Better Than This (43 page)

I felt suddenly vulnerable and exposed so I made my way along the wall and quickly slipped down the ramp into the car park. For a second I wondered if what I was doing was such a great idea. The red glow of the lamp on the wall created an eerie light at the bottom of the ramp, but further back the basement was pitch black and all at once forbidding. Nevertheless I didn’t have a lot of choice since my car was down there so I hurried to where I’d left it and fumbled for my keys. The darkness was like a physical thing, closing around me. It was suddenly deathly quiet, or perhaps it had been before only I hadn’t noticed. Somebody could have stood six feet away and I wouldn’t have seen them. I managed to get the key in the lock, and as I opened the door the interior light came on, creating a dim oasis of welcome light, then I climbed in, closed the door and the light winked out. I turned the key and the engine started and I felt a sudden rush of relief, but it only lasted a second.

At the bottom of the entrance ramp a light bounced off the walls and grew brighter and I knew that a car was coming down.

For a moment I stared in frozen fascination then adrenaline kicked in and my mind was off and running. I put the car in reverse and without turning on the lights I backed up and swung around a pillar where I came to a halt. I had a clear line now to the ramp, though I’d need to do a sharp left at the bottom. I figured as the other car came down and swung to the right I’d have a couple of moments before I was seen and in that time I planned to hit the gas and be up the ramp and heading onto the street. I gripped the wheel tightly, my heart pumping as the car came into view.

As it started to turn the corner I put my foot down and the Saab shot forward with a squeal of rubber. At the same time I saw the roof lights and the door insignia and I realized the car ahead of me wasn’t some crazed killer come after me like he had Brinkman, but in fact was a security patrol. The driver gunned his engine but when I hit the brake he did the same and slid around to a halt. A searchlight blinked on and hit me in the face. I tried for a friendly grin and showed my hands.

“Hi,” I called out. “You gave me a scare there.”

The light continued shining in my face, dazzling me as it was surely meant to while the driver looked me over.

“I came into the office to pick up something I forgot. I work here,” I said.

I heard a car door open. “Stay where you are, sir,” a courteous but firm voice said. He sounded young. I pictured some hot-shot who’d failed the police exam and this was going to be his big chance. He probably wanted me to be a burglar.

“Please identify yourself,” he said from the darkness. I still couldn’t see him.

“Nick Weston. I run an advertising firm in this building. Carpe Diem.”

“Carp what?”

“Diem.” I spelled it out for him. There was a short silence and I imagined he was checking a list.

“What’s your code, sir?”

Every business in the building was assigned a code, which, in the event of a problem, the security company would request as verification of a person’s entitlement to be on the premises after hours.

“Sixteen seventy-two,” I said.

He seemed satisfied with this because a moment later the searchlight was turned off. Though, as he came towards me he shone a torch at me just in case. His right hand rested on his holstered weapon which looked a lot bigger than the .38 I still had tucked in my jeans.

“Do you have any identification on you, sir?” he asked.

“Sure.” I started to reach for my driver’s licence, and as I moved I saw him tense. I held up my licence and he took a look. He was indeed young, as I’d thought. Maybe in his mid-twenties. He had broad features and red hair. Without the uniform he would have looked at home tending a pumpkin patch around Half Moon Bay. A glimmer of disappointment showed in his eye, then he relaxed.

“I saw the grill was open when I came by on patrol,” he said.

“Right. Well, it’s just me. So if everything’s okay with you, I’ll get going.”

“You left something behind you said?” he asked quickly.

That’s right.”

I think he was waiting for me to elaborate. Either some instinct made him suspicious or else he was just doing his job thoroughly, but I didn’t offer any more information.

“Well, goodnight,” I said pointedly.

He took the hint and stepped back a little. “Goodnight.”

He watched me leave. I hit the ramp and went out underneath the grill, then I was across the courtyard and out into the street. As I hit the intersection I slowed and made a right, and as I did a set of headlights hit my rear-view mirror and a car settled back several lengths behind me. I figured it was the security guard, though he must have moved fast to catch up so quickly. As I headed along the Embercadero towards the bridge I imagined him on the radio to a dispatcher, perhaps running a check on my licence plates. I didn’t know if they could do that, but I guessed they probably could. Anyway I drove calmly and kept to the limit, and signalled before every turn as if he was a cop, and when I reached the approach to the bridge I lost sight of the headlights among so many others in four lanes of traffic. I guessed that he had probably given up by then anyway and turned around.

It was a little before nine when I reached the marina. The basin where Temptation was moored was quiet at that time of night. Closer to town there were the usual milling crowds of people heading for the various waterfront bars and restaurants but the noise didn’t carry this far. The only sound was the rattle of rigging against the masts of yachts and the gentle slap of water against the hulls, and the only light was from a single high lamp in the middle of the parking lot which created a pool of yellow that faded towards the lot’s edges and created deep wedges of shadow alongside the boat trailers.

Alice was waiting for me on the stern deck. She had a glass of something on the table in front of her and was smoking a cigarette. I held up the disc as I approached.

“No problem,” I said and went inside to put it away in a compartment she’d showed me earlier.

“What are you drinking?” I asked when I went back outside.

“I bought some bourbon. Would you like some?”

Thanks.”

Then I sat down to wait for Sally and Marcus, wondering what would happen next.

Marcus arrived five minutes early. I saw the lights of his car as he drove down towards the lot and swung in through the open gate. The lights were extinguished and then a few minutes later I saw him coming along the dock. He was alone. I watched from the stern deck as he approached. Seeing him face to face put a renewed glow to the embers of my anger.

“Where’s Sally?” I said when he drew close.

He stopped uncertainly, and glanced from me to Alice who stood in the shadows behind me, though what he ascertained from the subtle vibrations in the air I don’t know.

“She wouldn’t come,” he said finally.

“Where is she?”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter right now. I’m not here because of Sally.”

I took a slow deep breath. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Marcus peered at me in the faint light that came from inside the cabin behind me. He was trying to read my expression, gauge my mood as if I had become something unpredictable. He kind of sighed, as if he didn’t understand how any of this could have happened. As if he was weighed down by a heavy burden.

“It doesn’t matter?” I said.

“I mean there are other things we need to think about.”

“It doesn’t matter?”

That’s all I could say. I was incredulous that he could imagine he could just push the fact that he’d been sleeping with my wife to one side. If that had been his intention, he evidently decided that it was a vain hope.

“Look, Nick, I don’t expect you to believe this but I … we… never intended for this to happen.”

“Does it matter what I believe?”

“Believe it or not, it does.” He saw, as he must have known, that this wasn’t going to be easy. He looked a little edgy, wary like a fox as if he didn’t know what I might do. “We need to talk.”

For a second I didn’t answer, then I said, “Come aboard. It’s your boat after all.” I held out my hand to help him up, though he could’ve done it himself as easily. He looked at my hand and our eyes met. My expression offered him no clue as to what he should do. In the end he reached out as I’d known he would. We clasped hands and I pulled him aboard and when his feet hit the deck I hit him with a blow that caught the side of his head and knocked him sideways. He staggered and I released his hand and hit him again and this time he hit the deck, landing on all fours with a grunt of pain.

As I stood over him he took a deep breath, his head down, and a drop of blood hit the deck, followed by another. He picked up his glasses and put them back on. When he looked up his eyes were shining and his nose was bloody. He dabbed at his face with his “I-shirt and rose unsteadily to his feet.

For some reason even though he’d deserved what I’d done, hitting him hadn’t made me feel any better.

“I thought we were friends,” I said, part in accusation, part justification.

He looked at me sharply. “That’s a little rich isn’t it?”

“How could you do it? Both of you. The lies, the cheating.”

“Right. And you never did any of those things.”

“Maybe I kept things from you sometimes, and maybe I should’ve listened to you more, but that isn’t the same as sleeping with my wife you asshole.”

“Look, I’m not proud of this. Neither of us are. We didn’t plan for it to happen.” He glanced at Alice, and I saw he was telling her this as much as me but she had heard it before and she looked away.

“But the fact is, Nick,” he said, turning his attention back to me. “You’re as much to blame for this as we are.”

I shook my head slowly. “Don’t try to do this. Don’t try to make this my fault. Nobody forced you two together. Nobody made you fuck my wife! How long have you been thinking about it? I bet it was a long time. I bet you dreamed about it for years.”

I was just talking, spewing out whatever came into my mind because I didn’t want to hear what he was saying, but I saw a reaction I hadn’t expected, a lowering of his eye and in a flash of insight I knew that it was actually true.

Alice stared at him, and she too saw what I had. “Bastard,” she said quietly.

“Whatever you think, nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. Not at first.”

“How long?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it fucking matters,” I said.

“We used to meet to talk. We both felt like we didn’t know you any more. I didn’t feel like I could trust you. Sally thought you’d changed.”

“Is that right? Is that what Sally thought. And I bet you agreed with her didn’t you? What else did you tell her, Marcus? Did you tell her that if she left me the two of you could set up house together and have a bunch of kids?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

But I didn’t believe him. I thought it had been exactly like that.

“Even after we knew we felt something for each other we tried not to let anything happen,” Marcus went on. “Believe it or not when you went to Mendocino and Sally said you were going to make a go of it, I was happy for you. For both of you.”

I remembered the phone call I’d overheard Sally make from our room in the inn. “That’s big of you, Marcus.”

“Believe what you want, but it’s true. Sally really wanted it to work between you. But after Hoffman died she knew it was the money that was important to you. More than anything else. Including her. You ought to think about that before you blame everyone else, Nick.”

But I didn’t want to hear any more. “I don’t even know why I’m listening to this. I should be talking to Sally not you.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you. She doesn’t want to see you again. Ever.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s true. She doesn’t know who you are any more. Neither of us do. She’s frightened of what you’ve become.”

“Frightened?” I echoed incredulously. “That’s bullshit. Why should Sally be frightened of me?”

Marcus stared at me. “You need to ask that? Really? For chrissakes, Nick, you killed him. You killed Dexter didn’t you? Sally knows you were out that night. You washed your clothes. Was that because you had Dexter’s blood on you? Detective Morello left a message for me to contact him today.”

I reacted to the sound of the detective’s name. I’d almost forgotten about him.

“You know what he said when I called him?” Marcus went on. “He told me Dexter was asphyxiated. Somebody bashed in his skull and then smothered him before they put him in his car and shoved it over a cliff to try and make it look like an accident. He said it happened the same night Dexter stopped by at our table in Marios. He was asking questions about you, Nick. He’d heard you and Dexter didn’t like each other and that made him wonder.”

“Plenty of people didn’t like Dexter. Why pick on me?”

“That’s what he doesn’t know. But he’s digging. How long do you think it will be before he finds out about Hoffman and that’s going to lead him to Brinkman.”

I supposed it was true, it was only a matter of time before he figured it out. But it was all circumstantial. Unless he had forensic evidence to tie Dexter’s death to me, it was all just guess work, and I thought the ocean would have obliterated anything there might have been. And since there was no way he could figure where Dexter had died, there wasn’t much chance of him finding any.

“And let’s not forget Brinkman,” Marcus said. “Somebody killed him too.”

It took me a second to realize what he was implying. “You think I killed Brinkman too? I was in Oregon looking for my wife you prick.”

He blinked, realizing that was true, but then something else occurred to him. “So you’re admitting that you killed Dexter?”

I saw that until that moment he hadn’t really believed it. Not completely. Perhaps Sally felt the same way. They must have talked it over endlessly, half convincing themselves that it couldn’t be true. But in that second Marcus saw in my face that it was.

“It didn’t happen the way you think. It was an accident. And Morello can’t prove I had anything to do with it.”