The Silent Widow

‘I’m a friend of the boy that cop was asking you about,’ he replied, pulling a second twenty slowly out of his wallet and turning it over thoughtfully between his fingers. The poor girl stared at it, unable to disguise the longing in her eyes.

‘He was abducted, close to where we are now. Whoever took him tortured and killed him. They’d done the same thing to a young girl a few days before.’

The girl shivered. ‘That’s terrible.’

‘Yup,’ said Williams, still fingering the bill. ‘I don’t know if there’s a drug connection to what happened to him, but there might be. What can you tell me about the dealers that work here?’

She shook her head. Williams could see the struggle inside her between her desperate need for the money and her fear. Fear was winning. ‘Nothing.’

He pulled out a second bill, a fifty this time, and watched the girl’s eyes widen as if he were Jesus and he’d just fed the five thousand. Nikki Roberts’ expense account was already proving mightily useful. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said.

‘OK, look,’ she whispered urgently, beckoning Williams closer. ‘Westmont’s a war zone right now, but it’s also the place you can guarantee the Krok will be clean. You know what I’m saying?’ She reached out for the money but Williams held it back.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘It’s a Russian drug, OK? Everywhere else, all over LA, it’s Russian business. Those bastards sell cheap, but they cut their stuff with other shit. Like, really, really bad shit. A lot of people have died. A lot. Terry and I came here because we heard the Mexicans are running Krok in Westmont now. Don’t get me wrong, I hate those guys too. It’s not like they’re good guys. But their stuff is clean.’

She reached again for the fifty. This time Williams let her touch it, but he kept his grip on the other end. ‘What Mexicans?’ He looked into her terrified eyes.

‘I don’t know, man. I don’t! They’re Terry’s dealers, not mine. I don’t touch Krok.’

‘I need a name, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘No one will ever know you told me, OK? I’m not a cop. I’m trying to help a friend.’

The poor girl looked as if she might be about to explode with indecision. Eventually, she could stand it no more. Cupping both hands around Williams’ ear, she whispered into it.

A name.

Williams’ blood ran cold. He let go of the bill and she grabbed it triumphantly, stuffing it into the same pocket into which she’d dispatched the earlier twenty.

‘Thank you!’ she said again, as Williams turned to leave. ‘And good luck, you know. With your friend.’

‘Good luck to you too,’ said Williams.

After what she’d just told him, they were both going to need it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Wiping the sweat from her forehead and underarms, Anne Bateman staggered out of her Soul Cycle class into the bright, Brentwood sunshine in a joyous mood.

Her performance in the Stravinsky concerts had won rave reviews everywhere, and offers were flooding in to her agent on a daily basis. All of which meant she could enjoy her three-week hiatus from the LA Phil without needing to worry about money, or where her next gig was coming from.

Everything was calm on the personal front too. Her husband had stopped bombarding her with texts and calls and flowers, a development that had caused her a brief, sharp pang of sadness followed by a profound flood of relief. Anne still loved him. Part of her would always love him. But Nikki had been quite right: in their case, love simply wasn’t enough.

That was the other reason for Anne’s good mood this morning. She and Nikki were on good terms again. After their awful, painful fight in her dressing room the night of the concert, when her ex’s truckload of roses arrived, Anne had begun to fear it was the last she would ever see of her therapist and dear friend. Too embarrassed to attend her next therapy session, she’d skipped without calling to cancel, and then been so embarrassed about that she ended up skipping the next one too. She’d been expecting a call or an email from Nikki’s office warning her she’d be charged for the missed appointments, but there’d been nothing. She’d been on the brink of swallowing her pride and apologizing, despite the fact that, even now, in the calm light of day, she didn’t feel she’d been in the wrong to call Nikki on her behavior that night. But her life was too lonely and painful to lose the few close friends she had, so she had been steeling herself to make the call when Nikki unexpectedly stepped up. This morning a handwritten letter had arrived at Anne’s apartment, containing a brief but heartfelt apology.

‘I’ll understand if you feel you prefer a new therapist. Absolutely no hard feelings,’ Nikki wrote. ‘But I hope you don’t. Because I do genuinely feel that our work together has been helping you. And I think, deep down, you feel the same.’

Anne wasn’t sure what she felt. Other than a happiness bordering on elation that Nikki had come back to her. And yes, she knew that wasn’t normal, but she didn’t care. It felt great! She’d accused Nikki of crossing the doctor–patient line, and that was the truth. But it was also true that she’d done the same thing herself. If Anne hadn’t seen that before, she saw it now.

Crossing the street to the Coral Tree Café, she picked up an overpriced kale juice and jumped in her car, heading over to Nikki’s office. Her session wasn’t till noon, but she had nowhere else to be, and the desire to see her therapist’s face again was so strong she didn’t bother trying to resist it. Maybe, if she didn’t have a patient prior, the two of them could grab a coffee or have a quick chat before the session?

Cranking up the radio and opening the roof, Anne let the rushing air cool the sweat from her limbs as she sped through the Wilshire Corridor, making a right at Beverly Glen. Palm trees swayed on either side of her to the strains of Justin Bieber and Wiz Khalifa, and above her a lapis blue sky seemed to glow with joy, reflecting Anne’s own happiness. Pulling up outside Nikki’s building, she was about to hand her keys to the new valet when a familiar voice behind her made her freeze.

‘Hola, angel.’

And suddenly there he was. Her husband.

Anne’s heart leapt into her mouth. She’d imagined this moment countless times since the day she left him. Him, coming to get her, showing up on her doorstep. In the beginning, those thoughts had been nightmares, loaded with dread that she would be dragged back to the cloying life she’d escaped. But as time passed and the distance between them grew, her physical fear faded. As her husband amped up the romantic gestures and loving, conciliatory rhetoric, she’d allowed the scenario to morph into something closer to a romantic daydream. A fantasy.