"Who says I'm not."

"Will you keep your job at Dr. Crawford's?" The lady at the bed-and-breakfast had told him JoLayne Lucks worked at the veterinary clinic.

She said, "Hey, your fingers are pruning up."

Krome was determined to overcome the distraction of his own nakedness. "Can I ask a favor? There's a notebook and a ballpoint pen in the pocket of my pants."

"Oh, no you don't."

"But you promised."

"I beg your pardon?" She picked up the gun again; gonged the barrel loudly against the tub's iron faucet, which protruded from the wall between Krome's feet.

OK, he thought. We'll do it her way.

"JoLayne, have you ever won anything before?"

"Bikini contest at Daytona. I was eighteen, for heaven's sake, but I know what you're thinking." She rolled her eyes.

Krome said, "What was the prize?"

"Two hundred bucks." She paused. Puffed her cheeks. Propped the shotgun against the sink. "Look, I can't lie. It was a wet T-shirt contest. I tell people it was bikinis because it doesn't sound so slutty."

"Heck, you were just a kid."

"But you'd put it in the newspaper anyway. It's too juicy notto."

She was right: It was an irresistible anecdote – yet one that could be retold tastefully, even poignantly, as JoLayne Lucks would appreciate when she finally saw Tom Krome's feature article. In the meantime he could do little but gaze at the glassy bubbles that clung to the wet hair on his chest. He felt disarmed and preposterous.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked JoLayne.

"I've got just an awful feeling."

"Like a vision?" Krome was fishing to see if she was one of the local paranormals. He hoped not, even though it would've made for a more colorful story.

"Not a vision, just a feeling," she said. "The way you can sometimes feel a storm coming, even when there's not a cloud in the sky."

It was agony, hearing one good quote after another slip away untranscribed. Again he begged for his notebook.

JoLayne shook her head. "This isn't the interview, Mr. Krome. This is the pre–interview."

"But Miss Lucks – "

"Fourteen million dollars is a mountain of money. I believe it will attract a bad element." She reached into the water – deftly insinuating her hand under Tom Krome's butt – and yanked the drain plug out of the bathtub.

"Dry off and get dressed," she told him. "How do you like your coffee?"

4

Demencio was carrying out the garbage when the red pickup rolled to a stop under the streetlight. Two men got out and stretched. The shorter one wore pointed cowboy boots and olive-drab camouflage, like a deer hunter. The taller one had a scraggy ponytail and sunken drugged-out eyes.

Demencio said: "Visitation's over."

"Visitation of what?" asked the hunter.

"The Madonna."

"She die?" The ponytailed one spun toward his friend. "Goddamn, you hear that?"

Demencio dropped the garbage bag on the curb. "I'm talking about Madonna, the Virgin Mary. Jesus' mother."

"Not the singer?"

"Nope, not the singer."

The hunter said, "What's a 'visitation'?"

"People travel from all over to pray at the Madonna's statue. Sometimes she cries real tears."

"No shit?"

"No shit," said Demencio. "Come back tomorrow and see for yourself."

The ponytailed man said, "How much you charge?"

"Whatever you can spare, sir. We take donations only." Demencio was trying to be polite, but the two men made him edgy. Hicks he could handle; hard-core rednecks scared him.

The strangers whispered back and forth, then the camouflaged one spoke up again: "Hey, Julio, we in Grange?"

Demencio, feeling his neck go tight: "Yeah, that's right."

"Is there a 7-Eleven somewheres nearby?"

"All we got is the Grab N'Go." Demencio pointed down the street. "About half a mile."

"Thank you kindly," said the hunter.

"Double for me," said the ponytailed man.

Before the pickup drove away, Demencio noticed a red-white-and-blue sticker on the rear bumper: mark fuhrman for president.

Definitely not pilgrims, Demencio thought.

Chub was intrigued by what the Cuban had said. A statue that cries? About what?

"You'd cry, too," said Bodean Gazzer, "if you was stuck in a shithole town like this."

"So you don't believe him."

"No, I do not."

Chub said, "I seen weepin' Virgin Marys on TV before."

"I've seen Bugs Bunny on TV, too. That make him real? Maybe you think there's a real rabbit that sings and dances dressed up in a fucking tuxedo – "

"Ain't the same thing." Chub was insulted by Bode's acid sarcasm. Sometimes his friend seemed to forget who had the gun.

"Here we are!" Bode declared, waving at a flashing sign that spelled out grab n'go. He parked in the handicapped space by the front door and flipped on the dome light inside the truck. From a pocket he took out the folded clipping from The Miami Herald.The story said the second winning lottery ticket had been purchased "in the rural community of Grange." The winner, it reported, hadn't yet come forward to claim his or her share of the prize.

Bode read this aloud to Chub, who said: "Can't be many Lotto joints in a town this size."

"Let's ask," said Bode.

They went into the Grab N'Go and picked up two twelve-packs of beer, a cellophane bag of beefalo jerky, a carton of Camels and a walnut coffee cake. While the clerk rang them up, Bode inquired about Lotto tickets.

"How many you want? We're the only game in town," the clerk said.

"Is that a fact." Bode Gazzer gave a smug wink at Chub.

The clerk was eighteen, maybe nineteen. He was heavyset and freshly sunburned. He had a burr cut and a steep pimpled nose. A plastic tag identified him as shiner.

He said, "Maybe you guys heard – this store had the winning ticket yesterday."

"Go on!"

"God's truth. I sold it to the woman myself."

Bode Gazzer lit a cigaret. "Right here? No way."

Chub said, "Sounds like a line a shit to me."

"No, I swear." With a finger the clerk crossed his heart. "Girl name of JoLayne Lucks."

"Yeah? How much she win?" Chub asked.

"Well, first it was twenty-eight million, but come to find out she's gotta split it. Someone else had the same numbers, is what the news said. Somebody down around Miami."

"Is that a fact." Bode paid for the beer and groceries. Then he tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter. "Tell you what, Mister Shiner. Give me five Quick Picks, assuming you still got the magic touch."

The clerk smiled. "You come to the right place. Town's famous for miracles." He pulled the tickets from the Lotto machine and handed them to Bodean Gazzer.

Chub said, "She a local gal, this Joleen?"

"Lives acrost from the park. And it's JoLayne."

Chub, scratching his neck: "I wonder if she's lookin' for a husband."

The clerk grinned and lowered his voice. "No offense, sir, but she's a little too tan for you."

They all had a laugh. Bode and Chub said goodbye and walked out to the truck. For a while the two men sat in the cab, drinking beer, gnawing on jerky, not speaking a word.

Finally Chub said, "So it's just like you said."

"Yup. Just like I said."

"Goddamn. A Negro."With both hands Chub tore into the coffee cake.

"Eat quick," Bode told him. "We got work to do."

Tom Krome spent three hours with JoLayne Lucks. To call it an interview was a stretch. He'd never met anyone, politicians and convicts included, who could so adroitly steer conversation in a wrong direction. JoLayne Lucks held the added advantages of soft eyes and charm, to which Krome easily succumbed. By the end of the evening, she knew everything important there was to know about him, while he knew next to nothing about her. Even the turtles remained an enigma.