Strip

by Thomas Perry

  “But what if he doesn’t remember me? Or if my wanting to see him isn’t good enough?”

  “Think of something else.”

  “But I don’t know anything about him.”

  Jimmy looked sad. “I know you think my partner has been mean to you, and that he’s a heartless jerk. The truth is that he’s been the one to go to bat for you the most. He and I have a theory that you had nothing to do with this, but it’s just a theory. Our boss, the lieutenant, thinks you suckered us the first time we met you, and that you’re guilty. He sent us to arrest you. It was my partner who fought hardest to give you a chance.”

  She half-turned and reached up to the seat back to put her hand on Jimmy’s forearm. “Thank you so much.”

  “I’m not eager to put another innocent woman in prison.”

  Her mind seemed to be dodging in different directions. “What about Paul?”

  “Who’s Paul?”

  “My boyfriend. Can I tell him what’s up, so when I say I have a crush on Joe Carver, he’ll know I don’t mean it?”

  Jimmy said, “If anything goes wrong, if somebody blows the story and you don’t attract Carver, then there are people who will say you had your chance to cooperate, but didn’t. Then you’ve got to think about what happens if Carver—a killer in the making—shows up at your apartment and sees you’ve got a boyfriend with you. What does he do? Does he get jealous? Does he decide you must have been lying about being interested in him, so you must have set him up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then maybe you ought to make sure your boyfriend’s out of the way until this is over and Carver is locked up.”

  She nodded. “I’ll just explain it to him.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you not to let anybody in on this. It’s an undercover operation to get a shooter off the street. Telling anyone is a crime in itself. The lieutenant would put you away in a second and keep you locked up without bail until no officer could be put in jeopardy.”

  Jimmy said, “My brother—my brother officer will be the one to stick close to you until this is all over and we’ve got Carver.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said. “I just couldn’t face this alone.”

  “It’s the job. Let’s get this car back to the lot,” Jerry said. “I’d like to have you ask your boss for a few days off. You’ll tell your boyfriend you’ve got to take a couple of weeks to think about your relationship and where it goes from here. You might mention the word ‘commitment.’ That will make him take a bit of time off himself. We’ll want to start getting in touch with your girlfriends today and begin making arrangements for the party you’re throwing for Joe Carver.”

  16

  JEFFERSON DAVIS FALKINS SAT in his favorite seat in the diner and ate an early lunch while he used his cell phone to call Carrie’s cell number. Each time he called he heard, “Your call has been transferred to the message center.” He had plenty of time to think, but didn’t want it. He had known Lila since they were in the ninth grade together at Louis Agassiz Central High School in Waldorf, Indiana. Or he had at least seen her and learned her name. It was true that they’d never had much use for each other at the time. She was chubby for a while, he seemed to remember, and then suddenly became tall and thin. He had pushed her into his peripheral vision for the four years of high school. She was over there to the left someplace doing something he didn’t bother to quite see, or maybe she was a hundred feet down the hall beyond the girl he was actually looking at.

  A few months ago, he had conceived the idea that it might be time to move to Los Angeles and called an acquaintance to find out whether he had any high school classmates living there. The person he called was Heather Fields. She had been in his homeroom, the F through H room, and they had gotten to know each other fairly well. She had been one of those girls who acted as a kind of talent scout to direct boys’ attention to appropriate girls. There had always been a hint of the traitor about her, an implication that she had, at least conditionally, decided to be on the boys’ side. Being a girl, she knew other girls’ secrets—what they had done, and with whom, and what they might be willing to do again. She would suggest a girl, and say far too much about her, in order to interest the right boy. She spoke plainly to boys and was a favorite for that reason. Heather had a great deal of power among the girls, because she was a kind of attention broker. It wasn’t until years later that Jeff realized she was not a special person who was essentially sexless and therefore abnormally wise. She was just a girl who wanted that attention for herself, but never got it.

  When Jeff called her, she told him that she’d heard Lila Porter was living in Los Angeles and she knew how to get her phone number. In return, Jeff gave her the phone number of his own apartment in Tucson, which he was about to vacate. He said he’d call with his new number when he got settled, but he never did.

  He had called Lila, said he was going to be in Los Angeles, and wondered if she would have dinner with him. She accepted, and when he picked her up, his first surprise was that she was no longer a tall and gawky, ill-proportioned girl with a plain face and thick glasses. She had grown into her body and looked better at twenty-eight than she had at eighteen. The fine, corn-silk hair was thick and flowing now, not the thin stuff that had let her ears stick out. When she mentioned that she was working at a strip club called Siren, he was intrigued.

  By the time the entrée was served, he realized that she must have secretly liked him in high school. Before dessert was over, she admitted it and laughed at herself, but kept touching her hair. He ordered them both after-dinner cognacs and waited for hers to take effect before he mentioned that he was having trouble finding a suitable apartment.

  She said, “I have a small place and it’s kind of crummy, but there’s a secondhand couch I inherited from the last tenant. You could crash there for a couple of days, if you want.”

  He not only wanted to, but it had been his whole goal for the evening, until he’d actually seen the way she had grown up. At that point his list of wishes and desires expanded dramatically.

  He should have tried harder to flatter her and make her feel appreciated. He should have talked about how beautiful she was. Having sex with her, while it implied attractiveness, apparently wasn’t clear enough for women. He should have pretended to have a job. He should have pretended to think about her whenever she was gone, pretended to listen to her when she told him about her days and her thoughts and her memories. He simply had not thought things through. He should have planned, not just reacted. And he should have given her some money almost immediately after his first robbery.

  All of Jeff’s belongings were stuffed into the trunk of his black Trans Am out in the parking lot. He had an impulse to look in his address book and see if there was anyone else he knew around here, or anyone who might have connections, but his address book depressed him. It was a black notebook about five by eight inches that held many phone numbers, most of them crossed out. Many of the ones that were left were so old that they had to be obsolete. It was a record of people he’d offended.

  Jeff finished his breakfast, drove to the movie theater where he and Lila had gone on a couple of occasions, then selected the movie with the longest running time. He bought a ticket, went to a seat to the far right along the aisle at the dark, empty back of the theater, and went to sleep. Last night he had gone almost without sleep, and now there was an opportunity to catch up.

  He slept through the previews and the movie, and woke up when the lights came on again. Then he bought a ticket for another movie and fell asleep while he was waiting for the theater to fill up. This one was apparently no better than the first, because the seats nearly all remained empty. When the lights came on the second time, he felt rested and full of energy.

  He stood, stepped into the lobby, and turned on his cell phone. The screen said “Eleven missed calls.” He used his right thumb to show the whole list. Lila’s number was not among them. All of the calls were from Carrie. H
e pressed Call and heard the ring.

  “Hi,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that I’m awake. Are you?”

  “Yeah. I woke up a minute ago. I was wondering if you were a dream.” He hadn’t been. “You’re too good to be real.”

  “So you’re eager to take me out tonight?”

  “Absolutely. What time do you want me to pick you up?”

  “I think I’d rather meet you somewhere.”

  “The diner where we met last night?”

  “No. I can’t stand the idea of going to a diner so much that they remember us and say things like ‘How you been?’ If you tell them, then you’re a regular. See? Sometime they’d say, ‘Oh, her? She’s one of our regulars.’ Then I’d have to shoot myself.”

  “I can see the reasonableness of that. How about somewhere else?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping this would be one of the times when you would surprise me and say something like, ‘Even though I’m an outlaw now, I used to be one of the five best chefs in Shanghai. Why don’t you come to my place and I’ll cook for you?’”

  “Sorry. I’m not a great chef, and I don’t even have a place right now. But Chinese food does sound good. What’s the best Chinese restaurant around here?”

  “People in the know say you can get the best food outside of Asia right now in Monterey Park. Don’t ask me why a bunch of great Chinese chefs would suddenly move to Monterey Park, but that’s the story. I’ll make a call or two and get us a reservation for eight.”

  “What time should I pick you up?”

  “You don’t know where Monterey Park is, do you?”

  “Never heard of it. But I can read a map.”

  “Come to my place at seven and I’ll drive.”

  “Can I come a bit earlier?”

  “Why?”

  “It you don’t mind, I’d like to use your shower.”

  “That’ll be fun. Come at five.”

  As the number on Melisande Carr’s kitchen clock changed from 4:59 to 5:00, she heard the sound of the black Trans Am turning into the driveway. She looked out the window and pressed the remote control unit to open the garage door, then watched the black car glide into the unoccupied space beside her white Acura.

  She watched Jeff Falkins swing his legs out of the black car, stand, and slam the door. He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn last night. He opened the trunk and took out a bundle of clean clothes, and then walked to the kitchen door. She opened it quickly and pulled him inside, then pressed the button to close the garage door and hide his car. “We have some talking to do.”

  “And some showering,” he said.

  She looked at him with narrowing eyes. “And some shaving. But first, the talk.”

  “What about?”

  “Why do you suddenly not have a place anymore?”

  “I don’t really want to go into it right now.”

  “If you want to be with me, you have to.”

  He looked down at his bundle of clothes but held her in the corner of his eye as he said, “It’s just temporary. It happened this morning, and I haven’t had time to do anything about it yet.”

  “So it was unplanned. You just got here a month or two ago, right? So you must have been renting. I know you have enough money to pay the rent, because we stole it together last night. So it was a fight with a roommate, right?”

  He wobbled his head from side to side. “Well, sort of. Don’t worry about me. I’ll find a nice place in a day or so and invite you over to see it.” He held up the roll of clothes. “Is it all right if I take my shower now? I think we’d both like me better after I’m clean.”

  “Not yet,” she said. “It was a girl roommate, wasn’t it? Tell me the truth.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she figured out what you were doing last night and threw you out on the street.”

  He wobbled his head again. “Not exactly. Are you sure talking about this doesn’t make you uncomfortable?”

  “I’m positively enthralled.”

  “All right, then. She didn’t figure out what I was doing last night. She and I didn’t even talk about last night. She was asleep when I came in. I waited until she was up and awake, and then told her I was going to have to move out.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah,” he said in a low, sad voice. “She’s a nice person, and I realized that it wouldn’t be fair to keep living there and giving her the impression that we might have some kind of future together. This isn’t her fault.”

  “It’s about me, isn’t it?”

  “It’s about me. I know you’ve got some commitments of your own—a boyfriend and all that. It’s just that if I could meet you by chance in a diner and feel the way I do about you after a couple of hours, then I have no business living with somebody else.”

  “Wow,” Carrie said. “Wow.” She reeled like a fighter after an unexpected punch. “I can’t believe you’re real. Where did you come from?”

  “Indiana, originally.”

  “You’re so sweet and dumb. Didn’t it even occur to you that if you kept quiet you could have both of us?”

  “I won’t lie to you. Of course it did. But I went out for a walk this morning and thought about it. I decided I wouldn’t want a woman to do the same to me.”

  “Amazing,” she said. “He’s reinvented karma, all by himself.”

  “My mother always called it the golden rule.” He studied her expression, wondering if he had gone too far with that one. He saw that she was studying him too. Her eyes narrowed and her brow crinkled. Yes, he must have gone too far. She was going to throw him out too—the second one in a day.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re blushing.” She placed both small, graceful hands on the sides of his face and lifted his head a little. “I can’t remember seeing a man who blushed—and an outlaw like you too. A regular desperado.” She kissed him. “Your face is so warm. Come on. Let’s go get that shower now.”

  She took his hand and led him through the house to the master bathroom. She opened the shower door and reached in to turn on the faucets and adjust the temperature, then stepped back. She unbuttoned her blouse, took it off, and then the bra, and then seemed to notice that he was watching her. “Get undressed.”

  “Are you taking a shower too?”

  “You just dumped your girlfriend for me. If I don’t scrub your back, who’s left to do it?”

  “Look, Carrie. I didn’t break up with her to make you feel guilty or something.”

  “Who’s guilty? I don’t do guilt. You just got me all turned on.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That’s good.”

  “You bet it’s good. Hurry up. We’ve got a lot to do before we leave for the restaurant.” She stepped into the shower and held the glass door open while he stepped out of his clothes and into the torrent of warm water.

  They made love in the shower, and then again on the bed. In the lazy, comfortable minutes afterward, she sat up suddenly. “We’ve got to get ready.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I’m getting hungry too.”

  “Did you happen to notice the way I was dressed when you arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like it?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Then I’ll wear those clothes. I only had them on for five minutes while I was waiting for you.” She was up and scurrying around, stepping over him and leaning down to snatch up clothes she had left on towel racks and counters. She glanced at him. “Get moving, Bud. The razors and shaving cream are in this drawer.” She opened it and stepped away. “Don’t dawdle.”

  He stood and put on the clean clothes he had brought, and then shaved with a pink razor. While he was cleaning the sink, she reappeared with her makeup on and her hair brushed and her purse over her shoulder.

  “You look amazing.”

  “Just so I don’t look as though I just got laid. Toss your dirty clothes in the hamper in my dressing room. We’ll wash them tomorrow.”

&n
bsp; “We will?”

  “Can you really not know that I’d want you to stay here tonight?”

  “I didn’t ask because it seemed like assuming a lot.”

  “Get over it, and get going. Zip-zip-zip.”

  As he went into the dressing room and put his dirty clothes in the hamper, he marveled at the world. How could a woman as cynical, crazy, and alert be such a sucker? She was far too smart and too self-indulgent to get manipulated into taking him in like this. She should have seen him coming from two streets away. And there was the question of her appearance. A woman that beautiful must have been conned by older and more experienced men when she was about fifteen. By now she should have assumed that every man who spoke to her was a liar.

  “Jeffrey!”

  “I’m not a Jeffrey,” he said. “I’m a Jefferson.”

  “Well, whoever you are, come on. Thousands of years of Chinese cooking and I have plans for tonight, and we’re waiting for you.” She snatched up a tissue from her vanity and whisked it across his cheek. “Missed a spot. Now you’re beautiful.”

  She stepped past him to the dresser built into her walk-in closet and pulled out her big .45 pistol. She checked the magazine, clicked it back in, and put it in her purse.

  “They’ll kill the chickens before we get there. You won’t need a gun.”

  “Don’t you have yours?”

  “Not on me. It’s in the trunk of my car with my stuff.”

  She stopped and folded her arms. “Go get it. I’ll wait.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He studied her. She stared back up at him, unmoving.

  “You’re weird about guns, aren’t you?”