Her heart pounded and she was drenched with sweat by the time it was over. She couldn’t bear to lift the pillow, see his face. She just leaned down, listened for sounds of breathing. Nothing.
From behind: “You just do what I think?”
Lorene spun around on the bed. Raymont stood in the doorway. Stranger still, Corella peeked out from behind him.
“We knew you’d be here,” Raymont said. “We saw the nurse leave. Corella has a key.”
Lorene held out her hand. “Help me down.”
Raymont approached her like he thought she might turn into a bat but helped her as she climbed off Pilgrim’s body. He caught her when she nearly fell. Her knees felt rubbery. She almost fainted.
“I couldn’t go through with it,” she said.
Puzzled, Raymont lifted the pillow. “You already did.”
“No, I mean go through with what he wanted me to do. Turn against you.” A shudder went through her and she began to weep softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right, baby, stop.” He stroked her face. “Don’t fret. We got it all figured out.”
“We?” She wiped her face.
“Corella and me. She’s the one stands to inherit, she’s the next of kin.”
“But Cynthia—”
“To hell with Cynthia.” It was Corella, holding herself so tight it looked like she might explode if she let go.
Raymont, more gently, said, “Anybody heard from this Cynthia? Anybody even know where she is?”
“St. Louis. Somewhere near—”
“No, Lorene.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her. “No. Listen to me. Corella and me, we’ve come to an understanding.” He looked at Pilgrim’s body, the face exposed now. Vacant. Still. “Corella’s gonna file the probate. She’ll say she heard some talk about another daughter, tried hard to find her, couldn’t. We ransack this place, destroy any letters or anything else that might give us away, lead somebody to where she is. Hell, why can’t we pretend she doesn’t even exist?”
“What about the lawyer? The one he’s been talking to. What if he’s told her—”
“Why should she care? You pay her whatever she’s owed, she’ll go away, trust me. One thing I know, it’s lawyers.”
The next impulse took Lorene by surprise. She reached for Raymont’s face, clamped her eyes shut and pressed her mouth so hungrily against his she thought, again, she might faint. A cold pulse ran through her, it felt like laughter. He’s dead, she thought. He’s dead and I’m free and God help me but I have lived for this moment.
Watching her mother grab the bogus preacher within inches of her father’s corpse, Corella suffered a moment of clarity so searing she nearly got sick. Nothing would change, she realized. She’d be used. These two revolting people would get what they wanted then toss her aside. She was a tool. She was baggage.
Raymont had brought a gun in case Robert had to be dealt with. Corella crept up behind him, reached inside his coat pocket.
Raymont tried to catch her by the arm, missed. “What you playin’ at?”
Corella gripped the weapon with both hands, waving it back and forth, at Raymont, at Lorene, at Raymont. She was crying.
Raymont held out his hand. “Put that down.” Then: “This was your idea, girl.”
Corella fired. Lorene screamed as the bullet hit Raymont in the shoulder. He howled in pain, cursed, reached for the wound, said, “I’ll kill you,” through clenched teeth but then she fired again, this time aiming for his face. The round went through his eye. Lorene’s screams grew piercing. Raymont tottered, reached for something that wasn’t there, and slowly collapsed to the floor.
“My God, Corella, why, Lord, what—”
Corella raised the barrel till it pointed at her mother. “Quiet,” she said, barely above a whisper, then fired. The bullet ripped through Lorene’s throat. The second went straight through her heart.
Robert came back from the Philly cheese steak shop on Oakdale he liked, chewing gum to counter the smell of the greasy cheese and grilled onions on his breath. He found the door unlocked. Odd, he thought. Careless of me. Smokehounds could just waltz in.
He went straight for the bedroom, make sure all was well, and stopped in his tracks. A man he didn’t recognize sat slumped against the wall, a bloody hole where one eye had been, another in his shoulder. Lorene lay in a heap beside the bed, ugly wounds on her chest and neck. And Mr. Baxter lay in his bed, motionless as a hunk of wood, eyes and mouth gaping.
Corella sat on the floor against the wall, clutching a pillow, staring at nothing. A pistol rested on the floor, not far from her feet.
“They killed him,” she whispered. “I came in …” Her voice trailed away. She glanced up at Robert.
Robert’s eyes bounced back and forth, the gun, Corella. “You?”
“They killed him,” she said again. Practicing.
Robert studied her, then said, “It’s all right. I understand.”
He went to the bedside, checked to make sure Pilgrim was dead, then checked the other two as well. From a box beside the bed he withdrew a vinyl glove, slipped it on his hand.
“You hurt?” he asked Corella, walking over to the gun, picking it up.
She shook her head. Then, looking up into his face, she said, “He never signed those documents, you know. You get nothing.”
Robert crouched down in front of her. “Sometimes it’s not about the money.” With one hand he forced her mouth open, with the other he worked the barrel in. “Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.”
Two days after the funerals, Marguerite Johnstone sat in her office, meeting with Pilgrim’s surviving daughter, Cynthia. She’d traveled from Hannibal, Missouri, for the services. Her mother had stayed behind.
“Your father had me draft two estate plans,” Marguerite explained, “one he executed the last time I met with him, the other he was saving.”
Cynthia tilted her head quizzically. “Saving?”
She was quite different from Corella, Marguerite thought. She had Midwestern manners, played the cello, wore Chanel. More to the point, she was Korean. Or half Korean, anyway.
“He wanted to see how his ex-wife followed through on certain promises. Obviously, that’s all moot now.”
Cynthia shuddered. “It sounds so terrible.”
The night of the murders, the police received reports of gunfire in the neighborhood but that was like saying it was dark at the time. No one could pinpoint where the shots came from till Robert called 9-1-1. The detectives working the case had their doubts about his story but he’d held up under questioning and passed his gunshot residue test. Besides, the new mayor was lighting bonfires up their buttholes—their phrase—because of their pitiful clear rate on the dozens of drive-bys and gang hits in that neighborhood. Last thing they wanted to do was waste time on a domestic. As it sat, the case had a family angle and a murder-suicide tidiness to it and that permitted them to close it out with a clear conscience. If justice got served in the bargain, fabulous.
“The documents your father actually executed leave everything to you. The Excelsior house has so little equity and is so heavily leveraged I’d consider just walking away. Let the lenders fight over it. The Hunter’s Point lot—forget the house—might bring fifty thousand. That’s a guess, we’ll have it appraised. That leaves the cash payout from the annuity.”
Cynthia looked up. “And that would be?”
“In the ballpark of half a million.”
The girl’s eyes ballooned. “I had no idea. I mean, my father and I, we weren’t in touch. My mother, she’s become more and more … traditional. She felt ashamed. She and my father weren’t married and they—” Her cheeks colored. She wrung her handkerchief in her lap. “I wrote from time to time but never visited. Not even after his accident. Corella was the one—”
“It wasn’t Corella’s decision to make. It was your father’s property. That’s the way it works.”
“But—”
“Fr
om the way he talked about it, I gathered it was precisely the fact you didn’t hang around, waiting for him to die, that made him feel benevolent toward you.”
Cynthia pondered that, then shrugged. “It still feels a little like stealing, to be honest.”
“You can’t steal a gift, not under the law anyway.” Marguerite glanced at the clock, reminding herself: billable hours. “Are there any questions you’d like to ask?”
Cynthia put her chin in her hand and tapped her cheek with her forefinger. Too cute, Marguerite thought. The innocence was beginning to grate.
“I hope this doesn’t sound crass,” Cynthia said finally, “But when will I get my check?”
Marguerite bit her lip to keep from grinning. Families, death and money, she thought. Didn’t matter your race or creed—or how far away you lived—the poison always bubbles up from somewhere, often long before the dear departed’s body grows cold.
“That depends on the insurance company administering the annuity. Why?”
Cynthia shrugged. “Nothing. I was thinking about maybe traveling.” She blushed again. “It’s my boyfriend’s idea, actually.”
Interesting, Marguerite thought. “‘Travel is a privilege of the young.’ I read that somewhere. Why didn’t your boyfriend come with you?”
“He lives here. We just met.” The color in her cheeks deepened. “It’s sudden, I realize, and he’s really not my type but I’ve felt lonely here and he’s very kind. He introduced himself at the church service. You may know him, actually, he took care of my father.”
Bobby the Prop Buys In
IT WAS MIDNIGHT AND Bobby Roper sat in the office of the Eucalyptus Room watching his boss, Sal Lazzarini, run a tape on the week’s damage. Sundays, Sal closed at eleven to tally things up, kicking out the last of the weekend losers. They’d sit there at the sucker tables till daybreak if you let them, pissing away a year’s worth of alimony, the balloon payment on the mortgage, the kid’s tuition. It hurt, Sal told Bobby, giving them the boot—a card room’s bread and butter, types like that—but you had to run the numbers sometime.
Sal squinted in the lamplight at his desk as he punched the figures into his adding machine. He was a beefy man, gone jowly and soft-muscled at sixty, but still imposing, even sitting down. He had impeccably combed white hair and a broad pockmarked face that withered up, eyes narrowing to slits, when he inhaled from his cigarette.
“Little skinks are stealing me blind.” He shook his head, studying the total for the cage drawer shortages from his cashiers. “Amounts are insane.”
Bobby sat on the big white sofa across from Sal’s desk—the only employee left, the others having long ago headed home. He could speak freely. “So ax somebody. Make an example.”
“Where you been? Last month alone, two okay? Sent the little thieves packing. Guess who hired them back.”
He meant his partner, Phil Vogel. Phil provided the capital for the card room, Sal the gambling know-how, a not uncommon arrangement. It brought with it not uncommon problems. Phil came from old Hillsborough money, the family black sheep, and like most guys of that stripe he was scared down deep. He tried to cover up by playing the big shot but he knew it was all a lie and so he drank. The drink, it made him an easy play.
“Show up in a leather skirt and a Wonder bra,” Sal said, “tease your hair like cotton candy, Phil can’t feel for you fast enough.”
Sal turned to the floor shorts next. From time to time the chip girls snuck loans from their aprons to gamblers, hoping by shift’s end to make it all back with “interest.”
“You try and tell ’em, guy’s already on a downslide when he hits you up. Luck don’t change in here. It’s what the place is for.” Sal made a little moaning sigh as he licked his pencil tip then entered the sums in his ledger. “Of course, I say that, make them cover the shortage, I’m a prick, right? Old Phil, he’s all, ‘Don’t cry, baby cakes.’”
Last, Sal ran the tally on the bum chits and dubious checks Phil had okayed. Tearing off the tape, he tossed it across the desk. “That’s twenty-three grand right there.” The scroll of white paper fluttered like a tiny kite through Bobby’s fingers. “One week, understand? The chits are fucking gone, okay? Be a miracle we ever make good on them. And sixty to eighty percent of the checks gonna sail right back NSF or with a stop order.” Sal uncapped the fifth of Cutty Sark he kept in his desk and freshened his glass. “That’s my partner. Him and that pack of wind merchants he calls friends.” He swirled the scotch in his glass, studying it like it helped him think. “Sick of it, Bobby. Only a matter of time before he fucks us all. Which gets us back to me and you.” He scratched his stubbled cheek with his knuckles and sat back in his chair, rocking a little, away from the lamplight. “So—got something for me?”
Bobby unbuttoned his sport coat, squirming forward in his seat. He’d been dreading this part. “Sal, you know, that’s what I’ve been meaning—”
“You ain’t got it.”
“I’ve got most.”
“Most? What’s most?”
“My player’s bank, in the vault there, it’s eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” Sal, incredulous, patted his waxy white hair. “You come here to insult me with eighteen?”
“I’ve got the rest.”
“On you?”
“Yeah, well, here’s the deal—”
“You gonna tell me eighteen is it? Total?”
“The other two’s promised to me.”
Sal cackled. “Promised. Christ. I love that.” Then it hit him. “Two? You think twenty’s gonna—”
“Sal, hear me out, okay? You said—”
“Twenty? Never.”
“Sal, don’t take that tone. It’s not right.”
“Fuck right. It’s fifty a point, always has been. Where you been, the eighties?”
“Sal, there’s no need to yell, okay? I’m sitting right here.”
“You think I don’t know my own damn numbers?”
“Look, let me tell you the deal.”
“Midnight’s the god damn deadline, Bobby, I told you. Partnership agreement spells it out. Gotta cut off shares some point, it’s the legalities.”
“Sal, I realize, yeah, yeah, but listen, okay?” Bobby hated what he had to say next. Not because it wasn’t true. It just made him feel weak. “Trink, the asthma, she’s had these doctor bills you wouldn’t believe.”
Sal stiffened, cocking his head. “Shut up.”
“Sal?”
“I said shut the fuck up.” He squinted, cocking his ear toward the door as he stubbed out his smoke. In a whisper: “You don’t hear that?”
Bobby leaned in, whispering back, “Hear what?”
Sal shimmied open the top drawer of his desk, withdrew a small, nickel-plated revolver and checked the cylinder for live rounds. “Stay put.” He nodded toward the door behind his desk, leading from his office out the back way into the employee parking lot. “Anything goes bad, you run, understand? Don’t play hero.”
Sal struggled from his chair and edged across the room. The pistol looked toylike in his hand but even so Bobby eyed it like it might suddenly fly up like a bat and sail across the room straight at him. In the doorway Sal craned his neck to peer down the dark hall out toward the cage.
“I’ll be right back.”
Bobby sat mesmerized, watching Sal disappear. Five seconds passed. Ten.
“Hey! Who the hell—”
A gunblast erupted in the hallway. A deafening tinny echo rippled along the walls. Bobby dropped from his chair to the floor, covering his ears, ashamed at his cowardice. Straightening up but still on his knees, he called out, “Sal! You okay?”
A stranger entered the doorway—medium build, medium height, nothing to distinguish him but what he wore: ratty black turtleneck under a limp brown suit, ski mask hiding his face. He had to tip his head back and a little to the side to see out the eyeholes, the mask on so crooked. He held a gun, too. It looked big in his hand, not like Sal’s. Bobby couldn�
��t take his eyes off it.
He lifted his hands. “Please. Listen. I’m just here, you know, I can’t … “ The words trailed away. He had no idea what to beg for, not with so little faith it would matter. And yet as that first wave of terror broke he suffered an eerie sense of familiarity. The way the man carried himself. The eyes for sure.
Six hours earlier, Bobby’d stood at the stove in his apartment, begging a kettle of water to boil and listening as Trink tore through the bathroom medicine cabinet and vanity drawers, desperate for an inhaler she hadn’t sucked dry.
Bobby called out, “Trink, Trink! What’d you wear last night? Check the pockets!”
Easy now, he thought. You freak, she freaks, the whole thing spins outta control. From the bathroom her raspy breath bit like a saw down her throat and lungs. She would’ve screamed if she’d had the air. Bottles crashed as she tried to exhale, couldn’t. The carbon dioxide was building up, the toxicity in her blood. Couple of minutes she’d black out. Worse if he didn’t get her to Emergency in time.
The teakettle whistled and Bobby snatched it from the stovetop, burned his hand, dropped the thing. “No. Fuck. No.” He grabbed a towel, dodging barefoot the puddle of scalding water as he picked up the kettle and shook it, checking to see how much remained. Spinning back to the sink, he doused the coffee grounds in the drip filter, splashing gritty shmutz everywhere. Just enough for a good half cup, he thought. Plenty strong that way. Think positive.
He stumbled to the bathroom. Trink sat in a heap on the floor, clutching the edge of the sink with a pale, skeletal hand, chest heaving as she sucked on a small silver canister of Albuterol. She’d used up all her Asthmacort, and her dependency on the Albuterol was the latest turn of bad luck. Before that it had been the mold infiltration in the apartment walls, an endless bout of flu they’d passed back and forth since Halloween, a case of thrush in her mouth from the inhalants. Then, the topper, the elevator—two months now, the thing was locked between floors. You complained to the landlord, he’d just say, “Blame rent control,” and slam down the phone. They lived on the seventh floor. Might as well be the top of Mt. Sutro. For all intents and purposes, Trink was a prisoner.
Killing Yourself to Survive: Stories Page 7
