Break the Skin by Lee Martin

Author:Lee Martin [Martin, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Coming of Age, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 0307716759
Google: WBxoFELVoXkC
Amazon: B004J4WKQU
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2011-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

MISS BABY

Pablo moved in with Emma, imagining that if the police or the Rangers or Slam Dent came for him, the house next door to mine would be so obvious they’d overlook it. That’s what we were betting on.

“I’m tired of running,” Pablo said. “Miss Emma, what do you say?”

We were in my house, and Pablo was resting on the couch, his arm in a proper sling now that Carolyn and Donnie had picked one up at the medical supply store.

Emma stooped over to look at the cuts and bruises on Pablo’s face. She reached out a trembling hand and almost touched him before she stopped herself and pulled back her hand. “Mercy, God,” she said. “Hadn’t no one ought to do a body like that. I don’t care how much call there is.”

“World’s a rough place, Miss Emma,” Pablo said. “No one has to explain meanness. It just is what it is.”

“You don’t have to tell me that, Pablo Omar Maximillian Ruiz.” Emma stamped her little foot. “You think anyone can live as many years as I have and not know that?”

“I don’t want to trouble you, Miss Emma, but I swear I don’t know what else to do but squirrel up at your house.”

“A fugitive,” she said. “Lord-a-mighty. I must be out of my head.”

I suspected that, secretly, it pleased her. A man to take care of. A little danger to boot. Her husband, the late Mr. Hart, was an employee of Jack Ruby, the man who shot JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Hart played saxophone in the five-piece bump-and-grind band at the Carousel Club, Ruby’s burlesque joint on Commerce Street in Dallas, and for years after Ruby killed Oswald, the FBI kept an eye on Emma and the Mister in case they knew anything about the plot to kill the president. There was talk, of course, that the Mafia was involved and that when Ruby killed Oswald, he was making sure none of the story came out. To Emma, it was business as usual. The late Mister had a history of shady dealings—mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night, men knocking on the door and asking for him, sudden money that took Emma out on the town to all the best spots—so a little attention from the FBI was nothing. In fact, she told me, it was something that put a little spice on the blah-blah-blah. Having Pablo hiding out in her house would be, I suspected, like old times.

So the deal was done, but still there was the issue of the money, and like I said, we had no answers for that.

“Can’t get blood from a turnip,” Emma said.

“Unless I’m the turnip,” said Pablo. “Then there’s plenty to squeeze.”

This all took place on a Monday. On Thursday evening, the police came. It was the same officer who’d come the night I’d called to tell the story of Carolyn and Slam. The bug-eyed man with the red mustache and, hidden beneath his shirt, the heart tattoo I’d given him.

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