by Bob Bickford
“Don't point your gun at me, please,” he said. “I do so hope this little scene makes you happy, but I know you came to do this yourself. Someone has beaten you to it. If I could offer you some consolation, he would have shot you like a dog. You would have been the dead one. That might have suited you just as well. You seem to have lost much of your appetite for living.”
“You think so?”
“That he would have killed you before you killed him?” He laughed gently. “I don't think it, Mister Crowe, I know it. You have strange scraps of honor, and you would have wanted to explain yourself to him before you killed him. You would have been compelled to offer justification to yourself and to him, and in your hesitation he would have killed you before you pulled the trigger.”
“So you killed him, Fin. Why? I can't imagine you were doing me a favor.”
He laughed again, and leaned forward to pick out one of the cards that had escaped the spreading blood on the desk. He gave it a cursory look and then tapped it thoughtfully against his chin.
“Oh, I didn't kill him,” he said. “I can assure you of that. I walked in here less than a full minute before you did. People are more useful and interesting to me when they are alive.”
“You want me to think this was suicide?”
“See for yourself.”
He nodded at Cleveland's body. I went a little further into the room.
“Don't touch anything,” he said. “You'll spoil it.”
I went slowly around the desk, instinctively giving the body a wide berth. Cleveland's right foot was pulled slightly back, as though he had been preparing to get up. The pistol rested on the floor beside his chair. I got down on a knee and sniffed the barrel.
“You want me to believe he did this to himself?” I asked. “Men like Cleveland don't kill themselves. The cops won't believe it, no one will.”
“Perhaps you're right,” he said. “I'll have to think of something else. Perhaps he'll simply go for a walk and not ever come back. So very sad. No one will ever know why.”
“The person who shot him knows.”
“Interesting, but who did it? If I didn't kill him, and you didn't kill him, and he didn't kill himself, then I wonder who did?”
Fin leaned forward and put the card he had been holding face-up on the green felt. The queen of hearts lay in the pool of light. She stared up at us and said nothing at all.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Mister Crowe?”
“Even if I do,” I said. “I don't believe that they can fire a .38 round into someone's head.”
“Perhaps we'll never know who did this then,” he said. “Perhaps that's for the best. I'll clean this unfortunate . . . mess, and I won't let it bother me. After all—”
“It's all just wind,” I finished for him.
“It's all just wind,” he agreed. “The wind blows and the wind swings, through sanatoriums and empty bedrooms and bare trees. It blows and it swings, blows and swings.”
“You've done this before,” I said. “Made corpses disappear.”
“More than once, Mister Crowe. It's no different than doing a card trick. The principles are the same.
“What are you doing here, anyway? How is it that you happen to be here?”
“I am often here. Mister Cleveland enjoys the flash and the sparkle of ownership, while I prefer the shadows. I only come out when the water gets . . . deep.”
“Like now.”
“Like now.” He nodded. “The ownership of this establishment, as well as many others, now reverts to me. I need a public partner, a face for the businesses. I've had my eye on you since the start. Your qualifications are immense, as would be the rewards.”
It took me a minute to understand what he was offering. I was shocked.
“You want me to take over for Sal Cleveland? No thanks.”
“I'm offering you a complete reversal of fortune,” he said. “You can be rich and powerful, starting right now. Think about it.”
I did think about it. I thought about swimming pools and big cars and marble floors. I thought about swank clothes and fancy broads and endless music. And then I thought about Charlene Cleveland with a bullet hole in her face.
“No, thanks,” I said again.
“Even if this body is never seen again, there are those on both sides of the law who will believe you responsible for Mister Cleveland's disappearance. I don't think you're going to survive the streets of Santa Teresa very long. You need me as much as I need you.”
“No deal,” I said. “You ought to go back to Ohio, if that's where you're really from. You don’t make any sense here.”
“I only bother with sure things, and I'm confident we have a deal,” he said. “You simply haven't acknowledged it yet. You want to play the shy bride, and talk yourself into it. Don't wait so long to accept that not even I can save you.”
“I'm leaving,” I said. “No deal. I assume you're going to let me walk out of here?”
He did his best to look offended. “I quite like you, Mister Crowe. I've told you that. Stop at the bar and finish your drink on the way out. I expect the ice has hardly melted, and we never know when a small pleasure might be our last, do we? I expect I'll see you again, very soon.”
“Not if I can help it.”
I headed for the door, and had a foot in the hall when he spoke from behind me.
“She isn't dead, you know,” he said. “Fives, sevens, and eights. Where there are cards, there are tricks. She isn't dead at all.”
I felt my pulse speed up. The sweet smell of poison was overpowering, and the room swam in my vision. The body sprawled across the desk, the cards and the blood all faded, leaving only Fin's face and eyes to fill my vision. I couldn't speak, but I heard my own voice.
“Are you talking about Annie Kahlo?”
He nodded. We looked at each other for a long minute, me in the doorway and him in the deep chair. I had been turning my hat in my hands, and I realized I was crushing it. I straightened the brim and settled it on my head. I wanted desperately to believe this strange man, but it was more hope than I could afford.
“All the evidence says she died in that fire,” I said. “There isn't any real doubt of it.”
“Evidence,” he mused, and looked at Cleveland's body. “We were just talking about evidence, weren't we? Do you know what I always say, Mister Crowe? Do you remember?”
“Fig's a dance,” I said.
His face lit up. His features were blotched and ghastly, but for just a moment his smile was strangely beautiful. “You are exactly right, Mister Crowe,” he beamed. “Fig's a dance.”
I took the frontage road along the ocean, all the way back into town. I needed time to think. At the curb, I got out and stretched. The day had gotten warm. Something felt different, and it took me a minute to put my finger on it. The fires were finally out, and the smell of smoke was gone. The air was sweet, and I could smell the ocean several blocks away.
The Gardiner's enormous black Cadillac sat berthed in the driveway. When I got to the driver's window, I tapped the glass with a knuckle. After a minute, it got cranked down slowly. It made a small squeaking noise. Mrs. Gardiner looked up at me. She put both of her hands back on the steering wheel, as though she were still moving. She looked ancient. I kept my voice as gentle as I could. “You killed Sal Cleveland, didn't you?”
She stared at me and didn't answer. Her eyes were vacant, haunted.
“You were at the Star-lite Lounge.” I said. “I saw you leave. A dozen bodyguards, and you just waltzed in and shot him.”
“No one pays attention to an old woman. No one even sees me anymore.”
I opened the car door and helped her out.
“I see you,” I said.
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“I'm not a policeman, Mrs. Gardiner. I wouldn't arrest you even if I was.”
Her lip trembled. I felt bad for her. She was far too old for any of this.
“Did I do a bad thing?” she ask
ed.
She sounded like a very old child. I thought something inside of her was broken, probably for keeps.
“I don't know,” I said. “I think you did the only thing you could. Sometimes that's all the good or bad there is.”
“I'm tired,” she said. “I'm so very tired.”
I put my head in the car. The big purse lay on the seat, and I undid the clasp and looked inside. The automatic was a business-like number with a blued finish. Not a lady's gun, but it smelled strongly of burned powder, so this lady had managed to use it. I got it out and slipped it into my pocket before I turned around.
“You'll be okay,” I told her. “It might take a little while, but I think you have a lot of steel.”
I put an arm around her and helped her up the walk to her front steps. When she had the door open, she turned to face me.
“For the record . . . ” I searched for the words I wanted. “For the record, I think your daughter had more guts than anyone I ever knew, and I think she got them honestly. I think she got them from you. It looks good on you. She’d be proud.”
Her face got a little startled. “Proud. That's a funny word, don't you think, Mister Crowe?”
“I think it's the right word,” I said.
The pistol weighed heavy as sin in my pocket. I needed to make it disappear, quickly. If the cops came around to talk to her, the best I could do was to make sure the gun went away.
“You don't lie, do you?” she asked.
“Sometimes I do,” I said. “Not often. Mostly I don't see any point in it.”
“And you don't ever leave anyone behind.”
I thought about all of the lost girls, the gone girls. In my mind's eye I saw Charlene Cleveland and June, both dressed in pink. They were separated by decades, brought together by their endings. I saw the doomed Mexican women in the truck, looking out at me from the old photograph. Mostly, I remembered Annie Kahlo. Her dark eyes and sweet smile were gone for good, but would be never far away from me.
I shook my head.
“I don't leave anyone behind.” I said. “Not when I can help it.”
I saw her tears, and I thought that was probably a good thing. Nothing could heal any of it, but tears were a way of trying.
“In the end, neither did you,” I said.
“She called me Mother when she left. She knew who I was. I have that much.”
“You have that much,” I agreed. “You should lie down for a while. Do you want me to help you inside?”
The tears were mostly winning, but she tried on some kind of a smile, anyway.
“I'm very tired,” she said. “I'm also very old, but I'm not an invalid, at least not yet.”
I smiled back at her. “Take care of the peacocks,” I said. “And the ocelot.”
There was nothing else I could do for her, so I left her standing in the doorway. I didn't think I would ever see her again, and it occurred to me that I had never known her first name. For some reason, it made me sadder than any of the rest of it. I stopped at the bottom of the walk and turned back.
“What's your name?” I called. “Can I ask you that?”
“Grace,” she said. “My name is Grace.”
I nodded. It suited her. When I looked again, she had gone and the door was closed. I headed for my own front door. I needed to pack a suitcase and get on my way.
-Thirty Two-
Plenty of neon light from the street filtered through the venetian blinds, so I left the wall switch alone. I got a glass off the shelf in the corner, blew the dust out of it, and bought myself a drink from the bottle in the desk drawer. The Browning sat on the blotter in front of me, but more because of habit than anything else. I didn't think anyone would come up the hall and try the door. I didn’t know if there was anyone left who wanted to kill me, but old habits die hard.
I tilted my chair back, slipped my shoes off and sipped warm whiskey. My office was different in the dark. Whatever went on here at night when it was empty and silent had nothing to do with me and what I did during the day. It didn't make me feel particularly welcome. I wondered if Mary Raw's ghost still hung around. I wondered if anyone had ever been killed by a ghost. I figured I had been playing with house money for a while now, so I didn't mind too much, one way or the other.
I wondered if ghosts got lonely.
The phone rang once. It startled me badly. The noise it made was much louder in the middle of the night. It didn't ring a second time, but I picked it up anyway.
“Hello?” I said.
There was no answer and no sound on the line. I caught a quick ghost of fragrance, though, from nowhere. It was light and sweet and smelled like someplace that was far away from here, like flowers and wet leaves.
“Annie?” I asked.
The sign outside the window flashed, on-and-off, on-and-off, a flood of blue that came and went. I held the receiver a little bit tighter and thought I heard a single breath. Then I heard rain and a faint, faraway sound like . . . elephants. I had only every heard them trumpet in films, but that's what the sound reminded me of. Elephants.
“I'm coming,” I said.
Epilogue
The couple sitting at the table had left, and the slowly spinning ceiling fan moved air over the now empty cantina in Corazón Rosa. One blade ticked, sounding like a persistent water drip every time it went around. It was the only sound in the room until a woman came from the kitchen area. She collected a plate and a knife, set them on a tray, and wiped quickly at the wooden table top with a rag. She saw the playing card and paused. It lay face down, beneath where the woman's plate had been. She picked it up.
It was old, the five hearts of hearts faded to pink. She stood very still, looking at it in her hand. When nothing happened, she shrugged, put it into the pocket of her apron, and carried the tray back to the kitchen.
Outside in the street, pockets of shadow were formed as the sun went out of sight beneath the rooftops. Echoes of voices, mothers calling children inside filled the air. Fishermen straggled home in ones and twos, boats left behind for another day. The street dogs were awake and watchful, collecting themselves against the coming night.
On the twilit shore at the foot of town with the black sand almost deserted, the wind gusted off the water, warm but getting cooler. It carried the smell of the ocean, salt and perfume and a little bit of rot; the ancient fragrances of blood and birth. The palm fronds turned dark against the sky as they clattered and rustled and sighed.
A small girl in a pink bathing suit played alone on the beach. She sifted sand from a metal can to a glass jar. The painted label on the can showed signs of rust, but still was legible enough to boast of a deluxe mix, fifty percent peanuts or less. The coarse sand held onto the warmth of the afternoon, the fall of it heavy and good against her small hands. The pouring was an arcane ritual that only she understood. Her brow furrowed with the importance of it; the tip of her tongue showed in one corner of her mouth.
As if drawn by the magic, a man and woman approached. They walked where the shore was packed wet, just out of reach of the surf. A dog ran ahead of them, dashing in and out of the foam.
The man wore a fedora. He carried a suitcase in one hand and his jacket over his shoulder. He moved slowly and looked around him, quiet and watchful. He looked like a man who had seen things that grieved him, but when he looked over at the woman walking beside him, the shadows cleared from his face.
The dog trotted over to investigate the girl. He was a medium-sized brown dog with a white face. He sniffed at the sand she poured and sneezed. The man called him back. He didn’t seem the kind who missed much, but his eyes passed over the little girl and went on without a pause, like she was invisible.
“I'm a ghost,” the girl said to herself. She laughed softly, startled and pleased by the idea.
The woman was graceful and solemn. She was the kind of slender that made her look taller than she really was. She was draped in something loose and pale that covered her head. Her feet were bare.
Something about her beauty evoked queens from long ago and far away, the ones in picture books. She took the man’s free hand as they passed.
She looked back over her shoulder and smiled at the little girl. The girl smiled back at her, and they held it for just a moment. It was a shared secret, and it lit up everything.
“Bye, June…” the woman called softly. She had a voice like a movie star.
Fireflies began to spark, echoing the candle flames in the windows of the buildings above the beach. The little girl didn't go anywhere. She kept playing, scooping sand from can to jar and back. A dog barked, and she looked up. The moon showed pale against the lowering evening sky; its light glimmered on the waves and the empty beach. She didn't see the man and woman anymore.
They were as gone as if they had never been there at all, vanished in the distance and the dark.
#
Coming soon from Taylor & Seale Publishing:
Hau Tree Green - A Nate and Annie story
Other books by Bob Bickford:
Deadly Kiss, Black Opal Books
Caves in the Rain, Champagne Books-January 2017
A Song for Chloe, Black Opal Books-Summer 2017
All books are available through the publisher or on:
Amazon.com
B&N.com
booksamillion.com
