by April Smith
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you describe the assailants?”
“Dark skin.”
“Can you be more specific? African-American? Hispanic?”
He is writing on a yellow pad.
“I couldn’t tell.”
“How old?”
“Maybe in their twenties?”
“Can you describe any facial characteristics? Beards, mustaches, birth marks, scars—”
“It happened fast. I never even saw the second guy.”
“Height?”
“I know the one who grabbed me was shorter than I am and that’s five ten.”
“Weight?”
The kinetic memory comes up, accurate as always, of the depth to which her elbows penetrated his ribs.
“Small muscle mass.”
“You mean he was thin?”
“Undeveloped.”
“But strong?”
“Average strength. I hate to sound like John Wayne, but in a fair fight I could have taken him.”
She says this to psych away from the pain tightening around the fingers of her left hand like a wrench.
“You tried, though. You fought back.”
“I went by instinct. Maybe it was dumb.”
“Instinct is always right.”
“My instinct was to kill the fucker. I’m sorry. The assailant. Whatever you call him.”
“The fucker.”
She laughs but her lungs hurt.
“Cassidy, what do you think they were after?”
“My backpack?”
“Did they take anything?”
“No.”
“Did they attempt to steal the car?”
“Maybe. I couldn’t see.”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing I could make out.”
“Did they perform or threaten any sexual acts?”
“No.”
She raises her hand. She lowers it. If it were to sprout flames right now she would not be surprised.
“Why did they hurt you?”
“Because I fought back? Why do you think?”
“Don’t know yet. One thing, you got lucky. Would have been a lot worse if they hadn’t been interrupted by some people coming out of the restaurant.”
“Is one of them a Dr. Wessendorf? Huge guy, yellow jacket, looks like Big Bird?”
“They’re witnesses, I can’t release their names.”
“I’d like to tell him thanks …”
She is drifting off to sleep. Coming back, she hears, “… Do you have any enemies, Cassidy?”
“Do I?”
“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt you?”
She is sweating so freely it must be fever. It is roasting in the tiny room. Even Detective Allen’s cheeks show pink.
“An old boyfriend? Someone associated with the Dodgers? A pissed-off fan?”
Cassidy experiences brain lock. Nothing inputs. Nothing outputs.
“Are you all right?”
“Let’s just finish this.”
“Okay, go back to the one who rolled out from under the car. You got the best look at him, right?”
“Young. Thin. Maybe five eight.”
Pain is temporary. She searches for something to focus on. Detective Allen’s lips. Pale strawberry-colored lips. Sucking black coffee from a white paper cup.
The lips say, “You said he had a knife. What kind of knife?”
“I don’t know anything about knives. It was a knife. Scary. Boom.”
Suddenly she is greatly impatient, a hundred percent irritated.
“What were they wearing?”
“I can’t tell you. It was dark, it was fast.”
How many times does she have to say it?
“Any colors stand out in your mind? Jackets? Chains around the neck? Athletic shoes?”
“Don’t remember.”
“It may come back.”
Detective Allen is fingering the material of the sleeves of his shirt.
“I want to be thorough because it seems they were lying in wait.”
“Does that mean anything?”
“It could mean a tougher sentence, but more to the point, if they were waiting for you, we better find out why.”
Her stomach is starting to feel sick.
“I think it was—just random.”
“Could be. We’ve had two attacks in that parking lot this year.”
“Looks so peaceful around here.”
“We have crime, same as you—lesser numbers because we have a smaller population, but it’s the same proportion as LA. You look ill. Let’s call the club, get you a ride.”
“Don’t wake everyone up. I’ll take a cab.”
Cassidy stands. Detective Allen steadies her arm.
“One thing I wanted to ask—”
“Sure.”
“Why was the guy slashing at the ground?”
“He was going for the Achilles tendon. They do that when they want to bring you down. Real fast.”
She sucks air. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Compared to the interrogation room the rest of the place feels arctic. Cassidy stumbles past empty desks and bulletin boards covered with “Wanted” photos, pushes a door open, gropes for a light, makes it to a stall, and throws up.
When the nausea recedes she swallows two pills. Her face in the mirror is milk white.
Nate Allen is standing in the middle of the room now, snapping on a shoulder holster that contains a startlingly large Glock nine-millimeter. This must be a hallucination. Near-empty before and quiet as a country pond, the police station is suddenly Emergency Central. Uniformed officers have materialized from nowhere, checking earpieces and walkie-talkies. Several hustle by in POLICE windbreakers.
“I have to go,” the detective says crisply. “The desk officer will get you a ride.”
“Thanks.”
“We appreciate your cooperation.”
If Cassidy had her wits about her she might have seized the difference between the shy-seeming neb of five minutes ago and the law enforcement professional. A crucial difference: of who, exactly, maintains control, this balmy, savage night.
17
The following morning Cassidy takes the first flight out to Los Angeles, where she continues to avoid everyone associated with the organization, betting that a crime report on an unsolved assault will live and die in the computer of the Vero Beach Police Department.
She has never actually been to the beach where Joe lives. Like many exclusive California coast communities, all this one will show you from the road is butt. The houses face the ocean, backsides careless and shoddy. The only way to get beyond a hodgepodge of garages and Dumpsters and ten-foot-high fencing is to have access.
Cassidy wedges the Explorer behind the Bentley and climbs out to the smell of burning charcoal briquettes and the lazy drumroll of surf. Immediately she starts to sneeze. Even when the air is clear, it’s not. She presses a button on a call box and waits for the door lock to unclick. Nothing happens so she presses it again. Finally she unlatches a gate and follows a narrow passage around the side of the house, leather huaraches soundless on the sandy tiles. Maybe she should not have worn white jeans, white stretch-lace shirt. The hot-pink cast sticks out like a cooked lobster claw.
From the beach it is a different story. Who cares about the miles of houses crammed together in the dusk—a lavender sky is fast dissolving to a beltway of stars, and beyond the empty dunes the ocean belongs to you.
She hesitates in front of Joe’s modernistic beach house wondering what it’s supposed to be: stark spaces, I-beams painted white. Slowly a motif emerges, frames within frames, but clearly the house, mostly hidden by an opaque wall, was designed to hold back more than it reveals. All she can see of an inner courtyard are suggestive shadows of a citrus tree playing across a pair of glazed doors like etchings on Lalique glass—a translucent mystery the passer-by may choose to explore, or continue on.
&nb
sp; Inexorably her fingers reach toward the bell and the doors swing wide on chrome hinges and Joe is there in the brownish-amber light, wearing faded jeans and a pink polo shirt, holding a glass of wine.
“Sorry. Come in. Didn’t hear you ringing. I was on the phone.”
She forgot about his physical presence and dark sparkling hair and how it feels to get close enough to press against his rough cheek in a hasty kiss, his hand light on her shoulder as he guides her past a small reflecting pool.
“What is this?” he asks of the cast.
“I was jumped in Vero Beach.”
“You’re kidding. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He slides a glass panel open and they step into the living room. Two simple sofas, slipcovered in white, face each other across a low wood table in a stain of tangerine.
“I am telling you,” Cassidy says. “That’s why I’m here.” She sneezes again. “Welcome to LA.”
“What happened?”
“They broke my hand.”
“Who did?”
“Two guys in a parking lot.”
“My God. What else?”
“Nothing really. A couple of nasty bruises.”
She indicates the purple.
“Cassidy, this is outrageous.”
“I’ve had worse spills off a mountain bike.”
He hugs her but she seems to resist.
“I’m sorry, does it hurt?”
“Not anymore.”
He peers into her eyes as if searching for something else. She seems so self-contained.
“Let me get you some wine.”
Eric Clapton Unplugged is playing on a sound system so exquisite she can feel the vibration of every guitar string. She follows Joe into the kitchen and says, “Whoa.”
“Whoa, what?”
“Kitchens tell a lot.”
“And?”
“Do you have a thing about submarines?”
The small space has been fabricated entirely of stainless steel—cabinets, sink and stove. The floors are limestone. There are no windows. Seafoam light filters through a wall of glass blocks.
Joe smiles painfully.
“Submarine,” he says. “That’s kind of fascinating.”
Inside the refrigerator there are bottles of wine, green Perriers, fruit salad in a crystal bowl and a four-pound jar of Kalamata olives. He scoops some into a bowl with a slotted spoon.
“What’s the idea behind this house?”
The briny herb-scented olives taste the way fresh seawater smells. Joe spits the pits rapid-fire into his palm.
“What do you mean?”
“Somehow it doesn’t seem like you.”
Cassidy has put her elbows on the surgically gleaming countertop.
“That’s ridiculous,” says Joe.
“I pictured you in some place darker, more traditional—”
Joe busies himself with the cork.
“—More like Harvey Weissman’s.”
“That’s why I like this house.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t dark. It’s all about the natural light.”
He fills a glass with Pinot Grigio. The bowl frosts over.
“You like keeping secrets.”
“Not really.”
“It’s not about the light. People don’t buy crazy houses because of light. I mean, I’m sure this house isn’t crazy—”
“That’s all right.”
“—So what’s it about?”
“The house?”
“Yeah.”
“Greece.”
“Thank you!”
Resigned, “There’s a Greek expression. Odessia. It means ‘the great desire of going back home.’ ”
“You wouldn’t know you were Greek until you opened your refrigerator.”
“The Galinis nose? Hard to miss.”
“Your nose is beautiful.” She lazily draws a finger down the hard straight line of it, tapering to a pleasant point in balance with the high square forehead and long face. “I didn’t know you were Greek. Until some old lady told me at Harvey Weissman’s party.”
“You knew,” Joe says shortly. “Come sit down.”
“What’s this?”
She lifts the aluminum foil off the corner of a large roasting pan that is resting on the stove, releasing the scent of cooked olive oil, garlic and oregano.
“Lemon chicken. I made it for you.”
“You made this?”
Crusty chicken breasts surrounded by soft thick rounds of potato, the rich scrapings in the pan all caramelized and dark.
“Hungry?”
“I will be.”
They return to the living room and face each other on opposite sofas. The wine is clean. She could drink a lot of it.
“Tell me what happened in Vero Beach. Start from the beginning.”
It takes a while because Cassidy seems to feel it is important first to communicate exactly what was wrong with Alberto’s ballplaying that alerted her to the depth of the problem. So she does a lot of talking and demonstration there in the pristine living room of drop-step, crossover, catching mechanics and release, during which Joe gets up restlessly and changes the CD several times—to blues and finally jazz—as they work their way through the Pinot Grigio.
“They didn’t go after Alberto because he had a bodyguard. Instead they delivered the message to me. Joe, a man was hiding under my car, he tried to slash my Achilles tendon with a stiletto—ever see a stiletto in real life?”
“I’ve had a gun held to my head in my own driveway. Not here. When we lived in Cheviot Hills. When Nora was a baby. She was asleep in the car seat.”
“The reptilian part of the brain takes over. The most primitive response.”
She sips the wine. It might be glass number three.
“Then another one grabbed me from behind. I never saw his face. Everything was wrong. Out of balance, out of myself.”
Her heart is racing. Nausea spiraling up. Their hands press her wrist. Her ankles scrape the asphalt. They’re dragging her. She’s pinned.
“Come sit here.”
In the dark reflection of the glass she can see her chest flushed pink, self-containment split open like a fig.
“Let’s get some air.”
Joe has jumped up and unlocked the sliding panel. When they are outside he tells her to relax and breathe.
He says, “You’re safe.”
But she does not feel safe because above the enclosed courtyard there is nothing but sky, a disturbing lack of context—dark possibilities of the unseen, and the sea air only bringing back the wet tropical night in Florida.
“This is bad. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would affect me—”
He snorts, “Not affect you? Who was the genius who told you back in 1984 you were the Bionic Woman? Which redneck coach, because I’d like to find him and blow his brains out.”
“Don’t yell at me, Joe.”
“I’m not yelling!”
He jams his fists into his pockets. “I feel like shit, that’s all, it makes me nuts beyond belief that A, this happened, and B, you had to go through it alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had Detective Allen.”
“Oh,” says Joe. “That’s good.”
She breaks away and sits on the edge of the reflecting pool. She takes four breaths from the diaphragm. This isn’t real. The attack is over. Say something. Distract yourself.
“He asked me to identify ‘the assailants.’ I said I couldn’t. Not the most creative lie, but I’m not the world’s best liar. Detective Allen was really very nice. It was a cute police station. Maybe I should move to Vero Beach and teach gym.”
“What do you mean, you lied? You knew who they were?”
“I know they were Dominican.”
Joe sits beside her on the cold stone.
“How?”
“Their bodies. The stiletto. Words they said in Spanish and the way they said them.”
She studies his fac
e, impenetrable, looking for a clue in the shadowed eyes, wide-set creases in the cheeks, that might reveal the brutality it would take to gouge earth, to raise buildings, to survive the constant pummeling of below-the-belt local politics. She can’t see it in the dark. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
“I didn’t tell Detective Allen about the extortion threats. That this was their way of suggesting to Alberto that he pay. Maybe he’ll find out from the organization. Maybe he won’t. I made the decision to play it out.”
Cassidy feels chilled, a consequence of the flashback. Goose bumps have risen on her arms.
“Hold me.”
Joe puts his glass down on the edge of the pool. She leans into the heat of his body.
“Alberto said it wasn’t him. He said that when we hit her, you were the one who was driving.”
Joe’s body slackens.
“That’s really disappointing.”
“What?”
“That Alberto would come up with something like that. Those are seriously dangerous charges. If it were anybody else I’d be outraged. I’d have Harvey on the next plane. The trouble is, I like the kid. He’s a good kid, his career just got royally screwed. I can understand why he’d lie. Okay, fine. We gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Were you? Driving?”
She expects him to sit up and throw her off. Instead he laughs, the dry hip laugh, so conscious of itself.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“I have to ask.”
“No. No you don’t have to ask.” Now he does gets up, pushing her away. “Don’t you know me? Haven’t we made love?”
“Yes, of course—”
“Then you should know the truth.”
She comes up behind him, puts her arms around his waist, and lays her cheek between his shoulder blades.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “So torn. I feel so guilty. I never should have let him get into that car—”
“Honey, there will come a point where you just can’t save him.”
Joe turns around.
“I know you want to.” His voice breaks. “That’s because you’re so good. So good.”
They cling to each other with relief. Their fingers stroke each other’s temples, eyelids, cheeks—savoring the reassurance that they’re both still there.
“No, I’m not so good, no, please forgive me. That was such an awful thing to even ask you—”
“Oh,” big ironic sigh, “I should be used to it by now. The developer is always the bad guy.”