Killing Yourself to Survive: Stories

by David Corbett

  “He beat us,” I told my guys afterward, like I was confessing to some crime of my own.

  A week later we went in to pull the wires, and I was hardly shocked to see they’d put a three-piece console in front of the wall socket where we’d planted the living room transmitter. They’d been a step ahead of us the whole time. Took us an hour, though, to take the knickknacks down, drag the big thing away, claim our bug then push the monster back and make sure all the junk was in the right place again, even smoothing the carpet so you couldn’t tell anything had moved.

  The operation got bagged, departments couldn’t justify the manpower any more. We went around to restaurants, schooling them on smarter ways to close up at night—it was all we could do at that point. Maybe Mike would decide his luck had played out. Or maybe he’d get reckless, hurt somebody, and the whole thing would heat up all over again.

  On Christmas Eve, I visited Barb and our daughter for the annual holiday torture—unwanted presents, forced smiles. And no talk of Donny, as though the only thing that could keep the pain at bay was a punishing silence.

  Walking to my car, though, I heard the front door click open behind me. Turning, I saw my daughter—she was five then—running toward me in her red velvet dress and green tights. Behind her, Barb waited in the doorway, a silhouette.

  Melodie scooted up, gripped my hand and pulled so I’d bend down. In a solemn whisper, she said, “Don’t be sad, okay? It’s Christmas.”

  “I’m not sad,” I lied, but she’d already dropped my hand, spun around and fled back toward her mother who let her back in, then closed the door.

  Later at my own place, drinking scotch as I flipped through the channels, I got the call from dispatch. A steak house up in Paradise Valley got hit right at closing. I was on my way to the scene when the second call came in. Shots fired. The address made my stomach drop.

  By the time I got to the condo the place was alive with cops, strobes spinning around the complex, mingling eerily with the Christmas lights. I got out of my car and pushed through the crowd of neighbors outside. The cop with the entry/exit log took my name and badge number, then waved me in.

  Techs and detectives ambled about. A spindly tree stood in the living room, sagging with ornaments and tinsel. One of the guys from homicide pointed me back to the kitchen.

  In the breakfast nook, I found a uniformed cop standing guard over Cavanaugh, who sat gripping his head. He glanced up just long enough to catch my eye, his gaze frantic with calculation.

  To the uniform, I said, “Do everybody a favor and stand back a little. He makes a grab for your gun, you may both wind up dead.”

  From the kitchen I made way toward the utility room. A body sheet covered a sprawling form on the floor, a pool of drying blood trailing out from underneath. Spray patterns hazed the walls. An eerie hand print smeared the doorframe.

  In the bedroom, wearing an undershirt and cargo shorts, Rhonda sat with hollow eyes, stroking the shepherd, who lay at her feet whimpering. A female officer stood guard, one hand on her sidearm, as though she intended to shoot the dog if it so much as moved.

  It took a second for Rhonda to sense I was there in the doorway. Glancing up, she blinked, took me in. Her hair was a mess. She looked ashen and lost.

  Cavanaugh would take the fall, pleading out to manslaughter. His story—I can’t say whether it’s true or not, though I tend to believe more than I doubt—was that he and Rhonda, his cop-crazy buddy’s wife, were lovers. The night Mike found out, he knocked Rhonda around a while, then went out, got coked up and took down his first restaurant. He’d been pumping Cavanaugh for information on robberies for ages, claiming he just wanted to know how to protect his own place.

  Mike came back from that first job in an odd heat, feeling invincible—the man he was meant to be—and told Rhonda that, if he ever went down, he’d hand up her lover as the man who’d taught him everything. Cavanaugh had to protect him then, to protect himself, protect Rhonda. He began tipping Mike off on the robbery investigations, staying away from Rhonda once the surveillance began but getting messages through by using the guy who washed dishes at their restaurant as a go-between. That went on until Rhonda’s grand jury appearance, after which she told Mike she’d dime him out herself if he didn’t stop, she didn’t care who got hurt. And Mike obliged her—until Christmas Eve.

  He missed it, that nervy heat when he slipped in, pointing the gun. The fear. The begging.

  As soon as he left the house for Paradise Valley, Rhonda picked up the phone, dialed Cavanaugh, told him she was leaving for good, she’d had it. He told her to wait, he’d be right over. They meant to be gone by the time Mike got back but—here again I’m not sure what to believe—he surprised them, slipping into the house unnoticed. It was self-defense, if you looked at it right, though Cavanaugh knew better than to take that to trial.

  But all of that was yet in the telling as I stood there in the bedroom doorway. The dog ignored me for once, still whimpering, its ears pricked up. It was Rhonda who stared right at me.

  “You’re the one whose wife walked out,” she said finally. She left the rest hanging, but her voice was accusing. She wouldn’t be gloated over, not by the likes of me.

  I don’t know how to explain it. Despite her contempt, despite everything, I felt for her. And I could afford to be gracious, not because I was different or better or even because it was Christmas. I remembered my daughter’s words, whispered in my ear: Don’t be sad, okay? I had a piece of something back I’d thought was lost for good. It felt a little like being forgiven.

  “My wife had good reason to leave,” I said, thinking: Why lie?

  But Rhonda just turned away. With a soft, miserable laugh, she said, “Like that’s all it takes.”

  With profound thanks to Detective Jay Pirouznia, Tempe PD (Retired)

  Killing Yourself to Survive

  SATCHER IGNORED HIS CELL phone, preferring to watch Odilia as she groaned herself upright on the edge of the bed. Sunlight flared in the lacework curtains beside her; the drone of traffic along the Avenida la Reforma filtered in through the window. She yawned, absently finger-combing the snarls from her long black hair. The call, he knew, was from Colburn. It could wait, for now.

  Up and awake for nearly half an hour, he’d long completed his morning constitutional, even made a wretched pot of coffee in the bathroom with the hissing gurgling device the hotel provided, and now, dressed in just his briefs and a hand-embroidered guayabera bought at the Mercado Central, he sat tapping away on his laptop, plowing through the third wall of usernames and passwords and encryption keys to access the private sanctum of his emails. Even with Ethernet one couldn’t be too careful, and only an idiot, or someone setting a trap, would rely on hotel wireless.

  “I should not have drink so much,” she said, voice furry from her hangover.

  Satcher finally plucked his cell off the desk and shot a glance at the display—message routed through to voicemail, good. “I can muster up a second pot of coffee, if you’d like.”

  She seemed to draw the words in like a warning, reflect on them, only to shake her head, her backlit hair quivering down her shoulders. Feeling gentlemanly, he tried not to stare at her breasts, but it was curious how girlish she was up top, how womanly at the hips. Then again, she was nothing if not a puzzle: the long Mayan nose, the thin Castilian lips, the paleness of her skin despite its indígena architecture, the little thumb-hold of flesh beneath her chin, the incongruous overbite that made her smile explode.

  She’d been a wallflower at the embassy gathering in her pastel suit and sling-back pumps, holding her champagne flute like a candle, a local prosecutor assisting the UN team targeting the militarized mafias roaming the country with impunity these days. It was, Satcher thought at the time, a heady job for a twenty-something whose principal claim to worldliness was a year in New Orleans studying international relations and Emily Dickinson at Loyola.

  Sensing an opportunity, he’d snatched a bottle of Dom Perignon
from a passing waiter and kept replenishing not just his glass but hers, flirting, flattering, chatting her up, watching her grow from shy to giggly to tipsy, at which point he stole her away to the Zona Viva for the usual playful nonsense, showing some cards, not many, the occasional necessary lie—he told her he was a risk analyst for an American investment consortium, trying to determine which opportunities in Guatemala City were little more than money-laundering fronts.

  When they finally kissed, the heat rippled through him a little more than he’d expected, and he actually shivered when she reached around with her fingertips and stroked the bristle at his nape. She had that thing you look for, the strength and yet the gentleness, the old-world grace that can’t be faked, the smarts, the fire, the simple decent kindness of a genuinely nice lady who, thankfully, likes to fuck.

  Using her blazer for an umbrella, they’d run through a light rain to his hotel, where shyness fled and clothing flew—she straddled him, hands pumping his chest like cat’s paws and the tips of her black hair grazing his face as she stumbled in and out of English with her endearments. Afterward she’d nuzzled his throat then curled beneath his arm, resting her head on his heart and tracing her fingertips across his shoulder blades, murmuring as she drifted off, “You need wake me temprano, okay?”

  The cell phone started humming again and it seemed to snap her into gear—glancing about the bed and floor, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, finding her blouse, slipping her arms into the gauzy sleeves as she rose and fled to the bathroom.

  Satcher flipped open his phone.

  “Been a bit of a cock-up, mate.” As expected, Colburn. “You decent?”

  A trace of Odilia’s scent lingered in her wake. “Never.”

  “I’m serious, Satchmo. Bloody fucking mess, I’m afraid.”

  Satcher glanced at his watch. “When and where?”

  “Lobby. Yours, not mine. Fifteen. Look smart.”

  Satcher snapped his phone shut as, beyond the bathroom door, Odilia flushed the john and cranked open the spigots, the water a muffled drum roll against the tile of the shower stall. He went around, gathered her things, laid them out primly on the bed, then finished dressing himself, slipped on his cargo pants, laced up his boots. He punched in the combination code on the safe in the closet, removed his holstered Sig, looped it onto his belt and fit it to the small of his back, letting the billowing fall of his guayabera conceal the weapon. Look smart.

  Odilia’s shower permitted him time for one last glance at his email, and he scrolled through the more recent intelligence updates and in-house memoranda, then changed identities, rummaged through his personal Inbox and found a message from his son, Brandon. The boy had sent along a drawing from art class, sent in the body of the transmission, not an attachment, good boy. No text with it, typical, not a verbal kid. He had a gift for pen drawings, an intense idiosyncratic style that spoke of a feverish misery; he was generally placid in temperament, withdrawn, but once a week or so something snagged an inner tripwire, detonating rages so scathing he had no friends. Even pets were out of the question. The meticulous art work seemed to calm him, or so said Julia, Satcher’s ex.

  What had it been, he thought, scrolling down to the picture, a year, maybe longer since he’d visited the boy. The image, as always, seemed to ripple with dread: a vast array of arrows of various shapes and styles, feathery and delicate to massive and dense black, pointing every possible direction, a compass in the mind of a god gone mad. The arrows were tucked and linked and nestled together in oddly symmetrical configurations, suggesting both an impossibly random confusion and yet a subtle radiation from an invisible core. At the bottom, written in that distinctive scrawl: The Users and the Used.

  Specialists had probed and questioned and offered referrals, only to pencil-tap their chins or throw up their hands, not that their ignorance stopped them from plying the boy with an ever-evolving brew of pharmaceutical cocktails. Satcher couldn’t keep up with the changes in regimen, not that he’d tried terribly hard.

  He was logging off as Odilia reappeared, scurrying about, stepping into her panties, shimmying into her skirt, tucking in her blouse, then earrings, necklace, bracelet, shoes. Satcher considered stopping her, stealing another half hour, knowing he couldn’t and feeling strangely aroused less at the chance than its impossibility. What’s happened to you, he wondered, feeling the full effect of the dreariness fogging his soul and suffering a momentary impulse to tell her how stunning and smart and brave she was, how unlike anyone he’d ever met. He wanted to confide in her, blurt out I’ve wasted every minute of my misbegotten life. But he knew not to mistake romance for redemption, suspected she did too.

  Gathering her purse, draping her jacket over her arm, she took one last look around, tucked her hair behind her ear again, a girlish tic, then offered one last popping smile.

  He said, “Probably best I not head down with you.” It came out a little more curt than he’d intended.

  Her smile faltered. “No.” Fussing with her jacket, her purse, she stood there awkwardly, sweetly, then stepped toward him, took his face in her hand and eased up on tiptoe to confer her goodbye kiss, lingering longer than he’d expected, and he bit back what it aroused. Finally, manners kicking in, that or good sense, he found a notepad atop the desk, a pen, scrawled his cell number. Tearing the top sheet off, he handed it to her. “I’m here for another week, I think.”

  “Thank you,” she said, slipping the note into the pocket of her skirt, then one last over-the-shoulder smile as she left.

  Colburn sat deep in one of the lobby sofas, paging through the International Herald Tribune and sipping tea from a hotel mug. Glancing up as Satcher approached, he offered by way of greeting, “Nice bit of chuff flounced out just a couple ticks ago. Yours?”

  “Don’t be vulgar.”

  Colburn set his mug on a nearby tray. “I said she was nice.”

  The valet brought the car around, Colburn dropped behind the wheel, Satcher the opposite side. “Lope rang me up this morning,” Colburn said, referring to their principal local informant. “Shot me out of a dead sleep, must’ve been what, quarter past six? If that. Said there was something we mustn’t miss at one of the local calequeros.”

  “He’s meeting us?”

  “Given what I expect we’ll see there, can’t imagine having Lope anywhere near would be wise.”

  Lope, aka Ramon Parada-Lopez, was Colburn’s contact in the local underworld, a slot machine for general background. Formerly a commando with the Kaibil corps, Lope had links to a kidnapping ring here in GC comprised of other skulkers from the special forces branch and a few bent cops—exactly the kind of operation, Satcher thought, that Odilia was trying to expose and prosecute. He admired that about her, and knew that what she and her colleagues hoped to accomplish was an honorable thing, in theory. It wasn’t why he’d put the make on her, but it hadn’t hurt either. And in the long run, their objectives coincided. But in the short run, men like Lope were indispensible. And in the grand scheme, given the impatience of powerful men, the short run always held the cards.

  A light rain fell, the wipers chugged, leaving filmy threads of moisture across the windshield. Colburn leaned forward over the steering wheel, softly whistling his old regimental double-past, “The Road to the Isles,” as he read street signs, weaving his way through Zona 4, past the Botanical Gardens, then merging onto 7 Avenida and passing the National Theater as they plunged straight into the heart of Zona 1.

  It was home to the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Plaza Mayor, and for a moment Satcher tried to see it as Odilia might, still graced with promise, even nobility. Once beyond the historical center, though, the shops and apartments lining the street looked disconsolate, not just from the rain. The cars and trucks and buses all seemed to lose a little paint, gain a little rust and soot; the faces looking out at the passing traffic wore expressions of rage or grief or numb remove.

  The maras controlled vast sections of the area, manning their esquina
s as though guarding a perimeter, selling crank and crack in single-hit papeles in hand-to-hand buys or through storefronts called tienditas. It was one of the reasons the country was falling apart—the cartels paid in product, not cash, and so the maras dealt locally, creating a whole new strata of lost souls. Colburn and Satcher, two white strangers in a rented sedan, triggered hand signals from the lookouts on their corners as the car sped past, and though the two men were armed—not just their pistols but short-stock M4s stowed in the trunk, pre-loaded magazines, plenty of rounds, even smoke grenades if needed—it would be far wiser to avoid trouble than fight their way out of it.

  Colburn turned down a narrow side street, pulled to the curb and murmured, “We have reached our destination, el capitan.”

  On the sidewalk outside a car repair shop, two satin-lined coffins lay open for display beneath a canvas canopy. Colburn and Satcher greeted the portly, mustachioed calequero who sat outside, nursing a cup of coffee, his Stetson nudged up on one side to make room for the cell phone pressed to his ear. A tip from a trusted cop or fireman, Satcher figured, someone with the word on a murder victim lying on the street somewhere. There were the same number of murders here now as Mexico, which had thirteen times the population. Shortly the man would be off, rushing to the scene to get the details, then hustling away to the family with an affordable package that included everything from help with finessing the death certificate to paying off the gravediggers.

  Colburn, using Spanish, told the man who—or what, at this point—they were looking for. Never taking the phone from his ear, he waved them inside.

  They strolled past the car repair bays and an ancient Coke machine to the rear where, among engine blocks and retread tires, a bone-thin woman who’d tucked her hair beneath a butcher’s cap smoked a carefree cigarette, taking a break from her work on the three naked bodies laid out on narrow worktables. She leaned against an iron sink, her back to a wall of greasy tools, her floral-print dress protected by a filthy apron. Overhead, a fluorescent coil hanging by chains flickered, casting an erratic purplish light. Winchester flagons of alcohol, lanolin, silicone and various dyes lined metal shelves, with discolored tubing and soiled rubber gloves scattered here and there among knives, pliers, saws.