The Flaming Motel - By Fingers Murphy Page 0,122

yet both of them, and the fortune too, were destroyed almost simultaneously, and with the force of a hurricane.

I glanced at the wall behind Liz and thought about the affair I’d had years before, which Liz knew all about. Then I thought about Liz and Benjamin Cross, which I knew nothing about. An image of Brianna Jones and her Internet performance went through my head, followed by the tactile memory of my arms around her on that balcony. Then I shrugged and asked, “Do you think people can redeem themselves for the terrible things they do?”

She squinted at me and grinned, but said nothing.

“I mean, Vargas and Stick killed two people thirty years ago. Stick was always no good, but Don, in his own way, wasn’t a bad guy, at the end of the day. Should that matter? Or are some things so terrible that a lifetime of good deeds can never outweigh them?”

“People always pay for the terrible things they do, one way or another.” She sipped her coffee and stared at me over her mug. Then she shrugged.

Liz got up and went to the counter and poured herself more coffee. I watched her movements and wondered what secrets she carried with her. I wondered what damage the two of us might have already inflicted on each other without even knowing how or why. Was that just the nature of things? And did knowing change anything? I thought of the myriad ways I’d contorted myself to be who I thought she wanted me to be. How many ways had she done the same? And what did it matter? Some things were better left unknown. If a disaster loomed out there somewhere, why ruin the present worrying about it? I’d rather not see it until the last possible second. Or, like Don Vargas, maybe never see it at all. Just a curious muzzle flash in the darkness and then the world goes black and still. No pain. No final anxious moments. Just life, uninterrupted, and then serenity.

So I sat there and finished my coffee. Liz returned to the table and studied the newspaper some more. I laughed at the sidebar story beneath the headline: Vargas Son’s Death Leaves No Heirs; $100 million Porn Fortune will go to the State.

I closed my eyes and imagined what it must have been like when the police came through the motel door, guns drawn, shouting at James Davis to get down on the floor. I imagined that he must have sensed it coming in the moments before it happened. Heard it in the way the parking lot outside went oddly still and quiet. Seen it in a quick flicker of shadow across the window shade. What did he think in that last moment before the door burst in on him?

I closed my eyes and saw him sitting there on the bed, almost like he was waiting for them, held motionless with anticipation. He wouldn’t have tried to run or fight or do anything. What would have been the point? I imagined him easing back against the wall, giving the cops the same knowing look his old man had used on a similar bed, in a similar motel, many years before.

It was a look of resigned awareness. A man watching his life play out in front of him, accepting it with all its faults and contradictions, without question. Seeing things the way they were and knowing it was the way they had to be.

Liz looked up from the paper and saw my expression. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

I smiled back and got up to get more coffee. “Like what?” I asked, giving nothing away.

Secrets accumulate in relationships like cholesterol in the blood, silently choking off the connection between two people, until one day someone’s heart explodes.

I was learning to be a patient man.

Now, turn the page for a taste of the debut Oliver Olson novel:

FOLLOW THE MONEY

1

“There was blood everywhere.” Jim Carver leaned back in his chair, chewing a mussel cooked in saffron. “At least that’s how the papers described it. Apparently he was covered with it when they found him, out in his front yard, stammering like an idiot about someone killing his wife.”

Each time he moved, the luxurious blue fabric of his shirt shimmered in the soft light. I’d never seen a shirt so well tailored, so textured. It practically screamed the word money. I wanted to come right out and ask him how much it cost, but I’d

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