Solomon Vs. Lord Part 46

On this chilly morning, Marvin wore a herringbone sport coat over a black turtleneck. A stocking cap, looking a bit like a yarmulke, covered his bald head.

They were standing in Steve's kitchen, roughly twelve hours after his altered-state experience in the chickee hut. At least his body was here. In his foggy brain, snow swirled, and he was still curled up with Victoria on the straw. Which is just where he'd been when a voice on the speaker asked Seorita Lord to come to the staging area.

Bigby was looking for her. She dressed quickly, kissed Steve, and ducked out of the hut, glancing back, giving him a look he couldn't decipher. Melancholy? Longing? Regret?

He went back to the farmhouse, gathered Bobby from the bed, and carried him to the car. Home, Steve tucked Bobby in, then stretched out on his sofa with a bottle of Chinaco Blanco tequila and tried to make sense of the night. By dawn, his lips felt numb and there was a ringing in his ears.

When Marvin stopped by-a Sunday morning breakfast ritual-he asked about the sc.r.a.pes and bruises. Steve said he had tripped while jogging. The Maven seemed to buy it. Now he was whining about the menu change. "Where's the cream cheese?"

"I'm using caprino. Goat cheese."

"Fancy-schmancy."

Steve spread the goat cheese on a roll, sprinkled it with capers and chives, then placed sun-dried tomatoes on top.

"What's with the tomatoes, boychik?" Marvin asked. "They're all shriveled up, like my schmeckel."

"They're sun-dried."

"Not that anyone's complaining. My schmeckel, I mean, not your tomatoes."

Steve stirred lemon juice with olive oil and drizzled the mixture over the panino. "Marvin, I need a favor."

"Don't worry. I'm gonna help you pick a jury."

Marvin picked up the panino, studied it suspiciously, took a bite. "Hey, not bad. Ain't a bagel and lox, but not bad."

"I'm not talking about jury selection, Marvin. I need a hundred thousand dollars."

Marvin whistled. "That's some serious shekels, boychik."

"A loan, not a gift. If we win Barksdale, I'll pay it back quick. If we lose, I'll pay it back slow."

"I'd like to help, but I don't have that kind of cash."

"I figured, but I thought you might have some ideas."

"What about your father?"

Steve shook his head. "Even if he had it, I couldn't ask."

"You mean you wouldn't ask. Isn't it time to forgive and forget?"

"Not now, Marvin. I can't ask him, not on this."

Marvin tugged at a fold of skin on his neck. Marvin the Thinker. "What's the money for, if you don't mind my asking?"

Steve shot a look toward the corridor to his nephew's bedroom. All quiet. The boy either was still asleep or he was beating the computer at chess. "It's for Bobby. That's all I can say."

The old man's eyes lit up. "That's different. For Bobby, anything." He demolished the sandwich in three bites. "Not that I know where I'm gonna get the money, but I got some friends."

"Thanks, Marvin."

"You sleep in a stable last night?"

"Why?"

"You got straw in your hair."

Steve ran a hand over his head, plucked a strand from behind his ear. "Bigby's farm," he said, and left it at that.

"What were you doing there, besides l.u.s.ting after his fiancee?"

"That about sums it up."

Steve had succeeded in not thinking about Victoria for the last few minutes, but there it was again. Just before Marvin arrived, Steve had called her cell phone, but there'd been no answer. Where was she this morning? With Bigby? Or taking a long walk through the trees, thinking of Steve?

"I don't know how I'm going to try Barksdale with her," he said. "Or Bobby's case, either."

"Why not? I thought the two of you were getting along these days."

"I'll be sitting close enough to smell her shampoo. Every time she'd give me a doc.u.ment, our hands would touch, and . . ." Steve stopped. He hadn't intended to open up.

Marvin was staring at him. "Ay, gevalt. You're in love!"

Now Steve wanted to talk. If he had a closer relations.h.i.+p with his father, this would be the time-"Hey, Dad, what should I do?"-but with Herbert, he wouldn't get advice, he'd get criticism. "I need some advice, Marvin."

"Got one word for you. 'v.i.a.g.r.a.'"

"Don't need it."

"Neither do I, but in case you're nervous when you and that s.h.i.+ksa G.o.ddess do it the first time, it can help."

Steve was silent.

"Ah! You already shtupped her?"

This wasn't going to be easy, Steve knew, but he needed to talk. "Marvin, can you be discreet?"

The old man shrugged. "Was Jesus a nice Jewish boy?"

Five minutes later, the front door opened and another Sunday morning regular walked in.

"Where are the bagels?" Cadillac said, entering the kitchen.

"Don't got any," Marvin said. "Mr. Fancy Pants bought machetes instead."

"Michettes," Steve said.

"Just as well," Cadillac said. "Poppy seeds stick in my dentures." He looked at Steve. "What happened to your face?"

"I fell jogging."

"I got marked up like that once," Cadillac said. "Tripped over a windowsill."

"How's that possible?" Steve said.

Cadillac sat down at the kitchen table, sighed, propped his feet on a chair. "A jealous husband was coming in the bedroom door with a shotgun, I was going out the window without my pants. Kansas City. Or maybe St. Louis."

"What's with the duds?" Marvin asked. Cadillac was wearing dark blue coveralls with a patch on the chest that read: "Rockland State Hospital."

"Doing a favor for Steve," Cadillac said.

"Everybody he's asking favors these days."

"Cadillac's a h.e.l.luva PI," Steve said.

"Janitor's more like it," Cadillac said. "Your doc was there last night, by the way."

"So you couldn't snoop?"

"Sure I could. Gimme a sandwich and lemme tell it my way."

Steve put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on a panino he'd been working on.

"Last couple nights, I been going through her desk," Cadillac said. "In-box, out-box. Patient records. Test charts. Lot of mumbo-jumbo. Last night, I come into her office around eleven o'clock, pus.h.i.+ng my broom, rolling my cart. Only this time she's still there. Big woman with a sour face."

"She say anything to you?"

"Not to me. She was on the phone."

Steve handed Cadillac the panino. "So you left?"

"h.e.l.l, no." Cadillac took a bite, nodded his approval. "I emptied her wastebasket, dusted the counters, puttered around. She just kept on talking. Old black man pus.h.i.+ng a broom. You don't get more invisible than that."

"Who was she talking to?"

"All I know, his name was Carlos, and he was in Mexico."

Steve's look must have asked a question because Cadillac said: "'What time is it in Guadalajara, Carlos?' That's what she was saying when I walked in. Then she says she wants a thousand units of replen-something."

Steve grabbed a pen and a pad. "Replen . . . ?"

"One of those drug names they make up that don't mean nothing. Like v.i.a.g.r.a."

"I don't need it," Marvin said for the second time that morning.

"So that's it?" Steve said.

"Settle down, boy," Cadillac said. "When you write a song, you don't give away the story in the first verse."

"Okay, okay."

"Like all those songs Gordon Jenkins wrote for Sinatra." He started singing softly: "Opposites attract, the wise men claim, Still I wish that we had been a little more the same, It might have been a shorter war."

"Sounds like Steverino and his lady partner," Marvin said.

"Can we get back to Kranchick for a second?" Steve pleaded.

"Then the song throws you a curve." Cadillac resumed singing: "She knew much more than I did, But there was one thing she didn't know, That I loved her, 'cause I never told her so."

Cadillac smiled. "There's the surprise. He never had the guts to tell the lady he loved her."

"Just like our friend." Marvin turned to Steve. "Unless you told her last night."

"What happened last night?" Cadillac asked.

"What happened in the hospital last night?" Steve countered.

"Steverino shtupped his law partner," Marvin said.

"No," Cadillac said.

"The emmis. Right under the nose of her fiance."

"Attaboy," Cadillac said. "Reminds me of the time I was seeing this dancer who was married to a comic. Every night, when he went on the stage-"

"Cadillac! What the h.e.l.l happened in the d.a.m.n hospital?"

"All right. Keep your britches on. The doc must not have liked the price. 'Cause she says, 'Forget it, Carlos. You're not gonna f.u.c.k me up the a.s.s.'"

"She said that?" Marvin made a tsk-tsk sound.

"Reminded me of a foulmouthed little mama I knew in Memphis," Cadillac said.

"Then what?" Steve demanded. "After she argued with Carlos about price?"

"She said something about calling this supplier in Argentina. But Carlos must have lowered the price because she calmed right down and said, fine, she'd wire the money first thing in the morning, and no, she didn't want a receipt. No paper trail. She hangs up and I go out and work the rest of the floor."

"Replen-something," Steve said, mostly to himself. "Replen what?"

"Replengren," Cadillac said.

"How do you know?"

"Because after she left, I came back and emptied her wastebasket a second time. It's my d.a.m.n job, right?" He reached into his pocket and handed Steve a slip of paper. A crumpled sheet from a notepad with the Rockland State Hospital logo on top, Kranchick's name on the bottom, and what had to be her handwriting in between.

80 mg Replengren X 1000 San Blas Medico "So what is it?" Marvin asked.