A Better Goodbye Read online

  She was wondering if this time would make her feel worse than the others, when someone buzzed her from the building’s outer door. Barry already? Well, too bad if it was. She wasn’t answering for anybody. She would just wait until the buzzing stopped and the unwanted visitor gave up. When she finally checked the water for her tea, she felt lucky it hadn’t boiled away. She filled a cup, the heat from the steam stinging her hand, and put in a tea bag, hoping whoever was downstairs would leave soon. She was in no mood for games, and she didn’t care who—

  The pounding was on her front door now, shattering whatever resolve her pep talk had provided. It had to be the same person who buzzed. He must have kept trying apartments until a tenant who just wanted the damned buzzing to stop let him in. Funny how she automatically assumed it was a man. It could just as easily be a woman who thought she was a bitch or a whore or a husband thief. But the way her life had been going lately . . .

  And then she was sure it was a man because he was calling for Jenny. It wasn’t Barry, though. And Mark, the lurker, had to be too scared to follow her home after Nick—wait, that was who it was. Oh, God, she thought, is he going to be one of those guys who thinks he’s in love with me just because I slept with him?

  Jenny moved cautiously to the door and looked at Nick through the peephole. His expression was as desperate as his voice: “Jenny? Open up, Jenny! Come on, you got to open up!”

  She knew he was right, though for a reason that likely hadn’t occurred to him. She had to open up or the apartment manager would yell at her. He might even call the cops.

  “One second,” she said, keeping her voice down.

  When she opened the door, Nick skipped hello and said, “You all right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “How did you find out where I live? I never—”

  Across the hall, behind Nick, she could see one of her neighbors peeking out at the commotion, a Russian woman barely six months in the country. She was trying to hold back her two small children while she satisfied her curiosity.

  “You better come in,” Jenny said.

  “Yeah,” he said, taking a last glance over his shoulder before he entered. “But not for long.”

  “What are you talking about? I mean, why are you here, anyway? I never told you my address.”

  “Sierra described your building and I started hunting for it. Now come on, you got to get out of here. You and Barry if he’s with you.”

  Nick’s eyes swept the living room and kitchen with a frantic intensity that unsettled Jenny. She was starting to feel like she’d taken bad acid.

  “Well, he’s not,” she said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Look, I don’t care if he is here,” Nick said, eyeing the closed door to the bedroom.

  You don’t? Jenny thought, surprised that she was disappointed. But what she said was, “I’m not lying.”

  Nick looked back at her, holding up his left hand as if he were trying to stop the hostility. “I’m sorry, all right?” he said. “I just came to take you someplace safe.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” Jenny said. “Why would I, like, run off with you?”

  “Scott and that guy with the dog—”

  “DuPree.”

  “They’re going to rob Barry, and if you’re with him when they do, you could get hurt.”

  It was all Jenny could do to say, “You really expect me to believe that?”

  “Sierra says Scott’s got a gun.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “This time, yeah, I do. DuPree’s probably got one too. You want to hang around so you can find out how crazy those two assholes are?”

  “Come on,” Jenny said. “I like you, Nick, I really do. But all I did was fuck you. I didn’t, like, pledge my undying love.”

  Nick didn’t flinch.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “But this isn’t about that. It’s about your life.”

  “Right.”

  “You believed I was going to take care of you in that goddamn jack shack, didn’t you? When those psychos were out raping massage girls?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you remember me chasing away poor fucking Mark and looking after you when DuPree shook you up so bad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, what’s coming down with DuPree and Scott is worse than all that shit combined. You hear what I’m saying?”

  Jenny felt helpless, the carefully tended components of her life suddenly thrown into a centrifuge.

  “Jenny,” Nick said, “we got to go now.”

  Her head spun worse than ever, and everything else about her was paralyzed.

  “Dammit, please,” he said.

  His tone made her focus again. It went beyond the fear generated by the moment and the sorrow in which he preserved his past. It was as if he were telling her he finally had a chance to do something good within his reach, if only she would let him do it. She didn’t know what he would ask in return. She didn’t know if it mattered.

  “Okay,” she said, in a voice so small it barely registered on her own ears.

  The next thing she knew, he was wrapping a hand around her arm and steering her toward the door. Her first steps seemed awkward, almost robotic. She wondered if the rhythm of escape was in her.

  28

  They would have run down the front steps and around the corner if Jenny hadn’t been wearing those damned sandals. They kept slipping off, but even when she started carrying them, her bare feet weren’t much of an improvement. The irritation Nick felt must have shown in his face because she told him, “I’m going as fast as I can.” He didn’t reply. He was looking up and down the street for a car he was afraid he wouldn’t recognize until it was too late.

  He’d parked his pickup in the entrance to an underground garage on the other side of Missouri, uncertain which building was Jenny’s until he’d climbed out and seen that dirty-diaper brown up close in the fading light. Now there was someone in a black Toyota Camry stopped behind him. As soon as he saw that it was a woman honking her horn and moving her mouth angrily, he put her out of his mind and resumed looking for DuPree and Scott, who would kill him rather than curse him.

  “This is mine,” he told Jenny when they got to the truck. “Get in.”

  “What about that lady?” she asked.

  “Just get in.”

  Nick watched Jenny scoot to the passenger’s side. When she had the door open, he began to climb in, only to be stopped by the sound of another horn honking. He spun toward it and saw a Rolls-Royce that had to be Barry’s, white ragtop, pale yellow body. He tried to remember if the guy at the wheel was the one he’d seen through the peephole. Yeah, it was, and he was pulling to a stop behind the woman in the Camry, powering down the passenger window and leaning across the seat, shouting, “Jenny!”

  “Barry!”

  Nick turned and saw Jenny hurrying toward the Rolls. “Dammit,” he said, and moved after her.

  The only time the woman in the Camry stopped honking was to lean out her window and yell something at him as he passed her. He couldn’t hear what it was, but he nodded anyway. Anything for a few seconds’ peace. By the time he reached the Rolls, Jenny was at Barry’s open window, telling him, “I’m serious.”

  The look on Barry’s face said he wasn’t buying it. He glanced at Nick and, in a voice both weary and snotty, asked, “Who’s this?”

  “This is Nick. He’s helping us.”

  “Yeah, but who is he?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Okay, if I have to spell it out, are you—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Nick said, “or we’ll leave you here.”

  “What do you know, he talks,” Barry said.

  Nick smacked the hood of the car with an open hand and Barry recoiled, wide-eyed. “You want to be an asshole, fine,” Nick said, “but there’s two guys looking to rob you, and they’ve got guns.”

  “You sound pretty sure of that.”

/>   “I am. And don’t even think about going home and closing the curtains until this is over. That’s the first place they’ll look.”

  “But my wife and kids—”

  Barry caught himself and looked at Jenny. Her expression betrayed nothing. It was the woman in the Camry who was visibly pissed off as she resumed honking, the expression on her face suggesting she was on the verge of living out a violent fantasy.

  “Come on,” Nick told Jenny. “We’re going.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and started moving her toward his pickup, never looking back at Barry. That was for Jenny to do as she tried to keep pace with him.

  “No, wait,” Barry said. “I believe you, okay? Just give me one second here.”

  He grabbed his black leather briefcase and scrambled out of his Rolls, leaving it half-blocking the entrance to the parking garage. He took one last sad look at it and hurried to catch up with Nick and Jenny while the woman in the Camry shouted out her window at him.

  Barry wouldn’t look at Jenny when he found himself wedged between her and Nick in the pickup. He really is a weasel, Nick thought, but it was the wrong time to make an issue of it. Nick pulled out and sped two blocks, blowing stop signs at both, before he turned left on Sawtelle, into the rush-hour slog. No one uttered a word until Jenny pointed at a restaurant called the Blue Plate and said, “This is far enough.”

  Nick angled the truck to the curb and Barry looked at Jenny, disbelief contorting his face. “So close?” he said. “For Christ’s sake, they might drive by and see me.”

  “Not if you’re inside,” Jenny said.

  Barry looked at Nick desperately. “Come on, pal, you know this isn’t right. You’re feeding me to the fucking sharks.”

  “Just go in like she told you and call a cab,” Nick said. “You’ll be fine.”

  When Barry finally started to move, Nick snatched his briefcase. “No,” Barry said, struggling to hang onto it until Nick rapped him on the nose.

  “Ow!” Barry said, grabbing his beak, tears coming to his eyes.

  “Shut up or I’ll hit you again,” Nick said.

  That got his attention. Jenny’s too.

  “Is what’s in this thing worth dying for?” Nick asked. “Maybe getting Jenny killed, too? Tell me. I want to know how much you value life.”

  Barry remained silent, as if he were afraid he’d choke on what he would say.

  “I had a manager like you once, when I was fighting,” Nick said. “The only thing he ever cared about was the money. So here . . . ” Nick thrust the briefcase back at Barry. “Take what you’d get us killed for. But I’m keeping the case. We clear on that? The case is mine.”

  Barry started working on its combination lock.

  “Faster,” Nick said.

  At last, hands shaking, Barry slid a plain four-by-six manila envelope from the briefcase, then gave it back to Nick.

  “Now get out,” Nick said.

  Jenny opened the door and stepped onto the curb so Barry could exit. “Fuck me,” he muttered as he stalked off toward the Blue Plate. When Jenny jumped back in the pickup, she called after him: “Tell your wife I said hello.”

  Traffic was a motherfucker. Seemed like it messed with DuPree every inch of the way. He hadn’t expected Wilshire to be worth a damn, but Olympic should have been better. That was how he remembered it from the last time he’d been fool enough to try driving at rush hour. Besides, at a quarter to seven, he’d thought rush hour would be easing up. He knew how wrong he was as he crawled along with the rest of the fools, all that muscle under his Beemer’s hood and no room for flexing it, not even in that little stretch through Century City with only one light. Nas was doing “Life’s a Bitch” on the Blaupunkt and DuPree was telling himself, Yeah, no shit, and wishing he had some weed. Nothing to do but slam his fist on the steering wheel and promise himself he’d take it out on Barry and that bitch Coco. In the passenger seat, Blanco looked at him like he was crazy.

  When DuPree finally turned onto Purdue—after taking what felt like a goddamn hour just to get past the 405—it was almost seven-thirty and he thought for sure they’d blown it. But he went into a slow crawl just the same, eyeballing every car jammed along the curb on both sides of the street. When he paused at the Missouri intersection and looked both ways, there it was on the left: Barry’s Rolls.

  He speed-dialed his man Scottie: “Get your ass over here. We got him.”

  Now DuPree had to find a parking place and wait, him and Blanco. If Barry came out before Scottie showed, no problem. DuPree had his Glock; he could take care of business himself. He just wanted to get situated with a good view of the Rolls and the building where Barry was undoubtedly enjoying some of that fine Oriental pussy. Ten minutes later, DuPree was still driving and looking, thinking good parking places were as hard to find as a break in the motherfucking traffic.

  They drove down Beloit, with the parking lot that was the 405 on one side of them and apartment buildings and an occasional single-family home on the other—bare-bones shelter for people simply trying to survive another day in L.A. Jenny felt like she was being reminded just how hard survival was every time Nick checked his rearview mirror or braced himself at an intersection. Once or twice Jenny tried to see what he saw, but mostly she kept her eyes straight ahead and wondered what was waiting in the gathering night.

  When Nick hung a U-turn and parked between a tatty convertible and a pickup that had been converted to a camper, she shifted anxiously. She wanted to run, she wanted to stay with Nick as her protector, she just wanted to come out of this alive.

  “Jenny?” he said. “You got anybody you can call?”

  “Call?”

  She expected them to be out on the street by now, racing toward a hiding place, fleeing DuPree and Scott and the guns Nick said they had. Instead, she was sitting here trying to figure out what he was talking about.

  “Friends or somebody,” he said. “People you could stay with.”

  “Like, hide.”

  “Like that, yeah. Somebody that doesn’t have anything to do with all this.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “You mean that doesn’t know I’m a—”

  “You’re Jenny, okay? Just Jenny.”

  Even though she’d told him to call her by her real name, it felt strange to hear him say it. And then she felt something else, absolution maybe, or forgiveness, though she hadn’t sought it. He was letting her know that Coco no longer existed for him either. Now she was a girl he had just met, a fresh face no matter how her secret life had collided with his. But there was no time to unspool all the words she would have needed to thank him for his kindness, his bravery. All she could do was nod before she dug her cell phone from her purse.

  “Let me call around,” she said.

  Nick opened his door.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To talk to them.” He nodded at three men in work clothes by a worn-out truck across the street. “Make your call.”

  She watched him trot toward the men as she dialed Maria and got her voicemail. No surprise there. No time to wait, either. She dialed Rachel, got another voicemail, and felt fear clutch at her stomach. Her hands shook as she dialed a third number, thinking, Be home, Sara, please be home. And Sara was, instantly deciding that they should grab dinner at Babalu, where they served this incredible banana cream pie, not that Jenny ever ate dessert. “We’ll see,” Jenny said.

  She climbed out of the pickup and walked across the street, wondering if this was how it felt to be inside a video game. The first thing she heard was one of the men telling Nick, “Sí. Is no problem.” The speaker was the eldest of three Mexicans, easily twice the age of the other two. When the guys with him saw Jenny, they grinned and whispered to each other in Spanish.

  Nick turned to her and said, “Did you get hold of somebody?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. My friends will take you there.”

  “I thought you were taking care
of me,” Jenny said.

  “I am.”

  She shot a glance at the young Mexicans that said she didn’t believe him.

  Their elder statesman read it instantly. “You’ll be safe,” he said. “Your friend helps us, now we help him. To where are you going?”

  “Santa Monica,” she said.

  The elder Mexican opened the door to his truck and motioned for Jenny to climb in. But before she could let herself do that, she had to ask Nick, “What about you?”

  “I’m home,” he said.

  He pointed at a shabby building that looked like it had been laid on the block sideways. The door to his apartment must have been down the narrow walk on the north side. It was half grown over with untended oleanders that rendered the two lights out front all but useless. If there were more lights in the rear, Jenny couldn’t see them.

  “Is there someplace for you to hide?” she asked.

  “Worry about yourself,” Nick said.

  “But how will I know you’re all right?”

  “I’ll figure that out later.”

  “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

  “Just get going.”

  Jenny wanted to kiss him more than she had ever wanted to kiss anyone in her life, but she couldn’t even hug him or offer a simple thank you. He was already hurrying toward his apartment with Barry’s briefcase in his left hand, and there was nothing she could do but get in the truck. As they drove away, she was still looking back, wanting another glimpse of Nick and hating the idea that he had been swallowed by darkness.

  So far Scott loved everything about his new gig as a criminal: DuPree buzzing all the apartments until somebody let them in, then going to Coco’s place on the first floor and not even knocking, just kicking the fucking door in. DuPree had his gun out and Blanco by his side when he checked the closets and behind the shower curtain. Nobody home, but he did find out the teakettle was still warm. Scott should have known enough to check it after playing so many cops on TV, but it was DuPree who did, and said Barry and Coco must have just split. And then he said knock it off when Scott looked like he was ready to trash the little bitch’s computer and fuck up her books. Anybody else and Scott would have been pissed, but DuPree was strictly business, a real pro. Scott told himself to remember it all—and to pull his gun next time. DuPree needed somebody who had his back.