'No… And tell you the truth, that seems kind of minor.'
'Not if you've got a ten o'clock appearance the next day and there's all kinds of pressure and you need sleep more than anything, and he's over there, pick, pick, pick… And he tries to sneak it in, so I won't hear it, so I wait…
God!'
'How do you want to do it?'
'I'll just do it,' Carmel said. 'There's nothing else to do at this end. No arrangements of anything.'
'I'll go around the block,' Rinker said. 'Hurry.'
Carmel got out, walked down the block to Allen's. He met her in a bathrobe, at the door, with a big grin. 'God, you got off,' he said. 'That's great.'
'Gotta make a call,' she said. She called the office law library, the answering machine, dropped the receiver on the table, said, 'C'mere,' and walked around him back to the bedroom.
'What?' He looked at the phone, puzzled, then went after her.
He was six or seven steps behind her. At the bedroom door, she slowed, let him catch up, turned with the gun, bringing it up. His warm brown puppy-dog eyes had no chance to show fear or anything else. She pulled the trigger and the gun went whack! And Hale Allen, as dead as his former wife, started falling backward.
Carmel fired three more times as he fell, and afterward stepped up beside him, pointed the gun down at his forehead and fired twice more: whack, whack. And again into his heart: whack.
'Goddamnit, Hale,' she said, as she walked back into the bedroom; 'You were my one true love.' Her photo smiled at her from the bedstand as she opened the folded piece of notebook paper, and let the odd strands of Clark's pubic hair fall on the sheet. On the way out, she hung up the phone, then looked back at
Hale Allen's motionless body.
'You prick,' she snarled. 'Screw around on me…'
She kicked him in the chest, and then again, in the face, and then in the arm; and, breathing hard, went to the door. On the street, Rinker was coming around for the first time. Carmel stepped out and Rinker pulled over. 'That was quick,'
Rinker said, as Carmel got in the car.
'No point in messing around,' Carmel said. 'Let's move.'
'Did you say good-bye?'
'I didn't say anything,' Carmel said. 'I did the phone thing, got him walking, and shot him in the head.'
'Huh.' Rinker continued on for a block, then said, 'You know something?'
'What?'
'We're good at this. If I'd met you ten years ago, I bet we could have set things up so that all of my outside jobs pointed somewhere else.'
'Not too late for that,' Carmel said. 'When you get to wherever you're going, you get established, set up a couple new IDs, cool off for a while
… and then come talk.'
'It doesn't bother you? At all?'
'Actually, I kind of like it,' Carmel said. 'It's something different, you know?
You get out of the office. You see lawyers on television, running around the courthouse, but ninety percent of my time is sitting in front of a computer.
This is a little exercise, if nothing else.'
Back at Clark's, Rinker carefully pulled the clip, pressed an extra shell into the bottom of the clip, using a piece of toilet paper to keep her prints off of it, then reloaded the cartridges in the same order that they'd come out. They left the gun next to Clark's hand on the bed, but pointed away. 'I saw a suicide once, one of my clients,' Carmel said. 'The gun was like that.'
'Then that's good,' Rinker said. She took a last look around. 'We're done.'
On the sidewalk outside, Carmel looked up at the sky and said, 'I'm gonna miss you. Do you think you could get the New York Times wherever you're going?'
'I'm sure I could.'
'Okay. Then listen: I'll leave a message for Pamela Stone in the New York Times personal column on Halloween, and the days around there. It'll just say something like, "Pamela: Zihautanejo Hilton, November 24-30." Or wherever.
That's where I'll be, if you feel safe and still want to do Mexico.'
'I'll look for it,' Rinker said.
'Listen, are you gonna need the other gun?'
'No, probably not. I've got a couple more stashed.'
'Could I have the one you've got?'
'Sure, but it could be dangerous. If you were caught with it.'
'I'll hide it out,' Carmel said. 'But if anything else comes up. ..'
'All right.' As they got back in the car, Rinker slipped the gun out of her girdle, pulled the clip, jacked the shell out of the chamber, pushed it back into the clip and handed the pistol to Carmel. 'There you go. Be careful.'
'I will be… Are you gone then?'
'Yeah. I gotta move: I'll be out of the country in a week. And I've got to make a few stops. I've got money stashed all over the place.'
Back at the parking ramp, Rinker and Carmel shook hands: good friends, who'd been through a lot together. 'If I don't see you again, I'll remember you,'
Carmel said.
'See you in Mexico, Halloween,' Rinker said. 'Hey – and don't forget to check that phone tape, and erase it, if there's anything on it.'
'Top of my list,' Carmel said.
She walked back through the building, let herself into the office suite, unplugged the answering machine, and listened to her messages. The call from
Hale's house had something on it, but she doubted that anyone could tell what it was. She was taking no chances, though. She replaced the phone tape with a new one, stripped the tape out of the cartridge, and burned it. The little fire left a nasty odor in the office and she opened an outside window, to air it.
She could see three or four cars parked up and down the street. At least a couple of them, she thought, were loaded with cops.
With the answered phone call, and the watching cops, she had the perfect alibi.
She should wait a few minutes, cool out, and get back home, she thought.
And maybe have a good cry. Although she didn't feel much like crying; she was more excited than saddened.
Man, that was something else.
He was right there and Whack! Whack! Whack!
Alive, then dead. Something else.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Allen's body was found by his secretary, who first called Carmel to find out if she'd seen him.
'Well, no, I haven't,' Carmel said. She felt a crawling sensation on the back of her neck: this was it, the beginning of the end game. 'Not since day before yesterday – I had to work last night. I did talk to him last night, though.
Sometime about 11 o'clock, I think.'
'Well, I don't know what to do,' the secretary said. 'He missed a closing this morning, and people are upset. He could miss another one if he's not here in die next twenty minutes. That's not like him.'
'How about his cell phone? That's permanently attached to him.'
'It rings, but there's no answer.'
'Huh. Well, maybe we ought to check with a neighbor or something,' Carmel said.
'I'd go, but I don't have a key, and I do have a court date.'
'I've got a key,' the secretary said, the concern right on the surface of her voice. 'He keeps an emergency key in his desk drawer. I can go over…'
'You don't think anything's happened, do you?' Carmel asked. She put concern in her own voice. 'I bet he just lost track of time somewhere, he was talking about buying a new sport coat…'
'He was supposed to be here at nine o'clock. That's a lot of time,' the secretary said.
'Now you've got me worried,' Carmel said. 'Keep me posted.'
As the secretary, whose name was Alice Miller, hung up, it occurred to her she'd just had her most congenial conversation with Carmel Loan, who tended to treat secretaries like unavoidable morons. Allen, she thought, was known for a certain mellowing effect he had on women…
When Allen didn't show up for the next closing, she apologized for him, told the participants that she was very concerned, that he hadn't been heard from; that she was going to his house to check on him. She felt increasing concern as she drove out to Allen's house. And once there, she called back to the firm to make sure he hadn't shown up in the meantime. He hadn't.