“I thought you die of overdose,” he continued. “Or maybe you meet another bad boyfriend?”
That did sound convincing. “Yeah, I met someone. He’s nice. We’re going to move to the East Coast.”
“New York?”
“We’ll see.”
“Very expensive. Even Queens is expensive now. I never find the men who kill Ariel. I never even hear a whisper. A night like that doesn’t happen without talk. I listen. I ask everyone else to listen. Nothing.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Again Eitan shrugged. “Strange, you know? Because is not a clean crime.
Is ugly. Amateur. People like this, they don’t cover their tracks.”
“I don’t know what happened that night,” Alex said. “If I did, I wouldn’t be protecting the people who killed my friends.”
“Was Len your friend?”
The question startled her. “Something like that.”
“I don’t think so.” He gestured to the backyard. “These are not my friends.
They like my food, my house, my drugs. Vampires. You know, like the Tom Petty song?”
“Sure.”
“I love that song.” He touched a few buttons on his phone and the strumming of a guitar filled the room. “Tzvi rolls his eyes.” Alex glanced
over her shoulder at the stone-faced bodyguard. “He thinks I need new music.
But I like it. I don’t think Len was your friend.”
Alex had spent years of her life with Len, lived with him, slept with him, run errands for him, run drugs for him. She’d stolen and shoplifted for him, fucked strangers for him. She’d let him fuck her even when she hadn’t wanted to be fucked. He’d never made her come, not once, but he’d made her laugh on occasion, which might be worth more. She was glad he was dead, and she’d never bothered to ask where he was buried or even if his parents had come to get the body. She didn’t feel guilt or remorse or any of the things she was supposed to feel for a friend.
“Maybe not,” Alex conceded.
“Good,” Eitan said, as if he was her therapist and they’d made some kind of breakthrough. “The problem with the police is they only look—” He held his hand up in front of his face. “Right there. Only what’s expected. So they check the traffic cameras, look for cars. Who comes to a house to do a crime like this walking?” He made his fingers scissor back and forth, a headless man on a stroll across nothing. “On foot. Stupid to think about it. But there’s such a thing as a wise fool.”
Sophomore. From the Greek sophos meaning wise, and moros meaning fool. A little joke one of her professors had made. Alex stayed quiet.
“So I think, why not look. What can it hurt?”
Quite a bit, Alex suspected. Did Eitan know she’d killed Ariel? Had he really brought her here to even the score? And had she walked right up to his house like an ass?
“You know the pawn shop on Vanowen?”
Alex knew it. All Valley Pawn and Trading. She’d pawned her grandfather’s kiddush cup there when she was desperate for cash.
“They have a camera on the sidewalk out front all the time,” said Eitan.
“They don’t look at the footage if there’s no trouble. But I had trouble. Ariel had trouble. So I look.”
He held out his phone. Alex knew what she was going to see, but she took it anyway.
The sidewalk was faintly green, the street nearly empty of cars and black as a river. A girl crossed the frame. She wore nothing but a tank top and
underwear, and she had something clutched in her hands. Alex knew it was the broken remnants of Len’s wooden bat. The one she’d used to kill him, and Betcha, and Corker, and Cam. And Eitan’s cousin Ariel.
She slid her finger over the screen, rewinding. She felt Eitan watching her, calculating, but Alex couldn’t stop staring at the girl on the screen. She seemed too bright, like she was glowing, her eyes strange in the green light of a night vision camera. Hellie was with me, she thought. Inside me. On that last night, Hellie had kept her strong, helped her get rid of the evidence, made her wash herself clean in the Los Angeles River. Hellie had protected her to the end.
“Little girl,” said Eitan. “So much blood.”
There was no point denying it was her on the video. “I was high. I don’t remember any of—”
She didn’t get the last word out. A meaty arm clamped across her throat, cutting off her air. Tzvi.
Alex tried to pry his arm free, clawing at the bodyguard’s skin. She felt herself lifted off the couch as her feet kicked out at nothing. She couldn’t even scream. She saw Eitan on the white cushions, watching her with calm interest, the partiers through the window, gathered around the pool, oblivious.
The dead girl in sequins was still dancing.
Alex didn’t think. Her hand shot out as her mind reached for the Gray, demanding her strength. Her mouth flooded with the taste of cigarettes and cherry lip gloss, the back of her throat itched as if she’d just snorted a bump.
She could smell perfume and sweat. Power burst through her.
Alex seized Tzvi’s arm and squeezed. He grunted in surprise. She felt his bones bend beneath her palms. He released her and Alex tumbled backward over the couch. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed a big lump of sculpture from the side table, swung. But he was fast, and no matter the strength inside her she was untrained. All she had was brute force. He dodged the blow easily, and the momentum carried the sculpture into the wall, hitting with so much force it plunged straight through. She felt Tzvi’s fist connect with her gut, knocking the wind from her. Alex went to one knee and grabbed Tzvi’s leg, using the Gray’s strength to knock him off his feet.
“Enough, enough,” shouted Eitan, clapping his hands.
