Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem by Jonathan Woods Read Free Book Online Page B

much money’s in Ray’s pocket plus or minus ten percent,” says Jack, his eyes unglazing.
    Bill cocks his head like a parrot, listening to the sound of the coins striking each other. Counting the dimes and nickels and quarters. He pouts his lips.
    “You’re on.”
    Two and a half hours and five Tequila Sunrises later, Jack Niles steers the Cadillac Escalade on to the cement causeway linking South Padre Island to the Texas mainland. His wife, in the white leather seat opposite, reaches out her fingers and squeezes his leg. Her given name is Jill. As in Jack and Jill. It still gets a laugh with strangers. Caught in the blasting stream of the air conditioner, her blonde hair sways across her austerely pretty face.
    “Don’t catch cold, hon,” she says.
    In the backseat Bill Oaks lounges sideways, the collar of his silk tropical shirt askance. “Hot back here,” he says. Jack turns on the back seat blower.
    The Escalade rolls like a sailor through the streets of Port Isabel. At last, just past the H-E-B supermarket, it turns onto the two-lane highway to Brownsville and Matamoros.
    It’s a dull dusty ride to the border. Bill Oaks, agent to the stars, regales Jack and Jill with strange tales from the Pacific edge. Mudslides and ecstasy parties in Malibu. A midnight run through the desert to Vegas—a famous starlet behind the wheel, naked except for a pink dog collar around her neck. The only difficulty arises when she sashays bare-assed across the lobby of the Bellagio and tries to check in without any luggage.
    “So,” ponders Jill. “What brings y’all to boring South Padre?”
    “Just taking a breather. Step out of the fast lane.” Then, after a pause: “Go someplace where I won’t run into anyone I know or who knows me.”
    “Been coming to Padre Island since I was a kid.” says Jack. “Back when there was nothing but two lanes of cracked blacktop with a drawbridge out from Port Isabel. When a sailboat was going through the channel and the bridge was up, you just waited awhile.” Flooring the gas pedal, he swerves the Escalade around a minivan that has pulled partway on the shoulder to let Jack pass.
    The outskirts of Brownsville present a cluster fuck of dingy bars, taco joints, gas stations, junkyards and strip clubs, in no particular order. At the international bridge most of the traffic is coming north into the lone star state. They breeze across; on the Mexican side a mustachioed border cop in a green uniform waves them through. Under the bridge the Rio Grande glides by, brown and sluggish as a snake at midday.
    Jack parks the car at Garcia’s restaurant and gift shop and slips the private guard a hundred pesos. They catch a cab to the address Jack got from an old frat buddy.
    “I don’t understand why we’ve got to come to sombrero-land so you can gamble my money away,” Jill says in a certain unmistakable tone, as the bare skin of her thighs squeaks across the vinyl back seat of the cab. “It’s so damn hot away from the beach.”
    Jack looks at the photograph on the cab license, then at the driver’s profile. They don’t match up.
    “You should have stayed at the beach, honey bun.”
    “Maybe I’ll just find me a Mexican gigolo with a waxed mustache to fuck me silly.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    Bill is looking uncomfortable. “I’m not a gambler either. Just along for the ride.”
    “I’ll bet,” says Jill.
    The cab drops them at a post-war palacio protected by a high wrought-iron fence. A buzzer opens the gate. The house is painted the same pink as a harlot’s toenails. Several lemon trees and a fig fill the otherwise bare front yard. From the second floor balcony, a man in a dark suit watches them go up the tiled walk and disappear through the deeply shaded front door.
    Inside a black man wearing a tuxedo serves drinks. You can play roulette, dice or poker. Jack leans over and turns up the leg of his cream-colored triple-pleated slacks. A rubber band around his ankle holds a