Assume Nothing

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  Lerner was oversimplifying matters, to be sure, but Winn couldn’t argue with the crux of his logic. Given a choice between two ways to close the books on Ruben Lizama – one imperfect but quick and dirty, the other a convoluted, open-ended mess that could take months of investigative legwork to resolve – what cop in his right mind, regardless of the agency involved, would choose the latter? Especially when a killer like Ruben Lizama, who was dead and beyond giving a damn, was the only one likely to be hurt?

  ‘Even if all you’re saying is true –’ Winn said, ‘and I’m not deranged enough yet to admit that it is – you seem to be forgetting one thing.’

  ‘Yeah? What’s that?’

  Winn tipped her head in the direction of Reddick and Iris Mitchell. ‘Them. They’d have to go along for the ride. Almost none of what they’ve just told us would jibe with your “Lizama wasted them all” scenario. Would it?’

  Lerner shook his head. ‘No. You’ve got a point there.’

  ‘Of course, people’s stories change,’ Winn said. Imagining what Reddick’s wife and kids, butchered in their sleep, must have looked like nine years ago in Florida, and how trying to live with that kind of memory might have tested her own ideas about the senselessness of street justice. ‘If we interviewed them again, they might remember things differently. Maybe a lot differently. That’s how it usually happens, isn’t it?’

  Lerner gave his partner a long look, trying to spot some telltale sign that this was not Finola Winn speaking at all, but an identical twin born on another planet who’d taken her place while his head was turned. ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said.

  Reddick didn’t know what the hell was going on. He should be getting booked right about now. Instead, he was still here at his home, watching Winn and Lerner break up their little chat and head back his way, looking like they hadn’t already been given enough information to ensure his conviction, ten times over, for the murder of two men.

  ‘We’re going to need to go over a few more things with the both of you,’ Winn said, speaking to Reddick and Iris Mitchell as if they were one and the same person. ‘Starting with Andrew Baumhower.’

  ‘What about him?’ Iris asked.

  Now Reddick knew for certain something was up. One of the cops should be taking Iris aside to question her individually, while the other remained here to do a one-on-one with him, just as they had earlier. Questioning them together, the two detectives working as a pair, was nothing short of inept, an invitation for Reddick and Iris to listen to each other’s answers and tell a story to match.

  Winn consulted her notes. ‘You said Mr Reddick here admitted killing Mr Baumhower in your presence. Is that correct?’

  Iris gave Reddick a sheepish glance, apologizing the only way she could. ‘Yes. But—’

  ‘Did he describe the killing to you? Can you remember exactly what he said?’

  ‘Look—’ Reddick said, not wanting to see Iris harassed on his account any more than she already had been.

  But Lerner said, ‘You’ll get your turn to speak shortly, Mr Reddick. In the meantime, kindly keep your mouth shut, OK?’

  Reddick started to argue, decided to hold his tongue.

  ‘Ms Mitchell?’ Winn said, turning Iris’s attention back to her question.

  Iris gave the matter some thought. ‘I can’t remember exactly, but I think he said . . .’ She took her mind back to the morning before in Reddick’s car, after he’d dragged her out of Cross’s condo and she’d posed the question to him, point-blank: ‘Did you kill Andy?’ What had he answered?

  And then it came to her.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said.

  Winn studied her. ‘What?’

  ‘He never answered the question.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘He never actually said he killed anybody. I realize now I’d just assumed he killed Andy because he kept avoiding the question.’

  ‘You’re saying he didn’t confess to Baumhower’s murder?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes. That’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘Then you can’t say for certain that Mr Reddick was the person who broke into Mr Baumhower’s residence and killed him Friday evening. For all you know, that individual could have been someone else.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  ‘Like this Ruben Lizama character, for instance,’ Lerner said, looking straight at Reddick as he did so. Are you paying attention, sport?

  ‘You’ve both told us Baumhower and your fiancé, Mr Cross, along with Mr Clarke and Mr Sinnott, owed Lizama a great deal of money,’ Winn said. ‘Money they apparently didn’t have. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes. Perry and Will both told me that was the case.’

  ‘So isn’t it possible – or more likely, even – that it was Lizama, and not Mr Reddick, who broke into Mr Baumhower’s home and killed him, in an attempt to retrieve what Baumhower and the others owed him?’

  Reddick couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but hell if he was going to question it. One wrong word and whatever spell Winn and Lerner were under might break, bringing them all back to reality with a vengeance.

  ‘Is it possible?’ Iris asked Winn. And then, finally and inevitably, the clouds parted and she was able to see the door that was not only being held open for her, but through which she was being masterfully steered. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. She turned to Reddick, braved a small smile. ‘In fact, I’m almost sure that’s what must have happened.’

  Lerner stole a glance at his partner, who betrayed no indication of noticing. Instead, her stoic expression never faltering, Winn flipped to a new page in her notebook and, in a perfect imitation of a boxer too tired to answer the bell, said to Iris and Reddick, ‘In that case, I guess we’d better get your statements all over again. Just to be sure there’s nothing else you two might have remembered, for lack of a better word, “incorrectly.”’

  She didn’t wink, but she didn’t need to. Reddick caught her meaning just fine without.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Jake and Reddick were four frames into their second game, Jake having bounced his bowling ball off the bumpers in the gutter fortuitously enough to roll his second strike of the day, when his son pointed at somebody behind Reddick and said, ‘Hey, Daddy! There’s the man who hugged Mommy at the motel!’

  Reddick turned around and saw Orvis Andrews entering the building, scanning the lanes at Jewel City Bowl in Glendale for the man he’d come here to see. Reddick raised an arm to wave him over, then said to Jake, ‘You go ahead and keep playing, OK? Mr Andrews and I have to talk for a quick minute.’

  ‘What are you going to talk about?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Just things. I’ll be back in a second.’

  Reddick went up to meet Andrews halfway and the two men shook hands, then found a table. Mid-morning on a Saturday, there were a lot of empty ones to choose from.

  ‘This is your idea of a joke, right?’ Andrews asked. Reddick couldn’t tell if he was amused or not.

  ‘Let’s just say, I thought it would be an appropriate setting.’

  Andrews nodded, taking no offense, and looked casually over at Jake. ‘How’s little man doing? OK?’

  ‘He’s fine. Been asking a lot of questions I can’t answer, of course, but other than that, he’s good.’

  ‘And the wife?’

  ‘She’s good, too. Thanks for asking.’

  Andrews nodded again, let out a sigh. ‘I’ve been thinkin’ about it a lot. What might’ve happened to ’em if I hadn’t been there. ’Cause that cat Lizama, he was really bad news, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. He was,’ Reddick said.

  Andrews grinned. ‘Course, people say the same shit about me. Which is why you gave me the job in the first place, I suppose. You knew I could do what might need doin’.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Six days ago, when Reddick had shown up unannounced at Andrews’s front door seeking his help, he had told the big man in no uncertain terms what he wanted done. He
needed somebody to go down to the Embassy Court Motel in Irvine and watch over Dana and Jake; take a room of his own and exchange it with theirs. But all that was the easy part, the part any thug with a gun and a mean streak could probably handle. The hard part would be following Reddick’s instructions, regarding what to do if anybody – anybody – walked into room 108 without invitation, to the letter: blow their fucking brains out. No questions asked, no hesitation. If Andrews wasn’t down with that, Reddick had come to the wrong address.

  Andrews had said he was down with it, no problem.

  Reddick was, after all, offering him a deal he could hardly pass up: His assistance in exchange for all the video Reddick had shot of him rolling the rock out at Arrowhead Lanes in Lancaster four days earlier. Using an arm his eleven million dollar lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles claimed he couldn’t use anymore. If Andrews went down to Irvine, Reddick had said, he’d make sure the City Attorney never saw the video, and hell if that didn’t strike Orvis as a better than fair trade.

  ‘You know what they’re going to do with you yet?’ Reddick asked him now. ‘They gonna violate you or . . . ?’

  It was the great risk Andrews had taken in helping Reddick out, violating his parole by getting caught holding – let alone actually using – a loaded handgun.

  Andrews laughed. ‘Shit, they like to talk like they might,’ he said, ‘but they ain’t foolin’ nobody. Lizama killed that poor girl in the office and then broke into my room, big ass knife in his hand, hopin’ to do the same to some other defenseless lady. How the hell they gonna explain violatin’ my parole to all the people think I’m a hero for wastin’ the crazy motherfucker?’ He paused, laughter petering out until only a wide grin was left. ‘Man, you should’a seen the look on that fool’s face when he seen me step into that room. It would’ve made your fuckin’ day.’

  Reddick couldn’t help but smile at the thought. ‘Yeah. I bet it would have.’ He looked over at Jake, found himself tickled by the sight of him, hunched down low, trying now to roll two balls down the lane at one time.

  ‘So how ’bout you?’ Andrews asked. ‘Guess they ain’t gonna lock you up either, huh?’

  ‘I think they’ll get around to it, eventually,’ Reddick said. ‘They just haven’t figured out the best way to do it, yet.’

  It was the most honest answer he could give. He really didn’t know what was going to happen to him, whether he’d be a free man for the rest of his life or would be sitting in a holding cell tomorrow, awaiting permanent residency in the state pen. Winn and Lerner had given him every break possible but the task of saving his sorry ass was monumental and there was only so much they could do without putting their badges and pensions at risk. If the Feds or the DA’s office decided not to play ball, knowing as they surely must that what they were being asked to do was give a murderer a free pass out of the goodness of their hearts, the whole apparatus of lies and half-truths being told for his benefit would collapse and Reddick would go down with it. Nobody involved was a fool. The only question was how much currency Reddick’s tragic past – and present – would hold with them all, and for how long.

  ‘Daddy! Come on!’ Jake called.

  ‘Hey, that’s my cue to jet, I guess,’ Andrews said. He slid a small digital video camera across the tabletop at Reddick, the same one Reddick had used to record his bowling performance in Lancaster almost two weeks ago. Reddick had given it to him Sunday afternoon as his part of the bargain they had struck.

  ‘I’m not gonna find any homegrown porn on here, am I?’

  ‘Naw. You ain’t gonna find nothin’ on there. You can trust me on that.’ Andrews laughed and eased his way up from the table, demonstrating a renewed reluctance to ever use his ‘injured’ arm for leverage. ‘You sure you ain’t got no other copies somewhere? You didn’t make at least one?’

  Reddick shook his head. ‘Not a chance. Looks like I’ll just have to tell the City Attorney that all that video I shot of you throwing strikes with that right arm out in Lancaster last week just got erased during transfer to my computer. Clumsy me.’

  ‘And if he don’t wanna believe that?’

  ‘Then he can kiss my ass. And for that matter, so can you.’ Reddick stood up and shook Andrews’s hand again, more warmly this time because he expected it to be the last. ‘You’re quite the gangster yourself, big man. I’ve got no illusions about that. But you came through for me, big time, and I’ll always be grateful for that. Good luck, huh?’

  ‘Yeah. You, too, brother. Tell the little lady I said hi.’

  Andrews waved to Jake with his left hand and hobbled out of the bowling alley, right arm held close to his side like a clipped wing.

  Later, as Reddick drove Jake back home to Dana, he thought about the words Andrews had used for her: the little lady. Was that what she was to Reddick? His little lady? Or was she just somebody who had been, once? Even that part of Reddick’s life remained undecided. His wife hadn’t yet retracted her declared intent to divorce him, so as far as he knew, the divorce was still on, but it seemed the last twelve days had somehow calmed the waters between them, given them both a greater appreciation for what they had as a couple and as a family.

  Dana had always loved him, just as he loved her; it wasn’t a lack of affection that had come between them. It was his smothering over-protectiveness, his crazed belief that it was his duty to shield her and Jake from all harm, no matter the cost. He was overcompensating, trying to do for this family what he hadn’t been able to do for his first, and the effect on her was stifling. But now Dana had been given a good, long look at the flip side to his madness; she had seen for herself that, under the right set of terrible circumstances, there could indeed be some value to her husband’s particular brand of obsession. Perhaps, Dana thought now, the world was too horrible a place for her and their son to go on living in without a man like Reddick watching over them.

  Maybe he and Dana still wouldn’t make it, Reddick didn’t know. But what he did know was that Dana understood him better today than she ever had before. And what she surely understood most clearly of all was something he had told her from day one, something that was as true at this moment as it had been then.

  He had her back. Now and forever.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Titles by Gar Anthony Haywood

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Past Tense: West Palm Beach, Florida

  His last night . . .

  Present Tense: Los Angeles, California

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

 

 

 
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