Run the Risk

by Scott Frost

  “We already know what Gabriel looks like,” I said. “We know what he plans to do. We know he has Lacy. What good is a two-bit check bouncer like Sweeny going to do for us?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know what he was doing in Finley’s house when he hit you with the door?”

  “Would it change anything about the landscape we’re in now? Unless Sweeny knows where my daughter is, or has a photograph of Gabriel . . . what good is he to us?”

  Tiny lines formed around the corners of Harrison’s eyes. That complicated head of his was still trying to work it out.

  “If Gabriel is trying to eliminate everyone who can ID him, then it would be natural to assume that—”

  “He would be looking for Sweeny, too,” I said, interrupting.

  Harrison nodded. “Maybe we can use that.”

  I held the thought for a moment. “Use Sweeny as bait.”

  Harrison nodded.

  “Put it out over every police frequency that we’re watching Sweeny at a specific location and hope Gabriel is listening to a scanner. Let him come to us.”

  It was a small chance at best, but it was at least worth a try.

  “We talk to Sweeny first though,” I said.

  “I was thinking,” Harrison said.

  I looked at him, and he hesitated as if unsure of broaching a subject. “We can talk about it later.”

  “Go on. What is it?”

  His index finger tapped the steering wheel as if he were keeping the beat to a song.

  “I was thinking about the phone call from Gabriel.”

  “What about it?”

  “Why did he make it?”

  “Part of his game,” I said, wondering if Harrison had guessed what Gabriel had said to me.

  He nodded uncomfortably. I could see he didn’t buy what I was saying.

  “It’s just that—”

  “What are you saying?” I said, annoyed.

  Harrison glanced down at his lap, then straight ahead, without making eye contact with me.

  “I know what it is to lose someone, and I know that I would have done just about anything to change that if I could have.”

  He had hit Gabriel’s words right on the button. He knew. Maybe it was in my eyes. Maybe he recognized something in me that was familiar: a silent deal he had made with whatever power presided over the murder of his wife.

  “I don’t think anyone really knows what they would do until the moment happens.”

  We looked at each other, the truth more or less on the table if not completely spelled out.

  “Maybe you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for,” he said.

  Our eyes held for a moment, then he pulled the squad away from the curb and began to drive.

  As we moved, I glanced one more time at the scene on Monte Street. Against the gray chill of the storm, the yellow crime-scene tape stood out like a row of bright sunflowers. Through the door of the house, the coroner emerged with the covered body of a boy who wanted to save us from ourselves. One of the gurney’s wheels wobbled like a broken shopping cart’s as it hit the sidewalk. A faint bloodstain on the sheet marked the spot where the bullet had entered the skull. I wondered how his parents had raised him. Did they love him, support him, or disapprove of him? Did they teach him to believe in the things that ultimately stole his life? Had they done a better job than I had? Did it matter?

  “I can’t help but wonder if he knew my daughter,” I said.

  Harrison glanced at me, then turned south, heading toward Colorado four blocks away.

  “In the squad,” he said hesitantly, “you’re taught to limit the imagination. It’s kind of a rule. Stick with what’s in front of you—the wiring, fuses, detonators.”

  “Does it work?”

  He nearly smiled at his attempt at advice. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes as we headed for the Vista Palms Motel.

  “I read the same thing in a parenting magazine when I was carrying Lacy,” I said.

  “Any luck?”

  “She was less than a day old when I imagined that the hospital had misplaced her, given her the wrong medication, and that she was dying all alone in her little bassinet.”

  I glanced at Harrison, then looked out at the passing landscape without seeing any of it.

  “I decided the writer of the article had never given birth.”

  THE VISTA PALMS MOTEL was one in a string of aging motels built in the sixties along East Colorado. The original owner figured he’d strike it rich because of its proximity to the Rose Bowl. He apparently didn’t know how long football season is. Most of the motels were now owned by Indian immigrants who kept them up just enough to attract low-end tourists not willing to pay Marriott or Holiday Inn prices. For fifty bucks a night you got clean sheets, noisy air conditioners, and double locks on the door. No mints on the pillow, no conditioner in the shower. For whatever reason Sweeny had chosen this motel to hide from Gabriel in, it wasn’t because he was used to the finer things in life.

  Detective Foley, who had taken the call of the Mexican major floating in the casting pond, was parked across the street in a brown Crown Victoria. We pulled up behind him, and he stepped out into the rain and walked back holding a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup in his hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Harrison smile at the image, as if Foley had stepped out of an old movie. I rolled down my window and Foley leaned in. Some pink sprinkles from a glazed doughnut were stuck in his teeth and powdered sugar dusted his thin Gable mustache. He may have given the appearance of a slightly harmless cop waiting for retirement, but he was the perfect man for the job of questioning a former felon like Sweeny. Wipe the sugar off Foley’s lip, and he could scare the hell out of a corpse if he wanted to.

  “Sweeny’s upstairs in two-eleven at the far end with the curtains closed. There’s another unit watching the back.”

  “When did he check in?”

  “The night after his bungalow blew up with you and Traver inside. Another customer called the clerk saying that he recognized his picture on TV.”

  “He in there now?”

  “Yeah. I sent a maid up to knock on the door. He was still in bed. You want to take him in or sit on him?”

  “We have less than twenty-four hours until the parade. We don’t have time to sit on him.”

  “I’ll get the key,” Foley said.

  He walked back to his car, picking at his teeth, and we pulled across Colorado into the parking lot.

  There were a number of beer cans littering the lot. Next to the curb’s drain, the soggy remains of a pizza was inching its way through the grate. Half the cars had Washington Husky stickers on the bumpers for the big game New Year’s day. One of the boosters had thrown up next to a blue Chevy Blazer.

  Foley walked out of the office with the key, and the three of us started up the stairs.

  “This the asshole who hit you with the door, Lieutenant?”

  God, I had almost forgotten.

  “Yeah, but he said he was sorry.”

  We reached the door and Harrison moved to the other side.

  “Don’t get in front of the window,” I said.

  He glanced nervously over his shoulder and took a half-step forward.

  “How do you want to do this?” Foley asked.

  “He thinks someone’s trying to kill him. We go in unannounced, he might do something stupid.”

  Foley pulled his weapon, then reached across the door and pounded three times.

  “This is the Pasadena Police! Open the door!”

  From inside I heard a heavy thud as if he had fallen out of bed.

  “Sweeny, open the door!” Foley yelled.

  I heard another thud inside the room, then a barely contained “Shit, shit, shit!”

  “I think we woke him up,” Foley said.

  I heard muffled footsteps on the other side of the door. It sounded like he was pulling on his pants.

  “Hold your badge up to the pe
ephole,” came from inside.

  Foley looked at the door, then over to me, and shook his head.

  “There is no peephole in the door, asshole.”

  “Then how do I know you’re the police?”

  “Because I’m the one you hit with the door!” I answered.

  “Oh.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Open the door, Mr. Sweeny, now!”

  The chain slid open on the other side of the door and then the dead bolt clanked open. As the doorknob began to turn, Foley moved through the door as if it were a sheet hung out to dry on a line. Sweeny began to react, but Foley was already on top of him, pinning his cheek against the floor and driving his knee into the middle of Sweeny’s back.

  “Don’t fucking move,” Foley said, in case there was still some doubt about who was in control.

  “Okay,” slipped weakly out between Sweeny’s lips, which were buried in the long strands of rust-colored shag carpet.

  Foley clamped the cuffs on him as Harrison checked the bathroom to make sure we were alone. The room was stuffy and smelled of thirty years of accumulated cigarette smoke. A faded print of the Taj Mahal hung over the bed. There was a paper sack on the chest of drawers containing a toothbrush and toothpaste. A shirt was draped over the back of the only chair in the room. There was nothing else that appeared personal. Everything he owned had gone up in the bungalow explosion.

  Foley got to his feet, leaving Sweeny staring into the carpet. I knelt down next to him.

  “You’re in a great deal of trouble.”

  “I think you got me confused with—”

  “If you bullshit me, I’ll charge you with accessory to murder.”

  “What!” he bellowed, his voice rising several octaves.

  I glanced at Foley. “Get him up.”

  Foley grabbed him by an arm and lifted him onto the bed. Sweeny’s eyes quickly took in the room with the rehearsed skill of a con man looking for a way out of a room in case the grift went south on him.

  “I don’t know nothing.”

  “Stop,” I whispered. It had the effect of a shout.

  “I need to know everything you know and everything you think you know. If you lie to me or play games, I will lock you away forever. You assaulted a cop, you’re a loser, and I have no time to waste. You help me, I’ll forget about the door you hit me with in your employer’s house.”

  “My what?”

  “Your boss, Finley. You worked for him at the flower shop.”

  The air slipped out of him like a dying balloon, and he looked up at the ceiling and nodded. I glanced at Harrison.

  “Get the file from the car.”

  He nodded and walked out.

  “Why were you in Finley’s house? What were you looking for?”

  “Money. What else would I be looking for? My boss got killed and my house blew up. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

  “You could get a job, asshole,” Foley said.

  Sweeny glanced into my eyes, then looked away as if somewhere inside he harbored a long-simmering shame about his life or the fear that Mom was looking over his shoulder shaking her head in disappointment.

  “I needed the money, okay? I didn’t know you were a cop when I hit you with the door.”

  That was his first lie, and I felt the blood rise inside me.

  “I told you not to lie. You’re going to jail.”

  “Okay, okay . . . hold on. I knew you were a cop. I panicked. I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me everything you know about Finley.”

  “What would I know?”

  “Answer the question!” Foley said, bending over and getting in his face.

  Sweeny knew the routine. He sighed and shook his head.

  “Not much. I just loaded the truck. The other guy hired me.”

  “Breem?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s dead,” I said matter-of-factly.

  Surprise registered clearly on Sweeny’s face, then just as quickly turned defensive.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Shut up, asshole,” Foley said.

  The door opened. Harrison walked in and handed me the file. I opened it and found myself looking at a picture of Lacy. It was a class photograph from school that she hated. She thought it made her look fat. I thought it made her look perfect. It had been taken pre-piercing. As I picked it up, my fingers trembled ever so slightly. I think Harrison noticed it because he looked away until my hand steadied.

  “Have you ever seen this girl?”

  I held it out for him to look at. His eyes passed over it, seeming to barely take notice.

  “No—”

  “Look at it!” I yelled.

  Sweeny snapped to attention as if stung by a jolt of electricity. He nodded and his eyes fell on the picture of my daughter and began to study it. Having a con’s eyes, even those as pitiful as Sweeny’s, going over a photograph of Lacy felt strangely like violation.

  “Is she that girl in the pageant thing? Yeah, I saw her on the news . . . right?”

  He looked at me as if for confirmation.

  “You never saw her except on television?”

  “No, never. What the hell is going on?”

  I slipped the picture carefully back in the file and took out a Polaroid of the kid murdered in the house on Monte. It was a shot of his face. His lifeless eyes were half-open, his face slightly distorted from the blood settling as he lay facedown.

  “Have you ever seen him?” I said, holding it up.

  Sweeny looked at it with a puzzled expression. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He has a bullet in his head.”

  “Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on?”

  “He was killed by the man who put a bomb in your house.”

  “That was a bomb?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Foley said. “You think it blew up all by itself?”

  “It happens.”

  “And dogs have wings.”

  “Have you ever seen him?” I repeated.

  “No, never.”

  His voice cracked with fear for the first time. I showed him a Polaroid of the kid we arrested in Azusa and one of the dead Mexican soldier.

  “I’ve never seen them either. You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”

  I took out the sketch of Gabriel and held it up.

  “Tell me about him.”

  Nothing passed in Sweeny’s eyes. No recognition, no attempt to conceal. No fear. There was nothing there. I glanced at Harrison. He had seen the same thing and was just as puzzled as I was.

  “Never seen him,” Sweeny said.

  “Look at it.”

  He took a breath and looked at it for another moment.

  “No, I’ve never seen him.”

  “Don’t lie to us!” Foley demanded.

  Sweeny looked at the drawing again. “I’ve never seen him. I’ve never seen any of ’em. I swear it. I’m a nobody, I mean nothing to no one.”

  It was as honest and as sad a self-assessment as I had ever heard. I would have pitied him if I had had any spare room in my heart to share with another person. I stuck the drawing back in the file. It felt like I was closing the door on the only hope left to me.

  “Why were you hiding then?” Foley said.

  “ ’Cause my boss got shot, I hit a cop, and I’m a con. Jesus, what did you think? I’m scared of guns.”

  “If you’re lying . . .”

  “He’s not lying,” I said.

  Foley looked at me, disappointed. We were wasting our time and he knew it just as well as Harrison and I did.

  “Is that the guy who blew up my apartment?”

  I looked at Foley and motioned toward the door. “Put him in my car.”

  Foley grabbed him by the arm and pulled him off the bed.

  “I want to know, is that the guy? ’Cause I got a problem with him.”

  “Shut up,” Foley said.

 
“I got a right to know—”

  Foley lifted Sweeny’s cuffed arms just enough to send a twinge of pain through him and shut him up. As they reached the door, I thought of one last question.

  “Did you ever meet Mrs. Finley?”

  There was nothing behind the question except instinct, which was possibly just another way of describing desperation. Foley spun Sweeny around with a yank so that he was facing me. It occurred to me while looking at him how pathetic it was that I was hanging even a thread of hope for my daughter’s survival on a twenty-nine-year-old two-time loser wearing unbuttoned jeans, a Jim Beam T-shirt, and black socks with more holes than fabric.

  “I saw her around . . . yeah.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “I guess.”

  “Yes or no?”

  He shrugged, his head moving side to side like a bobble-head doll. I imagined direct answers were something he had spent most of his life avoiding.

  “Yeah.”

  Foley gave the cuffs another tug.

  “Yes,” Sweeny blurted in a high-pitched squeal.

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing. She said hi, I said hi. Shit like that.”

  I motioned to Foley and he took him out the door, leaving Harrison and me alone in the room.

  “Why would Gabriel have tried to kill Sweeny if he never saw him?” Harrison said.

  I shook my head and glanced at the print of the Taj Mahal above the bed. I hadn’t noticed before, but there was no glass on it, and a former guest of the room had drawn McDonald’s golden arches over the top of it, which the owner had apparently tried to erase. I turned and looked out the open door into the rain. There is nothing pretty or restful about rain in Southern California the way there is in New England or the Midwest. Something to do with all that pavement that just makes it cold and harsh and full of violence. I always thought that if Thoreau had been a resident of Los Angeles, Walden would have been about mud slides and flash floods.

  “Clueless,” slipped out of my mouth.

  “There’s got to be some sense to it,” Harrison said.

  I tried to put some order to it, but it eluded me.

  “Is Sweeny lying?”

  I shook my head. “Didn’t look like it.”