Robert Crais - The Monkey

“It is.”

“Are there coyotes?”

“Yes. They like the hills above the reservoir.”

She looked at the cat. “I heard they take cats. I had a friend in Nichols Canyon who lost two that way.”

I touched the cat’s head between his ears. It was broad and flat and lumpy with scars. A good cat head.

She shifted in the chair. She was sitting on her feet, and when she moved she was careful to keep the robe over her knees. She said, “Tell me, how can you live with someone for so long and know so little about them?”

“You can know only what someone shows you.”

“But I lived with Mort for fourteen years. I knew Garrett Rice for five years. I was married to Mort for eight years before I even knew there were other women. Now I find out about drugs. I never knew there were drugs.” Her lips barely moved, matching the stillness of the rest of her. “He said it was me. He said I was killing him. He said he would lie in bed some nights, hoping I would die and thinking of ways to hurt me.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“Then how could Mort be that person, and how could I not know? His wife. What does that say about me?” A whisper.

“It says you trusted a man who didn’t deserve your trust. It says you gave of yourself completely because you loved him. It comments on Mort’s quality, not yours.”

“I’ve been so wrong about things. Everything’s been such a lie. I’m thirty-nine years old and I feel like I’ve thrown my life away.”

“Look at me,” I said.

She looked.

“When you marry someone, and put your trust in them, you have a right to expect that they will be there for you. The marriage doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect. By virtue of the commitment, your partner is supposed to be there. Without having to look around, you have to know they’re there. When you looked, Mort wasn’t there. Mort hadn’t been there for a long time. It doesn’t matter about his problems. He failed to live up to you. Mort lived the lie. Not you. Mort threw it away. Not you.”

Her head moved. “That sounds so harsh.”

“I’m feeling a little harsh toward Mort right now.” I took short breaths, feeling the booze still there. The big room had grown warmer.

We sat like that for several minutes. I was slouched on the sofa with my abdominal muscles forming neat rows leading up to my ribs. My legs were extended, my feet on the coffee table. I looked blue.

“I don’t mean to whine,” she said.

“You hurt. It’s okay.”

She brought her feet out from under her with a soft rustle, and sat forward. I heard her draw a deep breath and sigh it out. She said, “You’re a very nice man.”

“Unh-hunh.”

She said, “What happened”-she leaned forward out of the chair and touched my stomach-“here?”

When she touched me the muscles in my stomach and pelvic girdle and thighs bunched. Her finger was very warm, almost hot. I said, “I got into a fight with a man in Texas City, Texas. He cut me with a piece of glass.”

She moved her finger about an inch along the scar. I stood up, pulling her to me. She held on tight and whispered something into my chest that I did not hear.

I carried her upstairs and made love to her. She called me Mort. Afterward I held her, but it was a long time before she slept. And when she slept it was fitful and without rest.

The morning sky was a rich orange when I left the bed. Ellen was up, wearing the socks and the big terry robe. She had the washing machine going, doing two towels and the clothes she had been in since Ralph’s, and had started breakfast by the time I was showered and dressed.

“I called Janet,” she said.

“What a way to start your day.”

“I asked her to tell the girls that I was in San Francisco and that I’d have to be there a few days. Do you think that’s all right?”

“It’s smart if you don’t go home.”

She nodded.

“You could stay here.”

She nodded again.

“That okay with Janet?”

The young pretty part of her momentarily surfaced. “I’ll call her and ask.” Definite progress.

The cat door clacked and the cat came in, his fur misted with dew. He saw Ellen, went to her ankle, sniffed, and started to growl.

I said, “Get away from there.”

The cat sprinted back through his door. Clack-clack.

There was a knock, then Joe Pike walked in. He was misted with dew, also. “Couple of black-and-whites cruised you just before sunup. Other than that, nada.”

I introduced him to Ellen.

She said, “You’re the one in the pictures.” There were pictures up in the bedroom of me and Pike after billfish off Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baha.

“I’m the only one in the pictures,” he said. Enigmatically. Then he left.

“He’s like that,” I said.

“Mr. Pike is your partner?”

“Unh-hunh.”

“He was out there all night?”

“All night.”

“Why?”

“To watch over us, why else?”

Joe came back with an Eastern Airlines flight bag and a brown leather rifle case and without the field jacket. He put the rifle case in the entry closet, took a Colt. 357 Python in a clip-on holster from the flight bag, and put it on his hip. He took two boxes of. 357 Softnose out of the bag, then rezipped it and put it in the closet next to the rifle. The boxes of extra ammo he brought to the coffee table by Ellen Lang. She watched every move the way a canary watches a cat, her eyes going from his tattoos to the gun at his waist-it was the big Python, with the 6-inch combat barrel-to the polished sunglasses. Pike was in uniform: faded Levis’, blue Nikes, white sweat socks, steel Rolex, sleeveless sweat shirt. When he had everything where he wanted it, he looked at her again. “I’m sorry to hear of your trouble,” he said.

She tried out a small, faltering smile. “Would you like something to eat?”

“It’s nice of you to offer. No. Not right now.”

He stood close, dwarfing her with his size and his energy and his capacity for violence. He did it without thinking about it. He could do it to almost anyone I knew, even men much taller and much heavier. Anyone except Lou Poitras.

Pike went into the kitchen. Ellen watched him, large-eyed and uneasy. “You’ll be fine,” I said. “The Amal militia couldn’t touch you with him here.”

She kept her eyes on Pike. Joe was standing in the kitchen, staring at a closed cabinet, unmoving. It was easy to imagine him standing all night like that.

“I’m going to swing by your house before I go to the cops,” I said. “Can I bring back some clothes for you?”

“Yes. If you would. And my toothbrush. It’s the green one.”

“Would you like to come with me?”

She glanced at the floor. “I don’t want to go back there right now.”

The drive to Encino was easy. This early, traffic down the valley side of Laurel Canyon was light and the freeway west seemed empty. I parked in Ellen’s drive and let myself in the front door. There is no quiet the way a house is quiet when its family is gone.

I found an empty Ralph’s bag in the kitchen and brought it back to the master bath. I packed her green toothbrush in it, along with a bottle of Almay roll-on that was probably hers, and a Personal Touch shaver. I opened the counter drawers and stared into them a while, wondering what she might want. I took out three little white Georgette Klinger face cream jars, two lip gloss tubes, a marbled plastic box of Clinique blush, a Clinique eye liner pencil, and two silver tins of Clinique eye shadow, and put them in the bag. You never can tell. Out in the bedroom, I selected panties, bras, a pair of white New Balance running shoes, three light tops, two pairs of cotton pants, and one pair of Jordache jeans. Mort’s insurance policy was in the same box where I had found his banking papers. He had purchased a $200,000 policy three years before but had borrowed against past premiums. Its current value was written down to $40,000. Not a lot, but she wasn’t broke. She’d have to plan. I put the policy back in the box and went through the room for Mort’s. 32. Nothing. I went through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. Nothing. I went through the kids’ rooms. Zip.