When Jesus was on the phone she said, “I left there. I’m not going back.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at your place, but I’m leaving here, too.”
“Did Roland come?”
“Did he come-he was gonna take my clothes off again and I ran out. I’m not going back.”
“Calm yourself,” Jesus said. “I can’t hear you very well, this TV playing.”
“I’m not going back there,” Marta said.
“You have to be in the house,” Jesus said. “You understand you have to be there.”
“What is it to me,” Marta said, “or you? It’s none of our business. What do we get out of it?”
“Listen, stay there,” Jesus said. “I’ll come soon as I can, and we’ll talk about it. All right?”
“I’m gonna have to go get her,” Jesus said to Maguire.
“Did he pick up the tape?”
“Yeah, but he tried something, so she ran out and went to my place. She’ll be all right.”
“You sure?”
“If I take Vivian’s car”-looking at Vivian on the bed with the newspaper on her lap, watching them-“I can go get Marta, talk to her first. See, then bring her to the house and meet you there. Take maybe an hour, a little more.”
“Did she put the gun in her room?”
“I didn’t ask her, but I know she did.”
Maguire didn’t like it. He said, “Call Marta back. Have her come here.”
“She won’t. I have to talk to her first. Then everything be all right.”
“You can’t drive up to the house in Vivian’s car.”
“No, we leave it at my place, take Marta’s. Roland comes, sees Marta’s car, he thinks oh, she’s back. Good.”
Maguire said to Vivian, “Is it okay with you?”
“What do I have to say about it? Nothing,” Vivian said. “All I want to know is he’s dead.”
“All right,” Maguire said to Jesus. “But you got to get back by nine-thirty quarter to ten, the latest.”
“Easy,” Jesus said. “Don’t worry.”
MAGUIRE’S PLAN WAS COMING APART.
An hour ago it had seemed close to foolproof. Drop in on Karen, sit around till about ten. Say he was tired or didn’t feel good and leave. Park up by the beach and walk back. Marta lets him in the side door. He and Jesus wait in Marta’s room for Roland to come. Let him enter the house. Say hi, how you doing? Marta screams (optional). Hit him.
But Marta was in Coral Gables, and Jesus had to talk to her and get her back.
And Karen wasn’t home. The house was dark, the three-car garage empty.
He could say to himself, No, it’s going to work. Don’t worry. Keep your eyes open. You see it’s not going to work or too chancy, bail out. You don’t have to be here.
But reassurances didn’t relieve the bad feeling, the doubt beginning to nag him.
Maguire drove the Mercedes into the garage, closed the door from the outside and walked around the house, past the empty patio to the French doors.
There was some definition to the shapes in the darkness: the hedges, the pool, the umbrella table, the yard misty in a pale wash of moonlight. There were specks of moving light on the Intercoastal, the deep darkness beyond the yard. There was the sound of crickets. And now Gretchen barking, inside the house. There was no reason to be as quiet as he might be. Maguire pulled the sleeve of his jacket down over his hand, held it in his fist, punched through the pane of glass next to the door latch and he was inside, Gretchen running up to him, barking.
Moving through the sitting room, his hand feeling the crown of the Louis XVI chair, he told Gretchen to be nice and wondered: If Karen knew she was coming home after dark, why didn’t she leave a light on?
Because Marta must’ve still been home.
Then why didn’t Marta tell them Karen had gone out? If she did, why didn’t Jesus mention it?
Because they had no practice in this kind of thing, that’s why, Maguire thought. And you better get your ass out of here.
But he moved from the front hall to the back hall to Marta’s room, pulled down the shades and turned on a lamp. Okay, Jesus had said yes, he knew Marta had gotten the gun from upstairs. But where would she hide it.
Roland said to Lionel, “Look, I ain’t gonna argue with you. Go on get drunk, sleep on the beach, I don’t give a shit where, and pick up the boat in the morning. Now hand the suitcase here and push me off, goddamn it.” Man, to get through to some people.
The eighteen-footer rumbled away from the dock behind the thin beam of its spotlight, passing the fantails of the motorcruisers and sailers tied up in their slips, heading out into the channel now, Roland keeping the revs low, bearing to starboard as he pictured the map of the Intercoastal, this little section of it. Finding his way through canals and watercourses, natural or manmade, wasn’t anything new. Across the Harborage and where it opened up at the river-hearing a cruiser honking at the drawbridge down there-head for the second point of land and the house sitting there. He figured about a five-minute ride. There were support stanchions along the seawall; he’d tie up to one of them. In the meantime-wedging a hip against the wheel and zipping open the canvas suitcase-he’d get his twelve-gauge put together.
It took Maguire nearly ten minutes of looking through every drawer, the closet, and the bed to convince himself the gun, the one Jesus knew was in the room, wasn’t.
Andre Patterson would look at him and shake his head, Man, the people you associate with. Say to Andre, But look. What do they have to do? Practically nothing. Andre would say, That’s exactly what they doing. Nothing. Where they at?
They’ll be here.
In the meantime, run upstairs and get the gun. Before Karen comes home. Wherever Karen went.
Maguire turned off the lamp, felt his way out to the front hall and moved up the stairway. Gretchen had gone off somewhere.
When Roland saw the house dark it made him wonder for a moment. How come? Then accepted it as he crossed the yard toward the house. They went to get Vivian, that’s why. Both of them.
But at the French doors, about to put the rubber-padded butt of the shotgun through the glass, seeing it busted already, he said, No, they didn’t.
Somebody was home, and he bet he knew who it was, too. Somebody besides little Gretchen panting, trying to climb his leg. Roland sat down in the Louis XVI chair to pull off his cowboy boots, whispering, “You like to smell my feet, do you, huh? Come on up here you little thing. I don’t like to do this, Gretchie, no I don’t, but I got to.” He put his hand over Gretchen’s muzzle, clamping it over her nose and mouth and held the squirming furry body until it shuddered and became limp.
Roland went through the hall to the living room, looked in, came back past the stairway and paused. Was that a sound up there? Like a drawer being shut? Roland went through the back hall to Marta’s room-no Cubans hiding under the bed-came out and turned into the kitchen. There was a soft orange glow on the telephone to show where it hung on the wall. Roland got an idea. He’d memorized Frank DiCilia’s private number once. Now, if he could remember it-
Maguire closed the top drawer. He opened, looked through and closed every drawer in the dresser. He looked in the drawers of the two nightstand tables. He looked under the pillows and the mattress. Shit. Andre Patterson would say, Get your ass out, boy.