Time of Death

53

Ren stood up. ‘Eddie, do you mind if I…is there a quiet room I could use?’

‘For what?’

‘I just need to think.’

‘Sure, sweetheart, go across the hallway.’

She caught him glancing at Billy. What’s with your crazy friend?

Across the hallway was a bedroom, like a modern hotel bedroom. There were four light settings. Ren chose pink. The bed was perfectly made. Ren was brought back to Domenica flipping out at the maids.

‘Si quieres hacerla en este país cada cosa la tienes que hacer perfectamente. Yo no estaría aquí si no fuera por eso.’ You want to succeed in this country, you do every job to the best of your ability. Look at me! I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for that!

Ren paused — she had made a mistake. Domenica hadn’t said ‘eso’ — I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for that! She had said ‘esto’: ‘if it wasn’t for this’. This, meaning the job of being a maid?

Ren went back across the hall. ‘I need to make some calls. Where can I go?’

‘You need a phone?’ said Eddie.

‘No, no.’ She waved her cell phone at him.

‘I mean a throwaway,’ said Eddie.

Duh. ‘Yes. Thank you. Thank you. What time is it?’

‘Eleven,’ said Billy.

Stray Eddie watched her. ‘I read that Bernie Madoff wore two Rolexes — one with the time in New York, the other for London time.’

‘You don’t miss a trick,’ said Ren.

‘Where are you calling?’ said Eddie. ‘Who are you calling? Will they be in bed? Or will they be having breakfast?’

Ren looked to Billy and back to Eddie. ‘OK, Sherlock,’ said Ren, ‘being that I know you all of a half-hour, I’m going to guess you will not know who I am calling, no matter where in the world they are.’

‘I just like to know things,’ said Eddie. ‘It’s who I am. Any things.’

‘I’ll think of something exciting for when I get back,’ said Ren. ‘Is there a room I can use?’

‘Sure, go straight across the hallway. What’s that one up to?’ said Eddie when she had left.

‘My focus right now,’ said Billy, ‘is getting a car, Eddie. And getting the fuck out of Dodge.’

‘Relax, relax. It’s not under control.’

Billy stared up at the ceiling.

‘But seriously,’ said Eddie, ‘flipping out isn’t going to make this happen any quicker. We’ll chill, watch a movie. No one knows where you are.’ He slapped Billy’s knee. ‘Whoa. Is that a steel plate? My hand.’

Billy followed Ren in out into the hallway. He found her in one of the rooms. She batted him back out with her hand.

Sorry Billy. Sorry. But you really can’t know any of this.

‘Ferris Bueller,’ said Eddie, pointing at the screen when Ren walked back in.

‘Go piss up a flagpole,’ she said.

‘Everyone remembers that line,’ said Eddie. ‘And look — Bueller…Bueller. Are you done talking to Taiwan?’

‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘They’ve just finished making the remaining square inch of glossy white surfacing to complete your apartment.’

‘Great,’ said Eddie. ‘That’s the bit behind the toilet that’s been bothering me.’ He patted the seat beside him. ‘Sit down, Renaldo.’

Ren sat beside Billy.

‘I don’t think I ordered the Billy sandwich,’ said Eddie.

‘Well, I don’t think Ren ordered a side of Italian,’ said Billy.

Ren directed her gaze toward the television. She saw a flash of their reflections in the screen.

How did we all get here? Three people, lined up on a sofa watching a movie that reminds us of a time when the worst thing you could do was skip school.

The car was driven to the back of Stray Eddie’s apartment complex. It was a limousine with a driver. Ren looked at Billy. Is this for real?

‘It’s cool,’ he said. ‘Eddie’s got drivers with different limo companies…for when people are desperate.’

Ren turned her back on the car. ‘We’re not that desperate,’ said Ren. ‘I’m not dying to get ID’d here. There is no way that some random driver is going to lay eyes on me. So you get him out of that car and into Eddie’s or wherever the hell he wants to go, but I am not sitting in a car being ferried around by a stranger. Is Eddie insane?’

Billy lowered his voice. ‘You’re forgetting Eddie doesn’t know your day job. We are all partners in crime in his eyes. Not partners in crime-fighting.’

‘Just, please do something.’

Twenty minutes later, Billy was at the wheel of the car.

‘OK — what the hell was that all about back there with the secret phone calls?’ said Billy.

‘I’m sorry, Billy, but…will you trust me?’

‘Dammit, Ren. I am right in the middle of all this. I have been as soon as you asked me for my help and now that the shit has really hit the fan, you go sneaking off making phone calls — in my buddy’s house, on my buddy’s phone — and you won’t tell me what’s going on? Does that not strike you as unfair? In any way?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘And if the tables were turned, there is absolutely no way you would accept that from me.’

True. ‘Of course I would.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Look, there’s nothing else I can do, so can we drop it?’

‘Of course we can. Not a problem. Let’s bury it.’

Ren stared out the window. ‘I need you to drive back to your house.’

Billy stared at her. ‘You have to be shitting me.’

‘No. I need to check something out.’

‘No way,’ said Billy. ‘I am not going near that place. The whole of Denver PD is there.’

‘Hey — keep your eyes on the road. You don’t have to go back to the house,’ said Ren. ‘I just need to check something out. I may have dropped something in the garden out back.’

‘Your sanity,’ said Billy. ‘And the ability to come up with convincing excuses. I’d say you’ll find them both there in the snow. With the cops.’

‘It will be fine,’ said Ren. ‘You just need to drop me three blocks away-’

‘And you’re going to do what?’ said Billy. ‘Walk back to the house?’ He looked down at her feet. They were slipped loosely into a pair of Eddie’s sneakers.

‘At least I won’t leave prints,’ said Ren. ‘Just drag marks. They’ll be looking for a man with two limps.’

‘Why are you doing all this?’

‘Why do you give a shit?’

Billy could barely speak. ‘I’m going to do three things right now. One is to bear in mind that you are under huge pressure here-’

Ren looked at him.

‘The second thing is that you are bipol-’

‘I cannot believe you just said that, you…that is the answer to every-’

‘And the third thing is to ignore that reaction,’ said Billy.

Screw you.

‘I am trying to help,’ said Billy. ‘I…am not sure you are thinking rationally.’

‘Thanks, Billy. Thanks for that.’

‘I’m sorry…but this is unreal. Why have we spent the last few hours holed up in Eddie’s only to come right back to the scene of the crime? It’s insanity.’

‘That’s what it is,’ said Ren. ‘Please, just take me where I need to go.’

‘And then what? Wait for you?’

‘Yes. Wait for me for one hour. And if I don’t show, get the hell back to Stray Eddie’s.’

‘An hour?’ said Billy. ‘But how do you know that’s going to be enough time? And what will you do if it isn’t? Hitch a ride?’ He gave her a kind look. ‘Have you thought any of this through?’

‘Billy, come on. Yes. Of course I have.’

‘Jesus, Ren. Should I be stopping you doing this?’

‘No.’

So Billy did as Ren asked. And two hours later, he forced himself to start up the engine and drive back to Stray Eddie’s alone.

Billy Waites sat across the table from Stray Eddie in a cramped diner on a busy corner on Colfax. It was day time, but felt like night. A strange parade of people walked by the window, drawing Stray Eddie’s gaze more than Billy’s.

‘You OK?’ said Eddie.

Billy nodded and called the waitress over for more coffee. He picked up the sugar dispenser and started hitting it with the palm of his hand, trying to dislodge the lumps. Eddie grabbed it from him. He reached over to the next table and handed Billy the dispenser from there.

Eddie turned back to the window and the night-time people dressed in clothes not fit to be seen in winter daylight.

‘Are you banging her?’ said Eddie.

‘Who?’ said Billy, glancing out the window.

‘I’m not talking about some random chick from outside. Miss Ren.’

‘No, Eddie. No.’

‘You want to, though.’

Billy smiled.

‘She looks dirty,’ said Eddie.

‘You say that about every woman.’

‘I don’t notice women who aren’t dirty. Who is she?’ said Eddie.

‘If I could work that out…’

‘Women are fucked up.’ Eddie leaned forward in his seat. ‘Yo, check it out,’ he said, pointing past Billy’s shoulder to the television. Billy turned around. A photo of Peter Everett was in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

‘In a shock update on the disappearance of missing tycoon, Peter Everett, an FBI agent with the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force was taken into custody this evening following the discovery of the body of a fifty-three-year-old male at a house on Walker Street. The agent, who has not yet been named, was arrested at the scene-’

Eddie stared at Billy. ‘That’s your body, isn’t it?’

‘Shhh.’ Billy held a hand up to silence Eddie.

The rest of the report focused on Peter Everett’s life.

‘That’s your body,’ said Eddie. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

Billy’s face was white. He nodded.

‘Did your future wife do that? All that blood on her feet…’

‘That was her own blood,’ said Billy. ‘She’d been running barefoot.’

‘No wonder you were running,’ said Eddie. ‘If there was a dirty Fed in the mix.’

‘Yup,’ said Billy.

‘Or were you and your fiancée in cahoots with the guy?’

‘No.’

‘Fucking Feds, always protecting their own,’ said Eddie. He took a drink of coffee. ‘My name, photo and the location of the last toilet I shat in would be scrolling along the bottom of that screen if I were found hanging around a dead body. It’s one of theirs? No names given, nothing. Total shutdown. Case closed.’

‘Case closed, I guess,’ said Billy.