by Nick Totem
“Yeah, if I remember correctly, I went to park the car and . . . I didn’t take more than fifteen, twenty minutes. Yeah, I think so, I didn’t take more than fifteen minutes. Then I came back and we read that poem together.” He saw a peculiar intensity on her face, making him want to say something else. “Anyhow have you had lunch yet?”
“No, I’m not hungry. We can eat afterward.”
Thomas escorted Lana through the sign-in. A policewoman then took her to the interrogation room. He returned to the waiting room and heard phones ringing nonstop. A foul, sour smell, the same that he had detected the last time, came from the corner of the room, where a drunk had emptied his stomach the night before. Policemen came in while others went out, probably the hour of a shift change. A policeman dragged in a woman, her hands handcuffed behind her, and she appeared intoxicated and was screaming curses. He looked away. A beautiful and happy future. He tried to keep his mind on that, remembering that Lana had mentioned wanting to go Greece. A wonderful trip awaited them both. The seconds ticked on; now and then he grew anxious. He could hear Hugo Figueroa, whose sentences became questions only at the very end: Thomas Wilde didn’t have the opportunity, did he? For first time since the news of the murder, he truly understood what was at stake. He shook his head vigorously and inspected his watch. A full forty minutes had passed. What could they be talking about for so long?
Then he saw her colorful blouse flashing vivaciously against the white fluorescent light and the dark blue uniforms checking her out. She walked past him, avoiding his eyes. He followed her, now pacing fast, and refrained from saying anything until they were entering the parking lot.
“What’s wrong?” he said at last, still a couple of steps behind her.
She said nothing, came to the car and stood looking down, waiting for him to open the door. After they got in, he began to drive and studied her now and then. Without question, she was in what appeared to be some kind of shock, her eyes glazed.
“Baby, what’s the matter?” he said as softly as he could.
She brought her hands to her mouth abruptly.
“What did he say to you?”
A gasp escaped from her throat.
“Please, baby. What’s the matter?”
Her eyes bounced sideways, and her head pivoted gently from side to side as if mentally following a sequence of events.
“Why are you like this? Please tell me.”
Still, she said nothing, and he drove on to the only place he could think of—the apartment. The afternoon’s traffic was gathering force, and the drive was slow.
“Fifteen minutes,” Lana bellowed suddenly.
“What?”
“I told the detective you were gone for fifteen minutes.” She stared straight ahead, still reviewing a sequence of events, obviously the events of the night in question.
“That’s what I told you earlier. What’s the problem?”
“He showed me pictures of you, walking the street, carrying a bag.”
“Did he show you a picture of me holding a gun, shooting Lloyd? I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” he said.
“Thomas, you forget whom you’re talking to. I remember everything.”
“Okay.” Then it occurred to him that he really had underestimated Lana.
“You were wearing a gray suit, light blue shirt, and a deep blue tie.”
“What? Is that from the photo he showed you?” he said.
“No. That’s what you wore the first time I met you. When you approached me in the lobby of your building.”
“Okay.”
“You were gone from the apartment for one hour and sixteen minutes. Oh my God, how could I be so blind? You were out of breath, sweating. I can still see your face. You were terrified . . . An hour sixteen minutes. Not fifteen minutes. I lied. Oh my God. He asked me questions about you, implying that you were the suspect. I wouldn’t believe it, but I realized when he showed me the photo. Then it all came to me.” She panted, short and loud. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. What did you do? What did you do?”
“I went for a walk. I bought a cup of coffee. They had photos of me walking the street. Even if I was walking the street for over an hour, it’s pretty far-fetched to accuse me of murder. He tried to turn you against me, didn’t he? What did he tell you exactly? Don’t you see he’s trying to get you to contradict me and use you as a witness. That’s how they always do it, that’s how they get innocent people on death row.”
“He didn’t try any such thing. This is from me, what I remember, what I can see with my own eyes. I told him nothing . . . Tell me the truth, Thomas. I lied to protect you. I’m your alibi. The least you can do is to tell the truth.”
He didn’t answer, only grimaced.
“Ask me anything and I will tell you.” Her voice quivered. She turned to him. “Ask me if I betrayed Cristiano . . . Ask me how many men I’ve slept with. Ask me. I will tell you the truth. Ask me.”
He remained mute. At a red light, he turned to her fully, now a conflicting vision, but couldn’t say anything more.
The light turned green, and the car sped onto Fifth Street and its familiar sidewalks. It came to full stop in front of her apartment.
“Ask me if I love you,” she said with a sudden softness.
His hand moved toward her, but it stopped short, as if he couldn’t bring himself to touch her.
In a flash, she turned to face him, “Now I ask you. Did you kill Lloyd?”
His head seemed to gyrate. He said nothing.
“Oh, how could you?” she cried. “You shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have.”
She opened the door. “I never want to see you again,” she said without looking at him. She got out and, in another instant, she was gone.
42
Of the night in question, Thomas would later have every single action, second by second, ready at the throes of his memory to be recalled, rewound, and even regretted:
“I’ll have to park the car in the overnight parking. I’m sorry I forgot again.”
“Don’t go, darling. Don’t, Thomas,” she said with unusual sincerity, and in her eyes was the same clarity that seemed to occur only at some critical moments. “Stay here with me.”
“I don’t want a ticket.”
Her lips tightened and her cheeks tensed not into a smile but into what seemed like a sign of reflection. Finally she said, “All right then, if you must. Poor darling. Hurry back.”
“Your pain pill is right there.”
He stopped by the door and fixed his eyes at her, lying on her side, adjusting her body delicately with a notebook in hand, still keeping her clear eyes on him, the pain pill within reach. He cringed and reasoned that if she had suspected anything, she would have understood, or at the very least questioned, what compelled him to stop and look at her; after all, he would be away just a few minutes.
Then he was at the crickety elevator, waiting and foreseeing his plan unfolding. The elevator delivered him to the street; he saw his car and hurried to it. He drove the car around the corner and into the overnight garage, paid with a credit card and aimed for the space in the corner, away from the camera. While still in the car, he changed his shoes, into a tattered pair of jogging shoes. The knapsack, also black, on the back seat contained everything he needed, and he got out with it in hand, making his way stealthily to the street. He had chosen the parking lot for its open layout, one way for cars to come in or out, and along its back side, bordering another street, metal rails interrupted by gaps allowed pedestrians to pass. Twenty yards away was a coffee shop; he went in and bought a latte, paid with his credit card. Every action was as he had planned and practiced. Out on the street again, he threw the latte in nearest trash can; he didn’t need any more caffeine, he could already feel his heartbeats in his fingertips. This stretch of the street was dark, and all along the street the entrances to the stores receded from the pavement, where if one were to stand, one could be hidden from view from ei
ther direction, where a couple of homeless people had already made their temporary beds for the night. With a quick step, Thomas ducked into one of the recesses. From the knapsack, he put on a black hoodie over his white dress shirt and black sweat pants over his dress pants. Before he re-emerged onto the pavement, he pulled the hoodie over his head and tugged on the string, pursing the hoodie around his face, nearly concealing it entirely. He chuckled, realizing that with his glasses he must look like the Unabomber, unidentifiable.
His plan allowed him ten minutes of brisk walking, first on 6th Street and then cutting through Pershing Square Park, to the Biltmore Hotel. It was just before 9:30; the traffic was easing, and since there were fewer cars, they were going much faster. He became like one of the thousands of homeless people in Los Angeles; no one saw him and no one cared. Soon, he was moving across Pershing Square Park, with the knapsack hanging on his shoulder, seemingly a part of the darkness on a moonless night. Clumps of humanity scattered on benches, on the concrete steps, and under the trees, here and there. Past the park, the Biltmore Hotel stood just across the street. But Thomas remained where he was, in the protective shadows of the park, watching the traffic carefully. His plan depended in large part on Lloyd’s habits. From the times when he had followed Lloyd, he knew that Lloyd would often be leaving late from his office and stopping by the Biltmore Hotel for drinks, and sometimes dinner around this time of the evening. The hotel must loom prominently in Lloyd’s psyche, his obsession with Lana, and his place of power perched high above this part of town, to make him haunt the bars here.
The black, shiny Rolls-Royce could not be missed, must not be missed, Thomas told himself. He sat right on the dirt, next to a garbage can with a foul odor drifting over him, trying to catch his breath, and kept his eyes on the street in front of the hotel. Then he got up and ran across the street to be near the driveway. A bulky black car stopped by the curb in front of the hotel; a man got out. Thomas screwed his eyes on the man to see if he was Lloyd, but then a woman followed him out; that man was a stranger. In the intervals when there were no cars in front of the hotel, his hand, moist with sweat, felt the Beretta inside the knapsack. He had switched out the gun’s original barrel with the old barrel. Now it was ready to fire bullets that could be never be traced to him.
Standing up now and moving away the from the shadows, he observed his surroundings casually. He pressed himself into a corner near the driveway entrance, into a dark pocket, aware that there were cameras.
At nearly ten o’clock now, he breathed easier, frustrated but also much relieved that it would not come to pass, that Lloyd would not be coming. Twice on previous scouting trips, Thomas had watched the Rolls-Royce pulling up, and so tonight must be Lloyd’s lucky night. Now he would have to wait another night. He had been tempted to use Lana’s phone to send Lloyd a message, luring him here, but that would link Lana to the crime, inevitably leading to him. But if he were to let chance be a big part of the plan, things would appear haphazard, a random act whose origin and motive could never be traced. It had been forty minutes since he left Lana, who must be sleeping from the tablet of Norco. He decided to wait another five minutes. Where was the black Rolls-Royce? Shining under the streetlights.
The plan was to wait for Lloyd’s Rolls-Royce, and as it stopped in front of the Biltmore Hotel, Thomas would jump out and fire three shots at the car, a tit-for-tat reprisal, a warning to Lloyd that, despite his money, he could still be gotten to. No one needed to get hurt. Then Thomas would run away unidentifiable, and with his alibi, he could never be linked to the crime.
“I’ll see you later,” a woman said, coming through the front door and heading to a car parked a few yards away. In a few seconds, the car sped away.
“You got to be sure.” A man said as he exited from the hotel lobby. “I’m not going to put up that much money, if you’re not sure. The information has to be good . . .” The familiar New York twang, somewhat sombre, the slow cadence as if the speaker was thinking between words, was unmistakable. Thomas’s heart aroused itself violently again, like a wrecking ball against his ribcage, and he sucked in quick, shallow breaths. So, Lloyd had come much earlier, and he must have had company and had left them for a private phone call. Absorbed in the conversation, Lloyd sauntered along and turned at the corner. Thomas saw him walk past; the black hoodie camouflaged him so well that Lloyd didn’t seem to notice him at all. From the knapsack, Thomas took out a pair of latex gloves and put them over his sweaty hands, and then he gripped the Beretta. “Uh huh, that’s right. I’ll take your word for it. I don’t have to tell you what that means . . . I’ll call it in tonight.” Apparently done with the phone call, Lloyd dropped the cellphone into his jacket pocket and stretched his arms out wide, letting out a yawn, eyeing the familiar street. A car turned the corner, and its headlight lit up his shape, his expensive suit, his big stature, his thinning hair.
This was not what Thomas had planned for. Maybe, if he could hold still, a shadow in the darkness, it would be pass, and Lloyd would go back inside; he could still be with Lana and deal with Lloyd, his obsession with Lana, his henchman Chau the Dog, his money, somehow. The thought that he could get away with murder suddenly zipped through his mind, and he called out, “Hey!” And it was decided. Lloyd turned around, startled, and craned his neck to scrutinize the shadow. With a quick spring, the Beretta was within two feet of Lloyd’s chest. Lloyd appeared stunned for a moment, and then quickly he recovered his composure. “What’s this?” he said, more irritated than fearful. “Do you know who you’re fucking with?”
Thomas was about to raise the gun and fire the shots above Lloyd’s head, warning shots as he had planned, but Lloyd jumped forward and his hand simultaneously swept in an arc to deflect the gun. Thomas’s reflex was too fast; he, too, jumped back. A second passed. A single pop rang out, simultaneous with a single flash. Lloyd fell back. His body shook, his arms flailed. Thomas stood over him. He looked around, the street was still empty. He had the urge to run away. But he turned back to Lloyd, whose head jerked very slightly now. The shot had penetrated his chest, right over the heart. A single shot, a robbery—it suddenly occurred to him. The gun went back in the knapsack. He bent down to unclasp the gold watch from Lloyd’s warm wrist. And, immediately, he ran away.
Across the street and then across the park, he ran quickly and avoided the street corner, retracing his steps to the exact alcove where he had put on the black hoodie and the black sweat pants. At a distance of a dozen feet, a homeless man was lying on his side, his head covered with a towel. Thomas now took off the hoodie and the sweat pants and stuffed everything into the knapsack. His shirt was soaked with sweat. Passing his car on the way back, he threw the knapsack into the trunk and changed shoes. In another two minutes, he was riding up the crickety elevator to the apartment.
He waited to hear her regular breathing and the occasional murmuring that she often gave out during sleep, usually about ten minutes after she took the Norco. Lying on her side with one hand curled under her chin and the other thrown aside as if beckoning him, she appeared to be figuring out everything about him. He touched the mole on her left cheek and gave a soft kiss on her forehead before leaving.
The poem was singing in his mind when he closed the door—And what of my heart, Of flesh and mortal. He was in the street again, feeling as though he had never left it, and hurried to the car and sped away. He remembered the boy in Iraq, but this was something entirely different. To the south now, south on the 110 Freeway, going to the hospital in Torrance, he drove fast, fleeing. Keep it straight, keep it straight, he told himself. Once off the freeway, he went slowly through a neighborhood, where the trashcans were out for the next day pickup. He stopped abruptly in the middle of the street and turned off the engine and the lights. It was past midnight and the street was deserted. He retrieved the knapsack from the trunk, in which were the black hoodie, sweat pants, and the old jogging shoes, and tossed it into the trash can. Under the midnight sky, he stood still, conte
mplating the gold watch, a Breguet gold watch with a Tourbillon that must have cost Lloyd over two hundred thousand dollars; the money mattered little to Thomas, knowing that he could never sell it, but the handmade watch contained so much craftmanship and care and pride of its maker, a work of beauty, that Thomas couldn’t quite discard. Holding the watch in his hand, he got back into the car. Off he went, but he didn’t turn on the car light again until he was near the end of the street. He breathed easier the rest of the way to the hospital, where he saw a couple of patients. The night nurse greeted him with surprise, and he went out of his way to talk to her, asking her about her family, her children, and lamenting how he hadn’t been able to attend the last Christmas party.
When he got home, it was 3:30 in the morning. The first thing he did was to switch out the barrel of the Beretta. In the bedroom, he worked quickly, disassembling the gun—the cartridge was ejected, the slide came off, the barrel was drawn back against the loading spring and removed, and then the gun’s original barrel slid in place and all the parts were re-assembled. The Beretta, now with its original barrel, went back into the safe. Next, he went quietly into the back yard. He stood in the darkness, observing and listening. All was quiet. With tentative steps, he approached a potted lemon tree. Bracing himself, he lifted the tree from its pot as noiselessly as he could, and placed a plastic bag, containing the gold watch and the gun barrel that had killed Lloyd, into the bottom of the pot and dropped the tree back in. With his foot, he swept away the dirt that had fallen next to the pot. Then after one last look around the fence, he retreated inside. At last he went into the shower . . .
43
It was an accident.
That was all Thomas Wilde could think about, and around that fact he began to build his case, a case that he hoped to present to Lana. He rewound and replayed the scene of the shooting in his mind: Lloyd jumped forward and swept his arm in arc to deflect the gun, and he jumped back, accidentally triggering the gun. Yes, the shooting had been an accident, he kept repeating to himself, until he could see each movement, all together in a factual sequence of actions.