Good Morning, Killer

by April Smith

  Twenty-seven.

  The azaleas in front of Andrew’s house were trimmed as usual into perfect ovals of red, white and pink, like mounds of psychedelic candy brightly pulsating along the path to the door. The path was newly wet and fragrant with cedar chips still moist in the shade of a mimosa tree, whose featherlike leaflets trailed languorously in light ocean airs. Everything would be in working order—the tight screen door, the chiming bell—and it would take several more seconds for him to unsnap all the locks and chains. In those seconds we could still turn back.

  But then he was standing there, with nothing between us, vivid and three-dimensional in the immediate plane: greasy day-off hair, old sweats with cutoff sleeves, as if popped there whole. Behind him I could sense dark wood and cool rooms, and the poignant scent of gardenias was blowing across the interior through open patio doors.

  “What’s up?”

  I could have handled the cop face much better, the shut-down superior detachment, but instead he was giving off uneasy suspicion, as any home owner would, to find an unpleasant character from the past unexpectedly on his doorstep.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  There it was, the scan, the intuitive check for psychotic unpredictable vibes. No, he decided, it was just Ana, as surprisingly flesh-and-blood ordinary as he.

  “Want to come in?”

  “Are you in the middle of something?”

  “Just working out.”

  Stiff-legged, I crossed the threshold and hovered by the back of a couch, fingers scratching at the cracked leather.

  “Want something to drink?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Twenty-pound barbells had been taken from the rack near the sliding glass doors and were resting on the dhurrie rug.

  “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “I wasn’t exactly on a roll. Hard getting back.”

  “I know what you mean,” and let it fade.

  He was still shockingly underweight. His cheeks were stubbled and gaunt, the biceps that showed out of the cutoffs were not Andrew’s iron signature, but belonged to a different man, a sick man, the flesh of the muscles deflated and pale.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, and willed myself not to flee.

  “Sure I can’t get you something? Coffee? Juice?”

  “Maybe just some water. My throat is kind of dry.”

  “It’s dry,” he agreed. “Come on in.”

  The kitchen was just the same—spotless Mexican tile and family-size jug of dishwashing liquid on the wiped-down aluminum sink. Plants in the window, a white embroidered valance above the plants. The reason the curtains went so well with the house was they had been his mother’s, still starched by the same cleaning lady.

  He pulled a bottle from the pantry and tore off the cellophane.

  “Oh. Did you want ice?”

  I shook my head and drank the water.

  “Look, I don’t know how to say this.”

  “I can’t drop the charges,” he interrupted. “Even though you got Brennan. It’s in the prosecution’s hands.”

  The sincerity and swiftness of it caught me off guard, as if he had been waiting for me to show up just to say this.

  “I wouldn’t even suggest that.”

  “Once it got rolling, there was nothing I could do.”

  “Of course. I know.”

  “I never gave you up.”

  He had begun to breathe hard and through the nose with little snorting sounds and his finger pointed at my heart.

  “I did not give you up. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “It didn’t matter anyway, because—”

  “Yes, it does. It does matter. Even at the hospital. When they came to me, ready to go out and kick ass, I still gave them cock-and-bull about who did it.”

  “I know, and I’ll never forget.” My voice broke, and I had to clamp my fingers over my lips. “Anyway, there was Margaret.”

  “There was Margaret,” he affirmed with no attempt to hide the bitterness.

  “She told them it was me.”

  His voice was thick. “She thought she had something to protect.”

  “You?”

  “Whatever. Who knows what’s in her mind?”

  “Also,” I went on perversely, “they recovered the gun, so you had to know, sooner or later, they’d come to me.”

  “Just like old times,” said Andrew. “You’re listening but you’re not hearing.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Abruptly the color had drained from his face. He reached for a bottle of pills. There were many bottles, collected on a tray.

  “Are you all right?”

  He took the water bottle and gulped some tablets, then squatted and put his head between his legs. I went down beside him and stroked his hair, his bristly cheek.

  “Hey? Hey, partner. You okay?”

  He allowed himself to slide all the way down until he was sitting on the linoleum. I hunkered beside him.

  “Good thing you keep your floors clean.”

  We rested there until his breathing calmed.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve got a heart condition. Nobody knew about it until I almost bought the farm.”

  “In the ER?”

  “Yeah.”

  “See? That’s why it was a good thing I shot you. Otherwise, you’d never know you have a heart condition.”

  “You really fucked me, baby. It hurts to get shot,” he said, and slapped my thigh with an empty laugh.

  Fear had begun its paralyzing creep. I had not been afraid like this even in the house with Brennan.

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “It’s called IHSS—idiopathic hypertrophic subaortic stenosis. See, the old fart can still learn new words.”

  “Congratulations. What do they mean?”

  “There’s a thickening in the walls of the heart that blocks the flow of blood. No symptoms, won’t show up on a physical exam, it’s only when you’re under stress and shock and your blood pressure falls to a dangerous point that it becomes significant.”

  “Well … we just won’t let that happen again.”

  “I’m supposed to have no salt, no booze, no sex.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “The medication wipes out your sex drive. Can you imagine me, without a hard-on twenty-four hours a day?”

  I smiled.

  “Here’s the other thing.” He paused for the worst of it: “No bike.”

  “No way!”

  “If I got into an accident on the bike, it could happen again, I could have another ‘cardiac event,’ so I’m not supposed to ride the Harley.”

  “But you will.”

  “I don’t know if I will. This kind of shit makes you old.”

  He was lolling the back of his head against the cabinets, looking up, one transparent tear crawling down his cheekbone.

  “I feel,” he said, “like I’m at the bottom of a well.”

  I put my arm around him.

  “We fucked up, Andy. We fucked up really bad.”

  “I’m the one,” he said, “I’m the one who fucked it up—”

  “No—”

  “Can you forgive me? Please forgive me. I want to make an amend to you,” he cried desperately. “If I hurt you in any way—”

  “Yes—”

  “If I caused you to suffer because of my actions—”

  “Yes, I forgive you.”

  “I made a mistake, Ana—”

  “Forgive me, too. I did something terrible, I don’t know how I could have, actually, aimed a gun at you, I’m not capable of it, it must have been—”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay—”

  Then we were holding on to each other as tightly as humans can grip.

  “We were meant for each other,” he whispered and we cradled and rocked.

  “Oh God, Andy, this is really, really bad.”

  He stroked my hair. “What is it?”

  “I need safe
passage.”

  “You have safe passage, baby doll.”

  I had to get my breath. I had to find my voice. It was 1:47 p.m.

  He waited, slow and easy. “Go ahead.”

  “I know you robbed that bank. Mission Impossible. It was you.”

  He lifted his head and smiled sadly.

  “You know, huh?” and touched my chin. “How do you know?”

  “I ran the DNA on the ski mask. You dropped the ski mask, you stupid dope.” I hit his arm, but I was weak as a kitten. “Your DNA is a match to the DNA in the dried saliva on the mask.”

  “Pardon my ignorance, but how did you get my DNA? Did you sneak in here in the middle of the night and cut my hair?”

  “Your toothbrush,” I said softly. “The one you always kept in my apartment. It was still there.”

  “My toothbrush.” He shook his head in ironic acknowledgment of all the petty bullshit that makes the world go round. He sighed and we released each other.

  “Andrew—”

  “It’s okay. I would have done the same thing.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You just said you would never give me up.”

  “If I were facing attempted murder? And I wanted to prove self-defense? The guy came at me because I had the goods on him? You bet I would,” but it was bravado because now he was afraid, too, I could feel it.

  “Nothing would have happened if we didn’t have that fight—”

  “I came at the wrong person,” he shrugged.

  “I never would have put you together with the ski mask. I never would have had a reason—”

  “Shhh. It’s done. It’s survival.”

  “Survival is ugly.”

  He laughed. “So is a newborn baby. You think you arrived on this earth any different?”

  The house was immensely quiet. All the clocks had finally stopped.

  “We’ve run out of time, Andrew.”

  He nodded. “You’re wearing a wire?”

  “No, I’m not wearing a wire. But I’m armed.”

  “Right.”

  “I told them to give me half an hour.”

  “I’ll make you a deal.” He smiled faintly. “You and me. Take the money and run.”

  “I wish. I really, really wish.”

  “Let’s go. Come on. It’s not too late. You know you want it.”

  “I want it, all right.”

  “I can get the money. We can go right out that back door now. They never cover the back door—”

  I laughed.

  “—One of the most common tactical mistakes.”

  The look in his eyes was meant to be hopeful, but his rakish despair was breaking my heart.

  “Oh, Andrew, this is so making it worse. Don’t try to do this now. Don’t try to—oh, God, I just want it all to go away.”

  “We can, baby.”

  “What are you talking about, anyway? You gave the money to Margaret. Why her?”

  “I was practically a godfather to her kids. Cute little kids. The boy’s a natural athlete.”

  “Is that why you robbed the bank?”

  “She got screwed by the department,” Andrew said. “She should have been compensated when the Hat died.” He sounded tired. “The guy had almost twenty years in.”

  “So you robbed a bank?”

  “Somebody had to take care of the kids.”

  “Really? I think not. I think she was blackmailing you. Emotional blackmail.”

  “For what?”

  There was knocking at the door. I startled. No, wait, stop—it was too soon and too late at the same time.

  “Listen,” I said with crazed desperation, “you can make a good deal.”

  He replied with a doleful look. “I used a weapon in the commission of a bank robbery. That’s twenty-five years, no questions. And I’m a cop.” He shook his head.

  More knocking, harder now.

  “Ana? You okay? Andrew! It’s Barry. It’s me, buddy. We’ve got to talk.”

  We smiled at each other. He had automatically locked the door.

  “I hope he brought a tape recorder because I’m only going to say it once.” Andrew put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad it’s me, not you. Going to prison.”

  “I’ll stand by you,” I promised. And then I felt a great liberation, as if an old, worrisome question had been resolved.

  “Andrew, let’s get married. I love you.”

  He kissed me, hard.

  He would not surrender in his father’s house. He would not surrender to his buddies, knowing it would be something they could not live with afterward. Out of deference, because he was a cop’s cop, they gave him a break and took his weapons, and we all followed in a caravan—my car, him in his car with Lieutenant Barry Loomis, and two vans of Santa Monica officers, over to the closest strip mall we could think of that would be in Los Angeles County, out of the jurisdiction of the Santa Monica police.

  It was one of those neighborhoods where the haze is always hanging low, scouring the eyes and the hoods of dented cars with patched-up ten-year-old paint jobs, where wide commercial avenues, built for a dense mix of fast food and retail, instead are empty and scrawny as cheap Christmas trees. Everything seems to be on a slant. Signs are broken or defaced. Figures do not walk upright, unless they are mothers dragging double loads of grocery bags; buses don’t stop very long and drivers keep their eyes straight.

  There was a Laundromat and a Lucky supermarket, a used record store, a bright blue Caribbean restaurant with beaded curtains and exuberantly painted suns and moons and fiery cockatoos.

  Andrew’s car pulled into the center of the lot. It was mostly empty, the middle of the afternoon, except for indigents who were lounging at the outdoor tables at McDonald’s. Too early for the hookers. Barry got out quickly, turning his anguish into clipped, efficient movements, getting on the radio and telling everybody where to go.

  The vans had rolled in and the guys were keeping their distance, waiting for the LAPD captain to arrive.

  “Ana!” Barry snapped his fingers. “Andrew wants to say good-bye.”

  Why don’t you go back to the seventies? I wanted to say to him and his ridiculous mustache. I don’t need orders from you about when and where I should talk to Andrew Berringer, sashaying past the uniforms, who were still trying to make sense of what was going on.

  Andrew was sitting alone in the car, fingers drumming the steering wheel.

  “How’re you doing, babe?”

  “I’ve had better days,” he said.

  “I am serious. I want to marry you.”

  He snorted. “Is that your ambition now? To be a prison wife?”

  “I don’t care. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” He gave me an unreadable look. “Do I have safe passage?”

  “Always,” I assured him, and waited for the question.

  It was not an answer that he wanted but a promise.

  “One last time?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  We kissed through the open window, then he turned the ignition.

  “You better not do that.”

  He had me by the neck—

  “Andrew!”

  —and pulled me halfway inside the car and with the other hand, he steered.

  “Andrew! Please! Stop!”

  It was a muscle car, in seconds we were going in treacherous, widening circles.

  “Stop the car!”

  My feet were lifted off the ground, yet I was pinned through the window by his desperate strength.

  “Kill me,” he said.

  We were going faster, wider, a death spiral.

  “No, I won’t, I love you—”

  But it didn’t stop anything or change anything. Figures were scattering and weapons were drawn and there were shouts, “Get down, get down! Police action, get down!” Andrew’s teeth were clenched, but with effort, not rage. Our foreheads banged, I bit my tongue.

  “Kill me. Please, just do it.”

  There was shou
ting. Gunfire. They blew out a tire and the car veered crazily.

  He pulled tighter so I could not breathe. My body flew like a rag doll as he relentlessly and with purpose kept doughnuting the car in wilder circles. The glass façade of the supermarket came rushing at us, gleaming shopping carts and spinning women grabbing babies. “It’s all right,” he said, and I pulled the nine-millimeter Sig Sauer and his eyes were closed so I closed mine, and point-blank put it in the only place where I could reach, against the side of his rib cage, underneath the armpit, and fired.

  His hands dropped. His head slumped forward. He lost all animation, his foot put no pressure on the gas. The car slowed and coasted into a parked truck and I rolled free, to stare up at the empty sky. Andrew’s buddies tried to cover the hole, but the contact shot had penetrated the aorta and spinal column. He did not have fifteen seconds to imagine that his life might continue; that the wound might not be grievous, his case might be dismissed or won, or that he could save his partner or his father, or be given any other kind of freedom, any kind of chance. In an instant, oblivion, not love, had flooded his chest.

  Twenty-eight.

  The sky was growing lower, as if it would touch the ground and reclaim the planet, sucking up the horizon and everything that lay before it in streaming tunnels of ashen cloud. Whippy branches of ocotillo cactus jerked in spasms in a sweeping wind-colored brown. Raindrops sleeted the windshield, and then it went dry. I detested California.

  We were moving at a good clip down the slick highway—a sheriff’s van, the prisoner in an unmarked sedan and then the coroner. We were hunting bodies. Andrew’s funeral had been the day before, but the harvest was not done. There were still more corpses in the ground for the digging, or at least that is what Ray Brennan had boasted to his cell mate.

  I was free. The DA dropped the charges based on Andrew’s confession, taped in the living room just before his surrender, in which he stated that he had attacked me with intent to commit bodily harm because I had knowledge of the Mission Impossible bank robbery. Our relationship was falling apart at the time, he said, and he was fearful that I would expose him.

  Andrew took sole responsibility for the heist, providing details of how he had planned it, all the way back to the class he gave on bank security. He trained those two managers so when he appeared as a robber wearing a ski mask, they would unwittingly follow his commands. He used a weapon to threaten them, so he would not have to speak; so they could not recognize his voice. He had severed the hinges in the rooftop hatch weeks before, waiting until he knew there would be a large delivery of cash. Since Andrew had taught the opening procedures, he knew exactly how many minutes he had inside the vault and how long it would take for the police to respond. He expected a take of over a million dollars, but all he finally put in the trunk of his official car before driving to the police station to report for work that morning was $52,674 because the rest had been locked in empty safety deposit boxes overnight. He had given the money as a gift to Margaret Forrester to care for her children in the aftermath of the death of his best friend.