Finders Keepers (17 page)

He stopped when his hands hurt too much to continue. He looked and saw Claudette smiling at him through the blood.

“You through?” she said, cuffing gore off her chin. “Because if you are, I gotta tell you—you just hit the wrong lady.”

Claudette let fly with a hummer of a roundhouse. Yaghi ducked and Claudette’s fist slammed through the drywall. She made a grab for him and he squirmed past her down the hall, outgunned, looking for a weapon.

“You’re gonna give me that ticket,” he said, his breath coming in thin gasps now. “If I have to get another gun and shoot you, too, you’re going to give me that ticket.”

Still standing by the door Claudette stooped at the waist, grabbed the edges of the hall runner and yanked with all of her considerable might. Tacks flew, the runner came up like a curling wave and Yaghi’s feet whipped out from under him. He did a midair flip with a half twist, landing on his back facing his wife, the wind knocked out of him.

Claudette put her head down and charged, her rolling shoulders barely fitting in the narrow corridor. Five feet before she reached him Claudette went airborne, landing nimbly astride him on all fours, her broad face a hovering planetoid over his, framed in stringy black hair. Her breath reeked of barbecue chips and cheap wine.

“You have no idea who you’re fucking with,” she said. “Do you. You never really did.”

Claudette straightened at the waist, letting her knees take her weight. In mock seduction, she raised the nightgown off her belly and lowered her rump onto Yaghi’s thin chest, leaning forward as she did so that Yaghi’s nose and gasping fish-mouth were engulfed in the apron of flesh that was her abdomen.

Yaghi grunted and kicked for a while, thinking oddly of Crocodile Dundee and that snappy lizard-skin jacket. It never occurred to him that Claudette had no intention of relenting until an intense white light burst nova-like inside his head and abruptly faded to black. Then he lay still.

––––––––

Kate’s place wasn’t messy exactly, Steve thought; it was more a kind of casual disorder. Things on the floor that didn’t belong there, the chairs at the glass and brass table left this way and that, a pair of gym socks balled up on the mantle. He peeked into the kitchen and amended that assessment: Maybe a little messy. But there were lots of healthy plants, a picture window overlooking the lake and a fresh selection of movie posters:
Predator
,
Alien
,
Terminator 2
,
The Replacement Killers
. Not the sort of favorites he would have expected for a woman, but that was part of what made Kate so interesting to him. She wasn’t like any of the women he was accustomed to. Not even close. She had a kind of youthful exuberance, tempered by a relaxed self-possession that held up even under the recent pounding she’d suffered. The accident, losing all that money, Christ, he’d’ve been a basket case if the same thing happened to him. But Kate was taking it all in stride, putting the pieces of her life back together, and he admired her for that.

He continued exploring. There was some exercise equipment in a side room that also served as her office, a computer in there and a rank of tightly stocked book shelves. A spacious kitchen with a big cooking island, brass pots on hooks hanging from the overhead vent canopy. It was a comfortable place, Steve decided, airy and bright with its pastel walls and polished oak floors, and he half-wished they could stay.

Kate’s voice came out of the back now, a stifled curse followed by a flat thunk. Then: “Steve? Could you give me a hand in here, please?”

Steve started down the hall toward the room at the end. He could hear her struggling with something back there. He passed a bathroom with a see-through shower curtain and felt his imagination surge ahead into an intimacy that didn’t exist between them yet. He could almost taste the sweetness of her lips, parting as they pressed against his…

He gave his head a shake and went into the bedroom.

Nice big comfy-looking queen size in here…

Jesus, Seger, keep it in your pants.

Kate was kneeling on the floor at the foot of the unmade bed, trying to drag a fat blue suitcase out from underneath. Steve said, “Hold on,” lifted a corner of the bed and the suitcase slid free. He took it from her and hefted it onto the bed.

“Thanks,” Kate said. “I don’t know how I got that thing under there.” She turned the clock radio on, tuned to a local FM station, opened a bureau drawer and got busy stocking the suitcase with clothes. Doing a neat job of it, too.

Good
, Steve thought.
Staying awhile.

He stuck his hands into his pockets and looked around the room. The same cheerful disorder. Lots of framed photographs, like in her father’s study. Clothes everywhere. A bunch of athletic trophies arranged on a glass shelf.

Kate noticed him checking out the trophies. “So I was a tomboy,” she said. “Wanna make something of it?”

“Hey, no,” Steve said, “this is great.” He broke into a respectable Inspector Clouseau. “I’m something of an ath-u-lete myself, you know.”

Kate laughed. “Say, that’s pretty good.”

Steve moved to a shot of a teenage Kate in track gear, throwing a discus, the image caught as she released the heavy projectile, at the end of that powerful, spinning wind-up.

“Discus?” Steve said.

“Yeah,
discus
,” Kate said, strutting over to him, flexing a bicep. “Provincial champ three years running. They were afraid to let me throw against the boys.”

“You would’ve, too, wouldn’t you.”

Kate gave him a playful shove saying,“Why not?” and Steve stumbled over something on the floor. It was one of those stupid, inelegant things that sometimes happened. Kate put her good hand out to catch him and lurched into him instead, her added weight bearing them both to the floor. Kate landed on top of him, her cast bopping him on the forehead.

“
Ow
,” Steve said, laughing. “That thing’s hard as a rock.”

They lay there a moment, giggling, Steve spitting Kate’s hair from his mouth and rubbing his forehead, Kate rubbing it too, laughing even harder. Then she flipped her hair aside and looked into his eyes. They both stopped laughing.

Kate kissed him lightly on the mouth, tasting him, as Steve had imagined tasting her. He raised his head for another and Kate obliged, the embrace heating up—

Then Kate started giggling, her mouth still pressed against his. Now she turned her face away and buried it in his shoulder, giggling helplessly.

More than a little hurt, Steve said, “Geez, talk about your great rape deterrent.”

Kate reached up and increased the volume on the clock radio. “The song,” she said. “Listen to the lyrics…”

The song was “Mouth” by Merrill Bainbridge. Steve tuned into the lyrics that had shattered his crystal moment.

‘When I kiss your mouth, I wanna taste it. Turn you upside down, don’t wanna waste it…’

Steve laughed in spite of himself. “You wanna turn me upside down?”

Kate kissed him on the chin, whispering, “Maybe when I know you better,” playful, and Steve put his hand on the back of her neck, feeling her warmth.

It could’ve happened then, easily, each of them on the verge…but the embrace cooled, Kate drawing away, Steve letting his head sink back to the rug. He looked into Kate’s eyes and saw her desire shaded by doubt, maybe even fear. He wanted her—at this moment more than anything—but not this way. If it was going to happen, it had to feel right for both of them.

Smiling, he said, “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Kate said. She rolled off him, rising to her haunches beside him.

Steve pushed up on one elbow to face her. “That was…”

“Close.” She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “And nice.”

“At the very least.”

Reddening, Kate said, “I’m sorry, Steve. I’ve rushed into things before and—”

Steve put a finger to her lips. “Me, too. Let’s just get you packed.”

Kate nodded and got to her feet. Steve got up, too. There was another clumsy moment, Steve feeling like he should get out of her bedroom but not wanting to just walk away and appear sulky, when a weather warning came on the radio. Kate listened to it with unveiled alarm. In tandem, they looked out the bedroom window and saw that the light snow had turned to sleet.

“Shit,” Kate said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

* * *

Claudette sat at the kitchen table, weeping miserably, hunched shoulders heaving with shock. Putting on a show for the coppers. She’d always believed she could do a better job than those willowy flakes on daytime TV and here was her chance to prove it. She was still wearing her nightgown, nicely bloodstained from her scrap with Yaghi, but for discreteness sake she’d pulled a housecoat on overtop, belted loosely around her waist. The knot of kleenex in her fist was soaked with tears and blood.

There was a team of them out in the hall, fussing around Yaghi’s body, a couple of guys in blue jumpsuits from the Coroner’s office waiting by the front door with a zippered bag and a stretcher. They’d left a lady cop in the kitchen with her, a hard-looking broad with her tits strapped in tight under the dark blue uniform. All that shit hanging off her belt, standing there by the fridge with her hands behind her back. A comforting presence.

Before dialing 911 Claudette had called the lottery hotline to make sure Yaghi hadn’t been screwing with her—she wouldn’t put it past the little prick—carefully writing down each number with a pencil as the computerized voice rhymed it off. She compared them to the numbers on the ticket maybe ten times before letting out a yelp and dancing around the kitchen table, tracking her own blood all over the tiles with her bare feet.

Unbelievable.

She got the tears flowing again, heavy footsteps coming up behind her now. She couldn’t wait to get this over with.

* * *

Detective Jack Cullen came into the kitchen and sat across from the dead guy’s wife. Claudette. He glanced at her as he flipped open his notepad, thinking he’d never seen a more pitiful sight. The dame’s bottom lip was split wide open, the raw, fleshy sight of it making his skin crawl. Blood had crusted over her nostrils, one of which had to be packed with gauze by the paramedics to stem the bleeding, and her eyes were already starting to blacken. It was hard to believe the little guy in the hall had managed to wail on her so hard—and freaky beyond belief the same son of a bitch had blown away a bandit on Cullen’s day shift. When he took the call tonight and recognized that name, Yaghi, he’d thought,
No way, couldn’t be the same guy
. But there he was, laid out in the hall like a strip of bacon.

“Okay, Mrs. Yaghi,” Cullen said, “why don’t you tell me what happened here tonight. Take all the time you need.”

Sniffling, Claudette raised her head to look at him through red eyes swollen to slits. “He came home smelling of booze,” she said, snatching another tissue from the dispenser on her lap. “Furious over something…the shooting at the store, I guess. I told him how worried I’d been—he didn’t even call—and…” She dissolved into tears for a few seconds, then, in a baby-girl voice, “…he hit me. It wasn’t the first time, but I never told anyone. He threatened to kill me if I did.”

“He’s beaten you before?”

Claudette nodded. “Just never this hard.” She fixed him then with an expression of such bewildered helplessness Cullen had to look away. “He knocked me out, detective, and I…fell on him. When I came to, he was…” But she couldn’t go on.

“I understand, Mrs. Yaghi,” Cullen said, thinking,
Yeah, that’d do it, all right
. He closed his notepad and replaced it in his pocket, saying, “Don’t worry, okay? We’ll get everything looked after. Take a few minutes to collect yourself then we’ll drive down to headquarters. I’ll take your statement and it’s over.”

Claudette covered her eyes and sobbed. Cullen got up and moved away from the table, waving the female officer over, nodding discretely at Claudette. “Sit with her a minute,” he told her, “then help her get dressed. Drive her downtown, I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

Cullen rejoined the investigative team and told them to wrap it up. In his view the creep’s death had been accidental, and from the looks of things, well deserved. What he wanted now was to bail out of this stuffy apartment and go get some drive-through. Working doubles like this always got him craving junk food, and at the moment a big sloppy burger seemed about right. With onion rings, fries and a jumbo Coke.

The Coroner’s crew bagged Tarek Yaghi and carted him away. Cullen followed them down the steep staircase, his belly grumbling for grease.

* * *

Three hours and forty minutes later Claudette sat next to Detective Cullen in the front seat of his eight-year-old Buick, a maroon Le Sabre that smelled of cigars, telling him where to go when he lost his bearings in the maze of dead ends and one-way streets that was her neighborhood. She’d turned on the waterworks a couple more times during her statement—conducted in a cramped, soundproof room with pink walls and metal chairs made for midgets—and had believed Detective Cullen afterward when he told her she’d done very well. It pleased her that he’d volunteered to drive her home.

“Here we are,” Cullen said, gliding to a stop in front of her apartment block, a five-story brownstone with a ratty spruce tree on the lawn, scantly trimmed with Christmas lights. “I used to live near here when I was a kid. You think I’d know my way around.”

“It’s tricky,” Claudette said, giving him a restrained smile. Mustn’t forget she was in mourning. “Thanks for the lift, Detective,” she said, shifting to face him. “You’ve been a saint through all of this.”

Cullen smiled, his deeply-lined face tinted orange in the street light. “All in a day’s work, Mrs. Yaghi.”

Claudette touched his arm. “After all we’ve been through this evening, Detective, I think you can call me by my Christian name.”

“Claudette, then.”

“Do you mind me asking your name?”

“Not at all. It’s Jack.”

“Jack,” Claudette said, as if tasting the word. “I’ve always liked that name.” She smiled at him, letting it fade as she looked up at the drab apartment block, the number 516 in peeling gold foil centered on the steel and glass door. “Well, I guess I should be going in.”