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  But Marvelli was already on his way, crumbling up the receipt and sticking it in his pocket, the keys dangling from his teeth. Loretta, he thought. He had to find her. She’d beeped him last night. She was in trouble. Renée was right. He should never have left.

  As he jogged up to the automatic doors, he had to slow down and wait for them to open. He dashed out into the sunshine, cars and minibuses lined up at the curb. He cut through a rush of pedestrians on the sidewalk, squeezed through two bumpers, and waited for a break in the traffic so he could run across.

  “Two thirty-eight,” he repeated to himself as he slipped out of the sun and into the shade of the parking garage. He scanned the lines of rental cars and the white numbers painted on the black floor. Two-thirty-eight, two-thirty-eight—

  “Marvelli. Que pasa?”

  Marvelli looked up and saw Lawrence Temple coming toward him. He didn’t like the sound of Temple’s Spanish. It was phony friendly. Flanking Temple in a tight V formation was his 1RS goon squad—four dark suits with RayBans over their eyes. Two were average in size but grim of face, one white, the other Hispanic. There was something ominous and gnarled about these two. The other two were strapping, no-neck, Southern Methodist linebacker types, just as grim but somehow slightly less threatening because they didn’t seem as bright. Temple stopped walking, and the goons broke out of the V formation to form a loose circle around Marvelli.

  “How’d you know I’d be here?” Marvelli asked.

  Temple laughed. “We’re feds.”

  The goons were smiling.

  “Loretta beeped me. She may be in trouble.”

  Temple started shaking his head before Marvelli had even finished. “She’s all right.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We saw her.”

  “You went to the spa?”

  Temple shook his head. “There was a DEA plane in the area. They did some air recon for us. Loretta was spotted early this morning walking with Martha Sykes—”

  “Spooner,” Marvelli corrected.

  Temple shrugged. “The important thing is Loretta’s all right.”

  Marvelli had a gut feeling that Loretta’s safety wasn’t job one in Temple’s playbook. He kept his gaze leveled on Temple, the goons in his peripheral vision, as he pocketed the car keys just in case he needed his other hand. The two big meatballs moved farther behind his shoulders, out of his range of vision, as if they could read his mind.

  “Maybe it’s time to call it a game with this thing,” he said to Temple. “If Loretta doesn’t have anything for you by now—”

  Temple cut him off. “She’s not in any trouble, Marvelli. Let’s just leave her in place and give her a chance to dig up something good for us.”

  “Hey, Lawrence, Loretta’s not a fed and neither am I. We can’t stay here forever. We gotta bring this Spooner woman back to Jersey.”

  “You have until Monday.”

  “Says who?”

  “That’s what Loretta told me.”

  “Well, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean we’re authorized to be down here in Florida all that time.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll pay your day rate. You are helping us, after all.”

  The gnarly goons were smiling as if they knew something.

  “I know you’re worried about her, Marvelli, but believe me, she’s all right. Let’s just give her a little more time. Okay?”

  Marvelli glanced back at the Bubba goons who were covering his back. They were both young. And strong. But it was the gnarly ones who bothered him more. They looked like they’d been around. Temple was a wuss. He’d trip over his own feet trying to get away if anything happened. But these other guys Marvelli wasn’t so sure about. And there were four of them and one of him.

  “All right,” Marvelli finally said. “Let her stay a little while longer. See if she can do something for you.” He leaned forward and whispered in Temple’s face, “But just tell me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Are these guys really accountants?”

  Temple smiled at his question but didn’t answer it. “I’ll ride with you,” he said to Marvelli, then turned to his troops. “Follow us.”

  The goons moved on command.

  19

  Loretta’s face was a tear-streaked avocado green mask of torture and anguish. She was kicking the inside of the tub, sounding a monotonous dull gong as she called out for help over and over and over again. But she was so exhausted, she didn’t realize that her pleas were no more than pathetic squeaks and murmurs. Her knuckles were raw and stinging from banging on the salt crust. And even though her chest pains weren’t as bad as they had been, they were still there. But her primary fear wasn’t that she’d had a heart attack. It was that Brenda Hemingway would come back and start up the clothes dryer again.

  In Loretta’s mind Martha Lee had become Brenda, and the specter of Brenda was haunting her—Brenda wearing her clothes, Brenda cackling in her face, Brenda determined to burn her to a crisp until there was nothing left.

  When Loretta had been in that clothes dryer, going round and round, the gas burner roaring in her ears, the perforated metal getting hotter by the second, the fear of death merged with her fear of failure and became one and the same. An assault on her body was an assault on her very being. If Brenda had marked her for death, it had to have been her fault, something that she had done wrong that had made this happen. If she couldn’t live, she couldn’t succeed, and that was the crucial thing for Loretta—success, not just survival.

  “Help me please!” she squeaked. “Please, help me!” She broke down into sobs, finally realizing that her voice was gone.

  Suddenly the wooden door of the sauna swung open. “Martha, are you in here? They said you were here. Marth—oh, my God!”

  It was Roger Laplante, and his beady eyes were bugging out of his head. He was wearing a raspberry-colored sports jacket and pale yellow pants, holding the door open with his fingertips and standing stiffly as if he were afraid he’d get dirty.

  Do something! she shouted at him, but it was only in her head. Her mouth was moving, but nothing came out. He moved closer and partially blocked the glare of the overhead light bulb, sharpening the light so that she had to squint.

  Do something, you big douche bag. Please! But she was yelling only inside her head.

  Roger touched the salt crust with his index finger. He leaned on it with his palm, gradually bearing down on it. It held his weight. “Oh, Jesus!” he muttered to himself under his breath. “Don’t sue! Dear God, don’t sue!”

  He rushed to the thermostat on the wall, then changed his mind and went back to the tub. He unlocked the wheels with his foot. “Have to get you out of here,” he said, talking to himself. “Have to cool you down.” But when he touched the edge of the plastic tub, he immediately retracted his hand, burning his fingers.

  “She’s gonna sue,” he muttered in a tizzy. “She’s gonna sue. Oh, God!”

  Damn right I’m gonna sue, she thought. Get my 2,800 bucks back.

  He took off his shoe, hopping around on one foot, and started to bang his heel on the crust, but that didn’t do any good.

  Loretta winced. Her face was being pelted with bits of salt. “Stop,” she managed to get out.

  Roger was startled by the sound of her voice.

  “All right, okay,” Roger said, patting the air over the tub. “I’ll get you out. Don’t worry. Don’t sue. I’ll get a hammer. Yes, a hammer. We must have a hammer here.”

  He rushed out of the sauna, then suddenly he stopped in his tracks at the doorway. “You!” he shouted. Loretta could see that he was pointing to someone down the hall. “Yes, you,” he called out. “Come here quick. I need a hand. Quick!”

  Dazed from the heat and still fighting the glare of the light-bulb, Loretta saw a second shadowy figure coming toward her.

  “We have to get her out of here,” Roger said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Help him. He�
��s an idiot, Loretta tried to say, but she was so weak she couldn’t move. She tried to kick the tub again, but her legs wouldn’t respond. She was dizzy and totally exhausted. It was a struggle to keep her eyes open even a slit.

  “What should we do?” Roger asked in a panic.

  The other person didn’t say a word.

  Torpedo Joe looked at the guy in the faggy pink jacket, then looked at the poor fat woman trapped in the tub.

  “Do something!” the big faggot yelled at him. “Do something!”

  But Joe didn’t say squat, not wanting to give himself away. This guy probably figured he was one of the geeks who worked here since he was wearing black shorts and a white polo shirt just like all the other workers around here. Joe had snitched them from the men’s locker room—the fools didn’t use locks at this place. He kept his hand over his chin as if he were thinking hard about how to handle this situation when in fact he was hiding his soul-patch braid. Job or no job, he wasn’t about to shave that off. He needed some hair.

  “Come on, come on! Do something! Don’t just stand there.”

  Joe glared at the guy but held his tongue. The faggot was probably somebody important around here. Nobody wore clothes like that unless they were somebody and they knew no one would give ’em shit about it. He touched the crusty stuff in the tub. It was rock-hard.

  “Can you break through that?” the big dumb peacock asked. He was crazy as a chicken.

  Joe just grunted at him. Then he looked at the poor woman rolling her head from side to side, her eyes half-closed and out of focus. She was moaning something, but Joe couldn’t understand her. The towel around her head came undone and fell to the floor, and Joe saw that she had long, wavy dirty blond hair.

  “Take it easy, dear,” the peacock said, picking up the towel and wiping her brow with it. “What’s your name, dear? Tell me your name.”

  “Loretta . . .,” the woman slurred.

  Loretta? Loretta? Joe had heard that name recently. He took a closer look at her face, and suddenly he realized where he’d heard it. Goddamn! he thought. It was that woman from the parole office back in Jersey where Marvelli had brought him. Shit! It looked like somebody had tried to cook her to death. He wondered if this was the broad Martha Lee wanted him to do, the “spy” she’d talked about. It was possible, Joe thought. This Loretta woman was the law.

  But then he thought about it some more. Jesus H. Christ, he thought, what the hell did that little bitch Martha Lee do? Hire somebody else? Hey, nobody was gonna do him out of a job. They had a deal.

  He looked around the sauna and found another towel hanging from a rack on the wall. He whipped it down, folded it over the salt crust where this Loretta’s legs should be, and started to pound with his fist. She wasn’t gonna die. No way. No one was gonna screw him out of a fee. He was gonna save her, then kill her, then give Martha Lee the bill.

  He pounded away, pounding as if he were pounding in the head of the asshole who’d tried to take his job away from him. Finally the crust started to crack near the edge of the tub. Joe rearranged the towel and kept pounding, stopping now and then to press all his weight on the crust. Finally he was able to pry loose a chunk the size of a boulder. He tipped it over the edge and let it drop. It cracked one of the floorboards and left a pretty good gouge in the wood it was so heavy.

  “Hey,” the peacock complained, frowning at the damage. “Be careful.”

  “You want her out or not?”

  “Of course, I want her out.”

  “Well, then. . . .”

  The peacock just made a face at him as Joe went back to work, breaking the salt with his bare hands, letting the boulders crash to the floor just to spite the big faggot. When Joe got to her neck, he tucked the muddy towel under her chin so that it looked like she was wearing a bib and pounded out the last piece that was holding her in.

  “Get her out. Quick,” the peacock ordered.

  Don’t sweat it, pal, Joe thought. I’ll get her out.

  He fished around in the mud until he found her arm, then pulled her up to a sitting position.

  “Get her out!”

  “I’m getting her out.”

  “You don’t have to get testy about it.”

  I don’t get testy, Joe thought. I get mad.

  It was hard to get a purchase on her, she was so slippery. She was also buck naked, it seemed. He got her to lean over the side of the tub, though, then managed to lift her onto his shoulder. She made a noise like a toilet plunger as he pulled her out.

  “Take her back to the mud room,” the peacock ordered. “Hose her down and give her a rubdown. I’ll go get the nurse.”

  “Will do,” Joe said.

  But a nurse won’t do no good, he thought. Not when I get through with her.

  He walked out into the hallway with Loretta on his shoulder, heading in the direction that the peacock had indicated. She squished as he carried her, mud plopping on the floor, and he had to hold on tight to the backs of her knees so he wouldn’t drop her. He thought he could feel a boob on his back, but he wasn’t sure with all this goddamn mud. She was a hefty one, just like Ricky. Mud spattered his calves as he moved down the hall, looking for this mud room the peacock had talked about. He’d better find it soon and do what he had to do, he thought. Holding Loretta’s squishy-slick flesh was making him awful horny.

  20

  Loretta was still groggy when the big guy with the buzz cut laid her down on a massage table. He turned her over facedown and started working on her neck. He was rough, but she was too weak to resist. She hadn’t gotten a good look at his face, but she imagined that he was a big strapping Swede, a Viking masseur. He dug his fingers into her neck, kneading her muscles like bread dough, then suddenly he slipped his forearm under her throat and flexed his bicep. She figured this must be some kind of chiropractic adjustment, but she groaned to let him know that it was a little too much.

  “Easy,” she moaned.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, but he didn’t let up.

  Maybe he didn’t understand English.

  “Too much,” she said.

  He didn’t let up.

  Suddenly Loretta heard brisk footsteps on the tiles as someone came into the room. “The mud, the mud, get the mud off first.” She thought she recognized the impatient voice. It sounded like Roger Laplante.

  She tried to push herself up from the table, not wanting to be naked in the same room with that bastard, but she was suddenly so dizzy she had to lie back down and close her eyes, afraid that she was going to pass out. Thank God the big Swede is here, she thought. She didn’t want to be left alone with Laplante, not like this.

  A spray of warm water crossed her back. Muddy water trickled off the table and coursed to the center of the tiled floor, where it swirled around the drain.

  “That’s it,” Laplante said. “Get all of it. Her legs, her feet. All of it.”

  The masseur did as he was told, washing the mud off her entire body. Finally he went to work on her hair, laying it out flat on her back and squeezing the mud out with his hand. The warm water was making her sleepy.

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Laplante said. “Give her a rubdown now.”

  The masseur’s strong hands went to work on her neck and shoulders again, but he wasn’t so rough now. It felt so good. She had to fight to stay awake.

  “Are you feeling better, ma’am?” Laplante asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes . . . I’m okay,” Loretta murmured, aggravated by the sound of Laplante’s voice but too tired to open her eyes and tell him off. “Nothing wrong with me.”

  “Good. I’m so glad to hear that you’re all right.”

  “No you’re not,” she mumbled, half in a dream.

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re full of shit. You don’t think I’m all right. You think I’m too fat.”

  “Ma’am, I never said that.”

  “You’ve been saying it for years. . . . You say it on TV every day. . . . You
tell me I’m too fat, but I’m not. . . .”

  The masseur went to work on her lower back. She felt like jelly. Loretta kept babbling to keep herself awake.

  “We’re all too fat . . . all of us. . . . That’s what you think. . . . So what’s wrong with being fat? . . . It’s not like being stupid. . . . Fat and lonely, fat and lonely,” she sang, “goes together like a horse and carriage. . . .”

  “Ma’am, I sympathize completely with how you feel,” La-plante said. “I’ve dedicated my entire life to helping people—”

  “Bullshit,” she said, rotating her hips and arching her back with the pressure of the masseur’s hands. “You don’t understand shit. . . . I know what it’s like. . . . You don’t. . . .”

  “But I do—”

  “Not. . . . Third grade . . . Mrs. Hancock . . . skinny witch . . . I ripped my dress in the playground . . . really bad . . . could see my underwear. . . . Wanted to go home and change, but she wouldn’t let me. . . . Made me wear a crossing-guard slicker, a big yellow one. . . . Had to walk home that way. . . . The other kids said I was so fat I had to wear a tent. . . .Boys went woo-woo and ran around me, like Indians. . . .”

  “I understand what you’re saying, ma’am. When I was a boy in New Hampshire—”

  “Shut up. . . .I’ve heard that story a million times. . . . Don’t want to hear—ooooo, that feels good.”

  The big Swede was doing long strokes up and down the length of her back, putting his back into it. God, it felt good.

  “Ma’am, are you sure you’re all right? Is there anything we can get you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Whatever you’d like?”

  “How do you know what I like? You don’t know shit.” She tried to push herself up, wanting to tell him off to his face, but her head started to spin again. She flopped back down and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the room was still spinning.