Coq au Vin (15 page)

“He was run down by a car. Murdered,” I supplied.

“Yes, that's right.”

“Jerry killed him?”

She nodded. “Right. That piece of shit killed him. Wasn't enough that I had ripped him off and tore his heart out. Jerry had to kill him, the poor bastard. The cops looked into it, but they had no suspects. I figured it was only a matter of time before they'd hear something about the woman Ez had been keeping company with. They'd learn about me, come after me. What could I do? I felt horrible for the way it all came down. But it wasn't me who did the killing, and I didn't intend to get cracked for it. Sure, I was ashamed of myself, but I wanted to live. I left here on the run and never stopped running.”

“Until you got to the next party,” Andre said brutally.

Vivian shot him a bullet of a look. But she didn't deny his words. “That was all a long time ago,” she continued. “I did what I had to do to survive. A lot of the stuff I did wasn't very nice. Wasn't the kind of news my family would appreciate hearing. But I never forgot Ez, I never forgot Jerry, and I never forgave.

“I'm about played out now, Nan. Look at me. Do I look like I'm still a party girl? You think all the pretty men still want me? Think anybody wants to use my picture to try and sell nylons or a pack of cigarettes? I don't think so.

“But now I see my chance to get even with Jerry Brainard. To even the score—for me and for Ez. A couple of months ago I heard through some people I know that Jerry was living in Paris again. I decided to come over here and see him, see him one more time—and kill him. I've got to kill him, understand, because he's still at it. Even after all this time he's still trying to bury me.”

And Daddy had once voiced the fear that “maybe” Vivian was “accepting money from men.” I had to laugh at the memory.

My fabulous aunt Vivian. Next time I guess I should be a little more careful about choosing a role model.

I shook my head. “You can't do it, Viv,” I said sadly. “You
can't
get even.”

“Watch me,” she said, then corrected herself: “No, don't watch me. That's what I'm trying to tell you and this boy. Get out of here so you don't have to watch me. So none of it touches you.”

Too late for that.

“What did you mean—that thing about burying you? You mean Brainard knows you're in Paris and coming after him?”

“Yeah, he knows all right. A piece of scum he sent after me almost killed me one night. If I hadn't been carrying a can of Mace, I wouldn't be here talking to you now. I spotted the same guy hanging around my hotel, waiting for a rematch. Oh yeah, Jerry knows I'm here all right.

“Then, a couple of weeks ago he killed a woman. Or had her killed. A white girl who was working for him. And now the son of a bitch is trying to frame me for it. He's been slowly, steadily turning the cops on to me. He left things I had in my suitcase at the hotel near that girl's body—some old scarf of mine. It looks like the candlestick or whatever it was he used to bash in her skull was mine, too. I can't remember half of what I had in that bag. He's playing some kind of game with me, that old Satan. But he's not going to win. I'm going to get him first, and after that—whatever happens, happens. If I make it out of town, fine. If I don't, fine. But I don't want you here. I don't want you to have to deal with the fallout.”

I went back to that morning when Andre and I sat on the hotel bed amid the breakfast dishes, reading about Mary Polk's murder in the morning paper. I recalled the cold ripple that had gone up my back.

Thank God, I had thought then, thank God it isn't Viv lying dead in that alley. I had tossed the newspaper aside and never spoke of the story again. But that killing had worried me, even then. Maybe it was something as ethereal as that little square of fabric on the ground, the one that had indeed been Vivian's Scout bandanna. I don't know. But something had made me fear the murder was no out-of-the-blue occurrence, a tragedy unconnected to our lives. I felt somehow that it did have something to do with us—with Vivian and me. And that it was going to come back on us one day.

“Back up a minute,” Andre was saying to Vivian, trying to sound soothing. I knew what he was going to ask her, 'cause I had the same question for her on the tip of my tongue. “What kind of work did the white woman do for him?”

Vivian snorted. “Work? You work for Jerry and Jerry works you. He's been into so many different scams and businesses. He moved dirty money for a while. Computer secrets. Drugs. I don't know what that chick was doing for him. It could have been any one of a hundred things.”

“What a sterling fellow you gave your heart to, Viv,” I commented. “Did you ever help him in any of his businesses when you were with him? Did he work you?”

Her stiff posture and the way she bit off the words she was about to utter gave me my answer.

My role model had done a bit of everything, it seemed. That pickpocket, whoever he was, the one who made the cryptic remark to Gigi about Viv being up to her old tricks? Guess he hadn't lied either. I no longer wanted to know exactly what he meant by the remark. It didn't matter anymore.

What mattered was shutting my aunt down before she blew away this Satan of an ex-husband and spent what was left of her life in prison. Hell, after all my contortions to keep the authorities out of her business, I now realized she would be better off just telling the police that Brainard had killed Rube Haskins. If they reopened the case and could prove that, she'd have her revenge. If the law in France worked the same way it did in the States, there was no statute of limitations on murder. They could, theoretically, nab you a hundred years after the fact.

Inspector Simard would help us, I was certain, advise us. Viv had done an awful thing beating Haskins out of his money, but he was in no position to bring charges against her for that. And most important, she had nothing to do with the murder.

Now, how was I going to get her to see it that way?

I had had a lot of men, too.

I was going to be thirty in another year and a half. I had lived in Europe. Seen a bit of the world. I'd done my share of dumb things, and God knows I play fast and loose with the truth when it suits my purposes. But I tell myself that I still have a fairly good heart; at any rate, whatever there is in my heart, it ain't larceny. I have a salty tongue sometimes, I'm told. But I'm not a cynic, either. Something beautiful, new, intriguing, sexy presents itself to me, my first instinct is to say yes rather than no.

I had always thought Viv had a lot to do with me being that way. That my determination to be
out there
, as she put it, was due to her influence. Now I wasn't so sure. I just knew she was family, she was in deep shit, and I had to help her.

“I want my money, Nan.”

“Okay,” I said, stalling. “Tell us where Jerry is now. Do you know where to find him?”

“I know—now I do. But I'm not telling you. How stupid do you think I am, Nanette?”

“Honestly, Viv? I don't know how stupid you are. Excuse me for pointing it out, but you're about to embark on one of the stupidest-ass mistakes I've ever heard of in my life. You've had it bad for a long time, it sounds like. But now you've got ten grand, like a gift from God, and all you can think to do is go to prison for murder. Why don't you rat Jerry out to the cops and then go get yourself a room at the Ritz and start living? Fuck this revenge thing.”

“I have my own reasons for doing it this way,” she said icily. “Hand over that money.”

“All right. Just a minute. Just answer one thing more.”

“What?”

“Why on earth did you write home to Mom asking for help—telling her you were broke and stranded?”

“Andre asked me the same thing,” she said impatiently. “I already told him. I
was
broke. But I didn't write jack to your mother. I don't know what the hell you all are talking about.”

“Then it had to be Jerry who sent the card and the telegram,” Andre reasoned.

“That's right,” I echoed. “He's been setting you up for something for a while now, Vivian. He's just playing with you. He must've known where you were long before you knew where he was. Why don't you face the fact you're not going to win this game with him? He's going to—”

“I'm through talking, Nan. Give me those checks.”

“Vivian, you're not going to put that gun on us again. You're not going to take this all the way there— Oh. I guess you are.”

“You think I want to, girl? You're making me do it!” she shrieked. “Just give me the money and stop asking questions!”

I did as she asked.

“All right, Andre,” she instructed, “leave the keys and get out.”

Frantic, he began to splutter: Where was she taking me? Why couldn't he go, too? If she was going to commit murder, that was her business, but how could she do this to me, her own flesh and blood? Why was she taking me down with her?

“Just…get…the…fuck…out. Nan's not going anywhere with me. She's getting out, too.”

I climbed out wearily and joined Andre on the sidewalk, Vivian's gun trained on his heart.

“The two of you, get over there in the doorway of that old building. And don't move until I drive away.”

“One last time, Viv—” I began to beg.

“I told you, Nanette. I'm through talking. Move!”

We backed over to the abandoned women's center.

“Forget it,” I heard Andre say as I craned my neck to read the back license plate. “She's covered up the back one. I never got a look at the front.”

We heard the engine turn over.

“You're on the way to the guillotine, Viv,” I suddenly shouted across to her. “What do you need that money for?”

Her face appeared for a moment in the window on the passenger side. “I need to buy a gun,” she shouted back.

Andre and I looked at each other in puzzlement.

“Here, baby!” she called, sounding young and merry again. “Go play with your toys.”

A second later we heard the dull clatter of a metal object hitting the pavement. Then the car zoomed off.

I ran over and picked up the weapon, which was, despite its weight, nothing more than a prop—like she'd said, a toy.

The Volkswagen was nowhere in sight. No, it wouldn't be. I recalled how Viv had this one boyfriend whose car she would borrow sometimes, a cute red convertible. She drove incredibly fast, like a demon. Cut quite a figure behind the wheel with her pretty hair blowing against the wind.

CHAPTER 14

Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me

The
gardien
for the apartment building told us a police detective had come by to see me. He had left his card and asked me to phone him at the station the moment I got back.

I put the card in my pocket and followed Andre up the stairs and into the apartment.

So my big, strong stud—the love of my life—had been held hostage for five hours by an unarmed hundred-and-five-pound middle-aged lady.

I wanted to yell at him. Ridicule him. Slap him silly. Call him a sissy and an idiot.

I also wanted to laugh.

But I didn't do any of that. I was too tired. And too grateful he was alive. And too mad at Vivian.

I borrowed another phrase from the late Gigi Lacroix. “So you thought you were looking up the ass of death, huh?” I asked Andre. “What was going through your mind? Were you praying? Did you curse the day you met me?”

“Praying that her finger didn't slip,” he said quietly. “And I cursed all right. But not you. Your aunt—” The words seemed to fail him there. “God, that bitch is crazy.”

He collapsed into the nearest chair and I poured him a stiff drink of the rum I had been guzzling a few hours earlier.

“I don't suppose there's anything to smoke in the house,” he asked leadenly.

“I ran out of Gauloises last night.”

“No, Nan. I mean something to
smoke
. If ever two people in the world deserved to get high, it's us.”

I walked away from him and settled in the chair on the other side of the room. “Listen,” I said, “I know what you must be thinking.”

“What do you mean? Thinking about what?”

“About Vivian. Deciding what to do.”

“Do?”

“Yes. I know you've had it. You're just grateful that you've still got a head on your body. All you want to do is wash your hands of Vivian. And I don't blame you, believe me.”

“Wash
my
hands! Nan, she just blew us off. Like you told her, she kills that guy and her problems are just beginning. There's no decision for us to make except who to call first—the cops or the men with the white lab coats and the Thorazine. Vivian's not responsible anymore. She has to be stopped.”

“I know that!” I said impatiently. “Yes, of course she has to be stopped. But not by the police. I've got to get her out of here and back home where she can get some help.”

“Don't you start with that shit again, Nanette. I'm telling you.”

“Andre, what do you want me to do? Send a SWAT team after her? Do you want me to call these people and report she's running around with a real gun now?”

“Do
I
want you to? No. I want her in a straitjacket. And I want you to stop fucking around in this mess so we can live the rest of our lives.”

“Andre, they'll cut her down without blinking. She's not responsible anymore. You said it yourself. She's nuts.”

“I'm not going to argue with you about this, Nan. Call that detective. Or call Simard. Just do it. But you can't go around like the angel of justice, saving the day for everybody—for your mother, for Vivian, for this bastard Jerry, for dead people even. You got your hands full just barely keeping yourself in one piece—and I mean just.”