Lovers and Liars (12 page)

“You want it,” he had grated, pulling her up violently toward him, “all you had to do was ask.”

Abe pinned her on the bed, shoving up her nightgown. He plunged violently into her, again and again, determined to hurt her. Her sobs left him unmoved.

Afterward Abe lay on the bed, his heart raging. He ignored Nancy as she stumbled to her feet and into the bathroom. He closed his eyes. This wasn’t happening. Nancy Worth Glassman was not a cheap whore. She was his wife. He kept seeing her as he had through the years—chic, elegant, ladylike. Then he imagined her with the boy, Ford—naked and wet and moaning for him. He was sick. He hated her. He was going to destroy her.

And destroy Ford.

Nancy came out of the bathroom clad in slacks, a sweater, and carrying a small bag. He instantly sat up. “Where the fuck are you going?’

“I-I’m leaving.”

He was on his feet. “Oh, no, you’re not!” he snarled. He hated her, but he wasn’t about to let her go. Oh, no, not when she belonged to him.

She had started for the door, giving him her back.

And it dawned on him. “Just where the hell do you think you’re going? To
him?”

She didn’t look back.

And then it was funny. He laughed. “To that two-bit punk? You’re leaving me, me, Abe Glassman, for that punk chauffeur?” And he laughed harder.

She wrenched open the door and started running, as if she couldn’t bear another moment in his presence.

He had let her go—for then. Ford was just getting his
rocks off, and Nancy was in for a rude awakening if she thought he was her savior. What was she going to do—marry the kid? Live on canned beans and wear polyester for the rest of her life? He would wait. Wait until she came crawling back. And then he’d make sure she lived to regret every day of the rest of her life.

He heard her fall. There was a rolling, thumping noise that instinctively made him run to the top of the long, curved stairs.

She was slowly getting to her knees, bent over from the waist and moaning. He stopped himself from running down to help her, reminding himself of his hatred for her.

Eight hours later Nancy miscarried a twelve-week-old male fetus.

His son.

She and Jack Ford had killed his son.

16

W
hat really happened?

He had liked his job. Not that driving a Caddie for Abe Glassman was his future, not at all. He’d come to New York to study acting, mostly because he had the face to launch a thousand ships and the pussy panting after him to prove it. Of course, he hadn’t made it very often to acting class that summer. But that didn’t matter. Glassman was big, as in megabucks, and if he didn’t own half of New York City by then, Jack knew he would one day. And maybe he would be there with Abe, riding on his coattails. After all, didn’t Glassman trust him?

Jack was certain he did, because he had been tested and had passed with flying colors.

The first time Abe Glassman had given him a sealed
envelope and asked him to deliver it personally, Jack hadn’t thought much about it. The third time, he had held the envelope, weighed it, even sniffed it—and knew it contained money. He had taken it up to his tiny grimy room on Broadway and One hundred tenth and carefully steamed it open. He counted, slowly. Fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Then he replaced every single bill, not even tempted, and resealed the envelope. And delivered it.

Of course it was grease money.

The destination of the envelope confirmed it, and Jack began to keep track of his deliveries—city councilmen, CEOs, a secretary in the mayor’s office, an aide to a California senator, even a cop. Big stuff.

He began to think how sweet his life might become.

He was making money, good money for those deliveries. And there would be more coming his way.

Then it happened. The kid walking in on him and the gorgeous Mrs. Glassman while he had been driving his cock deep and thick inside her. Shit, that was bad. What if the kid told?

He had sweated bullets, waiting for Glassman to get back from L.A. Unable to sleep, he had tossed restlessly in the heat. Wondering why Nancy Glassman had failed to keep their rendezvous that afternoon, and feeling horny as hell. When he had spoken to her that morning on the phone, she had sounded fine. Had something gone wrong since then?

Abe called a little after midnight—something he often did. Everything seemed the same. Jack had felt vast relief, thinking that Abe didn’t know—the kid hadn’t talked. He was sure of it when Glassman told him to come by the town house to pick up another “package.” He got over there fast. And even in person Abe seemed fine.

The address Abe sent him to was in Queens, not Manhattan. Jack had never been there before, but that didn’t mean anything. He had even been whistling as he thought about the nice bonus he always got for these little deliveries, jamming on a rock station as he hit the Midtown Tunnel, fingers rapping the wheel.

He started frowning when he asked directions and was sent into a shabby neighborhood. Not just shabby. More like the kind of place he’d grown up in. An unadulterated slum. Kids in rags playing in streams of water from open fire hydrants. Tumbled-down buildings, some gutted from fires. Pregnant teenage girls sitting on stoops. Old men drunk in doorways stinking of urine. The strains of a ghetto blaster followed him down an entire block.

The address was a store advertising cigars and girlie magazines. This did not smell right. Jack wasn’t afraid—he was good with his fists and a broken bottle, if need be—but he was alert. The man inside the store was big and menacing. He looked as if he could break a man’s neck with his bare hands. His two customers weren’t as big, but they had that same feral look. Oh, shit, Jack thought, locking his door with one motion.

As the big piece of brawn came out toward him, Jack knew. He
knew
.

He rolled his window up and put the car in drive. From the corner of his eye he saw the blurred movement, realizing too late what had happened. The window smashed, glass raining in on him, and a bloody arm the size of a tree branch reached in. Before the car could even accelerate, the man had Jack’s throat locked in his arm and was dragging him out. Jack reached for the window, gritting his teeth as jagged glass cut his hands. He tried to pull a piece away. A small, daggerlike shard broke off in his hand.

He was propelled backward, but Jack didn’t fall. He regained his balance, crouching. “Come on, motherfucker,” he rasped, ignoring his bleeding hand.

The big man laughed.

Jack darted forward, sweeping up with the glass and jumping back. A line of blood appeared on the man’s fat belly. He growled.

Jack attacked again, feinting and jabbing with the glass. The man was an ox. He couldn’t move to save his life. This time Jack sliced open his arm from elbow to wrist. He blinked salty sweat out of his eyes.

Movement on the periphery caught his attention. The
other two were behind him and approaching from both sides. Then the giant lunged, and Jack had to leap out of the way. Something hit his ankle hard, and as he went crashing onto the ground on his side, he realized he’d been tripped from behind.

He kept rolling, right onto his feet. As he came up he saw the blow coming and heard the man laugh. The undercut to his gut doubled him over, red pain rushing through him. In that instant he knew he was in serious trouble.

Brass knuckles.

His jaw cracked, snapping his head back. Another blow to his stomach, and he cried out. As he hunched over, a knee came up into his groin. The pain was so excruciating he almost passed out. He started to drop. The second knee came up into his face, breaking his nose. Blood spurted. There was an agonizing blow to his kidneys, making him scream. He felt ribs crack. He began choking on his own blood. An excruciating blow to the back of his head, and he crumpled in a heap on the street, a red-and-black haze stealing over him.

“Is he dead?”

“No, he ain’t dead, just close, real close.”

Dimly, Jack heard and wondered if the man was right. He felt as if he was dying. In fact, according to the staff in the hospital where he was laid up for six months, he had almost died the night he had been rushed into Emergency. And three months after his release, when every door in the city was slammed in his face, when his old girlfriend threw him out, when he was jobless and homeless and forced to sell it just to survive, he knew he hadn’t dreamed what the thug had said just before unconsciousness claimed him:

“You’re finished in New York, pretty boy. Nobody ever fucks with Abe Glassman.”

17

N
ancy was nervous. It was Friday night. Her insides were twisted into knots. It was silly. But ever since she’d found out that Jackson Ford was going to star in Belinda’s movie, she had been a bundle of nerves. Warning bells were ringing. It was like being swept into the past. Worse. He was coming back into her life again, insidiously. Oh, God! Nancy could feel it—the fierce foreboding of a lurking disaster.

She hated him.

She had lain in the hospital too depressed to move after the miscarriage, lain crying and waiting for him to come and take her in his arms and tell her it would be all right, that he was going to take her away once she was better. She waited and waited, for days and days and finally weeks, but he had never come. He hadn’t come. She had never seen him again.

God, even now, seventeen years later—how she hated him!

When she had gone home the drinking had started. First an early cocktail hour, then just a white wine with lunch. She never drank before lunch, but from the moment she awoke, it was her anticipation of that drink that got her through the morning. Abe, of course, was rarely home, and when he was his contempt was not disguised. But he never suggested divorce, and neither did Nancy.

She needed a drink now, to steady her nerves.

Why had Abe brought her to California this time, when she hadn’t traveled with him in years? Nancy hadn’t lived thirty years with her husband not to be suspicious. She knew Abe had brought her for a reason. And she couldn’t figure it out. She had been too afraid to ask. And now there was this insistent feeling of fear.