What she was counting on was that he would then turn in the wrong direction, to the right, toward Del Mar and the old coast highway, the obvious avenue of escape.
By then Katia would be standing in front of one of the other houses up the hill, using that address to call a taxi on Emerson’s cell phone. Before he could sort it out, she would be in San Diego, and he would be looking in all the wrong places, trying to find her.
It registered immediately. Emerson didn’t have to pick up the wallet and look. He knew. The way it lay limp, pitched up like a collapsed tent; the cash that had fattened his wallet that afternoon was gone.
He didn’t bother to put on his slippers. Instead he ran barefoot out of the room, down the hall toward the study.
“Katia! Katia!” There was an ugly, angry edge to his voice. There was nothing paternal in it. Emerson was mad, mostly at himself for being so stupid. He should have locked her up, and now he knew it. He slammed through the door into the guest room next to the master bedroom. This was the place Katia used to get ready at night, but the lights were out, the room was empty.
He rocketed back out into the hallway. He raced down the corridor toward the study and the stairs in the direction of the front door. He called out her name, glanced into the study as he ran by the first door. He didn’t see her, but something else, out of the corner of one eye, a shadow moving quickly toward the other door, near the head of the stairs. Instantly it dawned on him. Katia would need more than the cash in his wallet to get back to Costa Rica.
In less than two strides, he slowed to a walk and then came to an abrupt stop, planting himself between the stairwell and the study. The confident, thin smile spread across Emerson’s face. He took a deep breath, regained some composure, drew the bathrobe around himself, retying it with the belt, and walked calmly into the study. “Where’s the money from my wallet?”
The last syllable had barely rattled from his larynx as the mind-numbing agony fired the cells of Emerson’s brain. The needle-sharp point of the chef’s knife penetrated half of its length, into Emerson’s left kidney. With a quick twist the blade sliced the organ open, paralyzing him in a paroxysm of pain. An arm came around at the level of his throat, too tall for Katia. But by then his brain was filled with other things.
The shock enflamed every nerve in his body. The involuntary contraction of his own muscles arched his back as he heard the sound of his own snapped vertebrae. More excruciating than any pain the human brain could imagine, it made it impossible for Emerson Pike to suck in a thimbleful of air, enough to emit even a single sound. It seemed to last forever. He stood suspended in that place where the tortured mind pleads for death. Relief from the agony came only as the darkening empty void of death rolled over and enveloped him.
SEVEN
Sometimes it’s how you back into things in life that is most unsettling. It was how I met her, over the bananas in the produce section of a small market on the main drag up in Del Mar, not far from the racetrack. It was a Saturday morning and I was headed to the races to hook up with some friends. A cup of coffee in one hand and a bag with a muffin trapped under my arm, I was busy trying to separate a single banana from three others when she caught me in the act.
“Could you help me, seńor? Por favor? She stood there looking at me, maybe five foot six in heels, shimmering dark hair past her shoulders, dimples, and a smile that could start a war.
“Ahhh…” She looked down for a moment, collecting her thoughts, translating in her head. “Do you know…umm…do they have plantains? You know plantains?”
I must have given her a kind of dull look. It wasn’t because I didn’t understand the question.
“Plantains.” The way she emphasized the word with the fingers of each hand at the corners of her mouth, full lips, a dark-eyed beauty, visions of Catherine Zeta-Jones descending from the big screen to haggle with me over bunches of bananas. She could read the stupidity of it all in my face, and she laughed.
“Ahh. I don’t know.”
I wasn’t sure if I had a clue as to what a plantain was, but if I could have invented one in that moment I would have done it.
She had that shiny, well-scrubbed look, the girl you dreamed about when you were twenty, the one you didn’t even try and date because you knew it was all a vaporous wet dream. The only place you could truly hold her was in your delusions. She would vanish the moment you touched her, tapped to go to Hollywood or hustled off on a modeling contract somewhere. Why bother to break your own heart?
She picked up one of the bananas and held it up. “Similar but larger.” She spread her hands about eighteen inches apart.
Habla espańol?
Un poco. Only enough to get in trouble,” I told her.
She laughed. There was something magical in it. I sensed by the way she smiled and instantly sized me up that it was not the first time she had seen this kind of confusion from men. It was in the air, surrounding her, atoms of volatile ether. It should have been a warning. To her, it was nothing unique, just part of nature, another fly in the trap.
“I need plantains to practice some recipes for a dinner party in two weeks. I am cooking for friends,” she said.
“Am I invited?”
She looked at me, a kind of twinkle in her eyes. “Nooo. Well, maybe. But only if you can help me find plantains.”
We talked about what she was cooking.
She called it a typical Costa Rican dinner. She asked me if I understood, but I didn’t.
“You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any of those-plantains-here in such a small market. You might find them in one of the larger grocery stores in San Diego.”
“Oh, no, es too far.” Her face fell but only for an instant, a momentary and put-on pout, until her facile mind seized on another thought. She sniffed a little toward the large paper cup in my hand. “Café? Umm, smells good. What is your name?”
“Paul. Paul Madriani.”
“Ah, very nice name. Madriani.” The d and the r tripped off her Latin tongue with a musical quality I had not heard in a while. “Italiano, no?”
“Sí. And this Italian is about to have breakfast.” I held up the banana and grabbed the bag from under my arm. “Would you like to join me?”
She looked over her shoulder, toward the door. “My friend is doing business at an office down the street. He will be a while. And your coffee smells very good. I suppose it would be okay.”
“If you’re sure he won’t mind.” Looking at her, I was suddenly getting visions of a jealous guy holding a loaded pistol to my face.
“Who cares?” She gave me a kind of indifferent smile and grabbed a banana.
Breakfast it was. She picked out a muffin and we headed for the checkout. Outside at the kiosk, I bought her coffee and we planted ourselves at one of the umbrella-shaded tables.
“You know es difficult to find good coffee here. My friend. Sometimes I think he is loco. He has only instant coffee in his house. Es poison.” The seriousness with which she said this made me laugh.
“Es true. I tell him. No good. He has casa grande, a big house, and a cook. Mexican.” She glanced over and rolled her eyes a little. “And instant coffee. I tol him it’s going to make me sick. I ask the cook about plantains. She looked at me like I’m crazy. She says ‘bananas on steroids.’ She will not cook them. Doesn’t know how, she says. Very stubborn woman. I doan think she likes me.”