“Hanging in my crib with Ian, Monica, and Kyle, talking about how the World Trade Organization is the surreptitious capitalist paradigm for. . . ”
The rest was all just revolutionary white noise. The first couple of times Malcolm went on a tangent, Tony had sat back doodling potential lineups for the Dodgers, waiting for the kid to talk himself out. But Malcolm had the fiery zeal of a revivalist preacher and enough conspiracy theories to keep Oliver Stone in plot lines for life. Tony pitied Malcolm’s future cellmate. Listening to this kid go on and on, he’d probably end up shivving himself.
Sam and Juan were interviewing Kyle and Ian respectively. The two stoners had emerged from their Leaving Las Vegas stupors and were exercising their right to take copious handfuls of Advil and remain silent. They mostly shrugged their way through the proceedings until the two-thousand-dollar-an-hour attorney, Malcolm’s father, had rousted out of bed, arrived, and shut down the questioning.
Unfortunately, no discarded costumes, Super Soakers, or accelerants had been found in or around Malcolm and Ian’s apartment. The kids had covered their tracks better than a Native American hunting party. With the lawyer standing watch, Sam didn’t dare keep their skinny asses in jail overnight. After all the Sturm und Drang, they were issued a couple of tickets for the pot and the drinking and told they were free to go.
Monica strolled out of the interrogation room like it was just another Valentino trunk show. Her stepfather was waiting for her in the squad room. Nola guessed he’d be tired, angry, and very rich. There was no way Jillian could support her daughter’s “gotta have” lifestyle on the profits she squeezed out of the Reader. What Nola hadn’t figured on was coming face-to-face with Lawrence Wilson twice in one day. When Jillian said her husband was extremely attractive, she hadn’t mentioned he was also a television star. Larry was standing by the front desk talking to Sam, and he was not a happy camper.
“You’re saying my stepdaughter sabotaged my own hearing today?” Larry shot Monica a look that was tantamount to child abuse. She shrugged it off like a loose sweater and smiled at Tony, who was typing up interview notes at his desk.
Hearing Dr. McDorable’s voice was almost surreal. Nola had only seen Larry’s soapy hospital show once or twice, but when he spoke he sounded exactly like the concerned doctor he’d portrayed.
“Is she going to live, Doctor?”
“It’s too early to say, Nurse. Removing a spleen from an eye socket’s a very delicate operation, but I’ve got to try — then later we can sleep together.”
Fifty Shades of Grey’s Anatomy, or whatever it was called, always managed to end on a sexy note.
Sam usually tread lightly with celebrities, but he wasn’t holding anything back. “We also believe your daughter helped set Mrs. Gillette’s pool on fire this afternoon.”
Larry struggled to keep his composure. “But you’re not officially charging her with anything?”
“Not at the moment, no. For now, she’s free to go.”
Nola gave Monica the nudge, and Stepfather and Daughter walked out of the station together in nerve-shattering silence.
Nola grinned at Tony and Sam. “Well, that promises to be an interesting ride home. I don’t know about you gentlemen, but my ovaries just sent me a thank-you note for never having children.”
Sam, who routinely peppered his language with words that would make Kanye blush, grimaced. “Do you have to say ovaries?”
“Sorry. Fallopian tubes? Uterus?”
“Yep, just keep digging that hole,” Sam said. “I’m sure there’s another sexual-harassment seminar down there somewhere.”
“Oh please, I haven’t had sex, inappropriate or otherwise, in so long, even identity thieves don’t want to be me.”
Sam laughed and went over to a credenza that contained a bottle of Courvoisier. Late-night protocol called for a nightcap.
“There is one plus to all this,” he said, taking out the cognac. “Now that Wilson knows his own stepdaughter was involved in this morning’s melee, he’ll probably get the rest of the Coastal Commissioners off our backs.”
Tony took a dimmer view of the situation. “Yeah, but we still have two unsolved murders: one with no suspects and one that, so far, we can’t even prove was murder.”
Nola fished three paper cups from the water cooler. “And we’ve got four miserable kids who think they’re smarter than we are.” She handed out the cups and hopped up on her desk, dangling her legs over the side.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t hold the little bastards, but great work finding them, you two,” Sam said as he started pouring. “Legs are looking good, by the way.”
Tony pushed his chair back and swung his feet up on his desk. “Thanks, boss. Been killing some power squats down at the gym.”
“I believe he meant mine, Tony.”
“Nope. I meant his. Yours are too long for that skirt. I can practically see up your ovaries.”
“And on that note, gentlemen . . .” Nola raised her cup and made her favorite toast, borrowed from The Maltese Falcon: “Success to crime.”
Thirty-Nine
It was after midnight when Nola finally pulled into her parking lot. The sight of the drunken couple walking arms around waists toward her condo was so discouraging that it was killing the pleasant, warming sensation left over from the cognac. Ken and Nancy were so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t even notice She was there till their paths converged outside the front door. Even then, it took Ken’s mojito-muddled brain a second to realize his bad luck.
“What? Are you following me?”
“Actually, I live here,” Nola said sweetly. “Hi, Nancy.”
Ken looked at Nancy accusingly. “You know her?”
Nancy opted to play dumb. “Ah, yeah, she loaned me a screwdriver the day I moved in. How do you guys know each other?”
Nola went along with the pretense. “Ken and I met earlier today. I had some questions for him. Now I have one more. How many girlfriends do you have in a night, Ken?”
The opportunistic little skunk didn’t miss a beat. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I asked Monica to meet me at the bar tonight so I could break up with her.”
If you ate more moral fiber, you might not be such a lying shit, Nola thought, but for Nancy’s sake she kept her response to a simple, monosyllabic, “Oh?”
So relieved to be back on the horse with her tarnished knight, Nancy rushed to his defense. “It’s true. He told Monica he’d made a mistake, then he called me. We’ve been talking all night down at Long Boards. We’re good again.”
Faced with the age-old dilemma: Do you tell your friend she’s living in a fool’s paradise, or do you wait and let the fool discover it for herself? Nola decided that ripping the bandage off fast would cause the least amount of pain.
“Nancy, Monica told me she went to Long Boards tonight to break up with him. And from the way she was sucking on her new guy when I arrested her, it’s probably the only true thing she said to me all night.”
Stunned, Nancy looked to Ken for a denial. Ken didn’t bother to lie. He was sobering up quick. “You arrested Monica?”
“Yes, and I know she and her friends in ROTC70 were the mysterious source for your story this morning, so if you don’t want to be named as a co-conspirator, I suggest you say goodnight to Nancy and start walking.”
It was an idle threat. She’d arrested Monica and her crew for the pot and the booze, they were Teflon on the rest, but Ken didn’t know that, and she suspected he’d had all the drama he could take for one night.
“Fuck,” Ken said to no one. Rude, stewed, and no longer about to be screwed, he told Nancy he’d text her later and started toward his car.
“Not to your car,” Nola called out. “You’re too drunk to drive. You can call an Uber from the street.”
Nancy’s expression was a Webster’s First Edition definition of agony as she watched him change course and walk away. Even faced with his latest set of lies, it was Nola s
he was mad at. “Why did you do that?”
“Because you’re not that egomaniac’s fallback girl. You’re too good for that.”
“Shouldn’t that be up to me?” she said, eyes welling up.
“Absolutely, I’m just buying you a night to think it over.”
“I don’t need a night. He loves me, he realizes that now.”
“Does he? Because I think he got emotional ass-kicked today, and all he realizes is that he needs someone to kiss it and make it better. If Monica hadn’t dumped him, he’d be darkening her door tonight, not yours. I was with him at the bar when she came in, and trust me, he was not going to break up with her.”
Ten minutes later, Nancy was back, curled up on Nola’s rattan chair, a tiny sobbing mermaid in a sea of Kleenex. “I’m so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. Every woman falls for a charming user at least once in her life. Take it from me, it’s best to get it out of the way early.”
Nancy’s curiosity was instantly aroused, but Nola had no desire to satisfy it. Dredging up past bouts of bare-knuckle romance wasn’t exactly her idea of fun. She tried to blow it off, but misery was way too anxious for company. Nancy kept pestering her with questions till the whole story of Josh spilled out.
“All eight years he cheated on you?”
“Or made sure I knew how much he wanted to. Check that, actually the first year was heaven, then the warranty ran out.”
“Did he ever tell you he loved you?”
“All the time. Then he’d complain behind my back and flirt right in front of me. He used to whisper to his female friends that if it wasn’t for me, they could be together.”
“How do you know?”
“They told me. Look, talking about Josh still makes me feel like a fool, and it’s too late to start Skinnygirl self-medicating.” Even if it wasn’t, Nola had no intention of activating her liquid escape pod tonight. Nancy was already tipsy and dehydrating at the speed of sixty Kleenexes a second.
“You couldn’t have been a bigger fool than I’ve been,” Nancy sniffled.
“Please, I should have worn a jester’s cap with bells on. Josh always said that Valentine’s Day was commercial schmuck bait. Then one year I get a box of chocolates to cover the fact he’d bought the same box for the French girl he’d been crushing on at work.”
“At least you got to eat the chocolate. Ken left me tied to his bedposts, covered in Nutella, because the drunk girls across the hall banged on the door and begged him to hook up their new game console. And then he stayed to play with them!”
Nola’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
“I know, it’s insane! I’m lying there like some masochistic Mallomar while he’s over playing Walking Dead with Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna. Then he comes back home all happy ‘cause he beat them.”
“Wow, he might at least have had the good manners to lick you first.”
For the first time, Nancy laughed. “I guess I really am a masochist. Just an emotional one.”
Nola laughed too. “Join the club. Josh took me on a romantic tropical vacation, then told me over a candlelit dinner that he knew he’d break up with me someday. Someday. I cried all night.”
“Oh, harsh. That’s how you broke up?”
“I wish. If it was, my place in the Guinness Book of Monumental Idiots wouldn’t be only one ‘how dumb can a smart woman be?’ step away from Hillary Clinton’s. The next day on the beach, when I asked him if he meant it, he started spouting all this philosophical bullshit that basically added up to, ‘I want to hump every girl I see,’ so I walked back to the hotel, packed my bag, and flew home sobbing. When he got back to our room and realized I was gone, he searched the island in a panic. When I finally answered my phone, he said I’d done the perfect thing to make him realize how much he really loved me. We stayed together another three years.”
“Three years?”
“Yep. Even when the schoolteacher he ‘hung out with’ after I flew home got flustered and disappointed when I answered his phone. Even when he called at five in the morning from the French girl’s bed and I’d been up all night freaking out, afraid that he’d been killed in a car accident. Hear my harlequin bells jingling now? Don’t be me, okay? Be better than me.”
“How did you finally end it?”
“Eventually, my self-esteem crashed so hard that there was no way to reboot, so I cheated, too, and in a didn’t-see-that-coming turn of events, suddenly I became the evil villainess in our tale.”
“Did he try and get back together?”
“Yeah. When the usual ‘now I know I really love you’ didn’t work, he parked outside my apartment and threatened to shoot himself. When that didn’t work, he even offered to marry me. Marrying me was apparently the only fate he could think of that was worse than suicide. It was deeply flattering.”
A glimmer of hope sparked in Nancy’s eyes. “He asked you to marry him?”
Nola’s heart sank. “That’s what you’re taking from my pathetic recap? You’re hoping that if you go through enough hell with a guy who keeps telling you he loves you, but doesn’t — eventually, in a panic, he might ask you to marry him?” The spark in Nancy’s eyes died, but Nola had lost the stomach for her fool’s errand. Broken hearts and Kleenex had to fall where they may. “Look, you’ve got Ken on speed dial, and I’ve run out of cautionary tales, so if you decide to take him back, I hope it turns out right for you.”
Still holding out hope for Ken, Nancy couldn’t help but ask, “Do you ever think maybe Josh did love you, at least a little bit?”
“Nope. He doesn’t even remember me now unless he reads about me in his journal. You don’t have to read that you loved someone. If you did, it never leaves you. Run Lola run.”
The smile was losing out to the tears again. Nola wondered how such a tiny girl could hold so much water. She must have hidden humps, like a camel.
“Oh honey, I promise someday Ken’ll be just so many clouds in your coffee.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s from an old Carly Simon record. My mother used to play it into the ground. You’ll be up all night anyway, so iTune it. While you’re at it, check out ‘Tired of Being Blonde.’ The woman actually had some very insightful things to sing. Oh, but avoid ‘Jessie.’ ”
“What’s that one about?”
“Sadly, tonight it’s about you.”
Forty
Up until the time of Descartes, the Western world generally accepted the idea that physical pain was a mystical experience, a reflection of God’s displeasure that emanated from the human heart. But René had other ideas. His PowerPoint presentation consisted of the image of a hammer striking a human hand, which sent a message through a tube to a bell in the brain. The greater the pain, the louder the bell would ring.
The bells of Saint Mary’s, Mark’s, Luke’s, and John’s, together with those on Santa’s sleigh, were ringing in Haven’s ears as she lay sprawled, legs akimbo, on the cold bathroom tile. She had gradually come to, but she was still too weak to move. Memories of how this incongruous situation had come about were lost in the hot-poker-through-shattered-bone sensation that gripped the bloody side of her head. She desperately needed it to stop. Thankfully, it began to dawn on her that she wasn’t alone. Xochile was starting the spray-tan compressor. It must be Tuesday morning, but surely she could see Haven wasn’t ready; she wasn’t even naked yet.
“Xochile, I need help,” Haven whimpered. “Help me.”
Xochile was wheeling the compressor toward her, the spray nozzle in her hand.
“No, help, I need help. I was attacked.”
Xochile was bending down now, but instead of helping her, she was climbing onto her chest. More pain.
“Stop, it hurts! Xochile, get off!”
The face was fuzzy. It was fuzzy, but now she saw it wasn’t Xochile. It was someone else, and the pain, they were hurting her. She wanted to fight, to scratch at the eyes glaring down at her, but the
weight of the knees pinned her arms. And the compressor kept humming and the pain kept crushing her. When she tried to scream, her attacker shoved the spray-tan nozzle so far into her mouth that it choked off the sound. Gooey brown liquid poured down her throat. Vomit came up, clogging her larynx, but the spray kept coming till her arms stopped shaking, and her body stopped moving, and her heart stopped beating. Beautiful golden girl Haven Gillette was dead.
Forty-One
The weather had finally caught up with the season. Coats and sweaters were appearing on State Street, and iced lattes had given way to espressos with biscotti at the Coffee Cat. Nola was walking past the restaurants, past the shops, past the theaters, when up ahead she saw him, the same old guitar with the feather on the strap slung over his shoulder. He was singing to the crowd in front of the Fiesta Five. Charley Beaufort was alive!
For a moment, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She stopped walking and started jogging. Ignoring the blinking Don’t Walk sign at the corner, she dodged cars and broke into a run. He was singing about the people going by, what they looked like, what they were wearing, what they talked and laughed and frowned about as they passed, but she couldn’t quite make out his words, just the general tenor of his voice.
“Charley, Charley, who tried to kill you?”
Charley flashed his big, warm smile and kept singing and strumming the guitar.
“Please. Tell me!”
The guitar was getting louder, too loud to hear over. When she reached out to stop his hands, stop the music, she woke up.
Nancy had stayed until around two-thirty. Now it was nearly a quarter to four, too late to take a pill and too early to get up.
Charley was the only straight-up murder on Nola’s plate, and she was about as close to solving it as she was to growing fins. The poor little junkie Sam had indicted was ducking flying monkeys and itching up a storm now, but they still couldn’t get anything more cogent out of him than, “Dude just shot him, click, click, click.”
Three clicks, but two bullets. The ones Alex dug out of Charley’s chest. It was the kind of inconsistency that kept her awake nights, and tonight or, more precisely, this very early morning, was no exception.
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