Killing Moon

5 Saturday

Scorpion tail

Lucille shooed one of the cats off the four-poster bed, stood up, drew the curtains and sat down at the make-up mirror. Studied her face. She had recently seen a picture of Uma Thurman, she was over fifty now, but looked like a thirty-year-old. Lucille sighed. The task seemed more insurmountable for each passing year, but she opened the Chanel tub, dipped her fingertips in and began spreading foundation from the centre of her face outwards. Saw how the increasingly loose skin was being pushed together in folds. And asked herself the same question she asked every morning. Why? Why begin every day in front of the mirror for at least half an hour in order to look like you’re not close to eighty but perhaps... seventy? And the answer was the same every morning too. Because she — like every other actor she knew — needed to do whatever it took to feel loved. If not for who they were, then for who they — with make-up, costume and the right script — pretended to be. It was an illness which ageing and lower expectations never quite managed to cure.

Lucille put on her musk perfume. There were those who thought musk was such a masculine aroma that it didn’t belong in a perfume for women, but she had used it with great success ever since she was a young actress. It made her stand out, it was a fragrance you didn’t forget easily. She tied her dressing gown and walked downstairs, taking care to avoid two cats who had settled on the staircase.

She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Almost immediately, one of the cats rubbed against her legs in an attempt to curry favour. No doubt it smelled the tuna fish, but it was easy to imagine there was a sliver of affection there as well. At the end of the day, it was more important to feel loved than to be loved. Lucille took out a tin, turned to the kitchen counter and gave a start as she caught sight of Harry. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his back leaned against the wall and those long legs of his stretched out in front of him. He was squeezing the grey titanium finger on his left hand. His blue eyes were squinting. He had the bluest eyes she had seen since Steve McQueen.

Harry shifted in the chair.

‘Breakfast?’ she asked, opening the tin.

Harry shook his head. He tugged at his titanium finger. But it was the hand he was tugging with that caught her eye. She swallowed. Cleared her throat.

‘You’ve never said it but you’re really a dog person, aren’t you?’

He shrugged.

‘Speaking of dogs, did I ever tell you I was supposed to co-star with Robert De Niro in Mad Dog and Glory? Do you remember that movie?’

Harry nodded.

‘Really? Then you’re one of the few. But Uma Thurman got the part. And she and Bobby, Robert that is, started dating. Which was pretty unusual, given that he mostly went for black women. There must have been something about the roles that brought them together, we actors do go so very into what we do, we become those we play. So if I’d gotten the role like I’d been promised, then Bobby and I would have become an item, you get me?’

‘Mm. So you’ve said.’

‘And I would have been able to hang on to him. Not like Uma Thurman, she...’ Lucille upended the tin can onto a plate. ‘Did you read how everyone “praised” her after she came forward and spoke about how Weinstein, that pig, had tried it on with her? Wanna know what I think? I think when you’re Uma Thurman, millionaire actor, and you’ve known what Weinstein’s been up to without blowing the whistle, that when you finally step forward to kick a man when he’s down, who other less powerful and braver women have brought down, that you shouldn’t be praised. When, for years, you’ve tacitly allowed all those young, hopeful actors to walk into Weinstein’s office alone because you with all your millions, by speaking out might — might — miss out on yet another million-dollar role, then I think you should be publicly whipped and spat upon.’

She paused.

‘Something wrong, Harry?’

‘We need to find a new place,’ he said. ‘They’ll find us.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘A private detective found us within twenty-four hours.’

‘Private detective?’

‘I just spoke to him. He’s gone.’

‘What did he want?’

‘To offer me a job as a private investigator for a wealthy guy who’s suspected of a murder in Norway.’

Lucille swallowed hard. ‘And what did you say?’

‘I said no.’

‘Because?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Because I’m tired of running, maybe.’

She placed the plate on the ground and watched the cats crowd around. ‘I’m well aware that you’re doing it for my sake, Harry. You’re heeding that old Chinese proverb about how once you’ve saved someone’s life you’re responsible for it forever.’

Harry gave a crooked smile. ‘I didn’t save your life, Lucille. They were after the money you owe, and they’re not going to kill the only person who can get it for them.’

She smiled back. Knew he was saying that so she wouldn’t be scared. Knew that he knew that they knew she could never get her hands on one million dollars.

She took hold of the kettle to fill it with water, but realised she couldn’t be bothered, and let go of it. ‘So you’re tired of running.’

‘Tired of running.’

She remembered the conversation they’d had one night while drinking wine and watching a VHS copy of Romeo and Juliet she had found in a drawer. For once, she had wanted to talk about him and not herself, but he hadn’t said much. Only that he had fled to LA from a life in ruins, a wife who’d been murdered, a colleague who’d taken his own life. No details. And she had understood there was no point in digging any further. It had actually been a pleasant almost wordless evening. Lucille propped herself up on the kitchen counter.

‘Your wife, you never told me her name.’

‘Rakel.’

‘And the murder. Was it solved?’

‘In a sense.’

‘Oh?’

‘For a long time I was the prime suspect, but finally the investigation identified a known offender. One I’d put behind bars before.’

‘So... the man who killed your wife did it to take revenge... on you?’

‘Let’s just say that the man who killed her... I’d taken his life from him. So he took mine from me.’ He got to his feet. ‘Like I said, we need a new hiding place, so pack a bag.’

‘We’re leaving today?’

‘When private detectives are looking for someone they leave behind tracks of their own. And that visit to the restaurant last night was probably a bad idea.’

Lucille nodded. ‘I’ll make some calls.’

‘Use this,’ Harry said. He placed a mobile on the kitchen counter, obviously newly purchased and still wrapped in plastic.

‘So he took away your life but let you live,’ she said. ‘Did he get his revenge?’

‘The best kind,’ Harry said, striding towards the door.

Harry closed the door of the main house behind him and stopped dead. Stared. He was tired of running. But he was even more tired of staring down the barrels of guns. And this one had two. It was a sawn-off shotgun. The man at the other end was Latino. As was the man with the pistol beside him. Both of them had prison muscles and both a scorpion tattooed on the side of his neck. Harry towered enough over them to see the cut strip of alarm cable dangling on the side of the gate behind them and the white Camaro parked on the other side of Doheny Drive. The tinted window on the driver’s side was halfway down, and Harry could just discern cigarillo smoke seeping and a white shirt collar.

‘Shall we go inside?’ the man with the shotgun said. He spoke with a distinct Mexican accent while he flexed his neck on each side, like a boxer before a match. The motion stretched out the scorpion. Harry knew the tattoo symbolised an enforcer, and the number of squares on the tail the number of people killed. The tails of both men’s tattoos were long.