A Killer's Kiss

by William Lashner

  “What is this?” said Gregor. “Joke?”

  “No joke,” said Sims. “The money is missing.”

  “It can’t be, not again,” said Gregor, the European languor cracking. “Where is it, Julia my love?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It was in the case.”

  “And now it’s not,” said Sims.

  “Still in room?”

  “I searched it,” said Sims. “Nothing.”

  “Then where? Where is it?” growled Gregor. He tipped the shotgun toward me. “Victor?”

  “No idea,” I said. “I just got here myself.” The second statement was true, the first no longer was, but I wasn’t going to let these two thugs know it.

  “How about you?” said Gregor, waving the shotgun toward Terry. “What do you know?”

  “Not much,” said Terry slowly. “Except I don’t have it. And Julia doesn’t have it. And Clarence doesn’t have it. And Victor is an idiot. And that leaves—”

  “There was a woman,” said Sims. “Old, feeble.”

  “She’s no one,” said Julia.

  “The maid?” said Gregor. “Gwen?”

  “I waited for her to leave before I went into the room,” said Sims.

  “Gwen,” growled Gregor.

  “A white car was waiting in front,” said Sims.

  “Yes, I saw it,” said Gregor. “A white Buick. It went south just as we pulled in. Okay, now we are—”

  Just then, in the distance, a siren sounded, and then another, both growing louder quite quickly. The heads of the two men turned in unison, like the heads of two birds on a wire. Terry started laughing.

  “My car’s in front,” said Gregor.

  “That’s no good,” said Sims. He pointed beyond the back of the motel. “My car’s through there.”

  Gregor waved the shotgun. “Take me.”

  “Fifty-fifty.”

  “Don’t be crazy. Take me or I kill you.”

  “Then we’ll both die, and without the money.”

  “I give you quarter, maybe.”

  “Fifty-fifty.”

  The sirens grew louder. A set of tires squealed in the parking lot on the other side of the motel.

  “You are a dishonorable and murderous thief,” said Gregor. “I admire that.”

  “Is it a deal?”

  “Deal,” said Gregor.

  “This way,” said Sims, beginning to run, with Gregor behind him. When Sims reached Terry at the fence, he stopped suddenly and turned to me. “Is this the perp who killed the doctor?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Of course I care,” said Sims. “I’m a cop.”

  He raised his gun and fired.

  “Case closed,” said Sims, as Terry staggered backward and fell with a quick splash of blood.

  And then Sims was off, past the pool and through a patch of weedy trees, with Gregor Trocek, lumbering like a bearded sasquatch, still behind him.

  Sirens and footsteps. Tires squealing. Shouts and hollers. Orders to get down, get down. And above it all the plaintive desperate keen of a woman in love.

  48

  AFTER

  There was a moment after the cops arrived and made sense of the scene and gave chase to Trocek and Sims, a moment before the ambulance careened around the side of the building to pick up what was left of Terrence Tipton, there was a singular moment in which things came clear to me. Julia, my Julia, was kneeling over the prostrate body of her lover in a posture of perfect devotion as a uniformed officer performed whatever CPR he could think of to keep the bleeding piece of meat alive. And then Julia looked up, her face full of panic. She searched around frantically until her search found me and our eyes met.

  Help me, please, her expression begged. And all I could think was, Who the hell was she? How had this strange woman, whom I barely now recognized, twisted me into knots?

  Yet in reality I had done all the twisting, hadn’t I? What she had done to Terrence, by concocting a fantasy room for him to live in, I had done to her, by concocting a fantasy past for the two of us, where our love had been honest and pure, when in reality it had been neither. She was just a woman doing her best to hold on to the one true thing in her life; my feverish emotions had turned her into a femme fatale. But isn’t that always the way of it when old love comes a-knocking?

  I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about old lovers that causes so much perturbation of the soul, and I’ve come up with a theory. We have, all of us, an image of what love looks like, an image that evolves and ages as we move through life. But for some, tragically, the evolution slows or even stops dead. And if that image stalls when a relationship dies, as it had for me, then you remain haunted by the lover who disappointed you and then disappeared. Whoever you are with, whoever you kiss or ravish, can be only a pale imitation of the image that lies like a ghost in your soul. But here’s the thing. When the old lover shows up again in your life, she is just as pale an imitation as everyone else. She is no longer twenty-four, and neither are you.

  “You took your time,” I said to Hanratty as we stood side by side and stared at the twisted little pietà inside the pool fence.

  “You told me you wanted to bring her out,” he said. “I thought I’d give you a chance. I waited as long as I could, and then the gunfight in front of the motel broke out.”

  “Did you know it was Sims who was shooting from inside?”

  “When the shooter outside was felled with one shot, I figured it out. Sims and Trocek didn’t get away so long ago, but Sims knows all the tricks. He’s probably on his third car by now. I’d be surprised if we see him again.”

  “Maybe he and Gregor will end up killing each other over the money.”

  “We can only hope. You have any idea where they’re headed?”

  “Georgia.”

  “Why Georgia?”

  “For the pecans,” I said. “I didn’t do much good here, but I appreciate your letting me come over to try.”

  “She’s still alive, isn’t she?”

  “But I don’t think she’s happy about it.”

  “That’s not the point. And at least you tried. I almost admire that. I still want to punch you in the face, but I’d feel bad about it now.”

  “It’s a start.” I looked around. “Where’s Derek?”

  “He stayed in the diner, said a pack of cops showing up with guns drawn made him a little nervous. And he said he had something going on with the waitress.”

  “Yeah, that’s Derek.”

  “What are you going to do about her?” he said, gesturing to Julia, still looking around desperately for the ambulance.

  “I’m going to wait until this whole thing settles down,” I said, “and then I’m going to wrap her in my arms and kiss her good-bye.”

  But I never got the chance.

  When the ambulance careened around the side of the building and lurched to a stop at the edge of the pool, she stayed with Terry. Even as they loaded him onto the gurney and lifted him into the vehicle, she stayed with Terry, climbing into the back of the ambulance with the paramedic before the vehicle rushed off.

  They pronounced Terrence Tipton dead at the Warren Memorial Hospital in Front Royal, Virginia, shortly after the ambulance arrived. It was inevitable, I suppose, that Julia and Terry’s romance would end in blood and anguish. In Shakespeare’s play the very instant Romeo unsheathes his sword, even if with the best intentions, he seals his fate, and Juliet’s, too. Violence begets violence, and love pays the price.

  I imagine that Julia was in the room as the doctors worked frantically over her lover’s body. I imagine she had to be pulled away as they pressed the paddles to his chest. I imagine that after death was pronounced and the time duly noted, they left her alone with the corpse and she hugged it and kissed it and swore her everlasting devotion a final time.

  Love at its truest, ever as faithful as it is delusional.

  And then, after all the hugging and kissing and swearing and pain,
after it all, she simply slipped away. The police came looking for her, but she had disappeared. There were charges of obstruction of justice and abetting a murderer to deal with, there were financial matters concerning her dead husband’s estate to deal with, there was me to deal with, but all that was evidently too much for her to deal with, because she slipped away and disappeared. She vanished into the thin of the air, as if without her one true love to keep her grounded she rose into the ether and dissolved.

  But I eventually received a clue that she might not have dissolved into nothingness after all. It arrived in the mail, a package from a place called Corsicana, Texas, about fifty miles northeast of Waco. A pecan pie. It was thick and rich, so sweet it curled your toes, and the nuts on top were fat as toads. About as perfect as a pecan pie could be, but not homemade, not Gwen’s, with its little imperfections and heirloom taste. She had promised me a pie, and she had made good on her promise, even if what she sent was mail order.

  “We got us a ways to go,” read the note, “but we’ll get where we’re going.”

  Was I delusional to believe Julia was there, in that lovely word at the head of the sentence? Was I a fool to hope that Julia was with Gwen somewhere, healing? And all I knew about the somewhere was that it wasn’t in Georgia, because Gwen hadn’t made the pie herself from handpicked pecans, and it wasn’t in Texas, because Gwen was too smart to order from on close. I could see the three of them, Norman driving the big white Buick while Gwen fussed on Julia in the backseat, a sweet little family making do on the road, with just one another to rely on, and one point seven million in cash.

  One point seven million minus the thirty bucks they sprung on my pie.

  I was glad that Gwen had gotten away with it, glad that she had slipped through the clutches of Trocek and Sims, glad but not surprised. When I look back on it, through the whole of that time after the murder of Wren Denniston, I can see Gwen’s fingerprints on much of what happened. She had sent me searching for Miles Cave, she had given the anonymous tips that kept Gregor on my case and the suspicions about me swirling, she had stayed by Julia’s side until Clarence brought the cash right to her. No matter how clever those of us on the trail of the money had been, there had always been one person one step ahead. That she would stay a step ahead only made sense.

  And did I feel a bit deprived that I hadn’t had that chance to see my Julia again, to hold her in solace and feel the painful emotions wrap like barbed wire around my heart one more time? Not as sad as you might expect. Because I suspected I’d have my chance eventually.

  An old lover is like the lumbago; no matter how free of the pain you might feel today, in the small of your back you always know that someday she’ll return.

  It was Detective McDeiss who eventually clued me in on what happened to Sims. It came over the Interpol wire, a warrant issued by the government of Croatia for the arrest of two fugitives suspected of murder: Gregor Trocek and an American named Augustus Sims. I suppose, with Sandro dead and Gregor in need of a new enforcer, Sims just naturally slipped into the role. And he’d do a hell of job, too. Though having a Cadizian hit man might make quite the statement in America, it probably carried a lot less weight in Cádiz. But having a slick-suited Philadelphia hit man on your side, well, that would be enough to make any Iberian quaver in his boots.

  Any Philadelphian, too.

  So I was rid of Julia and Sims and Gregor Trocek, but I was not yet rid of Derek. He showed up at my outer office a few days after the shooting, showed up with Antoine at his side and a nine-page invoice in his hand. I read the letterhead on the first page.

  DEREK MOATS—INVESTIGATIONS

  No Girl Too Tall

  No Case Too Small

  “Nice motto.”

  “I came up with that myself,” said Derek.

  “Why am I not surprised?” I said, looking over the invoice.

  It was quite a document, so overinflated in its self-importance, so rich in useless detail, so full of bogus items and bloated numbers, so nauseating in its final tally that for a moment I thought it could only have been drafted by a lawyer.

  “Like it?” said Derek.

  “I’m flabbergasted. How the hell did you come up with all this crap?”

  “A man in my position, just starting out in the detecting business and never having done an invoice before, needs to find help wherever he can.”

  “So who helped? Antoine?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then who?”

  “I asked around, talked to people”—pause—“and Ellie had some ideas.”

  I snapped my head to stare at my secretary, who had bent over to pretend to be looking for something quite important in a lower desk drawer. “My secretary?”

  “I just needed a sense of what a proper bill looked like,” said Derek. “She helped me work on it while you were out.”

  “My secretary?”

  “He looked like a lost puppy,” said Ellie in a soft voice.

  “A puppy?” I said.

  “You should be proud as a papa,” said Derek. “She told me that everything she learned about invoices she learned from you.”

  “This,” I said, waving the invoice in the air, “this is outrageous.” I stopped waving the document for a moment and looked it over again. “Which means you are well on your way, my friend. Well on your way. Now, if we can just negotiate some sort of a reasonable reduction among friends…”

  “Can’t do it, bo. That would be unethical.”

  “Unethical? But lawyers do it all the time.”

  “Which just proves my point. I got to follow the guidelines. Giving you a break wouldn’t be fair to my other clients.”

  “But you don’t have any other clients.”

  “Don’t matter. I will, and, like you been telling me, it’s time I start thinking about my future. So you going to pay up, or do I got to put that bill into my collection department?”

  “You have a collection department?”

  Antoine doffed his porkpie hat.

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “Now I see. Nice touch. You learn quickly, Derek, I’ll give you that. Okay, you don’t have to put it into collections. I’ll write you a check. No matter how outrageous your invoice, you did a fine job and deserve exactly what you get.”

  “Thank you, bo. And now that that’s settled, I see you have some empty office space.”

  “Yes I do, at least until my partner returns from overseas.”

  “When’s he going to do that?”

  “It’s a she, and I’m not holding my breath.”

  “Because just now, we’re in the market for some office space ourselves.”

  “You and Antoine.”

  “That’s right. Derek Moats Investigations. No girl too tall—”

  “Yeah, yeah. And no case too small.”

  I thought about it for a moment. It would be nice to get some income out of that office. But then I’d have to see Derek’s face every morning, which would really put me off my appetite. But then, truth be told, I could afford to lose some weight. And I had to admit, in the whole of that terrible week, whenever I had asked for Derek’s help, he’d been there. He had the makings of the real thing. It’s one thing to lecture your clients on straightening up and making something of their lives, it’s something else to give them the opportunity. I thought it over and glanced once more at the invoice.

  “I’ll need something up front,” I said finally.

  “Now we’re talking business,” said Derek. “Let’s have it.”

  “First month,” I said, “last month, a deposit for utilities and phone, equipment rental, furniture rental, secretarial usage—”

  “Bo.”

  “Don’t worry, Derek. It’s only the usual fees.” I gave him a car salesman’s smile. “I’ll just have Ellie work up the bill.”

  And so it all was settled, the whole old-flame thing. It hadn’t worked out so great for Wren Denniston and Margaret and Sandro, I had to admit, but everyone else seemed to
have gained something out of that week. I had come through it with my ghost lover finally put to rest, Julia had been freed from her fatal obsession, Derek had found for himself a new profession, Gwen would be living in the lifestyle she had earned all these many years, Sims had found his true calling as a murderous thug, and Hanratty had solved the murder. Even Terrence had finally found the thing he’d been searching for so diligently since his brilliant portrayal of the young, doomed Romeo: his death. All seemed to have come out okay in the end.

  All but one.

  49

  “What do you want?” said Clarence Swift.

  “To see how you’re doing,” I said.

  “Do you care?”

  “No, you’re right,” I said. “I really don’t.”

  He was wearing orange prison overalls, which gave his face a green tint. His lips were pinched, his skin taut, his philtrum deep. And yet, without his usual tortured verbal phrasings and ostentatious humility, I sensed some calm within him that hadn’t existed before, as if here, in this place, finally, he could fully express his true inner nature. Prison seemed to agree with him, which was good, because he would be here awhile.

  “How’s your mother?” I said.

  “Disappointed.”

  “I meant physically.”

  “She’s recovered from the beating, if that’s what you mean. She’s a stringy old hen. But it’s the disappointment that is going to kill her. I’m her only child, she had such hopes for me. I was going to finance her retirement, cleanse her bony limbs when she was too weak to bathe herself, wipe her buttocks when she lapsed into incontinence. Now she has nothing to fall back upon except the street.”

  “You don’t sound sorry.”

  “Well, it’s not all bad. She does enjoy visiting. What are you doing here, Victor?”

  What indeed? Why had I made a pilgrimage to the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on the dark edge of the city to talk with a murderer? What was I hoping to glimpse?

  A truth about myself, maybe.