The Best of Sisters in Crime (47 page)

“See, Ricky boy,”
he nattered as he took a slug of his fourth mimosa. “Guy like you, no
responsibilities, you think life’s a ball. Hey, you come to work, you go home,
it’s all yours. Me, I got the weight of my damn ancestors pushing on me like a
rock. I feel crushed by my own history.”

“Sisyphus,” I
said, wringing out the bar towel. After my divorce I’d gone to a few night
classes at UCLA in hopes of meeting a girl with brains. Some fat chance. Even
in Myths and Legends: A Perspective for Today, all the girls knew “Ooo Baby
Oooo.”

“Whatever,”
Eddie sighed. Ping on his glass again. “I can’t take much more of this kinda
life.” He gestured absently at his darkened domain. “If only she’d die . . .”
He looked up at me and shot a loud ping through the empty club. His lids peeled
back from his eyes like skin from an onion, and he gave me a wise smile. “If
only somebody’d give her a shove . . .”

“Hold on,” I
told him. “Wait a minute, Eddie . . .”

He didn’t say
anything else, but it was too late. I could smell dark blood seeping over the
layer of expensive crud that permeated the Dingo. He’d planted the idea in my
brain, and it was putting out feelers like a science-fiction monster sprouting
a thousand eyes.

For three nights
I lay in my bed, drinking vodka, staring out the window of my one-bedroom
apartment on Ivar, at the boarded-up crack house across the street, and
thinking about money. If I had money, I could take a few months off, vacation
in Mexico and jump start my life. I had no future as a bartender at the Club
Dingo. If I stayed where I was—as I was—I would never change, and I
had
to revitalize my life or I would shrivel and
die. If I could get out of L.A., lie on the beach for a month or two, maybe I
could start writing songs again, maybe I could have another hit. Maybe
something
would happen to me. Maybe I’d get
lucky. The way I saw things, it was her or me.

Three days later
Eddie made me the offer. A hundred thou, cash, no problems. He’d give me the
keys to the house; I could pick the time and place and kill her any way I
wanted.

“Look, Ricky
boy, you’ve got a gun, right?” he said.

“A thirty-eight.”
I shrugged. “L.A.’s a crazy town.”

“Great. Just
shoot her, OK? Whack her over the head, I don’t care. Do it fast so she won’t
feel anything. Make it look like a robbery, steal some jewelry. She’s got it
lying all over her dressing table; she won’t use the damn safe. Christ, I gave
her enough stuff the first year we were married to fill a vault; just take some
of it, do what you want. Throw it down the drain, it doesn’t matter. I just
gotta get rid of her, OK?”

“OK, Eddie,” I
said. By the time he asked me to kill her, it was easy. I’d thought it all out;
I knew he was going to ask me, and I knew I was going to do it. Ultimately, it
came down to this. If murder was the only way to finance another chance, I
would become a killer. I saw it as a career move.

I told him I’d
do it. Eddie gave me a set of keys to his house and planned to be at the Dingo
all night on Wednesday, my night off. He said it would be a good time to kill
Suzanne, anxiously pointing out that he wasn’t trying to tell me my job. It was
all up to me.

I drove up to
his house in the Hills; I’d been there for the Club Dingo Christmas party, so I
was vaguely familiar with the layout. It was a Neutra house from the thirties,
a huge white block hanging over the edge of the brown canyon like an albino
vulture, and as I parked my dirty Toyota next to the red Rolls that Suzanne
drove, I felt strong, like I had a rod of iron inside my heart. Suzanne would
die, and I would rise like the phoenix from her ashes. I saw it as an even
trade—my new life for her old life.

I opened the
front door with Eddie’s key and went inside, padding silently on my British
Knights. My plan was to look around, then go upstairs to the bedroom and shoot
her. Eddie said she watched TV most nights, used it to put her to sleep like I
used vodka.

The entry was
long, and there was a low, flat stairway leading down to the sunken living
room. The drapes were pulled back, and I could see all of Los Angeles spread
out through the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the far wall. The shifting
shapes of moving blue water in the pool below were reflected on the glass, and
in that suspended moment I knew what it meant to live in a world of smoke and
mirrors.

“Who the hell
are you?” a woman snapped.

It was Suzanne
and she had a gun. Dumb little thing, a tiny silver .25 that looked like it
came from Le Chic Shooter, but it was a gun all the same. Eddie never mentioned
that she had a gun, and I was angry. I hadn’t expected it. I hadn’t expected
her either.

I’d met her at
the Christmas party, so I knew she was gorgeous, but I’d been pretty drunk at
the time and I wasn’t paying attention. Suzanne Stanhope, nobody called her
Suzie Style, was a dream in white. She was as tall as I was, and she had legs
that would give a lifer fits.

“Eddie sent me,”
I said brightly. “He forgot his date-book. Didn’t he call you? He said he was
gonna . . .” I let my voice trail off and hoped I looked slack-jawed and
stupid. I thought it was a damn good improvisation, and my ingratiating grin
must have helped, because she lowered the gun.

“You’re the
bartender, the one who used to be a singer, right?” she asked. “Now I recognize
you.” She loosened up, but she didn’t put down the gun.

This was going
to be easy. I’d bust her in the head, steal the jewelry and be a new man by
morning. I smiled, amazed that one woman could be so beautiful.

She was wearing
a white dress, loose, soft material that clung to her body when she moved, and
the worst part was, she wasn’t even trying to be beautiful. Here she was,
probably lying around in bed watching TV, painting her toenails, and she looked
like she was going to the Oscars. Once again I saw the futility of life in L.A.
without money.

“Tell Eddie I
could have shot you,” she said, very mild. “He’ll get a kick out of that.” She
still had the little silver gun in her hand, but she was holding it like a
pencil, gesturing with it.

“Sure will, Mrs.
Stanhope,” I said, grinning like an intelligent ape.

“Oh, cut the
crap, will you? Just call me Suzanne.” She looked me over, and I got the
feeling she’d seen better in the cold case. “You want a drink, bartender? What’s
your name, anyway?”

“Ricky Curtis.”

“Rick, huh?” She
frowned and started humming my song. “How does that thing go?” she asked.

I hummed “Ooo
Baby Oooo” for her. Her hair was shoulder length, blond, not brassy. Blue eyes
with crinkles in the corners like she didn’t give a damn what she laughed at. “Ooo
baby oooo, it’s you that I do . . . .” I hummed.

“So how come you
don’t sing anymore, Rick?” she asked as she led me down the steps into the
sunken living room. I could see the lights of the city twinkling down below and
idly wondered if, on a clear day, I’d be able to see my apartment on Ivar or
the boarded-up crack house across the street.

“How come nobody
asks me?” I said.

She went behind
the bar, laughing as she poured herself a drink. Sounded like wind chimes. She
put the little gun down on the marble bar, and it made a hollow clink.

“Vodka,” I told
her.

She poured me a
shot in a heavy glass, and I drank it off. I had a strange feeling, and I didn’t
know why. I knew Eddie Style was rich, but this was unlike anything I’d ever
seen before. The sheer weight of the Stanhope money was crushing me into the
ground. Heavy gravity. I felt like I was on Mars.

She sipped her
drink and looked thoughtfully out the huge windows, past the pale translucent
lozenge of the pool toward the city lights below. “It’s nice here,” she said. “Too
bad Eddie doesn’t appreciate it. He’d have a better life if he appreciated what
he has, instead of running around like a dog. The Dingo is aptly named, don’t
you think, Rick?”

I wanted another
drink. I wanted to be drunk when I killed her, so I wouldn’t feel it. I hadn’t
planned on killing a person, just a . . . a what? Just a blond body? Just a
lump in the bed that could be anything? I hadn’t counted on looking into her
clear blue eyes as the light went out of them. I pushed my glass across the
counter, motioning for another drink.

“So why are you
here, Rick?” she asked softly. “It was a good story about the datebook but
Eddie’s too frazzled to keep one. I’m surprised you didn’t know that about him.
Maybe you two aren’t as close as you think.”

I didn’t know
what she meant. Was she kidding me? I couldn’t tell. What was going on? I had
that old familiar feeling of confusion, and once again, I was in over my head.
Did she
know
I was there to
kill her? I couldn’t let her think that, so I did the next best thing. I
confessed to a lesser crime.

“I’m broke,” I
said shortly, “and Eddie said the house was empty. I was here at the Christmas
party and I figured I could bag some silver out of the back of the drawer.
Maybe nobody would miss a few forks. It was a dumb idea but it’s tap city and
Eddie has more than he needs. Of everything,” I said, looking directly at her. “You
gonna call the cops?”

“Robbery? That’s
an exciting thought,” she said, clinking the ice in her glass as she leaned her
head back and popped an ice cube in her mouth. She took it out with her fingers
and ran it over her lips. “You value Eddie’s things, his lifestyle. Too bad he
doesn’t.”

“In this town it’s
hard to appreciate what you have,” I said slowly, wondering how her lips would
feel, how cold they really were. “Everybody always wants what they can’t get.”

“Don’t they,”
she said meaningfully as she dropped the ice cube back in her glass. “What do
you
want, Rick? Since you brought it up.”

“Me? I want
money,” I said. As the phrase popped out of my mouth I realized how pathetic it
sounded. Like a teenager wanting to be a rock star, I wanted money. That’s the
trouble with L.A. Being a bartender isn’t a bad gig, but in L.A., it’s just a
rest stop on the freeway to fame, a cute career to spice up your résumé.

“That shouldn’t
be tough for a good-looking guy like you. Not in this town.” She refilled our
glasses and led me over to a white couch. There were four of them in an
intimate square around a free-form marble table. I felt like I was somebody
else. I’d only had a couple short ones and I was wondering what she wanted in a
man. I wondered if she was lonely.

“Sit down,” she
said, her white dress splitting open to show me those blond legs. “Let’s talk.
Rick,” she said.

“Sure I married
him because he’s rich, just like he married me because I’m beautiful,” she
said, running a finger across my stomach. “But I thought there was more to it
than that. He was sweet to me at first. He didn’t treat me like some whore who
spent her life on her knees. Christ, I’m tired of men who want me because I’m
beautiful and then don’t want me because I’m smart. Am I smart, Rick?” she
asked, pulling the sheet around her body as she got out of bed. “Want anything?”

Mars. I was on
Mars. You hang around L.A., you think you know the words to the big tune, but
you don’t. You think you’ve seen a lot, know it all, but you don’t, and as I
lay in his bed caressing his wife, I wondered how it would feel to be Eddie
Style. Live in his house, sleep with his wife. If I had a room like this, why
would I ever leave it? If I had a wife like that, why would I want to kill her?
The sheets were smooth, some kind of expensive cotton the rich like; the carpet
was soft—was it silk? The glinting perfume bottles on her dressing table were
heavy, geometrically cut glass shapes twinkling with a deep interior light far
brighter than the city below. If I unstoppered one of those bottles, what would
I smell?

She let the
sheet drop to the floor as she lowered herself into the bubbling blue marble
tub at the far end of the room. I lay in Eddie’s bed and watched her as she
stretched her head back, and exposed a long white highway of throat pointing to
a dark and uncharted continent. I thought about killing her and realized it was
too late.

“This is insane,”
I said.

She laughed. “It’s
so L.A., isn’t it? The bartender and the boss’s wife, the gardener and the . . .”

“Yeah, I read
Lady Chatterly.
I’m not a complete illiterate,”
I told her. “What do you want to do about it?”

“Oh, we could
get together afternoons in cheesy motels,” she said. “Think you’d like that?”

“Sounds great,”
I said ironically. “Don’t you think you’d find cheesy motels boring after a
while? Say, after a week or so?” I got up out of bed, went over to the tub and
got in with her. The water warmed me to the bone. “You could come live with me
in my one-bedroom. You’d fit in just fine. Course, you’d have to leave this
house behind,” I said as I slipped my hands underneath her body and lifted her
on top of me. “And there wouldn’t be much time for shopping since you’d have to
get a job slinging fries. Think you’d miss the high life?”