Nina, the Bandit Queen. Joey Slinger

to do high-end condominium developments, pave and landscape them, the whole deal. But other than make the numbers he quoted bigger, he didn’t even slightly change the approach he’d used to fleece old retired people. That’s why it didn’t take the individuals who were bankrolling these projects long to start asking themselves what was up with this guy. Unless he was some kind of mental case who was so far off his meds that he was flying at an altitude where even birds couldn’t breathe, then somebody must be shaking them down. And for some reason or other, whoever it was had sent this wiener to put his foot in the door. What made it really confusing was that they couldn’t figure out how this scheme Frank was fronting was supposed to pay off for whoever was behind it, because, as their accountants said when they got them to look at the estimates he’d given them, the whole thing was too stupid for words.

      Was Nina surprised? When it rained, did her roof leak? The way she looked at it, Frank was lucky he never got too many ideas, because whenever he came up with one, he’d just go with it. For instance, he’d never bothered to figure out that the difference between dealing with these people and with the old farts who made up his former clientele was that he should avoid irritating these people in any way at all. In fact, he should go to great lengths to keep them from feeling even a tiny itch.

      Nina said this was because of the way he processed information. When something useful blew into his head, there was no place for it to land, so it just blew around for awhile and blew out again, like a candy wrapper. The big money in these deals was unaware of this, however, and until Frank showed up, they were under the impression that they had paid off all the necessary interests so nobody would try to muscle in on their ventures. For their part, the necessary interests were under the impression that they were the only necessary interests, so they could relax, since the only thing they had to think about was how they could muscle the big money out and take over for themselves.

      Every one of these people had concluded that Frank was pissing in their soup.

      Men of this calibre had long since put violence behind them as a business technique except as a last resort, but who wanted to use violence against some guy with nothing more than a smile and a shiny suit when the organization behind him was so mysterious they couldn’t even get a read on it and might risk everything in a fruitless bloodbath?

      These days, instead of violence, they used lawyers, but what good were lawyers when, far from being able to identify this guy’s backers, all they could find out was that he appeared out of and disappeared back into the stink and misery of SuEz? So the only thing left for them was to turn the matter of Frank Carson over to the courts. Several of these individuals got in touch with the senior police officers they kept on retainer for various purposes such as corporate and government relations. The charges these police officers came up with in turn were so obviously trumped up that the judge couldn’t help but assume that the accused must have done something extremely wrong. Whoever was fucking him up the ass had a lot of influence, and why else would they have gone to this much trouble? On those grounds, eleven years seemed about right.

      When Ed Oataway got back from visiting the penitentiary and mentioned Frank’s plans, the things that began to cross Nina’s mind were quite understandable when you consider that her familiarity with her brother and his shortcomings went back to the day he was born, and then take into account the astounding things she was starting to discover about her own capabilities. She was so wrapped up in working out all the implications that she sat on the porch for ages the next morning, her legs dangling over the side, and didn’t even notice the ice cream truck rolling toward her.

      “Cassie,” it was blaring, “you didn’t buy that Marshmallow Whizzard we had for you yesterday. That makes us very, very sad, because we made it for you and nobody else. You don’t really want us to be sad, do you Cassie?”

      And, “Leo Lee Roy, you told us yesterday you didn’t have any money to pay for your Mount Ever-Ice. And we told you to go and talk to your mama and tell her how embarrassed you would be when everybody on the street finds out why she’s too cheap to buy you a treat. Here, we brought a brand-new one for you today. We sure hope you’re ready this time.”

      And, “Trafford? We don’t see you. Are you hiding, Trafford? Get out here and get this Devil’s Frost-D-Lite. You don’t want us to take your name off our list, do you? If we do that you’ll never be able to get back on it. You’ll be gone forever.”

      She didn’t even look up when her girls came out to watch heaven on wheels go rolling by. Not even when Merlina said “Mom?” — which was something the others urged her to do every time the truck came along, because she had a gift for saying it in a way that made Nina feel like the most useless mother who ever lived, so useless it was hard to understand why the authorities didn’t put her children out for adoption.

      This time Nina didn’t even hear her. It was because that way-down-deep-inside-her spirit that had guided her into the ice cream company parking lot — and had led her, she now finally realized, to do what she’d done in the confrontation with the ice cream truck in front of her house — it was because that same spirit that made her breath get so short and her skin tingle like her nerves were full of static electricity was speaking to her again, only with a whole lot more determination than it had those other times.

      “That fuckin’ moron,” the spirit was saying, referring to her brother Frank Carson. “That fuckin’ moron could never rob a bank.”

      Then it paused. And cleared its throat to make sure it had her undivided attention. And when it saw she was listening with every single part of her body, it said, very pointedly, “But I could.”

      Eight

      There were things about Frank Carson’s plan to rob a bank that, if Nina had known them, would have made her think twice about her own. As it was, she hardly even thought about it once.