Past Due

Chapter 32

SHE WAS STUNNING. I’ve said that already, haven’t I? But it was especially so in that place, with its sharp-suited crowd of striving professionals, each wearing the latest fashions, the latest shoes, keeping their eyes ever on the prize. Chelsea was a complete contrast. She wore old jeans, a gauzy shirt, her hair wasn’t permed or styled, it just fell straight, with a lovely sheen. She wasn’t the latest anything, yet still, she had the freshest look in the place. Everything I suppose comes back again, or maybe some people never go out of style. And I didn’t have to imagine the magnificent body beneath the clothes; I had the pictures, didn’t I?

I caught the bartender’s eye, ordered the blue curaçao martini for her, the usual sea breeze for me. Weren’t we a festive pair?

“Lonnie tell you all the sordid details?” she said as she slid back onto the stool.

“The good old days.”

“They weren’t that good.”

“Lonnie seemed to enjoy them,” I said. “He couldn’t stop laughing as he told me his stories.”

“You could hear him all through the restaurant. A doctor in a back room thought he’d have to perform the Heimlich.”

“You don’t laugh much, I noticed.”

“Not anymore.”

“It wasn’t as fun for you, the good old days?”

“No, it was more than fun. It was perfect, like we were blessed.”

“You were young.”

“We were young and pretty and rich. But sometimes endings matter, don’t they? The difference between a comedy and a tragedy is the last page.”

“So it didn’t end well?” I said and she looked at me with a glint of disappointment in her eyes, disappointment not just then at her past, but at me for acting like I didn’t know the answer. Because I knew the answer and she knew I knew the answer.

“We’ve been told we could talk to you,” she said.

I lifted my head at that. “You’ve been told?”

“Well, you know, you’ve been asking around about the past. But it’s not your past, is it?”

“I’m trespassing, is that it?”

“Sort of.”

“So you had to get permission.”

“Yes.”

“From who?”

“He wants to know what you’re really after.”

“What does he think I’m after?”

“He asked around about you. Sent out his scouts. The word came back that all you care about is money.”

“Is that the word?”

“Is it true?”

“I’m a professional. That’s what it means to be a professional.”

“So what he wants to know is, where’s the money for you here?”

“Where does he think it is?”

“He has some ideas.”

“Do they involve a missing suitcase?”

She picked up her martini, looked at its brilliant blue, took a sip. “I don’t know why I drink this. I like the color, I suppose.”

“And when you hold it like that, it makes you look like Judy Jetson.”

“Is that good?”

“Oh sure. Judy Jetson is way hot. Or will be.”

“I don’t think it’s only the money you’re looking for.”

“Maybe not. My client was murdered. I have to do something, even if it’s just to ask as many questions as I can and piss some people off.”

“How are you doing?”

I touched the cut on my forehead, thought about Manley’s squeeze play. “Oh, I’ve hit the jackpot there, yes I have. But I especially love the way everyone’s eyes flutter when I mention the suitcase.”

“Did mine flutter?”

“A little. It was charming.”

She laughed, tucked her chin into her shoulder.

“I suppose all the boys wanted to kiss you,” I said.

“Enough.”

“Lonnie?”

“I would hope so. We were married.”

I jerked back at that. “Really? When?”

“Toward the end, but before everything collapsed.”

I suddenly wondered why Tommy Greeley had naked pictures of a married woman in his pocket on the night he died.

“What happened to you and Lonnie?” I said.

“We were going downhill anyway, and then we drifted apart.”

“Different interests?”

“More like different sentences. No hard feelings though. Still the best of friends.” She took a sip of the martini. “I’m supposed to find out if you know where it is.”

“And all this time I thought you were here because you liked me. If we decided to kiss, would you need permission for that too?”

“Yes.”

“Can you get it?”

“Not on the first date.”

“But this is the second date. The first date you pulled me bloodied and beaten off my vestibule floor.”

“That was romantic, wasn’t it?”

“You weren’t just walking by, were you?”

“We were asked to say hello.”

“Your friend is being right neighborly, sending out the welcome wagon.”

“Are you complaining?”

“No. Not at all. I’m very grateful, actually. So the suitcase, who did it belong to?”

“The twins.”

“Let me guess. Tommy Greeley was one, and the other, the guy who gave you permission to speak to me but not kiss me, is his old business partner, Cooper Prod.”

“I called him just now. It’s phone time at his penitentiary in New Mexico. He gives his regards.”

“But not permission to kiss.”

“No.”

“He’s the one who said that the past can be dangerous territory.”

“Yes. And he wanted me to tell you that the only thing more dangerous than someone else’s past is your own.”

“Maybe, but I’m not getting beat up over my past. Tell me about the suitcase.”

“It was all coming to an end, and everyone knew it. The business had just happened, had grown beyond anyone’s imaginings, and we hadn’t really thought about it much except for some pathetic rationalizations. But right then we all knew it was coming to an end. There were searches, seizures, this creepy little FBI guy was going around asking everyone questions. You don’t know what it’s like when the law turns against you. It’s on your mind every minute, the fear is constant. Every time the phone rings you cringe. Someone knocks on the door, you hide. It’s like you’re waiting to die. We didn’t say anything, none of us, and for a moment it looked like we might work our way through it. And then we heard that sleaze-bucket Babbage had started talking to the grand jury. The twins knew it was the last chance for them to save what they could. Tommy said he had a contact with a boat who would take care of it.”

“Who?”

“An old friend, he said. From out of state. So the twins got hold of everything that was lying around and put it in the suitcase.”

“Just the odd scraps lying around? It doesn’t sound like much.”

“You don’t understand, do you? How much business they were doing. How everything was in cash. How hard it is to do anything with cash, especially if you can’t prove where you got it. When it comes in like it was coming in sometimes you just stuff it into drawers and deal with it later.”

“And later had arrived. How much?”

“It seemed like more back then. It seemed like an impossible amount, now baseball players make ten times as much. Still.”

I did the math. Alex Rodriguez gets twenty-five mil a year to play shortstop for Texas. A tenth of that, she said. My heart ticked a little faster.

“Who knew about the suitcase?” I said.

“The twins.”

“Anyone else?”

“Lonnie.”

“Why Lonnie?”

“He was the guard. That kind of delivery, there was always two. Cooper trusted Lonnie completely and he had the gun.”

“So, Lonnie was the guard. What does he say happened?”

“He doesn’t remember. One moment he was with Tommy and the suitcase, heading toward where Tommy was supposed to hand it over, and the next he was in the hospital with the back of his head split open. He lost so much blood there were doubts as to whether he would survive. Sixty-seven stitches. He was the last one of us ever to see Tommy or the suitcase.”

“And now Cooper Prod wants it back.”

“He’s just curious. It’s a loose end. He wants to tie up all his loose ends before he gets out.”

“I’m sure he does,” I said. “Who knows about it now? Other than Cooper and you and Lonnie and me and the guy from out of town who was supposed to pick it up, who knows about it?”

“A lot. Everyone. Right after the arrests came down, people started talking about it, the suitcase full of money. It was just a rumor, but a rumor people listened to.”

“And where did the rumors say it ended up?”

“The bottom of the lake in Roosevelt Park. The top of a church steeple. In a secret space at the law school. Buried under a tree in the backyard of the apartment building where Tommy lived. There have been fools caught digging around that tree, but they’ve found nothing.”

“The mysterious missing suitcase. What would you do if you found it?”

She looked at me as if I had just said something incomprehensible. “I’d give it to Cooper,” she said. “It’s his money.”

“But he’s in prison and the money was drug money.”

“Why would I steal from a friend?”

“Why would you sell drugs?”

She turned her head quickly, as if she had been slapped, then took hold of her drink and swallowed the rest. The lemon twist sat forlornly at the edge of a spent blue pool. I motioned the bartender for another. We sat and waited as he filled the mixer with ice, added the gin, vermouth, and blue curaçao, shook it vigorously, bruising the hell out of the gin, and then poured it through the strainer into a fresh frosted glass.

“I guess I was out of line,” I said.

“Yes, you were. But it’s not like you think. It’s nothing like you think. I skipped college to go out on my own, a small walk-up the size of a closet, waitressing. There was a guy with money and charm who showed interest in me and at that age, for me, that was enough. He was educated, arrogant, clever, and he had all these amazing friends. His world was magical and he invited me in.”

“Tommy?”

“Yes. We were together before I married Lonnie. We took great vacations, we had great parties, we drove a great car, had this great place to live. We seemed blessed, that’s all I can say.”

“Tommy Fucking Greeley.”

“It was the happiest time of my life.”

“But the engine of it all was his drug business. Didn’t that matter?”

“No, not really. It made it more exciting, sure. Getting a load in, doing the breaks, getting it sold, getting the money together for the next round, it was all part of it, but just a small part. Everything else was bigger. The whole society of it. And even when Tommy dropped me for someone else, for Sylvia, he was still sweet to me, allowed me to remain in his world. That’s when I hooked up with Lonnie, as a way to stay connected. But it wasn’t the drugs that kept me there, it was the excitement, the camaraderie, the lifestyle, the love.”

“I can see that,” I said. “Except when you get right down to it, the charm, the car, the vacations, the fawning friends, they were all about the money, weren’t they?”

“I suppose.”

“And the money, it was all about the drugs.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sometimes it is.”

“I have to go.”

“Don’t. At least finish your drink.”

“Screw yourself.”

“All righty,” I said.

I watched her as she slipped off the stool without glancing my way and headed out the door, tall, slim, clutching at herself as she hurried away. I didn’t chase after her. I wanted to, I wanted to so badly, to chase after her and grab her by the arms and apologize profusely and fall to my knees and abase myself before her, to do whatever I needed to do to get her to smile at me, to get her to let me get closer to that body, the images of which I had pinned with obsessive care to my bedroom wall and to the plane of my desire. But I didn’t chase after her. I didn’t. I turned back to the bar and finished my drink, paid my tab, took a taxi home.

My clothes smelled like they had been cured in some sort of barbecue pit. I could only imagine the state of Lonnie’s lungs. I stripped and put everything, suit included, in the hamper and then showered to get the smell off my skin and out of my hair. Clean and bristly, towel around my neck, I stepped out of the bathroom. The bedroom was dark, but through the slats of my blinds the streetlights imprisoned the pictures pinned to my wall in bars of light. I stepped toward the wall. A leg was illuminated, a hand, a knee. I gently rubbed a finger across the smooth arch of a foot.

I had been flirting with her, all the time feeling some deeper connection grow. And then, and then, and then I had pushed her away, like I was Cagney with a grapefruit. I suppose I was tired of hearing how wonderful things had been twenty years ago, how wonderful had been the parties, the cars, the society of young and beautiful friends, the money, the very life, how wonderful had been Tommy Greeley. They were still in the middle of it, Lonnie and Chelsea, Cooper Prod, even Eddie Dean, who was somehow involved in it all, somehow, and I had just then a very strong idea how. They were all still living it as if it had all been so wonderful, as if it had all been so proper and so swell. A life distant yet still alive, a life that could never include me. I felt like I was back in high school, pushed to the side as the cool kids strode like kings through the hallway. The hell with them.

And yet here, on my wall, was part of it too. The pictures, the body, the emotions. Her neck. Her shoulder. The bend of her elbow. The curve of her wrist. Maybe it wasn’t them, maybe it was me. Maybe I had pushed her away because I was afraid. Afraid of getting too close to this, of getting consumed, or maybe of being consumed with disappointment. Answer me this, when had reality ever lived up to fevered expectation? Barely touching the paper I traced the bulge of her calf, the curve of her knee, the smooth inside of her thigh.

The phone rang.

I spun around. I snapped the towel off my neck and tied it around my waist.

The phone rang.

I panicked for a second, thinking it must be her, it had to be her. What should I say? How could I apologize? What were the magic words? There were always magic words. I’m a fool. Forgive me, please. You’re so so special. You frightened me, that’s what it was. Or the old standby, Did you know I can lick my eyebrow?

The phone rang.

I stepped forward and picked it up.

“I found another one,” came the voice.

“Excuse me?”

“A car, mate. Another of Manley’s cars.”

“Skink?”

“Who’d you think it was?”

“No one. Go on.”

“A 1989 LeBaron convertible. Who came up with that name for a car, hey? LaIdiot? But there it is. A LeBaron convertible, a classic much in demand with collectors, sos I hear. But that don’t matter none to you, does it? LePiece-of-crap, it’s one of two registered to the girlfriend, but she drives the other one, a Lincoln. This one, we traced the pinks back to a dummy New Jersey corp. what’s stock is registered to our boy. It’s behind her apartment down in German-town. A la-di-da place called the Alden Park.”

“I suppose we should go after it.”

“Suppose?”

“It’s just that Manley looks like a beaten dog already.”

“Some dogs you just can’t beat enough.”

“You’re a card carrying member of PETA, I presume. I’ll set up a date with R.T. in the sheriff’s office.”

“Do that, mate, afore it disappears on us. The thing about a car is it’s a mobile asset, innit? Here one day, cruising west on Route 66 the next.”

“I don’t think this one’s going anywhere.”

“How’s the job going?”

“Confusing,” I said. “It’s like I’m lost in a maze.”

“Oh, a rat like you will find his way eventually, I got no doubt, long as there’s cheese at the end. Anything more for me?”

“Yeah, there is.” I rubbed my scalp with my fingernails, rubbed it so hard I could feel the burn. “I want someone followed. Very discreetly. No hint you’re giving her the tail.”

“A dame?”

“That’s right. But it’s real Mission Impossible stuff.”

“I’m caught or captured, the secretary will be disavowing any knowledge of my knickers, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“All right, Vic. It’s good to know where I stand. Give it up.”

“Her name’s Straczynski,” I said. “Alura Straczynski.”