Right Behind You Page 2

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  Within moments, they were a block away, strolling as casually as the turistas with their wadded money up the Calle Mayor toward the Puerta del Sol. There, they crossed the square, threaded the noon crowds, and slipped into a small cafe where the owner—a kiddie porn merchant and dealer in whores—knew their faces but gave them no trouble. There, they were safe, and they could examine their take. They made for the restroom, a tiny closet down a flight of stairs. Once inside, they locked the door behind them.

  The billfold was black leather, just like the American’s coat, and held about three hundred euros and a single photograph. The photo was of a beautiful woman with olive skin and raven hair, not unlike a gitano girl, but with the fine, white teeth and unblemished skin of an American college coed.

  “Society whore,” Betani grumbled as she stared at the photo.

  Leta nodded and studied the small book, their bonus acquisition. It was bound in soft, tooled leather, with serpentine patterns on the cover and spine, elusive in the dim, fluorescent light of the restroom. The pages were edged in gold leaf, the leaves bound by thin suede laces. Leta started to untie it.

  “Leave it,” Betani said, unlocking the door and slipping out into the hall. “Probably his appointment book. Let’s eat and get some coffee before we head out.”

  “Go on,” Leta replied, still fingering the edges of the book.

  Betani left her.

  Leta locked the door behind her partner and moved to the toilet. She had to make water, but that wasn’t why she urged Betani away, nor why she locked the door.

  It was the book. The silly little leather book. Betani could lift, sort and toss in a single breath. Leta knew it was probably a failing, but she couldn’t move along so easily from lift to lift. Every so often she acquired something like this book, or saw something like the photo of the girl in the stranger’s billfold, and she needed a moment—just a moment—to sit and study and contemplate it.

  It wasn’t conscience, only curiosity. She felt nothing rooting through the private pocket treasures of strangers—but the joy of stopping to study those treasures and wonder at their significance in the lives of their former owners—that was a fever she couldn’t shake. In her more whimsical moments, she even imagined that the things she stole had voices. Alone, they spoke to her.

  The appointment book spoke to her now. I’ve got a secret to tell you, it said, it’s voice cold and feminine and playful all at once. Peek inside. You won’t be disappointed.

  She undid the suede laces tying the covers shut and gently fanned the book open. The gold-edged leaves flickered in the murky green light. As the leaves fanned past, columns of numbers, words and phrases flickered by like moving pictures, and a strange opalescence on the pages cast shimmering curtains of colors over the shifting, snaking columns of script.

  Leta stopped. She turned back to the first page and stared.

  The pages felt like fine, thin paper, but their sheen and the colors thereon were unlike any paper Leta has ever seen. Colors played over the page, snaking in and around and through the neat, black letters of the young man’s handwriting.

  And written on those pages: names, addresses, dates, and meeting times. They were written in tight, black letters—bold but not sloppy—delicately serifed each to the next, the names reaching in a single column down the center of the page. As Leta stared, the names seemed to sway back and forth, as if they were a banner waving in the breeze. But of course, that was only a trick of the light and the strange paper on which the names were written.

  Wasn’t it?

  She noted the first name on the list—Eduardo Velasquez—and began to flip through the rest of the book. Page after page after page of names, in that same neat script, from the top of the page to the bottom with only the barest of margins. And how many pages did this little book hold? She flipped and flipped and flipped. It seemed to have no end. When she finally came to the end of the pages, she closed the book and stared, measuring its thickness between her fingers.

  It wasn’t even a single finger-width thick, but it seemed to have hundreds of pages between its covers.

  A knock at the door startled her. “Date prisa!” someone hissed outside.

  “Uno momento!” Leta shot back, not sounding in the least bit sorry. She wiped, hiked up her pants and shoved the book in her pocket.

  Already, Betani tore into a ham sandwich. Two cups of café con leche sat steaming before her on the table. She had also bought a pack of cigarettes. She puffed between hungry bites of the sandwich.

  “Save some for me,” Leta said, and Betani, still chewing, tore off a great hunk of the sandwich for her partner.

  Leta slid into a chair opposite Betani, took a bite and washed it down with the caramel-colored coffee. Her body warmed and settled. She held out two fingers. Betani set the cigarette in them. Leta took a hearty drag, held it for a long moment, then gently let a plume of smoke back out through her nostrils.

  “You took long enough,” Betani said quietly.

  Leta drew out the appointment book and laid it on the table. “Look at the pages,” she said.

  Betani scowled. She didn’t like Leta’s curiosity. Never had. But she often humored her, and she did so now, laying down her sandwich and taking up the book. She fanned the pages, much as Leta had.

  Leta smoked, intermittently sipping her coffee. Her eyes rose momentarily to scan the restaurant.

  “What is this?” Betani asked, a note of worry and incredulity in her voice.

  Leta looked at her. “Isn’t that paper wild? Have you ever seen—?”

  “No,” Betani hissed. She shoved the book forward, open to the first page. “Here!”

  Leta looked. Eduardo Velazquez was nowhere to be seen. The first name on the list was now Maria Betani Heredia-Cortéz.

  “Wait,” Leta said, snatching the book. She rubbed the first page between her fingers, to be sure that there wasn’t another page stuck to it. She checked the next leaf. The next. She saw the name Eduardo Velasquez nowhere.

  Time and again she glanced back. Never once did that first name at the top of the first page change.

  Maria Betani Heredia-Cortéz. The address was that of the café they sat in.

  That can’t be, Leta thought, already filled with a terrible surety of what Betani’s name meant, printed in the pages of the strange little appointment book.

  Don’t be afraid, the book said softly, a honeyed voice in the center of her brain. We’ve appointments to keep, and I’ll not have you wreaking havoc on my schedule.

  Leta wanted to throw down the book, to watch it wither under her glare, to spit on its soft, kid cover through forked fingers and ward off whatever evil it now deigned to enact upon them.

  But she couldn’t. She only held it, staring, eyes moving back and forth between the book and her puzzled friend.

  In that moment of strange, mute panic, a familiar figure appeared at the front window of the cafe. The black leather coat caught Leta’s eye first, then, his smoldering stare.

  Leta looked to Betani. “Up! He’s here!”

  “Who?”

  Leta shook the book. “Him.”

  Betani turned.

  He was already inside.

  Strange, Leta thought, scooting out of her chair and making straight for the back corridor, I never heard the bells above the door ring.

  They moved—not running, but swift—down the length of the counter, toward the kitchen, toward, they hoped, a back exit.

  A busboy with a half-full tub of dishes spun around the counter and swept past them, almost colliding. They didn’t stop for him, but when they heard the commotion of his tub crashing to the floor only a breath later, both girls dared glances over their shoulders.

  The young man in the black leather coat had collided with the busboy. He was barely an arm’s length behind them.

  Leta had time for a single thought: Impossible!

  Then Betani shoved her, screaming abruptly. Leta shot into a dead
run, made the kitchen, and dared another glance back as she rounded a corner.

  The young man in the black leather coat reached out for them.

  The girls ran through the kitchen, leaving in their wake a number of puzzled ejaculations and cries for order behind them. Cooks and dishwashers grunted and shouted as the young man in the black leather coat collided with them, pushed past, then hurried on.

  Ahead, a back exit. The girls shot through, found a line of trash bins arrayed on the alley wall outside, and threw them over in their wake, hoping to slow their pursuer.

  “Throw it away!” Betani yelled.

  Leta wasn’t listening. The book was still in her hand, almost clinging to her.

  Yes! Throw it away! Why not?

  Because I’m yours now, a new voice answered. I’m yours, as I was meant to be—

  Her hand wouldn’t release it. She ran on, appointment book in hand, never looking back.

  The alley spilled out onto a broad side street and swept down toward the Puerta del Sol. They careened around the corner and shot into the milling midday crowds, across the square, hoping to lose their pursuer.

  Leta looked back. Above the oncoming tide of bobbing heads and shoulders, she couldn’t see anything. Satisfied, she sped on, Betani now out in front of her, urging her.

  “Run!” she cried. “He’s behind you, Leta!”

  Leta didn’t look back. She ran faster, Betani nearing, the crowds slowing and falling behind.

  Betani jogged on and half-turned to make sure Leta caught up with her. Her feet left the curb, carrying her out onto the Calle Mayor.

  It happened quickly. Tires squealed and a horn squalled. The crowd seemed to freeze, collective breath held. Then Betani disappeared beneath a skidding BMW. The acrid smell of burnt rubber and the coppery scent of fresh blood filled the air. Leta, still sprinting, slammed into the BMW’s passenger door and blinked, stunned. She was blocked, and Betani was nowhere in sight.

  The crowd surged forward around her.

  Leta glanced down. Thick, dark rivers of blood spilled out from beneath the sports car and forked around her shoes. She almost bent to see if Betani was really under the vehicle, but something deeper, something animal, urged her onward.

  She turned. The young man’s pale, pained-handsome face burst out of the gathering crowd toward her, black coat shining under the overcast sky.

  Leta pivoted to one side and launched herself over the hood of the car. The driver cursed as she landed on the far side and beat on toward the Metro station ahead. Her peripheral vision snatched random bits of information—nearing policia, a gathering traffic jam on the Calle Alcala behind the BMW, a bloody hand with bent fingers protruding from beneath the car—but all of these things were simply recorded and filed away. She had to run. Escape was the only imperative.

  She made the Sol metro station, spun at the head of the stairs, and started her descent. She pounded down three steps before she stopped and peered back through the iron railings at the accident scene.

  The crowd closed in, blocking her view, but before they choked her vision entirely, she saw the pale, handsome young man in the black leather coat kneeling on the driver’s side of the BMW. He lightly stroked Betani’s protruding hand with pale fingers, then grasped and drew her out into the light.

  She was a bloodied doll, some misused child’s plaything, streaked with red streamers and pocked, here and there, with glistening, white, protruding bone. The young man bent over her, as if to try and resuscitate her, and laid his lips on hers.

  Betani convulsed weakly, as if trying to shrink from him. Then her back arched, and her hand closed on his, and he seemed to draw her head up by his kiss alone. A moment later, she collapsed, limp. Thin, white smoke seemed to trail out of her open mouth. When the young man turned and eyed Leta across the square, the same tendrils of smoke twisted from his lips as well.

  As if he drew the last breath out of her, Leta thought. A terrible, numbing cold shot down the length of her spine.

  She took the stairs two at a time, leapt the turnstiles, and pounded down into the catacombs toward the nearest departing train.