House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  A nice house in a decent neighborhood, nothing about it to remark on.

  “What’s your name?” Kate asked the girl.

  “Loretta. Loretta Losario.”

  “I’m Officer Blanchard, and this is Officer Burgess. We’re with the Oakland PD,” she offered, stating the obvious.

  The girl didn’t say anything. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She was wearing Doc Martens over her bobby sox.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t have one,” Loretta answered. A little too fast, to Kate’s ear.

  “You were talking to somebody. I heard a man’s voice.”

  “No, I wasn’t. It must’ve been the TV.” She pointed to the corner, to the show in progress. “You must’ve heard the television.”

  “You’d better let us take a quick look around,” Kate had said to the girl.

  “Do you have to?” A whiny teenager’s voice, but with too much fear, way beyond the normal fear kids have of cops.

  They found Mrs. Losario in the bedroom lying on top of the quilted bedspread, her back to the door, all curled up in a ball. Shaking uncontrollably.

  “Oh, shit!” She heard her own voice—the woman part of her, not the part that was an officer.

  “Mrs. … Losario? Did you call us?” She crossed to the other side of the bed, so she could see the woman’s face.

  It was bad. Some teeth knocked out, the nose broken and flattened against both cheeks. Heavy bruises on the jaw and temple. A terrible battering, done by somebody who knew how.

  Kate knelt by the bed next to the woman. “Who did this to you?” she asked, trying to keep the quiver from her voice. “Is he still here?” The shock of recognition, of empathy on a gut level, immediately turned her stomach into a clutched fist.

  The woman didn’t answer. Her mouth was swollen, most likely her tongue, also.

  Kate turned to Ray. “Call an ambulance. And backup.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  She looked up, surprised, although why she should have been surprised was a mystery to her. This was a domestic quarrel, a husband beating up on a wife. Why hadn’t she assumed he was still here, and taken precautions?

  Because one event had led to another, and there had been no warning until it was too late.

  When she and Ray hadn’t called back in after the appropriate amount of time, a second car was dispatched to the scene. That’s when they found out they had a madman on their hands, an armed and dangerous wife-beater who was holding his wife, daughter, and two police officers hostage. Three hours ago, already an eternity.

  The first time the phone had rung, Losario had answered it. He had listened for a moment, then had hurried to the window and looked out, making sure he kept one eye on Kate and Ray. He had drawn the curtains and slammed the phone down, hard. When it rang again he let it ring: ten, twenty, thirty times, until even he couldn’t stand it and picked it up.

  “What the fuck do you want now?”

  He listened, his eyes darting around the room, keeping everyone in sight.

  “No.”

  He listened some more.

  “Why should I?”

  His brow was wrinkled in concentration he was listening so hard.

  “Okay, I will,” he said finally into the phone, “but no funny stuff. Any funny stuff and she’ll be the first to go.” He stared at Kate. “They want to talk to you.” He put the receiver on the table, backed off so she couldn’t get close to him. “No funny stuff,” he warned her. “I’ll blow your pussy brains out you try something cute.”

  It was Captain Albright. That’s when Kate learned that Losario had been doing this to his wife for years. He had been arrested on assault charges before but never formally charged—Mrs. Losario had always backed off at the moment of truth: the typical, tragic syndrome. If Losario had been charged, the record would have been on the computer and Kate would have been forewarned for the time he’d flip out and cross the line. The time he took prisoners. This time. It was another crack in the system, which she and Ray had had the misfortune to fall into.

  Albright had told Kate about Losario: a solid citizen, by all accounts. He was the assistant service manager of a Mercedes/Porsche dealership in Walnut Creek (those vehicles were out of his league; his personal car was a frugal Honda Accord), member of the Rotary and Elks clubs, a steady churchgoer. He and his wife had been married twenty-two years.

  That was the bitch of it. She remembered what one of the good judges in superior court had told her once, during a trial when a kid was accused of murdering his mother and father for no discernible reason: No one can know what goes on behind closed doors.

  “Thank you, sir,” she had said into the receiver, her heart plunging to her knees. “That’s good to know. I had kind of figured as much.” But wished against.

  “Be careful,” Albright had cautioned her. “Don’t take chances. Time is on our side.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.” She had hung up.

  How much time is enough? she thought.

  On the television set an off-camera female reporter was interviewing Captain Albright.

  “Is that the guy you’ve been talking to?” Losario asked her, turning for a moment to the screen.

  “Yes.”

  “… and that’s all we’re going to do,” Albright was saying in response to an off-camera question. “We have no plans other than to wait this thing out and hope that the gentleman inside comes to his senses.”

  “I have my senses, you asshole!” Losario yelled at the box, spinning back away from it to point his gun at Kate.

  Almost, she thought. You almost let me. Keep talking, Captain.

  “… We are not going to go in after him. Let me repeat that,” Albright said, turning and looking right into the lens. “If you are watching this, Mr. Losario, let me assure you that we are not going to come in after you. We are going to wait until you calm down and come out of your own volition.”

  “And a bear doesn’t shit in the woods. You’re going to wait until hell freezes over!” Losario screamed to the television set.

  Five seconds, Kate thought, watching him closely. That’s all I need. Keep talking, Captain, don’t stop. Piss him off royally, until he’s so wound up with you he forgets about me.

  The camera cut away to the broadcaster, one of the anchorwomen from Channel 8 across the Bay, who started in on how long Kate and the others had been held hostage, how many police there were outside the house—over a hundred—stupid shit like that.

  They could hear a helicopter overhead. Loud, like it was hovering right over the roof.

  “Mr. Losario,” Kate began. She had to talk to him, engage him. She had to talk him down off this ledge he’d constructed.

  “What?”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” She hadn’t meant to say that, the words had blurted out; she couldn’t hold on any longer, she’d had two cups of coffee at lunch and iced tea later that afternoon, her molars were floating.

  “So go.”

  She started to get up to go to the bathroom. Was it going to be this simple? She should have thought of this hours ago.

  “No,” he said, pointing the gun at her. “Here, you can go here.”

  “Are you serious?” You humiliating bastard, if—no, when I get out of this—I’m going to fuck you up so bad you’ll wish you’d never been born.

  “I have to go, too, Daddy.”

  He herded them all into the bathroom, even Ray.

  “Go ahead if you’ve got to go. I’ve seen women go pee-pee, it doesn’t turn me on.”

  The hell it doesn’t, you piece of shit.

  She had no choice. She couldn’t hold it any longer, and she wasn’t going to pee in her pants. Dropping her trousers and panties—pink with lace trim, incongruous with her uniform but she needed the femininity of the ladylike touch; now the vulnerable girlish gesture made her blush as much as being naked in front of this man—she let her water flow.
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br />   Ray had the decency to avert his look. Thank God for that, they couldn’t have remained partners if he had looked. They wouldn’t be partners anymore, anyway. He hadn’t been a cop very long, he’d leave the force after this. Who could blame him?

  Losario watched her. Bullshit it wasn’t turning him on. What did that wife of his have to put up with? And his daughter, too.

  She should know. More than she wanted to admit, she should know.

  She turned her back to him to wipe, pulled up her undies and pants. Then Loretta went, and the father’s eyes were as much on her as they’d been on Kate.

  “What about you?” Losario asked Ray.

  “I can’t go when people are watching,” Ray said, hangdog.

  Kate almost groaned in sympathy. You poor bastard, what have I gotten you into?

  “Close your eyes, ladies,” Losario commanded. The women turned away from Ray; they didn’t want to see this any more than the young patrolman wanted to be seen. “Go ahead, stud.”

  “It’s when guys watch.” His voice actually cracked.

  “You can turn your back, but I’m not letting any of you out of my sight.”

  The women looked away as the young officer turned away from his tormentor and unzipped his fly. There was a slight dribbling sound.

  Losario marched them back into the living room. Kate glanced at Ray, who turned away from her.

  It had gotten dark outside, which meant they had been in here for at least five hours. Losario had turned on the lights.

  “Mr. Losario,” she began again. They had been sitting there for over an hour now, watching the television, which cut back and forth between the house and different people speaking on camera.

  “Shut up.”

  “Let your daughter go,” she begged. “You can keep my partner and me and Mrs. Losario, but let Loretta go.”

  “You’ve got to be crazy,” he said.

  “You’re the one who’s crazy!” Loretta spat at him.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” He grabbed her by the hair, the barrel of the gun hard against her temple.

  “Please, Mr. Losario,” Kate said, as calmly as she could muster, “let her go.”

  “And you shut the fuck up, too!”

  But it worked. He shoved Loretta away from him, towards her mother. The two clung to each other.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” the father ordered his daughter. “And the rest of you, too.”

  The air escaped from Kate’s lungs; she was unaware of how long she’d been holding her breath.

  “Mr. Losario,” she tried again. She had to get him to talk, there was no other way of them getting out of here alive.

  “What did I just say?”

  “I’m not talking about blame or anything else,” she went on, keeping her voice low, “but please, listen to me. You don’t have to do anything but listen, that’s all I ask.”

  “Listen to what? You think you’re going to talk me out of it?”

  “Out of what?”

  “Whatever I want.”

  “I don’t know what you want.”

  “I don’t either, but whatever it is, you can’t get it for me, so what’s the point of talking?”

  “Maybe I can.”

  “How can you if you don’t know what it is?”

  “Maybe you can tell me.”

  “I just said I don’t know.”

  “Well, maybe we can talk about it and figure it out together.”

  “I don’t see that.”

  “Why don’t we give it a try?”

  “What for?”

  Circles. Keep him talking, no matter how mundane and stupid. Maybe he’ll bore himself to sleep.

  “Because I don’t want to sit here forever watching you holding a gun on your wife and daughter. Someone might get hurt. It could be you.”

  “I’ve got the gun, so I don’t think it’s going to be me.”

  “If you hurt them, it will hurt you. You know that.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  She breathed in and out, deep cleansing breaths.

  “Put the gun away, Daddy.”

  They both turned towards Loretta.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to shut up before you obey me?” he asked. “Or do you want me to use this on you?”

  “Put the gun down, you bastard, you lousy shit!” she screamed, tears and snot running down her face. “Nobody ever did anything to you, why don’t you just leave us alone?”

  Kate stepped between them, literally putting her body between father and daughter. This was ratcheting up way too high and too fast.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said quickly, soothingly. “We’re all under tension here. Let me do this, please,” she asked Loretta, practically begging the girl. “I’m trained for it.”

  “He’s been doing this our whole lives, it’s not fair!” the girl cried out.

  “Not fair? Not fair? I’ll tell what’s not fair!” He too was screaming now, so loudly that his face was turning purple from the constrictions in his neck. “I’ll tell you what’s not fair!”

  He stopped. Like a plug suddenly pulled from a wall, a dead stop.

  Kate waited a moment. They were all frozen in expectation.

  “What’s not fair, Mr. Losario?” she ventured, keeping her own voice down, barely above a whisper.

  “Ah, fuck it. Fuck the whole …” He stopped talking, slumped into a chair.

  “What’s not fair?” she repeated. Maybe she could finally get to something specific, something she could attack and defuse.

  “I’m hungry,” the man said, abruptly changing gears. He turned to his wife. “What’ve we got to eat? I’m starving.”

  “I could make spaghetti,” she said through her cracked lips, a difficult task for a woman with a jaw that was obviously broken. “With oil and herbs.”

  “And salad,” he said. “And garlic bread.”

  “I’ll help,” Kate volunteered quickly. Be feminine, show him he’s king of the house.

  “You don’t know where anything is,” Mrs. Losario spoke, her language slurred and slow. “Better I do it. He’s picky.”

  That’s the understatement of the evening, Kate thought.

  “You’re crazy,” Loretta told her mother, her voice full of teenage disdainful know-it-all. “You’re going to cook him dinner so he can kill us on a full stomach?”

  “It won’t take very long,” the wife went on, looking at the cops. Despite her broken jaw she spoke in the ingrained peppy voice of a housewife in a television commercial for detergent. To Kate and Ray: “Is spaghetti all right with you? I’ve maybe got something in the freezer I could microwave or …”

  “Spaghetti’s fine for them,” Mr. Losario said, impatiently cutting her off. “They can eat what I eat or they don’t have to eat anything.”

  “Spaghetti’s fine,” Kate assured Mrs. Losario. “Spaghetti’s great.”

  “Fine,” echoed Ray. His voice was dull, no timbre, a robot’s voice.

  Ray had thrown in the towel. He was no longer a functioning police officer. All he wanted now was to get out alive. Kate, looking over at him—miserable, impotent, full of self-pity and fear—had known the same feeling herself, had known it much of this day, but right now she couldn’t give in to it. In this immediate situation she had to find a way out, for all of them. She was the only one who could.

  Maybe she could distract Losario when he was eating. He looked like the kind of person who used both hands to eat his spaghetti.

  From the kitchen, Mrs. Losario blandly announced, “We’re out of spaghetti.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Losario groaned. He turned to Kate. “Can you believe that? You see the conditions I’ve got to live with? Every single day, it’s one thing or the other.”

  Kate looked away. She knew this song-and-dance, she could sing all the stanzas by heart.

  “I could make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” Mrs. Losario offered. “Or tuna melts.””

  “F
or dinner? What are you, nuts?”

  “I want pizza,” Loretta piped up.

  “We’re out,” her mother informed her. “You ate the last frozen one over the weekend, you and your girlfriends, when you were watching that video.”

  “Duh, Ma.” The girl regarded her mother as a relic, a dinosaur. “We could send out. Like they do deliver, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Pizza’s a good idea,” Losario declared, foreshortening the discussion. “Call Domino’s.”

  “I hate Domino’s,” Loretta whined. “Their crust tastes like cardboard. Can’t we order from Luigi’s?”

  “Luigi’s doesn’t deliver, Sis, in case you’ve forgotten, and right now leaving the house to pick it up is not an option.” He looked over at Kate and grinned, as if he’d cracked a joke worthy of Jay Leno. “Anyway, I like Domino’s, and they get it here quick.”

  Kate watched him, slack-jawed.

  “Anybody doesn’t like pepperoni?” Losario queried.

  “Just cheese for me,” from Mrs. Losario.

  “I want Hawaiian,” Loretta spoke up, her voice firm. “With Hormel bacon, not Canadian.”

  “You’d better write this down,” Losario instructed Kate.

  Kate felt like an utter fool as she spoke into the telephone. She could almost hear the derisive laughter of the troops posted outside.

  “Yes, sir, that’s what he wants.” She glanced at Losario, who was staring at her. “What we all want,” she added quickly. “Could you patch me through, please?” She paused, listening. “Yes, Captain. I appreciate that. Ray, too.”

  She ordered two large pizzas and a large Italian salad, no meat. Garlic bread for four and a six-pack of Pepsis, because they didn’t carry Coke

  “I’m timing them,” Losario announced as she hung up, glancing at his digital Seiko. “If it’s more than thirty minutes we get it free.”

  “Duh, Daddy. Like the delivery man’s gonna have it real easy getting through all those police cars blocking up the street,” Loretta jibed.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Kate assured him, thinking if Loretta didn’t put a button on her mouth real quick she could fuck this up righteously. Teenage girls—she knew about them. “We’re buying,” she said. “The department.”