The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  “What’s your point?” Romeo’s tone was entirely rhetorical. He just wanted let on that he was annoyed.

  “Point is that we know!” pressed Ben. “We all know when we’re putting ourselves at risk. We know when we put our families, the ones we love at risk—”

  “What’s going on?” asked Gonzo. Instinctively, she had rotated to Ben’s left, blocking him from the rest of her guests. If Ben was drunk and sketchy, she didn’t want him embarrassed.

  “Need to talk to you,” said Ben, his voice slightly trembling. Then he caught himself. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the place. I’m kinda drunk...”

  “We already established that,” said Gonzo.

  “Right. You’re right. Sorry.”

  “We can talk all you want,” said Gonzo. “Later, okay. Whatever it is, we can talk.”

  Gonzo couldn’t read what kind of emotional knife had been stuck in Ben, or the depth of his pain. Let alone how much of his dark demeanor was alcohol-induced. There was, though, that adultery remark he had delivered through grit teeth. For a nanosecond Gonzo had wondered if Ben had been unfaithful. Guilt-ridden men liked to confess to women cops. Women cops were sometimes treated like priests. As if a woman wearing a badge served as some kind of priest or Holy Madonna.

  One thing was for certain. Ben wasn’t himself.

  He was usually sunny despite his odd rants and opinions. In Gonzo’s book, he was an irregular Will Rogers, occasionally moody, but buoyed by a good soul. Gonzo felt as much from the moment she had met him. But whatever ailed her friend would have to wait. There were two more hours of pool party to hostess, kindergarten parents to schmooze, and a gifted bottle of El Conquistador Tequila waiting for her once her little boy fell asleep.

  “Am I interrupting?” asked Alex.

  Ben’s wife looked positively posed, standing two yards beyond Romeo and outside what appeared to be some kind of triangle of conspiracy. How long she had been standing there was anyone’s guess. She had one arm akimbo, and in the other, that cold bottle of beer forked between her index and middle finger, suspiciously swinging it to and fro like a pendulum.

  “Hey, you got that beer,” said Gonzo. “Thanks.”

  Alex handed off the beer to Gonzo, trying not to look too accusingly at the recipient before letting her eyes dart to her husband.

  “Everything okay, hon?”

  “Fine,” lied Ben, throwing a fist to his mouth and feigning a cough. “Allergies are kicking up.”

  Ben wisely slipped his arm possessively around Alex’s waist, attending to her with a warm smile.

  “Having fun yet?” whispered Ben.

  “Not as much as you,” nudged his wife.

  “Some time ago, I had another life...” Ben confessed. The next words choked him. He sat up in the chaise, his elbows to his knees, and tried to pull out what had long ago been massaged into a secure hiding place. “Obviously, it was before Alex. I was right outta college. Married young. Had kids. Twin girls.”

  Rolling the pricey bottle of tequila between her palms, Gonzo was propped on an identical lounger, her eyes stuck on a hanging moon. She was already halfway to drunk when she had answered the doorbell, a 9mm pistol bootlegged to her hip. When Gonzo discovered Ben on her dim little doorstep she hadn’t known if he truly wanted to talk—or if by feigning a need to talk, his true plans were to try and fuck her—or if she was juiced enough to let him.

  But clearly Ben had other things on his mind.

  “Anyway,” Ben continued. “Things didn’t work out for us.”

  Funny, Gonzo thought. She hadn’t pegged him for the divorcing type. And thinking she could break the tension of the moment, almost said as much. She was glad she kept her mouth shut.

  “It was a home invasion thing. Thirteen years ago. God...” added Ben, surprising himself. “Has it been that long?”

  Gonzo swallowed. Despite the expensive tequila, her throat had turned dry. She took another sip.

  “Where’d it happen?”

  “Culver City. Owned us a little house off Sawtelle. Starter house. But it was ours. Our house. I remember saying that to her. The two of us to each other—all the time. Our house.”

  The pauses. When Ben stopped talking, if only for seconds, Gonzo thought the pain in him sounded like there was so little give inside, his head might crack open.

  Ben told her about tending bar. That from the moment he turned twenty-one he had been a barman. It was all part of a master plan devised since that first restaurant job he had landed at age fifteen. Montagues. An old school steak and lobster joint. With a little hustle, Ben had graduated to a red-vested waiter by sixteen, the restaurant’s youngest ever. And though it was technically illegal for him to serve drinks until he was eighteen, the management and customers had either looked the other way or didn’t care. The young waiter was energetic, entertaining, efficient, and would come to the restaurant straight from school. Ben would plough through his homework before the first shift and on his breaks, pocket his tips, and be home in bed by eleven to ponder the next move in his master plan: Sports car. College. Wife. Kids. His own restaurant. And on his days off, maybe try his hand at tennis or golf.

  Young Ben was always snappy. At Montagues, when a regular customer would slap an extra fiver into Ben’s palm, the reply had always been the same. “Ah. It’s because you know that junker of mine don’t run on good looks.”

  Bartending had been the path to the dream. Liquor prices were always at a premium, the customers habitual, and the tips for a smiling barkeep with a patient ear and a friendly joke, certain to be worldly enough to help pay for college and the student loans he would incur.

  Then there were the women. Whether arriving at the bar single, in groups, or with a date, a talented, smiling Ben was in a prime position to pick his mark, divide her from whatever her social engagement, and have her before the clock struck 2:00 A.M.

  “I was working that night.” Ben wasn’t so much telling the story to Gonzo. He was reliving it, coiled on the lounger and staring into the night.

  “I was partnered in this restaurant over on Pico. Maybe you knew it. Was called Prague ’88.”

  The year was 1994. After Ben had graduated from Cal State Los Angeles with a bare-knuckled degree in business administration, he threw in with his two best high school friends, Miles and George, on the restaurant venture he had long dreamed about. The restaurant was called Prague ’88, after the Vodka-soaked week the three chums had spent in the Eastern European destination. The city was profoundly beautiful, the liquor cheap, and the women so very willing.

  From the jump, the three never deviated from Ben’s business plan. Ben would manage the bar and Miles would handle the food service. George, whose father was generous enough to kick-start his son’s entrepreneurial adventure, would handle the financing.

  “Before we bought it, it was a strip bar,” said Ben. “Called the Jaguar Club. Cool location. North of the freeway but still on the low-rent side of Santa Monica. City even gave us a break on the license fee. Sure you never went there? Not even for a drink? Mediocre food, but—yeah—the bar truly rocked.”

  The food side of the endeavor was never successful. The reviews were more thumbs down than up and getting a table was rarely difficult. But the business of serving booze to L.A.’s young and trendy was a different animal. The deco-styled bar was a full forty feet long and usually stacked four deep with pressing flesh, most waving cash or newly minted credit cards in return for the premium drink du jour. It was enough to tip the restaurant into profit. Bored with his part in Prague ’88, Miles soon quit and moved on to study art history in graduate school. And though George kept his stake in the business, he didn’t care for the late hours. This left Ben at the helm with an increased stake and a bank loan to cover Miles’ piece, but still pocketing the lion’s share of the profits.

  “I met her at the bar. She’d come in with some bond trader in a suit. Merrill Lynch, I think. First date kinda thing. Bad idea bringing a girl to a bar on a fi
rst date. She got bored and started talking to me. Bond guy left. She stuck around.”

  Gonzo’s head may have been buzzing, but her vision was crystal. She could make out the age lines on Ben’s face, each appearing to fade as he recalled his first wife.

  “And Christ, was I so done. Coulda had a parade of supermodels walk through and I wouldn’t have given ten shits... Man. Did I tell you her name?”

  “No,” answered Gonzo.

  “Sara. Sara Bess Savidge. I swear, we musta been shacked up in a week. She got pregnant, we got married... Shit happens so fast when it’s right. The twins were born in August 1996. Lea and Mae. Both with the middle name Bess. After Sara quit her job at Oppenheimer, we bought a small fixer in nearby Culver City.

  “That damn house needed a lot of work. And the subs, they all worked cheap if I paid cash. So for a while, instead of doing the nightly cash drop at the bank, I’d stuff it in my pants or a kitchen bag and lock it up in a gun safe at home. Bedroom closet. Combination was my mother’s birthday. 4-29-41.”

  Ben’s eyes glistened.

  “Still don’t get it. Sara was so good with numbers. Phone numbers, addresses. So why the hell couldn’t she remember the goddamn combination?”

  December 1997. The holiday season brought the usual foggy evenings to Santa Monica and in Ben’s experience cold air turned out the drinkers. Per person consumption had nearly doubled.

  That fall Ben had sent out a mailer to local businesses offering the flagging dining room of ’88 to local party planners. In no time the venue was booked six solid nights a week. Prague ’88 had turned into a gusher of booze and money.

  “We were hosting this party. Buncha Fox TV people. Really loud. I was short a man so I got behind the bar and started mixing. I remember barely hearing the desk phone ringing and nobody answering. Had this hostess named Marti. You know, the wannabe actress type with tits out to... Anyway. She wasn’t at her post. Shoulda been answering the phone instead of kissing ass with the TV people.”

  In his second life, Ben would have rated their Culver City fixer a safety index of less than three out of a possible ten. By all outward appearances it seemed safe enough. The house was in an older neighborhood where most of the homes were built in the forties and fifties. The streets had sidewalks and were well-lit. The lawns were all manicured. Just a few of the houses were rentals and Ben could recall a real pride-of-ownership feeling when he and Sara would take the twins for walks in their double stroller, often stopping at El Marino Park, conveniently located only a short suburban block to the west.

  For the young couple, it seemed like a perfect place to start a family. Ben was only twenty-five years old. Sara was twenty-six.

  “I shoulda known things. Like the increased crime index for living near a freeway. Or a park. Living near a park seems like a good thing. Lots of green grass. Playground for kids. But you’re a cop. So you know what happens in city parks after the sun goes down. All the drug deals and gangbangers lookin’ to start trouble.”

  “Culver PD’s always been strong,” said Gonzo, instantly regretting her idiotic addition to Ben’s monologue. The picture he was painting was clearly grim. Something awful was about to happen in Ben’s first life. Gonzo blamed the tequila and chose to keep her mouth clamped tight until Ben had finished.

  “Yeah, Culver has their own PD,” said Ben, “but everyone had those stupid private security companies with those stupid alarm systems. Those days, local PDs spent so much of their response time chasing faulty alarm trips, their response to real calls was no better than Inglewood’s.”

  Sara’s habit on those long holiday nights was to crawl into the master bed and flank herself with Lea and Mae. The girls would twist and burrow in as she read from a picture book, each child pretending she had mommy just to herself. Occasionally, the two would cry or fight, but mostly they would just drift on her words until mother and children were deeply asleep. So heavy was the trio’s slumber that Ben would sometimes joke that he could crawl into bed with the USC Trojan Marching Band without disturbing a single one of their heavy-lidded snores.

  “I locked the restaurant doors after two. Did my routine of checking the tills against the receipts. I liked to do that at the bar instead of in the back office because I could listen to the music. I’d switch to some mellow CD. Maybe have a few sips of Cognac.”

  As in so many other municipalities, Culver City’s emergency response telephone system was having difficulty keeping up with the increased demands of a burgeoning digital society. It was antiquated and analog, suffering from a rising influx of cellular phone calls, and had only five full-time operators. Only a month prior, in the November general election, Culver voters had narrowly passed Measure C, giving the sitting treasurer permission to issue and sell two million dollars in municipal bonds in order to pay for a much-needed upgrade.

  But until the upgrade, some Culver City residents dialing 911 were going to have to put up with a busy signal.

  “Was two-thirty when I finally made it to the back office. I remember four messages on the answering machine.”

  The back office was closet-sized, utilitarian white, and stacked with files, supply catalogues, and timecards. Scheduling calendars were pinned to a corkboard. There was room for one swiveling chair, a desk fit for a college dorm room, and a menagerie of photos of Ben’s young family stapled just above the two-line telephone.

  Ben was exhausted, certain he was getting the flu, and weighed whether or not to play any of the messages blinking on the answering machine. Then he reconsidered, thinking there might be something important on the tape—such as a changed order that might affect the party scheduled for the next evening.

  “First message was a professional party planner looking to book New Year’s. Second was some drunk asshole who was supposed to be at the party but was lost somewhere in Venice...”

  Gonzo decided she should stop sipping at the tequila bottle when she found herself tense and gripping the neck so tightly she thought it might snap off. No longer was she stargazing. No longer was she tracing Ben’s moonlit profile, or wondering why he had come to her that night. Gone was any inclination that she might be stupid or drunk enough to suck his cock.

  “Third message was Sara.”

  Ben’s voice squeezed into a crunchy whisper. His hands shook as he dried his palms against his pants legs. His face was streaked with tears.

  “She uh... she sounded really scared and was trying to be quiet. Said she thought there was somebody in the house. Said she dialed nine-one-one but couldn’t get through... She didn’t know what to do. She was begging me to come home now. Right now.”

  Ben wiped the heels of his palms across his eyes. Gonzo could see the snot draining from his nose. She wanted to hold him. To tell him it was all okay now. That he was just reliving bad memories. Trauma. She wanted to share her horrid experiences as a police officer in order to make him feel as if he wasn’t the only victim on the planet.

  But that would have been wrong. At least not now. Not when Ben was purging.

  “Last message,” braved Ben, clearing his throat and swallowing hard, the pressure behind his eyes close to unbearable. “Last message was Sara again. ’Cept this time she wasn’t whispering. I could hear the girls crying. And a man’s voice—but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Just Sara begging me to call back with the combination to the safe.”

  The rest of what Gonzo heard seemed scattered. She didn’t know if it was because of the frailty of the man telling the tale or because her own receptors were on overload. The story had snuck past her steely cop veneer. She was on the verge of sobbing outright. Poor Ben, she kept thinking. What a weight to carry around his neck.

  Ben faintly recounted the foggy drive home. Of running stop signs and red lights until an LAPD car finally pulled him over. He somehow explained himself and was placed in the back of the patrol car and driven to his neighborhood.

  The front door of the house was intact. But a quick recon revealed that the kitc
hen door off the driveway had been kicked in. One of the cops had restrained Ben while his partner explored. Before Ben knew it, the street was a parking lot full of emergency vehicles, flashing red lights, and dumbstruck neighbors standing on neatly mowed lawns.

  “All dead,” said Ben. He was slowly shaking his head from side to side. Like a metronome. “Kids in our bed. They found Sara...found her face down in front of the safe. They’d hit her with the same hammer they’d used to try and bust the lock... Dumb fuckers never got the money.”

  The dead space that followed Ben’s tale could have lasted ten seconds—or ten minutes. Gonzo didn’t know. One thing was for sure. Ben was cashed out. He had nothing more to say.

  And Gonzo? What could she say? The sound that finally broke the silence was the squeak of the cork twisting off Gonzo’s bottle of tequila.

  “Think you need this more than me,” she said.

  “Bet you’re wondering why I told you all this.”

  “You don’t need a reason.”

  “I know,” said Ben. “But I have a reason. Good one.”

  “Have you talked to Alex about—”

  “She knows most of it. What happened to my first family and all. We actually met—Alex and me—in grief counseling. After it all happened, it was like someone turned out the lights. For a long time everything was just dark. Anyway, me and Alex, we worked our way out together. Night became day again.”

  “Good to hear,” said Gonzo.

  “But there’s a part she doesn’t know,” pressed Ben. “’Bout a week or so ago, someone sent me this... recording.”

  “Like what? A tape?”

  “CD. Some kind of... deathbed confession... from a guy in prison.”

  “From the perp?”

  “Perp?” asked Ben.

  “The perpetrator. The man who...”

  “No,” answered Ben. “This was some old guy who claimed he’d shared a cell with the guy who killed my family... Anyway, he gave me a name.”