Know Me From Smoke, page 17
“I am a prosecutor, a deputy prosecutor.”
“And you keep us safe?”
“Nobody can keep you safe, Stella. I think you know that.”
Ooh, Stella said to herself. This boy had a little nerve in his voice, something cold. Okay, maybe he’s harder than he comes across. She decided she liked Jensen. “I wasn’t polite to you on the phone. You know, when you called me.”
“I didn’t expect you to be. It must have been a shock.”
“Still is,” Stella said.
“I understand why.” He grunted and took another dainty sip. “I came by to check in on you, Stella. And to give you an update. It may be another shock, that's why I felt I had to come in person.”
Stella straightened her lips at him, gave a mothering face to this young lawyer across from her. A guy, she could tell, who fancied himself a do-gooder. Good and evil. How was it that good—if it had to—could do evil? And evil was always trying to get its rocks off, always trying to inject its poison into whatever it could. You think it’s straight and easy to separate the two, but Stella knew that wasn’t the truth. That difference between good and evil was murky, like dark water in a rising river—it was hard to see through it.
Jensen shook his head, looked at her with honest eyes. “Look, we got something from the DNA. A match. He's an ex-con, that's why he's in the system.”
“An ex-con?”
“He was released recently on a legal technicality. There was a state supreme court decision. It's complicated, but he was let out—with lots of other cons—because of a civil rights violation during trial.”
Stella could not believe her fucking ears. Her cheeks pinched in around her mouth. A lump of rage grew in her throat. It burned like wildfire. “I’m sorry. You are going to have say that again. I have to hear it twice to believe it.” Her breath came fast, rapid as a drum beat. She gulped and gripped her knees as tight as her fingers allowed.
“You heard it right the first time.”
“You mean you had him, he was in prison, and you let him go?”
“I’m not supposed to say this: A judge signed an arrest warrant this morning. We’re out looking for the guy—I promise you that. I'm not thrilled about the court’s decision, as you might imagine. There’s lots of people who aren’t thrilled about it.”
“I’m glad somebody’s on my side.”
“The police are after him now. That’s what I’m saying, what I’m trying to say.”
“Where is this murderer?” Stella wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she knew it was something she had to ask. And what if he lived next door to her? Could they do anything about that? She doubted the man lived near her, but what if he did? What then? Bite her tongue and pray?
Jensen took a deep breath and said, “He’s around town. In fact, we know he’s staying in the mid-city area.”
“Say that again, DA man.”
“He’s living around here.”
Stella laughed. It was a laugh that came from a hollow place inside her—that empty place—and she was aware it might scare Jensen, but let him be scared. “Same neighborhood,” Stella said. “Like it never happened.”
“I’m telling you, Stella, PD is all over this. I believe they'll have the man in custody very soon.”
“Who is it?”
Jensen clammed up. He placed both feet on the floor and set his drink on the coffee table. “Like I said, I can’t tell you—”
“Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. You can’t keep the guy who killed my husband in prison. You can’t keep him off the streets. You can’t even keep him out of my neighborhood. Now, you want—”
“Stella, I—”
“Can’t?”
Jensen shook his head. He was uncomfortable. Stella could tell from how his stomach tightened inward and how he ran a hand through his hair and scratched his chin.
Stella said, “You’re just coming to check in on me, huh?” Her voice had that sarcastic bite to it, a jagged edge she knew got to men. All men. It didn’t matter how tough or jaded they were…that edge bit into them.
Jensen closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, he said, “I can't tell you anything else. Not until we have this guy in custody. There's an address on file for him. The police are probably pulling up outside his home as we speak.”
Stella nodded. She started to rock in her spot on the couch. A thought began to form in her mind, a deep and dark suspicion. She tried to push it away, to bury it, but it kept surfacing. It was like discarded wreckage breaking the surface of a thick black lake. No, Stella told herself, I don’t want to see that wreckage, that stuff below the surface. Instead, she said, “As we speak, huh?”
Jensen started to reply, but before he could respond, the lock turned in the front door. Slowly, with a drawn-out creak, the door opened and swung into the apartment. When Royal walked in, Jensen stood, met Stella’s eyes with a surprised look. He cleared his throat, moved around the couch, and pointed one finger at Royal like it was the barrel of a gun. “You.” He looked again at Stella, back to Royal, realization sinking in. “You twisted fuck,” Jensen said. “I swear, I can’t believe you’d do this. I can’t believe you’d have the guts to—”
Royal looked from Jensen to Stella.
The ex-con’s jaw moved as if he was about to say something, but he didn’t.
Instead, he turned and ran.
Chapter 35
Down the stairs two at a time.
Across the walk beneath the papaya trees and the reaching thorns of rose bushes in full bloom. Into the street as a motorcycle swerved to miss.
Onto the far sidewalk at a full sprint.
Royal’s cheeks bounced as he ran away from Stella Radney and the man who knew who the fuck Royal was—a law man if he’d ever seen one. DA, maybe. Or another detective. But he knew. He knew exactly who Royal was and what he'd done. Royal didn't know how but there was no doubt in his mind, that was for damn sure. So, Stella will know, Royal realized. That man knew who I was before I even spoke. My face and my case have been across the man’s desk and I’m in his sights. And now Stella will know.
He reached an intersection, crossed without looking at the traffic racing both ways, and reached the Datsun parked a few blocks from Stella’s—so stupid, Royal trying to make sure Slim Fat Frank and Skinny Slade didn’t know who Stella was, or who she was to him. And yet, he didn’t admit that Stella would find out somehow. Did he think he could hide it forever? No, that wasn’t it. Royal thought they’d fall in love, and that it wouldn’t matter. Not if it was real—love, that is. He wanted to believe love was real, that it wasn’t some word people threw around like God or justice or freedom. He wanted to be Junior, not Royal. He fell into the Datsun’s driver’s seat and inserted the key. He sat there for a moment, decided not to start the car.
What the hell was he going to do?
Think it through: What could they actually have on him? After twenty years, all that time when he was locked up right under their noses. They could have come and got him whenever they wanted. Did he make a mistake? But no, the look on the man's face. That sense of offended decency. Was there something else to bring that look of shock? Maybe Royal wasn't the best person to know. Was it wrong for him to be with Stella—in any sense—because he'd killed one woman in a robbery and Stella's husband had been killed during a robbery? Nope. And if it was wrong, that still didn’t mean it was illegal. There was a difference between wrong and illegal. Yes, there was an overlap there, a blurring of lines, but wrong and illegal weren’t always the same thing in this life. They couldn’t take him to jail on that sort of transgression. That was the law’s downfall: All the rules they had to follow. Crooks don’t have to follow rules, a code, nothing. And the likes of Slim Fat Frank, whatever his feelings and rage, would follow the law. Royal saw that in the detective’s eyes, heard it in his voice, and sensed it in the way he moved and breathed. Slim Fat Frank was good, and Royal was bad.
And wasn't that true?
I tried, Royal thought. I tried to play it all straight, but Phoenix found a way to take me to the wrong side, into the deep. He thought for a second of Phoenix collapsing onto the woman in the lounge office. He told himself to forget that: Blame Phoenix if you want, but now the man is dead as a donut.
Royal watched the traffic whir past a block from the Datsun. He began to think about Stella, about that first night he saw her. When he pressed his finger to the scar on her hip, touched that embedded .45 caliber slug. He thought about her firm body beneath his hands, the writhing strength of her torso, her thighs. He thought about the way she smelled, part vanilla and bourbon and some floral notes for flavor. He conjured her voice in his head, that effortless, throaty drawl with which she sang her love songs. Oh, dammit. Stella, I didn’t want to hurt you, didn’t want you to know about me, the real me. And he thought back to the actual first time he saw her, when he pointed a .45 at her and pulled the trigger. Odd how that bullet connected them. It pulled Stella right along with it for twenty years and swung her back to Royal.
Serious momentum, Royal thought.
One bullet. Two lives. Twenty years. And now this.
Royal pulled the key from the ignition.
Where am I going to go? I have nowhere, nobody. And now I’ve lost the woman I love, the one who loved me—she admitted it, and she wanted it. I lost that and it’s gone. My God, Royal thought, I killed to get that woman and I did twenty years in the joint for her. All that time was so I could return to Stella. I can’t let that get away. I have to talk to her, try to explain things.
Still, the bullet holes in Phoenix’s back kept coming into Royal’s head. The blood flecked across his shirt. The smell of death in that office. And, beyond these images, another image came to him: The duffel bag full of money.
In Stella’s apartment—she had the money.
Okay, he thought. Forget the woman. Forget Stella. Forget her voice and her touch and those prying hands. Forget love because it’s not real. It’s a made up word like those other ones. I need the money. That’s my money. It’s all mine. And if she wants to share it with me together—that’s what I want. But if not…
It’s mine. It can’t be anybody else’s. I killed for that duffel bag.
I kill for something or someone, Royal thought, and it’s mine.
He twirled the keys in his hand, thought about what he should do. Royal wanted Stella back, but he also wanted the money in his hands. And his chest tightened with the thought that he’d lose it, with the thought that he might end up—some way or another—back in prison. No, he wasn’t going back. He’d been there once, and that was far too much. Too long. Murder be damned. No more living from inside a cage.
I can’t make it without that money, Royal thought. Not a chance without it. Stella can come with me if she wants, but it’s mine and I want it. He took a deep breath and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. What he saw surprised him:
For the second time in his life—after two murders, numerous beatings, after two decades in prison, and after a love affair with a beautiful widow—Royal Atkins saw tears running from his eyes and down his cheeks.
Sweet Jesus in hell, he thought. I’m crying like a baby.
Royal drove two blocks south, parked on a busy corner, and walked into a rundown laundromat. He found the change machine, shoved a five dollar bill into it, and came away with twenty quarters—he wanted that to be enough, but he knew it might not be. Small change for conversation. Adjacent to the laundromat was a corner store with a tamale cart out front and a taco truck doing brisk business selling al pastor. He found the pay phone near the corner store’s entrance. No more cell phones for Royal—they could track him that way.
He shoved two quarters in the slot, listened to the familiar and satisfying drop, and dialed Stella’s cell number.
“Who the hell is this now?” Her voice came through with that edge he knew she controlled, a jagged point that bit like a snake. “Another surprise?”
“It’s me.” He watched a man in a painter’s suit walk into the corner store. The parking lot was mostly empty, all the taco truck customers wandering in on foot from the nearby neighborhood. “I need to talk to you, Stella.”
“You going to come clean now? Or keep leading me on?”
“I never led you on.”
Silence. Dead silence.
“I love you, Stella.”
She laughed on the line, a high-pitched warble that bordered on insanity. “You killed the only man I truly loved. Do you know that?”
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
“Got me in the hip.”
“An accident.”
“I still have the bullet in me.”
Royal sighed and said, “Does the past ever stay where it should?”
“Not that kind of past, you fucking murderer.”
“Stella, I—”
“You lied to me as much as you could.”
“As much as I had to.” The energy was drained from his voice, lost.
She made a sound with her tongue and lips, breathed hard into the phone. “You fucked me every way there is, Royal Atkins. And I am so stupid—I cannot believe I didn’t recognize you, that I let you into my fucking house. My body. How funny, and how stupid of me not to see.”
“I’m a different man, Stella.” The phone called for more money and Royal slipped two quarters into the slot. The man in the painter’s suit walked out with two malt liquor bottles in brown paper bags. Royal watched him saunter through the parking lot, unscrew the top on one bottle, and sip from it as he ordered tacos. That there, Royal thought, is freedom. And illegal. “What I did back then,” Royal said, “wasn’t me. It was a kid at the end of his rope, I was lost. And I felt forgotten, like I—”
“You know shit about being forgotten. I’ve had you on my mind for the last twenty years, all wrapped up with the love of my husband. Two things that don’t go together. You want to talk about being forgotten? Try living alone for twenty years. Every time you remember your husband, you remember the punk in the Cowboys jersey who shot him to death. You got a whole legacy behind you, Royal.”
“Not that, Stella.”
“That’s it. That’s all you get.”
The phone begged for more quarters. There went a dollar fifty. Royal coughed and tried to squeeze out an explanation. “When I saw you singing, I had to know who you were, Stella. I saw beauty. I just got out of prison. I didn’t know if it was you. How could I know that?”
“You liar. There you go again. Making words with your lying mouth. More stories. I hope Slim Fat Frank burns your ass. I hope he finds a reason to light you up. You knew it was me the minute you saw me.”
Anger scissored through Royal. He felt it run from his toes to his forehead, a warmth he wanted to prolong. “I’ll kill that detective if he tries to play me.”
“Okay,” Stella said. “Finally, you tell me something that’s real.”
“And what I said about Phoenix.”
“What?” Stella waited with her heavy, frequent breaths.
“I shot him. For you, Stella. For us.”
“Don’t bring me into it, you killer.”
Royal’s turn to laugh. He did it as loud as he could, knew he looked like a crazy man. Sounded like one at the very least. “It was your idea, black widow.”
She didn’t respond.
“Nothing to say to that, huh? Yeah, how is it for you to get in on the killing thing? Feel good to you, Stella? I bet it beats singing old school tunes to all those gummers downtown.”
“Don’t bring my singing into this.”
“Now you get all sensitive.”
Stella said, “Those songs are the only thing that never let me down. They are what they promise. They live up to the hype, and they speak the truth.”
“I bet they do you lots of good.”
“I can’t believe,” Stella said, “I let you fuck me.”
“You wanted it. Shit, you asked for it.”
“Shame. Heartache. Disgust.” She said the words with heat and hatred, like a woman breathing fire. “What do you want? What else can you take from me?”
“I want that duffel bag full of money, Stella.”
Now, again, her turn to laugh.
The phone wanted more quarters. Royal made it two dollars spent. “I can let you have a little bit, if you learn to be polite.”
“You are too much,” Stella said, “just too fucking much.”
Royal cleared his throat. “So, where are we going to meet, Stella?”
*
Royal told himself to pull it together.
He told himself there was still a chance.
In the Datsun, Royal closed his eyes and reclined in his seat. He had two hours to rest, two hours to think about what he was going to say to Stella.
Yes, there was still a chance because he knew—he was certain—a part of her still wanted him. It was in her voice. That want. That need. That desire. How could she not still want him? Her husband was long dead and Stella didn’t want to be alone—this was a certainty to Royal. She’ll release all her rage, he thought. She’ll let it all drift. I know she will. I’m positive. I know it. I’ll tell her how I think of her, that I can’t live without her, that I’m back in prison without her. I’ll tell her my whole life I’ve been living in a cage…Until I met her.
I should have told her who I was, what I did. But how does a man tell a woman he killed her husband? There’s no right way. There’s no good way.
There’s only evil and wrong.
But there was twenty years—dammit, she had to see that—between the murder and now. Two decades is a lifetime. And Royal’s life in prison did feel like a distinct lifetime, like a story he lived in another universe.
He opened his eyes and watched the traffic whip through the cross streets. That’s how I feel, he thought, like a man crossing some boundary; I’m stepping from one place into another. And I want that money to do it. I need that money to do it. Stella is going to give me the money and, along with that, she’s going to give me herself…She’s going to give me her love if I have to squeeze it out of her.
