Страница 48 из 62
I tried the doorknob.
The door was unlocked.
I eased it open.
The room was dark except for the faintest glow of daybreak beyond the drawn window shade. I could hear Diamond's shallow breathing across the room. A leather traveling bag was on the floor. His chinchilla coat lay beside it. So did his hat. His trousers were folded over the back of a chair. I went to the bed. I looked down at him. He was sleeping with his mouth open. He stank of booze. My hands were trembling.
My first bullet went into the wall.
The next one went into the floor.
I finally shot Diamond in the head three times.
I came tearing down the steps. The front door was still ajar. I ran out into a cold gray dawn. A man coming out of the building next door saw me racing across the street to where Dominique was standing outside the car on the passenger side, the engine idling, the exhaust throwing up gray clouds on the gray dawn.
"Was she there?" she asked. "No," I said. "Did you kill him?" "Yes." "Good."
Across the street the man was staring at us. We got into the car and began driving north. I was behind the wheel now. Dominique was wiping the guns. Just in case. Wiping, wiping with a white silk handkerchief, polishing those gun butts and barrels in the event that somehow, in spite of the gloves, I'd left fingerprints on them. As we approached St. Paul 's Church, a mile and a half from Dove Street, I slowed the car. Dominique rolled down the window on her side, and threw out one of the guns, wrapped in the silk handkerchief. Five minutes later, she tossed out the second gun, wrapped in another handkerchief. We sped through dawn. In Saugerties, a uniformed policeman looked up in surprise as we raced through the deserted main street of the town. We were free again. But not because I'd killed Legs Diamond.
"What do you mean?" I asked Vi
"What do you mean? Who? Talked to them about what?"
"About you and Dom."
"Who did?"
"Mickey Tataglia. He went to see them and convinced them you're not worth bothering with."
"But Diamond is dead. Why would they…?"
"Yeah, somebody killed him, what a pity."
"So why would they be willing to forget…?"
"Well, I think some money changed hands."
"How much money?"
"I don't know how much."
"You do know, Vi
"I think maybe five thousand."
"Where'd the money come from?"
"I don't know."
"Whose money was it, Vi
The line went silent.
"Vi
More silence.
"Vi
"I don't think it was her money. Let's just say somebody gave Mickey the money and he gave it to the goons, and you don't have to worry about anything anymore. Come on home."
"Who gave Mickey the money?"
"I have no idea. Come on home."
"Whoever's money it was, Vi
"I'll tell him. Now come home, you and Dom."
"Vi
"Come on, for what?" he said, and hung up.
When I told Dominique about the phone conversation, she said, "So you killed him for nothing."
I should have picked up on the word you.
But, after all, she hadn't killed anyone, had she? "I killed him because I love you," I said. "Alors, merci beaucoup," she said. "But money would have done it just as well, eh?"
A week after we got back to the city, Dominique told me that what we'd enjoyed together on the way to Chattanooga had been very nice, bien sûr, but she could never live with a man who had done murder, eh? However noble the cause. En tout cas, it was time she went back to Paris to make her home again in the land she loved.
"Tu comprends, mon chéri?" she said.
No, I wanted to say, I don't understand.
I thought we loved each other, I wanted to say.
That night on the train…
I thought it would last forever, you know?
I thought Legs Diamond would be our costar forever. We would run from him through all eternity, locked in embrace as he pursued us relentlessly and in vain. We would marry and we would have children and I would become rich and famous and Dominique would stay young and beautiful forever and our love would remain steadfast and true-but only because we would forever be ru
We kissed good-bye.
We promised to stay in touch.
I never heard from her again.
At the Paradise Motel, Sparks, Nevada by JOYCE CAROL OATES
How many of you pigs. Emissaries of Satan. Adulterers in your hearts and fornicators. How many rapists and despoilers of the i
In the desert, through planes of shimmering light, the hazy mauve mountains of the Sierra Nevadas in the distance, the light fell vertical, sharp as a razor blade. The sky was a hard ceramic blue that looked painted and without depth. "Starr Bright" woke from her druggy reverie of the past several hours and wondered for a moment where she was, and with who. A familiar-unfamiliar succession of motels, restaurants, gas stations, enormous billboards advertising casinos in Reno and Las Vegas- they were approaching the city limits of Sparks, Billy Ray Cobb behind the wheel of his classy rented steel-gray Infiniti with the red leather interior. "Starr Bright" removed her dark-tinted white-framed sunglasses to see better, but the glare was blinding. She wasn't a girl for the harsh overexposed hours of morning or afternoon, her soul best roused at twilight when neon lights flashed into life. But why am I here, why now? And with who? Not knowing she was awaiting God's sign. Beside her, proud and perky behind the wheel of the Infiniti, was Mr. Cobb of Elton, California, a manufacturer's representative-as he'd introduced himself the previous evening. Mr. Cobb was a thick-necked man of forty-six who perspired easily, with heavy-lidded frog's eyes and a damp, hungry smile. He wore sporty vacation clothes-this was his vacation, after all-an electric-blue crinkled-cotton shirt monogrammed B.R.C. on the pocket, checked polyester trousers creased at the thighs, a "Na-vajo" leather belt with a flashy brass buckle. A black onyx ring on his right hand and a gold wedding band on his left hand, both rings embedded in fatty flesh. Out of the corner of her eye "Starr Bright" saw Mr. Cobb peering at her and she quickly replaced the dark glasses. She was heavily made up, her face a flawless cosmetic mask. She knew she looked good but in this damned white-glaring desert sun she might look, if not her age precisely, for "Starr Bright" never looked her age, but, perhaps, thirty-one or -two, not twenty-eight as she'd led credulous Mr. Cobb of Elton, California, to believe.
She was "Starr Bright"-an "exotic dancer" at the Kings Club, Lake Tahoe, California. An independent woman trying to make a decent living amid the moral confusion of contemporary times. Before Lake Tahoe she'd been living in San Diego, California, or had it been Miami, Florida? And there'd been Houston, Texas.
Before that, memory faded. As a dream, even the most vivid and disturbing of dreams, fades rapidly upon waking.
It was not yet 6:00 P.M. And bright as midday. Yet Billy Ray Cobb was eager to check into a motel. Pawing and squeezing "Starr Bright" in the front seat of the Infiniti, panting and florid cheeked. The red-leather interior smelled of newness, the air-conditioning hummed like a third presence. "Starr Bright" was flattered by her new friend's sexual attraction to her, or should have been. "I'm crazy about you, baby," Mr. Cobb said, an edge to his voice as if he suspected that "Starr Bright" might not believe him. "Like last night, you'll see."