Deceived (3 page)

“It’s outrageous,” Mac said.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me
ma’am.
You should be married. Have you ever been married?”

“Mrs. Axelrod — ”

“Why aren’t you? The sea is full of fish. All you’ve got to do is put some bait on your hook.”

His head started throbbing. The right side. The side with the fragments. The hot claws would be coming soon.

“You do believe in marriage, don’t you?” Mrs. Axelrod said.

“Yes, I do,” Mac said.

“Well then, why — ”

“I was married, Mrs. Axelrod. But, as you know, I did some time in prison.”

Her eyebrows went skyward. “And your wife?”

“She decided she didn’t want to be married to a con. Can’t say as I blame her.”

“But you’re reformed,” she said. “You are a Christian man now.”

“That’s an ongoing project, Mrs. Axelrod.”

“I like you,” she said.

“Well, thank you. I — ” The claws sank into his head. His eyes watered. He had to get out of there before he started saying, or doing, things he shouldn’t.

He had to call Arty.

Arty was the only guy who knew everything, the only one who understood.

Mac stood up. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Axelrod. I have to go.”

“We’re not finished talking.”

“I’m not feeling too good.” Pinpricks of fire heated his skull, and it started to implode.

“Come inside,” the widow said. “Maybe the heat — ”

“I’m sorry,” Mac said, then ran down the steps and across the lawn. He heard Mrs. Axelrod hitting the wood with her cane.

“Rocky!”

His tough-guy voice. It turned Rocky’s bones to sticks. It was the sound of beer and shots. Boyd did bad things when he chased whiskey with beer.

“Where are you?”

She continued to pack the suitcase. She didn’t bother folding anything. This was not for a pleasure cruise. This was to get the heck out. Fast. Sort it all out later. If she stopped now, she might not do it at all.

Boyd Martin had a hold on her. When he was sober, he was more caring than any guy she’d ever been with — which wasn’t so many, but by comparison he stood out. The others wanted one thing, and only wanted that as long as they didn’t have to look at her face too much. Boyd, she always felt, wanted
her
.

When he was sober.

The first time he took her to dinner, he’d put his hand softly on her face, his palm over the scar that ran from the corner of her left eye in a half-moon to the corner of her lips. He said, “You’re beautiful.” The way he said it wasn’t just a line. Or maybe she just wanted to believe it wasn’t.

When he was sober, he could make her believe almost anything.

But when he drank, he was Mr. Hyde. And he made her drink with him. The drinking dulled the pain when he screamed at her, so she figured it was worth it. But it stopped being worth it last night. It was one too many episodes, like the shot that takes you from drunk to passed out.

All over horticulture.

She was reading a gardening book, late, when he got home from the poker game. Boyd played on Fridays at a house in South Pasadena.

He came into the apartment smelling of beer and cigar smoke. And he wanted her in bed. She said no, she had to read her book.

It was an excuse, but partly true. The one thing she looked forward to when they got married — someday — was having a house with a garden. She’d always loved plants and flowers. They were a way of making something beautiful, something she would never be. Gardening was a way to
feel
beauty, and ever since she could remember, that was what she wanted to feel.

Boyd grabbed the book, looked at it, cursed. She asked for it back and he slapped her.

The blow was stunning in its suddenness and in its anger. He had come close to hitting her before, and once pushed her down on the bed.

Now this.

He looked surprised for a second, then got a hard look and said, “This is an
apartment
, you dummy. We don’t have no house for a garden, so quit reading about it.” He threw the book across the room. It hit the table where they kept a cup of loose change. The cup spilled and coins hit the hardwood floor like a hard, metallic rain.

The sound of which only fueled Boyd’s inner fire. “Clean that up!”

She cleaned it up because she didn’t want to fight and because she wanted him to pass out before he asked her again to get into bed with him.

She knew she had to get out. As much as she wanted to still believe in him, she had to leave. Today.

But she hadn’t expected Boyd to come home in the middle of the afternoon, hammered.

She faced him now. “Boyd, we need some time away from each other.”

“Stupid thing t’say,” he said.

She scooped her underwear from the top drawer of the bureau and tossed it in the suitcase.

“Stop!” he ordered. His six-foot-four-inch frame filled the bedroom door. Before his stomach developed its beer-soaked circumference, he’d been a pretty fair linebacker. Played one season for the University of Utah, then dropped out of school.

He’d been making good money working for a pool ser vice, getting some Beverly Hills and Brentwood accounts. But the drinking, always the drinking. He’d been fired recently for downing shots of Jack Dan-iels, then falling into a pool and almost drowning.

Rocky said, “I think it’s a good idea if we take some time to think things out.”

“You can think right here.”

“I can’t.”

He called her a name.

“I’m going to stay with Geena for a while,” she said.

She turned to the bureau again. Boyd came up behind her, his boot heels banging the hardwood floor like muffled gun blasts. She whirled as he threw the suitcase over the bed. The contents spilled on the floor.

“You and me, we’re gonna talk it out right here,” he said.

“Boyd, don’t.”

“Chill, spill, take a pill.”

He was going into his bad rapper routine. Boyd thought for a time he could make it as a buffer version of Eminem. He lacked only two things — talent and sobriety.

Speaking softly, Rocky said, “Baby, listen. Just some time to think. We haven’t had that for a long time.”

His eyes were flame red. He kept blinking. “You think you can do better?” he said.

“That’s not what this is about,” she said. “Look, let’s set a date, next week, we’ll go out to Miceli’s and have dinner.”

Maybe there was still a chance with him. She loved him, right? Wanted to love him. Wanted it to be right and to last.

“Don’t go,” he said and sat heavily on the bed. Little boy lost. That’s what they were, two lost people who’d found each other. It wasn’t good that way. At least one of them had to know where they were going.

She sat next to him and put her arm around his shoulder. He was shaking. “Come on, baby. It’ll be good this way for a while. Just a while, huh?”

Boyd said nothing.

“I could try to get more work,” she said. If she tried, she could get more files. Maybe even the singing thing would finally happen for her. She could dream, right?

“Don’t go,” he said.

“We’ll talk soon.”

“No, I mean it, don’t go. No go, that’s what I said.”

He stood.

She stood.

“Let me call you tonight,” she said.

He shook his head.

She put her hand on his cheek.

He slapped it away.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Let’s go out somewhere,” he said.

Rocky turned, shaking her head. She had to pick up the suitcase and start packing again. This was pointless.

“Wait.” He closed the suitcase. “Let’s cool off, huh?”

“I’m cool now.”

“One hour. Will you give me one hour?”

“No.”

He sat on top of the suitcase. “Now that’s just not nice.”

“Get off the suitcase, Boyd.”

He smiled.

“Don’t act like this,” she said.

“You
don’t act like this.”

He grabbed her wrist, pulled her and twisted her, so she sat on his lap. He kissed her, clumsy and hard. She turned her face away.

“Come on,” Boyd said. His arms were around her, tight.

He kissed her again. She let him. Kiss it all away, she thought. All the bad. Make me believe we can make something out of this dirty, stinking mess.

His foul breath filled her nostrils. She thought she might retch. She pushed his chest, hard, and in doing so fell backward, sprawling on the floor.

“See?” Boyd said. “Don’t fight.”

He reached for her but she scrambled away. She got to her feet, grabbed her purse. If she didn’t keep going, she thought, she never would. And in not going, she’d die a little.

She heard him grunting. Heard the boots on the floor. She rushed out the door before he could reach her.

She walked fast, up her dismal street toward Franklin Avenue. She caught a glimpse of the Hollywood sign. The noted landmark, the beacon of dreams for so many, now a mocker of her own dreams of being a singer.

What prospects did this town have for her anymore? And who was she kidding? Life was unfair, and she’d been dealt cards from the bottom of the deck.

She was eight when the dog mauled her. She’d been playing in the backyard, making houses for bees. They had bees who liked the blossoms of the apricot tree, and she thought she’d make houses on the ground out of leaves and sticks. She thought she’d get a little honey later and put a few drops inside. The bees would catch on and find a nice home, courtesy of Roxanne Julie Towne.

She heard the cracking of wood.

The Townes had a fence between their house and the Lloyd family. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd were nice, but they had a son, Rick, who was fifteen and not very nice. He already had tattoos and a bunch of friends who made noise late into the night.

Now there was another crack, and a plank in the fence kicked up like a dancer’s leg. Went back down, then up again.

A snout came through. A dog. A black dog. One she’d seen before and been scared of.

One that she wanted to stay away from.

It turned toward her, snarling. She always wanted to be friends with dogs. She loved dogs.

This dog didn’t want to be friends.

It charged.

Roxanne screamed and tried to get up to run, but her foot slipped on the bee house.

Then the dog was on her. She could still remember the saliva and the teeth, but nothing else until she woke up in the hospital.

Rocky was almost to Franklin now. As she sometimes did, without wanting to, she thought about what her life would have been like without the scar. No kids shouting “scar face” at her. No spending her childhood and adolescence isolated in her own inner world.

Maybe she would have had a boyfriend, a senior prom, college, a recording contract, a movie even.

Yeah, she thought. And maybe unicorns dance on rainbows.

Liz waited as Arty came over and looked in the sack. She watched his face. It went from troubled to amazed in two seconds flat.

She smiled.

“I don’t believe this,” he said.

“Believe it.” Even though she could hardly believe it herself. There it was — a jumble of stones that had to be diamonds, some loose, some set in necklaces and rings. Three other sacks just like it were also in the saddlebag.

“Jewels,” Arty said.

Great observation!
Liz wanted to scream. “Yes, jewels, and where do you think they came from?”

“I don’t know.”

“It looks real suspicious, doesn’t it? I mean, these are probably stolen.”

Arty said nothing. He was deep in thought.

“These are hot rocks,” she said.

“How do you know that?” Arty said.

“Please, Arthur, you know I was raised in a pawn shop.”

Arty nodded. “You’re probably right. Don’t touch anything. Let’s call the police.”

“Hold on a second,” she said. “Think about this, okay?
Hot
stones
.”

His head tilted back slightly, as if he sniffed a bad odor. “You are not seriously thinking that we can keep any of these, are you?”

“I’m just asking you to think for half a minute.”

“There’s nothing to think about, Liz. We have to do what’s right.”

“What’s right? If these are stolen, they’re insured. The owners won’t care.”