by A. W. Gray
He leaned back, closed the jewelry case, set the shoebox on the floor, and closed the lid. He picked up his Scotch and sipped. The digital numbers on the face of her stereo now showed ten to four. In another hour it would be summer dawn. “Some,” he said. “What did Goldman promise you?”
“A release for Chris, with the San Francisco judge’s approval. Which he’s already showed me in a letter. Termination of my own probation.” She studied her lap. “I did six months inside.”
“Lexington, Kentucky?” Bino said. “One of the female joints.”
“Pleasonton, California. They had men, too.”
Bino nodded. “Sure, a coed pen. Another brilliant federal idea, put the boys and girls together and then tell them not to touch. Works about as well as everything else they do.” He swallowed. The Scotch burned a bit going down. “If you got six months, that would make old Chris worth at least fifteen years.”
Her mouth puckered sadly. “Twenty. Of which he has to do a shade under seventeen, unless I can help him get out. There’s no federal parole.”
“Don’t I know it,” Bino said. “And that’s about status quo, on a husband-and-wife arrest. Six months for you, twenty years for him. If you’re going to walk on the shady side, be female. That’s what I tell my clients.”
“I can’t help my gender, Bino.”
“He can’t help his, either.”
She took a big glug and swallowed hard. “I can’t do anything about it if I’ve made you hate me. I didn’t try to do that.”
The song now playing was “Coin’ to Jackson,” a number Nancy Sinatra had done years ago with a country basso whose name Bino couldn’t recall. Might have been Johnny Cash, he wasn’t sure. The two C.C.’s were a knockout act. “You didn’t?” Bino said. “I like to know when women are married. Gives me a choice, at least.”
“Dammit … ”
“You a plant?” Bino said. “Or did you meet Rusty and Rhonda by accident?” He grinned. “The two R’s.”
Carla adjusted her position on the sofa and hooked one arm over the back. Her breasts pressed out against satin fabric. “That much I told you was the truth. I knew them around the clubs at first. I came home one night, just about this time in fact, to find Mr. Goldman and two FBI agents sitting on the couch. I nearly fainted.”
“And he had a big old dossier on you,” Bino said.
“Right.”
Bino leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “He wasn’t bluffing, Carla. If you’d shot him the finger, told him to get lost or something, your probation was history.”
“Oh, he told me that up front. Said he could have me back in Pleasonton in forty-eight hours if he wanted.”
“He could, too,” Bino said. “So when Rhonda and Rusty split, he used your place as a free safe house for her, and you to slip him information about whether she was being a good little cooperator. How long she live with you?”
Her mouth quivered. “You know about that.”
“Yep. Found it out today.”
“About four months. Rusty was siphoning her some money, to keep her quiet. Mr. Goldman told her to play along.”
“Through a stockbroker and a guy named Kinder.”
She nodded. “It wasn’t a real fun four months for me. I couldn’t stand Rhonda. She was nothing but a whore.”
Bino snickered, then felt guilty.
Carla’s gaze smoldered. “Think what you want about me. At least I never spread my legs on Mr. Goldman’s cue.”
“Sure, you didn’t,” Bino said. “You thought I was Tom Cruise. Made you quiver just to be in the room with me. I’m just dumb-lucky I didn’t tell you everything I was doing to defend Tommy Clinger. Eventually I probably would have, and you could really have filled old Marv in. Jesus Christ, what did they do? Have a guy in Arthur’s giving you the high sign and pointing at me?”
“Listen,” she said, then sighed and said, “I wasn’t faking it with you, and that night I wasn’t putting you on. I am nearsighted, can’t see worth flip, and I thought you were the judge. It was the next day when Mr. Goldman called me about you. They … had someone taking pictures and got us on film.”
“Not at my apartment, I hope.”
“Nothing that revealing,” Carla said. “Just some shots of us at the table in Arthur’s. One as we were leaving in your car. Those are the only pictures I’ve seen. I don’t think there are any more.”
“I guess Goldman wanted to tie me in to the conspiracy,” Bino said. “Hell, I’m lucky he’s not indicting me.”
“That’s what he wanted to know at first,” she said. “Whether you were involved.”
“Sure. And then rigged you up to take me to Houston with you.”
She hugged herself. “No, that was my idea. It wasn’t all a fake.”
Bino’s chin lifted, then dropped. “Come on, Carla. I guess it was your idea to act like it was big news to you that Edgar Bryson was a judge.”
She looked at her knees. “No. That was Mr. Goldman’s idea.”
“Jesus, you change your story so much, I don’t know what to believe.”
She met his gaze. “Try me, then. What do you want to know?”
“Okay. For starters, which one of you lovely young ladies had the assignment of getting Bryson to talk?”
“Rhonda was the one. Bryson is nothing but a horny old bastard, and while she was in bed with him he told her lots of things. I told you, I’m no whore. You can believe that, or you can go to hell.”
“Which she repeated to you?” Bino said.
“Kinda sorta,” Carla said. She remorsefully lowered her chin. “She volunteered. I didn’t ask.”
Bino’s expression softened. “Oh, Carla, the way Goldman plays you people. He’d coach her exactly what to tell you. When she gets on the stand to testify against Bryson, you can back her up. It’s called corroboration, babe. Only with Rhonda dead, what she told you becomes hearsay. Your testimony’s no longer worth two cents to Goldman.”
“He says it still is.”
“I don’t know how. About the only thing he could use you for, after Rhonda died, was to pump me for information. You’d be his pipeline to the defense. Where’d he want you to hide the bug, Carla, seeing as how you were buck naked most of the time? Under the pillow?”
“Stop it.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t sleep with anybody unless I want. Since I’ve been married, you’re the only one.”
Bino glanced at the stereo. “You got a tape of the ‘March of the Sweet Potato Queen’? Jesus Christ, Carla.”
“Chris has been locked up nearly five years,” Carla said. “I did six months, just like I told you, and I’ve been on probation four and a half years myself. Not once in all that time, until you.”
Bino scratched his forehead above his eye. “At this point it doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not.”
“It matters to me,” Carla said.
Bino studied her, the lovely slanted eyes and buttermilk skin, narrow waist, taut muscular thighs. It would be a real ego-builder to believe her, sure it would. Something he’d always wonder about.
“One thing bothers me,” Bino said. “What the hell was Rhonda doing running off to Houston?”
Carla showed genuine shock. “You don’t know?”
Bino frowned. “Know what?”
She got up, crossed over, and leaned on the bar. Next to Dodie Peterson, perhaps, she had the most gorgeous fanny Bino had ever seen. She regarded him over her shoulder. “Rhonda never went to Houston,” she said.
Bino’s teeth clicked together. “Huh?”
She pointed toward the rear of the house. “Rhonda stayed in the spare bedroom back there, and Mr. Goldman had the room wired from A to Z, for when the judge came over. Mr. Goldman didn’t want to chance meeting Rhonda in person, he’d have me get the tapes and bring them to h
im. Some kind of legal rigamarole.”
“It’s called ‘chain of custody,’ ” Bino said. “Without somebody to testify who-all’s had possession of the tapes, from the time they were made, Goldman can’t get them into evidence. He’d have Rhonda get on the stand and say she made the tapes, then have you say you carried them from her to Goldman. Bores juries to death, but it’s something they have to do.”
“That last night I got home from the club around four in the morning.” Carla retreated from the bar, sat on the floor Indian style, and leaned her elbow on the coffee table. She looked up at him. “God,” she said. Her lower lip quivered.
Bino watched her, not saying anything.
She raised her gaze. “It had been raining to beat hell, and had just let up to a sprinkle sort of, but it was still thundering and lightning like I don’t know what. Made the whole thing even more horrible. I still have nightmares. God, she was … ”
Cold anger built up, low in Bino’s chest and working its way up through his neck as realization dawned. “You found her,” Bino said.
She nodded, and her look of fear left no doubt that she was telling it just like it was. “Her car … her white Cadillac, you know? It was parked, about the same place your Lincoln is, at the curb. Slanted funny, with the rear wheels sticking out. I put on my raincoat and went over to look inside. God, I wished I’d never seen it. She was … ” Carla covered her face.
“I saw the autopsy report,” Bino said. “What did Goldman tell you to do?”
She lowered her hands. Her mouth twisted as she raised an eyebrow.
“Goldman,” Bino said. “He told you to call him at once if anything went wrong, didn’t he?”
“How did you know that?” she said.
“Carla,” he said, “if I had a dollar for every time Goldman’s … just leave it that I know how he operates, okay? What did he tell you to do?”
“Nothing,” Carla said. “He said he’d take care of it.”
“What about the police?”
“He told me not to call them. That he’d take care of it.”
Bino pounded his forehead with the heel of his hand, twice. “Rusty was tooling his clients around. He put out the word he was looking for Rhonda, when all the time he knew right where to find her. Bryson had to know about the hit. Or maybe he even helped arrange the damn thing.” His expression softened as he looked at Carla. “For your sake, I hope you’ve got your arrangement with Goldman in writing, babe. I hate to be the bringer of tidings, but old Marv’s been known to crawfish when things don’t go just right.”
“He’s already had Chris transferred from California to Texas,” she said. “He’s out in the Mansfield Jail. I’ve … been to see him today.” She tugged on her earlobe. “I was fibbing when I said I tried to call you. I was worried about facing Chris, after what happened with you. Now I don’t know if I can look either of you in the eye.”
Bino watched her. “If he’s going ahead with the deal he made you, you must have heard Bryson say something in person.”
She shook her head. “I never did. But Mr. Goldman wants Bryson to think I did.”
Bino frowned.
“Mr. Goldman says he likes for his quarry to sweat,” Carla said.
“Jesus Christ, he used that word? His quarry?”
She nodded.
“What an asshole,” Bino said.
“He says that he’s let Bryson know I’m still around as a potential witness against him.”
Bino’s forehead tightened. “How’d he do that?”
“Through another judge,” Carla said. “A woman … ”
“Old Hazel,” Bino said. “Goldman would. The old heifer could drop enough hints at coffee, in judges’ meetings and whatnot, that Bryson would be on pins and needles.” He rose. “I’m going to call somebody.”
Her mouth softened in surprise. “Who?”
“A county cop I know, and maybe a D.A. The cop’s name is Hardy Cole. I doubt the county can do anything about what Goldman’s pulled up to now, but at least I want them to know there’s been a murder in their jurisdiction that the feds neglected to clue them in about. Hardy will want to hear about this bad enough that he won’t mind me waking him up. I don’t care what time it is.”
He crossed over to the phone where it sat on a low table beside the stereo. The two C.C.’s were now crooning “Take It to the Limit” in chill-bump unison. Bino would like to have caught the act in person. He picked up the receiver, then paused with his fingers over the digital keyboard. He wasn’t getting any dial tone. He jiggled the disconnect switch. Nothing. He turned and said to Carla, “You paid your phone bill?” She rose from the floor, looking concerned. “Sure. I just made a call this afternoon. Why, is there … ?”
Bino was looking out the front window, the shade pulled halfway down, light from the living room casting a parallelogram on ragged Bermuda grass. He replaced the phone in its cradle. “Douse the lights, Carla,” he said. “Right now.”
As the lights went out and the windows darkened, Mancil Adriani massaged the back of his neck. They’d taken their time about it, huh? The white-haired bozo must be dumber than he looked, shooting the shit with the broad instead of hauling her off to the sack to begin with. Broad that looked like that one, the white-haired bozo must be dumber than hell.
He pulled on surgical gloves, snapping the latex up around his wrists, picked up the Beretta from the seat and checked the clip, then reached in the glove compartment for the padded silencer. After fitting the silencer onto the pistol’s muzzle, he stretched his arm over the seat for the three rolls of adhesive tape and six feet of nylon rope on the backseat floorboard. He shoved the tape in his back pocket, looped the rope over his shoulder, then got out and crossed the lawn, headed for the vacant eastern side of the duplex.
Adriani knew the eastern half was unoccupied for the same reason that he knew every foot of the space in which the cute little bimbo lived: He’d been waiting for several hours and had been inside and made a walk-through. He hated doing things half-assed, without knowing in advance every single move he was going to make. The man downtown had convinced him that this job had to be done right now, this minute, and the hurried survey he’d made of the kill zone would have to do. If this turned out to be the final screwup, Adriani thought, he couldn’t blame anybody but himself, doing business without knowing he was fucking with a lawyer to begin with. If he got past this job in one piece, these Dallas people had seen the last of Mancil Adriani; he’d already made up his mind that he’d even forgo the rest of his money. To hell with the cheese, Adriani thought, I want out of the fucking trap.
Moving swiftly and noiselessly on foam-soled suede loafers, Adriani moved at a half-crouch into the shadow of the house. He hurried along parallel to the duplex’s eastern wall, vaulted the thigh-high fence into the backyard, and paused to catch his breath. He needed to do some jogging or something. He kept his mouth closed, inhaling and exhaling through his nose until the rising and falling of his chest slowed, listening to the steady chirrup, chirrup of crickets and casting his gaze over unmowed Bermuda with Johnson grass stalks waving in the wind. Beyond the back cyclone fence, light shone here and there from windows up and down the alley.
Adriani called up a mental image of the layout inside the duplex. When he entered the bedroom, he had to be silent. He imagined with a grin what it would be like, the dumb white-haired bozo in midstroke, his ass raised to drive one home as Adriani put one bullet through the side of the bozo’s head and then walked up to shoot the woman. Calm now, his pulse a steady seventy beats a second, Adriani strolled past the vacant half of the duplex and paused. He stepped forward, wriggled in between the six-foot juniper bush and the wall, and placed the latex-covered fingers of one hand beneath the edge of the bedroom window. The screen which he’d removed earlier was propped against the backyard hydrant, six feet from where he stood. Just two hours befo
re, standing inside the bedroom, Adriani had pumped several drops of WD-40 lubricating oil in between the window and the frame on both sides. He applied slight fingertip pressure; the window slid soundlessly upward a good six inches. He adjusted the rope around his shoulder, tensed himself, shoved the window all the way up, and hoisted himself up to sit on the sill. He slid back the bolt on the .380 with a near-inaudible click, then leaned backward inside the bedroom. Filmy drapes parted to admit his body; he twisted at the waist and thrust the silencer toward the bed. Sure of his direction, the bed exactly four paces ahead and the top of the mattress exactly twenty-one inches above the floor, Adriani squeezed the trigger.
The gun bucked in his grasp, the sound a quick, spitting hiss, the bullet whining through the darkness and thudding into the far wall. Adriani lowered the barrel a couple of inches and fired off three more shots; two of the shells thumped the mattress and the third whanged into the wall. Puzzled, Adriani lowered himself inside to the floor and walked over to the four-poster queen-size. The bed was empty. There was a mirrored dresser on his left. As Adriani turned, a single ray glinted from the Beretta’s muzzle. Somewhere inside the house water gushed.
Shower, Adriani thought. Well, ain’t that sweet? The bozo’s soaping her down. He pictured the hallway leading from the bedroom to the front of the house; six strides would take him from the window to the door. He retreated to just inside the sill and took confident steps, one, two, three, and his fingers contacted the wooden doorframe on the exact count of six. So far, so good. The door was open; the distance down the corridor to the bathroom was seven baby steps. May I? Adriani thought. He grinned. “May I” was a game which Adriani used to play with the other kids while the dons and their old ladies watched, thinking it was cute, the old dons having just murdered people the night before and now watching the little dumplings play “May I.” You forgot to say “May I,” you were fucked. He took the seven steps down the corridor, carefully sidestepping the one squeaky board on step number four. At the count of seven he turned to his left. A two-inch stripe of artificial light showed near his toes. Beyond the closed door a jet of water bombarded a silicone curtain.