Green Ice (16 page)

“Your clothes weren’t there.”

“Maybe someone packed them and was holding them for me. Did Marianna ask at the front desk?”

“As far as Las Hadas is concerned, darling, you were never there. You never registered.”

Fucking thieving Mexicans, Wiley thought. Probably the porter.

“My money … in the lamp base …”

“Gone.”

“The emeralds?”

“Not a trace.”

Wiley sagged. Now all he had were the clothes he had on, and he couldn’t even repay Lillian for those.

“It’s my fault,” she said.

“No.”

“We should have gone back when you wanted to. But I was afraid something might happen … to you.”

That was a lot better than nothing, he thought.

“I’ll make it up to you.” She smiled, toothy, and beckoned. He kneeled beside the slant board. She put her hand on the back of his neck to pull his face down for a kiss.

He was numb. It took a short while for the kiss to reach him.

“Poor soul,” she murmured.

Dumb fuck, was what he thought of himself. Crème de menthe hadn’t been the place to hide those emeralds. But the lamp base … it seemed incredible that anyone would think of looking there, take the trouble of unscrewing the base purely on speculation.
His
twelve thousand.…

“Why don’t you go try to take a nap?” she said.

“You want to get rid of me now that I’m broke?” A tinge of self-pity.

“For an hour or two.”

She gave him another, shorter kiss.

Kneeling and bent way over as he was, the blood rushed to his head. Homage to an upside-down woman. He needed to see her eyes, but was too close. He pulled away slightly, told her, “I love you.”

“Sounds true.” She might as well have soothed his brow.

He was embarrassed. He stood up quickly and brushed at the knees of his trousers.

“These shoes pinch,” he said.

“They didn’t have them in your width, but I like that style. Don’t you?”

He said he did.

“Sometimes you have to sacrifice fit.”

“Yeah.”

“Have a nice nap and don’t worry,” she said before he’d even started to leave.

“In case of emergency, knock on the wall,” he said.

His new room was almost half the size of the other. Even then, it was much too much for his mood. He removed his clothes, started to throw them over a chair, but decided, being all he had, he’d best treat them better. He opened the closet to get a hanger.

There was practically an entire wardrobe inside.

Everything brand-new and expensive. Everything his size.

He remembered her saying she’d make it up to him. Her shopping spree. All those packages had been for him, and she must have had others sent. But, wait a minute, hadn’t that been before Marianna reported his total loss at Las Hadas? So why had Lillian bought all these things? The only possible explanation was that she’d gotten carried away—with wanting to give to him, to please him.

In that spirit, he had to accept. Besides, he told himself, he still intended somehow to repay her.

That night at dinner Wiley felt invisible most of the time. Lillian directed nearly all her attention to Argenti, who soaked it up and reciprocated with scores of flatteries and overtures. Twice Argenti asked Wiley’s opinion, then didn’t wait for it.

After dinner they had espresso and Amaretto in the game room. Lillian and Argenti played gin rummy for a dollar a point while Wiley watched.

“No kibitzing,” Lillian told him.

Wiley had difficulty keeping silent, especially when he saw Lillian make mistakes, such as discarding what Argenti obviously needed. Either she wasn’t as good a gin player as she’d claimed or, for some reason, she was letting Argenti win. They set midnight as the time limit for their play. By then Argenti was ahead eleven thousand and very pleased with himself.

She started to write him a check.

“How about shooting for double or nothing?” he asked.

Wiley thought Argenti meant dice, or possibly marbles. He resented the idea of Lillian playing marbles with anyone else. She had before, of course, but from now on.…

They went downstairs to a large basement area. There was a shooting range. Off to one side a glass-enclosed cabinet contained numerous rifles and pistols.

They decided on pistols. Lillian got out two Browning nine-millimeter automatics. And several spare clips.

Wiley, leaning against a cement wall and keeping out of the way, thought how incongruous it was to see her with that weapon. It changed her. As though it radiated lethalness up her arm and through her entire person. It was fascinating and frightening. He had the urge to take it from her, pry it from her grip.

She inserted a clip, rammed it home.

“Hearts?” she asked.

“The most out of thirteen,” Argenti said.

She flipped a wall switch that illuminated the target range and activated a pair of targets fifty feet away. They were human shapes, average size, made of metal, painted white. Located at left center chest, precisely where the heart would be, was a hole five inches in diameter. Two other smaller oval-shaped holes were like eye sockets in the head. The targets, on an electric track, moved to the left at changing speeds, erratically up and down, and then to the right. Difficult to predict what the next motion would be.

Argenti offered Lillian first try.

She told him to go ahead.

He stepped to the line confidently, fired off the entire clip.

The explosions of the shots, greater than Wiley had expected, numbed his hearing. The smell of gunpowder seemed to cloud most of the life out of the air.

An electronic scorekeeper, a black glass-faced box on the left wall, flashed the numeral
8
.

Easy as that, apparently without even trying, Argenti had put eight bullets into the heart. Out of thirteen.

Wiley was impressed.

Argenti glanced at him. No mistaking the self-assurance in Argenti’s eyes.

Perhaps that was the true purpose of this shooting contest, Wiley thought, to warn him off. Was that why Argenti had suggested it?

Lillian was now on the firing line. She raised the pistol, took careful aim and let go at the target. She was unable to control the recoil of the Browning. The muzzle jerked upward. Her shots went high and higher. The last few into the far ceiling.

No hits, not even one.

Wiley remembered her telling him how she’d learned years ago from that sharpshooter. It made him wonder how much truth there was in the rest of her story.

She said to Argenti, “Now I owe you twenty-two thousand.” As though it was nothing.

“Try again?” Argenti asked.

Taking unfair advantage, Wiley thought, the son of a bitch. His impulse was to challenge Argenti, but he didn’t have a dime to bet. What’s more, he knew zero about shooting. The last and only time he’d held a gun had been over twenty years ago in Texas. An air gun that shot pellets. He hadn’t been able to hit an empty beer can at thirty feet.

Lillian released the used clip from her pistol, told Argenti, “I thought I might beat you without your glasses.”

“I am wearing contacts,” he replied.

“You’re a tricker, Meno, that’s what.”

Argenti raised his hands palms up and pouted to profess his innocence.

Lillian led the way upstairs, back to the game room. She turned on the stereo for disco music while Argenti went behind the bar. Rather as an afterthought, Argenti asked Wiley what he wanted to drink.

“Boilermaker,” Wiley said, hoping to confuse the foreigner.

The Italian filled a double shot glass with Old Grand-Dad and opened a Heineken for a chaser. He mixed a concoction of brandy, tequila, bitters and champagne for Lillian and himself. With the dexterity of a professional bartender, even spinning ice in the glasses to frost them. He hadn’t asked Lillian what she wanted, evidently knew.

Wiley told himself that noticing such little things was being absurdly sensitive. Sitting at the bar, he took a gulp of the straight whiskey. The way it burned was a suitable minor punishment. He drank some beer from the bottle.

Argenti carried the drinks over to Lillian.

Watch out, honey, yours is drugged, Wiley’s imagination said.

Argenti made a toast, personal enough to be nearly whispered, so Wiley wouldn’t hear.

Lillian smiled provocatively and clicked her glass against Argenti’s.

They sipped and kept their eyes locked. Then they placed their glasses down, and she turned the music up loud and they danced. Argenti hardly moved. He was like a center post, or perhaps an edifice, around which Lillian demonstrated. She pranced, snapped her head, made hip circles and center thrusts, as though to show various sexual proficiencies.

Wiley was reminded of all the love he’d made with her since yesterday morning. Their first time was already nebulous, obscured by so many subsequent sensations. And now, there she was, at the least mimicking erotically for Argenti. As far as they were concerned he wasn’t there, Wiley felt. He lighted a cigarette, held the match up, closed an eye and positioned the flame so it appeared to be about to ignite Argenti’s beard. Wiley imagined Argenti with his whole head afire. And to hell with her, too. He downed the rest of his whiskey, poured another, took it and his beer with him and left the room.

He wandered around the house some, eventually was drawn downstairs to the shooting range.

He got out one of the Browning automatics. It was indeed heavier than it looked, maybe two pounds, and felt even deadlier in his hand. The human-shaped targets were just standing there. Wiley took aim, pulled the trigger. The pistol nearly leaped from his hand. Lucky, he thought, that he hadn’t shot himself.

He got a firmer grip, took more careful aim, but still didn’t hit the metal figure. How the hell could he miss? He had it right in his sights. The fucking gun was off. He pulled the trigger again and again until he’d emptied the clip without a hit.

Argenti, he remembered, had put eight out of thirteen in the heart. And on the move.

He couldn’t even put one anyplace, standing still.

He kept at it. Became more familiar with the weapon, figured out how to reload it, found a carton of bullets in a cabinet drawer. He steadied his right wrist with his left hand, the way he’d seen police heroes do in films. He decided the trigger was crucial, had to be teased so it sort of surprised the mechanism that exploded the bullet. He took up the slack in the trigger, squeezed it gently, and that was when he registered his first hit in the heart.

He got so caught up in it that he didn’t think nearly so much about Lillian upstairs with Argenti. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he hit nine out of thirteen. Moving.

He had just hit six, his best score, when he noticed Lillian. She was seated on the stairs. From her relaxed position, Wiley assumed she’d been there awhile. She appeared a bit tousled. From dancing?

“Where’s Albert Anastasia?”

“He got sleepy,” she said.

After what? Wiley wondered.

“It’s almost four,” she said. She came over and touched the barrel of the gun. It was hot.

“You’ve really been blasting away.”

“Wasting time.” He shrugged.

“Six out of thirteen hearts is much better than average.”

Better than she could do, Wiley thought. She couldn’t hit the wall.

She smiled softly, and her eyes were soft on him.

He began loving her again.

She picked up the other Browning, checked to see that it was loaded, cocked a bullet into the chamber and stepped to the firing line. She hesitated, faced away from the moving targets, then spun around into a perfect shooting crouch, and, it seemed, didn’t even aim. She fired the entire clip, rapidly. Alternate shots at the heart of one target and then another, and then at the eye sockets to make it more difficult.

Thirteen hits.

She put the pistol down. “Let’s go to bed,” she said, definitely not meaning sleep.

12

First thing Wiley said when he awoke that day was, “I love you.”

Lillian reached to press a signal button on her bedside table. She got up, drew open the drapes and went back to bed.

Wiley said it again. It was easy to say because it was true.

She said, “I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“You’re a fortune hunter.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You yourself told me.”

“I was only bullshitting.”

“See, you even admit to lying.”

“About that, yes.”

“You really love me?”

“Very much.”

“I’ll bet I could count the ways. Actually, you know, I don’t mind that you’re an opportunist, as long as you’re straight about it.”

“I’m not an …”

“I think you are. I mean for other reasons.”

“Such as?”

“The way you make love.”

“It makes itself.”

“Certainly nothing amateurish about it.”

“You’ve got to believe me.”

“That’s how it’d be?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’d have to let me know when and when not to believe you.”

“Don’t you want to believe me?”

“Let’s brush our teeth,” she said.

They went and foamed at the mouth at each other in the long bathroom mirror.

In bed again, pillows plumped and rearranged, she told him, “Say it again.”

“I love you.”

“It still
sounds
true enough.”

“It is.”

“But I thought I detected a tinge of deception in the word
you.”

“
You
was the truest part.”

“We’ll see.”

“How can I convince you?”

“We’ll think of something,” she promised.

Breakfast trays were brought. Hers had a yellow rose on it with a slip of note paper around its stem. She ignored it while she ate, but Wiley couldn’t.

Finally, she dabbed at the corners of her mouth, laid her napkin aside and unrolled the note.

Wiley watched her closely while she read it.

“Meno,” she said, “thanks me and sends me his heart and says good-bye to you.”

“And good riddance.”

“And he invites us to Bogotá.” She seemed pleased. “Ever been to Bogotá?”

“Colombia?”