The Reckless

by David Putnam

  I grabbed his arm. “What’s going on?”

  He jerked away. “Nothing. This is all about nothing. That’s the problem. And it’s none of his damn business.”

  Ned followed Wicks into his office that used to belong to the grocery manager and closed the door. The muffled yelling started right away and reverberated off the glass-paneled walls. Not just Wicks either. Ned yelled back, used his arms in wild gestures and even pointed at Wicks in an accusatory manner. What the hell was Ned into? No way should he be yelling at Wicks. Wicks wouldn’t put up with it.

  The office door flew open and banged the wall as Ned stormed out.

  Wicks exited his office. “Detective, don’t you dare walk away from me. Get back here.”

  At the door that led outside, Ned turned and flipped Wicks the bird. He disappeared as the door eased closed in a flash of daylight.

  Wicks came toward me, still breathing faster than normal.

  “Boss, what’s goin’ on with Ned?”

  No way did I want Ned launched from the team. He’d only just been assigned there and I’d missed him. Didn’t know how much, until he showed up.

  Wicks finally quit watching the door and looked at me. “What? Oh, I can’t. I’d fill you in, but it’s personal and not work-related, so I can’t. If human resources found out, they’d come down on me with both feet. But if he doesn’t pull his head out of his ass, it’s going to turn into work-related. After he cools down, have a talk with him, would you?”

  “Sure, but if I don’t know what it’s about, how am I going to talk to him?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Bruno. I’m not in the mood. He’s the one who’s going to have to tell you.”

  “Okay. You’re not going to launch him from the team, are you?”

  “No. Hell no. You’re on my team, you’re part of the family. He stays until the department says otherwise. And if he doesn’t correct his behavior and his lack of respect, I’ll just put him on the Wicks get-happy program. But if he doesn’t pull his head out of his ass pronto, it won’t be up to me. Come in my office. Let’s talk.”

  “My turn in the barrel?”

  “Quit your whining and take a seat.”

  I followed him in and sat down in the chair in front of his desk. He sat in his own chair, put his gray snakeskin cowboy boot up on the desk, and pulled a pint bottle of Old Granddad whiskey from a drawer. He unscrewed the top and offered the bottle. He knew I didn’t drink the hard stuff. “No thanks.”

  He took a slug, screwed the cap back on, dropped the bottle in the drawer, and shoved it closed.

  “How’s the thing with Duarte going?” I asked.

  It wasn’t like Wicks to come off a manhunt, especially one with such a high-profile target.

  He waved his hand. “We’re about five hours behind that asshole. We just hit a house, and they said he was there five hours ago. We’d have him in pocket now, but everyone’s scared to death of this prick, and won’t volunteer any information. We gotta do a lot more squeezin’ than we normally do. We could really use you on this one, Bruno. If you and I were runnin’ and gunnin’ on this one, we’d already have him on a slab. But I think we’ll get him by morning, tomorrow night latest.”

  “About yesterday, boss.”

  “Damn good job, grappling up that guy like that. Keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”

  “Oh, that’s not exactly what I thought you were going to say. I thought you called me in to talk about the poor relations with the FBI? I didn’t mean to run my mouth like that.”

  He put on half a smile, got up, came around, and sat on the corner of the desk. “I just told you, grabbing that bank robber was great. That’s exactly what I expect from you. And yesterday, I might’ve told you to maybe power it down a little, but not now, not today. I want you to stick it to ’em and do it with my blessings.” He held up his hand. “But within reason. Don’t go capping any of those Feebies with friendly fire.” He smiled more broadly. “Unless you think you can get away with it.”

  I didn’t return his smile. This sounded too ominous.

  His expression shifted to grim. “I’m real sorry about this, Bruno. I am. I picked you special for this job, thinking it was something entirely different, when it’s not even close. I’ll owe you big once it’s done.”

  He might’ve had more than one snort before the meeting. It’s hard to tell with Wicks. He could hold his liquor and still shoot with a deadeye.

  “I’m not following you. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “Ah, hell. I handed you a shit sandwich and I can’t see any way around it. We’re gonna have to see it through and take a big bite.”

  “Explain.”

  He nodded. “I thought this was going to be a great gig; all the overtime we wanted, money, resources, deputy US Marshal status. I mean, it was too good to be true, and I should’ve known right off that it wasn’t any good. Not with the FBI involved.”

  That sinking feeling came on in earnest. “And?”

  “They boxed us. And like some kind of dope, I let it happen.”

  I waited. He’d tell it at his own speed. Didn’t matter how much I prodded. He looked back over his shoulder at the closed desk drawer, for his friend Old Granddad, who beckoned to him.

  “I found out early this morning,” he said, “what’s really goin’ down. What they really want our team to do. I tried to get us out of it, but the Deputy Chief said we signed an MOU and we’ll look like shit if we try to back out of it now. He said we’ll just have to go easy on this one.”

  “Robby, what’s going on?” I never called him by his first name, and in the two years I’d worked with him, I’d never seen him this concerned over any other operation.

  “This whole bank robbery team they put together with our violent crime team folded in is nothing more than a front, a way for them to cover their own asses. And, at the same time, hang us out to take the fall. They’re going to give you a case that we never would have touched. They want us to handle it because it has too much potential to blow up in their faces, a real public relations nightmare. In fact, I don’t see us walking away from it with anything less than a black eye and probably a lot worse.”

  “Does this have to do with the Rollin’ Sixties Crip gang?”

  “How in the hell did you figure that out?”

  I shrugged. “That’s all I know. If they want us to handle this case you’re describing, then why did they give us that case yesterday and another real stinker today?”

  “My guess is they wanted you to fail on both, so when they gave you this stinker with the Rollin’ Sixties, they could say, ‘See, those buffoons with the Sheriff’s Department really don’t know what the hell they’re doing, and that’s why they screwed the pooch on this one.’”

  He chuckled. “And then yesterday, you take the guy down in a couple of hours. That couldn’t have been a sweeter deal. You really rubbed their noses in it. Man, you have no idea how much that tickles me.”

  “So now they gave me a case that’s impossible to solve, and you’re telling me this is all part of the same plan?”

  “They want you to roll over and play dead. They want you to knuckle under, and say it’s impossible, just before they give you this other one, with the kids involved.”

  “Kids? No, no, no. Not kids. Ah, shit.”

   CHAPTER NINETEEN

  TEN THIRTY AT night I sat at the kitchen table in our house on Nord, going over the Thomas Guide map book, plotting out the next day’s action plan. All the houses we’d need to check, going door to door in the summer heat and in one of the most dangerous parts in South Central Los Angles. No way did I think I’d come up with the Bogart Bandit. Not going at it like this. Not with the information I had to work with. We had no other options left but to go door to door. We had to go back over the same territory the FBI already covered, hoping they missed something. They did not have a good reputation for talking to people of the street—my one and only advantage. A small one. And acco
rding to Wicks, the whole thing was nothing more than a study in futility. But I wanted to kick something. Maybe even an FBI agent named Jim Turner, kick a lung out of him. How could Chelsea—

  Didn’t matter.

  This case was only a stall until they gave us the real one: the one that involved kids. That one I didn’t want to think about until I had to.

  The only illumination in the house, a low-watt hanging light over the dining room table, encapsulated my entire world. The front door stood open, to let in what little breeze the summer night would allow. Dad had gone to bed at nine. He got up early every day to work his postal route. He’d been a neighborhood postman for the last twenty years. He never missed a day calling in sick and rarely took vacation. I didn’t see him ever retiring from the job. He thought it a great honor to serve the public. From my first memories as a child, he’d always been a postman.

  Dad came down the hall and out of the darkness, carrying Olivia, who fussed a little. Dad wore sleep on his face like a mask. “I’m going to get her some warm milk, see if I can get her back to sleep.”

  “Here, give her to me. You go back to bed.”

  “No, I’m okay. I’m up now.”

  He handed me my daughter. She sat on my lap facing me, smiling. “Hi, Pop. You wanna play dance, dance?” She patted my face and my world shifted on its axis. All the problems melted away. What a blessing—daughters. I could only smile and bounce her. “Not right now, baby. Tomorrow for sure, okay? I promise.”

  But something niggled at my brain. What was it? I played back what had just happened, and realized what it was. The way Dad had held Olivia when he came in, one arm under her legs, the other under her shoulders. That and her being a vulnerable little girl had suddenly caused me to flash on an incident from the past. I’d suppressed it for the better part of thirteen or fourteen years. Instead, I sat back in the chair as the memory rolled back onto me, thick and heavy and uncontrolled. I couldn’t figure out why I’d not thought of it until that moment. I wanted to think it was the fatigue, the mess of problems that swirled around in my head. But that wasn’t it at all. The huge responsibility Olivia represented had brought on the ugly memory.

  * * *

  Angry people in the Watts riot of 1965 burned to the ground all the big grocery stores in South Central Los Angeles. Dad called it the Watts Rebellion. The stores never came back, and we had to make the trek out of our neighborhood to a large grocery to get whatever the corner markets didn’t carry. We usually designated the Sunday after payday for the event. In the Mayfair parking lot, Dad stopped to wait where a man was loading his car with groceries by himself while he tried to supervise two little girls in frilly dresses, with socks and black patent leather shoes, five and six years old. I was only twelve at the time and couldn’t really tell their ages, for sure. We waited for his parking spot. He closed the tailgate to the station wagon and ushered the two girls into the back seat. He got into the front seat and tinkered with something, maybe rectifying his checkbook, or who knew what. Then he started the car … just as the back door on the far side of the station wagon opened, and the little blond head of one of the little girls bobbed as she started to get out. Maybe she’d dropped her doll getting in. Who knew how a child’s mind worked? Dad muttered, “Oh, dear Lord.” He shoved our car into park and opened his door. “Hey. Hey. Wait,” he yelled at the man in the station wagon.

  I got out, too.

  The man didn’t hear and backed up.

  A horrible scream came from the far side of the car. The man braked hard. The car lurched to a stop. The man looked around, frantic, and then pulled the car forward. He got out and ran, with us, to the far side of the car. I didn’t want to look, but couldn’t help myself. The man’s daughter lay on the ground, in her pink frilly dress, with the rear tire resting on her bare legs. She slapped and clawed at the tire, as she gave a long low keen, a sound that chilled me to the bone. The man instantly turned hysterical. He yelled, “Oh my God, what’ve I done? Baby. Baby. Hold on. Hold on.” He wasn’t thinking straight, and with every passing second, pure panic continued to rise within him and took control. He grabbed the fender above the wheel well and tried to lift the car off his child. He howled and lifted, and howled some more. This all happened in a second or two.

  Dad grabbed the white man, swung him around, and slapped him, hard. “Get in your car and back up. You hear me? Back up your car.” Dad shook him. The man’s wild-eyed panic cooled, some. He nodded and ran around his car. The little girl had stopped her keening and had lain back, her eyes closed. Dad knelt down next to her, picked up her shoulders, and held her. “Easy now.” Dad yelled at the man, then to the little girl in his arms, “It’s going to be okay, sweetie. You’re going to be okay.”

  The panicked man hit the gas, and the tire on the girl’s legs spun before it drove off of them. Dad pulled the girl out from under the car, muttering, “The damn fool. It’s okay, sweetie, I got you now. It’s all over.” He carried her with one arm under her damaged legs, his other behind her shoulders as he hurried away. I followed. He slowed and turned to hand her to me. I held up my hands. He said, “Okay, then you’re driving. Get in our car, behind the wheel.”

  “But I—”

  “Don’t back-talk me. Not right now, Son. Just do what I say, please.”

  The man and his other daughter ran to catch up. Dad didn’t slow. “She going into shock. We need to get her to the hospital, right now. There’s one real close.”

  The man nodded, his face pale, his eyes not focused enough to do anything but follow orders. He and his other daughter got in the back seat and slammed the door. Dad got in the front seat, and I got in behind the wheel, scared to death. I’d never driven before except when I was a kid on Dad’s lap.

  Dad held the wounded little girl in his lap, her white legs deformed and black in places, from the tire spinning. Dad calmly said, “Bruno, move your seat up until you can reach the peddles.”

  I did.

  “That’s good. Now you’ve seen me drive many times. You can do this. We have to hurry, Son. Foot on the brake.” He pulled the gearshift down into drive. “Now foot off the brake and on the accelerator.”

  In a trance, I did exactly what he said. “Good. Good, you’re doing fine. Speed up a little and head over that way, toward the street. Come on, let’s move it. Let’s move.”

  Behind me, the sister leaned up to my ear. “Is my sister, Kelly, going to be okay?”

  I couldn’t answer. I was driving. I pulled out onto the street too soon, misjudging the speed of the approaching car. It swerved around us, and the driver laid on the horn.

  “Faster, Son. You’re going to have to go faster. You’re doing fine. We only have ten blocks to go, that’s all.” He brought his foot over and put it on top of mine, and pushed down. The car lurched forward.

  One block passed, then another.

  “There. There’s a police officer,” Dad said. “Honk the horn. Honk.”

  Dad had always taught me to stay away from the police whenever possible, that sometimes the police did not treat blacks appropriately. That’s all he’d say about it. My entire life, I’d dodged them, took the long way around, whenever I came upon them. Now, he wanted me to get their attention while I was committing a crime.

  I did as he asked and pushed on the horn. Beep. Beep.

  “No, lay on it, and don’t let off.” We zipped by the cop on his motorcycle going in the same direction, as I laid on the horn. “Now pull over,” Dad said as he put his foot on the brake pedal. “That’s it. That’s it, you’re doing just fine.” We came to a complete stop not even close to the curb. The cop put his kickstand down. He started to take off his black gloves, as he sauntered up, too slow, to the driver’s side. He bent down in my window. Sweat ran in my eyes, and my hands shook on the wheel. I couldn’t look right at him but did out of the corner of my eye.

  Dad said, “We have an injured girl here. We’re headed to the hospital. She’s hurt real bad.”

&nbs
p; The cop lifted his sunglasses. He saw the unconscious white girl, with the injured legs, on Dad’s lap. “Sweet baby Jesus.”

  Dad said, “We’re not far from the hospital.”

  The cop looked perplexed, as if he couldn’t decide on a course of action. Dad said, “She’s in shock.”

  The cop’s expression shifted back to professional. He pointed at me. “He’s not old enough to drive.”

  Dad said, “He is today. We’re wasting time.”

  “Follow me.” He ran back, got on his motorcycle, fired it up, and zipped around us with the siren blaring. Dad put his foot down, on top of mine on the accelerator, and we took off.

  * * *

  Back in the kitchen with Dad warming some milk, the memory reminded me that I had to pay attention, all the time, to Olivia. I couldn’t take my eyes off her for one second. That heavy responsibility piled on, with all the other problems that I had to push aside, or go crazy. I cooed to Olivia and bounced her on my lap.

  Looking back on what he did that day, Dad rescuing that little girl, he’d really taken a big chance. That whole situation could’ve—and probably should’ve—turned out horribly different. Dad deserved a medal for it, and no one else even knew about it.

  “Hey, Dad?”

  He looked over at us. “Yes, Son?”

  “You remember that day, in the grocery store parking lot, when that little girl got hurt?”

  “Of course I do. What made you think of that right out of the blue?”

  “I was just wondering if you knew what happened to her?”

  “She’s a doctor up at LCMC—Los Angeles County Medical Center.”

  “What? How? I mean, you never told me that.”

  He just shrugged, picked up a plastic cup, and poured the milk from the pan. He came over and handed it to me. Olivia took it and sipped.

  “So you kept track of her?”

  “Not really.” He sat down on the chair at the table. “Days after it happened, might’ve been several weeks, Joe came and knocked at the door.” He pointed over to the front door. “I recognized him right off. He looked different, though. More put together. He said he just wanted to shake my hand and thank you and me for what we did that day. You were in school.”