“We can kick this thing around forever and it’s still gonna be a mystery,” she said around a mouthful of dinner roll. “But I will say this for you, Corso, you’ve got great taste in hotels.”
Corso swallowed a bite of steak. Looked around the room. Very nice. Very chic. “Yeah…this place is right in line with my new approach to just about everything,”
“What’s that?”
“When in doubt, throw money at it.”
“It seems to be working,” she said before biting another roll in half.
Corso sat back in his chair. “Yeah. That’s the problem. It works every time. It’s the curse of our society, isn’t it? We spend our whole lives collecting things that turn out not to matter to us. So we go out and buy something else, as if bigger houses and cars and boats are going to cure the malaise of the soul.”
“‘The malaise of the soul’? Oooow,” she teased. “You always wax this prosaic after a near-death experience?”
“I don’t generally wax at all.”
“Somebody I know once described you as an ‘artist in reticence.’”
Corso followed another bite of steak with a mouthful of wine. “That’s as close as anything, I guess,” he said. “I’ve certainly been called worse.”
“Yep.”
Corso stopped chewing. Swallowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She batted her eyes and smiled at him. “I was just agreeing with you.”
“Yeah…well don’t be too agreeable.”
“I mean…” She waved her fork at him. “It’s not news to you is it that people mostly think you’re a pain in the ass?”
“They can think whatever they want.”
“They say you’re arrogant, opinionated, reckless…” She stopped talking and leaned across the table. “First time Greg asked me to fly out to God’s country and work with you, I turned him down flat.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Turned out my condo needed a bunch of plumbing work. I figured I might as well make some money as sit around and listen to a bunch of fat-ass plumbers making noise.”
“Now there’s a vote of confidence if I ever heard one.”
“Awww…don’t worry about it, Corso. You’re not nearly as bad as they say you are. Hell…you’ve actually got a little streak of chivalry in you somewhere. It’s childish as hell, but you know…kinda touching.”
Corso used his napkin to hide the sneer on his lips. “You got any ideas?” he wanted to know.
“About you?”
“About this whole bank robbery thing,” he snapped. “About how Nathan Marino and what happened back East last year could be connected to the things happened around here today.”
“It’s a great idea.”
“What’s a great idea?”
“Robbing banks with a hostage. Puts the bankers at an enormous disadvantage. I mean, what in hell are they gonna do…let the perps…”
“You’ve been watching way too many police videos,” he interrupted.
“…let the perps blow up a perfectly innocent citizen so’s they can hang onto some money that’s insured by the Feds anyway.”
“We just watched one who did.”
She dismissed the idea with a wave. “He was Vietnamese. No way a Vietnamese banker is going to give anybody anything. Not a Cambodian either. Or a Laotian. It’s just not part of Southeast Asian culture to become separated from folding money.
“Also…I fail to see how anything we might have done back on the East Coast could possibly have been the catalyst for what happened here in the past couple of days.” She used the second half of the roll to wipe up the remaining béarnaise sauce in her plate. “You gottta admit…the timing’s a bit suspect.”
“More than a bit,” he admitted.
“You said it yourself. It’s been over a year…right? The case is colder than the proverbial well digger’s ass. Nobody’s paying the least attention to this loser chicken delivery guy who got blown to pieces in a bank parking lot way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, then all of a sudden your cherubic countenance is all over the media claiming you’re gonna solve this thing…and next thing you know, the local federales are trying to force you out of town and persons unknown are trying to force you into the grave.” She spread her hands in wonder. “Gotta be a connection somewhere.”
Corso finished his wine, reached for the bottle and found it empty. “You want another,” he asked. “I could call…”
She shook her head. “I’m gonna toddle off to bed here real soon.”
“And…you know…” Corso began. “…if this whole bank-robbing thing had started up again back East…well maybe I could believe that we’d inadvertently stepped on somebody’s grave…but, you know…what in hell does any of that have to do with any of this?”
“Beats me.”
“And I’m still not sure what we’re doing here,” Corso groused.
“It’s simple. They think we know something we don’t.”
Corso ran a hand through his hair. “This whole thing is straight out of some Franz Kafka novel.”
“Story of my life.” She said it wistfully, but a sadness appeared behind her eyes. She felt its presence and looked away.
Corso leaned in closer. “Tell me about your life,” he said in a low voice.
“Which one?” she asked with a laugh.
“You choose.”
Silence settled in. The sound of a distant car horn reached their ears, rhythmically bleating its one-note song, over and over before finally stopping.
“I never wanted any of this,” she said after a moment. “All I ever wanted was a husband, a couple of kids, a house in the ’burbs, summers down the shore…”
“You’re from New Jersey.”
She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “How’d you know?” she asked. “I don’t sound like Jersey anymore. I know I don’t.”
Corso put on an accent. “Summers down the shore,” he mocked. “Only in Jersey do they call it that. Over to the ocean. Over to the coast. Maybe even traipsing to the seashore.” He wave a hand. “But only in Jersey do they refer to it as down the shore.”
She looked around the room and then over at Corso. “This is a long way from New Jersey,” she said.
“Where in Jersey?”
“Freehold. It’s…”
“I know where it is.”
“Funny thing is…I’ve got no idea how I got from there to here. Not only didn’t I see it coming, but…you know…I don’t see any trail behind me either. It’s like I’ve been about ten different people in my life and, every time, all I did was blink my eyes, and I turned up someplace else doing something new.”
“You complaining?”
She mulled it over. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“What about?”
“Loss,” she said. A sudden stiffness in her shoulder told Corso she regretted having said it, so he tried to lighten things up.
“What’d you lose?’ he asked. The minute it passed his lips he knew it was the wrong thing to say. And suddenly it was as if her eyes were floating in space. No face, no boundaries, just a pair of angry eyes, intense and damaged beyond repair.
But she wasn’t listening.
Corso tried to move closer, but she wasn’t having it. She cringed as their shoulders met and got to her feet. “It’s been a long day. I’m about ready to avail myself of that fancy room next door.” She clapped a strong hand on his shoulder. “Thanks for dinner,” she said. “We get a chance, I’ll take you to Pink’s for a couple chili dogs…on me.” She made a circle with her thumb and index finger. “Best in L.A.,” she said. “Hands down.”
Corso got to his feet. He watched in silence as she crossed the room and disappeared out into the hall. After a time, he pushed himself back from the room service table, grabbed it by the edges and rolled it along in her wake, hoping to catch her scent as he pushed the table across the carpet to the door, which he held open with his foot as he eased the table out. Leaving the cart in the hall, he triple-locked the door, snapped off the overhead lights and then, in the darkness, mimed his way over to the bed.
When he bent to take off his shoes, his head began to spin. He sat up slowly, waited a moment and then tried again. Same result. For a second, he felt nauseous. He took several deep breaths, then crawled up onto the bed…one shoe on, one shoe off. The darkness began to fold itself around him just as he heard his mother’s voice say something about…