Shaker

by Scott Frank

  He looked up and asked, “You the nurse?”

  “No.”

  “My blood sugar’s all jacked again.”

  “I just said I’m not the nurse.”

  “You look like her.”

  Kelly said, “That can’t be true,” and nodded to the players on the field. “Which one’s Jamal Wilson?”

  The kid said, “Number four.” And then, as she scanned the uniforms, “The quarterback.”

  Of course, he was.

  Kelly watched as number four, a tall lanky kid, rolled back and threw what looked to her untrained eye like a million-yard pass, the other players cheering when it was caught by another kid who trotted into the end zone with it. As they all lined up for another go at the play, Kelly climbed the stairs into the empty bleachers and sat down to watch.

  She wondered what she was doing here. With everything going down, her life in disarray, why was she sitting here watching the Crenshaw Cougars practice? The truth was, she hadn’t felt much like a cop in a long time. That was a place she never thought she’d get to. Be just like the rest of them after ten years. Angry and drunk. Numb to pretty much everything. That wasn’t supposed to be her. But she now knew what they all knew: that the very thing you need to stay strong and keep your head, that daily and deliberate apathy you practice like meditation, is the very thing that, in the end, robs you of your desire to get in the car and catch bad guys. Nobody tells you that, once you put on the armor, you can never take it off.

  Kelly looked across the field and watched a familiar-looking Camry loop around the parking lot in front of the gymnasium. She thought this could be one of those things, like how it seemed like every time Kelly looked at a digital clock, it was always when it happened to read 11:11. Maybe she looked at the clock a lot of times and those were just the numbers she remembered. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that every time Kelly noticed a car today, it was a beige Camry.

  Or maybe somebody was following her.

  She was giving some serious thought to walking over there and knocking on the window when she heard the entire team yell Go Cougars! Practice over, they all began heading for the gym. Kelly watched number four as he unsnapped his chin strap and pulled his helmet off. She had to admit to a slight catch in her breath when she saw the kid. He was a dead ringer for the man in the photograph. A younger, cleaner-cut version to be sure. But still, there he was.

  No wonder Ruth Ann first thought she saw a ghost.

  Kelly watched him go into the gym, then looked off at the parking lot. The Camry was gone.

  She sat in her car for nearly thirty minutes before she saw the first players leave the gym, hair wet, clothes hanging loose. All of them with that easy, confident walk of young men in complete control of their bodies, if only on the outside. She saw Jamal, a heavy book pack over his shoulder, come out with a couple of other kids. They stood and talked for several minutes before a navy blue minivan pulled up and Jamal bumped it out with his buds and got in. As the van drove past, Kelly caught sight of a woman in some kind of white uniform behind the wheel, and another, younger kid in the backseat.

  She pulled out and followed them for a couple of miles to View Park, an upper-middle-class black neighborhood in South L.A. Kelly drove past as the van pulled into the driveway of a well-kept single-story home sitting on a corner knoll. She pulled to the curb and watched in her mirror as the woman in the white uniform got out. Jamal got out the other side and was now playfully shoving who Kelly figured had to be his younger brother, the kid looking to be about twelve. She waited for them all to go inside and then moved her car across the street. She wouldn’t be able to stay here very long, as neighbors would surely clock a white woman parked in what looked a lot like an unmarked police car. She watched them in the kitchen window, still talking and playing around, and took a couple of pictures of the house with her phone. When the woman looked out the window at her, Kelly took one more picture and drove away.

  If that was Ruth Ann Carver’s son, it looked like he had a pretty nice life. From a distance anyway. If that was her son. No matter what, Kelly needed to be careful how she played this. Eighteen years later, there would be a lot of other people in the mix now, and sensitivity was never Kelly’s strong suit. She wished that Rudy was here to advise her, instead of in Missouri doing God knows what.

  —

  Albert woke up stiff and pissed off. He had meant to take only a quick nap and here it was now ten minutes after five, the sun just coming up. He got out of the car and stretched, wanting to be limber for what was coming. It had been a while and he hoped that the muscle memory was still there. Killing, after all, contained its own very specific form of physical exertion and small motor skills. He took a series of deep breaths, knowing that he’d have to find some time to meditate later in the day, and crossed the street to Kelly Maguire’s apartment.

  Albert didn’t have to wait long for someone—in this case, a guy in a little black BMW—to pull up from the garage. The man at the wheel, looking ahead, not behind, as he pulled out onto the street, never seeing Albert stroll down the ramp and duck under the metal gate as it slowly rolled back down.

  He quickly found Kelly’s unit and considered simply knocking on the door, but thought better of it and picked the lock. This took him close to twenty minutes as he was out of practice and had brought the wrong tools, locks having become more sophisticated during his dozen-year hiatus. Surprisingly, no one came out of the other units and no one inside this one had heard either his scratching at the door or the soft curses he kept muttering as he worked.

  Once inside, Albert stood in the near dark for a good five minutes just listening and getting used to the feel of the place. It was clean, but she was a smoker. Had been smoking recently. There was an open wine bottle and half a glass of red on the coffee table. He pulled the silenced .22 from his coat and started down the hall.

  Having already missed one opportunity to speak with Sergeant Maguire, Albert figured this time he’d be inside waiting when she returned home. Once he made a quick check to make sure that no one else was here, he’d look around and see if she by chance brought any of her work home.

  The first bedroom was set up as an office. The computer on the desk was awake, someone having used it recently. A fresh butt in the ashtray. The computer would be his first stop in just a moment…

  While blackout curtains in the bedroom made it nearly impossible to see, Albert sensed the bed was empty. The duvet lay piled on the floor as if it had been thrown aside. The bathroom was cold and the shower was dry. Where was she? He didn’t think the smoker went for a morning jog. There was a chest against one wall and he looked through the drawers and quickly found a gun, a cop Glock, but no badge. Was she at work? This early?

  He had just sat down on the bed to figure out his next move when he heard a key in the front door.

  She was back.

  He could hear her moving around the living room. She opened a cabinet, lifted the cushions on the sofa, then went into the kitchen and started to open drawers in there. She was looking for something. Albert crossed his legs and waited quietly on the bed. He could see her now go into the home office across the hall and heard her going through the desk. Heard her say, “Fuckin’ A,” and then she was in the bedroom.

  She started going through the drawers Albert had just gone through. She didn’t see him sitting there in the dark, moved to the closet and turned on the light. She rooted around for a moment or two, finally coming out with a box. She was about to set it down on the bed when she saw Albert and shrieked, let go of the box, which hit the floor.

  She tried to bolt for the door, but Albert was up in an instant, blocking the way.

  He turned on the light and looked down at the jewelry, cash, and another pistol that lay on the floor. She sure liked her guns. He then looked up at her. She was in jeans and a T-shirt. No shoes. Her hair was short and palmed back on her head.

  “You’re not Sergeant Maguire.”

  She was breath
ing hard and could barely speak.

  “No.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Erin.”

  “Well, Erin, right up top, let me say that I’m not here to hurt you or otherwise harm you in any way. I’m not a rapist nor am I, like you, a thief.”

  She saw the silenced pistol in his hand.

  “You’re not a cop either.”

  Albert said, “No,” and then nodded to the box on the floor. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I was picking up some of my things.”

  “So that’s your gun and jewelry, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your cash?”

  He pointed with the gun to where she’d tucked a wad of it into her pocket, some of it sticking out.

  She said nothing.

  He smiled and asked, “Can you tell me where Sergeant Maguire has run off to?”

  “I have no idea. I haven’t seen her since the night before.”

  “Yet you knew she wouldn’t be here.”

  “I heard her leave.”

  He could see that she instantly regretted saying that.

  “So you live nearby?”

  He kept looking at her, knew that he probably shouldn’t let her walk out the door.

  Erin said, “Is Kelly in trouble?”

  “Yes, I think she is. And I think it would be best if you stayed away from her for a little while. Maybe resisted the urge to come over and rob her until after this particular trouble has passed.”

  She was clearly relieved that he was giving her a future. Albert had always loved that little tease. Subtly imply that they have tomorrow, all the while planning where the body would fall. Roy had never been that way, and in the end, that’s what blew them apart.

  Albert was raising the pistol when he heard someone else come through the front door.

  “Mommy.”

  And now Erin looked at Albert, even more frightened than she had been just a moment ago.

  Albert took a step back through the door and looked down the hall. A little boy, no older than three, in Toy Story pajamas was coming this way.

  “Hi, buddy,” he said. “Your mom’s just in here.” And then the smile. “Come join us.”

  Erin looked at Albert and said, “Please…”

  Albert hid the gun along his leg and stepped aside as the boy padded into the room and froze. He looked at his mother, wasn’t sure how to feel.

  “I woke up,” he said.

  She grabbed him. Tears in her eyes now.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  “He’s handsome.” Albert looked at Erin. “Is his father that handsome?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he around?”

  “More or less.”

  “Which is it?”

  She glanced at the boy, clearly didn’t want to answer in front of him.

  Albert understood and said, “So he’d miss his mother then, should anything happen to her.”

  She clung to the kid. “Yes,” she said. “He would.”

  Albert looked at the two of them while he ran the math on the situation.

  She said, “I’m not going to say anything.”

  “Won’t you?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, what would I say?”

  “I can think of a few things.”

  “I wouldn’t. I won’t.”

  Albert looked at the boy.

  She got the message, took her son by the hand, and faced Albert.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” she said. “I have to fix his breakfast.”

  Albert finally smiled and stepped aside.

  “Nice meeting you, Erin.”

  Albert spent the next hour on Kelly’s computer. There was some research on the house he’d followed her to the day before. But it was the email with the photo of Roy’s birth certificate attached that got his attention. He stared at it for a good long while.

  He went into Kelly’s history and found that, along with an Alcoholics Anonymous website, she’d that morning spent some time on the Dodgers website. Albert studied the schedule of upcoming Dodgers home games and smiled.

  A real smile, not the kind he used to flip people the fuck out. For Albert now realized that he didn’t need Kelly Maguire at all to find his old friend. In fact, he knew why she had been taking her sweet time. There was no need to go out and hunt for him. Not when she, like Albert, now knew exactly where he was going to be.

  Kelly woke up at four in the morning unable to sleep or stop thinking about anything other than Jamal Allen Wilson. She was convinced that there was a move here that would somehow redeem herself in her own eyes and maybe, just maybe, accomplish something good. But, being Kelly Maguire, she could also see the trap. She was no soft touch and, with her involvement, there were at least a dozen ways somebody or everybody gets hurt.

  But she couldn’t do nothing.

  So she found herself parked once more in front of Jamal Wilson’s house, this time at five in the morning and with Ruth Ann Carver now in the seat beside her. Kelly offered her one of the Egg McMuffins she picked up on her way to the shelter, but the woman waved it away, kept her eyes glued on the front door.

  Kelly shrugged, took her own healthy bite, sipped from a watery Diet Coke, and noted another car in the driveway now parked alongside the minivan. A beige Lexus sedan that no doubt belonged to Karl Wilson, the man of the house and sole proprietor of a State Farm agency in nearby Baldwin Hills.

  Kelly had at first planned on talking to the mother but then decided that she would first give Ruth Ann Carver another look at the kid. Mr. Wilson went for a run at around five-thirty. Lights went on in the house while he was out; for the last half hour, she had been watching the entire family eating breakfast. Who does that anymore? But there they were, all at the same table. The mother, Victoria Wilson, a dietitian at Children’s Hospital on Vermont Avenue, came out of the house a half hour later and Kelly and Ruth Ann followed her and the two boys to Crenshaw High.

  They were heading to Children’s Hospital when Kelly’s phone rang. After a brief chat with Rudy, Kelly let Ruth Ann Carver off at a salon in Koreatown called Loubelle and went to meet Rudy at the home of Trevor Green, aka Shake, where they served the warrant Rudy had secured based on a positive ID off the Zarate video made by not Alonzo Zarate, but a former UCLA student who had come forward just that morning. She had known Shake at Camp Kilpatrick where, according to Rudy, she had once taught some kind of writing workshop. Kelly was never big on the white women who thought they could parachute into the jungle for a month or two and “change lives.” She had no patience for anybody who went to war as an “experience.” Worse thing that probably ever happened to this UCLA girl, Kelly thought, was she got a C+ on some term paper.

  Trevor/Shake, handcuffed straight out of bed in jockey shorts and Oakland Raiders T-shirt, gave up everybody in the alley before the cops had led him out the front door. By the time his lawyer showed up at North Hollywood, the only offer the pretty young ADA had for him was coffee. The kid would slam for sure, the only question was for how long.

  While they were processing Trevor in North Hollywood, a radio unit from Hollywood Station over the hill spotted Delroy Kinney, aka L, going into an army surplus store on Vine. Upon the arrival of two more units, the officers went inside and somehow got into a “brief shootout” with Delroy, who, at the insistence of Kesha, had come to the store to purchase an earthquake kit for an apartment she neglected to tell Kelly they had been renting in Echo Park. Delroy took twenty-eight shots to the head and chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.

  It wasn’t yet ten a.m.

  By three-thirty that afternoon, Kelly was back in the bleachers at Crenshaw High sitting beside a silent Ruth Ann Carver watching the Cougars run through the last half hour of practice, Ruth Ann’s eyes following number four wherever he went on the field. When the coach finally blew three short blasts through his whistle and called it a day, Ruth Ann leaned forward and watched as Jamal pul
led off his helmet. And just as Kelly had two days before, Ruth Ann let out a gasp when she at last saw his face.

  Twenty minutes later, Kelly and Ruth Ann sat in the car as the boys began to emerge from the locker room. Ruth Ann sat up when Jamal came out in a group of three others, then craned her neck to better see Victoria Wilson behind the wheel of the navy blue van when it pulled to the curb and Jamal slid inside.

  Ruth Ann Carver still had not uttered a single word when they pulled to the curb just down the street from the house in View Park. She watched as the two boys piled out of the van and went inside. Kelly rolled the car forward so they could see better into the house, and Ruth Ann watched the same scene Kelly had a couple of days before: the boys horsing around in the kitchen while Victoria Wilson worked on dinner.

  It was nearly dark when Karl Wilson pulled into the driveway and Kelly turned to Ruth Ann and asked her, “What would you like me to do?”

  Ruth Ann kept silent and watched Karl go inside and greet his family.

  “Ruth Ann?”

  The woman finally turned away from the house and stared out through the windshield at something only she could see.

  Kelly asked again. “What would you like me to do?”

  “That’s not my son.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That boy in there. He’s not mine.”

  Kelly considered Ruth Ann’s profile a moment, the woman rigid in her seat, and asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” And then she turned to Kelly and said, “I’m damn sure.”

  Kelly nodded. “Okay.”

  “And how dare you drag me down here and waste my time with this bullshit.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “You damn well oughta be.”

  Kelly started the car.

  “Let me give you a ride back to the shelter.”

  “Never you mind,” Ruth Ann said and opened her door. “I’ll walk.”

  She got out and slammed the door. For the next few minutes Kelly sat there and watched Ruth Ann Carver walk past the Wilson house and up the street until she finally disappeared over the hill. Kelly gave the house one last look, and said, “Fuck this,” and began the twenty-minute drive to Dodger Stadium.