Richard Lange

by This Wicked World (v5)

  He and Amy return to the living room and sit on the couch, he leaning back on the cushions, she with one leg tucked under herself, facing him. She clinks her glass against his and says, “Here’s to the handyman.”

  “So the window works okay?” Boone asks.

  “Good as new. Was it a pain to repair?”

  “The right tools, the right parts — piece of cake.”

  “Have you always been good at fixing things?”

  “Not really,” Boone says. “At one time I was better at breaking them — noses, arms.” He stops suddenly and frowns. “I probably shouldn’t be joking like that around you.”

  Amy draws back, confused. “What? Why?”

  Boone can’t believe he brought this up right off the bat, but now that he has, there’s no graceful way to change the subject. “This is gonna sound bad,” he says, “but while I was in your place this morning I saw some photos on your dresser.”

  “So.”

  Joto trots in from the kitchen, collapses in the corner, and begins to scratch behind his ears.

  “So I didn’t know you’re a cop.”

  Amy narrows her eyes and smiles warily at Boone. “What’s the problem?” she says. “Are you a criminal?”

  “Ha!” Boone says, ignoring her question and hoping she’ll let him slide.

  “Actually, I’m an ex-cop, if that makes you feel any better,” Amy continues. “I quit about five years ago and became an English teacher, middle school.”

  “That makes more sense,” Boone says.

  Amy gives him a dirty look. “Yeah? How so?”

  “It’s just that most cops… Well, you seem so cool.”

  “I am cool,” Amy says, and they both laugh.

  “Okay, so then let me ask you this,” Boone says. “What made a cool girl like you want to be a police officer?”

  Amy purses her lips, thinking. She looks down at her glass and swirls her wine. “Ah, jeez, man,” she finally says. “Why does anybody want to do anything?”

  “Well,” Boone says, “I wanted to join the Cub Scouts so I could play with matches.”

  “Come on, you know what I mean,” Amy says. She pulls a pack of American Spirits from her pocket. Something has made her nervous, Boone can tell. “Do you mind?” she says, opening the pack.

  “No, no,” he says. “It’s fine.”

  He gets up and goes into the kitchen for a mug she can use as an ashtray.

  “It’s totally gross, I know,” she calls after him. “But I only do it when I drink.”

  “Your dirty little secret,” Boone says as he hands her the mug and sits on the couch again.

  “One of them anyway,” she says.

  “So forget about being a cop,” Boone says. “Tell me about teaching instead.”

  Amy smiles and takes a drag off her cigarette, blows the smoke out of the side of her mouth. “You’re a nice guy,” she says. “I’m only reluctant to talk about the cop thing because the whys of stuff are weird. They sound so stupid sometimes when you say them out loud.”

  “That’s definitely true,” Boone replies.

  “Part of it was just that I wanted some excitement. I was working in a bookstore in Portland, and I was bored to death. But part of it was also that I believed — still believe — in right and wrong and good and evil. And that’s silly, because I knew full well before I even put on the uniform that things don’t break that cleanly, that that’s just us trying to draw lines.”

  Boone sits back and raises his eyebrows. “Wow,” he says.

  Amy takes another hit of her cigarette. “Yeah, I’m full of shit,” she says. “But you asked.”

  “You’re not full of shit,” Boone says.

  “My parents sure thought I was. When I told them I was moving down to L.A. to go to the academy, they were like, ‘Do you know what kind of people become police officers? You have a college education. Just last month you were talking about going into the Peace Corps. You’re a Democrat, for God’s sake.’ But that just made me want to do it even more. Now I had something to prove. I was going to be the one good cop in the whole wide world.”

  “Hoo-fucking-ray,” Boone says.

  “Exactly.”

  Amy exhales a cloud of smoke and sips her wine. Boone’s a little dizzy watching her. You meet someone, you’re not expecting anything, and boom!

  “So what happened?” he says. “Why aren’t you still protecting and serving?”

  “Well, for one thing, I got shot.”

  Boone sits up straight, shocked. “Whoa! Really?”

  Amy rolls up the sleeve of her T-shirt to show him a scar about the size of a quarter on her upper bicep and a long jagged one on the back of her arm.

  “I chased down a thirteen-year-old psychopath high on paint thinner who’d cut up an old woman for her social security check, and he whirled on me and started shooting,” she says. “My vest stopped two of the rounds, but the one that got through broke my humerus and nicked an artery. It’s still a little numb sometimes, nerve damage, but nothing too bad.”

  “Jesus,” Boone whispers.

  Amy shrugs her shoulders as if to say, “There you have it.”

  “So then you were like, ‘Forget this’?” Boone asks.

  “It had been three years,” Amy says, “and I was still reasonably happy, meaning I didn’t dread going to work, but I was always glad to go home. I’d resigned myself to the fact that most cops are only out there for the money and the benefits, that it’s just a job for them, one they don’t particularly like. And I’d accepted that most of the people you’re dealing with on the street don’t want your help. They want to be free to beat and be beaten, rob and be robbed, kill and be killed.

  “I knew a lot of cops, though, who stayed cops because the years flew by and that got to be all they could do. I felt like I still had it in me to be something else. After I got shot, the way things panned out, I had a chance to leave the department without feeling like a quitter, so I took it and looked for another way to save the world.”

  “Did you find it?” Boone asks.

  Amy smiles sadly as she tosses what’s left of her cigarette into the mug on the coffee table and dribbles a little wine on it to put it out.

  “Teaching?” she says. “Nah, that didn’t turn out to be what I thought it would either. Most of the kids think they’re smarter than me, even though they’re reading at a third-grade level, and my job is to do what I can for the few who pay attention and try to keep the rest from killing each other on my watch. But it’s one more step, you know. Hopefully, in the right direction.”

  “What’s your master plan?” Boone asks.

  Amy shrugs. “Move to Montana, open a used bookstore, marry a rich cowboy — something silly and selfish like that.”

  “Sounds like you’ve earned the right to be a little selfish,” Boone says. “You’ve done your best to do good and paid your dues in full.”

  “I guess so,” Amy says like she doesn’t believe it. She thumbs the rim of her glass absentmindedly, suddenly somewhere else. Boone is about to say something to bring her back when she brightens and asks, “And what about you?”

  “What about me what?” he replies.

  “You ever done any good?”

  Boone hesitates, unsure how to respond. He’s never been much for tap dancing around the truth, but he also doesn’t want to scare her off. “Let’s just say that I did my best too,” he finally replies.

  “And let’s just say that you’re going to tell me all about it,” Amy says. “I’m not going to be the only one to spill my guts tonight.”

  “How much wine is left?”

  Amy picks up the bottle and holds it to the light. “Plenty,” she says before topping off his glass, then hers.

  “You’re sure you want to hear this?” he says.

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s not pretty.”

  “I was a cop, remember?”

  Boone exhales loudly and settles back on the couch. This
is going to hurt.

  HE BEGINS WITH the rough period after his marriage to Lila ended. He was still installing stereos, still living in the apartment he’d shared with Lila, still wondering what had gone wrong with his life, when he got a call from his old Marine buddy and sparring partner Carl Perry. It had been a couple of years since they’d last talked, and Carl had some news: he’d started a bodyguard service in L.A. and wanted Boone to come up and work for him.

  Boone turned him down, said it wouldn’t be a good idea. He’d convinced himself he wasn’t the man he’d been before the marriage, that the disappointment he’d experienced had diminished him somehow. Carl was persistent, though. “Come on, Jimmy. You’re just the guy I need,” he said. “You’re tough, brave, smart. A little crazy, maybe, but honest about it. I’m looking for someone I can trust with my life, buddy, and that’s you.”

  Carl’s confidence in him shocked Boone out of feeling sorry for himself for half a second, long enough to realize that the man’s offer was what he’d been waiting for all these months: a chance to get the hell out of San Diego and wipe the slate clean. He spoke quickly, before he could change his mind, told Carl that he’d drive up the very next day. If it was truly possible for someone to start over, he meant to.

  Carl put him up in his apartment, and he became the newest operative at Ironman Executive Protection. He took all the shit work in the beginning. Things like accompanying a loudmouthed TV actor to clubs where Boone’s job was to get between the punk and the girls he pissed off by grabbing their asses. Things like babysitting a famous model’s pug while she spent hours snorting coke in the bathroom of a Beverly Hills restaurant. And then there was the senile movie producer who hired Boone to start his Mercedes and ride with him to the pharmacy because he was certain the Mob was still out to get him for some dirt he’d done back in 1972.

  Boone was a hit. The clients liked him, requested him, and recommended him to others, and within a few months he was able to move into his own condo in Hollywood. Things continued to go well for the next six years. Boone became Carl’s partner in the business, and they got bigger and better jobs. He accompanied a Saudi prince to Monaco and stood by his side while he gambled away a small fortune, and he and a team he assembled spent a whole month watching over a movie star and his family during their vacation in Hawaii. He moved into the Hills, leasing a house with a gym and a pool. He bought a Porsche 996 Turbo the first year they came out, dated a slew of very beautiful but very fucked-up actress/model/waitresses, and often lay awake at night marveling at where life had taken him. By the time he was thirty years old, he couldn’t think of much more to ask for.

  Then along came Tom and Jeannie Anderson.

  The gig was cake. Tom Anderson, an oil-company executive from Houston, had a few weeks of business in L.A. and brought his wife, Jeannie, and eight-year-old daughter, Adelle, along with him, renting a villa in Malibu: a palatial main house, two guesthouses, a pool, and a tennis court, all on two acres overlooking a stunning sweep of California coastline. Ironman was hired to provide security.

  Usually, Boone and Carl would have put a couple of new guys on such a routine assignment, but they were shorthanded, and Boone called heads when the quarter came up tails. He took days, and they gave nights to Rodney Parker, who’d played one season at tackle with the Oilers back in the seventies before blowing out his knee and was now the oldest guy on Ironman’s payroll.

  The two men set up camp in one of the guesthouses, which Rodney declared was bigger than any dump he’d ever lived in, and things settled quickly into a routine. During the week, Anderson left for work early in the morning and returned after dark. When Jeannie and Adelle went on shopping trips to Brentwood and Beverly Hills or jaunts down to the beach, Boone accompanied them, riding in the front seat of the limo. But mostly the girls hung around the house, where they ate lunch by the pool and watched lots of TV.

  Jeannie was quite a bit younger than Anderson, one of those skinny, brittle blondes with perfect hair and makeup who seem born and bred to marry rich older men. She looked right through Boone when they had any occasion to interact, but this was nothing new. Many of his clients made it a point to ignore his presence, and they were doing him a favor, as far as he was concerned. Nobody yet had paid him enough to be their friend.

  Little Adelle took after her dad physically: dark hair and big sad eyes. She hadn’t learned the rules yet, so she often treated Boone and Rodney like babysitters, peppering them with silly questions and begging them to join in her games. She swam in the afternoons or sang along to her Little Mermaid DVD but still seemed a bit lonely stuck up there in that big house with Mommy and the help, once even asking Boone if he had any kids she could play with.

  The vague air of unease that hung over the family was explained when Rodney heard Anderson and Jeannie arguing late one night as he was making his rounds of the property. “Going at it like a couple of back-alley knife fighters,” he told Boone the next morning. “Screaming about divorce and custody, him saying if she ever leaves him, he’ll fix it so she never gets any money or sees that little girl again.” The tension between the couple was palpable after that, and Boone himself witnessed a couple of heated exchanges.

  The second weekend the family was in town, Anderson threw a party for one hundred guests. Catered barbecue, a country band, cowboy hats — the full Texas hoedown. Boone and Rodney stuck to the perimeter, Rodney grumbling the whole time about having to turn around afterward and also work the night shift.

  At one point Adelle and a couple other little girls approached Boone, and Adelle announced, “Here’s our bodyguard. He has a gun.”

  “Really?” one of the girls asked.

  “Show her,” Adelle said.

  “Come on, now, I don’t need to carry a gun here,” Boone said. “Not with all these nice people.” He was packing his Glock in a shoulder rig under his coat but certainly wasn’t going to let the kids see it.

  “Do you want me to get you some ice cream?” Adelle asked.

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks,” Boone said.

  The little girl suddenly stepped forward and hugged him tightly around the waist. “Thank you for taking care of us,” she said.

  Something about that got Boone right in the chest. He reached down and tousled the girl’s hair and had to swallow to get the quaver out of his voice before saying, “You guys better head back now. Sounds like the band is starting.”

  He turned to catch Jeannie staring at him so intently, it looked like she was trying to read his mind. Their eyes locked briefly, and then she walked off into the crowd of guests.

  The last weekend of their stay, Anderson took Adelle to Disneyland, just the two of them, no Jeannie, no Boone or Rodney. This didn’t sit well with Jeannie. She drank wine by the pool all day, threw a glass at the cook when he tried to serve lunch, and screamed to someone on the phone that she was going crazy.

  That evening Rodney was on duty and Boone was watching TV in the guesthouse when there was a soft knock at the door. Boone answered and found a bedraggled Jeannie on the porch, eyes swollen from crying, hair hanging in her face. She needed to talk to someone, she said, and, in a hoarse whisper, asked if Boone would take a walk with her. Every alarm in Boone’s head went off at once, but he couldn’t come up with a reason to refuse her.

  Jeannie was silent as they strolled side by side up the dimly lit path past the tennis courts to a bluff with a view of the moonlit ocean. She stood with her head bowed, her arms wrapped around her bare shoulders, and the same breeze that made her shiver in her thin sundress brought the faintest sound of crashing waves to Boone’s ears.

  “I think my husband is molesting my daughter,” Jeannie blurted, as if the words burned her tongue.

  Boone’s stomach twisted, but he kept his voice calm as he asked, “What does that mean, you ‘think’? Have you seen anything? Did Adelle say something?”

  No, Adelle hadn’t said anything, but there had definitely been some weird moments, Jeannie replied.
She’d walked in on the two of them a few times, and Anderson had looked so… well… guilty. “I realize that’s not any kind of proof, but I’m absolutely certain something’s not right,” she insisted. “A mother knows.”

  She turned to Boone then, tears shining on her cheeks, and said, “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. What can I do about it?”

  Without solid proof, Boone told her, not much. He suggested she keep an eye on her husband and talk to Adelle in a roundabout way, try to coax something out of her.

  Jeannie cried harder. Boone laid a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, and she crumpled into him. “He’s hurting my baby,” she sobbed.

  Boone walked her back to the main house after she’d calmed down. She thanked him for listening and apologized for being such a mess. When Boone told Rodney about it, Rodney said, “She’s a client, Jimmy, and that’s a personal problem. You see how much money this man has? He can fuck up your life in one hundred ways.”

  Boone didn’t sleep at all that night. Sickening visions of Anderson abusing Adelle swirled in his head, and he twice ran into the bathroom, thinking he was going to vomit. He arose at dawn as jagged as a broken bottle.

  Anderson and Adelle got back early Sunday, and the family began to pack for their return to Houston. Boone and Rodney packed too, so they’d be ready to roll as soon as the Andersons left for the airport the next morning.

  Rodney was eager to get back to his wife and new grandson, and his happy chatter calmed Boone some. He started to think that Jeannie might have been overreacting the night before, that it might have been the wine talking. Truthfully, he just wanted the fucking job to end. He planned to fly to Vegas, hang out with a dancer he’d met on his last gig there, booze it up for a few days, and put the Andersons out of his mind.

  About seven thirty, as the sun touched the ocean and set the sky on fire, he was making a final sweep of the grounds before turning things over to Rodney for the night. He was on his way back from checking the front gate when Jeannie appeared in the driveway in front of him. She approached at a run, her face clenched into a mask of agony.