by Pelzer,Lissa
‘Are you out of your mind? You think we haven’t seen each other this last year because you wore flip flops over to my place?’
Lilly pressed her hands together between her knees. ‘You said, ladies don’t wear flip flops.’
‘I don’t remember ever saying any such thing, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t.’ He lifted the short glass and took a long drink. ‘If you can’t work it out… Darling. You can’t work for me again. Last time we went to see a client together. The man ended up dead.’
‘I know.’ She knew she should be grateful to him. He’d saved her life. Well, not exactly saved it, she had made it out of the room first and gone pounding on his door. He’d reacted, like a gentleman, protecting her honor. He shouldn’t feel guilty about it.
‘So what the hell are you doing talking about flip flops?’
Lilly looked down at her water and the Martini next to it. She was thirsty but didn’t think she’d get either glass to her mouth without spilling it. ‘Maybe flip flops are easier to talk about.’
Bobby reached for his glass. ‘And maybe we’re done here.’
Lilly had him by the wrist before she knew what she was doing. She felt the bones, tendons and muscles under her fingertips and her skin flinched.
‘He deserved it. After what he tried to do to me.’
Bobby took a drink. His eyes skidded over the doorway and Lilly looked back expecting to see Davis standing right there, but it was clear.
‘Is that it?’ he asked. ‘Is that what you came here to say?’
‘Are you worried about the cops, because you said…?’
Bobby tipped up his drink and the ice cubes hit his teeth. ‘I know what I said. And we took all the necessary precautions. We always do. We drove up. The room’s not in my name and it’s well nigh untraceable back to you. I used a friend’s address for the credit card. And that man knew a thing or two about covering his tracks.’ He looked at her. Something clicked in his head. ‘Why do you ask about cops?’
‘Only because I mean, if they came to me and asked questions I wouldn’t say anything.’
‘Why would they come to you? Look, Lilly, there’s nothing to worry about there. If you just keep your head down and keep your distance…’
‘I mean about anything or about the business. You know. Like you said Cassandra did.’
He raised a finger. ‘And you can leave Cassandra out of this.’
‘I’m just saying…I wouldn’t rat you out.’
‘What is this all about?’ Bobby pressed his fingertips to his forehead. ‘You’ve picked a fine time to come here talking about cops and getting up under my skin.’ And a light went on. ‘But I suppose you know that…you want some money?’ he said suddenly, ‘That it?’
Lilly just looked at him. What could she say? A lady never asks for money.
Bobby sighed. It was like the air, he’d kept locked up in there for the last ten minutes had come streaming out. ‘Listen. I’ve got some people to see tonight. I need a little space. Let’s say we meet tomorrow and I give you some money and until then, we just keep out of each other’s hair.’
Lilly bit her lip. ‘We’re leaving tonight,’ she said. Half of it was true. Her ticket was the one-day return. She hadn’t expected, she’d need to use it. But if Bobby was just paying her off, if he didn’t want to see her anymore, he surely wasn’t going to book her a room.
‘Oh, you are?’ he said. ‘What time?’
‘Five.’
He managed a half smile. ‘So let’s say four o’clock. There’s a little room just before the elevator, a few couches, and real cozy. I’ll meet you in there and give you a little something to be going along with. How would that be?’
‘Four o’clock, today?’
‘Uh huh.’
Lilly tried not to look too excited. ‘Sure.’ And she smiled back. ‘Thank you.’
Bobby lifted his chin in her direction. ‘Aren’t you going to drink your drink?’
‘It’s kind of early for a Martini.’
‘Not on your birthday.’
‘My birthday isn’t until tomorrow.’
He blew out over her head. ‘Why take the risk? You never know what’s going to happen before then. The world might end. Maybe you already had your last birthday and that drink will just sit there going to waste.’
She could have said plenty about him being older, about Davis in the lobby. It was much more likely he’d had his last birthday, but she just smiled and thought of the money.
‘Then I’ll just say thank you.’ She lifted her glass in a toast.
‘I would, but my glass is empty.’ He stood up and left her sitting there. ‘Bad luck and all.’
Lilly nodded.
She let him go out the door as if they were the best of friends, sat there as still as the chair under her ass until his heels had passed the doorframe. Then she put down the Martini and was up.
She had to walk casually across the lobby, but when she found the door to the back stairs she kicked her shoes off and ran. Taking two steps at a time she got to the first door and stuck her face against the glass. He wasn’t on second. She turned back and headed up to third.
Here she heard voices and slowed before the door. Looking sideways through the glass panel, she saw him, thirty foot down the hall, his hand was on Cassandra’s elbow as he ushered her along. Lilly stepped back until they disappeared into a door. With her shoes off, she jogged quietly after them. Noted the door number and jogged back to the stairwell. And she waited a few minutes, half expecting Cassandra to make an excuse and come out to look for her, but half thinking that if Cassandra was sitting down already, she wouldn’t bother sticking her head out the door if it was the Pope in the hall. It was nothing to be offended about.
Lilly sat down and looked at the time on her phone. She had time to kill before Bobby came out again with her money. There was nowhere better to spend it than right here, but still she lurched up when she heard a creak on the stairs. She was on her feet, shoes back on and making like she was coming down them when Davis looked up into her face.
Lilly had expected a cleaner.
‘I was looking for you,’ Davis said.
And Lilly grimaced, ‘Well you found me.’
‘Indeed I have.’ And she stood there like she was waiting for an invitation to a party. ‘I wanted to check you got somewhere to stay last night.’
‘I did.’
Davis looked at her like she felt sorry for her and Lilly tensed up. Had Davis followed her last night, had she seen her going into that crack shack?
‘You sure look like you did…come on. Let me buy you a coffee.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Then let me buy you a waffle. They’ve got Belgian waffles at a stall on the corner. That nice boy in my hotel told me about them. They use a special type of chocolate. Gee-ar-deli. Gura-dali.’
‘Ghirardelli,’ Lilly corrected her.
‘That’s right. You know the stuff I’m talking about.’ Davis wasn’t smiling. She knew what she was doing.
Her stomach growled.
As if she had much choice.
Outside on the street, they had set up a photo studio. A frame was hung with red curtains and in front of it a mannequin of Marilyn Monroe and the little ugly guy who’s always in black and white movies. Some kids were taking photos of themselves with Marilyn, their hands on her chest and up her skirt and Lilly laughed but Davis didn’t.
‘Am I walking too fast?’ she asked, ‘Because we can slow down. That’s a heck of a get up for this time of day. Those shoes must hurt.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I recollect when you used to wear nothing on your feet but those old blue Converse. I think you only had that one pair of shoes.’
‘That was really back in the day,’ Lilly said. She remembered those shoes too. They were her only pair. They were one size too big. They’d looked about right when she snatched them from the changing room.
‘You dressed like a ki
d before you met Bobby. He likes his girls to look like ladies.’
Davis reminded her of one of those girls at school who tell you every personal detail about yourself even though you don’t know their first name.
Davis said, ‘You get to talk to Bobby yet?’
‘I told you. I’m not here for him.’
‘Doesn’t mean you’re not going to talk to him. You run into old friends. It’s only natural to say hi.’
‘Did you get to talk to him yet?’
‘You think he’d still be here if I had?’
Lilly turned. ‘But you came here for him, didn’t you? You followed him down here. What is it you’re waiting for him to do?’
‘Now we’re getting into the kind of territory where I give you some information and you give me some…’
Lilly looked away. The smell was coming out of the cart in hot steam and the couple in front were just getting theirs. It wasn’t easy to concentrate.
‘But that’s a good question. You’ve been thinking about all this. That makes me feel better. You think about what I said last night?’
‘I didn’t have time,’ she said.
‘Otherwise you would have thought about it?’
‘What?’
‘Two Belgians with everything,’ Davis said up to the guy in the paper chef’s hat.
‘And chocolate,’ Lilly added.
‘You would have thought about what happened with Bobby…’
‘Nothing happened,’ Lilly snapped, ‘He did what any guy would have done.’
‘What did he do?’
It was like a stone had dropped into her stomach. Lilly turned away, put her attention firmly on the waffles and played it vague. ‘What?’
And Davis hadn’t reacted. She was just standing there, shoulders relaxed. Lilly didn’t need to worry about that. It was like Bobby said, there was nothing to connect them to Sea Island. It was like it had never happened. They’d split up. She’d flown home as planned. Bobby had bought her a ticket so she could get home that night for her birthday evening – not that she had done anything. By the time she got back to Opa-Locka, Cassandra had left.
Davis was still jabbering on. ‘Sooner or later, this is all going to come out one way or another… Bobby is going to do something stupid and get himself in trouble and when they bring him in, he’s going to talk.’
‘I don’t know. He’s pretty careful.’
‘You call transporting females across state lines for the purpose of prostitution, careful?’
The guy in the van stared at them. Lilly blanched. Davis reached up and took the two plates. She held them there in front of her. ‘What do you think is going to happen then?’ She turned around, cool as anything.
It was hard to not look at the waffles. The heat of the batter made the paper plates bend and she stared at them, afraid they would collapse.
‘What do you think he’s going to say about you when that time comes?’
Lilly heard her own stomach growl again. Davis must have heard it too.
‘He wouldn’t say anything.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. Guys like Bobby Alvin. You can’t trust them. They talk all day long for no purpose other than to fill the air. If he gets arrested, and he’s looking at the rest of his life in a jail cell… he’ll talk about you.’
She reached out for the plate, but Davis didn’t hold the plate out to meet her hand.
‘I won’t put words in your mouth. Still, I don’t want to see you in trouble for this.’ Davis was staring hard, her eyes narrowing.
Lilly blinked. For a moment, she saw Davis, that time on the beach talking to Cassandra. She had the same look on her face. Lilly knew, she was saying the exact same things.
‘You know. If you did the same thing next week, even under mitigating circumstances, you’d go to jail for a long time.’
Lilly kept one eye on the waffles.
‘You did what you did, but you wouldn’t have, not if Bobby hadn’t been involved. This is a serious crime. They don’t get much more serious. Good God. We could go do it right now. If we went into a local department right now, you’d be turning yourself in as a minor. That would stand for something, Carol Ann.’
Lilly turned away. She hated that name, Carol Ann. She used to think her mom chose it just to make sure no one ever said she was prettier than her. The way she sang it out, sarcastic, like a nickname that she couldn’t deny. No, when Bobby gave her that ID that said Lilly Lessard, things changed. And she cringed to imagine herself in a courtroom, being called ‘Carol Ann’, someone standing there listing off the things that had happened and the places they had been.
‘Time is running out.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘We better eat our waffles.’
Davis submitted. She held out the bent plate and Lilly took it, tried to be casual as she folded the waffle like a slice of pizza.
‘You’re a tough kid,’ Davis said. ‘I guess you’ve had to be.’
Lilly took a nibble, but she felt like she could swallow it whole, dislocate her jaw like a snake and just send the entire mass into her stomach.
‘I guess it’s only fair to tell you. I know you didn’t come out here with a friend. I know you came alone. And I’m guessing you came by bus.’
Lilly chewed, moved the food to her cheek. She wanted to say, ‘no shit Sherlock’, but what with Davis being a detective, she might take offense.
‘You know,’ Davis said. ‘I used to travel by bus a lot when I was a teenager.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I used to live out west. I had a very different kind of life.’
‘Are you going to tell me you were a hippie?’ Lilly wiped a drop of chocolate from the corner of her lips. ’Because if you are, I’m not going to buy that.’
‘No.’ Davis lifted the waffle to her mouth, but let it drop again. ‘I wasn’t a hippie. I guess you could say I got into police work because someone altered my path in life. I was going one way.’ She held out her hand and curved it backward. ‘Someone made me go the other.’
Lilly nodded. She’d listen, the woman had bought her food, but if Davis started on about Jesus, she had better be willing to offer her a carton of milk to go with it.
‘But you know the way they did it, well, it was a little heavy handed. You could say I resented it. I’ve been thinking about it lately. How if I were to do the same, to help someone out, I’d want to do it differently. I’d want to show them the facts and let them decide to take matters into their own hands.’
‘By buying me waffles?’ Lilly said with brown teeth.
‘For example.’ Davis opened her mouth to speak but stopped. She was watching her making a pig out of herself and Lilly slowed down. ‘You know your own mind. Or at least, you think you do. I can see that. You don’t want to be told what to do and what to think. You want to come to those conclusions on your own. I have the feeling, if I came right out and told you what I know, you’d side with Bobby just out of spite.’
Lilly lifted her chin. That was one thing Davis could count on. If she started telling her, she knew what she did with those men, if she said it in words, it would be the last words she ever spoke to her.
Davis twisted her wrist to see her watch. ‘I’ve got to shoot. Do you want this?’ She held out her waffle. Lilly could eat it, no problem, but she shook her head.
‘Why don’t you just leave it on the wall? Maybe someone who wants it will pick it up.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Davis said and she lay it down.
Lilly took a bite of hers. ‘Why did you bring me all the way down here just to buy me a waffle and leave?’
‘I’ll let you work that out…Here, you’ve got some chocolate…’ Davis touched her own lip and held out a napkin.
Lilly snatched it off her. ‘You know, for someone on vacation, you’re using up a lot of your time wanting to talk about an old case. Aren’t vacations about getting away from it all, enjoying some down time, some free time?’
&nbs
p; ‘You can never get away from it all,’ Davis said, ‘And there’s no such thing as free time. The time you have from when you’re born to when you die is yours to use as you will, but you don’t get any of it for free.’ Davis got up and she touched the side of her lip again.
Lilly felt her eyes roll and she dabbed her mouth, but there was no chocolate smear on the napkin, just the name of the waffle truck, which she hadn’t seen before.
Now she did.
Lilly’s Homemade Waffles.
She looked up after Davis, but the woman was already gone.
For a moment, it caught her off balance, but it was no big deal. So she knew she went by Lilly, so what? Cassandra must have told her.
Still the sooner she got that money off Bobby and got on that bus the better. She could just imagine it, going back to Miami with a pocket full of cash. When they stopped in Atlanta she’d go into a restaurant and eat a proper meal all on her own, just as if she were on business, which in a way she was.
But for now she eyed the other waffle, sitting there on the wall. She waited till the people in the line drifted away and then let out a shrug, just in case anyone was looking. Then she picked it up. It was silly to let it go to waste if no one else wanted it.
Chapter 9
Lilly found the lounge Bobby was talking about. It was a small room with a fireplace and shelves full of leather bound books with no titles and she perched on the arm of one of the couches that faced the lobby. Her foot swung. She couldn’t help it. It can be so hard to do nothing at all.
As the minutes passed her shoulders dipped, she began to pick at her nails, but when the elevator opened and Bobby walked out, she straightened up. He came in, turned around like he wanted to close the door, but seeing there was none, stood instead blocking the way. He had an envelope in his hand. It was small, maybe too small.
‘I have a little something here to help you on your way. It’s not a bribe, it’s a gift.’ He smiled awkwardly. ‘It’s not like you’ve got anything on me that I need to bribe you for, but I appreciate we’re in unusual circumstances this weekend.’
Lilly looked at it. She wasn’t going to say, you couldn’t gift what you owed. ‘How much is that?’