She held the position, the back of her legs burning. “How could he?” She bent lower, feeling the burn. She straightened up, sucked in a deep breath. All of a sudden, she was angry. Mad at Nick. And he hadn’t done anything. Not really. She was the one who’d strayed. The one who got pregnant. No good blaming him. But where was he? Where had he been tonight?
She bent to the ground again, finished her stretches. She saw two lights far out at sea, green and white, a sailboat on a starboard tack. It had been four years since she’d been on a sailboat, the last time she’d seen her father alive. They’d let her mother’s ashes fly in the wind. Two days later he was dead by his own hand. He just couldn’t live without her.
“Oh, Dad, we could’ve worked through it.”
She’d been too depressed to spread his ashes. Instead she left the job to his brothers. She was depressed now, like she’d been then and it was taking her down. She raised her eyes to the stars. “Oh, God, I want to keep this baby.”
But she knew she couldn’t and it made her heart ache.
She sighed.
Metal against metal clanged up ahead. A city truck was parked at the end of the pier. They were locking the gate, keeping the Belmont Pier safe from the homeless who might spend the night out there. She used to fish the pier with her dad till all hours of the night when she was in high school. Now no children fished with their fathers at night. The pier was locked off. The fish, like the pier, safe till morning.
She sucked in a lungful of air, one more deep bend, knees straight. She dug her palms into the sand. Her legs screamed. She exhaled and eased out of the bend. A chill rippled through her, she felt herself being watched, she stood still, an elk exposed, looking for the wolf. Slowly, she moved her eyes around the night, then bit back a gasp as something moved under the pier. There was someone there. She’d been right, somebody was watching her.
She grabbed another quick breath, then sprinted back the way she’d come, legs pumping, determined to run till exhaustion pushed all thought from her mind.
Ripples curdled up Horace’s spine as he stood on the beach and watched the woman run toward the pier. Something sinister churned his stomach. To do a woman whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seemed a sin, evil.
But she’d seen his face and maybe Striker’s too, certainly his car. That’s what really worried the man and there was nothing Horace could do about that. Striker called the tune, paid the bills. Horace held a hand out in front of himself. Not so steady.
Any minute Virgil would be back with the van and he’d have to make a decision. He was supposed to kill the woman, make it look like an accident. It was going to be hard enough doing her. Horace fought the vomit that threatened when he thought about it. How in the world he could do it with Virgil around was anybody’s guess.
“Stupid,” he muttered. No way should he have his brother with him, but Ma had insisted. She thought he was a process server. Maybe if she knew what he really was, she’d have kept her darling at home. But she didn’t and she didn’t. Virgil needed to spend time with his brother, she’d said. He needed to know what it was like to work for a living. The man was thirty-nine years old for fuck’s sake and now she wants him to see what it’s like to have a job.
He closed his eyes. A cricket chirped in the distance. It reminded him of Yuma, where he’d grown up. He used to make up games with big brother Virgil outside in the dry desert air. Make something up, that’s it. An idea started to take shape.
He opened his eyes, looked around, felt the night. The gay bar across the street was quiet. Every now and then cars came by, but their occupants wouldn’t be looking out to the beach, not at this time of night, and they’d most likely have their radios on.
Tires screeched around a corner.
Horace turned toward the sound. Damn, Virgil had the brights on. Was he trying to wake up every cop in Long Beach? The breeze picked up, tickling the back of his neck. The blue-grey light of a television flickered in the house next to the bar. The porch light came on as Virgil pulled up to the curb.
“The fuck’s the matter with you?” Horace said when he got in the van.
“You said you were in a hurry.”
“Turn off the brights.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“You made so much noise, you got some couch potato across the street to get off his ass and turn on his porch light. Probably watching us right now.”
“I won’t do it again. I’ll be careful. You’ll see.”
“Okay, okay.” He paused. “Look, I gotta get the woman with her husband, so I can serve them the subpoena at the same time, otherwise it don’t count. But she knows that, see. That’s why they never get together.” Horace was making up his story as he went along.
“So, what are we gonna do?”
“We’re gonna grab her, handcuff her and put her in the van. I got cuffs in the glove box. Then we drive to her husband’s place where I serve them the subpoena.”
“Isn’t that kidnapping or something?”
“Not really. Process servers got special powers. We’re allowed to do stuff like that, because we’re acting for the law. Without us, nobody could ever get sued, then where would America be? All the lawyers would be out of work.”
“How we gonna get her?” Virgil didn’t even think of questioning what Horace said. He believed it just as if he’d seen it on TV.
“You get down to the water and scare her, so she goes the other way. Think you can keep up with her?”
“She’s a girl, Horace.”
“Right. Chase her back to the pier. She’s gonna have to turn right after she passes the pool. I’ll be waiting there with the van. Then we got her.”
The effects of the alcohol seemed gone now. Sweat rippled through her hair, down her neck. She was a train, her bare feet on the wet sand the wheels going over the tracks, her breath a steam engine chugging through a canyon. She could go forever.
Someone was up ahead. A man. She noted his size as she closed the distance between them. The white of his T-shirt stood out like a beacon even on this dark night. All of a sudden she knew who it was. She flashed on the image of the big man in the supermarket. Ferret Face coming into the Lounge had been no coincidence.
Maggie stopped, panting. Breeze cooled her sweat, prickly rivulets of cold. She looked around. A pair of joggers were behind the man, going the other way. She could scream out. But why? The man hadn’t done anything. She remembered him from the store. He’d seemed slow. Anyway she could out run him if he started anything. But what if he had a gun? And where was Ferret Face?
The big man started to move. Coming toward her at a walk. He was still quite a distance away and she couldn’t see his face yet, but she knew it was him.
Maggie backed up a step and the man stopped. She stopped too. Had he come here for her? Why? He’d certainly known her in the store. Or at least he thought he had. What was it he’d said? Saw you in the newspaper. She’d been afraid then, a little. That’s why she’d left the cart.
Again she thought about shouting out, but the joggers were farther away now. Almost out of sight, out of hearing distance.
“Wanna come to the van?” the big man called.
“I’m outta here,” she muttered.
“What?”
Maggie spun around and poured on the speed. The man was nuts, she thought as she ran back toward the pier. She looked up toward Ocean Avenue on her right. There were people up there. A two minute sprint across the sand and she’d be safe. But Ferret Face might be up there, too. Waiting.
She kept on, running strong. She looked left, out over the sea. She saw the lights on that sailboat. It was inside the breakwater. She was a strong swimmer, but could she get into the water before the man was on her? She didn’t think so. She kept on.
