Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

Pender shrugged. “Let’s wait for the forensics.”

Something in the way he said it, perhaps the impersonality, set off a spark in Irene. “Well I don’t care,” she whispered fiercely. The line had started moving forward again, but Irene stayed rooted in place, her fists clenched at her sides. “I don’t care what she’s done or how involved she was, I won’t let them put her in prison, Pen. I won’t let them put her away again if I have to…I don’t know, if I have to sneak her out of the country myself.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Pender-but he knew that if it did, he’d have himself one hell of a conflict of interest.

Lilith followed Lyssy, spotting him for safety as he stumped unevenly up the swing-down ladder and through the trapdoor into the attic dormer, a low-budget add-on consisting of one long, low-ceilinged room built of cheapjack pine and press-on veneer siding, running almost the length of the roof. Two dormer windows faced front, each housing a bulky air conditioner, only one of which still functioned.

The cracked and faded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle -themed linoleum, along with the twin beds, the twin child-size dressers, and a spray-painted baby-blue bookcase, suggested even to Lyssy’s inexperienced eyes that the room had once housed children. He asked Lilith if Carson and Mama Rose had had any kids; she told him no, that they’d bought the place furnished.

“They seemed like nice folks,” said Lyssy, sitting on the bed nearest the trapdoor.

“Actually, they’re stone killers, both of them. And Mama Rose already sold me out once-don’t think she won’t try it again, first chance she gets.”

“Then why did you bring us here?”

She sat down next to him, put her hand on his flesh-and-blood knee, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “For the same reason people rob banks-because that’s where the money is.”

Lyssy’s eyes widened, the gold flecks dancing in the dim morning light. “We’re gonna rob them?”

“We’re gonna need lots and lots of cash to live on the lam. You got a better idea?”

“No, but-”

“I didn’t think so,” she said wearily. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up to her. She closed her eyes and felt the room swaying; when she opened them again Lyssy was staring at her in alarm.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Fine-I’m fine,” she mumbled, swinging her legs up onto the bed. “Just need…couple hours…good as new.”

She was asleep atop the covers by the time her head hit the pillow. Lyssy took off her sneakers for her, then limped over to the other bed, stripped off the blanket, covered her with it, and sat down again on the edge of the bed to watch over her while she slept.

Mama Rose barely made it to the stove in time to save the bacon from burning. “Sweet Jesus forbid you should get up from the fucking table,” she muttered to Carson as she set the plate down in front of him.

“One of these days, woman…. “He made a fist, brandished it threateningly.

“You and what army?” she replied, sliding into the chair across from him. Both threat and response were pro forma-he’d only struck her in anger one time, when they were newlyweds. She’d bided her time, then whacked him across the back of the head with a shovel. Concussion, no fracture. Lesson taken.

“That gimp Lyssy, he look familiar to you?” she asked Carson.

“Kinda.”

“I could swear I’ve seen him before someplace.”

“I know what you mean. You get his last name? — we could Google him.”

“He wasn’t very talkative.”

“And she didn’t tell you who or what they were on the lam from?”

“Whoever owned that Rover, I’m guessing.” Mama Rose pushed herself back from the table. “Listen babe, I’m beat, I’m gonna turn in. Just leave the dishes in the sink, I’ll take care of ’em later.”

A cavernous yawn from Carson, a phony-looking, ham-actor stretch. “I think maybe I’ll join you-I’m getting too old for these fucking all-nighters.”

In addition to running the chop shop to which the Rover had been removed, the Redding Menace were mid-level players in the new triangle trade-drugs, firearms, and cash. All night long, on any given evening, dealers and couriers came and went, arriving with large quantities of one of the aforementioned substances, and departing with (ideally) smaller quantities of another.

It was often a complicated dance: player A might have to be hooked up with players B and C, while B had to be kept apart from C, with D waiting in the wings, and so on; meanwhile all the players had to be entertained, plied with weed or coke or brandy, topped up with coffee.

So the exhausted hosts had been on their way to bed when their last two visitors arrived unexpectedly. And now Carson, who hadn’t approached his wife with amorous intent for ages, wanted to make love. Mama Rose was no fool: she knew what was up, and why it was up-he’d had a letch for Lilith ever since Sturgis-but reminded herself that it didn’t matter where a man worked up his appetite, so long as he ate at home.

She grabbed a quick shower and changed into her sexiest nightgown, making only one concession to jealousy: If Carson even closed his eyes, much less called out Lilith’s name, Rose would have his nuts for earrings.

When Mama Rose emerged from the bathroom, Carson was at the computer. Like many another twenty-first-century wife, her first thought was that he was surfing for porn. Not that she minded-that appetite thing again.

“Hey babe, look at this.”

Mama Rose crossed the room, and standing behind him, resting her right breast on his left shoulder, she saw a picture of their new houseguest plastered across the front page of the cyber edition of the Oregonian. “Looks like we have a celebrity in our midst.”

She read past the headline to learn that the infamous serial killer Ulysses Maxwell had escaped from an asylum, leaving four dead bodies behind; a fellow patient, a minor, name withheld, was either a hostage or an accessory. “Got any bright ideas?”

“Fuckin’ A.” Carson leaned back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head. “Way I figure it, if there ain’t a reward for him yet, there will be; if there is, it’ll get bigger. So we find somebody we can trust, somebody with a clean record, that somebody takes Maxwell…shit, I don’t care, someplace far enough away from here, blows him away, makes up a good story for the cops, we split the reward. What do you think?”

“It might work,” said Mama Rose. “But what about the girl?”

“What do you think?” Same four words, but this time they chilled Mama Rose to the marrow.

No lights, mailbox stuffed, four days’ worth of rubber-banded Monterey Heralds on or around the porch steps-Pender might as well have put up a sign on his postage-stamp front lawn: Attention burglars: nobody home.

But burglaries were almost unheard of in The Last Home Town, as Pacific Grove officially styled itself-its other nickname was Butterfly Town, USA, for the monarchs that wintered over every year-and the annual murder rate hovered just above zero.

So Pender’s jet-black ’64 Barracuda was still in the short, weedy driveway when he hauled his bags up the mossy brick walk (he and Irene had taken the shuttle bus from San Jose to Monterey, then shared a cab from there) and his new flat-screen plasma TV was still on the wall of the front room-other than that, there wasn’t much worth stealing. (The kind of music Pender enjoyed sounded best in a car, second best on a boom box, the cheaper the better.)

Built in 1905, the cottage originally contained only three small rooms-parlor, bedroom, kitchen-lined up shotgun-style, front to back; a tiny bathroom with toilet, pedestal sink, and stall shower had been added on off the kitchen. Pender carried his luggage through the front room with its secondhand velour love seat, non-matching Naugahyde recliner, and hooked oval rug, dropped it off in the bedroom, where a queen-size bed took up most of the floor-space, grabbed a beer in the kitchen, and carried it out into the backyard.