So means. A gun. Not her own. She’d have to get another. South Central. East LA. Either was good for it. Gangs loaded up with rods they were looking to unload. Rods with history, stolen rods. But getting a piece down there also made it real easy to get caught up in some unpleasantness. To get caught between gangs or between gangs and cops. Eddi didn’t need high drama. Just a gun.
She’d do it Beverly Hills-style instead. In BH there were all manner of rich kids—or at least kids who lived well under the wing of their parents—who needed some extra cash of their own to score OxyContin and were more than happy to lift one of their daddy’s guns and put it up for sale. The BH police were weak. Eddi was less likely to run into an SPU running a sting there than in Compton. And rich white kids? To them all Asians looked alike. Even one identifiable by her busted wrist. If things really went south, the chances of one of them picking her out of a lineup were just about nil. So Eddi took a trip to BH. A CI Eddi was tight with told her just where to spike herself. She ended up copping a .38 off a teen girl. Her parents shelled out eighteen thousand a year for her private school, but her last John had shorted her and she needed some ready to pay off her pimp.
Wasn’t Eddi’s problem. Really, better—Eddi propagandized—she had gotten ahold of the piece and not some crackhead. What Eddi would do with the gun, it wasn’t a crime. It was justice.
Means, motive . . .
Finding the opportune time to hit Raddatz—when no eyes were looking, a moment she could wrap an alibi around—wasn’t going to be easy to come by. Would take charting. Watching. Watching Raddatz. Where he went and when he went there. That meant sitting on him, tailing him, timing him. That meant opening herself to getting spotted watching him. Not by Raddatz. Eddi was sure she could elude him. Pretty sure. But with eyes focused forward there’s always the chance some neighbor, some merchant . . . somebody would notice that one particular car with that one particular driver with a bad wrist who seemed to be hanging around all the time. It was a chance, yeah, but murder . . . the administration of justice was a chancy thing to begin with. Still, the odds favored Eddi. The stats in LA said seventy percent of murders went unsolved. Seven zero percent, higher or lower by some margin depending on what part of town the killing took place. Still, better odds you couldn’t get in Vegas. So, chancy as it was, it was a chance Eddi was going to take.
She held her conviction. She held on to her new gun. She watched Raddatz. She clocked him on duty, his comings and goings. Clocked what time he hit DMI on watch and what time he left. When he was working a watch, he was punctual. Same time in. Same time out. Every time. Raddatz was almost military-like with his adherence. Good for her. When Eddi finally figured the right moment to do things, Raddatz would most likely keep his appointment in Samarra.
Occasionally, after work and before going home Raddatz would stop to take a drink alone at a sports bar in the Valley. An actual sports bar. Not a strip club sports bar. Eddi didn’t go in. Besides not wanting to make herself obvious, she couldn’t watch him in the act of consumption. She had no interest in taking a read on what kind of solitary drinker Raddatz was. If he needed a little something to help him unwind, or a boost to help him through what remained of the day. She didn’t know if it was a happy drink or one laced with bitterness. If the booze in the glass was really just a reflecting pool—something for Raddatz to look down into and see what stared back.
Eddi watched Raddatz at home. What Eddi found out, what she figured but wasn’t previously sure of: Raddatz had family. Wife and two boys.
The first time Eddi got any kind of conscience about what she was planning was when she learned that about Raddatz, learned he had family. Was she really going to make a woman a widow, take away some kids’ dad? Probably, at some point on some call she’d already done as much to the family of a freak. But under the circumstances she had the law backing her. She had the reasoning that the freak could’ve chosen to turn itself in, but did things a different way. A family had ended up husbandless, fatherless for the choice it’d made.
This time there was no law backing Eddi’s play. Still, what she was doing was purely predicated on Raddatz’s choices. He’d decided to set himself aside from the law. Jeopardize the war against the freaks. He’d put himself in this place.
That his family would suffer . . . well, would they? Honest, Eddi thought, they’d be better off without him.
Yeah. Right. Like she was better off without her dad.
She was comparing Raddatz to her own father?
She wouldn’t have that. Not even from her own conscience.
Conviction was good, conscience was unacceptable.
Sundays.
Sundays, early evenings—at least three of them running—Raddatz took himself a walk to the newsstand on Laurel Canyon blvd. It was a couple miles there and back. A little exercise, a little air. The streets were mostly quiet, mostly residential. But there was an alleyway, a shortcut behind a block of shops. Two hundred yards. Maybe. But back there, there were few eyes. Back there, there was less light, more shadow and a better op for Eddi to shoot a guy and escape conviction for it. Back there, the alley behind the block of shops, was where justice would get put into the back of Raddatz’s head at 111 feet per second.
The waiting. That was the part that cut. From the Sunday she decided when and how to kill Raddatz to the Sunday she would do it were seven days in which she would pull three watches with Raddatz. With him. Watch by watch she knew what he did not. That he was a dead man. Seeing him, seeing him go through the motions of living not knowing that the time and place of his death had been stamped . . . for Eddi it was like watching a documentary of a life famously lost. King or Lennon or pretty much all the Kennedys. You see some footage of them at some innocuous moment laughing or smiling. Living, with no idea there was a bullet milled and waiting for them in Dallas or Memphis or just outside the Dakota. It was like watching a slasher flick and wanting to scream at the screen, useless as it was. Even with Raddatz, even knowing why she was doing what she was doing, Eddi nearly wanted to tell the man to get out of the way of the badness coming.
She had to avoid him. Three watches out of seven days a guy she previously barely crossed paths with on the job Eddi had to work at avoiding for fear Raddatz’d be able to decipher the look in her eyes, gain warning from it. But she wouldn’t let herself avoid him too much, paranoid he could read her evasion as well.
One watch down. Another watch down. The third watch down.
She kept way clear of him on that last watch. Totally. She felt like a bride giving distance to her groom. She felt like she was dodging some kind of ill karma. They’d meet up later. Sunday evening. Sunday evening they’d consummate things.
Friday night. Saturday. Saturday night. Eddi had no idea what navigating those hours would be like. Rough. Anxious. Full of impatience. Reality was, it wasn’t any of that. Eddi was less, much less keyed than she thought she’d be.
She also drank more than she usually did. Easy to do as she mostly never drank. But she was home, alone. It gave her an activity.
She thought about calling Vin. If she was going to drink, you know, why drink solo? Why let some other guy be an alcoholic by himself? But weak boozer that she was, what she didn’t need was to put down one too many, get weak with her mouth and start spewing her plans. Much as Vin loved Soledad, as much as he regarded the struggle against the freaks, Eddi didn’t figure he’d get with the idea of killing Raddatz. He wouldn’t rat her out, but what Eddi could live free of was hours and hours of Vin throwing liquored reasoning against her plans.
A waste.
She’d worked herself up. She was ready for the kill. There was no going any other way.
Sunday. It felt like Christmas was coming. Not a child’s Christmas with the static electricity of excitement permeating every single element of life. It was an adult’s Christmas. Everything seemed rushed, harried, and no matter all the preparations Eddi felt horribly unprepared. Incredibly, though she slept poorly, she
woke up late and felt as if even with taking a life the only thing on her calendar, she was running behind all day.
Then the day was gone.
It was getting on evening.
Eddi got in her car and drove to the Valley and parked a short distance from the alley off Laurel.
Shoot him in the head, walk to the car, go.
That was the plan. What little there was. What little was needed.
Shoot him in the head. Walk to the car. Go.
More waiting. Close now. Eddi could feel, could feel the passing of each second. No need to look at her watch. The sweep of her internal second hand was a razor to flesh, hacking off the time. Literally keeping score. Raddatz would come. Just wait. Be patient. He’d come.
Shoot him in the head, walk to the car, go.
The scent of arriving moonlight. The sound of clouds in the air. The laugh of a child who wasn’t even born yet. In her journal Soledad had written about her sense of death: an elevated level of perception that made the world hyperreal. As many calls as Eddi had been on, as many times as she’d walked with mortality—hers, other operators’, freaks’—Soledad’s words were, to Eddi, just inflated talk. Eddi’d never felt anything of the kind. But now things beyond the normal senses were coming real and real clearly to Eddi.
What she did not sense was Raddatz at the newsstand. Her essence spread across the city, Eddi hadn’t seen him arriving. Didn’t notice when he started thumbing a copy of Road & Track. She’d only caught him as he picked up a copy of Evo, flipped through it, put it aside knowing there was nothing in there for him.
He shared some friendly talk with another browser, got a copy of In Style magazine. It was probably for the wife, but that purchase alone of glamorized vogue-trash wrapped around the cult of celebrity was enough to remove any qualms Eddi had about what was to come.
Raddatz moved from the newsstand.
Eddi moved across the street.
Raddatz jammed the magazine under an arm.
Eddi put hand to pocket. She closed on Raddatz. Not too quickly. Casually. Steadily. Just a girl out for a stroll. Keep a little distance. Let him make the alley. Let him hit the center of it. Then give it to him.
Hand on the .38’s grip.
Give it to him quick.
Her finger brushed the trigger. Feathered. Easy to pull one-handed.
Give it to him twice, to be sure of things, right in the . . .
He kept going. Raddatz didn’t make the turn up the alley. He kept north on Laurel. Went west on Maxwellton where cars passed at a steady clip, where a couple of old women walked their dogs. Eddi watched Raddatz walk off, toss off a wave to some guy in-line skating. She stood there hand in pocket, hand gripping gun, watching a man who was supposed to be dead walking home.
She was . . . what was Eddi feeling? Disappointed. Queer as hell, but that’s how she felt: spending so much time working up to something that didn’t happen even if what didn’t happen was . . . Pissed. She was pissed Raddatz took a walk, literally walked from justice.
Eddi sat in her apartment. Lay on the floor. Lights low. Assessing herself, her feelings.
Scared.
Eddi was real scared that Raddatz had switched up his routine, would never again head down that alley. Scared not that she wouldn’t get to take another run at Raddatz. She’d make that opportunity. She was scared she’d have to take a run at him somewhere less clandestine. Somewhere she’d be more likely to get caught. And something she hadn’t even considered: When she got caught, what was her story going to be? Not the truth. Taking things public defeated the purpose. Shit, she didn’t want to rot in jail. The only thing she wanted less was to go out as a crazy cop who killed for no good reason. It came to Eddi maybe a hotshot was the better way to go. Twenty-five to life in a California prison? A ruined rep? Better she should ride out on a mix of state-approved, lethally applied meds.
Eddi felt tired, and that feeling was an emotional preview of the week to come. Another week of waiting. Another week of three watches she’d have to work around Raddatz. Another week of psyching up, of foreplaying toward the real deal. The thought, just the thought of it wore the shit out of her. But the juice to do the job was already building in her. It was seven days, at best, away and Eddi was already fidgety. Antsy.
She needed, this time she really needed a drink and did not need to drink by herself.
Eddi wound up at Vin’s. She didn’t bother calling first. No need. He’d be home. And he was. In the dark. In the same chair he’d been in that last time she’d come around. At least, he’d done a one-legged hobble over to the chair after letting Eddi into his joint. But Eddi figured he was just returning to his roost.
If he was surprised to see Eddi, Vin didn’t show it. If he was surprised by her request for some liquor, it was covered by a casual “Help yourself.” Mostly, Vin registered nothing greater than numbness.
So Eddi did as offered, helped herself to a selection from Vin’s ample collection of drink. A hit of Stoli vanilla. Downed the flavored vodka. Poured another, taking just enough time to open a window. The recycled air was killing her.
She polished her second drink, then Eddi took up a seat in Vin’s general vicinity.
Be cool. Eddi told herself to be cool. Drink what you like, what you need, but keep your mouth shut. Keep your designs to yourself. Vin served his purpose—a little human connection. A reminder of the whys of what she was planning: too many having given too much for the struggle to get fucked-up by a guy like Raddatz—just by being around. Beyond that, talk was not needed.
The two sat. The only thing going on between them the occasional clink of ice in a glass.
“This is how we used to be.”
“What’s that?” Eddi asked. In her head she’d been watching Raddatz walk up the street instead of down the alley.
“With Soledad. Hours like this. Sitting. Not saying a word.”
“Hell of a thing you had going.”
“Best kind of thing. Two people so tight they don’t need words.”
Eddi lay back on the floor, looked up at the bad Spackle job on the ceiling. “You’re positively delusional.”
“If you’re going to take my booze, then fuel my lies. Soledad called it . . .”
“What?”
“Some Japanese thing. You don’t know it?”
Eddi turned her head. Free juice or not, she shot Vin an “oh, fuck you” look for the assumption that because of her heritage she was supposed to be aware of all things Japanese. Vin missed the visual chastisement. He was slouched, face half buried in the fabric of the chair. The way he was, head up he still probably couldn’t see ten feet in front of himself.
He said: “They’ve got this thing in Japan, people talk without talking.”
“Talk without talking. That’s not talking, then, is it?”
“Anyway, that’s what she told me.”
“Where’d she get that?”
“I think it was from her guy. She was seeing a guy before we started . . . started whatever. She was telling me about that Japanese thing, rambling about it. When she realized what she was saying, she got all quiet. Bitter. Bitter for her even. Just figure, you know, thinking about her guy set her off.”
“His name was Ian.”
Head coming up from the chair. “How do you know?”
“Her journal.”
“What’d she say about him?”
“Not much. She wrote about him steady for a while how she felt about him. Then nothing. From one page to the next it was like he didn’t exist anymore.”
“He must’ve broke her bad.”
“I guess.”
“Did she . . .” Vin paused, didn’t want to sound too jealous. But then, hell, he was a one-legged drunk. Who was he saving his pride for? “Did she love him? Not like she loved me, did she really—”
“Yeah.”
They went back to two people quietly sharing space.
Eddi poured another drink. Drank it. Fixed another before
going back to the floor.
“You look butch, Eddi.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not dyke, butch. Tough. That cast—”
“Not a cast. It’s a splint.”
“Looks like a gauntlet. Looks tough. That leather?”
“Yeah. It’s comfortable. And I figure if I’m going to be a victim, might as well be a fashion—”
“I think she cared about me some,” Vin said.
“She did.”
“I think she really did. Her eyes used to go green. She thought I wanted to have sex with you.”
“Maybe she wasn’t jealous of you. Maybe she was jealous of me.”
And Vin melted some. “Jesus, Eddi. Let me have one fantasy.”
“Was she right?”
“Right about—?”
“Do you want to have sex with me?”
A yes-or-no question. But Vin’s answer was: “I think you’ve got nice tits. I was never a small-chest guy. I was always, I mean, guys are guys. They go for girls who’ve got it. But yours—”
“There a compliment in there somewhere?”
“Yours are beautiful.”
“What about my stomach?”
“That’s tight. Serious. That’s, like, fitness-model good-looking.”
“And my butt?” Eddi was definitely drunk. But she wanted to know. She wanted to feel wanted.
“Yours is . . . I don’t think of women’s asses sexually.”
“C’mon.”
“No, I mean, I look at them, but I was never . . . some guys are into them in a hard-core sexual sense.”
“Some guys?”
“A lot of guys. Whatever. Not me. But yours . . . it makes me think about it.”
“What’s my cootchie make you think about?”
After about eighteen seconds of silence, after Eddi’s brain was able to process that time had passed in silence, she looked to Vin. Vin was looking at her. Just looking at her.
Eddi: “What?”
“What are you doing?”
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