by Susan Dunlap
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“The little number with the tattoo, huh?”
He could tell Potelli was picturing the asp rising between those nubile breasts, its mouth open ready to take a bite out of the left one. Potelli’d be remembering that photo.
“Helluva artist.” Potelli repeated the comment that had made the departmental rounds with the surveillance camera shot. Little Liza Cummings adorned more locker rooms than Wanted notices.
“Here’s the thing, Joe. Guess who the girl, Liza Cummings, grew up to be—the wife of the guy who got his guts spread all over that unfinished loft downtown. She’s Liza Silvestri now. And she’s on the lam. I need—we need—to get her in custody and fast, you follow me? Priority one. And confidential.”
“She armed and dangerous?”
“You know her history, Joe. Tell your men to take no chances. Call me the instant your guys spot her. She’s the key to this case. If you get her, keep her locked up and silent, you follow me? She’s driving a blue Firebird rental car, license number five vee pee el one nineteen. Most likely headed north.”
Bentec could hear the swish of sheets—Potelli pushing himself up. Potelli realizing that the dead man was Bentec’s connection to the shipment, realizing that the girl with the asp between her tits could take a twenty year bite out of him.
“Frank?”
“What?” He let an edge of irritation show through.
“Nothing,” Potelli said in that nervous tone Bentec had come to expect when men considered challenging him and thought better of it. “Never mind, Frank. I’ll get the word out.”
Nine
ELLEN BAINES PRESSED HER knees against the magazine pouch and pushed back in her airline seat. Harry Cooper, who thought train travel was the civilized way to go, should only see her now, in Coach, wedged between the guy with the computer clacking on his tray table, his elbow poking over the armrests like an auxiliary wing, and the woman next to the window flapping pages of a natural supplements catalog. Ellen had made the mistake of glancing past her out the window. At that, the woman launched into a discussion of mercury build-up in the body tissues and cilantro extract tablets needed to leech it out. When Ellen closed her eyes the woman had raised her voice and launched into the history of how she and her husband found their calling in supplements.
Liza, Ellen reminded herself over the din, had never been a planner. Impetuosity was her charm, its debris the aftertaste she left. The first leg of this trip Liza had arranged had been First Class, and Ellen had to admit, she loved it. First Class, with its wide seats, foot rests, its fresh-squeezed orange juice, and coffee served on better china than she had at home. It was so Liza, that sweet generosity, with no thought that with her husband dead she might not have that kind of money anymore.
And so Liza to overlook the second leg. Just like in college—Liza’d done that one great impulsive favor and then almost canceled it out by climbing up the ivy and rapping on her dorm-room window at three in the morning. If the dorm mother had found out, both of them would have been expelled. Ellen felt a shiver down her back, only a little one now. After all, ten years had passed. And even back then she had thought to check the ivy before anyone spotted the broken branches. Because she did think ahead.
If Liza’d thought ahead—But Liza didn’t, not then, not now. And so, Ellen grumbled silently, she’d been the last passenger on this overbooked flight. She’d been held up at the door. Eyeing the jammed aisle, she’d said to the stewardess, “Are there any seats left or should I just crawl up in the overhead bin?”
“Fat chance of copping a bin.”
Now, elbows pressed to her sides, and afraid to look in the direction of the windows, she downed the last of the Coke. Two cubes made one-hop landings on the laptop man’s lap.
“Hey!” He swatted frantically.
“Sorry.”
“Look, I’m trying to work here.”
Pointedly, she shifted her elbow onto the armrest he had commandeered. “I know.”
“There’s little enough space—”
“I know.”
“There’s no leg room, not for a man—”
“My knees have been in the magazine pocket so long the stewardess will be picking them up as litter.”
He glanced from his computer, to her legs and back.
Maybe, she thought, he would have jerked his attention back to the flickering screen even if she’d had legs like Liza’s, but it would have taken more of an effort. And the man’s pained expression would have been the result of self-control rather than remorse at a screen gone blank. So there it was: legs less sexy than a spreadsheet. In college they had been long thick legs. Newel posts with shoes. They had suited her long thick body, her straight brown hair and her square face with nose that looked too serviceable to ever be broken.
But that was ten years ago and life had slimmed her down. One of the things she’d learned by the time she left Portland was that the easiest way to lose weight is to diet. Unless you’re in love, if you lose weight as a by product it’s because you’re sick or terrified or miserably depressed. She hadn’t had to diet. And despite all that caused the loss of twenty-five pounds, it was still better to be lanky. She looked down at her knees; they were covered with her brown skirt. Maybe even Liza’s legs didn’t garner stares when she was wearing brown.
Maybe, but Ellen doubted it.
The crack of plastic on plastic startled her. The laptop was shut, the man gazing straight ahead. He lifted up and for a moment she thought he was headed to the bathroom, but the move was preliminary to reshuffling his cases under the seat. He settled a briefcase on the tray table and reached for the airline’s phone over her tray table.
A bad flight should be the worst that happens, she reminded herself. Liza would be happy if it were the worst thing in her life. Oh, God! The thought of Liza pierced her anew, as if all the flight fuss had erased every pang she’d already had. She owed Liza, well, tons. Whatever she could do to help, she would do. She’d figure how to get Jay’s body from the police, find an undertaker, a grave—or better yet cremation and dispersal at sea—Jay Silvestri bought a house on the ocean; he must have liked the ocean, why not spend eternity in it?
And definitely she would monitor that tone. What she could do for Liza was pretend her dead husband hadn’t been a sleaze—at least till Liza realized he was. Surely Liza would want, would need to know why her husband had been shot.
Which was a good question. What could Jay Silvestri have been doing to get himself shot?
Maybe Harry gleaned some idea from that conversation with him in Portland. There was no answer when she had called Harry from the airport. It had been before 6:00 A.M. then, but she wouldn’t have been surprised to find Harry at work. He’d already begged off from their first foray into opera Saturday—tonight, she realized. To get the tickets, he had moved heaven and earth, or as he’d put it “Union Pacific and Southern Pacific and all cars between engine and caboose.” It wasn’t his fault the UP strike had backed up everything on tracks west of the Mississippi and had him slogging sixteen hours a day to find alternate routes and extraordinary means to quick start two hundred metric tons of rice out of Stockton, ten thousand crates of frozen French fries out of Idaho. Senior Freight Manager at the major hub in K.C. was a damned big job, a big promotion from peripheral hub in Portland. At 50, Harry viewed it as his penultimate step up the ladder, or as he put it, forward to the engine. He was the best and he’d beam when she reminded him. She loved to see that smile on his serious face. But the price was that it spurred him on to route talk, his daring forays into rerouting, his victories over sun and snow, his war against slowdown. Even she found her eyes glazing. The move to Kansas City which Harry assumed would cement their relationship had spotlighted what she’d avoided seeing in Portland, that the relationship was already too solid, too bland and unvarying. It was a prison with the sweetest jailer in the world. She’d known it as soon as the moving van pulled away; she just could
n’t bring herself to tell Harry.
But Jay Silvestri hadn’t looked bored listening to Harry at the reunion. He didn’t have the too-wide eyes and tight mouth she’d come to recognize on the faces of those trying desperately to appear interested. Silvestri really was interested. She’d heard him asking Harry to clarify something. He’d nodded as Harry repeated his theory about time variance as opposed to mileage.
Jay Silvestri was hardly a freight and sidings kind of guy. So why had he bothered with Harry? The reason had to be something about railroads. But what? Why? It just didn’t make any sense. It certainly couldn’t have been connected with him getting shot. But still…It made her uneasy. She’d try Harry again from her hotel.
Then she’d see what Liza knew, and what she really thought of Jay. Surely Liza could see what was obvious to everyone else…Then again, she did marry the man. Maybe she saw what she wanted to see. But she couldn’t go on choosing her own view of reality. She’d have to start planning ahead instead of trusting to instinct.
Still, if Liza hadn’t gone on instinct she never would have dared stride into the dean’s office at St. Enid’s and announce, “There is something very disturbing going on here.” If she’d analyzed ahead she would have pictured Dean Ingles pooh-poohing her. It must have been instinct that led her to dress in black, with medium heels and the most subtle of make-up and give ancient Miss Ingles the feeling that if a sophisticated girl from Los Angeles found the situation disturbing it must be shocking indeed.
“Marcus! Jed Bakerman here,” the laptop man shouted into the airplane phone.
Ellen jolted against his briefcase.
He nearly dropped the phone grabbing it. “I’m trying to do business here.”
“I know. We all know.”
She turned to the woman by the window whose catalog was open to a two-page spread on “The Miracle of Flax Seed for Health and Regularity,” and whispered, “Talk about constipated! Sheesh.”
She tapped the man. “I’m getting up now,” clambered around him, and the phone cord and headed down the aisle.
Twenty minutes later when she was forced back to her place by landing preparations, the woman had moved to her seat, had her hand on the man’s arm and was going on about putrefying residue in the colon lining.
“Stay where you are,” Ellen said, climbing over the two of them.
She looked down at San Francisco Bay and across it the skyline of San Francisco, where Liza was waiting.
Liza had removed Mom’s big fear of losing her job. Suddenly, Ellen had the freedom to leave home. She had taken it and moved to Portland. And if things hadn’t worked out there, at least for one spring and summer life had been magic. Which were two seasons of magic she would never have had at St. Enid’s. Would never have had without Liza.
The plane was late. Passengers dislodged carry-on luggage like freeing moose from bread boxes. When she made it to the gate Liza wasn’t there. “I’ll meet you at the gate, Ellen, no problem,” Liza had insisted. But there had been a problem. Traffic? An accident? Or merely Liza not planning ahead?
Or was it worse, lots worse? Could Liza have been shot, too? Suddenly Liza’s husband’s death was becoming too real. It was all becoming too real and she realized she had grumbled and speculated, concentrated on memories and irritations, all to keep at bay the awful thought that whatever caused Jay’s death could be threatening Liza.
There was a side of Liza she couldn’t imagine, she knew that. If Liza was dead, too…A huge sense of sorrow, of waste swept through her. There was something so unfinished about Liza, as if she were still the sweet, impulsive teenager standing at the door to the world. In an odd way Liza hadn’t lived enough to die, not yet. Tears welled. She didn’t move till a family jostled around her, pointing at the monitor and talking about the one-thirty flight from Seattle.
Liza wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. Not the girl who tromped into Miss Ingles’s office and announced she’d seen a very disturbing thing in the cafeteria kitchen, so unsettling that she couldn’t bring herself to go into it. That she had come to St. Enid’s to get away from that kind of atmosphere and now…Not the girl who had led Dean Ingles to the kitchen, positioned her outside the window where she would see Mr. Sleem’s slimy hand squeezing Mom’s butt, and where she couldn’t help see poor Mom’s humiliation.
Mr. Sleem was long gone now and Mom was cafeteria manager. And Liza could not be dead before there was a chance to make things okay for her.
Ten
LIZA’S BACK FELT LIKE wet cement, her skin sandpaper. She could barely sit up, barely sit still. The numbers on her digital watch blurred. 2:32?
2:32 P.M.! Ellen’s plane was due at 1:30! Now Ellen would be muttering, “Damn Liza, she never plans ahead!” And once again, she’d be right.
Had Ellen been waiting all this time? No, of course not, not Ellen. She’d have gone to the hotel. Liza took a deep breath. Maybe she should stop and call Ellen at the hotel. But she couldn’t bear to get off the freeway and deal with city streets again. Not and get lost again as she had on and off all night paralleling Route 99. At dawn she’d decided to chance the freeway and then she’d made the wrong turn on the interchange with 580 to Oakland and San Francisco and was halfway to Sacramento before she realized it and miles farther before she could loop around. All the time, she’d had to keep an eye out for Bentec’s highway patrol buddies looking for a blue Firebird.
With relief, she ditched car—and her trail—in San Francisco, hailed a cab and, being obsessively careful, headed not to Ellen’s hotel but to the St. Francis. There’d be nothing to connect her to a room in the Rosewood Hotel in the name of Ellen Baines. The cab ride was less than ten minutes, but sitting in the back seat, looking out the window at the cable cars turnaround, the old-time trolleys, and afternoon shoppers, she felt herself regaining control. A bicycle messenger shot across the intersection inches in front of the cab, and the cabbie, a woman with a mop of gray curls, screeched to a stop, rolled down the window, and yelled, “Hey! You dropped something back there!” She caught Liza’s eye in the mirror. “His brains.”
Liza laughed. When the driver pulled up in front of the St. Francis, Liza doubled the tip, and said, “I’d appreciate you not mentioning the pig.”
“No problem. Anyone asks, you’re just another fare from the airport. I got assholes on bikes to think about; I can’t be looking in the back seat. But listen, good luck, sister.”
The cabbie’s warmth invigorated her. As she lifted Felton from the seat she could tell she was a different woman than the frantic girl in jeans with the pig who’d thrown herself into the cab. She had learned to shift into the comfort of a role. By the time she was fifteen she was a pro. Then the policeman probably didn’t realize she was that young when he stammered out, “There’s been an accident. Cadillac over the edge of Coyote Canyon. Neither of your parents survived.” It was she who had comforted him, she who had called her grandmother, she who never once mentioned the words drunk or suicide. She’d played her role so well he would never have guessed she’d already handled worse.
As the cab pulled off, she covered Felton with her jacket. In San Francisco the only thing that could make her stand out was her pig.
By the time she trudged up the half flight of steps to the Rosewood Hotel’s etched-glass double doors, she was relieved to uncover her squirming bundle, and pause to accommodate the man opening them for her.
“Here, let me.” He was tall, spare, boy-next-door handsome in a worked-at way. The blue of his crewneck matched his eyes. Eyes that disrobed her before she was over the threshold. She relaxed. This was one game she knew.
“Welcome to the Rosewood. How can I be of assistance, madam? May I take your pig?”
Him she did not offer a smile. His kind needed to be made to work for it. She put Felton on the floor and strolled to the counter.
The check-in clerk would never be a player. He was a set of squishy circles one atop another, the topmost of which held eyes stuck open at �
��too wide.”
“My friend has already checked in. Ellen Baines. Would you tell her Liza is here?”
“Of course.”
She could feel the tall guy’s eyes on her back. Could she be gay? he’d be wondering. He’d be eyeing her butt and wondering whose hand would end up on it.
“Ms. Baines is on the phone,” the clerk said.
“I’ll just go up then.”
“You can’t do that.”
Him she gave the smile. She was not going to get into discussing revealing room numbers to strangers. She scooped up Felton and held him out to the clerk. “Your management is probably fussy about pigs, even beautifully trained miniature pigs. I wouldn’t dream of putting you on the spot about it. So, just keep him behind the desk while I go up and get her. We’ll be down—” she winked—“in two shakes of a pig’s tail. She’s in room six, right?”
“No, sixteen.”
“Thanks.”
She turned, making the briefest of eye contact with the tall one, just enough to get him thinking that maybe she was not gay, after all. No point burning bridges unnecessarily. Then she headed for the stairs. Room sixteen was probably on the top floor, but she wasn’t about to ask. The momentum was changing; both men had been leaning back taking her in, but now they were coming to the end of the arc and were about to swing forward into actions that would not be beneficial to her.
Eleven
FRANK BENTEC LEVERED HIMSELF out of his desk chair. His back was tight, his neck was stiff and his hands felt frozen into claws from holding the phone. He hadn’t been off the line five minutes in the last hour, what with getting calls from the homicide unit at the crime scene, from the lab, from the clerk in Files running Liza Cummings Silvestri. He’d issued a directive that all departments report to him. Two days from now captains would be asking why the Assistant to the Commissioner had nosed his way in. By then, he’d be gone. The phone buzzed again. Potelli, wanting his hand held.