by Scott Frank
Joe Mills said, “About fucking time,” and started forward, but abruptly stopped when he saw the gun come up, and instinctively turned to his bodyguard just in time to see half the man’s head disappear in a red mist.
Roy stepped away, now covered in the man’s blood, and stared at Albert, not believing that he was now seeing him standing there, right in front of him. Even when Albert smiled and said, “The ghost of Christmas Past.”
Joe Mills, like most people unaccustomed to such close and immediate violence, was shaking, rooted to the spot. His expression was more confused than horrified. Roy wanted to reach out and steady him, but Albert had already grabbed Joe by the bad arm and now had the gun pointed at the pitcher’s stupefied face.
“Let’s all go inside and talk, shall we?”
—
The empty locker room looked much like the empty stadium. Discarded clothing and trash were everywhere. There was a foot-wide crack in the shower room wall. The lights were still on as were the three televisions mounted in the ceiling. Albert and The Kid followed behind Roy as he stepped over a pile of towels that seemed to be soaked in blood, and sat down heavily on a bench. He looked again and saw that the towels were covering the body of a stadium security guard. Another guard lay dead beside the door that led to another corridor and then the field. Both had their throats cut.
While this part of the stadium seemed to have been abandoned, Roy knew it wouldn’t be long before they had company. Cops and other first responders had probably already begun a sweep in search of the injured and the criminally opportunistic. The minute Albert heard them coming, he would certainly kill both Roy and The Kid.
Roy had no gun, and there wasn’t much chance he could take Albert’s away. He was already feeling weak from the new bullet in the back of his leg and didn’t think that he could even stand up now that he had sat down. He wasn’t sure that he could stay awake long enough to keep Albert talking. And Albert would certainly have a lot to talk about, but there was also a good chance that he would shoot The Kid right away to kick off the conversation.
Roy watched him shove Joe Mills down onto the opposite bench.
“You’re not to move or speak unless I give you permission.”
The Kid stared at the body at Roy’s feet, looked up at Roy with a face as white as the towels once were.
Albert moved aside a dirty uniform tossed haphazardly into one of the open wooden cubbies and then leaned against the built-in drawers below it. For several moments, he looked back and forth from Roy to Joe Mills, studying the two of them.
“I don’t see it,” Albert finally said to Roy. “He looks nothing like you.”
Joe Mills sat there, clutching his bad arm trying to make sense of what was happening.
“What is he talking about?”
Albert came off the locker and grabbed Joe Mills by the hair, pulled his head back and put the gun under his chin.
“Once again,” Albert said. “You’re not to move or speak unless I give you permission. Is that clear?”
“I don’t understand. Who are—”
Albert pulled harder. “Is that clear?”
Joe nodded. Roy could see tears in his eyes.
“Leave him alone, Al. You want me. I’m right here.”
Albert turned to Roy.
Roy said, “I’m sure you’ve thought about how you’re gonna do it.”
“It’s all I’ve thought about.”
“Well,” Roy said and spread his hands. “Here I am.”
Albert looked down at Joe Mills and Roy knew that he was thinking about pulling the trigger.
“What are you doing,” Albert said, “wasting your time with this one?” He let go of The Kid and said, “You think your baby brother will want to hang out with you, wave to you in the stands, talk about you with Diane Sawyer?”
Joe said, “I’m an only child.”
Albert slapped him in the face. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Go ahead, guy,” Joe Mills said. “Shoot me. Shoot Joe Mills and see what happens to you.” For an instant, Roy could see his mother’s defiant face and gesture.
Albert looked at him and began to laugh. In the old days, that would have been the moment Albert shot him and said something like “That’s what happens.”
Roy said quickly, “Let him go, Al, he’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
But Albert wouldn’t turn away from Joe Mills.
“Seriously, why save this cunt’s life? Why do you even care about him anymore?” Albert poked Joe Mills with the gun. “He’s a spoiled prick. All these people, some of them trampled to death. All he’s worried about is his fucking record.” Albert then put the gun to his injured arm, and said, “I should shoot it off, and then beat him to death with it.”
“Al.”
“I was all you had, Roy.”
“You saw to that.”
“I was certainly more of a brother to you than him.”
Roy said, “You were.”
That got Albert looking at him.
“For a long time.”
Albert released Joe and stepped back. He looked as if he was about to say something, but then turned away, stared off, and slipped into some kind of daydream.
It was quiet while Albert thought about whatever it was had just caught hold of him; the only sound, the whir of jets in the whirlpool tub, which, in all of the commotion, had been left running.
Roy caught Joe looking at the door, thinking about whether or not he could make it. Joe’s eyes met Roy’s and Roy shook his head. You won’t.
Out of nowhere, Albert said, “Did I tell you about the time this fox got into the slaughterhouse?”
“No,” Roy said, “but I’d rather you just shot me and got it over with than have to listen to another second of your bullshit.”
“It was just a baby,” Albert continued. “A kit they call them. The mothers are vixens, I love that.”
Roy felt himself slipping and forced himself to sit up straight. No matter what, he had to keep upright.
“Anyway, this little fox somehow gets into the slaughterhouse and runs onto the cutting floor. Everyone starts chasing it, trying to kill it with their knives. But this one butcher, a Guatemalan—Modesto was his name, but we all called him Stu—he wants to save it. He starts yelling at everyone to stop trying to kill it. So we all back off and watch as Stu starts to chase after it with a burlap bag. It was quite a thing to see a man in a bloody butcher’s apron trying to save this animal, in a fucking slaughterhouse. Needless to say the irony was lost on him. He starts shouting for everyone to stand still, but of course no one in a slaughterhouse is allowed to ever stand still. So we all had to keep working while Stu chased the fox, until finally the poor man slips and falls against the Hide Puller and the chain cuts him in half.” Albert ran the muzzle of the gun across his chest. “Right through here.” He then shook his head and said, “Was the strangest thing I ever saw.”
They sat there a moment, Albert and Roy looking at one another until Joe couldn’t take it anymore and said, “What happened to the fox?”
Albert shrugged. “I can’t remember,” and then smiled at Roy. “And that’s the point.”
Roy said, “Whatever you say, Al.”
“I tried to save you,” Albert went on, “and look what happened to me. Danny Leone tried to save you, and look what happened to him. Or the other way, you try to save your daddy and look what happened to him. You try to save the old man in the alley and look what happened to a lot of fucking people. And now you’re gonna save this asshole.” Albert laughed. “I’d say that your baby brother’s a lot safer with anyone but you.”
Roy saw that Joe Mills was staring at him and Roy wondered if maybe he somehow understood. Even so, it was so late in the day that it no longer mattered. Joe had become something, just as Roy had, that Roy could no longer recognize. Roy knew, had probably always known, that they had stopped being brothers the night Roy left the house in that squad car. His mother had been ri
ght about one thing: that should have been, for everybody’s sake, the last time they saw each other.
Roy pushed off the bench, shakily stood up straight, and faced Albert. “What do you wanna do now?”
Albert said, “It’s not what I want to do, Roy.”
“What’s your plan?”
“We all die together. One big happy family.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
The Kid said, “Please, I’m not a part of whatever this is.”
Albert shot him twice. Both bullets hit him high, in what had been his good shoulder, and spun him into the locker behind him. The Kid slipped to the floor, his legs still draped over the bench. He struggled to sit up, but then gave up and stared at Roy. His eyes already heavy.
Roy said to him, “Keep your eyes open. Stay awake.”
Albert poked Roy with the gun. The silencer was hot and burned his chest.
“We were brothers.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“We were.”
“And if you knew I was alive?”
“I would have done the same thing you have,” Roy said. “I would have come for you.”
Albert nodded.
“I don’t feel anything for anyone,” Roy said. “That way no one can hurt me, isn’t that right?”
“I’m pretty sure I taught you that one.”
Roy said, “You taught me everything,” and felt his legs buckle. Albert reached out with both hands to catch him. Roy could feel the silencer under his arm, burning his ribs.
Albert put his mouth to his ear.
“You’re already done,” he said, “so I’m going to shoot you in the heart now, but then I’m going to take your little brother out of here, and play with him somewhere else.”
Albert pushed Roy away and once more put the gun to Roy’s chest but then froze. His expression changed as he looked down and saw his little knife was now in Roy’s hand.
“The gastric artery,” Roy said.
Albert ducked his chin and saw the blood that poured out of a deep wound in his stomach.
Albert looked up at Roy, started to say something when Roy’s hand reached out and brushed past Albert’s neck, left to right.
“You were a great teacher, Al.”
Albert’s head leaned to one side in a mist of blood and he fell back into the open cubby. Roy stepped forward then, pulled the gun from Albert’s hand and shot him in the heart.
Roy considered Albert, making sure he was done before he turned to see Joe Mills staring at him with the disgusted look of someone who had just seen one animal take down another.
He flinched as Roy moved to him and sat him up.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Roy grabbed a couple of towels and wrapped them around his shoulder.
“Hold on to these.”
Joe just looked at him.
“You’re gonna be okay, but you have to stay awake.”
Joe Mills grabbed hold of the towels and stared up at Roy. “Who the fuck are you?”
Roy could hear a door open somewhere and now voices somewhere down the corridor that led to the stadium. He stood up and listened. Someone with a radio. And another voice he recognized.
He would tell her everything, another time.
He looked down at Joe Mills, said, “I’m Roy Cooper,” and went out the other door.
After an hour of walking, Roy still had no idea where he was. He kept stumbling in the dark and even fell down a couple of times. For a while he could hear the freeway up above him somewhere and followed that. He crossed the L.A. River on a footbridge. He watched a mattress and a bicycle float down the shallow cement waterway. He wasn’t sure how much longer he would remain conscious, but he kept going.
He crossed a wide boulevard that had no structures or business of any kind along it, and soon found himself in tall weeds. He walked for another half mile until he was finally confronted by a barbed wire fence.
It seemed impossible to go around, slightly less so to climb over, so he began to pull himself up the chain link, one painful step at a time. Was twenty minutes to get to the top, another fifteen to get through the barbed wire. He cut himself on both arms before he was able to half climb, half fall to the dry dirt on the other side. He lay on his back awhile, then once more got up and resumed walking.
Soon, he felt large rectangular shapes all around him. Giant iron boxes. It took a few moments to realize that he was walking through a field of trains. Hundreds of them. Rows upon rows of empty freight cars. Roy could see the glass towers of downtown L.A. all lit up ahead of him. He followed a set of tracks for another half hour. Every now and then, he thought he saw the movement of another man out here—a vagrant or the like, he figured, sleeping in the cars. But when one of the men played a flashlight into the cab of an engine, Roy caught the tin badge and uniform of a security guard, so he kept his distance.
At a certain point, his injured leg just gave out and he sat down right where he was on the track. He wanted to curl up and go to sleep, but a figure was walking toward him. He first thought it was the guard, but after a moment, he realized it was a woman.
As she got closer, he saw that it was his mother.
He watched her approach, and wondered why she had become so small. Maybe it was the cancer. Roy certainly felt a lot smaller this past year. And then he saw that she was black.
Now Roy was confused. Was he dreaming?
She stopped in front of him and asked, “Are you all right?”
Roy reached up to her. She took his hand and sat down on the tracks beside him. Roy tried to speak, but he no longer had any voice. She put her arms around his chest and pulled him close to her.
“It’s all right,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“You know,” he whispered.
She started to gently rock him and said, “Mine’s Ruth Ann.”
Roy felt the ground rumble once more, thought it was another aftershock and started to panic. He reached for the rails and tried to push himself up, but she held on to him.
“It’s okay, sweetie, it’s just a train, on the other side.”
Roy saw it then, outside the yard, sounding its horn and moving away from Union Station. Somehow, even with the distance, Roy could still feel its power in the rails beneath him. And for the first time in a long time, Roy felt afraid and began to shake.
She must have sensed this and pulled his head back to her chest, rested her chin on top.
“It’s all right, sweetie.”
Roy could feel her breath in his hair. He closed his eyes and allowed her to resume rocking him back and forth.
“I got you,” she said. “I got you.”
I’ve had three great teachers in my life, and Cathy Colman was one of them. It was in the early nineties, while sitting with a dozen other creative souls in Cathy’s warm bungalow in Pacific Palisades, that I began first working on this novel. I had been writing screenplays for ten years and was already bored out of my skull. I had written ninety or so pages when I woke up one morning and realized that somehow my wife and I had had three kids seemingly overnight. I set the book aside to focus once more on my day job.
In 2000, I was looking for someone to help me do research on oil workers in Mongolia, for a film that needs no mention, when I met the legendary researcher Mimi Munson. At the time, Mimi had been, among other things, triple-checking the buttons on the uniforms for accuracy on the film Master and Commander. Somehow during our first meeting we got to talking about street gangs in L.A., and the book was born again.
I’m forever grateful to Mimi for her meticulous research here, as well as for her invaluable contributions to everything I’ve written since our collaboration began, fifteen years ago. She truly is my secret weapon.
Further gratitude is extended to my old friend Jamal Joseph for his insights into the worlds of gangs, juvenile prison camps, and the young kids caught up in both. His own experience and history were invaluable to me and, as
such, can be found all over the pages you’ve just read.
My editor, Peter Gethers, has read these pages more times than I can count. His gentle nudges and spot-on suggestions have not only made the book significantly better but have also no doubt saved me greater embarrassment. All I can say is that I’m lucky to have sat down next to him at dinner all those years ago. Luckier still to have him as a friend.
There are many others, including Sonny Mehta, whose faith in me continues to baffle, as well as my literary agent, Andrew Wylie, who has far more important clients, yet still somehow manages the patience to answer what I’m sure are the dumbest questions he hears on any given day. Bless you both.
Speaking of agents, I cannot go a foot further without mentioning the cool and classy Beth Swofford, who has helped me fashion a film career that is somehow now going on thirty-one years. While Beth occasionally protects me from the bad guys, she far more often protects me from myself, a nearly impossible gig, as you have probably gathered.
I sincerely hope that my father, Barry Frank, who unlike Roy’s father was a real pilot for Pan-American Airlines, will read this tale and see that I was actually listening when he shared his knowledge of all things winged, particularly his words of wisdom regarding the art of the preflight. He was a rock star in that uniform. Thanks, Dad and Mom, for all of your love and patience, and for not being psychopaths.
Finally, my three kids, Sophia, Lukas, and Stella, along with my wife, Jennifer, have for many years put up with a level of madness, mania, and interference on my part that no one should ever have to deal with. I can only hope that your certain knowledge that my love for all of you is constant and unbounded is somehow mitigating. It’s been a lot of fun so far. For me, anyway.
October 18, 2015
New York City
Scott Frank began his career writing such films as Little Man Tate and Dead Again. His screenplay adaptation for Out of Sight received an Academy Award nomination and won a Writers Guild Award. Frank’s screenplay adaptation for Get Shorty was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a Writers Guild Award. Frank has also written the screenplays for Heaven’s Prisoners, Minority Report, The Interpreter, Marley & Me, and The Wolverine. He wrote and made his directorial debut in 2007 with The Lookout, which won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. Most recently, Frank adapted and directed A Walk Among the Tombstones. Shaker is his first novel.
