“Lee—”
“You sucker me into going with you, pull that stupid stunt at the airport and now I’m trapped too. Thanks a helluva lot, lady.”
“I didn’t plan it like this! You’re wrong.”
“And you really expect me to believe you?”
“What do you want me to say?”
Lee stared up at her. “Granted it’s not much, but I like my life, Faith.”
“I’m sorry.” She fled upstairs.
Lee grabbed a six-pack of Red Dog from the refrigerator and slammed the side door on his way out. He stopped at the Honda, wondering whether he should just climb on the big machine and run until his gas, money or sanity were gone. Then another possibility occurred to him. He could go to the Feds alone. Turn Faith in and claim ignorance about all of this. And he
was
ignorant. He hadn’t done anything wrong. And he owed the woman nothing. In fact, she had been a source of misery, terror and near-death experiences. Turning her in should be an easy decision. So why the hell wasn’t it?
He went out the rear gate and onto the walkway leading past the dunes. Lee intended to go down to the sand, watch the ocean and drink beer until either his mind ceased to function or he came up with a brilliant plan that would save them both. Or at least him. For some reason, he turned to look back at the house for a moment. The light was on in Faith’s bedroom. The mini-blinds were down but not closed.
As Faith came into view, Lee stiffened. She didn’t close the blinds. She moved through the room, disappeared into the bathroom for a minute and then reappeared. As she started to undress, Lee looked around to see if anyone was watching him watching her. The police responding to a Peeping-Tom call would put the finishing touches on a spectacular day in the charmed life of Lee Adams. The other homes were dark, however; he could safely continue his voyeurism. Her shirt came off first, then her pants. She kept shedding clothes until all the window was filled with skin. And she didn’t slip into any pajamas or even a T-shirt. Apparently this highly paid lobbyist-turned-Joan-of-Arc slept in the raw. Lee had a fairly clear view of things the towel had only hinted at. Maybe she knew he was out here and was putting on a peep show for him. What, as compensation for destroying his life? The bedroom light went out and Lee popped a beer, turned and headed for the beach. The show was over.
He had finished the first beer by the time he hit the sand. The tide was starting to roll in, and he didn’t have to venture far to be in water past his ankles. He cracked another beer and went in farther, up to his knees. The water was freezing, but he went in farther still, almost to his crotch, and then stopped, for a practical reason: A wet pistol wasn’t particularly useful.
He sloughed back to the sand, dropped the beer, slipped off his waterlogged sneakers and started to run. He was tired, but his legs moved seemingly of their own accord, his limbs scissoring, his breath coming in great chunks of foggy air. He did a quick mile, one of his fastest ever, it seemed to him. Then he dropped to the sand, sucking oxygen from the damp air. He felt hot and then chilled. He thought about his mother and father, his siblings. He envisioned his daughter Renee when she was young, falling off her great horse and calling for Daddy, her cries finally dying away to nothing when he did not come. It was as though his flow of blood had been reversed; it was all backing up, not knowing where to go. He felt the walls of his body giving way, unable to hold everything inside.
He stood on shaky legs, jogged unsteadily back to the beer and his shoes. He sat on the sand for a while, listened to the ocean scream at him and downed another two cans of Red Dog. He squinted into the darkness. It was funny. A few beers and he could see clearly the end of his life at the edge of the horizon. Always wondered when it was going to happen. Now he knew. Forty-one years, three months and fourteen days and the Man upstairs had pulled his ticket. He looked to the sky, waved.
Thanks a lot, God.
He rose and moved on to the house but didn’t go inside. Instead he went to the enclosed courtyard, put his pistol on the table, stripped off all his clothes and dived into the pool. The water temperature, he figured, hovered around eighty-five degrees. His chills quickly disappeared and he went under, touched bottom, did an awkward handstand, blowing freshly chlorinated water out his nostrils, and then floated on the surface, staring at a sky smeared with clouds. He swam some more, practiced his crawl and breast strokes and then drifted over to the side and downed another beer.
He crawled up on the pool deck and thought of his ruined life and of the woman who had done it to him. He dived back in, did another few laps and then climbed out of the pool for good. He looked down, surprised. That was a real kicker. He looked up at the dark window. Was she asleep? How could she be? How in the hell could she be, after all this?
Lee decided he would find out for certain. No one could screw up his life and then fall into peaceful sleep. He looked down at himself again. Shit! He glanced at his soggy, sandy clothes and then up at the window. He finished another can of beer in quick gulps, his pulse seemingly spiking with each swallow. He wouldn’t need the threads. He’d leave his pistol down here too. If things got out of hand, he didn’t want lead to start flying. He pitched the last can of Red Dog over the fence, unopened. Let the birds pry it open and get a buzz. Why should he have all the fun?
He opened the side door quietly and took the stairs two at a time. He thought about kicking her bedroom door in but found it unlocked. He pushed the door open, peered in, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness here. He could make her out on the bed, one long hump.
One long hump.
To his alcohol-saturated mind, that phrase was immensely funny. He took three quick strides and was next to the bed.
Faith stared up at him. “Lee.” It wasn’t a question, how she said it. It was a simple statement that he didn’t know the meaning of.
He knew she could see he was naked. Even in the darkness he trusted she could see he was fully aroused. With a sudden thrust of his arm he stripped the cover off her.
“Lee?” she said again, this time a question.
He looked down at the fine curves and softness of her naked body. His pulse rose, the blood rocketed through his veins, delivering devilish potency to a man severely wronged. He roughly bulled between her legs, flopped down chest-to-chest. She made no move to resist, her body limp. He started to kiss her on the neck and then stopped. It was not that sort of thing. No tenderness. He clenched her wrists hard.
She just lay there, saying nothing, not telling him to stop. This angered him. He breathed heavily in her face. He wanted her to know it was the beer, not her. He wanted her to feel, to know this was not about her or how she looked or how he felt about her or anything else. He was a red-eyed drunken sonofabitch and she was easy meat. That was all. He loosened his grip. He wanted her to scream, to slug him as hard as she could. Then he would stop. But not before.
Her voice broke through the sounds of what he was doing. “I’d appreciate if you’d get your elbows off my chest.”
He wouldn’t stop, however, kept going. Hard elbow against soft tissue. The king and the peasant.
Give it to me, Faith. Clean my clock.
“You don’t have to do it like this.”
“Whad’cha have in mind?” he slurred back. Navy shore leave in New York City was the last time he had even come close to being this drunk. Intense pain clacked against his temples. Five beers and a few glasses of wine and he was pretty damn well blitzed. God, he was getting old.
“Me on top. You’re obviously too intoxicated to know what you’re even doing.” Her tone was blunt, reproachful.
“On top? Always the boss, even between the sheets? The hell with you.” He squeezed her wrists so tightly his thumbs and index fingers touched together. To her credit she didn’t even make a whimper, though he could sense the pain coursing through her in how her body tensed under him. He pawed her breasts and buttocks, roughly pummeled her legs and torso. He made no move, though, to enter her. And it wasn’t because he was too drunk to accomplish the mechanics; it was because not even alcohol could make him do that to a woman. He kept his eyes closed, didn’t want to look at her. But he dipped his face to hers. Lee wanted Faith to smell the stink of his sweat, to soak in the barley and hops base of his lust.
“I just thought you might enjoy it more, that’s all,” she said.
“Dammit!” he roared. “Are you just gonna let me do this?”
“Would you have me call the police?”
Her voice was like a twirling drill bit against his already throbbing skull. He hovered over her, arms locked, the cords of his triceps bulging.
He felt a tear escape his eye, touch his cheek, like a single wandering snowflake—homeless, just like him. “Why aren’t you kicking the shit out of me, Faith?”
“Because it’s not your fault.”
Lee started to feel sick to his stomach, his arms weakening. She moved her arm, and he let it go, releasing her without Faith having to say a word. She touched his face, very gently, like a feather dropped from the sky. With a simple motion she rubbed the single tear away. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse. “Because I took your life.”
He nodded in understanding. “So if I run with you, do I get this every night? My little dog biscuit?”
“If that’s what you want.” She suddenly took her hand away, let it drop to the bedding.
He made no move to take it again.
He finally opened his eyes and stared down at the numbing sadness in her gaze, the lingering pain in the tightness of her neck and face; pain he had inflicted and she had taken, silently; the outline of her own hopeless tears against pale cheeks. They all were like searing heat that somehow flashed right past his skin, collided with his heart, vaporizing it.
He pulled himself off her, staggered into the bathroom. He barely made it to the toilet, where the beer and dinner came out much faster than it had gone in. Then Lee passed out on the very expensive Italian tile floor.
* * *
The tingle of the cold washcloth against his forehead brought him around. Faith was behind him, cradling him. She seemed to be wearing some kind of long-sleeved T-shirt. He could make out her long, muscular calves and her skinny, curved toes. Lee felt a thick towel across his middle. He was still nauseous, and cold, his teeth chattering. She helped him sit up and then stand, her arm around his waist. He was wearing a pair of Jockeys. She must have done it; he wouldn’t have been capable. As it was, he felt like he’d been hog-tied to a whirlybird for about two days. Together they made it back to the bed and she helped him in, covering him with the sheet and comforter.
“I’ll sleep in another room,” she said softly.
He said nothing, refusing to open his eyes once more.
He could hear her move to the door. Right before she left, he said, “I’m sorry, Faith.” He swallowed; his tongue felt big as a damn pineapple.
Before she closed the door, he heard her say so very quietly, “You won’t believe this, Lee, but I’m more sorry than you.”
Brooke Reynolds looked calmly around the interior of the bank. It had just opened and there were no other customers in the branch. In another life she might have been casing the place for future robbery. The thought actually brought a rare smile to her face. She had several scenarios she could have played out, but the very young man sitting behind the desk, with the title of assistant branch manager on a name plate in front of him, had decided the matter.
He looked up as she approached. “Can I help you?”
His eyes grew appreciably larger when the FBI creds came out, and he sat up much straighter, as though attempting to show her that he indeed had a backbone beneath the boyish facade. “Is there a problem?”
“I need your assistance, Mr. Sobel,” Reynolds said, eyeing the name on the brass plate. “It has to do with an ongoing Bureau investigation.”
“Of course, certainly, whatever I can do,” he said.
Reynolds sat down across from him and spoke in a quiet, direct manner. “I have a key here that fits a safe-deposit box at this branch. It was obtained during the investigation. We think whatever’s in the box might lead to serious consequences. I need to get inside that box.”
“I see. Well, um—”
“I have the account statement with me, if that’ll help.”
Bankers loved paper, she knew; and the more numbers and statistics, the better. She handed it across to him.
He looked down at the statement.
“Do you recognize the name Frank Andrews?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “But I’ve only been at this branch for a week. Bank consolidation, it never ends.”
“I’m sure; even the government is cutting way back.”
“I hope not with you people. Lot of crime out there.”
“I guess, being in bank management, you see a lot.”
The young man looked smug and sipped his coffee.
“Oh, the stories I could tell you.”
“I bet. Is there any way to tell how often Mr. Andrews visited the box?”
“Absolutely. We transfer those logs to the computer now.” He punched in the account number on his computer and waited while it crunched the data. “Would you like some coffee, Agent Reynolds?”
“Thanks, no. How large a box is it?”
He glanced at the statement. “From the monthly fee, it’s our deluxe, double width.”
“I guess it can hold a lot.”
“They’re very roomy.” He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “I bet this has to do with drugs, doesn’t it? Laundering, that sort of thing? I’ve taken a class on the subject.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sobel, it’s an ongoing investigation, and I really can’t comment. You understand.”
He quickly leaned back. “Absolutely. Sure. We all have rules—you wouldn’t believe what we have to deal with at this place.”