An Inconvenient Woman

by An Inconvenient Woman (retail) (epub)

  She looked as if I’d just pulled her head out of a tiger’s mouth. “Thanks. Because Vicki would kill me or have me killed by one of her goons.”

  She pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “You mind?” she asked lightly, as if we were now just two old friends having a chat.

  “Go ahead.”

  She lit a cigarette and leaned back. In no hurry to leave. She looked down the street.

  “One day I’d like a nice little house,” she said.

  She was entirely at ease now, making herself at home in my car.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That you ended up living on the street. Working for Vicki Page.”

  “The usual routine. Mom on dope. With her boyfriend more interested in me than her. I knew it was time to get the hell out of there, and so I did.”

  In every way this seemed victory enough for her. Just to get away from someone before it was too late.

  “The thing is, if I can get another chance, I can get out of LA,” she said.

  “Where would you go?”

  “Colorado, I think.”

  “Why Colorado?”

  “I don’t know. Big-sky country.”

  Her eyes darted about.

  She was looking for something else to talk about. Idly, in a way that was completely offhand, she reached over to the dash, where she’d put the photograph Simon had given me the night before.

  “What’s this?”

  She gave it a quick once-over, then froze, her gaze fixed on the photograph. She looked as if she’d just picked up a rattlesnake.

  As if to conceal whatever had just happened in her mind, she returned the picture to the dash.

  “What was in the picture?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” She took a quick, nervous pull on the cigarette.

  “You ever been to Colorado?” she asked, a shift I recognized as purely a diversion.

  She wanted nothing more than to change the subject, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  I looked at her sternly. “What did you see in that picture, Destiny?”

  “Nothing,” she repeated.

  I knew this wasn’t true.

  “Now’s not the time to lie to me,” I warned her.

  She was scared again, looking for a way out.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Vicki would kill me.” She was terrified. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  I nodded toward the picture. There was only one man she could have recognized. I tapped Simon’s smiling face. “You know who he is?”

  She shook her head, but I saw the truth in her eyes.

  “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”

  She hesitated briefly, but she was cornered.

  “You’ve seen this man,” I said firmly.

  She nodded.

  “At the farmhouse?” I asked.

  She nodded again. “Yes.”

  I plucked the picture from the dash and held it before her.

  “Are you sure?” I demanded.

  She looked at the picture like a witness picking a face out of a lineup.

  “It was him.”

  If this was true, I thought, everything Claire had ever said was accurate. All her accusations.

  About her father in the past.

  About Simon in the present.

  I glanced at the photograph that had fixed Destiny’s gaze.

  Smiling Simon.

  My father erect in his uniform, looking as firm as his convictions.

  The simple fact that they were in the same photograph struck me as an obscenity.

  The whole idea of the scholarship in my father’s name had never been anything but a ploy to win me over. And I’d fallen for it.

  What a fool I must seem to Simon Miller, I said to myself. Merely another woman who fell into his trap.

  Claire

  IT IS NEARLY six when I get home.

  I sit down in the chair in the foyer and try to absorb the fact that my father is near the end.

  A car horn sounds outside. A short burst, like someone being summoned. Then another and another. Quick little beeps. Every five seconds. I try to ignore it, but the beeps keep coming. Harsh. Rapid. Maddening. It’s like being repeatedly jabbed in the ear.

  I get up, walk to the window, and look out.

  There he is.

  Mehdi.

  Sitting in his car, staring at my house, grinning each time he beeps his horn. He has a smug superiority on his face. He thinks I’m defenseless against his petty harassment.

  But I’m not.

  A rage lifts me and carries me to the desk.

  I unlock the drawer.

  Max’s pistol rests motionless, inert, unthreatening, until I yank it from its long sleep.

  Mehdi’s eyes widen as I burst through the door.

  Instantly he sees the pistol, turns, and reaches for the ignition.

  But I surge forward, as if carried on the wind.

  I am at his car, pressing the barrel of Max’s revolver against his temple. “Put your hands on the wheel!” I command him.

  He pales instantly.

  In my cold eyes he reads his death warrant.

  “Claire, it was just a joke—just a joke. I—”

  “Put your hands on the wheel!”

  My voice peals through the failing light.

  “Do it!”

  Mehdi is sputtering.

  “Just a joke, Claire—those bad reviews! I’ll take them back. I promise.”

  I press the barrel hard against the side of his head.

  “Shut up.”

  “Claire, please, I—”

  “Shut up!”

  I jerk back the hammer.

  The sound of its metal click hits Mehdi like an electric shock. His body goes rigid, then almost immediately limp.

  “Please, Claire.”

  He begins to whimper.

  I look at him evenly. “Don’t ever come here again.”

  I ease the pistol away from his head.

  He quickly hits the ignition and races away.

  As he leaves, I feel the heft of the pistol in my hand. Its power reverberates up my arm and into my brain.

  I watch as Mehdi’s car disappears around a far corner.

  As he vanishes, I am seized by the simple thought of how easy it is to stop a man.

  All you have to do is accept the consequences.

  Sloan

  I WASTED NO time calling Simon.

  “I’ve learned a few things,” I said when he answered the phone. Very pointedly, I added, “About Claire.”

  “Oh?”

  “We should go for a drive.”

  “You mean now? Tonight?”

  “We shouldn’t wait.”

  Simon heard the warning in my voice and assumed that Claire was about to fly off the handle again.

  “I see,” he said solemnly. “All right.”

  I’d already picked a place not far from the Palazzo and told him to meet me there.

  He arrived a few minutes later, dressed for a casual dinner in LA: yellow Lacoste polo, blue shorts.

  “Where we headed?” he asked as he got into my car.

  “Out of town.”

  “Why?”

  “We have to be careful.”

  He looked pleased and seemed to think that I’d reached the point he’d been urging me toward all along.

  “You plan to do something, don’t you?” he asked. “About Claire.”

  I nodded.

  He was silent for a time, thinking very seriously.

  “That stuff you told Claire about knowing people. Is that true? Do you really know people like that?”

  The question didn’t strike me as simply making conversation. I suspected that killing Claire was emerging as Plan B.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t that be a twist in the story?” he asked in a way that suggested just how much it amused him. “Claire the one who ends up dead inst
ead of Evil Simon.”

  He was perfectly relaxed with me now.

  “Have you ever been out this way?” I asked as I turned onto the road that led to the farmhouse.

  Miller shook his head.

  A while later we reached the house. The yellow beams of my headlights illuminated its blackened windows and red door. Simon examined the place without expression.

  “It was a brothel,” I said.

  Miller shrugged.

  “Boys will be boys.”

  “The girls were underage,” I added.

  Simon remained silent, unruffled.

  I was looking for a sign that he knew the house, was a regular client, but he gave no indication of ever having been here.

  At the same time, he asked nothing about why I’d driven him into the desert, stopped at this desolate place.

  Instead he made an assumption.

  “You’re hatching something, aren’t you? That’s why we’re here. To discuss it.”

  He laughed.

  “You have a flair for the dramatic, Sloan.”

  He glanced about.

  “Very cinematic, a location like this. Sets the mood, right?”

  He was like a little boy enjoying a game.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  We both got out of the car and walked toward the house. A little breeze played over the desert floor. It gently rocked the sagebrush and rustled through the dry grass.

  A long line of stairs led up to a wide, sagging porch. The creaks that sounded beneath our feet were like tiny cries.

  I opened the door of the farmhouse and motioned Simon into the front room. He walked to the back window, opened it, and peered out. There was nothing but emptiness beyond it.

  “It’s peaceful out here,” he said. “I’ve considered buying a place in the desert.”

  He strode to the center of the room and made a slow turn. The look on his face was harder that any I’d seen before. Something had changed, but I didn’t know what it was. He seemed more aggressive and self-assured, like an unarmed man who suddenly grabs a gun.

  “You’d have been commissioner one day if you’d stayed with the LAPD,” he told me. “Your father didn’t make it, but you would have.” He began a circular stroll around the room, his hands behind him, completely nonchalant. “You know what it’s called, this house?” he asked.

  He saw how much his question surprised me.

  “Lolitaville,” he said nostalgically, like a man remembering good times. “Funny how things change, Sloan. Back in the day, the age of consent for girls was ten. And I don’t mean marriage. I mean sexual consent.”

  “We’re not living back in the day,” I reminded him.

  He stopped his tour of the room and faced me.

  “It’s been going on out here for years,” he said. “At this house. Because we found someone to protect it. Someone who knew the ropes. Someone in law enforcement.”

  His gaze went cold.

  “Someone who was ambitious. Who wanted to be commissioner.” He smiled. “I’m sure you know a man like that.”

  And there it was. The reason for his self-assurance.

  “My father protected Lolitaville?” I asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  The polite, modest, falsely accused Simon fell away like a mask he no longer needed.

  “Do you think I’m stupid, Sloan?” he asked evenly.

  He stared at me scornfully.

  “Do you think I didn’t catch on to what this was all about the minute we headed out this way?”

  He chuckled lightly. It was all just a game to him, one whose rules he knew well and could faithfully depend upon.

  “Why do you think I called you that day, Sloan?” he asked. “Of all the fixers, cleaners, sin eaters, or whatever you call yourselves, in LA, why you? It’s because I had a hook in you. A way of controlling you.”

  He was utterly certain that he was beyond my power to touch him.

  “You know what your trouble is, Sloan?” he asked. “You’re still Daddy’s little girl. You want your father to be a victim. A man lied about and destroyed by a crazy bitch. You don’t want anything to ever tarnish that image.”

  He grinned.

  “Am I right?”

  When I didn’t answer, he walked to the far corner of the room and leaned against the wall. “But if I go down, so does your sainted father,” he said.

  His gaze was cold and confident, that of a man who knew where the secrets were and how to expose them to the world.

  “Because everything your mother believed about him was true.”

  He abruptly straightened himself and headed for the door.

  “Can we go back to LA now?” he asked. “Charlotte and Emma are waiting for me.”

  He turned and strode out onto the porch.

  I followed him and closed the door.

  He strutted across the porch toward the steps. When he reached the top of them, he took a deep, pleasurable breath.

  “I do love the desert air,” he said.

  He lifted his gaze to the stars. His expression was relaxed and unafraid. “I’m a bit of an ornithologist,” he said. “Did you know that swallows live eighty percent of their lives in the air? They eat in flight, and gather the materials for their nests. They even mate in flight. Imagine that.”

  He laughed.

  “It gives new meaning to sex on the fly, don’t you think?”

  He reached the edge of the porch, then wheeled around.

  “Don’t worry about your dad,” he told me, almost soothingly. “His reputation is safe with me.”

  The darkness that surrounded us seemed limitless and impenetrable, a black oblivion that blocked every source of light save for the flash of Simon’s sneering grin.

  “You’re a liar,” I said.

  Simon smiled. “Maybe. But you’ll never know, will you? Unless you look into the history of this place. Which you won’t. Because you’re afraid of what you’ll find.”

  He was daring me to investigate my own father, and he was certain I wouldn’t. He’d stained my father’s memory in my mind, and he knew it would remain that way. I would look no further into his accusation for fear of discovering that everything I’d ever admired in the man—his goodness, his incorruptibility—was a lie.

  When I simply stared at Simon, he stepped back. A little creak sounded a plaintive plea beneath his feet of a small thing breaking.

  I remembered that Claire‘s passionate hope had been for something “out there” to stop men like Simon Miller. I thought, This is what would happen:

  A board would give way.

  Simon would lose his footing and somersault down the stairs, head to wood, head to wood, repeatedly and violently, until he sprawled in the dust at the bottom of them.

  He would die like this unless something out there intervened to stop him.

  But the only thing out there was me.

  And I did nothing but watch as Simon turned and walked, undeterred, down the stairs.

  Claire

  I WATCH THE sun rise after a sleepless night. It dawns pink and gold, but nothing is beautiful to me anymore.

  Even daybreak is an indictment, because Simon’s wedding day moves relentlessly forward.

  Last night it infected my dreams. Simon stands in a dark corridor, with Emma at the other end. I am between them, watching as Simon takes first one step, then another. He is sure that I will retreat as he closes in on Emma.

  I awoke thinking of the pistol.

  After chasing Mehdi away, I placed it on the night table beside my bed.

  It was the first thing I saw in the morning light.

  I thought of Mehdi’s sputtering panic, how petrified he’d been, though I’d never had any attention of actually shooting him.

  Simon is not like Mehdi. Mehdi is a pathetic little coward. Simon is a force only death can stop.

  Only death.

  I imagine the gun in my hand.

  In my dream, Simon takes another
step down the corridor.

  I draw the pistol.

  He smiles and takes another step.

  I raise the gun.

  His smile broadens.

  I pull the trigger.

  Simon stumbles back like a villain in a film noir, a swath of black blood spreading over his chest.

  It’s only a movie image, but it feels absolutely real.

  Sloan

  I GOT TO work at just after nine the next morning. Jake was already in his office. He took one look at me and guessed that I’d had a rough night.

  “Jesus, Sloan,” he said, “you look like hell.”

  I sat down in the chair in front of his desk.

  “Have you ever heard of a place called Lolitaville?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “A house out in the desert. Where girls were taken. Young girls. Someone told me that back in the day, an LA cop protected it. I want to know if that’s true.”

  Jake stared at me suspiciously.

  “Why would it matter now, Sloan?”

  “I just want to know.”

  He thought a moment, then said, “Well, bad cops know who the other bad cops are, so you should probably start there.”

  “Who should I ask?”

  “I’d talk to Nick Devine,” Jake answered. “He was as dirty as they get. And I hear he has cancer. Just a few months to live. He might be willing to talk, since he has nothing to lose.”

  Nick Devine, I thought. Of all people.

  Claire

  MY FIRST CLIENT of the morning is Ray Patrick, but I don’t want to see him. Suspicion has clouded everything. Why did he hire me under false pretenses?

  I think of the young girl Ray was speaking with at the gallery, her adoring gaze. Simon had loved it when Melody looked at him that way.

  Does an adolescent’s gushing admiration have the same effect on Ray?

  I glance toward the parking lot.

  Ray will arrive at any minute.

  I consider leaving, because my mind has been completely poisoned by mistrust.

  I am still wrestling with that thought when a black SUV pulls into the parking lot. Is it the one that followed me before?

  I wait for the driver to get out.

  It’s Ray.

  He stands, waiting, until a young girl comes around from the other side of the car. He takes her hand and they come into the coffee shop where I am waiting.

  “Hi, Claire,” Ray says when he reaches my table. “This is my daughter, Jade. She’s been wanting to learn a little French.”

  She has Down syndrome.