A Small Fortune (12 page)

This madman has my son. My worst fear has come true. Oliver has been taken after all.

My mind shifts into high gear, steering me toward my own survival. If anything happens to me there’ll be no one to save Oliver.

I wash my clothes in the sink and hang them to dry on the balcony. I keep a gun near me at all times. I scrub my skin raw in the shower. The last of the insect bites softens and stings as I shampoo away the clumps of guts and dirt and oil from my hair. Several tangles at the base of my neck are so severe the only way I’m going to get them out is to cut them loose. I shave my legs and armpits with a used disposable razor someone left in the medicine cabinet.

Michael Mahon told the truth at least once in his life, and I didn’t believe him. Is this Jonathon’s one time to tell the truth? Is he really capable of hurting Oliver? I don’t want to believe it. I can’t. He’s full of lies and manipulation. I need time to figure out what to do next. But how does he know about the woman in L.A.? Is Benicio really working with him to get back in the States? Is he dead?

I briskly dry myself and loop the towel around my wet hair.

Roberto’s phone rings in the other room. It occurs to me that cell phones have pings. I have no way of knowing how far Jonathon’s connections go, and I’m not going to take a chance that somewhere someone is able to trace this phone.

I place the phone, still ringing, on the hard tiled floor and smash it to pieces with the butt of the gun. It’s remarkably resilient. I want to shoot it.

I stand with a head rush and brace myself against the dresser. On top of the dresser is the money. Next to that, my passport.

When I’d finally stood from behind the tree in the jungle, it was the first sign of morning. I almost didn’t look back. I took several steps down the path before I could bring myself to look upriver at the scatter of things along the bank. A ring of dank monkeys sifted through the debris, fighting over and devouring the food from the kiosk. I pulled the gun out. The couple seemed to have left everything behind. Including the raft. They must have been in a hurry to get out of there with Benicio. I couldn’t imagine where they’d gone or how they’d taken him away.

I lifted my arms and growled at the monkeys, hoping I wouldn’t have to shoot. The monkeys scattered, and I sifted through the garbage with my foot, unsure of what I was looking for. Something personal. Some sign Benicio had left behind that would reveal everything to me. What I found when I nudged a torn box of crackers was my passport.

Now I stare at the dusty blue booklet on the dresser, the golden eagle rising up, fierce, in control, a superpower I’m somehow a part of but in a way that’s so abstract as not to be real. It should be my ticket out of here. But it could also be the thing that gets me killed, or in the very least, imprisoned. What will happen if I try to reenter the States? Am I already listed as
wanted
in their database?

I have two thousand dollars. If Benicio’s been using me he sure has a funny way of showing it. He’s risked so much. Right up to the last second, calling out my name, trying to save me, trying to save himself. Could he have faked what I saw in his eyes when we made love? And that feeling radiating from deep inside him?
I had a couple of bit parts in movies you’ve probably never heard of.
He’s an actor. But it’s not as if he’s won an Oscar.

I’m startled by a knock at the door.

I’m naked with a towel on my head. I grab the gun from the dresser.

“Miss Donnelly?” a woman calls out.

I don’t answer.

“Are you all right in there? I haven’t seen you since you checked in.”

“Just fine!” I call.

“I have your breakfast here,” the woman who might be coming to kill me says. “I brought some yesterday but you didn’t answer. I thought I’d try again.”

“Just a sec. I’ll be right there.”

“Should I just leave it at the door?” she asks.

I peek through the corner of a small window at the edge of the kitchenette. I vaguely remember the young Canadian woman who checked me in at the reception. She’s now standing outside my door with a tray, glancing to the side with a look of boredom.

I’d planned to use a fake name but she insisted on seeing my ID. It’s a wonder she let me check in at all considering the shape I was in.

I scramble into my damp shorts and blouse. I can’t remember much of what I said to her.

“I can leave it here if you like,” she says.

I place the gun in the back of my shorts, rewrap the towel on my head, and swing open the door. The woman reminds me of Oliver’s girlfriend, Maggie, what she’ll look like in fifteen years. The red in her hair is slightly faded; laugh lines have begun around her mouth. Still pretty. Maybe more so with the years. What’s this woman’s name? All that comes to mind is her insistence that I write down the number on my passport.

“Thank you,” I say, taking the tray. “What did you say your name was?”

“Willow.”

“Willow?”

“Hippie parents. I used to hate it, but it’s grown on me as I’ve gotten older.”

“No, it’s lovely.”

“You’re looking much better,” Willow says.

As skeptical as I feel, I’m still taken by the warm openness in her face and voice. A gentleness in the faint lines of her mouth. Her eyes are big green almonds.

“I was quite a mess when I checked in. Sorry about that. I’m actually a very normal person caught in the middle of some very abnormal circumstances.”

“That’s what you said when you checked in.”

“Did I?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not exactly.”

Willow glances down at my leg. The long, hot shower has caused the scab to puff into a mountain of marshmallowy puss. A crater of white, surrounding what looks like a shiny red leech. My whole leg is blotched with bruises, my arms covered in scratches and bites.

“Listen, Willow. Do you have a second?”

She meets my eyes. “Is there something you need?”

We’re still standing in the doorway. I glance right and left at the stairway going down on either side of the villa, an antebellum entryway with coconut palms and a trickling fountain at the center. It’s seen better days. The iron rails given to rust, the blue-and-white enamel-tiled steps chipped along the edges. The air is quiet. I lower my voice anyway. I’d invite her in if not for the gun and money on the dresser.

“How many rooms are there?” I ask.

She eyes me with a look of suspicion. “Five. Two on each floor and then the penthouse upstairs.”

“Are they all full?”

“Usually.” She sighs and shifts her weight, and then it’s as if she’s made a conscious decision to be friendlier. “But not these days. Things have been kind of slow with the economy and everything.”

I’m only half listening. “I need a favor.”

She glances at my leg again. “OK?”

“I’ll be honest with you. My marriage has fallen apart. I mean, fallen apart is an understatement. Things are kind of messy. Really, really messy.”

She nods.

“My husband doesn’t know where I am. I just need some time to figure things out.”

She glances at my leg once more. “Did he do that to you?”

I cover my eyes and think that, in fact, Jonathon
has
done this to me.

“Yes,” I say, dropping my hand. “And he’s planning something even worse. That’s why I had to get away. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to drag you into this.”

“Oh please. No need to apologize.”

“I don’t want to burden you with the details of my ridiculous life. I just need you to assure me that I can get some privacy here. If anyone comes looking for me or calling to see if I’m staying here, can you please, I don’t mean to ask you to lie, but I just need some time to work through this.”

“I understand. No, listen, mums the word. Your privacy is my priority.”

This sounds both rehearsed and sincere.

“So if anyone, I mean, my husband has a lot of friends around, if anyone comes looking for me you’ll be sure to say you never saw me, right?”

“OK.” She seems to be considering how it’ll all play out.

She glances again at the hole in my leg as if she can’t control the impulse. I don’t blame her.

“Thank you,” I say. “This is serious. I wouldn’t even say anything if it weren’t.”

Willow shifts uncomfortably. “Did you go to the police?”

I feel a wave of weakness. I can’t hold this food beneath my nose much longer. “I heard they were corrupt.”

She laughs. “Not all of them. But sure. I’d say enough to make a person leery.”

“I honestly didn’t think there was anything they could do. And besides, I didn’t want them to know where I was staying, in case my husband knows someone who knows someone on the force.”

“Right. Well.”

“I’m sure you don’t want a scene around here, scaring people off with business so slow to begin with.”

“It’s not a problem. We’re pretty out of the way as it is. Not many people come here who don’t know of this place already.”

And that is the very thing that worries me. I found this place without any trouble because Benicio told me right where it was. If he knows, who else does?

Large round sunglasses, flip-flops, straw sun hat, bandages, peroxide, clunky hair clip, blue plastic wallet, Spanish–English phrase book, sweat shorts, two tank tops, and a simple yellow cotton purse. I place the items on the counter at the discount store. The clerk barely looks up as she rings everything through. She takes my dollars and hands back pesos in change.

Outside, I pile my hair inside the clip, slip on my sunglasses and floppy hat, and throw everything else into my new purse. Cars rumble past, music blaring through open windows—accordions and trumpets, a celebratory rhythm reminiscent of German oompah bands. The smell of cooked meat, of discarded mango rinds going bad in the sun, hangs in the streets. Flies are everywhere. Two blocks down I duck into an electronics store, which smells, oddly, of vanilla from the racks of the local product stacked at the entrance. I purchase a prepaid cell phone and leave.

After that I purchase an hour at the Internet café across the street. First thing I do is check my e-mail. There’s at least a hundred messages—work, spam, reminders of events at Oliver’s school, parents responding back and forth, back and forth again. One from Pacific Savings and Trust. They send periodic e-mails inviting me to sign up to view my accounts online. I’ve never even bothered to bank on such a simple scale, and yet somehow Jonathon is trying to implicate me in an embezzling scheme.

I need to see what he’s done, if anything, with my money. I click the message and follow the steps for each account, savings, checking, money market, the fund my mother left me in her will. After I enter a password the final step is to wait until I receive confirmation by e-mail. At that point I can view my accounts. But the last line informs me it can take up to twenty-four hours to confirm. Twenty-four hours before I can sign on.

I comb through more e-mails and something catches my eye. Several subject boxes have been highlighted, which means they’ve already been opened. They’re e-mails about work and each has small arrows next to them. Someone has gone in and replied.

I open the first reply, supposedly sent by me:

Hey Jane,

It doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to take these on. In fact I’ve been considering moving in another direction all together. Opening my own business, something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Sorry for such short notice. I hope you find someone soon.

Best,

Celia

Not only is Jonathon erasing me from his life, he’s trying to erase me from my own.

I click on the others and see the same thing. One even includes the line,
I’ve fallen into something far more lucrative and just couldn’t resist
. It’s dated the day we left. The morning I raced through the house trying to get ready with only minutes to spare because Jonathon, for reasons I hadn’t understood at the time, shut the alarm off and let me sleep in. It was so he could get on my computer. There’s no way to prove I didn’t send those e-mails myself.

At this point nothing should come as a surprise. And yet every new piece feels like another bullet in the leg—excruciating. Impossible to believe.

I sit back and focus on the distance to help relieve the dizziness forming behind my eyes. Across the street a man in sunglasses stands waiting at a bus stop. He cranes his neck up the street as if looking for the bus. But then he turns and cranes his head the other way. For what? A woman pushes her baby in a stroller down the sidewalk. She walks slowly, stopping for long periods to gaze in the shop windows behind the man who nods when she finally strolls past. It’s a small town. They probably know each other. I’m just paranoid. I glance around the café at all the people hunkered over their computers. Students and middle-aged couples, Americans, Mexicans, Europeans. Every one of them strikes me as off, as some kind of prop in an elaborate scheme.

I’m an idiot! I have to stay sharp to get through this, and I realize with a jolt that I’ve just screwed up in a major way. Jonathon has been going into my e-mail. How often, I don’t know, but chances are good that he’ll see the password I set up for my bank accounts. He’ll know I’m trying to get through. If he’s trying to point the finger at me for embezzling, and the Feds, as he calls them, are really looking for me, can’t they trace me to this computer in Mismaloya?

I take a deep breath and scramble to open a new e-mail account with another provider. I send Jane a message telling her to disregard the others and to please respond only to this new address. I’ll explain later. There isn’t much I can do about the bank except hope I catch the e-mail confirmation before Jonathon does.

Then I write an e-mail to Oliver.

Sweetheart. Bear with me. Things are not what they seem. I’m not at a spa, but I’m somewhere safe for the time being. I need to know you’re safe, too. Your father is involved in some very serious things. Potentially dangerous things, and I’m afraid he’s going to get even more desperate to see them through. I don’t want to say any more than that, so you’ll just have to trust me. I want you to find somewhere to go for a few days until I can get back. Is there a place you can think of where he won’t come looking for you?

I stop for a moment and wrack my brain. Where on earth can he go? I read back what I’ve written. It sounds like the rantings of a madwoman. He already thinks I’m at some spa trying to get my head straight.

I delete everything and start over.

Oliver, e-mail me immediately at this address only. I love you more than you’ll ever know.

I hit Send, hoping the message has just enough emotion in it for Oliver to want to keep it to himself.

I chew my nails, at a loss for what to do next.

I realize how absurd it is that I don’t even know Benicio’s last name. I do a computer search for
Benicio-Comedy-Scene-Los Angeles
. Nothing pops up that applies. I try,
In The Company of Harold’s Daughter “cast members.”
Pages of results appear. None include the name Benicio. He said it was a small part. So small he isn’t listed in the cast?

Someone scoots a chair across the tile floor, and the scraping causes me to let out an embarrassing shriek. Everyone turns.

I cup my hands like horse blinders around my eyes and face the computer again.

A clock in the corner of the screen shows ten minutes left before I’ll have to pay again. I check my e-mail to see if the bank has sent a confirmation but there’s nothing.

Then I check my new e-mail address. One new appears in the inbox. It’s from Oliver.

Nice try, Cee
, it reads.

I draw my hand back from the keyboard and cover my mouth. He’s broken into Oliver’s e-mail, too. I lean back in my chair, feeling shot through the heart. I’ve already killed a man and know in an instant how easily I could kill another. I grab my things and race out the door.