Two urchins, street kids about nine or ten, were thunking a basketball against an adjacent building. Just a matter of time before they thunked it off my T-Bird, I thought, annoyed. I saw a shadier parking space open up half a block away and was about to move the car when a Metro bus lurched to a stop at the corner and Angel got off, lugging two Burger King sacks. She headed down the street toward her front door, as the bus wheezed away from the curb, spewing an exhaust trail so heavy it looked like a mosquito spray truck. Angel wore cutoffs and a multicolored striped pullover. My timing had to be good, I thought. I needed to persuade her before she could disappear inside and slam the door. I opened my door, as a car parked down the block sprang to life.
I eased out of the T-Bird. Angel was two doors from home. Her step was not as bold or her body language as feisty as when her cubs were threatened. She looked almost vulnerable. I stepped into the street. That was when I saw it, a new cream-color Pontiac Bonneville, cruising ever so slowly down the block. The occupants, four or five teenagers, were all focused on Angel.
Oh, shit, I thought. Purse snatchers. They want the little handbag swinging from her left shoulder.
What did they expect to score from a welfare mother in this neighborhood? I thought indignantly. The little bastards were about to knock her down and rip off her purse. Probably even take the BK bags and steal her kids’ dinner. Dammit.
Riveted on her, they neither saw nor cared about me. I was glad I had stowed my own purse in the trunk.
“Angel!” I shouted across traffic to warn her.
She did not hear me. Shouting again, I began to run toward her. She stopped and turned. I expected one of the punks to bail out at any moment to take her down on foot. I glanced at the oncoming car. Nobody emerged, only gun barrels suddenly bristling from the passenger-side windows. The most menacing was long and fitted with a cone-shaped device. The guns glinted in the sun. These were no purse snatchers. This was a drive-by. Angel saw them at the same instant.
Everything happened in slow motion.
I was screaming still running toward her. She scrambled for the door, groping in the little purse for her keys. A plume of smoke erupted from the car, followed by the loud crack of gunfire. A row of grackles on a telephone line overhead leaped into open sky with raspy cries, beating the air with their wings. One of the little boys shouted; then both dropped and rolled like pros, as their basketball thudded slowly into the street. Halfway down the block an elderly man hit the sidewalk on all fours, his groceries scattering as he tried to crawl beneath a parked car. Angel still fumbled for her keys as I reached the door. I twisted the knob, pounded it with my fists.
“Open it! Open it!” I screamed at her. Earsplitting cracks kept coming, as fast as the two gunmen could pull the triggers. Concrete exploded overhead. Clouds of dust and grit showered us. Angel whimpered, keys in her hand at last. Sparks cascaded off the side of the building as a round smashed into a power meter. Glass flew out of two parked cars out front. The gunmen had been shooting high but were correcting their aim. A slug buzzed like an angry wasp, then shattered concrete inches above the door. Something glanced off the frame of my sunglasses, and for an instant I thought I was hit. They drew up almost abreast, still shooting, so close I heard cries from the occupants, saw them bouncing oddly around inside the car. We’re dead, I thought, forcing my body against the door, which suddenly flew open. Screaming and cursing, we both fell inside on top of Harry.
The other children lay frozen on the apartment floor, the older ones, accustomed to drive-by shooting drills at school, shielding the preschoolers.
Angel clutched Harry as I swung the door shut, gunshots still slamming the building like sledgehammers.
“Stay down! Stay down!” I gagged, choking on the dust.
A hole the size of a quarter opened in the door, and another the size of a tennis ball appeared in the wall across the room. The same slug kept going breaking glass in its path. Misty was on the floor, her body across the baby, eyes closed tight, both hands clamped over her ears. I thought the firing would never stop. Would they ever run out of ammo?
Suddenly it was quiet. Ears ringing I breathed again, despite the thick haze of dust. The shooters were gone as quickly as they had appeared. I crept to the broken front window to be sure. White smoke drifted slowly down an eerie empty street that smelled of cordite and sulfur.
Angel sobbed and let go of Harry, who got to his feet. I wanted to hug him myself for opening the door. He never cried. Solemn and dry-eyed, he studied the concrete chips and dust on our clothes and in our hair, then blinked.
“Did you bring me anything?” he demanded.
Angel hugged him. “I did, baby, I did.” Whimpering she groped on all fours for the scattered burger bags. The other children began to stir and run to their mother. Astonishingly, no one was hit.
“Stay away from the windows.” My knees shook. “They could come back. Maybe they just went around the block.” They could be reloading.
I shoved a chair against the door while Angel dialed 911. Then Misty and I turned the table on its side and gathered the rest of the kids behind it until the police came.
“Britt, how’d you get here so fast?” the first cop asked. His second question was for Angel. “You got some kind of beef with gang-bangers?”
“No,” she said, still sniffling. “It was my ex-husband.”
My head swiveled on that one, and I winced. The chunk of flying concrete that bent my sunglass frame had bruised the side of my face.
“That son of a bitch!” Angel raged, as anger took the place of fear. “That son of a bitch! He tried to kill me!”
“Who?” I said.
“Darnell, that bastard!”
“That wasn’t him,” I said impatiently. “They were teenagers.”
“He’s responsible.”
“Did you see him?” the cop asked.
“No, but he put them up to it,” she said stubbornly. Face pale, lips a determined line, she acted like she believed it. “He’s trying to kill me.”
It irritated me to think she might send the cops off on a wild goose chase, allowing the real culprits to escape. She reminded me of the Cubans who blame every cataclysm in life on Fidel Castro.
“He’s some redneck shit-kicker, a construction worker in Orlando,” I told them privately. “Most of these kids are his; he wouldn’t risk hurting them. The shooters, they’re gang-bangers.” I suggested they advise Bliss, who knew Angel’s background.
The detective whistled when he arrived and saw the mess. So did Lottie, who had heard the shooting report go out on her scanner and was already en route when the office dispatched her. I was glad to see her, feel her hug, and listen to her concerned murmurs about the bruise above my temple.
Gang unit detectives also showed up. So did TV news crews, demanding to know why I was inside the roped-off area and they were kept out.
The apartment house looked like it had been hit by mortar fire in Beirut. Heavy-duty rounds from the bigger gun had gouged out chunks of the building.
Angel’s popularity took a major nosedive among her neighbors, particularly the Spanish-speaking people next door, left without power because of the smashed electric meter. A parked Chevy Lumina was another casualty. Slugs had penetrated both doors, then struck the building.
Cops fanned out to be sure that no innocent neighbor had been blown away by a stray bullet while showering or watching TV.
The two small boys who had been playing near my car had seen the whole thing. Adrenaline-charged and hyper, they now danced about, bright-eyed and excited.
I did not know whether I would recognize any of the suspects. Their guns had commanded all my attention.
“I think one was an AK Forty-seven,” I told the cop writing the report.
“She right, she right! It an AK Forty-seven. Bam, bam-bam, bam!” One of the urchins crouched, spraying the crowd behind the yellow crime-scene tape with rapid fire from an imagin
ary weapon. The other nodded, clutching his basketball.
“They will flat-out kill you dead.” The cop shook his head. “Saw ‘em in ‘Nam. Excellent gun for the jungle.”
Our eyes caught for a moment, as we shared an unspoken thought about this place we lived in.
“This one had something attached,” I told him, mouth dry, as I tried to describe the conelike device.
“One of them things, you know…” the boy said. “You know, Tyrone, whatcha call it?”
“Flash suppressor,” the boy with the basketball said, proudly enunciating each syllable, jutting his chin with an air of superiority.
The cop nodded, taking notes.
“Why were they using it?” I fumbled with my own notebook.
The cop shrugged. “In daylight? Probably just cosmetic. Every time you fire, a foot of flame shoots out. A suppressor reduces the flash by about twenty-five percent, so it doesn’t mess up your night vision as much. Mighta been on there when they got the weapon, and they don’t know enough to take it off.”
“The one in the backseat had a smaller gun.” I still felt numb.
“Nine millimeter.” Tyrone casually bounced his basketball.
“You sure?” the cop said. “How do you know it was a nine millimeter?”
“I seen ‘em.” The boy clamped a skinny hand on his hip and struck a pose.
“Right,” the cop said, lifting an eyebrow.
Nearly forty rounds had been fired. It had seemed like more to me. Only a few expended cartridges were scattered in the street, which explained the bellowing and all the bouncing around inside the car. Because the guns were only partway out the windows, the shooters were spraying themselves and each other with red-hot shell casings.
“Like getting burnt wid a hot spoon,” Tyrone announced, nodding wisely. He caught the cop’s sharp glance and quickly added, “That what my cousin Billy say.”
Ordinarily, this shooting, though nearly a massacre, would not be considered newsworthy since no one died. But this was a slow news day, and even without casualties the cops made it top priority because so many children, a pregnant woman, and a newspaper reporter had been in the line of fire. And, of course, the guns were still out there, in the hands of people unafraid to use them.
Even McDonald showed up. Why was it my destiny to have him always see me at my worst? He looked grim, tilted my chin, eyeballed my bruise, and asked if the medics had checked it out.
“I’m okay,” I said. If he had his way I’d be in therapy three times a week and en route to X-ray right now. I was lucky. My dime-store sunglasses had deflected the flying concrete chip. They could not be resuscitated.
“Amazing nobody got hit,” Bliss said later.
He could not have been more amazed than I was. I shivered in the sun, acutely aware of its comforting warmth through my clothes. Inexplicable. A single stray shot often kills or maims a totally innocent victim blocks or buildings away. It happens every day. I remembered so many stories, so many deaths. Yet we were in their sights, the targets of that deadly barrage, and we escaped unhurt. Instinctively, I wanted to thank God for sparing us, but would that betray all those struck down? Had God abandoned them? Was anyone listening out there in the universe? Was anybody paying attention?
The car I heard start just prior to the shooting must have been the Bonneville. I had watched and waited for Angel. So had they.
“They were definitely after her,” I told Bliss. His own initial theories included random target practice, a gang initiation, or something Angel had brought on herself.
“One other possibility,” he said, lowering his voice.
“The ex-husband?”
“Nope. Planned Parenthood. They’d have a motive.” He suppressed a grin.
I ignored his sick humor. “She can’t stay here. They could come back.”
The sharp-eyed little boys had abandoned basketball for the moment and were eagerly helping the cops find expended cartridges, which were being marked and numbered. I reentered the apartment to say goodbye, Lottie trailing after me.
My knees were shaky, my appetite gone, but Angel’s kids were wolfing their burgers as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. She was feeding the baby.
“That was stupid,” she said flatly, back to her old obnoxious self. “Why did you run right in front of them?”
“I don’t know,” I said testily. “I thought somehow I could stop them from shooting you.”
“Working for the News doesn’t mean you’re bulletproof—or accurate. But thanks.” She wiped the baby’s chin.
“You’re welcome. Any idea why they were shooting at you?”
“I told you. It was Darnell.”
“Anybody else have a reason?”
“Nobody.” She shrugged and shook her head.
People who claim to have no idea why somebody tried to kill them are usually liars. They know. They are hiding something. When you piss somebody off that much, you know it.
“Why would Darnell do this?”
“Cuz he’s a mean son of a bitch, Cuz he doesn’t wanna pay child support. Cuz he’s violent. That’s why I got me a restraining order against him. Too bad that piece of paper don’t stop bullets.”
“You have a restraining order?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know.” She cut her eyes at me sarcastically.
“I came here because I want to tell your side,” I said. “Will you call me? Then we can talk.” I handed her my card and she took it.
Her eyes narrowed slightly when Lottie shot pictures, but she never objected and even provided the children’s names and ages.
“Gawd, what beautiful kids,” Lottie said, as we left the apartment. “To think, they almost lost their mama. I like her.”
“How could you?” I asked irritably.
“Hell all Friday, Britt. Look at those kids. The woman’s doing the best she can. It ain’t easy.” She paused and lowered her voice. “Lordy, looky there, at that handsome stud giving you the eye. I think he wants your body.”
She waved to McDonald, who flashed a dazzling smile and beckoned me to his car, where he was using his two-way. My heart went thumpita thumpita as I joined him. He looked happier than I had seen him in a long time. I smiled back.
“Guess what?” He gazed fondly into my eyes. “Our guys just arrested one of your Hollywood friends.”
11
I wanted to go home to change my clothes, wash my hair, and try to do something about the plaster and concrete dust permanently packed into my sinuses.
Instead I went back to the office, wondering how to charge a new pair of sunglasses to my News expense account. A message from Lance awaited me.
“You won’t believe the day I had.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, fingering the swollen side of my face, the skin around my neck itchy from the dust.
“Worst damn—”
“I know, I heard.”
“What?”
“Rad’s arrest.”
“Whoa. Where’d you hear that? Van Ness and Wendy said it was gonna be hushed up.”
“Surprise.”
“How’d you find out?”
“My job.”
“Writing a story?”
“Of course.” I waited for him to explode, intimidate, or attempt bribery. “It is a story,” I said. “Assistant director of major Hollywood epic busted during a brawl with two transvestite hookers at a Biscayne Boulevard crack house.”
“You have to do what you have to do.” He sounded philosophical.
“Damn straight.”
“Putting it in the newspaper won’t make us the most popular people on the set.”
“Us?”
He laughed. “Sure. They’ll assume I whispered in your ear.”
His voice suddenly made me all weak and mushy, wanting him to hold me and wh
isper in my ear. Was it because I had the hots for him? Because Kendall McDonald was acting like such a jerk? Or because I had just survived a near-death experience and needed validation that I was still among the living? “That’s not fair to blame you for being my source.”
“I’m a big boy, I can take it.”
“You’re not trying to talk me out of writing it?”
“Could anybody?”
“No.”
“Just what I thought,” he said. “Britt?”
“Yeah?”
“Was he really wearing women’s panties?”
“That’s what the cops say.”
Van Ness and Wendy testily refused comment, referring me to the project’s publicist, who sternly lectured that by persisting in the pursuit of this minor story I was about to forfeit my rare and privileged relationship with the filmmakers. The story of my life.
Johnson had posted bond, but I couldn’t find him. A search of his rental car had yielded enough drugs to warrant felony charges. A mixed bag of pills in his glove compartment included roofies, the date-rape drug Rohypnol, according to the cops. Never again, I vowed, would I chugalug drinks from strangers with such gay abandon. Was Rad the supplier for the entire movie crew? I wondered. Maybe that’s what assistant directors do. I recalled Ziff’s manic energy, Trent’s raw edginess, and even wondered if various pharmaceuticals might be helping Lance through all his stress and pressures. As I sipped coffee and pondered my lead, he called again.
“Hey, you’re on TV!”
I glanced up at the three silent monitors mounted over the city desk. There I was on the news. I have seen myself looking better.
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