Shooting Elvis Read online

  He inched forward, like he was getting ready to test just how much we liked each other. I raised the cup to my lips to slow him down, asked, “You like working for this Fleischer guy?”

  “Sure, Fleischer is smart, we’re all gonna make a fortune on this deal. You have any idea what’s in that case?”

  I said, “Not a clue.”

  “I don’t either, to me it’s just a toilet, but Fleischer, he’s smart, to him it’s art, it’s big money, millions.”

  “Killing this Kabyenko character seems pretty stupid.”

  “Kabyenko knew where it came from. The thing is worth a ton long as nobody knows it’s stolen. He could step in at any moment and fuck the whole million-dollar deal, no way we could risk that.”

  I said, “Oh.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, you know where it came from, we’ll kill you too. But you’re with me, I like you.”

  I held out my glass for another shot of vodka, smiled for him.

  He said, “You’re trembling.”

  I was, and bad. I saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes, a dimwitted sensation that something was wrong. I had to say something. I had to act. I told him something close enough to the truth to pass for it. I said, “I’m scared, don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  “You’ll be all right, little girl. I’ll take good care of you.”

  I looked up into his eyes, let him see the hurt I was feeling and the little bit of true wanting. I said, “Just hold me.”

  It was what he wanted, what he planned all along. I was giving it to him. I was asking for it. He wrapped his arms around my waist and shoulders. I buried my face in his neck, let the cup fall to the floor. The machinery of arousal geared through his body. Muscles stiffened, flexed, hips began to move. I turned my face, let him kiss me. A little cry escaped my lips. He thought it was passion, but it was the pain of what I was doing. I dropped my hand from his shoulder while he kissed me, the wormlike wriggling of his tongue inside my mouth, and drew the broken toothbrush from underneath the towel.

  I closed the kiss and pushed him back with my mouth, the way you do when the kiss is ended and you don’t want another one. There was a determined hunger in his face then, the kind of look on the face of a dog pushed from the dinner bowl. He was confused why I pushed him away, strained to come back for more. But when he saw my eyes, he knew something was wrong.

  I shot the handle straight toward his throat, it caught him just above the Adam’s apple. He roared and fell back, ripped from the center of his throat up to his ear. I grabbed the chair, lifted it over my head, swung down. He got his shoulder up, deflected the blow. I raised the chair again, but he recovered fast, kicked the legs out from under me. I rolled onto my feet, kicked him along the side of his head as he was trying to get up. It stunned him, but he got to his feet, stood between me and the door. My only chance was to put him out. I went for the chair.

  He saw what I wanted to do but couldn’t get there fast enough to stop me. I swung the chair by its feet. He hunched his head down and took it on his shoulders, the chair wrenched from my hands on impact. Nothing left between him and me except carpet and a lot of hostility. He threw a right. I ducked, went for his balls with my knee. He twisted aside, swung his elbow like a club into my jaw. I fell back, lashed out with the cuffs, tried to cut him. He blocked it easy, countered with a shot just about broke my ribs. I doubled up hurt like hell and thought, shit, I’d missed everything, his windpipe, his artery, his head, my chance. He cocked his fist back like he was going to chop down, put my lights out for good. I charged straight into him, spun away, bolted for the door. His fist slammed against my neck and I went crashing into the bureau.

  The lamp hit the floor, the lightbulb blew and sucked the light out of the room. I crawled for the line of light at the base of the door. Frick jumped on me from behind, pushed my face into the carpet. I bucked hard as I could, got nowhere. He weighed about two hundred pounds, no way was I going to budge him. I had to keep my arms free, reached out to grab a leg of the bureau, couldn’t stretch far enough to get a grip on it. His hand clamped down on mine, jerked it behind my back. The shoulder socket started to strip out like a chicken wing. I screamed in pain, he gave an extra jerk for good measure, said, “Like that, little girl?”

  I clawed at the carpet, tried to inch up and ease the pressure, but he caught my free hand at the thumb, twisted it behind my back. The cuffs snapped shut around my wrists. He squirmed up my body, whispered I was a liar, I’d lied about the case and lied about feeling sick and probably lied about my period, too. Maybe it would take him time to learn the truth about the case, but about my period, he could find out if I was lying about that right away, couldn’t he? I felt his hands digging under my stomach, going for my belt. I screamed at him to stop or I swore I’d kill him. He clipped the side of my head, said, “You wanna talk about killing, little girl? I’ll show you killing.”

  I screamed and bucked. He dug his elbow into my neck so I couldn’t twist my head, it hurt like hell but I kicked anyway. He couldn’t get my belt undone with me fighting him. He wrapped his forearm around my throat and squeezed. I started to pass out. He told me not to fight, just lie back and enjoy it. When I came to again, he had my belt off, was trying to rip my jeans over my hips.

  The sound of an opening door stopped him. I heard it too, coming from the front of the house. Frick tensed, scrambled to his knees. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be doing this to me, was afraid what his brother would think. I could see him out the corner of my eye, listening. He jumped to his feet, his hand went to the gash on his neck.

  He called out, “Frack? That you Frack?”

  Nobody answered.

  Frick opened the door, craned a look down the hall. The air ripped apart with a ragged blast, he lurched back like somebody hit him. The door frame stopped him from falling. He steadied himself against it, then stood his ground, like he didn’t believe he’d just been shot. Another bullet tore out, all noise and fury, he went down every muscle gone at the same time. His leg trembled for a couple seconds after he fell, but that was all. It was scary watching him drop, how quickly he’d been sucked out to darkness. The leg stilled and the only thing about him that moved was his blood spreading a dark red stain in the carpet.

  Boots thumped down the hall. I thought it had to be Jerry. He didn’t Judas me after all. He saw I was kidnapped, now he’s come to rescue me. A pair of blue-jeaned legs crossed the doorway into the room, but the boots were wrong, not the lizard-skin Tony Lamas Jerry wore, but black lace-up Doc Martens.

  A voice said, “Hey babe, good to see ya.”

  Wrex’s voice.

  Wrex took the key off Frick’s body, unlocked the cuffs, suggested we motor, because of the sound of the gun and all. He wrapped his bandanna bandit-style across his face, told me not to show my face until we were on the road. I followed him to the door, stopped short. I asked to see his gun for a second. He wanted to know what for. I told him don’t argue, just give me the gun. He did. I checked the safety like Jerry taught me, pumped three bullets into Frick’s dead body.

  “Rest in pieces, asshole,” I said.

  21

  The stars were out, the desert freeway clear of traffic. Wrex took advantage, let the Harley run. I held on tight, wrapped in Wrex’s leather jacket, the bike charging between my legs. Dawn stoked the eastern horizon. I breathed in the desert, felt a momentary freedom, like a prisoner finds a vein of fresh air, closes her eyes, imagines no walls around.

  We rode an hour and a half straight, got into Hollywood as the first brutal rays of sun speared over the hills. I told Wrex I had to eat something. He pulled into the parking lot of Ben Franks, an all-night coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard famous for years to insomniacs and graveyarders and druggies. There was a corner booth free. I took it. Wrex hid behind his black Ray-Bans, raised a menu soon as he sat, pretended nothing was wrong. I told him what I wanted, curled up in his jacket to nod out a minute on the seat cushion. Something hard in one
of the pockets dug into my ribs. I reached to shift it around. My fingers brushed against the curve of a trigger guard. It was the gun. I fumbled for the safety, made sure it was on, pulled the jacket around so the barrel pointed away from me, went instantly asleep.

  I had no dreams. Just a deep fall into darkness felt like death. When the food arrived, Wrex pulled me into a sitting position over the table. Felt like dirt in my joints, bones sticking through my skin, parts of my brain rotted away. A cup of coffee slid under my nose. The smell of caffeine was a trickle of electricity in my nostrils. I gripped the eating utensils and forked down some egg, a bite of hash browns, a hunk of ham, discovered I was incredibly hungry, my sole purpose in life condensed to getting the food on my plate into my mouth, chewed, shoved down to my stomach.

  When I finished eating, I said to Wrex, “Take off your sunglasses.”

  He dutifully jammed the sunglasses into the front pocket of his t-shirt, asked if I was happy now, just a little sarcasm in his voice.

  “Anything wrong with me wanting to see your eyes?”

  He raised his big browns all innocent to meet mine, gave me a look made him seem vulnerable and cute. It wasn’t the time for me to go soft.

  I asked, “What the hell were you trying to do?”

  “Do?” he answered, just a little confused.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  But Wrex didn’t know. I looked for guilt in his expression, didn’t find any. Not that it fooled me. Sometimes what looks like a clear conscience is just a blank brain. I said, “What happened about two weeks ago, made me a fugitive?”

  “I didn’t know the damn thing was going to explode! You think I’da had anything to do with this if I knew there was a bomb in that case?”

  I stared him straight in the face, nodded.

  That hit Wrex hard. His voice turned hurt. He said, “Then I guess we got nothing to say to each other.”

  He stared out the window, eyes misting up like he was going to cry any second. Waited for me to say something. I let him wait. I was about feeling sorry for him when he turned from the window, said, “That’s the thanks I get for saving your life. Makes me wonder why I did it.”

  “Okay. Why’d ja do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Save me.”

  “Babe, I been tryin’ to find you for two weeks.”

  “I ask because it’s obvious the only person you care about is yourself.”

  “But babe, you’re the one I love.”

  “You love something outside yourself, it’s your bike.”

  “When you get like this, it’s like tryin’ to talk to a scorpion. Everything I say, your tail comes up and you try to sting me to death.”

  I said, “Fine, go ahead and explain.”

  “You have to believe I didn’t know anything about this.”

  “I don’t have to believe anything.”

  “The Drake brothers told me nothing about any bomb.”

  “Just said you shouldn’t stick around.”

  “Didn’t say that at all.”

  “If you did, expect a sudden one-way flight through the roof.”

  “Said it was completely legal what we were doing.”

  “Liar.”

  “If I’m such a bad guy, what am I doing here? Why didn’t I just leave you with the Drakes?”

  That was a no-brainer, even for me.

  “Because you want the case, and you think I got it.”

  Wrex gawked at me, dumbfounded, or maybe just dumb.

  I said, “Direct hit, huh?”

  “The Drake brothers were tryin’ to whack me. Like it was good ol’ Wrex’s fault you absconded off! I say that makes us equal.”

  “Equal how?”

  “Equal partners. What’s in that thing, anyway?”

  “You wouldn’t believe if I told you.”

  “I say we give it back.”

  I looked at him like, Who are you trying to fool, but the weird thing was, he seemed really sincere, didn’t have that glazed look his eyes get when he lies. I said, “Explain what you mean by give.”

  “Give like in give back.”

  “You never gave anything away in your life. Why start now?”

  “I’m still in love, babe. Maybe even more now. I mean, you were okay as a blond, but now, with your hair chopped like that, and your nose pierced and everything, you look really hot.”

  All this time he was pouring his big browns over me like honey, and even though just yesterday “Wrex” and “asshole” were synonyms in my vocabulary, there was something about him that got to me. But it wasn’t love, it was hormones, it made me mad that all he had to do was look at me a certain way and they started stirring again. I said, “I have one t-shirt, one pair of jeans, one bra and one pair of underwear which I swear I haven’t washed in a week, so don’t talk to me about hot.”

  Wrex reached across the table, cupped my hands.

  I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

  He said, “C’mon babe, let’s go somewhere where we can, you know, be alone.”

  “You want to make love now, after all that’s happened?”

  He thought about it a second, said, “Well, yeah.”

  I jerked my hands away.

  “So what’s wrong with that?”

  “A million years, Wrex. The space of time between now and when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. That’s how long it’s gonna be before our private parts ever touch again.”

  “What I mean to say is...,” he started, and his eyes shifted back and forth while he tried to think just what it was he meant to say. “I love you,” came his final declaration. “And whatever you decide to do and all, well, I’ll stick by you.”

  I was not one hundred percent crazy about having Wrex stick by me, or stick to me, depending how I interpreted his motivations. I sipped coffee and stared out the window for a while, wondered what the hell I was going to do now.

  Wrex said, “You know, sooner or later we’ll both end up in jail. I mean, you killed somebody. Two people are dead ’cause of this. I don’t think the pigs are just gonna forget that.”

  I told him thanks, I could count up to two all by myself, the way I looked at it, neither guy was worth losing any sleep over.

  “Well, babe, I think that’s right, but what I’m tryin’ to say here is, there might be another way to go about things.”

  “Yeah? What.”

  “Just that you’re gonna give that thing away and go to jail for a hundred long hard years, when you might just as easy let me give it back for you, and with my negotiating skills, maybe get a little something for it, enough to get to Mexico until things cool down a little here.”

  “I’m not selling the case, Wrex.”

  “I’m not talkin’ about selling it. Just getting our aggravation money back.”

  “You going to get them to sign something says the money isn’t for dealing in stolen property, it’s some kinda fee for interrupted lifestyle? That’s one weird moral distinction, even for you.”

  “Morals got nothing to do with it. I can get fifty grand for what’s in that case.”

  “Who you gonna give it back to?” I asked, suddenly afraid we were talking about giving the thing back to different parties.

  “To the suit who hired the Drake brothers, that’s who.”

  I stripped Wrex’s jacket off, handed it to him as I walked away from the table. Said thanks for saving my life, thanks for breakfast. He shouted I should wait, but there was no stopping me. I was out the door and walking along Sunset Boulevard, suddenly wondering where I was going to go. Because I had no place, nobody.

  A block up Sunset, Wrex coasted to the curb beside me, revved his bike to keep from stalling out, said, “C’mon, babe, hop on.”

  I didn’t cut him so much as a look.

  “You do what you want with the case. I said I was gonna stick by you, and I meant it.”

  I shouted, “I don’t know where it is!”

  “What?”

/>   “The case! I left it someplace, and it disappeared. I don’t know where the case is, understand?”

  Wrex’s eyes went dead for a second, and that told me all I really needed to know. He wrenched down on the throttle, dropped the Harley into gear, and the noise of the bike ripping away from the curb shook windows, rattled cups for miles around.

  To hell with him. It was just hormones. I didn’t even like him. He was dumb as a stone, had all the future of one falling off a cliff. It figured all he wanted was the case. I was angry at myself as much as him, because I kept falling for the same old things. What I couldn’t understand was how he could say one thing with his eyes while his brain was thinking completely different. When he stared at me with his big brown eyes, I thought I could see all the way down to his heart, and his heart was saying he loved me. One of the reasons I fell for him. Big reason. But there was something alien, or maybe just male, about his brain. How he felt never interfered with how he thought, and it was his brain that mostly decided how to react to things.

  I heard his bike roar up behind me a second time. I turned to look at him. He had a big grin on his face, shouted over the bike noise, “Bet I fooled you that time. Bet you thought I was really gone.”

  I hauled off, slugged him as hard as I could on the arm.

  He said, “C’mon babe, don’t fight me.”

  I hopped on the back of his bike, held on to him from behind as he accelerated into traffic, pressed my face against the hot leather at his back. The wind flayed the burns on my arms, but I didn’t care. It was good to have a body to hold on to. Maybe Wrex had his faults, but he did come back for me, didn’t he?

  I yelled above the bike roar I wanted him to take me downtown, near San Pedro, to a loft I knew about, did he mind? He wrenched back on the throttle, threaded the dotted line between lanes, took Sunset Boulevard to the Hollywood Freeway. I could use Wrex to get a message to Cass, find out what was happening. I got lost thinking, didn’t pay attention where he was going. He got off the freeway too soon, shouted he wanted to take surface streets. I took him at his word, didn’t worry, the direction was good, toward San Pedro. Somewhere in Little Tokyo he leaned sharply, turned the bike into an underground garage. I looked up to see where we were. I recognized the building. Same building Fleischer Security Systems was in.