Death Was the Other Woman (9 page)

“Friends? C'mon. She's not the type to have friends. You probably figured that.”

I shrugged. “So Harrison ...” I said, trying to bring the conversation back around, but the black-haired girl cut me off.

“Oh, that. You forget that bum, honey. Focus on whatever you got now. Lucid is mad as hell at Harry. And he's not the only one. Harrison Dempsey is a dead man, if you know what I'm saying. Even if he's still alive, he's a dead man walking.”

WHEN I GOT BACK
to the table, I was relieved to see everyone had returned to their seats. And everyone was relieved to see me.

Dex didn't mince any words. “Where the hell did you get to?”

Mustard looked as though he'd been concerned as well. Brucie, on the other hand, did not.

“I
told
you guys she was all right. Didn't I say she was all right?” And then to me: “Where'd you go, doll?”

“The powder room,” I said. There were things I needed to tell Dex, but they would have to keep. I didn't think he'd want me blabbing about business stuff in front of Mustard and Brucie.

“That was an awful long powder,” Dex huffed. I looked at him closely, touched to see he really
had
been worried about me.

“Next time I'll leave an itinerary,” I said, maybe only half in jest. “Or a trail of bread crumbs. Where did
you
go?”

“There are private rooms back there.” He indicated the spot where he'd disappeared behind a door perhaps half an hour before. “I know some guys, but no one knows anything about our boy.” Brucie looked curious, but Dex didn't fill her in. “One of Lucid Wilson's boys figures maybe Dempsey blew town, but I'm not buying it. It seems like he had too much to lose to run out.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now nuthin',” Dex replied. “We did what we came to do. I say we have another drink and then blow this joint.”

Brucie looked disappointed, but the plan sat all right with me. I'd come and seen and experienced, and it was enough. It had been a long day and I was tired. Plus I had information I wanted to give Dex in private, though I didn't know if I'd be able to do that tonight or if it would have to wait for the office the following day.

Brucie wouldn't budge until she had one more dance. My boss surprised me by not only agreeing but obliging. Then he surprised me again, executing the moves of the Balboa lightly and expertly. Dex's and Brucie's torsos touched, but their feet flew so quickly, my eyes could barely follow.

While Dex and Brucie scuffed up the linoleum, Mustard and I sat at the table finishing our drinks.

“You wanna?” Mustard said, tipping his lowball glass toward the dance floor.

I just shrugged. I did but I didn't. And the part of me that really, really did was almost overshadowed by the part who was putting up a show of nonchalance.

When Mustard got to his feet, drained his almost empty glass, and extended a hand and a grin in my direction, I wasn't entirely surprised.

“C'mon, kid,” he said, pulling me in the direction of the dancers. “A dress that nice shouldn't oughta be wasted sitting on it.”

The canary's voice was belting out something dark and smoky as we approached the dance floor. My feet and my heart took no time at all to find the rhythm.

Like Dex, Mustard was a surprisingly competent dancer, and it wasn't until we were dancing—the dance floor soft on my shoes, the lights and other dancers blurring into a single color—that I realized how much I'd really wanted this moment. To have come to this beautiful new nightclub, sipped a pretty drink while wearing a pretty dress, and put my shoes and the dance floor to good use. It seemed almost like a dream.

I don't know when I felt the transition. They did it so smoothly that I figured it wasn't the first time they'd changed partners on a dance floor. But suddenly it was Dex who was leading me in a slowed-down version of a varsity drag, and when I looked around, Mustard and Brucie were almost clear across the floor.

“That was quite the magic trick,” I laughed up into Dex's face. I had to raise my voice slightly to be heard over the music and the din of the crowd. “What a handoff. You guys have done this a time or two before.”

I noticed that the smile he sent back to me reached his eyes. That didn't always happen with Dex. He nodded, agreeing. “Maybe a time or two,” he said. “But I'll tell you a secret.” He inclined his head over mine, and I leaned up to hear him better as we danced. “With as much history as me and Mustard have, it's good to know how to swap girls on a dance floor without them getting any the wiser.”

I laughed outright at that. Both at the idea of the two of them with enough time on their hands to actually perfect that skill, and at me being one of the girls in such a swap.

It had to be asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know. “So why'd you swap now?”

“Ah, lookit those two,” Dex said, indicating Mustard and Brucie. “Sure it's too soon for her to even think about it, but don't you think the two of them just seem to fit somehow?”

Dex danced us past them, and they didn't even notice. Brucie was laughing at something Mustard had said. For his part, though he danced gracefully enough, Mustard looked slightly red and slightly awkward in the reflection of all that gold lame.

“Why, Dexter J. Theroux,” I said, as we danced away, something in the magic of the night and being on the dance floor in the arms of a handsome man making me feel kittenish, a coquette-in-waiting. “I never figured you for a matchmaker.”

Dex laughed at that. “And don't start figuring me for one now. I wouldn't wanna have to change my business cards.”

We laughed at that as well. But it put work back into my head. The song had ended, and another started on its heels. Still we danced on. This looked like it might be the only quiet moment I'd get with Dex.

“Dex, I've been wanting to tell you . . . when I was in the powder room earlier ...”

Dex looked at me askance, as though afraid of what I might tell him. “What goes on in there is between a lady and her compact.”

I reclaimed my right hand and whacked him in the shoulder with it. He obliged me by saying, “Ow,” though he didn't look particularly hurt. “I was
talking
to someone in there. You wanna hear this or not?”

“If not hearing it involves more violence, then yes, I do.”

“It's about Dempsey.”

“Dempsey was in the ladies room?”

“Oh, pipe down, mister,” I said, half laughing, half exasperated. I'd never seen Dex in a mood so closely approaching jovial. “I was talking to these two young women in there. I didn't get the idea either of them knew Dempsey very well personally, but they certainly knew who he was.”

“You were asking people about him in the powder room?”

“I wasn't asking, exactly. It just. . . it just sorta came up.”

Dex looked skeptical, but he wanted to hear me out. “Go on,” he prompted.

“Well, I was sitting there, and these two girls started talking to me. They thought they knew who I was.”

“They were talking to you in the powder room?” Dex didn't sound any less skeptical.

“There are couches and stuff in the ladies', Dex. Like a little lounge. Women go in and sit there. Sometimes we chat.”

“Gotcha,” he said. “Go on.”

“Like I told you, these two thought they knew who I was. Like I looked familiar, you know? That they'd seen me there

before. So I let them think that—let them think I'd been in the club before with Harrison Dempsey.”

“Continue,” Dex said. I could tell he was at least slightly impressed with my fast footwork, and I don't mean on the dance floor.

“They said Harrison and Lucid got into a big to-do at the club last week. This one girl said she didn't feel it was a gambling debt. Or maybe not
just
a gambling debt. But something really significant.”

“A gambling debt can be significant,” Dex said, with the air of someone who knew.

“Well, either way, they seemed to think it was enough to get him killed. ‘Thousands and thousands.' And one of them said she heard Lucid tell Dempsey he'd run out of good time and that he'd better come across with the money or there'd be hell to pay. They didn't say
too
much, Dex. It didn't sound like bragging or anything. In fact, it sounded like they were being careful what they said and who they said it to. But they also said they figured Dempsey would be killed.”

“They said that?”

“Not exactly. They said he was a dead man walking.”

Dex didn't look skeptical now. At my words, I saw his eyes widen slightly and understanding flood in. “Well, that's it then, isn't it? That's what happened to our boy. Dead man walking. That's close enough for the kind of jazz we play around here.”

KNOWING THAT MUSTARD
would be bringing me to the club in his car, Dex hadn't bothered to get a ride of his own. He'd taken a taxicab to the hotel. I was feeling happy enough that, for once, I quelled any remark I might have made about him taking the streetcar instead of the more expensive hack.

Mustard had parked on Wilshire across from the hotel and down the block a piece. Brucie and I were both in heels, and Mustard offered to go on ahead and bring the car back, but we argued that the heels weren't that high and the evening was lovely. It was a nice night for a short stroll after the dense smoke and thick noise of the club.

There was a sweetness to the air that night. I'll never forget it. The clarity of the night was heightened by my own sense of well-being. For the first time since my father had died, I felt careless. That is to say, I felt without cares.

Here I was, out on the town. I was wearing a beautiful dress, and my hair had never looked prettier; Brucie had seen to that. I was in the company of two handsome men who cared about me, and a sweet woman who I thought would become a friend. I had just come from the swankest hotel in the city and not been made to feel as though I didn't belong, not even for a second. All of this made me feel on the verge of something fine and good and right. And as I laughed at a joke Mustard had made and as I let Dex take my elbow as I stepped off the curb, I thought, Here, finally, is adulthood. Not so scary as I'd feared.

There was a small park across from the hotel. Nothing more, really, than a handful of palm trees and some benches. As we moved into it, Dex stopped to clip a cigar, and the rest of us paused to wait for him. Just as our little group hesitated, we heard the sound of a car coming around the side of the hotel too fast, which was not in itself unusual, but the sound of squealing tires brought our heads up.

The next thing I was aware of was Dex on top of me. “Get
down”
he ordered. And then came the sound of a car backfiring, not once but several times. I didn't see sky again until after I'd heard the car squeal away; then Dex was helping me up.

“You OK?” he asked.

“I'm
OK. But I'm not sure about this dress Brucie let me wear,” I said, smoothing down the shimmery ivory while looking around for Brucie.

We all became aware of Brucie's injury in the same instant. Even Brucie herself.

“My god,” she said, more wonder in her voice than pain. “I'm bleeding.” A bullet had pierced her shoulder and the gold lame, which she had just a moment to bemoan before the pain started in earnest.

“I'll go get an ambulance,” Dex said, but Mustard stopped him.

“Whoever did the shooting was probably gunning for you, Dex.” Mustard in action was a soothing presence. There was a sort of unhurried speed about him. The hint of an efficiency I'd yet to see in full force. “Whatever questions you were asking back there must have caused some concern. You three stay here; stay low if you can. I'll run ahead and get the car and bring it back. It's a shoulder wound; we'll be OK. And I'll be faster than an ambulance anyway.”

He didn't wait for an answer, but sprinted away, moving his blocky form more quickly than I would have credited.

While we waited, Dex and I did what we could to stanch the blood that leaked from Brucie's shoulder. Dex ripped a sleeve off his white shirt, and we pushed the cloth into the wound. I knelt on the ground beside Brucie, stroking her head with my hand. I didn't know what else to do. I could smell the grass crushed under my knees. It smelled like spring and renewal and promise. It smelled like a lie. It could only have been a few minutes before Mustard screeched up with the car, but it felt like so much longer.

I jumped in the back, and Mustard and Dex carefully placed the injured girl across the seat with her head in my lap. Then we beat it up Wilshire toward the Good Samaritan Hospital, only a short distance away.

Once there, it's possible we might have gotten the usual hospital runaround about paperwork and next of kin, but Mustard and Dex weren't having it. And the admitting nurse seemed to know better than to delay the admittance of a well-dressed girl with a gunshot wound brought in by a couple of mooks who looked as though they may well have a roscoe or two between them. I don't think I've ever seen a hospital staff move more quickly, and I know I'd never seen Dex and Mustard acting mookier.

After the doctors had gotten Brucie sorted out, they decided to keep her in for a day or two. They told us that she'd lost a lot of blood and, in the early stages, would need constant monitoring.

Probably sensing she'd have a fight on her hands if she didn't comply, the nurse let us in to see her. By that time, it was two in the morning. Brucie looked so tiny and vulnerable in the hospital bed, her skin almost paler than the crisp white sheets.

I shot a glance at Mustard and then looked quickly away. There was thunder in his face, and something else. Something so personal it just didn't seem right to look straight at it.

The nurse didn't let us stay long. “All right, you three, out of here now,” she said, once we'd seen Brucie. “She needs to rest and that's all she needs. You can come back tomorrow during normal visiting hours. But now let her sleep.”

We left reluctantly, but we left. The nurse wasn't taking no for an answer, and in any case, we could see she was right. Brucie needed to rest and recover, and she looked to be in very good hands.

“You take care of her,” Mustard admonished the nurse, once we were out of Brucie's room. There was something stern in his face, something that didn't invite conversation. I saw it, but if the nurse did, she gave no sign. She'd probably dealt with tougher nuts in her time.

“Like I said, come back tomorrow. We'll look after her.”

There was nothing else we could do, so reluctantly we took our leave, though I, for one, felt confident that Brucie was getting the best care possible. After all, I told myself, I'd come by the hospital the following day and see with my own eyes that she was fine.

As things turned out, I was wrong.