Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 3, March 1990

Passing for Love by Bill Crenshaw

“Read it,” she snapped.

Scott looked at the letter drooping in his hand. It started the way they all had started. “ ‘Dear Lovebirds,’ ” he began.

Lucinda cut him off in a voice angry, weary. “How much? Another ten thousand each?”

Scott read on to himself a second before looking up slowly. He cleared his throat. “Fifty thousand. Midnight Friday.”

She went white. “They’re crazy. Four days. I can’t...” Her fist went to her mouth. “My God, Scott, what will I do?”

Scott laid the letter on the back of the couch and wiped his hands on his pants. “Marry me,” he said.

She turned away and crossed the room to the window, her shoulders hunched, head bowed as she stared down at the traffic below, at the long fall between her and the street. The window leapt from floor to ceiling, and she stood framed, the sun splitting and dancing on auburn hair sweeping down past her shoulders, falling by her face like curtains.

“Lucie,” he began, but her right hand came up. It hung in the air above her shoulder, then drifted back to her mouth. He waited. She stood motionless, glowing in the afternoon light, her shadow stretching behind her nearly to his feet. She would stand like that for a long time. He tensed and relaxed and tensed his calves. He tried to watch her shadow move with the sun. Finally she shuddered and sighed and pulled a thick cascade of hair behind her ear.

“Divorce him,” said Scott, “Marry me.”

She did not move.

“I know we’ve been through this before,” he said. “But isn’t it the answer?” He snatched up the letter and held it out to her back. “Isn’t it the only thing that will stop this?”

She said nothing.

He waited. She would stand a while longer, frozen, stone. Then her shoulders would start to quiver as she tried to squeeze the tears back in, and then he could cross the room and put his hands on those shoulders and turn her into him, and she would bury her face in his shirt and clutch at him and sob. “Oh, Scott,” she’d sob, “I can’t, I just can’t.” Then she’d take his face in her hands, slide her fingers into his hair, he’d feel the tapered nails along his scalp, then she would pull his lips to hers, crushing, insistent, always surprisingly urgent. “Love me, Scott,” she’d say. “Just love me.” Then they would go to the bedroom and make desperate love. It was the game they played. He waited.

She turned slowly, fist still at lips. She raised her face, backlit, her hair burning around her, looking young. “All right,” she said evenly. “I’ll marry you.” Scott felt his insides freeze solid. What had he done?

“You went too far,” Connie snapped, H pacing, hands slicing the air. Her voice was a blade. “You pushed her too hard.”

“We pushed her too hard,” Scott said. Even to himself, it sounded like a whine. “You’re the one who said go for fifty.”

Connie stopped pacing and squared off, finger pointing like a pistol at his heart. “You’re the one there. You’re the one who’s supposed to be in control. That was the whole point.”

“The point,” said Scott, bristling, “was to make sure she didn’t call the police and that she did pay up and that we knew what she was going to do.”

“Well, it worked. We know what she’s going to do. She’s going to marry us.”

He felt blood rushing to his face. He hated that, and he hated the way she could get to him. “What was I supposed to say? ‘You’ll raise the cash somehow? Don’t worry, darling, we’ll see this through together?’ ”

Connie gave exaggerated, sarcastic nods, eyes wide. “Better. That’s better than your little macho ‘Marry me.’ But you just love it. You love working her up and melting her down, love making love to a woman the age of your mother.”

Scott stood up. “My mother—”

“Oh, shut up, Scott.” She turned away, pacing again. “You had something to prove. It’s months down the drain.”

Sometimes he just wanted to hit her. Easy for her to criticize, she wasn’t the one out front. But when they argued, and she had all the right words and all the right answers and there was nothing he could say, all he wanted to do was to hit her and make her listen to him for once, make her just shut up. He clenched his fists and slowed his breathing as she stormed back and forth in her sky-blue teddy, bitching, thigh muscles tightening as she moved about with casual, unthinking grace, strength taut beneath the dewy skin, but maybe right, goddammit, maybe she was right, because he did like it when Lucinda rose hot at his command, when his touch traced fire across her skin, when he molded her under his fingertips.

Maybe he’d really screwed things up. Lucinda wasn’t like the others. The others were bored and rich and horny and didn’t mind being scammed for a few thousand, thought the sex was worth it. But this one, this one was the right combination of money, desire, and fear, had gotten hooked, addicted to the attention, the sex, to the love, finally, or what passed for love, what she thought was love. And then Connie had gotten the idea for blackmail.

Scott had shaken his head. He wanted to stick with scams. With a scam, you had a mark too embarrassed or ashamed or afraid to bring in the cops when they got burned, and with a scam you could always walk away if it wasn’t working out, and who’d ever know. But blackmail drew cops like flies and could go wrong in too many places. “Too dangerous,” he’d said.

“Not if you’re blackmailing yourself,” Connie had answered. “Not if you’re both victims. You’ll both be threatened. You’ll follow the instructions to the letter. You’ll raise the cash and make the payoff and console each other all night.”

“No,” Scott had said, but he had given in as he always did, because Connie was clever and Connie, well, Connie...

So a letter arrived at Lucinda’s condo, addressed to Lucinda, but demanding ten thousand dollars each from both her and her loverboy. Dear Lovebirds, it began. Enclosed please find several photographs...

And Lucinda had paid, had hocked jewels she hadn’t worn in years or sold what little stock she claimed she had listed in her name alone. And Scott and Connie had paid too, scraping up almost six thousand on their own, borrowing the rest from a shark named Bennie who knew them and gave them a deal, ten percent per week, one week minimum. And Scott had sat at Lucinda’s kitchen table and wrapped his ten grand and Lucinda’s ten grand in newspaper exactly as instructed and bagged it exactly as instructed and made the drop exactly as instructed, and he and Connie had cleared nearly nine thousand after expenses, including Bennie, and not including all Scott’s clothes and cigarette lighters and gold neck chains and such, presents from Lucinda, with love.

And they’d done it again, and again, three letters so far, and each one had worked fine, just as Connie planned.

But now...

Maybe Connie was right. Maybe he’d been stupid. Maybe he had gotten carried away with Lucinda, this woman whose face was in the newspaper with other wives of the important, who attended all the right functions with all the powerful people on the arm of her most right and powerful husband — this woman went limp over him, over him, for Christ’s sake. When she drove herself at him, when she needed him so clearly, like a junkie needed a fix, his limbs felt hot and light with power. Good for the ego. Bad for business.

And now business was blown. So as Connie said, now what?

“We pull out,” he offered. “We take what we’ve got and head for Miami.”

Connie slowed her pacing, stopped, hand on hip, hand rubbing forehead.

“What else can we do?” he persisted. “We got, what, twenty-five, thirty grand? Let’s get out of here.”

“Maybe we can salvage this.” She wasn’t talking to him. She wasn’t even thinking about him.

“We’ve got enough,” he said, which was not what he wanted to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to say exactly. He could say anything to Lucinda, he made beautiful speeches to Lucinda, but this was Connie, and he couldn’t string together things he didn’t mean and couldn’t say what he did mean, and even when he wanted to hit Connie, it was so that she’d respect him more, or love him more, or something. Things would be different, maybe, if they got married. He wasn’t sure exactly, but he thought that in Miami maybe he’d even ask her to marry him. She’d like that, he thought. They could go to Miami now, drop Lucinda and fly. “Bird in the hand, Connie. Let’s take what we’ve got.”

She was silent. She was mad. He’d really messed up this time, really made her mad. He hated it when she got mad at him.

He sank back onto the couch. “I’m sorry, Con,” he said. She stared at him and finally she smiled, and she crossed to him and sat in his lap.

“Not your fault,” she said, stroking his hair. “One of those things.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, “what now?”

Connie was silent again, staring off into middle distances.

She was beautiful, the smell, the warmth of her was beautiful. Scott felt himself shifting, making the transition from Lucinda to Connie. He was in a room with Connie now, his Connie, and with her he didn’t care about Lucinda or any more of Lucinda’s money or Lucinda’s driving, electric sexuality. He was with Connie.

“Connie?”

She sat up, gave him a small pat as she refocused her attention. “How does she feel about it all?”

Scott shrugged. “She keeps saying she’s happy, like a weight’s gone, she says. Her fingers keep trembling.”

“Has she told her husband?”

“Not when I left.”

Connie shook her head. “Didn’t think she had the guts to tell him. Maybe she still doesn’t. Okay,” she said softly, “okay. She’s excited. The blushing bride. She’s nervous. We can keep her nervous. Keep her from telling her husband.”

“She was excited. She’s probably already told him.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You haven’t seen her.”

Connie chewed her lower lip. “So we go ahead on the big score. We call her bluff.”

“What if she’s told him?” he said.

“Then we’ve got no hold.” She tousled his hair. He could see that she didn’t think for one second that Lucinda would tell her husband.

He raised his face to her. She smiled again, and kissed him.

Connie decided to let Lucinda go it alone for a couple of days. “It’s one thing,” she said, sitting in bed, sheet-covered, knees to chin, arms crossed around legs in the faded light of the full moon, “it’s one thing to say yes in the heat of the night. Let’s give her a couple of cold mornings.”

“But if she’s told...”

Connie gave him a patient smile. “And you have to make sure,” she said, “that you don’t encourage her to tell him. Not yet. You need to go iffy on the marriage. Give her a reason to back out gracefully herself.”

“What should I say?”

Connie shrugged and smiled, a gesture consciously showing faith — her way, he supposed, of apologizing. “You’ll know what to say,” she said.

Standing in front of the mirror on Friday afternoon, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen Lucinda since she’d said yes on Monday, and on the phone today she’d been in one of her moods, panting and insistent, nervous and hungry. She didn’t care what he had to tell his wife. He had to come tonight. He’d been away too long, and just when she really needed him. And anyway, she had a surprise. Lucinda’s voice was strange to him after four days with Connie. He remembered her breasts in his hands.

He leaned toward the mirror and inspected minutely the lines at the corners of his eyes, the faint blue shadow of freshly shaved cheeks and chin. He leaned back for a broader view, then unknotted the tie Lucinda had given him and tried again. Lucinda liked him neat, precise, elegant. Decorative, Connie had said. An adornment. Something she wears on her arm.

The idea buzzed around him like a swarm of gnats. It was more than that. How could Connie know what he meant to Lucinda? She hadn’t seen them together. Which was good, he thought suddenly, which was good, because if she had seen them together, then, well, then what hope would he have with Connie?

Maybe a lot, he thought. Maybe if she could see them together, could see Lucinda latch onto him like a vampire, gather him to her as if he held life itself, maybe Connie would have to look at him with new respect, jealous, seeing what she had in front of her for the first time. Maybe Connie needed some competition.

No. Whatever she needed, it wasn’t competition. He didn’t know what she needed.

He checked the tie and unknotted it again.

He found himself hoping that Lucinda had already told her husband, no matter how afraid of him she was. And the mood she was in, she might have, please God, might have decided to make a clean breast of it, she’d say, get it out in the open where it belonged. Her little surprise. It’d be just like her to spring it over one of her sweet dessert wines or a was-it-good-for-you-too cigarette. “Isn’t that wonderful, Scott darling,” she’d say. “We’re free, now. Really free.”

But what would he say to her then? That he hadn’t been able to tell his wife yet? He had tried, he’d say, but it wasn’t easy like he thought it would be? It wasn’t like he hated her?

Yes, that was good. He practiced it in front of the mirror. “It’s not like I hate her,” he said to his reflection. “It’s that I love you more, in ways I didn’t know I could love. But it’s so hard to tell them, isn’t it? They’ll think they’ve failed, but they haven’t.” Yes, that was very good. Then he could leave, he could say that he was going home to tell his wife right then, that minute, and then he could kiss Lucinda goodbye, and then he and Connie would just keep going. He’d have been right, and Connie would have been wrong, and she’d say, “Now what,” and he’d say Miami. Maybe Connie needed to be wrong.

He made a final adjustment to the tie and stared into his reflected face.

Unless Connie decided something else. Unless she decided that planning a marriage would be an even better scam, that as the future Mr. Lucinda he wouldn’t need to blackmail, he could just reach out and take, and they could keep taking right to the altar. He could milk her up to the wedding and then just not show.

Then Miami.

Maybe.

Because Connie might even decide that marriage itself was the best scam of all. Everything Lucinda had would be his, and he could share it all with Connie, and everything could chug along pretty much like it was now, except without the danger that always hovered around any scam. Married, there’d be no scam.

Scott was suddenly tired.

Connie was right after all. Lucinda hadn’t told her husband. Instead, Lucinda’s surprise was a deadline party, a celebration of freedom and burned bridges, a ritual to mark, she said, her new courage.

“You’ve got to tell him,” Scott heard himself saying, surprised that he was saying it. What would Connie say if she could hear him say that? But Lucinda was all around him and Connie seemed so distant at the moment. His head swam.

“I will,” said Lucinda. “After tonight, I’ll have courage.” She put her hand on his chest. “My new heart,” she said. “Courage means heart in French, having heart. You give me heart. You are my heart.” She kissed him gently then, tenderly, without passion but with great feeling. It startled him, frightened him. He pulled away. Her grip tightened. “Don’t, Scott,” she said.

“You’ve got to tell him,” he said, his voice again sounding far away, as if from someone else. “I’ve told her. You’ve got to tell him.”

He felt her fingernails digging into his arms.

“Help me tonight, just tonight. Help me past the deadline. I’m not good at defiance, Scott. I need you.”

She was trembling. He folded her to him, her head on his chest, and he stared beyond her into the lights of the night and the city and smiled. It wasn’t a party to celebrate the deadline, he realized; it was to get her past it. She was afraid of the blackmailer out there in the dark even while she held him in her arms.

He stroked her hair. “I’m here,” he said. “We’ll see this through together. They can’t hurt us now.”

She turned her face toward him and managed a smile. “At midnight,” she said, “we’ll be making love, and fuck them.” From her the word sounded ugly. And she started unbuttoning his shirt.

But as midnight neared she lay brittle and knotted. She asked Scott for a cigarette. He lit two, like in the movies, and passed one to her. She held it between her fingers and ignored it.

Scott’s watch gave two tiny beeps. The clock in the next room chimed twelve times. Her body stiffened.

He rolled onto his elbow, stroked her hair. “Will you relax?”

She twisted away and sat up, pulling the sheet to her neck and her knees to her chest. She jammed the cigarette to her lips and took a hard drag, illuminating nostrils and cheekbones in the brief orange flare. The long ash curled and fell on the sheet. “What will they do?”

“Nothing,” he said. She looked at him as if he were crazy. “Nothing. We’re not going to play any more. Game’s over.”

“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped. The cigarette shook, leaking zigzag columns of smoke. “What will they do?”

“What can they do?”

She stared blankly at the foot of the bed. “Will they hurt us?” The question sounded wrenched out of her, as if the act of naming were an act of invoking.

“That’s the last thing they want,” Scott said.

She was silent, staring beyond the room now, face locked in fear. Scott felt the deep electric jolt of power. She was still afraid. Better. She was scared to death.

“Look,” he said, soothing, calming. “Why should they hurt us? Blackmail only works if everybody plays. If we quit paying, they’ll go somewhere else. They won’t take chances. They won’t hurt us.”

She said nothing. She was a statue again, like at the window, as she was when she went deep somewhere to hide or to think. She sat, eyes fixed. Scott wanted to pinch her, slap her, just to see if he could get a reaction, or to reach for her and watch his touch transform the marble into warm and eager flesh again. The cigarette slipped from her fingers and rolled down the sheet and under the spread at her feet.

“Jesus,” Scott shouted, flinging back the spread and smacking at the cigarette with his bare hand. “Jesus, Lucinda, what the hell?” The orange coal exploded under his pounding and the sparks blasted away, fiery gnats that landed all over the sheets. “Jesus,” he said over and over again, beating at the tiny orange sparks eating holes in the fabric. He smelled satin burning.

“I can’t believe she told him,” Connie said. She sat on the couch. Scott stood holding out a can of beer to her. He waited. Connie looked up finally, realized he’d been standing there. “Sorry,” she said. “Thanks.”

Scott crossed the room and stood as if in thought. It was working better than he had hoped, better than he imagined, not that he had really planned this out, he admitted, he couldn’t claim that. It was just that he’d been tired when he stumbled back to the apartment after a long night with Lucinda, and Connie had been so cocky, so sure of herself, her scenarios all laid out. He hadn’t planned to lie, but it sure changed the weather when he said that Lucinda had told her husband and that her husband hadn’t objected to a quiet divorce. Connie, for the first time, was at a loss.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said again. “She’d never tell him.”

Scott shrugged. “I tried to tell you she was serious. I mean, we hooked her good, Con. She’s in love deep.”

“I mean, this wasn’t just I-don’t-want-a-scandal. She was afraid to tell him, scared to tell him.” She took a swallow of beer. She shook her head. “Now what?”

He smiled.

But she didn’t give him a chance to answer, making plans already. “Miami, I guess,” she said. “Sure wish I’d known this yesterday. Could’ve saved us another month’s rent on this dump. I guess we need to...”

“Let’s don’t quit just yet,” said Scott.

Connie gave him her tolerant smile. “Hon, it’s over. She’s not going to pay another dime.”

“Well, just let me...”

“Thought you wanted to go to Miami.”

“Just let me try something out here, all right? Is that okay?”

“There’s nothing to try.”

“There’s more to be had.”

“Anything you get now’ll be chump change. ‘Here, darlin’, go buy yourself a suit, a new car, another...’ ”

She mimicked what she thought was Lucinda. It made Scott mad.

“Is a hundred grand chump change?” he snapped. That shut her up. “I think we still have a shot at a big score here, if you’ll just give it a chance.”

She pulled at her beer again, watching him over the top of the can.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”

Scott stood at Lucinda’s window, the traffic stories beneath him. He imagined holding a brick over the street. How much damage would it do, he wondered, just from opening his fingers.

Far below a cab pulled to the curb. He wasn’t surprised that he recognized Lucinda getting out, even from this height. All part of feeling in control.

He turned back to the room, waiting. She’d be glad to see him, of course. It had been two days, so she’d be more than glad. She’d be hungry. And for the last two days, Connie had been... well, more like Lucinda, more like she needed him, too. But still his Connie.

If he had a choice, he wondered, who would he pick? Just as Lucinda’s key hit the lock, he realized he did have a choice. Both were his for the plucking. He had only to reach out and take.

He didn’t need to paste on the smile for Lucinda. It was already there.

Lucinda swept into the room, kissed him violently, the plastic bag on her arm banging his ribs as she spun away and swirled toward the kitchen. “I’ve got a surpri-ise,” she sang.

“What?” he called.

“You just sit down,” she called back. “I’ll be out in a jif.”

He heard the cork pop. Champagne. That’s what had hit his ribs. Launching their freedom, maybe. “Champagne,” he called.

“Oh, you,” she said in mock exasperation. “And caviar. And news.”

“What news?” he called, but she was there handing him the long-stemmed glass.

She clinked hers to his. “To us,” she said, raising her glass.

“To us,” he echoed, and drank. “What news?”

She turned and snuggled her back into his chest and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I can keep you.”

He laughed and leaned to her ear. She tucked her head and laughed and lifted her face and kissed him. “I talked to my husband,” she said, “and he didn’t kill me. He said I could not have a divorce, but that I could keep you.”

Late that night, sitting in bed next to Lucinda’s sleeping shape, drinking bourbon neat and lighting one cigarette from another, Scott tried to think of the word floating just out of reach in his mind.

What the hell did it mean, I can keep you. Kept man... access to bank accounts maybe... living in style... but it also meant a stud farm role, it meant losing Connie, or worse, it meant that Connie would see the chance to extend the scam so that he drained Lucinda slowly. He’d be kept by both.

He watched the smoke rise in a solid column and disintegrate into chaos and cloud.

Or, he thought, Lucinda was lying. Which was worse. Or better. Better because she was afraid to tell her husband after all. Worse because now she was running a scam, and he couldn’t exactly call the old hubby up and ask if she’d told him about her hot affair.

He stared at the curve of her hip, remembering her lips fastening on him, and the word floated into view, as if forming out of the smoke. Succubus.

He decided on Connie. Things were better there, now, and they could run the last scam on Lucinda and collect the hundred grand and go go go. If he stayed with Lucinda, she’d smother him.

“I can’t believe you mean this,” said Connie.

“If it’s going to work,” said Scott, “she’s got to believe the threat is real.”

“We can slash her tires or something.”

“Fine, that too.”

She picked at her blouse. “I just don’t want you hurt.”

He smiled and shrugged. “I haven’t been in a good barroom brawl since the army. Kind of looking forward to it, to tell you the truth. You go on. Give me fifteen minutes.”

Connie kissed him, hand resting lightly on his chest, then walked down the street and turned into the bar. Scott walked in the opposite direction. Connie was worried. Worried and protective. Worried and deferential. Connie with the parts of Lucinda he liked best.

He smiled. He walked three blocks up, then turned and walked back.

He didn’t look around until he had ordered a beer, and then he did most of his looking in the mirror behind the bartender.

It wasn’t hard to pick a fight in a bar. The trick was to pick the right kind of fight. What he needed was a pair of buddies who’d had a little too much, just enough to make them cocky and to slow their reactions, just enough to make them sensitive to insults and eager to gang up on one guy.

There was a likely pair at a table just off the far end of the bar, telling jokes, putting their heads together, laughing a little too long and a little too loud. A pair of happy jacks.

In the mirror Scott caught Connie’s eye and inclined his head a fraction towards the end of the bar. Connie followed his gaze, saw the pair, nodded. Scott drained his beer and ordered a new bottle. He stood and made his way toward them. He could look at their beefy faces and tell which whispered insult would start them swinging. He could even make it look as if they jumped him without provocation.

Connie was there to limit damage. When the fight started, she’d yell “Police!” to break it up. That way Scott could duck out the back and wouldn’t get beaten up too bad.

He needed to get beaten up some, though. It had to be real enough to scare Lucinda, to build on the terror he had seen at the deadline party. Getting beaten up in the bar would be proof that she had been right, and the letter that Connie would mail would say, “Dear Lovebirds: What happened last night is just the beginning. The price just doubled. You’re going to pay one way or another. Cash or flesh. Take your choice.” Then he’d see how Lucinda reacted. And Connie. He’d see the effect on Connie, too.

He leaned toward the happy jacks and smiled. This was going to be fun.

“We could have them arrested,” Lucinda said.

Scott shook his head, winced from real pain. “Wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “They’d claim I started it. They’d pay a fine. Then they’d kill me. Or worse, they’d hurt you. They want their money. They think we owe them.” His words came thick through his bruised lips. The right side of his face was swollen and purple. His right eye was shut. A split above his left eye was closed with eight tiny black x’s. He looked terrible. He looked a lot worse than he felt, but he didn’t feel good.

“I’m going to pay,” said Scott. “What else can I do?”

They were sitting at the kitchen table. Very domestic, he thought, except that across from him Lucinda sat silent and staring, tears filling her eyes and running down her cheeks and splashing onto the white ceramic tile of the table. She had started when she saw his face. She had continued through the story of the fight. She wasn’t sobbing, wasn’t breathing hard or funny; her voice, when she spoke, was almost normal. It was as if she didn’t know she was crying. It was more like overflowing than crying. The tears just poured out. They were making Scott nervous.

“It will never stop,” she said.

“I think they’re skipping town. I think that’s why they asked for so much. I think this will be the last time.”

She smiled at him as if at a child who had said something almost clever. She reached out and touched his cheek. “They hurt you. Poor face. Poor face.”

Scott pulled away as if her touch hurt. “I can have the money in a couple of days. But that’s going to wipe me out.”

She just stared, tears leaking from her unblinking eyes.

“Couple of days enough for you, Lucinda?” he asked.

“I’ll have to make some phone calls,” she said, as if talking to a third person.

Scott nodded and put his head down and hoped there was a way he could get out of there early that night.

Connie laid the money out in neat little stacks on the coffee table. A hundred thousand dollars. Twenty thousand of it theirs. Eighty thousand Bennie’s, at the same terms. Borrow eighty, pay back eighty-eight. Scott thought it was high, since they’d been such good customers lately. Connie said that it took money to make money. “You’re paying eight to get a hundred,” she’d said. “You clear ninety-two.” Looked at that way, it was a good deal.

Scott had a package of brown lunch bags with Mickey Mouse waving in sunglasses and flowery shirt. Miami.

Connie’s hands danced over the stacks, counting. There were a lot of stacks.

“Okay,” she said. “All here. Now remember, ten thousand a bag, ten bags in the grocery sack, grocery sack in the green leaf bag. Lucinda’s ten bags in another grocery sack, that sack in the same leaf bag. Be sure you bag hers like you’re really worried about following orders. Where’s the drop?”

Scott squinted into the distance and ran through the directions to the green dumpster out in the pastureland.

Connie was smiling, shaking her head. “Poor face,” she said. “No more of this. We’ve got to change the kind of operation we run. You’ve got to take better care of that poor face. I want it handsomed up again in Miami.”

He tried to smile. It hurt a little.

“Well,” she said. “That’s it. Don’t forget, Gate 7 at ten forty-three, Flight 398. Don’t push her too far this time.”

Scott smiled again. “Don’t worry.”

Connie touched his cheek. “Love you,” she said. She’d never said that before.

Lucinda was late.

If she didn’t hurry, they wouldn’t make the drop. Maybe she was having trouble getting the cash.

Scott stared down at the long fall from the condo window, hoping that she hadn’t done something stupid. God, she was so moody, she could do anything. The last thing he needed was to get linked up to a suicide.

It was scary, standing at the edge of the big payoff for all that work, for performing for Lucinda, for sometimes losing himself in the performance, for sneaking around to meet Connie. Final performance coming up. It would be worth it if it worked.

He sat down at the kitchen table and counted out ten Mickey Mouse lunch bags and waited. Traffic, he thought, or trouble getting the cash. She’ll be frantic. Be calm.

And then Lucinda came breezing in, not frantic, but happy, smiling. She gave him a hug. If she was carrying the money, he didn’t see it. She laughed.

“Oh, darling,” she said. “Oh, darling.”

Scott didn’t even try to smile. “We’ve got to hurry if we want to make the drop. We...”

“I have a surprise,” she said, fumbling through a drawer, pulling out a corkscrew. It was disorienting, like the other day being replayed. “Sit down.”

“Lucinda,” he began.

“Just sit down.” There was an edge there that he couldn’t ignore, an edge like Connie’s voice could get.

She opened a bottle of wine, humming. She poured two glasses. She gave him one. “To us,” she said. Scott raised his glass and sipped. She drained hers.

From her shoulder bag she removed a blank white envelope. “Surprise,” she said, handing it to Scott. “Happy birthday, Merry Christmas, and many happy returns.”

There were two pictures inside, pictures of two men. The happy jacks from the bar. They were quite obviously dead.

“Hurting you was where they made their mistake, of course,” Lucinda went on, refilling the glasses, spilling the red wine across the tablecloth, across Scott’s sleeve. “It wasn’t hard to find them after that.”

Scott looked from the pictures to Lucinda. “You...?”

She laughed. “Not me, silly. Friends. Well, people my husband knows. We can’t keep these pictures, so look while you can.” She looked at the pictures. She looked at him. “Well? Isn’t this wonderful?”

Oh God, Scott thought frantically. Oh God. He tried to say something, found himself stammering, got control by twisting his shock to fit her expectations. He was stunned, he said. It was incredible. It was great. He never expected it. She beamed.

He had to get out of there. She had served up the bodies on the kitchen table like a favorite dessert. Calm, calm, he told himself. You’ve got the money. Get it, get out, get out of town.

The doorbell rang. He jumped up, knocking over his glass. She laughed again, put her hands on his shoulders, sat him down. She took the pictures with her. He could hear her talking to someone, male, deep-voiced, but he couldn’t make out the words, wasn’t sure he’d understand them if he could. Wine ran to the edge of the table, hung there, building, building, then broke and ran, dripping into his lap. She came back into the kitchen and picked up the green leaf bag. Scott leaned forward, reaching, trying to say something, but she cut him off.

“It bought our freedom,” she said. “And it cost us only half of what they wanted.” And she was gone, with the money. His money and Connie’s. And Bennie’s.

He was numb.

But he could still leave.

Connie already had the tickets. That, and the money in her purse, was all they had. They’d had less. It would be hard in Miami, at first, anyway. But when his face healed they could work another scam. Or they could get into something safe, like drug running.

He heard Lucinda say thank you and goodbye, heard the door close. He took a deep breath and tried to gain some kind of control, to appear normal, whatever that was, so that he could leave, so that he could meet Connie, so that he could get the hell out.

Lucinda sat across from him, smiling. “It’s almost over, darling.” She shuddered. “They’re a little scary,” she said. “They said they’d call us later.”

“Call us later?” he said.

“About the girl. They’re going to take care of her, too. Then we really will be free, darling, once she’s gone.”

Scott was thinking about Bennie’s money, about Bennie. He and Connie were through in this town. With Bennie, they might even have to watch their backs in Miami. He realized that Lucinda was talking to him. What was she saying? “Once who’s gone?” he said. “Take care of who?” But part of him already knew.

She reached across the table and took his hand. “There was a girl,” she said. “At the bar. A lookout. One of the blackmailers. She warned them that the police were coming.”

Scott stood up, his ears roaring, room tilting. Lucinda took a sip of wine. Scott turned toward where he thought the door was.

“Maybe you saw her?” Lucinda said.

“Saw her?” he repeated.

“The girl. The one who warned them. Maybe you saw her. They say she was already there when you came in. Sitting at a table just inside the door. Blonde? Pretty? Young?”

He shook his head slowly. He wanted to leave, just to find the door and go through it. But Bennie was out there. He turned and looked at Lucinda. “You didn’t tell your husband.”

She stared at him. “If I told him, he’d make me watch you die before he killed me.”

Scott didn’t know whether to believe her or not. His legs felt wet. He looked down. There was wine all over his pants. He didn’t know what to do.

She wiped up the spilled wine at his place, righted his glass, filled it. “Sit down, darling,” she said.

He sat. He stared down at his empty hands.

“I hope,” she said, a smile flicking across her face, “I hope that I always love you as much as I do right now.” She reached out and stroked his cheek.

It took all of his willpower not to flinch away.