The Barbed-Wire Kiss (35 page)

Twenty feet away, Cristina gave Fallon a last look and began to walk back toward the escalator.

He called to her, tried to step back through the metal detector. The black woman reached across and caught his sleeve. He wrenched it away from her, turned, and collided with the first PA cop, who had stepped up to block him. From the terminal came two more cops, walking fast.

Fallon looked around, confused. The first cop turned him, guided him toward the wall. They had his bag open, were taking clothes out.

Cristina crossed the gate area, not hurrying. She walked by Harry without looking at him, got on the escalator, rode slowly up to the main terminal.

He stayed to watch. The PA cop had Fallon against the wall now, away from the other passengers. Fallon pulled loose, red-faced and angry, and the cop shoved him back hard. Handcuffs flashed. The other cops moved in.

Harry stepped away from the wall, walked to the escalator. Three more cops raced down the steps from the terminal. Halfway up, he looked back. Fallon had disappeared in a sea of uniforms.

She was waiting for him near the far doors.

“This way,” he said.

They took the escalator down to the garage. He led her to the car, unlocked and opened her door, shut it behind her. He got in, started the engine, and pulled out fast. When he stopped at the gate to pay, he saw three PA police cars in front of the terminal, lights flashing.

He followed the signs to the airport exit. Five minutes later they were back on the turnpike, heading south. He turned to her.

“Did you really?” he said.

She looked at him.

“What?”

“Know I’d come?”

She looked out into the night. “Always.”

“How did you know he’d leave me alone with the bag?” she asked.

They were southbound on the Parkway, the traffic sparse.

“I didn’t. I took a chance. Until the moment he handed it to you, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.”

“What will happen to him?”

“Not much. He’ll have a rough night, but his lawyer will have him out by the morning. He’ll say he was set up and they’ll believe him. No one in his right mind would try to carry that much heroin and a recently fired gun onto a passenger flight, especially these days. But until it gets straightened out, it’ll screw up any plans he has for leaving the country.”

“Heroin?”

“Like I said, it belonged to him. The gun too.”

“He’ll think I did it.”

“Maybe.” He looked at her. “That bother you?”

“No.”

She took out her cigarette case.

“I hate flying,” she said.

“What?”

“Flying. Planes. I hate them. He knew that, but he didn’t care.”

He pushed in the dashboard lighter.

“Then you got lucky today,” he said.

The lighter popped out. He handed it to her and she lit the cigarette, cracked the window to let the smoke out.

“Did he kill someone?” she said.

“Maybe not personally, but he was responsible for it.”

“How many?”

“Four that I know of. There might be more.”

She replaced the lighter.

“Four people,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Then he deserves whatever happens to him, doesn’t he?”

He shrugged. “Don’t we all?”

The motel was in freehold, near an industrial park off Route 33. He filled out the registration card and paid in cash, then drove around the back so the car couldn’t be seen from the highway.

They’d stopped quickly at her house and she’d loaded a suitcase while he stayed in the car. He carried it up the concrete stairs to their second-floor motel room, locked and chained the door behind them, drew the drapes.

They took turns in the shower, him first, keeping his cast outside the curtain. When he was done, he dried off, wrapped a towel around his waist, and stretched out on the bed, pillows propped behind him. He turned on the television and surfed until he found the eleven o’clock news.

After a while he heard the water switch off. When she came out of the bathroom, she wore a black silk top that ended just below her breasts, a matching pair of panties. Her hair was slick and dark. She crossed in front of the TV to where her suitcase lay flat on a chair.

“I’ve got something to show you,” she said.

He picked up the remote and switched off the TV, watched her. She opened the suitcase, dug through folded clothes, came out with a black leather fanny pack.

“What’s that?” he said.

She tossed it onto the bed. He picked it up. It was bulging, overstuffed. He unzipped it, saw the bundled bills inside. He thumbed the edges. Hundreds.

“His getaway money,” she said. “Or I should say part of it. I’m sure he has more hidden in other places. I knew about this because he went to the bank this morning and got it from a safe-deposit box. He packed it in one of his suitcases, but I took it out and hid it in the bathroom closet.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I thought the more money he had, the farther away he’d take me, and the harder it would be for me to get back. Maybe I just wanted to be able to get my hands on some money quickly if I did come back. He never realized it was gone.”

“How much is in here?”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He’ll come looking for this.”

“He’ll come looking for
me
anyway, won’t he? And the way I see it, it’s my money too, especially with everything he’s put us through. Three years of my life, eight thousand dollars a year. That’s pretty cheap.”

“I hope he sees it the same way.”

“Some of that is probably what he got from your friend.”

He zipped the bag shut, weighed it in his hand, set it on the bed.

“Dirty money,” he said.

“Is there any other kind? It’s a question of degree, isn’t it?”

“Drug money.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What’s important is that it’s not
his
money anymore.”

She sat down on the bed, touched his cast.

“Look at what he did to you,” she said. “To us.”

He took her hand, drew her down beside him.

“I thought it would give us a start,” she said.

“We don’t need it.”

She put a cool hand on his chest, tucked her head beneath his chin.

They lay like that awhile and she whispered, “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“I’ve left him.”

“You could have done it a thousand times.”

“Not without you.”

He pulled her closer, felt her breathing, slow and steady. He held her as she drifted into sleep.

The next morning he crept out of the room, Cristina still asleep, and stepped into blinding sunshine. He walked to the pay phone by the motel office and called his answering machine. Two hangups, no messages. Then he called Ray’s office, got him on the line, and talked for ten minutes.

When he was done, he went back to the room, closed the door quickly so the light wouldn’t wake her. She lay curled in the sheets, one bare leg exposed. The smell of her perfume hung in the air.

He sat at the desk, found a piece of motel stationery, wrote her a note, and left it on the nightstand. Then he let himself out again, shut the door quietly behind him.

The Ford station wagon that Ray lent him was ten years old, but it ran as if it were new. The body was dented, the paint faded, but the engine leaped when he stepped on the gas. He parked it outside the room and went in to find her dressed and lying on the bed, watching a soap opera, her suitcase packed and set by the door.

“I woke up and you were gone,” she said. “It scared me.”

“I had to run some errands. That’s why I left you the note. I didn’t want to wake you.”

She switched off the TV.

“Where are we going?”

“Delaware. Near the water. A friend of mine has a place there. It’s empty. We can lie low for a few days until some of this blows over. We’ll be out of the way, but I’ll still be able to keep an ear to what’s going on back here. Then, after a while, we can decide what we want to do.”

“How far is it?”

“About three hours, if we don’t hit much traffic.”

“Don’t you need to go to your house?”

“I already did. I’ve got a suitcase in the car. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

“I guess I’m ready now.”

She got up, began to gather her things. He propped open the door with a chair, carried her bag out to the station wagon. She came and stood in the doorway.

“What’s that?” she said.

“I had to return the Saturn. A friend lent me this. It’s a company car. He uses it for surveillance mostly. Nondescript.”

“It’s that, all right.”

“Wait here. I’m going to go check out, settle the bill.”

When he got back to the room she was sitting on the edge of the bed, turning something over in her hands. He stopped in the doorway.

“Second thoughts?” he said.

“Just thoughts.”

She got up, went over to the TV, set her wedding ring on top of it. Sunlight glinted off the diamonds.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” he said.

“Yes.”

She looked at him.

“Then let’s go,” he said.

They drove down into South Jersey on the Turnpike, caught the ferry that took them across Delaware Bay to Cape Lewes. Outside Belltown, they stopped for lunch and gas, then picked up Route 24 again, heading south.

After they passed Rehoboth Beach, he looked at the handwritten directions Ray had given him. He turned east and, after twenty minutes, the highway gave way to a two-lane county road with ditches on both sides. They passed the roadside farm market Ray had told him about and started looking for the turnoff.

It was a single-lane road, unpaved, and the station wagon rattled in protest, the suitcases shifting in the back. Fire roads led off into the trees on both sides.

“What are those?” she said.

“In case of forest fires,” he said. “It allows them to get trucks out into the middle of the woods.”

He slowed to twenty-five, watching carefully now.

“There it is,” she said, pointing at a rusty mailbox ahead on the left.

He braked, turned into the narrow, rutted driveway. It led uphill, trees on both sides, and when he reached the top he could see sunlight glinting on the waters of Rehoboth Bay. Then they were over the hill and into a clearing, the house ahead of them.

It was a small two-story structure, faded green with white shutters, in desperate need of a paint job. The grass around it was high, almost hiding the slate path that led to the front door.

He pulled into the side yard, shut off the engine.

“Wait here,” he said.

He got out of the car, found the key Ray had given him. He unlocked the front door, went through into a small living room where dust floated in the air, a thin film of it covering the hardwood floor. There was an undersized fireplace in one corner, and the only furniture was a couch and a single chair, both covered with bedsheets.

He walked through into the kitchen. The far wall was floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on a slope of dune grass that ran down to a small scallop of beach. The sun flashed hard off the water.

He checked the upstairs rooms, then went back outside and began to pull suitcases out of the wagon.

“Go on in,” he said. “It’s home, for a little while, at least.”

When he carried in the first bag, she was standing in the kitchen looking out at the beach, her form silhouetted against the windows.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

He came up behind her, slipped his arm around her waist, kissed the back of her head. She took his hand.

“Not exactly a honeymoon cottage,” he said, “but I guess it’s as close as we’ll get for now.”

She leaned back against him.

“Now’s good,” she said. “Don’t underestimate now.”

“I never do.”

There was no phone in the house, so after they had settled in and unpacked, he drove back to the highway, pulled into the first shopping plaza he came to, a cluster of small stores connected to a Kmart. The lot was full of pickup trucks and older passenger cars, the station wagon unobtrusive.

He called Ray’s office from a pay phone outside a liquor store.

“We’re here,” he said.

“Good. Any trouble finding it?”

“No problem. What’s happening back there?”

“Fallon was arraigned this morning in Newark. Possession and intent, gun charges, FAA violations, a whole laundry list. Judge set bond at a hundred thousand, but allowed for the ten percent. Not much when you consider he was about to get on an international flight with a loaded weapon and enough heroin to kill an elephant.”

“So he’s out?”

“His lawyer had the check in hand.”

“I’m betting Wesniak talked to the judge. Who was it?”

“Spero.”

“Know him?”

“Not well. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he owes Wesniak a favor or two. They go back.”

“My guess is Wesniak told him they need to keep Fallon free in order to nail Dunleavy.”

“Makes sense. Or maybe Fallon’s thinking about playing ball, coming in himself. Could be that business at the airport pushed him over. I can’t believe you pulled off that shit, by the way. How are you two making out down there?”

“Fine.”

“Place might be a little musty. We haven’t had a chance to get down there yet this summer. But the pantry’s full and there’s a freezer in the basement. Take what you need.”

“Thanks. I appreciate everything you’ve done for us.”

“Forget it. One other thing I should have told you earlier. Unless you had a flat tire, you probably haven’t noticed, but there’s what you might call an emergency kit in the wagon, in the wheel well below the spare. I put one in all the company cars. I don’t think you’ll need it, but you should know it’s there.”

“I’ll take a look. Thanks again, Ray. For everything. You came through for us.”

“You ever doubt I would?”

Back at the house, he found Cristina in the kitchen. She wore a blue one-piece bathing suit beneath a beach robe.

“Where did you find those?” he said.

“Upstairs in the bedroom. The suit’s a little big, but it’ll do until I get a new one. Let’s go.”