Wrecked

by Joe Ide

  “Sarah’s email says,” Walczak said, putting a finger in the air, “‘if you ever try to hurt her again.’” He looked at the crew like they were schoolkids. “Do you know what that means?” He waited a moment, building up to it. “It means—”

  “Sarah was there,” Richter said. “She saw what happened. She was somewhere around the Edgemont.” Walczak’s face folded in on itself and his teeth got darker.

  “That’s right,” he said, hitting the t hard so it sounded like tuh. He glared at Richter through his homo tortoiseshell reading glasses, his lips in a straight line. “Thanks for pointing that out.”

  The crew busied themselves like illegals in a sweatshop, looking through the CCTV footage again, focusing on the places with a line of sight to the Edgemont. Richter’s punishment for stealing the boss’s thunder was to maybe go patrol the grounds now. Patrol the grounds for what? A Stealth silverfish couldn’t get past the trillion-dollar security system.

  Early on in his career Richter was part of the Rampart CRASH Division, where seventy cops were busted for thefts, robberies, beatings, and payoffs. He squeaked by with a suspension only because there was no direct evidence and no witnesses who hadn’t left town. He was transferred to the Seventy-seventh Street Division in Inglewood, where he terrorized the lawless and the law-abiding alike. Eventually, his notoriety caught up with him. Internal Affairs was sniffing around. He reminded a few of his connections that he knew where the bodies were buried and got a job on the Long Beach PD. He toned down the extracurricular stuff. He was tired of all the drama.

  It was luck how he met Walczak. His partner was out sick and he was by himself. He got a call about an assault, an officer in need of assistance. The altercation took place in a parking lot outside the offices of Walczak Security Systems International. Two employees, both ex-military, had gotten into a brawl and both were seriously injured. Richter knew something was wrong the moment he arrived. A passerby, not the company, had called 911, and they’d brought in a private ambulance and their own doctor. They wanted to keep this to themselves. Richter heard opportunity knocking on his savings account.

  He told the officer to secure the scene and met with WSSI’s chief of security, Milton something, one of those clean-shaven guys with a buzz cut, a T-square jaw, and a suit previously worn by a Greyhound bus or a rhinoceros. Milton explained what happened, trying to be offhand, his military-speak getting in the way. The subjects were acquaintances…the incident took place at approximately twenty-three hundred hours…they were roughhousing and an altercation ensued.

  “Really, Officer,” Milton said. “We’d rather handle this in-house.”

  “What you’d rather do doesn’t really matter, one guy’s got a crack in his skull and the other guy’s got broken ribs and a dislocated jaw.”

  “Nobody’s pressing charges.”

  “They don’t have to press charges,” Richter said. “I can.” Which wasn’t true but it sounded good.

  “Is that really necessary?” Milton said. “I don’t know if you know anything about us, Officer, but WSSI is a worldwide company with—”

  “Yeah, I know, you’re like Blackwater.”

  “No, we’re not,” Milton replied, like he was denying he had syphilis. “But we do the same kind of work. Obviously, a fight between employees would not be good publicity.”

  “You mean it wouldn’t be good publicity after five of your employees got indicted for shooting a bunch of civilians in Mosul?”

  Milton was rattled now. “It was a confusing situation. They were mistaken for hostiles.”

  “What about the woman and the baby?” Richter shot back. “Were they mistaken for hostiles too?” Richter knew that companies like WSSI hired ex-cops all the time and if their personnel department chose people who mistakenly shot moms and babies he’d fit right in. He looked at Milton and nodded thoughtfully. He put away his notepad. “So let me see if I have this straight. Two of your employees were walking out to their cars. One of them fell down and bumped into the other guy and he hit his head on the pavement. Do I have that right?”

  “Yes, you do, Officer,” Milton said, trying to cover up a smile. “That’s exactly how it went down. Here. Take my card.”

  A few weeks later, on a blistering day in July, Richter arrested an elderly bag lady. She was drunk and threatening people with a screwdriver. He put her in his unmarked car and left her there while he went to a motel and got a blow job from a hooker in exchange for keeping her out of jail. He hung out for a while, drinking beer and watching the last three innings of the Dodgers game, at which point he was hungry so he walked over to In-N-Out and had a couple of cheeseburgers with double meat. By the time he got back to the car, three hours had gone by. People were pounding on the car’s windows; 911 had already been called. The bag lady was a sweaty mess, hair plastered on her anguished face, a curled hand slapping feebly at the window, barely breathing in her two sweatshirts and man’s corduroy coat. When he opened the door the smell made the whole crowd step back. “You left me,” she gasped. “You left me here to die.”

  She needed a new kidney and Richter was fired. He thought he could shrug the whole thing off but of all the fucked-up shit he’d done in his life, that was what wormed its way into his dreams; that he’d nearly killed an old lady because he was a lazy asshole.

  An article about the incident appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram and six days later he got the call from Milton. The so-called job interview took place in a bar at the Hyatt Hotel. Milton drank club soda, Richter ordered eighteen-year-old Glenlivet, a double.

  “According to what I have here,” Milton said, opening a file folder, “in April 2007, you got a complaint about loud music. According to your incident report, the suspect, a minor, allegedly behaved in a threatening manner and you defended yourself with your flashlight, resulting in the suspect suffering severe head lacerations.”

  “Look,” Richter said, “the guy played varsity football and he had a weapon.”

  “He was on the golf team and he had a TV remote. And later that same year, you allegedly harassed an administrative assistant, repeatedly referring to her butt as a turd cutter.”

  “Come on,” Richter scoffed. “She was always flaunting it, wore those tight skirts. When she walked it was like juggling basketballs. Anyway, it was her word against mine.”

  Milton continued. “In September of 2008, you were suspected of taking seventy-one thousand dollars from a drug dealer.”

  “They never proved a thing.”

  “But somehow, you were able to buy a new Lincoln MKX.”

  “How do you know that? Nobody knew about that.”

  “In October of 2009,” Milton said, wearily turning the page, “you were suspected of demanding sexual favors from a woman you’d pulled over on a traffic stop.”

  “She was driving erratically and she was a prostitute.”

  “She was parked in the Walmart parking lot and she was an employee.” Milton went on. “In May of 2012, you allegedly accepted payoffs from a man whose street name was the Counterfeit King.”

  “I was working for him off-duty and he had a print shop. Where did you get my personnel record?”

  Apparently, disgraced cops who’d been on their college wrestling teams and scored 97 percent on the firearms qualification course were hard to come by. WSSI brought Richter on as a “security analyst” at a salary of $72,500 a year plus benefits. He was glad to have a gig, but gladder still to put his past behind him. Almost behind him. Something random would set it off. A wobbling fan, a truck backing up, a stoplight changing from yellow to red. He’d smell the stink first. Then he’d see the runny gray eyes sliding off the old lady’s face, her skin cracked and dirty, loose brown teeth in her rotting mouth. And that hand. That fucking hand. Sooty, like she’d stuck it in a chimney, a blackened bandage around her thumb, blotches of red on her shredded nails. Sometimes he thought he heard it, tapping on the window, scratching on the door.

  Richter’s first a
ssignment for WSSI was surveillance on a scientist named Garrison Lew. Lew worked at a pharmaceutical company and was suspected of stealing company secrets. His contract stipulated he could only be fired for cause and the company didn’t have enough evidence to take action.

  “What am I supposed to do, catch him in the act?” Richter said.

  “No,” Milton said. “You’re supposed to make him stop.”

  Richter broke into Lew’s house, waited until he came home, and gave him a Maglite shampoo just like he’d done to that little fuck the golfer. Then he sat Lew down in the dining room, gave him a digital tape recorder, and told him to list everything he’d stolen, when and where. When Lew refused, Richter rinsed and repeated until he got a full confession. Then he gathered up Lew’s watch, wallet, laptop, and loose cash and told him, “Quit your job. I mean tomorrow. If you don’t, I’ll come back and stuff you headfirst into a sewer pipe.”

  Sometime later, Walczak called him into his office, which was more like a hotel lobby with an ocean view. “I need a personal bodyguard,” he said, not looking up from the papers on his desk. “Do you think you can handle that?”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I can.”

  “There might be additional duties.”

  “Additional duties are my specialty.”

  Walczak let him live in the guest house, gave him an expense account, a new Lincoln, and use of the company hookers. There was nothing to complain about except Walczak himself. What a monumental prick. He was everything that was wrong with rich people: arrogant, entitled, always showing off and throwing his weight around, and he was an evil motherfucker to boot. Compared to him, Richter was John the Baptist or Peter the Great or one of those other saints his mother was always praying to. And Walczak knew Richter had no place else to go so he abused him with impunity. Who’d want a washed-up cop who suffocated an old lady and got fired by an internationally known security company? He’d be back in his fucked-up house eating SpaghettiOs out of the can. The only way to get out of this with his pride intact was to fleece that monumental prick for every dollar he had.

  Richter was permitted back in the inner sanctum but wasn’t allowed to touch the laptops, which were reserved for the professionals. He was falling asleep when Owens said, “I got it,” pleased she’d finally done something right. She’d found a segment of footage from a diner across the street from the Edgemont. It showed Sarah and a man coming in, taking a booth by the window. They saw the action with Grace and Isaiah and left. Unfortunately, the lighting was dim and the camera had been there since the nineties so the image was poor quality. The man was black, looked to be in his fifties, little square glasses, an unkempt mess of graying hair, a full beard and a T-shirt draped over his paunch that said BAD, BAD LEROY BROWN.

  “He looks like a black Jerry Garcia,” Jimenez said.

  “Who’s Jerry Garcia?” Owens said.

  “Sarah and Jerry are a couple,” Richter said. “If we find Jerry we’ll find Sarah.”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” Walczak said, pissed that he hadn’t said it first. “For Christ’s sake, Richter, is that what I pay you for? Telling us things we already know? Why don’t you go wash the car or something.”

  The facial recognition system at WSSI marked where rigid tissue and bone were most apparent, it delineated the curves of the eye socket, nose, and chin, and it took measurements of depth and axis. These things are unique and don’t change over time. Collecting that kind of data was illegal in California, but the Feds had a database with thirteen million people who had committed federal crimes. If Jerry was in there, maybe they could identify him. Maybe. Even after enhancement, the shot of Jerry’s face was blurred and pixelated. The beard didn’t help either.

  Predictably, the results were disappointing. The system came back with over a thousand possible Jerrys spread out all over the country. Even after eliminating the ones who were dead, in jail, or obviously the wrong guy there were still over three hundred and fifty left.

  They were in the study again. Walczak frustrated, out of ideas, hoping somebody besides Richter had one.

  “What happened to the bar?” Owens said. All the liquor had been removed.

  “We’re here to work, hayseed,” Hawkins said. “Maybe drink some white lightnin’ when you get back to the barn.”

  “Why don’t you go write a rap song,” she replied. “Something you people are good at.” Hawkins stood up. Owens stood up.

  “Could you please control yourselves?” Walczak said. “Kill each other after this is over.”

  “So what’s next, boss?” that fucking Mexican said. “You got some other kind of high technology you want to lay on us? Some other kind of recognition? Armpits? Feet? I got a real distinctive foreskin. It’s got freckles on it.”

  “Fuck this,” Hawkins said. “I’m going home.”

  “No, we’re not finished here,” Walczak said.

  “Oh yeah? Well, I’m finished here and I’m going home.”

  “Let’s back it up a second,” Richter said. “Sarah was on the run, right? Maybe she—”

  Walczak glared and interrupted. “Richter, discuss these things with me first, will you? You work for me, remember?”

  “Sure, no problem.” Richter sat there, said nothing, and fiddled with the end of his tie, everybody waiting, wry smiles, wondering what Walczak was going to do. He looked like he was holding in a massive fart.

  “Okay,” he said, without moving his mouth. “Go ahead.”

  “Like I was saying, Sarah was on the run, right? She can live anywhere she wants and people who have a choice usually go by three things. Where they can find work, the kind of people they like, and the weather. What did Sarah do for work before the artist thing?”

  “Waitress, bartender,” Walczak said.

  “No help there. What kind of people did she like?”

  “Artsy types, musicians, writers, useless fucks who lie around and complain about the government.”

  “You can find them people anywhere,” Owens said.

  “Yeah, but Sarah’s deciding where to go,” Richter said. “She can pick and choose. What about weather?”

  “Sarah hated cold weather,” Walczak said. “Anything below eighty degrees was winter as far as she was concerned.”

  “That eliminates the Deep South, anyplace east of the Rockies,” Richter said. “Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. That leaves Southern Cal, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Texas.” Jimenez glanced at Hawkins. Do you believe this guy?

  “You’re stretching it,” Walczak said. His blood pressure made his eyes flutter, his butt wounds were bleeding again. “You might as well say Saudi Arabia or Europe.”

  “Think about going on vacation,” Richter said. “If you want to go somewhere you’ve never been before you do it by reputation. If you like hot weather and an artsy crowd you don’t go to Farmington or Steamboat Springs.”

  “There’s Austin, Taos, Santa Fe,” Jimenez said. “Nothing I know of in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, or the rest of Texas.”

  “Austin,” Walczak offered grudgingly.

  “What about here?” Hawkins said. “That bitch could be living down the block and we wouldn’t know it.” Owens was frowning, trying to think of a suggestion. “Don’t bother,” Hawkins said. “If we want to buy a horse we’ll ask you.”

  “Cut it out, okay?” Jimenez said. “It’s time to go to work.”

  They went over the list of Jerrys. There were two in Austin, one in Santa Fe, one in Taos, seven in the Bay Area, one in Silicon Valley. They decided to nix LA for now, reasoning that Sarah wouldn’t plant someplace so close to Walczak. They drew straws for who went where.

  “Santa Fe?” Owens complained. “What’s in Santa Fe?”

  “Good Tex-Mex and a lot of turquoise jewelry,” Jimenez replied.

  “This is a really long long shot, you know,” Walczak said, thinking, I’m not taking the blame for this.

  “You got any better ideas?” Richter said. Walczak
had no comeback.

  Everyone got up to go but Jimenez just sat there. “Why don’t you just pay her the million?” he said. “It’s not like you can’t afford it.” The others muttering and nodding in agreement.

  “You don’t know that cunt like I do,” Walczak said. “Sarah hates me and for good reason too. She won’t stop. She’ll release the pictures anyway. Trust me on this one. She wants my ass, not the money. If she’s not dead we’re fucked.” The others looked at each other as if to say, Do we believe him?

  “Let’s get to it,” the fucking Mexican said.

  Walczak glared at Richter. “If this turns out to be a waste of time? I’ll kick you out on your ass and you won’t be able to get a job as a crossing guard. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Richter said.

  When the ex-cop left the room, Walczak could have sworn he was smiling.

  Sarah met Stan Walczak at a memorial service for a friend who’d been blown up by an IED. Chuck went off to carouse with his old buddies, leaving Sarah and Walczak time to talk, go to lunch, and get a motel room. The affair lasted several months. Walczak was handsome and sophisticated. She knew he was at Abu Ghraib but he denied torturing prisoners. He said if he had he would have been fired and she wanted to believe him. Walczak had also seen the world and he appreciated art and music and he ate his pasta al dente instead of cooked into mush and he drank wine instead of beer. At the same time, Sarah’s marriage was falling apart. She was about to file for divorce when Chuck told her he had incriminating photos from Abu Ghraib and that he intended to blackmail Walczak. He’d always hated that pompous asshole. Sarah was horrified by the pictures but didn’t want Chuck to go through with it. She knew that if Walczak did those things at Abu Ghraib, he’d have no problem killing her husband. Or her. She devised a plan. She and Chuck shared a password manager. She’d get the passwords and delete all the pictures in the cloud accounts. Then she’d tell Walczak what she’d done and he would drop the whole thing. Chuck would be furious but that was a lot better than getting himself killed. What she didn’t know was that Chuck had already sent the demand note.