Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen Read Free Book Online

chin on the edge of the tub. “What do you want to know, Mr. Krome?”
    “Did you win the lottery?”
    “Yes, I won the lottery.”
    “Why aren’t you happy about it?”
    “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 not to.”
    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