by Dianne Emley
He knew where Crowley lived. After the night he’d happened upon him and Dena going at it in his own living room, he’d followed him to his Hollywood Hills home. He’d lurked in the shadows and watched him through the windows of his house. He didn’t even have window coverings, a detail that ticked Scoville off. Here was a guy who thought he could get away with anything: murder, writing a book about the murder, screwing someone’s wife, and walking around in the altogether for anyone to see.
Crowley had come to the window at one point when Scoville had tripped over a bowl of water left out for a cat. Big, manly, macho Bowie Crowley owned a scrawny, battle-scarred black cat that must have come from the same pit from which Crowley had crawled. If Scoville had been the man he was now, the killer he was now, he would have lured Crowley outside and whaled at his head with a brick.
But that night, he’d lost his nerve.
That was before. Now he’d found a gun and his cojones. In a way, he was grateful to Jenkins for showing him the light. He would thank him before he blew his head off.
Scoville navigated the meandering road off Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The neighborhood had always been artsy and hippieish. Figures that Crowley would live in a pseudowoodsy house in Laurel Canyon with a hot tub on the back deck overlooking a eucalyptus grove. A freaking Writer’s Retreat. Scoville had seen a photo of Crowley in his home office there. Where The Writer Works. The Writer.…
Scoville sneered as he slugged down a bracer from the bottle of Grey Goose, which luckily hadn’t broken during his fight with the thug.
He cut his headlights and drove slowly as he approached Crowley’s house. He passed it, looking for suspicious cars or the police. Dena had probably called Crowley to warn him, but when Scoville didn’t see anyone around, he wondered. Maybe she was too busy with all the cops she’d rained down upon Hancock Park.
He parked down the street from Crowley’s house. Opening the car door, he put on his tennis shoes. Standing, he slipped the gun under the waistband of his gym shorts, then snatched it before it hit the ground when it slid from beneath the elastic and headed down his leg. He had sought the gangster, gangbanger panache of the gun beneath the waistband, but he was having a wardrobe malfunction. Instead, he put the gun in his shorts pocket and pulled his T-shirt over it.
Walking around the car, he reached inside, opened the glove compartment, and took out a small flashlight. Dena had put it there, along with a disposable camera. In case he was ever in a car accident, it was important to have a camera to take photos, she’d said. The safety precautions seemed ludicrous now.
He took another pull from the bottle of vodka, wrapped it inside the paper bag, and set it on the floor.
He walked up the street to the house, then sprinted and ducked behind a large willow tree in the middle of the lawn. Crowley’s motorcycle was in the driveway. Scoville guessed he was home.
The house was small, made of stained redwood and river rock in a boxy, utilitarian style. It looked as if it had been built by the tender hands of hippies in the sixties, with that homespun natural look that Scoville had always found pretentious in its attempt to look unpretentious. Give him the genuine pretension of an overblown mansion any day. Looking at Crowley’s cottage, Scoville could almost smell the decades-old pot smoke that had permeated the wood and the spilled sangria that had leached into the floor.
The house was completely dark. Scoville saw that as another example of Crowley’s unbridled arrogance.
Look at me. I’m the big Bowie Crowley. I don’t care who looks through my windows. I don’t even keep a light on at night. I’m not afraid of anything.
The motherfucker.
Scoville darted to the side of the house, avoiding the front picture windows. He stretched to peer into a side window. The full moon cast enough light for him to see that the sparsely furnished living room right off the front door was empty.
Creeping farther, he stepped over the cat’s water bowl and empty food bowl on the cement back porch. From there, he could see into the kitchen. He slid a hand beneath his T-shirt and yanked up his shorts that had slid well beneath his healthy belly from the weight of the gun. He couldn’t see much of the kitchen, but it seemed empty.
He tried the back door. The doorknob turned. It was unlocked.
Of course it’s unlocked. I’m Bowie Crowley. I can fuck a guy’s wife in his own house in front of his living room windows.
Scoville felt a jolt of excitement as he slowly pushed the door open.
It’s a new day, Bowie. Time to wake up and smell the gun smoke.
He set a foot on the linoleum floor. The thin light that filtered in through the backdoor showed that the kitchen was undergoing renovations. The cabinets had been yanked out. Sawhorses and power tools strewn about suggested that Crowley was doing the work himself.
It was yet another thing that frosted Scoville.
Inside the kitchen, he risked turning on the flashlight. It was cheap, the hardware-store brand, and didn’t cast a bright beam. He didn’t know whether it was better to leave the door open or closed. He opted for closed.
A door to the right led to a dining room. An opening off it led to what looked like a living room. Scoville navigated around the construction project and went into the tiny dining room. The table was covered with a tarp. On it were piled the dinette table and chairs that must have been in the kitchen.
He crept from there into the living room. A hallway extended off it. Crowley’s bedroom had to be back there.
The house was silent. Dena must not have called him. Maybe she did call him and he’d left in a vehicle other than the Harley. He’d gone flying over there to be by Dena’s side, the chivalrous prick. Of course he would.
Maybe he was asleep. Early to bed. Up to see the sunrise. The dawning of a new day in the glorious life of Bowie Crowley.
Scoville’s hate for Crowley burned like unrequited love.
He turned off the flashlight, not wanting to signal his approach. He took the gun from his pocket and put the flashlight in, again tugging his shorts up around his waist. He moved down the hallway until he reached a doorway. Holding the gun between both hands, he spun inside, staying close to the wall, as he’d seen in a million TV cop shows. It was Crowley’s office. Flashlight again out, he saw that the small room was crammed with a 1940’s vintage desk, an Aeron chair, and a computer with a large monitor. A flat-screen television was on a wall. There was a printer/fax/scanner combo. While other parts of Crowley’s life were spartan, his work area was not.
He looked at the answering machine. The display showed that he had no messages.
Scoville moved back into the hallway. A doorway across it led to a small family room off the kitchen. There were two more doors. The first one was likely a bathroom. The last had to be Crowley’s bedroom.
Scoville took a second to think about his next steps and to try to calm his pounding heart. He wiped his sweaty palms against his T-shirt, shuffling the gun and flashlight. He was annoyed that his body was sabotaging him while his mind was gung ho. His hands were trembling. His machismo was melting.
Keep your wits about you, Skipper.
He smiled as he recalled his father’s advice and the nickname the old man had called him. Would his father be proud of him? One never knew with Ludlow, but Scoville thought he might. Ludlow considered himself an outlaw, and took pride in it.
He took a deep breath, one of Dena’s five million relaxation techniques, and mentally said, Inhale. He then exhaled at length. Relax. Two breaths in. Two breaths out. He did it several more times. He had to admit that he felt calmer.
Clicking on the flashlight, holding it in his left hand and the gun in his right, he forced his feet to move to the next doorway.
Bathroom, as he had thought. Empty.
One room left. The door was open. Of course. That was Crowley’s M.O. Everything open for the world to see. C’mon in.
He hated him—more than he hated life itself.
What to do? What to do
next?
He would march down there and announce himself. He wouldn’t shoot until he saw the whites of Crowley’s eyes.
Wait, wait, wait.… He had to think about this.
He shut off the flashlight.
What if Crowley slept with a gun or a knife under his pillow? That was what got him sent to prison, throwing a knife at a guy and hitting him in the heart.
Best thing would be to shoot first and sort it out later.
Maybe he had a woman with him. He’d have to kill the woman too. If he was going to succeed in framing Jenkins for Crowley’s murder, he couldn’t leave witnesses.
Crowley had a son. He’d TiVo’d Dena’s interview with Bowie, and they’d talked about a son, a boy Luddy’s age. What if the boy was there?
Scoville talked himself out of that idea. If the boy was here, he wouldn’t be sleeping with his father. One of those couches had to be a pullout. Hell, Luddy slept like a log anywhere.
He was losing his nerve. Stop thinking and start shooting.
He took a deep breath, mentally counting One. Another breath. Two. One more. Three.
He turned on the flashlight and stomped toward the final door. His tennis shoes squeaked against the hardwood floor. He was all about action. Man of action.
He was at the door. The flashlight beam flit across the bed. Crowley was there. In bed. Beneath the covers.
Scoville started shooting. Shooting and shooting. Shooting wildly. The silencer muffled the timbre of the shots, but in Scoville’s mind, the room exploded. The comforter danced from the impact of the bullets. No noise came from beneath the covers. Sometimes death was quiet. Like with the thug and the hood ornament. Sometimes death was as subtle as the quiet thwack of a skull cracking open against asphalt.
He kept firing. The empty gun made anemic clicks but he kept on, finally letting his hand drop to his side. A haze of feather fragments from the down comforter swirled in the moonlight that spilled through the naked window.
The overhead light went on.
Scoville let out a bleat of surprise and spun on his heel.
“Whatcha doin’, Mark?” Crowley stood behind him, wearing only boxer shorts, a knife in his hand.
Scoville fired at the bare chest of his nemesis, using a gun that had no bullets, an apt metaphor for his life. The gun not achieving the desired result, he raised it in his hand and charged Crowley, intending to do to him what he had done to the thug.
In one smooth motion, Crowley set the knife on a dresser, seized Scoville’s wrist, and twisted it behind his back, pinning it there.
Scoville yelped and the gun clattered to the floor. He cried out again when Crowley sharply tugged on his arm as if he was going to pull it out of the socket. He felt Crowley’s body heat and his rock-hard chest through the back of his T-shirt. It repulsed him.
“Mark, quiet down. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
Facing the bed, looking at the bullet-riddled comforter, Scoville saw the flaw in his logic. It was too warm a night for a heavy down comforter.
“You are hurting me. Let me go.”
“Not until you promise to stop acting stupid.”
“You screw my wife in my own home and I’m supposed to do nothing.”
Crowley leaned to speak into Scoville’s ear. “I’ll admit that was uncool. If I was you, I’d be pissed too. I’d want to do to me exactly what you came here to do. But Mark, what kind of man terrorizes his wife and children? If you have a situation with me, deal with me.”
“Dena called you.”
“She called me.”
“I guess the police are there.”
“They are.”
“Are they coming here?” Scoville asked almost hopefully.
Crowley released Scoville’s arm and pushed him away. “I don’t need to settle this with cops.”
Scoville faced Crowley, rotating his shoulder and rubbing the socket. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“There’s no alcohol in this house. From what I see, you don’t need any booze.”
“Don’t fucking preach to me, okay? You A.A.-ers, you’re like evangelicals. You have a gospel tract you want to give me?”
“I have water, orange juice, or punch. What would you like?”
“I’ve got vodka in my car.”
“Water, orange juice, or punch.”
“Whatever.” Scoville was somber, his bluster spent like the last of his bullets.
Crowley grabbed a pair of Levi’s from the back of a chair. Scoville looked away as he put them on, buttoned the fly, and buckled the belt that was already through the loops. He slipped his feet into worn huaraches and the knife into a leather sleeve on the belt. He waved his hand, indicating that he wanted Scoville to walk ahead of him.
In the kitchen, Crowley turned on the overhead light and surveyed the tools scattered around from his remodeling project. “Mark, clasp your hands behind your head.”
“I’m not gonna—”
“Just do it.”
Scoville complied.
In the bright kitchen, Crowley got a good look at Scoville. “You get in a fight?”
“Yeah.” Scoville chuckled. “You should see the other guy.”
Crowley appraised Scoville’s injuries. “You might need a couple of stitches. I’ll take you to the E.R.”
“No.”
“It’s your face.” Crowley opened the refrigerator. “I’ve got water and punch. I’m out of orange juice. Need to go to the market.”
“I’ll take punch.”
Crowley took out two small flexible pouches with plastic straws attached. The back of the pouch was transparent, showing blue liquid inside.
Scoville made a face and dropped his hands.
“It’s my son’s Kool-Aid. Sugar-free. Hundred percent of your daily requirement of vitamin C. Keep your hands behind your head, Mark.”
Scoville huffed and again laced his fingers behind his head.
“Let’s go in the front room. Watch your step.”
Scoville wove around the clutter, leading the way into the living room. “You doing this work yourself?”
“It’s a hobby. I learned cabinetmaking in the joint. Helps keep my head clear.”
On the way, Crowley grabbed a chair from the dinette set stacked on top of the dining room table. He plunked it in the middle of the living room and turned on a lamp.
“Sit down.”
Crowley handed him a pouch of punch. He sat in a deep leather chair, unpeeled a straw from its wrapper, and stabbed it into the opening of his own pouch.
Scoville did the same, sucking up the blue Kool-Aid. Only a couple of hours ago, he’d left his office and gone to the liquor store, where he’d encountered the thug. Earlier, he had considered going to the police and telling them everything about Jenkins and the double homicide. At that time, his worst crime had been lying. He’d since broken through that invisible veil in everyone’s life, the membrane that separates before and after, the barrier that one might not even know is there until it’s pierced, never to be restored.
In life, there are, of course, normal, recognized milestones. Graduations, marriage, children. Certain deaths are expected. Normal. Then there’s the unpredictable rest. Falling in love. Landing a sought-after job. Making a friend. But the melodrama of before and after comes not from the best life has to offer, but the worst. Those dark nights of the soul in which one cries out for the boring, unsatisfying before. If one could have only known what the future held. How a simple twist of fate could set in motion a landslide of destruction.
I didn’t realize how good I had it. Scoville drank the last of the blue Kool-Aid. He squeezed the empty container and hung his head, wiping tears and mucus from his swollen face.
“You want to talk about it?” Crowley looked like a Roman statue. His smooth upper body descended in a V shape to the waistband of his faded Levi’s. His legs were relaxed and open. His long hair was sleep-tousled. His famous tattoo was on his right bicep. On his hip, the hilt of
his bowie knife protruded from a well-worn case.
Scoville did want to talk about it. The horrible secrets he’d been harboring were eating him from the inside out, just like the Prestone patty Jenkins had fed Mercer’s dog. There wasn’t enough booze in the world to drown it. He could kill all his enemies in the world and it wouldn’t help. Nothing could restore before. The best he could do was to deal with after like a man.
Finally, he met Crowley’s eyes. Scoville would never have believed it was possible, but they had a lot in common. Both had murdered in a fit of rage. But Crowley had found redemption. He’d come far enough back to win the heart of a woman like Dena. Yeah, Scoville knew he’d lost her for good. He couldn’t blame her.
He started talking. He told Crowley everything, beginning with the moment he set eyes on Jenkins outside the courthouse in Van Nuys, up through the bludgeoning of the thug, and how he’d come after Dena.
After he’d finished, he asked Crowley, “What’s Jenkins’s beef with you anyway?”
Bowie raised his hands and laced his fingers behind his neck, unintentionally creating the famous beefcake pose from his Vanity Fair photo shoot.
After a while, he said, “It’s a long story.” He dropped his hands onto the chair arms. “Actually, it’s a short story.”
Crowley had changed into boots, his trademark black T-shirt, and a leather jacket. His knife was still in its sleeve on his hip.
Mounting his bike, he picked up his helmet from the handlebars and put it on. He released the brake and rolled the Harley down the street until he passed his neighbors’ houses before firing up the engine and heading out of the canyon toward the freeway.
THIRTY-FOUR
Kissick and Vining decided to get a few hours’ sleep before driving out to the Salton Sea. Returning to the station, they borrowed a pickup truck from Vice that had been confiscated from drug dealers. It had tinted windows, four-wheel drive, big off-road tires, and a roll bar.