by Jason Starr
Johnny got out at Eighty-second Street in Jackson Heights. He had Gabriela’s address, but he had no idea how to get there. He had GPS on his phone, but he knew the cops could trace that shit. So he asked a guy outside the station for directions. The guy—he was old with very thick glasses, so Johnny thought he would have a hard time ID-ing him later—told Johnny where to go. It was farther than he’d thought, sounded like it would be a ten-minute walk at least. After walking for about twenty minutes Johnny knew something was wrong. He asked a teenager, a black kid on his way to school, for directions, and the kid kind of laughed and told Johnny he’d walked way out of the way. Johnny had to jog back about ten blocks and ask somebody else for directions before he finally found Gabriela’s apartment building.
It was past seven thirty—about five hours since the robbery. The cops, if they’d moved fast, could’ve already gotten to her. A good sign: Johnny looked around and didn’t see any police cars, marked or unmarked. Unmarked, that always cracked Johnny up. The cops always thought they were so undercover in their unmarked cars; meanwhile the unmarked cars were always black Impalas or Chargers that screamed “cop.” If they wanted to be unmarked, why didn’t they drive beat-up Chevys with Puerto Rican flags all over them? Sometimes Johnny thought cops had to be the biggest bunch of idiots in the world.
Johnny pressed the apartment buzzer with g. moreno next to it—didn’t anybody ever tell her not to put her name on it?—and when she answered he said, “Police,” and she let him right up.
On the stairwell he stopped and attached the sound suppressor to the end of the barrel, then put the gun back in his inside jacket pocket and continued up to her apartment. He rang the bell, and she answered, looking scared, like she thought she was about to get busted. Well, she was about to get busted, just not the way she thought.
Johnny was surprised, though; she was actually a really good-looking woman. Yeah, overweight, but she had a pretty South American look and big light brown eyes. How had Carlos gotten a woman this hot?
“You Gabriela?” Johnny asked.
She nodded, and he shot her in the face. She fell back a little, then crumpled onto the floor, the blood puddle spreading around her mouth. He checked to make sure none of her blood was on him, and then he stood back and put a couple into her chest to make sure she was gone for good.
He took a quick look around, spotted her pocketbook. He took twenty-three dollars, then tossed the pocketbook onto the floor and got the hell out of there.
Heading back toward the city on the 7 train—it was crowded with commuters—Johnny stood at the end of the car, facing his reflection in the door, replaying the shootings. He thought it had all gone pretty well. He didn’t think he’d been seen entering or leaving, and he’d been careful not to leave any evidence behind. He knew that because of Gabriela’s job the cops would try to make a connection between her shooting and the shooting and robbery in Forest Hills, but he didn’t see any way the police could get to him. There was no way that Gabriela and Carlos would’ve talked about the robbery with anybody else, and hopefully the purse on the floor would be enough to throw the stupid cops off.
It felt so good to finally be able to relax. Johnny had been on edge pretty much nonstop since meeting Carlos in Forest Hills, and he was looking forward to getting back to Brooklyn, maybe stopping at a diner for a big breakfast, and then getting into bed and sleeping for as long as possible.
But then, when he was switching for the F train at Thirty-fourth Street, he got all tensed up again, thinking, What if Carlos is still alive? Maybe Carlos was in a hospital, hooked up to machines, and the police were questioning him right now. Johnny didn’t think Carlos would talk to the cops—St. John’s brothers didn’t rat each other out—but then again you never know what a guy will do when the cops start hanging twenty-five to life over his ass.
In Brooklyn, Johnny realized he had lost his appetite and decided to skip the diner and head straight home. He turned on the TV to the local news station, and there it was, the top story, the robbery and shooting in Forest Hills. The reporter said Carlos Sanchez had been shot and killed by the owner of the house. “Thank fucking God,” Johnny said, and he leaned back on his sofa and relaxed again.
He was totally in the clear. There was no way the cops would ever catch on to him. All he had to do was lie low for a while and everything would be okay.
On the TV, they were showing the guy, Dr. Adam Bloom. Johnny thought, Doctor? What kind of doctor is he? Johnny hated the way the guy was acting all smug and proud of himself, talking about how he did the right thing shooting Carlos, saying, “I’d do it all over again” and “I think anybody in my position would’ve done what I did.” Man, Johnny wished he’d just shot the guy last night, blown him away.
The report ended, and Johnny shut off the TV and got into bed. He tried to fall asleep, but he kept thinking about the time when he was fifteen years old and these gangbangers were kicking the shit out of him in a schoolyard and everybody was standing around letting it happen, except Carlos. He came right over, pulled a blade, put it up to the biggest guy’s face, and said, “Mess with my boy, you mess with this.” It wasn’t the only time Carlos had saved Johnny’s ass from a beating—Johnny might not’ve survived being a teenager if it wasn’t for Carlos. So now it just didn’t seem right that Carlos was going into a box in the ground, probably in Potter’s Field, where the city buried people who had no families, and that cocky bastard, Dr. Bloom, got to go on living with his happy family in his big, fancy house.
Yeah, Johnny knew he had to do what Carlos would’ve done for him. He had to give that uppity son of a bitch some payback.
BEFORE THE robbery and the shooting, Dana Bloom thought she had gotten back in control of her life. She’d told Tony that she wanted to end their fling and, although he didn’t take it very well, and it had been hard for her to let go, too, she’d made it three days without any contact with him and she felt like she’d made it over the hump, that she was ready to put the past four months with Tony behind her and rededicate herself to her marriage.
But now, suddenly, everything was falling apart again, and it was all because of that stupid gun. She had no idea why Adam had to go and shoot that guy— why couldn’t he listen to her for once in his life?—and now Gabriela was dead and she couldn’t help thinking that it was all Adam’s fault, too. That he wouldn’t take any responsibility or admit any fault for anything he’d done infuriated her more than anything. Why was it so hard for him to say I’m sorry?
After Detective Clements left, Dana felt completely helpless. Not only couldn’t she get through to her husband, but she felt like the police couldn’t protect them, and she didn’t feel safe in her own house.
They were walking along the hallway past Marissa’s room—she was in there blasting her stereo again, some god-awful music—and Dana was saying, “Let’s go to Florida, just to get out of the house for a few days or a week or whatever.”
Adam, heading into the bedroom, said, “That’s ridiculous. I’m not running away.”
Following him, Dana said, “Don’t call me ridiculous.”
“I’m not calling you ridiculous. I’m saying running away is ridiculous.” “Who’s talking about running away? I’m just saying I’d feel a lot safer if we
weren’t here, in this house, while that killer’s still out there, that’s all.”
“What killer?” Adam said. “Think about what you’re saying. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t make any sense? What planet are you on? Gabriela was killed, and—”
“And that has absolutely nothing to do with us.” He was raising his voice to talk over her. She hated it when he did that; it was so demeaning and disrespectful. “You’re just making up stories, trying to scare yourself,” he added and turned away from her, changing into his sweatpants. Another thing she hated— when he gave her his back.
“I can’t believe you,” she said. “You really can’t be this stubborn. You�
��re just doing it to get a reaction from me.”
“Really? And why would I want to do that?”
“Because you like it, you like provoking me. You like the way it makes you feel.”
“That’s it, you have me figured out, all right. I woke up today and I said, You know what, I think I’ll provoke my wife today. That’ll be so much fun.”
“That’s exactly what you do.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop it. Your problem is you just refuse to see anything any other way. You know everything. You have all the answers. You even know more than the police, apparently. I still love that, by the way, telling off the NYPD. That was just brilliant.”
“You’re doing it again,” she said. “Doing what again?”
“Spinning everything I say into something I’m not saying instead of just listening to me.”
“I’ll listen to you if you start making some sense.”
She was so angry at him she couldn’t even remember what they were arguing about anymore. She took a few moments and then said, “So what if I’m right? What if it is all related? What if whoever killed Gabriela comes back here, tries to break into our house?”
“He won’t get in.”
“What if he does? What’re you going to do then? Get your gun again? Shoot him?”
“If he breaks into our house and heads upstairs in the dark, yes, I’ll shoot him.”
Dana stared at her husband, slack jawed, her hands on her hips. “Who the hell are you?” she said. “I feel like I don’t know you at all anymore.”
“Oh, stop it with your melodrama.”
She continued, “You shoot one guy and you suddenly think you’re so tough, you’re some kind of Mafia hit man or something? Acting so rational, so in control. You’re not afraid, and you won’t run away, you’re just gonna keep shooting people with your gun—your gun’ll keep us all nice and safe.”
Shaking his head, he said, “I’m going to the gym,” and left.
That was so like him—just walking out of the room in midargument with everything unresolved, leaving her all pent up and frustrated. It was so controlling, so manipulative, and she knew exactly why he was doing it—to push her buttons. She used to complain about it all the time when they were in marriage counseling, but he kept on doing it anyway. If that wasn’t an indication that he didn’t care about her, what was?
A little while after Adam left, Dana heard Marissa going downstairs, and the door slammed again. Dana was alone in the house, and she felt alone. She just wanted some emotional support at a difficult time; was that too much to ask for? Things were going to get worse, she just knew they were going to get worse, and no one was going to be able to help her, not the police, and not even her own husband.
Then she did something that she knew she’d regret—she got her cell phone from her purse and called Tony.
He picked up and said, “It’s so great to hear your voice, baby. I miss you so much.”
She thought, What the hell am I doing? She wanted to hang up—she knew that it was the right thing to do, that this wasn’t going to solve anything, that in fact it was going to make things even more complicated—but she heard herself say weakly, “I miss you so much, too.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to call,” he said. “Where are you?”
She wanted to feel his body against hers so badly. She wanted to feel him inside her.
“When do you get off?” she asked. “I’ll get off for you anytime,” he said.
If any other man had said that to her, she would have assumed he was making a bad pun, but she knew even a bad pun was beyond Tony. It was usually hard for her to hold conversations with him that didn’t involve bodybuilding, protein supplements, or sex. Not that Dana usually had any objection to this, especially the sex part. She was interested in Tony for sex and sex only, and she’d made this very clear to him.
They arranged to meet at four at his place. Dana didn’t want to have to see Adam again when he got back from the gym, so she left the house early and killed time at the Starbucks a few blocks from Tony’s. She was dressed casually, jeans and a black turtleneck, but underneath she was wearing a hot pink satin halter from Victoria’s Secret. Adam didn’t like lingerie—one time she’d worn sexy underwear to bed and he’d actually told her that it looked silly on her; way to make a woman feel great about herself—but it always turned Tony on.
Heading toward Tony’s building, she tried to talk herself out of going. She knew that she was jeopardizing her marriage, and did she really want to lead Tony on more than she already had? Although she’d told him many times that they had no future together, that she had no intention of ever leaving Adam for him, when he said things to her like “Wouldn’t it be great if we were living together?” or “Imagine if it could be like this forever,” she’d felt like she wasn’t getting though to him at all.
It was still hard for her to believe she’d gotten into this situation. For years with Adam, even when things weren’t great, she’d never even thought about cheating on him. She’d seen the way affairs had destroyed families in her neighborhood, and she imagined growing old with Adam, for better or for worse.
But she’d had opportunities to be unfaithful. Mr. Sorrentino, Marissa’s fifthgrade science teacher, used to flirt with her at parent-teacher conferences, and a few years ago, Scott Goldberg, an old boyfriend from college at Albany, had contacted her. He’d recently gotten divorced and was going to be in the city on business, he said, and he asked her if she wanted to meet at the bar of his hotel for a drink. She made up an excuse and didn’t go. There were other opportunities now and then, but any time she sensed a guy was coming on to her she always maintained boundaries and let him know she was married and not interested.
But over the past several years her attitude had gradually changed. Part of it, she had to admit, may have had to do with empty nest syndrome. When Marissa went away to college, Dana and Adam had more time to spend together, but it was hard for her to shift gears, to become just a wife again instead of a wife and mother. It was hard to remember what she liked about Adam, hard to remember what they used to talk about, and they actually spent less time together than they ever had before. Adam always seemed to be wrapped up in work, and she started to realize how lonely she was. For years she’d defended her life as a stay-at-home mom—she refused to use the word “housewife”—by telling her working friends, “I love doing nothing,” but secretly she regretted not going back to work years ago and was jealous of her friends who had careers. She was bored at home, and it was getting harder to fill her days. Last year menopause had started setting in, so she had to deal with the emotional ups and downs, and for a while she’d been on Prozac for what her psychiatrist had called “a mild depression.” When Marissa graduated and decided to move back home, Dana was actually thrilled. Things had been getting tense with Adam, and it was nice having her daughter around again.
Around the time Marissa moved back in, Tony started working as a trainer at the New York Sports Club. He was very friendly and flirty with Dana from the get-go, smiling at her all the time and saying hi, or coming over when she was using machines and saying things like “What you want to do is get some more extension,” or passing by smiling, commenting, “You look sensational today.” She thought he was just being nice and there was nothing more to it, but she had to admit, it stroked her ego to hear those compliments, especially from a guy in his twenties. She looked good for a forty-seven-year-old woman who hadn’t gotten any work done. She was slim, still had nice legs, and though she sometimes felt self-conscious about the lines around her eyes and mouth, most people who met her thought she was in her early forties, even late thirties. But it had been years since a man had paid any attention to her. When she was younger and passed a construction site, guys would whistle at her and make crude comments; yes, it had felt like harassment back then, but now she missed getting male attention, even the negative kind. She liked how when she was using the elliptical StairMaster s
he’d look in the mirror ahead of her and see Tony checking out her ass and then looking away quickly when their gazes met. The most attractive thing about Tony was that he was attracted to her. He wasn’t bad-looking—he had a cute, pudgy Italian face—but his interest in her, the way he made her feel like a young sex object, was irresistible. When was the last time Adam had told her she was pretty or paid attention to her the way Tony did? She felt like Adam took her for granted and barely listened to her half the time. She’d be telling Adam about something that had happened during the day, or something interesting she’d read about in the paper or seen on TV, and she’d see his eyes wander and she’d know that even though he was answering her, saying “Really?” and “Okay,” he was thinking about something else and couldn’t give a shit about her. She started looking forward to going to the gym and seeing Tony, craving his flattering comments and the feeling she got whenever he smiled at her.
Then one day she was on the exercise mat, stretching, when Tony came over and asked her if she’d lost some weight. She’d actually gained a few pounds, but she said, “No, I’m the same,” and he said, “Well, you look sensational.” She noticed his eyes pan toward her breasts for a moment—she loved when he did that, and she was glad she was wearing that new exercise bra with that great support—then he said, “Hey, I’m getting off at seven, want to get some coffee or somethin’?” She had nothing planned—Adam had said he’d be in the city seeing patients and wouldn’t be back till late—but she said, “Sorry, I can’t.”
It was the right thing to do. Tony was a nice fantasy, but that was how she had to keep it—a fantasy.
But the next time Tony asked her out for coffee, a few days later, she said yes. Coffee had somehow evolved into a drink at a nearby sports bar. As she’d expected, they had zero to talk about, but she loved the way he looked at her, like she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen—he actually said, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen”—and she wanted him to kiss her. Into their second round of margaritas he asked her if she was happily married, and she said, “We’ve had some problems,” purposely leaving the door open, wanting to keep this flirtation or whatever it was going, loving the way it made her feel, terrified to give it up. There was a long moment when they looked into each other’s eyes, and she saw his shift downward slightly, toward her lips. She checked the time on her cell phone and said, “I should really get—” and he reached out and held her hand—when was the last time a man besides her husband had held her hand in a romantic way?—and said, “Come back with me.”
