Текст книги "January Justice"

Автор книги: Athol Dickson

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

39

Emilio Delarosa was dead to the world. After shaking him and yelling in his ear, I gave up and left. Eight blocks away I finally saw a cab. I stepped from the curb to hail it. The driver had to lock his wheels to stop in time.

After I was in the backseat, he said. “You must be crazy walking around this neighborhood.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I am.”

I told him to drive to the hotel. When we got there, I told him to wait for me at the curb, and went inside. I ignored the desk clerk and the desk clerk ignored me as I walked through the lobby. I climbed the stairs and followed the narrow hallway to my room. The door had not yet been replaced. I went in and knelt in front of the old washstand in the corner. I bent to reach underneath it, and found the envelope containing my cash, credit cards and passports, still wedged tightly where I had hidden it the night before. I stood, raised my shirt tail and slipped the envelope under the waist band of my jeans. I dropped the shirt tail back in place to hide the envelope and left the room.

Outside the hotel, the taxi was still at the curb. I got in and told the driver to take me straight to the airport. It was almost dark when we arrived. The woman working the AeroMexico ticket counter was putting on her uniform jacket as I walked up. She stooped to get her purse. As I reached the counter, she straightened and slipped the strap over her shoulder.

“We are closed,” she said.

“Is there not an eight thirty flight to Tijuana?”

“No. Only on Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“But this is Friday.”

“Today is Thursday, sir.”

I tried to smile. “I’m sorry. Of course it is. When is the next plane to Mexico City?”

“Six thirty tomorrow morning.”

“I would like a seat.”

“We are closed, as I already said.”

I lifted a finger. “One moment, please.”

Turning my back to her, I lifted my shirttail and slipped my hand beneath my trousers. I withdrew the slender envelope and took out some cash. I faced her again and put two fifty-dollar bills on the counter.

“That is for your trouble,” I said. “And how much is the ticket?”

She glanced quickly left and right and then slipped the bills into her purse. Moving to the computer, she started tapping buttons on the keyboard. “I can get you on it for another two thousand seven hundred and twenty quetzals.”

I spent a long night in the waiting area at the gate on the black-leather-and-stainless-steel seating at the unexpectedly modern La Aurora International Airport. I tried not to imagine what would have happened if I had lost control of my mind in the mountains or in the van with Vega instead of while I was alone with Emilio Delarosa. I watched the few people wandering beneath the crisscrossed steel trusses over the concourses and wondered if any of them had followed me. Mostly they were airport employees, janitors, and security. A guard entered the restroom, and I had the crazy idea of following him and taking his gun.

At one point, around three in the morning, a man with a thin beard and military boots came into the area where I was waiting. He sat down a few rows away from me. I stood up and walked to another gate.

When I walked off the AeroMexico flight in Mexico City the next morning, I realized that some of my dizziness might not be due to the damage in my head. It had been more than a day since my last meal. I found a snack shop and gorged on two prepackaged sandwiches and a bag of potato chips. Then I went looking for a ticket to Tijuana.

The Mexico City airport was enormous. By the time I found the correct ticket counter, it felt as if I had already walked halfway to the US border. It turned out that in stopping for a meal, I had missed my chance to board the only morning flight. I wandered through the airport for nine hours, waiting for the next one.

It was dark again when we touched down in Tijuana. The rental car was waiting where I had left it in the parking garage. I tried to remember how long ago that had been, but the days and nights had merged together.

I walked past the car along the driveway. I followed the curve up and up until I found a Ford Taurus with California plates parked beside a van. It looked as if the van blocked the line of sight from the nearest security camera. I knelt and used the flat tongue of my belt buckle to remove the plates. I carried them back to the rental car, got in, and drove to the exit. There, I handed the parking chit to the man in the booth and paid the amount that flashed on the small screen. When he handed me a receipt, I checked the date printed there and saw it had been four days.

On a side street several blocks away from the airport, I parked at the curb, got out, and switched the plates. I threw the rental plates onto a pile of trash bags and drove on. I found an OXXO convenience store and pulled over. I went in and bought a blue-and-silver Dallas Cowboys gimme cap, a pair of full-frame reading glasses from a revolving stand that also displayed sunglasses, and the fattest cigar they had. I also bought another prepackaged sandwich, some more chips, and a bottle of tea for the caffeine.

Ten minutes later I pulled to the end of the half-mile-long line at the border crossing and settled in to wait. There were five or six other lanes of cars, thousands of us inching toward the USA while people strolled between the lanes selling ceramic turtles, sodas, deep-fried pastries called churros, bags of peanuts, chewing gun, and piñatas in all shapes.

It took two hours to roll that last half mile to the border. When only two vehicles remained between me and the US Customs booth, I put on the reading glasses and the gimme cap. I also unwrapped the cigar and stuck it in my mouth, pushing it back so it filled out my cheek on the left side, where the customs cameras that were focused on drivers would be.

The car in front of me moved on. The light turned green. I rolled up to the customs booth.

“Passport and driver’s license, please,” said the border guard.

I handed them to him.

“Where have you been today, Mr. Carver?” asked the guard.

I did my best to talk around the cigar. “Down at Ensenada. I was looking at a little condo.”

“You planning to buy?”

“Thinking about it.”

“You know about the drug cartels, don’t you?”

“Yeah. But the place is cheap. ʼSides, I figure they won’t bother me if I don’t bother them.”

The guard shook his head. He compared my open passport to something on the computer screen beside him in the booth. He said, “Do you have any fruits or vegetable products with you?”

“No, sir.”

“Where are you from?”

“Originally, Salina, Kansas, but I live in LA now.”

He stared hard at me. I chewed on the cigar and waited.

He closed the passport and gave it back to me, along with the driver’s license. “You should think a little more about that condo, Mr. Carver. These cartels down here aren’t fooling around.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the documents. “I will.”

An hour and a half later, I pulled off the highway in San Clemente and passed a gas station with a pay phone. I wasn’t carrying a cell phone. Cell-phone locations can be traced. I drove a little farther to park the car out of the gas station’s camera range and then got out and walked back to the phone. I called Teru and told him where I was. I dropped the cap and glasses and cigar in a Dumpster beside the station, then walked back to the car, got inside, and went to sleep.

Sometime later I awoke to the sound of Teru tapping on the driver’s-side window. I put the rental-car keys behind the visor, got out, locked the door, and closed it.

When we were in Teru’s Porsche, he said, “So?”

“Remind me to call the rental people tomorrow about where we left that car.”

“Did you find Vega?”

“He found me.”

“And?”

“I’m not completely sure yet.”

I told him everything that had happened.

When I was done, he said, “I still don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

“Maybe it’ll make more sense after I’ve had some sleep.”

The next morning I woke up thinking about being served Simon’s french roast coffee in bed, but apparently now that Sid Gold was in residence, my days of being buttled were over. I made my own coffee. I heated a couple of frozen waffles, spread some butter on them, and smothered them in maple syrup, and then took them and the coffee outside to the patio. When I was done eating, I promised myself to start paying more attention to my diet. Then, since the police search had left the guesthouse in a shambles and Simon had done nothing about it, I spent several hours putting everything back in place. It was a hard thing, not being buttled, but it was better to have been buttled and lost, than never to have been buttled at all.

Simon dropped by around noon with a large brown paper sack in his hands. We had lunch together on the patio. From the paper sack he withdrew Cobb salad and tomato bisque, a couple of chilled bottles of Perrier, and yet another M11 semiautomatic. Simon had used maple-smoked bacon in the salad, and Bleu de Gex instead of Roquefort cheese. He told me Sid Gold was going to work out fine. Even his children seemed all right, although with teenagers, you could never tell.

I removed the sidearm from the holster and checked the action. “Have you hired a housekeeper?”

“I am still interviewing applicants,” he said. “But I engaged a woman from a temporary agency in the interim.”

“Can she cook?”

“Tolerably, although should Mr. Gold desire to entertain formally, I believe we would turn to a caterer for a more sophisticated bill of fare.”

I ejected the magazine, checked the load, and replaced it. I put the weapon in the holster and clipped the holster to my belt. “How’s Sid handling the divorce?”

“I overheard him weeping in the library yesterday.”

“Well, at least you’re making his life simpler.”

“Indeed.” Simon nodded. “There is that.”

“Has his wife come by?”

“From what Mr. Gold has mentioned, I believe she has no plans to visit.”

“Women can be hard to understand.”

“That has also been my experience.”

“Were you ever married?”

“Briefly, quite some time ago.”

“An English girl?”

“No. I met her in the Philippines. She passed away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“As I mentioned, it was quite some time ago. One does move on.”

“Really? How?”

He turned his pale gray eyes toward me. “One finds a way, if one is wise.”

We ate silently for a while. The soup was extraordinary.

Finally I said, “Thanks for the gun.”

“My pleasure.”

“Olivia Soto is Alejandra Delarosa’s daughter.”

“Is she indeed?”

“She is. The case files I was given only mention the Delarosa’s daughter by her first name, Maria. It turns out her full name is Maria Olivia Delarosa Sotomayor. What do you make of that?”

He took a bite of salad and chewed for a moment. “She is working for the Delarosa woman’s victim. For her mother’s victim. That is concerning.”

“It is.”

“But has she broken any laws?”

“Not that I know of. It’s not illegal to use an assumed name, except on contracts and so forth. And she was born in Los Angeles according to the file, so she’s an American citizen, not here illegally.”

Simon said, “There’s the woman Mrs. Montes saw during the home invasion.”

“Doña Elena seems pretty certain that was Alejandra Delarosa.”

“Family resemblance? Dim lights? Extreme stress?”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“One thinks of reporting this to the authorities or of warning Mrs. Montes directly. But given your current situation and the fact that you left Orange County to obtain this information, perhaps it would be best to gather more intelligence before taking that step.”

“That had also crossed my mind.”

“Of course, the authorities could be advised anonymously.”

“Of course.”

“But if a person in possession of this information were to interview Miss Soto, and if Miss Soto were unaware that the person knows her actual identity, she might reveal more unwittingly than she would in direct interrogation.”

“Unwittingly?”

“A perfectly useful word.”

We ate together quietly a little longer, then I pushed back from the table. “Excuse me a minute.”

I went inside and checked my cell phone for the Montes’s phone number. I dialed it. A woman’s voice came on the line. “Montes’s residence.”

I said, “Olivia, I’m sorry.”

There was a pause, and I wondered if she was going to hang up. Then, “It took you long enough to call.”

“I’m sorry about that, too. I’ve been confused. I have lots of feelings, and I’m not sure what they mean.”

“Feelings about me?”

“I think about you a lot. I’d like to apologize in person. Could we get together?”

“When?”

“How about tonight, for dinner? I could pick you up somewhere. Not at the Montes’s place, obviously.”

“Meet me at my apartment.” She gave me an address in Venice Beach. “Seven o’clock.”

“Listen, I owe you a fancy meal, so dress nice.”

“Don’t I always?”

She hung up.

I went back outside, where Simon was still sitting at the patio table. I sat down. “I’m taking her to dinner tonight.”

He nodded. “She has affected an attraction to you.”

“Affected? I’m shocked, Simon. All women are irresistibly attracted to me.”

“One is pleased to hear it.”

“I don’t think she’s been trying to set a honey trap.”

“No, that seems doubtful since the approach involves blackmail, usually associated with the victim’s urgent desire to conceal the illicit relationship from a concerned third party. In your case, there is no concerned third party, if I may apologize for saying so.”

“Never apologize when you’re right,” I said, knowing he meant Haley wasn’t around to object, so Olivia couldn’t get me into bed and then blackmail me. “I think it’s simple enticement. Get close to keep an eye on what I’m doing. Maybe get me making decisions based on lust instead of logic.”

“It does seem a more plausible explanation.”

“But decisions about what?”

“Perhaps you will learn the answer to that question this evening.”

“Well, if that’s her plan, it has one fatal flaw.”

Simon nodded. “The lady is quite beautiful, but she is not Miss Lane.”

40

When I left the guesthouse heading for the garage that evening, I was wearing a black silk sports coat over a white Egyptian cotton shirt open at the collar, a pair of bone-colored pleated linen slacks, a pair of brown leather Cole Haan loafers without socks, and the SIG Sauer P228 in a matching brown leather holster.

Haley and I rarely drove the Aston Martin One-77 because it made both of us nervous to be on the road in a car worth nearly two million dollars. When I asked her why she bought such a car, she patiently explained it was an investment, which appreciated about ten percent a year. Even parked inside the garage I kept it covered. But Olivia was a car fanatic, and I thought it might help soften her up. Besides, there was off-street parking at the restaurant, and I was pretty sure I could pay the valets to give it plenty of space and let me do the parking myself. I removed the Aston’s cloth cover, fired it up, and drove it over to Venice Beach.

Olivia lived in the rear unit of a duplex property about five blocks in from the ocean. I parked in the driveway and approached a modernistic gate of steel and frosted glass. Beside it was an intercom with the name “Soto” on a piece of tape under the button. I pushed the button.

Her voice came from the speaker. “Yes?”

I told her it was me.

She said, “The gate doesn’t have a lock. Come on in.”

I entered a long and narrow courtyard with a walkway alongside the front apartment. On the left was the two-story blank stucco wall of the apartment in front. On the right was a tall stucco wall between that property and the one next door. Horsetail reeds filled the planting beds on both sides of the walkway, packed tightly and trimmed flat on top like a hedge. There was a palm tree every ten feet or so, with low-voltage lighting shining up along the trunks. Her door was about halfway back, with frosted glass like the gate and sheltered by a steel trellis overflowing with riotous red bougainvillea.

Olivia answered my knock right away. She was dressed simply in a pair of open-toed high heels that brought her up almost to my height, a very low-cut beige silk blouse, and slacks made from some kind of bronze-colored fabric that shimmered and clung to her in all the better places. She wore her hair loose, the first time I had seen it out of a braid. It fell around her shoulders and glistened in the light as if she had a halo.

She looked absolutely stunning, so I said, “You look absolutely stunning.”

“Very good,” she said. “Keep up that talk, and I may forgive you.”

I wanted to see the look on her face when she laid eyes on the Aston Martin, to find out if she really knew as much about cars as she claimed. I made sure to go first down the walkway toward the street. I held the gate for her and watched.

She came to a full stop and whispered, “Santa Maria, madre de Dios!” Then she turned to me. “Is that really a one seventy-seven?”

“It really is.”

“But…but…how?”

“Like the Bentley, it’s sort of a perk. I get to drive it on special occasions.”

She tapped me on the shoulder as I held the car door for her. “There’s a lot more to that story, mister, and I intend to hear it.”

“Maybe we can work something out. You tell me I’m forgiven, and I’ll tell you about the warranty.”

When we rolled up in front of the Seven Palms, one valet opened Olivia’s door while another came to mine. “I’ll park it,” I said, handing him a fifty.

He said, “Certainly,” and then dashed off to remove a traffic cone in front of the restaurant. He stood by while I backed it in, and then he replaced the cone. When I got out, the valet said, “I assume you want to keep the keys?”

I said, “You bet,” and then walked over to Olivia, and we went inside.

They gave us a nice U-shaped booth in the corner. I sat with my back to the rear wall, and Olivia slid around to the middle, facing out toward the dining room.

She said, “Have you ever been here before?”

“Once I drove Miss Lane to a meeting here with a couple of producers. They were trying to attach her to a picture. She kept me close by in case of overzealous fans and so forth.”

Olivia said, “Doña Elena is the same way.”

“She has personal protection?”

“A service she calls in when she thinks she needs them. Any time she’s going someplace with a crowd.”

I thought about the two men who had tried to kill me in the mountains. They had obvious military training, but maybe they were in the personal security business now, as I was. Maybe they had been called in to escort Doña Elena and decided to capitalize on the inside information that was always available to bodyguards. Maybe they had been in the process of setting up a kidnapping, with Vega and the URNG as the fall guys, when I came into the picture. Maybe they decided I was making things too complicated, so they changed their plan a little and set me up to take the fall instead. Of course, that the idea only worked if Doña Elena’s security team had been around long enough to get access to the kind of details they would need to orchestrate such a complicated plan.

I said, “Does Doña Elena always ask for the same bodyguards?”

Olivia looked at me. “No. It’s usually someone different. Why?”

Ah, well. So much for that theory. I said, “Just making conversation.”

The waiter dropped by. Olivia ordered a martini. With the drive home in the Aston Martin in mind, I asked for mineral water.

After the waiter left, I said, “So, tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up?”

“Not too far from here. You know Pico-Union?”

“Wow. Not far as a crow flies, but you’ve come a long way. I’ll bet your folks are proud.”

“How about you? Are you from LA?”

“Uvalde, Texas. Down near Mexico.”

“That explains your Spanish.”

“The schools were about three-quarters Mexican. I pretty much had to learn it or miss out on all the gossip. How about you? Your parents teach it to you?”

“We spoke it all the time at home.”

“But you’re not Mexican American. I can tell from the accent. So, what? Colombian? Puerto Rican?”

“Kind of a combination, actually.” She was looking at the menu. “What’s good here?”

“I had a filet mignon that one time. I think Miss Lane said she enjoyed the swordfish.”

The waiter came back with our drinks. We went ahead and ordered dinner. Olivia and I both opted for the filet.

“Tell me about Haley Lane,” she said after the waiter had gone. “What was she like?”

I gave my stock answer. “She was a good woman. Easy to work for and very kindhearted. Not jaded or impressed with herself at all. What’s Doña Elena like?”

“You met her, so you know she can put away the Chablis. Sometimes that makes her a little bit mean-spirited, but mostly I like her. And the congressman is very kind and thoughtful. He can be curt, but only when he’s in a hurry, and he almost always apologizes later. It’s interesting how normal these people are behind the scenes, isn’t it?”

“In my line of work, I’ve met all kinds. Like they say, the rich are different; they have lots of money.”

“Really? Doña Elena and the congressman are my first rich and famous bosses. At first I was intimidated, but they treat me better than I would treat them if I were in their shoes, probably.”

“That’s an interesting thing to say.”

“I think it’s the power. Being able to make people do pretty much whatever you want them to do. I’d have trouble managing that. It’s seductive.”

Watching her sip from her martini, I said, “What did you do before you went to work for the Montes?”

“This and that. I went to college in Spain, then worked for a bank in a little town called Alzira in Valencia. That’s where I met the HRT Formula One guys.”

“What did you do at the bank?”

“Account management. I have a degree in international banking.”

I stared at her. “Seriously?”

She smiled. “Seriously.”

“Why are you working as a personal assistant?”

“Jobs in my field are kind of scarce at the moment. There’s a little recession on, as you may have heard.”

I smiled. “I did hear something about that.”

The sommelier arrived. I ordered a bottle of Rioja in honor of Olivia’s time in Spain.

When he had left the table, I said, “So how did you get from Pico-Union to Spain?”

“My father sent me.”

I admired her technique. The most convincing lies are always those that contain as much factual information as possible. It’s the same with a false identity. Soto instead of Sotomayor. Olivia was quite good at telling convincing lies. If I had not gone to Guatemala, I might never have known.

She took another sip of her martini, staring at me with her huge brown eyes. I felt her leg press against mine below the table. She maintained the pressure between us. Maybe she thought my leg was the table base, but I doubted it.

She said, “Let’s talk about you for a while. I’m still interested in how you get to drive an Aston Martin one seventy-seven. Who does it belong to now that Haley Lane is dead?”

Dead. It still seemed an impossible word to use about Haley. Suddenly I wanted to trade in my mineral water for three fingers of Scotch. I said, “I couldn’t comment.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

I tried to smile. “Something like that. In my business, discretion is everything.”

“Oh, I understand that, believe me. So answer this instead. Who were those men who tried to kill you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Are they connected to you looking into the kidnapping and murder?”

“Could be. I’m really not sure.”

The steaks arrived, and immediately afterward, the wine. When the sommelier had poured and gone away, she said, “Do you think it was connected to the home invasion?”

“Must be. Too coincidental otherwise.”

She looked at me a moment. “I can’t believe you accused me of being that woman.”

I looked her in the eye. “I’m sorry about that, Olivia. It’s just… I’m feeling a little desperate. Clutching at straws.”

“There might not have even been a woman there that night. I know what Doña Elena said, but she says a lot of things after her second bottle of Chablis. It’s hard to believe Alejandra Delarosa was involved.”

“Hard to believe I was involved, too. Right?”

She looked away. “Of course.”

“My fingerprints were on the door. Both inside and outside.”

“Well, you were there before, so you left them then.”

“Uh-huh. You know, there’s a funny thing about that. I could have sworn you were the one who opened the door both times, when I went in and when I went out.”

“Obviously not.”

“Yeah, I guess not. But I could have sworn.”

We ate silently for a few minutes. She continued to press her leg against mine below the table. The steaks were very good. Not worth fifty-three dollars each, but good.

Olivia said, “Have you learned anything interesting about Alejandra Delarosa?” She didn’t look at me as she asked the question. She was very focused on her filet.

I said, “I have, actually. Several things.”

“Really? Like what?”

I decided it was time to put on some pressure. I reached over with the back of my fingers and moved a lock of her hair away from her face. “You don’t really want to talk about her over dinner, do you? An evil woman like that?”

She cut a small slice from the steak. “I don’t mind. It’s interesting.”

“Doesn’t it kind of turn your stomach, thinking about what she did?”

Her leg moved away from mine. She said, “Not really.”

I watched her carefully as she lifted the bite of steak to her lovely lips. The lower lip seemed to tremble, just slightly. I almost felt sorry for her, but it had to be done. I said, “We were talking about how rich and powerful people are really like the rest of us, but people like that Delarosa woman, they’re a whole other species, if you ask me. Anyone who could do what she did to an innocent human being doesn’t deserve to be considered human. No conscience. No heart. She’s nothing but an animal. A disgusting animal.”

“Maybe she had good reasons. Maybe that Toledo man wasn’t so innocent. Maybe she was defending something, or getting some kind of justice.”

“Seriously? What good reason could a woman have for blowing a man’s brains out in front of his wife? What could she have been defending that would justify a thing like that?” I shook my head. “The woman is obviously a sociopath. She cares about nothing and no one but herself. She robbed a woman of her husband and abandoned her own husband and daughter for money. She has no more compassion than a snake or a shark.”

Olivia Soto put her fork down on her plate. It clattered loudly, drawing the attention of the couple at the next table. She said, “Excuse me,” and slid along the booth away from me.

I said, “Are you okay?”

“I… No. I’m sorry. I don’t feel well all of a sudden.”

She stood and hurried away, disappearing into the hallway toward the restrooms. The couple at the next table were still watching. I looked at them and shrugged, then went back to work on my steak.

Olivia was away for about ten minutes. I had finished my meal when I saw her coming back between the tables. She slipped into the booth but didn’t slide over to her plate. Her eyes were red, and the skin on her cheeks was blotchy. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but do you think we could go now?”

“Sure we can. What’s wrong? I hope it wasn’t something I said.”

“I’m just not feeling very well. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” I got the waiter’s attention across the dining room and made a signing motion with my hand. He nodded, then walked into the kitchen. I looked back at Olivia. “Is there anything I can do?”

Her lower lip was trembling again. Her eyes were welling up. She looked down and shook her head. I reminded myself that Arturo Toledo and Fidel Castro weren’t around anymore to get their feelings hurt. I reminded myself that a couple of guys had put three slugs into my Kevlar vest and left me for dead. I reminded myself that Olivia Soto wasn’t her real name, that she was her mother’s daughter, and she was lying about it to get close to her mother’s victim. After all of those reminders, I felt a little better about myself, but not much.

With the check paid, we went out to the car.

“So, what is it?” I asked as we drove out of the lot. “Nausea or something like that?”

She stared straight ahead and said, “Something like that.”

Neither of us said anything for the rest of the ride to her place. I pulled into the driveway and parked. I got out and went around to her door. She was out of the car before I got there. We stood facing each other.

She put her hand on my arm. “It was a wonderful meal. I’m sorry I ruined it.”

“Don’t worry about that, Olivia. But listen. Obviously you’re not sick. Something else is wrong, isn’t it?”

She moved closer. “Would you please hold me?”

I put my arms around her. She turned her head and pressed her cheek against my shoulder. Her hair smelled of roses. Her body against mine felt strong but soft. I told myself again that she was a liar at the very least.

I said, “I wish you’d tell me. Whatever it is, maybe I can fix it.”

She shook her head. “It’s not like that.”

I dipped my head down to her level, trying to make eye contact. “You sure? I’m pretty good at fixing things.”

She waited for a second before answering, and for one crazy second, I thought she might actually be thinking about telling me the truth. Then she seemed to rouse herself with a little shake of the head. She reached up and touched my cheek. “Some things can’t be fixed, Malcolm.”

She kissed me gently. I didn’t pull away, but I didn’t do much to encourage her, either. I seemed to watch it happening from a distance, as if some other man was standing there. Certainly not Haley’s man.

When it was over, she touched my cheek again. “I need you here tonight, Malcolm. I need someone with me.”

“‘Someone’ sounds a lot like anyone.”

“No, it’s you I need.”

“Tell me what’s wrong, Olivia. You told me once you lost someone. Is that what’s hurting you so much?’

“Can’t you just stay with me?”

I shook my head. “Not the way you want.”

“Then let’s just say good night.”

I watched her pass through the gate and waited until I heard the sound of her front door open and close, then I got into the Aston Martin. The gun had been digging into the small of my back all evening. I reached back, unclipped the holster, put the weapon in the Aston Martin’s glove box, and drove away.

Heading northeast on Washington Boulevard through Venice, I remembered the softly yielding warmth of her lips on mine. Her kiss had been foreign, yet familiar. Her kiss had made me ache for Haley, for the way my wife used to touch my cheek before she kissed me, exactly as Olivia had just done. It seemed a cruel coincidence that Olivia would touch me the same way.