James Conway - In Cold Blonde

Alice pulled opened the heavy door with the pneumatic hinge and stepped into the hall. An elderly woman was walking with her dog, a yappy little Maltese, who was clearly unhappy and tugging at its leash.

Alice smiled at the guest, dropped the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob and pulled on the door to hasten its closing.

And then the shit hit the fan.

The dog barked and jerked the leash out of its owner’s hand and bolted down the hall. “Maggie, no!” screamed the woman, running after the dog. She looked at Alice, called, “Stop her!”

Alice instinctively used her arms and legs to block the corridor, so the dog skittered left toward the only avenue of escape left open, the slowly closing door of Alice’s room.

The dog shot inside just as the door hissed closed. There was silence for a moment, and then they heard the muffled barks of the dog.

“I’m so sorry,” the elderly woman said. “If you’ll just open up, I’ll get Maggie and we’ll be on our way.”

“I don’t have the key,” Alice said, realizing how the captain of the Titanic must have felt seconds after striking the iceberg. “I left it inside the room.” Which was true, it was on the end table right next to Adam’s dead body.

“Tell you what,” Alice said. “I’ll go down to the desk, get another key and then come right back up.”

“Thank you so much,” the old woman said. “And again, I’m so sorry.”

Tell me about it, Alice thought as she hurried to the elevator. She used her knuckle to hit the call button so as not to leave a fingerprint, and then realized she still had her surgical gloves on. She stripped them off.

She had no intention of stopping by the desk. She was going to walk straight out the door. It would probably be fifteen or twenty minutes until the old lady made her way downstairs wondering what happened to her; plenty of time for Alice to get far from the Bel Air Regent. The elevator arrived. She got in and hit the Lobby button with her knuckle. So much for a twenty-four hour grace period, Alice thought, as the elevator door slid shut.

A crossroad. Syd knew that Ryan’s slip of the tongue had put their relationship at a critical crossroad, and what Syd said and did in the next few seconds would affect the rest of her life. Throw a fit? Storm out of the apartment? Pretend she didn’t hear it? Accept his inevitable apology?

Well, first things first; she swallowed.

Ryan dropped to his knees, took Syd’s face in his hands and said, “Jesus, sweetheart, I am so sorry.”

Syd could see the pain in his face, the embarrassment, the humiliation. And he couldn’t have sounded more sincere. Syd loved Ryan, and, Erich Segal be damned, but sometimes love means letting someone say they’re sorry.

“Well,” she said, “So much for me not being jealous of Anne.”

Ryan laughed. Now it was his turn to say just the right thing. But it couldn’t be the truth, could it? He was thinking about his ex-wife while having sex with his girlfriend. Syd would freak out. But what other explanation could he give her? Syd was not stupid and expected the truth, deserved the truth. And Ryan knew if he said the wrong thing, he might lose her forever.

“I don’t know what to say. I guess seeing Anne today stirred up some old memories. While you were giving me head, I flashed back to the first time Anne gave me head. And before I could refocus on you, I came. I don’t fantasize about Anne; I’m crazy about you, I love you, and I am so sorry.”

Syd could hear the truth in every word. And she wasn’t into playing games. So she let Ryan off the hook.

“To tell you the truth,” she said. “I was fantasizing about Lieutenant Hanrahan.”

Ryan laughed, relieved, and hugged her.

“Now,” Syd said, playfully shoving Ryan back onto the floor, “where were we?”

Anne sat on the balcony of her soon-to-be-foreclosed Santa Monica condo staring out at the black glob of the Pacific Ocean. There wasn’t much to see at night unless the moon was cycling through its more incandescent phases. Tonight a feeble crescent hung tentatively in the sky turning the sea into a murky mess. But the view was glorious during the day, and the sunsets were breathtaking.

Unfortunately, the only nice thing about the condo was the view. It was a boxy three- bedroom two-bath unit on the fourth floor of a twelve story building. And it wasn’t even a full- on view; you had to sit on the far edge of the balcony and look around the edge of the building.

It had been tough for Anne to move out of the Malibu house. Trading three thousand square feet of beachfront for eleven hundred feet of poured concrete was humiliating. And now, having to trade this rat hole for what, a studio in the Valley? Dear God, what a mess.

Rick came onto the patio, beer in hand. “I’ve found some office space we can look at tomorrow, decent building, just off Washington in Culver City.”

Oh yeah, she wasn’t only losing her home, she was getting kicked out of her office, too. Trading a corner office on the fiftieth floor of L.A.’s most prestigious high-rise to what, Culver fucking City? Well, Anne always had a plan and now was no exception. She turned to her husband. “I’m not going to start a law firm with you, Rick,” she said. “And I’m not going to move into a hotel with you. We’re done.”

“You mean, now that you’ve sucked me dry, you need to go find another sugar daddy?”

“How dare you.”

“Don’t get self-righteous with me, Anne. You’re the one with a Gucci closet, you’re the one who has to fly in private jets, rent villas on the Riviera, drive a Bentley, and flash a fistful of diamonds.”

“Don’t you dare make this about me. You lost all our money in the market.”

“And you’re the one who came up with the idea of forging dad’s signature.”

Anne shook her head. It was the same argument they’d been having for months. She was sick of it. “Look, Rick, let’s make this simple. I want a divorce. Let’s just split what few things we’ve got left down the middle and call it a day.”

“Where will you live?”

“I don’t know.”

“What will you do?”

“I have no idea.” But she did have an idea. First thing in the morning she was going to call the California Lottery and make an appointment for Thursday morning. There should be plenty of press there so what better place to announce that honest, hardworking homicide detective, Ryan Magee, was going to set up a foundation and give millions of dollars to charity. And she’d be sure to mention that she’d be heading up the foundation. It would be a great way to launch her new law firm and get plenty of priceless publicity.

Of course, with thirty-four million dollars to play with, you could give away ten million and still have twenty-four million. Hell you could give away twenty-four million and still have ten million. Point being, Ryan was now rich. Gold-plated rich. If she could win Ryan back, they could afford to buy a house on the beach. Her new offices would be in Beverly Hills, not Culver City, and she could continue to live the life of luxury she always dreamed about.

With a man she actually loves.

That’s right, because something happened to Anne while she was having that drink with Ryan. She realized she still loved him.

They didn’t get divorced because they fought or he was cruel, or inattentive or boring. They got divorced because Ryan was poor and she met someone who was rich. But that didn’t mean Ryan and his adorable dimples weren’t handsome, smart and charming.

But he had something else, something she rarely encountered in her law practice, integrity. Oh sure, there were honest lawyers out there, but a lawyer, by definition, was somebody who was always looking for a way to parse the truth. Ryan didn’t parse. He stood on a razor blade with two sides, right and wrong. He was going to give up a Lotto ticket worth tens of millions because technically it wasn’t his. Who would do that?!