Sweet Liar (15 page)

“I guess it's an old-fashioned term and it seems out of place now, but I was a gangster. I sold whiskey and beer to people when the government had declared it illegal to sell liquor or even to drink it. Because of some bad things that happened, we sellers of alcohol got a very bad reputation.” He paused to smile at Samantha again.

“I can't offer an apology for what I did. I was young and I didn't know any better. All I knew was that it was the Great Depression, and while other men were standing on bread lines, I was making fifty grand a year. And making money was important to a man when he was in love as I was.”

Barrett paused a moment in memory. “Maxie was beautiful. Not loudly beautiful, but quiet and elegant, a real knockout.” He smiled at Samantha fondly. “Like you,” he said, making her blush.

“Anyway, Maxie and I had been a pair for months. I'd asked her to marry me hundreds of times, but she said she wouldn't marry me until I went legit. I wanted to, but I was making too much money and I couldn't see myself settling down somewhere selling insurance. But then came that Saturday night that changed so many lives. May the twelfth, 1928.

“When I look back on it, I wonder that I didn't have a premonition that night that something was going to happen, but I didn't. I was on top of the world. My right-hand man, Joe, a man who'd been my friend since we were kids together, had picked up the receipts that day and they were the best ever, so I bought Maxie a pair of earrings. Diamonds with pearls. Nothing big or flashy since Maxie didn't like showy jewelry, but these were real nice.

“I went to Jubilee's Place—that's where Maxie was singing—feeling on top of the world. Right away I went to Maxie and gave her the earrings. I thought she'd be happy, but she wasn't. She sat down on a chair and started to cry. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, and it took me a long time to get it out of her.”

Barrett's voice lowered, as though what he was saying was very difficult. “She told me she was going to have our baby.”

Drawing in her breath sharply, Samantha wanted to ask questions, but she didn't dare stop his story.

“Maxie was very upset about her pregnancy, but I was the happiest man in the world,” Barrett said, continuing, “because I knew then that she'd have to agree to marry me. But I was wrong. Even when she was going to have a baby, she still said she wouldn't marry me unless I gave up the rackets.”

Barrett gave what on a younger man would have been described as a grin. “I agreed that I would. I would have agreed to anything that night if it meant having the woman I loved marry me. But between you and me, I don't know if I would have stayed away from the rackets. Maybe in a year or so I would have gotten restless and gone back, but that night I meant it when I said I would get out.

“I wanted us to leave the club right then and go get married, but Maxie said she had to sing that night, that she couldn't let Jubilee down. I agreed only if she'd promise that it would be her last time to perform in public. In those days there was no talk of a woman wanting a career. All Maxie wanted was what I wanted: a home for the two of us and our children.”

Barrett stopped and looked out the window. “She sang that night and I'd never heard her sing prettier. Like a bird.

“About ten o'clock, I guess, she took a break and I got up from my table to go backstage to see her. On the way I made a trip to the…you know, and when I was about to leave, just as my hand was on the door, I heard the first shots and the first screams. I knew right away what had happened. Back in those days I was small potatoes in the business. By that I mean I sold to only a few places, most of them up in Harlem. Most of the city was controlled by a man named Scalpini. I had already figured that Scalpini would have heard of our haul that day and I knew he'd be mad, but I thought he'd just send some of his guys over to try to work out a deal with me. But he didn't do that. He sent eight men to Jubilee's Place with typewriters—machine guns.

“I knew the men were after me, but all I cared about was getting to Maxie. I pushed open the door and already the club was full of screaming, hysterical, running people and blood—blood was everywhere. I had to push a woman's body aside to get the door open, then I had to walk over two people who were screaming on the floor. The bullets were flying everywhere and I took one in my shoulder then a second one in my side, but I kept going. I was afraid Maxie would leave her dressing room and come out or that maybe Scalpini's men would go after her because Maxie wasn't the kind of woman to think of herself first. She'd never run out the back door if she heard shots coming from the front.

“I almost made it to the back when something fell and hit me on the head. I think it was a chandelier. Whatever it was, it knocked me out cold. When I woke, it was hours later, and there was a man in a white coat bending over me. ‘This one's alive,' he yelled and walked past me. I grabbed his ankle and tried to ask questions, but he shook me off. I think I passed out after that, because when I woke again, it was the next day and I was in a hospital, and my side and shoulder were bandaged. It was another day before I found out what happened. Scalpini had decided to get rid of me and all the men who worked for me, so he sent his men over to shoot all of us. It didn't matter to him that there were probably a hundred people in the nightclub that night and that most of them had nothing to do with me. Scalpini meant to kill us all and he very nearly did. I lost seven men that night.”

He paused for a long while, and when Barrett spoke again, there was a catch in his voice. “I lost Joe that night. Joe was my childhood friend, and he'd saved my life when we were kids. He was the only person I have ever before or since trusted. Joe was dead, took a bullet right through the forehead, so he must have died instantly. And there were twenty-five or so others either killed or injured that night. But worst of all, Maxie disappeared. No one knew what had happened to her. For a long time after that I searched for her, but I couldn't find any trace of her. She walked out, and I'm sure it was my fault. Maybe she knew I wouldn't be able to do anything that wasn't exciting, maybe she didn't want her child raised with a gangster for a father. I don't know. All I know is that I never saw or heard from her again.”

He stopped talking for a moment, then took some long, slow breaths to calm himself. “I changed after that night. I'd lost the two most important people in my life—my best friend, my only friend, and the woman I loved. Samantha, can you understand how miserable I was after that night?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I understand what it feels like to lose everyone.”

“It's better not to talk about the next few years of my life. I was not a pleasant person. I don't know what I would have become if this hadn't happened.” He put his hands on the controls of the wheelchair. “I was in a car accident two years later, and my spinal cord was severed.”

Comfortingly Samantha put her hand over his.

“I've done things in my life that I'm not proud of, but I think I would have been a different man if that night hadn't happened. I used to think about it a great deal, what would have happened if Maxie hadn't stayed to sing that night. If she'd left with me before Scalpini's men showed up, we probably would have been married before we heard the news of what had happened. If she'd left with me, Joe would have gone with us and he wouldn't have died either.”

He looked off into the distance. “If Maxie hadn't wanted to stay and sing, everything would have been different.” Reaching out, he touched Samantha's cheek. “Maybe if I'd married her and waked up to hear of the bloodbath at the club, maybe it would have scared me into going straight. Maybe…” His eyes grew misty. “Maybe now you would be my granddaughter, not just my biological granddaughter, but living here with me.” He smiled. “Perhaps not here. Perhaps I'd be living in a house in suburbia somewhere, a retired insurance salesman.” He touched her blonde hair. “Like Midas, I'd trade all my gold for the warmth of a child.”

“I
wonder what happened to her?” Samantha asked.

She and Mike were sitting in the backyard at the picnic table, eating from several white paper cartons of Chinese food that they'd had delivered.

“Happened to who?” Mike asked, although he knew very well who she was talking about.

“If my grandmother didn't leave my granddad Cal to go to Mr. Barrett, where did she go?”

“That's what your father wanted to know,” Mike mumbled, looking down at his plate. Something was bothering him, and he wasn't exactly sure what it was. They had left Barrett's house immediately after the old man had finished his long, sad story. All the way into Manhattan Samantha had been very quiet, looking out the window with a slight smile on her face, as though something had pleased her very much. Now she wasn't eating but making little piles of her food on the paper plate.

“Do you think he lives alone in that huge house?”

“Probably. He seems to have killed most every person he's known over the years.”

Samantha gave him a look of fury. “Why do you have to say so many bad things about him? I thought that writers were supposed to
like
the people they're writing about.”

“Oh? How about the writers who do studies on serial killers? I don't like Barrett and I never will, but the man fascinates me. No one has ever tried to document what he's done in his life. No one actually knows what the man is capable of doing.”

Samantha took a moment before she spoke. “He seemed like a nice man to me,” she said softly.

Mike had to swallow before he could speak; he had to take a breath before he could say a word. “What is it about women and their love of a sob story? Some man you've never met hands you a tearjerker about true love lost and you fall for it. I especially loved the Midas part. I wonder if he rehearsed his little speech before he told it to you?”

Standing up, she glared down at him. “And I am sick of your jealousy! From the moment I first saw you, you have acted as though you own me. You have invaded my privacy; you have followed me and humiliated me and, in general, made my life miserable. And I don't even know you. You are nothing to me.”

“I'm more to you than Barrett is,” Mike said, standing up and leaning across the table toward her.

“No you're not,” she said quietly. “He's my grandfather, my last living relative on earth.”

Mike drew his breath in sharply. Now he knew what had been bothering him about the expression on her face when they had been riding back from Barrett's place. She had been smiling in contentment, smiling as though she'd found something that had been lost. “Sam,” he said, putting his hand out to touch her.

But she drew away from him, not wanting to hear what he had to say. He could afford to be a know-it-all about her having found a living relative because he had what appeared to be thousands of relatives all over America. Someone like him couldn't possibly understand what it meant to be completely and absolutely alone in the world. He wouldn't understand the concept of Thanksgiving dinner with no one to invite or Christmas with no one to buy presents for. Someone who had so much family that he could afford to be cynical about them, could happily say mean things about them, couldn't understand. Maybe this man Barrett had done some awful things in his youth; maybe everything that Mike knew about him was true, but now he was an old, man and he was alone—and Samantha was alone as well.

Turning away from this man who was a stranger to her, she started back into the house.

Stepping in front of her, Mike put his hands on her shoulders. “Sam, where are you going?”

“Upstairs. I do believe I am free enough to be allowed to do that, aren't I?”

Mike didn't release his hold on her. “I want to know what's in your head. I don't like the look in your eyes.”

“I don't like the look in your eyes most of the time,” she snapped. “Please let me go. I have to pack.”

“I'm not going to release you until you tell me where you plan to go after you leave this house.”

“As I've told you a thousand times, what I do in my life and what I have done are none of your business. I'll go where I want to go.”

Mike bent to look into her eyes, but she turned her head away. “You're going to him, aren't you?”

“It's none of your—”

“Sam, you can't go to that man! He's a killer!”

She gave him a look of disgust. “He's ninety-one years old, and he's in a wheelchair. What possible reason would he have to harm me? I'm not rich, so it can't be that he wants my money. I somehow doubt that he wants sex from me. Maybe his whole story
is
a lie. Maybe he concocted the whole thing in an effort to get Maxie's granddaughter to live with him for his last few—very few—remaining years. If that's true, then what's wrong with it? He's a lonely old man and I'm…” She broke off, not wanting to say any more.

“Go ahead and say it. You're a lonely young woman.” His voice softened, his hands dropping to her arms as he moved closer to her. “Tell me what you want, Samantha. Tell me what you want and I'll try to give it to you. Is it love you want? Then I'll—”

She jerked out of his grasp. “Don't you
dare
tell me you'll give me love. I've had all the love from greedy young men that I can take. What do I have to say to you,
do
to you to make you realize that I'm serious: I don't want to stay in this house with you. I don't want to go to bed with you; I don't want to have anything to do with you.”

Mike stared at her for a moment, his expression changing from anger to bewilderment, then finally to resignation. “I can take a hint,” he said with a little smile of mockery. “You are free to do what you want. In the morning I will go to the bank and get your money for you. Is a cashier's check all right with you?”

“Yes, fine,” she said quickly, then turned away and started for the stairs toward her apartment. Stopping on the first tread, she looked back at him. “Mike, I do appreciate what you've tried to do for me. I sincerely believe that your heart has always been in the right place. It's just that you don't know me, not really. I think you have an image of me that I'm…” She took a breath. “That I'm one of your wounded birds. I'm not. I know what I want.”

“Barrett,” Mike said tersely. “You want that old man because he says he might be related to you. He's never—” He didn't say any more because Samantha ran up the stairs.

When she was upstairs, she closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock. Not that locking the door would do any good, she thought with disgust, because he had his own key.

She dragged her big suitcase out of the closet, put it on the bed, and began to pack. With each of her new, heavenly garments she folded away, she felt sadness at leaving this apartment, at leaving this house that had become familiar to her. But she did her best to strengthen her resolve and kept packing.

When half of the suitcase was filled, she sat on the edge of the bed. Where
was
she going to go? It wasn't as though Mr. Barrett had asked her to come live with him, although she had seen that he very much needed a good housekeeper to take care of his neglected house. And it wasn't as though Michael Taggert wanted her for anything except sex. It always amazed her that men though if they couldn't “conquer” a woman, then they had failed. Sometimes she thought that when a man was pestering her without ceasing, she ought to just lay down on the bed and give him what he wanted so he'd go away. Maybe that's what she should do with Mike. After he'd had what he wanted from her, he wouldn't care whether she stayed in his house, whether she went to live with a former gangster, or what she did.

Standing up, she continued packing. She didn't want to give Mike what he wanted, didn't want to hear him say all the things that men say when they're trying to get under a woman's skirts: that he loved her and wanted to live with her for the rest of his life, that he was nothing without her, that she was everything to him. No, she didn't want that from Mike, because up until now, he'd been a friend to her. He'd been kind at times, if a bit autocratic. If she were honest with herself, she found his jealousy flattering. Mike had spent time with her. The day they had gone shopping had been one of the most joyous of her life. He had made her laugh, and at times he'd made her forget all the death that had followed her in her life.

She started to slip a pair of shoes into her bag, then stopped. All her life she would remember this time with Mike, remember the arguments they'd had, remember how he'd made her angry at every turn. She'd remember the way he looked after his shower, his hair wet, wearing only a pair of jeans, his feet and chest bare. She'd remember every touch, every look. She'd remember the way he smiled, just slightly out of one side of his mouth, as though his smile were tinted with sarcasm and disbelief that there was something to smile about.

She jammed the shoes into the case. Maybe she'd move to Seattle. Living around the rain forest might be nice. After the dryness of Santa Fe, her skin could stand living where it was foggy and cool.

She finished packing and set the suitcase on the floor. In the morning she would leave. What was she going to do? Have a taxi take her to the airport then go to an airline counter and say she'd like a ticket on the next available plane?

“Not exactly well thought out, are you, Sam?” she said aloud, then smiled at having called herself Sam. When she'd turned eleven and three-quarters, she had become aware of herself as a female and had declared to her family that she was no longer to be called a boy's name. From then on she was to be called Samantha. Her father and grandfather had readily complied, but her mother had infuriated her by laughing and continuing to call her Sam. After her mother died, no one had called her Sam—until she'd met Mike, that is.

Looking around the room, at her father's furniture, at her father's colors, for the first time she thought that maybe she'd like different curtains. Maybe rose-colored damask, she thought, and maybe she could put a matching spread on the bed.

She began unbuttoning her blouse, her nightgown over her arm, as she walked toward the bathroom to take a shower. In her next place of residence she could do whatever she wanted with the curtains and furniture.

There was no warning. One minute Samantha was asleep and the next there was a hand around her throat and she was fighting for her life. She clawed at the hand that was cutting off her breath, but even when she felt her nails tear his skin, he didn't move.

“Where is Half Hand's money?” the man whispered.

The moonlight coming through the window allowed her to see that he wore a stocking over his head.

“Where is Half Hand's money?” he repeated, but he didn't loosen the pressure on her throat to allow her to answer.

Samantha tried to kick him, but he was beside her in such a way that she couldn't reach his body. Besides, with no air getting to her lungs, she was losing strength. Michael, she thought, then used what little strength she had remaining to hit the wall with her heel. Once, she hit it. Twice. Three times. Then she began to fade out of reality as the pressure on her throat continued.

When the pressure was abruptly taken away from her throat, at first she still couldn't breathe. It was as though parts of her throat had been crushed beyond usefulness, and when she gasped, no air entered her lungs. Even when she sat up in the bed, her hand to her injured throat, she still couldn't breathe.

Turning quickly to the sound of a loud crash, she saw the shadow of Michael as he fought the man who had been trying to kill her. Mike was bigger than the man, stronger, and when Mike's fist plowed into the man's face, he hadn't a chance to survive the blow. As the man fell to the floor with a thud, Mike was beside her, his arms around her.

“Breathe, baby,” he commanded her. “Goddamn you! Breathe!”

Hitting her on the back, he held her as Samantha gasped for air. Mike's strong hands clutched her shoulders, giving her a little shake as his eyes bored into hers. It was as though he were commanding her to do what she couldn't, yet she found herself wanting to breathe, if for no other reason than to do what he wanted. After what seemed to be hours, the air entered her lungs in a painful, jerking gasp.