Strip

4

SPENCE WAS OUTSIDE the police station when Kapak emerged from the front entrance, walking with a strange stiffness, as though his knees had locked. Spence knew that it was the terrible discomfort of having glass fragments in his pants, so he took pity on Kapak, got out, opened the door of the Town Car, and stood at something like attention while Kapak eased himself onto the passenger seat. “Thanks,” said Kapak. “I feel like my dick is being sawed off”

“Better try sitting in a bath or something, until you get all the glass off.”

Spence got in and drove. He knew Kapak’s main concern for the moment was to get away from the toxic atmosphere of police headquarters and begin the important work of forgetting he had ever been there. Spence drove with some urgency, moving in and out of lanes to work his way among the slow stream of cars through the city.

He was up the freeway ramp and on his way out of the downtown section, where tall buildings shouldered up to the streets on both sides and made them seem narrow and dark. Kapak sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the glimpses of sunny hillsides far off beyond the buildings.

At last he seemed to catch his breath. “That was something. I’ve got a fucking police lieutenant showing me pictures of the two Hummers, which looked as though they’d been dropped from an airplane. There was no sign of any of the guys in them. Meanwhile, not one of our guys has seen fit to call me and tell me what’s up. Did Joe Carver kill them all and drag their bodies to a pit to be covered by cement? Did he scare them off? Buy them off?”

“Leave them alone and they’ll come home. If there were bodies, the cop would have said something.”

“What if he killed them quietly and took the bodies with him?”

“Can you imagine killing the Gaffney brothers without noise and blood?”

“No. You’re right. But the whole thing worries me. What is this Carver guy? He could be the wrong man. What if he’s just some pissed off little guy who got surprised by a case of mistaken identity? What if he’s not? He could be anything, even the advance man for some big players.”

“You met him and talked to him. What did he say he wanted?”

“‘Nothing,’ is what he said. He told me he just wanted me to leave him alone. He didn’t do the robbery, so he should be allowed to do whatever he wanted.”

“Then what were you shooting at him for?”

“You don’t think I was going to let him go just because he said that? Maybe he didn’t do the robbery. Whoever put the gun to my head got twenty-three thousand bucks. Joe Carver wrecked a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cars, did God knows what to five of my employees, and brought me face to face with the kind of police lieutenant who isn’t going to leave me alone until one of us dies. He also broke into my house and sprayed my nuts with pulverized glass.”

“He did that? It looked like you shot the window out.”

“It’s like capital murder. If a thief forces the cops to shoot at him and one of them hits the other, he’s the one they charge with murder, not the cop. This is just like that.”

“I see,” said Spence.

“You should.”

Kapak’s cell phone rang. He put it to his ear. “Yeah?” He listened for a few seconds. “Is anybody dead?” He listened again. “Let me tell you something. I got dragged out of bed, practically at dawn, to go down to police headquarters to explain why two Hummers of mine were in a construction site, wrecked, with the keys in them. And did any one of you think to call me and say, ‘Hey, Joe Carver is alive, and he’s probably on his way to your house to kill you.’ Yeah, that happened. He didn’t kill me, but that’s no thanks to you. Where are you? We’ll be there in a minute.” Kapak hung up.

Spence drove the last few blocks, and then pulled into the driveway. “There’s somebody in the house. I saw the front curtain move.”

“Yeah, it’s the fucking geniuses.” As the car moved up the driveway toward the house, the Gaffney brothers, the big Russian, Corona, and Guzman all stepped out of the front door to stand on the front steps and wait. Their suits looked dusty, and one of the Gaffneys had a long rip at his knee so the paper-white skin showed. “Look at them,” Kapak said. “Jesus, I’m actually paying these people.”

“You need me for anything?”

Kapak leaned in to say, “No. I won’t need you until midnight. Go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Kapak shut the car door and walked stiffly toward the front of the house. Spence backed out of the driveway, turned, and drove to the freeway entrance, merged with the traffic, and pulled into the left lane. The freeway was still clear and fast moving into the Valley. He switched to the Ventura Freeway, got off at Coldwater, and found the apartment building where he had left the girl two hours ago. He parked the Town Car, walked to the entrance, and looked at the names beside the buzzers at the door. When he saw “K. Noonan” he decided that it must be the right one. It was the only K, and she was the one who had volunteered her name, so maybe she hadn’t lied. He pressed the button, heard a click and a sudden sense of space like the other end of a telephone call, then her voice. “Who is it?”

“Spence, the guy who drove you home this morning.”

“Well, don’t advertise to the neighbors that I came home in the morning. When I buzz you in, come to the second floor landing. I’ll meet you.”

He heard the buzz and the click, and he tugged the door open and went up the stairs to find her barefooted and leaning against the wall wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she had a puzzled smile. Her long hair was wet from a shower, hanging in loose strings that dampened her T-shirt.

“Hi, Kira.”

“Forget something?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“What?”

“You”

She put her hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh. “Oh my God. That is so cheesy. How can you say something like that?” She stopped, shook her head in disbelief, then laughed again. She turned and walked down the second-floor hall, and Spence followed her. He noticed how much shorter she was now that she was barefoot. She stopped in front of a door that was open six inches.

He pushed the door open for her and she looked up at him. “Did I say that was my apartment?” She walked on along the hall while Spence quickly reached for the door and pulled it back the way he’d found it. But as he turned to follow her, she doubled back, slipped inside the door, and closed it.

When Spence knocked lightly, she opened the door and pulled him inside. Her apartment was decorated with framed photographs of Kira and a changing group of men and women about her age in various places, always outdoors. They were on a mountain just at the tree line near some wind-tortured pines, in the stands at a baseball stadium, on a big sailboat ducking low to avoid the boom. She stood three feet from him while he glanced around him. She folded her arms and said, “Please don’t tell me that your boss wants to see me again.”

“No. He’s busy right now. He’s got his mind on other things.”

“Good, because I won’t.”

“Good.” He stood there, making no move to leave.

“Then what do you have on your mind?”

He took one step and gathered her into his arms. He kissed her with a certainty that overwhelmed her tentative first attempt at resistance. She was already off-balance, clinging to him to keep from falling backward. “I thought you weren’t interested in your boss’s leftovers.”

“You’re not a leftover.” His hands moved down her back to the bottom seam of her T-shirt and abruptly lifted it so the T-shirt came off and left her arms in the air above her head. “You mentioned he had trouble getting hard. He sure didn’t tell you about it. He couldn’t get it up last night, so all either of you got was a good night’s sleep. I’m here to make it up to you.” He hugged her to his chest.

“What if I don’t want to do this?” She caught herself enjoying the way the soft fabric of his shirt felt against her bare chest.

“I hope you do. You like me.”

“Oh?” She had tried to make it sound at least argumentative, but she had a chill at that moment and shivered, so it only sounded breathy.

He plucked the bow in the drawstring of her sweatpants. She grabbed for the waistband, but they were so loose that they fell to mid-thigh before she could, leaving her in only a pair of white panties. She had to step back and tug the sweatpants up with both hands, leaving her breasts exposed. “There are laws against this.”

“I’m an outlaw. A gangster. You said it before.”

She was holding her sweatpants with one hand and trying to ruin his view of her breasts with the other. “So you admit it.”

“Sure.” He gathered her in his arms again and began kissing her neck, her eyes, her lips.

“You’re making this very hard. But then I suppose I brought this on by what I left in the car, right?”

“What did you leave in the car?”

“I left my name and phone number on a piece of paper in the back seat. You could have called ahead and asked me to go out with you tonight. I would have said yes, and I could have worn something pretty, and we could have had a beautiful date.”

“I didn’t see your piece of paper. Will you go out with me now?”

“I just got out of the shower and my hair is stringy, and you’ve really gotten a bit ahead of yourself. I mean, really.”

“I apologize. I thought you liked bad guys.”

“Well, I do, but…” She kept trying to move, to turn away from him, to hold him off, but he held her as though he were unaware that she was struggling. Finally she said, “Oh, what the hell” put her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

Spence gave her a long, gentle kiss. When they backed apart, she kicked the sweatpants away from her ankles. He began to remove his own clothes and step away from them toward her. She backed into her bedroom as he advanced. The bed had not been slept in, so when they reached it they moved to opposite sides and tore the covers open together. Kira hurriedly yanked open the top drawer of the nightstand, tore a wrapped condom off a long strip, and put it in Spence’s hand. She had the air of a woman committing one last act before being swept away in a flood.

They met in the center of the bed, eager and uninhibited, always in motion. After a time they ended breathlessly and lay together for a few minutes, letting their hearts slow to a normal rhythm. Then he got up, stepped to her dresser, and tore the next condom off the strip before they came together again in the center of the bed, almost like opponents in a fierce contest.

After two hours they lay on their backs staring up at the ceiling, touching only slightly at the hip and the side of the foot. She said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Do you do this kind of thing often?”

“Never. But suddenly this morning I felt like my life was changing—that big things were happening that I couldn’t control, so I had to go along. I took a guess that it was you.”

She snuggled close and put her arm across his chest. “That’s so…”

“True?”

“No, false. But this has been so, I don’t know, primal. When I think about it now I feel as if I’m going to faint.” She brought her leg across his thigh, straddled him, and stared down into his eyes.

“You don’t seem faint,” he said.

“The good kind of faint. It brings its own revival. I’m beginning to revive.”

“So am I.”

“How long can you stay?”

“I don’t have to be at work until midnight”

“Oh,” she said, then closed her eyes. “Oh.”