Dating Dead Men (28 page)

chapter thirty-seven

I
t was all so unfair, was my first thought. Aloud, I said, “You're supposed to be in jail. I was told the cops picked you up.”

“I'm sure they tried. I was out.” His gloved hand reached into the bomber jacket and produced a gun.

Random thoughts scrolled through my head.
I have no experience with this. That gun looks plastic. I actually dated this man
. The decision-making part of my brain seemed to have shut down.

“Let's move away from this window.”

I backed up, toward the front door.

“Uh-uh.” The Weasel gestured with his gun to the middle of the room and I switched directions accordingly, down Aisle 5, Engagements/Weddings. One thing was clear: Mr. Bundt was not going to be any help. Deathly pale, his breath came in pants, and he followed me like a spaniel.

Talk, I thought. Pretend it's a date. Talk, and get the Weasel talking. I turned to him. “What happened to the real Dylan Ellison?”

He seemed to read my strategy and find it amusing. The smile returned as he sauntered toward us down Aisle 5. “I came to your poetry thing and your big-mouth uncle told me about the guy that didn't show. You don't exactly check ID on your dates, do you?”

Keep talking. Open your mouth. Say words. “Speaking of dates: our plane ride yesterday? I guess you knew those guys in the Alfa Romeo.”

His face shut down, and I realized that of course he did, and that's why he killed his cousin Carmine—he saw him consorting with the enemy. This might not be the best subject to pursue. I switched gears. “So what really happened to our picnic?”

He smiled. “The Angeles Crest Forest was a little out of my way, as it turned out.”

Angeles Crest Forest—Body Dump, Joey called it. I saw it all with sudden clarity. He would've fed me a sandwich, picked my brain, taken my keys, bumped me off, dropped me from a cliff, left me for the coyotes, flown back to the airport, driven my car somewhere, and abandoned it. Instead, he'd decided to deal with Carmine and the Swedes, which bought me an extra twenty-four hours. “Well, that's a relief,” I said. “I'd hate to think you just found me unattractive.”

He looked me up and down like a peruser of pornography. “I'd do you. Not dressed like that, though. I've been looking at those sweatpants for twelve hours and, frankly, I'm sick of them. Also that wreck of a car you drive.”

Behind me, the faintest
thunk!
sounded in the back room. Was it possible? Was someone—? I spoke quickly. “You followed me? Today? In your Hummer?”

“Rental. I lost you on Little Santa Monica, but I saw you at the synagogue and with our Hebrew friends, so don't bother telling me you don't have my diamond. The world isn't that small.” He pointed the gun and wiggled it in a suggestive manner, as if I had the ring buried between my breasts. “Give.”

“Okay. Just for the sake of argument, though, if I didn't have it—?”

“You know about it. So one way or another, I'd still have to do you.”

Do me. He used the same figure of speech for sex and killing.

“But I can do you nice and quick”—he gestured with his gun to illustrate this—“or I can use my preferred method.” From his jacket pocket he pulled out a knife; thin and silver, it looked like something you'd use to gut fish. “Up to you, baby. How well you behave. How well you answer questions. One way is more fun for you, the other's more fun for me.” He put the knife back in his jacket.

“Sir?” The reedy voice was barely recognizable as Mr. Bundt's. “I know nothing at all about whatever you're discussing, so perhaps you could allow me to—”

“Oh, sorry. Rude of us. We're discussing my retirement income. Unless I have to use it to bargain for my life.” He shook his head. “In-laws. By the way, Wollie.” He came to me, took my neck in his hand, and moved me gently aside. “Not entertaining anyone else back there tonight, are you?” He walked toward the back room, as Mr. Bundt, next to me, tried to flatten himself against Anniversaries.

The Weasel stumbled.

React! I yelled to myself. Do something.

The Weasel recovered and looked down and saw what had tripped him.

Margaret's crate.

He stared at it, then spoke, his voice quiet. “Where did you get this?” He turned toward us and pointed the rectangular gun.

Mr. Bundt backed into me, stepping on my foot.

“Ow! It's a—spare.” I addressed the gun. I couldn't look at the Weasel. My face would undo me.

“You're a liar, bald man.” The gun swerved toward Mr. Bundt. “Where'd the cage come from?”

“Corvette, convertible. Young driver. Goatee. She signed for it.”

The gun turned back to me. The voice was like granite. “That's Big Eddie's nephew. How do you know Big Eddie?”

Behind him, in the lemon grove doorway, something appeared, then disappeared. Pea green velour.

Ruby.

She was two feet behind the Weasel. One glance toward the back room and he'd see her and—

“How do you know him?”
he yelled. “Lie to me and you'll be looking at your body parts on this carpet.”

Ruby's head popped into the doorway, and popped back out.

I felt rather than saw Mr. Bundt glance toward her. I kicked him in the ankle, then met the Weasel's eye, willing him to look at me and only me. “I contacted Big Eddie,” I said. “I told him I had the ring, but I wanted Margaret—our ferret—back first. I knew if anyone could find her, he could. He said to meet tonight, ten-thirty in his lawyer's office, but now this crate shows up, so what I want to know is, where the hell is my ferret?”

It poured out of me so readily, I wondered if I was channeling someone. But it got his attention. He stared at me as if I'd sprouted fur.

“Tell you what,” I said, “I'll show up at the meeting and give him some other ring. Here—” I grabbed Mr. Bundt's hand and held it up. “What's this, a class ring? That'll work. And Big Eddie will see I made a mistake. And he'll be upset, but he won't connect it to you. On the other hand, if you kill me, he'll figure out what happened, he already knows you kidnapped Margaret. If I'm dead, you're dead.”

I had a feeling there were holes in my logic and he was finding them. He didn't move a muscle, but the air between us seemed to vibrate. He would blow at any moment. What would it take to—

“Want your ring?” I said. “Because I'm wearing it.”

His eyes went to my hand.

“On my toe.” I lifted a foot, displaying my saddle shoe. Instinct told me to get within reach of him, in case he turned and saw Ruby. Balanced on one leg, I started to untie my shoe. It was awkward and allowed me to plausibly hop. I hopped toward him. Maybe a plan would evolve en route. I thought of the kickboxing tapes I'd meant to send away for. I continued to advance, fast little staccato movements.

“Try sitting,” Mr. Bundt suggested. I ignored him.

The Weasel was still eight feet away. Too far. I kept hopping and pretended to encounter a knot in my shoelaces. “I'll wear a wire,” I said. “At the meeting. So you'll know I'm not ratting you out. I have a little tape recorder that fits in my purse. You could keep Mr. Bundt here hostage.” A sputtering sound emanated from Mr. Bundt. “And Margaret,” I added. “You've still got my ferret.” I struggled with the imaginary knot. I could feel his impatience, but what could I do? The only thing under my sweat sock was last month's pedicure. My hands shook visibly.

“Need help?” The Weasel pulled out his knife, ready to cut my shoelace.

I pulled off the shoe. I left on my sock.

“You don't know who you're playing with, do you?” he said. “I don't care about your fat friend and I don't think you do either. The ferret's roadkill on the 405. She bit me, I threw her out the window. Now get that ring over here before I cut off your—”

“Hey, creep.”

It was a little girl's voice.

It was Ruby.

The sound was so extraordinary that time stopped. Anything was possible. When the Weasel turned toward the voice, I jumped him. I landed on his back and got him around the neck and hit him on the head and face as hard as I could with my size eleven saddle shoe and just kept hitting, smashing the hard heel against his forehead, nose, eye.

And then I was on the carpet, on my back, with no idea how I got there. I smelled my own sweat and heard myself breathe and looked up at the brown jacket and the glinting knife looming over me. So this is it, I thought, as things became very quiet and clear. I can't save us. I didn't save anyone.

There was a very loud
thunk
.

The knife dropped. The Weasel stood suspended, for what seemed like an eternity, and his eyes met mine in a moment of utter disbelief. He stumbled to the side, and I saw Ruby behind him, the white marble bust of Dante in her hands. Her second blow glanced off his shoulder. Then he turned to her and swung his gun arm across his body, winding up to backhand her.

I grabbed his foot. It didn't bring him down, but it gave Ruby time to back up, and then I got both arms around his army-green-clad thigh and hugged tight, like some overwrought Madame Butterfly. A hard object met the side of my face with such force that the whole world stopped and I thought, This is about to hurt very badly. I actually considered passing out, but as I slid down his leg, my hand came in contact with something sharp on the carpet and I knew that if ever there was a moment to stay awake, this was it.

I was on all fours, with the knife in my hand. I aimed upward, for the biggest target I could reach, the fleshy outer part of his thigh, and with the last bit of strength left to me, threw my body into it. At that second, he turned.

The knife went through his trousers at a more significant point.

The scream and the shot came simultaneously. The gun fell and bounced. The Weasel grabbed his crotch and fell into Engagements/Weddings and the whole rack went down with a crash.

I was still on all fours and there was blood on my grass green carpet. I looked for Ruby. She was standing, thank God, but I couldn't tell quite where. The geography of my store was growing murky. Plaster rained down. Had someone shot my ceiling? I lowered myself down onto my elbows and tried to collect my wits. My head hurt.

Mr. Bundt retrieved the gun from the carpet near me and moved with uncharacteristic speed to the overturned Engagements/Weddings rack. The Weasel's screams had transmogrified into an animal-like yowling that was disturbing to hear.

Ruby appeared at my side and I was simultaneously hugging her and trying to get up. She was either hugging me back or trying to push me down.

I saw Mr. Bundt stand guard over the Weasel in what had once been Aisle 5. In one hand was the gun, in the other his cell phone, which he spoke into with the old authoritative tones I knew so well and, suddenly, loved.

“It's okay, we're okay,” I heard myself tell Ruby. “You're good. I'm good. We didn't die.”

“I know,” she said, after I'd stopped. They were the third and fourth words I'd ever heard her say and she sounded brilliant.

chapter thirty-eight

“D
o you know what my dad did? Why he got sent to jail and stuff?”

I adjusted the phone and sealed up another cardboard box. “Yes.”

“No, but I mean, the whole story. The really, really true one.”

Now that Ruby was talking, there was no stopping her. Two days later, this was our seventh phone call. “Do you?” she said. “Know about the stock market part? And my mom?”

I pushed the heavy cardboard box across the back room to join eighteen others. “Ruby, I'm not sure I should be hearing—”

“My Grandma Vandenvieck told me the whole deal. Okay, my dad's economics class? He was teaching about the stock market, so his students, they gave him a bunch of money, like their allowance and stuff, because they wanted him to invest it, so first he put it in the bank, okay? But my mom went to the bank that same day and she saw it in the checking account, so she took it out and bought a new car.”

I sat down on my box. “That's why he went to prison?”

“Yeah, because you're not supposed to take money from your students. Especially if it's a lot of money. Doesn't that suck?”

Could this be true? It was hard to reconcile the father she talked about with the man I was working to forget. “And then,” she said, “my dad went to prison, and my mom went to Japan. So anyway. Wanna know how I'm going to invest my college fund money?”

I'd given Big Eddie's wad of bills—thirty-nine thousand, five hundred of it—to Ruby. I sent another ten thousand to Sammy's synagogue. The last five hundred went to Fredreeq, for her work on the Dating Project. This was my attempt at moral money laundering. “Blood money” was how I thought of it, although it probably wasn't, strictly speaking. Still, it was a good bet that somewhere in the making of Big Eddie's fortune, blood had been shed. I said to Ruby, “Not in a checking account, I hope.”

“You mean 'cause of my mom?” Ruby said. “Don't worry, she lives in Japan now, with her boyfriend. I might get to go visit her. When school's out. So anyway, the money? I'm gonna invest it in your next shop.”

“Ruby, there is no next shop.”

“Yeah, but there can be. My dad did the math. Okay, I gotta go.”

There were few taboo subjects with Ruby. She told me about her parents, her maternal grandmother, the school she was kicked out of, and the one she was going back to. The statement she'd made to the cops on Friday night. And how she'd sat in the lawyer's office that afternoon long enough to study the bus route in the phone book and get herself from Century City to Hollywood. In time to save my life. She even talked about her vow of silence. I'd guessed right, that she'd given up talking for Lent, hoping that God would restore to her the three beings she most loved, her family. In the end, she'd had to make do with her dad.

There was one thing she didn't talk about.

Margaret's crate sat on the chaise longue, haunting me. I took it out front and buried it in the giveaway pile.

With curtains gone and the racks stripped of their cards like so many leafless trees, the shop floor looked clinically depressed, made worse by a late afternoon fog. Whole sections of paisley wallpaper were faded from the sun. Every crack showed. Bullet holes in the ceiling and blood stains on the grass green carpet were merely the latest indignities.

The curious thing was that it didn't bother me.

Except for thoughts of Margaret, which sat like a bad meal in my stomach, I felt detached about leaving. It was as if a different person had taken up residence in my body, someone I didn't know very well. I let her do the packing.

Dr. Cookie, when she called, said it would be a while before I recovered from the demise of my childhood dream. She told me that seeing my shop physically assaulted had traumatized me. I told her that seeing my own body physically assaulted was no picnic either, but real trauma was getting kicked off the Dating Project this late in the game, with nothing to show for my twenty-seven dates but mileage reimbursement. Dr. Cookie expressed sympathy, but said that my lax screening process had compromised the scientific data.

Fredreeq said that okay, it was true that Rex Stetson and Benjamin Woo had been old flames of Joey's and Robert Quarter had gotten my number from Dave Fischgarten, and Sterling was her own husband's cousin, but this was blind dating, not stem cell research. Joey said that Dr. Cookie was miffed I'd found a man with a technically perfect List score and he turned out to be a mass murderer. Ruby said I should sell the whole story to the
National Enquirer
. But the truth was, my heart was no longer in the Dating Project. Maybe it never had been.

Uncle Theo said the pursuit of dreams is its own reward and impermanence is the nature of things and that the shop had served us well while it lasted, providing income, sanctuary, and inspiration. He did not consider my dream a failed one, merely a short one.

Fredreeq said the planet Saturn rearranges your life every seven years and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.

         

T
HE OFFICERS WHO
responded to Mr. Bundt's call had, at his insistence, taken me to the emergency room at Queen of Angels Hospital, where I was treated for a broken toe and a bruised rib and given seven stitches on my chest for gashes I wasn't aware I had. Mr. Bundt also insisted I not share an ambulance with the Weasel. Afterward, I went to the police station, where I spent the rest of Good Friday and part of Holy Saturday answering questions.

Detective Pflug was warmer this time around. He said Ruby and Mr. Bundt had given separate, glowing accounts of my actions. He assured me that Ronald “the Weasel” Ronzare was under police guard at the hospital, would soon be in jail downtown, and would not be released, on any kind of bail, any time soon. I, in turn, came clean about everything except the fifty thousand dollars from Big Eddie. As the subject didn't come up, I assumed Mr. Bundt's glowing account had left out the padded manila envelope. I wondered why.

Joey and Fredreeq and even Fredreeq's kids were waiting in the lobby when I was released, eager to take care of me. Ruby had long since been returned to her father, and while I was sorry not to see her, I couldn't say the same of him. He left messages with Pflug, at the shop, the apartment, and with my friends. I ignored them.

When I finally went to bed, I slept for fourteen hours. When I woke, it was Easter.

         

I
WENT NEXT
door to the twenty-one-hour locksmith, open even on holidays, to borrow a Phillips screwdriver. I came out to find my brother sitting in front of the shop.

“P.B., what are you doing here?” I asked.

He didn't answer. His ears were covered with foil and he rocked back and forth, a sweatshirt clutched to his stomach.

I looked around. Uncle Theo had hoped to take P.B. out on a holiday pass, if he could find them a ride. The parking lot was filled with cars, overflow from an Easter wedding at Sacred Heart, but none contained Uncle Theo. I plopped down next to my brother.

“I'm back on my meds,” he said. “They take effect in a week, maybe sooner.”

“So you won't be needing aluminum foil much longer.”

“No.” He looked up to the smog-filled sky. “They won't be listening in on me. There won't be anything to hear.”

He was a study in sorrow. It struck me that with all the attendant responsibility and even pain of his interstellar communication, it gave him a sense of purpose.

A horn honked on Sunset. “No place to park!” Uncle Theo leaned out the passenger window of his friend Xavier's truck. “It's time, P.B. Wollie, I'll come tomorrow to help you move.”

I waved and turned to my brother. “You've been happy on ziprasidone. You get along with almost everyone, and you feel more in control. You told me that.”

“But I won't see the patterns anymore. If you can't see the patterns, you can't change the patterns. I have to go.” He took the sweatshirt he'd been holding in his lap and placed it in mine. “Here.”

The sweatshirt was lumpy. And warm. And moving.

From its depths emerged a large white sock that stretched, yawned, and arranged itself into Margaret. She looked up at me and blinked.

         

H
OW HAD SHE
come to be in my brother's sweatshirt? Had Ruby and P.B., for reasons of their own, put the hospital phone number on Margaret's tag, that day in Venice, and had someone found her on the freeway and returned her to Rio Pescado? Other scenarios were even less likely, having to do with the things that happened when P.B. put his ear to the ground and listened to the dirt. I'd ask him, but chances were good I'd never get the whole story. One of life's unsolved mysteries, like the Blue Patron, who hadn't been Mr. Bundt's industrial spy, but merely, apparently, a fan.

We stood in line at Bodega Bob, Margaret and I, to buy their entire stock of raisins, three boxes. I wanted to shower her with raisins. Despite looks from my fellow patrons, I could not stop kissing the ferret's head and murmuring to her in the idiotic way people do to babies and puppies. There was a Popsicle stick tied to her back leg, like a splint, and a tear in one of her soft ears, but otherwise, she was her old self. She looked out the window, nose twitching.

I looked too, and saw Thomas Flynn, the man formerly known as Gomez, get out of a car in front of Bodega Bob.

I squatted behind a metal food rack, clutching Margaret. I'd wait it out. He'd go to my shop, I'd be gone, he'd go home. I'd call Ruby and tell her about Margaret while he wasn't there to answer the phone.

Margaret squirmed, bound for a box of Rice-A-Roni on a low shelf. I was on my knees, making a grab for her, when black shoes entered my field of vision. They were so new I could smell their leather. I worked my way visually up a dark gray suit, white shirt, and red tie, to a face. Just as I'd suspected. The new person inhabiting my body was as vulnerable to the man in front of me as the old one had been.

Thomas Flynn looked from me to Margaret and back again, his eyes glistening. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He dropped to one knee, that pristine suit on the dirty linoleum, well into my personal space.

I handed Margaret to him and stood. My own voice chilled me to the bone. “I need to pay for these raisins.”