'I should've shot you. I was going to. I just wanted to see you sweat first.'
'What the hell?' said Weiss with a laugh. 'No, I mean it.
What the hell? You leave the door open like that so I walk in and then you're gonna shoot me?'
'I saw you coming. I saw you from the window.'
'So what? You don't even know me, you crazy bitch.'
' Aaah, ' she said again. 'I know enough. I knew you were coming, didn't I? Someone like you. Some thug he'd send.'
Weiss made a ch sound, air between his teeth. 'I'm a thug now? What is this?'
'I know what you are.' Adrienne Chalk looked him over. Meanwhile, she worked her jaw with one hand to make sure it still worked. Weiss was large and powerful, and he'd slapped her hard. 'You're some private investigator type. Am I right? Ex-cop, you look like. I know. Nice, respectable people, they slip you an envelope, you make things go away. Anything that doesn't fit the nice, respectable picture- poof! right?-they pay you; it's gone. He'd like that, I bet. Mr. Nice Respectable. With his wife and kids and his house and his church and whatever bullshit. He'd like it if I just went away. Well, you go back and you tell him he can forget it. 'Cause guess what? I'm his memory. I'm all that's left of Suzanne, and I'm the price he pays for his nice respectable life. And if he don't like it, he can go fuck himself and so can you.'
Weiss listened, leaning against the wall. He looked at her. Sitting on the bed with her legs curled under her. Snarling at him with the fat lip he'd given her. What a skank she was. Was it possible she was talking about Andy Bremer? She thought Bremer had sent him to make her disappear, was that it?
Weiss asked her. 'You mean Bremer? You think Andy Bremer sent me? The Realtor guy from Hannock?'
Chalk sneered and eyed him sideways. For the first time, she seemed unsure of herself. 'What're you talking about? Obviously Bremer. I saw your plates, the California plates. Who else do I know in California?'
Weiss cocked his head. 'You see a lot, I'll give you that.'
'I knew what he'd try. Fuck you. You tell him: 'Fuck you,' I said. And fuck you too.'
She massaged her jaw with her hand some more. Weiss considered her. His temper had cooled now. He was sorry he'd hit her. But not that sorry. The skank.
'So let me get this,' he said. 'Every two months you show up at the Hannock Super 8 and Bremer pays the tab. Now you figure he sent me to make you go away?'
Chalk kept eyeing him, snarly and uncertain. 'You trying to tell me Bremer didn't send you? How come you know all about him, then? Huh? Who are you? If he didn't send you, who did?'
But Weiss was ahead of her. It was coming clear to him now. 'I get it. You're blackmailing him, right? Is that it? All that stuff about you're his memory. You're the price he pays. You got something out of his past, and you're blackmailing him with it.'
'Fuck you. Who are you anyway?'
'What is it? What've you got on him?'
'What're you, a cop?' said Adrienne Chalk. 'You're no cop.'
'Who's Suzanne? You said you were all that's left of Suzanne. Who's she?'
Spit fizzled between Chalk's lips as she glared at him.
Weiss made a noise. He pushed off the wall, straightened. He lumbered along the side of the bed, big in the narrow passage. Chalk scrambled away from him to the far side of the mattress.
'You keep away from me!' she said.
Weiss didn't answer. He went to the bedside table. He pushed the romance novel aside. A Ring for Cinderella, my ass, he thought. He lifted the first manila envelope underneath, opened it, looked at the papers in it. Sex stuff, money stuff, stuff from one of the strip clubs across the street. Femme Fatale was right.
'You work in this place?' he said over his shoulder.
'Yeah. So what?'
'You blackmail the guys who come in here too.'
'So what?' she said. 'Some of them.'
He picked up the next envelope. It hit the brass ashtray. The ashtray fell to the wooden floor with a clang. It spilled butts and ash over the floorboards. In the envelope, sure enough: photographs. Guys with topless women on their laps. Grainy printouts, from a phone camera probably. Addresses, web pages. All kinds of information on these poor hard-ons.
'That's my shit,' Adrienne Chalk protested. 'I got copies. I got plenty of copies, believe me.'
'I believe you. Who's Suzanne?'
Weiss went through the loose papers, tossing them aside. They floated down to the floor to lie on top of the envelopes. Finally the table was empty.
He rounded on Chalk. 'Come here,' he said.
'Stay away from me.'
'This is all small-time shit. Husbands getting lap dances. This is penny-ante shit. No one pays good money for this. If you think Bremer's coming after you, he's paying you good money. What've you got on him? Who's Suzanne?'
'Fuck you. I don't have to tell you nothing.'
But she was scared. Her eyes moved. Weiss saw it. Her eyes moved to the cabinet on the lower half of the table. She was scared and she couldn't help herself. Weiss pulled the cabinet open.
'Hey,' she said. 'Hey. That's my shit. I got copies.'
He found another bunch of manila envelopes in there. He pulled one out.
'Gimme that,' said Adrienne Chalk.
She made a move to come toward him on the bed. Weiss cocked his hand at his ear as if he'd hit her again. He would have hit her again. He was well past ready. He'd had enough of her. She scrambled back out of his reach.
He opened the envelope. He pinched the sheaf of papers inside, tugged it out. He scanned the paragraphs, lifted the pages, looked at the photos. He went over the whole story, his stomach churning. Jesus, he thought. Jesus.
'Suzanne Graves,' he said, reading the name off the newspaper printout. 'What was she? Your sister?' He got no answer. He glanced up. 'Listen, I'm sick of you. Don't fuck with me. What was she, your sister?'
'Half,' grunted Adrienne Chalk, sulky. She touched her hair as she said it. She shifted where she was sitting and sort of posed for him, arching her back, showing off her tits, which were all right. She must've sensed Weiss was looking her over, comparing her to the photos of Suzanne Graves. Graves was prettier, a lot prettier. Which gave Weiss another lurching pain in his belly. Suzanne Graves not only looked like Adrienne Chalk with her pinched, mean features; she also had the high cheeks and the fine complexion and the slightly uncanny gaze that made her look like Julie Wyant too. It was easy to see the truth. Adrienne Chalk wasn't Julie's mother. Her half sister was; Suzanne Graves was.
'That's a crap way to die,' said Weiss, rapping the printout with his knuckle. 'Got her head caved in with a clawhammer, it says. That's a crap way to die.'
'While she was asleep,' Chalk spat angrily. 'He just crept up on her in her bed while she was asleep.'
Weiss read from the printout. ''Police are hunting the dead woman's husband, Charles Graves.''
'Look at the picture,' said Adrienne Chalk.
Weiss had already looked. He saw how it was. The photo-captioned: 'Charles Graves, wanted for questioning by the police in the murder of his wife'-showed Andy Bremer as a younger man. So Bremer had been married to Suzanne. They'd had Julie together and another daughter too, according to the paper. Then, when Julie was maybe thirteen or so, Bremer had murdered the girls' mother in her bed. Crept up on her while she was sleeping with a clawhammer in his hand and pounded her skull until her brains burst out onto the pillow. Nice. Weiss thought about Bremer the way he was now. Doing the dishes in the kitchen. Joking around with his wife and children. Singing in church. Nice.
'He killed her, huh,' he said aloud. 'He killed his first wife.'
'My sister. That's right.'
'In Ohio, this was?'
'In Akron, yeah.'
'Seventeen years ago, it says.'
