37.
The MGD bottle slipped from my fingers and crashed to my cement balcony. Foam erupted among the broken glass shards.
Shit.
I considered grabbing another beer from the twenty-four pack at my feet, then decided to give it a rest for the night. Instead, I began drunkenly counting the empty glass bottles standing like sentries along the tabletop, lost count, started over, lost count again, then decided that I had drunk a shit-load of beer tonight.
I had murders, child molesters, broken arms, dead cats, suicides and death threats on my mind. And now perhaps new information about my mother. Enough to drive any man to drink. But then again I never needed much reason to drink.
Cindy was with her sister-in-law tonight, Francine. They got together once every other week and gossiped about their men, football and the nature of God in society since Francine was a religious studies instructor at Calabasas Junior College near San Diego.
That left me alone tonight. Just me and my beer.
I automatically reached down for another beer. Stopped halfway. Put my hands in my lap, and laced my fingers together.
Good boy.
The night was cool; a soft breeze swept over my balcony. Traffic was thick on PCH. I could smell exhaust and grilling hamburgers.
On its own accord, my hand reached down for another bottle. I stopped it just as it brushed a cold bottle cap.
The bone had snapped loud enough for birds to erupt in surprise.
My knuckles still ached from the beating I gave Peterson. The assemblyman's solo vehicle accident had made the local papers. Neither I nor Sanchez were mentioned. After the beating, we had dragged Peterson's limp body down the incline and stowed him in the driver's seat. I placed a call via his cell phone to 911, pretending to be Peterson, gasping for pain. Hell of a performance. Sanchez was amused, although I noted he looked a little sick and pale.
A horn honked from below, along Main Street, followed by a short outburst of obscenities.
I would have killed Peterson if Sanchez hadn't pulled me off him.
And, Lord help me, I was enjoying every minute of it.
I reached down and grabbed another beer. This time there was no stopping my hand. I twisted off the cap and drank from it. And it was good, so very, very good.
38.
"How's the case going?" asked Cindy.
She had just sat down in front of me at the Trocadero, a Mexican place across the street from UCI. She was wearing a casual business suit, and her hair was down. She looked three years my junior, rather than the other way around. Her lipstick was bright red, which was good since I was color blind. Seriously. She wore the bright red for me.
"Other than the fact that I have no idea who killed Amanda, just swell."
The waiter took our drink orders. An apple martini for Cindy and Coke for me.
"I called you last night," she said. "Twice."
"I know," I said, "and I called you this morning when I got the messages."
She let her unspoken question hang in the air: so why didn't you pick up? I let it hang in the air as well. I still felt like shit from the night before. I had drunk the entire case. A new record for me.
"Are you feeling well?" she asked.
"Just great."
"Bullshit. Your eyes are red and you look pale." She opened her purse and removed the local edition of the Orange County Register. "Amanda Peterson's father was in an accident. A bad accident. A broken arm. Three broken ribs. A broken collar bone. And a broken jaw. Jesus Christ, Jim."
"Like they said, a bad accident."
"It was no accident."
"No," I said, looking at her. "It wasn't; it was a methodical beating that I gave to a son-of-a-bitch to reinforce the idea that he is to never, ever touch his family inappropriately again. The way I see it, he got off easy. His wounds will heal. The damage he inflicted may never heal."
"Did your point hit home?" There might have been sarcasm in her voice.
"So far he's sticking to the accident story. So he's scared. As he should be."
The waiter came around and took our order. Salmon for Cindy and two Super Mex chicken burritos for me, extra guacamole and sour cream.
"You're going to kill yourself before your tryouts," said Cindy. More sarcasm?
"I'm still about seven pounds from my target weight."
"Isn't there a healthier way to gain weight?"
"Is that an oxymoron?"
"I'm serious, Jim. I'm concerned about you. About us."
She wouldn't look me in the eye, and sipped her martini faster than normal. Her free hand played with the napkin, repeatedly wadding it and smoothing it out.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I can't keep doing this."
"You mean strangling your napkin?"
"No. I mean us."
I let the air out of my lungs. We had had this conversation before.
"Last time, I convinced you to stay," I said. "Talked until I was blue in the face. Do you remember what I told you I would do if you did this to me again?"
"Yes," she said. "You said you wouldn't try to stop me the next time."
"Yes."
The napkin was wasted, rendered perfectly useless. She pushed it aside and drank deeply from her martini. So deeply, in fact, that she finished it. I said nothing. There was nothing for me to say. I was not going to keep having this conversation with her. I loved Cindy with all of my heart, but I was not going to make her do something she did not want to do.
The waiter saw her empty glass and came over.
"Another?" he asked.
"Yes, please."
She still hadn't looked me in the eye. I studied her closely. She was behaving very un-Cindy like. Small, jerky movements as she tapped on the now empty cardboard coaster. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
I said nothing.
"Jesus Christ, Jim, you beat the unholy shit out of another human being. Your life has been threatened by a hired killer. A dead cat shows up in your office. Cut in fucking two. And now you're drinking again. It's not that you're drinking, really. It's that you are getting drunk, and doing it in secret, which makes it dirty and dangerous and all-consuming. And, ultimately, sad. Very, very sad."
I said nothing.
"You didn't answer the phone last night because you were passed out."
Her second apple martini came, followed by a second waiter bearing our food. The food was placed before us; it went ignored.
"And now you're trying out for the Chargers in a few weeks. What if you make the team? I would never see you. I know that's selfish of me, but it's true. You would throw your whole life into it, like you do everything else, and the NFL would own your heart and soul. Would there be any room left for me?"
She drank her martini. Her eyes were wet. Hands shaking. She spilled some of the drink, and used the shredded napkin to clean up. The napkin only managed to smear the liquid.
"Christ, aren't you going to say anything?"
I said nothing.
"And I love you so much, you big sonofabitch. You worked your way deep into my heart like a damn thorn. A thorn that hurts, but has so much love to give."
I didn't like the analogy, but said nothing.
"I worry so much about you. But you can take care of yourself. I've seen it. And you have Sanchez and your father to help you. The three of you are an amazingly formidable force. And you are so brutal and deadly, but moral and just, and so fucking hilarious. Shit."
She stopped talking and picked at her salmon. She even went as far as to bring up a forkful, but then got distracted by her own thoughts, and set it down again.
"You are a wonderful man, but you fuck me up."
She started crying. She brought her hands to her face, and the tears leaked from under her palms. I resisted the strong urge to reach out to her. She needed to make a decision. I was not going to influence her decision in any way. I held on to that thought, no matter how hard it was for me to do so.
"Are you just going to sit there and let me cry?"
I said nothing, and didn't move, although my hand flinched.
"I think I need to leave," she said.
She did, getting up quickly and dashing through the dark restaurant. I watched her go, and when she was gone I set aside my Coke and signaled the waiter.
I was going to need something a little stronger.
39.
It was almost 1:00 a.m. when I came home that night.
With a twelve-pack of MGD in hand, I took the stairs two at a time, climbing my way to the fifth floor, where my apartment and drinking sanctuary awaited. I had made it a point recently to always take the stairs, to augment my training. I figured every little bit helped.
I was regretting that decision now. Especially at this hour, and what had happened over dinner.
Maybe I should have said something to her, I thought.
But I was determined not to sway her decision. She needed to decide for herself whether or not she wanted me in her life. Me prostrating myself, switching into used car salesman mode, and listing my strengths and perks did no one any good. It debased me on one level, and clouded her thinking on another.
Cindy and I had been seeing each other steadily since my senior year in college. At the time, she was in the master's program at UCLA. I had met her through a teammate of mine, her brother Rob. Cindy had come from a football family, and although she made no real effort to understand the sport, she at least understood the men who played it, and we were a good match. She went on to get her doctoral in anthropology, her expertise the anthropology of world religions. Turns out, there's a lot of world religions out there, and so she keeps fairly busy writing papers and what-nots. She's only recently been tenured at UCI, which is great because now she really has to royally screw up to be fired. Luckily, she rarely screws up.
After my injury, she had been so supportive during those years of rehabilitation. She had also been supportive of the idea of me following in the footsteps of my father, although I had sworn long ago to never be a detective. I mean, I was destined for a long and rewarding career in football, right? Say ten years in the NFL, another ten in broadcasting, and finish things up as an NFL coach. That had been the plan.
Things change.
Especially when you're hit by a cheap chop block, and you hear the sound of your bones fracturing in so many places that you still have nightmares over it. It was only later, after my drinking had started, that I found amusement in the fact that the fracturing of my leg had sounded like the popping of popcorn.
I was now on the fifth floor. I was not winded, but there was a healthy burn in my legs. And as I stepped through the stairwell door, I saw a man smoking a cigarette five feet away. He was waiting by the elevator door, and there was a pistol hanging loosely by his side. He did not see me.
It was Fuck Nut.
40.
I eased the stairwell door shut, removed the Browning from my shoulder holster and set down the beer. This wing of the fifth floor is reserved for four apartment suites. The elevator lets you out under a veranda outdoors. From there one can choose four different routes: immediate right or left, or straight ahead and then right or left. My apartment was straight ahead and then right. The whole area is flooded with outdoor lighting.
He had been leaning behind a stucco pillar, just feet from the elevator, gun hanging idly by his side, blowing smoke from his cigarette straight into the air. I could smell the smoke.
I had the element of surprise, of course, being that he did not expect anyone in their right mind to walk up five flights of stairs, especially someone with a bum leg. And if Fuck Nut was a professional killer, as I assumed him to be, he had done his research on me; he knew about the bum leg. He was confident I would take the elevator. He did not realize I was a hell of an example of human perseverance in the face of tragedy.
In the least he should have positioned himself to see the stairs and elevator.
Expect the unexpected, as my father would say.
I eased open the door and raised the Browning.
But he was no longer standing behind the pillar. No, he was now waiting off to the side of the elevator. His cigarette, tossed aside, was glowing ten feet away, half finished.
Because the elevator door was about to open.
Shit.
He raised his own weapon. In the glow of the outdoor lights I could see he had a silencer on the end of his pistol. A true killer.
The doors slid open.
Yellow light from the elevator washed across the veranda, and out stepped my Indian neighbor from across the way. My neighbor who had told me his name seven or eight times but I could never remember it. Poorjafar? I always felt like crap asking him to pronounce his name again, so we both accepted the fact that he was known as "Hey!" And I was known as "Jeemmy!" Normally, Jeemmy is an unacceptable variant of my name, but I let it slide in this case.
The man who might be Poorjafar was a big guy who lifted weights, and he stepped confidently out of the elevator, swirling his key ring on his finger and whistling. I didn't recognize the song, but it had a sort of Bollywood feel to it. And, for effect, Poorjafar stopped, did a little dance, turned around -
And saw the hitman.
"Oh, shit," said Poorjafar, stepping back, startled.
Fuck Nut said nothing.
"Are you waiting for someone?" asked my neighbor.
"You could say that," said the hitman.
I knew something about assassins. They didn't like witnesses. They saw themselves as living outside the real world; in fact it was a fantasy world of their construct, where they were king and God, pronouncing life and death on mere mortals.
The killer had just pronounced death on Poorjafar.
There would be no witnesses tonight, if the killer had his way.
I stepped out of the stairwell, losing my element of surprise, my own gun hidden behind my back. "He's waiting for me," I said.
Poorjafar turned. "Jeemmy! How you doing, man?"
"Hey...hey."
Poorjafar pointed at the man in the shadows. "This is a friend of yours?"
The killer didn't move, but his eyes wanted to bug out of his skull. He shifted uneasily, but kept his gun out of sight. I kept my eyes on him.
"He's a recent acquaintance," I said.
"Well, your acquaintance scared the shit out of me."
"Yeah, he likes to do that. Of course, it doesn't help that he's such an ugly bastard." I gave a big, fake hearty laugh. The killer didn't laugh. "Probably scared the shit out of his own mother when he was born."
Poorjafar laughed, and I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
"Shit, Jeemmy. That was a low blow. He's a friend, man."
"No, I'm not," said the man. "I'm very much not his friend."
And he stepped sideways, keeping his hand behind his back, and stepped into the elevator. He pressed a button; the door closed. He pointed a finger at me and fired a blank bullet. And he was gone. I went back for my beer, and Poorjafar danced and whistled his way into his apartment.