Love and Gravity Read online

  “Come on, Eddie. It’s time to go home.”

  Eddie was next to last to go. As Margot tried to herd him towards the door, he started pawing at her. A few more of the guys had bought him drinks after his show of territoriality to the detective and he'd gotten pretty drunk and even more obnoxious than usual. He reached around Margot's waist and spun her to face him.

  "Margot, you're a pal buying me a drink tonight. Lemme kiss you, huh?"

  Margot pushed at Eddie's chest. Eddie tried to kiss her but she moved her head away from him. The left strap of her dress fell from her shoulder leaving her dress held up precariously by nothing more than the angle of her breast. She began to feel panicked.

  "Let me go Eddie, you're drunk!" She punched at his chest. She felt her heart fluttering faster as his grip on her tightened.

  "Hey come on, I’ll be nice if you are," Eddie slurred at her.

  Puddy appeared from the corner of the bar, crossing the room before Eddie had the chance to try anything more.

  "Knock it off Eddie," Puddy said, grabbing Eddie by the collar like a cat grabbing her kitten by the scruff of its neck.

  "Hey I was just trying to thank the lady," Eddy slurred.

  "Sure Eddie. Let's go, I'll take you home." Puddy pushed him to the door and looked back at Margot. "You okay?" Puddy liked to look out for her.

  "I'm fine Puddy, thank you for your help." Margot lifted her strap back onto her shoulder and pushed a stray hair back behind her ear.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," She said, trying to smile reassuringly, but she felt violated. Eddie’s lips had grazed her neck when he tried to kiss her and they’d left a small spot wet spot on her.

  “Alright, then. Have a good one Margey. Come on let’s go you jerk.” Puddy pushed Eddie out the door into the warm summer air. As soon as they were out the door Margot rubbed her neck furiously where Eddie had touched it. She felt disgusted.

  Puddy and Eddie were the last of the customers in the bar, and once they were gone Margot took a moment to collect herself and recall what she needed to do to close. She had done most of the closing duties during her shift and just needed to restock the empties before she could put this whole night behind her. She looked behind the bar and realized that, thankfully, she only needed a few bottles from the back.

  Margot went through the wood paneled door behind the bar, down the short lime-green tiled hallway that led to Pop's office and the back storage room. As she passed Pop's office she was surprised to hear voices coming from within it. He was still doing business. It was unusual for him to be there so late.

  Margot kept walking, turning left to go into the back room. She thought about what Malone had said, about the faces of those girls, about the quietness that lay on them. She grabbed a scotch, a whiskey, and vodka out of their boxes. She started back towards the bar.

  As she came out of the storage room into the hallway she heard shouting from Pop's office. She thought about it for a moment, hesitating, deciding whether to stay or go. She'd walked by his office a thousand times, and she'd always known better than to listen in. But this time she found that she couldn't keep walking. The look on those girl’s faces stopped her. She cautiously leaned closer to the door. She could hear Pop yelling angrily.

  "I don't care about the detective! We are going to finish this. That girl has got information she’s going to use against me and she can't be allowed to get away with it. Can you imagine, a bunch of little whores blackmailing me in my own goddamned city? If anyone finds out the Lacey fight was rigged I’ll have every dirt bag in Grandino’s gang after me. You need to take care of this one like you did the other three. Get it right this time. If that goddamned detective gets in the way again, then you take care of him. Do your job!"

  "Alright boss, you got it."

  Margot recognized the second voice as belonging to a guy named Lenny. He was like Pop's shadow, always around. Margot couldn't believe it, Malone was right. Pop was having these girls killed.

  Just then the bottle of Vodka slipped from beneath Margot's arm and hit the floor with a sharp, echoey crash. Margot started, and looked at the shattered bottle. Fear set in on her almost before comprehension did. It had fallen so loudly. She knew it was too late.

  Margot rushed down the hall to the bar and put the other bottles down on it. She grabbed her purse and ran out the door as quickly as she could. Lenny ran out of the office seconds behind her and slipped on the spilled vodka.

  “Shit!” he yelled, getting up as quickly as he could and running out to the front of the bar. He could just make her out as she ran across the street. Lenny sighed before going back to the office.

  "It was Margot, Pop. She must have heard the whole thing," Lenny reported tiredly.

  "Dammit to hell!" Pop was sitting there, a short, fat man in a grandiose brown leather chair. He flicked his cigar ashes into the ashtray irritatedly. He rather liked Margot and hated to break something so pretty. He was reluctant to say it, but was pressed for options. He couldn't be linked to these murders. It was too much heat at once; it would draw too much attention. National attention.

  He leaned forward in his chair. "Fix it Lenny."

  Chapter 3 -

  Margot was absorbed in panic as she ran down the street. The heels she was wearing made it difficult to go very far very fast and she knew she needed to get out of sight as quickly as she could. Her mind raced as she tried to decide what to do.

  The summer night that would usually have seemed beautiful to Margot now seemed oppressively hot and sweat began shimmering along Margot’s forehead and chest, coalescing into beads of sweat that traced their way down between her breasts. She turned off into a dark alley and stopped to lean against a brick wall, breathing heavily and wiping the sweat from her forehead with her arm.

  She took the business card out of her stocking. She got her cell phone out of her purse and read the phone number off the business card in the faint blue glow of the phone’s screen. She dialed the number and took a deep breath.

  The phone rang a few times with no answer. Margot began to worry he wasn’t going to pick up. It was, after all, close to 4:30 in the morning. If he didn’t answer Margot didn’t know what else to do. With each ring her panic increased and she gripped the strap of her purse more tightly.

  “Please pick up, please, please...”

  Finally a muted, sleepy voice came from the phone.

  “This is Jack” the voice said slowly.

  Margot was flooded with relief but couldn’t help notice the fear in her own voice as she spoke.

  “Detective, this is Margot Kidman from the bar. I’m...I’m in trouble and I need to meet you. I heard something. I wasn’t supposed to hear it, and Pop knows I did, and I think he’s going to kill me. I have nowhere to go hide and I can’t go home. Will you please meet me?”

  All this came out in a few short, rushed breaths and then Margot heard a silent pause on the other end of the phone. After a second that felt like an eternity Jack spoke.

  “Where are you?”

  “Meet me at The Early Byrd Cafe on Howsley in fifteen minutes” Margot said. Then she hung up.

  Margot was almost a twenty blocks from The Early Byrd. She put her phone back in her purse and took off her high heels. She started running again, the pavement hitting her soft feet, biting at her stockings. She ran in the shadows of the street lamps as much as she could, taking the most direct route to the cafe.

  Jack was dreaming a sweet, sad dream that took him back to his childhood, and back to his sister Chelsea. In the dream he was around ten years old and she was around seventeen. She was beautiful with her long brown hair, always gently curled into fat rivulets that would stroke Jack’s face when she hugged him. Her hair smelled like lavender and framed a face that seemed to always be smiling. Jack admired her immensely.

  They were in the park on a perfect summer day. Chelsea was wearing a thin summer dress covered in flowers and had laid out a plaid blanket for them on top of the grass. The sky was ba
by blue and cloudless and Jack and his sister lay in the shade of a tremendous oak tree watching the passersby. They were playing their favorite game, making up stories about people as though they were all characters in some great big play.

  “That man is a pianist.” Chelsea pointed to a man standing off by another tree. He was a homeless man in tattered, dirty clothes and he was swaying slightly, side to side.

  “He’s been playing piano his whole life and was in fact a famous concert pianist at one time. But he dreamt one night of the music of the future. He woke up and fervently began composing it, convinced it was his life’s mission to bring this music into the world. But he found that the people of today aren’t able to hear it. It only sounds like a great cacophony to them. So he goes around playing a small electric keyboard on the street corners and everyone thinks he’s mad.”

  Jack looked around for a new target. He pointed at a woman playing with a big golden retriever a few hundred feet away from the man.

  “She will understand his music though,” he said. “She’s a famous cellist and she travels the world playing concerts. She had the same dream on the same night, but she couldn’t remember what the music sounded like when she woke up. When she hears the pianist playing on the street she remembers the dream and they begin playing together. They travel the world together and become the world’s most famous musicians.”

  “That’s such a wonderful story! I can hear their music even as we speak.” Chelsea smiled so happily at Jack, that he couldn’t help feeling proud of his contribution to the story. She had this way of making him feel loved just by looking at him.

  Jack looked up and saw a man whose face looked like a puddle of swirled paint walking angrily across the park straight towards them. Concern fell over Jack’s face as he looked to his sister.

  “And who is that man,” he asked?

  Chelsea turned to face him. She was wearing a different dress suddenly, long-sleeved and black, and there were tears streaming down her face. Jack felt swallowed by a paralyzing sadness.

  It was then that Margot’s phone call woke Jack from his dream. For a moment he was disoriented and continued to feel that same aching he’d carried with him since childhood. When he answered the phone he heard a voice strained with worry on the other end as it quickly rattled off a plea for help. He heard the name, “Margot” and came back to himself. He couldn’t possibly forget Margot as quickly as all that. He had, after all, been considering her for the last week, ever since reading her arrest sheet.

  She told him to meet her at The Early Byrd and hung up. He got up from bed quickly, with an athleticism that seemed almost cat-like. The bed sheet fell away from him, revealing his muscular body to the cold moonlight. He walked on bare feet across the room to the chair in the corner that had his suit from the day before draped over the arm. He got dressed efficiently, grabbing his wallet and keys from the table near the door on his way out. He could tell by the tone of Margot’s voice that he needed to hurry. He was anxious to get to the cafe so he decided to take his car, even though he was only ten blocks away.

  When he arrived Margot hadn’t arrived yet, so he grabbed a booth in the back corner and ordered a coffee from the plump waitress that seated him. When it got there he put in a bit of creamer and sugar and began stirring the cup with his spoon, watching as the blackness turned to light suede brown.

  He thought back to seeing her at the bar. Before she’d noticed him, he’d noticed her. But then she was the hard to miss kind. He felt anxious about seeing her again, partly because he didn’t know what was going to happen with Pop or what kind of danger she may be in. But there was more to it. He was anxious because he thought she was beautiful, and because he found her alluring.

  His response to her excited him, and surprised him. He’d never expected to find her so pleasantly disquieting. At least not for the reasons he did. He could already sense that she was unlike anyone he’d met in this city, with its bottomless wealth of lost people.

  When Jack looked up from his coffee, he saw Margot opening the door to the cafe. His heart pounded a little more fiercely in his chest. She looked hot and disheveled. She was bending down to put her shoes on. Her hair had fallen down in chunks, she was covered in a thin veil of sweat, and her chest rose and fell heavily as she caught her breath. She walked towards the booth he was seated in. He rose to meet her.

  “Thank you for meeting me” Margot said, then she waved the waitress over and asked for a glass of water. She was grateful to see Detective Malone sitting there. Despite her disdain for cops in general, she’d already silently committed to trusting this one a little. She remembered that his concern for her had seemed genuine, and she was pinning everything on her hope that it was.

  “What’s happened,” asked Jack?

  “You were right, I heard the whole thing. Pop did kill those girls, and he told his man Lenny to kill another one. He told Lenny to kill a particular detective, too, if he continues to get in the way. I can only assume he was talking about you. But I dropped a bottle and it broke outside their door. I’m sure they heard it, I’m sure they knew it was me. Pop said the girls had some information on him, that they were blackmailing him, and that he can’t afford for anyone to know that he had them killed, or for anyone to find out the information they had. Something about the Lacey fight being rigged and that he was afraid that someone named Grandino would send his people after him if they knew.”

  “Jesus. Did they say what girl they are going to kill next?”

  “No, Pop just told Lenny to get it right this time, as though he tried and failed before. Look Detective...”

  “Please, just call me Jack.”

  “Jack. I have nowhere to go. I live above the bar, so I can’t even get a change of clothes. I’m really afraid.

  “Well, first thing’s first,” said Jack. “We need to go find Lola. She’s a pro that got attacked last week. I saw the marks on her neck. She wouldn’t talk about it, but they were the same marks on the dead victims. She must be their target. I know a flop where she stays with some of the other girls when they aren’t working.

  “As for you, I want to ask if you’d be willing to testify to what you heard. I’ve been gathering evidence against Pop for a long time. Practically every cop at the station is in his pocket, but I have a buddy from the service, Frank, who works for the Feds. I want to turn all my information over to him and let the Feds prosecute Pop. If I can connect him to these murders, they can put him away for good. And if you can testify against him they’ll protect you, probably put you in witness protection. That’s a chance at a whole new life Margot. It’s the best thing I can offer you.”

  Margot sat thoughtfully in the booth across from Jack. Witness protection. A whole new chance at life. They would expunge her record; maybe even get her a good job. She could get out of Gravity and never look back. She’d been looking for a chance at freedom for a long time, but witness protection wasn’t exactly the kind of freedom she wanted. It seemed like it could just be a prettier cage.

  Then Margot heard a popping sound before something hit the large glass window beside them. She felt Jack’s hand on her arm pushing her down into the booth just as she heard the sounds of two bullets being fired from the dark street in front of the cafe.

  “Stay down! Get on the ground,” Jack whispered violently at her and, scared, she grabbed her purse from the table. She slid off the plastic seat of the booth onto her hands and knees on the short carpet. She was shaking madly. Jack was on the carpet across from her. He had a gun in his hand that Margot hadn’t even seen him draw. He was looking towards the front door.

  “We need to go through the kitchen and out the back. Come on, quickly and keep low.”

  Jack began crawling towards the kitchen door behind the long bar counter. Margot followed him and saw their waitress cowering behind the counter with her head in her hands.

  “Lady, don’t worry. They’re not after you. Just stay down,” Jack said to her.

  Th
e waitress raised her head and looked at him through terrified eyes. She nodded, but said nothing. Jack and Margot crawled ahead through the swinging aluminum kitchen doors. Once the doors had swung shut behind them Jack pulled Margot to a standing, crouched position.

  “Alright, we’re going to take a different car and get out of here. They must have seen mine outside the cafe and found us that way. Stay here for a minute. I’m going to run out and unlock a car, then I’m going to wave you over and you need to run towards me and get in as fast as you can. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Margot looked at Jack. He seemed hurried but collected. He looked unafraid, and very determined. She felt small next to him.

  Jack opened the back door that led outside. There was a row of parked cars on the side of the street. Margot watched as Jack ran hunched over to a beat up Ford Ranger. He hit the window with the butt of his gun a few times and the window broke. He reached in and unlocked the doors then waved Margot over.

  “Get in the passenger’s side and stay down.”

  She did what she was told and watched as he swiftly hot-wired the car. It roared to life and he sat up behind the wheel. He drove the car around a corner onto a different street.

  “We need to find Lola,” Jack said and pressed the pedal down faster.

  It was only when Margot bent down to hide that she saw Jack’s right arm was bleeding through a small tear in his suit.

  “Jack, you’re hurt.” Margot instinctively reached towards his wound but Jack pulled away from her.

  “It’s just a scratch. I’ll deal with it later.”

  Margot felt a pang of guilt. This was her fault, she’d been so foolish to eavesdrop on Pop and now she’d ruined everything. She could have gotten them both killed, not to mention that poor frightened waitress. She felt embarrassed that she’d reached out to touch him so instinctively, and a little rejected that he’d pulled away. She bit her lip to focus on something else.