by Gorman, Ed
“Yet here you are spilling your guts,” Reno said. “Why? Why now, when you could have hidden the photograph instead of dragging it out for me to notice?”
“Because I’m tired of living the lie, Jack. When Walter showed up as a defendant in my courtroom, my first thought was to recuse myself, take myself out of harm’s way, but the way he seemed to mock me with his every expression, his eyes daring me to do anything that upset him or worked against his favor, it was enough. It was too much. I denied his lawyer’s motion for dismissal and motions to suppress evidence. I denied his lawyer’s motion for bail. Walter exploded and made his open threats on my life. The rest you know. Why you’re here. The one good thing to come of this so far. You and me, Jackie-boy.” She reached for Reno, sandpaper noises like a bitch in heat rising from the base of her throat. Toyed with his chest hair, saying, “You’re everything I suspected the first time I set eyes on you in my courtroom.”
“And what was that?” Her hands were on the move and driving him nuts.
“You don’t know by now, you’re not as smart as I gave you credit for being. Help me, Jackie-boy? Help your Gilly-girl get Walter Farnum out of our life forever?”
“Forever? How?”
“You tell me, lover. I know you’ll figure out something, but first — I’m desperate for you to satisfy something else.”
• • •
Sunrise was illuminating the bedroom curtains when Reno pulled her closer to him, pampered her awake, and whispered, “I need you to put Farnum back on the street, Gilly-girl.”
She unlocked herself from his arms, scrambled out of bed and toured the room panic-stricken by the idea, demanding reasons he wasn’t anxious to share with her.
He said, “You want him out of your life forever, that’s what I need you to do if my plan’s going to work. Let it go at that.”
“Plan? What plan? Turn that animal free and make it easier for him to come after me? Is that your plan?”
“You’re better off not knowing.”
“Why do I have to go on faith alone?”
“And love,” he said. “Faith and love. Beyond that, you don’t want to know. Trust me on this.”
She drained the room of air and pushed it back in.
“With my life,” she said, making it a declaration.
“As I trust you with mine,” he said, matching her sincerity.
“But can either of us trust Walter Farnum?”
“It won’t make any difference,” Reno said, and told her as much as she had to know.
Farnum was out on bail three days later, based on what Judge Armstrong explained was a reevaluation of his lawyer’s request once Farnum apologized in court for his malicious earlier outburst, which he did with all the sincerity of a snake. In fact, she had taken direction from Reno, whose idea it also was to set Farnum’s bail high enough — a cool million dollars — to reinforce her reputation as a no-nonsense judge from the School of Guilty Until Proven Innocent.
Next, with the judge’s nervous approval, Reno called off the Priority Protection Squad and spirited her away for a lust-satisfying weekend at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, where they tracked after landmarks left behind by Marilyn Monroe when she filmed Some Like it Hot there when they weren’t creating their own heat in an oceanfront suite.
• • •
Farnum was settled in her den watching a Laker game when they returned from San Diego. “Good evening!” he called to them, clicking off the set. “Expected you here an hour ago, Jack. Was beginning to get worried.”
“Traffic, Walter. Murder on any Sunday.”
“Murder on any Sunday, the man says. Good one, Jack. Good one. Hey, Judge, how they hanging?”
The judge broke away from Reno’s hold around her waist. “You knew he was going to be here? What’s going on, Jack?” Her voice was demanding, but her eyes betrayed her alarm.
Reno sent Farnum a hand gesture that invited him to speak.
“Come to set the record straight now that I’m breathing free air again and there’s none of Jack’s buddies in blue blocking the way,” Farnum said.
Her eyes narrowed, causing a series of ridges and furrows to form across her forehead, eyeing Jack as she put the question to both of them. “The record straight?”
“The way you said what happened that time to your girlfriend, Kim, not like that at all, sweetheart.” Farnum tucked himself into a corner of the sofa, hands in a schoolboy lock on his lap, and flicked a smile at the judge. “You were my girl back then, from the night we ignited at that strip joint where you hustled for bikini bucks all through your turning high-end tricks for me with selected VIPs who could, incidentally, further your daytime gig with the DA You brought Kim onto the yacht for a road test by me, but she balked when she figured out what I had in mind for her future and scrammed topside. You took it personally. Chased after her screaming and threatening. I dragged my drugged-out sorry ass after you, got there in time to see you give Kim a slap and a shove that sailed her over the railing and into the drink, where we left her to drown, locked into the fog halfway to Catalina.”
“No, Jack, no. The bastard is lying. It was him,” she said, spitting out the words like a personal declaration of innocence.
Farnum pitched his eyes to the ceiling. “I owned her after that, y’know? She did favors for me, I did favors for her. Her favors worked for me and any member of my crew whenever they stepped in it. When she decided she wanted to be a judge, I helped out there, too, money and cashing in on favors owed me by certain people who know how to swing an election. We could have gone on like this forever, except for the stupid thing she did in court, refusing me bail, leaving me no choice but to make good on my threat. Anything else and my guys would see it as a sign of weakness and maybe get some nasty ideas of their own, y’ know? Ambition trumps loyalty every time.”
“Not true, Jack. Not any of it,” she said, as if delivering a verdict from the bench.
Reno held out a palm to quiet her. “Tell Judge Armstrong the rest, Walter.”
Farnum smiled agreeably. He got up from the sofa, adjusted his camel’s hair sports coat and strutted across the room like a bantam cock who owned the barnyard. Settled on a stool at the bar counter and threw open his arms. “Here’s the rest of the deal your boy toy cooked up for us the last time he came calling on me, Gilly-girl. Our next court date, my shyster moves that all the charges against me get tossed. You go into your usual holier-than-thou dance, then grant the motion. I walk out a free man and you can quit looking over your shoulder. I’m out of your life for good, and it’s happily ever after time for you and Jack here, y’know?”
Gilly stopped patrolling the den and sank into an armchair.
What color hadn’t drained from her face when she first saw Farnum was gone now.
She picked at her nails, scraped off polish while buried in thought.
After two or three minutes, she said, “And if I refuse?”
Farnum smiled. “Just like a lawyer, right, Gilly-girl? Don’t ever ask a question where you don’t already know the answer.” He withdrew a .38 caliber automatic from the shoulder holster under his jacket and held it up for inspection. “Our deal goes south — I gotta keep my crew’s respect, y’know what I mean?”
“Jack, you’d let that happen?”
His eyes roamed between the two of them and settled on her. “Walter called you Gilly-girl.”
“What?”
“Twice,” Reno said. “He called you Gilly-girl, and I know firsthand what that means. It means him ... you ... him and you. It means he, not you, was talking truth about you and how Kim died, Your Honor. What other lies did you feed me after you steered me into falling hard for you, steered me into believing you were in love with me, steered me to the idea of getting Walter out of your life forever, you said, but killing him is what you really meant?”
She averted his hard stare and searched the room indiscriminately, nervously pushing back her hair and exposing gray roots under the bottle red, the sweat b
eads lining her forehead toning the scent of her perfume with fear. “Leading you to fall for me, maybe it was my idea at first, Jack, and about Walter, but — ”
Farnum cackled. “I told you she was some piece of work, Jack.”
They were his last words before Reno marched at him demanding, “Oh, shut up, damn you,” firing the Glock he had pulled from his belt holster.
The bullet caught Farnum in the chest, flung him backward into the bar counter, arms flailing madly, then forward onto the floor face down.
Reno twisted around and straight-armed the Glock at the judge.
This time she answered his eyes with a look that begged understanding.
“I did fall in love with you, Jack. I do love you. Please. I need you to believe that, no matter what else. So help me God.”
“God help me, even if I wanted to, it’s too late for me to believe anything else,” Reno said, lowering his weapon.
Her shoulders relaxed. She smiled approvingly. “I recognize now what you did, your plan ... You needed Farnum out on bail so you could get him here on some pretext, kill him in a way that made it look like you got him before he could make good his courtroom threat and shoot me, am I right, Detective Reno of the Priority Protection Squad?”
“He’s dead. You’re not. He’s where you wanted him, out of your life forever.”
She embraced Reno, smothered his mouth with a lingering kiss that promised more and better to come and stepped over to Farnum. She kneeled and tested his neck for a pulse, as if the pool of blood inching out from under him wasn’t proof enough Farnum was dead.
She said, “Two problems, Jack.” Her declaration caught Reno off guard. “First, as an officer of the court and a strict advocate of law-and-order, I would be uncomfortable knowing I let you get away with murder.”
“Very funny,” he said, tossing off a laugh.
“Second, I have a problem with you knowing about Kim and me, something you might decide one day to hold over my head the way Walter did.”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“I’m not,” she said, rising, revealing her hold on Farnum’s .38. She said, “Thank you and goodbye, Jackie-boy,” and got off two quick shots before he could raise the Glock again. Her first shot caught Reno in the neck, the second in the chest.
He fought to sustain the light, watching Gilly catch her breath, bent forward with her hands on her knees, like a runner after a race. She looked down at him, nodded satisfaction, then nonchalantly fixed Farnum’s .38 back in his grip, found her handbag and dug out her cell phone. She was saying, “Yes, this is an emergency,” as her voice blurred and the smell of her perfume evaporated and Reno stopped hurting so much.
• • •
ROBERT S. LEVINSON is making his sixth consecutive appearance in a “year’s best” mystery anthology. He is the bestselling author of eight novels, The Traitor in Us All, In the Key of Death, Where the Lies Begin, Ask a Dead Man, Hot Paint, The James Dean Affair, The John Lennon Affair, and The Elvis and Marilyn Affair, with his ninth, A Rhumba in Waltz Time, scheduled for publication in 2011. Bob is a regular contributor to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, whose readers cited him in the annual EQMM Award poll three years running. His short story in Hitchcock, “The Quick Brown Fox,” was a Derringer Award winner. He wrote, produced and emceed three Mystery Writers of American Edgar Awards shows, as well as two International Thriller Writers Thriller Awards shows. His website is www.robertslevinson.com.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
ED GORMAN has been called “one of suspense fiction’s best storytellers” by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and “one of the most original voices in today’s crime fiction” by the San Diego Union. He’s been published in many magazines, including Redbook, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Poetry Today. He has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Shamus, the Spur, and the International Fiction Writer’s awards, as well as being nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Golden Dagger, and Stoker awards. His work has been featured by the Literary Guild, the Mystery Guild, the Doubleday Book Club, and the Science Fiction Book Club. He lives with his wife, author Carol Gorman, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
MARTIN H. GREENBERG is the CEP of Tekno Books and its predecessor companies, now the largest book developer of commercial fiction and nonfiction in the world, with over 2,300 published books that have been translated into thirty-three languages. He is the recipient of an unprecedented three Lifetime Achievement awards in the Science Fiction, Mystery, and Supernatural Horror genres — the Milford Award in Science Fiction, the Bram Stoker award in Horror, and the Ellery Queen Award in Mystery — the only person in publishing history to have received all three awards.
Tyrus Books, a division of F+W Media, publishes crime and dark literary fiction—offering books from exciting new voices and established, well-loved authors. Centering on deeply provocative and universal human experiences, Tyrus Books is a leader in its genre.
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