by David Putnam
“Alonzo deserves that roll of those dice. Besides, we snatch Alonzo up, then what? Where would we go? We’d be on the run.”
She opened her car door. “If it were me, I’d take off south, maybe Costa Rica. That’s a nice place to live. A good place to hide.”
What she said made a lot of sense and made me wonder what evil event had soured her on our system and on the life we’d chosen to uphold the law.
She got in, the car door still open. “Bruno, you need anything, you have my number.”
“Thanks, I do appreciate it and I’ll keep your number handy as a last resort.”
She closed her door, started up, and took off.
I turned to head to the house and spotted a shadow on the sidewalk. I let my hand ease under my khaki work shirt to the stock of my gun.
“Son, it’s okay, it’s me.”
I moved out of the street and up on the sidewalk next to him. “What are you doing out here?”
“Who was that? Who were you talking to?”
“Just a friend.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I saw it on the news, about your friend Judge Connors. I’m really sorry.”
Hot emotions clogged up my words. “Hey, Dad, you want to go for a ride? I’d really like to go for a ride.” When I was much younger, we used to take rides and talk things out.
“It’s kind of late, where do you want to go?”
“I just want to show you something.”
“All right.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IN THE SIX months since the funeral, and after Social Services stepped in and snatched Alonzo out of our home, I had not spent a lot of time with Dad, and I regretted it. Now he sat in my Ford Ranger staring out the windshield. Hope and faith was smothered out of the both of us the same as a pot lid on a bacon-grease stove fire. When Wicks had called looking for me, Dad had told him to check the Crazy Eight. Dad had accepted my continued descent into oblivion and believed, if left unchecked, I might not ever climb out. Maybe he was right.
I stopped southbound on Wilmington at Rosecrans, waiting for the red and fought the need to tell him about TW, hand him at least some morsel of hope to cling to in a vast sea of despair.
In the close quarters of the truck, Dad smelled of baby powder, a strong reminder of the very different life we had seven months ago when we still had Olivia and the twins, Albert and Alonzo. Of how things had changed in a blink, how we had struggled to grasp at that change to stop it, and failed in the most horrible manner possible. Both of us intelligent men, experienced in the way of the ghetto, and yet we couldn’t stop what happened. It was as if we stood on the tracks with a megaton freight train barreling down on us at high speed and all we had to do was take a couple of simple steps to the side to avoid certain disaster and we just couldn’t do it.
Dad sitting so close in my truck also reminded me of the day of the funeral. I stood next to him at the open coffin looking down at my lovely Olivia, peaceful and at rest, my arm around Dad’s shoulder as we both wept like babies. His essence of baby powder forever linked that common scent with the most devastating events in my life. No one is emotionally prepared to have their child predecease them. No one should ever have to experience it.
The light changed to green; I shifted to first and took off. “Dad, I’m okay, really. I’m getting through this. Soon I’ll be through to the other side and we can start over.” It would never be back to normal, but we could at least start over.
He turned his head away, stared out the passenger window, and said nothing.
I knew the address and drove right to it. I parked a few houses up the street from the foster home on Laurel and shut the truck down. Until today, the place Alonzo had gone remained an enigma, an intangible place difficult to visualize with our vulnerable grandson subject to those kinds of trials and tribulations. I wanted Dad to see the physical location in the hope it would put him at ease. And maybe I needed to see it too.
I waited for him to say something.
He finally turned to look at me and asked, “What are you thinking about?”
I couldn’t see his features distinctly in the dark. I said, “I’m thinking about how, on all those special Sundays when we were just kids, you’d take me and Noble to the Thrifty’s Café. We’d get three huge hot fudge sundaes, extra fudge, piled high with whipped cream and a red cherry. We’d drive to the Compton Airport and sit on the hood of the car. We’d eat our hot fudge and vanilla ice cream and watch the small planes take off and land. Those were some good times, Dad, and I never did thank you for them. I had a good life, and you were the reason for it.”
His head moved in a nod, his eyes difficult to discern. “I’m worried about you, Son.”
“I told you, I’m okay. I’m almost through it.”
“No, you’re not. Not even close. You’re not acting right. The doc even said as much. He’s worried too.”
Dad had talked with the shrink.
“Dad, everything … well, it’s not as it seems. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“No, you’re wrong, I think I do know what’s going on. Vengeance is a lazy form of grief. You need to let go of it, Bruno, before it’s too late. It’s going to ruin the rest of your life. We can’t retract the decisions we’ve made; we can only have an effect on the ones we’re going to make from here on out.”
“I know … I do know. I haven’t stepped across that line. Not yet.”
“Pish posh, don’t try to use those kinds of words as an excuse—everything is not as it seems—that’s just putting lipstick on a pig. Every moment you don’t renounce what you have in mind, it digs in a little deeper until you won’t have any choice but to act. And that’s what scares me.”
“No, you’re wrong. I don’t intend any harm to—” I couldn’t finish that one. I could never lie to my dad.
“See, you can’t even say the words out loud. You need to pay attention to what your conscience is telling you. Just think about it, will you, Son? Murdering Derek will cause others the same kind of pain and grief you’re suffering. You don’t want to do that to people you don’t even know. Do you?”
His argument caught me and snatched my breath away. I had not thought about that aspect of it. I’d been selfish, wanting nothing more than to make amends for the guilt and for a pain like I’d never felt before over not protecting my family from a known threat. I’d let Olivia down, and that anger raged inside me like an unchained beast. But at the same time, I couldn’t wish that kind of pain on anyone no matter how much better Derek’s death would make me feel.
My voice cracked. “I’m sorry, Dad. When I wasn’t looking, someone snuck into my world and changed all the locks. I haven’t been thinking clearly ever since. I’m going to get through it though, I promise.”
I knew my dad pretty well, yet I had no idea how he’d react if he knew what Derek had done to Albert, the satchel dropped off the San Pedro Bridge, a secret that ate at my gut every minute of every day. I needed to let it out, but I couldn’t tell anyone, not with the way I’d obtained the information. And if I did expose that secret to the light of day and something did happen to Derek afterward, whether I was the one who did it or not, I’d become suspect number one. Which really didn’t matter to me, but I still needed to consider Alonzo.
Dad reached over through the near dark and put his warm hand on mine. “I know. It’s my fault. All of this is my fault.”
“What? How’s it your fault? Now you’re talking foolish.”
“I had the opportunity to get you boys away from here, move you to someplace nice, and I didn’t. This … this neighborhood … Well, I thought if you lived a clean life and kept to your own business, it wouldn’t matter where you lived. I was wrong—the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.”
A wave of déjà vu swept over me. I’d been thinking the exact same thing about Olivia and how I’d made that same mistake. Why had I kept my family close to the place where I’d grown up? I knew better. It would�
�ve been so easy to take an apartment in a middle-class neighborhood away from all this mess, move to Downey, Lakewood, or Norwalk. Was it ego? Hubris? And to find out Dad felt the same way eased the pain just a little. Was I a bad son for thinking that way, for allowing Dad to take on some of my guilt?
“No,” I said. “That’s not true. This is all on me. I worked the streets. I knew better than anyone else the dangers Olivia had to deal with.”
It was good we were having this talk. In its own way it relieved a little of the pressure.
“Son, I can’t help thinking that you stayed around here because I stayed. We’ve lived in the same house in the same neighborhood for decades. That much time binds you to the place with memories of bygone years. Don’t try and tell me that wasn’t a factor. I stayed for selfish reasons, for sentimental reasons.”
“What are you talking about?”
His voice changed. It came out filled with emotion and regret. “Olivia looked so much like your mother, it scared me. I’ve never talked to you about your mother. And you should have known about her early on. I was wrong to keep it from you. I’m sorry about that.”
He had never said so much as one word about her, and I’d asked him enough times in my early years that I finally gave up. Now I waited, hoping tonight he’d say more about her.
Silence. Minutes ticked by.
“Dad, what was she like?”
“I guess it’s time you knew.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
DAD FELL IN love with Beatrice Olivia Elliot the first time he laid eyes on her. Sure, he’d had crushes before, but nothing like this. He was twenty and she was seventeen—would be eighteen in just a couple of months. He didn’t know that at the time and it didn’t matter. He’d always had a difficult time talking with girls, which was the main reason why he only had one real girlfriend back in high school and none since. School and work kept him too busy to mess with something so confounding and befuddling as girls.
Bea had come out of the theater on Crenshaw with two of her girlfriends, all of them twittering about the movie, sipping from their soda straws. They walked past Xander without giving him a look. He’d come to see a movie in one of the few theaters in Los Angeles that allowed blacks, but instead, followed along zombie-like, no longer aware the rest of the world existed. One of Bea’s friends spotted him after only a short distance. They stopped, put their heads together, and twittered some more. Finally, Bea, the boldest of the three, walked back toward him. He wanted to turn heel and hightail it out of there and couldn’t move. All of his muscles froze in place. Cars on Crenshaw zipped by, and the earth continued its slow-motion rotation around the sun, all without notice as he held his breath. She was absolutely beautiful, way out of his league, and here she was walking toward him and about to say something.
“Hey, you. Are you following us?”
He swallowed, his throat too dry to answer without a rasp. “No,” he croaked.
“Well, I think you are.”
“Okay, I am.”
“What for?”
“I … I just saw you and …”
“What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you talk like a normal person? Do I know you?”
Talk now or she’s really going to think you’re an idiot. “I don’t think so, my name’s Xander Johnson. I’m going to junior college, taking administration of justice. I work two jobs, three really. During the day at Charlie’s Liquor over off’a 133rd, I stock shelves and sweep up, that sort of thing. I work security at night over to the Sands Motel on Long Beach, which isn’t anything big. I’m more just a door-rattler. Oh, and I throw papers in the morning. You want to go out with me?”
He blurted out the whole thing in one long string and didn’t know where all the inanity came from. His face flushed hot as he cringed waiting for the brutal rejection.
She smiled. It lit up Xander’s world and he’d have done anything to keep making her smile.
“You sure talk a lot, Mr. Xander Johnson. Go out with you? Why, I hardly know you.”
“That’s why I just told you all about me. I don’t have much of a life outside of what I told you. Oh, and I forgot, I clean a couple of pools once a week for folks in Lynwood.” So the fool in him continued to spew.
“What’s this college course you’re taking? Is it about the law? You know the law real good?”
Down the block, her two friends yelled and waved at her to hurry up.
She held up the flat of her hand, still looking at him.
“That’s right,” he said, “I’m studying up now so when I turn twenty-one, I can get hired and go to the police academy. I want to help the people in the community.”
She moved in close, making his heart pound in his chest. She smelled of lilac, a scent he’d never forget. She pulled the ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and reached down and took his hand, her touch electric on his skin. She wrote her phone number in the palm of his hand. Someone drove by on Crenshaw and honked at them. Someone else in the same car yelled, “Get after it, man! Go for it.”
She put the pen back in his pocket and patted it. “Call me, we’ ll go out.”
He opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t.
She smiled again. “You’re real cute, Xander Johnson. Call me.” She turned and headed back to her two friends. They conferred with their heads together before the other two let out little squeals of excitement and looked back at him. They hurried away. He watched them get smaller and smaller until they made a turn on some unknown street. He finally looked down at the number scrolled in his palm and quickly memorized it before sweat could wash it away. With the movie forgotten, he hurried back to his small studio apartment in a regular-sized old house that had been divided into four separate apartments. He sat by the phone waiting for some time to pass so he could call. He didn’t want to seem too eager and scare her off. He went over in his head the way the conversation would go, taking her side as well as his own. Hearing his replies in his head, he sounded like an absolute fool and didn’t have a clue in how to avoid it.
He did eventually call and they did go out on a date. He had to borrow a friend’s ratty old Ford sedan with a rust streak right down the center of the roof and ticking protruding from the seats. Bea didn’t seem to mind. He met her at the Thrifty Café, where he bought her an egg cream. They took a drive, and then a long walk on Redondo Beach at sunset. She let him hold her hand.
He never dreamed he could be so smitten with a girl and realized after only three dates that he was wildly in love with her. He loved her so much it hurt, an ache he carried around with him every minute of the day. He couldn’t sleep at night and he found himself in a daze when he should’ve been paying attention at work or in class.
She lived over a back-alley garage with her parents and her father’s brother and wife and two kids, seven people in a small three-room apartment. Bea never complained, but he knew she wasn’t happy about the arrangement and would do anything to escape the cramped accommodations. He forgot his dreams of being a cop and put in an application to work at the post office; they were hiring and paid well.
The night it all started to unravel, he took her to dinner at Stops and then to a drive-in movie. They kissed at intervals all through the first movie. Each time he kissed her, they started breathing harder and harder until she broke away. With one hand on his chest holding him at bay, she patted her hair and said, “Oh my, Xander Johnson, you really are something, aren’t you?”
He didn’t like to be apart from her even for a second and wanted her right next to him, close enough to touch, close enough to be sure she was real. He didn’t feel whole when she moved just inches away. He didn’t know what to say in response to her comment about his ability to kiss. “I applied at the post office and they called me for an interview. It’s this coming Monday.”
“Oh no, what happened to being a cop?”
“I can’t be a cop until I’m twenty-one; that’s almost two years away. I … I want to get a place so we can …�
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Her eyes went wide. “Why, Xander Johnson, you mean move in together?”
He had lain awake nights wondering how he’d broach such a sensitive topic, especially since they’d only been going out a short time and here she’d just come right out and said it before he had the chance.
“Yes, that’s my plan. I hope it’s okay with you. I can work for the post office and save up for a place of our … of our own. Maybe save for a couple of years, buy a decent place.”
“That all sounds wonderful. But two years, that’s a long time to wait.” She wiggled over to him and ran a finger down his nose.
“Really?” he said. “I mean, yeah, two years is a long time to wait.”
“Yes, it is, but listen.” A strange light came into her eyes. She leaned in close and took up his hand. “I know how we can do it a lot sooner. I’ve been working out a plan. It’s foolproof, really. I just need someone big and strong, someone who knows a little bit about the law. We can pull this off, I know we can.”
“What are you talking about? Pull what off?” His world started to swirl.
“Do you know that once a day a fuddy-duddy little old man goes along to all the telephone booths up and down Wilmington and Central and Avalon, lots of streets, and he takes out all the dimes and nickels and even quarters from all the pay phones?”
“What are you talking about?” What was the matter with her? She’d never talked like this before.
“This little ol’ guy carries these big canvas bags bursting with dimes and nickels and he just puts them in the back of his van pretty as you please. He’s got to have bags and bags of dimes in that van. Thousands of dollars.”
“Bea, you’re talking about armed robbery—it’s a felony. The police shoot armed robbers, especially black armed robbers. That’s crazy talk.”
“Silly, we don’t need any guns, and besides it’s only bags of dimes. Nobody cares about bags of dimes. We do it right we can—”