I was pleased about Marni’s progress. She had done something worthwhile in the world. All I had done was make money. Reading Marni’s accomplishments was the first time I questioned my own achievements. I could imagine her asking, “And what have you done for the world lately, Win Liberte?” Well, I fucked a few broads and I even threw a movie star into a fountain.
I puzzled over my own feelings as I waited, surprised at the powerful emotions that seeing Marni had generated in me. It was as if I’d had everything bottled up inside and suddenly the cork popped. I’d had a dozen lovers since we parted in Angola, but none of them had stuck more than a few months. Part of it was because I was running too fast to build the business. But I now knew another part of it was that I still cared for Marni.
Why was I sitting outside the school waiting for her? What did I expect to gain? I wasn’t ready for marriage, or even a relationship, if that was in the cards. So why didn’t I just start the car and pull away before it was too late?
Analyzing my feelings got me nowhere. I just sat in the car, stewing over the situation, wavering back and forth about staying and going. The private investigator said Marni picked up her daughter on Fridays; on the other weekdays her housekeeper, Josie, picked her up.
I tensed as I saw a car approaching which matched the description in the report. It was her. She pulled up to the school and went inside.
I got out and crossed the street without giving it another thought.
A minute later she came out of the school, chatting and laughing with her little girl. I stood still and let her almost walk into me. When she saw me, I carefully watched her face, looking for a clue as to what her feelings might be. The only emotion I got was surprise.
“Win!”
“In the flesh.”
“I—I—what are you doing here?”
“I dropped by to meet your daughter.” I stuck out my hand to the little girl. “Hi, I’m Win Liberte. Nice to meet you.”
The child looked up at Marni and Marni nodded her okay. “It’s okay, tell the gentleman your name.”
“Elena Jones,” she said shyly, shaking my hand.
“That’s a beautiful name. Elena was my mother’s name.”
“My mother’s name is Marni.”
“Yes, I know.” I held out my hand to shake Marni’s hand. When she took it, I didn’t want to let go. “It’s been a long time.”
“Some people might say, not long enough. Have I thanked you for the lover’s quarrel that made the front pages for the food program?”
“I can explain that. And I want to make a donation, to make up for it.”
“No explanation is needed, it was all in the papers, your pathetic efforts to get Shelly Lane to take you back. I hear you’re going to be arrested for stalking her. I believe the tabloids described it as you going ‘postal’ after having been kicked out of bed.”
“The papers like to exploit things—”
“But we’ll take the donation, though I have to tell you that the publicity was wonderful for the program. You missed the best part. She took off her wet dress when she got out of the fountain and threw it aside. We’re auctioning it off at the next banquet. You should attend. We can offer you as the booby prize.”
I got down on my hands and knees.
“What are you doing?”
“Making it easier for you to kick me.”
Two mothers coming out of the school building broke into laughter. “If he’s proposing and you don’t want him, I’ll take him,” one of them said.
“You wouldn’t want him. Shelly Lane kicked him out of bed.”
Shrill laughter. “Oh, God, is that him?”
Oh-God-my-ass. I got to my feet and took Elena’s hand and led her off, to the jeers of the women. How humiliating.
“Where are you going with my daughter?”
“Elena and I are going to dinner. You can either join us or go home and cry in your milk.”
“How do you know there’s not someone waiting for me at home?”
“I had you checked out by a private investigator. He said you are a lonely old maid who subscribes to lonely hearts’ magazines and buys vibrators by the dozen.”
I didn’t look back over my shoulder. Her telling me she had a husband or significant other would have stabbed me right between the shoulder blades.
73
I took Marni and Elena down to Gladstone’s For Fish, a restaurant on the Pacific Coast Highway near where Sunset slid into the ocean. It wasn’t one of my favorite spots—too crowded, too noisy—but it had the best location in town—right on the beach. Elena could run around in the sand while Marni and I talked and walked on the beach.
I sipped a bottle of Corona, no lime, no glass, and Marni licked salt on a margarita while we waited for a table and the kid threw sand back into the ocean.
“Great kid,” I said. “She’s beautiful, like her mother.”
“Give me a break, Win, stuff the compliments. You hate kids and you treated her mother like crap.”
“I don’t hate kids, I don’t know anything about them. I passed over being a kid myself, mostly I went to funerals as the people around me died. And I didn’t treat you like crap. You walked out on me without giving me a chance to explain.”
“To explain what a bastard you are? That to squeeze a few more million when you already have a fortune, you supply guns to bloodthirsty criminals to use on innocent people?”
I undid my necktie. “Here.”
“What’s that for?”
“To hang me with. You want to lynch me, you’re judge, jury, and executioner, you know everything and don’t need any explanations. You walked out, left the country, and never heard my side of it.”
“All right. Explain.”
That shut me up. What was I going to tell her? That I ended up helping Jomba get a load of weapons . . . for Savimbi? That the weapons were used to keep a civil war going in Angola that was still going hot and heavy today, without a pretense of a truce? That I had made a fortune in Angola, digging the country’s precious diamonds from the earth and had returned nothing to it?
“Why don’t I just shoot myself,” I said.
“That would be a good start.”
“Marni—”
“Win, it wasn’t easy for me to walk away, I had never felt about anyone like I felt about you. Now I don’t want the wounds reopened.”
I nodded at the kid. “You must have really been hurting bad, but it didn’t take you long to connect with someone and have Elena.”
She was about ready to throw the margarita in my face.
I held up my hands. “The last woman who threw a drink in my face took a bath. Please, let’s just talk. I know you think I’m an unfeeling bastard, but you’re only half right. I do have feelings. I lied to you in Angola and I regret it, but you have to give me a break about it. I had my back to the wall and a gun to my head. Give me five minutes to tell you how Angola came down. If you still think I’m dirt, you can leave and I won’t try to contact you again.”
I told her my story, from the time I first heard about Bernie’s folly to standing near a landing strip with a war going on. I gave her the truth, the whole truth . . . and only left out a few details I didn’t want her to hear. The blood feud with João—and having screwed his wife and daughter—were a couple subjects I censored. When I said we hit blue earth at the mine, I added, “And, I’m donating money for a hospital in the region.”
I made a mental note to have my secretary check out Angolan medical donations with my tax lawyer. I hadn’t actually lied. I had used the present tense which meant I was in the process of doing it, not that it was a done deal.
I had only one question for her: Was she currently involved with anyone?
“Many men,” she said. “Like Shelly Lane, I use and abuse them and kick them out of bed when I tire of them. I have so much time, being a working single parent, that I go out every night to bars and pick up men.”
“Do you want me to
turn around and bend over so you can kick me some more? Or would you prefer I spread my legs so you can do it where it hurts?”
She started laughing. That was a good sign, I thought.
During dinner, I complimented Marni on Elena’s manners.
“She’s a regular little adult,” I said.
“That’s the problem with an only child. They spend most of their time talking to adult parents rather than squabbling with siblings and kids their own age.”
“Did her father help raise her?” It was an opening for her to tell me about the man she had become involved with so soon after she stormed out of my life. So far she had told me zero about her own life, except facetiously letting me know that there was no one current in her own life. Even though I hadn’t seen her in nearly six years, I felt possessive and jealous that another man had fathered her child.
We had talked quietly, letting little of the conversation float across to where Elena was busy with crayons.
She took a sip of her margarita and gave me an ironic grin. “Let’s just say that he’s as big a bastard as you. He didn’t do a damn thing except provide the sperm and a little pleasure for himself.”
“Men are pricks,” I said. “Most of them fuck and run. But the men in my family aren’t that way. We have kids and die early.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
I took her hand. “I’m on a roll with the diamond business. I didn’t realize how much it was in my blood, how much my father taught me stuck in me. But I really don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up. I want to become an astronaut. Or maybe I’ll go to Angola and hand out food packs—”
I frowned at her. “Why are you laughing?”
74
I went through the door of the offices we had set up on Canon close to the store, snapping orders at the receptionist as I came in. She pointed to a woman standing by the windows.
“You have a visitor.”
Simone turned around. She smiled. It had been three years since she had knocked on my Bel Air hotel room.
“Take a seat,” I told her as I ushered her into my offices. “There’s always a snake in paradise, isn’t there?”
“Is that how you think of me? A repulsive reptile?”
“I think of you as a beautiful and dangerous woman, one I’d just as soon keep an ocean between.”
“You give me something not much bigger than an acorn, and I’ll be out of your life forever. João had it, you know, before you were even born.”
“He stole it from my father.”
“He has a slightly different version of how the fire diamond came into his possession than you do.”
“He’s a liar. He’s also responsible for killing Bernie. I don’t know how he did it, whether he sent a couple of his Lisbon thugs over to push Bernie out a window, sent you over to finesse Bernie out the window, or simply broke Bernie down so hard financially and emotionally, that Bernie crawled out the window. Whatever the scenario, he was responsible for Bernie’s death. Go back and tell João that Bernie is paying him back.”
“Things have changed. João has had a hard time for years. We’re not as rich as we used to be. He’s had money problems, people won’t do business with him, he’s paid out millions in Portugal to keep from getting prosecuted. He blames you for his problems.”
“Blame Bernie’s ghost. He’s the one whispering in my ear.”
“Listen to me, Win, João is sick.”
“That breaks my heart.”
“He’s dying.”
“I’m going to start crying.”
“He has nothing left to lose. He’s going to kill you.”
“He can try.”
“He will. The only way to save yourself is to give him the diamond. He wants to hold it once more before he dies.”
“Tell him I’ll put it in his cold, dead hand—as his soul is being shipped off to burn in hell. Look, let’s knock off the bullshit. João will never see the diamond. And my will says it goes to the Smithsonian.” I lied. It occurred to me that I didn’t even have a will. I probably needed one.
She stood up. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
“No, you’re not. You’re sorry I don’t roll over and play dead. If you had any human feelings, you’d feel sorry for Bernie.”
“I have enough trouble grieving the living—I don’t have time for the dead.” She paused. “You know Jonny’s in town.”
“No, I didn’t,” I lied. I’d seen her but not spoken to her.
“I’m surprised she hasn’t contacted you. I think half the reason she came to L.A. was because she read you were here. She likes you, you know.”
“I like her, too. She’s a great kid. Now, if you’re finished . . .”
I took a cheap shot as she opened the door to leave. “It’s too bad you never had time for your daughter. She’s a great kid who never had a chance because her father’s a crook and her mother’s a slut.”
I tensed. It looked like Simone was going to jump over the desk and rip out my throat. Her face turned several shades of purple before she got a grip on herself and walked away with calm deliberation.
As soon as she was gone, I called in my secretary.
“Call a detective agency. I want a bodyguard, twenty-four/seven. Someone with a gun. And someone who has experience using it. I don’t want a guy who’s going to fold in the clench.”
She gawked at me. “You want me to ask for a murderer?”
“I want you to ask for an ex-cop or a soldier who’s been in combat. For around-the-clock protection, they’ll have to line up more than one man.” As she headed for the door I yelled another command. “And call my lawyer. I need to make a will.”
I thought for a moment and then called Cross. “You in the market to make some money? Big bucks?”
“Who do I have to kill?”
“João Carmona.”
There was silence on the line for a moment, then Cross grunted. “Your boyfriend here or did he send over a hit team from Lisbon?”
“I’m not sure, maybe all of the above. For certain, Simone is here. She paid a visit to me, as good as told me that João was going to help me into an early grave and then piss on it. It’s no longer about money or even the diamond, this is an old-fashioned blood feud. The only way out of this will be for one of us to die.”
“What are you gonna do? Call the cops?”
“You think the cops could help me?”
Cross gave an explosive laugh.
“My point exactly. I want to fight fire with fire, give João some of his own medicine. There are street gangs in this town that would scare the balls off a gorilla. I was wondering if you had any contacts.”
“Why? ’Cause I’m black? What do you think, you honky asshole, all blacks are into street violence?”
“You’re only black on the outside, Cross, inside you’re the color of dogshit. I’m asking you because you told me Megan had a cousin who was big in the gangs.”
“Oh, Latino gangs, yeah, those macho bastards will kill you because they don’t like the color of your eyes, my people only kill for guns and money. What do you want, a meet?”
“That would be a starter.”
“What’s in it for me? A piece of House of Liberté?”
“You think you’re worth it?”
“What’s your life worth?”
“Let’s start with cash, and we’ll see where we go from there. I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand to set up a meet and hold my hand.”
After I hung up, I thought about Cross. I didn’t trust him any more than I could pay him. He backed me up in Angola, but basically he went with the highest bidder. I wasn’t going to make him rich again. I couldn’t help but wonder what his attitude would be when he found that out.
75
Simone rolled down the window of the limo and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke out, as the limo pulled away from the passenger-loading curb at LAX. João’s lungs had become sensitive to smoke. She hated being away from hi
m for too long a period because it was always a shock to come back and see how much he appeared to age during her short absences. He wasn’t really aging more when they were apart—it was a trick of her mind. She thought of João as vibrant and strong, even in his wheelchair, but when she saw him after being apart for a week she got a clearer picture. He was old and shriveling. As I will be someday, she thought, shuddering at the prospect of growing so old that her body began to self-destruct.
“What’s going on with Juana?” he asked.
“I’ve only seen her briefly. She told me the only reason she even stays in contact with us is to make sure she gets her allowance on time. She’s doing more partying than studying. I hired a tutor, but she bribed him with drugs and sex to do her schoolwork for her.”
“Has she been seeing that bastardo?”
Simone shrugged. “I don’t think so. When I asked her, she boasted she’s sleeping with him. That makes me think that she’s probably not telling the truth.”
“If she isn’t now, she has been. My daughter spreading her legs for my enemy is just one of the many trespasses I have suffered from the bastardo.”
Simone met his eye without flinching. “He said to tell you that he is paying you back for the murder of his uncle.”
“I should have killed his father forty years ago. I had the opportunity, now I am paying for a moment’s hesitation I had when I was young.”
The limo pulled to a stop across the street from a day school in Brentwood.
A few minutes later, Simone and João watched as Elena ran to meet Marni.
“For sure, it’s his daughter, you can see the bastardo in her face.”
“Yes,” Simone said. “Yes, it’s his child.”
João padded her leg. “Good, you have done good. How did you find out?”
“From his friend. I found out the woman had a child and checked the birth records. Win is named as the father on the birth certificate.”
Heat of Passion Page 34