“You have to swear on your own grave,” she said. “Swear or you’ll die seven times.”
“I swear on my own grave,” I said, trying not to cringe away.
“Okay,” she said, suddenly breaking away and circling in a tight zoo animal orbit. “Okay okay okay. We’ll need a towel.”
I got one of the sopping wet towels out of the bathtub while she fished the bullet out of the toilet. I held the towel out to her and she deposited the flattened bullet on the towel’s sagging center. Then she wrapped the bullet up in another towel and handed the bundle back to me.
“Take this too,” she said, scooping up the briefcase and pressing it into my arms. “And the cat head.”
She picked up a pink net bath poof and spoke gently to it before setting it carefully on top of my dripping burden.
“Hurry,” Roxette said. “You have to make the seven o’clock news on Channel 7. Remember you swore on your own grave, Charlie.”
I had no idea who Charlie was, but at that point all I cared about was getting the hell out of there.
“I swear,” I said.
She hustled me out the door and swiftly locked it behind me. As soon as I reached the end of the hallway, I ditched the wet towels, the bullet and the bath poof and set the briefcase down on the carpet. It took me a second of staring at the little brass line-up of three numbered wheels to remember the combination I had seen Lia use in my office that day. 666. The number of the beast.
Maybe Roxette’s meth-induced madness was catching or maybe it was just my own sleep-deprived state of mind, but as I popped open the latches I had a sudden irrational fear that the case would contain not money but something awful. It took everything I had to make my hands push open that case.
It was full of money, just like Ridgeway had said. There was no time to count, but it looked like a lot. Brick upon brick of banded hundreds, along with Lia’s original handwritten note. I closed the case. I’d count the money later.
When I got back into the living room, I found Malloy grimly battling to maintain his virtue and keep Taylor’s fingers out of his fly. A fat white chihuahua was furiously humping his leg.
“Come on, baby,” Taylor was saying. “Don’t be shy.”
“Christ,” Malloy said. “What took you so long?”
He extricated himself from Taylor’s boozy affections and looked down at the briefcase, eyes widening. As he pried himself loose, Taylor burst into braying sobs.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. “Before—”
Of course, that was the moment Thick Vic picked to show back up with the cavalry that was supposed to help get Roxette out of the bathroom.
His assistants were a couple of aging bikers, a hamburger and hotdog pair with matching leather vests and matching scars. The burger was short and barrel-shaped with more white hair on his chinless face than on his large shiny head. The hotdog was tall and scrawny with his long black hair bound into two braids like that Indian who used to cry about pollution on TV. Turned out that guy wasn’t really Native American after all. I didn’t think this guy was either.
Seeing Vic again after nearly ten years probably would have been a lot tougher if the girl who used to care about him hadn’t been buried out in the desert along with Jesse Black. Standing there in Taylor Simone’s living room holding a briefcase full of stolen cash, I just sized Vic up along with his two buddies and decided they posed no threat.
Vic’s long dark hair was mostly gone and what was left had been scraped back into a frizzy little ponytail. His fragile, skeletal physique made the desk clerk at the Palmview look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and his face and arms were pocked with scars and scabs from needles and endless picking at imaginary crank bugs. If you slugged him, he would probably fall into a heap of dust on the piss-stained carpet.
“Get your shit and get the fuck out,” Taylor screeched suddenly, reaching for Malloy. “I got a new boyfriend now who respects me, you junkie piece of shit.”
“Jesus,” Malloy said, stepping back out of her desperate grasp.
“You lying fucking whore!” Vic hollered. “You told me you were still sore from that last surgery and now you’re banging some other guy behind my back?”
“Maybe if you could make that big dead thing between your legs do something other than lay there like a fucking roadkill snake,” Taylor said, staggering to her feet, “I wouldn’t have to go for other guys!”
“I got no problem getting it up for Roxette,” Vic said.
Taylor let out a shriek and launched herself at Vic. The two of them tumbled awkwardly to the floor, sending platform heels and panties flying in their wake. The two bikers looked at me and Malloy and shrugged. The hotdog lit a cigarette and the burger wandered into the kitchen. Roxette was still howling in the bathroom. Malloy got a light from the hotdog and motioned toward the door. Vic and Taylor crashed into a spindly wire CD tower that was sturdier than either of them, knocking it over and scattering disks and splintered jewel cases across the carpet. No one seemed to notice the briefcase. No one tried to stop us when we left.
Nowhere to go but back to the Palmview. Malloy left to return the rental car and get food and cigarettes. I sat numbly on the bed with the duffel bag containing my meager worldly possessions and the briefcase containing what counted out to exactly one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
I still felt raw and strange from the bad business with Jesse and beneath that was the dull, constant ache of grief over Didi and Sam. Over my house and my business and everything that used to matter. There didn’t seem to be any kind of order or logic to this madness. Crazy, random things just kept on happening, dragging me along behind them on an unbreakable choke chain. I really wanted to be some kind of badass avenging angel, and standing over Jesse’s grave I’d almost felt like I could be, but now I felt scattered and unfocused. I couldn’t find my way back up into the driver’s seat.
This game was far from over and wouldn’t be over until Ridgeway was dead. Killing Jesse was a start, but the truth was, Jesse was just a tool. It was Ridgeway who was calling all the shots and I couldn’t let myself disintegrate before I got to him. In the meantime, I needed to do something I could be sure of. Something to take control.
So I did two things. First I took the money out of the briefcase and packed it into my duffel bag, refilling the case with hand towels and toiletries from the Hilton until the weight felt right. Then I pulled on the stiletto-heeled designer boots.
When Malloy returned, I stood by the bed, facing the door. Hip cocked, smiling. I was naked except for the boots. My lips were slick with the cheap red lipstick. Even with the short hair, I knew I looked damn good. I looked like a woman.
“Lalo,” I said. “Come here.”
Malloy cautiously set his grocery bag down on the little table, pushing the door shut behind him.
“Angela” he said, but I didn’t let him finish.
I could feel him fighting himself, trying to hold back and stay cool but I knew it couldn’t last. After all, I am a professional. I broke through his resistance as easily as he had taken down that thug in Vegas.
The raw lust that sprang free from behind that wall of stoic resistance was intoxicating. I needed it like other people need air and I filled myself up with it, gorged myself on it as he lifted me off my feet, holding me breathless against him and then tossing me down onto the rickety bed. He came down after me, heavy and eager, big hands all over me just like I wanted. But when I reached down to unzip his trousers, the wall was back as he suddenly dodged me, rolling away to one side.
“Angel,” he said again. “I...”
I tried to kiss him again, but he wouldn’t let me. His face was flushed pink, his eyes narrow.
“Look, Angel,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
I had a sudden chilly fear that he would turn out to be the kind of guy who can’t get past the porn star thing. The kind of guy who’s turned off by the sheer number of priors. But my instinct told me he wasn’t turned off in the slightest. His body was practically vibrating with leashed desire. I couldn’t imagine what was holding him back until he spoke.
“I...” he said, eyes cutting away from mine. “I’m not... built like those guys in your movies.”
