by Dianne Emley
Cars piled behind them and around both sides, pinning them in.
Iris looked in the rear view mirror at the Cad. She blew the geeks a kiss.
Traffic moved ahead four inches.
“Now what?” Sally Lamb asked.
“Let’s just pop her. Freeway craziness,” Jimmy Easter said.
“Now that’s smart. See that helicopter up there? Besides, we’re just supposed ta talk to her. Remember talking, dick head? Scare her. See where the dough is.”
“I got a idea,” Jimmy said.
“Oh, good.”
“I’ll go sit in her car. Then she can’t go nowhere.”
The traffic moved ahead eight inches.
“She’ll scream.”
“She won’t. I’ll show her my piece and tell her nothin’s gonna happen if she cooperates.”
“You gotta promise me she’s not gonna get hurt.”
“C’mon.”
“C’mon nothin’. We’re in enough trouble.”
“Nice and easy. Watch.”
Iris saw the tall one open the passenger door and get out of the Cad. He walked to the TR and grabbed the door handle. The drivers in the surrounding cars watched with interested disinterest.
“Hi.” He cobra smiled.
Traffic moved ahead five inches.
Iris let up hard on the clutch and jerked the TR forward.
Jimmy hopped alongside, his hand caught in the door handle. He held the snake smile. “Howyadoin?”
“Don’t,” Iris said, “if you want to keep that.”
Jimmy saw a .45 pointed at his crotch. He raised both hands in the air and showed Iris his palms. He turned and walked back to the Cad with his hands still up, opened the door, sat down, and unconsciously cupped his hands over his crotch.
“What happened?” Sally asked.
“She’s fucking crazy! She pulled a gun on me,” Jimmy said indignantly.
Sally looked at Jimmy’s hands in his lap. “What kind of a whacko are we dealin’ with?”
“I tell you one thing.” Jimmy took a cigarette from a pack and put it between his lips. “I’m sick of this. We oughtta just off her and be done with it.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? We’re not supposed to off her. We’re supposed to find out what she did with the boss’s money.”
Jimmy took another cigarette from the pack, rolled down the Cad’s window, and threw it at the TR. “But she’s pissing me off.”
The cigarette landed on the TR’s passenger seat. Iris picked it up. She shot a gimlet eye in the rearview mirror. She unzipped the backpack and took out a hundred-dollar bill. She wrapped it around the cigarette, twisting the ends like a Chinese firecracker, then tossed it back at the Cad. It landed on the hood.
Jimmy got out and picked it up. He unwrapped it and held the money in front of the Cad’s windshield. “Fuckin’ A.”
Something hit the side of his head. He reached in his hair and pulled out a tiny paper airplane made out of a hundred-dollar bill. He spread it open on the Cad’s hood.
Iris twisted around to face him. Jimmy looked at her slack-jawed, gingerly holding a hundred-dollar bill by the edge between the thumb and index finger of each hand.
“What the fuck?” he asked her, flipping his hands, waving the money.
Iris started laughing. “It’s only money, baby.” She wiped tears from her face. “Keep it. It’s a gift.”
Jimmy walked backward and got into the Cad.
Traffic moved ahead four inches.
“What’s this supposta mean?” Jimmy fluttered the money in Sally’s face. “We gotta call the boss.”
“And say what? That she threw money at you?”
A big truck painted with fruits and vegetables and a supermarket chain’s logo drove next to the TR and the Cad. The driver had one tanned arm leaning out the open window.
Iris tugged at the hem of her miniskirt. She threw the backpack on top of the gun.
“What’s happening up ahead?” she asked the truck driver.
“Some guy flipped out and started playing bumper cars.” He appraised the TR. “Great car. What year?”
“Seventy-two.”
“Cherry.”
“Thanks.”
“Looks like the accident’s not the only action on this road,” he said, looking back at the Cad.
They approached an off ramp. Cars were lined up to get off. The truck partially blocked Iris from the entrance.
“I gotta lose those guys,” she said. “Can you let me in so I can get off?”
“No problem.”
Iris turned the steering wheel hard right. She moved forward, then threw the car in reverse and backed up to get enough room to make the turn. She drove onto the shoulder of the off ramp past the waiting cars, waving back at the truck driver.
The Cadillac moved to follow Iris. The truck driver rolled his rig forward, closing the gap. He rolled up his window, changed cassettes, turned on the air conditioner, and pretended they didn’t exist. The L.A. block-out.
People honked and yelled and shook their heads and fists at Iris as she came down the shoulder. The driver of one car moved onto the shoulder to try and block her. The TR’s right tires ran over the weeds and trash and tangled ice plant at the side of the road.
Iris ran a red light at the bottom of the off ramp and plotted a surface street route to McKinney Alitzer.
She hoped he was still waiting for her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“What are you thinking, my son?” Vito Camelletti took a cigar from his inside jacket pocket. He punched the cigarette lighter on the dash of Joe’s Jag and lit the cigar. He puffed clouds of white smoke and stroked the bulb of his nose.
“Makes no difference, Pop. No difference.”
Joe Campbell jammed his finger on the window switch, sliding all four windows down a few inches. He gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands and stared out the windshield.
Vito puffed the cigar.
“Everything’s got an angle for you. I admire that in you, Pop. I do. You’re thinking all the time.”
“I made a good life for my family. All the nice schools and nice clothes and nice friends and nice this and nice that. Just don’t forget that.”
“No chance, Pop.”
Silence hung in the air like Vito’s cigar smoke. Vito stared through the windshield at the while lines rolling under the Jag.
Joe cleared his throat. “I’m not trading on Worldco anymore, Pop. It’s done. I can’t bring that money home and make it clean. Not after what happened to Alley. It’s dirty. It makes everything dirty. I can’t do it, Pop. It’s over.”
Vito smoked his cigar.
“If you cut me off—” Joe shrugged. “If that’s how it has to be, so be it. That’s my decision.”
They drove in silence.
“Say something, Pop.”
Vito again stroked bulb of his long nose. He puffed the cigar and exhaled a billow of smoke. The world rolled quietly under the Jag’s tires.
“I won’t give up my only son.”
Joe clenched his jaw, trying to hide his emotions. “What does that mean?”
“You just changed your name. You didn’t change your blood. Now, hurry up.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Downtown was quiet. The commuters had fled at the close of happy hour.
Iris Thorne parked on the empty street in front of the McKinney Alitzer building, behind a shiny black Mercedes with tinted windows, comforted that someone else’s work was running their life, too.
Lucille, the bag lady, had spread a soiled blanket underneath the portico of the building and was arranging assorted bottles of perfume on top of the blanket’s thin fleece. “Hey, babe,” she said to Iris, smiling with grimy teeth.
Iris unzipped the backpack, counted ten hundred-dollar bills, and handed them to her. “Enjoy.”
“Whatcha expect me to do with this?”
“What do you mean? Spend it. Get off the street.”
Lucille folded the money in half and handed it back to Iris. “I can’t spend a hundred-dollar bill. I’ll get busted. Shopkeepers will call the cops. Besides, street’s my home, sugar.”
Iris shoved the money into the backpack, took out her wallet, and pulled out all her cash. About forty bucks in small bills. She handed it to Lucille. A perfume sample in a small glass vial had dropped to the bottom of her purse. She handed that to Lucille, too.
“That’s more like it.” Lucille stashed the money somewhere inside her many layers of clothing, having the grace not to count it in front of Iris. She displayed the perfume on the blanket with the rest of her vanity items.
“Wear some on one of those big nights on the town.”
“Sugar, every night’s a big night on the town for me.” Lucille laughed.
Iris laughed too, hard. Too hard. She felt a hysterical lightness in her head. She grabbed control and came back. There was work to do. She walked up the marble steps to the tall glass doors.
“Hey, Scarlet,” Lucille said.
Iris turned.
“Remember.” Lucille held up a dirty finger. “Tomorrow is another day.”
Iris gave her a thumbs-up.
In the building lobby, the guard sat behind the desk reading a Hollywood trade paper. “Hey! The executive woman in a mee-nee skirt. Whoa!”
“Hi, Nicky.” Iris swiveled the sign-in clipboard around and felt a nostalgic pang when she scribbled her name. Another last time. She scanned the sheet for his name. It wasn’t there.
“No one else from McKinney is here?”
“No. But I stepped away for a minute. Someone could have slipped in.”
She held out her hand. Nicky shook it.
“What’s goin’ on, baby doll?”
“Thank you. For your humor and big heart.”
“Part of the service. Part of the service. This sounds final. You goin’ somewhere?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, no! She’s leavin’ me! Be back?”
“Maybe.”
“Good luck, baby doll. Remember, offer’s open. House husband to the executive woman.”
In the elevator, Iris took the .45 out of her backpack and stuck it into her skirt waistband against the small of her back. She pulled her T-shirt out to cover it. Just in case the geeks turned up again. The metal felt cool against her skin. She pulled at the hem of her mini and wished she’d worn something more commanding. She patted the .45 and played out several deliciously morbid office fantasies in her mind. “Like my new power suit, Drye?”
The air inside McKinney Alitzer’s suite was warm and still. The air conditioner had been shut off for hours. The suite was dark except for a light shining from a corner office that illuminated a triangle of carpet outside the door and a corner of a secretary’s desk. A small, metallic balloon on a stick in the secretary’s pencil holder reflected a light beam back at Iris.
She walked down the corridor. A paper rustled. She spun around on some premonition. There was nothing behind her. The gun tugged at her waistband. She stepped up the pace and took quick steps toward the end of the suite, anxious for resolution, her tennis shoes silent on the thick carpet.
Tomorrow is another day.
Stan Raab was writing on a yellow legal pad.
Iris rapped on the door frame. It sounded sharp and metallic.
He jumped, startled, and looked up with bellicose eyes.
She recoiled, her fist still in the air.
“Iris.” His expression turned warm, as if he’d pulled a shade over a window. “I was starting to worry about you.”
He stood and extended his palm. She took it and he gripped her wrist with his other hand. It had the correct effect. She felt welcome.
“There was a big accident on the freeway,” she said.
“Traffic.” He shook his head. “We’d do better with horse and buggy.”
They tsk-tsked about the traffic, which makes more interesting small talk than L.A.’s limited weather flavors, if there hasn’t been an earthquake.
“I’m glad you called me, Iris.” Stan sat down.
Iris took the cue and sat also. The upholstery of the antique chair felt rough against the backs of her bare legs. Another last time. She savored the feeling of closure.
“Stan, I apologize for calling you at home.”
“You know I’m here for you.”
“I know. I appreciate that. This is hard, Stan. I’ll just say it. I’m resigning, effective immediately.”
“Resigning?”
“I’m going to travel.”
“You’re resigning to travel? Have you given this enough thought? Your career…”
“Alley made me think about a lot of things. I need some time off the merry-go-round.”
“Having fun is great, Iris. But you have to consider the long term.”
“Stan. I can’t work here anymore. Not after our conversation today.”
“Put yourself in my position, Iris.”
“I have. But there’s a credibility issue. Mine’s gone.”
“My conclusions were logical. I’m not taking anything back.”
“Then, there we are. Can I still count on you for a letter of recommendation?”
“That goes without saying.”
“Thank you. I’ll send you a formal resignation letter tomorrow. But before I leave, I want to clear the air about Alley.”
She stood up and leaned over Stan’s desk, unzipped the backpack, and upended it. The cash and the stock certificates tumbled out. A bundle knocked into the chained silver-ball toy. A ball broke loose and started the device’s pendulum swinging and clacking.
“This was inside Alley’s safe-deposit box.”
Stan picked up a bundle, licked his thumb, and quickly counted the bills. “A safe-deposit box?”
“Alley gave me an envelope with the key. Told me I’d know when to open it.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“No one.”
He counted the bundles and arranged them into neat rows. He unfolded the EquiMex certificates and tapped the edges on his desk to straighten them. His brow was creased. He turned them, tapped, turned them, and tapped. “There’s what? Two, three hundred grand here?”
“Two hundred thirty-eight thousand.”
“Iris, please sit down. I can’t think when you’re standing up like that.”
“I have to go, Stan.”
“You can’t dump this here and leave. You have to explain.”
She sat. “I told you, Stan. It was in a safe-deposit box. Alley left the key and told me I’d know when to open it. Gave it to me a couple of weeks ago. There was the money and stock and some trinkets. I threw the trinkets into the ocean, off my friend’s sailboat.”
“Someone else does know.”
“No, no, he didn’t know what I was doing.” She dragged the backpack onto her lap and started to stand. “No one knows. Okay, Stan? No one knows about the money. No one knows I’m meeting you. It’s clean. It’s done. It’s our secret. I have to go.”
He chewed his lower lip and patted the air for her to remain sitting. He again tapped and turned the stock certificates on the edge of the desk. “No one knows you’re here?”
Iris got up. “Someone’s waiting for me, Stan.” She took a step toward the door.
His left eye started to pulse. “You didn’t answer my question.”
She took another step toward the door. “My friend Steve knows I’m here. He’s waiting for me.”
“So someone does know you’re here. No matter. No one knows I’m here. That’s the point. Just Susan.” Stan tapped and turned the certificates.
Iris took another step, reaching the doorway. She slung the backpack over her shoulder. The .45 cut into her waist. She almost pulled at it, forgetting. “Stan, this is everything. I’m going now.”
“Not everything, Iris. Not by a long shot.”
“Stan, you always told me I was a bad liar. Look at me. I’m not lying t
o you.”
“This is not everything. You don’t realize the implications. I need everything. If not everything, I have to have a good reason. A damn good reason. Four million is missing. Four million out of ten.”
Iris ran.
Stan grabbed the corner of the desk and swung around it, scattering the certificates.
Iris was already halfway down the corridor, running, the swinging backpack knocking pencil holders, photographs, papers, and plants off desks.
He was close behind her. She swept a desk lamp into him. The cord twisted around his feet. He threw himself into a headlong tackle, catching her around the ankles. He went down. She went down, crushing a pencil box from someone’s desk underneath her.
She thrashed her legs, crawling on her belly, kicking madly. She reached behind her and grabbed the gun, sweeping it across the carpet in her hand. Stan tried to grab her arm. She twisted and pointed the gun at his face. He lunged and pinned her gun arm over her head. She pulled out a handful of his hair with her free hand and dug her thumb into his eye. The gun discharged into a wall. Stan pried her fingers backward until her hand was forced open. He got the gun. He held it beneath her chin.
He rolled back onto his heels. “Get up.”
Iris scooted backward on the carpet, rolling over pens and pencils. She brushed them away, scattering them. She pulled a sharpened pencil from beneath her hip and jabbed it into Stan’s cheek.
He dropped the gun and grabbed his face.
She got to her feet and ran. She reached the glass doors of the suite. Her mind raced. Was the elevator still there? Should she take the stairs? Lock herself in an office? She pushed the heavy doors open. The elevator. If it didn’t come immediately, the stairs.
Then she saw spots before her eyes. Then darkness.
Stan touched his cheek where blood streamed from the puncture wound in his face. Blood ran down his neck and onto the collar of his pink polo shirt. He examined the revolver butt. A blond hair was stuck to it. He carefully picked it off and dropped it onto the carpet. He ran a hand through his hair as he looked down one end of the suite, then the other. He again touched his cheek, looked at the blood on his hand, then pulled the front of his shirt out and looked at the wet red on pink.
