Lola: Chapter Eight
Moreno is finishing another long day of work. He has returned home and like many a working man loosens his tie as he leans into the sofa, cigar in hand. The stress of the missing briefcase is getting to him. It is that important. He needs that briefcase and the documents inside.
Jackson is standing nearby. He always seems to be standing nearby. I guess that’s his job. The living room of Moreno’s mansion has a beautiful view of the pool, floor to ceiling glass windows. Out beyond the pool is the Pacific Ocean. Moreno doesn’t watch the ocean, his eyes watch the calm cool ripples on the surface of the pool. It helps him relax. His girlfriend Roxanne is swimming underneath those ripples, thinking of her helps him relax, too.
Two of his bodyguards stand at the entrance to the room. Moreno gives a look to Jackson, then to the guards. Jackson dismisses the guards. Jackson and Moreno need to be alone for this conversation.
“Any news about our lady friend?”
Moreno lights his cigar.
“Walters is still watching her.”
“That’s it?”
“She’s waiting to make her move.”
“Goddamnit! We can’t let her. That briefcase can’t be allowed to float around. Those papers implicate you as well.”
Moreno waits for that to sink in to Jackson. But his words skip off Jackson like a stone off ice. Jackson remains cool. This gets Moreno hotter. “Who the hell is she working for?”
“We don’t know.”
“Find out.” Moreno’s temperature is about to pass a boil, Jackson looks around to make sure there aren’t any paperweights lying on desks nearby. The pool comes to life and a beautiful mermaid emerges from the rippling water. This draws Moreno’s attention away from his worries.
Roxanne, dripping wet in her black one-piece bathing suit, towels off her short blonde hair. She wraps a white robe around the black of her swimsuit and puts on a pair of sunglasses to walk inside. These sunglasses are a familiar sight to Moreno, Roxanne’s favorite pair, rounded, oval and dark, completely hiding her eyes. She loves wearing them, even inside. Moreno is always telling her to take them off so he can see her blue eyes.
Those sunglasses would be familiar to Lola as well. They are the same make and model of sunglasses the blonde who set her up wore during most of their meetings. They are the camouflage that Roxanne uses to protect her eyes, to hide her thoughts from the rest of the world, they are the sunglasses that reflected Lola’s own image back at her as Roxanne led Lola down a much more interesting yet darker path than Lola’s previous two bedroom craftsman house married life. The glasses she wore as she taught Lola how to seduce all the gullible marks in the world, while she was unaware she was being seduced by Roxanne.
Of course, Lola surviving the blast was not part of Roxanne’s plan. Whatever feelings she may have developed for her younger protégé in the preceding months, Roxanne wasn’t about to let those feelings get in the way of a well thought out plan. She was too ruthless, like her older boyfriend, to let such things as emotions and personal attachments get the best of her. Or was she? She left the note, one last gesture of sentiment, one last moment of weakness. Is that why Lola survived? Maybe she wasn’t as good at this game as she thought she was. From behind her darkened oval sunglasses she stared at the current master of such games through her own reflection in the window to the pool as the sun set over her shoulder.
Roxanne’s mind dances. The fact that Lola was still alive did not completely ruin her plan. In some ways it helped. It distracted Moreno and those who were still loyal to him. They were focusing on the wrong person giving her time to set up her next move.
She enters the living room, casually eavesdropping on the conversation that Moreno and Jackson are having, and walks over to the bar and pours herself a glass of something strong.
Moreno gets up from his place on the sofa to go embrace his girlfriend. He makes a stop along the way and leans in to Jackson taking his arm and keeping his voice low.
“Tell Walters to get his hands dirty. Fuck this waiting around shit, tell him to torture her if he has to. I want him to get those papers back and find out who she’s working for. I’m not going to let some fucking lost briefcase bring me down.”
Moreno lets go of Jackson’s arm and continues towards Roxanne, brightening up.
“How was your swim, honey?”
Roxanne takes a drink from her glass, sunglasses still on and smiles brightly.
“Relaxing.”
Moreno gives her a smile then turns back to Jackson. “Get it done.” These are his last few working words for the night before he clocks off.
Jackson understands his boss’s order and nods his understanding. He acknowledges Roxanne and leaves the two of them alone.
“How about making me one of those.”
“How about I make you something better, something special.”
Roxanne takes out another glass and starts mixing Moreno a concoction of her own creation.
“You don’t seem very relaxed.” She says as she finishes the unusual mixture and adds a ripe cherry dropping into the browns and yellows of the cool liquid making a splash.
“It’s nothing. Just business.”
“You shouldn’t worry so much.” She turns around, drink in hand, stem of the cherry sticking out from the top of the glass.
“Baby, it’s my worrying that allows you to spend all your time lying in the sun.”
Roxanne hands him his drink and smiles. Moreno doesn’t want the drink. He sets it aside and pulls her towards him with those meat hooks he calls hands.
“Take off those damn sunglasses. I want to see your eyes.”
“Take them off for me.”
He removes her sunglasses and sets them down next to the drink. Moreno stares into her eyes. They are beautiful. Blue as a cloudless sky. Moreno appreciates the beauty. He pulls her in tighter.
“Why don’t you help me forget these worries.”
He kisses her. Roxanne’s eyes stay open looking over Moreno’s left shoulder. In the open doorway, Jackson hovers in a spot where only Roxanne can see him. They hold eye contact as Roxanne continues the kiss, moving her hands down her boyfriend’s body to keep him occupied. Jackson disappears from the doorway. Roxanne’s eyes stay fixed on the spot. Sun passing over the cloudless sky. Her cold calculating eyes ready for her next move.
---
Lola is sitting down on the couch, Walters is across from her, still on the edge of a sofa chair. He’s holding the Dorothy Drake card in his right hand.
“A blonde in sunglasses. That doesn’t help much.”
“If I knew more, I’d tell you. I want her, too. She owes me 93 grand.”
“Why?”
“Half of what was in that briefcase.”
Walters is surprised.
“You think money was in there?”
“That’s why I seduced him.”
Lola gets up from the couch and walks past Walters to her kitchen.
“He wasn’t supposed to die.”
She looks at all of the bills stacked up on her counter.
“I need that money.”
“If we find her, money will be the least of her worries.”
Walters stands up.
“The man you.. she killed, was the brother of my boss. The briefcase didn’t have money in it. It had something more important.”
“What’s more important than money?”
“There are a lot of things more important than money.”
“Says the person who has money.”
“When he finds the person responsible for this, he will have retribution.”
“Retribution?” Lola finds the word choice odd. She lets it hang in the air. “For his brother?”
“No.”
“For what then?”
“For taking what is his.”
---
Moreno and Roxanne are in the bedroom. Moreno has finished his drink. The drink that Roxanne made for him. The browns and the yellows of liquid gold with a cherry on top and something a little extra squeezed inside. There is a beautiful view from the window, the last edge of the orange sun on the horizon over the Pacific. Moreno is unbuttoning his shirt, removing his business attire for something more casual for a night with the girlfriend. That girlfriend has something else in mind. She watches Moreno as he continues to unbutton his shirt. It seems like she is waiting for something. Moreno doesn’t notice this look of hers. He generally doesn’t notice her looks of most kinds, at least the ones that aren’t in his specific interest. This is one of the good things about being a man with power and money. Moreno has enjoyed the trappings of that power as most men would. It has given him little concern over his lifetime, these things a crime boss needs to do to stay a crime boss and the things a crime boss can take as prizes for those things he has done. Maybe he has been in power so long he’s started to take such things for granted, to take the trappings of power as permanent fixtures instead of the temporary rewards they are. Roxanne, his girlfriend of almost a decade now, was almost certainly one of those items he took to be a permanent fixture no matter what he did or said. Maybe she didn’t like being considered a permanent fixture, not that much different than the couch he was sitting on when he watched her swim in the pool. Maybe she thought of herself as something more as a reward. Or maybe she thought of herself as something else entirely.
Roxanne watched this old man as he undressed, staring at him like a falcon, her talons tapping her side, waiting for the right moment to pounce. A fog descends on the old man’s brain. Each button harder to unbutton, this fog isn’t normal, it’s not the relaxing fog of exiting a day of work, it’s a fog that grows denser by the minute, or by the button, until Moreno needs to stop half way down his shirt. He can’t even reach the end of all those buttons, they look hazy, they keep moving side to side, he hasn’t had a hit of acid since he was in his teens, all of a sudden he’s on a trip again, he had forgotten what this feels like.
Why would I feel like this?
The talons are removed from the falcon’s side as she swoops in to her boyfriend. He thinks it’s to help.
“This fucking headache. I need to sit down.”
There’s a chair not far from Moreno, Roxanne holds the top of the chair in her hands like a maître’d seating a guest. His knees bend. He moves to sit down. She pulls the chair away.
He steadies himself. He looks at her strangely. “What are you doing?”
His hand gropes for the seat of the chair. It might as well be made of water at this point. His hand can’t find it. Does she keep moving it?
“Poor Al.”
Moreno’s eyes widen then narrow then widen again. His head is in a complete haze. Objects don’t appear natural. The room doesn’t appear to be a room. This is worse than an acid trip. Everything grows distant.
The door to the bedroom is open. Two bodyguards, Tomas and Marco, are standing there.
Thank God for the bodyguards. Thank God I always have someone nearby. I never thought it would be her. I thought she loved me, or at least loved what I gave her, why would she do this to me. My bodyguards will save me.
Tomas and Marco won’t save him. They are looking at Roxanne, waiting for directions from her. She nods. That’s all they need. Marco closes the door. The room becomes darker. Moreno’s last chance disappears.
Moreno’s tie is still on. He left it on as he went to unbutton his shirt, his normal routine. Roxanne walks up to him to help him with his tie. She undoes the knot. Moreno’s legs are jelly but he is still on his feet. Barely on his feet.
“How long has it been since you picked me up in that club. 10 years?”
It’s actually 9 and a half, but who’s counting.
“Ten years of your bad breath. Ten years of your condescension. Ten years and it never even occurred to you that I might have a brain that goes along with this body. Ten years and you never realized the reason I was with you wasn’t because I was some dumb blonde, but because I’m smarter than you.”
Roxanne has the tie off his neck now, she holds it in her hand. She takes something out of a pocket, a strong thin cord and runs it along the length of the tie. She leans in and whispers into Moreno’s ear just before he falls to his knees.
“I was the one who stole your precious briefcase.”
She backs away. Moreno looks up to her. “You?”
“Me.”
“They’ll come after you.”
“No, they won’t.”
“You can’t kill me. The other bosses won’t allow it.”
“Please. After what you lost they’ll be happy someone had the balls to get rid of you.” She walks back to Moreno, tie still in hand.
“They’ll be so busy looking at each other wondering who gave the order they will never suspect little old me.”
Roxanne wraps the tie, with cord inside, around Moreno’s neck. Moreno, drugged, helpless is unable to fight back. Roxanne enjoys this, keeping the tie around his neck, using all of her strength to strangle the life out of this man she may have once loved or perhaps just liked but now loathed.
Moreno struggles as much as he can, which isn’t much. His eyes bulge. The door opens behind her and Tomas and Marco walk back in as Moreno falls to ground, dead.
“You know where to put him.”
Yes, Tomas and Marco know where to put a dead body so it won’t be found.