The Best of Sisters in Crime (48 page)

“Probably,” she
gasped.

“Yeah, I think
so too. But we can talk about it later, right?”

“Right,” she
said, clutching at my back with those beautifully sculpted nails. “Yessss.”

Of course, I
left without killing Suzanne. Then I went back to the Dingo and yelled at
Eddie, which was a laugh since I’d been rolling around with his wife all
evening. Funny thing, though. As I stared at Eddie Style, sitting on his usual
stool at the long faux-malachite bar, I felt contempt for him. He had
everything, Eddie did. Money, cars, a beautiful wife. But he didn’t know what
he had, and that made him a bigger zero than I was. Even with all that money.

“Why the hell
didn’t you tell me she had a gun?” I snarled over the blast of the head-banging
band onstage. I’d never snarled at him before, and it felt good.

“I forgot,” he
said, very apologetic as he tugged on his mimosa. “Really, Ricky boy, I didn’t
think about it. It’s just a little gun . . . .”

“Easy for you to
say,” I grumbled. “Don’t worry about it, man. I’ll take care of it for you.”

But I didn’t.

I called Suzanne
a few days later, she came over to my apartment and we spent the afternoon
amusing ourselves.

“Why don’t you
fix this place up?” she said. “It doesn’t have to look like a slum, Rick.”

“Sure it does.
It is a slum,” I told her, stroking the long white expanse of her back. “You
think it’s
La Bohème?
Some sort of
arty dungeon? Look out the window, it’s a slum.”

“Don’t complain,
you’ve got me. And,” she said as she got out of bed and went over to her purse,
“now you’ve got a nice watch instead of that cheapo.”

You think your
life changes in grand, sweeping gestures— the day you have your first hit, the
day you get married, the day you get divorced—but it doesn’t. Your life changes
when you stretch out your hand and take a flat velvet-covered jeweler’s box
with a gold watch inside that costs two or three thousand dollars. Your life
changes when you don’t care how you got it.

When you’re a
kid, you never think the situation will arise. You think you’ll be a big star,
a hero, a rock legend; you don’t think you’ll be lying in bed in a crummy
Hollywood apartment with another guy’s wife and she’ll be handing you a little
gift. Thanks, honey, you were great.

I took the
watch. A week later, I took the five hundred bucks she gave me “for groceries.”
You see the situation I was in? Here I was, supposed to kill Eddie Style’s wife
for a hundred thousand dollars, and I was too busy boffing her to get the job
done. Me, the guy who was so hungry for cash that his hands vibrated every time
he felt the walnut dash on a Mercedes.

I was swept by
the same confusion I’d felt after “Ooo Baby Oooo.” Once again I was staring out
over a precipice into an endless expanse of possibilities, and I didn’t know
what to do. I was looking at a row of choices lined up like prizes at a
carnival, and the barker was offering me any prize I wanted. But which one
should I take? The doll? The stuffed monkey? The little toy truck? Reach out
and grab it, Ricky boy. How do you make a decision that will determine the
course of your life? A thick, oozing paralysis sucked at me like an oil slick.

All I had to do
was kill her and I couldn’t do it. When she wasn’t around I fantasized about
taking her out for a drive and tossing her down a dry well out in Palm Desert
or giving her a little shove over the cliff as we stared at the sunset over the
Pacific. But when she was around, I knew it was impossible. I couldn’t kill
Suzanne. Her beauty held me like a vise.

Beautiful women
don’t understand their power; their hold on men is far greater than they
comprehend. Women like Suzanne sneer at their beauty; they think it’s a happy
accident. Mostly they think it’s a commodity, sometimes they think it’s a gift,
but they don’t understand what the momentary possession of that beauty does to
a man, how it feels to see perfection lying beside you in bed, to stare at
flawless grace as it sleeps and you know you can touch it at will.

The flip side of
my problem was that a rich guy like Eddie Style didn’t understand that
possessing a woman like Suzanne made me his equal. Within the four corners that
comprise the enclosed world of a bed. a fool like me is equal to generations of
Stanhope money.

“So, Ricky boy,
when you gonna do that thing?” Eddie asked me late one night, giving me a soft
punch on the arm. He’s acting like it’s a joke, some kind of a scene. Kill my
wife, please.

“Don’t pressure
me, Eddie; you want it done fast, do it yourself.” Now that I was a hired gun,
I no longer felt the need to kiss the hem of his garment quite so fervently or
quite so often. Weird, what power does to you. You start sleeping with a rich
guy’s wife, you feel like a superhero, an invincible Saturday morning kiddie
cartoon. “If you’d told me about the gun, I would have killed her that first
night. Now the timing’s screwed up.”

This was true,
and it creased a further wrinkle into my murderous plans. The vacationing
couple was back at work at Eddie’s big white house in the daytime, so it was no
longer possible to slip in and kill Suzanne even if I’d had the guts to do it.
Too many people around.

Besides, I was
no longer an anonymous cipher, a faceless killer. I was a piece of Suzanne’s
life, although Eddie didn’t know it. Now that she was coming to my apartment
for nooners, I knew we’d been seen together. The elderly lady with ten thousand
cats who lived across the courtyard and peeked out between her Venetian blinds
at people coming in and going out, Suzanne’s big red Rolls parked on Ivar—there
were too many telltale traces of my secret life, traces that would give me away
if I
did
kill her.

So there I was,
stuck between skinny Eddie Style and his beautiful wife, and it was at this
point that a brilliant idea occurred to me. What if I killed Eddie Style? What
if I killed the husband and not the wife? Assuming Suzanne approved of the
idea, it would have a double-edged effect; it would cement Suzanne to all that
Stanhope money and it would cement me to Suzanne. For I had no intention of
allowing her to remain untouched by Eddie’s death, if I chose to kill him
instead of her.

Turnabout.

But would
Suzanne take to the idea of killing her husband? Would she see me as a lout, as
a sociopathic lunatic, or merely as the opportunistic infection I truly was? Or
would she, too, see murder as a career move?

At night I
worked at the Dingo, and though I poured drinks, laughed and chatted with the
customers, I was changed inside, tempered by my connection to death. Now that I
was concentrating on murder, I was no longer a failure, a one hit wonder. I was
invaded by the knowledge that I possessed a secret power setting me apart from
the faceless ants who surrounded me in the bar. A few weeks ago, I was a
shabby, sad wreck tossed up on the shores of Hollywood with the rest of the
refuse, the flotsam and jetsam of the entertainment business. Now that I was
dreaming about murder, I was on top again, and I had the potential of ultimate
power.

A week later I
decided to talk to Suzanne about killing Eddie. I had no intention of bringing
up the question directly; I was too clever for that. I planned to approach her
crabwise, manipulate our pillow talk in the direction of murder. If she picked
up the cue, well and good. If not, I’d have to alter my plans where she was
concerned.

It was
Wednesday, my night off, and Eddie was at the Dingo. I called Suzanne and said
I’d be at her house that night. She wasn’t too happy that I was coming over,
but I let my voice go all silky and told her I felt like a hot bath.

The white Neutra
house was lit up by soft floodlights, and as I knocked on the door, it reminded
me of the glistening sails of tall ships flooding into a safe harbor bathed in
sunshine.

The door opened.
It was Eddie Style. “Do you think you should be here, Ricky boy?” he asked,
very mildly.

Not a good sign.
I had a moment of fear, but I covered it. I was feeling omnipotent, and
besides, I had my .38 in my jacket pocket. “You mean we’ve got to stop meeting
like this?” I mocked. Simultaneously, I knew I was in over my head and
apprehension started nibbling at my shoes.

He held open the
door for me, and I went inside, automatically stepping down into the sunken
living room. Suzanne, wearing a white kimono with deep, square sleeves, was
sitting on the couch, a drink in her hand. Her nails shone red as an exploding
sun and her face was flat, expressionless. All the beauty had drained out of
it. and there was only the molded mask of a mannequin staring back at me from
behind a thick sheet of expensive plate glass. Who was she?

Confusion swept
me, and I was carried off down the river like a dinghy in a flash flood.

“Here we all
are,” Eddie said. “Drink?”

I nodded yes. “Vodka.”

“Ricky boy,” he
said as he went behind the bar, “I’ve had you followed and I know you’re
sleeping with my wife. I’m afraid I can’t stand still for that,” he said
slowly. “When the help gets out of line it makes me look foolish and I simply
can’t allow it to go unpunished.” He reached underneath the bar and pulled out
the shiny silver .25 Suzanne pointed at me that first night.

Now the dinghy
was caught in a whirlpool. “I’m sorry, Eddie,” I said. “These things . . . just
happen.” I indicated Suzanne. “I’m sorry.”

“Ricky boy, I
know what you think. I’ve seen you operate.” His voice was cold and he was
still holding the gun. “You think because I’m rich you can come along, skim a
little cream off the top and I’m so stupid I won’t notice. You think you’re as
good as I am, street-smart Ricky boy, the one hit wonder. Wrong, buddy. Dead
wrong. You’re not as good as I am and you never will be.”

The absurd
little gun was firmer in his hand, and I had the cold, cold feeling he was
going to shoot me. He’d claim I was a robber, that his faithful minion had
betrayed his trust. Who’d dare to call Edward Woffard Stanhope III a liar? With
his beautiful wife Suzanne by his side to back up his story, why would anybody
try?

I looked at
Suzanne. Her face was unmoved. I felt empty and desperate in a way I hadn’t
felt since I’d started sleeping with her. I’d had a taste of invincibility in
her bed, but she was giving me up without a backward glance; I could read the
news on the shroud that passed as her face. I felt like a fool. What made me
think she’d choose me instead of the unlimited pool of Stanhope money? Once
Eddie killed me, she’d have him forever. He’d never be able to divorce her;
they’d be locked in the harness until the earth quit spinning and died.

“Eddie, that’s
not it,” I said. I heard the helplessness in my own voice. I sounded tinny,
like a playback. “OK, man, it was a mistake to get involved with your wife. I
know that. I’m sorry.” I was trying to sound contrite, once again the serf
tugging his forelock. I walked over to him and shifted my right side, the side
with the gun in the pocket, up against the bar so neither of them could see
what I was doing. Slowly, I dropped my hand and began to inch my fingers toward
the gun.

“Yeah?” he
laughed, an eerie sound like wind whining down a tunnel. “Tell me how sorry you
are.”

Confusion butted
heads with omnipotence. This was the time, the moment, my last chance for a
comeback, and I gave omnipotence free rein as I kept inching my hand toward the
gun in my pocket. “Ever try, Eddie? Ever try and fail? You’ve never had to
work, rich boy. You have it all. The house, the wife, the car. You want to own
a nightclub? Buy one. You want your wife killed? Hire it done.”

Suzanne gasped
out loud. “Killed?” she said slowly. “You wanted me
killed
?” she asked Eddie, her voice thick with
distaste.

“He promised me
a hundred thou to get rid of you, princess. Ain’t that a kick in the head?”

“Rick, you were
going to kill me?” she asked. “That first night, you were here to kill me . . .
.” Now she was thoughtful, pondering her own murder like a stock portfolio.

Eddie Style said
nothing.

My fingers
closed on the gun and I turned toward him, slowly. “Think about living without
that mass of cash behind you, that blanket of money. Ain’t easy, Eddie. But you’ll
never know ’cause whatever happens, you’ve always got a fallback position. The
rich always do.”

It wasn’t until
I said it that I realized how much I hated him, how much I hated his flaccid
face, his thin shoulders that had never seen a goddamn day’s work, his weak
mind that never had to make a tough decision, his patrician arrogance. I pulled
the gun out of my pocket, fired and caught him right between the eyes.

I heard Suzanne
shriek as blood sprayed out of the back of Eddie’s head, splattering the
polished sheen of the mirror on the back bar with a fine mist. His body crashed
to the floor, taking a row of heavy highball glasses with it, shattering a few
bottles. The smell of blood and gin filled the air. I didn’t give a damn.

It was all mine.
At last I’d turned myself inside out, and the mildewed scent of failure that
had clung to me was gone. I was no longer a grinning monkey at the Club Dingo,
but Zeus. A king. I was on top, a winner at last.