“No, thank you,” she said.
He talked the entire way. He asked more questions than she answered, and made her feel uneasy. Why should a stranger need to know so much? Could the driver possibly be a plant sent to bring her back? Was the conversation normal chitchat? That last question bothered her: she had been cut off for so long, would she know normal if she met it head-on?
When the driver dropped her at a funky old place on the block behind the main street through Palm Springs, she was still wary. She waited until he was gone before she picked up her bag and walked inside.
Off season, the hotel felt empty. The manager was old enough to be her mother; a desert woman with skin like a lizard and tiny black eyes.
“I need a room for two nights,” Lise told her.
The manager handed her a registration card. “Put it on a credit card or cash in advance?”
Lise paid cash for the two nights and gave the woman a fifty-dollar deposit for the use of the telephone.
“It’s quiet here,” the manager said, handing over a key. “Too hot this time of year for most people.”
“Quiet is what I’m counting on,” Lise said. “I’m not expecting any calls, but if someone asks for me, I’d appreciate it if you never heard of me.”
When the manager smiled, her black eyes nearly disappeared among the folds of dry skin. “Man trouble, honey?”
“Is there another kind?”
“From my experience, it’s always either a man or money. And from the look of you,” the manager said, glancing at the suitcase and the gourmet shop’s handled bag, “I’d put my nickel on the former. Don’t worry, honey, I didn’t get a good look at you, and I already forgot your name.”
The name Lise wrote on the registration card was the name on a bottle of chardonnay in her bag: Rutherford Hill.
The hotel was built like an old adobe ranch house, with thick walls and rounded corners, Mexican tile on the floors, dark, open-beamed ceilings. Lise’s room was a bit threadbare, but it was larger, cleaner, nicer than she had expected for the price. The air conditioner worked, and there was a kitchenette with a little, groaning refrigerator for her wine. For the first time in five years, she had her own key, and used it to lock the door from the inside.
From her tiny balcony Lise could see both the pool in the patio below and the rocky base of Mount San Jacinto a quarter mile away. Already the sun had slipped behind the crest of the mountain, leaving the hotel in blue shade. Finally, Lise was able to smell the real desert, dry sage and blooming oleander, air without exhaust fumes.
A gentle breeze blew in off the mountain. Lise left the window open and lay down on the bed to rest for just a moment. When she opened her eyes again, floating on the cusp between sleep and wakefulness, the room was washed in soft lavender light—hot, but fragrant with the flowers on the patio below. She could hear a fountain somewhere, now and then voices at a distance. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t go straight to the door and listen for breathing on the other side.
Lise slipped into the new swimsuit. A little snug in the rear—she hadn’t taken time to try it on before she bought it. She needed the ice pick she found on the sink to free the ice in the trays so she could fill the paper ice bucket. She liked the heavy feel of the
tool. While she opened a bottle of wine and cut some fruit and cheese, she made a call.
“Sunset will be exactly eight thirty-two. No moon tonight. Rattlesnakes love a moonless night. You better stay indoors, or you might get bitten.”
“What is your game?”
“Your game. I’m a quick learner. Remember when you said that? I think I have all your moves down. Let’s see how they play.”
“You’re a rookie, Lise. You won’t make it in the big leagues. And every game I play, baby, is the big one.” He’d had some time to get over the initial surprise and anger, so he was back on the offensive. He scared her, but because he couldn’t touch her, her resolve held firm as she listened to him. “You’ll be back, Lise. You’ll take a few hard ones to the head and realize how cold and cruel that world out there is. You’ll beg me to take you in and watch over you again. You can be mad at me all you want, but it isn’t my fault you’re such a princess you can’t find your way across the street alone. Blame your asshole father for spoiling you. If it wasn’t for me—”
“If it wasn’t for you, my father would be alive,” she said, cutting off his windup. “I have the proof with me.”
The moment of silence told her she had hit home. She hung up.
Lise swam in the small pool until she felt clean again, until the heat and the sweat and the layer of fine sand had all been washed away, until the warm, chlorinated water had bleached away the fevered touch of Henry LeBeau. Some of her new hair color was bleached away too; it left a shadow on the towel when she got out and dried off.
Lise poured a bathroom tumbler full of straw-colored wine and stretched out on a chaise beside the pool. There was still some blue in the sky when the manager came out to switch on the pool lights.
“Sure was a hot one.” The manager nursed a drink of her own. “Course, till October they’re pretty much all hot ones. Let me
know when you’re finished with the pool. Sun heats it up so much that every night I let out some of the water and replace it with cold. Otherwise I’ll have parboiled guests on my hands.”
“How many guests are in the hotel?” Lise asked.
“Just you, honey.” The manager drained her glass. “One guest is one more than I had all last week.”
Lise offered her the tray of cheese. “Can you sit down for a minute? Have a little happy hour with the registered guests.”
“I don’t mind.” The manager pulled up a chaise next to Lise and let Lise fill her empty glass with chardonnay. “I have to say, off season it does get lonely now and then. We used to close up from Memorial Day to Labor Day—the whole town did. We’re more year-round now. Hell, there’s talk we’ll have gambling soon and become the new Vegas.”
“Vegas is noisy.”
“Vegas is full of crooks.” The manager nibbled some cheese. “I wouldn’t mind having my rooms booked up again. But the high rollers would stay in the big new hotels and I’d get their hookers and pushers. Who needs that?”
Lise sipped from her glass and stayed quiet. The manager sighed as she looked up into the darkening sky. “Was a time when this place hopped with Hollywood people and their carryings-on. Liberace and” a bunch of them had places just up the road here, you know. We used to get the overflow, and were they ever a wild crowd. I miss them. That set has moved on east, fancier places like Palm Desert. I still get an old-timer now and then, but most of my guests are Canadian snowbirds. They start showing up around Thanksgiving, spend the winter. Nice bunch, but awful tame.” She winked at Lise. “Tame, but easier to deal with than Vegas hookers.”
“I’m sure,” Lise said.
With a thoughtful tilt to her head, the manager looked again, and more closely, at Lise. “I’m pretty far off the beaten track. How’d you ever find my place?”
“I passed the hotel when I was up here visiting. It seemed so…” Lise refilled their glasses. “It seemed peaceful.”
Lise could feel the manager’s shiny black eyes on her. “You okay, honey?”
Lise held up the empty bottle. “I’m getting there.”
“That kind of medicine is only going to last so long. It’s none of my business, but you want to talk about it?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. Long-suffering wife skips out on asshole husband.”
“I’ve not only heard it, I’ve lived it. Twice.” The manager put her weathered hand on Lise’s bare knee and smiled sweetly. “You’re going to be fine. Just give it some time.”
The wine, fatigue, the sweet concern on the old woman’s face all combining, Lise felt the cracks inside open up and let in some light. The last time anyone had shown her genuine concern had been five years ago, when her father was still alive. The
re was a five-year accumulation of moss on her father’s marble headstone. Lise began to cry softly.
The manager pulled a packet of tissues out of her pocket. “Atta girl. Let the river flow.”
Lise laughed then.
“Does he know where you are?”
Lise shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“Given time, he’ll find me. He always does. No matter how far I run, he can find me. He’s a powerful man with powerful friends.”
“What are you going to do?”
Lise shrugged, though she knew very well. The answer was in the bag upstairs in the closet.
“Well, don’t you worry, honey. No one knows about this old place. And I already told you, I don’t remember what you look like and I don’t recall your name.” The manager picked up the empty bottle and looked at the Rutherford Hill label, sly humour folding the corners of her creased face. “Though come to think of it, the name does have a familiar ring.”
The sun set at exactly 8:32. Lise showered and changed into long khakis and a pale-peach shirt, both in tones of the desert
floor. She took her bag out of the closet and held it on her lap while she waited for the last reflected light of the day to fade.
The big story on the local TV news was what the manager had been talking about, the growing controversy over the proposal to build a Vegas-style casino on Tahquitz Indian tribal land at the southern city limits of Palm Springs. A congressional delegation had come to town to investigate. As the videotaped congressmen, wearing sober gray and big smiles, paraded across the barren hillside site, Lise felt chilled; her husband, wearing his own big smile, was among the entourage. She knew why he was in town and who he would be meeting with. But she hadn’t expected to see him before…
She pulled the bag closer against her and checked the clock beside the bed. If the clock was correct, he had nearly run out of time.
When Lise walked downstairs, she could see the flickering light of a television behind the front desk, could hear the manager moving around and further coverage of the big story spieling across the empty lobby. Quietly, Lise went out through the patio, the bag hanging heavily from her shoulder.
Maybe rattlesnakes do like a moonless night, she thought. But they hate people and slither away pretty fast. Lise walked along a sandy path that paralleled the road, feeling the stored heat in the earth soak through her sneakers. Palms rustled overhead like the rattle of a snake and set her on edge.
Lise slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and, being excruciatingly careful not to disturb the beautiful, five-year-old set of prints on the barrel, took the .380 out of her bag, pumped a round into the chamber in case of emergency, and walked on.
The house where the meeting would take place had belonged to her father. Before her marriage, she used to drive out on weekends and school vacations to visit him. After her marriage, after her father’s funeral, her husband had taken the place over to use when he had deals to make in the desert. Now and then, when he couldn’t make other arrangements for her, Lise had come
along. It had been during a recent weekend, when she was banished to the bedroom during a business meeting, that Lise had figured out a way to get free of him. Forever.
The house sat in a shallow box canyon at the end of the same street the hotel was on. Her father had built the house in the Spanish style, a long string of rooms that all opened onto a central patio. Like the hotel, it had thick walls to keep out the worst of the heat. And like the hotel, like a fort, it was very quiet.
All the lights were on. Lise knew that for a meeting this delicate, there would be no entourage. Inside the house, there would be only three people: the non-English-speaking housekeeper, Lise’s husband, and the congressman. She knew the routine well; the congressman was as much a part of her husband’s inheritance from her father as Lise and the house were.
Outside, there was a guard on the front door and one on the back patio, standing away from the windows so that his presence wouldn’t offend the congressman. Both of the guards were big and ugly, snakes of another kind, and more intimidating than they were smart. By circling wide, Lise got past the man in front, made it to the edge of the patio before she was seen. It wasn’t the hired muscle who spotted her first.
Luther; her father’s old rottweiler guard dog, ambled across the patio to greet Lise. She pushed his head aside to keep him from muzzling her crotch, made him settle for a head scratch.
The guard, Rollmeyer; hand on his holstered gun butt, hit her with the beam of his flashlight, smiled when he recognized who she was. Part of his job was forestalling interruptions, so he walked over to her without calling out.
Lise hadn’t been sure about what would happen when she got to this point, couldn’t know who the guard would be or how he would react to her. How much he might know. She had gone over several possibilities and decided to let the guard lead the way into this wilderness.
“Didn’t know you was here, ma’am.” Rollmeyer kept his voice low, standing close beside her on the soft sand. “They’re going
to be a while yet. You want me to take you around front, let you in that way?”
“The house is so hot. I’ll wait out here until they’re finished.” She had her hand inside her bag, trading the automatic for something more appropriate to the situation. “Been a long time, Rollmeyer. Talk to me. How’ve you been?”
“Can’t complain.”
Hand in the bag, she wrapped her fingers around the wooden handle of the hotel ice pick. “Don’t you have a hug for an old friend?”
Rollmeyer, whose job was to follow orders, and whose inclination was to cop any feel he could, seemed confused for just a moment. Then he opened his big arms and took a step toward her. She used the forward thrust of his body to help drive the ice pick up into his chest. Holding on to the handle, she could feel his heart beating around the slender blade, pump, pump, pump, before he realized something had happened to him. By then it was too late. She stepped back, withdrawing the blade, met his dumb gaze for another three-count, watched the dark trickle spill from the tiny hole in his shirt, before he fell, face down. His eyes were still open, sugared with grains of white sand, when she left him.
Luther stayed close to her, his bulk providing a shield while she lay on her belly beside the pool and rinsed away Rollmeyer’s blood from her glove and from the ice pick. With the dog, she ducked back into the shelter of the oleander hedge to watch the meeting proceed inside.
Creatures of habit, her husband and the congressman were holding to schedule. By the time Lise arrived, they had eaten dinner in the elegant dining room and the housekeeper had cleared the table, leaving the two men alone with coffee and brandy. Genteel preliminaries over, Lise’s husband went to the silver closet and brought out a large briefcase, which he set on the table. He opened the case and, smiling like Santa, turned it to show the contents to the congressman, showed them to Lise
also in the reflection in the mirror over the antique sideboard: money in bank wrappers, three-quarters of a million dollars of it, the going price for a crucial vote on the federal level—the vote in question of course having to do with permits for Vegas-style casinos on tribal land.
There was a toast with brandy snifters, handshakes, then good-byes. Once business had been taken care of, she knew her husband would leave immediately and the congressman would stay over for his special treat.
Lise dropped low behind the hedge when her husband, smiling still, crossed the patio and headed for the garage. She had the .380 in firing position in case he came looking for Rollmeyer. But he didn’t. He went straight to the garage, started his Rolls.
As soon as he was out of sight, Lise moved quickly. Her husband would back down the drive to the road and signal the call girl who was waiting there in her own car, the call girl who always came as part of the congressman’s package. Lise knew she had to be finished within the time it would take for the whore to drive into the vacant slot in the garage, freshen her m
akeup, spray on new perfume, plump her cleavage, and walk up to the house.
With Luther lumbering at her side, Lise crept into the dining room through the patio door just as her husband’s lights cleared the corner of the house. The congressman had already closed his case of booty and set it on the floor, was just finishing his brandy when she stepped onto the deep carpet.
“Lise, dear,” he said, surprised but not displeased to see her. He rose and held out his arms toward her. “I had not expected the pleasure of your company.”
Lise said nothing as she walked up within a few feet of him. Her toe was touching the case full of money when she raised the .380, took aim the way her father had taught her, and fired a round into the congressman’s chest, followed it, as her father had taught her, with a shot into the center of his forehead.
Luther, startled by the noise, began to bark. The housekeeper, in the kitchen, made “ah ah” noises and dropped something on the floor. Lise tucked the gun under the congressman’s chest, picked up the case of money, and left.
Behind the hedge again, Lise waited for the call girl to walk in and help the housekeeper make her discovery. The timing was good. Both women faced each other from their respective doorways, shocked pale, within seconds of the shooting.
Through the quiet, moonless night, Lise walked back to the hotel along the same sandy path. She stowed the case behind a planter near the pool and continued onward a block to place a call.
Rollmeyer would be a complication, but the police could explain him any way they wanted to. Lise dialled 911.
“There’s been a shooting,” she said. She gave the address, identified the congressman as the victim and her husband as the shooter. Then she went to another phone, further down the street, and made a similar call to the press and to the local TV station.
When she heard the first siren heading up the road to the house, she was mailing an unsigned note to the detective who had investigated her father’s death five years ago, a note that explained exactly why her husband and the congressman were meeting in the desert in the middle of the summer and what her husband’s motives might be for murder—for two murders. And why the bullets taken from the congressman should be compared with the two taken from her father. And where the assets were hidden. Chapter and verse, a fitting eulogy for a man who would never again see much open sky, whose every movement would be monitored in a place where punishment came swiftly, where he would never, ever have a key to his own door or the right to make the game plans. Trapped, for the rest of his life.
A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women Page 43