The phone rang. When I sat up, I saw the clock. Ten. I caught Mom’s hand as she reached for the phone, gave her a hug, scrambled out the door.
Mom said, “Well, for heaven’s sake.” That’s what she almost always says when something surprises her, when she can’t quite believe how crazy something is. Sometimes late at night when I’m alone and can’t sleep, I curl myself around the little things she used to say, expressions without meaning mostly, except the goodness of her heart. It makes me feel less alone.
When I got back to the apartment Wrex’s complexion had turned the color of the ash on the end of his cigarette, four butts lay crushed out on my doorstep. He clutched a briefcase tightly to his chest. The first thing he wanted to know was where I’d been, but it was clear from his tone of voice he didn’t really want an answer. He just wanted to criticize me for leaving when I wasn’t supposed to.
I opened the door, said, “None of your business where I’ve been.”
“None of my business! You go skipping off with my two hundred dollars, half kill me with worry, and it’s none of my business?”
I gave him a look. A short one. One that said I was in no mood. He set the briefcase on the kitchen table. I reached for it, thought maybe I’d try the lock, see what was inside, but he slapped my hand away. He said for me not to touch anything, just pay attention. I asked why he hit me.
“Don’t do this to me, not now,” he said.
“You hit me and I can’t even ask why?”
“I didn’t hit you.”
“You sure did.”
“I’m not going to waste time arguing about it.”
“You hit me and now you won’t even talk about it?”
“Hey, I’m sorry, I love you with all my heart and soul, but please, babe, have a little mercy here. I’m just trying to get the job done. For a couple minutes don’t say anything, just listen for once, okay? You can yell at me later, but now, we gotta get moving.”
I said, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
Wrex said the briefcase was locked. He didn’t know the combination, I was under no circumstances to try to open it. I was to take the briefcase to the departure-level lobby of the International Terminal, which is on the top tier of the airport, and look for a man in his early forties. The man would be wearing a blue business suit and yellow tie and holding an unlit cigar. I was to go up to the guy and tell him he was in a no-smoking area. The guy would say the cigar wasn’t lit. Then I’d hand him the briefcase, and he’d give me a package in return.
Wrex reached into his jacket for a plain white envelope, handed it to me. I held it up to the light, couldn’t see anything through the paper, asked, “What’s in it?”
“I don’t know, I don’t wanna know, and you don’t wanna know either. Don’t get smart and try to open it.”
He took the briefcase from the kitchen table and pushed me toward the door, because it was already a few minutes past ten-thirty, and I absolutely had to meet the guy at noon, not a minute later, or, Wrex said, the whole deal could blow up in smoke. I grabbed the floppy hat, sunglasses, my camera bag and portfolio. As I loaded the stuff into the car, Wrex made me repeat everything I was supposed to say and do at the airport. Maybe I didn’t have the self-confidence to do well in school, but I’m not stupid and I’m sure as hell smarter than Wrex, so I started changing the story around just to see if he’d notice, giving the guy a blue tie and a yellow suit. Wrex thought I was seriously confused, his expression was so anxious I broke out laughing. He laughed along, sounding sick about it. When I started the engine, he motioned for me to open the window. I did and he said to be careful. Then Wrex kissed me. Judas never kissed so good.
4
My town never amounted to much, just a small town over the hills from L. A. with a main street and a corner grocer and little shops owned by people who live there and a sign at the city limits says the town’s motto: SMALL TOWNS ARE SMILE TOWNS. About a dozen years ago we got surrounded by freeway commuters wanting to escape the city. The commuters made a little town for themselves has nothing to do with us. Doesn’t have a main street. Has mini-malls and supermarkets and fast-food franchises and a fancy shopping center with a cineplex and stores like Hansel & Gretel’s. The freeway runs right next to it. Makes it easier for the commuters to get home in a hurry. Last stoplight before the freeway, I thought about opening the envelope, decided I shouldn’t. I stuffed it in the crevice between the briefcase and the seatback, got on the freeway going south to Los Angeles International Airport.
Lot of girls I knew in high school wanted a commuter’s son for a boyfriend, figured it was how to get to the other side of the freeway. I never knew any commuters except to say hello. Ever since I was little, I always figured I was going to get blue-collar married, move to a rickety tract home, work some kind of retail job days, raise a family nights. Most of the kids I went to school with married early or left town a couple years back. I hung on, not going anywhere, not having any ideas of a real career until I got the job at Hansel & Gretel’s. Taking pictures of babies wasn’t all that bad as far as work went. I didn’t know enough to be humiliated. I needed the job. Nobody ever told me I’d be any good at anything, so I was proud to be a good Gretel. It was a delicate balance, knowing the precise moment to snap the shutter before the little darlings began to drool or whine or wail with such eardrum-splitting ferocity the memory is enough to make me reach for the nearest birth control device. I never dreamed of becoming a real photographer, but it seemed possible that I might succeed assisting other photographers, maybe have my own portrait studio some day. But I needed a lot of money for that, with few prospects of ever making more than just enough to get by.
I pulled the envelope out of the crevice, set it flat on the briefcase. I wasn’t so stupid I didn’t know what was in the envelope. I was giving a locked briefcase to somebody, and how was that somebody going to open it unless the answer was in the envelope? I held it up to the blue sky above the steering wheel, still couldn’t see the writing inside. If I wanted to know what was in the briefcase, I had to figure some way to open the envelope.
I pulled off the freeway, popped the hood, twisted the radiator cap just a notch. A thin jet of steam hissed from the opening. Then I ran the flap of the envelope back and forth across the steam, until the gum holding it down started to dissolve. Did it just to see if it could be done, if I could get away with it. Slipped my fingernail into the seam. The flap lifted easily off the back of the envelope, except for one part where I had to tear it a little.
I went back inside the car, shook out a single sheet of paper. Three numbers were typed on the upper third: 9-1-3. Not a good omen. Numbers one and three together looked like thirteen, add up all three numbers, thirteen again. Gave me some serious thoughts maybe I wasn’t doing the right thing, opening the case. But I didn’t open it much, just a crack to see what was inside. Then I shut the case, started the Honda, and pulled back onto the freeway. I thought about places I could go, places I could hide and still have a good time. Places like Paris, Mexico, South America. Because what I saw in the case was money. Stacks and stacks of what looked like hundred dollar bills. Problem was, I’d never been anywhere, didn’t know anything about Paris or Mexico or South America except they didn’t speak English, and I sure as hell didn’t speak French or Spanish. I had an old boyfriend moved to Bakersfield. Didn’t think I’d want to hide out there. Could be a million bucks on the seat next to me, and I couldn’t think of anyplace to go with it. Goes to prove I’m basically honest, couldn’t imagine really stealing it, didn’t want Wrex on my conscience because if I stole the money they’d probably break his legs or worse.
So I drove. It was already noon. I drove like hell. Didn’t matter how fast I drove, I was half an hour late. I hit the top tier at LAX doing seventy, cut across three lanes of traffic and double-parked near the International Terminal. About six other cars were double-parked ahead of me. I grabbed the briefcase and envelope, stepped out of the car, and you know how sometimes your ear picks
out certain sounds? That afternoon it was the airport recording, The white zone is for the loading and unloading of passengers, only. The voice in the recording sounds harmless but means if you leave your car unattended, some cop is going to give it a parking ticket. That was on the back of my mind as I walked into the terminal and looked for the guy I was supposed to meet, just the thing I needed was to get a parking ticket after breaking every traffic law in the book getting there.
My contact looked to be a guy standing under the TV sets that tell you when the planes leave. I hung back for a moment to check him out. Blue suit, yellow tie. He was pretty big, about six feet tall, two hundred pounds, face gone beefy red like you see when older guys eat and drink too much, don’t work out. He was waving his cigar back and forth like he was having a nicotine fit. I walked up to him, said what I was supposed to say about smoking in a no-smoking area. He just about shouted at me the fucking cigar wasn’t fucking lit, so who cares if he was in a fucking no-smoking area? Had a funny accent, like he wasn’t from around here, just discovered the F word and wanted to try it out everywhere.
I said, “That wasn’t exactly what you were supposed to say. You were supposed to just say, ’The cigar isn’t lit.’”
“You were supposed to be here at noon, and you were supposed to be a man.”
His w’s were funny too, sounded like v’s. I said, “Yeah, well, Wrex couldn’t make it.”
Then the contact said something I didn’t understand, some kind of foreign language, and it didn’t sound very nice. But I didn’t want to make a scene, just wanted to get the transaction over with. I asked him, Where was the item I was supposed to pick up? He pointed to this big black case on wheels, more like a chest, stood about four feet high, looked like it weighed a couple hundred pounds.
“How am I supposed to get that into my car?” I asked him.
He looked at me like he couldn’t believe I asked the question. He said, “You tell Fleischer I don’t like dealing with amateurs.”
I told him I didn’t know any Fleischers, maybe if he explained who the guy was, I could deliver the message. He called me an idiot, reached down and took the briefcase out of my hands. More like ripped it. Fine. If that was the way he wanted it, the sooner I got out of there, the better. I pushed the case toward the glass doors out front. He grabbed me by the arm before I got more than a couple steps. It was rude, the way he grabbed my arm. I didn’t like him touching me, and I almost popped him one right there, just planted my foot and let it rip, like my pop taught me years ago, always hit off the back foot and twist your hip into it.
“The envelope!” the guy said. “How am I supposed to open the fucking briefcase without the fucking envelope?”
It was in my hand the whole time. It wasn’t like I was trying to hide it. I slapped the envelope into his palm, noticed the moment it left my fingers the back flap hadn’t sealed up exactly right. In fact, hadn’t sealed up at all. He noticed it right away, said, “Hey, wait a minute!”
I rolled the case toward the entrance fast as I could. The contact would suspect I didn’t stop at the envelope, I opened the briefcase too, maybe took a little something out. Wrex or his bosses could be double-crossing him. If money was missing, it would look like I’d stolen it. The contact started to come after me, but I wasn’t going anywhere fast pushing that case. He decided to open the briefcase first, see if I’d stolen anything supposed to be in there.
Someone shouted, “Watch out!” because I was too busy looking back to watch where I was going. I pulled up just short of a woman must have been at least eighty, leaned on her cane she was so crippled with arthritis. I remember thinking, Great, now I’m running down little old ladies, this is the last thing I’ll ever let Wrex talk me into.
I thought the guy tackled me or something, I got hit so fast and hard I was in the air before I knew what happened. The sidewalk twisted underneath, came fast toward my head, and there was this moment when I felt my brain explode out my skull. Next thing I remember, I was sitting on the cement walkway, covered in shards of glass. It was quiet as I’d ever heard it, not a sound, except this high-pitched tone in my ears. Nothing moved. The old woman sat next to me, perfectly fine except her eyes were glazed and her mouth hung open. A jam of people lay jumbled together on the sidewalk, arms over their heads, except for two or three, who stood like surviving trees after a blast. Out on the traffic loop, a half dozen cars and a bus had skidded into one other. A puff of smoke drifted out the International Terminal, front windows smashed to jagged teeth.
A calm voice broke the stillness, said, The white zone is for the loading and unloading of passengers, only.
A woman screamed. One of the men got to his feet and moved toward the International Terminal. It was weird the way he moved, crouched low, as though expecting to get shot at. Then he ran, and a couple other guys got the same idea, started running too. People got out of their cars, glanced around, wondered what the hell happened. I pushed myself off the sidewalk, looked for my hat. I don’t know why I wanted to find my hat just then. Didn’t like it much, wore it only a couple times a year. Shock, I guess. The hat was under the wheel of a Chevy Blazer parked at the curb. I picked it up. Smoke gusted out of the terminal, hung heavy black against the sky. It wasn’t until then I realized nobody tackled me. It was a bomb that exploded. And chances were pretty good the bomb was in the briefcase I carried all morning.
Your basic life training doesn’t prepare you for what to do in situations like this. I stood by the curb, watched people go in and out of the terminal. Most of the people stumbling out had blood on them. Some of the people running in carried out people too hurt to walk by themselves. I followed the people running in. The sense was shocked out of me. I wanted to see what happened, maybe find the guy I gave the briefcase to. It was hard to see inside. Shadows howled around the smoky dark, insubstantial and noisome as ghosts. Fire skittered here and there along the ceiling. I wasn’t thinking too clearly, but somewhere my brain told my lungs to hold still.
I knew about where the contact had been kneeling. He was near the TV monitors, but I couldn’t find any TV monitors. My eyes burned. I couldn’t hold my breath anymore. The contact wasn’t anywhere around I could see, at least no recognizable parts of him. I turned around to go back, couldn’t decide which way back was. I took a couple steps one direction, stopped, took a couple steps another direction, stopped again. The ground felt strange, all crumbly. I looked down to my feet. The floor was gone. Blown out. Ground zero.
The first thing I did when I got outside was try to breathe, I had a good lungful of smoke, the air got me to coughing it out. Blood dripped onto the sidewalk at my feet. I wiped at my nose, got a bloody hand. Sirens wailed a ways off in the distance. It suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea for me to stick around. I didn’t trust anybody to believe I was innocent just then. The smartest thing was to get away fast and worry about the consequences later. The black case lay flat on its side a few feet from where the blast first threw me. I didn’t have any experience in the fugitive-from-justice thing, just what everybody knows watching television and the movies, but I knew it was dumb to leave anything behind could link me to what happened. I walked over, tried to lift it. The thing weighed a ton.
The thought came to me I should leave it there, wipe my prints from the handle and get the hell gone, when two guys came over and helped me tilt the thing back up onto its wheels. Didn’t really see them until I’d already started lifting. I was about to say thanks when one of them called me a stupid bitch and the other pushed me and said I should get the fuck out of the way. I didn’t get it. Here it was twice in one day somebody was cussing at me. First the guy with the accent and now these guys, both mid-thirties, balding and pot-bellied in identical rayon windbreakers and stay-pressed slacks, had mustaches looked like rat tails glued above their lips. A couple of real Frick and Fracks. I wasn’t going to let anybody ugly and mean shove me around like I didn’t exist. I yelled out they should stop, but all that did was make
them push the case faster. I shouted at two airport cops running up the sidewalk, but they didn’t pay any attention. The terminal was burning good, a lot of people were shouting things. I got an idea, yelled, “Looters!” I don’t know if it was some riot-training film they saw, but both cops turned to see what I was talking about, then yelled stuff like “Police!” and “Freeze!” But the guys didn’t freeze, they took off in opposite directions, had to abandon the case to get away.
The sirens were getting so loud I couldn’t think, fire trucks and ambulances and cop cars weaving through traffic in both directions. All adrenaline, I hoisted the case up over the bumper and into the hatchback. The only idea I had was to get away, think someplace else. I jumped behind the wheel, swerved around the gawkers and parked cars, bounced over a sidewalk curb, sped out of traffic jammed in front of the terminal. Something pink flapped under my windshield wiper. An envelope of some kind. I laughed. Couldn’t stop laughing the next five miles. A parking ticket. A half hour ago the worst thing I thought could happen was a parking ticket, and here I’d got one.
5
I drove south on surface streets, through Inglewood to Torrance and Long Beach. Swung east through cities with exotic names that had nothing to do with what I was seeing, like Bell-flower, Gardenia, Lawndale. After an hour or so in the car, everything started to look the same, four-lane boulevards stretching without dip or bend to the horizon, strip malls, fast-food franchises, gas stations. I didn’t think about what happened, didn’t think about what I was going to do, other than follow the road I was on to the next and the next after that. You can drive forever in Los Angeles, never travel the same street twice. Somewhere around Downey I tired of the blood on my face, turned into a gas station to wash up.
The bathroom smelled heavy with urine, looked like it had been cleaned once this decade. I ran the tap, looked around the streaks of grease cutting across the mirror. My stomach twitched at the first good sight I got of my face. Tried to look just at the skin to scrub the blood off, but it didn’t work. Kept seeing the whole face and the scared eyes. It was the last place I wanted to be sick but my stomach gave me no choice. I fell to my knees in front of the toilet and one whiff shot the contents out my stomach like a cannonball.
Shooting Elvis Page 3
