Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  “Sometimes the bad guys get away with it. That’s the price of a free society.”

  “The man is a monster, Gloria, and he’s run out of family to victimize. How many other pubescent girls has he abused who’ve never come forward? How many others are out there right now that he hasn’t gotten to yet? We’ve got to bring him down.”

  Now I’ve got both Gloria’s and Sophia’s interest.

  “What do you expect me to do?” asks Gloria. “Gun him down in the street?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about Lana’s murder. But we can nail him for incest if Sophia testifies. She’s the only eyewitness who’s still alive. Ginger’s teenage accusations will back her up, and she may give the courage to other witnesses to come forward.”

  Gloria finally catches on. “But if Sophia gets tried for Karl’s murder, or convicted of tampering with evidence, any defense attorney worth his salt will shred her on the stand.”

  “Like a block of Parmesan,” I say. “So who are you going to take down, Gloria? Sophia or Nathaniel? Because you know you can’t have them both.”

  “You are such a son of a bitch,” she says. I’m pretty sure she means it as a compliment.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  We’re cramped in a van a block from Strain’s house watching a balding technician named Ramsey tape a wire to Sophia’s stomach. We’re all concerned for her safety.

  The Nathaniel Strain incest sting isn’t a Robbery Homicide case, so Gloria enlists the aid of a friend from Sex Crimes, a detective named Sheryl Bane, who takes over the case but lets Gloria run it with her. Sheryl is every pedophile’s worst nightmare, a pit bull who chases them down and chews them up. She’s flat-faced, black-haired, and about my height but could probably out-bench-press me if push came to shove.

  “I don’t like you going in there alone,” says Sheryl. “The man’s a filthy pig scumbag child molester.”

  “He’s never hit me, he’s never hit my sister, and he never hit my mother except in self-defense.”

  “He shot her in the head,” I point out.

  “I don’t think so,” Sophia replies. “Didn’t you see her shrine in his house? He loved her. She was his only daughter. He wouldn’t hurt her, and he won’t hurt me. I’ve got to do this.”

  “Well, you don’t have to do it alone,” says Gloria. “I’m going in with you.”

  “He’ll never admit it in front of a witness,” says Sophia.

  “I still don’t like it,” says Sheryl. “You get hurt, it’s on my watch.”

  Sophia fixes her with a hard eye. “For the first time in my life I’m the hunter instead of the prey. I’m doing this.”

  We all fall silent as the technician finishes up and straightens her blouse. She’s wired and ready to go.

  With a troubling brew of excitement and trepidation I watch her walk down the street. Then she turns the corner and disappears.

  Ramsey turns up the volume, and we can hear Sophia breathing as she approaches her grandfather’s door. She sounds pumped up, like she’s been jogging, even though she’s only walked a short block. The fidelity is crystal clear, but the prevailing sound is the rustling of fabric against the mike. To minimize that interference, Ramsey instructs Sophia to keep still once she gets inside, but that’s only possible if things don’t get out of hand. There’s no telling how Strain will react to Sophia’s visit, but a physical confrontation isn’t out of the question.

  Sophia stops, and we hear a distant chime—the doorbell ringing inside the house. Distant footsteps, the clack of a deadbolt, the creak of the door, like the sound effects of a radio play.

  “What are you doing here?” Strain sounds surprised.

  “We need to talk.” Sophia sounds determined.

  The door closes and the bolt clacks shut. She’s locked inside the lion’s den.

  “What is it?” He sounds worried, a grandfather concerned that his granddaughter has come to him in trouble.

  “It’s this.” We hear a faint metallic clink. Her half-heart pendant hitting the glass coffee table. “The police said Mama was wearing one when she died. Did you give it to her like you gave me mine, Grampa Nate? Did you do her, too?”

  “What’s the point of dredging all that up? It’s gone. She’s gone.”

  “Just answer me.”

  “What’s past is past.”

  “Not to me. I live with it every day. With the feeling of your filthy fingers and your slimy tongue and your stiff prick. I was only thirteen, you son of a bitch. Is that how old she was when you fucked her? Is that how you like them?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say after all these years.” He’s wily, not giving an inch, but I can hear his irritation heating up.

  “How about you’re sorry, you piece of shit?”

  “Don’t you talk to me that way!”

  The plan was to try to get an admission without pissing him off, but she pulled the gloves off early. It’s making me nervous. I’ve seen how little it takes to set him off. I remember thinking how close he was to smashing his one iron though my skull.

  “Are you going to admit what you did? Or do I have to go to the police?” Oh, no.

  “And tell them what? That you lied to them when Ginger made those charges all those years ago? Why should they believe you now? It’ll be your word against mine.”

  “You killed my mother. How about that? Did she threaten to tell the cops how you raped her and then raped her daughters? Is that why you did it?”

  Gloria and I exchange an anxious glance. Sophia is pushing him too hard, just like I suspect Lana did before he killed her.

  “You ignorant little bitch. You want an apology? Look in a mirror for it. Everything I did was something you wanted, something you asked for. Tarting around in those short skirts, tits sticking out like a fuck-me ad. You were nothing but a little slut, just like your mother!”

  “How did she get that necklace around her neck, you son of a bitch? She flushed the one you gave her down the toilet. I saw her do it.”

  “Shut your mouth, Sofie.” His voice is pure menace.

  “You shot her, then you put one of your little golden hearts on her to mark your goddamn territory.”

  The van fills with an awful sound, part scream, part smack, muffled by the scraping rasp of fabric on mike and crashing furniture. He hit her.

  I don’t hear anything else as I wrench open the door and flee the sound chamber into the night. Gloria calls my name then hits the ground running behind me. As I turn the corner and sprint for the house, I hear the harsh explosive crack of a gunshot.

  I bound up the steps and launch my full body weight into the door, hoping to smash the bolt through the jamb. It holds firm, smacking me back like a brick wall. For a split second I think I’m going to lose consciousness, but it clears. I hear struggling inside, then the frightful boom of another shot.

  “Get back!” I step aside, and Gloria blasts the lock with her Glock 22.

  The door swings open. Strain wheels in our direction, gun in hand. Gloria shouts for him to drop his weapon, but he raises it. They fire at the same time. I feel something smack into my chest and realize it’s a bullet that just blasted through Gloria’s body. She goes down hard. She’s got a hole the size of a golf ball in her back. Please God, don’t let her die!

  I collapse to my knees, my tears salting her wound. I try to stanch the flow but her blood gushes through my fingers. Strain is still standing, blood spurting from his neck. I cough up blood of my own. We’re all drowning in it. Blood, blood, and more blood.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Strain’s hand shakes as he swings his gun toward Sophia. She dives for it and wraps her hands around his, struggling for the weapon. She’s been clipped in the left leg, but she can still use it. I hook my arms under Gloria’s and drag her outside, out of the line of fire. I see Sheryl run down the street and shout, “Officer down!” She lunges for cover at the sound of a gunshot in the house. I pray that Sophia wasn’t hit. I’ve been praying t
oo much lately, especially for an atheist. If Gloria makes it, I swear to God I’ll start believing.

  I hear sirens approaching. Gloria’s eyes are open, staring at me, struggling to stay focused. As she fades, I feel my heart start to dissolve. The Siamese twin thing again. If she goes, I go with her.

  “Stay with me, Gloria.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Of course not.”

  She almost smiles. “Liar.”

  I hug her tight with my shirt wadded between us to compress her entry wound and my hand clamped tight against her exit wound, but it feels like a losing battle. I rest my cheek against her head. Her hair is soaked with my tears.

  “Stay with me, Gloria.”

  Sophia comes out, breathing hard, stained with her grandfather’s blood.

  “He’s dead,” she says.

  Three squad cars screech up, and all hell breaks loose.

  I feel like I’m trapped in an oil drum bouncing down a mountainside as the ambulance careens through the streets. The siren screams. Every time its modulation bottoms out, I can hear the siren of the ambulance that carries Gloria. They won’t tell me if she’s dead or alive. At this point she’s probably both, like Schrödinger’s cat. They tell me the bullet is lodged in my chest muscle, just above my heart, probably not deep enough to cause serious damage. If Gloria’s body hadn’t slowed it down, it would have killed me. I just hope it didn’t achieve in her where it failed in me.

  We swerve to a stop and the doors fly open. As the EMTs pull my gurney out I see the back of Gloria’s ambulance. Empty. Doors wide open. Too much blood on the floor.

  I’ve lost my temper in public, and I’ve cried in sappy movies but, unlike my mother, depression is not part of my repertoire. Until tonight. I stare at the TV, but my mind is trapped in the operating room where they’ve been trying to stitch Gloria’s shredded chest back together for three and a half hours. Lung. Arteries. Trachea. Muscle. Ribs. Life’s blood. They’re keeping her alive with machines, because her body can’t do it on its own.

  Perry Mason’s deep-set eyes bear down on a hapless witness. “In that case, Mrs. Longstreet, why did it take you almost an hour to make a ten-minute drive?”

  Ten minutes feels like an hour to me at the moment.

  The witness starts sobbing. “I didn’t mean to kill him!”

  I try to shift my body on the bed, but my hospital gown is pinned by my weight and fights the move. It takes an effort to lift my butt in order to free the gown, and the effort hurts. It’s just a small annoyance, but I feel like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill.

  Keep breathing, Gloria.

  The door opens a few inches and Holly peeks in, worry etching her perfectly sculpted brows, trying to see if I’m awake.

  I switch off the TV. “Any news?”

  “She’s still in surgery.” Not what I want to hear, but at least she’s still alive.

  Holly walks in, gnawing at a cuticle.

  “I used to worry every day about you getting shot,” she says. “When you left the force, I thought, At least he’s leaving the violence behind.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” I resist saying again.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” She goes back to her cuticle.

  A scowling nurse walks in, drops a tray on my table, and leaves without a word. The Salisbury steak and gravy looks like sewage from a Goodyear plant. I eye the small plastic cup of orange juice, wishing it were beer.

  “Want some?” Holly leans over me to reach for the juice. I smell rose water and woman. The scents are not strong, but they have a powerful effect on me.

  “I don’t want anything on that tray.”

  She straightens up, and her scent recedes like a fog burning off.

  “You have to eat.”

  I’m too tired to crack wise, so I ignore the remark. My neck aches from the indentation my head made in the pillow. I reach to flip it and get another stab of pain.

  “Let me help you,” she says leaning over me again to lift my head gently with one hand and grab the pillow with the other. I get another whiff of her as the soft skin behind her earlobe beckons just inches from my eyes. I remember loving the taste of that spot. That’s when Melody walks in.

  Holly lowers my head and steps away fast, as if caught cheating.

  “I’ve been watching the operating room door,” says Mel. “No one’s coming out smiling.”

  “Fuck,” I say. “She wouldn’t be in there if I’d just kept my mouth shut.”

  “You didn’t know he had a gun,” says Holly.

  “I knew he’d shot Lana,” I say.

  “You didn’t know for sure,” says Mel.

  “Yes I did.”

  Like a dog, a hospital never really sleeps, even when it appears to. It may dim its lights and limit its activity at night, but it’s still alert, prepared to leap into action. The nurses go out on covert patrol as opposed to full maneuvers. They lock the visitors out, keep the noise level down to a low roar, and distribute sleeping pills. Mine’s in a little cup on my water tray, untouched. I need to stay alert if I’m going to sneak out.

  I’m attached to an IV that’s delivering saline solution or something, don’t ask me why. I have to unhook it. I can’t just tear off the white surgical tape without ripping the needle through the top of my hand, so I have to hold the needle in place with my other hand while I pick at the tape with my teeth. I endure a couple minutes of slow torture as I worry the tape off my arm, uprooting my arm hair follicle by follicle. When it comes free, I pluck a tissue from the small box they charge insurance companies two bucks for. On my bill, it’ll be eight bucks. The hospital expenses for this story are digging my financial hole into a vertical mineshaft.

  I pull out the needle and use the tissue to compress the exit wound. To counteract my impatience, I force myself to watch the clock for two minutes to make sure the bleeding stops before I toss the tissue. Mission accomplished.

  I lower the bars on my bed and twist myself out. When my feet hit the floor, my chest feels like a round of birdshot has hit it point-blank. I take a moment to let the pain subside and my head stop swimming. My legs wobble, but they hold me up.

  My heart monitor communicates wirelessly with the nurses’ station. It’s on wheels, so I assume it’s got battery backup. I just hope the battery is charged. It has a power switch, but if I turn it off some nurse might notice that it stopped, so instead I pull the plug. It gives a single beep then keeps monitoring on battery power. I grab the pole and wheel it into the hallway. No one seems to be running in my direction. So far so good.

  I head for the elevator. As soon as the doors close, I rip the monitor leads from my chest and sides, and when I get to the fourth floor I leave the monitor in the elevator. By the time they figure out whose it is, I should be done.

  The ICU is hopping. People everywhere. I’ll only have a minute before I get caught, so I have to move fast, which in my condition isn’t easy.

  Then I catch my first break. I see Gloria right away. She’s parked on the near side of the ward. She’s got a breathing tube in her nose. I hobble over to her bed and see a nurse’s face across the room snap up to stare at me. I head for Gloria, and the nurse heads for me. I glance at Gloria’s monitor but can’t decipher much. Then I look at her face. She’s looking back. I take her hand and feel a weak squeeze of recognition.

  “If you die on me, I’ll never sleep with you again.”

  Her lips do that curl. “Liar,” she mouths. Then her eyes flutter shut.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  I lean against the new handrail on my deck and try to recall what it felt like the night Gloria got shot. I was hit, too, but that’s not what comes to mind when I think of that night. It’s been more than a year, and I’ve been interviewed about it so many times that my glib descriptions have begun to repaint my recollection. Blurred memories have flooded the once-uninterrupted landscape of my past, turning it into an archipelago of isolated highlights, each one a bar saga of its
own. The first crime-scene photo. Ginger’s work. Ginger’s death. The missing fingerprints. Billy Kidd. The gold necklaces. Karl’s murder. The contemptible grandfather. The ballistics report that proved Gloria was shot by the same gun that killed Lana Strain.

  I padlocked myself to my keyboard for two weeks to wrestle this thing onto paper for Playboy. Then Chuckles sold the piece as a book, and I had to chain myself down for another seven months.

  Now that it’s published I’m hoping to land some better assignments, but so far I’ve been spending so much of my time promoting the book that the only thing I’ve had a chance to get off the ground was five hundred words for the Journal of Cleaner Production on the impact of a drowned body’s decomposition on surrounding water quality. I researched it at the Japanese tea garden of the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys, where they found Gary Cogswell’s body floating with the koi.

  The doorbell rings. I’m not expecting anyone. I’m not expecting any packages. Melody has keys. Jerry never came back from Tobago, and Holly’s paid up anyway. Angel would have called first.

  The bell rings again as I walk through the house toward the door.

  I doubt it’s Sophia, since she hasn’t spoken to me since the shootout. Billy tells me she’s become a recluse in the house she inherited from Karl after the DA decided the shooting was a clean self-defense. She spends most of her time painting, mostly in shades of black. The picture I took of Sophia on the Venice pier still wallpapers my cell phone. Maybe I’ll change it someday.

  I look through the spyhole. Gloria has a bottle of wine in her hand and a pair of cuffs hanging from her belt loop. A deadly enough combination. She’s still laying off the gin to give her lung a break. Don’t ask. It’s the same brand of logic that governs her love life.

  She spent three weeks on the breathing tube before they thought she was strong enough to breathe on her own. Another week and she called me to pick her up from the hospital. They sent her home with one of those breath exercisers where you’re supposed to keep three Ping-Pong balls in the air, but instead she made me use my own techniques to make her breathe hard. Respiratory therapy wore me out.