“So that’s Norman.”
“He’s taking me home.”
“Back to Philadelphia?”
“Why would I go back there? With the doctor gone and Mrs. Denniston in a state and the house about to be seized by the bank, there’s nothing in Philadelphia for me now. Norman is taking me back home to Georgia. I’ve earned a rest.”
“Yes, you have.”
She stepped forward and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Take care of her,” she said.
“I’ll try.”
I watched as she made her way around the car and picked up her suitcase. Norman leaned over and opened the passenger door.
“Good-bye, Victor.”
“When you get down there,” I said, “I expect you’ll be picking some pecans.”
“The fattest I can find.”
“Then you’ll be making some pies, I suppose.”
“I have no choice. Norman’s been after me ever since I gave his last pie to you.”
“Lucky Norman.”
“I’ll send you one, I promise.”
“I’d like that.”
She smiled at me and then eased herself into the white Buick, shut the door. Without looking at me, Norman pulled the Buick out of the lot.
I watched the car head toward Skyline Drive and the scenic road south, and then I jogged to the north side of the Mountain Drive Motel. I skulked around the corner and across a scabrous piece of crabgrass. When I reached the black wire fence surrounding the pool, I peered over the top. What I saw stopped me cold.
On two chaise lounges, pressed close together at the edge of the pool, a man and a woman lay side by side in the sun, their heads leaning one against the other, their hands entwined such that their fingertips just barely touched. He was in jeans and a T-shirt, his swollen foot swathed in gauze. She was in dark pants and a loose white shirt, her feet bare. Their eyes were closed, their lips moved softly in hushed conversation. They were in a world of their own, a universe of two, blissful and exclusive, perfect and unyielding. It was a place where nothing could intrude, not another suitor, nor a foul drug addiction, nor a murder or two, nor a sordid chase for sordid wealth, nor a pack of police and a pair of gunmen all closing in. But it wasn’t this vision of steadfast love that stopped me cold.
What stopped me cold was the expression on the face of the third figure in the tableau. He sat on the edge of another chaise just a few feet away from the loving couple, a figure in a tan suit and a bow tie, with his bulky black shoes flat on the ground, his elbows on his knees, his hands wringing one the other urgently, violently. The sun shone brightly on his face, and I could see his features clearly, twisted in unrequited ache as he stared forlornly at the blissful couple, alone together in a foreign land he would never be permitted to enter. And even though I knew him to be the enemy, and I had seen the grisly fruit of his foul crimes, I couldn’t help but empathize with his pain.
Welcome to the club, you murderous son of a bitch.
46
“You’re the worst kind of fool,” I said to Clarence Swift.
Clarence jerked his head up at my words and then shot to his feet. “How did you…?” he sputtered. “Where…?”
“Did you really think,” I said, “that they would ask you to join them in their fatal embrace?”
“I don’t…Victor…What are you doing here?”
“I came for Julia,” I said.
“What have you done?” His head swiveled back and forth. “The police might have followed you.”
“They didn’t follow me, I brought them. But you should be more concerned about the madman who’s trailing Julia. Or the killers following you, who will be here”—I checked my watch—“in a matter of minutes.”
“We have to go,” he said. He reached forward and put his hand on Julia’s shoulder, shaking her. “Everyone’s onto us. Carl betrayed you like I told you he would. We have to run.”
“Victor?” said Julia, pushing herself up off the lounge, her eyes half open. She was calm, languorous, she looked slow, wrong. So it wasn’t just love anymore that was creating for them their own separate world.
“I need you to come with me, Julia,” I said carefully. “I need to take you to safety.”
“Both of us?” she said.
Clarence’s head spun, like he had been slapped.
“I’ll take Terry, too,” I said. “I’ll even take Clarence.”
“What about Gwen?” said Julia.
“She’s gone already. She left with her boyfriend.”
“With Norman? She left without saying good-bye? Where to?”
“Home, to Georgia. But the rest of you I need to take across the street. Right now. To Detective Hanratty.”
“He’s across the street?” whined Clarence. He turned to Julia. “He’s across the street. We have to get out of here. We need to go.”
“You need to, all of you, turn yourselves in. Before the shooting starts.”
Clarence swiveled his head back toward me. “Shooting?”
“You didn’t think you’d get away with it, did you, Clarence? You didn’t think Gregor Trocek would just shrug resignedly and go on back to Portugal, leaving you with your million point seven, free and clear, did you? Really?”
“With the information I’ve been feeding the government, it’s only a matter of time before Immigration takes him out of the picture.”
“Trust me when I tell you it won’t be soon enough. Who else knows where you are?”
“No one.”
“Your mother?”
His eyes widened. “What does it matter?”
“Trocek reached her to find you. Now she’s in a coma and he’s on his way.”
“He’s coming? Here? That can’t be. Do you know all I’ve done to get that money?”
“Yes, actually.”
“We have to stop him.”
“We can’t,” I said. “He’s a more vicious snipe than even you. So let’s all get the hell out of here before he shows.”
“Shut up, you miserable crumb,” said Clarence. “You’ve been meddling from the start, but no more. You’ll learn like the others, cross me and pay the piper. Julia, we’re getting out of here. My car’s parked in front. Go to the car, I’ll get the money.”
“What about Terry?” she said. “I don’t know if he’s ready.”
“Then leave him. We have to go.”
He started running, stiffed-backed and awkward, toward the gate leading to the motel.
“Clarence, stop,” she said.
“Just get in the car,” he called out before he disappeared into the motel.
I watched him go and then turned back to see Julia kissing Terry full on the lips for an obscene amount of time. Terry remained immobile, his eyes remained closed. It was as if she were kissing a corpse. As if she were kissing a killer’s corpse good-bye. She said something, and he barely nodded before she rose from her chaise and walked slowly toward me.
“What have you done, Victor?” said Julia, now just across the fence from me. She was unsteady on her feet, her dark eyes were hooded, her hopelessly pretty mouth was smiling kindly, as if she were smiling at a puppy.
“I’m trying to save your life,” I said.
“Why?”
“If you want a pep talk about every life being precious, you’re not going to get it from me. What did you take?”
“Only a little. Just a taste.” She turned to look at Terrence. “Sometimes I follow him to be close.”
“You should have left him on the balcony,” I said.
“He left me on the balcony. But I’ve remained true to myself. Love, if it matters, if it’s real, is forever.”
“Maybe, but relationships end. That’s what they do. Some end quickly, some end badly, some end in death, but they all end. It’s the nature of the beast. At some point after they end you have to move on.”
“But then I’d be like everyone else.” She reached out and gently touched the bruise beneath my eye. “Do you ever wo
nder how we would have been?”
“Incessantly.”
“Do you think it would have worked?”
“Not with him around.”
She laughed lightly. “We didn’t need him to screw it up, Victor, we had each other. I thought I was ready to move on this time and leave him behind. I thought I was going to be free of it.” She turned her head to stare at Terry. “But I was wrong.”
“He’s a leech.”
“He’s my leech,” she said, and I noticed then there was something strange about her manner, something other than the drugs.
“Come with me,” I said. “Now. Let’s get away from here. Now. Give me your hand.”
“I can’t leave him.”
“Don’t let him drag you down anymore. Don’t let him kill all your hope.”
“Hope? You were always so sweet.”
“There’s nothing you can do for him anymore except turn him in.”
She placed the back of her hand lightly against my cheek. “Thank you for trying, Victor. But when Clarence comes back, we’re going to run, all of us, run as far as they let us and then face what comes together.”
“There isn’t going to be any running. There’s only going to be bullets and blood,” I said.
“That’s what Gwen said, too. Maybe you’re both right, and if so, I’m ready. I’ve begun to think that Romeo and Juliet was mislabeled as a tragedy. I don’t think the ending is sad, I think it’s just right.”
“They die in the end.”
“We all die in the end, but they do it on their own terms, with their love still untainted. I think dying with love’s sweet poisoned kiss still on your lips is about as perfect as we can hope for.”
It was then that I realized what was strange about her. She was happy. For the first time since I had known her, she was truly happy. Just as that realization dawned, Clarence stumbled out the rear door of the motel, clutching at his head as blood leaked down his scalp.
“He took it,” shouted Clarence, collapsing on the ground, arms still around his bleeding head. He tried to rise and failed. “He took all of it. He took my money. Stop him.”
Julia and I both stared at Clarence without moving to rush and help, as if we both were rendered paralyzed. There was something cold in the way we stood and stared at the bleeding, babbling man. She had been driven to indifference by the drugs; I had been driven to it by the sight of Margaret in the freezer.
“There’s the blood,” I said.
Two shots rang out from someplace distant, a scream, then one shot more.
“And there’s the bullets. It’s from the front of the motel.”
“My money,” wailed Clarence.
From over the fence, I grabbed hold of Julia’s arm and began to pull her toward the gate that faced the rear entrance. “Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
She didn’t fight me, she was too high to fight me. But as I pulled her along, she looked back at Terry, who was now sitting up, dazedly, on his chaise.
“What’s going on, love?” said Terry, his voice dreamy and weak.
“Nothing, baby,” she said.
“What’s he doing here?”
“He’s just leaving.”
“Give him some money, that will shut him up.”
“Okay, baby.”
“Do you think we should get on our way?”
“In a minute,” she said.
As I listened to all this toddler talk, and tried to keep from puking, I held on to her arm and edged her toward the open gate. Just as I pulled her through, the motel’s rear door swung open and a small, angry man rushed out, a huge black briefcase in one hand, a snub-nosed automatic in the other.
Sims.
There was blood leaking from a dark crease on his neck, his hair was mussed, his expression was slow and dazed, like he had just come out of a midday porn film and was blinking at the afternoon light.
He stopped when he saw us and pointed his gun at me.
“What a surprise,” said Sims, putting down the bag and touching the neck wound with his hand. He moved with an exaggerated, even frightening, air of calm. He checked his hand, rubbed his thumb across the blood that was smeared thickly over his fingers. Still looking at the blood, his face betraying no evident concern, he said, “I thought you’d be rotting in jail by now.”
I wanted to say something smart and witty, but I was too busy clenching my bowels.
“Chasing her, I suppose,” he said, waving the gun now at Julia. She staggered just a bit to the left but otherwise didn’t seem affected by the sight of the barrel pointing at her heart. “Didn’t I warn you from the start? Didn’t I give you my best, heartfelt advice? But a foolish romantic, I suppose, will never learn. If I had time, I’d have some fun with both of you, but you’ll have to excuse me for a moment while I take care of a quick bit of business.”
Suddenly he pointed the gun down at the still-kneeling Clarence Swift, pointed the gun right at his head.
“All right, you sniveling little piece of crap,” shouted Sims with an uncharacteristic loss of control, spittle flying from his lips, his voice now a vitriolic shriek that sent birds into flight and insects burrowing. “Talk now or lose the top of your skull. Where the hell is it?”
47
Clarence acted as if he hadn’t heard the psychotic shriek of a money-mad cop. Instead of quivering for his life like a sane person, he started scurrying on his knees toward the heavy black briefcase on the ground by Sims’s feet.
The briefcase was one of those where the handle fits through a slot in the top. The bright brass lock of the case had been broken open, so only the handle was keeping the case closed. When Clarence reached the case he, wrapped his arms around it and grabbed it to his chest.
“Mine,” he said.
Sims stared down at Clarence in seeming fascination, as if he were staring at a fish flopping helplessly on the ground, and then kicked him in the head. Clarence spun onto his back, the case still clutched to his chest.
“There’s the money,” I said, indicating the briefcase. “Just take it and go.”
“That’s the money case, all right,” said Sims. “But not the money. Instead it’s two phone books, a Bible, and a wet towel.”
“No money?”
“Just a few bills scattered on top to make it look good.”
I turned to Clarence, still on the ground, still clutching the case. “Where is it, Clarence?”
“Mine,” was all he said.
“He showed it to me in the room,” said Julia. “It was filled to the brim with cash. We were going to take it with us to Mexico.”
“That was your brilliant plan?” I said. “Mexico?”
“And south from there.”
“That’s the best you could come up with? Driving through the wilds of Mexico and Guatemala? With a briefcase full of money?”
“There wasn’t much time.”
“A briefcase full of money,” said Sims. “Don’t leave home without it. This is getting tedious. I’m going to start shooting if I don’t get an answer soon. Where is it, Clarence?” He cocked his revolver, still pointed at Clarence, and then swiveled his arm to point the barrel at Julia’s head. “Tell me or I’ll kill her.”
“Why her?” I said.
“Because I don’t think he cares if I kill you,” said Sims.
“Now, is this nice?” came an accented voice from the south corner of the motel. We all turned our heads to see Gregor Trocek, a sawed-off shotgun pointed at us from his hip, heading our way. “You are having party but did not invite me.”
Sims calmly moved the gun away from Julia so it pointed at Gregor. Gregor kept approaching, his shotgun steady on Sims.
“Remember what I said I’d do if I saw you again,” said Sims.
“Yes, I remember,” said Gregor. “Which is why I brought my friend Peter.”
Sims’s head swiveled. “Peter?”
Gregor shook the shotgun. “Peter.”
This is w
hat I had plotted and planned for, that these two would face off over a suitcase full of money and hopefully murder each other in the process. But as usual, despite all my best efforts, my plotting and planning had turned ruinous. When the lead flew, both Julia and I would be in the middle. I looked around, hoping to see Hanratty or some other cop rushing in to save us, but all I saw was the desolation of the pool at the Mountain Drive Motel.
“Hello, sweet Julia,” said Gregor with the shotgun still at his hip. “I always thought if your husband was dead and you were twenty years younger, we might have had ourselves some fun. At least part has come true. And Victor, yes, always pleasure, though I am sorry to say our deal is off. All this running around and guns and such. Clarence, I have regards from your mother. And who is that sitting like a drunken log on the chair?”
I turned to look at the man on the chaise, staggering to his feet and then dragging his gangrenous foot to the fence.
“That’s Terrence,” I said.
“Ah, so he’s the one,” said Gregor. “Well, thank you, Terrence. You saved me much trouble. I would have had to kill Wren in any event, and I so much prefer someone else to perpetrate my violence. But, unfortunately, Detective Sims has inconvenienced me terribly by killing Sandro. So here I am, Peter in hand, ready to perpetrate violence on my own. Okay, hop-hop. We must work quickly. Julia dear, be so kind as to take briefcase from your lawyer and give to me.”
Julia didn’t move.
“Now,” said Trocek with a jerk of the shotgun.
“Do it,” I said.
Julie kneeled over Clarence and gently took hold of the briefcase’s handle. Clarence wouldn’t let go even as Julia pulled. Julia pulled harder. Clarence said, “Mine, mine,” as if the word were invoking some sort of spell.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said as I stepped over, grabbed the handle, yanked the case away from Clarence and tossed it at Gregor.
As the big black case twisted in the air, the top flopped open, and out spun a smattering of bills along with the phone books, Bible, and towel. As the bills flitted toward the swimming pool, and Terrence reached for them as if they were bubbles floating by, the books and case dropped with a series of thuds just in front of Gregor.
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