Genuine Fraud(62)

Empty. The bed was made.

She yanked the screen out of the window and threw it into the room. She pushed her suitcase into the open top—it barely fit—and banged it through the cheap venetian blind. She threw her shoulder bag in and vaulted herself over the windowsill. She scraped her skin going over and landed hard on the floor. Then she shut the window, adjusted the blind, threw her things and the detached window screen into the bathroom, and closed herself in there as well.

The inn was the last place Noa would look for her.

Jule sat on the edge of the bathtub and forced herself to breathe slowly. She unzipped the suitcase and pulled out her red wig. She took off her black T-shirt and put on a white top, then slid the wig onto her head and tucked her hair inside. She closed the suitcase.

She picked up the gun and shoved it down the back waistband of her jeans, like she’d seen people do in the movies.

A couple of minutes later, she heard Noa walk past the window of the hotel room. The detective was talking on her phone and moving slow. “I know,” Noa said. “I underestimated the situation, I know that.”

A pause. “It was a lightweight thing, an heiress who ran away, you know?” Noa had stopped walking and was easy to hear. “A silly rich girl on a spree. Evidence so far makes it seem like she and her friend staged a suicide that was gonna let them both live large. The two figured to run off together. They wanted to escape the usual—obsessive ex-boyfriend, controlling parents. The friend thought they were going to share the heiress’s money, but the heiress does the double cross. She takes her friend’s ID as planned, and then she gets rid of the friend entirely….A contract hit’s our best guess, probably in the UK. The friend is now missing, last seen in London back in April. Meanwhile, the heiress, using the friend’s details, runs away with all that money and would be living happy, except the obsessive boyfriend can’t believe she killed herself, so he keeps hounding the police. Finally, they come to think he’s got a point. They look into it, and eventually they find the friend’s credit card being used at this Mexican resort.”

Another pause while Noa listened. “Come on. A girl like that, a Vassar girl, you don’t expect an offensive. No one would. She’s barely five feet tall. She wears three-hundred-dollar sneakers. You can’t call me out on that.”

Another pause, and Noa’s voice began to fade as she walked away. “Well, send somebody, because I need medical attention. The kid has my weapon. Yeah, I know, I know. Just send me some local help, comprende?”

Forrest had sent detectives. Jule understood it now. He had never accepted Immie’s suicide, had suspected Jule from the get-go, and what had all his vigilant questioning turned up? He’d been told that Imogen had committed fraud to get away from him, and that poor, dead Jule had been nothing but a gullible victim.

Jule left the bathroom, crawled across the floor, and crouched beneath the window to look out. Noa was walking down the hill, clutching her arm and shoulder as she went.

There was a supercabos bus coming down the road. Jule grabbed the suitcase and rolled it into the hall, then stepped out of the inn through a side door. She walked calmly onto the edge of the road and put her arm in the air.

The bus stopped.

She breathed.

Noa did not turn.

Jule stepped into the cab of the bus.

Noa still did not turn.

Jule paid her fare, and the doors of the bus closed. A car pulled up to where Noa stood, cradling her broken hand. The detective flashed ID to the person inside.

The bus pulled away in the opposite direction. Jule sat down on the worn seat nearest the driver.

It would stop anywhere she wanted to get off. That was how the supercabos worked. “Quiero ir a la esquina de Ortiz y Ejido. ?Puedes llevarme cerca de allí?” Jule asked. Ortiz off Ejido—that was where the hotel clerk had told her a guy sold used cars for cash. No questions asked.

The driver nodded.

Jule West Williams leaned forward in her seat.

She had four passports, four driver’s licenses, three wigs, several thousand dollars in cash, and a credit card number belonging to Forrest Smith-Martin that would do for buying plane tickets.

In fact, there were a number of things Jule could do with that Smith-Martin credit card. She could pay Forrest back for all the trouble he’d caused her.

It was tempting.

But she probably wouldn’t bother. Forrest was nothing to Jule, now that she didn’t need to be Imogen Sokoloff any longer.

The last bits of Immie that had been inside her slipped away, like pebbles washed off a shore by a tide going out.

Going forward, Jule would become something else entirely. There would be other bridges to walk across and other dresses to wear. She had changed her accent, had changed her very being.

She could do it again.

Jule took off the jade viper ring, threw it on the floor, and watched as it rolled to the back of the bus. In Culebra, no one looked at identification.

The gun felt hot against her back. She was armed. She had no heart to break.

Like the hero of an action movie, Jule West Williams was the center of the story.





AUTHOR’S NOTE


I was inspired by many, many books and films in the writing of Genuine Fraud: Victorian orphan stories, con artist tales, antihero novels, action movies, noir films, superhero comics, tales told backward, stories of class mobility, and books about the lives of ferociously ambitious, unhappy women. The novel I have written feels to me like layer upon layer of references. I cannot possibly name all my influences, but particular debt goes to Patricia Highsmith for The Talented Mr. Ripley, to Mark Seal for The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, and to Charles Dickens for Great Expectations.