"I guess that's what it's all about," LaMonica said in his most sincere tone.
They spent the rest of the afternoon sharing the quart of bourbon. Red-cheeked and tipsy from the liquor, she recounted her life story: a small town outside Munich, a taxi-driver father whose goal in life was to sell enough black-market G.I. liquor to buy his own Gasthaus, a mother who ran away with the town butcher and later came back, a Roman Catholic school whose nuns administered swats at the drop of a hat, and finally the story of her sister. Sandy Hartzbecker told the tale as if she were recounting the success story of the century: "She tricked in a fancy whorehouse in Stuttgart for three years and saved her money. When she left, she had enough to buy a Mercedes-Benz and a new identity. She moved to Frankfurt and started life all over again; told everyone she was a widow, that her husband had been a doctor who lost his life in a car accident. She ended up marrying a rich lawyer. It proved to me that people can make something of themselves if they really want to. I knew that I could be more than a waitress in a G.I. bar for the rest of my life. I left Germany and came to the U.S. with my old man."
That evening after some sex talk he followed her into the bedroom. As they undressed he noticed her sinewy housemaid's shoulders, her proud, dark nipples. She threw back the covers and climbed on the bed. He joined her and discovered that her sexual abilities were pretty much along the lines of her general appearance: mediocre at best. Afterward, they lay in the perspiration-soaked bed. She lit a cigarette.
"You're different than other men," she said.
"Howzat?"
"Because you're gentle," she said. "I loved the way you went for my tits. You took your time with me and didn't rush. A tit man is a gentle man. I hate to be just used."
The next year of nights was a blur of hotels and motels from Las Vegas to Newport Beach, the days spent passing and selling counterfeit money. Passing one bill at a time at shopping centers and department stores, fast-food joints, grocery markets. LaMonica would wait in the car as Sandy Hartzbecker went from store to store getting change for a twenty or fifty. With package deals, he would make the arrangements with a buyer and she would deliver the bills to a phone booth or a rental locker or a hotel room and pick up the payment. All in all, it was just like the song: a really good year … until Sandy's arrest.
A black man with an Afro that looked half a foot high came out of a room on the second floor. He glanced around suspiciously and walked down the stairs to the gold Cadillac. He got in the car and drove off.
LaMonica locked his sedan and trotted up the stairs two at a time. He tried the door handle. It was unlocked. He pushed the door open. There was the smell of sex in the room.
Sandy Hartzbecker got up off the bed. She was naked, but made no attempt to cover herself. "What the hell do you want?" she asked.
"Just to talk," LaMonica said.
She grabbed a pair of Levi's off the end of the bed and wiggled into them. "The answer is no," she said. Having yanked on a pullover, she strode to the dresser mirror. Angrily, she picked up a brush. Ignoring his presence, she yanked it through her hair.
"Can we just have a drink? For old times' sake, shall we say?"
She tossed the brush down and faced him. "The only 'old times' I remember was when I took chances for you and ended up going to the fuckin' joint. You better get out of here before my boyfriend gets back. He can press three hundred pounds."
"Your cut in this new thing would be twenty-five C's. I can prove it to you on paper."
"You are not part of my life anymore," she said. "I'm not into being a mule or a slave for any man. I'm tired of being used. I'm looking out for myself. You knew I was down here and you never so much as looked me up to say hello. Now you need me for a thing and you want to buy me a drink."
"I tried to bail you out."
"And I'm sure you tried to send me flowers, too," she said. "There's no need for bullshit. We did our thing and now it's over. I don't need you anymore. I do enough coke and smack deals to keep me in clothes and motels. I'm not greedy. I put everything together myself. No moneymen, no partners, no getting busted for somebody else. I'm my own person, and that's the way I like it. I don't want to work for you or anybody else. I did a lot of thinking when I was in Terminal Island. I look at life a lot more realistically now. I'm no longer your average dumb farm girl."
"As a matter of fact, you're the most intelligent woman I've ever met," LaMonica said. His gaze was dead serious.
"Yeah, well my brains didn't keep me from getting busted for you and going to the joint."
"All I ask is one drink. If you want to talk I'll be down in the bar." He walked out the door and closed it behind him.
The bar was a spacious, well-lit place with wicker chairs and decorative tiles on the walls and floors. Paul LaMonica sat at a table and sipped a drink. He kept looking out the window toward Sandy's room. Except for a couple of fishermen at the bar exchanging jokes with the bartender, he was alone in the place.
Twenty minutes later Sandy strutted in and LaMonica took a deep breath. The fishermen elbowed one another as she shouted, "Cuba libre, no ice," to the bartender and sat down at LaMonica's table. "I don't like people sneaking up on me," she said.
"Neither do I."
Sandy Hartzbecker dug a filter tip out of her purse and flamed it with a gold lighter. She sucked smoke. "So many people have gotten busted down here in the last few weeks that I've become paranoid," she said. "And I'm not talking about getting taken down behind a few spoons of coke or a brick of weed. I'm talking about the other night when the federales stormed into Teddy's and dragged some dude right out the door. They drove him straight to the border and shoved him across the white line to a carload of FBI agents. He was good for some bank jobs in San Francisco. But how did they know he was sitting there in Teddy's? It's scary. Really fuckin' scary." The bartender set a drink down in front of her and walked away. She poked the ice with her finger.
"The simple explanation," LaMonica said, "is that someone who hangs around Teddy's is a snitch."
"There was a time when it seemed like you could trust everyone there," Sandy said. She used the straw.
"Trust everyone at Teddy's?" LaMonica laughed.
Her face reddened. She pointed a finger at his face. "Look, you sonofabitch, I don't have to take any shit from you. The last time we did something together I'm the one who ended up holding the bag, and to this day I'm not even sure what happened. You told me that the pit boss was wired. Just drop the phony fifties on the pass line,' you said.
And without so much as asking you a question, I did just that. He was wired all right! The next thing I know the whole Las Vegas Police Department is dragging me away. Did you know that out of the corner of my eye I saw you sneaking off toward the slot machines? The feds offered to let me go if I would tell them who gave me the counterfeit money. But I kept my mouth shut. I protected you. And did I ask you for any help when they sent me to the penitentiary? No. I escaped on my own, without one bit of help from anyone. And I'll tell you this, I'm a much stronger person for the experience." She took a deep drag on her cigarette.
"I've never forgotten that you stood up for me, that you didn't hand me up to the feds," LaMonica said. "You might say that I want to make it up to you with this new caper.
"Bullshit," she said. Tears welled in her eyes. It occurred to LaMonica that he had never seen her cry.
"I know a lot of women who would love to take a shot at twenty-five grand," LaMonica said.
"Hundreds of women would jump at a chance to make twenty-five bucks, much less twenty-five grand. But you and I know that's not the goddamn point. You want me because you know I won't snitch on you if I get caught. You know I've stood the test of fire."