“It’s in the Lacey journal, his confession. There’s a lot more in it besides the Kennedy killings. But there’s no gold, Chita.”
“You have it!” she said. “Where is the gold?”
“Sir Anthony Wells?” said Walter ignoring her question. “The American Ambassador? What about them?”
“Overzealous associates.”
“Overzealous associates!” cried Walter. “That’s it? Just like that.” Conchita Crystal shrugged her shoulders.
“So, then you decided to hire me. Harry was hiding and wouldn’t even tell you where he was.”
“Not me, Walter. I never heard of you. Louis. Louis told me not to worry. He knew someone who could find Harry no matter where he had gone. Louis sent me to you. He said you weren’t working anymore, you had retired. But he was sure you would work for me.” The gleam in her eye, the smile on her lips, said it all-“Facil? You don’t know what easy is.”
Walter rubbed the back of his neck, shook his head and breathed slowly, deeply through his nose. He felt himself getting lightheaded. “I know,” he said. “You set me up real good. I found Harry for you and as soon as I did, you had someone on me. That we got away-me and Harry-was just a mistake. It didn’t matter, though. You figured out where I would hide him. ‘Someplace no one else could find him,’ isn’t that what you said? But you knew how to find that too. Devereaux found Harry through Isobel Gitlin. But it was you who went to New Mexico. It was you who killed him. It was you who took the document.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” she said. “And Louis never told me there would be any killing, not in London, not in New Mexico. Whoever he sent overdid it. There was no reason to kill Harry. It hurt me. I’m sorry. I’m deeply sorry-for Sadie Fagan too-but I can’t turn back the clock. I can’t make it unhappen.”
“You have anything to drink?” said Walter. “Something cold.”
“Sure. I’m sure I have some Coke.”
“Diet?”
“Walter, what other kind?” She patted her flat belly, inviting and secure within those skin-hugging jeans and a green silk blouse that also fit like it had been made just for her. She saw the look in his eyes. She smiled at him. One of those smiles again. A smile that never quit, equal parts magic and desire. Probably enough right there to melt the Czar’s gold, Walter thought. They walked into the kitchen. Walter was surprised to find it much smaller than he would have guessed.
“Why did you kill Harry?” he asked, as she poured the drink into a glass filled with crushed ice.
“I didn’t kill Harry. I told you. Things got out of hand. I don’t know how. I wasn’t there.”
“Sure you were, Chita. You were there. You were the only one there. You’re the one who shot him. You killed Harry.”
“Come on, Walter,” she said, throwing off his accusation as lightly as she might discard a sweater on a warm day. “What do you think I did? Go busting into his cabin, guns blazing, firing away? Shoot him down-grab Lacey’s papers and drive off? Is that how it happened?”
“No, that’s not how it happened.”
“Then what makes you think I had anything to do with it? How could I have been there?” Walter took the glass she offered, took a long sip and put it down on the kitchen counter.
“I knew it anyway,” Walter said. “But if there was any question, any doubt at all, you just told me you were there.” Chita looked at him, half a grin, half a rebuke written on her beautiful face. “Cabin?” Walter continued. “You said cabin. How would you know it was a cabin? And, Lacey’s papers. You called them papers. Not a journal, not a notebook, not a diary, not even a document-papers. How would you know that, if you hadn’t pushed them all together in a stack, packaged them and took them, leaving Harry dead on the floor.” Conchita Crystal had nothing to say. She’d run out of script. “And you weren’t even careful. The Russian cigarettes-‘papiroses,’ they call them. Just like the one you smoked the day you came to St. John, the one you lit up so dramatically at the bar. You probably have a pack in your purse right now-a couple of cartons in the pantry. Hard to find. Can’t get them at your neighborhood supermarket. Devereaux got them for you. You threw the butt on the floor and stepped on it, but the holder, the cardboard part, didn’t get squashed. If a man steps on one of those things, the whole thing gets flattened. A woman, however, a woman with high heels-she uses only the front of her shoe. You didn’t get the whole thing. You only stepped on the front of the butt.”
“My, what an imagination you have, Walter. You even know how I step on a cigarette.”
“The same way you did in Billy’s. The same exotic cigarette. The same crushed butt. What made you think you could mislead me?”
Chita Crystal said nothing.
“You know what made me sure it was you? You know how I knew it was you, how I knew from the minute I found Harry’s body? Do you?” Still she was silent. “Answer me, goddamnit!”
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Harry was shot so close there were powder burns on his shirt and an indentation larger than the bullet itself. An indentation the size of the barrel. You hugged him. You brought him close to you, up tight. And you reached up, pushed a little single-shot pistol, no bigger than a cigarette lighter, against his heart and pulled the trigger.” Walter had to catch his breath now. He took another, longer, bigger swallow of his drink. Conchita Crystal, she did that which was most natural to her, that which she had been doing since she was fifteen.
“I know you want this,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse, leaving it tucked into her jeans, riding on her hips, low beneath her waist. With the slick ease of a poisonous snake, her hands slid the open blouse around behind her, showing him her breasts, the silky smooth curve of her belly, and as the open blouse fell from her shoulders, as she pulled each arm through the sleeves, she was bare from the waist up. “It’s all yours, Walter. Touch it. Go on, touch it. It’s all yours-today, tomorrow, forever. You and me.” She could see what she was doing to him. How many men have reacted the same way? How many over thirty years? Who could resist? Facil. She kept her eyes on his, smiled the smile that always got her what she wanted, and with a twist of her fingers, unsnapped the top of her jeans and began slowly pulling its zipper open. She no longer had to say it-not in English-not in Spanish. Walter Sherman had what she wanted and she had what he wanted. “Walter,” she said, walking up to him, right up to him, taking one hand and putting it on his neck, running it across his shoulders, up into his long hair, pulling him closer with the other arm, that hand touching his hips and moving over them, around behind, into the small of his back. “Walter.” She squeezed against him and he held her tight, his own hand moving down her back as she pushed hard against him. She knew when things were going her way. She felt it. To Walter, she felt so warm, smelled so wonderful. She never stopped looking him in the eye, and then she drew his lips to hers and kissed him. Her tongue fired into his mouth. Her eyes shut. His didn’t. But he held her close, as close as he could.
“Did Devereaux ever tell you,” he whispered, “about Leonard Martin? Did he ever mention the name?”
“No,” she answered.
“He should have.”
Walter shot Conchita Crystal in the heart. The tiny pistol he pushed against her smooth warm brown breast had only a single shot. The force of the small caliber shell was not enough to even produce an exit wound. If she knew what happened at all, it could only have been for a fraction of a second. He let go and she slumped to the floor, dead.
THE ENDING
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone.
Thursday is a good day to die.
For Jews, and others with similar beliefs about the nature of death and the behavior required of survivors, you can have a funeral before the weekend. If your faith dictates otherwise, requiring one or more time-consuming ceremonial activities, or if you have no religion at all to guide you, and in its place find it desirable to have the
