"What's to tell," she said.

"I was with Marty, now I'm with Anthony."

"How was it with Marty?"

She shrugged.

"Marty's a pretty dangerous guy," I said.

"He's a pig," she said.

"Yes, he is. That why you left him?"

"Yes."

"Why'd you marry him?"

Bob returned with the Roman salad and the cheeseburger. The Roman salad looked very much like a tossed salad except that it had green olives and wedges of artichoke heart in with the cherry tomatoes and shredded carrots and red leaf lettuce. Bibi took a small bite of her cheeseburger.

"Was he a pig when you married him?" I said.

Bibi chewed carefully and swallowed. She picked up a French fry and ate it.

"He's always been a pig," she said.

"But I didn't always know it."

"He treat you right?" I said.

"He beat the shit out of me," she said.

Everything she said was flat and offhanded as if nothing mattered more than anything else, and she was kind of bored to have to tell me.

"At least he's consistent," I said.

"I think he liked to do it," she said.

"I think it gave him a thrill."

"He do it often?"

"Yeah."

"And you didn't leave."

"No."

I nodded and took a bite of my Roman salad. Bibi had stopped eating and sat staring past me as if she were looking at her own past, just beyond my left ear.

"I didn't have any money," she said.

"He kept it all. I didn't even have a credit card. He'd give me money for food shopping once a week, two hundred dollars, and he'd check the register receipt when I came home and make me give him the change."

I didn't say anything. You do it long enough and you get a sense when somebody is at the start of a long talk. The best thing is to give them space and wait for them to fill it.

"I didn't have a credit card. I didn't have anyplace to go, even if I had one. He wouldn't let me work. You know I never had a job? I married Marty right after high school."

Bibi shook her head. Her face was blank but there was painful self-mockery in her voice.

"Fairhaven High School, nineteen seventy-seven, most congenial. Met him down the Cape, bar in Falmouth we used to go to 'cause they didn't card you. He picked me up. He was dangerous.

Everybody was scared of him, but me. I thought he was exciting, you know? A real man."

Bibi stared down silently at her cheeseburger for a time.

"You got married right away?"

"Three months."

"Kids?"

She made a sound that had it been less bitter might have been a laugh.

"Marty didn't want kids. Didn't want my figure get ruined, he said. I think he didn't want to share me with a kid, you know?"

"Well," I said.

"Your figure didn't get ruined."

She gave me a little automatic smile to acknowledge the compliment.

"Let me join a health club, aerobics, body shaping, that stuff;

Marty said he liked me looking good."

Bob came by and poured a little more decaf in my cup. I looked at it gloomily. It was better than nothing. It was not, on the other hand, better than an Absolut martini on the rocks with a twist. And the more Bibi Anaheim talked about her marriage, the more I wanted the martini.

"He used to like to punch me around," she said.

"And then have sex. Called it making up."

I nodded.

"He had a lot of trouble," Bibi said, "getting it up, you know?

I'm not sure he could get it up, he didn't rough me up first."

"Probably wasn't pleased that you knew that."

"No, he wasn't. Said it was my fault. Said he had no trouble with the whores."

"Probably because they were whores," I said.

She shook her head impatiently.

"I don't know anything about that," she said.

"He used to go to the whores a lot. Good. Keep him away from me. Bastard gave me the clap once."

I was quiet. She sat thinking back, looking past me at the lush artifice of the Las Vegas restaurant and probably not seeing it.

"And then Anthony came along," I said after a while.

"Funny thing," she said.

"Marty introduced us. He never did that, you know, but he introduced me to Anthony. Figured Anthony was safe, I guess. He's not a tough guy like Marty. And he was married to Julius Ventura's daughter. I guess Marty never thought Anthony would be the one."

"He was a friend of Marty's?"

"Marty had a lot of guys hang around him. I don't think he had any friends. Everybody was scared of him."

"So what was his relationship with Anthony?"

She sat staring past me as if she hadn't heard me and then her eyes came slowly onto my face.

"You scared of Marty?"

"No."

She kept her eyes on me for a while. Then she nodded her head slowly.

"No, maybe you're not," she said, still looking at me.

"But you should be."

I waited.

"Marty and Anthony had some deal going," she said, finally.

"Do you know what it was?"

"No."

"Was Gino involved?" I said.

"I don't think so."

"I assume the deal is now off," I said.

She nodded.

"Marty finds out you're here, what happens?" I said.

"He'll kill Anthony. Probably with his hands. Marty likes that.

And he'll take me home and beat the shit out of me and it'll be like it was. Except this time he'll probably hurt me worse."

"We'll have to see to it that he doesn't do that," I said.

"Can Anthony stand up to him?"

"Oh, God no," Bibi said.

"Nobody can."

"Somebody can," I said.

"You love Anthony?"

She made the bitter laugh sound again.

"Better than Marty."

"And he was a way out," I said.

"He was. Now it's all shot to hell," Bibi said.

"He's gotta break the bank or whatever he thinks he's going to do, and we sit here and wait until he does it, and now the stupid wife shows up and gets killed and Marty will hear about it and know I'm out here and find us and…"

She shrugged.

"Or not," I said.

She shook her head.

"There's no or not," she said.

"You can't stop him. He'll find me and do what he's going to do and no one will stop him. Nobody can."

"I might stop him," I said.

She shook her head, and kept shaking it, slowly back and forth.

Tears formed in her eyes and came down her cheeks. She lowered her head, and I could no longer see the tears but I could see her shoulders shake. I put a hand out on top of hers. She didn't move except for her head swaying back and forth and her shoulders shaking. I guess she didn't believe me.

CHAPTER 23

I was sitting at the bar drinking club soda, watching the gamblers, and thinking of the Kipling poem… something about piling all you own on a single bet and losing and smiling and walking away.

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and which is more you'll be a Man, my son. Kipling had never been to Vegas. I was drinking club soda because in recent years beer in the middle of the day made me sleepy.

I didn't want to be sitting at the bar in the middle of the day, wide awake, drinking club soda and thinking of poetry. But I didn't know what else to do, and at least this way I could keep an eye on Anthony Meeker while he mourned his wife at the blackjack tables. I knew Julius would show up to take his daughter home. I figured sooner or later Marty Anaheim would show up to straighten out his marital circumstances. The Vegas cops might or might not catch whoever murdered Shirley. Hawk would or would not spot someone at the MGM Grand which would explain why Shirley had the number written down.


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