“So, what’s your next move?” she asked.
“File my report. Send in the photos.”
Well, Jenna thought hopefully, that would take a couple of days. Developing, overnight mail. Tomorrow, the earliest.
“Yeah,” Joey continued, sitting next to Jenna. “Technology is pretty cool these days. I take the pictures with a digital camera, download to my laptop, and then fax them in via cellular. As soon as you leave, I’ll get them right to your husband’s personal fax line in his office. He had to have a personal line put in, see, because he was afraid other people might see his wife in compromising positions.”
They both lifted their plastic bottles to their lips. Jenna looked over at Joey. He had spotty facial hair. Black hairs on his chin, the hollow of his cheek, his upper lip. He had the longest eyelashes Jenna had ever seen. But that always happens with guys. Guys get all the long eyelashes and girls always get thin, short ones. She sighed.
“Look, I don’t need a lot,” she said. “A head start. It’s better for both of us, anyway. As soon as you tell him, he’s going to come here. I know Robert. And that’ll be the end of your job. So if you stall for a day or so, I’ll get some time to think and you can keep on calling Tokyo on your little cell phone and billing it to my husband, or whatever it is you do for fun.”
Joey held his little bottle of vodka in his teeth and tipped his head back, emptying the alcohol into his mouth. He leaned back on his hands and shot the bottle out of his mouth with his lips. It bounced off the dresser and onto the floor. Then he dropped back onto the bed and laced his fingers behind his head.
“I think I see what you’re saying.”
“Yeah, if you solve the case, your job is over. You don’t want that. It’s good for both of us.”
Joey chewed on the air, contemplating the situation.
“Maybe,” he said, arching his back slightly off the bed. “Maybe I need you to convince me.”
Jenna looked down at this jerk, wishing for a harpoon gun to shoot through his intestines. Intestinal wounds were the most painful. They bleed like crazy. Guts hanging out.
“Convince you?”
“Yeah, you know.” He lifted his head and looked down at his crotch. “Convince me.”
Jenna smiled and shook her head.
“If I give you a blow job, you’ll play ball, is that it?”
“If you give me a good blow job . . .”
Jenna looked down at Joey, who closed his eyes and prepared himself for pleasure. She quickly reviewed her options. She could give this idiot a blow job or she could throw herself out the window and break her legs.
“I like it when girls pinch my nipples,” he said.
That settled it. Jenna laughed at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.
“What?” Joey demanded, annoyed.
“Do you actually think I’m going to suck your dick?”
“You want my help or not?”
Jenna laughed harder. She couldn’t stop herself. She rolled back and onto her side, laughing.
“I’m going to put your penis in my mouth? Would this be before or after I slit my throat?”
Joey was mad. He jumped off the bed, rushed over to the closet, and pulled out his backpack.
“Look, bitch. I don’t care whose penis you put in your mouth. I was doing you a favor.”
“You were doing me a favor.”
He pulled a laptop computer out of his pack.
“You wanted help, I was willing to give it to you.”
“But don’t you see the irony of it all?”
“Nope.” He plugged the computer in and turned it on. It beeped and clicked.
“I’ve never cheated on my husband. But you’re going to tell him I have, even though it’s a lie. In order for you not to tell him, I have to give you head. At which point, I have cheated on him, but not with the person you claim I have, but with you. So in order for me to get you to tell my husband I’m not an adulterer, I have to commit adultery with you. That’s irony.”
She laughed. He typed a few characters and waited. Then he pulled out a little black plastic thing. A computer camera.
“If you want to see the pictures as I fax them in, you can. That would be ironic.”
Jenna stood up and walked toward Joey, reviewing her new options. She could charge him and try to destroy the computer, grab it and smash it on the floor before he could stop her. Or she could grab the lamp and smash it over Joey’s head and then kick him in the face until he stopped breathing. Of course, the fellatio option was still available. But would any of these options change anything? Would any of it matter? What would it prove? She woke up this morning with an agenda, and that agenda would have to prevail.
“Joe, I’m going to tell you the situation, and you do what you have to do, I’ll do what I have to do, Robert will do what he has to do, and everybody will have done their best and that will be that.”
He stopped fiddling with the computer and turned around to face her.
“My son drowned two years ago, up here, in Alaska. I was with him when it happened and I didn’t save him. I have not been able to live with that for the past two years. Right now, I’m on a quest to put the soul of my dead son to rest. Robert, if he comes here, may screw that up. I would appreciate it if you would not give him a reason to come here. I will give you anything you want to prevent you from giving him a reason, but I will not give you my dignity. I will not humiliate myself for your perverse satisfaction. It’s nothing personal. You seem like a nice enough guy. You’re cute enough. I’m sure if I had been single and your age, and you took me to dinner and bought me flowers and I was a little drunk . . . I’m sure I would have sucked your dick for you.”
He laughed. He wasn’t hard and cold anymore.
“But, I’m afraid right now I can’t do it . . .”
She backed toward the door.
“I hope your hand feels better. Sorry about that. Have some more drinks, call Tokyo, order the shrimp cocktail, get eggs for breakfast, I’ll approve everything.”
She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it. The door opened quietly.
“And if you can see it in your heart to help out a girl who’s trying to get her life straight, I’d sure appreciate it.”
She stepped through the door and pulled it after her. It was almost closed when Joey called out.
“Mrs. Rosen?”
She stuck her head in the room.
“You have until tomorrow morning.”
She smiled and winked at him, closing the door very softly.
Chapter 30
THEY BOTH REALIZED IN THE SAME INSTANT THAT JOEY WOULD not keep his word. As Jenna’s foot hit the street, she knew that this guy was a mercenary and wasn’t going to stop for her. In fact, even if she had given herself to him, it wouldn’t have mattered. Joey did give Jenna a bit of a break, though. He drank another bottle of vodka before he put his report together and faxed it in.
Eddie and Oscar were lying on the grass, waiting for Jenna to return.
“Is he going to be all right?” Eddie asked Jenna as she approached.
“His hand will be fine, but he’s not really doing anything for his karma right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you later. What’s the fastest way off this island?”
“A boat. Where are we going?”
“We?” Jenna sighed. She had no choice but to bring Eddie in on her problem. She didn’t know the terrain well enough to go it alone. As a matter of fact, she had no clue where Klawock was. She hoped it wasn’t far.
“A town called Klawock. Do you know where it is?”
“Yeah, it’s not very far.”
“Let’s go.”
Eddie didn’t make a move to get up off the ground. “To Klawock?” he asked, then shook his head. “A boat will take too long. You want a plane.”
“You said a boat was fastest.”
“Fastest off the island, not the fastest to Klawock.”
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“I can’t take a plane.”
“Why not?”
“It’s traceable. My name would be on a ticket. I need to leave quickly and quietly so the spy upstairs won’t know where we went. Could you stand up, maybe, and we could talk on the way to the boat? I’m trying not to panic, but I really can’t stress enough the importance of my leaving.”
Eddie got to his feet and they climbed in the truck.
“A boat will take a whole day,” Eddie explained. “It’s three hours at least to the north end of Prince of Wales Island; Klawock is on the southwest, and it’s a big island.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t very far.”
“Not very far in Alaska means fewer than three days.”
Eddie started the engine and looked over at Jenna. She was rubbing her face, feeling trapped. They would be able to follow her if she took a plane. They would see her name on the ticket. Unless she used Eddie’s name and he paid for it and she paid him back. That was a possibility.
“It would take about forty minutes in Field’s plane,” Eddie offered.
“Field has a plane?”
“Sure.”
Field’s plane. Of course. She wouldn’t have to buy a ticket. They wouldn’t know about it. But she hated small planes. She hated big planes, too, but small planes were worse. No parachutes. Dropping hundreds of feet at a time. Most airplane deaths are in small aircraft. Guys behind the wheel keeling over from a heart attack and the wife not knowing how to fly. Plummeting to earth in a metal coffin, ready for cremation upon impact. Forty minutes isn’t long. She could close her eyes and just hold on for dear life. White-knuckle it. You’ve got to stay awake in this game of give and take.
“Is it safe?”
Eddie laughed. “Field’s been a bush pilot around here his entire life. It’s safe.”
“Does he have to file a flight plan or something?”
“Flight plan? No. We take off and we land. Nobody knows the difference.”
Eddie shifted into drive.
“Okay then,” Jenna said, sitting back. “Field’s plane to Klawock it is.”
Eddie pulled the truck out of the parking lot. They went to his house, where he called Field and picked up some clothes. Then they headed down to the dock, where Field was already waiting by his floatplane.
ROBERT WENT IN to work on Saturday even though he felt like shit. He would feel worse, he knew, if he stayed home all day and rattled around in the empty house. Besides, there was plenty of work to be done.
Pat, his nubile young assistant, came in to work also, always happy to get the overtime. With her help and no distracting telephone calls, Robert could get three times as much done. One plus one equals three. She brought a couple of chocolate hazelnut coffees up from downstairs and sat across from Robert so they could go over the corrections of a bid Robert was submitting. As she scanned over the document, Robert couldn’t help but appreciate the view he had of her long, slender legs and delicate ankles.
“What’s this? I can’t read it.”
She leaned forward and held the page out for Robert. He caught a glimpse of the top of her left breast through her blouse.
“Sorry. ‘Frequency.’ My handwriting sucks. ‘Extremely Low Frequency Electro Magnetic Radiation. Henceforth referred to as E-L-F slash E-M-R.’ ”
She leaned back and crossed her ankles. Robert loved ankles. He had thought about an affair with Pat a few times. He knew she was single and that she liked him. She would probably do it. But he never acted on his fantasy. In the end, the thought of it was too distasteful to Robert. I’m screwing my secretary. It made his stomach turn.
He knew some guys who used these high-class escort services to cheat on their wives. The service came complete with phony receipts so you could write the whole thing off. But the concept of paying for sex was ultimately embarrassing for Robert. You go to a hooker, even if it’s the most expensive hooker in the world, and you give her money and you get to do what you want. But what he wanted was to not have to talk about what he wanted. He wanted someone who knew what he wanted, and the only person who knew that was Jenna. She knew. She could do it. If he had to tell someone how to touch him or where to put her hands, he would die. Because inside that person is a brain that’s judging. He knew that. Everyone judges everyone else. What would keep a hooker from judging him? People who go to hookers put their own pleasure over their embarrassment. Robert couldn’t do that.
Reality is never as good as you want it to be, anyway. Girls in magazines are airbrushed. Bottom line. Fantasy is not reality. Jenna was as good as it got in reality. And if sex was a little sparse since Bobby died, so what? He could look at girls in magazines and shoot off into a handful of tissues when he needed to. Airbrushing is airbrushing. Let’s get real.
The fax machine rang, and Robert didn’t realize it was his private line until it was too late to stop her. Pat got up and stood before the machine, watching the paper unroll with its message. The built-in paper cutter zipped across the page, a second page emerged. Pat walked the two curly pages over to Robert, looking confused.
“What’s this?” she asked.
The first page was a terse report. Who, what, where, when. All the details. The second page was a bad computer pixilation of a strangely abstract photograph of two mounds under a blanket.
The life drained out of Robert. What he had hoped wasn’t true, was. He slumped back in his chair and stared dumbly at the fax paper.
“Are you all right?”
Robert shook his head. “No.”
“What is it?”
Robert looked up at Pat. He felt like crying, like breaking down into tears and crying his heart out. But he didn’t. He choked it back and said, with broken voice, “My wife.”
“Oh, my,” said Pat, placing her hand on top of his and shaking her head sadly.
What were those steps again? Denial, despair, anger. There was no point in wasting time on the first two. The only one with any kind of merit was the third. And that’s because anger resulted in action. Robert told Pat he had to go for a walk. She understood. She said she would work on the bid while he was out, and if he wanted to talk, he could talk to her. But Robert didn’t want to talk; he was angry. He wanted something else.
It was only one o’clock, but Robert headed down to Mike’s to get a drink. A good, stiff drink. Mike’s was a dive down on First Avenue South where Robert liked to take clients. They had burgers and sandwiches, and all of it tasted like shit. But he liked taking clients there because they always had a good time and they always gave him credit for giving it to them. Men with money don’t like wearing suits and they don’t like drinking perfumed gin. They become accustomed to both because they think that if they don’t play the game they won’t succeed. But, deep down, they like to fart and burp without restraint, scratch their asses if their asses need scratching, and they like waitresses who know they’ll get bigger tips if their skirts are shorter. So Robert takes these gentlemen, guys who are in board meetings until their eyes are popping out of their heads, he takes them to a dive. They relax. They have two or three martinis. They have a good time. They think they’re going to score with the waitress. They sign a lease. Big revelation. So he went to Mike’s and he sat at the bar and ordered a martini straight up with a twist. And then he had another.
By the time he started his third martini he was talking to the bartender, a guy about his age, about where to get a girl for the afternoon. Robert had decided there was only one way for him to deal with his anger. He had to get a hooker. Robert had always assumed that all bartenders are somehow connected to the pimp circuit and this guy could give him a number to call. He had thought about calling Steve Miller, who he knew could hook him up, but that would be too public. The whole world would know. But the bartender was a bust. He could only suggest hanging around First Avenue near the porn theaters and getting something there. But Robert didn’t want that. He wanted to explode. Release his pressure and his pain. He wanted pictures of
it. He would pay someone to take photos. Then he’d fax them to Jenna, and then she’d know what it felt like to see it come over the telephone.
That’s when the obvious occurred to him. The girl with the lips from the Garda Bar. Here’s my number if you need to talk. He reached into his pocket. He was wearing the same jacket; it had to be there. The matches. The ones with her name and phone number. Sure. Right next to the empty vial of coke.
He picked up the phone in the back of the restaurant and wiped off the mouthpiece on his shirt. She told him to call her if he wanted to talk. He did want to talk. Talk would be nice. Right before they fucked. Erin, that was her name. Sweet Erin. College girl. Smooth flesh, tight over her petite frame. But where would they do it? Her place. Did she have a roommate? Not his place. That wouldn’t be good. He’d have to get a hotel. And what of the foreplay issues? The candlelight dinner. The champagne. All that crap. He would have to do all of that. She would expect it. He would actually have to talk. Ugh. He didn’t want that. It would have to be a date. Have to be. The groundwork had to be laid. She wouldn’t just jump into bed.
Complications, complications. Robert didn’t want to think about it too much. He wanted to dive in. Call her and get the ball rolling. It would take care of itself. She wanted to do it last night. She said she thought it’d be fun. Fun. That would be good. Just what the doctor ordered. She answered in a sleepy voice. It was almost two. Young people sleep late.
“This is Robert. Did I wake you?”
“Robert?”
She yawned. Shaking herself awake. She was asleep; that’s why she didn’t remember him.
“We met last night. I gave you a ride home.”
“Right.”
“You said I could call if I wanted to talk. Sorry I woke you.”
“That’s okay. Hold on a minute.”
She set the phone down. He heard her walk across the room. Silence. Then a toilet flushing. Charming.