And got myself a gun...
...born under a bad sign
blue moon in my eyes
Alabama3
South Beach – Stanfield Residence - 8 PM
Sometime between when he left and when he hit the overpass, taking the exit north, she hit him with something he already knew. Don't take the boxes? He was riding a bike, he wasn't carrying boxes, but it was all right, it was all good, she was good, he trusted her, the only person he trusted other than his wife, but what she was saying was a big load of stupid.
"I sent her email. You’re not going to like it but it’s done and it’s a better idea…”
Metro South – 9 PM
Always thinking she was one step ahead of him or maybe she worried she wasn't, either way, this time she wasn't. "Yeah, I know, done already. You didn't think I was going to hump all that shit over here....Beth...shut up and don't call...yeah I know but do not call me." Rafe hung up, parked his bike, uneasy, tired, stretching and trying to convince himself that this was going to work.
Was this even the right place? Rafe checked the address again. Right address but not what he expected. He thought he’d end up at the wharf, not faced with some damned mansion. As he approached the front door he saw a curtain twitch up on the third floor – someone watching him. He took a deep breath and kept on going.
He started to knock on the door, not even sure which door to knock on, stopped, looking through the sidelights at some guy, a total geek, who walked towards him.
The total geek - on second glance, not so geeky after all - pushed through the door and rounded on him with a deep and hard voice. “If you’re packing anything, you’re dead. She’s expecting you. Go in and go up to the third floor and don’t fucking look around on your way up.”
She? That took him aback, and it was hard not to take a look at anything at all…looked like they were moving…nothing here but a pile of boxes, a chair, a gun on the box beside the chair. Not that he was looking at it.
Three stories up, he stopped. A woman played a piano, Debussy's Clair de Lune, a long lovely elegant romantic and accomplished and very personal interpretation. It was impressive. And he recognized her.
The woman at his mother’s house. The Ivory Soap woman. No…not possible…all that detail from Gabe and he had never mentioned this woman…had he known? This was the source? The woman who had taken out Gabe. And the woman behind his mother’s power? No way Gabe would have known. Gabe would have jumped all over her...all right maybe not but he would have tried.
“Hello Rafe." She slid off the piano bench, looking up at him. “You are on time.”
The room, the carpet, the curtains, the whole damned place took him back. It was like his mother's house, and the memory ripped through him, shaking him. Rafe fought it, focusing. Yeah, he was right on time. He’d gotten that much right. The rest of it though…he’d anticipated a lot of scenarios but nothing that included this woman.
“Don’t tell me you are speechless." She stood up. She laughed. "You really did not know who I was? I am surprised. But I appreciated the email – we do need to talk but that was well done. Excellent. Is she a girlfriend? You have girlfriends?”
Girlfriends…he knew sending the email like that was going to cause problems… He had no idea what this woman wanted, where she was going with this, and didn’t intend to go running down the same road along with her. Rafe leaned toward her, deeply and thoroughly uneasy and hoping it didn’t show, his voice low and quiet. “Glad you appreciated it. There’s more. You want to talk about it?”
She smiled, walked across the room and sat down in a chair and looked at him. He drew a deep breath, looked past her out at the city, ordered himself to focus – she’s a woman. Damned fucking dangerous woman, but a woman. Go for it.
And as soon as he got close enough to her, she curled up on the chair, looked up at him and continued, “Half of it is what I got Rafe? Can you tell me what is in the other half?”
He settled on the sofa and took his time, continuing to watch her. Let her breathe for a minute. Watching her watch him. Rafe moved, stretching one arm, shifting his legs, still watching her. This one was nothing like any woman he’d ever gone up against. Stop thinking about her as a woman then…think of her as a female version of Gabe. He leveled his eyes on her, locking them. “You’ll have all of it, hardcopy, everything, once I get a guarantee from you that I’m out of it. I have copies of everything, and all of it, every single damned bit of it, will go out if anything happens to me or anyone in my family. I want a guarantee.”
“I am not ebay,” she shot back at him, and, finally, the accent came through. Russian. She had dropped her guard. “I do not give guarantees. But I will tell you this. You give me what you have and we are done. I have no interest in you. I have no interest in your girlfriend or your wife or your children. None. You do understand my intentions for Eden – you do not call me to ask what happened to her. And I will not call you. Are we clear on this?”
Rafe eased back against the couch. Was he really sitting here discussing this? Yeah lady, I'm here talking about killing my mother. Don’t choke now. “Very clear. We are more than clear about this. I appreciate an honest woman.”
And she laughed and slid one long leg over the other, leaning forward towards him. “Do you? I think you do. I saw that in you, with your mother. My god I do not know how a woman like that had children. But you know, I’m not as old as your mother. That’s for another time maybe. You need to go.”
Rafe walked toward the stairwell, feeling her eyes on him every step of the way, wanting to run down and get the hell out here alive to hell with his mother. The Heidi woman followed him and watched him and smiled and something about it made him remember Cam. Forget her. He couldn't. He stalled, looked at her, cleared his throat, touched his wedding ring like a magic charm and went for it. “Gabe,” he began, trying to figure out a way to put it, “there’s a girl who’s interested in what happened to him. Is there anything I can tell her?”
She tapped her fingernails against her upper arm, a pause so brief, a heartbeat, no longer, but it was there.
“Tell her,” she said softly, looking into his eyes, “that he will not call.”
South Beach – Oceanfront – 10 PM
Halfway home, Rafe abruptly wheeled his bike off the coast road onto a stretch of flat and rocky sand. He’d been here before but it wasn’t the kind of place he frequented now – the beach dropped off precipitously into a deserted cove. Private. No view from the road at all.
He cut off the engine, pocketed the keys, and started down the hill, checking first to make sure he’d be alone. And, mercifully, he was.
Strange, standing here, moving right into the waves, listening to the deep quiet, soft hush of water against the sand and rock, he was less concerned about his mother’s fate than that of his cousin.
Grabbing a pebble, Rafe hurled it into the surf, watched it sink, watched the waves rise and pound and retreat and pound again. Gabe. Damn him. What was he supposed to think or feel about him now?
He would never be able to think of his cousin as any kind of hero. Anyone who made that mistake was an idiot, a tool, a passenger on Gabe's train wreck to hell. Here's your ticket; enjoy your ride on the fuck you express. Stop by the gift shop on the way out for a full color photo of Gabe giving you the finger.
Except at some point the conductor got off. All those years Gabe had plotted and schemed against him, copied him, trying to be something he wasn’t. Trying to be me. I’m the man Gabe wanted to be.
Why? Who the hell knew. If Cam knew, she never said. If his father knew, he was past believing anything he said. But what Gabe had done this time, finally, this time, went a long way toward redeeming him. Too late. Probably too late. Rafe thought about the woman’s hesitation when he had asked about his cousin, and smiled. Maybe not too late.
“Thanks, Gabe.” Rafe turned into the night and the wind, letting them hit him, cold and hard. “Where ever you are…thanks.”
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Thus ends South Beach. Thanks to everybody who has read through it.
