“She wanted it—you hear me? You hear me?” The big guy slowed.
Flip came away from the wall.
Mr. B straightened. “You did good. Real good.”
Flip stood over him. “The money.”
“Sure. Sure. He’s dying.” Giddy laughter quaked his words. “This is the last thing he’s going to hear.” He bent over him again. “She wanted it!”
Flip balled his fist. “Who wanted it?”
Mr. B grinned. “Never mind. Help me move this desk.”
Flip watched him cross back to it, put two hands on one edge.
Tats struggled against the floor, but he was losing.
Mr. B said, “Help me with this.” He nodded to the desk. “Hey, you want your money or not?”
“You deserved it. What he was going to do. Didn’t you?”
Mr. B gave up waiting for Flip to help and bent to the desk, shoved it until the safe was exposed. “What’s ‘deserved’?”
“Who’s this she you keep yelling about?”
Mr. B worked at the combination on the floor safe. “Don’t worry about it.” Louder, he yelled, “Just his strung-out, dead, junkie daughter!”
Flip looked to the big guy in his death throes on the wooden floorboards. Nothing could be done. By the time an ambulance got here, he would be gone.
Those sirens he heard would be cops. He moved closer to Mr. B.
The safe door flapped open. Mr. B reached inside. He kept his eyes on Flip. His hand came out. But it didn’t hold a pile of bills.
Flip dove at him.
A gunshot exploded. Wide. Flip went for the hand that held the gun. He twisted Mr. B’s arm like a dishtowel. Mr. B grunted. The gun clattered onto the hardwood.
An elbow to Mr. B’s face sent him to the floor. Flip picked up the gun. “Get in the corner.”
Mr. B’s eyes teared up. Blood spread over his mouth out of both crushed nostrils.
Flip pointed the gun at him. “Now.”
Mr. B crawled to the corner on his knees and one hand, the other held to his nose as if he could straighten it out. Flip knelt at the safe, kept the pistol pointed at Mr. B. Inside he found papers but not cash. He took the papers out and set them on the floor.
Mr. B sat in the corner, cursing him. “Where’s the rest of my money?”
Mr. B’s answer didn’t have anything to do with money.
Flip rose and went to the corner. He shoved the muzzle into Mr. B’s temple. “They’re going to find your brains all over that wall.”
“Wait. Wait.” Both hands came up, smeared with the blood from his nose. “It’s there. You have to slide the shelf over. It’s there.”
Flip returned to the safe and found the lip of a shelf on one side of the compartment and drew it in. It was there all right. And a lot more. He wadded all of it into his pockets and stood. The pockets were large, but they barely held the bundles of cash.
The papers looked interesting. He folded them in half and tried to stuff them in his back pocket. He’d forgotten his cap was back there. Putting it on made his swollen forehead smart even more. He jammed the papers in his pocket and went to the door.
The voices of cops echoed in the empty bar.
Behind him, Mr. B said, “You better watch your back. I’ll be looking for you.”
Flip pointed the pistol at him. Mr. B ducked. Flip didn’t fire.
He took one last look at Tats. Stretched out wall-to-wall, he wasn’t struggling anymore. It was too late to make it right. Killing Mr. B wouldn’t help.
Flip ducked out. He made it through the exit door and into the alley without seeing anyone.
30
Jason woke in Brenda’s bed and felt Serena standing in the room with them, behind him.
No. It was absurd. She couldn’t be here. Not here in Brenda’s apartment with the front door bolted. Not now.
“Jason, what’s wrong?” Brenda’s hands moved to his shoulders. Her fingertips flamed on his skin.
Serena’s eyes, the force of her character, her intellect always a step ahead of him—she was there.
Jason took his eyes off Brenda and looked over his shoulder.
“What is it, Jason?”
He rolled away from her.
Brenda came up on one elbow and stroked his head with her other hand. “Did I do something wrong?”
He turned to her. She’d wanted the lights off. Her modesty made her even lovelier to him. He’d insisted on leaving the lights on so he could see what he took in now in the softer light coming through the window. The green of her eyes, lashes long and flickering. Her skin luminescent. Just below her collarbone a single mole like a pinpoint of chocolate in cream.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re perfect.”
She lifted the sheet, and her face flushed delicately. “Then what’s wrong?”
“I just . . .”
Her hair was tousled, pressed and combed by his fingers. He let his hand rise to it, allowed his fingertips the pleasure of touching it.
She took that hand, kissed the palm, held it to her cheek. “It’s okay, Jason. Whatever it is. We’ll make it okay.”
Brenda shifted toward him and brought his arm around her.
But Serena’s presence still loomed. In spite of Brenda’s skin on his, her citrus fragrance in his nostrils, the taste of her on his lips, he sensed Serena here, haunting him. He told himself that what had happened to their marriage was not his fault. It was hers. Serena had done this herself. The proof wasn’t debatable. Forget her denials. She had cheated on him.
Brenda lifted her face to him. “I wish it could always be like this.”
He stroked her shoulder, smooth like a china cup. “Me too.”
“Really? I’m not just . . . you know.”
“Of course not.” He kissed her forehead. “There’s a lot of complications.”
“Yeah.”
“But we can make it okay, Jason. Can’t we?”
“Sure we can.”
Serena argued against it. Silently, invisibly, her presence debated him as forcefully as she would if her legal mind could voice its argument here and now. Her first exhibit would be their marriage license. She would call every witness who had sat through their ceremony. Before a judge, she would repeat the vows they’d taken. Till death do us part. Till death.
But when she took a lover, she’d put to death the marriage itself. That was the death that parted them. She’d surrendered her rights as a wife when her arms went around Pete Rossi. Jason had evidence. After what she’d done, she had no right to interrupt this moment of happiness.
He turned to Brenda. “We can make it work. We just have to be careful.”
Close now, her hot breath mingled with his. “We’ll be careful. No one will know.”
“They can’t know. I’d be fired. I’m already on shaky ground.”
She backed away an inch. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind. It’s not important.”
“Of course it’s important. It’s your career.”
Across the room, the clothes he’d worn all day at the office were draped over a chair. From the floor next to the chair, his shoes gleamed dimly.
Brenda’s hand on his chest brought him back. “What do you mean about the shaky ground?”
He sighed. “Let’s not get into it. Okay?”
Thumping steps elsewhere in the building drew closer and faded away. At any hour of day or night in LA, someone was always moving around and disturbing the peace. He looked at his watch. The display read 2:30.
“Don’t go. I won’t ask any more questions about work. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just this city. Something’s always grinding away out there. It never stops. I was just thinking it would be great to get away.”
“You were?” Brenda reached for a T-shirt. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot.” She sat up in bed and slipped into the shirt. “Ever since that kiss in your office, I’ve been thinking if on
ly we could get away together. Really away, not hiding around like this. Not just for a few days, either.” She reached out and nudged his shoulder. “Where would you go? If we could go anywhere in the world?”
Jason put his hands behind his head. “Anywhere?”
“If you had the whole world. Where?”
Traffic noise filtered through the window. Two cars shooting past on the street outside Brenda’s apartment, a third. Where could people be going at 2:30 in the morning? “What’s the opposite of LA?”
Brenda sat up straighter. She tapped at her knees. “Opposite of LA. Let’s see. Norway?”
“Maybe not that opposite. I don’t mind warm weather.” The Caribbean meant Serena. Not there. “Ever been to the South Pacific?”
“Like Tahiti? Mmm. Sounds great. I’d go there with you. How about the Far East? Would you like to go to Japan and see pagodas? Or China?”
“Sure. After the South Pacific. We could rent a sailboat down there, just go from island to island. There’s thousands of them. Fiji. Tahiti. Tonga. Bora Bora. I’ll bet there’s islands where there’s nobody at all. It could be just you and me on the beach.”
“And then, when we want some company, we could jump on a plane and go someplace until we got tired of other people again. Then where would we go?”
“Africa. We’d go on a safari.”
“I don’t want to shoot anything.”
“A photo safari. Just take pictures. They have guys that’ll drive you around and show you the lions and rhinos. But not like in a zoo, where they’re cooped up. Out where you can see them hunt and see the herds. Stuff like that.”
Brenda hugged her knees close. “You know I’ve never even been outside the US?”
“Not even Mexico or Canada?”
“Not even Hawaii or Alaska.”
Jason stroked her ankle. “We’ll have to change that. By the time we’re done, the US will be just another place in a big world.”
She stared at him, eyes gone distant. For a moment, the playfulness disappeared. Those lips drew straight and her brow hardened.
Jason sat up. “What is it?”
“What? Nothing. Nothing.”
And she was back, the Brenda he knew, the forehead smooth and lips curled up at their edges.
“For a second there you were a million miles away.”
Her eyes held on him. It was as if she was thinking of how to answer him. “It’s all too good to be true. You here, with me. This talk about traveling together. I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That this won’t last. That it won’t come true.” She eased down beside him and brought her arm across him, her face pressed to his shoulder.
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll make it work. We’ll make it work. Other people have done it.”
She spoke into his shoulder, her hair tickling his chin.
“It’s not just the work thing. I can get another job.”
“What is it, then?”
“You’ve got your wife to deal with. . . .”
He buried his face in her hair, inhaled, fought the presence in the room. “I know. You deserve better.”
She shook her head to clear her hair away and brought her face up to him. Her eyes met his. “I told you, you’re all I’ve wanted since I first saw you. No one else measured up.”
The silence in the room weighed on Jason. He stroked the skin of her arm, put his hand to her face. She kissed it. He said, “I’m going to end it with her. She ended it. I’ll make it legal.” Applying the word to Serena gave him a strange satisfaction.
“You’ll do that?” She squeezed even closer to him.
“Honey, I’ll do a lot more than that for you. Just wait and see.”
31
Jason shoved out the door to Brenda’s apartment building. The morning light pressured his eyeballs. He brought a hand up and wished for the sunglasses that rested safely in his BMW a block away.
His watch read 7 a.m. He thought of Brenda standing at her door, leaning against the frame after they kissed good-bye, her hair a mess, her green eyes lidded by tiredness. A smile tugged at his lips, and he let it come.
He rounded the corner. The sun was at his back, and his eyes could focus now. He spotted the rounded edges of his car. His mind played over what had happened since he’d parked it. He thought he must look like a crazy man to anyone who saw him on the street, the way his smile wouldn’t stop.
At the car, he found his sunglasses and got the Bimmer started, and in ten minutes he pulled into his driveway and pressed the garage-door opener. As he watched the panels fold up, his mind was on a quick shower and change of clothes.
Serena’s car sat on the left. Where she used to park it before she left him.
His foot rested on the brake pedal. He stared at the black trunk lid, the three-pronged symbol in back a mockery of the peace sign. The vehicle announced her presence, and in response Jason found claustrophobia pressing in on his body from all angles.
She’d left a space for his car where she used to, but Jason yanked on the parking brake lever and turned off the ignition where he sat in the middle of the driveway. He stood outside his car, the neighborhood quiet in the still morning air, calmness all around him while his heartbeat charged and his vision clouded with irritation.
He fingered the key to his BMW as if it were some sort of magic charm that would ward her away. He could jump back in his car and return to Brenda’s apartment. Take a day off, the both of them.
But no, that would be the coward’s way out. And Serena would know he’d come home. She would’ve heard the churn of the garage-door opener unless she was in the very back of the house.
Jason clicked the lock button on his car key and moved into the garage. The door to the house was unlocked. He stepped inside.
There she sat. A portrait of female counsel seated at table. She wore a new gray suit, shoulders sharp enough to cut paper, skirt revealing the curve of her crossed knees beside the tabletop. The neckline of the jacket circled the base of her throat and left a gap exposing the dip at the center of her collarbone. The black fabric of a belt circled a waistline he’d rested his hands on a thousand times.
She lifted a china cup to her lips. Her lipstick had pinked the brim. She pursed her lips and swallowed, and as she returned the cup to its spot on the saucer, her left hand rose to draw a strand of her auburn hair behind an ear. She turned her eyes to him, brown, brushed upward at their edges by blackened lashes. Those eyes revealed nothing. She could have been considering a contract. Or ready to pull a trigger.
But her hair was different, trimmed since he’d seen her last, so that the curl where it rested on her shoulder wasn’t as long as it had been when she’d walked out on him. Like everything else about her appearance, it was just right.
Jason wondered if she had trimmed her hair and bought the new suit to torture him. He didn’t speak. He closed the door.
Serena’s middle fingertip circled the lip of the china coffee cup, the steam rising from inside swirling around her fingers. She’d painted her nails with a new shade of red— was that purple in it? They could have been candy.
“Long night, Jase?” Her voice had the texture of silk.
He put his keys on the counter. “Too short.” He went for the cupboard and brought out a mug. Serena’s coffee was always weaker than he liked it, but it would do. He brought it up for a sip. His hand trembled, the mug flittering against his lips until he pressed it to them. He waited for a remark from her about it. None came.
Jason took his mug to the table and sat. She watched him, her cool expression unchanging. You’d have to strap a polygraph to her to see what was going on in her head—if you could even coax a straight answer out of her. Her finger kept working around that china. Jason tried to decide if it was the maddening deliberation of the movement or her silence that was making him so angry. Or maybe it was just her presence here, sitting in her favorite perch as if nothing had ever happened and she was ju
st having coffee with her husband on an ordinary day.
She tapped the lip of her cup twice with that fingertip. “Who is she?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve asking me that.”
She uncrossed her legs and turned to face him. Her hands circled the cup. “So you still believe it.”
“Of course I do.”
“We’ve been over this, but I’m going to say it again and keep saying it until you believe me. I never had any kind of relationship with Pete Rossi other than a professional one. I never cheated on you. I never lied to you. Ever.” A practiced glare. A dramatic flash of the eyes and pinch of the brow betrayed the emotion behind her level tone.
It made him angrier than ever. “Sure. I believed that for a long time. All the business trips with him, the late nights coming home. I believed all of it. Until I found that letter.”
“Yes. The letter.” She leaned back. “Do you still have it?”
“I burned it.”
“Too bad. I was hoping to go over it with you. Did you really read it? The words, the sentences? I wouldn’t compose anything like that, no matter what kind of delirium of love I was supposed to be in.” She slid the coffee cup an inch to the left. “Did you look beyond the penmanship? I don’t think you did. This is what truly disturbs me about all this, Jason. That you would believe this drivel no matter how similar the penmanship looked, instead of believing words out of my own mouth.”
“You said all that before you walked out on me.”
Her jaw jutted toward him. She drew a breath in. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about it that way.” She blinked.
Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her shed tears. He thought hard. It came to him.
His resolve fled.
He looked down to the table. Steam still rose from his mug, but none lifted from Serena’s china cup. The teaspoons of coffee remaining in her cup pooled tepid there.
It was on their wedding night that he’d last seen her cry. He’d asked her what she was crying about, and she’d told him she was so happy it overwhelmed her. She’d laughed through her tears and thrown herself into his arms again. They were tears of joy that night.
Now she wouldn’t look at him. Blinking back the tears didn’t quite work. She had to flick one aside.
Jason’s hands wanted to go to her face to wipe any tears away. But his hands probably smelled of Brenda’s perfume. He clenched his fingers together so they would stay in place.