Assume Nothing

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  Something about the body they’d found in a storm drain down here yesterday wouldn’t leave her be. A fully clothed white man spread out on his back in a pool of black water, ripe as a rotten cantaloupe and crawling with maggots after what the coroner’s tech guessed had been maybe three-to-five days of curing. The clothes had been nice: high-end slacks and a silk sport shirt, the shoes soft leather loafers that had Norman drooling. A TAG Heuer watch was on the dead man’s left wrist and a gold ring was on each of his middle fingers. He carried no wallet, no ID, no cash.

  It was way too soon to rule out homicide, but nothing at the scene had suggested it. The body bore no obvious wounds and neither blood nor a weapon – nor shell casings, for that matter – had been found anywhere around it. It looked as if the guy had just wandered into the mouth of the storm drain and collapsed in a heap. The idea seemed far-fetched, but Finola knew she had seen much crazier things happen, more times than she cared to admit.

  Still, the incongruity bugged her. The deceased and the river just didn’t jibe. Whoever he was, he wasn’t the kind of person one regularly saw down here – vagrants and gangbangers, indigent poor folks scavenging for recyclables. This guy had money, and probably, somewhere, a home. Why come down here to die?

  The barrel-chested black woman with the LAPD detective’s badge clipped to her belt, neatly corn-rowed head shining in the sun, scanned the river’s cluttered floor for answers. Not knowing what she was looking for, or why she was bothering to look for it.

  ‘What are you doing, Finola?’ she asked herself again.

  No sooner had their waitress set their coffee cups down than Dana said, ‘I’m going to see a lawyer next week, Joe.’

  ‘Yeah? What about?’

  ‘Don’t. Please don’t. This is hard enough for me as it is.’

  He thought about saying something smart, despite her warning, but it had taken him all week to get her to agree to this lunch meeting and he was afraid she’d storm out before he’d even had a chance to speak.

  ‘You don’t want to do that, Dana,’ he said, and the words came out sounding just as pathetic as he felt.

  ‘No. I don’t. But I don’t know what else to do.’

  ‘You could give me another shot. That’s something you could do.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve tried. It’s just too hard.’

  ‘And being alone would be easier? Raising my son on your own, without his father?’

  ‘His father’s a crazy man. A hot-tempered headcase who’s going to get him seriously hurt someday – or worse – if I don’t do something to stop him.’

  She was losing her own temper, the way she always did when Reddick refused to admit he was demented. He thought he saw the guy in the booth behind her turn his head, her sudden anger drawing his attention, but Reddick wasn’t sure. The coffee shop was just too damn crowded to suit him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dana said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Yeah, you did. But you’ve got it all backwards. I’m the reason Jake hasn’t been seriously hurt yet. And as long as I’m around, he never will be.’

  ‘You can’t say that. Nobody can. That’s your problem, Joe. You’re trying to guarantee something you can’t possibly control.’ She waited for two women headed for the cash register to pass their booth, then went on, making a concerted effort to be kind. ‘People get hurt. Bad things happen to them. It’s life, and you can’t make Jake and me exceptions to it, no matter how hard you try. It just isn’t possible.’

  ‘That’s what you say. I say, it’s better to attempt the impossible than do nothing. Life’s a rigged game, Dana. The man who doesn’t try to improve the odds for himself and everyone he cares about gets fucked. That’s your “guarantee.”’

  The man sitting behind Dana visibly flinched, and now Reddick was sure he was listening in. Reddick was going to give the asshole ninety seconds to mind his own business before getting up to suggest he have his lunch somewhere else.

  ‘Look,’ Dana said. ‘I didn’t come here to argue with you. I just wanted you to know what I plan to do. I’m going to file, Joe.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Separation is just delaying the inevitable. You won’t change and Jake and I can’t be around you the way you are. Let’s try to end this thing amicably, for Jake’s sake, while we still can, before it turns into something completely ugly.’

  ‘No. I’m not walking away and neither are you,’ Reddick said. ‘OK, so I come off the rails every now and then, maybe even more than I should. But it’s only because I love you, and I don’t want to see anything happen to you. I’ve got that right, Dana. To protect what’s mine. I’ve earned that right as much as anyone in this world, and you know it.’

  ‘Joe . . .’

  ‘You want to tell me you’re calling it quits because you don’t love me, that’s a different conversation. But that’s not what I hear you saying because it isn’t true. Is it?’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  Dana pushed herself out of the booth, attempting to flee, knowing she was only proving him right. Reddick jumped up to catch her by the left wrist and turned her back around to face him.

  ‘Wait! Don’t go.’

  ‘I have to get back to work. And we’ve said all there is to say. It’s over, Joe. Whether we love you or not, Jake and I don’t want to be your excuse for waging war against the world anymore.’

  She pried his hand off her wrist to free herself and walked out. Reddick let her go. The coffee shop was dead silent, every eye in the place aimed in his direction, but he barely noticed.

  He sat back down in the booth and drank his coffee.

  Clarke had been following Reddick around for hours – ever since early this morning when he’d driven out to the Echo Park address Reddick had given Andy Baumhower at the scene of their accident and this guy fitting Reddick’s description had come out – and now he was faced with a dilemma. Stick with Reddick, or follow this big, nice looking brunette he’d just tried to have lunch with at the Eat Well coffee shop on Sunset? Clarke thought Reddick ‘tried’ to have lunch with her because it looked like lunch hadn’t worked out, the lady storming out of the joint in a huff before anything more than coffee could be served.

  From his parked car across the street, Clarke watched the brunette scurry down the block as Reddick, clearly visible behind the coffee shop’s big picture windows, just sat there sipping his joe, looking like he’d just lost the family dog to cancer. Or, Clarke thought, having an epiphany, like his old lady had just told him they were through. He’d noticed the wedding band on Reddick’s left hand when he’d had the binoculars on him earlier, so unless she was some kind of piece he had on the side, it stood to reason the brunette was Reddick’s wife.

  His decision suddenly made, Clarke started up his BMW and watched as the lady got into a blue, late model Ford parked a block down the street. He eased away from the curb, did a U-turn well out of Reddick’s sight, and started east down Sunset after the Ford, keeping his distance, in no great hurry.

  If Clarke was right about the woman he was tailing, Reddick was a family man, maybe even one with kids, and that could only make him that much easier to deal with. A man with a wife and kids had no choice but to listen when you spoke to him; he had more than himself to think about when making critical decisions. A man without, on the other hand, could blow you off if he felt like being a hero because he had nothing to lose but his own life. Your leverage against him was severely limited.

  Driving on in the air-conditioned car, keeping the blue Ford in plain sight, Clarke reached into the bag of chocolate chip cookies on the passenger seat beside him, next to the nine-inch assault knife and fresh roll of duct tape, and hoped Joe Reddick knew how to lay down when somebody gave him the order.

  EIGHT

  Because of the strange holes he liked to put in people with assorted sharp instruments, both his friends and enemies in the Mexican drug trade had come to call Ruben Lizama ‘La Aguj
a,’ or ‘The Needle.’ Pencils, steak knives, screwdrivers, garden shears – it seemed nothing with a hard edge or point was too esoteric to be used by La Aguja to either torture a man, stop his heart from beating, or both.

  It was no doubt this proclivity of Ruben’s that was foremost in the minds of the five men he had come to see today in the city of Tampico, at the southern-most tip of his home state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. The five men were arranged in a neat row, face down on the dusty floor of the machine shop in which they worked, as Ruben and the three family soldiers he’d brought with him loomed over them, automatic weapons at the ready. The men knew why Ruben had come – all had spoken to the Federal Police about a murder they had witnessed one of the Lizama soldiers commit, and one of them had actually said something other than ‘Yo no vi nada’ – and so they also knew they were all dead. What they didn’t know was what kind of death Ruben had in mind for them, and it was this mystery above all else that had two of the five pissing into the floor through their overalls.

  Ruben let them squirm for a long time; he was in no particular hurry. They had the machine shop all to themselves. Upon his arrival, he had ordered it to be evacuated of all but the five men on the floor, and without anyone issuing a single word of argument, the building had emptied out like a burning movie theater. Now it was almost deathly silent, with only the sound of a few running machines providing background for the prayers some of those on the floor were uttering.

  Finally, Ruben pointed to one of the five, a short, older man with jet-black hair and skin nearly as dark, and said, in Spanish, ‘Him.’

  The soldier closest to Ruben reached down with his free hand to lift the little man off the floor. The other offered no resistance; instead, he came to his feet and stood with his back straight, head up, making no attempt to avert his eyes from Ruben’s. He was afraid, but not a coward, and he understood that anything he said or did now to try to save himself would only serve to disgrace his family name. Ruben saw all this and grinned, satisfied he had chosen the right man.

  He glanced over at the three Lizama soldiers, almost offhandedly, and nodded his head.

  Instantly, the shop roared with gunfire, blinding sparks and muzzle flashes lighting up the walls. The four men prone on the floor died in a hail of bullets, a barrage that only seemed to stop when their assassins had grown weary of the exercise.

  With great interest, Ruben watched the little man standing before him and saw him flinch once, then close his eyes up tight. That was all. When the shooting stopped, he opened his eyes again without being asked and waited, trembling but silent, as unwilling to dishonor himself by pleading for his life as ever.

  ‘¿Cómo te llamas?’ Ruben asked.

  The little man told him his name: Guillermo Leal.

  ‘Were you the one who gave the police a description of my friend?’ Ruben asked in Spanish, already knowing the answer.

  ‘No,’ Guillermo Leal said, shaking his head.

  Ruben leaned in close to study his hard, impassive face for a moment, just to make sure his instincts were correct, and decided he believed him. The alcahuete he had come here to find was one of the four dead men on the floor.

  ‘Bueno,’ Ruben said, patting the little man on the back. He looked around the shop, searching for something, and eventually his eyes locked on to to a hulking green machine several feet away. It was a drill press of some kind, fitted with a bit the size and length of a hatchet handle. Ruben took Leal by the elbow and gently guided him toward the press, the three gunmen trailing behind. ‘Come,’ he said.

  When they reached the machine, Ruben asked the little man which of his two hands he used the most. Leal gestured with his right, hesitantly, because he knew, like the other three men watching, what was coming.

  At Ruben’s signal, one of the soldiers – Poeto, his personal bodyguard – started the press running and waited, hand on the wheel that would lower the whirring drill bit down toward the machine’s table.

  ‘I have left you alive so you can honor me with a favor,’ Ruben told Leal. ‘When we are gone, I want you to show your left hand to anyone you think may be talking to the police about my family’s business. To warn them what could happen. Do you understand?’

  Leal nodded. Tears welled in his eyes, but he made no move to wipe them away.

  Later, after the deed was done, Ruben sat in the back seat of the car as Poeto drove him and the other Lizama soldiers away, and marveled at little Guillermo Leal’s courage. He had accepted the punishment they had seen fit to visit upon him without complaint, honoring them with silent capitulation and nothing more. Ruben wondered how many other men could have done as well, and the thought brought his mind around to Ben Clarke and Clarke’s three friends in America. In Leal’s place, waiting for the terrible pain to come, how would such pampered nenes de mamá have behaved? Like men or like children?

  Ruben thought he could guess. He didn’t take Clarke for a coward, per se, but he knew the Americano was far more flash than substance, and what little he had seen of Cross, Baumhower, and Sinnott had not impressed him. Still, the evidence of their joint success seemed to speak for itself; whatever their short-comings in the way of real balls, Clarke and his Class Act partners clearly knew how to make money, and that in itself made them useful to Ruben. Because he loved Los Angeles – the parties, the women, the movie stars – and with the help of Clarke and his friends, he hoped to someday become a real player there. Not simply Jorge Lizama’s youngest son, who made the A-list now by virtue of his father’s drugs and grisly reputation, but a bright young man who had learned the filmmaking game and mastered it. Ruben didn’t want to buy or terrorize his way to stardom in Hollywood – he actually wanted to earn it – and doing business with Ben Clarke and company was his idea of a first step toward that end.

  If it turned out to be a false step – if trusting Clarke to launder $250,000 of Lizama family money proved to be a foolish mistake – Clarke would pay for it with his life. Later today, La Aguja would fly out to Los Angeles and spend the whole weekend partying.

  After that, he would go see Ben Clarke and find out what kind of man the big white boy was compared to brave, little, one-handed Guillermo Leal.

  Aside from the Orvis Andrews surveillance, Reddick had several other assignments for the City Attorney’s office on his plate. One of them involved a woman named Gina Delgadillo, a thirty-six-year-old mother of three who was suing the city of Los Angeles to the tune of thirteen million dollars. Delgadillo was claiming she’d been seriously injured at Angel’s Gate Park in San Pedro six weeks earlier when a pair of clowning maintenance workers had backed a small utility truck into her. As in the Orvis Andrews case, Reddick was supposed to determine if her injuries were as extensive as Delgadillo’s attorneys would, given the chance, lead a jury to believe.

  He was out at the park where the accident had taken place late Friday afternoon, interviewing one of the maintenance men who’d allegedly caused it, when he received a text from Dana on his cell phone. A text from his wife wasn’t particularly unusual, but after their lunch earlier in the day, he hadn’t expected to hear from her again any time soon, and this was the first time he could remember Dana resorting to a text without first attempting to reach him in person. Her message was short and maddeningly ominous:

  nd 2 see u @ home rt awy. xplain when u get here. pls hurry!

  His immediate thought was that something must have happened to Jake. It didn’t make sense, her texting him about something as grave as that, but Reddick couldn’t imagine what else such a dire message could mean. He tried to get his wife on the phone and only got her voicemail. He tried twice, left a crazed demand for a call back after the second attempt, and then thought to reply to Dana’s text with one of his own:

  whats gng on? what happened?

  His text went unanswered. He waited two minutes, then ran to his car and started for his old home.

  He was furious by the time he arrived, having almost convinced himself his panic would prov
e to be unwarranted. Dana was blowing a non-life-threatening situation way the hell out of proportion and had sent him a message far more cryptic and mysterious than necessary. And she still wasn’t answering the phone. She had to know what he would think, the conclusions he would jump to. If this turned out to be no big deal . . .

  Please, God, let that be it.

  Throughout the drive out to Glendale, he had been tempted to call the police, demand they send a car out to precede him, but now he was glad that he hadn’t. The normalcy he saw outside his old home seemed to prove what an embarrassing overreaction that would have been. There were no ambulances, no squad cars, no crowds of neighbors milling about on the sidewalk out front; instead, there was only silence and tranquility, and Dana’s Volvo parked with perfect precision in the driveway. Not halfway in and skewed to one side or the other, the way someone rushing home in hysterics might have parked it, but straight in toward the garage.

  Reddick allowed only the merest wave of relief to wash over him, then rushed to the front door.

  Dana answered on his first ring of the bell. Still dressed for work, she looked ashen, like someone who’d just witnessed her own death. There was no sign of Jake anywhere.

  ‘Jesus. What the hell’s going on?’ Reddick asked, stepping inside.

  Someone standing behind the door hit him at the base of his skull with something anvil-hard and dropped him face first on the floor. His hold on consciousness lasted only long enough for him to hear Dana shriek his name, and then his ground-level view of the world was swallowed up in black.