The Big Ugly (16 page)

I nodded just to show her I was listening, but I didn't have anything to say.

She asked. "Why didn't you never try and retaliate?"

"Against who? Paquita Morales?"

"Yeah. She the one set you up."

"No. She wasn't. She was just working for Morley. I never blamed Paquita really. She just wanted to see her kid, and Kitty was in a position to swing it for her. If I wanted to hate someone, I got enough hate for Kitty to keep me occupied. Besides, there was no use going to war inside Eastgate over that shit. I needed to lay low and get out, not get into it with the Latinas over Paquita. She avoided me. I avoided her. It was never about her."

Jack thought about that for a while. I don't know if she agreed with me—she was old school about that kind of thing—but she didn't say anything more about it.

When we got back to my car, she pulled into her parking lot and we sat there in the truck for a minute.

"What now?" she said.

"Now, I contact Junius Kluge."

"How you want to handle that?"

"I'll go over to his office and walk in."

"Where?"

"The Morgan Building, where I met him before."

She shook her head. "He just met you at the Morgan. He got his regular office at city hall."

"City hall?"

She nodded. "In the back. He got the hook up, Ellie. Don't forget who you dealing with."

"I won't," I said. "But I'm going to drive down to city hall and walk in and ask to talk to him just the same."

Jack stared at me. "You is?"

"Damn straight."

"You sure that the smart thing to do?"

"I wouldn't know the smart thing to do if it walked up and kissed me. But I don't see any reason to hide from him. No use trying to do this covertly."

She twisted her mouth, but I didn't wait for her to say anything. I got out of the truck.

She got out too and walked around the bed. "Bennett."

I turned around. "I know," I said, "if something happens, I need to get the fuck out of town and not try to contact you."

She tapped her keys on the truck. "I was just gonna say, 'Good luck.'"

"Oh. Thanks."

"Try not to kill nobody."

I was still wearing the jeans and T-shirt I'd thrown on the night before. I didn't want to look disheveled when I met with Junius Kluge, so I drove over to the sprawling four-story Central Library by the river. With some clothes over my arm, I walked inside, past the metal detectors, and through the lobby.

I found the women's bathroom on the second floor. It was empty, and I took the large handicap stall at the end.

There had not been a lot of time the night before to plan for outfit changes, but I had thrown in a pair of black pants and a decent concord-green scoop neck top. I didn't have any shoes, though.

"Motherfucker," my voice echoed in the bathroom.

I dug through my jeans for the cash I got from Belton. It was a little roll.

Three hundred and twenty-five dollars.

With the other cash I had on me, that brought my net worth up to three hundred and fifty-two dollars.

Something about that, just the number itself, caught me off guard and I had to stand there beside that public toilet a moment and catch my breath.

No friends. No family. Just three hundred and fifty-two dollars.

With a burnt hand I wiped tears out of my busted eyes. I was on the verge of bawling when some broad came into the bathroom, clanged the first stall shut, plopped her butt down and started to take a shit.

She must have wondered why the lady at the other end of the bathroom was laughing through tears.

Wearing my sneakers, I walked out to the car and drove over to Target to buy some shoes. I grabbed a pair of cheap black flats and took them up front. The girl at the checkout had long glittery nails and heavily powdered acne, and she kept stealing glances at my face.

"Not as bad as it looks," I told her.

Embarrassed, she half smiled and handed me my change.

I switched shoes in the car. Then I drove over to city hall to see what destiny awaited me.

Junius Kluge had a secretary as old as the building itself. In his outer office, she sat at a desk that, I noticed, had no computer. When I walked in, she stopped fussing with some papers, looked up at me in alarm and said, "My lord, dear, what happened to your face?"

"You should see the other guy."

She wore a flowery blouse and big glasses, but the nod she threw me was as gangsta as anything I'd seen in Eastgate. "Good for you!"

"I'd like to see Mr. Kluge."

"Well, let me see if he can see you." She pushed herself up from the desk. "Let me see."

She walked to the unmarked door at the end of the office, tapped on the door and walked inside.

After a moment or two, she returned and waved me over. Holding the door for me, she said, "He's free."

I thanked her and walked inside.

It was a long narrow room with a view of the water. Standing behind a large desk was Junius Kluge. As I walked the length of that long room, he said, "When she got in here, Mrs. Willhide realized that she'd forgotten to ask your name. Very unlike her. She offered to go back to get it, but when she mentioned that the young woman asking to see me had a freshly battered face I told her to send you on in."

I stopped at one of the chairs in front of his small wooden desk. He motioned me to sit if I wanted. I sat.

He didn't. He crossed his arms on the back of his chair.

"What can I do for you, Miss Bennett?"

I pointed at my face. "First, you can tell me why this happened."

His lipless mouth settled into a slight overbite. Maybe that was supposed to be a smile. "Why what happened?"

"Why Vin Colfax kidnapped me last night and tried to beat me to death."

"I wouldn't know anything about that."

"No?"

"No, ma'am. Especially not when I'm talking to someone I don't know, a convicted felon, a fledgling blackmailer, and maybe worse."

"You weren't so reticent to talk when you called up my parole officer and got him to lure me out."

"That is a baseless allegation, madam."

I leaned forward. "I'm not wearing a wire, Mr. Kluge. I'll be honest with you, though. I was wearing one when I talked to Belton. The dumb son of bitch admitted that you had him get me out of the house. You. Not Vin. You."

"You were wearing a wire for whom?"

"For me. I'm not talking to any cops, Junius. They don't like me, and I don't like them."

"I see."

"So why don't you tell me why I had to kill Vin Colfax last night."

Kluge had perfected a way of listening without visibly responding to anything. He just stood there for a moment. Then he said, "Vin Colfax was a passionate man."

"I don't …"

"He thought he could handle you in his own way."

"He thought wrong."

"Yes. I'd say you relieved him of that particular illusion."

"Well," I said. "Now I'm dealing with you."

Kluge pulled out his chair and sat down.

"So you are. Tell me what you want."

"I want a million dollars."

I thought that might get a reaction, but his tight, red face just hung there a moment until he opened his mouth enough to say, "And where do you think I can put my hands on a million dollars?"

"Oh, come on. Only poor people have to make do with what they got. Rich folks can always put their hands on more money."

He thought about it for a minute. Through the window behind him, the river shuddered under a hard wind. "I'll need time to discuss it with other parties."

"Don't tell me you have to talk to the governor. You can't convince me he wants to dirty his hands with this."

"Considering that you throttled his little brother to death, he might have a strong opinion about how we should proceed with this business. And it might just be, Miss Bennett, that he won't want to pay money to the woman who killed his brother. Since Vinton isn't even in the ground yet, this conversation may be premature." He laced his fingers together over his stomach. "Lou Don Colfax is a different man than his brother was, of course, but like the whole Colfax clan he's marked by the, ah,
fervor
of his emotions. A good quality in the right context but counter-productive in others. So you'll want to give me time to talk to him."

I stood up. "I'll wait until the funeral. The next day, we end this thing. I get my money. You guys try to fuck me on this, I'll make everything public. You people should know by now that I'm not bluffing, Junius. You tell that to the governor."

"I shall."

I nodded and turned around and crossed that long room again. Kluge didn't say anything else. He just watched me go.

I waved at Mrs. Willhide on my way out. I took the stairs rather than the elevator and got out of there as soon as I could.

Outside, the air was warm and sweet. People passed me as I walked to my car. A young couple with kids. A couple of old folks. A middle-aged man and his teenaged son.

I was so busy looking at the faces passing me on the street that I didn't notice him leaning against my car until I was almost to it. I nearly bumped into him.

He'd watched me come toward him the whole time, though.

He stood there with his arms crossed, with a smile, of course—that same gorgeous, maddening smile.

"Hey, Ellie," Frank Morley said.

As always, he looked as if he'd just stepped out of an aftershave commercial. Lean and tan, with a crisp white shirt and an emerald tie, olive slacks and polished black shoes. A little breeze stirred his salt-and-pepper hair, but otherwise he stood still and waited for my reaction.

"Get the fuck off my car," I said.

He downgraded the smile to a disappointed grin and took a step away from my car. "Is that going to be it?"

"Is what going to be it?"

"It's been a year since we've seen each other, and you're not even going to say hello to me."

"It's been over fifteen months since we've seen each other—thirteen months of which I sat in prison with no word from you—so, yes, you don't really rate a hello in my book."

"That's fair enough," he said. "Would you stoop to having a drink with me?"

Shame and rage burned my busted face. I looked horrible and being seen by him at that moment was humiliating. I couldn't bring myself to speak. I walked around to the driver's door and dug out my keys.

"C'mon, Ellie," he said. "I just want to talk to you."

"Why, Frank? So I'll feel worse than I feel right now? I don't feel horrible enough, already? You gotta make it worse?"

He stepped to the edge of the sidewalk and folded his arms on the roof of my car. "Make you a deal. How about we walk up the street to the Capitol Club? I'll buy you a drink. And I guarantee that you will not feel bad when you leave. A guarantee. How often in life do you get a guarantee?"

"What do I get if you renege on this deal?"

"You can shoot me. Here, I got my service weapon on my hip. You can shoot me."

I glared at him. I felt myself thawing already, goddamn him, but when I locked eyes with him I wasn't kidding. "I might shoot you anyway, Frank."

"And that's what I love about you, Ellie. The uncertainty."

In the Capitol Club, slats covered the windows and the lights were turned down low. Frank got us a booth in the back. I felt like the dimness gave me a little cover.

I couldn't say why I was there with him. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to beat him as I'd been beaten—and I couldn't help but note that I never would have wound up in the chicken killing room with Vin Colfax if I'd never met Frank Morley. The spark of his smile started the fire that had burned my entire life to the ground. Even as we sat there, I could feel myself hating him.

But I couldn't be indifferent to him. My thawing out on the street? As Frank ordered us drinks—a whiskey neat for him and a vodka tonic with lime for me—I reflected that I could be a lot of things with this man, but I couldn't be cold. Everything I felt about him had heat on it.

"Want to tell me about your face?" he asked.

"You said you weren't going to make me feel bad."

"I'm asking because I'm concerned, Ellie. Multiple wounds, choke pattern on your neck. That happen inside?"

I stared at him. Our drinks came. I took a sip. I said, "Yeah. Inside."

"What happened?"

"Some meaningless shit. Nothing to talk about."

He nodded and twirled his drink around.

"What about you?" I asked. "You look like you're on your way to a GQ cover shoot."

He shook his head. "Just working. You know. I was working away at my desk, sitting there writing some damn report, and I look out the window and who do I see getting out of her car? Ellie fucking Bennett."

"A bruised and battered Ellie Bennett."

"We're all bruised and battered, Ellie."

I leaned forward. "Shut the fuck up, Frank. You're going to piss me off talking that way. I'm not crying about my childhood scars or an unfulfilling marriage. I'm talking about a life making its last rotation around the toilet bowl."

He watched me talk. His eyes were amber and sad. Maybe they were ashamed, I couldn't tell. He sipped at his drink.

"I don't blame you for hating me," he said.

I shook my head. "Jesus Christ."

"What? I'm trying to tell you—"

"'I don't blame you for hating me'? Who gives a fuck who you blame? It's not about you, Frank."

"Yes, it is, Ellie," he said. "My life is about me, just like yours is about you. You think I haven't thought about what happened with me and you and Kitty? I have. I hated what she did to you. I hated it, but there was no way for me to stop it by the time it happened."

"There was a trial. You couldn't have come forward?"

He leaned back and tapped his glass against the smooth chestnut tabletop. "With what? And said … what? 'I think maybe my wife set up my girlfriend'?"

I leaned over the table and stuck my busted face as close as I could to his. "Yes." I sat back and took a slug of my drink. "If you'd cared you would have."