Two Flies

"No big deal."

She's wearing a new outfit, yellow slacks and a white top. She's put on some make-up. Is she pale underneath? It hurts to look at her, she's so beautiful.

They step into the elevator.

"Looking good, Ben. You been working out?"

He is not sure what to do first, return the compliment or answer the question. "You, no, you, too."

"Thanks. I need to hit the stepper real bad." Glancing at her slender legs. "Just been so busy with school."

Ben nods.

"But my schedule will look much better next week."

Another nod. They reach the garage. Isabella steps outside, and with her pulling and him pushing they manoeuvre the dolly onto the concrete floor.

"You stay here." Isabella presses the button. The gate clicks upward. She walks through.

Ben looks down. Front and back, top and bottom of the box are secured with duct tape to the point that you can't see the cardboard. The sides are uncovered. Is he imagining that they are bulging? The dolly is hardly four inches high. Probably she used some makeshift ramp to push the box onto the dolly. The engine sound of Tony's Mercedes startles Ben. Isabella parks next to him.

"This is why I need a man." She opens the rear door, points to the back seat. "That's where it needs to go."

He squats and puts both his arms around the box, tests the weight. When he gives it all he has, he is able to put an inch of air between the box and the dolly, for a second.

"Gee, Isabella. You got rocks in there?"

"Just books."

"So that's why they say the law will come down on you like a ton of bricks."

She laughs, but it doesn't sound real. "Come on, big guy. You can do it!"

With Isabella helping to raise the opposite side, Ben can get his right knee below the box. A bolt of white pain shoots up his spine as he tries to straighten his back. Standing half upright and clutching the box, he staggers two steps and crams it into the back seat.

Isabella is clapping. "I knew you could do it!" She cups his biceps. "Wow! Thanks soooo much."

"My pleasure." Ben gasps.

Isabella checks her watch. "Better get going. My friend's expecting me. Late night study session. Plus, she wants her car back. She let me test-drive it."

Right, Isabella. Suddenly she stands on tiptoe, kisses him on the cheek.

"We'll have to get together soon, catch up."

Before he can say a word, she is behind the wheel of the Mercedes. As it pulls away, she blows him another kiss.

Ben waits for the Benz to turn left on the street, then runs to his Firebird. The gate is still up. He is in the street thirty seconds after Isabella. It is deserted, but he can imagine where she's headed. He turns left, right, left, and there's Tony's Mercedes, idling at the traffic lights.

Just then they switch to green, and it accelerates onto the 405-South. Ben stays a hundred yards behind. He is not worried. She won't recognize his headlights. He lets down the window. The air dries the sweat on his forehead. He really needs to get the AC fixed. He's been forgetting that for months.

The Benz heads south at a steady seventy. Don't speed, Isabella, you don't want to get pulled over, do you? They pick up the 10-West, drive through Santa Monica. She better have a plan. Onto the Pacific Coast Highway. Through Malibu. The houses fall away, the traffic thins out. Suddenly they're the only two cars on the road.

The moon is turning the Pacific into an ocean of mercury. In the distance the pyramidal shape of Point Mugu juts into the sky. Maybe Isabella wants to be unobserved when she pulls over. Ben drops back and after the Mercedes has disappeared around a bend kills his lights.

A minute later Isabella's taillights veer to the right onto a parking lot for hikes into the Santa Monica Mountains. Ben turns his lights back on, accelerates, and drives past the parking lot at sixty-five. A hundred yards further north he pulls over on the side of the road.

He gets out. He tries not to run. He knows what he'll be seeing. When he crouches down behind a eucalyptus tree and peers onto the parking lot his expectations are not disappointed: Mercedes, both rear doors open; Isabella sitting sideways, holding tight to the headrests of the driver's seat and of the backseat, pushing the box out with her legs. Getting herself deeper into trouble. The box emerges through the door, hangs on the edge of the seat, strikes the ground with a thud.

Isabella continues to push until the box is not blocking the door anymore and she can yank it shut. She emerges from the backseat, slams the other door, gets into the driver's seat. Ben ducks. The Benz comes to a halt ten yards away.

Isabella eyes the PCH in both directions, then turns left. Back to LA. With his eyes Ben follows the taillights until they vanish behind a bend. Shouldn't be difficult to ditch the car. Park it in Watts, take a cab home. Tony's Mercedes will have disappeared by tomorrow.

Ben crosses the parking lot. He takes his pen knife from his pocket and cuts a hole into one of the sides of the box unsecured by the tape. Then he takes off his shirt, wraps it around his hand, and tears away the cardboard. The body is lying on its back, folded into the narrow space like an outsized foetus. The head is covered with a plastic bag. Keeps the blood from seeping through the cardboard. Ben removes the bag with the end of a eucalyptus branch.

Tony's skin has lost its golden gloss and shines like marble. Where his right eye used to be there is now a darkish mass. That's where the bullet went in.

"What a comeuppance, huh, Tony? Underestimated her, didn't you?"

Ben chews on his lower lip. She thought this was her only way out. Too bad it'll ruin her. In the morning some nature lover will stumble across this box. The cops will ID Tony, get his phone record. A couple of hours later they'll be knocking at Isabella's door. She'll never last through a grilling. Blood residue in her apartment. They'll nail her.

Unless she gets some help! The body will have to go. No body, no case. But if someone reports this sonofabitch missing, the cops will nonetheless show up – first with some questions, then with a search warrant....

Isabella needs some instruction in the law enforcement business. Someone to tell her she's got to burn those clothes, get rid of her carpets, take Lysol to the hardwood floor. Better yet, tear it out, wallpaper the room – Luminol is incredibly sensitive. She needs Ben Chalmer! He'll be the only one who knows her secret. Catching up won't be all. She won't refuse him anymore. Ever!

Walking back to his station wagon, Ben uses the eucalyptus branch to remove the tire marks of the Mercedes from the dust.

He drives the Firebird into the parking lot, stops beside the box. In the back he's got a shovel he dumped there last October after clearing out his mother's garden shed. (She always said she'd pass away in the fall.) He needs to work fast. It will begin to get light around five. Soon after surfers will show up. Ben checks his watch: he's got three and a half hours. Doable.

He presses the shovel under his arm, but the moment he grabs Tony's feet the shovel falls to the ground. Ben pushes the handle down Tony's pants and secures it by tightening the dead man's belt, then sets to dragging the body up a hill into the bushes. Soon sweat is pouring off him. He'll have hell to pay for this tomorrow. It's all worth it! After a hundred yards he passes a limestone boulder the size of a house. Behind it, he comes across a patch of soft, dry soil. Good enough.

But a rush-job won't do. Better play this safe. Buried bodies are found sometimes. A dog sniffing around, digging, barking his lungs out until someone becomes suspicious. Can't rule that out. Can't rule out either that they'll be able to ID the body. All it takes is a hair with its root still attached, which they'll get from a brush in Tony's apartment if he's reported missing and keep on file. Two DNA tests – bam! Then again, maybe no one will report him missing. Maybe everyone will be glad the bastard's disappeared. Can't rule out good luck. Worth making sure they'll have nothing to go on if that dog really comes sniffing.

Ben frisks the body. Gee, the girl's so guileless she never even went through the clothes. He pockets Tony's wallet and cell phone, then extracts the shovel and places its tip on Tony's mouth.

Ben's eyes are closed during the crunching downward movements that eliminate dental records as a means of identification. He shifts the shovel to the nose, to the left cheekbone, to the right. There the shovel slips and with a rich wet sound slices off a chunk of flesh. Ben stumbles, rights himself and glances sideways at Tony's face. It is a featureless oval, blotched grey and black. Reconstruction impossible. It will do.

Aren't you forgetting something?

Ben stares at the hands. The lump in his stomach grows to the size of a bowling ball.

You never know when that dog's going to show up, do you? Better finish what you started.

Fingers shaking, he pulls out his penknife again. A Swiss Army knife, with all the gadgets. He opens the saw, kneels down.

Blood oozes from Tony's wrist like black syrup. A sickly sweet and sour smell fills the air. But it is the grating noise of the metal chewing its way through the bone that makes Ben shudder. A final tear through flesh and skin, then Tony's left hand lies severed in the dirt.

Ben stares at the sky, fighting an impulse to throw up. He'll burn the hands somewhere else, together with the box and the plastic bag.

By the time he is halfway through Tony's right wrist Ben has trouble holding the knife. It has become coated with half-coagulated blood. A raging urge to scream is pounding the inside of his body. Tears are running down his cheeks. He needs to finish this – fast!

You're losing it, losing it....

He readjusts his grip, forces his gaze downward. His field of vision shrinks to his knee pinioning Tony's arm to the ground, left hand securing the dead man's fingers, right fist with metallic extension moving back and forth across Tony's wrist with jerky, ripping movements.

"Drop the knife, put up your hands, step away from the body! Now!"

Ben spins around on his knees. A flashlight blinds him.

"Stand up!"

Handcuffs click. A cop reads him his rights.

"Jeez!" says another cop. "Talk about catching someone red-handed."

They march Ben down to the parking lot where two police cruisers have pulled up next to the box and his Firebird. A third cop is standing beside it. He's holding an evidence bag. Inside the bag is a gun, with a silencer attached.

"Look what I found in his car."

Ben remembers that he left the window open.

You should've gotten that AC fixed.

"Who called it in?"

"Some woman apparently. Reported a suspicious looking guy walking along the PCH. Sounded like a waste of time, but what do you know." The cop laughs.

Ben's knees buckle as a hand presses on his head to make him sit down in the backseat of the cruiser.

Isabella! Why?! How could she?! He was helping her! She owes him!