by Thomas Laird
*
“Why don’t we go out more often?” she asks as I hold her close to me in bed.
We woke together at 3 a.m., and then the usual overpowering want arrived on schedule for both of us, and now when we’re in the afterglow, I’m holding onto her as if there’s some kind of good answer for her question.
“I don’t want to see anyone else. No one but you.”
I kiss her firmly on the lips.
“I thought maybe you were ashamed of me.”
I look over at her and then I take her face in my hands.
“Don’t you ever think that. Don’t you ever let that thought come into your mind again.”
I think I’m holding her face too tightly, so I ease up, but she pulls my hands back to her cheeks and I feel the wet.
“And I don’t want you crying again when you’re with me, Diana. This life has been sad enough for both of us, and we’re leaving all that behind. We’re not going to waste any time on feeling bad anymore.”
She reaches up to me and kisses me again. I have to touch her body, all of it, and then the gentle fury begins until it extinguishes itself in fatigue. We keep coming at each other like this as if we’ll never get the chance again, but I don’t think Diana knows how true it is. We really don’t have much time to get this life in, between us. It isn’t right. It isn’t just.
Now I find myself talking about justice inside my head when I thought I was the bearer of it, with those five other Rangers. Justice is turning around and biting me now, and I feel a wave of genuine guilt.
“You think there’s anything like forgiveness in this goddam world, Diana?”
We’re all sweated up and we’ve thrown the covers on the floor, and I trace my fingertips across her moist torso, and she shivers at my touch.
“What brought all this on?” she asks in a husky, weary voice.
“Nothing. Forget it. You make me … happy. That’s all I wanted to say.”
She rolls over to me and when our bodies touch I feel her incredible heat.
“I can’t come anymore. I mean I really can’t.” She smiles wearily.
“Neither can I.”
So we continue to hang on until I hear her breathing regularly, and even as she sleeps, I don’t let go of her.
*
She was widowed not all that long ago, but she’s never had kids. She tells me all this as she drives us to the Evergreen Mall in Evergreen Park, a southwest ‘burb that’s about twenty miles to the north of Orland Park. I’m wearing shades and a Cub’s baseball hat that I bought at the park, just before Tommy Costello pissed his pants. I’m figuring on letting my hair grow out again and adding a mustache and a short beard, and when I tell Diana, she’s all for it.
“It’ll make you look more mature—sorta like me.” She laughs as we drive to the mall.
“You look young. You look much younger than you say you are.”
“Why would I lie about my age?”
“I don’t give a damn about numbers, especially when it comes to you.”
I touch her thigh, and she grins over at me.
“You’ll have to wait until we get home.”
When she says “home,” I start to think her apartment really is that place, for me. Home. I never thought of anywhere else I’ve lived as anything other than a temporary resting place. My old man’s house, the Army, the village with the Hmong—none of those were permanent. And now that I finally found it, it won’t last long, just like the other places I’ve stayed.
She won’t let me become depressed. She’s like a miracle drug that you don’t have to ingest. You simply have to be in Diana’s vicinity. It’s impossible to stay depressed when I can look at her, when I can feel her touch, her body.
When we get to the mall, we decide to eat lunch at one of those joints where the tables are outside the restaurant. It’s an outdoor mall, and the April weather is cooperating, so we can sit outside wearing light jackets.
This place specializes in salads, Diana’s favorite. You can virtually build your own, from the lettuce to the vegetables to the fruits to the chicken to any other kind of toppings you can imagine. After we make our order, the waitress comes back in a few minutes with two heaping mounds of produce and chicken chunks. They place a rotating thing with seven or eight dressings on the middle of the table.
While we’re trying to devour all this greenery, the thought comes into my head that I should ask her to marry me. We could always go to Mexico. I haven’t been there, yet. And Canada’s got too many bad memories. But we could drift south on an endless honeymoon. Maybe the cops wouldn’t catch up to me if we went far enough into the interior of the country. Ex-patriots have done it before, and the remainder of the cash I’ve still got would support us down there for years. The prices are ridiculously cheaper than they are in the States, and with a few bucks to the local cops down there, if need be, we could disappear.
But I’d have to tell Diana the truth about who I am.
And then the fantasy subsides and disappears.
Does she love me enough to live with a killer? Would she give up her life and her freedom to take a chance on a life with a fugitive?
If she were Li’s age, it might have been possible to tell her everything, but she’s a veteran of life and of all the shit that sticks to you on the road and I doubt she’d be able to commit to Evan Azrael, multiple murderer.
No, I’ll have to accept the lot we have, the life we’ve been given, here, not in another country. It’s a pretty dream, running away, but it’s nothing more.
When we finish lunch, we walk the mall, and I buy her a few little things from some variety store that catch her eye. A globe with the snow inside that comes down on the village as if it’s winter—all you have to do is shake the round piece of glass and the flurries come down. She likes a scarf that has a green and yellow parrot on it, and she wraps it around her neck, and then I have to kiss her. She also takes a liking to a pair of ceramic cardinals, so we get those, too.
I was never happy to have all this cash until I was able to spend it on her.
We walk from vendor to vendor, and then she tells me her feet are getting sore and that she wants to go home so I can rub them both, and I tell her that’s what I want, also.
When we get into the large mall parking lot, the two of them approach us from the south. I see them fluttering toward us out of the corner of my peripheral vision. They’re up to no good, but I’ve got the .22 in the trunk of her VW, where I left it after shooting Tommy’s hired help.
They might be carrying knives, and they might have a gun or guns. I can deal with the knives, but the pistols would be the great equalizer. I don’t know why I left the goddamn .22 in the trunk.
Then they’re right behind us, and we’re standing behind the trunk of Diana’s Bug.
I tell her to get into the car, but she appears reluctant to move.
“Diana—”
“What’s going on?” she says as she sees the two black males standing only a few feet from us.
One of them is a little over six-two, but the other is punier, maybe five-six.
“Give us what you got,” the taller teenager says.
There are no other mall-goers in our immediate vicinity, and neither of the black kids looks afraid of being interrupted.
“Diana, get in the car.”
“Oooh, she one fine lookin’ old bitch,” the shorter one laughs.
Then the taller of the two takes out a six-inch switchblade and he snaps it open for effect.
“Diana—”
“No,” she says.
“The old bitch be smart,” the bigger one tells me. “I think we have a little fun with her first.”
“You really want to get out of here,” I tell them both.
“What you gonna do?” Pee-wee chimes in.
“Last chance,” I tell them both.
I can see Diana watching me, but she’s not backing off.
“I’ll cut you. I’ll cut both of you.
Hand over what you got,” the bigger one demands. “Hand it over now or—”
I snap my right foot out to his groin, and I catch him true and hard, and the switchblade falls from his hand as he staggers to his knees, and then I follow with another right foot to his face and I catch him in the throat, and he grabs for his neck. Then I punch the shorter, frozen black teenager in the face, and I feel his teeth give with my straight right, and down he goes, too, and then they’re both on their knees on the blacktop, and I fling a toe in junior’s throat, and now they’re both gagging and spitting out blood.
I pick up the switchblade from the ground, and I grab the taller one by his Afro, and I place the cutting edge of the blade at his throat, and then I hear Diana cry out, “No!”
The taller boy still can’t talk, and the shorter of the two is on all fours, puking on the blacktop.
I look up at Diana and I see the horror cross her beautiful face, and I feel shame for making her frightened, even though I know this was all justified because it is self-defense.
“Don’t hurt him, Matt!”
I snap the switchblade closed, and I pocket it.
Now there are onlookers approaching, and I think I see a blue-coated security man approaching from a few blocks away.
I grab both of the teenagers by their long Afros and I drag them away from the back end of Diana’s VW.
“Give me the keys,” I tell her.
She hands them over to me. The onlookers are still approaching and the security man is in a full trot from about a block away.
“We should wait and—”
I point to the car, and I get in, and she finally arrives inside on the passenger’s seat.
I start up the Bug, squeal backward in reverse, and I haul us out of the parking lot and head back to Orland Park.
*
“I’m sorry you were scared,” I tell her as we sit on the couch and watch the evening news on the TV in her living room.
“They could’ve killed you, Matt. That’s what scared me. They could’ve killed us both.”
I nod my head.
“Maybe,” I say softly.
“Where did you learn to … do all that?”
“I was in the Army. They taught us self-defense.”
“But you’re supposed to give them money if they have guns or knives, aren’t you?” she asks.
“They only had a knife.”
“But he could’ve stabbed you or cut you!”
“He could’ve. But he made a mistake.”
“What mistake, Matt?”
“He kept talking.”
She can’t help but let out a surprised laugh.
“He could’ve killed us both.”
“Not while I’m still breathing.”
She watches my eyes.
“Weren’t you scared?” she asked.
I keep watching her eyes.
“I wasn’t going to let him hurt you, Diana. I won’t let anyone harm you. Not even me.”
“What do you mean, me?”
“I’d walk out the door now if I ever thought I’d let anyone put hands on you. And I wouldn’t allow myself to cause you any pain, either. I’m sorry you were scared. It was such a nice day before they showed up. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life, but you keep making me feel better ever moment I’m with you. I won’t bring anything sad inside these walls. I won’t let it happen.”
She looks at me with a question on her face, but she never asks it out loud.
“I love you, Diana. All I want to do is protect you from everything that’s out there that can do you any harm. And I do not want to become part of the problem for you. So if you think I’m making you feel bad, you tell me and I’ll be out of here immediately.”
Then the tears come storming down her cheeks.
“You leave and I’ll never forgive you, Matt. Don’t you dare even say that or think that again.”
I take hold of her while the talking head on TV babbles about the most recent disaster that’s happening outside these walls around us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Chicago, 1985
Doc and I go see my cousin Pete at his Oakbrook lair. I told him I was coming over the phone, and I also told him that we were coming to see Tommy Costello. Pete started bullshitting and hemming and hawing that Costello wasn’t there, but I warned Pete that I’d call Vice and have every rub joint and brothel and titty bar raided if the San Francisco bigshot wasn’t present when we arrived.
The same ex-military guy is at the gate, but he doesn’t say anything to us and he passes us right through to the main building. It’s May already, and the pool man is cleaning the debris out of an empty swimming pool, and I’m wondering how early Pete’s going to fill the thing up—it’s off to the left of the big house, along with his double tennis court and badminton court.
“You should’ve gone to work for your cousin,” Doc cracks. “You would’ve made a swell pool boy, James.”
The butler or the door guard or whatever he is lets us in without a knock or a ring or a chime. They knew we were coming, and I’m sure anyone who doesn’t want to be seen by the cops has already fled the grounds—but Costello better not be one of the departed.
The guy at the front door seats Doc and me in the spacious front room with ceiling-high windows looking out at Pete’s immaculately trimmed grounds. He’s got two Hispanics toiling out front, along with the pool dude.
“Lots of money in tits and ass,” Doc says with a straight face.
Then Pete makes his entrance.
“Come on into the study,” he tells us.
“The study?” My partner grins at Pete.
Pete doesn’t retort. He lets it slide.
Costello is waiting for us inside with two of his gunsels.
“Tell the help to leave,” I say.
Tommy nods to the two bodyguards, and they walk out and close the door to the study behind themselves.
Doc and I sit on a leather couch that probably cost five or six house payments for me.
Costello plants his ass on a leather high-backed chair.
“Do I need an attorney?” he asks us.
I look at his dead black eyes.
“Feel free if you think you need one.”
He smiles at me, ignoring Doc altogether. I don’t think my partner is all that heartbroken over the obvious exclusion.
“When are you heading back to San Francisco?” I ask.
“Tomorrow. Is there a problem with my departure?”
His face is expressionless. Dead. Wintry. Pick one of the above.
“We need to know because we’re in charge of supplying security from here to O’Hare Airport,” Doc tells him.
Costello finally glances at my partner as if Doc’s laid a gaseous plume into the room.
“I can supply my own,” he retorts.
“It doesn’t work that way,” I explain. “Your guys didn’t do too well at the ballpark. If you’d called in advance, we could’ve protected you a little better.”
“Must be hell on the dry cleaning, those ball games.” Doc smiles brightly at him.
But there is no overt response to Doc’s taunting.
“I want to get out of this piece of shit burg nearly as much as you two want me out.”
“Your fan club is much larger than just the pair of us,” Doc says.
But there’s no comedy on his face this time.
“All right,” Costello concedes. “The flight goes out at 11:15 a.m.… You think that crazy’s coming back for an encore shot at me?”
“He might. You never thought he’d come at you in broad daylight in a crowd, did you?”
Costello doesn’t reply.
“What time are you leaving here, then?” Doc asks him.
“Around eight-thirty, I suppose.”
“That’s all we needed to know,” Doc says, and then he rises off the leather. The couch squeaks.
I don’t get up, yet, however.
“What did he sa
y to you?” I ask Tommy.
Costello looks at me quizzically.
“What did he say before he left you on the floor of the can?” I ask again.
His eyes narrow. The black pupils look as if they’re hollowed-out pits.
“He said he was coming back when I least expected it.”
There appears to be a slight blush in his small jowls. His face hasn’t quite gone old, just yet. Maybe it’s all the girls that my cousin has supplied him with.
“Are we done here?” he asks us.
Now I stand up alongside Doc.
“He’s done badder sons of bitches than you, Costello,” I tell him. “I knew some of these guys of the caliber of Azrael, Green Berets, Rangers, Seals. They’re not hired hitmen. He won’t stop coming after you unless you kill him first.”
“It’s your job to catch this guy, isn’t it?” the California don snarls.
“We have to perform unpleasant tasks all the time,” Doc tells him.
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?” Costello barks.
“Need a translator?” My partner grins.
This time I see that Doc’s gotten under Costello’s bark.
“Let’s go,” I say. “We’ll have your escort here when you leave in the morning.”
“Wait a minute,” he growls again.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“You’re not going to leave him holes to creep through, are you?”
He appears to be seriously concerned about our helping the ex-Ranger put a hole in the back of his noggin.
“That would be highly unprofessional of us,” Doc replies.
Tommy’s face tightens.
“Pete has friends in City Hall.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I say back at him. “But Pete and I certainly ain’t in that crew of admirers. Keep your eyes open, Don Costello.”
We walk ourselves out the front door, and then we drive past the pool man once again, and we see he’s filling up the Olympic-sized rectangle, even though the temperature tonight is supposed to be barely above freezing.
*
Costello comes down with acute appendicitis, we’re told, the next morning. His flight plans are on hold indefinitely, which causes me acute gas in the intestines. But I don’t require hospitalization, just a couple of Alka Seltzers. I enjoy the fizzing part when the two tablets hit the water. It doesn’t really take much to amuse me, and the medicine gets rid of the stored-up methane as well.