Criminal Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  The mention of money warms her up, puts the color back in her cheeks and a little smile on her face, awakens the slick operator in her heart, the one who looks for ways to work me over. She retracts her lion’s claws and uses her other reliable weapon: that soft, curving body that’s supple as a snake. She moves against me and I let her. She slides her hand up the front of my coat, and I let her do that, too. I don’t want to stop her, I want to take her, press myself all over her until she sucks me dry. We’ve been stroking that possibility since I arrived at her door, and now it’s pawing at us like a rapacious animal as she slides her hands under my overcoat. Celeste’s hands understand my nature and my desire, her fingers arousing every muscle, bone, and sinew in my body, bringing me close to a recklessness I’m about to unshackle when her right hand stops at the bulge of my gun.

  She suddenly freezes. She’s the trapped animal again. “What if you don’t like what I say about Opal’s death? What if you don’t believe me? Are you as dangerous as Pep? Could you kill me, too? Is that what you want?”

  “I want what I want, Celeste.”

  “Are you talking about me, or my story? Which is more important to you, Cantor? Which are you willing to pay for?”

  “Ten thousand dollars buys me all of you, honey, your story included. But okay, for starters, I’ll take your story.” She’s afraid of Loreale, she’s afraid of Pep Green; maybe it’s time for her to be afraid of me, too. “And it better be the truth, Celeste. My hands are at your throat. It’s not a caress.”

  I’ve brought her face so close, my last word, caress, slides along her lower lip when her lipstick brushes my mouth. I’ve wanted to taste this creature from the minute I laid eyes on her. I’m crazy from watching and waiting. I pull her to me, press her mouth fully on mine.

  She’s delicious, sweet like one of those dangerous flowers whose fleshy petals drug you with their narcotic nectar, a drug that kills all the hurt in your heart. Celeste Copley is the kind of woman you crave for the rest of your life.

  She pulls away, but only slightly, talks fast, breathless. “Come with me, Cantor. Let’s get lost together.”

  “Can’t do that.” I pull her back to me. I haven’t finished enjoying that mouth. We speak between my tasting her.

  “Why not? What’s there to stop you?”

  “Loreale, for one. He’d find us both and kill me as fast as he’d kill you. And by the way, I have to save someone’s life.”

  Celeste tries to pull away again, roughly this time, but I pull her back. I’m stronger than she is and I like it that way. I keep her against me, keep her breasts pressed against my gun and the cash she doesn’t know I have in my jacket pocket.

  But her eyes are on me like probes, and her smile now isn’t forced or nervous. It’s triumphant. “I knew I had you pegged,” she says. “I realized it back at your office. You don’t usually run with Loreale’s pack. He’s got something on you, doesn’t he. What is it? Is he holding a hostage over your head? Is that the life you have to save? A female life, I’m sure. You in love with her?”

  I hold her tighter, pin her arms back to force her to stop fighting me. “I don’t trust love any more than you do, angel. But her life matters to me. Her life matters a whole lot more than Opal’s mattered to you.”

  “More than mine matters to you?”

  I can’t help smiling at that one. It’s rich. I slide my hands back to her throat. “There’s no one around to see what I’ll do if you don’t come through with the truth. Now. Or I’ll throw your pretty little corpse at Loreale’s feet.” My fingers tighten ever so slightly, just enough to make her wince.

  “Don’t do this,” she says.

  “You have only one way out, Celeste.” I tighten my grip on her throat.

  “Take your hands off. Please. You’re hurting me.”

  I loosen my grip, but only a bit, finding it useful to let Celeste think I might really be a killer. “This is the best I can do,” I say. “My hands will stay right where they are so I can feel it if you lie to me. Start talking.”

  The muscles and sinew in her neck weaken beneath my fingers. When she speaks, the words grind in her throat, fall out of her mouth in broken bits. “Pep…he…he didn’t kill Opal. I did.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Celeste won’t be the pretty little murderess I’d imagined sharing a cell with in my old age because she isn’t going to live long enough to take up residence in our cozy prison dwelling. Sig Loreale will see to that.

  “Well, well,” I say, my hands moving from her throat. I can drop my song and dance about killing her. She’s dead already. Or at least she will be when I turn her over to Loreale. Sure, she’ll try to sell him her tale about Pep’s wedding-night scam, and then Loreale will kill them both.

  I’ll hate turning her over. There’s something crummy about sentencing to death a woman I’ve just held in my arms, a woman whose body and soul I’d wanted to know intimately.

  Okay, so it’s crummy, but Celeste’s a killer and a liar. My heart will heal. And handing her over to Sig is my best play to save Rosie’s life.

  But it’s Celeste’s life that’s looking me in the eye, reading my lousy thoughts and begging me to get rid of them. “Don’t turn me over to Loreale, Cantor. Please. You have to let me explain!” But it’s a dead-end gamble. She can plead from now ’til doomsday. I’ve had all I can take of Celeste playing fast and loose with the truth, and I’m tired of the way she yanks me around. And she’s still trying. “You know what Sig will do to me. Can you live with that?”

  “Save it. You killed a woman, and you want me to help you get away with it. That’s not how it works. It’s either Sig’s justice or the Law’s justice for you, sweetie. But I don’t do business with the Law, and you wouldn’t want me to, anyway. The Law will hold you in a filthy lockup with a dozen scabby sisters. By the time your case comes up for arraignment twenty-four hours later, you’ll be just as scabby as they are, inside and out, from the sport the guards will make of you. So believe me, handing you over to Loreale is a mercy. Sig’s justice is a lot faster and cleaner. And the best part is it has something in it for me.”

  It’s like I slapped her, stung her fear and jolted it into anger. But her anger curdles into a disappointment so familiar to her it settles into her eyes as easily as a regular guest settles into a comfortable chair. Celeste Copley is disappointed with every single thing in the world, with a life where every road she travels is a dead end and everyone she meets does her dirt.

  So she backs off from me, leans against the butcher block, and looks me over, trying to find a way to stop me from handing her to Sig, maybe find a thread that could unravel me if she pulls it. She says, “I suppose the something that’s in it for you is the life of the hostage Sig’s holding? The dame you’re not in love with?”

  I answer with a nod. It’s not much of a nod, but it’s all I’ll give her.

  Celeste comes back with a sharp, fierce laugh. She’s suddenly confident again, wriggling her lioness’s claws and eyeing me as if she’s found something better than a thread to pull, a way to sting me fast rather than unravel me slowly, finding a scab to pick instead. “You’re wrong about me,” she says. “You said I don’t trust love any more than you do. Well, you’re all wrong about that. I loved Pep and maybe I still love him, you hear me? A rotten love for a rotten guy, sure, but love nonetheless. You know what that means, Cantor? It means that I still have something true inside me, even if I have to lie my way through my lousy life just to survive. But you? I don’t know what you’ve got going with this dame Sig’s holding hostage, but I bet she’s nuts about you and you don’t lift a finger to discourage her. Hell, you probably even encourage her, which makes you the liar. You’re a bigger liar than I’ll ever be.”

  Celeste picked that scab right down to the bone.

  I could bloody her mouth to shut her up, and I would if I could live with it. But I can’t. I’d lie awake nights, hating myself. I might not be able to look another woman in the eye
ever again. So I give Celeste the only response I can live with, the only one that matters anyway. “Then the best way for me to make it up to her is to save her life.”

  “And then you can keep lying to her.”

  “I don’t lie to her. I’ve never told her—” I choke it back before I get suckered into a conversation I have no business having with Celeste, a conversation that’s been tough enough to face with Rosie. “Look, it’s your lies that get you into trouble. Now you have to pay for ’em.”

  “So you can have a clear conscience when you hand me over to Loreale, to that murdering monster? I don’t deserve this. You said you’d help me.”

  “That was when you were breaking my heart. Maybe my heart will break again when Sig kills you for Opal’s murder.”

  “But it wasn’t murder. It was an accident. An accident, I swear! I was trying to save Opal’s life, but I…well…it went wrong.” The pleading in those big brown eyes could bring the saints to their knees.

  I’m no saint, but I’m no sucker, either. This accident routine could be another dodge.

  But what if it isn’t? If it isn’t a dodge and I turn her over to Sig, I’ll have blood on my hands. I already have plenty of other stuff on my hands, juggling a lot of people: Ortine, Sig, Mom Sheinbaum, the cops. Blood would only make everyone slippery. “You’ll have to work a miracle to convince me, Celeste, and I don’t believe in miracles.”

  “You want to throw me back in the gutter? Fine, be my guest. But don’t give me to Loreale. I’m no killer, Cantor. It really was an accident.”

  “Since when is a stabbing an accident?”

  “When it isn’t actually a stabbing. When it’s more of a cut, a puncture really, sort of a rip. A rotten, clumsy…” She’s choking up, crying now, pitiful as an orphaned little kid. But I stopped trusting anything that comes out of her pretty mouth—not her words, not her sobs. Her kiss was probably a lie, too.

  Her smudged mascara is real enough, though. Wet black streaks drip down her face. Her tears don’t get to me, and neither does her pleading, but those long black streaks, like jailhouse bars shadowing her face, get me good.

  I’m torn up by the idea of Celeste in the city lockup, of having to endure the rough stuff she’ll take from the guards and from the street-tough sisters who’ll bait her as prey. I take my handkerchief from my breast pocket and give it to her. She wipes her eyes and face, smudging the blue silk with black.

  She gets her crying under control, settles down, and hands the handkerchief back to me, but I say, “Keep it. You may be doing a lot more crying if I don’t buy your story.”

  Getting past a last weak whimper, she says, “The story would go a whole lot better with a drink, but I’ll settle for a smoke. Got one?”

  I pull out my pack of Chesterfields, give a cigarette to Celeste, take one for myself, and light our smokes. Celeste takes a deep drag the way you might take a deep breath before you jump off a cliff. Her gaze drifts past me, looks toward the cliff’s edge. “You’ve got to believe me, Cantor, I didn’t want any part of Pep’s scam,” she says, “but Pep gave me no choice. It was either my life or Opal’s life.”

  “Why didn’t he just lure Opal out here himself and leave you out of it?”

  “Because—listen, Opal wouldn’t give Pep the time of day, that’s why. He was just one of Sig’s hired thugs as far as she was concerned. Pep hated that snotty attitude of hers. I wasn’t crazy about it, either, if you want the truth.”

  “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Yeah, well…anyway, Pep figured Opal would go along with me if I asked. He knew I was her best friend, we had a lot of good times together, and that I kept her company while Sig was in prison.”

  “And I bet she showed her appreciation,” I say. “I bet Opal tossed you a few bucks, or treated you to lunch at the classier places? Your kind of life, right, Celeste?”

  “Don’t be such a cynic,” she says, disgusted with me for always thinking the worst of her, even though she makes it easy. “I didn’t need Opal’s handouts, not then. Pep was taking real good care of me. We had a nice setup at his place on the East Side.” Celeste fingers Opal’s mink without realizing it. Then she realizes it. She stops fingering the fur.

  “Keep talking,” is all I say.

  But she needs another drag on the smoke before she can go on, using it to withhold herself from me while she recovers from getting caught in the act with the fur. Finally, she says, “It’s like I told you, that louse Pep eventually threw me over. Then tonight he calls me up and asks me to drive Opal out here, before Loreale gets home from upstate. Oh, boy, Pep sure turned on the charm, let me tell you, dripped syrup all over me. All of a sudden he needs me, he says. He needs me.” She’s smiling at the memory, a weird childlike smile that makes my skin crawl.

  Her tiny triumph doesn’t last long, though, as lousier memories seep back. “Pep knew I was hard up for cash, really hard up, so he put his hooks into me with that promise of ten grand. But I heard a threat inside that promise.” Her eyes darken and her shoulders sag with that scary memory. I’m tempted to offer her a little tenderness, but it doesn’t take much to talk myself out of it. Celeste’s moods can be as dishonest as her stories.

  Pulling up what little confidence she can muster, she says, “I know Pep. I know what his voice sounds like when he’s figuring a killing. You don’t live with a guy, share his nights, pour his coffee, and not know how he’s put together. I knew he’d kill me if I didn’t go along. Funny, huh? Now he’ll kill me anyway.”

  Not if Loreale does first. But I don’t mention it. “So you brought Opal out here,” I say. “And you walked behind her, blocked the stairs. She never had a chance to run.”

  “She tried, but I grabbed her. She fought me, but Pep came up the stairs and overpowered her. She couldn’t fight us both.” Celeste’s hands rush to cover her face, shield her from the memory. Tears seep between her fingers, leave dark spots on those red leather gloves.

  I let her be, let her cry it out, let the story burst from her. “Pep stuffed a rag into Opal’s mouth so she wouldn’t scream and wake the neighborhood. Then we got her downstairs. Cantor, you should’ve seen Pep’s eyes. They were too bright, too strange.”

  “And what about Opal’s eyes, Celeste? The poor kid must’ve been scared out of her mind, or didn’t you notice your best friend’s eyes?”

  “I saw, and then I couldn’t look at her. I just…couldn’t. Especially when Pep tied Opal’s hands behind her back. Or he tried to tie her hands,” she says, suddenly laughing, a brittle laugh with as much joy in it as a slit throat, “but this fancy fur coat got in the way! With Opal struggling, wiggling like crazy to get free, the fur on the cuffs kept getting tangled in the rope and Pep couldn’t tie it up. It annoyed the hell outta him. So he tackled Opal by her neck and told me to take her coat off.”

  “And you just couldn’t resist putting it on.”

  “No. I did not put it on,” she says, disgusted with me again. “I put it down on the butcher block. I wasn’t thinking about the goddamn coat. All I was thinking was, how the hell did I wind up like this, in this lousy cellar with this rotten guy and mixed up in the murder of my best friend? I begged Pep not to kill her. I tried to convince him that maybe we could pay her off, shanghai her out of town, anything to prevent her marriage to Sig and stop the money skim to Opal’s mother.”

  Pep must’ve laughed her off. Her ridiculous schemes even make me snicker.

  “Yeah,” she says, “go ahead and laugh. Stupid ideas, I know, but it’s all I had.” Her shrug is so limp and sad, I’m afraid she’ll topple over. For all I know, she’s playing me for a fool, giving me the weak little girl act again to get my sympathy, but I can’t be sure. So if I want the rest of this tale of death, I’d better play along.

  I put my hand on her arm to steady her. She gives me the kind of smile that makes scolding daddies feel guilty. Then she says, “Of course Pep wouldn’t go for it, but I kept trying. I was frantic. I didn’t
know what else to say or do. And those sounds Opal made while Pep tied her hands, shrill, horrible groans through that rag in her mouth, they scared me, Cantor. I felt sick. I started to scream, which made Pep even madder, so he swatted me one! Gave me the back of his hand, real hard and vicious. He tried to land it on my mouth, but what with Opal wriggling against the rope, Pep’s arm wasn’t steady. My hands were at my face while I was screaming, so Pep’s already messed-up aim was blocked again, and his hand landed on the lapel of my coat.”

  “Black wool?” I say, knowing that a good liar always bases their lies on facts, and Celeste is a helluva good liar.

  She looks at me with surprise, then remembers she’d lied to me about Opal wearing the black coat. After a deep breath to clear the lie away, she says, “I wore a big brooch on the lapel of that coat, one of those big silver birds, must be about four inches, I guess, with lots of rhinestones. Pep caught his hand on the brooch when he tried to swat me. It must’ve pinched him because he cursed like a stuck pig. You should’ve heard him squeal.” This time the laugh’s real, a vengeful joy filling her whole body.

  I don’t laugh with her, but the picture she’s painting of Pep in clumsy pain makes me smile, a sneery smile full of swaggering glee.

  As her laughter winds down, she says, “It gave me an idea. I pulled the brooch off my coat and used the pin as a weapon. The back of the brooch has a long, heavy pin to hold the weight of all those rhinestones, and I thought if I used it to stab Pep’s hands, hurt him enough, he’d have to let go of Opal, and she and I could run away. But I couldn’t get to his hands. He was too fast for me. I kept catching the sleeve of his overcoat with the pin,” she says, making a stabbing motion over and over with frantic energy. “Then I had this crazy idea that I’d aim for one of his eyes, blind him. Hell, I wanted to kill him! But he was still too fast for me. When I came at his face with the brooch he twisted away and pushed Opal at me, and that’s when the pin went into her neck. I tried to pull it out, but she kept…twisting, kept struggling. The more she struggled, the deeper the pin went into her neck and the more it tore her flesh. Oh God, Opal’s blood spurted straight at me like a fire hose!”