The Famous and the Dead

23



Mary Kate Boyle rang up another Family Bucket Extra Crispy and took a handful of wadded bills from a very short woman who looked exactly as wide as she was tall. Mary Kate sorted the damp currency and made the change and when she handed it to the customer she had to bend over the counter and reach down. The woman waddled out with a white-and-red KFC bag in each hand, their bottoms scarcely clearing the floor. Tony, the manager who had hired her, helped another customer at the next register. He’d been shuttling between the front and kitchen all day but, now that early evening had come, he had to concentrate on the waves of hungry working people who hit just after five o’clock. Tony glanced very quickly at her, then away. He’d been doing that. Mary Kate pulled her cell phone from her apron pocket and checked the time, then put on a smile for her next customer.

Thirty-five minutes later she was at the Lowell Theater on Fourth, breathing hard from the long, fast walk, trying to steady herself to read for the part of Curley’s wife in Of Mice and Men. It was a Community Theater Players production, non-Equity. In the theater lobby she scanned through the brief story synopsis and character description of Curley’s wife. She’d read the book twice, years ago. She had liked it that Curley’s wife didn’t have a name and wasn’t allowed to exist outside of the way the men on the ranch saw her. But she knew that Curley’s wife had a whole other existence, invisible and outside the written story, like many women where Mary Kate came from. Secret hearts, she called them. A good many of the women she knew had them. Some men, even.

Waiting in the near darkness she watched the other actresses read. They were doing the scene at the end where Curley’s wife talks to Lennie in the barn. Mary Kate noted the training and skill and robust beauty of the real actresses. Several of them seemed to know one another. Still, after four readings, she saw that there were things about Curley’s wife that these women did not quite get. They played her as a sexy tramp, but didn’t give her true loneliness and her sharp fear that her life’s possibilities had almost totally slipped away. Those qualities were what made her more than just Curley’s wife, which is what the writer knew but his characters didn’t. Mary Kate sensed she wouldn’t get the part, especially with her split lips and black eye, though the wounds were healing. But the idea of not getting the part somehow calmed her. She felt good inside. She was out of the sticks and into a city full of terrific food and good people. Her pulse was normal as she waited, her thoughts drifting peacefully along with the dialogue, a sense of confidence settling in. Her fight. The one thing she knew she had a lot of. A lot more than most people could even see. It was hers. Only an empty stomach could take away that fight, and her stomach now was filled with fiery chicken thighs and mountains of coleslaw and those terrific mashed potatoes, and there was more where all that came from.

“Mary Kate Boyle?”

• • •

The casting director said he might or might not call. Later she met Tony and some of the other KFC crew at a diner in the Gaslamp District. It was not far from her fleabag hotel, and it was noisy and busy and had the buzz of a local’s hangout. Tony bought beers for everyone because he was the manager, though he explained that he made little more than his cooks and front-store employees made, and put in twice the hours. Three of the cashiers were there, all about Mary Kate’s age. Two of the cooks came by later. Mary Kate liked the cooks. They were Mexicans, like Tony. For the past few days during slow times at KFC, she would go back into the kitchen just to watch them work. She liked their coordination and athletic balance and goofy singing as they slid around the greasy kitchen floor carrying heavy pressure kettles—boiling with fat and chicken—from the flame-belching stoves to the drainers. They looked like they were roller-skating. They were a happy bunch of daredevils, sliding around like that, but she hoped they weren’t just showing off for her. Don’t want to be like Curley’s wife, she thought. That story had haunted her since the day she finished it.

They shot some pool at the Rack and when it got late Tony walked her out. The Gaslamp was quieting now and the breeze off the ocean was up and Mary Kate buttoned her coat high and put her hands deep in the pockets. Out in front of the Winston Arms, Tony embraced her politely and waited until she’d gone inside. By the time she got upstairs to her window he was gone, and this was good. She liked him but didn’t want him stuck on her. Her phone rang and she checked the number and didn’t recognize it, except the area code, which was Russell County. “Hello?”

“Clinton Stewart Wampler here.”

“Not you, Clint.” She put him on speaker phone and turned on the recorder that Charlie Hood had given her.

“Why not me? Skull’s in jail and Brock, too. They got busted by the feds. But not me. I got away. I got a plan and I need some help.”

“How am I going to help you from way back here in Missouri?”

“You listen. I didn’t just get away, I got away with a missile! I want to sell it for big bucks. And if I can’t, I’ll just blow something up. Like maybe an abortion clinic or a Muslim church or school or something. Southern California’s full of shit like that.”

She felt queasy at the words abortion clinic. “But why are you calling? What do you want me to do?”

Clint said nothing for a moment, then, “I want you to come out here and be my girl.”

“While you blow things up?”

“Exactly. We’d be like a movie.”

“I was Skull’s girl.”

“Why did you say that?”

“I’m not sure why. Something about how different you two are.”

“But you’re not his girl no more, right?”

“‘No more’ is most certainly right.”

“Then what about me? I always was lookin’ at you when I wouldn’t get caught at it. Skull and you didn’t know squat about my affections and overall designs for you. He was too old to understand your value. I’m young, Mary Kate, and I got a future.”

Mary Kate Boyle said nothing for a long beat. She was truly flummoxed.

“Now when you come, bring all the money you got and a decent car.”

“I can’t afford a car.”

“Then borrow one. Just get here. Take a Greyhound if you have to.”

“What’s in this for me, Clint?”

“Forty thousand American-made dollars is what I’ll take for this here Stinger. I ain’t saying one penny of it’s yours but if you’re with me it’s gonna rub off. You know what I mean.”

Mary Kate kept herself from laughing. It was funny to her that anyone could be as self-serving as Clint yet so confident in his success. Maybe that’s how people like him got away with things. He’d never said much more than a word or two to her in the six months she was hanging with Skull’s merry band. He looked about eighteen with the big ears and bad haircut but she knew he was older than that.

“Let me think about,” she said. “I’ll call you.”

“You can’t. I’m on a pay phone and I won’t use it twice. When you going to make up your mind?”

“When I’m done thinking about it.”

“Don’t be taking all day. I got half the cops in the world out here looking for me. I think I’ve pissed them off. There’s this one, Charlie Hooper—tall a*shole with diamonds in his teeth, the guy who set us up—I’m gonna do something special with him.”

A chill rippled down Mary Kate’s back. “Like what?”

“Like none of your business.”

“If Skull and Brock got popped, how did you get away?”

“’Cause Clint is smarter and meaner, that’s how.”

“I guess I believe that.”

“I’ll call soon. Don’t piss away the lifetime of an opportunity, honey. I’ve got a big heart for you. And plenty more.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get that part, Clint.”

“Skull said you got it real good. Now I’m the one loving you.”

“You’re not doing any such, Clint.”

“I know you’re gonna come.”

• • •

She played the recording over the phone to Charlie Hood. It was very late but she thought this information might be important. Lawmen always wanted to hear about bad guys blowing up things like schools or mosques or clinics. Hood had told her a full day ago that Clint might call and she had thought that was ridiculous. Why would he call her? But now she knew and Charlie had been right. He was a smart guy. With diamonds in his smile. She wondered if maybe he was still in bed right now and if anyone was in it with him. It worried her that Clint Wampler wanted to fix Hood’s wagon and had a missile to do it.

“So, Charlie, what do you want me to do?”

“Tell him you’re on your way.”

“Then what?”

“Set him up for us.”

“I figured that’s where you were going.”

“Can you do it? There’s always risk when you deal with people like Clint. He murdered a man less than forty-eight hours ago. But we’ll keep him away from you. It can all be by phone. We won’t let him get close.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Promise me another thing, Charlie.”

“What’s that, Mary Kate?”

“Aw, I don’t know. Anything you want. Just funnin’ with ya. My lips are almost healed up enough to smile again.”