Ida froze, a bag of groceries in her arms, overcoat collar turned up, crushed tam cocked on her head. Shock made her long face into a noirish shadow-catcher. The whites of her oval eyes enlarged-processed-man coming at her-
“What have you done?” he hissed, bursting out of the dark living room, scattering puzzle pieces into the kitchen light.
She was halfway to a startled scream, dropping the groceries, reaching in her purse-then: “Oh my God.” Horrific recognition on her face. “Tom?”
Cans popped and rolled on the floor. Desperation took the chilly scent of damp celery, the skitter of burst coffee beans on waxed linoleum. He stooped, swept up a can and threw it, through the kitchen doorway, across her living room, into her porch. It slammed her computer table, shaking off the screen saver. The lurid wanted poster glowed in the dark.
He faced her, leaner than she’d ever known him, more dynamic. A force to be reckoned with. He pleaded, “I would have done anything for you. I would have given you a new face. And you betrayed me.”
After her first fear, seeing who it was, she stood her ground. Coolly assessing him, she fired back without miss 360 / CHUCK LOGAN
ing a beat. “You sonofabitch, you never called.”
He flipped the light switch off, then on again. “How do you want it, Ida, off or on? You always like it off. Let’s leave it on, okay?”
So she could look at him. He couldn’t help opening his wallet, showing her his new California license.
“I was right,” she said in a dull voice.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That it was you; I recognized you, because of your voice,”
she said evenly.
Danny puffed a little. “I look different, don’t I?”
“Yes.” Same even voice. Trying to put him at ease. Up to something.
He pointed to the computer. “Explain that.”
Still very cool, as if they were discussing a story in the office, she asked, “How did you get on to this?”
Danny grinned. “I hacked into the newsroom network with your password and read your e-mail.”
“Not bad,” said Ida.
“So what’s he up to?”
“He wants to talk to you. He thinks things like that”-she jerked her head at Broker’s Web page-“will make the FBI give you over. He thinks you took some money…”
But she was just making conversation to throw him off.
Look at her, backing against the sink, inching toward her purse.
“Uh-uh.” His hand shot out, faster than hers and stripped the purse from her grasp and-holy shit-closed his hand around the small compact pistol with the recessed hammer, jammed it in his belt.
“Tom, it’s me,” she stated. He wanted her to be more scared.
“Don’t call me that,” he said emphatically.
“Okay, Danny.”
“That’s better.”
“Did you take some money?”
Like she was working or something. Ida, get a clue.
“You don’t want to know,” he said frankly.
“C’mon, you can tell me,” attempting the old cajoling voice, her alley cat voice.
“Believe me, Ida, it’s better you don’t know.”
“Tell me, Danny.”
“How much is it worth to you to know? How much would you pay?”
“We could work it out,” she said. And for a moment it was like the old days, their secret sharing.
News.
“Oh, for sure, we’ll work it out. But how much?” Looking at her. And her opening her coat, shifting around, sending out a fleet of little sex gremlins.
“How much do you want?” smearing the tense air with hormones.
“All there is.”
“You got it.” Putting that great lilt in her voice.
“That’s fair,” he said leisurely. “Okay. I hid the money, I’m going to get it when I leave here. No one knows except you…”
“Real smart, I’m impressed,” she said.
“Nah, that was just logical. I’ll tell you what smart is.
Killing Caren Angland was smart. Yeah.” He relished her eyes getting wide. Now there’s some NEWS for you. “I pushed her in. Why in the hell Angland hasn’t told somebody, I don’t know. He tried to stop me. That’s how I got shot.”
“That’s a hell of a story,” she managed to say in a dry husky voice.
“No it isn’t. It’s a secret. There’s a difference.” He took a step forward, so their bodies brushed. Felt the squirm of passion. Sadly, because that was definitely out. Fluids. Hair.
Eloquently, her eyes noticed the latex gloves.
He half turned. “The thing about a secret is-they only work as long as the person who hears them lives to tell about it.”
Her face composed a scream. But no sound. It was a diver-sion, because her sharp left knee pistoned up and caught him-almost-in the balls. He took the attack mostly on his right thigh. Enough to knock him back. Pawing for balance, he ripped a shelf off the wall over the stove. A scatter of tea bags flew across the counters, the floor. But then he lunged forward, caught her as she dashed for the door.
His hands shot out to beat the real scream to her throat.
He felt it like water inflating a thick hose. Had to choke it off with both hands. All those weeks working the hand springs really paid off now.
“You?” she managed to gasp. Swinging with her free arms, pummeling his outer arms. Fighting back. He whipped his right elbow as hard as he could and felt the sharp pain as it connected with her cheek.
Now the left side of her face matched her chin. She went loose, flopping. The body going slack inside the thick coat, twisting, thrashing. Her legs went out from under her and he forced her down, clamping one hand over her mouth.
With the other he felt for something to use as a weapon. Felt a hard cylinder. A can.
Between a skewed lock of her hair and the back of his left hand he saw a wedge of her cheek and one cloudy eye. Pin-point bright in the overhead light, he saw her long lashes, individual hairs, the liquid in the corner of her eye. Smelled the hair rinse she’d used in the shower this morning. Body lotion. Her sharp animal scent. Finally, here was fear, a forest fire of it boiling out of her armpits.
The thick crush hat was still on her head and that’s where he brought the can down with enough force to split a round of spaghetti elm.
Ida Rain arched once and collapsed.
Danny straddled her, gasping for breath. Not think ing. Just pictures. The side door was open, and he could see through the open door, across the driveway and into the neighbor’s kitchen windows.
See her keys still hanging below the doorknob.
Finish the job. Like someone who criminally misunder-stood CPR, he kneeled on her chest with both knees and pumped his crossed hands down on her mouth and nose, clamping off her breath, he kept this up for minutes as her strong body fought back independent of her unconscious brain.
Finally she stopped. Everything stopped.
He tore her blouse away, and needing to touch her, to feel her, flesh to flesh, he ripped the bra to shreds, snapped off the rubber glove and placed his right hand, palm down, on the calm silent chamber of her smooth chest, between the swell of her breasts.
Felt. Listened.
Nothing. Slowly he pulled the latex glove back on. Never this close to Death, he paused to study it. The writer in him, perhaps. Her lips looked like raw meat. Her teeth imbedded like stones in the clay gums.
Too much. He shuddered, panicked, scrambled to his knees, reached up and turned off the light.
The real thing. Not shoving someone off a slippery rock.
Okay. Now what.
His eyes swept the dark interior of the house and encountered the innocent perpetual motion of the screen saver looping itself. He literally watched his reason leave, a toy helicopter flying off the top of his head. Thus unencumbered, like a true denizen of WITSEC, he could argue that the sonofabitch Broker was to blame for this. If he had left Ida alone, she’d be alive today.
All Broker’s fault. Danny got up. His hand closed around the handle of the stubby pistol on his belt. More bad luck for Broker. Now I got a gun. He stooped among the 364 / CHUCK LOGAN
cans, boxes and vegetables on the floor, found the slim manuscript he’d dropped. Tucked in his belt, in back.
Remembered kicking over the chair in the study. Returned there, righted the chair. Picked up a can of soup that he’d thrown. Now.
The keys still in the door and the strewn groceries sketched a desperate scenario. He could leave the door untouched, ajar. A smash-and-grab robbery gone sour. In thirty seconds he found the spare set of keys she always carried in her purse.
So. What would a dumb junkie do? First, he wouldn’t take off his shoes and figure out where the house key was hidden. Danny retrieved his tennis shoes and coat from the hall broom closet and put them on.
He slipped outside, walked back along the side of the house and stamped his feet in the snow beyond the throw of the house light, next to the garage. Then he walked back and stomped into the house, leaving distinctive sneaker treads on the linoleum. He continued this little routine around the kitchen, reenacting his fight with Ida. Throwing in a few extra moves. Victory dance.
Then back to the purse, tore through the contents and pulled out the wallet. Standing up, he took a quick inventory.
Had the manuscript. And the gun. Without looking down, he stepped over the sprawled form and exited the house, careful not to disturb the door. The dangling keys.
Like complicity, a heavy fog cloaked the street. Lights were smears of jelly in the soft gloom. With his shopping bag and travel bag, he got in Ida’s car and backed into the street.
Turned on to Cleveland Avenue and rolled down the window near the crosstown bus stop.
He pulled the currency from the wallet and the VISA, Dayton’s, and Neiman Marcus credit cards. Twenty yards from the bus stop, he tossed the wallet into a frost-painted hedge. Since all the gang kids started shooting each other on the streets, cops made jokes about the bushes being full of guns. They always checked the shrubbery near a crime scene. They’d find the wallet.
Free of the wallet, he checked the gas gauge. Nice of her to leave him a full tank.
Real deep in the “danger zone.” Driving a stolen car, with a loaded handgun, on his way to visit two million bucks.
Master of Life and Death. So this was what it was like, living in real time. One of Joe Travis’s clients for sure, now.
He toed the gas. The muscular snow tires surged and carved a sidewinder pattern in the slush. Behind him, back on Sergeant Street, a cold draft knifed through the ajar inner and outer side doors. It ruffled a strand of sticky hair that coiled in a tiny trickle of blood on Ida’s cheek.
The trickle stopped. Seeped. Stopped.
Slowly, her powerful heart failed, fought, failed, fought.
Until. Lubdub. Lubdub. Through the firestorm in her brain, a red push rallied to whip the sluggish blood; a wispy spark fired the slack lungs. The tiny bubble of vomit swelled at the corner of her mouth. Popped. Ever so slowly, another bubble started to form.