Be the One

by April Smith

  “So I’m inside the room when I hear this word—”

  “You didn’t know what it meant.”

  “Diabetes. Yeah. I don’t have a clue except I hear my mother saying, ‘He’s terrified of needles. Now he has to give himself injections, he can’t believe this could happen—’ And I knew it was bad. My mother pretended there was never anything serious—my dad just got angry—but I knew this was bad, what could be worse than having to give yourself injections? Terrifying. No way. I’d rather be buried alive.

  “So meanwhile Gregg’s hauling ass out of bed. ‘I’ll kill you, I swear, I’ll break your neck—’ he’s screaming at this very nice doctor, who he manages to ram against the wall, and people in the room are going nuts and my father comes storming back in and picks Gregg up and throws him on the bed, and Gregg is jumping up and down and screaming, ‘I don’t care, I’ll cut your throat!—’ and my dad’s screaming, “ ‘Shut up, boy! I’ll take my belt to you—’ ”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah, and the poor doctor’s saying, like, ‘Everybody get a grip—’ and my mother starts giving orders, as usual, ‘Everybody out, just leave him alone—’ She tells my brother, ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ like she’s going to the grocery store, and they drag me out and close the door and put me in the community room, where they have a TV that doesn’t work and a pile of stupid games, and they leave me there. They did that all the time. Who knows where they went.

  “Finally I kind of creep out in the hall and down to Gregg’s room and he’s in there, crying his eyes out. ‘Get out of here,’ he tells me. He’d been crying alone the whole time. I climbed onto the bed, he kicked at me, but I ignored him. I wanted to fall asleep and die together.”

  She sips the tea.

  “CF is a genetic disease,” she says. “You can pass it along to your kids.”

  “That’s why you never had kids?”

  She nods. “Isn’t this what you came all the way out to California to hear?”

  Allen smiles. His hands are loose in his lap, like they were that night in the hospital.

  “Can you always give it to your kids?”

  “You both have to be carriers of the gene. There’s a blood test you can take.”

  “So you’ve had the test and everything?”

  “No, I never had the test.”

  “You never had it?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Why?”

  She blows her nose. She’s drowsy now.

  “I just never wanted to. I already know.”

  “You just — know?”

  She doesn’t answer. He watches her.

  “Cold?”

  She nods. Even underneath the comforter the chills come and go.

  Allen picks up the Bruins blanket.

  “Can I tell you something?” He bends close and his eyes are mild. “We’re all carriers.”

  He shakes it out, three, four times, then lays the blanket over her.

  31

  An FBI agent shows up on the doorstep wearing a gray suit and carrying an orange suitcase. The suitcase detaches into two sections, the top containing a telephone, wires, headset, pinch clips, batteries and tape cartridges packed in molded foam, the bottom a switchboard that will control all calls incoming or outgoing from Cassidy’s home. The agent explains he is a hostage negotiator. When Monroe calls again he will coach Cassidy through it, writing her notes on what she should say.

  “Never give anything without getting something in return” is the first rule.

  Soon Cassidy is on a first-name basis with the officers working the round-the-clock shifts, asking about their kids, eager in her imprisonment to sniff the fresh air of life. It is always easy to talk baseball. The TV is constantly tuned to sports and the cottage is beginning to smell of cardboard pizza boxes and male cologne.

  On the first of July the Dodgers score three unearned runs against Colorado and move into first place. Cassidy convinces the copper on duty to escort her to Baskin-Robbins for their own pathetic first-place ice cream party. But the very next day—although Offerman, Piazza, Mondesi, Nomo, and Worrell are named as All-Stars—the Dodgers lose to the Rockies and slip back to second.

  She spends most of her time in the bedroom, playing computer games or surfing the Net, lifting, reading magazines. When she thinks of Joe he is sitting on a stool in a bare room, a room still and rich with daylight, like a quiet art gallery. She imagines him looking at her with the same calm, limpid intensity as the first time in the airport lounge.

  Monroe’s impulsive street-fueled rage is nowhere in the picture.

  When Joe does call, the FBI negotiator is of course at a conference for hostage negotiators in Chicago, but a lieutenant from Laguna Beach is there, headset on the moment Cassidy says, “Joe! Thank God! Where are you?”

  “Near the freeway—”

  The reverberation of traffic is unbearable.

  “Where, can you tell me where?”

  “No, I can’t, but Cassidy—”

  A hundred decibels of live truck roar.

  The lieutenant winces and slaps at switches.

  “We’ll do anything—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Who is? What?”

  “Monroe is dead!”

  Joe is shouting. Maybe it’s a gas station at a freeway off-ramp.

  “You’re free? You escaped? We’ll get you—”

  “No, you can’t—”

  The lieutenant scribbles on the pad, WHERE IS SUSPECT?

  “Where is Monroe?”

  Joe names a motel in Venice.

  “He fell asleep. I jumped him. We struggled and the gun went off.”

  “We’re coming to get you—”

  “They know about the accident, don’t they?”

  Still shouting over the barrage.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “I understand. You did what you had to do. Look, I’m going—”

  “Where? What are you talking about—”

  “—speak to you.”

  The motel is a court of squat stucco boxes stained nicotine yellow recessed between a wholesale meat market and a used vinyl record store. An LAPD motorcycle cop and patrol car are already parked, uniforms posted at the doorway of shack-up shack number one, closest to the street. Drawn by the scent of violence, a dark-skinned guy in shirtsleeves (the manager?), three Latina teenagers, a homeless person and a white dude carrying a guitar case stand around mesmerized, whiffing the exhaust-laden air as traffic on Lincoln Boulevard slows down to gape.

  Cassidy and Detective Allen roll up in his rented Acura.

  “Don’t get out of the car, don’t touch anything, don’t make a fuss.”

  Cassidy leans out the open window to watch as Allen shows his ID to the cop straddling the chopper whose pants are stretched tight over boulder quads. The cop won’t let Allen in.

  “That Florida badge doesn’t mean jack up here.”

  Allen doesn’t blow, but engages the studbolt in cop conversation until a dark green sedan pulls up and LAPD Detective Mark Simms gets out.

  “It’s okay, he’s with me.”

  Both detectives proceed to the open door of number one. They speak to the uniform, then stop in the doorway and look inside. Allen goes down on one knee as if sizing up a putt; Simms remains standing. They stay that way, each of them drinking in the scene from a different angle.

  Then Allen comes back to the car.

  “The guy’s lying on his back, looks like he bled out, probably shot twice in the upper body.”

  “Is it Monroe?”

  “Just like his pictures, only dead.”

  He walks around to the driver’s side.

  The crowd of gawkers has grown; this is turning into a situation. A bus goes by leaving a hollow vibration in the air. Somewhere a load of pipes spills with an ear-shattering crash.

  Allen closes the windows and turns on the AC.

  “Gum?”

  She takes it.

 
; “It didn’t happen the way Joe said. Any close-up struggle over a gun the way he described it would result in stippling—powder burns—on the body, which would be obvious to the naked eye. There was no stippling. At first I couldn’t see the cartridges. Sometimes the EMT guys screw up a scene, but there were no EMT guys and that rookie swears nobody went inside. I spotted the two rounds near the baseboard, so I’m assuming they didn’t get booted over there, that’s the way they were ejected from the gun. A Beretta will do that, kick them out to the right and backwards.”

  He fires the ignition.

  “The lack of stippling on the body and around the wound is a dead giveaway that the weapon was not fired from close up. And the cartridge placement will have a lot to do with this. There wasn’t any struggle for the gun. I can tell you this: It didn’t happen the way Joe said.”

  He puts the gearshift into drive.

  “Monroe was shot from a distance, most likely just inside the door-way.”

  “Why would Monroe open the door?”

  “He knew the shooter,” Allen replies. “Ask me something hard.”

  32

  “Why do I still have to be here?”

  Cassidy paces the kitchen, arms crossed petulantly. Two days have passed since the discovery of Monroe’s body. The coroner’s protocol has confirmed Detective Allen’s hypothesis. Monroe opened the door to someone he trusted, and that person blew him away.

  “For your own protection.”

  “Monroe is dead!”

  “Monroe had an associate. Who is still at large. And then there’s Joe.”

  “Why do you cling to the ridiculous notion that Joe staged his own kidnapping?”

  “There’s a link. Monroe gets shot and Joe ankles it.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.” Her arms fly up in exasperation. “Didn’t you hear his voice? He was terrified!”

  Allen’s eyelids look droopy. He definitely needs a shave.

  “There was no sign of forced entry at the beach house. Nothing out of the ordinary—”

  “The photo!” she counters. “The phone on the floor! The receipt in the Buy Rite bag which you said was from two days before—”

  “He’s still out there on vehicular manslaughter,” Allen interrupts. “Leaving the scene, he knows that. The biggest indication he’s not acting in good faith is the fact that after this traumatic kidnapping experience, he split. As a general rule, most victims are happy to come home. Do you have something like a Coke?”

  Cassidy, surprised, “Sure.”

  He’s never taken her food nor asked for anything before, as if it were important to declare a line between his investigation and the contents of her home.

  “So when do I get out of here?”

  He cracks the can.

  “When we know the whereabouts of Joe Galinis.”

  “Nate, you have to help me.”

  “Just hang with it. A few more days.”

  “It’s been two weeks. You don’t get it. I’m on suspension from my job and every day I’m not on the road, somebody else, probably Travis, is taking my stuff. When I get back, you’ll see, half my prospects will suddenly appear on his list—”

  “I’m sorry. It’s a consequence of events.” To deflect it, “How’s Alberto?”

  “Fine. They removed an abscess from his liver and he’s great, he’s going back to Double A. Still the best bat in the Texas League. This is over for me, Nate. I cooperated, I did everything to help you, why can’t you help me?”

  “Because it’s not my decision, Cassidy.” He tosses the empty and checks his pager. “This was a determination made by three cooperating law enforcement agencies—”

  “Well, I won’t! I won’t be stuck in here another minute!”

  She plucks a saucer from the dish rack and frisbees it so it shatters against the wall.

  Allen remains perfectly still. His thin lips tighten. Release.

  He raises one finger very slowly. “You get a time-out.”

  “You’ve had a hard-on for Joe since the beginning,” Cassidy persists, following him to the door. “You don’t like him because he’s a rich guy who treats police officers like dirt. I know. I dated a cop. Almost married him, do you believe that? He was totally into power. You don’t become a cop if you don’t need power. So this is your little bit of power. Keeping me here.”

  “There will be officers outside the house, twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Bringing me tea. All that stuff. You got everything you wanted out of me to solve your case, didn’t you?”

  Detective Allen pauses on the doorstep.

  “I’m being pulled back to Vero Beach, so, don’t worry, I’m out of your hair.”

  He regards her for a moment in a peculiar way; a look she isn’t used to.

  Then he says, “Have a nice life.”

  He leaves. She grabs the remote and flicks on the TV.

  The look was pity.

  Imprisoned, Cassidy becomes a total sleaze.

  She starts going to sleep at two in the morning and wakes up at noon. Her first beer will be around four and after that she keeps a nice buzz going the rest of the night. She makes a big pot of spaghetti sauce and has it for lunch and dinner three days in a row. She has visitors. A couple of scouts. Folks from the bar. A neighbor who wants to know why all the police. After a while she stops taking showers and checking e-mail, even reports from the team. She’s long ago given up in disgust her warm relationships with the cops on duty.

  It must be around seven in the evening because she’s watching the end of the national news when the phone rings. She picks up carelessly. It is Alberto, calling from the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where the organization put him up during his recovery.

  Even through a depressive haze, Cassidy is thrilled to hear his voice.

  “How are you?”

  “Feeling good. Everything good.”

  “No more stomach pains?”

  “After the operation, I feeling great.”

  “When do you go back to Texas?”

  “I see the doctor one more time, then I go. Day after tomorrow.”

  “I’m so glad, Alberto. You never answered my messages. I thought you’d never speak to me again.”

  “I was very mad with you.”

  “I know you were.”

  “I think, you’re with that guy, what am I gonna do? I know I never hurt nobody.”

  “I’m sorry. I tried to say I’m sorry. I wasn’t seeing with my eyes. But I never gave you up, Alberto. I wouldn’t do that until I was sure. Then I was sure. It wasn’t you.”

  “Well, now he gonna pay.”

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah. He gonna meet me at the stadium. We gonna straighten some things out.”

  “At Dodger Stadium?”

  “No, the new one they building.”

  “Joe’s back? He’s here?”

  “He’s in LA but he is hiding out. He say he’s gonna turn himself in, but he want to make it up to both of us first.”

  “You and me?”

  “He feeling really bad. He sorry and he want to talk. I am supposed to call you up and tell you to come.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In the lobby of the hotel. I gotta go—”

  “What else did Joe say?”

  “Don’t tell the police.”

  “He said that?”

  “No, his daughter.”

  “Nora said, don’t tell the police?”

  “Yeah, because I not actually talk to him. His daughter, she call me up and tell me all these things. Okay, they say my taxi coming. See you there.”

  “Alberto, wait—”

  He’s gone.

  Cassidy is shaking as if her body has gone into some sort of shock, trying to instantly purge itself after days of abuse. She drinks a bunch of water. Goes upstairs and picks the cassette out of the tape recorder and pulls out all the tape and comes downstairs and looks around and throws the whole tangled mess into the microwave
and gives it fifteen seconds.

  That should fry the cops.

  She peers through the front window. The cruiser is parked out on Glenneyre. She’s going to assume the officer on assignment is sitting in it, reading USA Today. She grabs her car keys and backpack and closes the kitchen door very quietly and steals across the backyard to the garage at the rear of the property. The outside world seems vivid and crowded with sensation. It is cool. From inside the house next door, she can hear someone rattle a drawer and take out a handful of silverware.

  The garage door is maddeningly slow. She backs the Explorer out, whips it around and down the alley, glazed with sunset light.

  Freedom.

  She drives aggressively through the evening grace. The extreme left lane, the diamond lane, is for carpools of at least two passengers, a seventy-miles-per-hour pneumatic tube when the rest of the freeway is at a standstill, and you can get a major ticket if you’re driving it alone. But seventy isn’t fast enough. Up against someone’s rear with no place to go, Cassidy veers suddenly to the right, passes at eighty-five, hops back over to the diamonds.

  She punches the CD player. Instantly the wicked mocking guitar licks of Steely Dan fill the interior. Get along, Kid Charlemagne. A San Francisco drug wizard on the lam. Martyr to subversive arts. Did you feel like Jesus?

  Nothing could be further from vinegary pungent Caribbean romance, which is perhaps Joe’s intention—to zap her from unknowable dark entanglements to the known. To the 405 and the oil refinery with its swollen tanks and silver smokestacks and great plumes of white steam, day and night a colossus as undeniable as the sports and entertainment center being erected out of the pit like a new Corinth—to jerk Cassidy awake to the naiveté of being stuck in a third world moment that is past and of no interest to anyone when this, this is coming at her head on.

  Two, three cuts go by. “Haitian Divorce.” “Everything You Did.”

  Finally she accelerates toward a downtown exit, leaving the comforting lights of the city’s landmark establishments—the New Otani, MOCA, the Bradbury Building, the spiffy Central Library, the Music Center—and follows the route she had taken with Joe behind the Convention Center into a massive ten-acre construction zone, bumping over potholes, lost in a maze of yellow and orange barricades and flashing cautionary lights, half-demolished buildings, empty lots with curls of razor wire, night air dank with the sewery stench of open pipes.