Frederick Zackel - Dead Wrong About the Guy

"Let's go talk in private."

Corky held back. "The parking lot in five minutes."

I agreed. We walked away from each other.

I walked through the main lounge to the lobby. There I bumped into Ivy Lawson. Ivy's smile was only for me. Our lust drew us together and we kissed. Our kiss went on for a long while, like two magnets fusing together. Once we realized other people could be watching us, Ivy blushed and I got self-conscious. But no one seemed to have noticed us.

We moved into a darker corner of the lobby.

"Wanna go somewhere, sailor?" Ivy asked.

I noticed Corky leaving. "Give me twenty minutes, okay?"

Ivy only had eyes for me. "Sure, Michael."

I gave her some money. "Buy yourself a drink."

As Ivy disappeared down the hallway towards the ladies room, I followed Corky outside.

I caught up with Corky in the parking lot of the Club Ilima, a swatch of gravel along the shoreline. White thundering surf and the black night along the ocean were beyond us. Next stop, Tokyo.

I said, "When is Debra Lawson coming forward?"

"How the hell--?"

"She is your girlfriend, right?"

"Leave her out of this!"

I pushed harder. "I need to meet her face-to-face. She's your partner. I want to know how much she knows about all this. We get together soon, understand?

"No way."

"Does she know about it?"

"She knows I'm having it done."

"Did she ask you to do it for her?"

"No!"

"What does she get out of this? You and half of everything you own?"

"Yes."

"Love or money? Which one is it?"

Corky bit the bullet. "Both."

"When the shooting starts, you two gonna be holding hands together?"

"We don't hold hands in public."

"Never? Not even over in Waikiki? Or did you two meet in a church camp?"

Corky was furious. "You son-of-a-bitch!"

"Is she going to need an alibi, too? Something iron-clad and fool-proof?"

"You've made your point," Corky said stiffly.

I stepped back. "I'm forgetting my manners. Hey, we can postpone murdering your wife for a month, two months, five months, whatever. Don't you want to spend some time with your new old lady?"

Corky was outraged. He took a sudden step towards me, threw his chest out, made a fist as if he would strike me, but he hesitated, because he was afraid.

"Corky, once we get started, you won't be able to get together for a long time. At least until the body's cold and forgotten. And if your scheme goes bust, it's even a longer separation for you two lovebirds. You may never see it again, not at least before it's gone all gray and wrinkly with age, and it cracks like old leather because it hasn't been used in ages--"

"Keep getting on my case, okay," Corky snarled, "and maybe you'll find yourself out of a job!"

I smacked Corky with the back of my hand hard enough to send the older man to the sand. "It's my ass on the line if you or her screw up!" I growled.

Corky realized his mistake. "Okay, okay--"

"Nobody gets whacked until I'm satisfied! You got that?"

"Okay. Okay."

I could be very cold. "If it looks like a set-up, or a frame-up, or a screw-up, anything other than an easy hit ... " I waited a heartbeat. "I hit you."

Corky was stunned. "What?"

I made a menacing hiss. "And if something happens to me, the word goes down. Somebody will get paid to hit you. You and your girlfriend both."

"Let me explain--!"

But I was already stalking away, heading back to the Club Ilima.

Corky stayed behind, afraid.

Inside the club, I ordered a drink for myself. I turned and saw Ivy talking with Saundra Collins. The two women were staring at me.

Then I saw Saundra Collins shoot from her stool and come straight at me. She spoke loudly, very belligerently. "Mister Bishop, my name is Saundra Collins, and I represent a lot of the local property owners and residents. We bought this land and built homes here, and our families and our future is here, and none of us is going to be thrown off our land!"

Very quickly, everyone around us stopped whatever else they were doing to eavesdrop upon this one-sided argument.

I was confused. "Who wants to throw you off?"

"You and Uncle Sam." She turned to the rest of the drinkers and spoke loudly. "The Federal government is planning to get rid of all the East Maui people!"

I backed away from the battle. "Lady, I just got here ... "

Over her shoulder, I saw Corky came into the Club Ilima. He saw his wife's outburst, was horrified but powerless to move. I wanted to leave myself.

Saundra pressed her attack onward. "If you turn this coast into a national park, we'll get more tourists, more traffic, more congestion, and that means more crime and higher taxes and more problems."

I was desperate. "I have to leave now--"

Saundra spoke up very loudly. "Washington should just leave us alone!"

Ivy and I left in a hurry.

I started the Mustang. "Where did she come from?"

"Michael, I'm sorry," Ivy said. "That was my fault. I told her you worked for the National Park Service."

"You sicced her on me? Jesus, Ivy!"

"I know how I'll make it up to you." She snuggled up against me. "I'm going to bite your face, rip your hair, and fuck you as hard as I can."

I was surprised. "Oh! Okay."

I slipped the Mustang into gear.

I wasn't happy.

We were still awake at sunrise, naked in my bed at the Beach Chalet. She had asked for forgiveness, and I had really given it to her. But the hours had passed, and now I was as close as I can ever come to confession.

I told her, "I think about wretched places, about empty, dreary towns. About a job that at best is trash. A way of life without a wife, a family, close friends. I'm tired of always being alone."

Ivy was loving me. "I'll go anywhere with you." She kissed me. "I'll go where you go."

I wasn't surprised, but I knew not to show it.

I took a last toke, burned my fingertips, then flicked away the joint. The joint sailed through the dimly lit room, smacked against the window. Sparks ricocheted off, then disappeared. Outside the window was a full moon bathing in the sunrise.

Then we made love again.

On our way to breakfast we drove past the Paradise Bowling Alley.

I said, "Are you any relation to Debra Lawson?"

Ivy was deliberate. "She's my stepmother. She murdered my father."

"No wonder you no longer live at home," I joked.

Ivy sloughed it off. "Do you want to see the house I was born in, where I spent my life in, until the day he married her? It's her home now. That's what the lawyers tell me."

"When did your father die?"

"Two years ago. They say it was a car accident."

"And you say it was murder."

"She murdered him. His neck was slashed in the accident. He died from loss of blood. He bled to death."

"Your wicked stepmother. Got any stepsisters, Cinderella?"

Ivy was hurt by my teasing. "You're laughing at me."

I sobered. "Tell me about his death."

"His car was in a ditch along the side of the road. They said he had been drinking, that he fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road. But his throat was cut. You can check the death certificate."

"You must have been very close to him."

"We should have been. But when he came back from the sea, I was already four years old." She sounded wistful. "We never clicked." She frowned. "He died too soon. Before we had a chance to click."

"How did he meet her?"

"She was playing the dollar slots next to him in Las Vegas. Dad married her there. The same weekend. One of those twenty-four-hour wedding cottages. Eight months later she killed him."

"Married only eight months?"

"She only lived with him for three months of that. That last five months he wasn't even in the same house with her. They had an argument about money, he got mad and stomped out and wouldn't move back in." She hesitated. "The Tuesday before he died, he told me he wanted a divorce.