On the couch, the little girl, Epiphany’s daughter, she pretends like she’s not seeing any of this. Me, I’m crying.
Nico is saying, ‘My caretaker, she told Hanna the girls had been moved to Cannes.’ He grins. ‘I left her tied to that tree, you know? I left her suffocate in that heat. I don’t like when people talk.’
And outside in the hall it sounds like someone laughs or screams again and Nico, he puts his gun back in its holster underneath his jacket and waits to make sure no one walks by. When no one does he picks up one of the gold Oscar statues from one of the tables, like it’s good to mix up what he’s hitting me with.
‘Really, you brought this on yourself,’ Nico says, flipping the Oscar statue around in his hand, feeling its weight. He looks a little disappointed. ‘You know, when Matthew said that Phineas told him he saw you in the bar at the Carlton I was surprised. I had thought you separated from Hanna in Porto.’
‘I’m here for Bela,’ I grit.
‘Of course you are. Bela. That was her name, yes? Beautiful.’ Nico laughs. ‘Hanna is rubbing off on you. Both out for revenge for your own reasons. And here I thought I taught you business sense, perro. But if you had learned any, I guess it would have occurred to you that I couldn’t let Hanna threaten any future deals, so after I left Spain I had to come to Cannes and embarrassingly explain to my valued client that an old friend of his might show up and, if she did, I would take care of her, I would set things right. Free of charge. I don’t like having to give freebies. Freebies make me want to break mouths.’
And he hits me with his fist.
‘What I was surprised to find out was that Matthew knew who you were when I told him your name. He knew about the “murder” you committed at the museum, but he was alarmed to find out that you had been travelling with Hanna. He was even more alarmed when a few nights later his man Phineas told him he had seen you at the bar.’
And he hits me with his fist again.
‘We weren’t sure Hanna would find us, but once he knew you were in town he ordered Phineas to invite you places, to see if anyone was travelling with you,’ he says.
Against the wall, I’m crying, my jaw hurts so bad.
On the couch, Epiphany’s daughter, she’s still kneeling and not hearing any of this.
Nico clicks his teeth together and rubs a finger back and forth over the edge of a coffee table in the room.
‘Matthew isn’t as foolish as Hanna’s presence here suggests she believes he is. He knew if he had Phineas invite you here, at the very least he could have me tie up one loose end – and at best he hoped you would bring Hanna as your guest if you were still travelling with her, knowing she would come for her daughter. Why waste energy searching for the two of you when we could get you to come to us?’
Nico clenches his first and I wince, expecting another punch. But he smiles when he sees my terror and unfurls his fist without striking me.
‘Matthew, I like him very much,’ he says. ‘He is like me: take charge; use people until they can no longer offer you anything. Not like his stupid man Phineas, who doesn’t realise everything that’s going on around him. He doesn’t know Hanna is here. He doesn’t know why Matthew wants you invited places. Like most, he is weak and afraid to challenge the leash. He takes orders from his master because he’s too afraid of what might happen if he questions them.’
This time Nico’s fist hits me for real.
‘I really wish Matthew would tell me to get rid of him, too. Maybe after Matthew is done letting Hanna think her little disguise fools him he’ll let me take care of Phineas as well. Right now he’s letting Hanna think that he’s like other men; that the promise of sex will get him to tell her anything she wants. But once he’s used her, he’s going to do what he should have done years ago.’ And here, Nico turns to Epiphany’s daughter. He says, ‘He’s going to have me kill your mommy.’
In his hands, Nico flips the Oscar statue around. Those large hands. Those meaty weapons. I’m trembling like a leaf. ‘You killed Bela. You didn’t have to. I wasn’t with Hanna any longer. I had left her,’ I say through the pain in my mouth.
‘Not my problem, perro. You had reneged on our previous agreement. You were dishonest! Worse, you left me for dead and even stole my money, like a petty thief.’ Nico looks at Epiphany’s daughter then back to me. ‘You know, Matthew ordered me to kill you. But I like to think I’m a forgiving man. Of course, I took from you already. But that was for your betrayal in Mexico. You still owe me for the money you stole.’
‘It’s gone.’
On the couch, Epiphany’s daughter, still leaning on her elbows and knees, her body wavers.
‘Do not move!’ Nico shouts and points the Oscar at her like a baton. ‘Do not move or I will beat you like never before.’
The little girl stifles a cry and tries with all her might to steady her body.
‘The money is gone? Of course it is. You have no discipline.’ He places the Oscar back on its table. ‘But, it’s your lucky day. You have a choice. I can give you a new smile and then kill you, or,’ he simpers, ‘you can fuck her.’
The little girl, her body acts like it’s heard nothing, but her eyes tell a different story.
‘You can fuck that bitch’s daughter and walk out with the same mouth you have now. Please take the second choice, perro. It will be more pleasurable for both of us,’ he grins. ‘Before Matthew has me put a bullet in her head, I would love to tell Hanna that you fucked her daughter to save your own ass.’
Nico’s cruelty, Epiphany was right about it. On the couch, the little girl’s eyes, Epiphany’s daughter’s eyes, they fall to the floor along with some teardrops. She’s just an object in a world run by sick men.
But hey, we all have our own problems.
And feeling all the pain in my mouth, I say, ‘I walk out?’
‘You walk out – and this time you never let me see you again.’
‘You’ll just let me leave? Just like that?’
‘I’m a man of my word. Unlike you,’ Nico says.
I look at Epiphany’s daughter. The tears have dried on to her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. Then I tell her to bend over the couch. ‘No, the one by the table there.’ I point to the shrink’s sofa, the one next to the table where Nico has set the Oscar down.
Oscar statues, you think of them as such Hollywood inventions, but they’re made in the good ol’ Midwest. The mould was originally cast at a foundry in Batavia, Illinois in 1928. The statues, they’re 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percent copper. The gold plating is added after they’ve been moulded. I know this thanks to years of watching Access Hollywood.
I unbuckle my belt and Nico moves closer to me, his eyes appreciating a cruelty only he can orchestrate. And as I flip the little girl’s dress up, I place one hand on the table for support as I lean over her. With my other hand, I unzip my fly.
The Oscar statue, it’s officially called the Academy Award of Merit. It depicts a knight holding a sword standing on a reel of film with five
spokes. The five spokes, they represent the five original branches of the Academy: Actors, Directors, Producers, Writers and Technicians.
Nico, I can feel him grinning over me as he waits for me to penetrate this little girl.
The Oscar statue, this blunt instrument of gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, its final weight is eight and a half pounds. Eight and a half pounds of solid metal.
So you’ll excuse my surprise when I grab the statue and I swing it and it shatters like a porcelain vase as it connects with Nico’s face. In my hand, all that’s left is a fractured part of the Oscar’s black base.
And the thing about Oscar statues is that, during the Second World War, to support the American war effort, they were made of plaster painted gold. After the war ended they were traded in for real tin and copper and gold-plated britannium ones. The old plaster statues, like this one, they’re quite a collector’s piece. Which is probably why it’s in Matthew’s possession.
And the thing about these rare plaster Oscar statues, they won’t get you out of a jam.
They won’t make a dent big enough to crack a human skull, to haemorrhage a brain.
They just break and crumble and sting, like a really harsh slap in the face.
And as Nico howls in pain, I find my voice. ‘Run!’ I yell at Epiphany’s daughter, ‘Run! Now!’ But she runs, of all places, back through the passage door. And, as Nico reaches for his gun, as I hold the shattered golden statue in my hand, I realise my bravery is all used up.
49
Lemon Meringue
The thing about being a coward your whole life – or at least since you were twelve, the night you ran into the Hollywood hills before you were supposed to save your little sister’s life – it makes you a fast runner. I was out the door before Nico had a chance to pull his gun. And when someone is hot on your heels with a gun pointed at your back, well, you don’t run with a destination in mind, you aren’t looking for a finish line – you just run.
Because if you do find that finish line, you’re most likely dead.
Another thing about running for your life, when you’re a coward like me, you’re too afraid to look back. You’re too afraid to turn around to see if you’ve outrun anything. It’s like being in the ocean and being too afraid to put your head underwater because you don’t want to know if a shark is coming up to eat you from below.
But, like everything in life, sometimes shit just gets in your way. I’m in the second floor art gallery now and it’s packed with people. The crowd, they make it really hard to run for your life. So here, I kinda just mosey for my life. I slip past the waiters serving hors d’oeuvres on silver trays and I mosey.
I mosey by a comedian talking to a supermodel about the weather in front of what is probably Monet’s greatest work ever (‘Looks like it’s going to rain.’). I mosey past a Teen Beat pretty-boy heartthrob being hit on by the manliest action star of the 1990s. I mosey by a forty-five-year-old Country-Western singer giving breast enhancement tips to Disney’s latest sixteen-year-old cash cow.
Then I stop moseying and dare to look around. And see? I see Nico enter the other side of the gallery. He’s clutching his head in one hand and with the other he quickly slips his gun into his waist when he notices how many celebrities have moved inside.
I bound up the central flight of stairs to the third-floor ballroom, where a crowd of celebs drink and pick at food from long buffet tables. They look more at home here, among the movie posters on the walls and the props in glass cases, than they did in the art gallery. And as the stars smile and laugh, as they nibble caviar and slurp raw oysters and drink the Dom Pérignon, I wonder who among them is part of the other twelve? Who among them are here to diddle little girls?
Against my better instincts, I dare to look back again. Nico, he glares at me, handkerchief blotting a little dribble of blood on his forehead as he walks up the stairs. I start towards the cinema, but stop as I realise there’s no better place to kill me than in a darkened room full of self-obsessed celebrities admiring their own images flickering on the silver screen.
As Nico reaches the landing I notice a giant-sized Epiphany staring at me from the wall behind a dessert table offering sweets the size of your head. But then I realise it’s not really Epiphany. It’s just, well, with her face with her hair all up like that, she looks a lot like her now that I think about it. It’s the original movie poster for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The one with Audrey Hepburn standing in a black evening gown, black gloves, big diamond necklace, cat around her neck. That one. The one with the red and blue and yellow borders.
Right by Audrey’s hip is a bronze door handle. Without looking over my shoulder again to see how close Nico is to killing me, I slip through the door and lock it shut from the other side.
And, shit.
Literally. There’s a piece of shit floating in the toilet. In magazine photos stars are so glossy clean it’s hard to believe they have assholes like you and me. It’s even harder to believe that they forget to flush.
There’s a light tap at the door.
‘Uh, one minute,’ I say. The turd bobs gently below the surface in the toilet bowl. ‘It’s a big one!’
‘My friend, let’s not make this hard, OK?’ Nico says through the door. ‘I know it’s you in there, perro. Let’s not be silly. There’s no way out.’
And he’s right. It’s either back out the door or through the window. And the garden is three storeys below.
You know how you tense every muscle in your body when you’re holding in a fart? So you don’t make a sound? That’s what I’m doing.
Through the door, Nico says, ‘Fine, I can stay out here all day; there’s so much great food.’ His voice dampens when he says, ‘You must try this meringue, my friend.’
I walk past the green-marble basin and cabinets with gold finishings, past the free-standing bidet, and I wiggle the bathroom window back and forth, the one that looks out to the gardens and the Mediterranean below. The window, it’s triple-glazed. Weighs a ton.
‘What are you doing?’ Nico’s stuffed voice asks through the door as I strain against the weight of the window. ‘It’s over, perro. You tried. But even that little girl knows how this ends. She didn’t even run. She just hid behind the wall. She’s back with the others now. Be like her, perro. Accept this.’
‘Open, open, open,’ I say to the window.
A short thump comes from the other side of the door.
The veins on my temples flare. ‘Come on, open, please,’ I ask nicely.
On the other side of the bathroom door, the thumping quickens.
Inside, I say to the window, ‘Come on, open you sonofabitch. Open!’ And with a loud screech, the windowpane shudders up.
I’m halfway out when the bathroom’s lock gives. And Nico, he slips in and quietly kicks the door shut with his heel. In one hand is his gun and in the other is a huge piece of lemon meringue. Seriously, it’s massive. I’ve seen softballs that were smaller.
Nico waves his gun and I crawl back into the bathroom. And, taking a bite of his massive meringue, he slides a tall metal trashcan underneath the door handle.
He says, ‘OK, perro. That’s two chances I’ve given you. Now, I need to kill you.’
‘What are you going to do?’ I say. ‘Shoot me with all those people right outside?’
‘No,’ he says, taking another large mouthful of the meringue. Then he uses his gun hand to open one of the sink drawers and places the gun inside. ‘I’m going to strangle you, just like I strangled your girlfriend.’
‘And where are you going to put my body?’ I say, like I’m the smartest guy on the planet. ‘You can’t exactly toss me out the window. Not with all of Matthew’s guests outside.’
‘Underneath the sink,’ he says, tapping on the cabinet with his foot.
I say, ‘I won’t fit.’
He says, ‘I’ll make you fit,’ and takes another bite of his meringue.
Nico, he’s got that smug grin on his face, the one that says, ‘All the power in this room belongs to me. Let me finish my meringue; I’ll kill you in a little bit.’
He takes another bite from his massive Swiss dessert and, with a full mouth, says, ‘Please just don’t scream like your little Portuguese girlfriend.’ Munch, munch, munch. ‘What was her name? Bela?’
My body shakes to hear him speak her name.
Nico shrugs. ‘She was beautiful, perro. She was. That’s a girl who could have made a man like me a lot of money.’
My chest heaves.
‘She begged me not to kill her, you know?’ Munch, munch, munch. ‘She offered me her body. She opened her legs and begged me to take her if I wanted – anything so I wouldn’t kill her.’
‘You’re a liar…’
‘Am I, perro? Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ He raises his eyebrows and frowns his lips. ‘But you know what is the absolute truth? And this I swear on my dear mother’s grave. Don’t you wonder how I fo
und you? In Porto?’
He lets this question hang in the air between us. As it lingers there, I remember the night before Bela … Paulo told me a man had come around asking if anyone had rented the flat. At the time I thought it was Abdul – but now I know it was Nico.
I say, ‘You saw through an old man’s lie.’
Nico laughs. ‘Wrong again, my friend! I went around the city looking for where you might be staying, but the old man, he lied for you – and he lied well. I believed him when he said a German couple who had already left had rented the flat.’
Nico motions with his hand for me to make another guess. When I remain silent he shakes his head in disappointment. He says, ‘The thing is, I gave you a chance to punish her and you didn’t take it.’
Munch, munch, munch.
‘After Hanna fled from me in that market I thought I would never find her again. But, as fate would have it, I was leaving this nice little bar late one night. It was almost four in the morning, and who do I see walking down the avenue? Hanna. I followed her until she came to a small street where she stopped outside a café and peered towards the second floor.’
My heart drops into the ice pit that is my stomach.
‘And, believe it or not,’ Nico grins, smears of meringue caking his teeth, ‘believe it or not, perro, she actually began talking to herself. She said, “Please, Michael, let Jerry believe me”.’
Spasms run across where my heart used to be. Epiphany – if she had left me alone…
‘“Let Jerry believe me”.’ Nico smiles widely.
If she had left me alone … Bela would still be alive.
‘Now some man scared her off after that, but I knew she would come back for you. So, I waited because two for one is always a better business decision. After I saw you leave your flat a few hours later, after you spoke to the old man and he dozed off, I snuck up the stairs. I was going to wait for you – for both of you. Just imagine my surprise when I found the oddest thing: a beautiful woman lighting candles inside vegetables.’
Epiphany Jones Page 35