Lola: Chapter Nine
“What happens now?” Lola asks.
“Hard to say. You’re in a lot of trouble. But then again, if what you say is true, a lot of people could be in a lot of trouble. Including my boss. Including me. You weren’t the only one double-crossed. I have to be careful with the information you gave me.”
Walters writes something on the back of the ‘Dorothy Drake’ card.
“You should leave town. Here’s my number. It’s in your best interest to call me if you remember anything else about this blonde.”
Walters holds the card out for her.
“That’s it?”
“Yes. For now.”
Lola takes the card.
“It doesn’t seem enough, somehow.”
“Maybe not, but it’s all I can offer you.”
Walters gets up from his spot on the armrest.
“Goodbye, Dorothy.”
She looks confused.
“Lola.”
“What?”
“Call me Lola. The name Dorothy is still too weird for me.”
“Isn’t that what she called you.”
“Yes.” Lola shakes her head. “It’s the name I remember, maybe, eventually...” her voice trails off.
“Alright, Lola. Keep in touch.”
Walters decides he will exit through the front door this time. Before he does, he stops and walks back to Lola.
“Here.” He’s holding out his gun. It’s a Sig Sauer P226. Lola looks at it like the foreign object it is.
“Take it. You might need it.”
“Lola takes the gun from Walters’ hand.”
“Stay safe.”
Walters turns and leaves. Lola follows him to the door to close and lock it, not that such things did much good before, but it makes her feel safer. At least for a second.
Then she has another thought.
---
Walters arrives at Moreno’s mansion and gets out of his car and is greeted by Jackson in the driveway.
“Do you have anything for us?” Jackson says.
“I think I should talk to Alphonse.” Walters tries to brush him off, but he stays on him like a fly buzzing around butter.
“What? Don’t you trust me?”
“Bobby, I trust you about as much as I trust a drowning rat.” Walters slaps Jackson on the back and walks into the house.
He doesn’t get far. Just as he was greeted in the driveway by Jackson, he is greeted in the entryway by Roxanne. Marco and Tomas stand behind her, one on each side, Roxanne forming the tip of the spear.
“Hello, John.”
It doesn’t take much of a sixth sense to know something is up. Jackson greeting him outside is one thing, odd, micro-managey, but that describes Jackson. Roxanne with two goons beside her and Moreno nowhere in sight, that’s more than odd, that’s a party with a new host, a circus with a new ringleader. Unlike Moreno, Walters never had any illusions about Roxanne or her place within Moreno’s organization. Maybe that’s because he didn’t sleep with her every night, sex clouds the judgment of the best of men and Moreno wasn’t the best of men. Walters knew Roxanne was a climber just like Moreno was in the beginning, just like Walters was in his younger days. She was on the lookout for her next playdate, her next big score, the fact she stayed with Moreno as long as she did shows how successful he had been in climbing to the top of the organization, to become the wealthiest of the wealthy of the criminal kind making it as far as a crime boss could in this town in this day and age. Maybe that’s why he got comfortable and lazy. Lazy enough for his girlfriend to pull her body over his eyes. Lazy enough to start losing briefcases because of his flunky younger brother. Walters isn’t any sage or Nostradamus, he didn’t predict Roxanne’s betrayal of his former boss, but he was wizened enough to not be surprised when he realized it either. He stared at Roxanne, watching her on her pedestal as she looked down on the world. He had seen that look so many times before, in the corners of many rooms when Moreno wasn’t aware, from behind Moreno when he was telling others what to do. But she was a tamed bird then. Now she had been set loose and was searching for prey. There’s no telling who she might swoop down on next. Actually, that’s not true. From the looks of things, Walters knows who the falcon is coming for. There’s not much he can do to protect himself. He just has to find a way to survive.
“Where’s Alphonse?”
“He’s busy, anything I can help you with.”
Jackson is standing behind Walters. Walters doesn’t like Jackson standing behind him. Walters takes a step to the left, so he can see Jackson out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t want anybody putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger before he can notice it.
“I thought he was expecting me.”
Roxanne laughs the laugh of a devil. “He had too much to drink. He’s sleeping it off.”
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do. You’re just an employee. You’d be surprised at the number of habits he has that you don’t know about.”
“I’ll come back another time.”
Walters turns to find a 9MM Taurus pointing at him. I guess the corners of his eyes don’t work as well as they used to. They say the eyes are the first things to go when you hit forty. The Taurus isn’t aimed at his head, but a bullet to the heart wouldn’t do him any good either.
Walters turns back to Roxanne. “What’s going on?”
“Did you find out anything from the girl?”
“Oh, the girl.” Walters smiles, scans the room. Four against one, not very good odds. And he gave his gun to that girl, too, might not have been the smartest move. He winces at the thought. Of course, he didn’t expect to be walking into an ambush, but then again that’s the thing about ambushes, they’re not something you expect.
Roxanne is right in front of him now. She has a big smile on her face. The smile of someone who’s been dealing from the bottom of the deck and just won a big round of chips. At least he knows she’s cheating, that’s something.
“She talked about you.” Walters says.
“Who?”
“The girl.”
“I doubt that.”
“She remembers you. She talked a lot. I don’t think she likes you very much.”
Roxanne gives a nod to one of her goons and either Tomas or Marco, Walters can never keep the two of them straight, frisks him. The goon let’s Roxanne know that Walters is unarmed. Her self-satisfied smile grows more self-satisfied. Roxanne reaches up to Walter’s face. He flinches. Her hand brushes his cheek and goes around to the back of his neck. She straightens his collar. It was a mess from his fall at Lola’s place.
“That’s better.” Roxanne turns away, announcing as she does so. “Al’s dead.”
“And you took the briefcase?”
“Oh John, why would you say a hurtful thing like that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“Al was getting sloppy, he started losing things.”
“Because of you.”
Roxanne doesn’t answer his accusation, standing behind her two bodyguards. She looks into the living room with the sofa and the large floor to ceiling glass window that looks over the pool she swims in every day. She pretends to be far away from any of the earthly concerns that Walters is trying to bother her with. She is above it all, doesn’t he know that. Can’t he see that. He’s such a mere mortal in the presence of the divine. Divinities don’t care about cheap accusations. They don’t care about hitmen with short lifespans. They don’t even care about nice mansions and nice pools that overlook the Pacific Ocean. But there are some things a divinity does care about and she just can’t help herself, under her breath, as nonchalantly as she can, Roxanne asks a question she is dying to ask.
“What did she say about me?”
And Walters found his card. The only card he can play against this stacked deck. The only card he can play to survive. A Lola. That’s his card.
“Do you want to know where she is?”
Roxanne’s eyes get wide against all her intentions, a reflex that can’t be controlled. Yes, she does want to know where she is, but she can’t tell this killer that. Such an obvious set up. But she oh so desperately wants to know. She has three killers on her side. And that’s just in this room. Okay, two killers and a Jackson. But that might be enough to see where this takes her. To see what Walters knows. To see what Lola knows.
“She doesn’t worry me.” Roxanne picks some imaginary lint off her dress.
“She should worry you. She’s the only one who can pin this on you. She remembers everything.”
“And who is she going to tell?”
“She knows people.”
“No, she doesn’t. That’s why I picked her.”
“I gave her some numbers to call.”
Roxanne approaches Walters again, parting Marco and Tomas down the middle. She walks straight up to him, holding the collar that she fixed earlier with both hands, staring him straight in the eye, trying to project all the confidence, arrogance, that she possibly can. “You’re lying.”
“I’ll take you to her.”
She needs more convincing, Walters can tell that, his eyes circling hers, she’s teetering, she’s trying too hard, all this fake confidence and arrogance, it’s the type of thing a playground bully does. Like any good boxer, he sees his opening.
“Why would I protect her?” A shot to the ribs. “It’d be stupid to let an opportunity like this pass.” A jab to the head. “She’s the only one that can stop your plan now.” An uppercut to the jaw.
“Fine.” A flick of the wrist and Roxanne agrees and retreats from her perch on Walter’s toes.
“Marco, take some guys with you and see if there’s anything to John’s story.”
Marco moves away from Tomas. Oh, so that one is Marco. “What’s in it for me?” Walters asks Roxanne.
“If she’s there, we’ll let you go.” No one in this room believes that. A gullible child wouldn’t believe that. A newborn baby infant in the cradle is cynical enough to see through it. But it buys Walters a few more minutes of life so it’s a fiction he’s willing to go along with for now.
Two other bodyguards show up and escort Walters outside. Marco stays behind, at Roxanne’s hip, to get one last direction. Roxanne leans in to her second favorite bodyguard and whispers in his ear.
“Kill him either way.”
“Gladly.” Marco has his assignment.