“What’s her name? Do you know her name?”
She shook her head. It didn’t matter. I knew.
Chantal.
Six months though? How had I not known? It made sense. He’d come up on me looking to find Wally and made contact with her, a big risk that she would rat him out to me. But he was always into big risks, they had potential to pay off in big dividends. She did what she always did, turned on the charm, offered up the only defense she possessed, she gave him a little sugar.
“I’m sorry, Barbara, I have to go.” The words nothing more than a whisper. I stood and opened the door. The uniform blocked my path. I looked back at her. For a long moment I thought maybe I wouldn’t leave Montclair Police Department.
“That’s okay, Al,” she said. “Let him go.”
Al stood aside.
Thirty-five minutes to go before Mack came onto the same trail with all his resources backing him. I got in the little Toyota Camry with the punched ignition, started up, and drove to the exit watching the rearview for cop cars laying in wait to ambush me.
Too much paranoia.
I used the turn signal to pull out onto the street. A sleek black Crown Victoria came up rolling hot and squealed his tires into the Montclair Police Department parking lot. As the car passed under the streetlight, I caught a glimpse of the driver: Detective Mack from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He was early, in too big of a hurry to pay attention to an innocuous Camry with a fleeing felon in it. I saw him, but he didn’t see me. I don’t think he lied about the two hours. Anxiety whipped him into such a frenzy he could easily have thought he’d waited the prescribed amount of time. He drove a cop car with emergency equipment, red lights, and a siren. Once he got the same information from Barbara, he’d jump on the Pomona Freeway and scream on past me. Unless Barbara listened to what I told her, believed I was the best man to bring her husband down, if she believed in irony. If she still loved him even a little, she’d stall. I pushed the speed, as much as I dared. The trip back to the city, the freeway long and rolling ahead of me, was going to be the worst I’d ever made.
Mack must’ve left his partner Fong to book Ruben the Cuban. It also meant Mack had not released Marie. The bastard had the blood spoor and nothing else mattered. I unintentionally pushed on the accelerator, had the speed up to eighty. I forced myself to ease off.
Thirty-five minutes later. I pulled up a block away from Chantal’s. Three floors up, the white-yellow light from her apartment spilled onto the outdoor walkway. For the last twenty miles anger rose and pulsed behind my eyes. I had no weapon. Didn’t need one. I still had two hands. I had my rage. I went up the stairs intent on kicking the door.
The blinds in the window sat in the frame slightly skewed, probably from Chantal watching the street for her man to arrive home. The slot between the blinds and the frame revealed half the living room. Chantal sat naked on the couch. Her smooth, perfect cocoa skin against the butternut leather would’ve made a tasteful and expensive work of art. Call it Ghetto Princess. Before her on the thick glass coffee table—the subject of her full attention—lay stacks of US currency: sex and greed.
She sat perfectly still staring at the money, her eyes and facial features displaying the classic opiate droop. I stood mesmerized, stood there longer than I should’ve, standing right outside her window looking into her apartment. Down on the street, a random noise floated up, the acceleration of a car a block away, trying to catch an amber signal turning red. Without taking my eyes from her, my hand went to the doorknob. That’s when I realized something was wrong. Chantal hadn’t moved. For someone hooked on junk, sitting still for hours didn’t call for panic. I guess it registered first in my subconscious. Her chest, the bellows that brought the life-giving air into the lungs, didn’t move either.
My hand turned the knob. Unlocked. The little bit of pressure eased the door open. Someone had kicked it in. Splintered wood stuck out jagged in the frame. The same someone had simply pulled the door closed. I pushed it open all the way, wary of who stood behind it.
The unmistakable stink of cordite hung in the air, floating in a bank of smoke at the ceiling, too soon for it to dissipate. I walked in like an awestruck civilian. I had grown to like Chantal and saw her as a special friend. I went over and sat on the couch next to her. Her eyes stared off into oblivion, her lips were parted slightly, a narrow trickle of blood ran down the corner of her mouth. I reached up and put a gentle hand on hers; her skin still warm to the touch. Under her left breast, difficult to discern from any distance, a small red dot wept another trickle of blood. In the back of my mind I knew I should’ve cleared the apartment first. But I also knew this, the money on the coffee table, had not been his big payday. This whole time, he’d been after the million-dollar reward for Wally Kim. He was just tying up loose ends. Chantal.
All that money was too bulky to carry. And he was in a terrible hurry. Odds of someone finding Chantal before he got back were slim to none. That’s why he’d pulled the door shut. A calculated risk. Then I realized another reason he had to come back. He’d not had time to set the scene up to frame me for her murder. No, he’d be back for the money.
The bullet must have hit a vital organ, and killed her instantly. On the table was everything he had stolen from me. The motives for murder have always been timeless: money, power, sex. Robby Wicks succumbed to all three. First, the influence of the job now lost, power. Then, the woman, sex. Then, the money, greed.
The sight of the money on the table, what it represented, what it had caused, the untimely death of this beautiful woman, made me physically ill.
Her hand moved.
“Chantal? It’s okay, it’s me, Bruno. I’ll call 911.”
I looked around for a phone. No one had landlines anymore. Everyone had cells. Where did she keep hers? “Where’s your cell phone?”
Her head moved slightly from side to side, her lips moved, “No.” Her eyes held that faraway gaze. Then I realized it was the heroin, an analgesic, a painkiller that also slowed down all the bodily functions. Anyone else would’ve already been dead. Slowly, she became more animated. She gripped my hand. “I’m sorry, Bruno. It’s all my fault. Not his. It was my fault.”
She spoke in short sentences, spoke around the pain, spoke around the lack of air, with small words.
I didn’t want to leave her, not for a second. I ran into the bedroom, grabbed a blanket, found her phone on the night stand and dialed 911 as I ran back into the living room. “I need medical aid at 2615 Crenshaw, number 310.”
“What is the reason for your—”
I shut the phone.
Chantal’s skin turned chalky in the time I was gone. I wrapped her up in the blanket and held her close. I rocked her back and forth. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. You just have to hang on a little while longer. Help’s on the way.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” she said haltingly. Her eyes refocused, she came alive a little more. The blanket, the physical contact, the hope of medical aid, did it.
“I shot him.”
“What?” I looked around on the table and floor for a gun.
“No, listen. I shot McWhorter. Kendrick’s aide. McWhorter found out about—” She coughed. More blood rippled out of her mouth. “—me and Kendrick. My gravy train, baby. McWhorter was shutting down my gravy train. My retirement. You understand, don’t you?”
Kendrick was a supervisor on the County Board of Supervisors. The pear-shaped man. The man with the clothes in the other room.
“Chantal, you have to relax. Don’t move.” Far off to the north, a siren started up.
“No, you have to listen. Please, Bruno.
“I shot McWhorter. I called Robby. Robby loved me. We were going to run away—” She gulped hard. “He came over, made it—He made it look like—the burning.”
“It’s okay, I understand. Now please, just relax, concentrate on your breathing.”
The siren drew closer.
I wanted to ask her who shot her. But it didn’t matter. I knew.
She convulsed. She went still. Limp.