Getaway (11 page)

Daniel slept for a while
. She lay there listening to his deep, even breaths. At least he didn’t snore.

Not that she’d been able to sleep.

Though it really had been okay. If she’d been able to forget the circumstances, it might even have been fun. She’d almost forgotten, once or twice.

Even so, she wasn’t about to fall asleep with him in her bed.

I just need to find out who cursed me
.

She lay there—muscles knotting in her shoulders, acid in her gut like a weight—and watched him sleep.

Shortly after dawn Daniel yawned, stretched, and sat up.

The rooster that had started up around 3:00
A.M
. began another round of crowing. And was that a donkey?

“Hey,” Daniel said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

“Hey.”

“I should go. Got some stuff I got to do today.”

She watched him find his clothes, put them on, check his pockets for his keys, like it was all some jerky, stop-motion movie, her eyes closing now and then despite her best intentions to stay awake.

He came back to the bed and kissed her again, on the lips this time.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“I’d like that.”

She smiled at him, lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers as he paused by the door and gave her a mock salute.

Maybe he didn’t mean it any more than she did—maybe it was just something to say after a one-night stand that he had no intention of repeating. Well, two nights, she amended, but the first night had hardly counted. This was just finishing what they’d started.

She managed to sleep for a little while after that, until her phone rang. The default tone for known callers. She fumbled around on the nightstand for the phone. By the time she found it, the ringing had stopped.

Two minutes later it started again.

She grabbed the iPhone and hit
ANSWER
.

“Hey, Michelle. Ted Banks.” A chuckle. “You have a nice night?”

She stared at the phone. How could he know?

“You know,
Ted
, if you were really in Los Angeles, it’d be six
A.M
. Kind of early for office hours.”

Gary wheezed out another chuckle. “Oh, I knew you were good, Michelle. Look, let’s meet for lunch. I got a little something for you. And we can talk about your date. Call me when you wake up, and I’ll let you know where.”

He disconnected.

Did he still have people spying on her? Was that how he knew?

She thought about that night in his condo, how he’d known the next morning that she’d put a chair in front of the door.

Some kind of hidden camera? A bug?

What if he’d been watching?

She bolted out of bed.

She tried to remember movies and TV shows she’d seen where rooms had been bugged. Radios, she thought, they put bugs in radios, but there wasn’t a radio here. In the television? She
crouched down in front of the blank gray picture tube and saw only her dim reflection. She unplugged the television anyway. Jiggled the remote, opened it, plucked out the double-A batteries.

In the overhead light? She climbed up on top of her bed. Stretched out her arm to try to touch the dusty fixture. No use.

Electrical outlets, she thought. She’d seen some show where they planted bugs behind the switch plates.

She crouched down in front of the outlet by her bed, examined the screws, ran her finger over the heads to see if they stuck out, before it occurred to her that this was pointless.

If there
was
a bug in here, how would she even recognize it?

She fell
back onto the bed, pulled the sheet over her head. She felt like shit. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in days. Don’t think about anything, she told herself. Try to sleep.

She tried. But there were the donkeys. The rooster. The kids, laughing, on their way to school.

When the gas truck rumbled up the street, with its recorded racing fanfare and distorted shout of
“Global Gas!”
broadcast through a bullhorn (and she heard it three times while the truck apparently waited in traffic), Michelle gave up.

She decided to do some yoga. Nothing complicated; the tile floor wasn’t ideal. I could buy a mat, she thought, if I’m going to be here awhile. Use some of Gary’s money. There was a Walmart here, and a Costco; they’d have things like yoga mats.

It was another one of those thoughts that, even as she had it, seemed like further evidence that Gary’s insanity was contagious and she’d been infected. How can I even be thinking this way? she wondered. I need to come up with a plan. What I’m going to do. How I’m going to get out of this. Not think about what to buy with Gary’s money.

But she had no idea what to do, none at all.

Yoga first. Quiet the monkey mind, the constant chatter of normal human concerns. Wasn’t that what the instructors always said? She did fine with that as long as she was moving, doing poses.
But at the end, Savasana, the Corpse Pose, when you’re supposed to just let go, do nothing—that’s when her monkey mind would come roaring back, the second the instructor started telling the class to relax, to think of nothing.

Stop it, she told herself. She went through the poses, lost herself for a while in the familiar movements, working up a sweat before she’d even started. It was already hot, so humid she couldn’t tell if she was sweating or just taking on the water in the air.

After that she showered, dressed, and went down to the courtyard for coffee.

It was early yet, the sunlight still diffuse behind the hills east of town. Only two other guests were out, a heavy woman some years older than Michelle who sat in one of the loungers reading a novel, and an even older man puttering around the yard, his bony pelvis jutting against the waist of his shorts.

Michelle took her cup of coffee to a chair by the fountain and sipped, watching the cat chase leaves around the courtyard.

Gary wanted
to meet for lunch at the Outback Steakhouse. “In the Zona Hotelera—that’s the Hotel Zone.”

“Okay,” Michelle said. “I got the ‘hotel’ part, but where is it?”

“North of downtown, just before the marina. In front of the Krystal hotel. Ask any cab driver, he’ll get you there.”

An Outback Steakhouse, Michelle thought. Great. She wouldn’t think of going to a chain like that at home—hardly ever anyway. Now here she was in
Mexico
, where she should be eating … well,
Mexican
food, heading to the home of Bloomin’ Onions and giant hot-fudge pecan brownies.

To meet with a crazy man.

I really should just leave, she thought, sitting in the back of the cab. Get out now. Go to Tijuana, seriously, and figure out a way home from there. All she had to do was get across the border; then she could take the trolley to downtown San Diego.

A story she’d read in the Internet café flashed into her mind unbidden. Something about headless bodies, in oil barrels, in
Tijuana. Kids on their way to school finding them. Was that right? Or was she confusing two stories?

Corpses in vats of lye. A hit man called “The Soup Maker.” Because that’s how his victims ended up. Stewed in barrels of chemical soup.

If Gary was connected with people like that …

Staring out the window at the condominiums and Sheratons and Starbucks that populated the Hotel Zone, she thought, It seems so normal. So safe.

Things like that don’t happen here
.

She felt better physically at least. The yoga had helped, and that had been a pretty good workout last night, she thought, feeling the pleasant soreness between her thighs. She hadn’t felt that in a while.

She caught herself smiling.

Don’t make this into something it isn’t, she told herself. Just because he’s good in bed, that doesn’t make him a good guy.

She thought of how he’d treated her at dinner. With real understanding, or a very good impression of it. How he’d been patient with her when they’d gone back to her room. Had let her decide what she wanted to do.

He
seemed
like a good guy.

If he found out the truth …

Maybe I should tell him, she thought.

She already knew that she couldn’t trust Gary. He’d set her up, hadn’t he? Had blackmailed her into this. Whoever he was, whomever he worked for, she had only his word that Daniel was some kind of criminal.

I’ll see what Gary wants, she thought. Have the lunch. Decide after that.

Gary waited
for her at a booth in the back of the restaurant. “Hey there, Michelle,” he called out, patting the banquette next to him. “I ordered us a Bloomin’ Onion.”

She sat. “Do you know how many calories are in one of those?”

“Well, that’s why you look the way you do and I look how I do,” he said, grinning. “I don’t think enough about things like that. What can I get you to drink?”

“Just an iced tea.”

For lunch she ordered the steak salad, with olive oil and vinegar instead of the Danish blue cheese dressing and without the Aussie Crunch, whatever that was. After some hesitation she kept the cinnamon pecans. Fattening, but she liked pecans.

Gary ordered the prime rib.

“So tell me about your date,” he said after their drinks arrived.

“There’s not much to tell. We went out to dinner.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Small talk mostly.”

“The whole night?”

“Well, no.”

She told him about the lie she’d made up to explain why she was still in Vallarta.

“And he went for it?”

“I wasn’t sure at first. But he seemed to, after I … explained a little bit about my personal situation.”

“Danny to the rescue, huh? He felt sorry for you, right? You give him a few tears?”

It must have shown on her face, her surprise that he’d read the situation so accurately.

Gary chuckled. “Trust me, Danny’s a predictable guy in a lot of ways. A damsel in distress—I knew he couldn’t resist.”

“You might have given me a hint about that. What if I hadn’t come up with the right thing to say?”

“I had a feeling you would. And I guess I was kind of curious to see what you’d come up with on your own.” He lifted his drink. Scotch, it looked like. “Good job, Michelle.”

“Thanks.” She didn’t raise hers.

“So after dinner … what happened?”

The way he sat there, that little smile lifting the corners of his cherub lips, he knew what had happened.

He had someone watching her—he had to. The woman at the front desk. The policeman. Someone she didn’t even know.

“We went back to Hacienda Carmen.” She kept her voice flat. Don’t respond to him, she told herself. That was what he wanted, a reaction. To rattle her.

“How was it?”

Michelle felt her cheeks redden. “What do you want me to tell you, Gary? You want a blow-by-blow?”

“Hey, don’t be mad! I think you really have a talent for this sort of thing.”

“You mean sleeping with men I don’t care about?”

“Now, come on, I didn’t say that.” He patted her hand. “You’re good. You really are. Adaptable. That’s important.”

She supposed there was some truth to that. She’d been adaptable enough in Los Angeles, hadn’t she? Good at pretending she was interested in things and people she didn’t care about.

Good at playing a role.

“So do I get a prize?” She knew she sounded angry. She supposed that she was. She didn’t like thinking of her life this way.

Gary appeared to consider.

“Well, I told you we might be able to help with some of your financial problems.”

“Okay,” she said. “So I fucked Danny. What’s that worth to you? You’ll pay off one of my credit cards?”

I’m done, she thought. Fuck this. I’m going to get up and walk out the door. Just leave. Let him stop me.

“Why, sure,” Gary said, sipping his scotch. “Why don’t we start with the Working Assets Visa? You use that one a lot.”

She froze. “How …?”

“Is that the card where every time you charge something at Fred Segal or Barneys or what have you, they throw a couple pennies at saving the whales? Or I don’t know, maybe it’s stopping global warming.”

Maybe he’d had access to her wallet when she was in the jail. That might be how he knew.

Have some ice tea, she told herself. Don’t show him anything.

“We vote where the money goes, once a year,” she said.

She actually had no idea where the contributions went. She’d never paid much attention.

“Consider it done.”

Except … she hadn’t brought that card with her. It was close to maxed, and she’d left it in Los Angeles.

I should say something, she thought. Tell him that she didn’t want his money.

Maybe he didn’t mean it.

Their food arrived.

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Gary said after a few mouthfuls of prime rib and potato. “You know, I really am impressed with that photography you’re doing. So my thought is, we should put that in play.”

Michelle took a bite of her steak. She didn’t have much appetite, but eating slowed things down, gave her a chance to think before she responded.

What was he going to do, set her up as some sort of photographer? Have her take wedding photos on the beach?

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“See, it would be real useful to us to get some pictures of Danny’s associates.”

“You want me to take pictures of Danny’s friends?”
Like I’m some kind of paparazzi
, she almost said but didn’t. “You don’t think that would look a little odd?”

“We’ve got that covered.”

Gary reached for something next to him on the banquette. A small brown paper bag. He put it on the table, next to Michelle’s iced tea.

“Take a look.”

She set down her fork and opened the paper bag.

Inside was what looked like a jewelry box—black flocking, hinged on one side. In that was …

A watch?

It was oversize, clunky, stainless steel, with a linked stainless-steel band, a sort of sporty look to it. Not the sort of thing she’d wear at all.

Oh, please, she thought. Tell me this isn’t a hidden camera.

But it must be. Underneath the insert on which the watch sat was a small USB cable.