He didn’t notice her return until she said, “Catch!” A sealed envelope hit his chest and before he could disengage his thumbs from his belt loop, it had fallen to the floor. He picked it up. It was almost an inch thick. Most people wrote a check, he thought. What was this? All ones?
“You want to count it?” she asked.
“Uh, if you’re trusting me, I’m trusting you. That’s what I say.” With a roll of his head, he smiled and stuffed the envelope in his back pocket. “I’d better get to work.”
“On what?”
“The pool,” he said.
“Very funny,” she said. “You get out of here, a long way out of here. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. Have a good life. I’ve got things to do. You’ll read it in the papers. The guy who broke in was black, about six feet, with a shaved head, a Mexican accent, and an earring.”
He squinted, still unable to decipher the lock on that last door, but nodded and picked up the bucket of chlorine tablets that still lay in the lake of broken glass. The handle was hot from lying in the open doorway and seemed a lot heavier than usual. The vacuum hose had unrolled all over the patio. As he wound it, he barely noticed the telephone ringing inside.
“Marty?” she said. “It’s just great! Just perfect! I’m going to call the cops and-”
Exemel straightened up and squinted into the house. Just great? Just perfect?
“You had to slip out to a pay phone? Why? No records, I understand, but-?” Suddenly she looked up at Exemel. “What?” she said. “That can’t be. He’s right here. Talk to him yourself. He’s about six foot two.” She listened carefully. “No,” she saidslowly. “This guy could fall down a drinking straw.” Her eyes widened. She walked toward Exemel. “Marty sent you, right?”
“Marty? No, it was Lester. Marty don’t work there no more.”
She shuddered her head trying to clear it. “Where? Where does Marty work-? Used to work?”
“Desert City Pool Services. My real name’s Herbert, but everybody calls me Exemel. Like in XML, you know, ‘Extensible Mark-up Language.’ It was kind of a joke.”
Her mouth fell open and she did not move. The phone was squawking in her hand. “Shut up, Marty,” she finally said. “Just a minute, damn it!” She blinked, thought, then smiled like a mother holding a newborn. “Uh, umm, Hex-abel, or whatever, could you come back inside for a minute?”
“Exemel. But really, ma’am, I’m flattered and all, but the code, you know… I got three more pools this afternoon and we don’t get overtime.”
“Just-” she said, barely controlling herself, “just come in for a minute. Please. My nerves are shot. Just a few seconds.”
Exemel crunched in across the glass. “You don’t look so good. I mean, you look good, but, you know, you don’t look good. I can wait for the cops with you. I got no problem with that.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Maybe a toke or two would help. I’ll just step out to the truck. It’s new stuff so it shouldn’t smell too much like chlorine yet.”
“Just-damnit-stay there. Don’t move. I-I want to get a robe. Promise?”
“Sure.”
Exemel gazed at the dead man sprawled in front of the fireplace. With the leather pants and mask, his skin pale and unreal, he looked like a really big action figure. An X-Man or something. Deathmaster. Sado-Man. Sick Bastard Dude.
He heard the padding of the woman’s feet on the granite floor. She was still naked, but she was holding an enormous nickel-plated pistol in front of her.
“Whoa,” said Exemel.
She stiffened her arms. The heavy gun wobbled in front of her. “Look, I’m really grateful for all you’ve done, but Marty knows about things like this and he says you’ve got to die.”
“Me?”
“You heard Marty’s name. It’s tough luck for you. What can I tell you? I mean, I didn’t know you weren’t the guy.”
“But I am the pool guy. Exemel Knapsdale. That’s me!”
“Not for the damned pool! The guy who was supposed to off Ted. He was killed on 215. All burned up. He was in Marty’s car.”
“This is the Marty who used to work with me?”
“No! The guy with the car! Will you pay attention?! Marty owns the Pleasure Garden! I used to work there. He hooked me up with Ted. I pretended to be just off the boat and the sick bastard married me. Marty said he’d arrange it. He knows people.”
“Okay,” said Exemel. “Okay. But what’s this got to do with the pool?”
She ground her teeth in frustration and closed her eyes. “Never mind! It wasn’t a black guy. You broke in, looking for drugs or something. Ted tried to defend me. I ran for the gun. You killed Ted. I killed you.” She licked her lips. “That will work. Yeah.”
“Well, I did kill that dude,” said Exemel. “That dude is Ted, right? It was an accident, but it’s still, like, killing. So it’s like karma coming back on me or something. I started work on a game called Karma once, but they pulled the plug on it because like Hindus or somebody might get the wrong impression-”
“Will you shut up?!” The gun wobbled, but she gritted her teeth and squeezed. Nothing happened. She looked at the gun in astonishment and tried again. Nothing happened. “What the-?”
“Some joke,” said Exemel, taking one step toward her. “That wasn’t funny! You really had me going there!”
The woman’s face twisted in fury. It seemed to morph and massage itself, and Exemel hesitated at the sight, waiting for her to turn into an American Werewolf or just explode like in Scanners. Before he could react, she snatched the chef’s knife off the dinette table, raised it, and charged him.
This was no joke, dude. His sneaker went out from under him as the glass pellets skidded. He stumbled over the patio door sill and dropped to one knee. He covered his face with his hands and braced to feel the knife in his back. He stared into the darkness of his hands to see what Death or God or Shiva or whatever it was really looked like.
But there was only the pain in his knee and a strange noise: whee! whee!, like the sound of a tiny, distant bird. He spread his fingers and saw the woman sitting in the glass pellets. She had slipped on them as well. The noise was her breathing, growing weaker and weaker. The knife was buried deep under her rib cage.
“Lady!” said Exemel. “I’ll get a doctor.”
Her eyes rolled up to look at him. Her mouth gaped. She seemed to want to say something to him, and shook her head. “The jackpot,” she said and her pupils rolled up like cherries on a slot machine. She fell back white-eyed.
“Lady?” he asked. “Lady?” He looked at her and wondered what she would have looked like with clothes on. He’d never see that now. She was seriously dead. He crossed the room. Ted was even deader than he’d been a while ago. He thought about the envelope of money in his back pocket, and about Marty, and about the dude who was burned up on 215 and blocked the traffic going both ways. If he could write a will for Ted, he’d be rich! Dude, would that be stupid. Greed is not good, no matter what the evangelists say. He thought about DNA, and blood spatter stuff, and he was glad he hadn’t taken her up on the offer, which he’d really wanted to, but not with the dead guy watching.
He concentrated. It wasn’t easy because he wasn’t in, like, that stoned way that makes you understand everything real clear. After thinking for what seemed a very long time, wandering through several mental detours about whether Shiva could materialize and be a witness, he picked up the woman’s phone.