Not when it's rotten from the inside.
Lizard Tongue by Rosa Lee Delgado
 |
 |
Martina didn’t
want to go. Everyone crowding around, asking stupid questions. But what would
people think if she stayed away?
She was almost too
late, thanks to her brother Manny who called just as she was leaving. He wanted
to tell her about a woman he met who kept darting her tongue in and out like a
lizard. When he looked at her, he said, all he could think about was this cop
with a forked tongue in an old Cheech and Chong movie.
Manny was making her
laugh like he always did, but she was running late, so she said she’d call back
later.
By the time she found
the place and went inside, they were already telling the guy if he had anything
to say, he should say it now. She thought he’d say he was sorry, or maybe
nothing, but no, he wanted to tell his side of the story again.
He said he’d been hired to paint the inside
of a house overlooking the bay, a big split-level. At first, nothing seemed unusual,
but then the wife, Martina, began following him around while he was working,
wearing a little wrap-around robe, talking to him like they were old friends,
bringing him sandwiches, things like that. After a couple of days, she started
telling him about her personal life, like how her husband Victor was a mean
bastard who was too busy making money to pay attention to her, and how she
missed having a man who would treat her right.
When he finished the job and was about to
leave, Martina asked him to come back later that night. He should park his
truck up the street so the neighbors wouldn’t notice, then come in through the lower-level
patio door, which would be unlocked. She said they wouldn’t have to worry about
Victor because he was out of town.
She was too good-looking to resist, he
said, so he came back, and then again the night after that. What happened was
different from anything he’d ever experienced before, and it wasn’t just the
sex either, he said. It was like they were made for each other. By the end of
the second night, he’d fallen for her, hard. When she said Victor would be gone
for only one more night and it might be their last chance to see each other for
a while, he’d promised he’d be back.
When he came through the patio door the
next night, he said, there was this man, who turned out to be Victor, lying in
a pool of blood with a bullet hole in the back of his head. At first he froze,
but then started running through the house, looking for Martina. When he
couldn’t find her, he ran to his pickup and took off. This was his second
mistake, he said. His first one was taking the bait to begin with.
He said it wasn’t two hours before the
police showed up at his place with a search warrant. When they found Victor’s gun
under a tarp in the back of his pickup, they zeroed in on him. Nothing
complicated, they said, just a burglary that went wrong. The husband heard
something and came downstairs with his .38, only to have it taken away and used
on him. Finding the murder weapon in the pickup was all they needed, even if it
didn’t have any fingerprints on it.
His third mistake, he said, was the one that
really finished him. When they first questioned him, he denied being there that
night. But when they found Victor’s blood on the bottom of his shoes, he had to
admit he’d lied. After that, nobody believed a word he said, except maybe his
mother.
What puzzled him for the longest time was how
Victor’s gun turned up in the back of his pickup. Now he understands, he said.
You see, Victor must have been downstairs that night, and while he was, Martina
shot him with his own gun when his back was turned. Afterwards, she went
upstairs with the gun and waited. As soon as she heard the lower patio door
slide open, she slipped out the front door and ran to a neighbor’s house crying
for help.
But here’s the clever part, he said. Before
she banged on the neighbor’s door, she ran to his pickup and planted the gun,
which she’d already wiped clean. In other words, he’s been framed, and the real
killer is right here, watching.
That’s when the
man who was in there with him said we’ve heard enough, and pulled the curtain
closed. After a few minutes, someone came in and told Martina and the others
that it was over.
Martina had heard the
story before, and wondered why he bothered to keep telling it. Like he said,
nobody believed him.
She remained seated
for a while, thinking about the painter. She’d enjoyed having him around, letting
him try to please her. Once he’d even called her a raven-haired beauty, which she’d
liked. He didn’t know how to look out for himself, that was obvious, but he
wasn’t a bad guy.
You want a bad guy, she thought, take Victor. After using her for fifteen years, he tells her he
wants out. So he can breathe, he said. What bullshit. He had a girlfriend, that’s
all, probably someone younger.
She would have told
him to go ahead and file, but she knew Victor was very good at hiding money.
He’d make it look like they were almost broke, and then she’d be lucky to get
anything.
She also knew something
Victor didn’t know. Everything goes to her if he drops dead while they’re still
married. That’s the way it works, if you don’t have a will or any children. Pretty careless of Victor, she thought, not to think of this.
