Hard Cold Whisper

by Michael Hemmingson

  “Well, you’ve been served,” I said, and walked out of the store.

  I have to stop conversing with these people.

  As I left all those cats, birds and iguanas, my cell phone rang. Didn’t recognize the number and while I usually never answer if it isn’t someone or something I know, I did this time.

  “Mr. Kellgren?” said a soft woman’s voice with an urban Hispanic accent.

  “Yeah.”

  I knew who it was before she said, “This is Gabriella Amaya, we met last night.”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s here,” she said. “I mean, not here here; the house, he’s across the street.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Pablo Martinez.”

  “Oh?”

  She said, like she was telling a national secret, “I thought you’d like to know. Just want to help, after what he did, attacking you like that. Just want to help.”

  4.

  She said it would be okay if I stayed in the house and waited for Martinez to come out. “My aunt usually sleeps from noon to five, so she’ll never know,” Gabriella explained. “She has two sleeping schedules, the other is from nine at night to six in the morning. That’s when I sleep too.”

  “Would she mind otherwise?”

  “She doesn’t like strangers in her house.”

  “I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

  She smiled softly. “Your company is nice. Usually I just sit around and watch TV or read.”

  “What do you read?” I asked.

  She blushed. “Trashy romance novels.”

  I laughed.

  “Is that funny?”

  “No, no,” I said. “Just that, my mother used to write romance novels on the side, when she wasn’t teaching junior high English.”

  “What’s her name? Maybe I read them.”

  “She used a pen named: Kelly Greene.”

  “Don’t know that name.”

  “It was a long time ago, when I was barely out of diapers.”

  “She doesn’t anymore?”

  “She’s no longer among the living,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Why do people always say, ‘I’m sorry’? It doesn’t make much sense, when you think about it. You can never really know what someone else is feeling or thinking, so why say sorry? Sorry for what?”

  I gave that some thought; she almost sounded like Meghan.

  Gabriella said, “My parents are dead too, they died when I was five so I don’t remember them much. My aunt and uncle raised me. My uncle is dead, too, and he left my aunt a lot of money from playing the stocks, and real estate.”

  “Now it’s just you and your aunt?”

  “Yeah, and she’ll be dead soon.” She said it in a way like she was hoping that event would happen soon. “And I’ll be alone.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Sorry that you’ll be alone,” I said.

  “Alone would be nice for a change. I never have any time by myself. I never have. Feels like I’ve been looking after my aunt all my life. Well, since I was twelve. Seven years. Feels like seventy.”

  “What’s her ailment?”

  “What isn’t? She had cancer when I was sixteen, but she beat that. Then some kidney issues, then a minor stroke. Now they say it’s Alzheimer’s plus Epstein Barre Syndrome.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hardcore fatigue,” Gabriella said. “That’s why she sleeps a lot. When she’s not asleep, she complains about everything in the world and yells at me. Gabriella get me this, Gabriella get me that, Gabriella change the channel, Gabriella change my bed pan.”

  She was angry.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Sorry,” she said. “And I do mean that.”

  “It can be good to vent.”

  “It did feel good.” She smiled. “You’re nice. It feels good to have you here. Like, I feel safe, even with that pendejo across the street, his gang and drugs and acting tough all the time. I can never go out to get the mail or go down to the store without him or one of his homies wolf-whistling at me.”

  “Maybe they can’t help themselves,” I said, “you’re very…pretty. You’re nice,” I said, feeling stupid. I wanted to say “hot” but I was too old for an adjective like that.

  Still, she blushed, and asked, “Would you like something to drink?”

  “A soda would be cool. Or water.”

  “I was thinking tequila,” she said.

  “At this time of the day?”

  “Hey, like I said, this time I usually have nothing to do, so sometimes I get into the Cuervo. What do you say?”

  “Don’t drink on the job,” I said.

  “A professional!”

  Grinned. “Guilty, your Honor.”

  She went into the kitchen. I admired her shape in those jeans. I couldn’t help myself.

  I sat on the couch in the living room and looked out the dirty window, waiting for Martinez. It was hard to see out but I could see enough.

  Waiting.

  Another stakeout.

  I’d get him.

  I thought I heard Gabriella talking to somebody. Her aunt? Was she on the phone? No, she was talking to herself. “Gonna drink you up good, baby,” she said.

  What a way to talk to Jose Cuervo.

  She returned with a tequila bottle, a shot glass, and a can of Diet Pepsi for me.

  She opened the can and handed it over.

  Our fingers touched.

  She poured some tequila in the shot glass.

  “Salud,” she said.

  I held up my soda.

  She gulped down the shot of tequila. She smiled and shook her head, her hair getting messy in the process. I have to admit: it looked very sexy, and if we were in a bar and it was night, I would probably grab her and kiss her.

  I was thinking of kissing her now. The way she looked at me, I knew she would welcome that.

  “You sure you don’t want any?” she said, and I got the double-meaning of her question all right.

  “Maybe later,” I said.

  She pointed at the window. “Holy shit! Look!”

  I turned. There he was, walking toward a truck: Martinez, along with some beefy Mexican guy with a shaved head and a lot of jailhouse tattoos, baggy jeans and a tank top.

  “Excuse me, Gabriella.”

  I picked up the court papers and rushed out.

  5.

  First order of business: get the steel collapsible baton from my Ford Mustang, since Martinez wasn’t alone and I knew from experience that anything could happen, and he had one himself.

  Second, serve the guy clean and legal.

  That was easy. He wasn’t looking. He was getting behind the wheel and putting the key in the ignition. His window was down.

  I tossed the papers into his lap.

  He looked up, face stone cold.

  “You’re a slippery slime, Pablo,” I said, “and now you’ve been served.”

  And now it was time to get the hell out of there.

  “Fuck him up, José,” I heard Martinez tell his big bald buddy, and then I heard a car door slam and footsteps rushing behind me.

  José had quite a surprise look on his face after I spun around, opening the baton, swing and getting him right in the jaw with a curious but painful sounding thunk.

  There was no time for warnings, for, “Get anywhere near me and I’ll use this.” And I was betting that he didn’t carry a gun, he was one of those big guys that liked to use his fists and all the fighting techniques he learned behind bars or in the gang clubhouse. And I was certain he was a felon, so having a gun on his person would land him back inside the pen.

  From the sound of it, I knew that I had broken José’s face in several places, as well as knocking out a few teeth.

  He was surprised all right, and that didn’t stop this hulking pissed off man. He spat out two
teeth and said, “You a dead man, white boy.”

  He lunged, tried to knock me down. I moved out of his way and brought the baton down on his skull, then swung low and got one of his knee caps.

  José grunted and fell to the ground.

  I knew he would get up in a few seconds, and I saw Martinez getting out of his car holding a 9 mm Glock, or what looked like a Glock.

  Before I could find out if it was indeed a Glock or a Browning, I was in my car and burning rubber out of there.

  Heard two gunshots behind me. Winced, ducked; expected bullets to fly into my back like bees on a manic stinging spree, but nothing happened.

  Looked in my rearview. He was getting smaller, but Martinez was aiming that gun at me.

  He didn’t fire a third time.

  He helped José up.

  Two bullets and he missed.

  6.

  Five minutes later, before I got on the freeway, my cell rang.

  Gabriella: “Where did you go?”

  “Had to move fast.”

  “He fired a gun at you!”

  “I’m okay, and he’s a lousy shot. Some gang guy. They don’t spend much time at the firing range.”

  Silence.

  She said, “Thought you’d come back here and celebrate on a job well done.”

  “Didn’t want him to know you and I, um, know each other,” I said. “I mean, if he figured out you had told me . . .”

  “I’m a snitch,” she said flatly.

  “You did the right thing. I owe you one.”

  “You know what happens to snitches in this part of town?”

  “You’re okay,” I assured her. “He doesn’t know.”

  “David, come back.”

  “Back?”

  “Please.”

  “Not a good idea.”

  “He’s gone. He and his friend left in his car. His friend looked bad, you fucked him up good. You know how to fight, man.”

  Her voice was sexually excited.

  Some women like guys who fight. I didn’t tell her how much I hated violence.

  “Come back,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I want to show you something,” she said.

  “Show me?”

  “Show you.” Her voice went husky.

  It was tempting.

  She lowered her voice. “Come back here, I’m scared, okay?” she said, and, “You owe me one, right? I’m cashing in the favor.” She said, “Come through the backyard. Go through the alley, the gate’s open, and come in from the backdoor, this way no one will see you.”

  Didn’t park on the street. Parked two blocks down and walked to Gabriella’s house via the alley. I was nervous. The backyard gate was open, as she said. The yard was a mess, and the grass hadn’t been mown in months. An almost dead lemon tree, tilted downward, was in the middle of the yard, two worm-eaten, rotting lemons dangling from a thin branch. There was some dried dog shit on the ground but no dog—strays leaving a package. I stepped on a crushed beer can.

  I knocked on the backdoor.

  It opened a crack, and there was Gabriella’s left eye.

  “Hi,” said the eye.

  “I’m here.”

  “So you are.”

  She didn’t open the door.

  “What did you want to show me?”

  “Come in,” she said, stepping back and opening the door.

  I could smell the tequila on her when I walked in. She was holding the bottle and half the contents were gone.

  She was also naked.

  Completely in the raw.

  7.

  First Meghan, and now Gabriella. What was it about women getting nude for me?

  “I wanted to show you what I have to offer,” she said, turning around and displaying her body, as if she were slave meat up for auction in some other century.

  I looked, and I stared.

  She purred, “Do you like what you see?” and I wondered if she got this idea from one of her trashy romance novels.

  I grabbed her left arm, pulled her to me, and kissed her hard, our teeth slamming into one another like two elk colliding in battle. I tasted blood and I did not mind. She did not mind either. I tasted the tequila on her tongue. Now I wanted some; I snatched the bottle from her hand, forcibly; she acted as if she didn’t want to let the precious liquid go. I took a long swig. She watched me, wiping away spit and blood from her mouth.

  I turned her around, cupping her brown breasts in my hands, pinching the dark nipples between two fingers, feeling them grow; sinking my lips and teeth into her neck like an urban vampire.

  We collapsed to the floor and we had each other, we attacked each other, we made a connection.

  After, we held each other on the couch in the living room.

  “My aunt will awake soon,” she said.

  “Should I go?”

  She kissed me. “I don’t want you to go, David, but it’d be better if you did. Oh, what she’d think and say, if she saw a naked man here, or me naked, the two of us here, what she’d say and do.”

  “What would she say and do?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “You’re not a child, you’re a grown woman.”

  “I’m a servant,” she said. “You serve legal papers, I serve my aunt. We all serve somebody.”

  I got dressed. She watched me.

  I kissed her goodbye.

  “Can I see you again?” I asked, holding beauty in my arms.

  “I’m here,” she replied. “I’m always here. You know where to find me,” she said softly, like it was a bad thing.

  Back in the car, I phoned the Sheriff’s office and reported that one Pablo Martinez had been served the temporary restraining order and order to show cause, and it could be recorded in CLETS (California Law Enforcement Technology Services). I gave them my registered process server’s ID number and that was that: that job was done, over with, my record remained untarnished, and I had Gabriella to thank for that.

  Gabriella. That was a crazy moment, filled with adrenaline and alcohol, the sort of desperate act two lonely people do from time to time in the world. We followed a pattern that was hardly new. She was stuck in that house, a slave to her sick aunt, and I was stuck in my desire to never let a target get the best of me, as if it mattered in the grand scheme of things.

  Perhaps my problem was: I had no grand scheme. I had no goals, beyond wanting to be a P.I. someday. I wasn’t struggling or living for anything important, the way a man might fight for his family and freedom. My life, day by day, I realized, was in a rut of sameness: I woke up, went to my job, did my thing, went home, went to sleep, got up the next day and did the same goddamn fucking thing I did the day, week, month before. There was no Big Rock Candy Mountain that I was making the long trek and hike to; there was no over the rainbow, Shangri-La, a great big dream…

  I once thought I was in love with Meghan, and I’m sure there was a time that I was, but I simply didn’t want to be alone; it was good to have someone to go out with, see movies, have dinner, fuck, and hold at night in bed. Now, I considered her as a nuisance from a past life that wouldn’t let go, like a scratch on the skin that never seems to heal. I had no idea how to finally get rid of her because I was weak.

  This is what I pondered on when I walked into my apartment and found Meghan laying on the couch in panties and bra, watching TV, smoking a joint and drinking my beer.

  “Hey, booboo,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Silly question.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I have a key,” she said, giggled, stoned.

  Key? Okay: she’d left early, she had taken the spare in the kitchen, probably got a copy made.

  I am a stupid man.

  I went to the fridge and got a beer and slugged it down. The adrenaline of being shot at and fucking Gabriella was still pumping my blood.

  I got another beer and went to the bed
room. I found Meghan’s jeans and halter on the floor. Picked them up, went back to the living room, and tossed her clothes at her body.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Ya gotta go, baby,” I said.

  She sat up, rubbing her belly. “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Sit down.”

  I stood.

  She patted the couch. “Sit down.”

  I sat down. She tried to kiss me. I turned my head.

  “What’s wrong, booboo?”

  I said, “Don’t want you here right now.”

  “Last night was good,” she said.

  “Last night was a mistake.”

  She tried to kiss me again, and then she sniffed. She sniffed at my neck, at my hair.

  She stood up, her face red.

  “You motherfucking bastard,” Meghan said, “I can smell it. I smell pussy on you. You weren’t working today, you were out getting some ass. Who is she? Who is the smelly cunt? She smells foul.”

  “Get out,” I said to my ex-lover.

  She got dressed. “I’ll get out all right,” she said. “You go have your skank twat. You have some prime pussy here and you don’t even know it.”

  I knew it; I didn’t want it.

  “The key,” I said.

  “What?”

  I held out my hand. “Give.”

  She reached into her pocket and handed me the spare key.

  “And the copy you made.”

  She grinned. “You know me well.”

  She gave me the copy.

  “Goodbye,” I said.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, and left.

  She probably made two copies. Yeah, I knew her well and I needed to call a locksmith soon.

  8.

  Gabriella phoned my cell later that night and said, “I’m missing you something bad,” her voice low. She probably didn’t want her aunt to listen, if her aunt was awake. “I can come over,” I suggested.

  “No.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “After she’s asleep?”

  “It’s risky.”

  “Come here,” I said.

  “No.”