Late in the Standoff

by Tracy Daugherty

  Libbie stepped onto the balcony, where the force of the blast had apparently blown Anna Lia through the sliding glass door. Shards webbed the space around the smoker. The hibachi lay upside down.

  Inside, Danny followed a policeman around, composing an inventory of Anna Lia’s things. Carla stood in the kitchen, weeping.

  “Turntable, tuner, cassette deck,” the cop mumbled, scribbling on a clipboard pad. “What are these?” He fingered a pile of cloths, milk chocolate and orange, stacked on one of the stereo speakers.

  “Guatemalan weavings,” Danny said. He brushed his eyes. “I bought them for her one Christmas.”

  Danny had bought everything here, Libbie realized. She looked around. Birthday gifts, presents from their courtship, offerings from after the split—attempts to woo her back. Romance: it all began with kisses, whispered secrets, friendship and trust, and ended like this, in a clutter of napkin rings, dishes, books.

  She thought of her wedding registry at the Galleria—the Wedgwood, the silver, and vases.

  Danny moved slowly, corner to corner, touching the charred debris of his marriage; he’d done so much to try to please Anna Lia.

  “Oh,” Libbie sighed, an involuntary release. The weight of things, of living with another person, doubled her over. She couldn’t stop her tears now. Carla came over and hugged her. A second police officer entered the apartment, carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts box. He passed it around the room. Danny picked a fat gray volume off the carpet, Numrich Arms: A Catalog of Military Goods. “I’ve never seen this,” he said.

  Underneath it, a thin blue paperback—How to Make a Pipe Bomb, published by an outfit called Survival Books.

  “I’ll have to ask you to leave those where they are, sir,” said the cop with the clipboard. “We’ll be finished up here this afternoon, but for now, those are considered evidence. The more personal items, you’re free to dispose of as you wish.” He checked his papers. “Let’s see here, yes, that’s right, since she had no will and her family is overseas.”

  Danny’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Look around here,” he said. “You see the china? The art prints? The figurines? What doesn’t fit in this pretty little picture?” He waved the catalog. Its pages fluttered like wings. “Military goods? You can’t honestly believe Anna Lia was making that bomb.”

  “Sir—”

  “You’ve talked to Smitts. You know he’s into this shit. Then you find these books in her apartment? How can you fail to make the connection?”

  The policeman nodded, staying calm. “Sir, there’s no crime against reading literature on military hardware. Mr. Smitts says it’s a hobby of his. It’s a hobby of mine, too, as a matter of fact. There was no evidence in his residence that he’s ever manufactured any—”

  “Here!” Danny screamed, shaking the catalog. “Here’s your evidence!”

  “Found in Ms. Clark’s apartment, with a credit card receipt, signed by her, for its purchase. As was the gunpowder, the caps, the steel pipe.”

  “No! No, I don’t believe that!” Danny’s face flared. Libbie brushed doughnut powder off her palms, stepped over and placed her hand on his back.

  “Sir, the door was locked from the inside. No trace of anyone else in the apartment. She’d purchased the materials, the instructions. She had motive—”

  “Listen to me!” Danny shouted. “Even if … all right, all right.” He lowered his voice. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, she wanted to hurt this guy, this Capriati fellow—which is purely hypothetical—it wouldn’t have occurred to her in a million years, zero, zip, to use a bomb. A bomb, for Christ’s sakes? That just wasn’t Anna Lia.” His hands trembled. Libbie knew he’d covered all these bases yesterday with different cops. “Smitts must’ve—I don’t know, I don’t know—brainwashed her into—”

  “Mr. Clark, I know this has been a terrible ordeal for you, and these circumstances are particularly hard to come to grips with, but we’re satisfied with our investigation. Now, my advice to you is to concentrate on the funeral arrangements, take care of your business. It’ll keep you occupied, help you through this difficult time. All right, sir?”

  Danny dropped the catalog onto the floor. Libbie noticed the folded corner of a sales slip tucked inside the other book. Danny plucked it out.

  Over his shoulder she read, “‘The Silencer’: Books and Supplies.” Stapled to it, a Visa receipt. Sure enough: Anna Lia’s homely scrawl. In the last four years, Libbie had seen it on dozens of exams.

  My god, she thought, could the cops be right? Like Danny, she’d refused to believe it. Her knees weakened. Bending, trying to sit, she saw inside the bathroom doorway a bright purple catbox, two small bowls of dried food, half-eaten. “Excuse me,” she said to the man with the doughnuts. She straightened her legs. “Do you know what happened to her cats?”

  He checked his partner’s papers. “I don’t see any mention of them, ma’am. If they were removed from here, they’d be at the animal shelter out on Curry Road, off the South Loop.”

  Carla screamed. The stove light, right above her head, had gone out with a pop. “Sorry,” she said, brushing thick limp hair from her eyes. “It startled me.”

  “Probably another explosive device,’” Danny sneered. “She probably hid explosive devices all over this place. Couple of TOW missiles. A hydrogen bomb.” He gazed at the cops. They didn’t respond.

  Libbie told Carla she wanted to search the animal shelter for Suzi and Robi. Carla agreed to drop by the LCC office after checking on her sister and line up substitute teachers for the next couple of days.

  “My students’ll be frantic,” Libbie said. “I still haven’t graded those tests.”

  “They can wait,” Carla said. She turned and touched Danny’s arm. “What are you going to do? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’ll—I don’t know, I’ll stay here a while longer, sort through her things.”

  “If you’ll wait until this afternoon, Libbie and I can help you over at the funeral home. We can call Gustavo.”

  Danny just stared at the floor.

  Libbie overheard two officers talking about the switchboards at various precincts of the Houston Police Department. The phone lines were jammed with confessions. “Homicides, violent crimes—it happens every time,” one cop told Libbie. “Soon as you publicize ‘em, dozens of people, for whatever nutty reasons, phone in and want to take credit. They want to be punished. Don’t ask me why.”

  Several callers claimed to know Anna Lia. A few said they belonged to political organizations with her and promised mass bombings all over the city in the next few days. Others said they’d signed suicide pacts with “that Italian woman” and planned to kill themselves too. One man boasted that he’d planted the device in her apartment; he swore he’d sneak into the morgue and blow the legs off the corpse.

  Libbie was horrified. “It’s nothing,” the cop said. “It’s just your standard loonies.”

  A pair of workmen interrupted the conversation. They conferred with the policemen about the balcony railing, its seared wood the only sign of fire. The workmen had received an order to replace it. The clipboard guy thought it should stay for now, as evidence. His partner said, “Ah, let ‘em at it. We’re wrapping up here, right?”

  One of the construction guys said the apartment manager was eager to fix the place and rent it again as soon as possible. In and out, Libbie thought. Life and death. Print another contract, bump the rate up for the next poor wretch.

  She gave Danny a hug. “See you in a bit,” she said. He fingered the bookstore receipt.

  At speeds over fifty, Libbie’s van struggled, coughed, and choked; she avoided freeways whenever she could. Now, heading south on the Loop, she felt the chassis rattle. She moved into the far right lane and raised her foot off the pedal. She coasted for a while.

  To her right, a day care center, children laughing on swings. She felt a powerful urge to veer off the road, over by the green and yellow monkey bars, the seesaws and slides.


  Normal life, she thought. The blessings of the commonplace. She recalled running through a park with Hugh’s girls, the sisters laughing and tugging each other’s hair.

  An ashy BMW tailgaited her. She accelerated. Something knocked in the back. In the rearview, she saw the box with her wedding dress vibrating against the seat’s bottom springs. She was angry with Hugh, she remembered now. Early this morning, on the phone, he’d shown a callousness about Danny. He didn’t know Danny well, but still.

  “I don’t see why you need to keep staying with him,” he’d said.

  “Just another night or two,” Libbie had countered. “He’s just not doing well.”

  “He’s a grown man, Libbie.”

  She didn’t appreciate the impatience in his voice, and she told him so. They’d hung up, tense.

  Yesterday, she’d been thrilled to glance in her mirror and see the dress; now, the box felt cumbersome, intrusive.

  Her eyes hurt. She hadn’t slept much. Over dinner the night before, she’d been shocked to learn from Danny that Smitts had been the one to identify Anna Lia’s body in the morgue. Before anyone else showed up, he’d volunteered to aid the cops. A little choir boy.

  Now, Anna Lia’s body rested in a funeral home near the Ship Channel, a place that specialized in delivering bodies overseas. Imagining her on a table, in a dark corner room someplace, Libbie felt scooped out, cold, and lonely, but still she couldn’t cry for her friend. So far, her tears had been for Danny, and this morning, herself.

  Pine trees lined the highway. Squatty homes. Libbie knew the city through the people she’d taught. Each part of town reminded her of her former students, places they’d lived. Here, near a parched branch of Buffalo Bayou, skirting Hickory Street, Julio and Lira Zamora had rented a small house. They’d come from Jalisco, Mexico. Several years ago, they’d taken classes with Libbie, and she’d been proud of them. Many nights, they asked her to dinner, to thank her for her efforts.

  Her colleagues complained that too many rules hampered teacher-student relationships now—education had lost its personal touch. “You can’t even pat a good student on the back anymore without being accused of harassment,” a friend of hers had said one day in the office. But Libbie had always involved herself in her pupils’ lives—how could you help it, she thought, when they needed so much: not just lessons in English, but cultural advice, legal tips, financial aid? She’d known instructors who took advantage of kids—there’d always be predators—but most of the time, she felt heartened by her “shabby profession.” The work was vital, intimate; she never regretted befriending women like Lira or Anna Lia.

  The Curry Road exit. Nelda’s Super-Hair. A hot tub dealer. She turned around. Pine trees bowed in the breeze. She was irritated and tired. But the poor kitties. Suzi was a tortie, Robi a beautiful gray Russian. Libbie ached with hope that the bomb hadn’t taken them, too. They were young, energetic. One evening, a couple of years ago, in Anna Lia’s apartment—which she’d shared with Danny, then—Libbie and Anna Lia had split a bottle of pinot grigio and some microwave popcorn. They tried to keep the cats from tipping the bowl. From the back of the couch, Suzi had pounced on a cup of melted butter. Anna Lia laughed like a kid at a slumber party.

  Danny was on the road that night. “He’s such a sweet man,” Anna Lia told Libbie, topping off her glass. “But in bed—” She blushed.

  “What?” Libbie said.

  “He’s all business, you know; he never slows down. I can never get … loo … loober—”

  “Lubricated?”

  “Yes. It’s very painful with him.”

  “Have you told him?”

  “I try. But he starts to frown, like a sad little boy, and I have no heart.”

  “Have you tried Vaseline? Or—”

  Anna Lia laughed. “With Roberto, I never need it.” She rubbed her muscled calves. “Libbie, it’s never been so good with a man. I’m so much in love.”

  Libbie had heard her friend’s romance talk before. This time Libbie didn’t get it: Roberto was short, with thin, greasy hair. He had a bright, animated face, but it seemed to move in many directions at once. Libbie had found him repulsive when Anna Lia first introduced him to her. But then, Libbie had long ago stopped analyzing couples. Why hadn’t her folks taken shovels to each other? Why had Carla stayed with Edgar? Libbie couldn’t even say why she’d married her own first husband. Foolishness. Youth.

  As they talked that night, Robi circled a flower of popcorn—as though he were stalking a tiny bird. “Anna Lia, does Danny know about Roberto?” Libbie asked.

  “Not yet.” Anna Lia gulped her wine. “But I can’t hide my feelings much longer.”

  “Oh, honey.” Libbie touched her friend’s knee.

  Then Robi launched across the table—“Ai!” Anna Lia chirped—toppling the salt and pepper swans.

  The animal shelter smelled of wet fur. Barking and wailing. Even if the kitties were here, how would she find them? She stutter-stepped down the hall past small wire cages. A runnel ran the length of the floor. A clear liquid washed through it. The fluid smelled like pesticide.

  Then Robi appeared in front of her, huddled against a wall. Libbie peered into the cage. Suzi trembled in a corner, her pink collar, which had always been too big for her, bunched around her ears. “Hi, guys,” Libbie said, setting off a chorus of howls.

  Two young men in white coats helped her carry the cats to her van. She unlocked the door; Suzi and Robi scrambled out of sight beneath the back seat, next to the box with her dress. When she had traveled a few miles, Robi braved the open. “Hey, boy,” she whispered. “It’s all right, sweetie. Come here.” He stepped around the gearshift, then crouched, whiskers twitching, on the seat beside her. He stared at Libbie.

  “What did you see?” She scratched behind his ears. “Hmm? What really happened in that apartment?”

  Glass as fine as cotton candy filled the cracks in the walk in front of Discomundo. Three summers ago, Hurricane Alicia had lashed the city, tipping palms and pines, popping windows out of downtown buildings, sweeping cars down the bayou. Discomundo’s plateglass window had shredded like confetti—it wasn’t the record store then, but a take-out taco place. As soon as Danny rented the space for her, Anna Lia went to work cleaning the walk, but she never could clear all the glass. It was embedded in the cement.

  Standing here now, scraping shards with his boots, Danny swallowed hard. As soon as he opened the door, he’d feel Anna Lia’s breath on his neck. He knew it.

  “Want some company?”

  Danny looked up to see a tall woman in a short blue skirt and knee-high boots. She dug a finger into a pack of Virginia Slims.

  “Christ, move on,” he said. “This is a respectable place of business, all right?”

  “Whatever you say, sugar.” She pulled a Bic lighter from her purse, then strolled across the street.

  In the past two months, more and more hookers had found this part of Montrose. The Vice Squad had chased them from their old haunts. Eventually, they’d be run out of here, too, but in the meantime, Anna Lia had placed daily calls to the local precinct house.

  The last time he saw her, she said, “I don’t see what’s so sexy about these ladies. They’re skinny. And their faces are hard.”

  “Right.” He’d touched her hip; she slipped his hand.

  Across the street now, the woman stationed herself against a telephone pole in front of Chimichanga. One of the kitchen boys emerged from the restaurant’s side door, did a comic doubletake, and whistled at her.

  Inside the record store, a pair of teenage Mexican couples browsed the aisles. Accordions rippled through hidden speakers behind a warped Formica counter; plaintive men wailed, “Mi unico camino.” A piece of notebook paper taped to the cash register said NOW PLAYING: Conjunto Bernal.

  Danny sniffed. White Shoulders. Anna Lia’s perfume, still in the air.

  He didn’t see Marie at first, then he noticed her just inside the beaded curtain to the sto
ck room. She was unpacking a cardboard box. He stood for a minute, waiting for her to spot him, his eyes on the scuffed white floor, on the posters of Freddie Fender and Fito Olivares on the walls. Finally she turned; when she saw him, her face, behind the rain of plastic—red, yellow, blue, swimming in the doorway—flushed with grief.

  She brushed the beads aside. They crackled like popping hot oil. “Oh Danny,” she whispered, stepping into his arms, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe what’s happened.”

  She didn’t hug him the way Libbie and Carla did, sincerely but with a mild resistance, signaling only friendship. Marie’s embrace was full and warm and vaguely erotic, even now. She and Danny had always gotten a buzz from each other, even when he was married to Anna Lia. They’d never spoken about it; it was just there, like the cantos playing always in the store.

  He stroked her thick black curls. Blue eyeshadow, mixed with tears, leaked onto his shirt. “Oh god, I’m sorry,” she said, wiping his arm.

  “Don’t fret about it,” Danny said. The young shoppers watched them over the tops of the record bins.

  “Marie, I need to know. Has Roberto Capriati been around?”

  She pulled away and looked at him, worried.

  “I’m not angry with him. Not anymore. That’s behind me.”

  “Good.”

  “But I need to talk to him. I have to know if Anna Lia was mad enough … mad enough at him … to …”

  “Danny, she couldn’t … it’s crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s that other man. Smitts.”

  “The cops say—”

  “I saw the stuff.” She was stroking his arm. After his split from Anna Lia, he’d thought about Marie, but by then she was steady with a cook at Chimichanga.