The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  This is it. Our mutually assured destruction.

  Stew, so hell-bent on crushing Ben’s skull, didn’t hear the challenge. Or the warning. What gave him pause were the camera flashes. Not from just one digital pocket shooter, but a veritable paparazzi blast from a flock of Korean tourists caught up in what was shaping up to be the highlight of their American holiday.

  A sudden self-awareness broke through Stew’s rage. His eyes panned away from Ben to the growing ring of spectators. Making the situation even more surreal was the moving image on the giant video screen. There was Stew, twenty feet tall, looking like a grainy, live-action version of Marvel’s Incredible Hulk.

  And Josie?

  She stood only a few yards away, shocked, her hands stuck to her face in fear at what she had wrought. Two days ago, slipping off the wagon had never crossed her mind. If anything, her part had begun as a kindred act from one recovering alcoholic to another. While Stew had waited for Ben to arrive at the office, he had instantly noticed Josie’s sobriety chip on her key ring. A conversation had followed. The kind shared only by those belonging to the Brotherhood of Bill W. Then Josie, charmed by Stew’s blue-collar smile, had invited him to attend her morning AA meeting. She had scribbled the address on a Post-it along with her telephone number, folded it, and given it to Stew. Yes, she would admit. It was a sexy come-on that only a fellow twelve-stepper would understand.

  God, I am such a stupid bitch!

  Stew and Josie had strolled from the AA meeting, climbed the steps to her Los Feliz apartment, and between bouts of sweaty, un-showered and unprotected sex, had broken into her roommate’s stash and smoked bong-loads of Humboldt County weed from a vase Josie had turned into a water pipe. The hunger that had followed was quenched by pizza, beer, and even more sex. From there, the day had spun out of control. Both were off whatever wagons they had rode in on and it seemed that all bets, narcotic or otherwise, were off.

  It was Josie’s bright idea to drive up to City Walk, order a pair of silly frozen tourist drinks, and go bowling. It could be said that Stew was just along for the ride. Who could have predicted the events that came after? Least of all Josie.

  When the blinding camera flashes subsided and the gawkers started to recede, Stew regained his few remaining wits that weren’t owned by his unchecked rage. Stew thought he caught a brief flash of Josie disappearing through the doors of the Hard Rock Café.

  Ben, though, was nowhere in sight.

  One particular cell-phone jockey—scruffy, sixteen-years-old, and still curiously capturing video of Stew through the screen of his mobile device—was caught unaware when Stew lurched at him with a death scowl.

  “Which way’d he go?”

  So terrified was the teen that he just dropped his phone and ran away. Frustrated and punching at air, Stew wheeled a speedy three-hundred-sixty degrees before he bent over, picked up the mobile device, and working the menu with his thumbs, brought up the video. Stew wasn’t as interested in his own moments as much as he was keen on Ben’s, especially the direction in which his prey had run. West, it appeared, past the escalators and underneath a hanging, blue and black neon King Kong.

  “WE GOTTA GO!” urged Ben.

  Ben didn’t think to ask before he grabbed Pam’s wrist after letting a couple of twenty-dollar bills flutter to the table.

  “I already paid,” Pam said. “Stew’s card—”

  “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just move.” Ben just wanted to get Pam moving toward the valet stand in the parking garage.

  “What’s going on?” stalled Pam before twisting out of his grip. “Where’d you go, anyway?”

  Then she saw the thin stream of red trickling down Ben’s face from the cut just beneath his hairline. A large knot was forming. And the blood looked black through her dark shades.

  “It’s not safe—”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Your husband!”

  He held his hand out for her to take, hoping to get through to the eyes hiding behind those large sunglasses.

  “Stew?” asked Pam, half rhetorically, the other half in utter disbelief. “How—”

  “You want answers now? Or you wanna move?”

  Pam got the gist and her hand into Ben’s. Together they hurried through the mob, never losing the other, until they reached the crowded first-floor valet stand. Ben paid cash and offered an extra fifty dollars if the cashier would agree to bring his car first. The cashier, a thick man with an equally indistinguishable accent, took offense at Ben’s bribe and chastised Ben accordingly. Not even the blood on Ben’s face got a reaction from the angry cashier. When the notion of arguing appeared pointless, Ben retreated and sought secondary options. While Pam was dabbing his face with tissues from her purse, he grabbed her yet again and started walking toward the exit.

  “We’ll walk,” he said. “Down to the boulevard and grab the Rapid Bus.”

  “What about a taxi?” asked Pam.

  “This is the Valley. Too long a wait—”

  Pam tugged Ben to his right.

  “I said...” Pam was pointing east, through the valet entrance to a drop-off circle. There, two hundred feet away, a Valley Checkered Cab stood idling as if waiting to rescue Ben and Pam.

  “Run!” said Ben.

  Stew, in fact, had given up the chase once the faces of the Wednesday night horde had began to muddy and dissolve, one into the other. It was dizzying, and surprising to Stew, who grew exponentially claustrophobic with every hurried step. Stew blamed the frozen blue cocktail, blamed Josie for suggesting that it was fun to bowl while tanked on booze, blamed City Walk for merely existing, and blamed Ben for the fact that he badly needed oxygen and a few extra yard’s distance from the constant swarm of foreigners.

  So Stew cut in the direction of the nearest exit sign as if he were deep underwater and needed to kick extra hard to the surface just for a lungful of air. He rushed, stumbling past strangers, and flattened a poor little Latino boy who had broken loose from his father’s hand. The father, a heavily tattooed gangbanger, a true O.G., chased a few steps after Stew, loudly cursing him in Spanish. But after getting frozen by an over-the-shoulder glower from the big white man, the father threw Stew a sideways middle finger, then wisely returned to his family.

  Ahead of Stew was a yellow, checkered taxi. Just the ticket, he thought. An easy ride home. Though the restraining order was still in Stew’s pocket, he hadn’t given it any mind since he had stuffed it there shortly after he had been served. It may as well have been delivered on a platter to a paper-chewing goat.

  Stew waved at the taxi thirty yards away.

  “Hold up!” shouted Stew.

  Next, Stew saw a blurry flash as a couple climbed in ahead of him. He saw the door close, followed by the flare of brake lights as the cabby put the car into drive.

  “My goddamn ride!” yelled Stew.

  Whether it was the mist in the air, the distance from the crowd, the flush of O2 in his lungs, or the frustration of feeling like dirt had just been kicked in his face, Stew’s visual acuity returned in a matter of seconds. And in that precious instant, he focused on the couple in the cab as it pulled away.

  Framed in a rear window dappled with fresh rain was Pam, clear as day, her short blonde mane as distinct as the cut of her jawline. Stew saw her remove her sunglasses to reveal glistening tears of fright. He also watched in awe as she willingly folded her arms around another man...

  ...the man Stew knew as Ben Keller.

  Neither Ben nor Pam had paid the slightest attention to the cabdriver. Ben had merely slammed the rear door closed and curtly said, “Just drive,” before the question of “Where to?” could have conceivably been asked. The driver paused, regarded the passengers through the rearview mirror as they settled into the backseat, then dropped the transmission into drive. The cab rolled away from City Walk and toward Ventura Boulevard.

  Pam was nearly hysterical, but quietly so, trembling in Ben’s arms.

  “I don’t un
derstand,” she whispered, her voice wavering at the same frequency as her shuddering body.

  “He must’ve seen me with you.”

  Ben was already spinning another lie. And without much forethought, either. Why did the lies come so easily to him? How many tales, he wondered, could he fabricate before his stories unraveled into pile of spent thread?

  “But he hates this place,” said Pam. “How’d he know where to find me here?”

  The truth was screaming inside of Ben. The truth that so desperately wanted to be released. She deserved to know. Everything. From his Santa Monica restaurant to the murders to the deathbed confession to the truth of why he had rung her doorbell on that sunny morning.

  “He was drinking,” said Ben. “I could smell it on him.”

  “The sonofabitch,” she cried. “He’s gonna kill me, now. I swear to God he’s gonna kill me.”

  “That’s not gonna happen,” calmed Ben, clueless, of course, as to how or why he would be able to prevent her death.

  “Yes he will!”

  “There’s the restraining order, remember? You’ve got the police.”

  “After he’s seen me with another man? Like that’s gonna help me. He’ll kill us both!”

  “Where to?” asked the driver. “Left or right.”

  The cab was idling at a stoplight. When Ben looked away from Pam he could see the rain was getting heavier, sheeting from the blackness that hung above the skyline.

  “Where’s your hotel?” asked Ben.

  “Can’t go back there. He might know.”

  “Another hotel, then. The Radisson.”

  Pam thought for a brief moment, then nodded.

  “Encino,” said Ben. “The Radisson.”

  “Mind if I take the freeway?” asked the cabby.

  Finally, Ben’s eyes met the driver’s through those sixteen square inches of rearview mirror. Of course, Ben registered no recognition of the driver, nor did the driver show the faintest hint of having ever seen Ben. That’s because the driver was not Gonzo. He was a middle-aged pug of a white man, with an unshaven face and a resplendent right earring.

  “I need my gun,” Pam whispered.

  “Your what?” asked Ben. He wondered if he had heard it wrong.

  “I have a gun,” she said. “Stew gave me a gun. Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “Sometimes I get attention,” she said. “You know, the wrong kind. From fans.”

  “Fans?”

  “You don’t know,” said Pam, grateful, but still crying. She shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Okay,” conceded Ben, more interested in Pam’s gun than her past. He kept his voice below the hum of the cab’s tires against the street so only Pam could hear him.

  “Where’s your gun?” he asked.

  “I should’ve taken it with me when I left for the hospital.”

  “It’s at home?” Ben guessed. “So Stew has it?”

  “No,” Pam shook her head. “He couldn’t find a clean pair of socks without me telling him... I hid it. I hid the gun.”

  “You hid it in your house?”

  “It’s in a tampon box under the sink in our bathroom.”

  Ben gripped Pam’s shoulders and lowered his head to hers.

  “And you would feel safer,” Ben asked, “If you had your gun with you?”

  “You tell me. You’re the expert. Would I be safer?”

  Statistically, yes, flashed the answer. A loaded gun against a home invader or an assailant without a gun was a decided advantage. But a weapon out of reach, let alone hidden in a tampon box underneath the bathroom sink? The odds tipped dramatically to the attacker.

  “You can’t go home,” said Ben. “That wouldn’t be safe.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” repeated Pam before turning up her volume for the cabby. “How far to the hotel?”

  “The Radisson?” asked the cabby. “Five minutes.”

  Pam nodded and relaxed a little, settling back into the seat and feeling more assured that, at least for the moment, there was a safe cushion between herself and Stew. Ben joined her, leaning into the seat and facing ahead. The taxi’s windshield wipers were churning at maximum speed, swatting at the pouring rain. Then Ben felt Pam’s fingers intertwine with his. There followed a good minute of quiet comfort before Pam asked:

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.

  “Why what?”

  “Helping me. You don’t know me. You don’t owe me...”

  “I don’t know,” said Ben, not exactly lying this time, but still not telling close to the truth. “Sometimes, I think we find ourselves in unfamiliar situations... and maybe it’s just instinct or survival. But I think we kinda reach out.”

  “You talking about you?” asked Pam. “Or me?”

  “Both of us,” said Ben.

  When the cab arrived at the Radisson Hotel and parked under a protective awning out of the rain, Pam was quick to slide out first. She was reaching into her purse for cash when Ben touched her hand.

  “No,” he said, still inside the cab. “You check in. I’m going back to get my car.”

  Pam exhaled and let her face fall, downcast, pouting like a rejected teenager.

  “Stay?” she pleaded. “Please?”

  “I’ll come back,” said Ben.

  “I can’t be alone right now.”

  “You’re safe here,” said Ben. “And I will be back. Promise.”

  Pam leaned in close enough for Ben to smell her.

  “I know I’m not much to look at right now,” she said. “But maybe... maybe we can take care of each other. Just for tonight?”

  “And in the morning?”

  “Whole new day,” said Pam with a hopeful snuffle, her ruby lips gliding back over her teeth. Inviting.

  At the split second before Ben imagined kissing her, he was overcome with the same sense of release he had experienced when he had let go of the wheel of his car and let fate—or God—or the road itself—decide the path he would take. It was the same path that had led him to Stew’s house, the doorstep where he had stood and waited to meet Pam. And had brought him to this critical moment where, parked in front of the Radisson Hotel, there was nothing for Ben to decide or calculate or risk assess.

  All there was for him to do was put his lips to hers. But Pam made the first move. She kissed him. And he neither recoiled nor gave any message that he was surprised. In fact, he kissed her right back.

  As Ben later reflected, there was no revenge in the act. At least no feeling as such. Since meeting Pam, Ben had experienced moments where he had fantasized about sleeping with her. Pam was, at the jump, as sexually attractive a woman as he had ever met. What sweet and twisted justice—if only partial—would it be for Ben to screw the wife of the man who had murdered his family? But the thought itself was always dashed against the rocks at the sheer sickness of it all. Ben was a married man, responsible for three young girls whom he cared for dearly.

  Ben wasn’t out for revenge. Or so he rationalized.

  Ben’s was a practical problem.

  That his world wasn’t safe with Stew Raymo in it.

  Still, there he was. Kissing Pam. Liking it. Accepting the tingles that came from having her mouth linked with his. As if Stew Raymo hadn’t a bloody thing in the world to do with it.

  “So you’re coming up,” said Pam, taking a breath, then kissing him back.

  “I need to get my car,” said Ben.

  “Get it tomorrow.”

  “You’re safe here,” repeated Ben, retreating back into the cab. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Ben shut the door, rapped the glass partition and said to the cabby, “C’mon, let’s go.” He made sure to turn and wave confidently back at Pam as if to take the sting out of his rejection. He wanted her to understand he had every intention of returning. Just not quite as soon as he had implied. The plan unfolding in his head was not yet fully formed. But it was still a plan of a
ction. A plan that would, at last, resolve all conflict.

  “I have a gun,” she had said.

  Pam’s words formed an audio loop in Ben’s head. And with each trip around his brain, the pieces of a plot fell into place. Not necessarily neatly. But in such a fashion that an actual endgame was suddenly in plain sight. All of this in the course of a short cab ride, between the moment when Pam had said, “I have a gun” and when Ben had shut the cab door and promised, “I’ll be back soon.”

  The immediate future unfolded on Ben’s mental white board in simple bullet points.

  Retrieve Pam’s gun.

  Return to the hotel.

  Wait for Stew to discover that Pam is sharing the hotel room with him.

  An enraged Stew arrives at the hotel, thus violating his restraining order.

  Ben shoots and kills Stew with Pam’s gun.

  Ben claims self defense. The court rules justifiable homicide.

  Ben only needed to reach out, embrace the scheme, and execute it without fear. His heart pounded with an adrenalized brew of excitement and terror. He was well beyond his uncanny abilities to calculate and assess risk. His precious numbers and odds weren’t available to give him any kind of handhold on reality. It was as if he had leaped off a high bridge, consciously ignoring all basic laws of physics, plummeting face first into the danger zone.

  “Where to now?” asked the driver.

  “Back to where we started,” said Ben.

  10

  RAGE, BETRAYAL, AND heartbreak.

  The first emotion was familiar. That other pair of feelings was mostly foreign to Stew. Stew was familiar with rage. Rage could be tempered, molded, turned into satisfying action, negative or otherwise. And the first action Stew had chosen was to march onward and leave City Walk behind by putting one foot in front of the other. Get downhill, he told himself. Walk down to the boulevard and damn all the rain and the man who sent it.

  Betrayal, though. That one sucked Stew so far back that he was recalling his first middle-school crush. She had curls of red hair, freckles to match, and was adored by every boy in the class, especially Stew. But she didn’t know about Stew. She assumed Stew was her tall, skinny friend. The only boy to whom she could tell her secrets. Stew listened, then one day screwed up the courage to tell her a secret of his own. His most important secret. That he loved the red-haired girl and wanted her to be his girlfriend. Then moments later, after she had acted flattered and interested in the content of Stew’s confession, she had told all her other friends of Stew’s romantic intentions. For a week after, Stew stayed home pretending to be sick with the stomach flu. Then he begged his mother to allow him to transfer to another public school. He remembered his mother gently smiling at the request, then sprinkling a thimble-full of hashish into little pile of tobacco. She rolled the mixture into a joint, expertly twisting the ends, and before putting flame to it, smiled at her crushed son and promised, “I’ll look into it.”