LaBrava

LaBrava, just for fun.

She felt like performing... She could get on the freeway and be at Richard's house in about fifteen minutes; she'd memorized the directions. They had planned to wait at least a week, give the police time to relax. But she was so close and her mood was perfect.

She could hear the elevator door close across the hall, the elevator begin to descend with McCormick and the two Palm Beach officers.

It might be the best time of all. Richard would be surprised. Just in case he had ideas...

Coming away from the door Jean paused, looking at herself in the wall of glass behind the sofa. She smiled. Too much. Staring at herself she saw a worried expression now, with a smile trying to break through. 'Richard, is everything all right?' Make it a little more personal. 'Richard, are you all right?' Maybe even, 'Richard, I couldn't wait to see you.' Well--disarm him, but don't overdo it.

LaBrava stood by his window with the phone. He could see Franny in the park across the street, sitting at an easel in shade, painting one of the Della Robbia women who sat facing the ocean. When the slim girl, Jill Wilkinson, came on he said, 'How was Key West?'

She said, 'I love it. It's the only place I know you can rest and not get hit on all the time. I mean a girl. Wait a minute.' She was gone several minutes. When she came back she said, 'I'm sorry. We've got a guy took one of the panels out of the ceiling and crawled up into the overhead. He won't come down because he says the office is full of alligators. Keeps saying 'They's gators down there.' He's right, but we're not supposed to let on.' He asked her the name of the cop Richard Nobles had mentioned that night, the one Pam said she knew. Jill said, 'Hold on.' He heard her call to Pam and ask her. Jill came back on and said, 'Glenn Hicks, he's Boca P.D. But tell me about Richard. What's that subhuman piece of shit up to now?'

Franny looked naked at her easel; and her hair made her look like a little girl. The Della Robbia woman was getting up, walking around behind Franny to look at the painting. Watching them LaBrava phoned Torres and gave him the name of Richard's friend. Glenn Hicks.

He crossed the street from the Cardozo to Lummus Park, two ice-cold cans of beer in each of his hands. Boy, did she look good: the mauve bikini top with cutoff jeans, artist at work under a palm tree, very nice if you can get away with it, if you're any good. Artist concentrating, showing the tip of her tongue, touching up, canvas chair where the subject had been sitting, empty. Her weird hair moved, she was looking at him, waiting.

'Well, how're you doing?'

She said, 'How am I doing. I went home for a wedding three days ago, you didn't even know I was gone.'

'You got married? Here I've been looking all over for you.'

'Why, were you horny?'

'Reasonably.'

'You don't get reasonably horny, Joe, you are or you aren't.'

'I was more than horny, I missed you.' He handed her a can of beer, then paused as he was about to sink into the canvas chair, looking at the easel. 'That's very good. You know it?'

'Who is it?'

'It's Mrs. Heffel. Don't you know who you're painting?' He was pretty sure it was Mrs. Heffel.

'I know. I didn't think you did.'

'Even without the nose shield. You know how I know her? I took her picture. She's got a little girl inside her that shows every once in a while, when she doesn't think people are accusing her of something. You caught the little girl. A glimpse of her.' He sat down and popped a beer.

'You think so?'

He handed her the opened beer, took the one Franny was holding and popped it. 'I think so. What happened to your hotels?'

'I like hotels okay, but hotels are things. I've decided my interests lie more in people. That's your influence, LaBrava. I look at your work, I want to see what you see.'

'You do, you see things.'

'I don't know. I see a certain thing in your work because you caught it, there it is. But I don't know if I'd see the same thing before. I don't know if I have the eye.'

'You got Mrs. Heffel.'

'I've been watching her for a week.'

'You've got the eye. The secret is, don't look at everything at once, concentrate on one part at a time.'

She said, 'Maybe I'm doing it, I'll find out.' She sipped her beer and said, 'So what've you been up to while I was in New York having the time of my life with my relatives?'

He said, 'Not too much. I've been trying to think of a movie I saw a long time ago.'

'Don't tell me, starring Jean Shaw. You still have the hots for her? She's too old for you.'

'As a matter of fact it was a Jean Shaw movie. You saw it too, because you mentioned it that night we saw Let It Ride.'

'What's the name of it?'

'Obituary.'

'The one, her husband knows he's gonna die of an incurable illness so he kills himself, then makes it look like she did it because she and her boyfriend took him for a lot of money?'

'That one.'

'I didn't see it.'

'How much of it do you remember?'

'I think I saw like the last half.'

'She go to jail?'

'Yes, there's a trial, and she's found guilty, not for what she did but for killing her husband, which she didn't do. Heavy irony.'

'Who was the guy, the hero?'

'I don't know. He had sort of a chiseled face and the muscle in his jaw kept jumping. He had sorta wet lips too. The other girl, the good one, is the daughter of Jean Shaw's husband by his first wife. The daughter, when her dad starts getting his own death notices clipped from out-of-town papers, the daughter right away thinks Jean's doing it, but nobody believes her, including the cop.'

'Victor Mature.'

'Yeah, that's who it is. I forgot his name.'

'The husband's afraid of death anyway--'

'It petrifies him. Anybody mentions death, he looks like he's gonna throw up. Until near the end of the picture, when he finds out he's got this incurable illness and he really is gonna die, then he accepts it. His daughter gives him a talk about dying being part of living and he buys it. It's really dumb.'

'So they send the death notices to scare hell out of him, set him up...'

'Yeah, and then the death threat, pay up or you're dead. Jean, the wife, is not only in on it, it's her idea from the beginning.'

'She delivers the payoff?'

'Yeah, but not really. Let me think... They get a phone call to deliver the money to a motel somewhere, a certain room. She goes there, gets another phone call to go someplace else. But first she switches the suitcase full of money with a suitcase full of newspapers or something that's already in the motel room. You understand?'

'Yeah, go on.'

'So then she makes the drop. Along comes some guy her boyfriend hired, a weirdo with big eyes--'

'Elisha Cook.'

'He swings with what he thinks is a suitcase full of money. He opens it, goes berserk when he sees newspapers and falls out of his hotel-room window.'

'He didn't know the wife was in on it.'

'He didn't know shit, he's just sorta in the picture.'

'Then what? The boyfriend...'

'The boyfriend goes to the motel and picks up the real stuff. He takes it to a cabin up in the mountains, opens the suitcase... You think Jean is jobbing this guy too, but it's all there.'