SUICIDE HILL

463

“Hello, Lloyd,” she said. “Liney called me at the office and told me you were in town. I expected you to come by, but I didn’t expect you to break in.”

Lloyd stood up. A red wool suit and a new shorter hairdo. He hadn’t been close. “Cops have criminal tendencies. You look wonderful, Jan.”

Janice sighed and let her purse drop to the floor. “No, I don’t. I’m fortytwo, and I’m putting on weight.”

“I’m forty-two and losing weight.”

“So I can see. So much for the amen—”

Lloyd took two steps forward; Janice one. They embraced hands to shoulders, keeping a space between them. Lloyd broke it off first, so the contact wouldn’t make him want more. He took a step backward and said, “You know why I’m here.”

Janice pointed to a Louis XIV sofa. “Yes, of course.” When Lloyd sat down, she took a chair across from him and said, “I know what you want, and I’m glad that you want it, but I don’t know what I want. And I may never know. That’s as honest an answer as I can give you.”

Lloyd felt threads of their past unraveling. Not knowing whether to press or retreat, he said, “You’ve made a good life for yourself here. This pad, your business, the life you’ve set up for the girls.”

“I also have a lover, Lloyd.”

“Yeah, Roger the on-and-off lodger. How’s that going?”

Janice laughed. “You’re such a riot when you try to act civilized. I read about you in the L.A. papers a couple of weeks ago. Some man you captured in New Orleans.”

“Some man whose capture I fucked up in New Orleans, some man whose arraignment I almost blew in L.A.”

Janice smoothed the hem of her skirt and leaned forward. “I’ve never heard you admit to making mistakes before. As a cop, I mean.”

Lloyd leaned back. The sofa creaked against his weight and combined with Janice’s words to form an accusation. “I never made them before!”

“Don’t shout, I wasn’t accusing you of anything. What did the man do?”

The creaking grew; for a split second Lloyd thought he could feel the floor start to tremble. “The man? He beat a woman to death during a snuff film. Roger ever take out any scumbags like that?”

Janice started to flush at the cheeks; Lloyd grabbed the arms of the sofa to keep from going to her. “Roger doesn’t take out scumbags,” she said. “He doesn’t break into my apartment or carry a gun or beat up on people. Lloyd, I’m a middle-aged woman. I was in love with your intensity for a long, long 464

L.A. NOIR

time, but I can’t handle it anymore. Maybe it isn’t a nice thing to say, but Roger is a comfortable, no-fireworks lover for a middle-aged antique broker who put in nineteen years as wife to a hot-dog cop. Lloyd, do you know what I’m saying?”

The perfect softness of the indictment rang in Lloyd’s ears. “I’ve made amends as best I could,” he said, consciously holding his voice at a whisper.

“I’ve tried to admit the things I did wrong with you and the girls.”

Janice’s whisper was softer. “And your admissions were excessive and hurt me. You told me things that you shouldn’t ever, ever tell any woman that you claim to love.”

“I do love you, goddammit!”

“I know. And I love you, and even if I stay with Roger and divorce you and marry him, I’ll always love you, and Roger will never own me the way you have. But I’m too tired for the kind of love you have to give.”

Lloyd stood up and walked to the door, averting his eyes from Janice and groping for threads of hope. “The girls? Would you consider how they feel about me?”

“If they were younger, yes. But now they’re practically grown up, and I can’t let them influence me.”

Lloyd turned around and looked at his wife. “You’re not yielding on this an inch, are you?”

“I yielded too long and too much.”

“And you still don’t know what you want?”

Janice stared at the light blue Persian carpet she had coveted since the day of her wedding. “Yes . . . I . . . still don’t know.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to outyield you,” Lloyd said. 4

She was gone, and she’d taken everything that could be converted into quick cash with her.

Duane Rice walked through the condo he’d shared with Vandy, keeping a running tab on the missing items and the risks he’d taken to earn them.