The Twenty-Year Death (61 page)

“Shem, you tell me what the hell about the police right this instant.”

“You need to get out of here. You need to leave right away.”

“Shem—”

“Were you married?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

“The police came to Joe’s funeral yesterday. They wanted to know where you were. They say you killed and burned your husband.”

“My husband?” Her arms had turned to gooseflesh. With just the one earring hanging, her head looked lopsided.

“In Denver. No. Cleveland.”

“What else did they say?”

“They know Joe’s skull was fractured. They said they aren’t sure it was murder, but...”

“But they brought up Cleveland. Paul. That was years ago.” She started forward, but stopped, not sure where she was going.

“Did you kill your husband?” I said.

That woke her back up. She grabbed the other earring. “You don’t know what he was like, so don’t you even start. And what does it matter to you anyway?”

She wasn’t saying no, and even though I knew the answer was yes, I began to feel uneasy with the idea of her running, where I wouldn’t know where she was, and I’d worry each minute we were apart.

“Paul had no vision,” Vee said. She went to the armoire and pulled out a handful of clothes on their hangers and threw them onto the bed. “He was keeping me trapped in that little town, and a girl can only take that for so long, you know? But he just wouldn’t listen.”

“What are you doing?”

“What am I doing? I’m leaving. I’m getting the hell out of this city. I’m not stupid. If they’re talking about Paul, it’s because they want to hang your kid on me too, and I’m not getting sent up for something I didn’t have anything to do with.”

Hearing her say it, that she was going to leave, that she was doing what I wanted her to do, suddenly filled me with an even greater sense of dread.

She dumped more clothing onto the bed and pulled out a suitcase. “You better get out of here. Carlton’s supposed to be out all day, but you never know with him.”

That threat didn’t even stir me. My mind was trying to catch on something. Something I hadn’t thought through in the whole night of thinking. “Where will you go?” I said.

“Who cares? Not here.”

Yes, ‘who cares?’ That was Vee. I knew then what I had probably already known. Even if she ran, they would catch her.

She had her bag half packed, and was forcing stuff into it with no regard.

Yeah, they would catch her, because if she ran it would look guilty as anything, and they’d put everything into catching her. “You can’t run,” I said.

She looked at me and put her hands on her hips. “You’re the one who said I should leave.”

“I was wrong. I hadn’t thought it through. They’ll think for sure you did it then, if you run.”

“So I’m supposed to wait right where they probably know where I am. That’s your brilliant idea.”

I was desperate suddenly for a way to keep her from walking out the door. “You can’t leave me,” I said.

“Oh, Mr. Sentimental. You got my face beat in and then got me tangled up in a murder. I should have left you the day I met you. You’d have thought I’d never been around the block before, starstruck for a has-been writer. All because one of your books made me cry as a girl.”

“I got the money.”

That stopped her. She did want that money. “What do you mean you got the money?”

“I got the money. I’m getting it. The whole two million, it’s mine. Now that Joe’s dead.” I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the money, just like I knew they’d catch her when she ran, and she’d pull me into it.

“You’re sure?”

I nodded.

She blinked rapidly, and shook her head. “How long till you get it?” She spoke deliberately, as though she was afraid I might skitter away if she talked too suddenly.

“I don’t know. I’m meeting with the lawyer soon. Today maybe. These things take time. Maybe a week or two. Certainly by the end of the month.”

“The end of the month!”

“It’ll be sooner than that.” I had no idea how long it would be, but as badly as I needed her to run before, I needed to keep her there with me now.

Her face was dead serious as she looked at me across the clothing-strewn bed. “I want us to get married,” she said.

I almost laughed at that one. Married! I couldn’t even believe she’d been married before I knew her. And she killed that guy. “I can’t. I’m still married to Clotilde.”

“You can get a divorce. She’s in the loony bin.”

I shook my head. “I’m not getting a divorce.”

“Well, something. I need to know that I’ll get my cut of what’s coming.”

“You’ll get your cut,” I said. I saw in her eyes that I had her hooked. I’d be able to keep her where I could watch her. Having killed Joe was already nearly killing me, my whole chest on fire from reflux, but I wasn’t going to sit in any electric chair.

“Fifty-fifty.”

“We’ll see.”

“Fifty-fifty,” she said again. “It’s my neck hanging out there.”

I saw then what you probably saw at the start. They’d get her if she stayed or if she left.

“Sure. Of course,” I said. “That’s fair.”

She searched my face, still wary. “You know what I’d do to you if you cross me.”

“I’d never cross you.”

She was reluctant, but she must have decided that was the best she was going to get right then. She started putting clothing back into the armoire. I watched her do it, and I was suddenly more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life. Exhausted because there was only one way I would know she wouldn’t talk, and being
in the room with her after thinking that, well, it just got real hard. Carrying my body around seemed like a horrible inconvenience. My head was falling off my neck and my eyelids were like quarters over my eyes. I wanted to lie down and never get up again. Because I had to kill her, and that was worse even than thinking about how I’d already killed Joe.

“I’m so tired,” I said.

She went around the bed and sat down at the vanity. “So get out. Go home, sleep.”

I could tell by the way she said it that she was still awfully unsettled by the fact that the police were asking about her and bringing up what she thought was ancient history. If her nerves could be rattled so easily... Killing her really was my only choice.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said.

“I know that,” she said. “I’m probably safer with Carlton than anywhere else anyway. The cops wouldn’t touch one of Carlton’s girls.” She folded a tissue, put it between her lips, and closed her mouth quickly and opened it, blotting her lipstick.

As she talked I felt heavier and heavier. Could Browne really protect her from a murder charge? And what about protecting her from him? He’d attacked her at the sight of me. I had a feeling he wouldn’t take it too kindly if he knew where she had gone afterwards, what she had done with me. Men like Carlton Browne don’t let any of the dirty work get anywhere near them, so they always have deniability, and this was right up next to him.

Vee finished her makeup, stood, and turned to me. “Well, how do I look?” The bruise was still visible, but it wasn’t as pronounced. Even with the puffiness on that side of her face, she looked like a million bucks. She knew what she had, and she knew how to use it.

“Like a killer,” I said.

She laughed, a big open-mouthed laugh, throwing her head back to really get it out there. “Come here. Let me give you a present.” I didn’t move, and she pouted a little, but then she came over to me. She gave me a kiss on the cheek. It made me think that there was no way I’d ever be able to go through with it.

Then, with her mouth right near my ear. “Who was that girl you were with the other day?”

I looked at her, incredulous, and I knew I’d be able to kill her after all. “You’re all dolled up for some other man, and you’re going to be jealous?”

Her face turned mean again. “That’s work, and you know it. Carlton expects me to be on call.”

“That was Joe’s fiancée,” I said.

Her expression softened. “Is that why her face was all runny? Oh little girl, you’ve got a lot to learn.” And she laughed her ugly laugh again, and I could have killed her right then if I knew how to do it without putting me in it.

“I better go,” I said.

“We ought to celebrate,” she said.

“Celebrate?”

“The money,” she said. “We can have a lunch in the dining room. I think that’s safe enough, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, it is. Just give me a couple of hours to get myself together. I need to, I don’t know, untwist my mind. Two million dollars! Sweet Mary! I always knew I deserved this.” And she kissed me again and then that horrible laugh. It made my stomach turn over. “Ha! Two million dollars. My luck’s really changing now.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, thinking, if only she knew. “Noon, we’ll say. Downstairs. I’m going now.”

“Wait,” she said, and she stepped forward, and wiped some lipstick from my cheek. It was such a gentle gesture, and it made me sick. Because sure I’d killed Joe, but that was an accident. And this... This wouldn’t be.

She stepped back. “Okay,” she said.

But nothing was okay. Nothing.

The thing about killing is... You see, when you’ve decided to kill someone... What am I trying to say? I think I mentioned that Joe wasn’t the first person I’d seen who’d met a violent end. I had a girlfriend, a girl I knew, back when I could get a little work in Hollywood, even if it was only because Clotilde pulled some strings. This girl, she was a waitress at a nightclub with aspirations to Hollywood stardom. What I’m saying is that she was one of thousands of girls out in S.A. who all are waiting for their moment to come, convinced they’ll be discovered, that someone on the street will stop them, and say, ‘You oughta be in pictures.’ Yeah, this girl was just a dime a dozen, but I’d met her, and I started seeing her, and I even got her cast in one of Clotilde’s pictures. I’ve always been a real upstanding guy, huh?

Clotilde was starting to have more and more trouble with her nerves, jumping at shadows, playing the wronged woman, convinced that a slew of people were out to get her, including me. It didn’t matter that I actually
was
stepping out with this other girl, the point is, I’d never have done anything to hurt Clotilde. I mean it. She was always the joy of my life, the one thing that mattered, and if I was going out with this other girl, it was only because I couldn’t help it, I just needed something Clotilde couldn’t give me, suffering the way she was.

Now that I think of it, that was about the time I started borrowing money from Hub Gilplaine. He owned the nightclub
where I met this girl, and we were friends... Gee, it’s funny how the pattern of your life gets stitched from all these different threads, none of which seem important at the time, just day-to-day living, and then someone starts worrying one of those threads, just gives it a little pull, and your whole life starts to unravel. But maybe it was before that even, back when Quinn and I were still married...

Anyway, I went over to this waitress’ house in San Angelo, late one night, and I let myself in with my key, and I went into her bedroom, and there she was, all cut up and blood everywhere. It was a thousand times worse than what happened to Joe. I shriveled up then. Anyone would have, even the toughest cold-blooded murderer on death row. And I was just an effete writer who told himself he was hardboiled but really wasn’t anything but a husk of a man, if that.

So I’ve seen the worst, and the only thing that made Joe as bad as all that was that I did it myself. Now I was planning to do it for real, on purpose, and it just about was all I could do to make myself think about it. Because if you thought too much about it, how a person was a body, just a biological machine that was, honestly, quite easy to break, but a person was also so much more, the stuff that all of the world’s religions and artists and writers had spent all of human existence trying to understand... Well, you see where your mind starts to go. It had been that way for a long time after my girlfriend got cut up with me trying to understand what and why. And now it was like that in thinking about Vee, and what I needed to do. I had to kill her. It was the only way I’d be safe. But my mind kept slipping back to that cut-up girl in S.A., and I couldn’t think straight, even if I knew I
had
to think it out or I’d end up in a jam over Vee’s death too.

Well, there’s no surprise that I was doing all of this thinking in the hotel bar, but I was tossing back far fewer than you would have thought. I was hardly even buzzed. I played out different scenarios. Getting Vee out of the hotel into a bad part of the city and making it look like a mugging. Only that was just improbable enough that the police would probably know she’d been killed to shut her up. Throwing her down the stairs. But why hadn’t she used the elevator? Any good cop would find that too suspicious. I didn’t know anything about poisons, didn’t know much more about weapons. And it needed to look like an accident.

It didn’t help that with each plot, the blood from that long-ago night in S.A. kept trying to drown out all of my thoughts. The only reason I hadn’t been a suspect then was because I had a good alibi. Even if I could orchestrate a good alibi for Vee’s death, it still might seem convenient enough to reinvigorate the investigation into Joe’s death, which left me at risk. The police had to be certain that Joe had been murdered by Vee. These ideas twisted and curled in my mind, spiraling out questions that hit brick walls, banging up against them again and again, as I tried in vain to find an answer, increasingly anxious that I didn’t have one.

And that was a familiar feeling. The steady flow of ideas discarded one by one, with each failure constricting me further and further in inaction. That was writing. Killing someone was a whole lot like writing, a creative endeavor. I was trying to manipulate characters to do what I wanted them to do while trying to figure out how it would all play out afterwards to get the effect I wanted. I was anxious, but a part of me enjoyed what I was doing. And with that realization, a door opened up in my mind to show me new space—it didn’t have to be an accident if it was suicide.