Alice pursed her lips, just slightly.
“You were?” Bennie had had no idea. She took another step. Six feet now. Almost close enough.
“We kept in touch the past two years. On the phone, we talked. He wasn’t ill, not that he said.”
But Alice fell suddenly silent when a rustling came from the other side of the blue tarp that hung behind Bennie.
Somebody was pulling the tarp aside.
36
Georges St. Amien stood in front of the tarp, pointing a black handgun at Bennie. Her heart froze in fear. So she had been right. He was Robert’s killer. And now he was after her.
“Welcome to my hospital, Bennie,” Georges said calmly. His gaze shifted from Bennie to Alice and back again. “I was back making my rounds when the ambulance brought your friend in.” He managed a civilized smile and reaimed his gun at Alice. “So you do have a twin, eh? I read this in the papers.”
“Who the fuck is this joker?” Alice spat out, and pointed her gun at Georges.
“He’s my client’s brother. His name is Georges. Say hi, Sis.” Bennie defaulted to stalling, and she wanted the truth. She had realized Georges was the killer during her conversation with Carrier and Murphy, when she’d watched them bicker. They had reminded her of sisters, and Bennie had thought of the depth of rage that sibling rivalry could breed. And Bennie had made the connection to Robert’s “wacky” brother, Georges. Even the cops always said look to the nearest and dearest. But Bennie needed to hear it from Georges. “You killed Robert, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did,” Georges answered. His blue eyes had gone hard as ice. “He calls and says he isn’t coming to dinner that night and I know the restaurant, so I go there. He sits in the window, and I follow him when he leaves, walking home. I take him when he goes past the alley.”
My God. Bennie could even hear pride in his confession. But she needed time to think. To save herself. “Your cast came off?”
“Of course. I made it myself, with a slit in the back that no one sees. Micheline is out that night with friends. I get back before anyone knows anything, home to my chair and my study.”
“But why?” Bennie asked, but she was sizing up the situation. Alice was aiming her gun at Georges. Georges was aiming his gun at Alice. She could duck and let them shoot each other, but that only happened in movies. “Robert was your brother.”
“Ha! Robert ruins my life. He makes me a nothing, a cipher. He turns me into the unsuccessful one, the useless one.”
“But why now, Georges? It makes no sense.” It sounded so much like Alice, but Bennie doubted her twin would make the connection, especially at the end of a gun. With all this firepower, there was no time for family therapy.
“Because of the Belgian banker. I know the police are already thinking it is because he was a foreigner, and I say, this is my time. So I pretend I have the riding accident, put on the cast, and wait for the opportunity. Then Robert, he cancels our dinner that night, for business.” Georges snorted. “Gustave doesn’t throw me, not in a million years.”
Keep him talking. “But what did you gain by killing him? Revenge?”
“Not only.” Georges brightened behind his gun. “Money, lots of money, because now I ‘ave my family business back. Now I will own and run St. Amien amp; Fils, and now I will share in the money from the lawsuit. It is my business, by rights!”
“But Julien-”
“He will not stay with it. Everyone but Robert sees this. I cannot do this with Robert alive, so he has to go. He makes his own bed.” Georges’s eyes went cold again. “But, I think I will need a new lawyer, eh? You have to go too, Bennie. C’est dommage.”
“Why kill me?” Bennie asked. She tried not to panic. The two-by-four lay less than five feet away. Almost close enough to her right hand. She kept her eye on Georges. “I don’t have anything to do with it.”
“Because I know you are onto me, my dear. You tell me you don’t believe the police theory. You are talking with Julien, secretly, outside my building. When I ask you about it on the phone today, you lie. You say it is business, and I know it is not. Julien doesn’t get upset about business. He doesn’t care enough.” Georges’s eyes narrowed over the gun. “Does he suspect me also? Is that what you two were discussing?”
Bennie’s heart sank. She was going to die because she was a lousy liar. It didn’t seem fair. “Georges, put the gun down. You can’t get away with this. There’s no reason to do this.”
Alice laughed abruptly. “I don’t think you’re gonna talk him out of it, girl.” She raised her gun and aimed it dead-on at Georges’s forehead. “And right now, I got this clown in my sight.”
“Ha!” Georges raised his gun, pointing it at Alice’s forehead. “And I you, madame.”
“Everybody stay calm,” Bennie said. She edged toward the board. Four feet away. No time left. She was about to lunge for it when suddenly she saw a murderous flickering in Georges’s eyes. He was going to shoot Alice. A voice told Bennie what to do. She knew that voice. She recognized that voice.
“No!” Bennie dove in front of Alice as both guns exploded into fire and earsplitting sound. Smoke filled Bennie’s nostrils. Georges’s shoulder erupted in blood. He collapsed to his knees, his gun clattering to the concrete.
Bennie found herself in her twin’s arms. She blinked once, then twice. There wasn’t a mark on Alice. Georges must have missed. Thank God.
Then Bennie felt herself slipping from Alice’s grasp. The room began to whirl. Her stomach turned over. The only sound was a hideous gasping. It took her a moment to understand why. Pain stabbed through her back like a hot steel spike. She couldn’t breathe. “Huh huh huh,” went the gasping. It was her. She fell to the concrete, her head slamming against the floor at Alice’s feet.
Bennie gasped for air. Her chest seared with pain. She struggled to function. She looked up at Alice, her eyes welling with tears. She tried to speak but she choked on her own blood, bubbling hot in her mouth.
Help me help me why aren’t you helping?
Alice aimed the gun down, hot smoke curling from its barrel. She cocked the gun and took aim. “Why did you save me, you idiot?” she asked, standing over her twin.
Bennie tried to scream. Blood sputtered from her mouth, falling back on her face like a warm spring shower.
Don’t kill me don’t kill me don’t kill me don’t
And then the world went dark.
37
But it wasn’t dark, in the dream. In the dream it was light and sunny. Not the rumored white light of heaven, nor the sunniness of a clear sky, but the incandescent amber glow of a small lamp bought long ago at Woolworth’s and set on a bedside table. Its paper shade had yellowed, its tiny flowers faded to the thinness of a butterfly’s wing, their colors impossible to discern. The shade rested askew on its base of cheap yellow glass, shaped like an oversized tulip bulb, fluted at the top but too coarse to be pretty. A thick brown wire that ran from the back of the base, still bearing its round “UL Approved!” tag, stamped in authoritative black ink onto soft, thick paper.
Bennie remembered the lamp, recognized the lamp, it was one that had sat on her mother’s nightstand, atop a cotton doily crocheted by hand. By her mother’s hand, from when she had been well. A time Bennie could never recall in her waking moments, but which came back to her in the dream with a clarity remarkable in its detail.
The lamp rested always next to an empty perfume bottle of lead crystal, not Waterford but a quality her mother could have afforded so long ago, when she was well enough to place it, even empty, on her nightstand, in a storybook understanding of the way rich ladies lived. It was a naive fantasy her mother had, of privileged women who owned lovely items like French perfume bottles and other luxurious things, strands of lustrous pearls and gold bangles and long-handled brushes of sterling silver, engraved with monograms in incomprehensible swirls. It was Hollywood’s version of wealthy women that stayed with her mother, and she would envision these lovely women who sat at vanities before bedtime, brushing their long hair until it shone-one hundred strokes, she always said, and no cheating.