Strip Poker Read online

  “How about this?” I plugged it in before she could issue an opinion. Travis Tritt started singing “I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E.” “Now that’s music I can relate to,” I said. Fluffy ignored me. She watched as we swooped down into the parking lot of the college, wide and open, facing St. Andrew’s Bay.

  Frankie sat on top of a picnic table, dressed in his standard black leather jacket, boot-cut jeans, and Harley T-shirt. In the daylight, if you looked past the beard, he was easier to recognize. His hair was much longer than it had been the last time I’d seen him. The lines around his mouth and eyes were a little deeper, but the essence of Frankie was there. He still smoked unfiltered cigarettes. He still smiled with a lopsided grin, but now the smile seemed genuine, not the sinister leer he’d sported before Denise calmed him down.

  “You ain’t changed a bit,” he said as I approached him. “Still got them great tits and those long-assed legs.”

  “Yeah, well you ain’t lost your mouth either,” I said. For a second I flashed back to the way we’d met, him on his Harley, his friend kicking poor Fluffy senseless. I’d tried to kick his ass that day, hopped up on adrenaline and unafraid even though he towered over me.

  “Where’s Denise?” I asked, like this was nothing but a social call, like he was a regular citizen and not with a price put on his head by angry bikers who didn’t particularly care for him resigning from his gang.

  “She couldn’t make it on account of she don’t know I’m here yet.”

  I walked right up to him and stood just beyond his reach, challenging him to invade my personal space, letting him know I was in no way threatened by him.

  “Break it down for me, Frankie,” I said. “What’s this about? You’re taking a hell of a risk coming here. The Outlaws might not have a presence here anymore, but one of their friends could spot you. They don’t forgive people they think betrayed them.”

  Smoke got in Frankie’s eyes, making him wrinkle up and squint at me. “I’ve still got some friends here,” he said. “But you have a way of pissing people off. I don’t know how you do that.” He laughed, but there was a harsh ring to it.

  “I’m down in Key West, minding my own business, when I get a call from some former, shall we say, acquaintances. You got any ideas about that?” he asked.

  I sighed, reached for one of his cigarettes and then thought better. Now was not the time to start smoking.

  “Yeah, I think I have an idea. Your friends must’ve been looking to rob Vincent’s game.”

  Frankie nodded and looked off out at the water. “Word is, a guy got shot.”

  “Two guys got shot,” I said. “And one of them was my friend.”

  Frankie shrugged. “You get so fucking sentimental,” he said. “I don’t give a shit about that part. All’s I’m saying is, you’re running around town saying they plugged a guy and they’re saying they didn’t and you should let it lie at that.”

  “They shot Bruno,” I argued.

  Frankie shrugged again. “That’s part of his job, Sierra. He got in the way. But they didn’t do the other guy.”

  “How can you say that?” Frankie was starting to irritate me.

  “On account of they were using completely different weapons and one of the guys saw the little runt get plugged.”

  “Oh, and I am filled with brotherly love and respect for this upstanding citizen who is witness to a cold-blooded murder and has stepped forward to identify the real killer!”

  Frankie blew smoke in my direction. “Still a wiseass, huh?” he said.

  “Well, come on, Frankie. Think it through. An armed robber says, yeah we robbed the guy but we’re not killers? And I’m supposed to believe that? Give me a break!”

  “That’s the word, bird,” he said, climbing down off the table and stretching. “I was just trying to do you a favor. See, the way my friend sees it, the cops don’t really care about them. They got Gambuzzo. They got him on a multitude of charges. Who cares if some guys rob an illegal game?” He shook his head and answered his own question. “Don’t nobody care … until you start saying they done more than attempted robbery and assault. You start making a federal murder case out of it, and the cops’ll get more interested. What they’re saying is, take their advice, they didn’t do it, leave them alone.”

  “Or what?” I asked.

  Frankie smiled, the sinister smile this time. “Now you get it,” he said. “Or what, indeed.” He walked right up to me, so close I could smell the cigarette on his breath. “Or they’ll be dropping by to shut you up.” He looked at me, his eyes burning into mine. “Sierra, I owe you, but don’t make me fight off these guys. They’re assholes. They’ll kill our asses. Just listen to what they said and move on. Is that so hard?”

  I shook my head. “So who did they say did it?” I asked.

  Frankie smiled like maybe I was listening finally. “Some guy.”

  “Aw, come on, Frankie!”

  Frankie raised both hands, palms out. “Shit, I don’t know. The guy who called me said all he knows is it wasn’t one of them, it was some other guy.”

  “A big guy? Gambuzzo or what?”

  “He didn’t say, Sierra. I don’t know!”

  “Oh that’s wonderful!” I said. I started walking toward my car, watching Frankie’s reflection bounce off the windshield as I moved. “You tell them they have my undying gratitude. And then you tell them I want to talk to them.”

  Frankie started after me. “Yeah, right, Sierra. I don’t think you get me. You don’t talk to these guys. They talk. You listen.”

  I whipped around. “I’m serious, Frankie. Hook me up to talk or I’ll tell Nailor to start driving toward Key West.”

  I had pushed the wrong button and suddenly I knew it. Frankie covered the distance between us in two strides, grabbed me by the back of my hair and pulled my head back against his chest.

  “This is the end of what I owe you, honey. Now it’s time you started owing me. You compromise me or my fucking family and I’ll skin you while you watch. You got that?”

  I nodded. “Family?”

  “Denise is pregnant,” he said. “We don’t do stress.”

  I took a deep breath and relaxed back against him, hoping to take the pressure off my neck. Fluffy came flying out of the car window, barking, charging Frankie, only stopping when I called her name.

  “Fluffy, stop, good girl, it’s all right. He’s not hurting me.” But Fluff wasn’t sure. She stood watching, her teeth bared, growling. I squirmed and turned my attention back to Frankie. “All right. Okay. I’ll leave you two out of it,” I said. “But you gotta get the word to these guys that I want to talk.”

  “Sierra, you’re a serious nutcase. These jokers’ll kill you.”

  “Let go of me,” I said, wrenching away. “That hurt!”

  Frankie didn’t seem to mind. He just stood there looking at me like I was seriously demented.

  “Deliver the message, Frankie,” I said. Behind us I heard Fluffy growl. My backup.

  Frankie shrugged. “You know what?” he said. “I’m just going to do it. I’m going to hook it up and I’m going to be there to make sure it comes off okay.” I started to speak but he held up his hand. “And you know what? Then we’re even. In fact, after that, you owe me.” He smirked again. “And it won’t be nothin’ personal if I decide to collect one day.” He started stalking off toward his bike.

  “Frankie, set it up for after Christmas,” I said. “I’m going to Philly for a few days.”

  Frankie just shook his head. “I’ll see if they can work you in,” he said. “Of course, at your convenience!”

  I’d pissed him off good, but there was nothing I could do to help that. Vincent Gambuzzo was an innocent man and one of Frankie’s ex-friends might be able to help prove that. What was a little riff between friends if it meant saving another friend’s life?

  Eleven

  Denny the Whiner was buried in a small church cemetery on the outskirts of the Panhandle village of Mexico Beac
h. By the time I scouted out the family home, I’d reached the edge of Port St. Joe and could smell the stink of the paper mill.

  His house was a small redbrick rectangle that showed all the signs of hard living and hit-or-miss attention. A concrete seahorse stood guard over the weed-laden front garden bed, its white paint peeled and the tip of its nose chipped by some long-ago accident. The grass in the yard was burnt off by the drought that had plagued most of Florida this fall, and a baby stroller sat sagging on the tiny front porch.

  Cars lined the small street, among them Raydean’s former police cruiser, and people stood in small huddled groups in the front yard. Somehow I found it difficult to believe that Denny had many friends. I figured most of the people here were curiosity seekers.

  It was one of those warm December afternoons that Florida is famous for, mid to upper sixties, bright sunlight, and blue, blue sky. I left Fluffy curled up on the backseat, wrapped in her faded yellow blanket, and headed for the front door. Denny the Whiner had a real last name and I struggled to remember it as I stepped onto the front porch and entered his home. Watley. Dennis Watley, the paper had said, thirty-six, with three young children and a wife, Rebecca.

  I spotted them instantly. While hordes of young children ran through and around the legs of the adults, the Watley children sat still as statues on the sofa beside their young, beautiful mother. Luckily, none of the kids bore much of a resemblance to pinchfaced Dennis. They were tall and rail-thin like their mother, with dark hair and eyes and clear, pale skin that seemed almost translucent. The four of them sat as if they were still in shock, watching the goings-on around them with vacant, slightly puzzled expressions.

  Raydean was in a corner of the room observing the scene on the sofa with a terribly sad look on her face. I walked up to her, breaking her view of the family, and smiled softly.

  “Hello,” I said, giving emphasis to the word so she’d remember our code signal and maybe jar herself out of whatever state she’d fallen into.

  She looked up at me and a slight air of irritation seemed to cross her features. “Sierra, this ain’t the place nor the time for playing super spy. Do you not see them poor young’uns? And look at their mama, ’bout to bust a gut with another young’un. God Almighty knows that’s a tragic picture.”

  I turned back and looked again, then faced Raydean. “I know, sweetie,” I said. “It must be so hard.” But inside a part of me was thinking, “Who wouldn’t be relieved to lose Denny ‘The Whiner’ Watley?”

  I spotted Denny’s badly dressed friend from the poker game. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, a sad, forlorn expression on his face as he watched the Widow Watley reach down and rub her hand absently over her pregnant belly. A gray-haired woman, looking like an older version of the young widow, stepped up to Denny’s friend and handed him a glass of tea, motioning that he should give it to Denny’s wife.

  I watched him walk up and speak to her. She seemed startled at first, taking the glass of tea and placing it on the coffee table in front of her, but then she looked over at the children and lapsed back into whatever thoughts she’d had before he walked up. Denny’s friend stood there, looking helpless for a few moments, then wandered back to his watch post by the kitchen door.

  I looked past him and saw Mike Riggs standing in the kitchen, talking to an elderly lady and holding a coffee mug like maybe he wished it was a beer. Even dressed for a funeral, Riggs still looked like Barney Rubble. Every now and then I’d see him glance nervously around the room, like he was maybe hoping to avoid someone, or like he wasn’t supposed to be there and was just waiting to get thrown out.

  I looked over at Raydean and saw her watching me. I nodded toward Riggs and raised an eyebrow. If Riggs was nervous, Raydean was just the girl to take advantage of the situation.

  She smiled slowly, instantly figuring Riggs as a potential alien. She nodded and pushed off from the wall, heading toward the nervous sea captain. Raydean made her move just the way the alligators used to push off from the sunny riverbank in the old Tarzan movies.

  The surprise guest of the afternoon was Izzy Rodriguez, the owner of the Busted Beaver. From the way he was watching Mrs. Watley, I figured him to be scouting for new talent. He looked hungry, like he was figuring the best angle to use to score her. It made me sick. I moved away from Raydean and toward Rodriguez with an eye toward letting him know what a sick piece of scuzzbag he was.

  He saw me coming and smiled, but it was one of those wary, enemy smiles and we both knew it.

  “Thought you didn’t crawl out of your coffin ’til after dark, Rodriguez,” I said. I was smiling so’s the people nearby would figure us for friends.

  Rodriguez looked at me, his beady little eyes hard chips of coal. “That’s no way to talk to your future employer,” he purred. “I’m gonna need a dishwasher and you’re gonna need a job. If you’re lucky, I might let you lick out the toilets.”

  Okay, open warfare, me and him, I was good to go. “Turd like you, I didn’t think you’d be wanting it clean,” I said. “Ain’t that like it always is with you, Izzy, dirty?”

  I saw his fists clench and knew I was getting to him. I smiled. “Bet you’re here to offer the little widow a loan at an interest rate she can’t possibly afford. Guess that’s how you play it once you bust a cap on her husband.”

  Izzy didn’t flinch. “Nice try, honey,” he said. “But amateur hour don’t start for another fifteen minutes. Perhaps you oughta go brush up on your detecting techniques and try it again.”

  Well, I hadn’t expected a lay down. “So why’re you here then?” I asked.

  “Could ask you the same.”

  “Could, but I got a reason and you don’t.” Raydean, looking over my way and sensing trouble, broke off her conversation with Mike Riggs and started moving slowly in our direction.

  “Maybe,” Rodriguez said, “I want to buy a fishing boat. Maybe I feel bad because another club owner shot an innocent man. Maybe I don’t want the Watley family to get a bad idea about the entertainment industry in Panama City.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You aren’t telling me why you’re here, but trust me, I’ll find out.”

  Raydean joined us, a scowl deepening as she sized Izzy up and found him lacking. Izzy stared right back at her, his eyes coldly appraising. Big mistake on Izzy’s part. Raydean didn’t like people who stared.

  “Flemish, ain’tchu?” she asked, invading Izzy’s personal space by a good six inches.

  Izzy, mistaking Raydean for an elderly relative, smiled. “I didn’t know Mr. Watley well,” he murmured.

  “Hell, I reckon you didn’t know him a’tall,” Raydean answered. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  Izzy tried to back up, but bumped into the wall, trapped by Raydean’s bulk and her enormous flowered hat.

  “I’m from here,” he sputtered.

  “Yeah, right,” Raydean said, reaching not at all subtly into the depths of her flower arrangement, plumbing for a hat pin. “You think I fell off the turnip truck yesterday, don’t you, boy?”

  She extracted the pin, hiding it in the palm of her hand. “I got me a surefire test for your kind,” she said softly.

  Izzy, still smiling, leaned back as far as he could, but it wasn’t far enough. From the angle of Raydean’s approach, I could see a possible 911 call coming. I bumped her, throwing her pitch off just enough to land the four-inch needle in the side of Izzy’s left rear anterior. But better that than the dead center target she’d been working on.

  Izzy screamed and Raydean jumped backward, a puzzled expression on her face. “Ain’t never heard a one of ’em utter a death scream like that,” she said. “I was figuring for him to kind of pop and go flying around the room like a leaky balloon.”

  Izzy pushed past us and barreled out the front door at a dead run. Raydean, for her part, merely tucked the hat pin back in her bonnet and looked after him, shaking her head.

  “Grief,” she said to the near-silent room. “It’s a
turrible thing.”

  The room remained silent for maybe ten seconds before everyone once again resumed their condolence behaviors. The well-wishers, or whatever you call them, seemed to be mainly made up of Rebecca’s family and her friends. Denny didn’t seem to be very well represented at all.

  I snagged a glass of too-sweet punch the color of lime-green Jell-O and struck up a conversation with the plump woman in charge of ladling out cups of the sticky goo.

  “Friend of Denny’s?” I asked, trying for all the world to pass for a dumb blonde.

  The woman sighed, leaned toward me, and looked around to make sure she wasn’t heard. She was about as subtle as a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  “Frankly, I think we’re well rid of that’un,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong,” she added. “He was a good provider, but he made her life a livin’ hell, what with his drinkin’ and his druggin’.” The woman stared back at the sofa and the four lost souls sitting there. “All Becky ever done was homeschool and love up on her young’uns. But he dogged her, expected her to do all the work, tend the yard and raise the young’uns, while he was out getting shot at a poker game and such as that!”

  I shook my head, aware that Raydean had joined us.

  “Poor Becky,” Raydean said. “I knowed that man was wrong for her.”

  The punch lady nodded. “You should’ve seen her in high school—perkiest little thing you ever did see. Could’ve had her pick of ’em, but no, Denny’s what caught her eye. He seemed like such a nice guy back then, but you never can tell about a man, can you?”

  “Aha!” Raydean cried. “I knowed it. Self-esteem problems, weren’t it?”

  The punch lady looked confused and picked anxiously at a spot on the tablecloth. “Well, I don’t know them fancy terms, but I can tell you this: She never felt worthy, not with Willie Baldwin for a father. Cut from the same cloth, he and Denny were. I ask you, what was wrong with all them nice boys that wanted her? And look over at him,” she said, nodding toward Denny’s friend. “Turk’s half sick in love with her, but she wouldn’t leave Denny. Now you go figure that!”