by Solace Ames
“That’s my wife, man, I swear to God, we just had a few drinks—”
“Heroin?”
“Just a few drinks, I don’t—”
“Ketamine?” That was a drug people took to fuck, and a typical date rape drug, too.
The man flinched. Paul was starting to get a sense of him. “Did she know I was coming?”
Silence.
Killing someone was...messy. Maybe back in Vegas, Marc had planned on how to get rid of the body. Simple to drive Paul out into the desert for the coyotes and buzzards to carry away. I trusted him, I loved him, I wanted to be like him.
“I could kill you,” Paul said, and gently circled his left hand around John’s throat to illustrate his point. “But I could go away, too.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
A small, rather arrogant voice in the back of his mind congratulated him for frightening someone high on meth, which generally wasn’t easy. “I’ll take your wife to the hospital. Considering she didn’t even blink when I kicked down the door, I think that would be the best decision, don’t you?”
“What the—yeah. Just go.”
Paul patted his ass to check for a gun, then let go and pushed him aside.
The woman was pretty much a dead weight, but she was petite, slender, and carrying her down the stairs hardly slowed him down. She wore a short red dress that slid against his palms like polyester satin, and she smelled like patchouli and vomit.
Paul didn’t look behind him at all. He tipped her into the passenger seat, climbed into the driver’s side, peeled out and drove about ten blocks away before he stopped the car and fastened her seatbelt. He was angry at himself for ignoring the warning signs, angry at being manipulated, angry for being angry, even angry at the woman for making him responsible for her.
I could have raped her.
No, that would never have happened.
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” he said.
“No speak Engliss,” she muttered in a Spanish accent, and threw up yellowish bile into her lap.
Paul wasn’t feeling a full range of emotions quite yet, but they were coming, oh yes, rushing at him like storm clouds on the horizon, and a sense of disbelief at the absurdity of the situation was right at the forefront.
What the fuck did I just do?
He reached for his phone again.
* * *
The line ran smoothly tonight. Adriana had time for a brief phone call to Paul and a text to Jay to let him know she’d be home before midnight. She wanted to tell him not to wait up for her, but knowing it was useless, she kept the note simple. He’d been doing well, anyway. One rough night when his knees and back hurt, that was all, and a hot bath and a massage from Paul had him good as new the next day.
She left the line to check the date labeling in the walk-in freezer. When Wallace came in tomorrow, she wanted everything to be absolutely perfect. And as much as she despised him, Steve had to feel the same way—he was a professional, too. The time for fuck Adriana over was gone; impressing the boss was more important.
As her breath made clouds in the frigid air, she reorganized a few veal cutlets, tidied a row of sauce containers.
Someone came in behind her and closed the door.
“Hey,” Graciela said. She had her arms crossed, eyes downcast.
“What is it?” That probably came out as irritated, but Adriana couldn’t help it because everyone had to move fast all the time, keep moving forward and don’t stop and why was Graciela just standing there?
“This isn’t easy but I—I’m really sorry. I fucked up. I did some bad things to you.”
“What do you mean?” The hum of the refrigeration unit seemed to alter in pitch and dropped lower, more like a growl. This was a new year, a good year, a moving-forward year. Bad things was way too vague to be taken seriously.
“I messed with your knives. Threw away stuff for your specials. Steve paid me to do it. I mean, I only wanted to do it once and then he said he’d tell if I didn’t do it again. I made some bad decisions and I really needed the money. I’m sorry. I want to make it up.”
“You fucked with my knives,” Adriana said, disbelieving. Anger began to rise up in her, anger no less powerful for being slow and cold.
“Yeah.” Graciela looked up and almost made eye contact, then jerked her chin back down. “I was gonna try to ride it out. Just stay away from everyone, do my job. But he wants you gone so bad. He told the owner you slept with Wallace for the job. That that’s how you got it so young and how you keep it.”
“And Vito would believe that? There’s no way.” Adriana was relieved that the situation had turned abstract, less personal. Something was terribly wrong, but it didn’t have anything to do with her. She kept the line running. Worked her ass off, put in eighty-hour weeks, and it showed in the food. Vito had been here. Vito had seen that.
“Yeah, Steve says you’ve been fucking up and he’s the only reason Sapore hasn’t fallen apart. Vito wants to fire you at the meeting tonight, and if Wallace has a problem with it tomorrow he’s gonna fire Wallace too.”
“You’re making this up,” Adriana shouted. Her hands were clenching and unclenching. She wanted to hit Graciela. No, no, she didn’t want to hurt Graciela—the thought of hitting her was only to make her...be quiet. Take it back. Start making sense.
“I wish I was. I don’t know what to do anymore, but I found out today and you—I don’t know what you can do. You’re smart. Maybe you can figure it out. I’m sorry, Adriana, I’m so sorry.”
Adriana reached for her phone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jay was fairly comfortable in hospitals, but the waiting hall at L.A. County-USC was a nightmare by any standard. He walked by rows and row of bench seats, all separated with bars so that the sick people waiting couldn’t lie flat. Some lay on the floor. An old woman pressed a bloody rag to her head—oh, that was his landmark. He turned to the right.
Paul sat stick straight, his face frozen in a distant expression. Marielena hunched next to him, her head rested on her arms, arms rested on knees.
Jay felt numb and disassociated, like he was stuck in the waiting room of his own mind. Purgatory. He wasn’t sure whether to resent Paul or fear for him. He’d talk it out—maybe that would help him think it out.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Jay said, even though he wasn’t. “Everybody’s safe. She’s had a lot of meth and ketamine, but they’re wearing off. That’s probably what triage decided, and it’s why they shoved you guys off into the twelve-hour wait time crowd. They probably figured you were trying to get a free detox. She might be going through benzodiazepine withdrawal now, though—that’s the pills she keeps mentioning. Maybe they’ll give her a small amount of Valium here.”
“That’s good,” Paul said.
“So it’s a good time to talk about calling the police.”
Paul’s mouth tightened.
God, Jay didn’t want him to suffer for this. “Or maybe you can call a lawyer, talk to them, and the lawyer calls the police. I’m looking at three priorities in here, and the first is Marielena, what’s in her best interest, and because she’s high as fuck right now it’s not as easy as just asking her. Maybe she needs to get the police involved and maybe she doesn’t, especially because she’s not here legally.”
“Right,” Paul said. It didn’t feel too unnatural to have Paul relying on him for the answers. Jay wasn’t going to panic. They were all tangled up in a stranger’s tragedy, and there was never a miracle fix, no deus ex machina, but things could always get a little better, a little clearer, a little less tangled.
“That’s the first priority, because it’s her life and it’s obviously an abusive situation. She’s terrified of him. She keeps asking me to go back to the apartment and get her pills, and it’ll be
all right because he’s off at work.” Jay had a twinge of guilt that he was talking about her as if she wasn’t just sitting and rocking three feet away, in a cocoon of ill feeling and confusion, lost among foreigners. He shifted his feet—it would be nice to sit down, but someone had taken his seat—and took a deep breath. “And my second priority is you, as in I don’t want you to go to jail for prostitution or God forbid something worse. I mean, you said you left a bag there with rope and handcuffs. Jesus. If we get the police involved now, prostitution is probably the worst, right? You could get out on bail, pay a fine, community service, I know it sucks to have a record but you already have a record, right, because of the drug stuff—”
“And the third priority?” Paul interrupted, getting up and gesturing to his place.
Jay sat down, realized that the seat was going to kill his spine—low-level pain already coiled there in warning—and eased back until his shoulder blades dug into the seat, to keep the weight off. He looked up at Paul and smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring. It felt reassuring to be close to Paul, now that the initial shock—You want me to come where? Why?—had faded. Paul was shaken but he was doing his best, he was a good guy.
“Myself, that’s all,” Jay answered. “I need to do the right thing—morally, if not legally—and try to make sure I don’t get charged with anything that would endanger my job.” He shrugged. “I’ll be fine. I’m just being honest about all my concerns, because that’s how you get through fucked-up times like this—communication and total honesty. I’m glad you called me. We might be here all night, but we’re in this together. I’m going to text Adriana once we make a decision—have you sent her anything yet?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you look into the lawyer thing, and I’ll talk with Marielena some more.” Jay patted her shoulder nervously. She moaned and shifted toward him, revealing a half-moon of agonized face. She was young, with good skin except for a few sores on her neck and chin. “Hi, Marielena,” Jay said quietly in Spanish. “We can wait here to see a doctor, but it might take a long time. Is there a safe place that you’d like to go?”
“I need my pills,” she said. “I have an anxiety disorder. It’s very serious.” Her accent was strange to him. She’d said she was from Peru and had overstayed her student visa to be with the man who was going to marry her, and then everything had gone to hell, and she was supposed to make it up to him but she didn’t remember what she’d done wrong, even, and it wasn’t fair, was it?
“Okay, Marielena. We can stay here then, and see a doctor about your pills. Afterward, do you have a place to go? Friends, family in Los Angeles? If you don’t, I know a safe place you can go, for women. It doesn’t matter what your immigration status is.”
“I want to talk to my mother.”
Jay pulled up his phone. She couldn’t remember the number, but she had names, and passwords for social media, and it didn’t take long to track down a woman in Lima who sobbed in relief and blessed him. When he handed the phone to Marielena, she held it to her forehead as if she could touch the woman on the other end of the line, across all the miles, and then spoke in a torrent of hushed words.
Jay looked up at Paul. Paul wasn’t browsing for a lawyer or talking on the phone or doing anything. He was just standing there. Looking at Jay. He had that unreadable expression on his face, but not the one that melted Jay, made him want to do anything to please him—this time the expression was a wall, not a door.
“I’m on federal parole,” Paul said. “It’s called supervised release now. It’s way beyond a fine. I’d go back to prison for a while. I don’t think you should change those priorities, Jay. But I want to be, well...honest.”
“Federal?” Jay looked around him. Either no one spoke English or they were asleep or they didn’t give a damn. “How did you—what the fuck did you do federal time for?”
“Bank fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud.” Paul smiled crookedly. “We surfed the real estate bubble. Did residential mortgage fraud in Nevada and California, ran a pyramid investment scheme for a commercial development. Everything was fine until the crash in ’08, and then it all fell apart. I did a year in prison. I know, for someone like you, what I did was probably a lot worse than drugs. But I never really lied about it.”
Jay kept talking, talking instead of thinking, because he didn’t want to think about it yet. “Residential. Right. So did you guys have any straw buyers in our neck of the woods? In Downey or Pico Rivera? My brother got foreclosed on in ’09. I know how it all works, because of that. They loved minorities, first-time home buyers. Coincidences—crazy, right?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible. I owe a lot of money in restitution. I’m trying to pay it off quickly. That’s one reason I got into such a risky business.”
Maybe this was the time to yell at Paul for being a whore—no, that was only a passing thought, the remnants of a morality Jay had very consciously rejected, a mistake, because what Jay really wanted was to call him dirty. Dirty money. Fucking contaminated. Papers pasted over doors—NOTICE TO VACATE. Everything had fallen apart, all right. He stared down at his shoes, not wanting to look at Paul. A dull, aching misery beat behind his eyes and curled down his spine.
“My mother wants me to come home,” Marielena said, and she sounded the clearest he’d ever heard her. “I need to go home.”
The phone chimed softly.
“I’m not going to stand here and self-flagellate,” Paul said. “I’ll just say that I understand you’re disappointed in me. I did a lot of bad things, and the good things I’ve done are mainly for selfish reasons. You and Adriana deserve someone with more integrity, and I’m sorry I’m not that person now. But I want to be.”
“My phone’s almost out of batteries,” Jay said. “Give her yours.”
“Sure.” Paul handed Marielena his phone. “Have you decided?”
“We’ll help her get home. And then, I don’t know.”
He had to talk to Adriana.
* * *
The bar stretched on forever. A wet sheen covered every surface, the whole world lacquered and slick, no purchase anywhere. Paul wasn’t sure which way was out. Out of this bar, out of Las Vegas. He blinked and clutched at his bottle, his fingers numb and cold and wet and sliding.
“So you gambled away your student loan money,” the man said. He was older, had salt-and-pepper hair, a nice navy suit, intense eyes that seemed to drink in the light, swallow it down. “I didn’t even know that was possible. It must have taken some level of ingenuity taking it out in cash, so I’ve got to hand it to you, Paul.”
“You’re fucking with me.” Paul was very drunk.
“No, I’m genuinely impressed. You said you were in architecture school?”
“Used to be.” Tonight had been his last chance to make tuition.
“I love architecture. Whether it’s high art, vulgar, vernacular, it’s all about imagination on the grand scale. I’d be interested in finding out more about your drafting skills, Paul.”
Paul’s name in his mouth sounded...reassuring. Like there was a connection there. “Give me back some money.”
“The direct approach. Well, that works, sometimes. Here you go, Paul.” The man took out a silver money clip, peeled off a few hundreds, and slipped them into Paul’s shirt pocket along with a business card. “You need to work on your poker face. That last hand you played—” He shook his head sadly. “I could give you a few tips. Look me up tomorrow. My girlfriend and I are having brunch at Il Mulino.”
Paul was unexpectedly disappointed at the mention of a girlfriend. It wasn’t like he could fuck his money back from this guy, anyway, he was a player on another level, looking down at Paul from a godlike height.
And reaching out a hand.
Paul startled awake, shivering. He’d gone to sleep in the front seat of his car, in a parking lot behind
a Peruvian roast chicken joint. When he looked out the windshield, there was a pre-dawn dove-gray color layered on top of the usual light pollution.
The image of Marc reaching out a hand floated behind his eyes, another layer, from a nightmare realm. But then, turning Marc into the Prince of Darkness wasn’t fair to all the people Paul had personally fucked over. The money, the high life, trying to fill the aching existential stereotypical void with fistfuls of cash—that was what it was all about. Paul could have walked away; he’d chosen not to.
He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes and rolled the ache out of his neck. No idea how long he’d been out. Jay had directed them here after the medication finally came through, something about Marielena’s mother’s friend’s nephew and getting a safe conduct pass from the Peruvian consulate, not to mention clothes. The next step was the consulate, then the airport. Paul had wondered if voluntary deportation wouldn’t be simpler, but he was sure Jay had already considered that.
No more choices left to make. He was just along for the ride at this point, a glorified chauffeur. That suited him fine.
Jay wouldn’t look at him. That, on the other hand, was unbearable.
What else can I do?
A restless surge of energy spiked in his chest, and suddenly he had to get out of the car before he slammed his fist against the dashboard. He flexed his fingers and climbed out into a cool morning that smelled faintly of old engine oil. Sandy soil bristling with weeds, some flowering even in this dry winter, pushed through cracks in the asphalt.
As he approached the back of the restaurant, Jay came into view, leaning against the door, phone clutched in both hands, looking fragile as the thin stalks that pushed their brave, twining way through concrete toward the sun.