Rubbed Out (16 page)

“Not planning on staying long,” I commented.

Janet Wilcox kept going as if I hadn't said anything.

“I hear the Caribbean is nice this time of year, though I think your money would go further in Mexico. Or Costa Rica. Excuse me, I forgot—your husband told me you didn't like to travel, but then I bet he thought you didn't like to steal either.”

She ignored me, put her packages on the kitchen table, unbuttoned her coat and scarf, and carefully hung them on the back of the chair.

I placed my backpack on the floor next to the doorway. It was beginning to hurt my back.

“Aren't you going to ask me what I want?” I said to her.

“I've already told you I have no desire to speak to you, so why would I ask you anything?”

“Don't you want to know about your husband?” I asked.

“No.”

She began unpacking her food. A box of macaroni. Ajar of tomato sauce. A tin of canned beef stew.

I picked it up and read the label. Three-fourths of the ingredients were words I couldn't pronounce. “I didn't know anyone actually ate this stuff.”

Janet Wilcox took the can out of my hands and banged it down on the table.

“He's dead, you know.”

She kept on unpacking. Not even a moment of hesitation.

“But of course you do. Don't you care?”

“It has nothing to do with me.”

“I think it does.”

She turned and faced me. “You forced your way in here. You threatened me.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is, I don't have to say anything to you and you can't make me.”

“I think we've established that I can, but let's not go into that right now. Do you know how he died?”

“How many times do I have to tell you I'm not interested?”

“He was tortured to death.”

Janet Wilcox picked up the can of tomatoes and put it on the top shelf of the cabinet across from the sink.

“He was tortured to death because of the money you took from him. He spent a long time dying.”

Not even a flinch. I could have been talking about squashing a gnat.

She returned to get the box of macaroni. “I wanted Mueller's, but all I could find was this foreign stuff.”

“I need to get back the money that you took. The people your husband took it from are very unhappy.”

“That's not my problem.”

“Now, that's where you're mistaken.”

And that was when things started to go really wrong.

I
heard a “Hello, ladies,” and spun around.

Paul was standing in the middle of the kitchen doorway with his arms folded across his chest and a shit-eating smile on his face.

To this day I still don't know how come I didn't hear the front door opening and closing or him coming up the stairs.

“Glad to see me, Janet?” he asked.

“Not particularly,” I replied. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Light, in case you didn't notice, I'm not addressing you,” he snapped, the smile suddenly gone. “I'm talking to Janet.” And he put the smile back on as if it was a pair of false teeth he was taking out of the jar.

“Light?” I said. “So formal. What happened to Robin?”

He ignored me and watched Janet. The vein below her right eye was twitching. She swallowed and edged closer to me. I may have made her nervous, but not as nervous as Paul was making her.

“Don't want to answer?” Paul continued.

She swallowed but didn't say anything.

“That's too bad 'cause I'm real glad to see you.” He made a show of looking around. “You know, this place isn't half bad, though the wop decor would get to me after a while. Especially the guinea wallpaper. How'd you find it? Still don't want to answer me?” Paul went on when Janet didn't reply. “That's okay. Even though some people would consider that rude. You still have a little time.”

He unzipped his jacket and hooked his thumbs on his belt. The jacket was one of those heavy black leather ones. The kind cops wear. He had a one-day growth of beard, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as if he'd slept in his clothes. Glancing past him through the kitchen window, I noticed a cat stalking a pigeon pecking on something on the ground. The cat got within half a foot before the pigeon flew away. Something told me it wasn't going to be that easy for Janet and me.

“Janet,” Paul said. “Remember how you used to make me take my shoes off when I came in your house, even when I wiped my feet, even if I was just going to stay for five minutes?”

She pressed her lips together till they were nothing more than a thin line.

“It used to drive me crazy. All that lacing and unlacing.” Paul indicated his feet. “See. My boots are still on.”

Despite herself, Janet looked toward the door. Wet footprints and ridge-sized clumps of gray slush that had fallen from Paul's Dr. Martens marked his trail across the floor.

“Didn't even bother to wipe them off on the doormat,” he told her. “What you gotta say about that?”

“Nothing,” Janet whispered.

I had to strain to hear her.

“Goddamned right,” Paul said.

“I thought you were in Syracuse,” I said.

Dumb comment.

“And I thought you weren't going to talk to Janet,” Paul said.

“Evidently we were both wrong.”

He grinned. I couldn't help thinking he needed to have his teeth cleaned.

“I love technology, don't you?” he said. “It gives one so many more options. Now you can do anything from anywhere.”

“I'm enraptured by it.”

“Nice word choice. You should have stuck with being a writer.”

“I'm beginning to think so too.”

My eyes strayed to my backpack for not more than a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Paul to pick up on.

“You wouldn't be thinking of using my own weapon on me, would you?” he asked as he reached down and scooped it up.

“The thought never crossed my mind.”

“Sure it didn't. Not keeping it with you was careless, Light. Very careless.”

“I know. I should have foreseen you were going to turn out to be a shiftless, lying sonofabitch.”

He opened the backpack and peered in. “I'll take that as a compliment. How much crap do you carry in here anyway?” he said as he pawed through it. “Here we go.” And he took out the Glock he'd given me in his office and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “You should get a shoulder harness like the detectives in the movies do.”

“I can't. It would spoil the line of my clothes.”

“I wouldn't have thought that was a concern of yours.”

“It is,” I protested.

“ 'Course it is.” Paul sucked in air between his teeth. “That's what I always said to myself every time you walked into the office. Paul, there's a woman that has an overdeveloped fashion sense.” He looked me up and down. “Although I have to admit you look better than you usually do. Here.” He dug in his pocket and came out with a set of handcuffs. “Put these on,” he said, tossing them to me.

“That's not necessary.”

“Oh, yes, it is.”

“And if I won't?”

“Now is not the time to be doing one of your numbers,” he warned. “I will hurt you if I have to.”

“You're such a putz.”

Paul's smile vanished again. “I don't think you're in a position to call anyone names. Now put them on.”

He was right. I wasn't. I did as I was told.

“Satisfied?” I said showing him my wrists.

He came over and tightened them. “Now I am.”

He tossed my backpack to me. I caught it with both hands.

“It's safer this way. For both of us,” Paul said. “No accidents.”

“How reassuring that you have my welfare at heart,” I said.

“Isn't it?”

Janet's eyes darted from me to Paul to me again. “What game are you running?” I asked him.

“Game isn't the word I would use.” Paul picked something out of his front tooth with his fingernail.

“Then what is?”

“Actually, I got to thinking after you left my office that maybe you were right after all. I should leave town. Take a vacation. See the world. Learn new things. I really don't have anything holding me in Syracuse. You want to come along?”

I indicated the handcuffs with my chin. “You certainly know how to persuade a girl.”

Paul shrugged. “Some women like it that way.”

“I'm not one of them.”

He smirked. “Yes, you are. You just don't know it yet.”

“Now I can understand why you're so lousy in bed.”

I wondered why I still hadn't learned to watch my mouth as Paul's smirk changed to a scowl. He clenched his fists, took a step toward me, then stopped.

“You're not worth the energy.”

Worked for me.

He laughed. “I don't know what I saw in you in the first place. I can do better.”

“I know I can.”

“You haven't so far.”

“That's a matter of debate. Aren't you worried that they're going to kill you?”

Paul turned up the corners of his mouth into an imitation of a smile.

“No, dear. If Mikhail kills anyone, he'll kill you and her.”

Wilcox had used the name Mike on the phone. Mike was Mikhail in Russian. Coincidence? Not likely.

“They won't be able to find me,” Paul said.

“But I will. I'll make it my mission in life.”

Paul's eyebrows shot up. He smiled for real this time. “I'm trembling in fear and trepidation.”

I could feel myself flushing.

“And even if you do, so what? What are you going to do? Call the police?”

“No. Turn you over to the Russians.”

“You won't.”

“Don't bet on it.” More than anything, I hate being made a fool.

“Your conscience won't allow it.”

“You'd be surprised what my conscience will allow”

“I would be. In any case, I think you're overestimating your ability in the detection department.”

“Not really. I've found everyone I've ever looked for. I don't see why you should be an exception.” I'd have given anything for a cigarette at that moment. “George said you were bad news.”

“And George was right. You should have listened to him, but then, that's another of your problems. Besides being careless, that is. You don't listen to people.”

“Let's not turn this into a see-how-fucked-up-Robin-is discussion, if you don't mind. Though one thing is clear. I shouldn't have listened to you.”

“This is true. Isn't that right, Janet?”

Up to this moment, she'd been standing perfectly still, the way a rabbit freezes when a fox sees it. As if not moving makes the rabbit invisible. I noticed that Janet's hands were shaking. She crossed her arms over her chest and buried her hands in her armpits.

“I'll take the money now, if you don't mind,” Paul said to her.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she replied.

If she'd asked me, I would have told her she'd given Paul the wrong answer, but she didn't.

“Really?” he said.

“Really.”

“How inconvenient for you.” He swept his free hand around the room. “So if I looked around this apartment, I won't find it here?”

“Go ahead,” Janet replied. “Look all you want.” Her voice had a slight tremble in it.

Paul moved his mouth up in an imitation of a smile. “Don't waste my time. It puts me in a bad mood. I have things to do and places to see.”

“I told you, I don't have the money.”

“I know you do.”

“I don't.”

“Last chance.”

When Janet didn't say anything, Paul crossed the floor and casually backhanded her across the face. She staggered back from the force of the blow.

“Some men don't hit women,” he informed her. “Believe me, I'm not one of them.”

I moved toward Paul, but he'd taken the Glock out of his jacket and was pointing it in my direction. “You. Stay where you are.”

“Fine.” I lifted my hands. “I was just getting a glass of water anyway.”

“Of course you were,” Paul said. “It's what I would do in the circumstances.”

I wondered what I'd do with the handcuffs off. Half of me felt really bad for Janet, while the other half of me remembered what had happened to her husband and thought that Janet Wilcox was getting a small taste of what she had coming.

“The next one will be worse,” Paul promised Janet.

“I told you, I don't have the money.”

“That's too bad.”

Paul kept an eye on me as he moved toward Janet Wilcox. She tried to scuttle away from him, but she had nowhere to go. This time Paul put his weight into the blow. I heard the
whap
of his hand on her flesh and saw her head fly back. She slid down the cabinet door and landed on the floor.

“Please,” she cried as she hid her face in her hands and tried to curl up in a ball.

But she wasn't fast enough.

Paul smiled, lifted his foot, and casually kicked her in the stomach with the tip of his boot. The kick was hard, but not hard enough to rupture anything.

“Consider that foreplay,” he said.

Janet's legs jerked.

“The frogs I killed when I was a kid used to do that,” he observed as he stepped back.

“Now, we're about to get into the real deal,” he informed her as a thin stream of bile came out of her mouth. Paul turned toward me. “Tell her this is just a taste of what's going to happen to her. Tell her,” he ordered. His face was expressionless. “Unless, of course, you like seeing this.”

I didn't, despite what Janet had done.

I took a deep breath.

“He's right,” I told Janet. “Tell him where the money is. He's not going to stop until he gets what he wants.”

Paul nodded.

“You should listen to her,” he said to Janet. “For once she's making sense.”

He raised his foot to kick her again.

“At least let her get her breath back so she can talk,” I pleaded.

He consulted his watch, then smoothed his hair back with the hand that wasn't holding the gun. “I'll give her five minutes. No more.”

It was dead quiet in the kitchen. Paul looked around. “We could use a little music, don't you think, ladies? Something to liven things up a little. Where's the radio?”

“There isn't one,” I said.

“She telling the truth?” he asked Janet.

She nodded weakly.

Paul shook his head. “How can you live without music? It's nectar to a man's soul.”

Janet looked as if she was going to throw up again. The refrigerator turned itself on. Janet's ragged breathing filled the room.

Now it was my turn to look at my watch. We'd been in Janet's apartment for less than half an hour. Somehow it seemed a lot longer.

“I'm waiting,” Paul said to Janet. “Hurry it up.”

Janet groaned. After thirty seconds or so, she lifted herself up on her hands and knees. She stayed like that for a moment or two, head hanging down, slightly swaying back and forth. A line of drool made its way out of the corner of her mouth and hit the floor. I went to help her.

“She does it on her own,” Paul said. His eyes were flat.

Looking at him, I realized the Paul I thought I knew was gone. I've seen snakes that have had friendlier expressions.

“How did you get to be like this?” I asked him.

He kept one eye on me and one eye on Janet while he answered.

“I always have been. I've just come out of the closet.”

“You should go back in.”

“I like myself this way better.”

“Well, I don't.”

“I didn't expect you would.”