Past Due

by William Lashner

  “He is. And he’s very interested in you. He wants you to know that, and that he will help however he can.”

  “Is that why you came over, to deliver his message?”

  “One reason, yes.”

  “How sweet.”

  “I could have called.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s something else I wanted to tell you. Something I thought I ought to make clear. I might have given you the wrong impression about something.”

  I kissed her again. This time I kissed a little harder and this time I could feel something give in her, and her head leaned back and her mouth parted slightly and her hand lifted gently to rest on my throat. And then with that hand she pushed me away.

  “I need to tell you this.”

  “All right,” I said, not really listening, just wanting to kiss her again.

  “It’s about Tommy and me and Lonnie.”

  “All right,” I said, but even as I said it the fruity taste of her lips worked upon my mind like a drug and I tried again to kiss her. But this time, with that hand curled at my throat, she kept me away.

  “No,” she said. “Listen. I told you the thing with Lonnie and me—”

  “The marriage you mean.”

  “Yes, the marriage. My marriage.” She took her hand from my throat, rubbed her two hands together, as if cleansing them under a spigot. “I told you it was after my relationship with Tommy. But it wasn’t, not really. Cooper said I should tell you everything and so I need to tell you this. Tommy and I were together sometimes even after I was married to Lonnie. It was just something we did, but we did it.”

  “I knew that.”

  “How?”

  “I just did.”

  “But—”

  I put my finger on her lips to quiet her and then I thought of something. I thought of something and I took my finger away and I kissed her, kissed her quick and rubbed my tongue again gently on her lips and then I pulled back and gazed into her sweet brown eyes.

  “Did Lonnie know?”

  “About Tommy and me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “About it continuing after you married him.”

  She turned away from me. “He found out.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t trying hard to hide it. I think he suspected something and then followed me.”

  “How did Lonnie take it?”

  “How do you think he took it?”

  “Not well. That’s how I would take it if my wife betrayed me with my boss. Not well at all.”

  “Maybe I should go.”

  “No, don’t. Please.”

  “This whole thing, just talking about it has got me…”

  “It’s okay, Chelsea. It’s over. All of it. Everything that happened was a long time ago. It’s over.”

  She turned to me, her eyes glistening. “But it’s not, is it?”

  She wanted some assurance, but all the assurances I had were false. She was right. It wasn’t over. Not all of it, not any of it. I had nothing I could say to her so instead I leaned forward and gently kissed a tear welling in one of her eyes and then kissed her cheek and her jaw and then again her sweet lips. And this time she kissed me back, as if she was suddenly relieved of a burdensome secret and was able, now, to respond, finally, to my touch. She placed her hand gently on the back of my neck and pulled me closer and kissed me. And it was lovely and soft and somehow as sad as her eyes and as we kissed I felt the alcohol in my blood start to boil.

  And then I saw something approach us from the left, just the shape of something, of a man, of a man in black leather. I guiltily jerked my head away from her, certain I had been caught. Caught? Caught at what? Adultery? No. Who was married? Caught by whom? By whom else? By Lonnie Chambers. And for some reason it scared the hell out of me.

  But it wasn’t Lonnie, it was some guy with glasses, his black leather jacket butter soft and draped loosely over his narrow shoulders, leading a little white dog on a leash. The spurt of anxiety disappeared. The man smiled at us wanly, the white dog came close, sniffed my legs, my crotch, gave me a worried glance, and then hurried away.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” I said, and we did, and what followed was the usual thing, you know how it goes, tender kisses, soft caresses, frantic unbuttoning, unbelting, long, languorous licks of the neck, the collarbone, the soft mounds rising above the black frill of lingerie, the reaching hand, the fumbled clasp, the bra falling away leaving breasts like the motherland itself, glorious and free—all followed by the inevitable howling bout of outright humiliation.

  Chapter

  38

  I WAS LYING in my bed, alone, my head turned toward the photographs pinned to my wall, my mind not quite pinned to anything at all, but instead floating free with thoughts puzzled, prurient, and strangely paranoid, when the doorbell rang.

  I wasn’t just then in the mood to receive visitors. I still was half drunk, half dressed, half erect, fully confused, and mortified. Let’s just say it hadn’t gone as well as I had dreamed with Chelsea.

  I rolled out of bed, made my way stiffly to the living room, grunted a “What?” into the intercom.

  “Is that you, Victor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have, like, a minute?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “You’re not going to invite me up?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Helloo? Jammy, V, who do you think?”

  “I should have known,” I said, and I should have, since every sentence ended with a question mark. I looked around at my apartment in disgust, figured it didn’t matter, and then buzzed her in.

  I took off my suit pants, slipped on a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt. I closed the bedroom door firmly behind me and started cleaning up the living room, putting the cushions back onto the couch, dropping the half-empty beer bottles into the blue recycling bin, tossing into the hall closet the clothes I had stripped off with hopeful abandon just a few dozen minutes before—my suit jacket, my tie and shirt, my belt.

  I gave the living room a quick appraisal and, just as the first knock at my door came, I spotted something. Black and thin, like an accusing finger reaching over the edge of the couch.

  I stepped over to it. It was a thin black strap. I lifted it up and with it came the whole of a lovely black bra. She had forgotten it, or couldn’t find it, when she dressed to leave. Taking it off had been the highlight of my day, my year, and yet that very act had sabotaged everything.

  I had led Chelsea up the stairs by her hand. She was strangely passive, it was like when we first kissed on the stoop, like she was allowing me this. Normally that would have stopped me, I don’t like to be allowed to do anything, but in my current state, still brazened by alcohol, still sexually charged, still in thrall to the pictures of the younger Chelsea pinned to my wall, I didn’t care that she was merely allowing me. Merely allowing me was enough.

  I led her up the stairs, led her into my apartment, kissed her hard and long, led her to the couch. That led, of course, to the aforementioned tender kisses, the aforementioned soft caresses. I moved my hand through her long black hair like I would move it through a basin of water and then I brought the hair to my face and smelled its freshness, its organic herbalness. I closed my eyes and I saw her body, her younger body, naked, taut and lithe, I saw it as clearly as if the photographs were pinned beneath my eyes. And then I couldn’t help myself even if I had wanted to. If you leave a greyhound on a metal run it will head off into a sprint with such abandon it will literally break its neck. The aforementioned frantic unbuttoning, unbelting, the aforementioned long, languorous licks of the neck and collarbone as I undraped the frilly white shirt from her shoulders. I bowed down to kiss the tops of her breasts, the same breasts from the pictures of which I had been staring at relentlessly ever since they came into my possession. I fumbled at the cl
asp behind her back, as I always fumbled at the clasp behind the back, and then the bra suddenly loosened and she herself raised her hands and pulled it over her shoulders and her breasts, her breasts came free.

  And they were beautiful, gorgeous, ripe, perfect. And not the same. No, not the same. The nipples were smaller than those in the pictures, the areolae lighter. And yes, unblemished. Unblemished. Not the same at all. And something went out of me then, and everything sagged, my emotions, my hurry, my obsession, my lust. Everything sagged, yes everything did. And that had been the end of that. No lead in the pencil, no toothpaste in the tube. Time to hire the limo.

  There was a second knock at the door. I searched quickly for someplace to hide the bra, jammed it under one of the cushions of the couch, and then let Kimberly Blue inside my apartment.

  She sat down on the couch, right upon the cushion beneath which I had stashed the bra. She seemed troubled, did Kimberly, quiet, without her normal brassy confidence. I sat down across from her and tilted my head to get a good look at her.

  “Nice place,” she said, as she perused my digs with cautious eyes.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Well, it could be a dec setup if you would, like, decorate or, even better, clean.”

  “But that would be so out of character.”

  “Two words, V. Merry Maids. They come in, do a quality job, when you come home the place is good to go.”

  “How do you know so much about Merry Maids?”

  “That was one of the primary employment opportunities I was looking at for after college.”

  “At the vice presidential level?”

  “More like entry level.”

  “And then Eddie Dean came along.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we’ve been away.”

  “You and Eddie?”

  “And Colfax, too. San Fran. The city of lights.”

  “I thought that was Paris.”

  “I don’t know, San Fran was pretty bright. Mr. Dean had business out there he had to handle.”

  “And he took you along?”

  “I think he likes having me around.” She looked around nervously, bit into one of her cuticles. “Anything new on Tommy Greeley?”

  “Just that he was sleeping with the wife of one of the guys he was selling drugs with.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy named Lonnie Chambers.”

  “Did this Lonnie know Tommy was hooking up with his wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think he was the one who set Tommy Greeley up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Pretty good reason, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. You know I am always glad to see you, Kimberly—”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. But I’m a little tired right now. Why don’t we meet up tomorrow afternoon at my office and we can go over everything then.”

  “I know where your office is, V. I could have gone there if I wanted to. I wanted to talk to you someplace not at the office.”

  “Oh?”

  “Someplace private.”

  “Oh.”

  “I overheard something.”

  “Oh. I see.” And I did. Kimberly was troubled, and there was something else I noticed now in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. She was scared. I stood, went to the fridge, pulled out a Rolling Rock long neck, popped the top with an opener.

  “How are you doing, Kimberly?” I said as I handed her the bottle.

  “I’m not sleeping with him,” said Kimberly.

  “I believe you.”

  “He’s yucky, you know what I mean? That face.”

  “I was wrong to even bring that up. I was a jerk to think it. And even so, it’s none of my business. Whatever you do is none of my business, and I was wrong to imply what I was implying. But you should be careful around him, and especially around that creep Colfax.”

  “Oh, Colfax is all right. He’s a sweetie.”

  “No he’s not. Deep down I’m a sweetie, you just haven’t seen it yet. But Colfax, deep down, is Jack the Ripper.”

  “What’s really going on here, V? Do you have any idea?”

  “Some, but not much. Why don’t you tell me what you heard.”

  “It’s nothing, really. Mr. Dean had a meeting with a couple of men and it got a little heated. I was in the other room so I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like one of the other men was pressuring Mr. Dean for some money and he was telling them to calm down, that he was on it, and that he’d have what he owed in a short time.”

  “So our Eddie Dean is not as rich as he lets on.”

  “He sounded scared, V. You know how he always has this droll, laconic thing going on? Well, here he sounded scared. And there was something else. He said he had a big deal going down in Philly and it was only a matter of time before he had the money. But V, all he does here is sit in the house building some wooden model of that ship of his, the one rusting down in the harbor? There is no big deal going down. The only place I can figure where he might be trying to get some money is from Derek Manley, but it sounded like he needed a brutal piece of change. Does Derek Manley have anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought. Poodles. I’m going to lose my job, aren’t I?”

  “Is that all you’re worried about, Kimberly? Your job?”

  “Ayeah. Helloo. Remember Merry Maids? What do you think that would do to my nails? But that’s not all. Am I, like, in trouble? Should I be scared?”

  “Why ask me?”

  “Because you know more than you let on. See, V, I know how much I don’t know, I know how much I don’t do. I’m the vice president of what? Of getting coffee and keeping the help in line? The job’s a joke. But it pays. And I hope maybe it will lead to something better. I have skills, I could be good at something. Something. But this is where I’m at now and I am asking you, should I be scared? Am I going to get in trouble? Should I stick it out and see where it goes or should I maybe hop a plane to Cancun.”

  “Tell me about how you got this job?” I said.

  “The position was just posted on the job board, like hundreds of others.”

  “So why’d you apply to this one?”

  “Well, it was, like, made for me, you know? They wanted a marketing major, which I was. They wanted someone who could speak Spanish, which I can.”

  “Really?”

  “My dad was at the store all day, but he paid this nice old Mexican woman to look after me. I sort of picked it up.”

  “Does Spanish come in handy working for Jacopo?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What else?”

  “They wanted someone with experience designing ad campaigns for clothing lines.”

  “Let me guess. You happened to have had some experience in that very same field.”

  “My senior marketing project.”

  “But Jacopo doesn’t sell clothes.”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever find out how many campuses they were recruiting on?”

  “I think just Penn.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t require someone with red hair.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just a story I read a long time ago. For some reason, Kimberly, Eddie Dean wanted you. Not someone like you, but you. The other interviews were a sham. They were just saying next, next, until you came in the door. But why, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “No idea. But they must need something you have, or something you know, or someone. There’s a reason, and my guess is, Kimberly, when we figure that out we’ll be ten steps closer to finding the truth behind this whole stinking mess.”

  “So what should I do, V?”

  “Cancun is supposed to be nice this time of year, and if I thought you were in any real danger I’d tell you to stock up on Lomotil, lather on the sunscreen, and go. But Eddie Dean needs you. He’s not going to
hurt you. He’s going to keep paying you an absurd sum to get his coffee until he decides it’s time to tell you what he wants. And when he does Kimberly, do yourself a favor and give me a call.”

  After she left, I dropped back into my bed, turned my gaze upon the pictures on the wall, and tried to make some sense out of the night.

  First there was Lonnie. I had been looking for someone with a motive to do Tommy Greeley harm and Chelsea had given him to me. Lonnie, who had found out about the continuing relations between his wife and Tommy Greeley. Lonnie had been watching over Tommy the night he was killed. It wouldn’t take much for Lonnie to take himself out of the scene and leave Derek and Joey free to do their dark deed. He better than anyone knew what was in the suitcase, he surely would have known a place to hide it while he was in prison. And, best of all, if he had it, from the look of him he hadn’t spent its contents, he had kept it hidden, where it waited still for someone sharp and resourceful enough to unearth it and make it his own. Lonnie Chambers, my oh my.

  And then there was Eddie Dean. I had wondered what his angle was from the start, the childhood oath was too much to believe, and now I knew. He was seriously broke and in deep trouble. And how did he know about the suitcase? Chelsea had clued me into that, I believed, at the Continental. Tommy Greeley said he had a friend from out of state who would launder and then stash the money for him, an old friend, from out of state. Eddie Dean, I’d bet. He had probably been there that night twenty years ago, on a boat in the river, waiting, waiting for Tommy Greeley and the suitcase full of cash. In fact he might even have been close enough to hear Manley say, “Get him, Cheaps.” That explained how he knew Joey was involved, how he got Derek Manley’s name, and how he got mine. Now, desperate to pay back an impatient loan shark, he had used me to find a murderer hiding a suitcase full of money that could maybe save his life. Eddie Dean, that son of a bitch.

  It was a neat theory about what had happened twenty years ago and what was happening now, but it had holes. Like who had killed Joey Parma? And what connection, if any, did Justice Jackson Straczynski, or his wacko wife, have to the disappearance? And what the hell was Kimberly Blue doing in the middle of everything? And what about the pictures?