No Accident

by Dan Webb

  “Very funny,” Jacob said.

  “Good luck breaking the news to Alan. Maybe he’ll let you tell the client on your own, too.” With that, Brad walked away before Jacob had a chance to do so himself. He pulled out his cell phone to call Sheila. She would be ecstatic. Never mind that, thought Brad, I’m ecstatic.

  30

  At first Sheila wanted to come to Alex’s house to give him the money, which made Del happy because he said he wanted to meet her. Del could be so immature. “She’s not my girlfriend,” Alex said. “Besides, you can’t meet her.” But then Sheila called and said she was running late, and told Alex to just come by her apartment on his way to meet Beto. Del told him to be careful.

  “I’m not scared of Beto,” Alex said.

  “I meant be careful with Sheila.”

  Sheila lived in a luxury high-rise apartment on the West Side. She answered the door in a sweater and a dark skirt and wore diamond earrings and a string of pearls. She looked good that way, and Alex noticed that her clothes flattered the shape of her body, but not in the showy way that most of the women he knew dressed. It made him want to watch her more, which he did discreetly as she led him inside.

  “I hope you didn’t get dressed up on my account,” he said. He meant it jocularly, but the words sounded wrong as soon as they left his lips.

  “I have a charity event this afternoon,” she said over her shoulder.

  Inside, she handed him five bound stacks of twenty-dollar bills. That’s the way Beto wanted it. It was only one-fifth of the fifty grand Beto asked for.

  “You think that’ll be enough?” Sheila said.

  “I’ll persuade him that it is,” Alex said. He told Sheila more about the meeting he had set up with Beto—in a public place, neutral ground.

  “He’ll think you’re trying to scam him,” she said. “He may get angry.”

  “I’m not worried about little old Beto Capablanca,” Alex said. And he wasn’t. Nothing wrong with showing a little justified confidence.

  “But he’s—he’s a criminal. He may get violent.”

  She didn’t know Alex had collared Beto all those years ago, right on the street. “I’ve seen Beto angry before. I think I can handle it.”

  “Oh, I forgot—surfers are tough.”

  “How about ‘good luck’?”

  “Have you ever walked around with ten thousand dollars on you?”

  Ah, Alex thought, so she’s concerned about the money staying safe. “Have you?”

  “Every time I step out of the house,” she said, and she slipped a manicured finger between her pearl necklace and her collarbone.

  “So then what’s the big deal?”

  “A bag full of cash is a little different than a necklace,” Sheila said. “People still respect jewelry.”

  Alex felt like he should respond but didn’t know where to begin, and then she spoke again.

  “You’ll call me as soon as it’s over?”

  “I told you, we’re meeting at MacArthur Park. There are always hundreds of people around. It’ll go fine.”

  She looked skeptical, then turned away from him. “So you have the money,” she said, like she was thinking about more than the money after all, “get out of here before I change my mind.”

  * * *

  MacArthur Park was named after a general, Alex recalled. It was the statue that reminded him. He took a relaxed stroll around the park to look for Beto. Even though it was cool out, there were plenty of people—young lovers wasting time, street vendors, some cops, some kids. The park was in better shape than it used to be. Still, this was a part of town where you didn’t flaunt wealth. Alex had the ten grand bundled tightly inside a satchel strapped over his shoulder and across his body. As far as anyone knew, he could have been a bike messenger.

  Alex’s cell phone rang. “Hello?”

  “It’s Sheila. Have you found him yet?”

  Alex couldn’t believe how impatient she was. For a moment, he felt a little for Luke. If she was this annoying with Alex after just meeting him, he didn’t want to imagine how high maintenance she must be after years of marriage. “No, Sheila, I just got here. I’ll call you when it’s over. Goodbye.”

  Alex found Beto waiting for him on the other side of a fountain. Beto wore a windbreaker and stood hugging his arms, glancing from side to side and generally doing a poor job of looking casual. Alex boxed him playfully on the shoulder by way of greeting, and he jumped. They walked together toward the edge of the park.

  “You brought the money?” Beto said.

  “Absolutely. And a key to a house where you can stay for a while.”

  “Let me see the money.”

  Alex sighed. There were few things less suspicious the two of them could have done right there besides stop and look inside Alex’s bag. Plus, Beto might notice that Alex had not brought the full fifty thousand. But Beto had stopped in his tracks like a tired dog, so Alex grudgingly lifted the flap that covered his satchel. Doing so made him feel seedy, but no one around seemed to notice.

  Beto started shivering. “That don’t look like no fifty grand.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Alex said. “It’s a down payment—I’ll give you the rest when I know your evidence is the real thing. Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

  Beto moved flush to Alex’s body to obscure the view of those around them and then pulled a gun from the pocket of his windbreaker. Alex didn’t know what it was for a moment. It was thin and silver and almost vanished inside Beto’s small hand.

  “Oh, Beto, put that thing away before someone gets hurt.”

  Beto had pulled a gun on Alex once before, years ago. It was less shocking the second time—though Alex admitted he liked it better when Beto had pointed the ashtray at him.

  “I’m not playing around Alex,” Beto said. His wrist quivered alarmingly.

  Alex leaned in to him and whispered in his ear. “Del is watching us right now. If you kill me, his next call will be to Crash. You won’t leave the ZIP code.”

  Beto thought about that, then asked, “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “Well, you’re a gambling man. If you feel lucky, you should just shoot me and see what happens. Or you could use your head for once, and get a lot more money in a couple days. Meantime, you’ll be staying in my house. If I stiff you, burn it down.”

  Beto looked around and then dropped the sleek silver pistol into Alex’s bag like it was a rotting fish.

  “Jesus, Beto, what’d you do that for? I’ve got to get you out of daylight.”

  Alex led Beto to a tiny diner right off the park. They sat down at a booth in the corner. Beto slowly pulled a plastic bag from inside his jacket but shoved it back inside when the waitress clomped over.

  “What’ll it be?” she said.

  Beto scowled at her. “We’re not hungry.”

  The waitress leaned up and back—she was tall—and planted her hands on her hips. “Sweethearts, we’re too busy in here to be giving out booths to people who aren’t hungry.”

  Alex went into his bag and peeled out a twenty from one of the bundles. “Give us whatever the last guy had, but don’t bring it to us,” he said. She put the money in her pocket and left.

  Beto pulled the plastic bag out again, his expression full of grave drama. “This is how I got it from Jorge,” he said, and he passed it across the table.

  It looked the way it was supposed to look—sealed inside a clear plastic bag was a slip of paper, like one from a desktop memo pad, that had a license plate number and a date written on it.

  “Now the money,” Beto said.

  Alex reached into his own bag, felt his way cautiously around Beto’s pistol and took out the bundles of cash. He passed them under the table to Beto. “Count them in your lap,” Alex said.

  Beto glared at him. “I’m not stupid.”

  Alex’s cell phone rang. It was Sheila again. He knew he should ignore it, but he was so annoyed that she was calling again that he couldn’
t.

  “It’s Crash,” Alex said to Beto. Beto hugged the bundles of money more closely into his belly. “Just kidding,” Alex said, “I’ll be right back.” Before Alex could rise, Beto snatched the plastic bag away from him.

  “I’m not done counting,” he said.

  Alex stood, his satchel still draped over his torso, and looked down at Beto. Beto sat hunched over the plastic bag and the bills that were stacked in his lap.

  “You see how much I trust you, Beto? I’m going to leave you here with the money and the goods. I’ll be right back with your house key.”

  Alex moved to the doorway to get away from the clatter of the diner, but all the way there Alex watched Beto, and Beto watched Alex.

  “Hi Sheila,” Alex said in a hoarse whisper, “I’m still with Beto. I told you—”

  At that moment a burly man barreled past Alex and out the door, his arms pumping in a dead sprint. The man brushed Alex as he went by and knocked Alex back on his heels.

  A moment later Alex was knocked all the way to the ground by a greater force, an explosion that sent his cell phone flying out into the street and propelled his skull into a wall. The explosion did worse to many others, which Alex saw for himself after he gropingly rose from beneath a blanket of shattered glass. Strangely, he thought, he couldn’t hear any screaming. But he couldn’t hear anything. He saw agonized faces that he wouldn’t soon forget, but he didn’t see Beto’s. He followed his first impulse and ran out of the diner toward where he thought the burly man had gone.

  Alex thought he spotted the man running a half a block ahead of him, but lots of people were running just then, and in all different directions. After a couple of minutes he admitted he had lost the man and stopped running. He tried instead to focus on the last moments at the diner, to recall anything that might be helpful. But once he stopped running, his memories wouldn’t fall into sequence. All he could retrieve were unconnected images: A waitress with a pencil stashed in her hair. A child joyfully drumming with a table knife while Alex hissed at Sheila over the phone. The thick arm of the man who raced past him just before the flash—and the man’s hand, with a birthmark like wine running over a linoleum floor.

  * * *

  Crash didn’t follow Alex. He stayed in his SUV, watching the diner.

  The explosion started a fire, and the firemen came. They put it out quickly, and Crash joined the gathering crowd that drew in around the police line. Some seemed to be looking for loved ones. Others just seemed curious. Crash was tall and he let others stand up front. He watched until they had taken the last of the bodies out, then he got in his car and drove away. Beto was no longer a problem.

  31

  Alex knocked on Sheila’s door and heard her run to it on the other side. She flung the door open, looked at him with surprise, then threw her arms around him. He was too exhausted to react, but wobbled a little in her embrace.

  “I saw it on the news,” she said.

  “Then you know he’s dead.”

  She took him inside and closed the door. For the first time, Alex saw a depth in her eyes that proved she cared about more than just money. He felt himself relax a little.

  “When the call went dead, I thought you were gone, too.”

  “Lost my cell phone,” he said.

  Sheila gave him a penetrating look. “And the evidence?”

  “Gone. The money, too.”

  “Oh, who cares. I was so worried when I heard about the bomb. To think that I’d sent you to meet Beto, and if something had happened to you—”

  “I remember it being my idea,” Alex said.

  “You know what I mean. I’m just glad you’re safe. Did you see it?”

  “The slip of paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure, I saw it up close.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think Beto was right.”

  She looked him over, the bruises and the dirty clothes. Her gaze lingered on the backs of his hands, where a constellation of puckering purple cuts had started to scab over.

  “From the glass,” Alex said. “Luckily, I hit the ground before the windows shattered.”

  She raised a finger and let it hover over the swollen left side of his forehead. “You’ve got a bruise.” The concern in her voice made Alex feel a little better—he’d stopped thinking about his bruises an hour ago.

  “I’ll take that over the alternative.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said.

  “I already cleaned up.”

  “Where?”

  “A McDonald’s bathroom.”

  She responded with a crooked smirk that was half amused, half appalled. “Stay here,” she said, and she left the room. Alex remained standing.

  “Did you see who set off the explosives?” she called from the bathroom. Her disembodied voice echoed through the apartment.

  “I think so, for a second,” Alex said. “It was a man. A big guy. Does Crash have a birthmark on his hand?”

  “Um . . . no. Did you see the man’s face?”

  “No.”

  “You talk to the police?”

  Alex laughed. “I’m not ready to do that.” The police would have asked Alex questions that he didn’t want to answer, like what his business was with Beto.

  Sheila returned from the bathroom with a tube of ointment and led him into the kitchen. It was brighter there. She propped him up against the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap.

  “What’s that?” Alex said.

  “Just a little medicinal cream. Stand still, it’ll stop the bruising.”

  Alex took hold of her wrist before she could squeeze the cream onto her finger. He welcomed Sheila’s new awareness of his welfare, but she’d skipped a step on her way from frosty cooperation to attentive concern. “Why did you lie to me about not knowing Beto?”

  “Oh,” she said, freezing in place. “That.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  He let go of her, they had a little staring contest, and she looked away. “I was embarrassed.”

  “About what?”

  “Beto and I had . . . a relationship.”

  Alex’s eyebrows jumped.

  “Not that kind of relationship,” she said quickly. “I lied about knowing him because I used him to spy on my husband.”

  “And you couldn’t tell me that?”

  “I was ashamed of it, OK?”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Alex said. “You don’t try to hide your venom for your husband.”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was . . . seedy.”

  “I’ve seen a lot seedier than that. Why did Beto agree to help you?”

  “I paid him.”

  “In cash?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, in chocolate. Of course I paid him in cash.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough to matter to someone like him.” Her eyes begged him for a truce. “Why are you asking these questions?”

  “I don’t like being used.”

  “You’re not being used,” she said. Then: “If anything, we’re sort of using each other, aren’t we?”

  “The thing is, if you lie to me about little things like not knowing Beto, it makes me wonder whether you’re lying to me about bigger things.”

  She sighed. “I told you, I was embarrassed about using Beto to spy on Luke. I didn’t want you to judge me.”

  “Too late.”

  After Sheila had been so stingy and bossy and dishonest, it was satisfying to Alex to make her squirm a little. But she didn’t indulge him.

  “Fine,” she said. “I can play that game. Sure, I told a little lie, but you’re not as noble as you pretend to be.”

  “I never said I was . . .”

  “Sure you did. ‘I just want the truth.’ You want money, pal, and you want it even more badly than I do.”

  How did she guess that? Alex wondered. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her about his five mortgages. He and Sheila were not morally equal. Just
apologize for lying to me, he wanted to yell. Instead, he said, “Sure, but money’s not all I want—unlike you.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said. She suddenly looked hurt, like she was going to cry. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  Alex couldn’t tell whether the watering eyes were real or a put-on, but either way her reaction made him feel cruel. It was wrong to continue his attack after she’d raised the white flag.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said.

  “You have every reason to be angry with me for lying.”

  “You’re damn right I do.” Alex knew he shouldn’t have cursed at her, but in his mind her remorse hadn’t yet caught up with his indignation.

  “And I shouldn’t judge you, either,” she said, “because I don’t know all you’ve been through.”

  Alex was impressed at how calm she was despite his outburst. “You’re right,” he said.

  “Five mortgages sounds like a lot.”

  “Too many, it turns out,” Alex said sheepishly.

  “At least you still have the houses,” she said.

  “For now,” Alex said. Then, thinking of Pamela, he added, “But they’ve cost me other things.” Sheila didn’t need to know the details about Pamela—especially since Alex didn’t know or trust Sheila well enough yet to reveal his closest secrets—but all the same, he wanted her to know that she wasn’t the only one who had suffered.

  For her part, Sheila looked puzzled. “Oh,” she said finally. “A girl.” Alex didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to confirm her guess, but part of him was relieved that she’d guessed right. He wanted her to understand, without having to tell her.

  “Stand still,” Sheila said. She squeezed a dab of the cream onto the tip of her finger and lifted it toward Alex’s forehead. “Lower your head.” He complied, and she began applying the cream in light circles to Alex’s forehead.

  “I know you think I’m a spoiled brat,” she said softly.

  Right again, Alex thought. But with her standing inches away and openly discussing her faults, he had lost the urge to strike out at her. “We all have our little entitlements,” he said.