He said, "You don't understand. This is a sport for Mary Andrea, dodging me and the lawyers. It's like a competition. Feeds her perverse appetite for drama."
"Can I ask how much you send her?"
Krome laughed sulfurously. "Nada.Not a damn penny! That's my point, I've tried everything: I cut off the monthly checks, canceled the credit cards, closed the joint accounts, forgot her birthday, forgot our anniversary, insulted her mother, slept with other women, grossly exaggerated how many – and still she won't divorce me. Won't even come to court!"
JoLayne said, "There's one thing you didn't try."
"It's against the law."
"Tell her you're dating a black girl. That usually does the trick."
"Mary Andrea couldn't care less. Hey, check this out." Tom Krome pointed across the parking lot. "Is that the pickup truck?"
"I'm not sure." JoLayne sat forward intently. "Could be."
On the morning the disposable camera arrived in the mail, Katie took it to a one-hour photo studio. Tom had done a pretty good job in Grange: only two pictures of his thumb and several of the Madonna shrine. In the close-ups, the statue's eyes glistened convincingly.
Katie slipped the photographs in her purse and drove downtown for an early lunch with her husband. In keeping with her new policy of marital sharing and complete openness, she placed the snapshots on the table between the bread basket and the pitcher of sangria.
"Tom kept his promise," she said, by way of explanation.
Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. put down his salad fork and thumbed through the pictures. His dullness of expression and pistonlike mastication reminded Katie of a grazing sheep.
He said, "So what the hell is it?"
"The Virgin Mary. The one that cries."
"Cries."
"See there?" Katie pointed. "They say she cries real tears."
"Whosays."
"It's a lore, Arthur. That's all."
"A crock is more like it." He handed the photos to his wife. "And your writer boyfriend gave you these?"
Katie said, "I asked him to – and he's not a boyfriend. It's over, as I've told you a dozen times. We're through, OK?"
Her husband took a sip of wine. Then, gnawing on a chunk of Cuban bread: "Let me see if I understand. It's over, but he's still sending you personal photographs."
Katie conveyed her annoyance by pinging a spoon against the stem of her wineglass. "You don't listen very well," she said, "for a judge."
Her husband snickered. His poor attitude made Katie wonder if this whole honesty thing was a mistake; with someone as jealous as Arthur, maybe it was wiser to keep a few harmless secrets.
If only he'd make an effort, Katie thought. If only he'd open up the way she had. Out of the blue she asked, "So, how's Dana?"
Dana was one of the two secretaries whom Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. was currently screwing.
"She's just fine," he said, cool as an astronaut.
"And Willow – she still with that ballplayer?"
Willow was the other secretary, Arthur's reserve mistress.
"They're still living together," the judge reported, "but Oscar's out of baseball. Torn rotator cuff, something like that."
"Too bad," said Katie.
"Maybe it was tendonitis. Anyway, he's gone back to get his degree. Restaurant management is what Willow said."
"Good for him," said Katie, thinking: Enough already about Oscar.
The judge looked pleased when his scrod arrived – baked in a bed of pasta, topped with crabmeat and artichokes. Katie was having the garden quiche, which she picked at listlessly. She hadn't seriously expected her husband to confess all his adulteries, but it wouldn't have killed him to admit to one. Willow would've been an encouraging start – she was no prize.
Katie said, "You were tossing and turning last night."
"You noticed."
"Your stomach again?"
"I got up," Arthur said, cheeks full, "and reread that remarkable list of yours."
Uh-oh, thought Katie.
"You and your young man," he said, swallowing emphatically, "every sordid, raunchy, sweaty detail. I can't believe you kept count."
"That's what truthful confessions are. If I went a little overboard, I'm sorry," Katie said.
"Thirteen sexual acts in fourteen days!" Her husband, twirling a pale-green noodle onto his fork. "Including three blow jobs – which, by the way, is two more than you've given me in the last fourteen months."
Talk about keeping count, Katie thought. "Arthur, finish your fish before it gets cold."
"I don't understand you, Katherine. After everything I've done for you, I get a knife in my heart."
She said, "Stop. You're getting worked up over practically nothing."
"Three blow jobs is not 'practically nothing.' "
"You've missed the whole point. The whole darn point." She reached under the table and flicked her husband's hand off her thigh.
"Your young man," he said, "where is he now? Lourdes? Jerusalem? Maybe Turin – getting fitted for the shroud!"
"Arthur, he's not my 'young man.' I don't know where he is. And you, you're just a hypocritical ass."
Neatly the judge buffed a napkin across his lips. "I apologize, Katherine. Tell you what, let's get a room somewhere."
"You go to hell," she said.
"Please?"
"On one condition. You quit obsessing about Tommy."
"It's a deal," said Arthur Battenkill Jr. Jovially he waved at the waiter and asked for the check.
A few hours later, Tom Krome's house blew up.
On the way to breakfast, Bodean Gazzer and Chub stopped to hassle a couple of migrant workers hitchhiking along Highway One. Chub hovered with the .357 while Bode ran through the drill:
Name the fourteenth President of the United States.
Where was the Constitution signed?
Recite the Second Amendment.
Who starred inRed Dawn?
Personally, Chub was glad he didn't have to take the same quiz. Evidently the two Mexicans didn't do so hot, because Bode ordered them in butchered Spanish to show their green cards. Fearfully the men took out their wallets, which Bode emptied in the gravel along the side of the road.
"They legal?" Chub asked.
"They wish."
With the sharp toe of a boot, Bode kicked through the migrants' meager belongings – driver's licenses, farmworker IDs, passport snapshots of children, prayer tabs, postage stamps, bus passes. Chub thought he spotted an immigration card, but Bode ground it to shreds under his heel. Then he removed the cash from the men's wallets and ordered them to get a move on, muchachos!
Later, in the truck, Chub asked how much money they'd had.
"Eight bucks between 'em."
"Oh, man."
"Hey, it's eight bucks that rightfully belongs to white 'Mericans like us. Fucking illegals, Chub – guess who pays their doctor bills and food stamps? Me and you, that's who. Billions a dollars every year on aliens."
As usual, Chub saw no reason to doubt his friend's knowledge of such matters.
"And I mean billions,"Bode Gazzer went on, "so don't think of it as a robbery, my friend. That was a rebate."
Chub nodded. "You put it that way, sure."
When they returned from the 7-Eleven, they found an unfamiliar car parked crookedly near Chub's trailer. It was a sanded-down Chevrolet Impala; an old one, too. One of Chub's counterfeit handicapped permits hung from the rearview.
"Easy does it," said Chub, pulling the gun from his belt.
The door of the trailer was open, the TV blaring. Bode cupped his hands to his mouth: "Get your ass out here, whoever you are! And keep your goddamn hands in the air!"
Shiner appeared, shirtless and stubbly-bald, in the doorway. He wore the grin of a carefree idiot. "I'm here!" he proclaimed.