by Thomas Perry
“Look at this,” he shouted. “Why did you do this?”
“Because it’s exciting.”
Jeff had no words.
“I told you I wanted to do it. I’ve been telling you for days. I guess you haven’t been listening to me—not really listening.” She shrugged. She looked at the woman, who had, at some point, lowered her scream to a quiet, sobbing moan. “I guess I’d better do this one too, huh?”
“No,” said Jeff. “What’s wrong with you? You can’t just kill people.”
She leaned close to the woman and spoke distinctly. “His name is Jefferson Davis Falkins, and I’m Melisande Carr.” She straightened and turned to Jeff, smiling. Her face was beautiful and perfect, but watching him from somewhere behind the big, liquid eyes was something that terrified him. “Well, what do you think, Jeff? Can I kill her now?”
He stood in silence for a few seconds, then turned and began to walk back the way he had come, through the tall alfalfa that whipped against his knees. He heard her yell after him, “You didn’t answer, Jeff. Can I?”
He kept walking, staring straight ahead at his car and at the immense empty landscape beyond it. He raised his head without looking back. “Yes!” In a moment, he heard the loud report of the gun again. A moment later he heard the whisper of Carrie’s light, graceful footsteps as she trotted through the alfalfa to catch up with him.
They drove on, the black Trans Am moving across vast, flat plains divided into squares of green or brown or gold so enormous that they were best discerned from the window of an airliner passing miles above.
After a few minutes, she said, “Somewhere dead ahead is a town whose luck is about to change.”
Jeff glanced at her, and she was holding the gun again, smiling. For the first time, he was really afraid of her. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck rising. He looked ahead at the road. She had him now. He was completely under her control. No matter what insane whim she had, she would find a way to make him go along with her, to say, “Yes, sure. It’s okay with me.” And one day, she was going to feel the urge to get rid of him too. Maybe she would decide she wanted to see a man die while he was having sex with her. Or she would decide he just wasn’t any fun anymore and have a few more seconds of amusement pushing him off a high place and watching him fall. He turned his head to look at her again.
She was staring at him, watching his face closely, and he felt as though she were reading his mind. “What’s the matter, Jeffy? Getting to be a bit of a pussy?”
“No,” he said. He kept his eyes on the road for a few seconds, then gave in to the urge to look at her. She was still staring at him, and she was holding the big .45 pistol again.
“What are you doing?”
She raised the gun and aimed it at his face, then said, “Pow.”
“Cut it out. That could go off.”
“Pow. Afraid?”
“Carrie, that’s enough.”
“Pow.”
He was overcome with a rage that was partly fear, partly shame at letting her bully him, and partly anger at her for murdering the couple in the Corvette. He swung his right arm to backhand her face. She bent down, both hands coming together over her bleeding nose. The gun was in her lap, and he snatched it. Part of him thought that all he was going to do with it was take it away from her, but part of him knew that wasn’t going to be enough. He fired it into the side of her head.
Instantly the inside of the car was coated with a film of tiny blood droplets. He could barely see out the windshield. His hands, his arms, his face were speckled with back-spatter. Carrie’s head lolled against the broken side window, and he could see the stream of blood already draining onto the upholstery and the rug. “Oh my God,” he said. He tried to clear the windshield with his hand, but the blood only smeared.
She seemed bigger and more frightening dead than she had been alive. What was he going to do with her? He couldn’t stop in the middle of this empty landscape and dig a grave. People would see him from ten miles away. And he had to get as far as he could from the two dead people in the Corvette before he did anything—a couple hundred miles, if he could. With his right arm he pushed her body so it was crammed onto the floor space in front of the passenger seat. He was in terrible trouble now. He would have to try to drive to a place where there was a ditch or a river, and dump her out. Then he would clean his car. He would have to strip off these clothes, wash himself, and put on clean ones.
Even looking innocent might not be enough. People had seen him with her. If she was found dead, the girlfriend she’d been with in the diner could describe him to the police. And Roger, the ex-boyfriend. He would just love to be able to show the cops all the places in his house where Jefferson Davis Falkins had left his fingerprints.
Jeff drove faster, staring out the clear space on the left side of the windshield. He would have to pass every car he saw before they could get a clear view of him and his car windows. If anybody saw blood, they’d call the police. It would have to be night before he stopped, and the right sort of place, where there was cover and there were no people.
He looked ahead and drove still faster. As long as he kept the car moving fast, he would still be alive.
36
KAPAK DROVE the rental car to the office of his lawyer, Gerald Ospinsky. When he opened the door, the receptionist looked up and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Kapak. He’s in the conference room waiting for you.” It was as though nothing had happened, as though this were his thousandth time here and there would be two thousand more.
Kapak smiled. “Thank you.” He walked through the big oak door into the back corridor, past the offices of the partners to the conference room.
Ospinsky saw him and stood, but remained a bit bent over, like a man who was expecting a blast of wind to blow his papers away, and he would have to slap them down and hold them. He looked, as always, pale and worried. “Hello, Mr. Kapak. Sit down.”
He shut the conference room door and moved to sit down across from Kapak.
“Well, Gerald” said Kapak, “is everything ready?”
Ospinsky’s eyes roamed the table. “Yes. I believe so. Yes.” He pointed. “First, here are the checks for your signature. Your accountants made them out according to your instructions. A hundred thousand to each of your closest … assistants and the managers of each of your clubs. Fifty thousand for each of the assistant managers, talent bookers, chefs, et cetera. Twenty-five thousand to each of the waiters, dishwashers, busboys, bouncers, and dancers.” Ospinsky paused. “I have to say, if what you’re trying to do is buy their love, then—”
“I’m not that stupid. I’m trying to make it go where I want now so the government can’t confiscate it later.” Kapak picked up one of the pens on the table and began to sign the checks in the stack quickly, moving them to another pile as he went. “And a hundred thousand to you. I hope you saw it. Oh, here it is.” He signed it and pushed it across the table to him.
“Yes. I thank you for that, but I don’t think it would be appropriate for—”
“Yours isn’t a present. It’s a retainer so you’ll still answer the phone on the first ring.”
“Well, okay. I’ll have to have you sign a standard agreement.”
“Put it at the bottom of the pile, and I’ll get to it in a minute.”
Ospinsky said, “I should bring up another slight problem. Or maybe it’s intentional. You’re transferring ownership of these assets but ignoring a few major ones. For instance, there are three liquor licenses. The going rate for a license this month seems to begin just north of two hundred thousand dollars. You can sell yours at auction or through a broker, or—”
“They go with the clubs. Each club goes with everything that’s attached to it—land, license, building, sound equipment, security systems, whatever.”
“That said, I have the transfer papers all ready, as you requested. My assistant, Harriet, is a notary, and I can sign as witness.” He went to the door and called, “Harriet? W
ould you mind helping us out for a while?”
The signing went on for forty minutes, with Kapak moving from one pile of papers to the next, and Harriet and Ospinsky following to notarize, countersign, and fold papers into envelopes.
At the end of an hour, Ospinsky smiled faintly, his eyes still terrified, as though he were in the presence of a dangerous madman. “That’s it, I believe. As soon as these are mailed, you’re a pauper.”
“Homeless, but not quite a pauper,” said Kapak.
“I certainly hope you’ve made the right decision.”
“It’s not as bad as that. I’ll be carrying half a million in cash.”
Ospinsky’s eyes nearly shut as he made his pained grimace. “In legal terms, I believe these bonuses and transfers are your best bet for avoiding confiscation. There’s never been a claim the money wasn’t yours.”
“Good. Now let’s pack up the letters and I’ll mail them on the way.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can have my staff do it later.”
“I’d like to do it myself.”
“All right” The three worked together to put all of the remaining papers into the correct envelopes and collect them in a cardboard box.
When they were finished, Kapak held up a set of keys. “If you don’t mind giving me a ride, I’d like to leave my rental car here.”
“Harriet will do that. The police may have identified my car and be watching for it. They won’t know hers.”
Harriet said, “I’ll be happy to drive you.”
“Good. Gerald, thank you for everything. I’ll call you in a few days.”
“I wish you the best of luck,” Ospinsky said.
“No. Wish me the strength to go on without it.”
“Then I wish you that.”
They took the elevator down to the bottom of the parking garage, where Harriet’s car was parked. It was a gray Prius. Kapak set the letters on the back seat and went to the rental car to get his suitcase and a carry-on valise.
Harriet was a fussy driver, taking each turn with mechanical precision. She went down Vermont Avenue to the post office, and waited at the curb while Kapak carried his box inside and pushed the letters through the slot. He crumpled and tore the box so it would fit in the trash can, went outside, and got into Harriet’s car.
Harriet said, “What does it feel like?”
“Lighter,” he said. “It feels like dropping a sack of weights so you can swim.”
At the airport she pulled up ahead of a hotel shuttle bus in front of the Delta terminal. She jumped a little when Kapak leaned over suddenly and kissed her on the cheek. He said, “I wrote a check for you before I closed an account today. It’s good. Take it.” He unfolded a check, and she could see it was handwritten, not printed like the others. When she took it he said, “Don’t tell Gerald or he’ll give you a lot of advice about investing it. Have a good life.”
He picked up his suitcase and valise and hurried into the terminal. He scanned the crowd but saw no face he’d ever seen before. He waited in the line to check his suitcase. The line wasn’t too long, because most of the business flights to the East coast left in the morning. The evening was for the overnight flights to Europe. He took his boarding pass and carry-on bag, and walked to the security barrier, took off his shoes, and put them in the gray plastic bin to be x-rayed with his telephone, his watch, his sunglasses, and the change in his pockets. He stepped through the metal detector, scooped up his belongings at the end of the conveyer, and walked on.
He sat down on a seat in a row of four set aside for the shoeless and tied his shoes. He sat still for a moment. He had rushed all day, trying to get here past the metal detectors with a valid ticket in his pocket. Now he was a little afraid to see what awaited him at his departure gate. He took a deep breath and let it out, then stood up and began to walk.
The gate was far down the concourse. He watched people run past him, and he walked past others who were looking in shop windows or stopped at the television monitors mounted above the concourse to list arrivals and departures. As he approached his gate, he saw the sight that he had been dreading since he left the police station. He stopped walking and looked at it for a moment, studying the elements of it.
There were only three of them, but they had known they wouldn’t need more. They were the same three who had picked him up this morning—Timmons and Serra standing along the wall like a couple who had spent so much time together that they never talked anymore, just leaning on the wall and staring straight ahead while their boss, Lieutenant Slosser, talked. The woman, Detective Serra, even had a bulging shopping bag from the bookstore across from the waiting area.
Kapak walked directly to the small group, stopped, and stood still. Slosser became aware that someone was behind him, turned, and saw him. “Hello, Mr. Kapak.”
“Hello,” said Kapak.
“Let’s talk.” He put his hand on Kapak’s elbow, took his valise and handed it to Timmons, and walked with him out of the waiting area to a spot beside the big window of the bookstore. There was nobody standing near them. Even the male and female detectives didn’t follow, and travelers coming along the concourse instinctively passed far from them. The pair stood by his carry-on bag, making sure nobody stole it.
Slosser said quietly, “I was happy to see you decided to fly to Paris. You’ll be there in the morning. I’ll notice you’re missing and report it to Interpol sometime tomorrow evening, so they’ll be too late to stop you and turn you back at the airport. After the police find you, hire a good lawyer and tell him the truth about what happened in Malibu last night. France won’t extradite anybody who might be eligible for the death penalty. They’re trying to have a civilization.”
“Why tell me this?”
“You’re leaving, and you’re not going to be able to come back. That means I don’t have the problem I thought I did.”
“I’m your problem?”
“Not exactly. The problem is that Rogoso hasn’t been dead twenty-four hours yet, and already shooters who work for Rogoso’s Mexican drug suppliers are on their way here to find the one who killed him. The feds have already recognized three two-man teams and stopped them at the border. Two of them were pairs of teenagers. The gangs down there recruit these kids to be killers by hanging advertisements on highway overpasses.”
“So how does my leaving help?”
“When you’re gone, so is the threat to public safety. If you’re here in jail, Rogoso’s friends will kill you. If you’re out on bail they still will, but you’ll have a chance to get some of them too. Even worse, if I try to bring you to trial, I have to produce my two eyewitnesses. If I do that, then Rogoso’s friends will know about them and kill them.”
“You care about that?”
“My job is to ensure public safety. What that means is to keep as many people alive as I can. I don’t see how your trial would make my division any safer. Do you?”
“No.”
“Then bon voyage.” He turned, walked back to the waiting area, and nodded to Serra and Timmons as he passed. They followed him at a distance, but neither of them appeared to have noticed Kapak.
He waited until they were out of sight, picked up the carry-on bag they’d been guarding, and then sat in one of the blue seats and stared out the window at the big airplane with the accordion tunnel attached to it. It occurred to him that close up, they didn’t look like birds. They looked more like big fish. He let his eyes go unfocused, staring into the early evening light. When this day ended, so would his thirty-year sojourn in America.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he stood up. He stepped around the row of seats, put his arms around Sherri, and held her. “You came.”
“Of course I came” she said. “Who puts out on the first date and then turns down the second date?”
“This is serious, Sherri. I’m never going to be able to come back.”
“There are worse places than Paris. I think I might have spent the last few years serving d
rinks in one of them.”
He kissed her. She leaned her body into him and made the kiss go on just a tiny bit longer than he had intended it to. She had always found that when a woman showed she was more interested than the man and at his mercy, it was easier to manipulate him. She amplified her feeling of passion by reminding herself that the carry-on case he was carrying had to be full of money. She let the kiss end, but looked up at him for a few seconds with wide-open eyes and slightly parted lips. Finally she sat down on the nearest of the connected chairs in the waiting area, as though she were trying to control her feelings, and he sat down beside her. She lowered her eyes shyly and looked at the purse in her lap. Inside was a large prescription pill bottle with her name and her doctor’s on it. Kapak had already had his first heart attack. Sherri had enough confidence in her skills to be sure that with the help of this much Viagra, she could make him have his last. She glanced at the valise again. An attractive woman alone in Europe could have a nice time with that much money, even if she was no longer an ingénue.
Slosser and Serra and Timmons walked along the concourse together. When they reached a restroom sign with the silhouette of a woman, Detective Serra went inside. The two men continued a few yards farther and went into the men’s room. A few minutes later, the three reassembled and walked on. They went down the escalator, past the baggage area, and out onto the sidewalk. Detective Serra handed Lieutenant Slosser the shopping bag she had been carrying. “Paree isn’t going to be quite as gay as he thought.”
“Thanks, Louise. You two can go off-duty now.”
“Good night, Nick,” said Timmons.
“See you tomorrow,” Serra said. They stepped onto the crosswalk and went into the parking structure across the circular drive, got into their unmarked car, and drove toward the airport exit.