Timothy Hallinan - Crashed

“I had zero idea she was going to shoot him,” Tony said. “Zeee-ro.”

“There was no gun in his hand,” I said. “It was inside his jacket.”

“Tony put it there,” Ellie said. “And he fastened the guy’s jacket. Said it would make things more confusing, they might figure he got shot by somebody he knew.”

“It worked,” I said.

Tony put out both hands, palms up. “Hey, hey. You’re not buying any of this. Does that make sense to you? I mean, come on. Listen, listen, give me a minute. I know something about you, you’ve got a great reputation. People say you’re together and everything, that you could do anything you want, but you haven’t had the breaks. All you need is a couple breaks, and you could be rolling in it. Look at you, you’re not just some guy, even Trey knew that. You know what I’m talking about here, right?”

I just watched him, watched him try to find the gear that would get him up this particular hill, watched him do the mind reader’s trick, studying my eyes every time he laid out a new line, looking for the reaction that would tell him he’d had a strike. Watched the face, perfect in every way except there was no life behind it.

“Look,” he said, and now he had one hand on his hip, the other stretched reasonably toward me. “Trey, you know, Trey’s picky, but she likes you. I can tell just looking at you, women like you. You’re a man, I’m a man. Look at this one. Listen to her. Me , marry her? I wouldn’t touch her, you wouldn’t touch her. That’s loser’s meat, and we’re not losers. Come on, we’ve got more in common than you might-”

He actually said that. He said that he and I had something in common.

So I shot him through the center of the chest.

He went over backward, arms and legs spread, and landed on top of the heavy glass coffee table, which broke in half under his weight with a sound that I could hear even over the ringing of the shot. He went straight through and ended up on his back at the center of a V of thick glass, the far ends propped up in the air by the table frame.

Ellie screamed and stood there, looking down at him with her hands over her mouth.

“Is anyone else here?” I asked.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she said. “I can’t-please, please don’t-”

“I asked you if there was anyone else here.”

“No,” she said.

“You know what happened, right?”

“I-no, I mean-what? What happened?”

“That piece of dirt on the floor told you to kill a man. A good man, who had come thousands of miles from China because he fell in love with the movies, a man with a wife who adored him. Twenty-two years old, a kid, really. For the thing on the floor there, you shot that man. And the whole time you were doing what he wanted you to, this pile of shit on the floor held you in contempt. He despised you. He thought you were ridiculous. Unattractive. The whole time, while he was telling you he loved you, while you were helping him to wreck the movie, he was sneering at you. When you killed that man for him, he was sneering at you. You loved him. You loved him enough to kill someone for him. He thought you were loser’s meat. It made him sick to look at you.”

Ellie still had her hands over her mouth. I holstered the gun.

“Live with it,” I said.

That night, the night after I shot Eduardo and killed Antonio Ramirez, I had my first solid night’s sleep of the week. No anxieties, no dreams, no pacing, no CNN. Just eight hours of sawing logs.

Part of it was because Doc had told me on the phone that Thistle was fine, and maybe better than fine. After administering some advanced first aid, Doc had called up a couple of hard-line twelve-steppers, and they and Thistle were sitting shiva for her habit. When she told me she could hurt, she’d meant what I’d hoped she meant.

The new day was bright. The rain had lifted overnight, and the mountains were so clearly visible they might have been painted directly onto the sky. The roads were wet and clean, and I was still lifting off from my first cup of coffee when I pulled into the largely empty parking garage. I grabbed the things I’d need and headed for the elevator.

I was sitting on the excruciatingly uncomfortable couch at 9:04 when the door to the office opened and Wattles came in, followed by Hacker. Wattles barely broke stride, but Hacker froze, letting loose something that sounded like a hiss.

“You ask Janice out yet?” Wattles asked. He lowered himself into his chair, got his belly settled against his desk, and lifted the screen on his laptop.

“I don’t know whether that’s in the cards,” I said.

“I doubt it,” Hacker said. “You fucked up. Trey’s calling off the project. You’re gonna meet Rabbits real soon.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” I said. “Don’t you read the trades? Thistle’s doing a real movie.”

“Your job was to get Trey’s movie made,” Hacker said. “You gonna tell me you succeeded?”

“Big people got interested,” I said. “And people say Hollywood has no heart.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Wattles asked me. “Lyle here, he’s got a point.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. Maybe you should start by looking at this.” I leaned across and slid the eight-by-ten prints I’d made, three of them, showing Dora at her resplendent best.

After an interested moment, Wattles said, “What’s in her mouth?”

“Tell you in a second. First, do you recognize the room?”

“I’m not big on remembering furniture,” he said. “I barely remember my own.”

“It’s the living room at Rabbits Stennet’s house,” I said, and Wattles leaned back in his chair, looking at me. He reached inside the pocket of his jacket, without taking his eyes off me, and came out with a cigar.

“So?” Hacker said.

Wattles said, “Shut up, Lyle.” He stripped the cellophane from the cigar. “The thing in her mouth,” he said. “I bet I’m going to love it.”

“I’ve found that one of the hardest things in life,” I said, “is knowing what people will love. I can’t tell you how often I’ve bought what I thought was the perfect present for someone, and then she didn’t like it. You know what I mean?”

Wattles took his eyes off me long enough to give the cigar a glance. Then he sat back in the chair, slapped the side of his belly with his free hand, and emitted his one-syllable laugh. “Bet it’s a peach, isn’t it?”

“You decide,” I said. I pushed a copy of the letter over to him.

“Hi,” Wattles read aloud. “My name is Dora. I’m manufactured by Wattles, Inc., 14586 Ventura Boulevard, suite 512. Mr. Wattles has sold me to 24,393 men, and most of them sleep with me every night.” He gave me the amputated little laugh again. “I live to please them in every way. I’m sure that the woman who inspired me and her lucky husband will both be proud to know how many men love me, and how often.” He looked at me over the top of the page. “Do I need to read the rest?”

“Depends on your reaction so far.”

“I’m persuaded.”

“Good. So you’ll fix the video surveillance disk and send somebody in to get old Dora before they get back this evening.”

“Absolutely.”

“And in case you change your mind after you get Dora out of there, I have copies of everything, and anything happens to me, they go to Rabbits.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” he said.

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “You knew what would happen if Rabbits ever found out.”

“She’s the hottest thing I ever saw, that Bunny,” Wattles said. “Why’s Rabbits ever gonna see Dora? He doesn’t even do take-out any more. And I wanted a big seller. You know how much money this thing has made me?”