What Williams would make of that, Colin didn’t worry about too much, either. The absolute worst thing the new chief could do was drive him into retirement. Colin didn’t want that to happen, but it wouldn’t be nearly so bad as if he’d had to quit because Mike Pitcavage killed himself. He’d go home, he’d enjoy his wife and his tiny daughter, and he’d cultivate his garden. You could do worse.
Meanwhile, he pedaled past the big B of A near Sword Beach. The gas stations at the corner of Sword Beach and Reynoso all flew the red flags that meant they had no fuel. Those flags were ragged and faded—they flew most of the time.
Past Sword Beach to the east was a shopping center a bit spiffier than a strip mall. The anchor store, such as it was, was a Vons supermarket that had been there since dirt. Colin and Louise and now Kelly all got their groceries there. The Vons was the place that had been knocked over. The armed robber had blown a plate-glass window to hell and gone; sparkling shards littered the concrete walk out front. A middle-aged woman who could only be the manager waited there for the cops to show up.
She gave her name as Rudabeh Barazani—Iranian, Colin guessed. One more ingredient in the SoCal ethnic stew. Her English had a ghost of an accent, no more. “Anybody get hurt?” Colin asked.
“No, thank heaven,” she said.
“Okay, that’s good,” he said, both because it was true and to calm her down—although she didn’t seem too flustered. “Tell me what happened, then.”
“A man filled one of our hand-carry baskets with cans of hash and chicken and tuna. He filled it as full as he could. When he got to a checker, he did not take the items out. He tried to set the basket in front of her instead. When she asked him to take the cans out so she could see how many there were, he pulled a gun instead and told her to put all the money in the register into a bag. Since we have no bags any more, she just handed it to him. He left with the money and the canned goods, and fired a shot through the window to make sure no one would try to chase him.”
“You have a description, ma’am?” Gabe Sanchez asked.
“A white man, or maybe Hispanic, in his fifties,” Ms. Barazani said. “Medium-sized. Gray hair, getting thin here and here”—she sketched hair drawing back at the temples on her own forehead—“and a gray mustache and chin beard.”
“Clothes?” Colin asked.
“Denim jacket. Khakis. Nikes.”
Colin sighed to himself. You couldn’t get more ordinary than that. He said, “I wouldn’t want to lug a basket full of cans real far, not on foot I wouldn’t. What kind of getaway vehicle did he use?”
“He had a tricycle with a wire basket big enough to hold our plastic one,” the store manager replied. “A woman said she saw him turn from Reynoso north onto Sword Beach. I didn’t see that. I was trying to take care of poor Carmela. She was the checker, and she was very upset.”
“Somebody sticks a gun in your face, you usually are,” Colin agreed. “We’ll need to talk to her, though, and to the woman who saw which way the robber went. Gabe, radio the station and let ’em know what we have. I’ll interview the witnesses.”
“You got it.” Sanchez drew the walkie-talkie out of his jacket pocket.
The checker had pulled herself together. Her story wasn’t much different from the one Rudabeh Barazani had told. Colin discovered he couldn’t talk to the gal who’d watched the getaway—she’d already gone home. But she was a regular at that Vons. The manager gave him her name and address. It wasn’t far. He wondered whether he ought to go over there after he and Gabe finished up here.
Virtue triumphed over laziness. He was heading toward the witness’ house, with Gabe puffing along beside him in more than one sense of the word, when his inside-pocket, not-quite-wrist radio squawked for attention. He took it out. “Ferguson,” he said as he eased to a stop. “What’s going on?”
“We just nabbed your armed-robbery suspect,” answered the dispatcher back at the station.
“Oh, yeah? That’s what I call service,” Colin said. “How’d it happen?”
“A patrolman on a bicycle on Hesperus north of Braxton Bragg spotted an individual matching the description we sent out on a trike with canned goods in a basket in back. He made the arrest after a short pursuit.”
“I bet it was short.” Colin wouldn’t have wanted to try to outspeed a bike on a trike, especially when the trike was weighted down with loot. “Any trouble with the suspect? I know he was armed.”
“No, Captain, no trouble,” the dispatcher replied. “Our man had the drop on the perp. The guy didn’t try anything stupid.”
“Roger that. Good,” Colin said. “Okay, Gabe and I will come back to the station to question him. The witness I was going to talk to can wait. Out.”
“We turn around?” Gabe said.
“We turn around.” Colin nodded.
“Well, shit.” Gabe ground out his cigarette under the sole of his shoe. “If we’d headed straight back from Vons, we’d be a lot closer than we are now.”
“Piss and moan, piss and moan,” Colin said. They grinned at each other. Then they rode back to the police station.
The suspect was already there. The dispatcher had sent out a black-and-white to bring him—and the canned goods, and the cash—in. His name was Victor Jennings. He was fifty-nine years old. He lived only a couple of blocks from where he’d been caught. Another five minutes, and he would have made a clean getaway. He had no previous criminal record.
In the interrogation room, he looked angry and embarrassed and hopeless, all at the same time. Colin had seen variations of those expressions on too many faces in that room. After Jennings waived his Miranda rights, Colin asked him, “Why’d you do it, Mr. Jennings?”
“Why d’you think?” Jennings sounded hopeless, too. “I was hungry. I was broke. Haven’t hardly worked since that goddamn thing blew up. Had to get me food some kind of way. So I figured, what the hell, and I went and did it.”
If he’d just stolen food, they might well have turned him loose. They might even have let him keep the canned meat. Even in cases like his, where the hungry thief pulled a gun to get what he wanted, juries often didn’t care to convict. Too many jurors were either in the same boat themselves or had friends and relatives who were. But . . . “Why did you have the checker empty out the register, too?”
Jennings shrugged. “Like I said before, what the hell? I was already a robber. After I ate what I took, I could buy some more food with the money.” His mouth twisted. “You guys’ll be feeding me now, won’t you?”
Colin and Gabe looked at each other. The way things were these days, nobody at any level of government wanted more than the barest number of prisoners locked up. Feeding and guarding prisoners cost money, and money had been as hard to come by as work since the eruption. After a longish pause, Gabe answered, “That’s not up to us. That’s up to the DA.”
Although Colin didn’t blame him for passing the buck, he did add, “We’ll have to hold you till the DA makes up his mind—a few days, anyhow.”
Victor Jennings brightened. “A few days my belly won’t be scraping my backbone, anyway. I know it won’t be fancy food, but there oughta be enough of it.” He went off to his cell a happy man.
“What does it say about us when somebody wants to get locked up so he can eat?” Colin asked when he was gone.
“Says we’re fucked, man,” Gabe told him, and he couldn’t very well argue.
VIII
N
aked on the bed with Vanessa, Bronislav Nedic stretched luxuriantly. As the afterglow faded, she found herself chilly. He seemed plenty warm. Maybe that was because of the fur on his hair and belly: no surprise, what with how thick his beard grew. Vanessa didn’t mind it; she found hairy guys more a turn-on than the reverse. Or maybe he seemed warm enough just because he was a guy. Something was wrong with half the human race’s thermostats, though which half’s had sparked arguments for thousands of years. He rolled toward her. Did he feel like another round? She wasn’t sure s
he did. But instead of reaching for her, he asked a question out of the blue: “Do you ever finish story you started during last winter?” His English was excellent, but he often left out articles.
“Huh?” Vanessa said brilliantly—no, she hadn’t expected that.
Bronislav let his patience show. “Do you ever finish story?” he repeated, and went on, “I see—I saw—in Playboy story your brother wrote. Pretty good story. Not great story, but pretty good.”
“Mrmm.” Vanessa ground her teeth instead of answering. She thought it was a dumb story. She thought almost everything her kid brother wrote was dumb, so that came as no great surprise. She didn’t mind that Bronislav had looked at the Playboy—and, no doubt, not just for the story. Men were going to look at women, and that was all there was to it. She did mind that Marshall had got a fat check from the magazine. It griped her belly as much as bad fish would have.
“You do not finish story.” This time, Bronislav was telling, not asking.
“Well, what if I didn’t?” Vanessa flared. “I didn’t like the way it was going, so I put it away till I figured out how to fix it.” She hadn’t figured it out yet. She hadn’t tried for a while. When she had time, she had no inspiration. When she wanted to do something with it, she was too busy.
“You should finish,” Bronislav said. “If your brother can do, you also can do.” Since Vanessa was convinced that was true, she found herself nodding. But then Bronislav asked, “Do you—will you—let me see what you do so far?”
She didn’t want to. Then he’d see she hadn’t done much more since the last time he looked at it. But if she told him no, she’d also have to tell him why not. Or, more likely, she wouldn’t have to. You didn’t need to belong to the FBI to work that one out for yourself. And so, with no great warmth, she said, “Um, okay.”
Naked, he padded out to the dinette and brought the laptop back to bed. Since the power was on, he plugged it in. Then he said, “You find story for me. I have no GPS to find where you put things on your computer.”
The way she organized her hard disk seemed perfectly logical to her. She quickly called up the story, not wanting Bronislav to see it lived in the same folder as one called “Strange Fish,” which she also hadn’t come close to finishing. Feckless lunges at fiction. Marshall could get things done, get them out, and get them sold, goddammit. Why couldn’t she? She didn’t know why. All she knew was that she didn’t.
She felt nakeder while he was reading her prose than she had with him on top of her a few minutes earlier. Sex came naturally and, for guys, just about always had a payoff at the end. Writing, on the other hand, was almost the definition of an unnatural act.
He gave the screen his usual close attention. He didn’t do anything halfway, which was one of the things that attracted her. She was like that herself, even if she’d never crawled under barbed wire clutching a Kalashnikov.
When he got done, he asked, “Why do you not go on more?”
“I couldn’t find a way to end it that I liked,” Vanessa said. That had the virtue of being at least partly true. The rest of the truth was that her enthusiasm for the story had dribbled away once she got past her opening burst. Sitting at the laptop till beads of blood came out on your forehead seemed much too much like work.
Bronislav made three suggestions. They were quick and neat and close together, like a burst from his assault rifle when he was fighting the Fascist Croats. Vanessa was sure one of them wouldn’t work, but the other two easily could. The only thing wrong with them was that she hadn’t thought of them herself.
“Maybe I’ll try one of those,” she said after a pause she hoped wasn’t too awkward.
“Or do something you think of. Only do!” Bronislav said. “Your brother does, so why not you?”
Yeah, why not me? she wondered. Envy of Marshall was part of what had got her writing, or trying to write, in the first place. The other part was hating the crap she had to deal with at the widget works. She was still jealous of Marshall. She still hated the crap Nick Gorczany and the other linguistically challenged nerds at the widget works dropped on her desk.
But writing stories—all the way through, from beginning to end—proved harder than it looked, at least for her. It wasn’t a way out, a way to keep from having to go in to the widget works every day. That was what she wanted. That was what she needed, before dealing with idiots forty hours a week plus overtime drove her postal.
Could she explain that to Bronislav? She felt herself yawning. Not tonight, she couldn’t. She was too damn sleepy. She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Bronislav took the hint. He shut down the computer, made his own ablutions, and came to bed with her. She turned off the light.
When she woke earlier than she wanted to the next morning, Bronislav was sitting up beside her. His face, illuminated from below, looked scary—faces weren’t meant to be lit that way. But the way he was lit wasn’t what bothered Vanessa. “What are you looking at?” she asked sharply—she didn’t want him or anybody else snooping on her computer.
“Oh, good morning. I am sorry if I bother you,” he answered. “I am reading your story again. I managed to find it, you see.” He turned the screen her way. Sure enough, there was the story, or as much of it as she’d done. “You need to write ending. It will be outstanding. It will be amazing.” That was his all-purpose word of praise.
Vanessa’s temper cooled almost as fast as it had kindled. That he liked the piece so much helped to relax her. Right this minute, she was sure he liked it better than she did.
“Since you are awake, I will make for us breakfast,” Bronislav said.
“Okay!” Vanessa knew she sounded eager. With reason—she was. He could do outstanding things—amazing things—with the junk in her icebox. They might not be illegal or immoral, but they were sure as hell fattening. She didn’t care even a little bit. They were also delicious.
This time, he got dressed before he went into the kitchen. He’d be messing around with hot grease, after all. Spatters could get you in some of the most unkindest places if you let them.
Vanessa lay in bed for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of cookery. Listening to someone else cook was a lot more fun than doing it yourself. When savory smells started wafting back to the bedroom, she got up, put on a thick terrycloth robe, and went out to see what kind of magic Bronislav was working this morning.
It involved an egg or two, torn-up bread, a little bit (only a little bit, for flavor) of sausage, some leftover veggies, and spices in the pantry she’d forgotten she had. “What do they call this in Serbian?” she asked when she could stop inhaling it.
“I don’t know.” His powerful shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “It is not Serb dish. Oh, maybe spices are Serb-style, but it is just what I do with what I find. I hope you do not get mad, but is poor-people food. It stretches what you have as far as it can.”
“I’m not mad. It’s great!” Vanessa tried to stretch what she had as far as she could, too. Food didn’t turn out so tasty when she cooked, though. She got her attitude toward cooking from her mother, she supposed. And Louise Ferguson never aimed any higher than Well, let’s get it over with. Vanessa went on, “You really ought to open up your restaurant. The place’d be packed, and they could roll the customers out after they got done, ’cause everybody’d be round as a bowling ball.”
Bronislav’s long face seemed mournful even when he was happy. Now he looked like a bearded Mask of Tragedy. “I want to try this. I am sick of driving truck back and forth, back and forth. But what can I do?” He spread his hands, both hard palms up. “I have not money to open restaurant. Not close, even.”
That might have been a hint. Vanessa realized as much. If she’d had more money herself, she would have thought about helping to back him. But she was still trying to climb out of the hole the supervolcano had dug for her. Everything she’d owned before the eruption was buried in ash in Denver—except for her poor cat, who’d surely died in Garden City, Kansas. She ha
d to regather the Stuff that made a life: an old end table here, the secondhand laptop there, some used books somewhere else. She saved when she could—at a bank with a nationwide presence, not a crappy little local credit union like the Colorado one that had vanished and taken her funds with its dead computers—but she still lived from paycheck to paycheck a lot of the time. Bronislav’s poor-people food rang a painful bell with her.
When she didn’t say she’d fork over a few thousand smackers, he sighed. “Maybe one of these days. Maybe one of these years,” he said. “I look for chance. I look for money. Could be I find it.”
“I hope you do.” Vanessa wouldn’t have minded marrying him and helping make a go of a restaurant. She supposed it would involve moving down to San Pedro, which had the largest concentration of people from the ex-Yugoslavia. Well, that might not be so bad. It wasn’t as if she were too close to her mother, or to her father and his obnoxious new wife and brat, or to the little brother who had the gall to sell things.
One sign she was serious about Bronislav was that she washed dishes after breakfast. She hated washing dishes. Sometimes they piled up in the sink till they started getting stinky and she had to do something about them. But Bronislav was grimly neat, in the way some veterans were (Dad had a bit of the same disease). The hurt look in his eyes when he saw a mess got her moving better than a top sergeant’s chewing-out could have.
When the power was on, and when the gas was, the apartment building had hot water. Doing the dishes with it was easier than without it. And, after the dishes got done, she and Bronislav took long, lazy showers—Hollywood showers, her father would have called them. Once the showers were finished, they found something else to do with their morning together.
• • •
Another winter in Guilford. Every one seemed harder to get through than the one before it. As far as Rob Ferguson could tell, every one was harder to get through than the one before. They kept on getting colder, something he wouldn’t have imagined possible after the first couple. And moose on the hoof and pines in the ground got scarcer and farther away every year.
Things Fall Apart Page 13
