Bet Your Life

by Richard Dooling

  I pushed on the door, and it opened with no resistance, which left me suddenly with nothing to bang on. She’d turned out the lights over the washstand, but there was a walk-in closet behind her, where I saw the clothes she’d been wearing scattered on the floor.

  She wore a kimono-style pink satin wrap with the sash tied, her breasts roaming around free underneath as she walked toward me. Her face was twitching with hate, and her eyes were on mine like missile-lock.

  “You wanna feel my skin and find out if it’s really me, Isaac?” she said.

  I hadn’t planned on getting in without breaking down the door, and now I was suddenly in here, with nothing to do, except maybe the second-oldest crime known to man and woman.

  I just stood there, breathing heavy, sweating, watching her, like you’d watch a new species in a lab, continually amazed by her surprising behaviors. It was a maneuver of some kind. She was making me think she was going to give it up. She’d move us out near a phone or a weapon, or maybe she’d make a run for the neighbor’s place, call Becker and tell him that Carver Hartnett had assaulted her in her boudoir.

  “Close your eyes, Isaac,” she said, her face still on low boil. “You’re blind, remember? Close your eyes, and I’ll put you back in bed, and let you feel the back of my hands and my neck. See if it’s really Esau, or not.”

  She moved closer to me and reached for my hands. I jumped at first, like I was expecting she’d palmed one of good doctor Ray’s uncapped syringes. Maybe she’d done the same thing to Lenny the night he died? Maybe she’d killed Lenny just this way. Maybe she was a double agent or an operative in one of those James Bond video games, and she’d walk me over to the bed, and just when I thought I was going to get some, she’d finish me off with a lipstick gun, lethal acid perfume, or a diamond-chip and titanium-strand garrote spooled inside her fake-gold watch.

  The fire went out of her eyes. I let her take my hands, and I could feel her shaking. She was afraid, too, and not just mad.

  “Close your eyes,” she said.

  I did, but I still had plenty of hate in me making my eyelids jitter like I was watching ancient, overexposed film race through the sprockets of my internal projector: blood reds and midnight shadows, skipped frames, flashes of light from sharp instruments and blunt weapons she’d use to hunt me in the darkness to which I’d acquiesced. Because I trusted her? No fucking way. I had to know what she’d done with Lenny on-line and otherwise, had to know if she went all the way and murdered the poor fucker, or helped a hale fellow well-met like Hector or Guttman do the job. If she told me that the only way I could know the truth about Lenny was to let her show me, I was going to let her. I’d drink the coffee with the sleeping pill, and maybe I’d wake up alone in a coffin, hearing her dump shovelfuls of dirt on the coffin lid. Thrump. Thrump. Thrump, and me alone in the box, with nothing but a butane lighter to watch the last of my oxygen burn. No, that wasn’t like her; she’d run a pipe down there so I could breathe and have an extra week to think it all over.

  She backed me up out of the washroom. She was gentle about it, but maybe she was just putting me off guard.

  “That’s it, Isaac.”

  I opened my eyes and watched her, holding my hands, walking me backwards, guiding me over to her bed. She looked bitter and resolved, her face somber and agloom, as if she were leading me outside to a skyless gray dawn on the morning of my execution.

  She turned out the lights when we went by the switch, and it was suddenly as dark as the tombs under the Sphinx.

  She sat me on the bed, and I figured once she got me off my feet, she’d bolt, or smash my face in and run for it, but she didn’t.

  She let go of my hands and said, “Wait.”

  She struck a match and lit a blue candle on her nightstand.

  I swallowed hard and watched her bending over the candle, her dark hair spilling onto the pink satin. Her runner’s legs looked basted in oil and ready to eat.

  She caught me watching and said, “Close your eyes, Isaac. You’re blind, remember?”

  Her voice was farther away from seduction than heaven is from earth; instead it was clotted with sadness and hope forlorn.

  “Lie down, Isaac,” she said. “You’re old and sick. I’ll give you what you want, and then you’ll give me your blessing.”

  I obliged and lowered myself back on her fat pillows, but I cheated and peeked, so I could watch her walk around the bed to the other side, where she climbed in with me, and with no weapons, as near as I could tell.

  I needed some spit bad, because my mouth was open and moving a lot of air.

  She crawled over close to me and rolled onto her side, still looking nothing like romantic. She kissed me a good one, tongue and all, then she drew back and stared.

  “Miranda?”

  “Wait, Isaac,” she said.

  She found the satin sash and untied it.

  That was enough for me. I went in for another deep kiss, and she kissed me back.

  I took a breath and watched her move under the robe, the candle glow flickering like flames on her silk-draped curves. I felt my damp pants rising like a pup tent on a pole.

  We could hear each other breathing.

  I touched her breast, and she pushed it into my hand, her eyes watching me. Touching her.

  She had to know how hungry for it I was, and if this was another scam of hers, it wasn’t going to end with me going out to the couch with a hangover hard-on and blue balls. Long ago, I’d decided that if her sex phobias were Catholic, then I’d have to marry her after I did it, or she’d have a nervous breakdown or a psychotic break. It made me pause on the brink, but then I slid my hand under the silk robe.

  My throat parched and hurt when I didn’t have enough moisture for a swallow.

  “Close your eyes, Isaac,” she said, with that same haunted tone.

  I obeyed, even though it occurred to me that she might have an ice pick at the ready. Instead, her left hand took my right and steered it under the gown, just like she had done in my dream.

  “Come closer, Isaac,” she whispered.

  I moved up from her hip to the curve at her waist, where I felt something rough, and my first thought was that she had a huge gauze bandage on under her silk kimono, which didn’t make a lick of sense.

  I opened my eyes, and she pulled the flap of the gown away, showed me those glorious breasts I’d wanted my hands on from day one. But where my hand was, at her waist, was Annette’s giant nevus, as big as a catcher’s mitt. The skin was black and bumpy, just like the photos I’d seen attached to her e-mail to Lenny.

  My hand went limp, but I had enough sense not to jerk it away. I just left it there, trying to shut down tactile sensations from my fingertips. It felt like busted Styrofoam or dried leather.

  Her eyes were afraid, like the family dog on her way to the pound to be put to sleep. She was just a big organism, like me, but she’d lost the power of speech and had only her eyes—complex, light-sensitive organs, open and laid bare, like gutted shellfish, with all the soul removed.

  I didn’t know how many other guys had made it this far, but I wasn’t going to do whatever they had done. I looked right at her, straight into her naked eyes. I touched it, too, just like I wasn’t a bit afraid of it. I imagined the other guys, excusing themselves to go dry-heave in the can and then come back for a long discussion about her affliction. Probably not one of them had just gone ahead and done their duty.

  “Miranda,” I said, “I don’t care about that. We can just cover that up any time we want.”

  My intention was to believe those words, and soon. My plan was to wake up tomorrow and say aloud to her and myself for the rest of our lives, “Miranda, I don’t care about that.” It would be like Faith, something I had to say over and over and work on every day to make sure I didn’t take it for granted, and then maybe one day I’d wake up really believing it. But I was also afraid that I couldn’t do it, afraid that I would care about it. I wanted to take a day or two and think a
bout whether I cared about a big black mole on my wife’s hip. It wasn’t going away soon, I could see that. And I could see the flatter, scarred places where they’d tried to fix it, and I had a good idea of how it would look even with the rest of the black mole removed.

  Somehow she believed in God, even after being born with that on her, or maybe that was why she believed, because God was all she had.

  “Now you know why I spend on clothes,” she said.

  Then she reached down and touched me, right through my damp pants.

  Right then I knew what had happened with every other guy who’d been here before me. They hadn’t had anything down there for her to grab on to. They’d lost it, because they were squeamish, half-assed amateurs.

  Not me.

  28

  PISS FOR COLD BEER

  I CHANGED MY MIND,” said Becker. “I’m not going to charge you with being dumber than you look.”

  I knew it! Agent Rhuteen of the Viatical Task Force obviously had kept his promise and had called Becker to report my services above and beyond the call of duty.

  He poured more coffee for me and spilled some Old Golds my way.

  We were back in our little interrogation room, which I was starting to think of as our office, where we would be working together to solve crimes, arrest Hector and his minions, find out which weasel killed Lenny. Soon Becker would be proud of me indeed. I had the image file from GothicRage right there in front of me.

  “You’re not going to charge me?” I said, trying not to sound too proud of myself.

  “Not with being dumber than you look,” said Becker. “Instead I’m going to charge you with being a water-headed, Mongolian clusterfuck.”

  Becker was expressionless, as usual, but not without emotion. He ran the gamut from scathing sarcasm to flashes of tenderness whenever he mentioned “poor Lenny” or “the victim’s family,” all without moving a facial muscle.

  “Somebody was at Lenny’s place the night he died, and I’ve got a time-stamped JPG image of her right in here,” I said, tapping the folder.

  “And JPG,” he said, “that must be Mongolian for something I could use to swat you upside the head? You and computers.” He shook his head. “That’s why you ran off to pretend you were a secret agent for a day, right? Those FBI guys are all computer techies now. They don’t even talk to people anymore. They leave that to us menials who work on unimportant local matters, like homicides.”

  I pulled out the digital image GothicRage had sent me and passed it across the table to him.

  “I’ve seen that,” said Becker. “The federales sent it to me yesterday after you came out of Heartland Viatical without any holes in your head. They couldn’t even ID her. Not a clue. They’re asking me if I know who she is. I said, ‘Sure, I know who that is. It’s Miss Scarlet and she did it in the billiard room with a candlestick.’ Earwax for brains!”

  His ingratitude was shocking. I’d risked my life to get that image.

  “The task-force agents told me that if I wore the wire, they’d call you and tell you what I did for them, and then they’d help you with your investigation.”

  Becker laughed through his teeth and grunted. “You’re funny. You could do comedy at the fund-raisers we hold down at the union hall. You should see about getting in the Omaha Press Club Show. You’re good.”

  “They said—”

  “Let me tell you about the FBI,” said Becker. “The FBI will trade you piss for beer, as long as your beer is cold. You gave ’em their cold beer by wearing a wire for them, and then they let you sit in there and piss yourself, while they ate Taco Johns out in the van. Do they even carry guns anymore? No, probably just those little pocket computers. Go on, and get out.” He waved his arm at the door. “Go on out West Dodge Road and let the FBI take care of you.”

  I picked up the image and turned it around for him.

  “This woman’s name is Rosa Prescott,” I said. “She was at Lenny’s place the night he died. She works with Heartland Viatical.”

  “Her real name is Juanita Sanchez, and she’s downstairs in a holding cell,” said Becker. “She made a run for it the minute she heard about your viagra-tal adventures. We put out the all-points, and the State Patrol pulled her over on I-80 out by North Platte. You see how it works with us simpleminded local cops? We don’t have time to play on computers. While you and the FBI type love notes to each other in chat rooms on the Internet trying to trick each other with your computers and digital listening devices, somebody back here in the real world has to actually drive around in a car, find the bad people, and arrest them.”

  “She’s downstairs?”

  “She had her name on two life insurance policies worth four hundred grand,” said Becker. “And she works with Heartland. I got every insurance company in North America calling me and telling me about life insurance and viagra-tals. You know how easy insurance murders are—when the policies start popping up, all you gotta do is see who’s getting all the money when Lenny dies. Look at Heartland. He sold them a million dollars’ worth of life insurance policies on himself.”

  “Because he knew they needed policies,” I said. “Any policies, to answer the federal subpoenas and prove they were legitimate.”

  “And if Lenny dies,” said Becker, “they get their policies, and make a million clear.”

  “Cash,” I said. “Cash to pay investors. Cash to buy more policies. Cash to help them prove they’re legit when the FBI comes around. They needed policies and they needed money, and with Lenny they got both.”

  Becker lit a cigarette.

  “Even before we got a second look at the body,” he said, “we knew it wasn’t the Ecstasy and the pot and the painkillers and booze that killed him, it was somebody, probably one of those beneficiaries on his policies, or maybe it was all of them, or it was a freak heart attack.”

  “You just have to figure out who all is in on it,” I said.

  “Right,” said Becker. “You? Your girlfriend?” He pointed his finger at me, like he was Norton warning me about finding a gal. “You keep hiding things from people, and you’re gonna wind up in a cage with nothing but a toilet and no lid, my friend. I was ready to lock all of you up and hold you for forty-eight hours while I sorted it out.”

  “But then they took another look at the body,” I said, “and something was not right? No, you said it went from not right to flat-out wrong.”

  “This is just like a death unknown I had ten years or so ago,” said Becker. “Found a young guy drunk and dead, slumped over the steering wheel, with the front end of his Mazda smashed in by a light pole out on Military Avenue. Looked like a basic one-car accident all the way. Nothing suspicious, so the medical examiner lets the pathology resident handle the autopsy. Blood drawn at the scene showed a BAL of point-two-five, plenty drunk enough to smash up a car. Autopsy didn’t show squat, except maybe trauma to the heart from being smashed against some ragged broken ribs and the steering wheel. They went ahead with the funeral and buried the guy. Two big life insurance policies turn up, recently purchased by his wife and held just long enough to make them incontestable.

  “I never hesitate to exhume a body,” said Becker, “or to stop one from going in the ground in the first place. The body is all the victim has left to tell you who killed him. Wounds don’t heal once you’re dead, and for a few weeks or months you got a nice skin map and legend of trauma, anything from faint scratches to a puncture wounds.

  “When we dug that one up, we found a hole in the guy’s left armpit, just about the size of the ice pick the wife’s boyfriend ran into his heart before propping him over the wheel.”

  I knew where he was coming from; bodies to him were like original documents to us in Special Investigations.

  “You found an ice-pick hole in Lenny?”

  “Syringe hole,” said Becker. “Left foot, right between the little piggy that had none and the one that ran wee, wee, wee, all the way home, but we couldn’t find lethal amounts of any of the usu
al suspects in his blood. So the examiner was thinking it’s a Claus Von Bulow insulin special. No. We sampled the tissue at the wound site and found our substance: potassium chloride. Same thing old Dr. Kevorkian and the mercy killers use. A massive dose delivered quickly brings on sudden cardiac arrest, and after that, it gets absorbed by the body. But the killer missed the vein at first and injected a sample into the surrounding tissue before she pulled back again and found the vein.”

  I remembered Lenny in the back of Miranda’s car again. He’d practically predicted his own death. “Guttman has a history of being disciplined by the medical board in California because he helped a terminal cancer patient do the Kevorkian with a big injection of potassium chloride in a California mercy-killing case.”

  I flashed on Rosa back at Harrah’s the night Lenny had lost five grand to Charlize, Blackjack Princess of the Night. Rosa had known where to find Lenny: at the tables. Then Miranda said we had to leave, and Rosa had whispered in Lenny’s ear. Were they arranging to meet later? Was she telling him she’d be by later?

  “It’s easy to murder a druggie and get away with it,” said Becker. “All you gotta do is party hard with him until he gets fucked up as per usual, then stick around and convince him it’s a special occasion and it’s time to get way fucked up. Keep him going until he passes out, then you can do anything you want with him. Mix pills in water and pour them down his throat, or give him a hot shot of something two or three times the purity he usually gets. Even a guy like Lenny who doesn’t do needles, you just help him get beyond fucked up until he passes out, then roll him over on his back, prop him up on some cushions, and keep dribbling liquor down his throat. He’ll do some gagging and coughing and spitting, just like any other random drunk, but eventually he’ll stop breathing, or aspirate booze or vomit, and die. If you’re worried about evidence, light a cigarette for him, drop a match in a puddle of tequila, and excuse yourself. Either way, it don’t look nothing like murder. He looks like just another drunk fuckup who poisoned himself.”