by Fred Zackel
I had the streets to myself.
Chapter 34
I walked up the cobblestone path, through the iron gate, and up the tile steps to the front door. I rapped on it, it started buzzing, I pushed it open.
The living room walls were glacier white, as was the ceiling. The furniture was the same shade, and even the carpet and drapes were bright white. Beams and rafters jutted down from the seventeen foot ceiling in sharp angles like icicles in a cave. It was like being buried inside a glacier. It was just about as cold, too. I wished somebody wasn't so shy with the central heating.
"It's about time you showed up." Her voice came on like a midnight date on a deserted beach. I could listen to it all night long. I just couldn't see the snow queen anywhere in her palace.
I tried for an echo. "It's Michael Brennen."
There was a long silence. "You're back again." She was on a balcony that overhung the far end of the room. The balcony was actually a bridge between the second floor bedrooms. She was still dressed in black, this time a cocktail dress like you see at happy hours at the Snob Hill hotels.
"'Fraid so, Mrs. Anatole."
"I'll be right down." She started down the staircase. "I'm afraid you've missed him again. He's over at Presbyterian Hospital."
"What's Riki doing at the hospital?"
"Grandfather had a heart attack."
Sweet baby Jesus. "What are his chances?"
She didn't know. "He's in Intensive Care." Then she remembered. "He had one a few years ago." Her smile was warm. Another valium smile. She was loaded to the gills and she'd need a mood ring to know how she felt. She scared the hell out of me.
I told myself I could always come back tomorrow. But Dani wouldn't let my walk away. I saw a double funeral. Star-crossed lovers who never married, buried together in the family plot. A murderer among the mourners.
"Would you like to wait?" she asked.
"I didn't come to see Riki."
She hesitated, computed alternatives. "I'm flattered." She thought it over. "Very flattered. But I love my husband." She went bright-eyed. "We have a good marriage."
"You don't understand," I said. I settled myself in a chair halfway across the room. I knew better than to get too close to the Imperial Iceberg. She had frigid claws. "I was the one who found Dani."
An icicle snapped down over her eyes. "I know that."
"I don't think you do."
She waited for me. "What does that mean?" Her blue eyes stared back at me. Sometimes ice reflects the same color.
"I can't let Jack take the blame for Dani's death."
"You're accusing me of murder?"
"You did a lousy job."
She pursed her lips. "Why does it have to be me?"
"She was killed late New Year's Eve. The cops know what her last meal was. The autopsy will show what time it was. There had to be someone who answered her phone call that night. You're the only one who could've done it."
"Should I call my lawyer?"
"Probably." Though he was probably dead, I thought.
She had to know. "Would it help me?"
"How could it hurt?" I smiled like her closest friend. "He'll help you get all the facts straight. You should write them down now. And he should go with you when you turn yourself in."
She couldn't be sure. "Turn myself in?"
"The longer you wait," I lied, "the worse it looks."
She looked like she'd just woken up in a strange bedroom.
"Why don't you call your lawyer?"
She closed her eyes and furrowed her brows. I started counting to ten. Maybe she was trying to remember, or trying to get the facts straight enough. Maybe she was trying to remember her side of the story.
She came back at eight. "She was hysterical," she recalled. "Blabbering about narcotics and smugglers, murder, people following her."
"And you didn't believe her."
"She wanted my husband."
"Did she show you her gun?"
Lilian was taken aback. "She was daring me."
"So you took it away from her."
She got angry. "She was daring me."
"She was trying to convince you."
"Daring me!" She was turning nasty. She had her side of the story down pat, and this wasn't going her way.
"So you killed her."
She drew comfort from that fact. "I couldn't let her have him." She was earnest. People put old dogs to sleep with the same earnestness.
"Dani never wanted your husband."
"How could he resist her?"
"It was easy. He never wanted her."
She snickered. "That wouldn't stop her."
"Dani wanted Jack, not Riki."
"Jack?" Her mind caught up. "You can't believe that."
"They were lovers," I told her.
"No." She shook her head. "No."
"Too many people told me that."
"They're lying." She was sure.
"They were caught more than once."
A tiny gun appeared in her hand. It wasn't much larger than a track pistol, and it didn't light cigarettes. She fluffed her hair with her other hand. It was still in place. "And I say they were lying."
"Sure." I stared at the barrel again. I tried being calm. "I didn't think you'd keep that."
"Riki's left me alone a lot lately." She almost pouted. "He's got my car, too."
It was an effort keeping my voice steady and calm. "That's the final proof. The gun's registered to Catherine. Ballistics will prove it's the one that killed Dani."
She kept it pointed at me. "I suppose I should kill you."
I had to say something. "What will you do with my body? How about the mess it'll make? What about my car?"
She tossed them aside. "I'll think of something."
"You can't think of everything."
She started to speak, but her words froze. The gun in her hand went east, towards the kitchen.
Riki stood there, slumped against the door. God knows how long he had been there. From his expression, he had witnessed enough. He looked heartsick. She had gone too far this time.
I waited for the explosion. Maybe just a single shot. Maybe one right after another. But the shots never came.
She looked closely at the gun. She raised it, put the barrel in her mouth. She looked at me. Her eyes were haunted. She had lost him.
I told her to take it out of her mouth. Like an obedient child, she did. She set the gun in her childless lap. Then the dry heaves came. I took the gun away. She didn't resist. I wrapped it in a handkerchief.
Riki stopped me at the telephone. "You're going to call the police?" He had desperate eyes, blue with fear.
"What do you think I should do?"
"I don't know." His voice was grim.
"Is that your decision?"
"You should have let her kill herself."
"Then it wouldn't be suicide," I said.
"But she's homicidal!"
I tried to gauge him. "She's your wife."
"Yes, yes, I know that." He mumbled his words, as if mumbling divorced him from her. He had to know it wasn't so simple.
I wasn't finished, anyway. "She's your first cousin."
He winced like a man being nibbled. He seemed to shrink like a failing balloon. He looked weary of giving in to his own better judgment. He was almost a zombie from giving so much and going nowhere.
"Go to her," I said. "Go on."
He was in worse shape than I thought. He took a hesitant step. I shoved him when he faltered. He stumbled forward like a bear with a hangover. He cradled her in his arms, then hugged her tightly.
She didn't react at first. Then she started to whisper. She tried to hold him. Her hands stuttered and fumbled, as if trying to remember how they had fit together.
They held each other for a long time, as if it had been a longer time since either had held someone. Neither spoke. Neither wept. They didn't look at each other.
In the kitchen I found a dry bar near a gas firep
lace. I scrounged through it, came up with a frosted bottle of cognac. I uncorked it and swigged a couple of mouthfuls. It was bitter, like gun smoke in the lungs.
I tried to think of something clever to tell Banagan tomorrow. They never make it easy on you. I looked at the clock. It was last call. Mañana was here already. The end of the New Year's weekend. The freeway would be jammed with homebound weekenders.
Never enough money to get away.
Chapter 35
The autopsy said Dani Anatole was in her second month of pregnancy.