Black Leather

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  He sat up and sipped the ice-cold coffee that had been steaming up his windshield the last time he’d looked at it. He checked his watch. He’d dozed for almost an hour.

  He moved around in the seat a little bit, and watched Miss Lillian and her pick-of-the-night jiggle back to a white van. The guy opened up the van’s back door, and the rest was lost to Owen’s sight.

  Just as well. He didn’t really want to see Irene screwing some one-night-stand anyway.

  He rolled down the window to let some fresh air into the car.

  He didn’t really want to see the future Judge Nottingham screwing some one-night-stand.

  In the back of a van.

  In a parking lot.

  Wait a minute. Warren Begay: parking lot. Sam Begay: parking lot.

  That woke him up. That, and the nasty, bitter coffee he was drinking.

  Irene Nottingham had won her case. She was celebrating. He needed to stay conscious. This was the pattern, predictable and uniquely hers. He gripped the steering wheel with cold, tight fingers, and waited.

  Chapter 41

  “A van!” Cynthia squealed, pleased with this tidy man, his affectionate nature and his obvious attention to detail.

  He opened the big back loading door, then bent over, depositing her on the carpeted floor. With big, competent hands on her hips, he scooted her back toward a bunch of pillows, climbed in after her, and then slammed the door.

  In the dim light, she could see a toolbox, a small cooler, and a couple of cardboard boxes, but his hands were on her and she didn’t have time or the inclination to explore the interior of his van. She had better things to do.

  He kneeled up and began working on his belt buckle. She smiled at him and began to unzip the big silver zipper at the hem of her skirt. Slowly, very slowly.

  He pulled his pants down to his knees, pushed her back onto the pillows and collapsed on top of her, his fingers popping the Velcro on her panties and guiding himself right in. “Oh, Miss Lillian,” he breathed as he entered her, “look at you.”

  But he wasn’t looking at her face, he was looking at her boobs, falling out of the top of her bra.

  He thrust deeply and completely, and said, “Oh my God, how I’ve missed you.”

  Wait a minute, Cynthia thought. Then her lust-fogged brain began to clear. He thinks he’s with Irene. He doesn’t want me at all; he wants HER.

  Fucking Irene.

  Hot sex congealed quickly in the cold chill of Cynthia’s mind. “Stop,” she said. “Stop it. Get off of me.” She struggled, trying to push him off, out, away.

  But he wasn’t listening. He just gripped her tighter, making bruises on her arm, and grinned in a wolfish way.

  AI mean it,” she said, trying to sound tough, but sounding scared instead. “Stop. God, what’s that awful smell?”

  “You used to love that smell,” he said.

  He grabbed both her forearms in one big hand, pulled over one of the cardboard boxes with the other hand, and in a swift, practiced move, slipped a thick leather band around her wrists, secured it, and then snapped it onto an eyebolt embedded in the side of the van.

  “No!” Cynthia screamed, struggling. But the restraints were hefty, and they did the job. “Stop it! Let me go!”

  He began pumping at her again, his hands kneading her buttocks. “Oh, how I’ve missed these rides. You were always the best. You were always the most exciting.” He grabbed the bra with his teeth and pulled it up, so her breasts fell out the bottom. He bit one nipple, then sucked it hard.

  She kicked at him and tried to squirm out from underneath him. “Let—me—go!”

  “Shhh,” he said, slowing down. “Settle down, babe. You want me to tie your legs?” He looked at her with that grin again, that dare me to do it, please dare me to do it look that sickened her. “I will, you know. I know how to do it just right. The way you like it. Remember?”

  The last thing Cynthia wanted was to have her legs tied, so she settled down. Just let him finish, she thought. Then he’ll untie me and I can get the hell out of here. She stopped struggling and stared at him with a look she hoped would kill him. It was all she could do to keep from gagging, both from the stench in the van and from this asshole’s cologne overload.

  “That’s better,” he said, resuming his rhythm. “Oh, baby,” he said. “That’s so good.”

  Chapter 42

  With a lazy fingernail, Irene traced the path of the waterfall she’d etched into Joseph’s shoulder. He was drifting in and out of sleep, and she had an overabundance of adrenaline flowing. She didn’t know what to do with the agitation she felt, but it wasn’t going to let her go to sleep.

  “I’ve got a busy day tomorrow,” she said, tapping lightly on Joseph’s shoulder.

  His eyes opened and he lay quietly for a moment. “Are you throwing me out?”

  “I won’t get much sleep with you here.”

  He whined, a little boy sound that made Irene smile, and a flash of sad affection zapped through her. But it wasn’t enough. Not tonight.

  “Come on,” she said, giving his shoulder a tiny kiss. “Cynthia might even come over late. I don’t think it would be good for her to find you here. In my bed.”

  That worked. “All right,” he said. He turned over, stretched, then wrapped his arms around her in what would normally be a soft, cozy, affectionate hug, but this time felt claustrophobic and confining to Irene.

  She endured a long, lingering kiss, wishing that she could get into it, wishing she could settle down with him, wishing that the restless animal that lived inside her would just crawl off and die, but wishing was futile. She couldn’t get Joseph out of her bed or out of her apartment fast enough.

  When he was gone, she obsessed about being with him. And when she was with him, she couldn’t wait for him to be gone.

  She hated that about herself, but it was the way she was. At least tonight. Especially tonight.

  She watched him dress, then she swirled on her silk robe, walked him to the door, gave him a cursory, apologetic goodnight kiss on the cheek, then locked the door behind him.

  Chapter 43

  Bobby gave a grunt, a groan and a gasp and then collapsed on top of Cynthia.

  The stench in the van was about to make her puke.

  She bucked and kicked at him, wanting him off of her, wanting him out of her. The last thing she wanted was for this pig to fall asleep where he was.

  He rolled over onto his side, pulled his pants up, then punched up a pillow under his head. “God damn, girl, you’ve still got it. All these years later, too.” He drew a finger down her cheek, and she snarled at him. “All these years. I’ve thought about you every day, do you know that? Remember that fun we had in Reno? God, I think about that every day. I’ve never had a time like that since. But it wasn’t until that guy came into the store—”

  He looked at her more closely. He blinked, then sat up. Her wig had come off, and she felt long strands of blonde hair stuck to the perspiration on her neck and her forehead. She wanted to brush it away, but her hands were still tethered.

  “What guy?” she asked.

  “Hey, you’re not Cynthia,” he said.

  With her eyes finally accustomed to the dimness of the van, she could see his face as it was, without the distortion of fear or heat. He looked familiar. Several circuits snapped closed. “Bobby Milner,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Hey, what’s going on here?”

  “You’re Bobby Milner, right? You dated my sister.”

  “Dated her? I married her.”

  “Married her?” This information was a little too much for Cynthia to assimilate. “What guy came into your store?”

  “Black guy. Said he married Irene. But that’s you. You’re Irene.” He zipped his pants and buckled his belt. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry. I saw you in that getup. Cynthia liked to dress up like that. Miss Lillian, she used to call herself, you know, when she dressed up like that, and we used to have some good times.
”

  He reached across her and unhooked her from the eye-bolt, then undid the cuffs from around her wrists.

  “Hey,” he said, “it was great, know what I mean? Hey, no hard feelings, okay?”

  Cynthia took a two-fisted swing at him, smacking him hard on the side of the face. Caught off-balance, he fell sideways, banging his head hard on the side of the van.

  “No, you little fuck,” Cynthia said through clenched teeth. “No hard feelings. No hard feelings at all.” She adjusted herself back into her leather bra. “You just married my fucking sister, and she told you her name was Cynthia, but that’s my name.” She kicked him hard in the ribs with her boot. He whooshed out a satisfying sound and bent over double. “I’m sick to fucking death of Irene and her men. She gets the good ones, she gets the best ones, and she gets to them first, or else they drop me and go to her.” She felt around behind her, and her hand landed on a length of chain. She picked it up in a rage and swung it at him.

  He caught her wrist in a vise grip, and she was instantly powerless. That enraged her even more. She saw him wincing with the pain in his ribs, and she waited her chance.

  “Hey,” he said, “settle down. Hey, now, settle down. I’ve got no beef with you.”

  Cynthia struggled to get him off balance. “And when she makes some massive fuck up like marrying a weird little creep like you, she uses my name!” She was screaming and crying and watching all her power fly away as she lost control.

  Bobby held her down gently but solidly. “Shh,” he said, trying all the wrong things to calm her. “Hey, shhh.”

  “Let me up!”

  “Not until you quiet down.”

  She struggled harder, feeling the skin at her wrists begin to tear. “Ow, ow, ow, come on, something’s digging into my back.”

  “You going to be quiet?”

  This felt like some kind of a children’s game. “No, you little prick,” she said. “You raped me. I’m going to kill you.”

  Bobby brought her wrists together like he did just before he bound them. He looked down on her threateningly. “I’ll get those restraints.”

  Get smart, Cynthia, she told herself. It took all the energy she had to stop struggling, but she didn’t want to be tied up again. She took a desperate try at relaxing, hoping to lull him into believing that she was beaten. But something was digging into her back, and fire was flowing in her veins.

  “Now there’s no reason for you to be mad at me,” Bobby said in a soft, calm voice. “You were willing to come out here, and it was a clear cut case of mistaken identity, right?”

  Cynthia just glared at him, not willing to trust her voice.

  “You thought I was somebody else,” Bobby went on, “and I thought you were somebody else. Nobody got hurt, right?”

  “Ow,” Cynthia said, and wiggled around. Bobby let one of her hands loose, and she dug around beneath her for whatever it was that she was lying on.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  “Okay,” Cynthia said, nodding.

  “You all right now? You going to get up nice now? I’m going to take you back into that bar and buy you a drink and everything’s going to be all right?”

  Cynthia took a deep breath and nodded.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Bobby let go of her hand and moved away from her.

  Cynthia got a good grip on the screwdriver that had been underneath her. Time clicked into slow motion as she took careful aim at the pulsing place just beneath the skin on his neck, and with artful self-control, she brought it up, and stabbed him right through the jugular.

  Surprise crossed his face.

  He reached up, grabbed at it, then coughed a stream of blood.

  Cynthia scrambled out of the way. She didn’t want to get blood on her, she didn’t want his corpse to fall on her, she wanted to get out of this awful place.

  “Now it’s okay,” she said. She grabbed her leather thong, zipped the zipper on her skirt. “It fucking stinks in here,” she said as she opened the back door.

  Bobby sounded like he was trying to clear his throat.

  She got out, readjusted the wig, tucked up errant strands of blonde, and smoothed down her clothes. She needed a mirror. She needed a drink. Better yet, she needed to have a little chat with her loving big sister.

  Just before she closed the van door, she saw Bobby stare up at her. He was leaning limply against the van’s side door, blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth.

  She had a flash of memory: a knife through the neck of another man, a pudgy, uncooperative Indian guy, who looked up at her in much the same way as blood trickled out of his mouth and landed on the seat of his car.

  Cynthia shivered and slammed the door.

  Chapter 44

  Owen Crowell watched Miss Lillian walk between cars and go back into the bar. He downed the dregs of the cold, biting coffee, and waited.

  And waited.

  He crumpled the cup and threw it onto the floor of his car.

  He looked at his watch.

  He waited.

  He realized with a thud that only one person was going to come out of that van.

  “No!” He jumped out of his car and ran to the van. Leatherworks was painted on the side, and a few things began to come together in his head. He opened the back door, fully expecting to see exactly what he saw.

  “Damn!” he said, squeezing his eyes closed. He should have known. He should have known. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911.

  He felt as guilty as if he had stuck the screwdriver in the poor slob’s neck himself. He was the one who tracked down Irene’s ex-husband, then told Joseph about him. It was entirely within the realm of Irene’s experience to put Bobby Milner out of her life for good. And in a way that was so eerily, totally similar to what she’d done to Sam.

  “Oh, man,” he said to the dead guy. “I’m sorry.”

  He saw a taxi pull out of the parking lot, but he didn’t see who got into it. It didn’t matter. He saw who did this, and he knew where she lived.

  He knew where she lived and he knew where she worked.

  Chapter 45

  Cynthia wiped the tears from her face with clenched fists, then gritted her teeth and buried her fingers in the back of the taxi’s front seat. She willed him to drive faster, faster, faster, she had a terrible time just sitting still. She wanted to rip, slash, cut, punch, grab, pinch, slam. She was mad, she was goddamn furious, and the taxi wasn’t nearly big enough to contain her rage.

  Joseph. Joseph and Irene.

  Irene.

  Irene and Joseph, Irene and Bobby, Irene and her career, Irene and her bench appointment, Irene and her cases, Irene and her trips, Irene and her staff, Irene and her political connections, Irene, Irene, Irene.

  Irene and Myron.

  Cynthia wanted to rip Irene’s head right off her scrawny goddamned neck.

  Instead, she almost ripped the driver’s head off. “Here!” she said, pointing at the lobby door to Irene’s building. “Stop here.”

  The driver pulled over, and Cynthia threw money on the front seat, then stepped out of the cab.

  She made angry strides up to the front door, but just before she got there, a shadow darkened the door from the inside. Then it opened.

  Joseph.

  She stepped back, melting into the shadows. Her heart hammered in her chest. She could still smell the chemicals from Bobby’s van. The stink was all over her.

  Joseph walked out of the lobby, trotted across the empty street, got into his car and drove away.

  Cynthia watched, her fingernails running in a nervous twitch up and down the big zipper on the front of her skirt.

  Chapter 46

  Irene’s apartment felt unusually empty after Joseph left. She hadn’t wanted this relationship to get to the point where she liked his constant presence, but it seemed as though things had progressed to that point regardless of what she did or didn’t want. She liked to cling to t
he illusion that she had designed the perfect life for herself, but it wasn’t perfect, and she doubted that she had all that much to do with the design of it anyway.

  She wished she had a girlfriend to call.

  Cynthia? No. Cynthia was too busy being needy herself. Mona? No, Mona was too close professionally to be a friend. She was an employee, and that dynamic needed to be maintained. Bonnie? Good lord, Bonnie. Irene hadn’t talked to Bonnie in years. Not since her law school days when they had that little problem.

  Needing a break from school, Irene had gone to visit her old best friend in Reno. During that brief visit, they’d shared some very personal information over a few bottles of wine. Bonnie, unable to hold her tongue, or disrespectful of their friendship or something, had embellished a confidence and broadcast it to all the wrong people. Word of it had even got back to Irene in San Francisco. A terrible betrayal at the time, and Irene had found it impossible to forgive.

  Irene retaliated by seducing—and marking—Bonnie’s boyfriend, and she didn’t even have to return to Reno to do it. He came to her. That whole sordid episode still left a bitter taste in Irene’s mouth.

  Bonnie. Bonnie would faint if Irene called her, needing a little girl talk.

  Irene wished she could call her mom. She wanted to go over to Ellie’s house and sit at the kitchen table together, drinking tea and doing their nails, and Irene could pour out her heart. Her mom wouldn’t have any advice that made any sense, but she would look at Irene with love and empathy and nod her head and hold her hand and stroke her hair and put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, and somehow, everything would be all right after that.

  Irene missed Ellie. Missed her desperately.

  She wandered into the kitchen, but its spotless, cleaning-service aura seemed soulless and uninspiring. She didn’t want to mess anything up. She didn’t want to leave any evidence of herself, which was an odd feeling, since it was her own damned kitchen. She wasn’t hungry, wasn’t thirsty. She wanted, she wanted... something... but she didn’t know what.