Carl Hiassen - Lucky You

"It's fantastic, Jo! You beat the bastards. You got Simmons Wood."

They sat down, breathless. She pressed closer. "Mostly it was Moffitt," she said.

Tom raised an eyebrow.

"He told the guy you were writing a big expose on the shopping-mall deal," JoLayne said. "Told him it was bound to make the front pages – Mafia invades Grange!"

"Priceless."

"Well, it worked. Squires bolted. But, Tom, what if they believe it? What if they come after you? Moffitt said they won't dare, but – "

"He's right. The mob doesn't kill reporters anymore. Waste of ammo, and very bad for business." Krome had to admire the agent's guile. "It was a great bluff. Too bad ... "

"What?"

"Too bad I didn't think of it myself."

JoLayne gave him a marinara kiss and headed for the kitchen. "Come along, Woodward, help me get the food on the table."

Over dinner she went through the terms of the land sale. Tom worked the math and said: "You realize that even after taxes and interest payments, you'll still have quite a comfortable income. Not that you care."

"How comfortable?"

"About three hundred grand a year."

"Well. That'll be something new."

OK, JoLayne thought, here's the test. Here's when we find out if Mr. Krome is truly different from Rick the mechanic or Lawrence the lawyer, or any of the other winners I've picked in this life.

Tom said, "You could actually afford a car."

"Yeah? What else?" JoLayne, spearing a meatball,

"You could get that old piano fixed. And tuned."

"Good. Go on."

"Decent speakers for your stereo," he said. "That should be a priority. And maybe a CD player, too, if you're really feeling wild and reckless."

"OK."

"And don't forget a new shotgun, to replace the one we tossed overboard."

"OK, what else?"

"That's about it. I'm out of ideas," Tom said.

"You sure?"

JoLayne, hoping with all her heart he wouldn't get a cagey glint in his eye and say something one of the others might've said. Colavito the stockbroker, for instance, would've offered to invest her windfall in red-hot would've advised her to deposit it all in the police credit union, so he could withdraw large sums secretly to spend on his girlfriends.

But Tom Krome had no schemes to troll, no gold mines to tout no partnerships to propose. "Really, I'm the wrong person to give advice," he said. "People who work for newspaper wages don't get much experience at saving money."

That was it. He didn't ask for a penny.

And JoLayne knew better than to offer, because then he'd suspect she was setting him up to be dumped. Which was, now, the farthest thing from her mind.

Bottom line: From day one, the man had been true to his word. The first I've ever picked who was, she thought. Maybe my luck has changed.

Tom said, "Come on – you must have your own wish list."

"Doc Crawford needs a new X-ray machine for the animals."

"Aw, go nuts, Jo. Get him an MRI." He tugged on the knot of her shirttail. "You're only going to win the lottery once."

She hoped her smile didn't give away the secret.

"Tom, who knows you're staying here with me?"

"Am I?"

"Don't be a smart-ass. Who else knows?"

"Nobody. Why?"

"Look on top of the piano," she said. "There's a white envelope. It was in the mail when I got home."

He examined it closely. His name was hand-printed in nondescript block letters. Had to be one of the locals – Demencio, maybe. Or the daffy Sinclair's sister, pleading for an intervention.

"Aren't you going to open it?" JoLayne tried not to appear overeager.

"Sure." Tom brought the envelope to the table and meticulously cut the flap with the tines of a salad fork. The Lotto ticket fell out, landing in a mound of parmesan.

"What the hell?" He picked it up by a corner, as if it were forensic evidence.

JoLayne, watching innocently.

"Your numbers. What were they?" Tom was embarrassed because his hand was shaking. "I can't remember, Jo – the six numbers you won with."

"I do," she said, and began reciting. "Seventeen ... "

Krome, thinking: This isn't possible.

"Nineteen, twenty-two ... "

It's a gag, he told himself. Must be.

"Twenty-four, twenty-seven ... "

Moffitt, the sonofabitch! He's one who could pull it off. Print up a fake ticket, as a joke.

"Thirty," JoLayne said. "Those were my numbers."

It looked too real to be a phony; water-stained and frayed, folded then unfolded. It looked as if someone had carried it a long way for a long time.

Then Krome remembered: There had been two winners that night.

"Tom?"

"I can't ... This is crazy." He showed it to her. "Jo, I think it's the real thing."

"Tom!"

"And this was in your mail?"

She said, "Unbelievable. Unbelievable."

"That would be the word for it."

"You and me, two of the most cynical people on God's green earth ... It's almost like a revelation, isn't it?"

"I don't know what the hell it is."

He tried to throttle down and think like a reporter, beginning with a list of questions: Who in their right mind would give up a $14 million Lotto ticket? Why would they send it to him, of all people? And how'd they know where he was?

"It makes no damn sense."

"None," JoLayne agreed. That's what was so wondrous. She'd been over it again and again – there were no sensible answers, because it was impossible. What had happened was absolutely impossible. She didn't believe in miracles, but she was reconsidering the concept of divine mystery.

"The lottery agency said the other ticket was bought in Florida City. That's three hundred miles away."

"I know, Tom."

"How in the world ... "

"Honey, put it away now. Someplace safe."

"What should we do?" he asked.

" 'We'? It's your name on that envelope, buster. Come on, let's get moving. Before it's too dark."

It was a few hours later, after they'd returned from their mission and JoLayne had drifted to sleep, when Tom Krome found the answer to one of the many, many questions.

The only answer he'd ever get.

He slipped out of bed to catch the late TV news, in case the men on Pearl Key had been found. He knew he shouldn't have been concerned – dead or alive, the two robbers wouldn't say much. They couldn't, if they wished to stay out of prison.

Nonetheless, Krome was glued to the tube. As though he needed independent proof, a confirmation that the events of the past ten days were real and not a dream.

But the news had nothing. So he decided to surprise JoLayne (and demonstrate his domestic suitability) by washing the dinner dishes. He was scraping a tangle of noodles into the garbage when he spotted it in the bottom of the can:

A blue envelope made out to "Ms. Jo Lane Lucks."

He retrieved it and placed it on the counter.

The envelope had been opened cleanly, possibly with a very long fingernail. Inside the envelope was a card, a bright Georgia O'Keeffe print.

And inside the card ... nothing. Not a word.

And Tom Krome knew: That's how the second lottery ticket had been delivered. It was sent to JoLayne, not him.

He could've cried, he was so happy. Or laughed, he was so mad.

Again she'd been one step ahead of him. It would always be that way. He'd have to get used to it.

She was too much.

Vultures starred in his nightmares, and Chub blamed the nigger woman.

Before boarding the skiff, she'd warned him in harrowing detail about black vultures. The sky over Pearl Key was full of them. "They're gonna come for your friend," she'd said, kneeling beside him on the shore, "and there's nothing you can do."

People think all buzzards hunt by smell, she'd said, but that's not so. Turkey vultures use their noses; black vultures hunt purely by sight. Their eyeballs are twenty or thirty times more powerful than a human's, she'd said. When they're circling like that – the nigger woman pointing upward and, sure enough, there they were – it means they're searching for carrion.