Mean Woman Blues

got this big ol’ dog. So first he has to poison the dog. He say that went real good, so…”
    “What am I hearing here? What am I hearing, Bettina? Are you saying that ham-handed amateur poisoned a dog?”
    “Well, yessuh, he poison a dog. See, he had to, ’cause…”
    “I
did not
authorize any dog poisoning!”
    “Well, Daddy, we…”
    “What did that poor dog ever do to anybody?”
    “Oh, he was a real mean dog. Like to took Wolf’s, I mean Lobo’s, hand off.”
    “Bettina, you fucked up. You fucked up big time this time.”
    “But, Daddy, I didn’t…”
    “Ya gotta do penance, Bettina. I’m gon’ make you suffer a way you never suffered before.”
    There was a long pause on the telephone. Finally, she said softly, “Daddy, if I got to, I got to. Ain’ nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you.” He could tell she was getting off on the idea.
    “I want you to take that ugly baby of yours…”
    “Daddy, you ain’t never even seen yo’ baby.”
    “What did you say? What’d you say, Bettina? That’s
your
baby. That’s the curse the good Lord sent you for your weakness. Now I want you to take that ugly baby…”
    “His name’s Jacob.”
    “Every night for a week, now, I want you to take little Jacob and put him over your knee and give him twenty whacks with a hairbrush.”
    “But Daddy, he’s a
good
little baby.”
    He heard real distress in her voice, and that pleased him. “Well, you fucked up, and Jacob’s got to suffer for it. Listen to me! Listen to me, now. I don’t mean little love taps either. You whack him till he cries. And after two, three days, when he’s real sore, you whack him twice as hard, hear me? And every tear that child sheds’ll be the same as my tears for you, because of your mistake, and Jesus’s tears for me and for all of us on this Earth. You go and do that now.”
    She was crying. He knew she’d do it, but it would hurt her bad. “Lobo say…”
    “You tell Lobo to lay off right now. Tell him not to do a goddamn thing till further notice. And call me Thursday at six.” He disconnected before she could answer.
    For obvious reasons, he had his door closed. There was a knock on it now, as if someone had just been waiting for him to end his conversation. He didn’t answer. He needed a moment to get back in character. He was pretty sure you couldn’t hear more than a mumble from the other side, but he was glad he’d told Bettina to call him next at a time when he could get away. It wasn’t safe to take her calls here.
    The knock came again.
    He cleared his throat and spoke in the cultured voice he’d so lately learned. “Come in.”
    The person on the other side burst in carrying a clipboard, puffed up with importance. It was his producer, Tracie Hofer, a sloppy looking girl with long curly hair clipped back carelessly. She always wore pants, and they always looked too short for her. She was too dark for his taste, too bohemian; probably the only woman in Texas who didn’t give a damn what she wore.
    Without being invited, she sat down. “David, I’ve got something really great coming up. This woman called who ended up in jail because of bank fees. Ever heard of anything like that?”
    He thought about it. “Hell, I don’t know. What happened?”
    “She’s perfect for us: an art student, very young but enterprising. Even has her own business running errands for people. The trouble is, she still barely makes it. You with me so far?”
    He leaned forward, smiling at her. “Totally. Isn’t that what people your age say?”
    She put her hand up for a high five, a practice he rather liked but thought should be reserved for truly celebratory moments. “You got it. So anyway, she’s living on the edge. Fits the profile, right? So she has two bank accounts, and she writes checks on one, deposits them in the other before they’ve cleared…”
    “Check kiting.”
    “Yeah, but she’s got no idea it’s against the law or has a name or anything. Also, she doesn’t know the bank’s charging her huge fees every time she bounces a check, and, because she’s frantically trying to cover her ass, she never has any money in either account, and the bank has the right to put the checks through twice. So she incurs not one but two fees on each check, neither of which she knows about.”
    An obvious question came to mind, but Tracie held up a hand to stop it. “So she finds out when she gets her statement right? She panics, borrows money to straighten