There was a light on. I could see that before I had the door open enough to see anything else. There was a galley kitchen immediately to the left of the door that ran for several feet, and there was a bank of mirrored sliding closet doors to the right. The light I had seen was a reflection in the mirror; the entryway was actually quite shadowed.
I stepped past the kitchen into a big open space with a dining room table to the left and living room furniture a little further on. The furniture was organized around a glass coffee table, taking full advantage of the large windows that offered a wide view of the city. In the far corner there was an armchair lit by a standing lamp, and in the chair, a book closed over one finger on his lap, was an enormous man—it was hard to say just how big with him sitting. He wore a pair of blue-and-white striped pajamas with a mauve silk robe over it and a pair of leather slippers. He looked at me with open amazement.
“Who—the hell—are you?” he said, almost biting off each word, his amazement turning fast to anger.
“I’m sorry, I—”
He raised his bulk and he was big like a gorilla. “Who the hell are you.” He let the book fall to the floor, and it lay open in the middle.
“I just...Mr. Carlton.”
“Mr. Carlton? Mr. Carlton?” He was advancing on me. I thought I was going to cry. I really did. How would that have been, me crying in front of a gangster? “Those who address me,” he was yelling, “address me as Mr. Browne, but that’s just those who address me.” There was still half the room between us. He was livid, but he wasn’t too concerned about getting at me. “You better talk or you won’t be able to talk no more.”
Vee appeared from the hallway at the left in a short robe. “Shem!” she said. “Carlton... I mean Mr. Rosenkrantz, what’s going on?”
Carlton; Mr. Browne—how was I supposed to know Carlton was his first name?—Mr. Browne yelled without turning around, “You know this man, Victoria?”
“No,” she said, looking at me with complete shock. “I mean, yeah. He’s my cousin.”
“What’s your ‘cousin’ doing in my suite at nearly two in the goddamn morning?”
She started across the room then. She had her face in a pretty good imitation of honest confusion. “I saw him this afternoon. I lost my key. Shem, you should have just left it at the front desk with a note.”
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her around.
“Oh, Carlton!”
He must have squeezed tighter, because she winced.
“Carlton...please.”
“This is your cousin? How old is he?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She was struggling to keep her face composed. “Shem...?”
I held the key out, like that was going to make it better. This was a man who wanted his girlfriends to carry guns and was just about breaking Vee’s arm. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I sounded like I was going to cry. “It’s just that I killed him, and I didn’t know what to do.”
He took a step towards me, pulling Vee with him. She was looking at me with terror, trying to shake her head so that I’d see but he wouldn’t.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“He’s dead,” I said, still holding out the key.
“Carlton, please...” Vee said. He threw her to the side and she tripped but caught herself against the wall so she didn’t go down.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, and he was smiling as he said it, which was much worse than when he was angry. “I don’t feel much like ruining this robe, and I just had a manicure this morning, so I’m going to go back in my room for my baseball bat, and if you’re still here when I get back, I’ll show you what to do when you kill somebody.”
Vee took a step towards him, “Carlton—”
He punched her in the face and her head swung around and she fell into a dining room chair and then sat on the ground. “That goes for you too,” he said to her, walking away from us.
Vee looked up at me from the ground. There was a large red blotch on the left side of her face that was already becoming puffy. “You bastard,” she said, and started to try and pull herself up with the help of the chair she had fallen into.
“Vee, I didn’t know what else to do. I killed Joseph, and—”
“Stop saying that!” She grabbed onto me to steady herself. “Come on, or are you really that stupid?”
“You’re not wearing any—”
She pushed me back towards the hall door, got it opened, and went right for the stairs, dragging me along. “I could kill you. I should kill you.”
We were in the hot stairwell. The room key was still in my hand, and I slipped it back into my pocket as Vee started down ahead of me. “I told you I was only joking,” she yelled back up at me, her voice echoing. “You weren’t supposed to go and do it.”
And it hit me that she had told me to kill him this afternoon. And had that been in the back of my mind when I went to see him? Had I killed him because I actually wanted to? The money would be mine now—he wasn’t married yet, he had no will, I was his closest living relative. I realized just how much trouble I was in, because nobody would believe it was an accident now, even if I tried to say it was. I had too good a motive. But I hadn’t meant to kill him. It had been an accident.
Vee was a whole level below me. She pushed out onto our floor, and the door had already closed behind her when I got to it, but she had to wait at our room, because I had the key. She had her arms crossed just under her breasts as though she was cold, but really she had caught an unnatural case of modesty. She shoved me aside once the door was unlocked and was at the armoire already by the time I made it into the bedroom. She took out a skirt and a blouse and flung them on the bed.
“You’re really crazy, you know that? He could have killed us both. He probably will kill me. What am I to him? I’m just another whore.” She was getting dressed, not taking the time to hide her nakedness now. “He’s not so foolish to think I’m with him alone, but to have another man show up in his room. Like Samson and Delilah.” She had the skirt on now, and was zipping it up. Then she pulled it around so the zipper was in the back. “We need to get out of here.”
“Vee,” I said, and I don’t know what was in my voice, but she stopped and looked at me.
“What the hell happened to your arm?”
“Joe stabbed me with an ice pick.”
She got very calm. “You’re serious? You really killed him?”
I just nodded. I couldn’t talk then.
“S—t! S—t, s—t, s—t.”
“It was an accident.”
“Who saw you?”
I shook my head. “When?”
“When! When! Now, you idiot. Who saw you? Who’d you tell? What happened?” She started putting her blouse on, but her fingers were shaking so much as she tried to work the buttons that it took several attempts with each one.
“I don’t think anybody saw me. It was at his house. It was an accident.”
“Like anyone will believe that.”
“It was!”
“All right! Don’t yell at me about it. I believe you it was an accident. But who else will believe you!” She had her shirt mostly buttoned. Her face was bruising.
“I ran out. It was dark. I took a cab here, and I don’t know. I guess I came through the lobby.”
She gestured at my bloody arm with her head. “With that?”
“I had my jacket on.”
She paused. “Can we get back in the house? Is it locked?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Probably not. It never used to be.”
She went past me, finishing the last button and picked up the phone. “Yes, could you have Mr. Browne’s car around front please?” She paused. “Thank you, I’ll be right down.”
“What are you doing?” I said.
She picked up my jacket and pushed it at me, pushing me towards the door at the same time. “You go down the stairs and out through the back. Make sure no one sees you. Wait around the corner and I’ll be there to get you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Fix it. That’s what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“Vee, are you okay?”
Her face was purple and black, her eye had red in it. She looked like she was going to claw me. But instead, before I could say anything more, she was off to the elevators, striding away from me with all the assurance in the world.
I felt exhausted all of a sudden, and slumped against the wall. How could I get up? How could I ever walk again? My eyes closed and my head sagged. Quinn, I thought. Clotilde... Again the sight of Joe’s head flopped over on his neck came before me, and it made my stomach turn. But it got me going. I went back to the stairs, and went down, down in the fiery heat.