He sucked on his cigar. A cloud of the stinking stuff rose into the moonlight above his head. “What do you want me to say, Miranda? Sorry your old man couldn’t take it.”
“Put your fucking hands on your head.”
He did it, his cigar clamped between his fingers.
“Kneel.”
He didn’t do it. “You were always tougher than him, angel,” he said. “Is this what you did for eight years? Look for me? Get all wet thinking about how you were going to fix me? Think about me every night before bed?”
“That’s right, Jack. I’m a good hater. I don’t let go of things.” The gun tugged at me. The gun wanted to have its say. But first, I’d have mine. I’d waited a long time for this.
“I know what you can’t let go of,” he said. But he looked awfully stupid saying it with his hands on his head.
“The million you stole? The kid I never had? Somebody’s gotta pay for all that. Someone who looks a lot like you.” I didn’t know the last time I’d felt so good. My sails unfurling in the moonlight.
“Did you tell Benjie here about us?”
“There was no us.” I could feel Ben next to me, alert as a hunting dog. “You sick son of a bitch.”
“See, Ben, Gil wasn’t much in the sack—”
“Shut up, Jack.”
“And the lady here was so lonely. Bored. Too much juice for a weakling like Gil. But we were a match, weren’t we, dar-lin’? We set that bed on fire.”
That round bed. Wearing Sarita’s black lace stockings. I’d never had a man like Jack before. A real match.
“You fucked him?” Ben whispered.
“And poor old Gil found out.” He snorted. That smirk.
I raised the barrel of the gun in both hands, closed one eye, lined up the sights. “And you didn’t feel anything. Not one moment of regret.”
“Can’t say that I did, darlin’. It’s what I do.”
“Let me ask you one question,” I said, pulling off the safety. “Answer correctly, I might let you live. Tell me, what’s it all for? You could have made that company work. You could actually build Sunrise. All this scamming and fucking people over, people who love you, who trust you. Just tell me why. Is it just money?”
Alan took one hand off his head to puff on the cigar. He grinned. “The money’s the sideshow, darlin’,” he said. “It’s the winning. Every time I take some simpleton like Ben here, or put one over on the city fathers, those Tennis Club assholes — I win. Even if I die, I win. That’s why you’re always going to be a loser, Miranda, even if you shoot me and leave me to the crows. You’re a great fuck, but you don’t have the brains to come in out of the rain. Eight years, and all you could do with your life was think about me.”
I must have been squeezing the trigger harder than I thought — the blast caught him in the chest. It shoved him backward into the Porsche. Ben shouted, “Jesus!” as the sound bounced off the rocks all around us. Dark blood gurgled out of Jack’s mouth, bubbled out and rolled down his chin, staining his shirt.
The second shot dropped him to his knees. He fell onto his side, clutching his chest, his boots dog-kicking in the sand.
I stood over him, watching his blood, black in the moonlight. “Who’s the loser now, darlin’?”
I’d shoot him again, but at this range I’d have blood all over me.
Ben just stood there, his hands over his mouth. Then he turned and staggered away, threw up all those expensive Scotches.
I pocketed Jack’s cell phone, pried his wallet out. Credit cards, driver’s license, receipts, library card — shit, Danika’d have to return his books — business cards, including one for a lawyer in Phoenix. A fat wad of cash. He’d always liked cash. I took a single bill from it — a twenty — wiped the leather on my shirttail, and put the wallet back into his hip pocket. “You done barfing?” I said to Ben.
I folded back the blanket covering my car, rolled it, stuck it in the trunk, took out a package of Clorox wipes and cleaned my hands, wiped the gun. I’d toss it and the phone into a storm drain on the way to Ben’s car.
“And we just... leave him there?” The smell of Scotch and barf clung to him.
“He had plenty of enemies. They’ll never prove who did it... You coming or you want to walk?”
He looked wild as he climbed in next to me. “But I was the last one seen with him.”
Yeah, things get real, Ben. “Just play it cool, and remember — Sunrise is going to get built. Someone settled a score with Alan, but Sunrise is going to happen.”
He was shaking but I knew I could count on him to keep quiet. If he told the cops he’d have to admit he was the one who lured the man out there. Accessory before the fact. But I didn’t like the way he kept saying, “I can’t believe you did it. How can you be so calm?”
I was more than calm. I was redeemed. I felt like I’d been driving up and down the block all these years, looking for a certain address, and someone had finally pointed to the house. My key had fit. I was home. I won, you son of a bitch.
I dumped the gun and the phone. Ben’s teeth were chattering. “You did great,” I said, talking him down. “You’re free of him.” He nodded, swallowing. “We’ll get through the week, and then you’re going to build Sunrise.”
In a few minutes we were pulling up to the parking garage. Nobody around. Palm Springs, despite its legend, rolls up the sidewalks at ten.
“Miranda.” He crushed me to him, burying his face in my hair. “Let me come home with you.”
“Not tonight. You’ve got to go home and act like you’ve been there the whole time. Get some sleep. Be ready to talk to cops tomorrow. I’ll call you in a few days.”
He was suddenly on fire. “Fuck me, Miranda. I need you.”
Why not? We crawled into the backseat and did it there like two teenagers.
By the third day, it was all over the news. Millionaire developer Alan Thompson found dead on the site of his latest development. Two bullet wounds. Motive unclear. A stunned-looking Ben in wrinkled linen and a borsalino. It was fine, he should look stunned. An innocent man, his partner gunned down.
I went to work as usual. The dog people in Old Las Palmas called. El profesor liked our layout. I presented the bid, broken down into labor and materials. But as I was driving back from Cathedral City, I got a call from Shirley. “Doll. It’s bad. Don’t come home. You got cops running all over the place. They’re interviewing the neighbors. Showed me a picture of that guy Thompson. Asked if I knew you. Me, I don’t know nobody — not my own mother.”
Ben had panicked. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. Fucking Ben. What did Jack say? Trust nobody never. But that’s a hard life.
I met Shirley at the Ralph Lauren in the Cabazon outlet mall. Parked the Audi on the blank side of the mall. “They tore the hell out of your place,” Shirley said under her breath, going through the clothes on the sale rack.
“How’s Mr. Frenchy?”
She took out a silk blouse, turquoise, held it up to me. “This is nice.” Then under her breath: “Eleanor’s got him. But you better think of someone to go visit. Who do you know out of town?”
“How far out of town?”
“Mexico?”
Fucking Ben. Just when I thought I didn’t have anything else to lose, turns out I’d had a life. Her, the bird. My place. Gone. It was my hand in the rice trap, after all.
Luckily you didn’t need a passport to get into Mexico, only to come back. And what was the likelihood of that?
Shirley found an ATM and took out a sheaf of bills, slipped them into my hand. “Here. I owed it to Lottie but she never collected.”