Cash Burn (20 page)

In the alley, he leaned against the wall. Tats would probably be on his way toward the back by now.

Ten thousand for watching a big guy shove into a bar. Not a bad night’s work.

Or, he could face him for another ten.

The alley ended at a side street. It would run back up to Venice Boulevard. That would be the smart thing. Just take the ten thousand and call it a night.

But Flip’s blood pumped hard. All the old feelings swept through him, feelings from other streets, from the yard at Lancaster. From the room behind a bar a long, long time ago. It charged him, fed him.

He shoved away from the wall. At the end of the alley he circled up to Venice. The guy who’d taken Ronny’s place at the front of the club was long gone. Nobody was around. Flip leaned inside.

Ten minutes ago the place had been packed. Now it was empty. Except for Ronny, sprawled unconscious across broken lumber that used to be a table. The music that had been so loud before was silenced. With the place deserted and the music gone, Flip had the sense he was walking into a bar in a ghost town.

In back, he heard a muffled crash. That would be the door to Mr. B’s office splintering apart.

He moved faster.

At the door past the restrooms, he listened. He opened it slowly and looked around the edge.

Garrett flew out and bounced off the hallway wall. He left a head-shaped dent in the plaster and slumped into a heap like laundry.

Flip moved in. He swirled his tongue around in his mouth. Dry.

Mr. B was trying to keep the desk between him and Tats. It wasn’t going to work. The big guy, his back to Flip, shoved the desk toward Mr. B.

The owner’s eyes shot around, caught Flip’s. “Do something!”

So much for surprise.

Tats looked over his shoulder. He was leaning over to grip the edges of the desk with both hands, his wide back strained at his black T-shirt. Another shove and he had Mr. B pinned to the wall.

Tats’s eyes held on Flip. “You going to try me?” The voice was absurdly high. It belonged to a dwarf.

Flip smiled. “How’d you get by inside with a voice like that? All those tats help, or are you just get used to getting turned out?”

The bald head tilted. Flip could now make out the face tattoo. The markings around his eyes looked like a child’s drawing of the sun. The words under the skin would put him in the segregation unit anyplace.

Mr. B struggled like a bug pinned to a kid’s piece of cardboard. He pushed against the desk, but Tats held it solid.

That high voice spoke again. Tats’s eyes were on Flip, but he was talking to Mr. B. “Why you bring me this lop?” He glanced to Mr. B, back to Flip. “Hang on, boy. I be with you in a second.”

Flip laughed at him. “I’m sorry, man. You sound like a little girl.”

“Keep it up, punk.”

Flip’s face leveled. He stepped in.

Tats turned his back to Mr. B and straightened up. He had a long neck. Flip liked the look of it.

Mr. B pushed the desk away. It hit the back of the big guy’s legs and for an instant threw him off balance.

Flip tensed his left fist. Tats grinned. Flip spun everything into a right aimed for the Adam’s apple.

He hit it flush.

Flip pulled back. He ducked to his right.

Tats tried to swallow. His eyes popped wide. He staggered. His neck muscles tightened.

Flip swung for the nose.

Tats slapped it away and came at Flip like a brick wall falling.

Close now, Flip could use the point of his elbow.

He went for the neck again.

Caught it.

Tats’s face contorted. The tattoo around his eyes scrunched.

But he kept coming, choking.

Flip twisted, trying to get out of the way. Tats was too wide. A hand caught Flip’s shoulder and held him. The big guy tumbled toward him. Flip pushed back, but he was under a tidal wave. He swung, no target, no aim—hit something.

The floor rose. It slammed into him.

Crushed, on his side, Flip squirmed. His right shoulder was in a vise. Tats was sputtering, choking on his own windpipe. Flip shoved against the floor.

The big guy lifted a hand. Flip couldn’t get space to wriggle free. He threw an elbow, caught the big guy’s cheek. That hand was coming.

Flip tried to duck.

The fist landed like a sledgehammer on Flip’s forehead. Stars exploded behind his eyes. He slipped his arms up, covered his head.

But the second punch didn’t come.

The noises from Tats’s throat sounded like a kid coughing far away. That little girl’s voice wasn’t forming any words.

Flip rolled out from under him and scrambled to his feet. He needed the wall. One hand pressed against it. The wall kept wanting to drift away. Pinpoints of light floated around the room. Flip passed a hand across his eyes to wipe away the wetness forming there.

Stretched out on the floor, Tats’s feet scraped like he wanted to climb sideways. He took up the whole floor.

Mr. B came around the desk. He stared at Flip, chest heaving. “You . . . you . . .” He stood out of the big guy’s reach, feet dancing, and looked down at him. The big guy wrestled with his own throat. “Did you kill him?”

Flip leaned against the wall. No amount of blinking would clear his vision. “Give me the other ten.”

Mr. B ignored him. He leaned over, still out of the big guy’s reach. “She wanted it!”

Tats couldn’t respond. His gagging made Flip think he wanted to, but no other noise would come.

“Give me my money.” His own voice was a floating croak. The throb in his forehead gained power with the settling of his adrenaline.

“She wanted it—you hear me? You hear me?”

The big guy slowed.

Flip came away from the wall.

Mr. B straightened. “You did good. Real good.”

Flip stood over him. “The money.”

“Sure. Sure. He’s dying.” Giddy laughter quaked his words. “This is the last thing he’s going to hear.” He bent over him again. “She wanted it!”

Flip balled his fist. “Who wanted it?”

Mr. B grinned. “Never mind. Help me move this desk.”

Flip watched him cross back to it, put two hands on one edge.

Tats struggled against the floor, but he was losing.

Mr. B said, “Help me with this.” He nodded to the desk. “Hey, you want your money or not?”

“You deserved it. What he was going to do. Didn’t you?”

Mr. B gave up waiting for Flip to help and bent to the desk, shoved it until the safe was exposed. “What’s ‘deserved’?”

“Who’s this
she
you keep yelling about?”

Mr. B worked at the combination on the floor safe. “Don’t worry about it.” Louder, he yelled, “Just his strung-out, dead, junkie daughter!”

Flip looked to the big guy in his death throes on the wooden floorboards. Nothing could be done. By the time an ambulance got here, he would be gone.

Those sirens he heard would be cops.

He moved closer to Mr. B.

The safe door flapped open. Mr. B reached inside. He kept his eyes on Flip. His hand came out. But it didn’t hold a pile of bills.

Flip dove at him.

A gunshot exploded. Wide. Flip went for the hand that held the gun. He twisted Mr. B’s arm like a dishtowel. Mr. B grunted. The gun clattered onto the hardwood.

An elbow to Mr. B’s face sent him to the floor. Flip picked up the gun. “Get in the corner.”

Mr. B’s eyes teared up. Blood spread over his mouth out of both crushed nostrils.

Flip pointed the gun at him. “Now.”

Mr. B crawled to the corner on his knees and one hand, the other held to his nose as if he could straighten it out. Flip knelt at the safe, kept the pistol pointed at Mr. B. Inside he found papers but not cash. He took the papers out and set them on the floor.

Mr. B sat in the corner, cursing him.

“Where’s the rest of my money?”

Mr. B’s answer didn’t have anything to do with money.

Flip rose and went to the corner. He shoved the muzzle into Mr. B’s temple. “They’re going to find your brains all over that wall.”

“Wait. Wait.” Both hands came up, smeared with the blood from his nose. “It’s there. You have to slide the shelf over. It’s there.”

Flip returned to the safe and found the lip of a shelf on one side of the compartment and drew it in. It was there all right. And a lot more. He wadded all of it into his pockets and stood. The pockets were large, but they barely held the bundles of cash.

The papers looked interesting. He folded them in half and tried to stuff them in his back pocket. He’d forgotten his cap was back there. Putting it on made his swollen forehead smart even more. He jammed the papers in his pocket and went to the door.

The voices of cops echoed in the empty bar.

Behind him, Mr. B said, “You better watch your back. I’ll be looking for you.”

Flip pointed the pistol at him. Mr. B ducked. Flip didn’t fire.

He took one last look at Tats. Stretched out wall-to-wall, he wasn’t struggling anymore. It was too late to make it right. Killing Mr. B wouldn’t help.

Flip ducked out. He made it through the exit door and into the alley without seeing anyone.

32

Jason awoke in Brenda’s bed and felt Serena standing in the room with them, behind him.

No. It was absurd. She couldn’t be here. Not here in Brenda’s apartment with the front door bolted. Not now.

“Jason, what’s wrong?” Brenda’s hands moved to his shoulders. Her fingertips flamed on his skin.

Serena’s eyes, the force of her character, her intellect always a step ahead of him—she was there.

Jason took his eyes off Brenda and looked over his shoulder.

“What is it, Jason?”

He rolled away from her.

Brenda came up on one elbow and stroked his head with her other hand. “Did I do something wrong?”

He turned to her. She’d wanted the lights off. Her modesty made her even lovelier to him. He’d insisted on leaving the lights on so he could see what he took in now in the softer light coming through the window. The green of her eyes, lashes long and flickering. Her skin luminescent. Just below her collarbone a single mole like a pinpoint of chocolate in cream.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re perfect.”

She lifted the sheet, and her face flushed delicately. “Then what’s wrong?”

“I just . . .”

Her hair was tousled, pressed and combed by his own fingers. He let his hand rise to it, allowed his fingertips the pleasure of touching it.

She took that hand, kissed the palm, held it to her cheek. “It’s okay, Jason. Whatever it is. We’ll make it okay.”

Brenda shifted toward him and brought his arm around her.

But Serena’s presence still loomed. In spite of Brenda’s skin on his, her citrus fragrance in his nostrils, the taste of her on his lips, he sensed Serena here, haunting him. He told himself that what had happened to their marriage was not his fault. It was hers. Serena had done this herself. The proof wasn’t debatable. Forget her denials. She had cheated on him.

Brenda lifted her face to him. “I wish it could always be like this.”

He stroked her shoulder, smooth like a china cup. “Me too.”

“Really? I’m not just . . . you know.”

“Of course not.” He kissed her forehead.

“There’s a lot of complications.”

“Yeah.”

“But we can make it okay, Jason. Can’t we?”

“Sure we can.”

Serena argued against it. Silently, invisibly, her presence debated him as forcefully as she would if her legal mind could voice its argument here and now. Her first exhibit would be their marriage license. She would call every witness who had sat through their ceremony. Before a judge, she would repeat the vows they’d taken. Till death do us part. Till death.

But when she took a lover, she’d put to death the marriage itself. That was the death that parted them. She’d surrendered her rights as a wife when her arms went around Pete Rossi. Jason had evidence. After what she’d done, she had no right to interrupt this moment of happiness.

He turned to Brenda. “We can make it work. We just have to be careful.”

Close now, her hot breath mingled with his. “We’ll be careful. No one will know.”

“They can’t know. I’d be fired. I’m already on shaky ground.”

She backed away an inch. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind. It’s not important.”

“Of course it’s important. It’s your career.”

Across the room, the clothes he’d worn all day at the office were draped over a chair. From the floor next to the chair, his shoes gleamed dimly.

Brenda’s hand on his chest brought him back. “What do you mean about the shaky ground?”

He sighed. “Let’s not get into it. Okay?”

Thumping steps elsewhere in the building drew closer and faded away. At any hour of day or night in LA, someone was always moving around and disturbing the peace. He looked at his watch. The display read 2:30.

“Don’t go. I won’t ask any more questions about work. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just this city. Something’s always grinding away out there. It never stops. I was just thinking it would be great to get away.”

“You were?” Brenda reached for a T-shirt. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot.” She sat up in bed and slipped into the shirt. “Ever since that kiss in your office, I’ve been thinking if only we could get away together. Really away, not hiding around like this. Not just for a few days, either.” She reached out and nudged his shoulder. “Where would you go? If we could go anywhere in the world?”

Jason put his hands behind his head. “Anywhere?”

“If you had the whole world. Where?”

Traffic noise filtered through the window. Two cars shooting past on the street outside Brenda’s apartment, a third. Where could people be going at two thirty in the morning? “What’s the opposite of LA?”

Brenda sat up straighter. She tapped at her knees. “Opposite of LA. Let’s see. Norway?”

“Maybe not
that
opposite. I don’t mind warm weather.” The Caribbean meant Serena. Not there. “Ever been to the South Pacific?”

“Like Tahiti? Mmm. Sounds great. I’d go there with you. How about the Far East? Would you like to go to Japan and see pagodas? Or China?”