Timothy Hallinan - Crashed

Another scream, and then something broke, something that sounded like pottery or crockery rather than glass. Then I heard a man’s voice, low and sharp: “You remember where you parked? Well, get your ass out there and drive away.”

“You son of a bitch . You promised, you told me that you, that you-”

“I got Thistle coming here. Trey’s fucked, it’s over, stupid. I don’t need you no more, so get going, go get a job or something. You want a couple hundred bucks? That’s about what it’s worth, what you done.”

The woman began to shout over him, words I couldn’t make out, and then there was the unmistakable sound of a slap, a real carpet-beater to judge from the volume.

As near as I could figure, I was only hearing two voices. No one else had said anything, or laughed, or applauded. The woman’s voice reasserted itself, and she’d changed approaches, going from murderous to injured in less time than it would have taken me to say it out loud. She said, “Tony, sweetie, we talked about all of this, remember we said that once …”

I removed the automatic from my jacket, racked it, and stepped into the archway.

The living room was about forty feet long, with the same Spanish-influenced tile floors and an open-beam ceiling, nice enough if you’re nostalgic for the Inquisition. The furniture was Testosterone Modern, all black leather and dark heavy wood, and quite a bit of it was lying on its side, so this squabble had been going on for a while. A shelf that had contained bowls and other ceramic treasures lay flat on the tile floor, surrounded by brightly colored fragments. There was a big glass coffee table in the center of the room, in front of a couch that had been shoved back at about a thirty-degree angle.

They were so involved with each other that they didn’t even notice me. She was working up to tears, going from sad reason to recrimination at a virtuoso pace, and he was standing there with his fists balled up, obviously weighing the wisdom of simply punching her out.

I said, “Hi.”

Both heads snapped around and she shut up, which was a real relief. From our previous interactions, I never would have thought Ellie Wynn had such an impressive harpy vocal range. She looked confused for a second, but then she pushed her face into a smile. “Junior,” she said, as though my absence had been the only missing element in an otherwise perfect evening.

He wasn’t working as hard as she was. He looked at me with that absurdly handsome face and said, “What the fuck?”

“This is Junior,” Ellie said, keeping the smile in place and sounding like she was introducing the new third-grader to the rest of the class. “Trey hired him to-”

“I know who he is,” Tony said. “What I want to know is what the fuck he’s doing in my house.”

I lifted the gun an inch or two, keeping it trained on him. “I’d think this would be some sort of clue.”

“Oh, well, excuse me,” he said. “Pardon me if I don’t just drop to my knees here and plead for my life. And you’re dripping on my floor.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” I said, “but it’s true. It’s possible to be so good-looking that it gets silly.”

“It’s nothing you’re going to have to worry about,” he said.

“That’s okay. You’re not going to have to worry about it much longer, either.”

He shook his head, and his hair moved perfectly. The guy or girl who cut him was worth every penny. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t know you from nobody except you’re working for my fucking wife, and you bust in here with a gun in your hand.”

“And drip on your floor,” I said. “Don’t forger that I’m dripping on your floor.”

“Yeah, so what’s the beef? Tell you what, why don’t I get rid of Stupid here, and we can talk man to man?”

“ Stupid ?” Ellie Wynn asked, her voice soaring back up into the migraine zone.

“Actually,” I said, “what we need to talk about involves Stupid, so I think she ought to stick around.”

“I don’t believe this,” Ellie said. “Junior, what have I ever done to you?”

“It’s not what you did to me, sweetie.”

“Then-what?” She shook her head and tried out a little laugh. “Oh, I know, you’re mad about that trick with Thistle’s dress. It was just a way, I mean, I was just, um, trying to give her some time to get away, you know?”

“That’s pretty good,” I said. “But it’s sort of beside the point. I want you to think back, both of you, to a couple of nights ago.”

I was still standing in the archway, a puddle forming beneath me. They were fifteen, eighteen feet away, and there were only two directions they could go in: toward me, or through the archway to my right, which led to a formal dining room.

“While you’re thinking about it,” I said, “both of you move to your right five or six feet. Toward the front windows.”

“Fuck that,” Tony said, and I blew a hole in the chair he was standing beside, which jerked backward and sent up a nice explosion of dust and stuffing. Ellie screamed, but Tony looked at the chair, and then his eyes came back to me, and his mouth was open. “Ellie,” he said. “Do what he said.” And the two of them edged away from the dining room.

“Outside Thistle’s apartment,” I said. “Around midnight. There was a Porsche parked there. With a guy in it.”

“That was her,” Tony said, and it was Ellie’s turn to go openmouthed. She stared at him as though he hadn’t been there a second ago and said, “But, but, but-”

“Shut up,” I said. “I don’t really care.”

But Tony kept talking. “She was just supposed to talk to him, get him to look at her so’s I could go into the building, I didn’t tell her to, I mean, I had no idea she’d-”

“Where did she get the gun? Do you usually carry a gun, Ellie?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t own one.”

“So the one that Jimmy got shot with-that was his name, by the way, Jimmy. He liked James Dean, the old movie star, so he called himself Jimmy. It made him feel more American. He was proud of being American. Anyway, the gun that Jimmy got shot with. Where’d you get it?”

“It was-” she hesitated, realizing she was making an admission. “It was his.”

“That’s a fucking lie,” Tony said. “I don’t know where she got it. I didn’t even know she had it. I told her to go talk to him, and next thing I know, she pops him.”

“You-you liar,” Ellie said. “You told me to-you told me you loved me, you told me that once this was over with, you and I could, we could-”

“Listen to her,” Tony said. “Look at her. Do you believe any of this? I mean, is this a chick I’m going to be with? I wouldn’t pick her up off the sidewalk. Looks like nothing. She’s like crazy. She pops him out of nowhere, and she’s all proud of herself, like I’m gonna pin some fucking medal on her, and I’m just, I’m like why did you do that , and-”

“This is way too embarrassing. What happened, Ellie?”

“He saw us come out of the building,” she said. “And there was something about the way he looked at Tony, Tony knew it was trouble. So he handed me the gun and said I should get up close, like I needed to talk to him, and then shoot him. I didn’t want to, but Tony said maybe Thistle would die from the pills we left, and the guy would tell on us, and it would be like murder, and we couldn’t get married if we got caught, so I went to talk to him; even though I didn’t think I could do it, I went to talk to him, and he brought his hand up and he had a gun in it, and I–I shot him.” She blinked rapidly and put a hand to the side of her neck as though checking for a fever.