The sound of the soothing surf on the other side of the street seemed to seep beneath her skin, drawing her like a wondering child to a magician. She loved the seashore, loved running in the hard, wet sand, loved the way the runner’s high cleared her mind and if ever she needed a clear head, now was the time.
“The guy’s going into that faggot place.” Horace put a hand on Virgil’s arm, stopping him. “The way they been acting, I thought they were lovers, dancing cheek to cheek, walking so slow, whispering.” Wrong about that, not lovers. Something else.
“She didn’t seem like the kinda woman would go around with them.”
“How do you know what kind of woman she is? God damn, Virgil, sometimes I think you are a retard.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Sorry.” Maybe he wasn’t a retard, but he wasn’t Einstein either. “But you gotta think more before you talk.”
“Yeah, okay,” Virgil said and Horace chuckled. He didn’t have to see his brother’s face to know he was smiling. He was always smiling.
Up ahead, the woman was standing outside the fag place, like she was unsure what to do next. Then, all of a sudden, she started across the street toward the beach. Horace held Virgil back until she was a safe distance ahead, no homes on that side of the street to give them cover.
“I wish we had the van,” Horace said.
“I could get it.”
“Maybe.” Horace grimaced at the thought of Virgil driving his van. It wasn’t that Virgil wasn’t a good driver, but the van was new. It usually took Virgil a while to get the hang of a new vehicle. However, the van had been in the Safeway parking lot since noon. How long before they’d tow it away? He thought about it for a second and decided not for awhile. The supermarket was open till nine, so it was probably safe till then. Still, he’d feel a whole lot better if it was close by.
The woman bent over, pulled her shoes off, then tossed them onto the sand like she was throwing a Frisbee or something. Then she tucked her shoulder bag into her side, like a football, stepped off the sidewalk and started to run.
“Stupid woman.” Horace sucked his mustache into his mouth, chewed on it. “She’s gotta come back for the shoes.” Horace spoke the words the instant the thought came to his head. “Think you can get to that store and get the van back before she does?”
“Really?”
He handed Virgil the keys. “Go.”
“I’m gone.” Virgil took off at a dead run.
Maggie took quick breaths. The sand, starting to cool now, sluiced between her toes as she found her rhythm. She was a runner. Throughout the course of the afternoon she’d had five or six drinks. Not that much considering she’d eaten, but too much for her. She’d always been a lightweight, a cheap date.
The water lapping against the beach seemed to be calling her name and she turned toward it. She ran at the very edge of the surf, feet splashing through the water as it rolled up onto the beach. Cold water, cool breeze, gentle waves, almost paradise.
She passed the enclosed Olympic pool on her right and was closing on the Belmont Pier when she stopped to catch her breath and do a few stretching exercises. Here, with the pool complex blocking off the cars on Ocean Avenue on one side and the Pacific on the other, she could imagine she was alone on a Caribbean island, but a horn honk in the distance reminded her she was pretending. She sighed. She couldn’t escape the city any more than she could escape her own depression.
“Damn him,” she muttered. “He’s with that redhead.” She bent down, legs straight, grabbed onto her toes. She held the position, the back of her legs burning. “How could he?” She bent lower, feeling the burn. She straightened up, sucked in a deep breath. All of a sudden, she was angry. Mad at Nick. And he hadn’t done anything. Not really. She was the one who’d strayed. The one who got pregnant. No good blaming him. But where was he? Where had he been tonight?
She bent to the ground again, finished her stretches. She saw two lights far out at sea, green and white, a sailboat on a starboard tack. It had been four years since she’d been on a sailboat, the last time she’d seen her father alive. They’d let her mother’s ashes fly in the wind. Two days later he was dead by his own hand. He just couldn’t live without her.
“Oh, Dad, we could’ve worked through it.”
She’d been too depressed to spread his ashes. Instead she left the job to his brothers. She was depressed now, like she’d been then and it was taking her down. She raised her eyes to the stars. “Oh, God, I want to keep this baby.”
But she knew she couldn’t and it made her heart ache.
She sighed.
Metal against metal clanged up ahead. A city truck was parked at the end of the pier. They were locking the gate, keeping the Belmont Pier safe from the homeless who might spend the night out there. She used to fish the pier with her dad till all hours of the night when she was in high school. Now no children fished with their fathers at night. The pier was locked off. The fish, like the pier, safe till morning.
She sucked in a lungful of air, one more deep bend, knees straight. She dug her palms into the sand. Her legs screamed. She exhaled and eased out of the bend. A chill rippled through her, she felt herself being watched, she stood still, an elk exposed, looking for the wolf. Slowly, she moved her eyes around the night, then bit back a gasp as something moved under the pier. There was someone there. She’d been right, somebody was watching her.
She grabbed another quick breath, then sprinted back the way she’d come, legs pumping, determined to run till exhaustion pushed all thought from her mind.
Ripples curdled up Horace’s spine as he stood on the beach and watched the woman run toward the pier. Something sinister churned his stomach. To do a woman whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seemed a sin, evil.
But she’d seen his face and maybe Striker’s too, certainly his car. That’s what really worried the man and there was nothing Horace could do about that. Striker called the tune, paid the bills. Horace held a hand out in front of himself. Not so steady.
Any minute Virgil would be back with the van and he’d have to make a decision. He was supposed to kill the woman, make it look like an accident. It was going to be hard enough doing her. Horace fought the vomit that threatened when he thought about it. How in the world he could do it with Virgil around was anybody’s guess.
“Stupid,” he muttered. No way should he have his brother with him, but Ma had insisted. She thought he was a process server. Maybe if she knew what he really was, she’d have kept her darling at home. But she didn’t and she didn’t. Virgil needed to spend time with his brother, she’d said. He needed to know what it was like to work for a living. The man was thirty-nine years old for fuck’s sake and now she wants him to see what it’s like to have a job.
He closed his eyes. A cricket chirped in the distance. It reminded him of Yuma, where he’d grown up. He used to make up games with big brother Virgil outside in the dry desert air. Make something up, that’s it. An idea started to take shape.
He opened his eyes, looked around, felt the night. The gay bar across the street was quiet. Every now and then cars came by, but their occupants wouldn’t be looking out to the beach, not at this time of night, and they’d most likely have their radios on.
Tires screeched around a corner.
Horace turned toward the sound. Damn, Virgil had the brights on. Was he trying to wake up every cop in Long Beach? The breeze picked up, tickling the back of his neck. The blue-grey light of a television flickered in the house next to the bar. The porch light came on as Virgil pulled up to the curb.
“The fuck’s the matter with you?” Horace said when he got in the van.
“You said you were in a hurry.”