Janie rose and stalked her terrifying red snakeskin heels over to me. “The police have a fake. The question is…” She knelt in front of me. “Where is your boyfriend with my real painting?”
“Suddenly he’s ‘my boyfriend’, not ‘your criminal underling’,” I grumbled. “How do you know the police have a fake?”
“I have my ways.”
I really, really hated that damn Pablo guy.
Sam had given me a fake Picasso to give to Scott? But…if the whole thing had gone down badly, Scott would have taken it out on me when he’d realised it was a forgery.
I sat back on one hand, the room growing fuzzy. That bastard. That absolute bastard!
There was nothing else for this sudden and inevitable betrayal but to cry about it. A gush of tears seeped their way onto my cheeks.
Jane uttered a sound of pure disgust and crossed away. “Stop crying.”
There was nothing worse than a snivelling heroine sobbing at the wrong moment and letting down the sisterhood. I cried when I got a B in school. I cried at commercials for Disneyland. I cried when deceived by untrustworthy men who should not have surprised me by being untrustworthy deceivers.
In the face of her derision, I made a switch from insipid to mad at light speed. My entire body broke out in a sweat. The air was close and hot in the bare-bones room. Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I said, “I have no idea where my boyfriend is. If he screwed you, he screwed me way more.”
Jolly Roger and Wendy snickered. “I mean…he…um…damn it! You know what I mean. What do you expect me to do about any of this? I’m the patsy here! If anyone is to blame, it’s your poor crime management skills.” Okay, that sentence didn’t make exact sense, but she understood just fine. Her lovely face flushed and for a moment I thought she was going to perform actual violence upon me.
In the end, though, she swept from the room, her lackeys in tow. “You can’t kill me now!” I screamed at the solid-looking metal door. “I’m famous!”
Shit. I shouldn’t have mentioned killing.
And I wasn’t that famous.
Just to spite her, I sat in her fancy chair to ruminate upon my continuing misfortune. Sam and I had had such a tender, affecting parting. He should have been the actor instead of me. At least I was so pissed off I didn’t cry anymore. If…when I ever saw that piece of grimy squirrel offal again I would twist his lying tongue around the nearest…object…spiky object until he was super…freaking…twisted! I would bash him on the head and kick his stupid, crappy—
Sam walked in the door.
I blinked. Had I conjured him? Was I some sort of awesome anger-sorceress?
Nope—Roger followed behind him, a gun in my faithless lover’s back.
It didn’t stop me from rolling right over and slapping the shit out of him.
After that very, very, very satisfying slap—and the wounded, hurt face at the other end of it—I made a run, er, roll for the door. Wendy blocked my way and pushed me straight backwards. If I hadn’t been such an accomplished skater, my ignominious fall would have been even harder. At this point, my ass was in heavy competition with my ego to see which could become more black and blue.
Jane followed her minions inside and shut the door behind her. “Welcome, Sam. I didn’t expect you, but let’s begin this again. Where is my painting?”
Sam cradled his face in his hand and said to me, “Are you okay?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I snarled.
Roger gave Sam a hard shove, and he collapsed to the floor beside me. Jane glared at the two of us. She needn’t have bothered. Glaring at Sam wouldn’t make him magically cough up the truth. And I didn’t know the truth.
A sliver of violence in her voice, Jane stood over us and said, “I tire of repeating the same question.”
I shrugged my shoulders. Sam sat on his heels and shot a confused stare at each of them in turn. “The Picasso is with the police.”
Wham! Roger slammed the butt of his gun across Sam’s chin. He fell against me, and, without thinking, I cradled him in my arms. “Don’t lie to them, Sam. Just tell them where the stupid thing is.”
He turned his ire to me. “I’m not lying. Janie, if I didn’t give the real painting to Samantha, then someone else took it from me. I wanted her off the hook. I wouldn’t have done her like that.”
Four sets of incredulous eyebrows shot up. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, everyone.” Sam’s nostrils quivered in my direction. “Especially you, sweetheart.”
“Oh, excuse me,” I spat back. “How could I ever suspect you of lying, cupcake?”
“Enough!” Jane began pacing the room. I’d never seen her so ruffled. Therein beat a human heart after all. I hoped she didn’t sweat through the magnificent aqua silk blouse she wore. “Let us, for a moment, decide that you are telling the truth, Nate.” She stopped in front of him. “You stole back the painting. You put it in your car. Did anyone tamper with your beloved vintage automobile?”
“There was no sign of that, no.” Sam furrowed his brow. “Wait. I gave you the key when you took the car in Nevada to repair the windows. Did you make a copy of it?”
“No.” Jane stopped and turned to Sam. “How did you know we’d picked her up tonight? I haven’t seen you since the police got involved.”
“Roger called me and told me to come here. I didn’t know Samantha was with you until I arrived.”
Understanding dawned across Jane’s face. Sam held his breath. Something important was happening, but I had no idea what. Jane turned her head.
The room exploded in a flash and a deafening bang. I screamed and hit the deck. Sam landed on top of me, a dead weight.
Chapter Twenty-One
Happily Never After
A horrible silence fell over the room. I pushed Sam off me and turned him over. In a mad rush, I leaned over his beautiful, stupid, beautiful face. His eyes opened.
“Ajjj iufhifuh kjdu?” he said.
“What?”
“Arrey oohh kjay?”
Nothing but whistling in my ears. It had been a very loud bang.
“Are you okay?” Sam screamed.
“Am I okay? You’re shot!”
“I’m not shot.”
I grabbed his face. “You’re not?”
“No!” He took me in his arms and warmth enveloped me. For the briefest of moments, everything was the heaven of his smell, his touch. Until I looked at the floor. A thin trail of blood crept towards my foot.
It came from Jane.
She lay on her back, eyes closed. Horror washed over me like a flood. A shadow fell across Jane. Roger was now pointing the gun at Sam and me.
They say in moments like this your life flashes before your eyes. Mine didn’t. Not as such, like a movie that began with childhood. I heard nothing but the whoosh of blood through my veins. I saw nothing but splashes of the people who mattered to me most. I saw Ellen and me on Halloween dressed as Patsy and Edina from Absolutely Fabulous. I saw Sam eating a cheeseburger in bed. He smiled that glorious smile. The dimple that made me forget good sense.
With all my strength, I kicked upward. Short as my legs are, they were just barely long enough to connect with Roger’s hand. FYI, kicking someone with a skate is very effective. I knocked the gun clear up and out of his grip. With a roar of pure fury, I brought the rolling thunder back down on his foot. Birkenstocks had been a poor choice. His toes crunched under the heavy weight of my groovy footwear. He screamed and crumpled.
Sam lunged at Roger, knocking him to the floor. My stalwart sorta-hero crawled atop the bastard and punched his head over and over again, his blows landing with gross, squishy thuds. I scrambled to my feet and rolled towards the gun, swooping it up on the way by. At the wall, I turned a one-eighty and screamed, “Stop!”
Sam stopped. Roger just lay there, clearly out cold. Wendy huddled in the corner with her arms up.
And that is how you use motherfucking roller skates to foil the villain.
* *
* *
Jane was not dead, as I’d feared. I mean, sure, the lady had kidnapped me, threatened my life and made me a pawn in her fight over a stupid square of oil paint, but I didn’t wish her dead. Jolly Roger was also a jolly bad shot. He’d merely grazed the outside of her arm, and she’d fainted, which I didn’t think Iman would ever have done.
Sam found some rope obligingly supplied by the gang and restrained everyone who wasn’t me. Then he knelt next to Jane and gave her a few gentle taps to the face until she awoke. While they spoke, I tore a strip off Roger’s T-shirt and bound her arm with it.
“We have two choices, Jane,” Sam began. “We can go to jail and get unsanitary tattoos, or we can make Roger the fall guy and agree to a truce. His intent was to kill all of us tonight in one fell swoop, I think.”
She sat up, good arm cradling her hurt one. “I’m listening.”
Sam turned towards me. “Samantha will tell them Roger is the head of this whole fiasco—that it was him and Scott from the beginning. The police are already looking for me, but you can just disappear.” Jane sat up straighter. “You, too, Wendy. Walk away and leave Samantha alone forever. Me, too. I officially owe you nothing—our business arrangement is hereby severed. If you do that, I’ll conveniently forget you. If you don’t agree, I’ll turn state’s evidence, and we’ll all rot in prison. Me for a lot shorter amount of time.”
Jane looked at Wendy—they nodded at one another. Sam untied Wendy, and she walked over to Sam and extended her hand. “Nice doing business with you.” A lady of few words, that Wendy, but they were the right ones.
I released my breath. Sam and Wendy helped Jane to her feet.
With a gait full of determination, Jane crossed to Roger and slapped him awake. Her blood-soaked bandage gave her an aura of grit—one I was delighted to not be on the receiving end of. “Samantha, may I borrow the gun?” My eyes widened. “I swear on my Picasso I’ll not use it on you or lover-boy here.”
“Are you going to menace Roger with it?”
“And they say you’re an idiot.” She grimaced and cupped a hand around her wound.
I passed the gun to her. “Who says that?”
Their conversation lasted only a few minutes. In the end, Jane told him that she’d rip his intestines out through the prison bars if he’d lied to her about where he’d stashed the real painting. Well, she said she’d have someone else do it. Classy lady, that Jane. If he kept his end of the bargain to not implicate her, he’d profit after he was released from prison. All these criminal deals upon deals made my head hurt. How exhausting to never trust anyone you dealt with. I might be poor, but at least I knew Ellen wasn’t secretly plotting to whack me.
Having concluded her menacing for the time being, Jane left the room without so much as a backward glance, Wendy in tow.
“Jane will keep her word.” Sam took my face in his hands and wiped my eyes. I’d been crying, I realised. “I have a lot of shit on her. Almost as much as she has on me.”
With great effort, I rolled backwards from the circle of his arms. “Exactly how wanted are you?”
“Well, a couple of days ago you implicated me in grand theft and kidnapping to the LAPD. What name did you give them, anyhow?”
“Sam Turner. The name you used at Steak on a Stick. They’d put two and two together.”
“Okay.”
I gripped the cool cement wall to brace myself. “You could turn on Roger right now. Make a deal.”
He shook his head. “I have no particular desire to go to prison. Besides, I’m pretty sure they’d tie me to more stuff.”
“How much stuff?”
“A lot of stuff.”
“State or federal?”
He laughed. “Both.”
“Only in this country or others?”
“Mmmmmmm.”
“More than several?”
“How many is several?”
“I don’t know! Five or more?”
The dimple flickered. “It’s bigger than a bread box.”
I sank down the wall to land on my butt. He came over to sit beside me, his arm reaching around my shoulders to pull me in. “If it’s any consolation, I actually regret it now that I’ve met you.”
“Is that true?” I searched his face for the answer.
“Yes.” He brushed hair back from my shoulder. “Mostly.” Shrugging, he added, “What can I say? I like being a thief. I steal from the rich to give to myself. And frankly, most of them rob people blind.”
My head fell to his shoulder, and I laughed. And I cried.
My thieving lover stroked my new, superior dye job. “Will you run away with me? I have more than enough money stashed here and there. You’d never want for anything, Samantha.”
I picked up my head. Could I do it? A thousand scenarios flashed in my mind. Living in Paris, Monte Carlo or just in the mountains of North Carolina in a little cabin with a big, soft bed and piles and piles of cash to roll around in. Or bathe in! Yes, bathing in champagne and money. But not together.
On second thought, a tub full of champagne sounded like a yeast infection waiting to happen. I’d recently learned that running away from life was no way to live it. “No.” I shook my head. “Thanks for the offer, though.”
He kissed me then. Hard and soft and passionate and tender. After a few beautiful moments, he pulled back and said, “Quit crying when I kiss you. I’ll get a complex.”
* * * *
When the lovely Officer Fitzgerald came upon the scene—in an industrial park in Culver City—she found me blindfolded and tied up, and Roger, bound as well. As one would expect, she had quite a few questions. The way I told the story, the gang had turned on itself, one member had got clean away, and I had been left intact because I’d been blindfolded the whole time and couldn’t tell anyone who was who. Which was not that big a lie. The surveillance cameras at a bank around the corner showed an average-height White guy in sunglasses and a hoodie running from the area. They’d never ID him as Sam Turner—everyone knows all White guys look alike.
It wasn’t until months later that the police discovered that the Picasso was fake. I disavowed all knowledge and played dumb—it was far too easy for the police to believe me.
A couple of evenings after it had happened, Ellen and I analysed the takedown over her belated offering of cheese—cheese sticks and grilled cheese sandwiches. I’d moved in with her because my apartment was perpetually surrounded by news hounds. Plus, the building manager had kicked me out. I had no idea why.
She’d recently inhabited a cute little place Mid-Wilshire, with a doorman and everything. Très chic. It was done in black, white and shades of green. I felt at home, though—she had an even bigger pile of shoes than I had.
Our fattening feast took place on the living room floor in front of an Ab Fab marathon. “I heard from my mother,” I said, a string of cheese dangling off my bottom lip. I daintily licked it off. “She read I’m going to be on Barbara Walters.”
“Ah.” Ellen gestured to the last cheese stick. I magnanimously waved my largesse so that she could take it. It was her house, after all. “Can I make my bet now that she’ll manage to worm her way into the interview?”
“Ah’m a model!” I sing-songed in my best Suzie.
“Ah’ve wohn the same size ahl my life!” Ellen added. “Even when ah was prehgnant with that fat bay-bee, Samantha.”
She popped the last stick into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “I noticed something about your new phone from Sam.” She reached for the phone. I handed it to her. After pressing a few buttons, she showed me the face. “There’s a tracking app on it. He can find you from anywhere.” She sniffed proudly. “I read an article about stalkers and checked.”
I gazed at my new toy and let out a gasp. “That sneaky bastard.”
She turned piercing brown eyes on me. “Are you gonna keep it and let him track you?”
“Nope.”
“Nope?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Good.”
“I don’t want to see him again.”
“Good.”
“He is bad news.”
“He’s a thief and a liar and beneath you.”
“Although he did allow me to implicate him in many, many crimes.”
“If that’s the mark of a gentleman, I’m glad I’m a big, fat lesbo.”
I reached for the last half of grilled cheese—she snatched it away. “Consider me your personal cock-blocker. He is not going to give up his life of crime and settle down with you in a little white house.”
“I know!” Sullenly, I took back my sandwich. “I know. From this day forth, food shall be my only lov-ah.”
Ellen nodded in satisfaction and put more cheese sticks in the oven. I munched in silence and tried not to think about Sam. He’d been a lark. A sexy, ill-advised, sexy lark. I could live without him. “I’m totally throwing that phone out!” I yelled into the kitchen.
Plopping back onto the couch, Ellen muttered, “You better.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t run away with him for a glorious, wealthy life of being a kept woman?”
“Yes!”
“Yes, I should run away?”
“No, you should not run away. It would be dishonest and dirty. Criminal, even. You could go to jail. Nicolette is just itching to get something on you.”
“Ah-ha!” I sat up on my knees. “She hates me, doesn’t she?”
Ellen pushed me back onto my butt. “I’m working on her. But please, make it easy for me and leave that man alone!”
We sat and watched TV for a while until the kitchen buzzer went off. I followed the delicious smell of melting fat and goodness, and plopped my lazy butt on a stool by the counter as Ellen took the cheese sticks out of the oven.
“So,” Ellen said, “Roger stole the real painting, and then was going to shoot everyone to become head of the crime ring, right?”
“Yup. I think. Is Nicolette happy to have another jailbird?”
The Dimple of Doom (Samantha Lytton) Page 23
