I said, “He’s a real tough guy.”
“Some call Akufo-Addo the biggest coward in Ghana. Garrett is America’s coward.”
She tried to get up, couldn’t. Needed assistance. Jake Ellis helped her to her feet, let her lean against the wall, then took off his bloodied hoodie, put it on her. It covered her like a miniskirt. She was ashamed and angry, wiped away tears, pulled the hood up and covered her head.
She asked, “Where is my loving husband? Where is my Dickie Bird? Doesn’t he know his Apple Booty needs him now, for better or for worse? We have company and he’s not entertaining or helping. I mean, there are dead men by the pool. A man outside crying over his broken legs.”
Jake Ellis motioned toward the bedroom’s double doors. Three-point locking system on each access. Even if we charged the entry at the same time, the doors wouldn’t break open.
She wiped away tears and yelled, “Dickie Bird, want to come out for some more gelato?”
There was no response.
She turned to us. “No worries. I have a key. In my closet. I have a key because when he gets mad, he will lock me out. We can get in with my key. Bastard doesn’t know I have a key.”
Before I could ask, Jake pointed. “The bedroom across from that one is her closet.”
She walked toward a bedroom that had the same style doors, told us, “Wait here.”
While she dealt with shock and anger and wiped away more tears than were in her swimming pool, I asked what I really was concerned about. “Does he have more guns?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. I just know he had his toys everywhere. I know he bought guns like he was in the NRA’s gun-of-the-month club. He was always going to Wyoming or someplace, always went to some gun show somewhere, then came back home with new toys. Once he brought back flowers and gave me chlamydia. Must’ve been a hell of a gun show.”
Jake Ellis asked what was important: “Did we get all the guns in the house?”
Tears dropped as Mrs. Garrett touched her bald head. “You didn’t get mine.”
I asked, “You have a piece? San Bernardino didn’t know that. We didn’t know that.”
“My husband doesn’t know that. I hide it in the drawer that has my tampons and girlie stuff. That’s the drawer men will never look in. Had a .380 for eight years and he has no idea.”
“What happened eight years ago?”
“We had a black president. People were talking about race wars.”
“Yeah. Well.”
“I was going to buy a .22, but the man at the gun shop told me the bullet might not penetrate the brain. Said the bullets might follow the path of his skull. With a .380, no problem like that. That’s why I hid out in my closet earlier. I love God with all my heart, and I prayed, but in case the Internet in Heaven was offline, or my prayers went to God’s spam folder like they always seem to do, I had my loaded Pinkie Boo at my side just in case he went a bit too berserk.”
“A marriage built on secrets is a marriage built on a foundation of sand.”
“This one was built on quicksand in a tornado. I’m not stupid. I can guess the things he does. He associates with ruthless people. I knew that one day it was gonna get ugly around here. Bad people come and go, sit at our dinner table, swim in our pool. My closet would have been my hideout. And he gets mean. If he ever got crazy, didn’t want him to know I had a gun too.”
“Why didn’t you peel a cap in his ass tonight? Justice would be on your side.”
“I don’t know. I ain’t never shot anybody before. Should have shot him two years ago when he gave me chlamydia. Now he’s thrown me down stairs. He cut off all of my hair. He made me ugly. He beat my face and made me ugly. What kind of monster would do this to a woman?”
“The kind that would slap you with a prenup on your wedding day.”
“A man with no heart. A control freak with no soul. A goddamn wannabe gangster.”
“But you jumped the broom. You married a man you didn’t want to marry.”
“For the money. I guess I mean, I couldn’t not marry him and crawl back to Coco’s and beg for my job back. Made me feel like I was a fuckin’ moron. I would have had to give him back the BMW. I couldn’t go back to driving my ugly bucket and being a two-bit waitress for minimum wage, not without people whispering. All the girls there were jealous. Real jealous. Those thots would have loved to have seen me fail. I would have been the laughingstock of Compton and Dominguez Hills. So, yeah. Yeah. To save face I sucked it up and married Richard Israel Garrett the Third. Dickie Bird. They called him that in Boston. He had a bad leg when he was growing up. A dickey leg. And he was puny until he went to Princeton. So, they called him Dickie Bird until he made it to university. Then he was Garrett.”
“Macho, egotistical guy like him, seems like he’d want people to call him Butch.”
“No, but he’s mean and calls his sister Butch. She’s the South End’s biggest lesbian. She’s a cop. I think she is the reason he left Boston. She hates him. He doesn’t talk to her. Told her when she got off the clit and back on the dick, then maybe they could be family again.”
“His nickname needs some Viagra. And you married Dickie Bird for the money.”
“At first it was for love, would have been happy being the dutiful wife, would have lived to please my husband, but on my wedding day it changed, and I guess it became for money. I was angry, was going to marry him and try and take everything. Just never figured out how to do it.”
I said, “The key. Mind getting the key?”
She moved like the walking dead, went to her closet, a closet the size of my apartment, a closet that had a bed and a full bathroom. When she came back she had pulled on funky leggings, had put on red Chucks, but still had on Jake Ellis’s hoodie, her head and face covered.
“Let’s open the door and go see how Dickie Bird’s doing. Let me see if he’s happy to see me after I didn’t die. He beat me like I was a dog. He raped me. He locked me in a closet and let me suffer and bleed half to death. He paraded me around naked in front of all those strange men. And he threw me in the pool and tried to drown me. Like I wasn’t shit.”
I said, “We’re both having bad days.”
“So, since I’ve lasted through the in-sickness-and-in-health part of the contract, this little naïve girl from Compton is ready to see how this until-death-do-we-part is going to work out.”
I stepped up. “Okay. But we can’t just break up in there not knowing if he’s armed.”
Then she snapped, “And, yes, all of this art was stolen. Stolen from all over the world.”
Jake Ellis said, “Some is from Africa. And it is authentic.”
“He hates Africa, but he knows that’s where the easy money is. The money that can’t be traced when moved offshore. Him and all his rich friends are going to African countries trying to make bank. They want to chop up Libya. Or did he say Liberia? I know it started with an L.”
“They come, take, never give. Rubber from our trees, diamonds from our mines, gold from our land. African leaders are complicit. They will sell our country to the highest bidder. They call it good business. I call it bullshit. Colonialism by another name is still colonialism. Nigeria could unite Africa and Africa could rule the world, if they allowed merit rule instead of mediocrity.”
She sobbed. “He has had mistresses. Several. One was the housekeeper. I fired her.”
Water dripping, making a puddle at my feet, I said, “Really?”
“That’s what we were arguing about when we came home from shopping today.”
Jake Ellis said, “Well, at least you came home to the magically moist salmon.”
“He had hidden a bottle of Viagra and condoms in the glove box. A box of three. Two missing. We haven’t used condoms. Ever. And the extra Viagra was a hundred milligrams. Bottle of twenty. Week-old prescription. Over half already used up.
So he had a secret prescription. He knew I counted the pills in his cabinet. And we haven’t used one in a very, very long time.”
“Congratulations. You’re definitely married.”
“We’ve gone nine months. Wait, once we went a year. Best year of our marriage.”
“Why get married and not have sex?”
“He knows I want a baby. Wanted. Even if I freeze eggs, they are no good without the secret sauce. And he has the damn sauce. He has to control everything. I wanted a baby so I would have someone to love and love me back. That’s sad, huh? Makes me feel pathetic to admit that. I’m glad we don’t have one. Who would want their child to ever see their mother looking like this? If he did this to me, just think of what he’d do to his child.”
“He wouldn’t touch the child. Men don’t usually go Andrea Yates on the kids.”
“I bet I wouldn’t be the first woman he’s done away with.”
“They don’t kill children. But rich men always do away with the mother.”
“Right. Like OJ. Or Robert Blake. Lot of that kill-the-mother shit going around California.”
“Sounds like he did everything but Phil Spector you and call it suicide.”
“Dickie Bird pushed me downstairs, bashed my head, tried to break my neck, and then he tried to drown me like a roach. He did things that assholes do when they want to prove they own a woman. He’s stronger, but I fought him back. People in my family hurt fast and bleed quick, but we don’t die easily. He’s got me mixed up with those weak girls from Altadena or Monrovia.”
“No woman expects this to happen in her life.”
“I’m not stupid. I knew what to expect when you marry a man like him, knew shit wasn’t going to be a fairy tale when he had his lawyer hem me up with that damn prenup. I know rich men have their ways. He told me his ancestors used to rob banks, stagecoaches, and trains. Didn’t bother me. Mine shot craps in the back rooms of bars and drank liquor out of brown bags in pissy alleys. I can take a lot of shit. I mean, I put up with a lot of shit, can put up with him being cheap, can turn a blind eye to lots of things he has done, to the women, but I can’t take this.”
“He went full Boston on you. He tried to kill you.”
“Why do all that? Why torture me? Why didn’t he just shoot me in my head?”
“Wanted you to suffer before you died. Wanted to humiliate you. Like you did him.”
She groaned. “I think my arm is broken. It hurts. My legs hurt from falling too. He bumped my head over and over. Everything is kind of blurry, off and on, but I can hang on a little longer.”
Jake Ellis said, “We will take care of this, then get you to a hospital, to Cedars-Sinai.”
“If I go to the hospital, they’ll call the police and I’ll have to tell them what happened.”
“He scares you.”
“Men like him is why Clara Harris will always be my hero.”
Neither Jake Ellis nor I had any idea who Clara Harris was. We didn’t care.
Mrs. Garrett stepped to the side, arms folded across her chest, angry, shivering.
Jake Ellis motioned. “Go lock yourself in your closet. Stay safe in your panic room.”
Her jaw tightened. “I’m done being a coward. I want him to see he didn’t destroy me.”
“Still, we need you to step back. Let this be between bad men.”
She looked at us. “Don’t kill him. If you kill him, things will get worse.”
Jake Ellis said, “I’ll try not to.”
Apple Booty did take a step back, moved closer to the double doors leading to her closet.
Jake Ellis and I took deep breaths, evaluated wounds, readied ourselves to attack.
Thoughts came in dark flashes. Dead bodies were cooling by the pool. Injured and dying men decorated the patio and the first level of the house. Like I had offered those other black men, we could call it a push, lick our wounds, and hobble away. But like those institutionalized men, we weren’t trained to back down; we didn’t walk away. We hadn’t walked away in two decades. We were institutionalized in our own way. Too many black lives lived behind invisible walls. America still had thousands of sundown towns, and this elite city might have been one. Garrett could be bold and call the slave catchers. He could break the code, then deal with San Bernardino later. He was in fight-or-flight, and he wasn’t fighting, and no one was left to combat on his behalf. If I heard sirens, there would be dozens of cop cars, cars that had barking dogs, and cops who never used rubber bullets or Tasers. If black men weren’t wearing football gear, even when wearing the same hoodies and hipster gear white men wore with Birkenstocks, to the biased eye we all looked like prison inmates. Guilty until proven innocent, and no one on this property was innocent. Even Mrs. Garrett was complicit. Mr. Garrett would point at us, and the protect-and-serve crew, men and women who respected his hue, would see my swarthy skin, would see Jake Ellis’s dark skin, and right away think we were in league with other men scattered all over the property. Garrett could claim we all broke in to steal his precious art and rape his wife. He could say we attacked his wife. And maybe she’d think twice, clam up, let us take that charge. She had too much to lose. I’d saved her life, but I didn’t trust her. I knew my history, knew her history, knew my bias, had to acknowledge my preconceived notions, but my gut instincts wouldn’t let me trust her. But we were pissed off. We had the same adversary. We were all cold, sweating, furious. Tired. Bleeding. Half past dead. Mrs. Garrett looked like Rihanna after an evening with Chris Brown. Garrett had come after me and Jake Ellis. We had been disrespected on our own turf. Jake Ellis had been dodging bullets and I’d been gaffled, beat down, and could barely walk straight. We didn’t start shit. But we ended it. Jake Ellis never backed down.
I wasn’t no punk either. Never would be.
Jake Ellis handed me the Glock. He glanced at me and probably figured I needed it. I looked back at Mrs. Garrett, was going to leave the gun with her, but the battered housewife shook her head, wouldn’t touch it. I assumed she wanted to keep her fingerprints off the neener. Again, that was the wrong answer to me. If she could get us all dead, she would win the grand prize. I’d seen that blockbuster movie before, where all the men were killed, and the femme fatale ended up on a Caribbean beach, sipping margaritas, rich, widowed, a dreadlocked lover for hire at her side.
I stood next to a man who didn’t know how to lose. On the other side of that door was a man built from the same steel. An unstoppable force had met an immovable object.
I didn’t want to be here, was as battered as Mrs. Garrett. I was ready to leave. Not out of fear. I was suffering, but I didn’t know if Garrett’s bushwhackers had hurt Jimi Lee. She could be dead. She could be in a car that had been bricked and set on fire. She had been my first love. The mother of my disrespectful child. I couldn’t leave, couldn’t pretend this shit didn’t happen, sip brown liquor, use Kush to ease the pain, put Band-Aids on my wounds, and crawl back in bed with Rachel Redman, couldn’t go on with my life without knowing whether Jimi Lee had been dragged into this. Even when it felt like I would drown, Jimi Lee’s safety was on my mind. She’d never left my mind. Not a day for twenty goddamn years.
Jake Ellis said, “Bruv? You’re shaking. You okay?”
I nodded. “I’m always ready. Especially when I’m not.”
Ego was the anesthesia that deadened the pain of stupidity. And death killed egos; no anesthesia needed. Nothing killed stupidity. Stupidity had survived for millions of years. Like kudzu, it spread and spread and spread. It was a cockroach in the mind.
Jake Ellis took the key, twisted it in the keyhole, turned the door handle. Six locks clicked and disengaged. As soon as the door opened, bullets flew our way. Garrett screamed and fired.
I fired back. Eight bullets left. Seven. Six. Five. Then four.
Garrett’s shots matched mine as his insults matched Jake Ellis’s. And
each time, Mrs. Garrett screeched and made her Apple Booty jiggle. Jake Ellis wanted to rush into the room, his rage the lie that made him feel bulletproof.
We were invading a master bedroom like it was a Middle Eastern country filled with oil, busy taking shots and being shot at, until the clip ran dry. We pushed the doors open and Garrett was alone, no bushwhackers, but he held his gun. A nice gun that had no bullets. He tried to fire again. The bitch was bone-dry. He casually put the gun in his waistband. It wasn’t a sign of surrender. He had other weapons. He reached for two knives. Held one in each hand.
Swords, actually.
He had swords with short blades, the kind made for gutting a man.
Garrett was out of breath, stress-sweating, looking at us like he was a zombie killer.
He wasn’t going to go down easily.
And he was still determined to take out Jake Ellis.
Garrett grinned that monkey grin. “I ain’t scared of you motherfuckers. Come taste this metal.”
CHAPTER 27
JAKE ELLIS DIDN’T back away, so I pressed forward. Moving in opposite directions, we picked up lamps to use as weapons, something to block those blades, and we had one in each hand. Garrett huffed, puffed, then yelled, came at us swinging his blades, swinging his blades, swinging his blades.
Garrett charged at us, and we each threw a lamp. Jake Ellis’s missed, but mine hit Garrett’s right arm. That didn’t stop the fat man who was once a boxer at Princeton from getting his balance and trying to cut our heads off. We were in an oversize bedroom that had a sitting area, king-size Italian bed, art, and pictures of him and his wife when they married.
Bad Men and Wicked Women Page 26