Lawrence Block - Getting Off

Idly, she stroked Angelica’s bottom, listened to the woman’s measured breathing. There was a question on the way, she could feel it, but still it came as a surprise.

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Killing somebody.”

“Wow,” she said. “Nobody ever asked me that before, but then how could they? What’s it like? I don’t come from doing it or anything like that. But it’s, oh, satisfying. I mean, the sex is always okay, even if it’s nothing much, but no matter how good it is or how many times I get off, it’s never over. Not until the life goes out of him and into me. Not literally, I mean I’m not sucking up anybody’s soul, but it feels like it’s a zero-sum game, and I get stronger every time I do it.”

Another long silence. Then, “Please don’t kill me.”

“Silly. I only kill guys.”

“Could you take the tape off? It’s uncomfortable, lying like this.”

“Not just yet,” she said. “You have to tell me about the money.”

“Money?”

“I got what was in your purse, and I found his pants in the other room and emptied his wallet. See, I’m traveling all the time, and I constantly wind up having to buy new clothes because I sometimes leave places in a hurry. And I don’t have a job. So this is how I support myself, and I know you’ve got money in the house. So you’ll tell me where it is, and then I’ll cut you loose.”

Angelica was silent. Thinking, she figured. She extended her forefinger, poked Angelica’s back. “Otherwise,” she said, “I’ll do this—” she poked harder “—with the icepick. In the kidney, which is supposed to be very painful. So you’ll wind up telling me anyway, and at that point I’ll have no choice, and I’ll kill you. But I don’t want to, because I’ve never killed a woman, so—”

“God, I don’t care about the money! You’re welcome to all of it. I was just trying to think where it is.”

She gave her a minute.

“The top drawer of my dresser. The high chest is his, the wide low one is mine, and the top left-hand drawer—”

“Three hundred dollars,” Missy said. “I already found it, I wanted to see if you’d tell me about it. Now the second half of the test. Pass this part and you won’t have the icepick to worry about, and that’s a promise. There’s more money here somewhere, money your husband would want to keep handy. Now where do you suppose that might be?”

There was a locked drawer in the kneehole desk downstairs in the living room. He’d never let Angelica see what was inside it, but if he had money stashed anywhere, that was where she thought it might be.

Angelica didn’t know where he kept the key, and she didn’t waste time looking for it. She figured a desk drawer wasn’t exactly Fort Knox, and a hammer and a screwdriver got her into it in hardly any time at all.

The drawer held a revolver and a box of shells, along with various legal documents; she left all of that untouched and went straight for the cash. There was a stack of it, all hundreds, and she took her time and counted it. It came to $3,800, a huge score, enough to keep her going for a long time.

Back upstairs she said, “Can you believe he kept his gun in a locked drawer? Real handy if somebody breaks in. But you were right, that’s where he kept his cash.”

Angelica was saying something about jewelry, but she didn’t want to hear it. She had the money and that was all she wanted. And she didn’t want to hear anything else the woman might say, didn’t want her begging to be let loose. She’d prepared a square patch of duct tape earlier, when she’d bonded the woman to her husband, wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle, and now she slapped the gag over Angelica’s mouth, cutting her off in mid-sentence.

“Sorry,” she said, “but I want to talk now, and I don’t want you interrupting. I lied to you before. Well, lots of times, but when I told you and Brady about being an orphan. Which I am, but I lied about how I got that way. See, that’s what the cops thought happened, and how they explained it to me, but what they didn’t know is I shot my mother, and then I called my father at the office and told him to come home, and when he did I shot him, too. And then I went to my girlfriend’s house, and got myself invited to spend the night, and went home in the morning and discovered the bodies and called the cops, di dah di dah di dah. So it’s not really true that I never killed a woman.”

She went to the nightstand, took out a silk scarf.

“And I’ll keep my promise,” she said, “and not do you with the icepick, but how could I let you live? Not because we had sex, but because, duh, you know what I am and what I do.”

Angelica was struggling, trying to free herself. No way that was going to happen. Missy slipped the scarf around her neck.

“This is Hermés, isn’t it? Very nice. It’s what you were going to use to tie me up, right?” She took a breath, tried to focus on what she wanted to say. “You’re really beautiful,” she told Angelica, “and I had a wonderful time with you, both before and after Brady joined the party. And I wish I could get the name of your waxing person, but I’ll be leaving town as soon as I’m done here, so I wouldn’t have time anyway. But I’ll find somebody else, somewhere, and get it done, so I guess I’ll have plenty of occasions to remember you.”

She told herself, Do it, for God’s sake. Don’t draw it out.

“This ought to work,” she said. “It’s supposed to be pretty easy to strangle somebody this way. But you’ll have to bear with me. I’ve never done this before.”

“Kimmie, a threesome!”

“I was just looking to go home with a girl,” she said, “but she was there with her husband, and he was kind of cute.”

“You’ve got to tell me everything.”

Well, not exactly everything. She gave Rita the Reader’s Digest version, abbreviated and toned down. Even so, with Rita’s questions and exclamations, she used up a chunk of the new cell phone’s prepaid minutes.

“It added something,” she said of the husband’s presence. “But at the same time it took something away.”

“ ’Cause it wasn’t just the two of you.”

“Right.”

“Kimmie, I really wish you were here.”

“Me too.”

“I won’t even ask where you are.”

“Actually, I’m out west again. Not as far west as you are, though.”

“Oh?”

“A place I’ve never been before. Provo, Utah?”

“I’ve never been there either. When I was a kid we took a family trip to a national park, and I think it may have been in Utah. Arches?”

“I never heard of it.”

“It was pretty neat. There were these great natural rock formations, sandstone eroded by the wind, and there was this one huge freestanding stone arch and you could stand under it and get your picture taken. And it fell down.”

“While you were standing under it?”

“No, silly! I was there fifteen or twenty years ago, and just last year it fell down. It was on the TV news.”

“Oh.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s in Utah. Hang on. Thank you, Google. It’s in Utah, and the nearest town is Moab, and I remember now because that’s where we stayed. In a motel with fake wood paneling on the walls. Now why do I remember that?”

“Maybe the wood grain looked like a cunt.”

“Kimmie, you are just terrible !”

“I know.”

“Where did you say? Provo? Hang on. Okay, you’re a hundred and ninety-one miles away if you take Route Six. Oh, you know what? That’s where he’s from.”

“That’s where who’s from?”

“That crazy Mormon. What was his name? Not Kelly. Damn, why can’t I — Kellen!”