Falling Down

by David Cole

  In a matter of seconds, it became almost dark. The driving rain suddenly freezing cold, both of us shivering until we decided to run down the hill. We charged blindly, Ken leading, totally drenched and half blinded, the starkness of our peril totally clear as a lightning bolt struck ahead of us and thunder crashed immediately and I knew we were dead perfect in the heart of the electrical part of the storm, lightning striking viciously all around.

  When the storm finally relented, we realized there was very little chance we could get out the way we came, but Ken unerringly sensed where we were, extended his arm forward like a karate chop, go this way.

  An hour later, we were home.

  31

  “I need to tell you something,” I said.

  Ken and I nibbling on cold pizza crusts, the last of the monsoon rain splattering the skylights.

  “Right now things are kind of uncertain for me,” I said. “Spider calls it Jumping The Shark. When you lose your bearings, you want to know the quality of support you can trust from your friends. Are they with you, down the next block, into that house, across that street? Some people, you can’t trust yourself to guess their motives, you’ve got to just give complete trust. Or no trust.”

  “You can trust me,” Ken said.

  “I don’t really know that.”

  “No,” he said finally. “You don’t. I like you a lot, but I don’t know you very well, and you know me even less.”

  “It’s not the sex,” I said.

  “I liked that, too.”

  “Trust, that’s what’s on my mind. How much do I trust you?”

  “You’ve got to decide that,” Ken said. “To me, my life seems so, hey, I’m eight to one at the park. Weekends are mine, but it’s a steady thing, working at the park. It’s a routine, it’s steady, I love doing it, right now it’s my life. You, you’re no way ordinary. But you’re asking me the wrong question.”

  “What?” I said. Thinking, I don’t have time for this.

  “Why do you need to trust me?”

  Blinked twice, tried to focus on the question.

  “See,” Ken said, “I want to help you because it’s instinctual. I’d do anything to protect you, protect your family, even to protect Mary and Ana Luisa. It’s from my heart, my gut, I’ve told you that, it’s completely a gut response.”

  “And?”

  “You’re always working things over in your head.”

  “Say again?”

  “Laura, what are you thinking right now?”

  “Uh,” I said, “uh, I don’t understand what you’re telling me. I don’t have time to try and figure those things out.”

  “You’re in your head,” Ken said. “Not your heart. You toss everything around, backwards and forwards, flip it side to side, you’ve got to look at a question from a dozen different ways until you decide how to answer it.”

  You’re a Libra and a Gemini rising. Sandy. My astrology chart. You’ve got four different people in there all competing against each other. Like a split personality.

  “Is there another guy?” he said. “Somebody else? In your life?”

  “There was, there…”

  “Was? Or is?”

  There’s the moment. Which side of the border are you on? Do you look at a glass of water being half full or half empty? Or do you see whatever water’s in the glass as what was, and the empty space as what will be? Or is it just water and you’re working your head too much instead of your spirit?

  “I can’t say.”

  He let the moment pass.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “The Tucson Police Department has a bad cop.”

  That blindsided him, not the fact itself, but that I’d said it.

  “For the record, for the somewhat public record, TPD hired me to look at all kinds of financial records relating to drugs. But what they really hired me for is to look at the financial records of several hundred cops, looking for a pattern of unexpected income or purchases.”

  “A dirty cop,” Ken said.

  “Except, I haven’t done anything about it.”

  “You know the cop’s name?”

  “No.”

  “Does TPD have somebody in mind?”

  “They’re not telling me.”

  “So let me get this right,” Ken said. “You’re looking for a bad cop who’s probably taking money from drug cartels? From the maras?”

  “Yes.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes, crinkled his face muscles.

  “Just tell me one thing, Laura.”

  “I’ll tell you anything.”

  “You’re not using me?”

  “Using you?”

  “Using my connections with the police department?”

  “How could you think that?” I said.

  “Trust cuts both ways.”

  “No,” I said. “Does that help? No, it never occurred to me.”

  “Whew,” he said. “I just had to be sure about that.”

  “Be sure about that.”

  “So tell me, Laura. What the hell are we doing with each other?”

  “You’re a good friend,” I said.

  “Nothing more?”

  “I don’t know you enough. Not yet.”

  “There’s something going on between us.”

  “I’ve more to tell you,” I said. “About my life. But I’m not sure yet I’d want to trust myself, trust my reason for telling you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You’re not disappointed?”

  “Disappointed?”

  “In me, in us. That there’s nothing more than friendship?”

  “I don’t live for the future,” he said. “But…uh…” He turned his head slowly away, eyes unfocusing.

  “You are disappointed.”

  “No no no no no,” he said. “Forget talking about us. Laura. About this bad cop. I think…I think I might know who it is.”

  Mary and Spider burst into the kitchen.

  “Come on,” Spider said. “Let’s all go out to eat.”

  “You know who it is?” I said.

  “No.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Spider said.

  “But you think you know?”

  “Come on!” Mary said. “We want to go out to eat.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Whatever’s threatening you, Mom,” Spider said, “they’re gone. Let’s celebrate, let’s go eat.”

  “No.”

  “Come on,” Ken said. “Just a quick meal.”

  “You’re not helping, Ken. My daughter’s not going anywhere.”

  “All right. You and Mary and I. We’ll go out.”

  “Yes,” Mary said, turning to Spider. “You watch the kids. Tomorrow, I’ll watch the kids and you go out.”

  “Mom,” Spider said. “You’re treating me like another kid. I’ll do what I want, I’ll go out if I want.”

  “No,” Mary said. “You go tonight, and I’ll stay.”

  Spider looked us over.

  “All right,” she said. “You three guys go tonight.”

  In the car, Ken tapped on the dashboard, nodding to himself or shaking his head. I didn’t ask him anything, didn’t want to talk about it in front of Mary.

  Ric’s place stayed open until ten, we piled in the front door just before closing and begged for three meals and a bottle of zinfandel. We sat out on the patio, the sky darkened, the moon bright, occasional traffic noise humming from Sunset Road just to the south of the restaurant.

  At ten-thirty, the restaurant staff locked up and left us alone, drawing a large chain around the entire plaza but leaving a space for us to walk out. Once the staff had all driven away, Ken went to his car, brought back a yellow plastic bucket, like a kid’s sand pail for the beach. Popped the lid off the bucket and spooned icy slush into our three empty wine glasses.

  “Margarita mix,” he said. “You buy the bucket at Costco, you fill it with tequila, you got instant cold margar
itas. Hand me that saltshaker.”

  Somewhere around midnight, we’d run out of stories and Mary asked Ken to tell about any other incident happening when he was a detective. He ran a finger inside the yellow bucket, licked his finger. The mix had long since melted, still drinkable but not cold.

  “I ever tell you about the Iceman?” Ken said.

  “Nope.”

  “Iceman loved NASCAR races. He’d drive all over the circuit, every year he’d follow the circuit. Never had a job, but he did have steady income. Had this three-quarter-ton pickup, rigged with those mechanics’ boxes? You know, those ribbed, galvanized boxes along each side of the pickup bed, you stored your tools in there, whatever. Well. Iceman, at some time he’d learned how to repair refrigeration equipment. Residential, commercial, he could fix anything.”

  “So he’d take jobs in towns?” I said. “To pay his way? Around the circuit?”

  “You know, when you stay in a motel, they’ve got these ice machines. You got your room, you got your empty bucket, you go outside to the ice machine and fill up on ice cubes. Well, Iceman, he’d steal the machines.”

  “For the ice?” I said, poking him in the chin.

  “He’d empty out the ice. In one of those mechanics’ boxes, on his pickup, he had a heavy-rigged dolly. He’d disconnect the ice machine after he emptied it, he’d haul that machine to the power tailgate on his pickup and load it aboard. Next town, he’d sell the machine. He got these official stickers he’d paste on the machines, look like they’d been inspected and approved. Sometimes he’d clean up the machine, spray-paint the rusted or dinged spots, and go back to sell it to the motel owner at the very same place he stole it from. Must’ve stolen…I don’t know, hundreds of ’em.”

  “How’d you ever catch him?”

  “Didn’t. Some deputy sheriff in some back-country Texas town decided to look into ice machine thefts in his county. Got license plate numbers, starting coordinating with other sheriff’s offices, they noticed the pattern. Same deputy that started the search, he got so addicted to finding this guy, he quit his job and drove across thirteen states until he realized that he’d been following the NASCAR circuit. Being a race fan himself, he’d go the races, probably same day as the Iceman. And that’s a true story. Want to hear another one?”

  A car backfired on Sunset Road and Ken whipped out his .357, my hand behind me, reaching for the Beretta.

  “Wow,” Mary said. Loopy, but not drunk, none of us really drunk but high. “I want a gun.”

  “No, you don’t,” Ken said.

  She picked up his .357, broke open the cylinder, checked the loads. “Grew up on farms,” she said. “I don’t have a gun, but I know what to do with them. You’ve got the hammer on a loaded cylinder.” She put the .357 down, touched my Beretta. “Laura, why do you have this?”

  Three margaritas loosened my self-control. Mary and Ken waited, my mouth opening and closing like a guppy grazing for surface food. I had no answer for them, none for myself, and in that moment a car backfired on Sunset Road and I said the first thing that popped into my head.

  “Target practice.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s shoot some rounds. See who’s better.”

  “Not a good idea,” Mary said.

  I looked at Ken, gestured. “We’re at Sunset and Cray-croft. Right? A little east of here, we turn north into the canyons, go all the way to the end, there’s an outdoor shooting range.”

  Mary watched, hands over her ears, as I matched shot for shot with Ken, his .357 incredibly loud, the Beretta sounding only like popping corn.

  “I’ve had four margaritas,” Ken said. “But I hardly feel them. At thirty yards, you’re just plinking, I’m blasting. Mary, you want to shoot?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’ve talked about it. Show us.”

  Ken palmed his .357, offered the handle to Mary.

  “I’ve mainly fired rifles and shotguns,” Mary said. “I’ve been watching the recoil when you fire that cannon, what would it take to learn?”

  “Could you do it?” Ken said.

  “Why would I want to?”

  “Is this more of your pacifism?” Ken said, and everything got quiet because his good humor was entirely gone, replaced with a cold, serious tone.

  “No.”

  “Then why not?”

  “If I had to,” Mary said, “I’d shoot it. But I don’t have to.”

  “And what would it take?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Protecting Ana Luisa?”

  She ducked her head, held both palms up, no.

  “If you had to protect Ana Luisa,” Ken said. “To the max?”

  “Then? Yes,” Mary said. “If pushed into that corner, no matter what the consequences, I would shoot a gun.”

  “Would you kill somebody?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Mary said.

  Ken stood against her, pushing her body so they both faced downrange.

  “It’s heavy,” he said.

  Heavy pressure. That’s what I felt, sweat running freely in defiance of the cool evening air. Took a small pack of tissues from my bag, wadded them together, and wiped my forehead and across the back of my neck, the tissues quickly sodden and crumpling in my fingers while the sweat kept running.

  Panic sweat, flop sweat, the moisture cooled just enough by the air to work like an evaporative cooler. Sort of. I’d rarely known this kind of sweat, rarely felt this degree of tension. A diver friend told me about undersea pressure, she regularly descended to six, nine, even twelve fathoms below the surface. Each fathom approximately six feet down. At six fathoms, the pressure per square inch was double that at the surface. Twelve fathoms, triple the pressure, and so on and so on to the limits of a survivable dive.

  I figured I must be somewhere down around one hundred feet, watching Ken level his .357 and fire a round.

  “About six, eight inches of recoil. So. Ana Luisa is at your back, you and this gun are all that’s between her and whoever stuck that rattler in your mailbox.”

  He fired again.

  “You and this gun are all that’s between Ana Luisa and the maras.”

  He fired again.

  “You see how to do it?” He put the .357 in her hand, started backing away. “You’re all that’s between Ana Luisa, between all your love and something evil.” Fifteen yards away, shouting. “Aim the gun.” Twenty yards away. “Aim it at me, Mary. Lift it up, aim it at me.” Thirty yards away. “Shoot me, Mary.” He stopped. “You’ve got one round left. Shoot me.”

  Mary stared at Ken, muscles working all over her face.

  “Shoot me!”

  She aimed the gun, Ken threw his arms out wide, waving his palms at her. She pulled the trigger just before I could deflect the pistol, but it clicked on an empty chamber. Astonishment all over our faces, she pulled the trigger twice more.

  Click. Click.

  “You knew it was empty!” I shouted into Ken’s face when he came back to us. “You knew, you made her try anyway.”

  “I knew,” Ken said. Palming the .357. “But she didn’t. Come on. We’ve had a party. Let’s go back to your house, you two get some sleep.”

  But at home, nobody guarded the driveway entrance. Winding clockwise up the drive, apprehensive, we came into the parking lot and saw two TPD cruisers.

  “Miss Winslow?” an officer said, Maglite in my face.

  “Yes.”

  “Miss Winslow, I’ve been ordered to take you to headquarters.”

  “It’s two in the morning,” I said. “Can’t this wait?”

  “Lieutenant Kligerman said to bring you in. Now.”

  “Is there a charge?” Ken said.

  “The lieutenant will discuss that, ma’am. But we have orders to cuff you if necessary. So please get out of your vehicle and in back of the cruiser.”

  “Call Christopher Kyle,” I said to Ken.

  “Detective Kyle will meet you at headquarters,” the officer said, one h
and holding out handcuffs, the other hand on his duty weapon.

  32

  The four of them huddled around one end of a huge oak table, elliptical in shape, with a rounded notch cut into the far end. TPD Chief of Police Rich Wallach, Assistant Chief Django Manouche, Bob Gates, and Jordan Kligerman.

  At fifty-seven, Wallach’s hair still more blond than gray, cut in military style, shaved at the sides and sparse bristles on top, no more than an inch high and dead flat across the crown of his narrow head. Jarhead, I thought. But just the hair, his voice not that of a Marine, but very soft, a faint burr, Scotch or Irish, long since smoothed by Arizona’s slower pace.

  Wallach wore a short-sleeved Brooks Brothers shirt, a button-down collar with the buttons cleverly tailored underneath the collars. A very light orange shirt, tucked into carefully creased seersucker pants, held up with braces, the pants in turn tucked into sixteen-inch-high cowboy boots with a two-inch roping heel.

  “Bob?” I said. Gates didn’t even smile. “Bob, what is this?”

  “You know who I am,” Wallach said.

  “Chief of police.”

  “And you know these other men?”

  “Yes.”

  A fifth man entered the room, left the door open, pulled out a chair next to Gates but didn’t sit down. Lids falling slightly over light blue eyes, no crinkles at the sides as he smiled, lips wide and curved, the smile broadening to show impossibly white teeth, capped or a dental plate, the smile as fake as the teeth.

  I’d met him three years ago.

  I couldn’t remember his name, couldn’t remember if I’d ever known his name, and he wasn’t introduced.

  An assistant United States attorney who’d threatened me with old FBI arrest warrants if I didn’t work with him. This guy, he’d been at two or three meetings back then. Sat away from the conference table, took no notes, never said a word. Another U.S. attorney. From the Phoenix office. My hair was different, shorter, redder, I was three and a half years older.