by Mark Pryor
At eleven she adjourned for a break, inclining her head for me to meet her in the judge’s hallway that runs behind the courts. I sidled out there as surreptitiously as I could, with a good idea of what she wanted: either help or information.
Once I’d discovered that there was no official report of her little indiscretion, I’d gone back and told her. I didn’t say anything about my phone call with Chipelo, but I did mention who’d been sitting in the car, watching the whole thing unfurl. As a result, she knew what McNulty’s game was and probably wanted more advice on how to stop him. Or, at the least, to make sure there were no more copies floating about. As for me, I was curious about whether he’d had the balls to actually make an explicit demand or two yet.
“Let’s go to my office,” she said.
I followed her down the hall and she held the door to her office, closing it firmly behind me.
“Can I assume he made his play?” I asked.
“Yes and no. He hasn’t said anything directly, I think he’s smart enough to know that if I do decide to go to the police, without any kind of threat or demand, there’s no blackmail case.”
“Smart? That doesn’t sound like McNulty.”
She clenched her jaw, unamused. “I was hoping you might have a suggestion or two for me.”
“He’s not said anything at all?”
“He walked into that interview like it was a done deal. The way he looked at me . . . he knew I’d seen it. That it was him.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Of course. But what happens when he gets that robe?” The one I now want so badly. “Maybe you should call his bluff. He’d be utterly ruined if you stood up to him.”
“The problem is, so would I,” Portnoy said. “And I have a damn site more to be ruined than he does.”
“Do you really want to work with him, though? I mean what’s that going to be like?”
“I have two more years, and then I can retire,” she said. “Two more years, and then I don’t care what he or anyone else does because I’ll be on a beach in Aruba downing margaritas. But until then, I need my job and reputation intact.”
“He’s not said a word to me,” I told her. “But he sure is cocky about getting that job.”
“Yeah, well.” Her tone was resigned. “I guess he should be.”
“What if the others on the panel don’t like him?”
“They’ll defer to me. This is my territory, so to speak.”
“Then I guess just go along with him and hope he doesn’t screw you over once it’s a done deal.”
“I was thinking, I could maybe meet with him and record it. Get him to say something incriminating. Then either confront him and make him give up any copies, or even go to the police with it and have them pressure him. Without prosecuting, though.”
“Both of those assume he’ll incriminate himself. I know I don’t think highly of his intelligence, but surely he’s not that dumb.” I shook my head. “Also, if you go to the police, it’s going to get out. No matter what they promise, it’ll leak out. This is Internet gold.”
“To you maybe,” she snapped.
“Just telling you like it is. Trying to help.”
“Yes, sorry.” She didn’t sound it, though. “Well, we should get back to court. Will you let me know if he says anything to you?”
“Of course, absolutely.”
After lunch, Brian was nowhere to be seen, but at three he appeared and clattered about with his lunchbox and briefcase. Once he finally settled in he turned to me, too quickly for me to put in my earbuds and crank some Kings of Leon.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s the scoop on the poker game?”
“Why, you chickening out?”
“Heck no. Got my stash of cash ready to go.”
“Good, hang onto it. Game’s been pushed back; it’s in two weeks,” I said. “A couple of the chaps had family trouble. You know how it is with those married guys, always needing permission to go out.”
“Yeah, that’s not me.”
“I bet. Cindy not wanting to tie the knot?”
“It’s Connie. And she hasn’t said anything. Why buy the milk when you can get it for free, eh?”
“I’m sure she’d love the cow comparison.”
“Yeah, well, you know what I mean.”
“Hey, you want to go to the range today? I feel like shooting something.”
◯
BRIAN
Dominic probably guessed this about me, but I actually do have to run things by Connie. That’s why I was asking about the game, so I could give her plenty of notice. Not that she’s possessive or anything, or particularly controlling, she just isn’t a great one for spontaneity. Especially mine.
Which is why his sudden invitation to the shooting range had made me hesitate. But, then again, I sure did want to shoot with Dominic. I made a snap decision.
“Yeah, cool. What time?”
“You usually knock off around four. If you can bear to wait an extra thirty minutes, we can head over to APD’s range.”
“They let us use that?”
“They let me use it. I had a case with one of the instructors, he was assaulted while on patrol. Some baby-momma racked him in the face with a box of baby wipes, believe it or not.”
I laughed. Dominic has the best stories. “For real?”
“Yeah, she wouldn’t take my plea offer, so we went to trial and the jury hammered her.”
“How long?”
“Nine years.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, it was hilarious.”
“Yeah?” Nine years seemed like a long time for just that, and certainly not hilarious.
“Yep. I got to make all kinds of puns. Like how, after she hit him, she tried to make a clean getaway. How her lawyer was trying to wipe away the seriousness of assaulting a cop. Some others, I forget. Anyway, the cop appreciated the humor and the sentence, so once the range closes to cadets for the day, he lets me shoot there.”
“That’s way cool, I’m in.” I took out my phone, then saw the look on Dom’s face. “I’m gonna tell Connie, not ask her.”
Lucky for me she didn’t pick up, so I left a message that I’d be home around six thirty.
“You have your gun on you?” Dom asked when I was done.
“I keep it in the car. I still don’t have a concealed-carry license.”
“Ammo?”
“Loads, actually. I keep meaning to go to Red’s and shoot.” But Connie doesn’t approve, so I don’t.
I followed him out to the APD range at the academy in south-east Austin, having never been there before. He introduced me to Lieutenant Brett Bailey, the firearms instructor. I wanted to make a joke about the baby wipes case, but nothing came to mind so I just shook his hand and thanked him for letting me use the place.
“Hey, any friend of Dominic’s is a friend of mine.”
We stopped at the entrance to the range proper and helped ourselves to earphones and protective glasses, then walked through heavy doors into a hangar-like space with a concrete floor and a low ceiling that was covered in some kind of sound- or bulletproof material. Probably both. Lieutenant Bailey had already put up two targets, clipped to a wooden bar at the back of the range, upperbody outlines of a bad guy with a gun. Bailey gave us a wave and left us alone.
I was suddenly nervous; I’d not fired my gun in over a year and wasn’t very good then. Knowing Dom, he’d be an excellent shot and make fun of me if I wasn’t.
“Fifteen yards to start?” Dom asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“You got fourteen in that magazine?”
“I think so. Same as yours, right?”
He took my gun, looked at it quickly, then released the magazine and counted the bullets inside. “Yep, same. Let’s do seven at the head, then see if we can hit the gun.”
“I thought cops always went for body shots.”
“We’re not cops.”
I waited for him to shoot first, the gun
heavy in my hand and getting heavier as I waited. When it came, the explosion from his gun seemed to be amplified by the earphones, not muffled, I’d forgotten how loud guns were. But when my turn came I squeezed the trigger, aiming generally for the head. I counted off seven shots, and Dominic’s presence disappeared with my concentration. After those seven, I lowered the sight toward the black outline of the bad guy’s gun before squeezing the trigger seven more times.
When we were done, we holstered our guns and I realized how sweaty my palms were.
“All clear?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but nodded. “All good.”
He gestured for me to follow him up to the targets, but I could already see how I’d done. Dominic took a quick look at his and then stood in front of mine. “Two in the head, and you knocked the gun out of his hand twice,” he said. “Not bad.”
“And you?”
“Seven and five.” He pointed to a cluster of my shots that had hit the bad guy’s neck. “See this? I think you’re overcompensating for the kick of the gun. I always used to until Brett explained what was happening. You don’t realize you’re doing it, but you’re pushing the tip of the gun down in preparation for the kick. Hence the low shots.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. And if you’re doing that, you’re probably gripping the gun too hard. Are your hands all sweaty?”
“Definitely.”
“Vicious cycle. You grip the gun too hard and your hands get sweaty, so you’re afraid of losing control and grip tighter.” He nudged me with a friendly elbow. “Rookie mistake.”
“I guess.”
“Let’s go again. Just focus on the sight at the end of the barrel, not the close one. Same as last time?”
“OK, sure.” We went back to our positions and took a moment to reload. Well, he took a moment, I took a few more, the bullets were slippery in my fingers and I found the spring in the magazine hard to push against.
“All right,” he said, when I was done. “Ready? Then the range is hot. Fire when you’re ready.”
The shots seemed quieter this time, and I focused on relaxing my grip and keeping the front sight on the target. I hit the head four times and the gun three.
We shot from twenty yards, then twenty-five, my aim improving with repetition then worsening as we moved back. It was fun, though, and by the time we wrapped up an hour had gone by.
“We need to clean up?” I asked.
“Yeah, they have this cool device that collects shells. I’ll get that and you grab our targets; we need to put them in the stack at the front.”
I unclipped the now-shredded targets and walked them over to a pile on a table by the main doors, then watched as Dominic ran what looked like a push lawnmower over the places we’d been standing, collecting the shell casings. When he was done, he showed me how to strip down my gun and clean it, using the long table at the front of the range.
“An Englishman shouldn’t be showing a Texan how to shoot and clean a gun,” I joked.
He grunted. “No worries. Now you know, eh?”
“You may need to show me this bit again.” The gun mechanism looked a little complicated, which bit went where, exactly. “But hopefully I’ve got the actual shooting down a little better. Appreciate the tips—that was fun.”
“Welcome.” He checked his watch. “Hey, I gotta run. You can find your way home?”
“GPS is my friend.”
He nodded and left me there, trying to slide the barrel back into place. I finally managed it, then turned to look back at the empty range. Connie would be upset at the short notice, but I’d just shot guns with Dominic at the Austin Police Academy’s gun range. She could deal. And I didn’t even care that he might be doing this to suck up to a potential judge, not one bit. I was having fun.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DOMINIC
My gun went into the glove compartment, and I made the trip back to the Twin Oaks Library, parking across the street instead of using the lot in case the place had erected eco-friendly, recyclable surveillance cameras. I sat and watched.
A few minutes before seven, he arrived in a clapped-out Honda Civic from the mid ’90s. He parked in a handicapped spot, and that got my juices flowing. Here was an ex-con looking to improve his life, parking illegally. Not that I needed a reason to dislike him for what I was planning; the greatest benefit of having no empathy was that I never needed to make excuses to myself for the way I treated people. But I did like to imagine myself as a generally decent guy, so it never hurt if I could manufacture a reason that some dolt brought harm upon himself, and an ex-con taking up a handicapped space out of laziness or entitlement fit just fine.
I waited for the meeting to end, resisting the temptation to break into his car there and then. At eight fifteen he wandered out of the library, ignoring the inquiring looks of a young couple who had also noticed his parking spot on their way in to return armfuls of books. I tucked in behind his car as he made the short trip back to Meadowbrook, not even a mile. That annoyed me even more. Lazy slob should have walked.
Once I knew which apartment was his, I called it a night. Two objectives achieved was plenty. But I did sit in my car outside my place, wondering if I’d made it too complicated, if I was pushing my luck.
But that’s another problem I have. Pushing my luck is a way to feel things. You see, when you have an absence of fear, an inability to love, and a total lack of empathy, there’s a hole inside that you’re always aware of, that you’re always looking to fill. Feeling things is important; it’s why people read books, listen to music, and watch romantic comedies. Music cracks the mirror for me, but mostly when I’m behind the guitar; and, while I appreciate the elegance of a well-turned sentence, I still don’t feel anything much when I read a book.
Filling that hole takes a little more. And sometimes I push myself too hard, too far, and take risks that I don’t immediately recognize as dangerous. But I also fill that hole with logic, in the sense that I try to plan my thrills so that it’s only other people who get hurt. And, yes, I’m well aware of how that sounds.
After a little analysis, a balancing of the odds, I decided that not only was I too far in to make any changes, but that I was having too much fun. I thought back to the Great Cutlery Prank and reassured myself that despite all that I’d been through and all that I’d done, fate and the gods were on my side. The only nagging worry I had as I let myself into my apartment was that I didn’t believe in fate or any gods.
I decided to take a nap in my clothes, setting my alarm for three that morning, and when it went off, I was already dressed in black jeans and a black, long-sleeved shirt. I drove back to Meadowbrook, careful not to speed or run lights, and signaling at every turn. When I got there, I drove through the entire apartment complex twice, watching for security guards and cameras, just in case my contact had been mistaken or lying.
Travis White’s car was parked between a motorcycle and an ancient brown truck, sitting deep in a patch of darkness. A tall wooden pole stood close by, but someone had broken the two lights atop it, and I silently thanked them.
In Bobby’s short life I’d done much to help him, to guide and teach him. But he’d taught me a few things, too, and one of them was how to break into a car. I’d looked online—you can learn anything there—but with his guidance and some practice at the mall parking lot, I’d gotten almost as good as he was. And a 1990s Honda Civic was a doddle. Within five seconds I had the front door open, nothing broken or even scratched. I checked to make sure his glove compartment was filled with the usual array of papers and trash, and added my own little gift. Then I popped the trunk and checked his spare tire, sprinkling gift number two around it but out of sight.
I was in and out of that squalid little patch of asphalt and subhuman housing in less than ten minutes, at home and in bed before four a.m. Which gave me a few hours of sleep before I had to get up and make my acquaintance with Travis Lee White in the flesh.
; ◯
I’ve never known a con or ex-con to be an early riser. Maybe it’s in the genes. Or maybe they become criminals because they’re too lazy to work for a living, so of course they sleep late. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t wrong about him.
White made his appearance in the parking lot at ten a.m. on Thursday morning, an hour after I’d gotten there. I stood behind a tree about forty yards away and watched him walk to his car. When he got to it, he stopped and stood there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head with annoyance. I’d parked right beside him where the motorcycle had been, and I mean right beside. No way he could get in on the driver’s side, but he stayed there for a moment, wondering if he could and looking around for the dumbass who’d blocked him out.
Eventually he came to the conclusion that he’d have to get in through the passenger door and climb across. Apparently he’d not been doing his yoga, because it was an almost comical struggle and, of course, it being a tiny car didn’t help. At first he sat in the passenger seat and tried to swing his legs over to the driver’s side. But he was too big or inflexible and couldn’t manage it that way. Then he shifted his upper body to the driver’s side, and tried to bring his legs over, but that was a fail, too.
The winning formula was to kneel on the passenger seat, facing backward, then shift over to the driver’s side, still facing the rear of the car. Then all he had to do was corkscrew his body around and drop into the seat. By that time, two things had happened: first, he’d worked himself into a righteous anger, his face red and his fists thumping the steering wheel. Second, I’d let myself into my car and was watching him with an amused expression on my face. For a moment he didn’t realize I was there, but as soon as he did, his eyes bulged and his mouth fell open. He wound his window down.
“What the fu—” he started to yell.
I just gave him a cheery wave through my closed window and shouted, “Have a nice day!”
