The Vanquished

by David Putnam

  “I think it’s only a sprain, but we won’t know until we get an X-ray. We’re going to give her a ride in anyway.”

  “I don’t want to go, Bruno. Tell ’em I don’t wanna go.”

  I leaned down close to her ear. “You need to get out of here until things cool down a little. And it wouldn’t hurt any if your ankle was really broken.”

  Stunned, she sat back in the gurney. She held up her hand to hold back the imaginary crowd. “Oh, stand back, girls, this one’s all mine.”

  I kissed her on the forehead. She tried to push me away, but I jumped back.

  I helped load her gurney on the ambulance and closed the back doors just as Cole broke away from the throng of uniforms surrounding the Hornet and headed my way. I watched him come, his expression grim.

  He stopped in front of me. “Rodriquez wants you back at the station ASAP.”

  I nodded.

  “He also said he doesn’t want you talking to anyone on the way. You are not to talk to anyone until he talks to you.”

  I nodded as I watched the ambulance drive away with Sonja.

  “Bruno, did you hear what I said?”

  “Huh? Yeah, don’t talk. I’ll catch a ride to the station, or maybe I’ll just walk.”

  “I told you to be careful around Good.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about that.”

  Cole smiled.

  “How many of the four did we catch?” I asked.

  “None. They all got away, and that only makes things worse.”

  “None?”

  “Yep, those guys made us all look like a bunch of monkeys trying to fuck a greased football. Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to the station.”

  I walked with him down the street along all the parked cop cars. We stopped at his. I opened the passenger door. Cole stood about five-eight and peered over the roof of the car. “Just so you know, before this little rodeo kicked off, I got a call from LCMC. The guy with the depressed skull fracture, Doug Howard?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He didn’t make it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I SAT IN one of the two chairs outside the watch commander’s office waiting for Lieutenant Rodriquez to come in from the field, where he must’ve been trying to get the lowdown firsthand about what happened. After an hour I stood and paced, the whole time worried about Sonja and not thinking clearly about anything else. I should’ve been thinking about what I was going to say. The interview with Rodriquez could easily bust my career into little pieces. The bad part about it was that I wasn’t at all sure I cared.

  Another twenty minutes passed.

  The side door around the corner opened and slammed shut. I watched the end of the hall. Good appeared, looking harried. He quick-walked right at me, glancing back over his shoulder, as if the boogeyman chased him. “Hey, hey, listen. The dude that jumped from the car had a sawed-off shotgun, okay? You good with that? That’s why I cranked those rounds off at him, okay? He was going to unload on us, and I wanted to keep his head down, okay?”

  I walked back to the chair in front of Rodriquez’s door and sat. “I’ve been ordered not to talk to anyone.”

  “I know, me, too, but you gotta back me up on this one, pal. I’m toast if you don’t. You understand, right? You don’t back me, I’m sunk.”

  The door around the corner opened and closed again.

  I said, “You got about two seconds to get your ass outta here.”

  “I’ll owe ya forever, pal, if you back me up on this.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  Rodriquez came around the corner in time to hear it. “Deputy Johnson,” Rodriquez yelled.

  I stood.

  “Not you, this other asshole right here. Get your ass out of my sight. Now.”

  Good scuttled off.

  Another man, dressed in a dark-brown sports coat and tan slacks, accompanied Rodriquez. The man’s expression, along with his blue-gray eyes, gave off a solid aura of confidence and something else I couldn’t quite place. His smile made you instantly want to like him.

  Rodriquez stopped in front of me. “I believe you were ordered not to speak with anyone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hooked his thumb in the direction Good just disappeared. “You talk about what happened out there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Come in my office.”

  He unlocked his door and went in. None of the other watch commanders kept the office door closed, let alone locked. The others had an open-door policy and wanted the deputies to wander in and talk.

  Once inside, he pointed at a chair that faced his desk and said, “Take a seat.”

  I no longer felt like sitting, but did as ordered.

  Rodriquez sat in the big chair behind his desk and took a tape recorder from the drawer. He set it down and turned it on. He recited the date and the time and then said, “Deputy Bruno Johnson, tell me what happened out there tonight.”

  So much for small talk.

  I looked from Rodriquez to the man in the brown sport coat, who stood off to the side, his hands casually crossed at his waist.

  Rodriquez said, “This is Lieutenant Robby Wicks. He’ll be observing and advising.”

  I nodded.

  “Go ahead,” Rodriquez said.

  I hesitated a long moment, weighing my options.

  “Deputy Johnson, you’d better start talking right now or suffer the consequences.”

  “I rode in Two-Fifty-Three-Adam as the bookman tonight. Good—I mean Deputy Johnson—drove. We picked up a rollin’ G-ride out in front of MLK, and we were transporting the suspect to LCMC. The suspect claimed to have tuberculosis. Two-Fifty-One called out an armed and dangerous vehicle occupied four times at the same intersection where we were. He was in a one-man car. We decided to back him until backup could arrive.”

  Rodriquez held up his hand to stop me. “So you had someone in custody in the back of your unit?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was this your decision or was it Johnson’s?”

  “Both.”

  “What’s the suspect’s name and where is he now?”

  “His name is Freeman and he was cite-released at the scene.”

  Rodriquez let his pencil drop to the pad. “You cite-released a suspect involved in a rolling stolen?”

  “Yes, under the circumstances, with all that was happening I—”

  “That’s out of policy, mister.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go on.” He picked up his pencil and made a note on his legal pad.

  I hesitated.

  He looked up. “Go on, Johnson, then what happened?”

  I looked at Lieutenant Wicks.

  “Johnson.” Rodriquez raised his voice. “You have two seconds to tell me what the hell happened out there before I bust your ass. You understand me, mister?”

  I snapped back and looked at him. No one talked to me that way. I’d only slept an hour and a half in the last two days. I was worried about Sonja. And Rodriquez, the pompous ass, pushed me that last little bit right over the edge to where I just didn’t care anymore.

  “As I said, we had a ten-fifteen and I was completing the booking app, filling it out under the map light. The car hit a hard bump and . . . and I guess in all the excitement I dropped my pencil. I reached to pick it up. I heard some shooting. When I looked back up, it was all over.”

  Rodriquez’ mouth dropped open, his eyes wide in stunned shock. I glanced over at Wicks, whose smile was even wider than before.

  Rodriquez recovered. He must’ve realized the recorder now memorialized the fat silence that suffocated the room. “Is that the way you’re going to play this? Really, Deputy Johnson?”

  “Play what, sir? I dropped my pencil, reached to pick it up, and didn’t see any part of the shooting.”

  He pointed to his desk, his face flushed red. “Badge and gun now.”

  I stood, knees weak. I c
ouldn’t believe my career ended just like that. Just that easily, after all those hard years of work. I unhooked my badge and set it on his desk.

  “Look at your uniform. You’re a disgrace.”

  I fought that bad self of mine and its desire to piss Rodriquez off even more, and lost. I did a quick draw of my Smith and Wesson model 66 .357, twirled it like in the old western cowboy movies, and finished with the butt facing him. What did I have to lose? He didn’t take it. I set it down on his desk, turned, and headed for the door.

  How would I tell Dad? He’d been so proud that his son worked the same streets we both grew up in, streets I worked as a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy.

  I made it to the door, hand on the knob. “Johnson?” Rodriquez said.

  I turned.

  “I’ll give you until tomorrow noon to change your mind.”

  “How can I change my mind from the truth, Lieutenant?”

  He locked his jaw, his eyes going narrow. “Kowalski resigned tonight. I guess you fucked her figuratively and literally.”

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CURRENT DAY

  LOS ANGELES AIRPORT

  MARIE SNORED HER dainty snore. I didn’t know at what point in the story she’d fallen asleep. There’d be plenty of time to talk about it again as long as we continued to talk. She’d scared me. I’d never seen her so angry. I couldn’t blame her, though. My fault. I did imply that Sonja no longer walked the earth. Stupid.

  The constant drone of the plane’s engines lulled me to sleep, and I woke with the pilot’s announcement of our final approach into LAX. I gently nudged Marie. She came awake with a start. Her fists shoved into my chest in a wild-eyed, desperate attempt to defend herself, to escape, to flee.

  “Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s me,” I said.

  “Oh, Bruno, jeeze.” She leaned over and hugged me, held on, end-of-the-world kinda tight. “I had the most horrible nightmare.”

  I’d been the cause of that nightmare. Our trip back to the States to handle a problem without a solution, a problem that could only end in violence, had eroded our confidence. It forced us to stare down the barrel of a gun, waiting for it to go off. That kind of stress would give anyone a nightmare. Factor in the baby and no wonder she had bad dreams.

  The flight attendant came by and said, “Please put your seats forward. We’re about to land. Thank you.”

  I reached over and moved her seat forward and kissed her forehead. “Tell me all about it when we get in the car, okay?” Better if she cooled down emotionally first, instead of reliving it again so soon by telling me now.

  She nodded and gripped my hand, waiting for the plane to touch down. I watched her closely.

  The impending doom hanging over my head, the unknown resolution in how I’d handle the untenable situation with The Sons, helped me to cherish each precious moment.

  After we grabbed our bags off the carousel, we took the shuttle bus to the rental car office and checked out a sleek new Ford Escape, “Bronzit” in color. To me it looked more like the copper from a penny. I liked the way the car handled. I drove, heading toward Burbank and the hotel. Marie sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window, her feet up on the dash, her open window letting the warm, dry Southern California wind blow on her face.

  “Hey,” I said, “why don’t you tell me about what you’re going to buy at the Galleria Mall? We’re going to be staying about two blocks from there.”

  She looked at me, this time without anger, only sadness.

  “Bruno, in the plane when I fell asleep, I had this real bad dream and it scared me.”

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head, missy. Big Bad Bruno Johnson’s here to protect you. It was only a dream. Dreams don’t mean a thing, darlin’. They’re just a product of your pent-up anxiety.”

  She nudged me, a little too hard. “Hey, how come you don’t want to know about it? Dreams are the window to your soul. Don’t you at least want a glimpse at my soul?”

  Boy, I sure didn’t want to throw my dog into that fight. “Hey, when you go to Macy’s, buy an extra suitcase for all those clothes you’re going to buy and bring home with us.”

  She socked me with her little fist, crossed her arms, and stared forward.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Please tell me all about your dream.”

  She let me stew a few moments more. The dream bugged her too much, and she had to get it out.

  “Really, babe,” I said, “tell me. I really want to know.”

  She twisted around in her seat, swallowing hard before she started. “In the dream, I went into the bathroom on the plane. You know, one of those little cramped jobs with no space at all. And . . . and somehow this huge yellow life raft inflated with this loud hiss while I was in there. It shoved me right up against the wall. It pinned me against the wall so tight that I could hardly breathe. And . . . and the odor, it smelled terrible in there. Like moldering butt.”

  I looked out the side window, trying my damnedest not to smile.

  “Then I realized,” she said, “that the plane was in distress and going down. Going down in this corkscrew that made me sick to my stomach.” She put her hand up like a plane and moved it downward in a swirling motion. She turned to me, truly upset. “What do you think it means?”

  I took a deep breath and tried to stay focused. I looked from the road to her and back again as I spoke. “Well, a good psychoanalyst, for which I think I qualify, would say that the dream was symbolic of feelings deeply rooted in your subconscious and points directly to your adoring and loving husband, the man soon to be the father of your darling little boy.”

  Her expression went from serious to a half-grin. “That right, cowboy? Why don’t you lay it on me then? What does my psychoanalyst, with his degree from the University of The Sorry-Assed Street, think?”

  I looked at her for a moment, trying not to smile, then back at the road. “It’s obvious. This dream indicates a deep-seated desire to have hot—”

  She grabbed my arm. “Careful, Bruno.”

  I hesitated. “Okay, look,” I said. “The airplane is this long, a cylindrical aluminum tube that resembles—”

  “Bruno!”

  “Okay, okay, you want it in a nutshell. Your dream, simply put, means you want to have hot, randy sex in a small bathroom in San Francisco.”

  She giggled and stared at me for a moment.

  “That’s what you got from what I just told you?”

  “Sure did, babe. It’s obvious.”

  “So when you say San Francisco, you mean like in Ghirardelli Square?”

  I fought to stay in character. “Exactly. Chocolate indicates that you want to do it in that San Francisco bathroom with a tall, handsome black man.”

  She laughed for the first time since we discovered the phone number written on Toby’s back. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear her laugh. It warmed my heart.

  She calmed. Her laugh petered off. We rode in silence for a while.

  She said, “Hot, randy sex, huh?”

  “That’s right, the hotter and the randier, the better.”

  “You mean like with Randy Travis, that kinda Randy sex?”

  My head whipped around, my mouth dropped open. She’d blindsided me with that one.

  My turn to laugh.

  We drove some more. “Why Randy Travis? You don’t like country western.”

  “I don’t have to like country western to—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it, that’s enough.”

  I thought about it for a moment. I took my eyes from the road and looked at her. “You haven’t been thinking about Randy when we . . . I mean . . . ah, jeeze. You haven’t . . . you know, been thinking about him while we’ve been . . . you know?”

  “What’s that Bruno?” She shot me that impish smile I loved so much.

  “Ah, jeeze.”

  “Bruno?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your ‘Ah, jeeze’ is stuck again.
”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WE CHECKED IN to a nice hotel, the kind with monogrammed towels, at a price of three hundred and fifty a night, and unpacked. Neither one of us spoke. Our time together started to wind down from hours, shifting to minutes, the time before I’d make the phone call to The Sons of Satan and put in motion the game they had in mind for me.

  Marie went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  I sat for a long time and worried about the kids back home. I picked up the phone and punched in the number. My brother, Noble, picked up, his mellow voice a comfort. “Hey, Bruno?”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Huh?” he said. “What? Oh, who else is going to call? And I figured you couldn’t be away too long without checking in on the children. They’re fine. I told you, with me on the job you don’t have to worry about a thing.”

  “Thank you, Brother, it means a lot. How’s Dad?”

  “Same, gettin’ by, you know. You just pay attention to what you got going on there. You need to stay focused. Get all that done and get on back here.”

  I wanted to talk to each of the children, hear their voices, but thought it might be better not to, for their sake.

  “Man, oh, man these kids sure can eat. It’s like feedin’ an army. You can’t just slap together some sandwiches for lunch. Well, you can but it’s a loaf and a half a bread, a jar of grape jelly, and a jar of peanut butter.”

  The image of Noble slathering sandwiches for ten kids made me smile. I needed that smile.

  “Bruno?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know you’re busy and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  I sat up straighter on the bed. “What? What’s the matter?”

  “No. Nothing, take it easy. I think it’s just an old man’s paranoia, that’s all. You know, a paternal kinda thing. You know what I mean?”

  “Is there something wrong with my nephew? Is he in trouble?”

  “No, nothing like that. Really, it’s just a silly old man’s worry, that’s all. I can’t get a hold of him. No big deal. He’s a kid. He’s busy. I know that. If you have a minute, while you’re out there, can you check in on him? It’d really give this old heart a mine a break if you know what I mean.”