Dating Dead Men

by Harley Jane Kozak

  She gave me a look I couldn't read, and moved to the side of the bridge.

  I followed. “I look at the whole give-up-something-for-Lent routine as a way to keep Jesus company for the forty days and forty nights he's in the desert. That's why I do it. But I know that some people do it to atone for their sins.”

  Ruby kept walking. Her hand skimmed the top of the railing, fingers splayed across the expanse of smooth black steel.

  “Other people do it to get their prayers answered, like making a deal with God.”

  Ruby stopped. She gripped the railing and leaned over it and stared onto the street below. Her hair hung down and hid her face. I moved to her side. “I personally don't believe God works like that, demands payment up front. I believe prayers either get answered—or they don't.” I touched her hair. It had the feel of a Brillo pad.

  Ruby gave one convulsive sniff that wracked half her body. Something I'd said was hitting home.

  “And sometimes,” I said softly, “no matter what you do, how hard you pray—they just don't.”

  I LEFT HER in a plush-carpeted law office, reading Daily Variety and making her way through a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies provided by a motherly secretary who greeted her like an old friend. Ruby did not look up when I said goodbye.

  In the elevator it occurred to me that the lawyer would be useful if I needed to contact Doc/Gomez/Flynn, who wasn't likely to contact me, not after the pithy note I'd written him. I'd already forgotten the law firm's name. C. Something and Someone, on the seventh floor. I stopped in the lobby to search the building directory, amazed at how many entries said “Attorneys at Law.” Saul Meier & Associates, for instance, on the tenth floor. Why did I know that name? Oh, of course: Saul was the Saul of Saul and Elaine's 14th Annual Beverly Hills Hoedown.

  My heart thumped. Saul was counsel to Eddie Minardi. Big Eddie. Eddie Digits.

  I walked into an empty elevator and pressed 7. I needed to see Ruby again.

  IT TOOK THE executive secretary eighteen minutes to find Saul, and it took Saul forty-three to find his client, once I stated the exact nature of my business. I was shown to a conference room to wait.

  I took out the ring. The facets of the diamond made mirrors, through which I could see the picture window, the long mahogany table, the outsize sunflower arrangement, the high ceiling with its recessed lighting. My pulse raced when I considered what I was doing. At least I'd have the rabbi's blessing. And Ruby's. This time when I'd left her in the offices of Capparelli, Miyazaki & Zeiss, she'd smiled.

  “Ms. Shelley.” The voice boomed behind me. I slid the ring onto my finger, and closed my fist over the diamond. Then I stood.

  Saul Meier looked less genial in a gray suit than he'd looked in a ten-gallon hat. He shook my hand firmly and introduced me to the man alongside him.

  Edoardo Minardi could not have been more than five foot four. He did not shake my hand. A cultural thing, maybe, like the scarlet silk handkerchief tip peeking from the breast pocket of his deep blue suit. The handkerchief matched his tie, held by a diamond tie clip. He measured me with a look, then moved to the other side of the huge table, followed by Saul. A wave of aftershave lingered in the air. Saul gestured to me to sit.

  I sat.

  The three of us maintained a churchlike silence and I realized, with something akin to terror, that I was expected to speak first. I could not.

  The Mafia don turned to his lawyer and raised his eyebrows.

  This was not helpful. My vocal cords seemed to have fossilized, and I could only stare. Big Eddie sitting, I noted, seemed bigger than Big Eddie standing—all torso and no legs, apparently. For some reason, this gave me courage. I put my fist on the conference table and opened it slowly, as if I were having blood drawn.

  “This has been in a synagogue for a year, and in my pocket for an hour.”

  I had their attention. I twisted the ring off my finger and set it on the polished wood. “Four men have chased me since Saturday. Two are in jail now, and two are dead. I didn't kill them,” I added hastily. “What I want is for the two that are left, Tor Ulvskog, and the Wease—uh, Ronald Ronzare—” I amended, remembering he was Big Eddie's relative, “—I want them to know I don't have the ring. They're in police custody, and I don't know how to contact them. Not that they'd believe me.”

  Big Eddie nodded, a single dip of the chin, and a return to its original position. It was a dignified gesture, the kind you'd expect from the Pope. I wasn't sure if it was a “You got it” kind of nod or a “Please continue” kind of nod. I continued.

  “It's also important to me that these guys don't come around looking for retribution, sometime in the future, say after . . . twenty-five years to life.” This time Big Eddie's nod was barely perceptible. I slid the ring halfway across the table, next to the sunflower arrangement. Saul glanced at it. Big Eddie did not.

  “One last thing,” I said. “Mr. Ronzare kidnapped a ferret this morning. Her name is Margaret. If she is alive, I want her back. If she's not—” I felt my bottom lip quiver. I willed it to stop, and then just bit it. “—I'd like to know that.”

  Saul said, “What is a ferret?”

  “A small animal, related to the stoat, or . . . weasel.” I pulled a business card from my purse and did a quick sketch on the back. I stood to hand it across the table.

  Saul glanced at it and passed it to his client.

  Big Eddie turned the card over and read the front before looking at the sketch. His voice, when he spoke, was lyrical. Soothing. “It looks like an anteater.”

  He put the card in the inner pocket of his beautiful blue suit. Then he stood and nodded once more, that enigmantic nod, and walked around the table.

  “Thank you,” he said. He stretched out his hand and when I took it, held mine to his lips and kissed it.

  chapter thirty-six

  I returned to find my shop sealed off with yellow crime scene tape. Ditto the parking lot. The other businesses were open, as Fredreeq had reported, but only to pedestrians. Since parking on Sunset required an act of God, I had no doubt they'd had a dismal sales day and I was in the mini-mall community doghouse.

  There was a sign on the shop's front door, a huge smiley face with the words “Back in business in no time!” coming out of its mouth, comic-book-style. Joey's handiwork. This made me want to cry, for reasons I couldn't even identify.

  I should be happy, grateful, relieved. The bad guys were in jail, my brother's well-being was restored, and I actually trusted Big Eddie to guarantee our safety. But the adrenaline rush brought on by the diamond had subsided and left me feeling as zippy as a bag of dirty laundry. I drove around the block to my apartment and realized that while life was not materially different from the way it had been a week earlier, there was a yawning emptiness that hadn't been there before.

  I walked through my apartment building and out into the alley.

  The spot where Carmine's corpse had lain was marked by more crime scene tape, and the freight door was padlocked, as the front door had been. But there was one more entrance. I went through the apartment building, to the courtyard. No yellow tape here. The cops either hadn't cared about this door or, more likely, had missed it altogether. People often did. From the inside, it was covered with chinoiserie wallpaper and blended into the surrounding wall. I let myself into the back room and switched on the lights.

  There was the unmade bed.

  It's what I'd come for. The man who'd slept there with me last night—okay, so he was a liar and a thief and he'd had sex under an assumed name. Nobody's perfect. I missed him. I also missed sleep. The bed beckoned, its white rumpled sheets and pillows willing to seduce me all over again. Fully clothed, I succumbed.

  Under the covers, I inhaled his scent until it became hard to breathe. I pulled my head out and opened my eyes. Above me was the cornucopia of personal effects suspended from the ceiling, all the stuff of my life. My eyes drifted downward, over well-stocked shelves, along the Persian rug, and came to rest on som
ething unfamiliar on the cement floor: a plastic barrette. Ruby's. Too flimsy to be of any practical use, given the quality of her hair, it lay there pink and hopeful, an expression of vanity that—

  In the front room, someone pounded at the door.

  My heart leaped. I jumped up out of the bed, flooded with guilt. Violating a crime scene must be a crime. But if it was cops, would they knock? It was their padlock on the door, wouldn't they just let themselves in?

  The knocking came again. Fast. Peremptory. I tiptoed to the doorway of the shop floor and peeked out. Through the Cards-o'-Bob rack I could just make out a shape, on the other side of the front entrance. A very large man.

  Carmine, come back to haunt me.

  I clutched my throat, to stop the guttural sound it was making. I reminded myself that with all the preternatural phenomena I believed in, I didn't believe in ghosts. The regular world had plenty of large men, it didn't need to recruit from the afterlife. This was simply a guy with a brisk knock, not a bad guy, the bad guys were all in jail, maybe even a good guy, someone with news of Margaret, and besides, it was only eight o'clock in the evening, hardly a witching hour. I pulled myself together, slithered over to the doorway, and turned on the outside light.

  Mr. Bundt stood there.

  THERE WAS ONLY one reason for him to come over at closing time on Good Friday. The annual New Franchise Owners decisions had been made and he was here to deliver the news in person before the formal announcement on Monday. I turned on the shop floor lights and wished for the sixth or seventh time that I was dressed in something other than a sweat suit and saddle shoes.

  Mr. Bundt indicated through the thick glass that he wished to be let in. I pointed to the padlock and yelled that I'd come around and meet him. Then I ran through the back room, the courtyard, the apartment building, and around the block to Sunset.

  “Miss Wollie Shelley?” The voice stopped me.

  A man rested against a convertible, illegally parked in a loading zone in front of the mini-mall.

  “Yes?” From the sidewalk I could see Mr. Bundt at the door of the shop, checking his watch.

  “Sign, please.” The man, a teenager, actually, with advanced facial hair, wore a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops. He shoved a clipboard in front of me.

  “What am I signing for?”

  “This.” It was a padded manila envelope with my name on a typed label. “And this.” From the convertible he lifted an all-too-familiar object. Margaret's crate. Empty.

  “Oh, God.” With a sinking heart, I signed my name and handed back the clipboard. I peered into the crate as if the ferret might have left a note. A piece of calcified raisin clung to one of the steel rungs. I thought I'd prepared myself for this, but grief came over me in a wave; I had to sit down on the curb. The convertible drove off.

  The envelope lay heavy in my lap until I set down the crate and opened it. Inside were half a dozen thick bundles of money. I pulled one out. The bills were hundreds, crisp and new, with rubber bands over the faces of a bored-looking Benjamin Franklin. A cream-colored piece of paper with a Saul Meier & Associates letterhead said, “Regret to inform you no other sign of your ferret found.”

  I sat amid the lights and traffic noises on Sunset, holding an empty crate and a wad of money until Mr. Bundt's voice pulled me out of my trance.

  “Wollie? I think you'll be more comfortable inside.”

  WHEN YOU SPEND years dreaming of a particular moment, the moment never plays out quite like you imagined. Anyone over age seven realizes that. Still, as I led Mr. Bundt through the courtyard entrance, I marveled at just how odd it was, that I was about to get the best news of my career on what was a contender for the worst day of my life. This was a Good Friday kind of paradox.

  Which is why, when we'd trooped into the back room and he'd helped himself to a glass of water and I waited for words like “pleased to inform you” and “excellent reports” I found it odder still that Mr. Bundt would speak in tongues. Not that I didn't understand the words, only that they were not appropriate to this scene, phrases like “truly disappointed” and “deeply disturbed.” Perhaps he'd walked into the wrong store.

  “Wait. Stop,” I said. “Your spy—the secret shopper doing the inspection—he definitely implied he loved our operation.”

  Mr. Bundt lifted an eyebrow. “The industrial agent assigned to you was in fact a team. Of females.” He cleared his throat. “Posing as, how shall I say—?”

  “Hookers,” I whispered and sank onto the chaise longue.

  “Precisely. Who reported lights and activities at all hours, a wild animal kept on the premises, whose cage you are holding, if I'm not mistaken, and”—here he shuddered slightly—“your sponsorship of some sort of escort service.”

  “I can explain that.”

  “Explanations are not results, however, and the result of all this unauthorized activity is—” He nodded toward the front room. “‘Police line, do not cross.' In English and Spanish. Hardly an acceptable greeting for our Welcome! patrons. This shop will never become a Willkommen! Greetings.”

  Inside me, something tore, right in the middle of my abdomen. I gripped the steel edges of Margaret's crate and held on tight. Mr. Bundt's voice softened, seemingly embarrassed by what came next.

  “As your services are no longer required, do you think you could vacate the premises by the end of the week? This branch, with its dark fiscal history, is to be terminated. An automotive parts chain takes over the lease next month.”

  Terminated. Inventory shipped to rival Welcome! stores. The trompe l'oeil lemon grove mural painted over, my greeting cards replaced with spark plugs and fur-covered steering wheels . . .

  The Welcome! greeting bell interrupted my mental funeral. I followed Mr. Bundt onto the shop floor and wondered if he'd ever stop talking. “We'll take the spinners, of course”—he gestured to the Cards-o'-Bob rack—“but your main shelves are shoddy. They should have been replaced years ago, and—sir, excuse me, we're closed.”

  The man stood at the table in the northwest corner looking out the window. He was in shadow, but I recognized the army green pants and the brown bomber jacket he'd worn on our plane ride the previous afternoon. I set down Margaret's crate and moved to him, summoning his name from my mental dating files.

  “Dylan. Ellison, right? What are you—?”

  He turned and smiled. “Guess.”

  “Sir,” Mr. Bundt said, “this establishment is permanently—”

  “Shut up.”

  The voice was mild, even pleasant, and the smile didn't waver, but the effect was chilling. In the ensuing silence I noticed a padlock on the table next to Dylan, and when I looked back up at him, I wondered how I'd found him so good-looking yesterday. He wasn't, really, he was too sharp-featured, too much like a—

  “Weasel,” I said.

  And then I saw he wore latex gloves.

  chapter thirty-seven

  It was all so unfair, was my first thought. Aloud, I said, “You're supposed to be in jail. I was told the cops picked you up.”

  “I'm sure they tried. I was out.” His gloved hand reached into the bomber jacket and produced a gun.

  Random thoughts scrolled through my head. I have no experience with this. That gun looks plastic. I actually dated this man. The decision-making part of my brain seemed to have shut down.

  “Let's move away from this window.”

  I backed up, toward the front door.

  “Uh-uh.” The Weasel gestured with his gun to the middle of the room and I switched directions accordingly, down Aisle 5, Engagements/Weddings. One thing was clear: Mr. Bundt was not going to be any help. Deathly pale, his breath came in pants, and he followed me like a spaniel.

  Talk, I thought. Pretend it's a date. Talk, and get the Weasel talking. I turned to him. “What happened to the real Dylan Ellison?”

  He seemed to read my strategy and find it amusing. The smile returned as he sauntered toward us down Aisle 5. “I came to your poetry thing a
nd your big-mouth uncle told me about the guy that didn't show. You don't exactly check ID on your dates, do you?”

  Keep talking. Open your mouth. Say words. “Speaking of dates: our plane ride yesterday? I guess you knew those guys in the Alfa Romeo.”

  His face shut down, and I realized that of course he did, and that's why he killed his cousin Carmine—he saw him consorting with the enemy. This might not be the best subject to pursue. I switched gears. “So what really happened to our picnic?”

  He smiled. “The Angeles Crest Forest was a little out of my way, as it turned out.”

  Angeles Crest Forest—Body Dump, Joey called it. I saw it all with sudden clarity. He would've fed me a sandwich, picked my brain, taken my keys, bumped me off, dropped me from a cliff, left me for the coyotes, flown back to the airport, driven my car somewhere, and abandoned it. Instead, he'd decided to deal with Carmine and the Swedes, which bought me an extra twenty-four hours. “Well, that's a relief,” I said. “I'd hate to think you just found me unattractive.”

  He looked me up and down like a peruser of pornography. “I'd do you. Not dressed like that, though. I've been looking at those sweatpants for twelve hours and, frankly, I'm sick of them. Also that wreck of a car you drive.”

  Behind me, the faintest thunk! sounded in the back room. Was it possible? Was someone—? I spoke quickly. “You followed me? Today? In your Hummer?”

  “Rental. I lost you on Little Santa Monica, but I saw you at the synagogue and with our Hebrew friends, so don't bother telling me you don't have my diamond. The world isn't that small.” He pointed the gun and wiggled it in a suggestive manner, as if I had the ring buried between my breasts. “Give.”

  “Okay. Just for the sake of argument, though, if I didn't have it—?”