“Are you a cop?”

“Yeah, I’m Chief Curry of the Dallas Police. Can’t you tell from the glasses and the jowls?”

“I don’t see any glasses or jowls, ma’am.”

“That’s because I’m in disguise. What you want to bet on in the middle of the summer, chum? There’s nothing to bet on.”

“Case-Tiger.”

“Which pug?”

“Case.”

She rolled her eyes, then shouted back over her shoulder. “Better get out here, Dad, you got a live one.”

Frank Frati was at least twice Chaz Frati’s age, but the resemblance was still there. They were related, of course they were. If I mentioned I had once laid a bet with a Mr. Frati of Derry, Maine, I had no doubt we could have a pleasant little discussion about what a small world it was.

Instead of doing that, I proceeded directly to negotiations. Could I put five hundred dollars on Tom Case to win his bout against Dick Tiger in Madison Square Garden?

“Yes indeedy,” Frati said. “You could also stick a red-hot branding iron up your rootie-patootie, but why would you want to?”

His daughter yapped brief, bright laughter.

“What kind of odds would I get?”

He looked at the daughter. She put up her hands. Two fingers raised on the left, one finger on the right.

“Two-to-one? That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s a ridiculous life, my friend. Go see an Ionesco play if you don’t believe me. I recommend Victims of Duty. ”

Well, at least he didn’t call me cuz, as his Derry cuz had done.

“Work with me a little on this, Mr. Frati.”

He picked up an Epiphone Hummingbird acoustic and began to tune it. He was eerily quick.

“Give me something to work with, then, or blow on over to Dallas. There’s a place called—”

“I know the place in Dallas. I prefer Fort Worth. I used to live here.”

“The fact that you moved shows more sense than wanting to bet on Tom Case.”

“What about Case by a knockout somewhere in the first seven rounds? What would that get me?”

He looked at the daughter. This time she raised three fingers on her left hand.

“And Case by a knockout in the first five?”

She deliberated, then raised a fourth finger. I decided not to push it any farther. I wrote my name in his book and showed him my driver’s license, holding my thumb over the Jodie address just as I had when I’d bet on the Pirates at Faith Financial almost three years ago. Then I passed over my cash, which was about a quarter of all my remaining liquidity, and tucked the receipt into my wallet.

Two thousand would be enough to pay down some more of Sadie’s expenses and carry me for my remaining time in Texas. Plus, I wanted to gouge this Frati no more than I’d wanted to gouge Chaz Frati, even though he had set Bill Turcotte on me.

“I’ll be back the day after the dance,” I said. “Have my money ready.” The daughter laughed and lit a cigarette. “Ain’t that what the chorus girl said to the archbishop?”

“Is your name Marjorie, by any chance?” I asked.

She froze with the cigarette in front of her and smoke trickling from between her lips.

“How’dja know?” She saw my expression and laughed. “Actually, it’s Wanda, sport. I hope you bet better than you guess names.”

Heading back to my car, I hoped the same thing.

CHAPTER 25

1

I stayed with Sadie on the morning of August fifth until they put her on a gurney and rolled her down to the operating room. There Dr. Ellerton was waiting for her, along with enough other docs to field a basketball team. Her eyes were shiny with preop dope.

“Wish me luck.”

I bent and kissed her. “All the luck in the world.”

It was three hours before she was wheeled back to her room—same room, same picture on the wall, same horrible squatting commode—fast asleep and snoring, the left side of her face covered in a fresh bandage. Rhonda McGinley, the nurse with the fullback shoulders, let me stay with her until she came around a little, which was a big infraction of the rules. Visiting hours are more stringent in the Land of Ago. Unless the head nurse has taken a shine to you, that is.

“How are you?” I asked, taking Sadie’s hand.

“Sore. And sleepy.”

“Go back to sleep then, honey.”

“Maybe next time . . .” Her words trailed off in a furry hzzzzz sound. Her eyes closed, but she forced them open with an effort. “. . . will be better. In your place.” Then she was gone, and I had something to think about.

When I went back to the nurses’ station, Rhonda told me that Dr. Ellerton was waiting for me downstairs in the cafeteria.

“We’ll keep her tonight and probably tomorrow, too,” he said. “The last thing we want is for any sort of infection to develop.” (I thought of this later, of course—one of those things that’s funny, but not very.)

“How did it go?”

“As well as can be expected, but the damage Clayton inflicted was very serious. Pending her recovery, I’m going to schedule her second go-round for November or December.” He lit a cigarette, chuffed out smoke, and said: “This is a helluva surgical team, and we’re going to do everything we can . . . but there are limits.”

“Yes. I know.” I was pretty sure I knew something else, as well: there were going to be no more surgeries. Here, at least. The next time Sadie went under the knife, it wouldn’t be a knife at all.

It would be a laser.

In my place.

2

Small economies always come back and bite you in the ass. I’d had the phone taken out of my Neely Street apartment in order to save eight or ten dollars a month, and now I wanted it. But there was a U-Tote-M four blocks away with a phone booth next to the Coke cooler. I had de Mohrenschildt’s number on a scrap of paper. I dropped a dime and dialed.

“De Mohrenschildt residence, how may I help you?” Not Jeanne’s voice. A maid, probably

—where did the de Mohrenschildt bucks come from?

“I’d like to speak to George, please.”

“I’m afraid he’s at the office, sir.”

I grabbed a pen from my breast pocket. “Can you give me that number?”

“Yes, sir. CHapel 5-6323.”

“Thanks.” I wrote it on the back of my hand.