Flamethrower (10 page)

Ruby felt insane.

She put keys, wallet, and Fireballs into her canvas messenger bag and left the apartment. Ramirez’s door was open, but neither he nor Elsie was in the kitchen. Which was just as well.

Ruby walked the three blocks to the lot where her robin’s egg blue Mustang lived. It usually took her a few days to build up the courage to drive, but she had to get her bike out of Tobias’s house, and she felt compelled to do it now. She didn’t want anything of herself left behind there, wanted to be free and clear of Tobias, Jody, all of it.

Emilio was on a chaise longue on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot. He was wearing sunglasses and on his chest was a sign reading PARK HERE. The sign wasn’t visible until you stood right near him, so it probably wasn’t doing much to drum up business.

“Emilio,” Ruby said, looking down at him.

Emilio was apparently sound asleep. Ruby’s voice startled him, and he nearly fell off his chair.

“Huh?” He looked at Ruby. His short black hair was sticking up, and his light brown skin had a red, sunburned hue.

“I’m the girl with the 1974 Mustang,” Ruby said. Emilio looked as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Ruby? Blue Mustang?” She scanned the lot and saw her car parked in a far corner, wedged behind some nondescript vehicles. “There,” Ruby said, pointing to her car.

“Oh!” Emilio got to his feet. “Sorry, lady, I was sleeping. What happened to your head?” He motioned at Ruby’s bandage.

“Fell off my bike,” Ruby said. “That’s why I’m driving today.”

Emilio shook his head as though bike riding was some thoroughly insane pursuit. When he suddenly realized how much work it would take to get the Mustang out, he lectured Ruby about giving him a few hours’ notice before coming to get her car.

Ruby tried to look apologetic.

She nosed the Mustang out of the lot and saw that Emilio was back on his chaise longue, eyes closed.

She got onto the Belt Parkway and considered praying even though her only sense of religion was a vague paganism investing all things with small gods. By the time she reached Tobias’s dead-end street, Ruby was almost calm from focusing so hard on the road. She pulled the Mustang up onto the patch of dirt in front of Tobias’s house.

The sky was slate gray, and half a dozen gulls circled overhead. Ruby got out and knocked on Tobias’s door. She wouldn’t have been shocked if Tobias had suddenly rematerialized there in his house. There was no answer though. She tried the door, and it opened, unlocked as she’d left it.

“Hello?” Ruby called out, not expecting an answer.

“Who the hell are you?” a voice asked.

Ruby jumped halfway out of her skin then flipped around and saw a man sitting on a chair beside the door. He was holding a gun.

“Who are you?” Ruby asked, heart pumping.

“I asked first,” the man said. He grinned a little. His teeth
were large and crooked. He had sandy hair, a few days’ beard, and dark eyes. He pointed the gun at Ruby.

“I’m Ruby Murphy.” Ruby tried to sound calm.

“And what business do you have here?”

“My bike is here.” Ruby motioned at her bike leaning against the wall near where the guy was sitting.

“Where’s Tobias, Ruby Murphy?”

“Last time I saw him he was right there.” Ruby motioned toward the kitchen. “I have no idea where he is now. I just came to get my bike.”

“And the wife?”

“What wife?”

“Tobias’s wife. Where is she?”

“She’s missing too,” Ruby said.

“You think they reconciled and rode off into the sunset?”

“No idea.”

“You’re not much help, are you?”

“I’m sorry.” Ruby silently vowed that if she lived through this, she would lead a safe and dull life ever after.

“So what the hell are you doing here?” Gun Guy wanted to know. He wouldn’t have looked threatening if it weren’t for the gun. He was probably in his early forties. A decent-looking guy if you went in for the scruffy, crazy type. “And what happened to your head?” he asked.

“Fell off my bike.”

“Oh. That one?” The guy motioned at Ruby’s brown bike.

“No. My racing bike.” Ruby was starting to almost enjoy her ongoing fib about a bike accident. She was ready to embellish.
it further. Maybe say she’d actually been racing her bike when she’d crashed.

He wasn’t that interested though. “You’re friends with Tobias?” he asked.

“More with his wife. Jody. She asked me to stop by and say hello to him.”

“I thought you just told me she was missing too.”

“She is. But she wasn’t yesterday.”

“Ah.” The guy paused. “Tobias owes me money,” he said then, as if Ruby could do anything about it.

“Well I don’t know where he is. Please stop pointing the gun at me.”

“This bothers you?” He looked down at his gun.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He shrugged and tucked the gun into the back of his pants. “Tobias and I had a business arrangement, but it went a little sour,” he said conversationally. “I fulfilled my end of the deal, but Tobias didn’t uphold his end. And that doesn’t make me happy.”

Ruby wanted to tell the guy that if he expected to get paid, he shouldn’t have cut Tobias’s leg off. She wanted to ask him why he’d done it. But she didn’t.

“So you’re going to find Tobias and shoot him?” Ruby regretted saying it the moment it was out of her mouth. The man had a gun after all.

“Just threaten.” The guy smiled, unperturbed, showing off his crooked teeth. “Until he pays me. Providing I ever find the fucker.”

“Oh,” Ruby said.

“What are you going to do when you leave here, Ruby Murphy?”

His mentioning her leaving here implied he wasn’t going to kill her.

“I don’t know,” Ruby said honestly.

“No use reporting me to the cops,” the guy said. “I mean, you can if you want to, but I’d be long gone by the time they got here.

“You’re pretty unflappable, huh?” The guy added. He seemed to be admiring Ruby, was looking her up and down as if he’d decided she was a tasty morsel.

“I flap as easy as the next girl,” Ruby said. “I’m just containing myself right now.”

“Wise girl. Anyway, I wouldn’t shoot you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You might as well go. I’m going to get going myself.” The guy stood up and pulled his button-down shirt over the back of his pants where he’d tucked his gun.

Ruby hesitated.

“Go ahead. Get your bike and go,” the kidnapper said.

She didn’t wait to be asked twice. She rolled her bike out to the Mustang, took off the wheels, and stuffed everything into the Mustang’s small backseat area. She glanced at the house, saw the kidnapper standing in the doorway. He waved. Ruby smiled weakly, got in her car, and drove.

She found the nearest store, double-parked the car, and ran in to buy a pack of Marlboro Red. She got back in the
Mustang and smoked two cigarettes in a row before she could stop shaking.

Then she headed for Belmont.

RUBY PULLED IN
the main stable gate and drove over to Ed’s shed row. She still felt awful. Belmont wasn’t working its magic. Even the sight of the horse laundry drying over the railing in front of Ed’s barn didn’t make her feel much better. Usually, just having a reason to think the phrase
horse laundry
made her happy. Not today.

Ed was sitting in his office with his back to the door. He was shuffling papers. The army cot in the corner was unmade, and dirty clothes were strewn over it. His hair hadn’t been combed in days.

“Ed,” Ruby called out softly.

He flipped around as though he’d just heard a ghost. Looked at her the same way.

“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked.

He said nothing. She could see him taking in her bandaged forehead. But still, nothing.

“Ed?”

“Why?” he said, “Why’d you do it?” His face was drawn down, sinking toward the earth.

“Do what?”

“You know exactly what.”

“You mean Tobias?”

“Tobias? Who’s Tobias?”

“Tobias,” Ruby protested, “Jody Ray’s husband, that Tobias.”

“You’re fucking him too?”

“What?”

“I’m too upset to talk,” Ed said. His green eyes looked colorless.

“Upset? Why? What happened?”

“I can’t talk about it yet.”

“You have to, or we’re headed for a major disaster.”

“We’re already there.” He was looking right through her.

“Tell me what the hell this is about.” Ruby’s chest was constricting. She’d never seen Ed like this. They’d been through some things before, but he’d never seemed this distant.

“Ruby …” He looked down at his feet.

“What?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“Find out what?”

“This,” Ed said. He reached for a manila envelope and extracted two 8-by-10 photographs. “These were mailed to me here. And they don’t make me feel great about our future.” He thrust the prints at her.

Ruby glanced at the photographs. There was something familiar in them. Then she realized
she
was in the photographs. With Triple Harrison. Appearing, in fact, to be making out with Triple.

“What the hell is that?” Ruby asked. She felt her mouth fall open. She didn’t have the strength to close it.

“Looks like Triple Harrison to me.” Ed wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“This is some sort of really bad joke.” Ruby felt cold all over.

“It’s not very funny,” Ed said. “Did Triple do this?”

“Of course not,” Ruby protested. “Why would he do that?”

“He’s always been after you.”

“Not seriously. He’s just a flirt.”

“If it wasn’t him, then who? And why?”

“I have no idea,” Ruby said. “You don’t really think I was making out with Triple, do you?” Ruby was searching his face, looking for the man she trusted and who trusted her.

“I don’t know what to think. There was that whole thing last year.”

“What whole thing?”

“The jockey.”

“Attila?” Ruby was incredulous, “but he’s
dead”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean it happened. You were with him.”

“And you, as I recall, were fucking some exercise rider in Florida. We hadn’t had the monogamy talk yet. Remember?”

“The exercise rider wasn’t serious. She was a distraction while I waited for you to come around.”

“Come around? Where did I go? You’re the one—you moved to Florida. That put a damper on things, remember?”

“It was my job. I was sent there.”

“Fine, but don’t blame me for sleeping with the jockey when you were in another part of the country and we hadn’t had any kind of talk about what was between us.”

“Okay. I guess that wasn’t entirely fair,” Ed said. He finally
looked a little sheepish. “But this has rattled me.” He motioned at the pictures.

Ruby was still holding the photos but now dropped them onto Ed’s desk as if they were burning her fingers.

“I’d be rattled too. But you believe me, right? I didn’t do anything with Triple?”

“No matter what I believe, I need some space,” Ed said then.

Ruby was aghast. She couldn’t believe anyone still said things like
I need space
, and she really couldn’t believe Ed was saying it to her. It was grotesque, clichéd, abominable.

And he hadn’t even asked about her head.

“You need what?” Ruby gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she’d misheard.

“Space,” Ed said.

“Why?”

“Just do. I’m sorry.”

“But aren’t you going to help me?”

“Help you what?”

“Find out why someone wants you to think I’m doing something with Triple?”

“I can’t.”

“It’s probably got something to do with what’s been going on over the last few days,” Ruby said. “Aren’t you even going to ask what happened to my forehead? I had to go to the emergency room. I lost consciousness.”

Ed narrowed his eyes to slits. “What?”

“I got bashed in the head by Tobias. Jody’s husband.”

“Why?”

“He thought I was someone else.” She launched into the story. Tobias’s leg in the fish tank. Jody Ray’s selling off Fearless Jones to come up with money for what proved to be a fake ransom. The trip to Rockaway. The kidnapper pointing a gun at her.

“Oh, Ruby.” Ed sounded more sad than angry. “Why would you keep that from me?” He actually looked close to tears.

“And I have no job. I got fired,” she added, figuring she might as well tell him everything.

“What?”

Ruby told him what had happened with Bob.

“That’s bizarre,” Ed said.

“I know.”

“What have you done, Ruby?” Ed said it softly, standing just a few inches from her.

“Done?”

“It sounds like someone is really pissed off at you.”

“I don’t know,” said Ruby, shaking her head, then stopping since even the slight movement of her head made her dizzy.

“Call me if you’re in danger. If anything else happens,” Ed said.

Ruby squinted at him. “Call you?”

“I need to take some time away. From you. From us.”

Ruby felt her mouth fall open. “Because of those pictures?”

“Those were a catalyst maybe, but no. I need to think through some things, and I can’t do that while we’re together.”