“And did nothing?” Kelly Cruz said.
“He had money and we were well situated,” Mrs. Plum said. “He made no demands on me. It was easier to drink.”
“Not for the girls,” Kelly Cruz said.
“I loved those girls,” Mr. Plum said. “And they loved me.”
“And you destroyed them,” Mrs. Plum said. “And now you’ve killed Florence.”
“Betsy,” Mr. Plum said. “Please. Can’t this wait until our guests have departed?”
Mrs. Plum finished her Manhattan. With no apparent thought, Mr. Plum refilled her glass. She began to cry silently.
“See him,” she gasped. “See him? That’s what he’s like.
He’s like a reptile. He doesn’t hear. He doesn’t feel. He has no body warmth.”
Kelly Cruz nodded.
“I am not a reptile, Betsy,” Plum said. “I am a man with the feelings and impulses of my gender.”
“And you killed Florence,” Mrs. Plum said.
Her voice was beginning to soar again.
“You killed Florence because you were jealous that she was having sex with other people.”
“The tape was insulting,” Mr. Plum said.
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“And you killed her.”
“She betrayed me, Betsy.”
“And you killed her,” Mrs. Plum said. “Say it. Say you killed her. Say something for once in your weird reptilian existence, say something true. Say . . . you . . . killed . . . her!”
“You can’t know,” Mr. Plum said. “None of you can know how I loved those girls.”
“Which is . . . why you . . . killed her?”
Mrs. Plum struggled to speak.
“You . . . loved her so . . . much . . . you killed her?”
“I killed her to keep her from becoming worse than she had become,” Mr. Plum said. “I really had no choice.”
He picked up the silver shaker, found that it was empty, put it down and rang the little bell for the maid.
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61
K elly Cruz turned her drink slowly on the bar in front of her. She was drinking Jack Daniels on the rocks.
“So what about Darnell and Ralston?” she said to Jesse.
They were sitting at the bar in Jesse’s hotel. Jesse was drinking a Virgin Mary. Kelly Cruz had on a black dress with spaghetti straps and a skirt that stopped above her knees. She had a nice tan. A small black purse lay on the bar beside her drink.
“We busted them yesterday, for statutory rape.”
“Will it hold in court?”
“We got Darnell on videotape.”
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Righteous tape?”
“Absolutely.”
“How about Ralston?”
“If our witness holds,” Jesse said.
“She might not?”
Jesse shrugged.
“She’s a kid,” he said.
“Think they’ll do time?”
“Not my area,” Jesse said.
“What do you think?” Kelly Cruz said. “Cop to cop.”
Jesse smiled.
“I don’t think about that,” he said. “Too many variables.
How good is their lawyer? How good is the prosecutor? Will their sexual history be admitted? Will they plead out?”
