As the big black case twisted in the air, the top flopped open, and out spun a smattering of bills along with the phone books, Bible, and towel. As the bills flitted toward the swimming pool, and Terrence reached for them as if they were bubbles floating by, the books and case dropped with a series of thuds just in front of Gregor.
“What is this?” said Gregor. “Joke?”
“No joke,” said Sims. “The money is missing.”
“It can’t be, not again,” said Gregor, the European languor cracking. “Where is it, Julia my love?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was in the case.”
“And now it’s not,” said Sims.
“Still in room?”
“I searched it,” said Sims. “Nothing.”
“Then where? Where is it?” growled Gregor. He tipped the shotgun toward me. “Victor?”
“No idea,” I said. “I just got here myself.” The second statement was true, the first no longer was, but I wasn’t going to let these two thugs know it.
“How about you?” said Gregor, waving the shotgun toward Terry. “What do you know?”
“Not much,” said Terry slowly. “Except I don’t have it. And Julia doesn’t have it. And Clarence doesn’t have it. And Victor is an idiot. And that leaves-”
“There was a woman,” said Sims. “Old, feeble.”
“She’s no one,” said Julia.
“The maid?” said Gregor. “Gwen?”
“I waited for her to leave before I went into the room,” said Sims.
“Gwen,” growled Gregor.
“A white car was waiting in front,” said Sims.
“Yes, I saw it,” said Gregor. “A white Buick. It went south just as we pulled in. Okay, now we are-”
Just then, in the distance, a siren sounded, and then another, both growing louder quite quickly. The heads of the two men turned in unison, like the heads of two birds on a wire. Terry started laughing.
“My car’s in front,” said Gregor.
“That’s no good,” said Sims. He pointed beyond the back of the motel. “My car’s through there.”
Gregor waved the shotgun. “Take me.”
“Fifty-fifty.”
“Don’t be crazy. Take me or I kill you.”
“Then we’ll both die, and without the money.”
“I give you quarter, maybe.”
“Fifty-fifty.”
The sirens grew louder. A set of tires squealed in the parking lot on the other side of the motel.
“You are a dishonorable and murderous thief,” said Gregor. “I admire that.”
“Is it a deal?”
“Deal,” said Gregor.
“This way,” said Sims, beginning to run, with Gregor behind him. When Sims reached Terry at the fence, he stopped suddenly and turned to me. “Is this the perp who killed the doctor?”
“What do you care?”
“Of course I care,” said Sims. “I’m a cop.”
He raised his gun and fired.
“Case closed,” said Sims, as Terry staggered backward and fell with a quick splash of blood.
And then Sims was off, past the pool and through a patch of weedy trees, with Gregor Trocek, lumbering like a bearded sasquatch, still behind him.
Sirens and footsteps. Tires squealing. Shouts and hollers. Orders to get down, get down. And above it all the plaintive desperate keen of a woman in love.
48
There was a moment after the cops arrived and made sense of the scene and gave chase to Trocek and Sims, a moment before the ambulance careened around the side of the building to pick up what was left of Terrence Tipton, there was a singular moment in which things came clear to me. Julia, my Julia, was kneeling over the prostrate body of her lover in a posture of perfect devotion as a uniformed officer performed whatever CPR he could think of to keep the bleeding piece of meat alive. And then Julia looked up, her face full of panic. She searched around frantically until her search found me and our eyes met.
Help me, please, her expression begged. And all I could think was, Who the hell was she? How had this strange woman, whom I barely now recognized, twisted me into knots?
Yet in reality I had done all the twisting, hadn’t I? What she had done to Terrence, by concocting a fantasy room for him to live in, I had done to her, by concocting a fantasy past for the two of us, where our love had been honest and pure, when in reality it had been neither. She was just a woman doing her best to hold on to the one true thing in her life; my feverish emotions had turned her into a femme fatale. But isn’t that always the way of it when old love comes a-knocking?
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about old lovers that causes so much perturbation of the soul, and I’ve come up with a theory. We have, all of us, an image of what love looks like, an image that evolves and ages as we move through life. But for some, tragically, the evolution slows or even stops dead. And if that image stalls when a relationship dies, as it had for me, then you remain haunted by the lover who disappointed you and then disappeared. Whoever you are with, whoever you kiss or ravish, can be only a pale imitation of the image that lies like a ghost in your soul. But here’s the thing. When the old lover shows up again in your life, she is just as pale an imitation as everyone else. She is no longer twenty-four, and neither are you.
“You took your time,” I said to Hanratty as we stood side by side and stared at the twisted little pietà inside the pool fence.
“You told me you wanted to bring her out,” he said. “I thought I’d give you a chance. I waited as long as I could, and then the gunfight in front of the motel broke out.”
“Did you know it was Sims who was shooting from inside?”
“When the shooter outside was felled with one shot, I figured it out. Sims and Trocek didn’t get away so long ago, but Sims knows all the tricks. He’s probably on his third car by now. I’d be surprised if we see him again.”
“Maybe he and Gregor will end up killing each other over the money.”
“We can only hope. You have any idea where they’re headed?”
“Georgia.”
“Why Georgia?”
“For the pecans,” I said. “I didn’t do much good here, but I appreciate your letting me come over to try.”
“She’s still alive, isn’t she?”
“But I don’t think she’s happy about it.”
“That’s not the point. And at least you tried. I almost admire that. I still want to punch you in the face, but I’d feel bad about it now.”
“It’s a start.” I looked around. “Where’s Derek?”
“He stayed in the diner, said a pack of cops showing up with guns drawn made him a little nervous. And he said he had something going on with the waitress.”
“Yeah, that’s Derek.”
“What are you going to do about her?” he said, gesturing to Julia, still looking around desperately for the ambulance.
“I’m going to wait until this whole thing settles down,” I said, “and then I’m going to wrap her in my arms and kiss her good-bye.”
But I never got the chance.
When the ambulance careened around the side of the building and lurched to a stop at the edge of the pool, she stayed with Terry. Even as they loaded him onto the gurney and lifted him into the vehicle, she stayed with Terry, climbing into the back of the ambulance with the paramedic before the vehicle rushed off.
They pronounced Terrence Tipton dead at the Warren Memorial Hospital in Front Royal, Virginia, shortly after the ambulance arrived. It was inevitable, I suppose, that Julia and Terry’s romance would end in blood and anguish. In Shakespeare’s play the very instant Romeo unsheathes his sword, even if with the best intentions, he seals his fate, and Juliet’s, too. Violence begets violence, and love pays the price.
I imagine that Julia was in the room as the doctors worked frantically over her lover’s body. I imagine she had to be pulled away as they pressed the paddles to his chest. I imagine that after death was pronounced and the time duly noted, they left her alone with the corpse and she hugged it and kissed it and swore her everlasting devotion a final time.