Richard Lange

by This Wicked World (v5)

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She thrust a pair of underwear at him, little girl’s underwear — white cotton, flowers — and pointed out a spot of blood the size of a quarter.

  “He’s with her now,” she rasped in his ear. “In the first upstairs bathroom. You have to stop him.”

  Her urgency propelled Boone into the house without further questions. The front door was wide open, and he raced through it, a human cannonball. He took the stairs two at a time, keeping to the edges to avoid squeaks.

  Anderson’s voice floated out of a room down the hall, something about “Love you, baby doll.” Boone put his back to the wall and slid sideways toward the door, which was slightly ajar. He peeked through the crack.

  Anderson was kneeling next to the bathtub with his back to Boone, wearing Bermuda shorts and no shirt. Boone could just see the top of Adelle’s head. She appeared to be on all fours in the tub.

  “I love you, baby doll,” Anderson crooned again.

  A bomb went off somewhere behind Boone’s eyes. He drew his gun, moved away from the door. “Mr. Anderson?” he called out.

  Anderson stepped into the hall, red-faced and scowling. “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

  Boone stuck his gun in the man’s ribs, hissed at him to shut the fuck up, then said, “Adelle, honey, I need you too.”

  “Now wait a goddamn minute,” Anderson said.

  Boone jabbed him with the gun again and said, “I will shoot you.”

  A few seconds later Adelle came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, wet hair plastered to her forehead.

  “Go downstairs,” Boone said, putting his hand on her shoulder and giving her a little shove. “Mommy’s waiting.” She was frightened and glanced up at Anderson as if asking if it was okay to leave.

  “Go on, sweetie,” Anderson said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The little girl ran off without looking back.

  “What is this?” Anderson said to Boone. “A robbery?”

  The outrage and disgust that had been building in Boone since the previous night got the best of him. He swung his gun, hitting Anderson on the side of the head. The man’s eyes rolled, but he didn’t go down, so Boone grabbed him by the throat, took him to the floor, and began punching him.

  He kept it up until his hands hurt too much to go on and Anderson’s face was a bloody mess. When he finally came back to himself, he crawled over and sat against the wall, gasping for air. Footsteps pounded on the stairs, and Rodney appeared in the hallway.

  “What the fuck did you do?” he yelled. “What the fuck did you do?”

  The paramedics arrived, the police. They cuffed Boone and took him away. At the station he gave a brief statement about what Jeannie had told him, about what he’d seen in the bathroom, then decided he’d better keep his mouth shut until he talked to a lawyer.

  It was touch and go for Anderson for a few days. Shattered cheekbones, a broken jaw, nose pulped, brain swelling. He pulled through, though, so murder wasn’t added to the litany of charges against Boone, which included felony aggravated assault, felony battery, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a firearm, attempted murder — it went on and on.

  Ironman’s attorney, Danny Berkson, showed up for the arraignment, where Boone pleaded not guilty. Carl posted his bond. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for a week later, and Boone kept close to home in that time, nursing two broken knuckles and replaying the scene in the Malibu house over and over. He’d fucked up for sure, gone way too far, but he figured he’d probably get off easy when what Anderson was doing to Adelle came out.

  Berkson, a hulking, worn-out teddy bear of a man, paid him a visit the day before the hearing, his face grim, his shoulders more slumped than usual. “We’re in a pickle,” he said.

  Turns out Jeannie had denied telling Boone that Anderson was molesting Adelle, denied showing him the bloody panties, denied there was ever any trouble at all. Furthermore, she claimed that Boone had been eyeballing her during the family’s stay and, on a few occasions, had made comments that indicated he was attracted to her.

  “You see how it looks, don’t you?” Berkson said. “It looks like you busted into the house while Anderson was giving his darling daughter a bath and beat the guy half to death because you wanted to fuck his wife.”

  All the air went out of Boone, and he slumped on the couch, his chin resting on his chest. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Do you know Him?” Berkson cracked. “Because we could sure use His help right about now.”

  “She played me,” Boone said.

  “How?” Berkson asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, but she played me hard.”

  Berkson leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “Well, look,” he said. “What it boils down to is that Anderson’s attorneys have got the DA by the balls somehow, and he’s saying that the only way he’ll deal with us is if you retract your original statement about what Jeannie told you and what you saw in the bathroom.”

  Boone exhaled hard and shook his head. “This is so fucked up,” he said.

  “If you retract, they’ll settle for eight years,” Berkson continued. “With good time and work credits, you’ll do four.”

  Four years. Boone stared out at his swimming pool sparkling in the sunlight. Four years. He felt like he’d been turned inside out.

  “If you don’t retract and this goes to trial, they’re gonna come down on you with a sledgehammer,” Berkson said. “That motherfucker was this close to dying, so we’re talking fifteen, twenty years.”

  “Danny, man, what do I do?” Boone said.

  “What do you do!” Berkson exclaimed. “Retract, retract, retract.”

  Boone could barely muster the energy to raise his head and look into Berkson’s eyes. “At least you believe me, right?” he said.

  Berkson smiled. “You gonna trust an old shark like me if I say I do?”

  Boone briefly considered cutting and running. He could sell the Porsche and raise enough cash to make it to Panama or Colombia. But he wasn’t the fugitive type. All that lying and hiding and scheming didn’t sit right with him. So he took the deal, his hand shaking as he signed the papers. And when they cuffed him and led him out of the courtroom, he felt he might fall down dead of shame.

  Not two months after he walked into the fish tank at Corcoran, he learned from Berkson that Anderson and Jeannie were divorcing. They’d share custody of Adelle, and Jeannie would receive a hefty settlement. Ha! he thought. There it is. He ran the whole thing through his head that night in his bunk.

  It was clear that Jeannie was desperate to get out of the marriage and that Anderson didn’t want to let her go. Hadn’t Rodney heard him threatening to take the kid and give her nothing if she left? So she needed something to use against him. She revs Boone up with phony abuse stories, shows him a doctored pair of panties to push him over the edge, and lets his righteous anger do the rest.

  The way it games out is, if he kills Anderson, she inherits everything. If he merely fucks him up, there’s the abuse allegation, which she’ll deny and make disappear in exchange for a divorce and enough cash. Either way, Boone is played for a fool and ends up behind bars. He chuckled bitterly as it all fell into place and thought, Well, someday she’ll get hers, but that was bullshit, and he knew it, just something people comforted themselves with when they’d been had.

  He kept his head down in prison, did his time. It was rough in the beginning. He had to go toe to toe with a couple of bone crushers to establish that he wasn’t to be fucked with, and sustained a minor stab wound fending off a lunatic with a shiv who had some kind of beef with him. Word eventually got around that he was a righteous con, though, and the challenges stopped.

  After that, his main problem was boredom, filling his days. He worked in the laundry, read paperbacks from the library, played cards, and exercised on the yard. In some ways it was a lot like the Marines. The easiest way to get by in Corcora
n, just as it had been in the corps, was to stick to the program, follow orders, and not indulge in useless bitching and moaning. The few friends he made were older cons, go-with-the-flow characters who knew the secrets to living a quiet life in the midst of the chaos of prison.

  Carl came up to see him a couple of times, Berkson too, but Boone was content to have little contact with the outside. His strategy was to ignore everything that didn’t pertain to the day-to-day grind. Concrete, steel, shit, and sweat. He pulled back his horizons until they reached only as far as the razor-wire-topped perimeter fences and got very good at convincing himself that there was nothing he wanted, needed, or missed. But then a jet would pass overhead, bound for L.A. or San Francisco, or the yard would be swept by a breeze sweet with the smell of new-mown hay, and he’d crumble into dust.

  Berkson picked him up when he was cut loose and drove him back to L.A. He’d come to believe that Boone had indeed been set up by Jeannie Anderson and felt awful about the way things had gone. Boone had sold everything he owned to pay his legal fees and fines and had only two grand left to his name. Carl had talked about him maybe returning to Ironman, but as a convicted felon — not even allowed to carry a gun — Boone wouldn’t be much use, so Berkson set him up with the job at the Tick Tock and the gig managing the bungalows.

  It’s six months later now, and he hasn’t yet figured out his next move. The only thing he’s ever been good at is protecting other people, putting himself in harm’s way for pay. Tending bar is nice and safe, but it sometimes feels like killing time. Lately he rouses from dreams of waiting and lies awake in the dark with the minutes flying past so swiftly, it takes his breath away. Then, suddenly, it’s dawn, another day, and he’s still a man becalmed, adrift a million miles from shore.

  BY THE TIME Boone finishes up, his and Amy’s glasses are empty, and so is the bottle. He’s never laid the whole story out like this, told it from the beginning, and he’s surprised at how drained he feels. He is also a bit embarrassed, thinking about Amy having to sit through all of it.

  “Damn,” he says. “Sorry about going on like that.”

  Amy sets her glass on the coffee table. “Don’t be,” she says. “You obviously needed to get it out.”

  “Yeah, okay, but that’s what shrinks are for.”

  “Ahh, shrinks are expensive.”

  “Well, still, I’m sorry.”

  Amy pushes her hair back behind her ears. She reaches for her cigarettes, starts to pull one out, then pushes it back inside and closes the box.

  “Look, I’m gonna go,” she says. She stands suddenly, as if now that she’s decided to leave, she can’t wait to get away. “This is an awful lot to absorb, and I kind of feel like I need to be alone to do it.”

  “Sure,” Boone says. “I understand.”

  Joto wakes up and lifts his head to watch as Boone walks Amy to the door.

  “Do you have a blanket for him?” Amy asks. “Dogs like that, something of their own.”

  “I’ll find one,” Boone assures her.

  She steps out onto the porch.

  “The kids at school, what do they call you?” Boone asks.

  “Bitch behind my back, I’m sure, but Miss Vitello to my face.”

  “Well, then, good night, Miss Vitello.”

  “Good night.”

  Boone watches her walk across the courtyard and actually feels pretty good, all things considered. He’s done the right thing for once, putting everything out there. And Amy reacted just the way she should have. What woman wouldn’t be turned around by a story like that? Maybe over time he’ll learn a better way to tell it.

  “Hey.”

  It’s Amy, calling to him from her porch.

  “What time are we going to breakfast tomorrow?” she says.

  “Excuse me?” Boone replies, wondering if he missed something.

  “I’ll have all this sorted out by morning and be dying to talk about it.”

  “Is nine okay?” Boone asks.

  “Nine’s fine,” Amy says. She walks into her bungalow and closes the door. A few minutes later the light in her living room goes off.

  Boone stands on his porch for a long time, listening to the freeway traffic in the distance and watching the spotlights slide across the purple sky above Hollywood. It might be the wine, but he’s moved — by the night, by the city, by the gently swaying silhouettes of the palm trees overhead. By Amy’s kindness and by Berkson’s faith in him. Beautiful, he thinks. All of it. Tomorrow, things will go to hell again, but tonight he’s not going to question his contentment; he’s going to accept it for the fleeting gift that it is.

  7

  WILLIAM TAGGERT SLIPS OUT OF BED AT DAWN AS HE DOES every morning. Part of it is that he can’t stand to waste daylight, but the other part is that his dreams have turned weird lately. Lots of running, lots of hiding. Half the time he wakes up more tired than when he sacked out.

  Olivia mumbles something angry in her sleep and curls into a tighter ball, and Taggert takes a moment to admire her long legs, her smooth skin, thanking his lucky stars for the thousandth time before covering her with the sheet. A quick piss, and he steps out into the front yard in his boxers and a T-shirt, raises his arms over his head, and groans as he stretches.

  The surrounding desert blooms pink and purple, the sun just now climbing above the horizon. Taggert watches a baby cottontail nibble at a clump of weeds until a barking dog over at the barn spooks it, sending it bounding for cover. A couple of little brown birds perched on the old horse trough in Olivia’s cactus garden dip their beaks and fluff their feathers. These truly are the finest five minutes of every day.

  Miguel, the kid who looks after the animals, steps out of his trailer over by the barn and waves. T.K.’s Explorer is parked next to the bunkhouse, a battered seventies singlewide set up on a flat a hundred yards down the hill. Taggert heard him and Spiller get in around eleven last night but didn’t feel like dealing with it. He and Olivia had already killed a pitcher of margaritas and were in the middle of The Godfather. She’d never seen it before, but that didn’t surprise him. She’s twenty-five; he’s fifty-five. He’s seen a lot of things she hasn’t.

  He puts on khaki shorts with lots of pockets and a pair of flip-flops, then pours himself a cup of coffee and sips it on his way down to the bunkhouse. The mobile home shakes when he pounds on the door. Something falls off a shelf and clatters to the floor.

  “Rise and shine, bitches,” he yells.

  Spiller opens up, that stringy red hair of his, what’s left of it, hanging in his face, a bandage on his neck.

  “Morning, boss,” he mumbles.

  “Another job well done, huh?” Taggert says.

  “What were we supposed to do, the fucker pulls a gun?”

  “Reason with him? Talk him down?”

  “No time. The guy was half a second from opening up on us.”

  T.K. appears in the hallway behind Spiller, nods, and says, “Hey, boss,” before shutting himself up in the bathroom.

  “What’d you do with the garbage?” Taggert asks Spiller. “I didn’t see anything in your vehicle.”

  “We dropped everything off at the shack on the way in. T.K. was worried about it leaking on his upholstery.”

  “And the kid?”

  Spiller jerks his head toward the couch, and Taggert leans in to see a pair of scared eyes peering at him over the armrest. The punk does look a little like Olivia.

  “Hey there,” Taggert says. “Welcome to the ranch.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It’s Virgil, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, Virgil, I bet your sister’s gonna get a big kick out of seeing you. Spiller and I have some chores to do, but what say we meet at the house at ten for breakfast?”

  “Cool,” Virgil says.

  Cool, huh? Taggert kicks himself in the ass. He should have had Spiller and T.K. put the kid down with that other piece of shit. Olivia would never have been the wise
r; bad boys like Virgil drop off the face of the earth every day of the week. But he blinked because of her. Because she calls him Big Poppa and Sweet Tea. Because sometimes she smiles right when he needs her to. Because she gets him hard just by walking into a room.

  “Put some fucking pants on,” he says to Spiller, the guy standing there in his Jockeys like it ain’t no thing.

  TAGGERT WALKS BACK up to the house, which started as a simple vacation cabin in the fifties but has since mutated into a sprawling three-bedroom jumble of dubious structural soundness thanks to various owners’ additions and improvements. Taggert bought the place a couple of years ago for the land — two hundred acres of sand, chaparral, and rocks — and when the new house he’s building on the butte is finished, this rattrap will be torn down and hauled away.

  He climbs into his old Dodge truck and drives down to pick up Spiller at the bunkhouse. They bump along a washboard road until they reach the abandoned homesteader’s shack where T.K. and Spiller stashed Eton’s body and the bags containing the pieces of chair and the bloody linen. There’s a funky smell in the air when they step inside the shack. Flies are already gathering, their frenzied buzzing enough to make your head spin, and a long line of fat black ants marches across the shower curtain to squeeze through a hole in the plastic and get at the corpse.

  “They sure don’t waste any time,” Spiller says as he bends over to grab Eton’s feet.

  “When’d you last turn down a free meal?” Taggert replies, lifting his end.

  They carry the body out to the truck, lay it in the bed, then load the bags. Taggert slides behind the wheel again and turns onto a side road that climbs into a narrow box canyon. The canyon dead-ends at the entrance to an old mine, a five-foot-square vertical shaft that extends down who knows how far, but enough that the beam of a powerful flashlight doesn’t reach the bottom.

  Spiller hops out of the truck and walks over to the mine. He cranes his neck to peer into the hole and says, “I bet there’s a way to figure out how deep this goes by counting, like you do with thunder.”