Carl Hiassen - Lucky You

When the Lotto bureau opened the next morning, JoLayne and Tom were waiting at the door with the ticket. A clerk thought she was joking when she matter-of-factly remarked it had been hidden inside a non-lubricated condom. The paperwork took about an hour, then a photographer from the publicity office made some pictures of JoLayne holding a blown-up facsimile of the flamingo-adorned check. Tom was pleased they'd avoided TV and newspaper coverage by showing up unannounced. By the time a press release was issued, they'd be back in Grange.

"This is all going to work out," he assured JoLayne, pouring more champagne. "I promise."

"What about you and me?"

"Absolutely."

JoLayne studied him. "Absolutely, Tom?"

"Oh brother. Here it comes." Krome set down his glass.

She said, "I think you deserve some of the money."

"Why?"

"For everything. Quitting your job to stay with me. Risking your neck. Stopping me from doing something crazy out there."

"Anything else?"

"I'd feel so much better," she said, "giving you something."

Tom tapped a fork on the tablecloth. "Boy, that guilt – it's a killer. I sympathize."

"You're wrong."

"No, I'm right. If I won't take the money, it'll make it harder for you to dump me later. You'll feel so awful you'll keep putting it off, stringing me along, probably for months and months – "

"Eat your salad," JoLayne said.

"But if I do take a cut, then you won't feel so lousy saying goodbye. You can tell yourself you didn't use me, didn't take advantage of a hopelessly smitten sap and then cut him loose. You can tell yourself you were fair about it, even decent."

"Are you finished?" JoLayne inwardly ached at the truth of what he said. She definitely was looking for an escape clause, in case the romance didn't work. She was looking for a way to live with herself if someday she had to break up with him, after all he'd done for her.

Tom said, "I don't want the damn money. You understand? Nada. Not a penny."

"I believe you."

"Finally."

"But just for the record, I've got no plans to 'dump' you." JoLayne kicked off a shoe and slipped her bare foot in Tom's lap, under the table.

Tom's eyes widened. "Oh, that's fighting fair."

"I've had a bad run with men. I guess I'm conditioned to expect the worst."

"Understood," he said. "And just for the record, you should feel free to string me along. Drag it out as long as you can stand to, because I'll take every minute with you that I can get."

"You're pretty polished at this guilt business."

"Oh, I'm a pro," Tom said, "one of the best. So here's the deal: Give us six months together. If you're not happy, I'll go quietly. No wailing, no racking sobs. The only thing it'll cost you is a plane ticket to Alaska."

JoLayne steepled her hands. "Hmmm. I suppose you'll insist on first class."

"You bet your ass. Up front with the hot towelettes and sorbets, that's me. Deal?"

"OK. Deal."

They shook. The waiter came with the steaks, big T-bones done rare. Tom waited for JoLayne to take the first bite.

"Delicious," she reported.

"Whew."

"Hey, I just thought of something. What if you dump me?"

Tom Krome grinned. "You just thought of that?"

"Smart-ass!" she said, and poked him with her big toe in quite a sensitive area. They wolfed their steaks, skipped dessert and hurried back to the room to make love.

Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. came home to an empty house. Katie was probably at the supermarket or the hairdresser. The judge put on the television and sat down to savor a martini, in celebration of his retirement. The early news came on but he didn't pay much attention. Instead he absorbed himself with the challenge of selecting a Caribbean wardrobe. Nassau would be the logical place to shop; Bay Street, where he'd once bought Willow a hand-dyed linen blouse and a neon thong bikini, which he'd brutishly gnawed off in the cabana.

Arthur Battenkill tried to imagine himself in vivid teal walking shorts and woven beach sandals; him with his hairy feet and chalky, birdlike legs. He resolved to do whatever was needed to be a respectable exile, to blend in. He looked forward to learning the island life.

The name Tom Krome jarred him from the reverie. It came from the television.

The judge grabbed for the remote and turned up the volume. As he watched the footage, he stirred the gin with a manicured pinkie. Some sort of press conference at The Register. A good-looking woman in a short black dress; Krome's wife, according to the TV anchor. Picking up a journalism plaque on behalf of her dead husband. Then: chaos.

Arthur Battenkill rocked forward, clutching his martini with both hands. God, it was official – Krome was indeed alive!

There was the man's lawyer on television, saying so. He'd just served the astonished and now flustered Mrs. Krome with divorce papers.

Ordinarily the judge would've smiled in admiration at the attorney's cold-blooded ambush, but Arthur Battenkill wasn't enjoying the moment even slightly. He was climbing the stairs, taking three at time, anticipating what he'd find when he reached the bedroom; preparing himself for the catastrophic fact that Katie wasn't at the grocery or the salon. She was gone.

Her drawers in the bureau were empty; her side of the bathroom vanity was cleaned out. A suitcase was also missing, the big brown one with foldaway casters. A lavender note in Katie's frilly handwriting was Scotch-taped to the headboard of their bed, and for several moments it paralyzed the judge:

Honesty, Arthur. Remember?

Which meant, of course, that his wife, Katherine Battenkill, had been to the police.

The judge began packing like the frantic fugitive he was about to become. Tomorrow's front-page newspaper headline would exhume Tom Krome but, more important, rekindle the mystery of the corpse found in the burned house. Detectives who might otherwise have dismissed Katie's yarn as spousal bile (and done so without a nudge, being longtime courthouse acquaintances of Arthur Battenkill) would be impelled in the scorching glare of the media to take her seriously.

Which meant a full-blown search would begin for Champ Powell, the absent law clerk.

I could be fucked, thought Arthur Battenkill. Seriously fucked.

He filled their second-string suitcase, a gunmetal Samsonite, with underwear, toiletries, every short-sleeved shirt he owned, jeans and khakis, a windbreaker, PABA-free sunscreen, swim trunks, a stack of traveler's checks (which he'd purchased that morning at the bank) and a few items of sentimental value (engraved cufflinks, an ivory gavel and two boxes of personalized Titleists). He concealed five thousand in cash (withdrawn during the same sortie to the bank) inside random pairs of nylon socks. He packed a single blue suit (though not the vest) and one of his judge's robes, in case he needed to make an impression on some recalcitrant Bahamian immigration man.

One thing Arthur Battenkill found missing from the marital bureau was his passport, which Katie undoubtedly had swiped to thwart his escape.

Clever girl, the judge said to himself.

What his wife did not know (and Arthur Battenkill did, from his illicit travels with Willow and Dana) was that U.S. citizens didn't need a passport for entry into the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. A birth certificate sufficed, and the judge had one in his billfold.

He latched the suitcase and dragged it to the living room, where he got on the phone to a small air-charter service in Satellite Beach. The owners owed him a favor, as he'd once saved them a bundle by overruling a catastrophic jury verdict. The case involved a 323-pound passenger who'd been injured by a sliding crate of roosters on a flight to Andros. Jurors blamed the air-charter service for the mishap and awarded the passenger $100,000 for each of her fractured toes, which numbered exactly four. However, it was Arthur Battenkill's view, based on the expert testimony, that the woman herself shared much of the blame since it was her jumbo presence in the rear of the aircraft that had caused the cargo to shift so precipitously upon takeoff. The judge sliced the jury award by seventy-five percent, a decision upheld on appeal and received buoyantly by the air-charter firm.