Perfect Killer

by Lewis Perdue

  With Jasmine's voice echoing in my head, I remembered a New York Times article that emphasized that Jasmine had never met her father. She had been conceived during a one-night stand back in the licentious 1970s when Vanessa was a volunteer at a San Francisco law firm representing Native Americans arrested in the occupation of Alcatraz.

  Vanessa's quote from the article struck me now as I listened to her daughter: "Good breeding material doesn't necessarily make for a good parent. Too damn many black children grow up with episodic and unreliable fathers who create expectations of love and trust that rank several steps below the family dog. I also didn't like the way abortion felt for me, so I raised her myself."

  All of this hurtled through my mind as I struggled to say something intelligent to Vanessa's daughter. I came off inarticulate and banal, then said good-bye.

  "Daughter of an old friend," I said to Sloane as he stood on the dock looking down at me. He raised the eyebrow that said he had questions that could wait. When he extended his hand, I accepted it.

  "Thanks, Sarge."

  He grunted something I took as a "You're welcome."

  We walked toward the Coast Guard and sheriff's building, but it no longer felt familiar and secure to me. Now it loomed alien and full of unknown menace as we pushed through the doors and headed for the suspect-interview rooms where the doors locked from the outside.

  Vince grabbed a first-aid kit on the way in. "Technically, we oughta have the paramedics look at this," he mumbled as he wiped at my earlobe with an alcohol pad, which burned worse than the original wound.

  "Hell, that's not even big enough to put a Band-Aid on," Vince said.

  He slapped me on the shoulder, then left me alone to wrestle with life, death, murder, and salvation. Little did I know that the enormity of what had just happened would pale into insignificance within just a few hours.

  CHAPTER 19

  Fifteen minutes later, two plainclothes officers I had hoped never to see walked in. Internal Affairs was a lot like the Internal Revenue Service: necessary for the proper functioning of the organization, but best if never actually experienced firsthand. They interviewed me until nearly midnight. They had a job to do, but their assumption I was guilty pissed me off.

  I told my story three times, first with both the investigators, then, by turns, with each of them alone. They asked me about my military background and tried to pry into the classified stuff. I told them they should talk to Vince or to call the Pentagon. I gave them the number.

  They left the room by turns, and from the follow-up questions they asked after returning, I surmised they had called the Pentagon and interviewed Vince. Clearly they had also interviewed witnesses on the other boats, obtained copies of the duty logs from the Coast Guard and sheriff's dispatchers, and listened to the radio tapes of my Mayday calls. Their swift professionalism made me feel a lot less like an Inquisition victim.

  They didn't know what to make of the reference one of the men had made to the Blackberry and at first were skeptical that I also had no clue. But over time, their attitudes mellowed; softened, I assumed, by the consistency of my story and its concurrence with the other witnesses, my radio calls, the gunshots, flares, and their discovery of a militarystyle inflatable drifting west of the breakwater

  They constructed a timeline and eventually wound things up by telling me I should be available at any time for more interviews. They also explained that releasing me was not an exoneration for my killing the men.

  I finally grabbed my Windbreaker and walked from the interview room, toward the locker room and a quick shower. Trudging through a grinding fatigue where fluorescent lights glared way too bright and normal sounds hit my ears as too loud and brittle, I recognized the adrenaline hangover that always accompanied every life-or-death battle. I half-closed my eyes as I made my way down the familiar corridors, through a quick rinse in the shower, and back toward the main office, dressed in a ratty pair of old cargo shorts and Cafe Pacifico T-shirt that had been stuffed in the back of my locker.

  I made my way through a mostly deserted warren of desks and offices and spotted Vince at the doorway leading to the visitors' reception area.

  "How you feeling?" He searched my face.

  "Okay, I suppose. Internal Affairs has a job to do."

  "Uh-uh."

  When he shook his head at my words, then nodded back toward the breakwater where the firefight had happened, I knew what he was trying to say.

  "They started it, Sarge," I said. "Whoever they were, they deserved what they got. It was them or me. That part doesn't bother me a bit." I paused. "Having my boat sunk bothers me."

  Vince looked at me strangely, cocking his head and focusing on my eyes as if he could see something mysterious there. Unlike others, I never experienced guilt or remorse after killing an assailant.

  As a neuroscientist, I cognitively understood why about 98 percent of the population had trouble with killing in self-defense, but I had never grasped the emotional sense of it. Decades ago, that combination of personal characteristics had once allowed me to keep effectively soldiering along while combat fatigue claimed people around me. But on this night, age and a lack of practice had taken their toll; fatigue hit me a lot harder than it would have twenty-five years before.

  "Uh-huh," Vince said doubtfully. "Regardless of how you feel, you still look like shit, Doc, even if you don't smell like it anymore."

  "And you sound like an echo."

  "Well, you may want to perk up a little. You have a visitor." Cocked his head toward the reception area.

  "Who?"

  He shook his head.

  "See for yourself."

  I combed my fingers through my still-wet hair.

  "Go on in," Vince said impatiently "The young lady has been waiting patiently."

  In the brightly lit reception area, a murmuring entourage of uniforms jammed the front: three or four khaki-clad sheriffs deputies, two LAPD partners in navy blue, and a CHP motorcycle cop in knee-length leather boots holding his helmet in his left hand. In the next moment they parted like a curtain, framing Jasmine Thompson, who made her entrance. She looked more like her mother than she sounded. The similarity took me by surprise and made me wonder if she had her mother's intellect and sense of humor as well. The whole package would be astonishing.

  As Jasmine made her way to me, I got a collective glare from the assembled audience, equal parts displeasure and envy.

  "Mr. Stone!" I picked up on the sly winks and nudges among the cops flanking her. Most were half my age and looked palpably relieved at her formal greeting.

  As Jasmine drew near, she appeared to be Vanessa reincarnate. I felt the faint stir of old, faded memories. Jasmine had her mother's generous, almost Lane Bryant figure, which amply filled out her jeans and knit top in a way that guaranteed the undivided attention of the appreciative audience around her.

  I recognized differences in Jasmine as she approached. Jasmine stood a head taller than Vanessa. She was nearly as tall as me, making it necessary for most of the cops to look up at her face. A wild halo of ringlet curls surrounded her face and cascaded nearly to her shoulders. Her intensely black hair dazzled with rainbows. And where her mother's skin reminded me of creamy mocha, Jasmine's glowed more warmly like maple sugar. Her lips were fashionably full even without makeup, and her nose looked more American Indian than African-American. Two small diamond studs on one of her ears dazzled intensely even under the fluorescent lights.

  But her eyes dominated everything else: large, intense, with the pale luminescence of wisteria blooms accentuated by the warm, dusky hues of her high, aristocratic cheekbones. If these were the window to her soul, then I swear I could see Vanessa shining through.

  I remembered Vanessa in the next minute and swallowed against the constriction in my throat. Jasmine held out her arms as she approached; I followed automatically, accepting a brief, polite, concerned family-variety hug.

  For an instant the minor notes of Mississippi funerals pl
ayed in my head. Then those dark, anxious emotions vanished as her scent, blissfully different from Vanessa's, made a direct connection with my innermost thoughts.

  Jasmine's scent moved my heart before my mind could grasp it. In one instant, it made me sorry the hug was so chaste; then the next instant, guilt hit me for feeling that. The human mind is a strange amalgam of deep-seated, foundational Darwinian impulses and rational centers of higher control. The first govern basic animal survival and land people in prison when the second doesn't take control. Impulses happen physically, spontaneously. They are hormone-driven and totally without thought. Free will can either surrender or control the chemicals. In an instant, I knew then my reaction was physical, the impulse all wrong. I worked at thinking with my big head and not the small one.

  "How are you?" she asked as she stood back a step, and I saw concern make its way across her face as she took in my face and head. "Are you all right?"

  "A scratch," I said gently, touching the top of my ear. "I got lucky."

  She frowned.

  "You should see the other guy." I smiled.

  She shook her head.

  I said, "I thought you—how did you find me?"

  "Television. Every local channel has a helicopter."

  I nodded slowly "But you really shouldn't have—"

  "Do you really think I'd miss the action this close to my hotel?"

  "You really are your mother's child."

  A quick shadow of loss momentarily eclipsed the smile in her eyes and made me regret my words. Jasmine had had six months of getting on with life to ease her pain, but I knew that the loss of someone so close would leave a wound that would never quite heal. I also knew I had to be careful, because open psychological wounds leave us all emotionally vulnerable, irrational, apt to go with the flow of our natural steroids. I thought of people who get divorced and marry on the rebound, or Stockholm-syndrome hostages who fall in love with their captors.

  "Awright, awright! Quit the gawking!" Vince Sloane's voice boomed as he made his way in front of us toward the assembly of law enforcement personnel. "Don't you guys have a report to file or something?" When the clot of uniforms failed to give way, he bulled his way through and motioned Jasmine and me to follow. "C'mon, c'mon! I hear your mother calling you. Step aside; there's nothing to see here; gimme some air," he barked like the Marine gunnery sergeant he had once been.

  We followed Vince out of the building and into a night that had turned crisp and clean with a light breeze off Santa Monica Bay. I followed Jasmine to a Mercedes twoseater glowing bright red under the streetlights. Vince gave a low whistle as he looked admiringly at the car's polished shine that reflected every streetlight in the vicinity back at us. The chrome dazzled, the top was down.

  "I didn't know you could rent these," I said.

  "You can rent anything in L.A." She hit the alarm release. "Anything." She gave me a Mona Lisa smile that hid more than it revealed. "All it takes is money"

  Jasmine looked good next to the Mercedes. She wore style without looking flashy and pretentious. Vince had stopped a good ten yards from the car. I turned back to look at him, He gave me a wink and a nod of approval, then turned back toward the building, where the uniformed officers still crowded behind the broad plate-glass windows. Vince slowly shook his head as he advanced on them.

  Jasmine opened her door and nodded at me. "Hop in."

  I obeyed as she cranked the engine and backed out of the space.

  "Where to?"

  I thought for a moment as she headed slowly toward the cop controlling traffic into the lot. Beyond, a jam of television trucks with their satellite dishes worshiping the southern sky crowded both shoulders.

  "Just around the marina; I said as we cleared the checkpoint and made our way toward Fisherman's Village. The mob of television functionaries instantly spotted the flashy convertible, then recognized me.

  Shoulder-cam lights burst out of the darkness like magnesium flares.

  Jasmine muttered some low derogatory curse about leeches or roaches

  as she hit the accelerator and sent both production crews and the well

  coiffed talking heads lurching for safety. In an instant, we were through

  the corridor of inquisition and into the freedom of early-morning

  darkness.

  Jasmine looked in her rearview mirror and smiled; a sly satisfaction lit up her eyes. My heart filled with trouble when I studied Jasmine's eyes and felt Vanessa's irresistible gravity that had never let me go. I looked quickly away and struggled against memories I dared not recall.

  "They'll follow us," she said as she pressed on the Mercedes's accelerator.

  "Not much chance the way you're driving."

  She looked over at me and raised her eyebrows. "Too fast?"

  The g-forces pulled me toward her as she steered the car through a sweeping curve.

  "Nope," I said. When her face made that ambiguous smile again, I wondered what she was thinking and worked diligently on not caring.

  Our trajectory straightened out parallel to the H Basin; ahead of us, the light at the intersection at Admiralty Way turned red.

  She braked hard, "Which way?"

  "Left," I said. "My truck is over near my slip."

  "Truck?" She raised her eyebrows again and eased through the red. "I didn't know brain surgeons drove trucks. Next you'll be telling me you wear Fruit Of The Loom briefs and watch television wrestling."

  I did wear Fruit Of The Loom briefs, bought in twelve-packs at Target, and almost said I was a neurophysiologist and hadn't performed brain surgery since the accident, but it all played in my head as too stuffy, too fussy…too old, and something in me wanted very much not to sound too old for Jasmine. But in fact, I thought of nothing that didn't sound old or lame, so I said nothing at all.

  I closed my eyes and we rode in silence for several long moments. The scene on the Jambalaya played in my head.

  "The guy said, ‘I want the Blackberry.' That's what he said," I mumbled to myself.

  "Pardon?"

  I opened my eyes and caught Jasmine looking at me.

  "The guy on the boat. He said he wanted the Blackberry your mother gave me." I shook my head. "I don't remember a Blackberry.

  "What could be so important about a PDA that people are willing to kill for it?"

  CHAPTER 20

  While I pondered the mysterious missing Blackberry, Jasmine sped past the turnoff.

  "That was our turn," I said, pointing behind us to the left.

  "No problem." She slowed for a turn lane, then hit the brakes hard enough for my shoulder belt's inertial catch to grab as she steered the Mercedes through a 180 and headed back.

  "What Blackberry?"

  She reached the turnoff and I pointed toward the parking lot next to Jambalaya's berth. We pulled into the lot and found a parking space next to my battered three-quarterton Chevy pickup with the off-road roll bar and sheet metal sculpted by a decade's worth of encounters with a wide assortment of near misses and tight squeezes with high-Sierra trees and granite boulders.

  "Impressive," she said, looking up at my truck. "Perfect for L.A. freeways."

  "Nobody tries to crowd me when I merge."

  She nodded and turned off the ignition. "Nothing to lose."

  "Pardon?"

  "They take one look and know you've got nothing to lose and they let you in, right?"

  "Something like that."

  "That's such a totally contra-L.A. thing."

  I shrugged.

  "No, really." She leaned over and placed her hand on my forearm; her touch felt electric. "That's very cool." She paused, and in the silence the sounds of engines and tortured tires grew louder.

  "The jackals are coming," she said. "Give me a ride and tell me about the Blackberry."

  We transferred everything to my pickup. I cranked up the big-block V-8 and pulled out of the parking lot. The light was red at Admiralty Way.

  "Duck down." I faced away from the
onrushing surge of television vehicles as Jasmine slumped down in her seat. Nobody gave my battered truck a second glance. I didn't have a plan yet, so I took the easy path and turned south on Lincoln.

  "Could Mom have slipped something in your pocket there in the cemetery and you didn't remember?"

  "I suppose. Everything happened really quickly and I could have easily missed something. Our brains can only handle focusing on one thing at a time We switch back and forth between things so fast we think we're multitasking, but it's an illusion."

  "Mom always told me it was impossible to have a conversation with you without learning something."

  I looked over at her.

  "Mom was right," she said.

  Jasmine gave me her mother's smile again and, with no warning, opened up an epic blockbuster of a memory. The vision nailed me with fine holographic details like one of those incredible black-and-white Ansel Adams photos where you can see the needles on a Jeffrey pine all the way across Lake Tahoe way up on the top of the distant Sierra ridges.

  Jasmine's smile did that. It brought me face-to-face with that fateful Christmas party so long ago. Vanessa opened the door as if she had watched me come up the walk, and when I stepped in, she stood so close I felt the heat from her face and savored the aroma of Doublemint gum on her breath. I recalled the fine variegated color detail in her eyes as she focused on mine, holding my gaze right down to the last instant, when I had to turn away from the moment that would have been our first kiss had the house not been jammed with people.

  This memory struck me now, as I drove my truck and Vanessa's daughter across the Ballona Creek bridge. All of this seized my thoughts so completely that I ran the stoplight at Jefferson.