by Susan Dunlap
“Slow down!”
Liza twisted another knob. The windshield wipers came on.
“Slow down, dammit! Think of your pig!”
The lights came on, and Liza stepped on the gas.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting us out of range of Gwen’s fox hunters. It’s already getting light. We’ve got to move.”
“We won’t be moving if we’re picked up for speeding.”
“So what’s our choice?”
“Let me drive; Liza.” She sounded so calm, like the panicked woman holding the pig didn’t exist.
Without responding, Liza pulled over. And that panicked Ellen more. Liza should have protested. That would have been Liza. But this—? How wrung-out was Liza to give in like this? Had everything finally caught up with her?
Liza was out, walking around to the passenger seat.
Ellen clambered over behind the wheel, adjusting the pig and Liza’s purse in the process. Her gun-heavy purse. The engine was still running; she shifted into drive and suddenly they were tooling along the road like two women on their way to a sunrise church service. Liza needed time to get herself together. But there was no time, not now. “Where’d you get that gun?”
“I had it in my purse.”
“You always carry a gun? Like you do keys and a lipstick? In case you want to hold up a Safeway? So you still get a bargain when your coupons have expired?”
“Hey, I didn’t think of its economic benefits.” That sounded more like the old Liza. “But no, I don’t carry it all the time. Jay just gave it to me, Friday night.”
“He gave it to you the night he was shot?” Ellen couldn’t picture that at all.
“He brought it home.” Liza’s voice was quavering. “He’d said he would bring it from Malibu.”
“Why?”
It was a moment before Liza squeaked out, “So I’d be safe.”
“Oh my God, Liza! How dangerous is it in Malibu?”
She couldn’t label the noise Liza made, but when Liza spoke she’d gotten control and her normal light tone was back. “Oh, Jay didn’t get it for there. It’s for when I stayed late in the loft because it’s pretty deserted there at night.”
Ahead was a crossroads. She slowed. Two or three afterthoughts of commercial buildings huddled near the corner before the road turned rural. Spruce, pine and redwood edged in toward the pavement. Puddles of night dew sparkled in the hazy morning light. Way ahead she could see a vehicle coming toward them. Surely it was too soon for “the boys” to be out hunting Gwen in the Camaro. Good she still had on headlights to shield the car. “If you have a house on the beach in Malibu what are you doing staying in a deserted area downtown?”
“Jay got the loft for business.”
“A deserted area that requires a gun, for business? What kind of business was he in?”
“Not for business there. In the house, in Malibu.”
“Excuse me?”
“When he finished remodeling the loft and they started selling the other lofts in the building he was going to move his office there. In the meantime we spent some nights there.”
“But why were you there alone, late? Liza?”
“Well, he wanted a place for me to go when he was entertaining business clients.”
Liza’s voice had changed mid-sentence as if she’d started out pitching a story to avoid whatever it was she was avoiding and discovered halfway through that she was spouting a truth she hadn’t realized before.
It was like picking at a scab, these prying questions; she couldn’t bear to look at Liza but she had to figure out what was going on, had to force Liza to answer. “Why didn’t he want you there when his clients were? You must be a superb hostess.”
“Yeah, I’m the best.” Sarcasm bit into the words. “I can draw out a post. I could make small talk with Hitler, Ben Gurion and Marie Antoinette and have them leave thinking they’re best friends. I know the best caterers and the most interesting. So why did Jay want me out of there? Jay said it was so I wouldn’t be bored. No, don’t bother chortling; I knew it wasn’t true either. And don’t bother asking what I thought he was up to there. It wasn’t other women. Trust me on that.”
“With a wife like you why would he—”
“Men do. Even men with wives who are great in the sack want more. Here’s what I’ve learned in my years in L.A., Ellen, guys want more, just more. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Does the universe go on forever?”
“What?”
“Does the universe extend forever? Answer me.”
“Liza, we don’t have time for games.”
“Does…the…universe…go on forever?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes or no.”
“Okay. No.”
“Then what’s beyond the end?”
“Liza, what does this have to do with Jay, why he rented the apartment, and what you learned in your years in L.A.?”
The pig made a hiccoughy noise. Liza shifted it on her lap. “Guys want more so they don’t have to face the wall at the end of the universe. If they can keep ‘getting’ they can keep pushing back the end, you know ‘sure, there’s an end but not until after I get the Mercedes, not till I get the redhead in the sack.’ They never have to accept the fact that no matter how much money and power they’ve got they’re going to get sick some day and be helpless and the with a tube up their nose.”
In the oncoming lane a car went by. The driver, in beaked cap, slowed long enough for a look at them. Normal for a small town, Ellen assured herself. But she watched him in the rearview till his car shrunk to nothing. “And the end of the universe has what to do with Jay?”
“He knew there was an end. And, I don’t mean to brag, Ellen, but he also knew he wasn’t going to find a woman better than me.”
Ahead a stoplight turned red. Ellen slowed to a stop. “Okay, we agree he wasn’t shacking up out there and—”
At first she thought the little squeal came from the pig. “Sorry, Liza, I don’t mean to be crass about your husband, especially when he’s only been dead for two days.”
“ ’S’okay.”
Without looking at her Ellen reached over, and squeezed the spot on her arm where her hand landed. “It’s not okay, but things have gotten so bizarre we don’t have any choice.” Ellen let a moment pass. “So let’s say Jay was doing business at the house. What was that business? Before you decide you don’t know, think about it. You met some of his venture capital clients, right? You went to some functions, right? So those were safe, legitimate, and—”
“And boring.” Liza gave a small laugh. “If the people he had to the house were more boring they must have been dead.”
“Boring?”
Liza heard the word but didn’t respond. Boring? It seemed like another life when boring was a worry. She leaned her head back, gazing at the collage of colors beyond the windshield. Ellen had stopped the interrogation and the lack of an adversary left her no one but herself to face. She felt like two women, one clinging to her husband, one…what?
It had all been so innocent in the days of boring business evenings before Jay got the loft and she never had to see his clients again. Of course, avoiding clients had been just a side benefit of the loft. Now she felt the same small warm rush she always did thinking of the erotic nights she’d arranged for him there, the ones Jay had called “sensual even by Hollywood standards.” “Why don’t we put off the remodeling till next month?” Had he said that after every night, or did it just seem that way? Didn’t matter. Nothing had gone in but the receptionist’s room, the one she’d made into the beach house. “Because that was the whole point.” She was so startled by the sound of her voice, she nearly dropped Felton. He squealed. Stroking his head, she cuddled him, then hoisted him onto the back seat.
“What was, Liza?”
“Nothing.”
“Liza, nothing is nothing anymore.”
Liza was wringing her hands, actually
doing it, hand on hand. She wished she still had Felton on her lap to stroke while she tried to make sense of all this. She pulled her hand tighter over the other, squeezing the thumb into the palm, trying to feel the pain, to concentrate on it, to slip into it and disappear.
“Liza? Goddammit. What was the whole point?”
She looked at Ellen as she drove, a sprig of light-brown hair was sticking to the edge of her eye and Ellen seemed too tired, too preoccupied to feel it.
Liza was expert at rearranging people so they’d be in a position to help her. It was how she’d made it through Juvie, how she’d endured St. Enid’s, how she’d created her life in L.A. All her instincts told her to make up a story for Ellen; to give Ellen something that would allow her to remain a friend. Not the truth, not now. She was almost surprised when she heard herself saying just that. “The loft Jay died in we used for sex.” She hurried on so she wouldn’t hear Ellen’s reaction. “Every other week or so we spent the weekend there. Jay was so pleased with the concept of this secret place and the fact that I would spend most of my time hunting down the props for each weekend. I thought it was because our love was so sophisticated, that Jay kept wanting to keep the loft just for us. Other people had to buy excitement, go to Bali or Paris and pretend they were part of the exotic life, but we had it all within us. I gave him what no ‘place’ could offer. In the loft I gave him total respite, and, well, sex like he’d never had before. At least, that’s what he told me.” The words caught in her throat, she swallowed, and when she started to speak her voice still creaked. “I thought the loft was special, and he saw clients at the house so he could keep the loft just for us, and all the time he was away on business he was thinking of us…there…in the loft.” She swallowed again. She didn’t see Ellen anymore. Her eyes were open but what she saw was the loft, the thrift-shop sofa and the wooden coffee table, the archway, Jay staggering back—
Ellen’s voice was like a slap in the face. “But what if he wasn’t, Liza?”
She inhaled slowly, trying to find a connection between Ellen’s question and the reality she shared with Jay in the loft where they lay long, lusciously as the sun broke the fog in the mornings, listening to the sounds of each other’s breathing, feeling each other’s thoughts so clearly there was no need of words. “No, that’s not the question. I told you, there was no other woman. A guy doesn’t come home to a weekend like we had after he’s been with someone new. I’d have known. Trust me.”
Ellen nodded.
She could tell Ellen didn’t quite believe her but that didn’t matter. “The question is: What…if…my husband…was just using the loft…having me set up these elaborate sensual nights…to get me out of the way?”
“Well, that makes sense and—”
“Ellen! You don’t understand! I gave him everything I am, there in that loft. I spent my time arranging the most erotic set-ups, games that would tantalize him the whole week when he was away. He’d give me a word: say, Silk, and I created him a harem, six silken chambers, each with its own rules of pleasure. I spent the whole two weeks he was gone creating it. In the loft, he had me, body and soul. We were like one being, like nothing else existed, because nothing could touch what we had. Or…that’s what I thought.” She was shaking; sweat coated her face and back. “I gave him everything I am; and he…For him, was I nothing more than an interlude, an amusement when it was convenient?” Nausea roiled through her throat and stomach and mouth, her eyes, her ears, in each breath she drew in. It crowded out thoughts, smashed words to whimpers. What she saw in her mind was the image of a man, not Jay Silvestri but Pope the jeweler.
For a moment she thought she really was going to throw up, but she couldn’t even do that. There was nothing in her but bile.
Trees passed. Wind flicked her face. She could feel it cutting away at her skin, carrying it off, leaving…what?
“Liza?” Ellen’s voice quivered but Liza could tell she wasn’t about to be sidetracked by sympathy. “What if you’re right, and Jay wanted you out of your house? What does that mean?”
It means that the one man I thought really loved me, fucked me over like I was a naive child on her knees behind the jewelry counter.
“Liza, just what do you think was going on in Malibu when Jay sent you away?”
She started to say “I don’t know,” but caught herself. She wasn’t a child on her knees anymore. “He had business clients or business dealings he didn’t want me involved in…or to know about because…it would make me…despise him.”
“Or get you killed.”
“Or…get…me…killed.” She could hardly believe it, but she said the words aloud and listened to herself say them. She unscrewed the water bottle at her feet and shot the water at her face. Then it was all cold, and she was blinking and gasping and wiping ineffectually with her hand as the water ran down her face onto her T-shirt. She was rooting in her purse for a tissue. And she was looking down at the gun. “Jay was involved in something at the house. He had this gun.”
“Let me see the gun.”
The car stopped. It took Liza a moment to realize they were at a red light. “You want to check it out here?”
“Suddenly you’re shy? Yes, here.”
Liza pulled it free of her purse.
“Jesus, it’s huge.” Ellen hefted it. “And heavy. What is it, Liza?”
“A nine-millimeter. What the cops use for personal weapons. See, here on the grip—FB, Frank Bentec.”
Ellen looked as if she’d drop the gun through the floorboards. “Let me get this clear, Liza. We’ve got highway patrolmen all over the state looking for us, and we’re sitting here with a gun taken from the Assistant to the Police Commissioner? We’ve got to get rid of it and quick.”
She wasn’t looking at Ellen. Her gaze was out the windshield. Eucalyptus lined the two-lane road. Now she noticed the pungent smell that must have filled the car all along. Her nausea settled in her throat. She’d believed she had a tacit agreement with Jay that her past and his business were their own domains, secondary to their life together, and that life was sacrosanct. She had blocked out all questions about his other life and imprisoned herself in her fantasy marriage. But she was not Mrs. Silvestri, Malibu wife, anymore. She never had been, really. She was Liza Cummings, running down the alley with the cops after her and no one to protect her, no one but herself.
All those questions, the unpermitted suspicions, shoved forward now. What had Jay been doing in the Malibu house that left no detritus of lipstick or ash, was so short-lived that she was rarely barred and required so small a space Felton was not freaked by the nearness of threatening strangers? And that left him in possession of Frank Bentec’s gun?
Frank Bentec. Jay’s betrayal was not in what he was doing, but his doing it with Bentec.
If he knew about Bentec and her past.
Liza’s eyes filled. Jay was dead and she’d never know what was real about him and what she’d made up. She stiffened against a sob. No time for anguish, no luxury of regret now. She had to think. What was Jay’s business with Bentec? What did she know? Two things: Bentec’s demand of her: Tell me when that container will arrive! And Jay’s last words: “Richland grade.”
She turned, took the gun from Ellen. “I’m not tossing Frank Bentec’s gun. Ellen, I’m done with running.” A minute ago she’d been weighed down by exhaustion, now she felt as if she’d shed the leaden cloak of Mrs. Silvestri. She felt giddy. “I know. I know. We’re driving a car that might as well have a flashing red light. We’ve got the cops after us, plus maybe Gwen’s sons and all their friends. I don’t know how Jay got Bentec’s gun, but whatever the answer it means they were a lot more entwined than Jay let on.”
“Doing business?”
Liza nodded. “Otherwise Bentec would have kicked up a stink about the gun. But if they were doing business like you say, he wouldn’t want to call attention to it. He’d figure he’d get the gun back later.”
Ellen shrugged. “You led a fast lif
e, Liza.”
“Just like the girls at St. Enid’s expected, huh?” Ellen didn’t reply, which meant that observation was on the money. She leaned forward, half off the seat so she could face Ellen. “Here’s what we know. Jay shipped something to Richland but we don’t know what, and nor why Bentec is so hot to find it. One container of something. So, okay, here’s what we do: stop at the next restaurant, preferably one near a gas station. You call Harry and let him tell us what’s in the box.”
It was a moment before she realized Ellen wasn’t answering. She was staring through the windshield wide-eyed. Liza jerked her head forward but there was nothing but empty road ahead.
“Ellen?”
Ellen’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“Hey, you there?”
“Yes. I just can’t believe it. It’s so simple. Harry will tell us what’s in the container. He’ll have made sure he knows exactly what it is, because that’s how he does business. No one’s more precise than Harry.” Ellen tapped the gas pedal with each statement. “It’s something stolen, right? You agree, right?”
“I guess. Jay was never offended by stepping over the edge of the law. I don’t think he’d deal in drugs, though.”
“Too evil?”
“Too dangerous. Jay said drug runners were crazy. There are easier ways to make money. So, no to drugs. And definitely not by train. Besides, would Harry—”
“Oh, God, no! So, okay we’re talking a product.”
“Animal, vegetable or mineral?”
“Liza!” But Ellen was grinning. “A product that belongs to someone. So all we need to do is find out what it is, and contact someone in that field.”
“Like if it’s a container full of diamonds we call the diamond merchants’ association?”
“Exactly, Gold Bullion Society or whatever if it’s gold. Then we get them to take charge and vouch for us. And it gets Bentec off our backs.”
“What about Jay’s murder?”
“You can hire a good lawyer and have him run interference with the police. You said Bentec left threatening messages on your tape at home. Have your lawyer get them. Then you’re clear of Bentec. Right?”
