Chapter 14
Ricardo had recently read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears to his four-year-old niece. At first everything in that story was too hard or too soft, too much or too little, too big or too small, and then finally it was just right. It had made him think of his new lady. Always before, they had been younger than he was, and too something or other-too lazy or too busy, too shy or too selfish. With Charlotte, it was just right. And not only that, it was getting better all the time. He separated from her slowly. She tried to hold him.
“Charley, you’re the world’s best. Just no comparison. When the meeting’s over and I don’t have to do all that chartwork, let’s work up to twice a day. Do you want to go away somewhere? Brazil?”
She put her face against the hollow of his shoulder and followed him as he rolled. Then she sighed and pulled back slightly so fewer surfaces overlapped. But her mouth was still against his shoulder, and he didn’t hear what she said.
“What, honey?”
“You aren’t going to like what I have to tell you.”
He pulled back another fraction of an inch. Her eyes were still closed.
“You met somebody else. You decided to join the nuns.”
“I’m selling Surfside. Now darling, don’t jump. I had to do it. We’ll have quite a nice bit of money. Brazil, of course, anywhere. I know what you think about marriage, but I hope we can get a house-”
The hammering subsided slowly, and he was able to speak. “I don’t believe this.”
“I’m not strong enough, Rick.”
He had moved completely apart from her now. “Max paid out that money. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Nobody else knows that. I’ll be subpoenaed.”
“What’s a subpoena? A piece of paper. Get a good lawyer. You aren’t the first wife who signed the tax returns without reading them first. This thing at the track is just getting started! Eighty-five hundred in three hours. And the beautiful thing about it-absolutely without risk.”
“Absolutely without risk,” she repeated. “You see, I don’t believe that.” She sat up, pushing back her hair. “And if you’re caught, I’m part of it, aren’t I. I protect you and we divide your winnings. People know about us already. Linda, damn her, hired Shayne, the private detective. He’s a clever, ruthless man.”
“He may be all that,” Ricardo said, “but he isn’t allowed in the lockup kennel.”
“I wouldn’t be sure of anything with that man. He’s an outlaw now, and he smells money. I’m afraid of him. You and I are no match for that kind of person.”
“You tell me exactly what you’re afraid of. I’ll tell you exactly how we deal with it.”
She was off the bed now. She went to the refrigerator and took out the ice and the vodka. She said without turning, “It’s a waste of time. I already signed.”
He stood up slowly, again feeling the pounding in his temples. “When?”
“Over coffee and brandy, in Zell’s office, two hours ago. I’m sorry. I’ll try to make it up to you.”
“How?” he shouted. “You don’t realize what we’ve got going. I put three years into that, and there it is, finally. If we take it easy, if we don’t push it, it can go on and on and on. And you threw it away-”
“I had to.”
“Why did you have to? Why didn’t you talk to me first? What about all those things you’ve been saying to me in bed? What was it, bullshit to keep me contented?”
“No! I want to be with you all the time.”
“And slip me a twenty under the tablecloth so I can pay the check. Didn’t you ever hear of machismo? We don’t like to take money that way.”
“I thought you might get a job at another track-”
“I explained it to you! I’d have to spend ten years cleaning up turds, and why would they give me my own kennel even then? It’s working! And because you were scared for an hour or two-scared of a private detective-why aren’t you scared of me? Don’t you know about Cubans? Hot-blooded. We want to have some say about the conditions of life. We don’t like to take twenties from middle-aged women.”
She was breathing quickly. “I beg you-”
He shouted again and came at her. He could hardly see through the pink haze. He was going to smash this woman’s face…
Dropping the glass, she ran past, striking out at him. His fingers slipped on her bare shoulder. Things spilled out of her purse. He stopped short when he saw that she had a gun.
“Be careful!” she warned. “I’m perfectly calm.” That was untrue; the gun was shaking badly. “I won’t have it, do you hear? I won’t have you hit me. You stand there, and let me get dressed and out of your life.”
“Charley,” he said, confused.
“I had a decision to make, and I made it. I haven’t made many decisions in my life, but by God I made that one.”
The haze receded, and Ricardo saw her more clearly. “A gun,” he said softly. “Sweetheart, we’ve just been fucking. They don’t go together.”
He put out his hand, and the sight of this beautiful naked woman pointing a gun at him seemed so unlikely that he was convinced she would hand it to him.
“Don’t!” she screamed. The gun was all the way out between them, and it was pointed at his crotch, naturally. “I’ll try not to kill you. But I’ll hurt you badly if you come another step.”
He lowered his hands. “You really are scared of me, aren’t you? That’s funny, because I love you, for Christ’s sake.”
“You do not. Liar. You planned it all in advance, for the money. You told me.”
“To start with, sure. If I go across the room and sit down, will you point that at the floor or someplace? I feel tender right there.”
After a moment she brought the gun back in to her chest. “I’m not naive enough to believe-”
“Charley, I wouldn’t hurt you. Jesus, seeing that look in your eye-you were one second away from pulling that trigger.”
“One half second.” She lowered the gun the rest of the way. “And then I would have been in a real mess.”
“How much is he paying?”
She bit her lip. “The overall price is two and a half million. I know that’s not as much as-”
“Two and a half! Two and a half! It was five last week.”
He studied her. Various counters began clicking, and he said quietly, “You think I killed Max.”
Her eyes darted over the room, never fixing directly on him.
“Sure you do,” Ricardo said. “You think I racked him up and set him on fire. You see it on TV all the time. The young buck with a hard-on. The wife in menopause. The husband with all the money. And with us, it wasn’t just the savings account and the insurance. We had a real plan. We couldn’t do anything about it as long as he was alive. And now that I think of it, the night of that accident, you had the pip, such as it is these days, and stayed home to go to bed early. You don’t know where I was at two in the morning.”
“That’s true, I don’t.”
“But that wouldn’t be enough to make you sell for two and a half. What else?”
“Oh, there’s more! I’ve known all along that you did it, and I didn’t care, why the devil should I? I would have done it myself if I’d had the courage. I thought of it long before you came on the scene, my friend! It was all right as long as it was just my mind. The sex was all right tonight, wasn’t it?”
“Super.”
“It could have gone on, I think. But we’re talking about it now, and that’s always a bad idea. You still have almost a month. You can make quite a tidy sum. Keep the whole thing. Then if you ever feel like taking me to dinner you can pay the check with your own twenty dollars and feel manly! Take me to Brazil and you can buy both tickets.”
