by Julie Vail
What the hell happened? She was supposed to save him, wasn’t she? I mean, if she could save Patterson, then why the fuck couldn’t she save Gonzo? Gonz was twice the cop Patterson was. I paced, and finally I got tired of waiting. I pushed open the doors leading in to the operating rooms and I raced through, looking for her.
“Detective.” I ignored the voice and kept searching for her, in vain. “DETECTIVE.” The surgical nurse who worked for Karen stood there with her hands on her hips. I knew her, too, but her name escaped me.
“You need to leave. Right now.”
I stormed over to her. “Where is she?”
“She is speaking with the family.” She looked at me with compassion and sympathy that I probably did not deserve at that moment. “I’m sorry, John, but you must leave now. This is a sterile area. Doctor Gennaro will be back in a moment.” She turned without a word and escorted me back out into the hall, where I waited, and seethed.
Finally, the doors hissed and opened toward me, and she walked in. She stopped when she saw me.
“What the hell happened, Karen?” The hissing doors I had just been escorted out of opened and someone came out to see what was going on.
She held up a hand to let the intruder know she had everything under control. She stopped in front of me with her hands on her hips, and looked directly in my eyes.
“John, please . . .”
“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” I screamed at her.
She glared at me. Her eyes were moist and her lips quivered. I didn’t care. My friend was dead and I needed to blame someone. I needed to punish someone.
“The bullet penetrated an artery . . . there was no chance, John. I’m so . . .”
“Fuck. That’s BULLSHIT. You didn’t SAVE him. YOU.” I was in her face now.
“You’re upset, John. Please. You need to go be with your friends now.” And she started to walk away.
I was beyond the point of no return. I grabbed her arm and jerked her back around to face me. I grabbed her other arm just for something to hold on to so I didn’t slap her.
“You fucked this up! YOU!” I choked on the last word. My rage wasn’t just about Gonzo. Control was failing me.
She blinked back the tears, her voice barely a whisper. “Johnny, I tried. I’m so sorry. I tried.”
I tightened my grip on her arms and the look on her face changed from fear to alarm. “Well, ya know what? You didn’t try . . . hard ENOUGH.” I shook her hard with every word I spoke.
Her eyes flashed in anger and suddenly everything went into slow motion. She jerked away from me and her hand came out of nowhere and connected hard with my left cheek. The force of the slap snapped my head to one side. All I could hear was the Seth Thomas on the wall, TSK, TSK, TSK . . . admonishing me for my cruel words. My cheek throbbed in rhythm with my heart, which was pounding in my ears. All of the hurt, all of the anger that had built up was rushing out of me like a rogue wave. She was ready to call it quits simply because I drove her there. She’d asked me, indirectly, to fight for her, and I didn’t—couldn’t. And now, the one person I relied on to fight for Gonz, to save him, couldn’t do it. And then I saw, with such great clarity, why I would never put her through this. This was why I hadn’t returned her calls. This was why I let her go. I wanted out. For her sake, for my mother’s, for all the widows and orphans out there who were forced to attend the funeral of a hero. Never again would I subject a woman I loved to this. She would see in time that I was right about this and thank me. She would thank me.
I turned back just in time to see in the pain in her eyes, the pain of loss. I watched helplessly as she turned away from me once again and walked out the door. The clock continued to take me to task. And as I sat on a chair, alone and completely overwhelmed, I put my head in my hands.
The tears never came.
THIRTY
It was well after dark when the boy came home. He quietly opened the door and walked in. He heard music, a tune he heard before.
At last
My love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
It was their song. He stood on the covered porch and watched them dance. They moved slowly, in perfect rhythm, lost in each other. For a moment, he forgot about the lady in the park, and the yelling, and remembered that love lived here.
I see you, Giannino, she said, never opening her eyes.
So do I. His voice low, husky. Go on to bed, kid.
His mother’s laughter sent him to sleep. His father had the day off tomorrow. He would ask him to walk him to school.
The surgical waiting room, the same one many of us were in months ago when Gregg Patterson’s life hung in the balance, was filled now with uniformed cops and detectives from Pacific. Mark’s ex-wife and his parents sat off to one side, huddled as if against the chill. Cari Gonzales walked over and collapsed in my arms. During their marriage, she and I got along well and I was sorry as anyone to see it end. I held her, words failing me. Mark’s father finally came over and pulled her into his arms.
Lisa and Alex were standing against the wall. Lisa was crying.
“What did you find out?” I asked Alex.
“Laborteaux says he came up on the guy holding a gun on Gonz. The guy fires, hits Gonz, Laborteaux shoots him.”
“Gonz’s gun was holstered.”
“Yeah. Laborteaux says he came up on the two of them with Gonz trying to talk the guy down.”
“You get his gun?”
“Yeah.”
“The shooter. You get his gun?”
“Yeah, Johnny. We got everyone’s guns.” I was surprised. An officer usually surrendered his weapon once Force Investigation Personnel arrived.
“This stinks. This fucking stinks.”
“John . . .” Alex swallowed hard, and a single tear ran down his face.
“Jesus.” I grabbed him and held on tight. “Jesus-fucking-Christ.” I spoke words to Lisa I knew I’d never remember, then I asked where Amelia was.
She sat on a couch in a small waiting room. Dan was next to her. She rocked back and forth, moving the pain around, so it didn’t lie all in one place. I realized I hadn’t seen Dan Rios since he came to take Kevin Meyers’ statement.
Amelia looked up and saw me. She placed her hand over her mouth and a moan that started down deep escaped from her lips. She grabbed on to me, then her knees buckled. Dan and I got her seated again. I held her head in my arms while she sobbed uncontrollably. I reached around and I took Dan’s hand and I held it, holding us all together as best I could.
When I could see that nothing more could be done, when I saw that my hanging around the hospital would not bring him back, I got in my car and went straight to the Stone Cantina. I wasn’t expecting to find solace there. In fact, I didn’t know what I expected to find. All I knew was I didn’t want to be alone.
It was 9:30, and you can only spend so much time with other people sharing your grief before you need to just go off and have some all by yourself. I mean, you’ve just spent the day watching your partner and friend die under the watchful eye of the woman you said you loved. Now, you’re in a bar, alone, having lost them both. Honestly, in cases like this, the only thing left to do is drink scotch. So I ordered one. A double. Neat. I figured I’d order ice eventually, once the numbness started to kick in.
Retribution. Something I was familiar with. I knocked the drink back in one gulp and asked for another. I reached into my wallet and pulled out a yellowed piece of newsprint.
Mob Boss Murdered
By Steve Burch, New York Post staff writer
filed April 15, 1985
Sonny Vitello, head of the Tancredi crime family, was found gunned down inside his car off the Westside Highway Thursday evening. The driver of Vitello’s car was also killed.
The murder is currently under investigation, but it is believed the hit was in retaliation for the slaying earlier in the year of Carlo ‘Connie’ Contadina, the son of Rico C
ontadina, a ‘Capo’ with the Costa family. It is believed that Vitello was meeting with a member of the Contadina family when he was slain.
Sonny Vitello became head of the notorious Tancredi family in the late sixties, sparking investigations into corruption from local police precincts to the Mayor’s office, most notably after the slaying, execution style, of Vincent Testarossa, a sergeant with the 312th in Brooklyn, in 1972. Over the last decade, mob violence has escalated as different regimes jockey for power. It is rumored that Marco Vitello, Sonny Vitello’s eldest son, will take over as head of the family, sparking more wars between rival families, authorities believe.
I folded the article and put it back in my wallet. What form would vengeance take this time? I was certainly capable, wasn’t I? I finished and asked for another drink. The bartender looked at me like I was nuts.
“Hey, I’m walking. Hit me again.” Then I remembered my manners. “PLEASE.”
The bar was pretty crowded for a Wednesday. All the single men and women looking to hook up. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? I knocked back the second, then asked for the third double on the rocks. I’d change colors soon, I’d decided. Maybe clear would be next . . . vodka, rum, tequila? No, tequila’s sort of yellow. I’d wait on yellow til later. The noise in the bar became a hum in my ears. I had been waiting for that. The jukebox was playing some song about Sunday morning rain.
I was fading, fading into the abyss where no one died, no one left you. You just were. And I was going there. But what would I do once I got there? Hide? Create my own private Idaho? I had to tell Gonzo that one next time I saw him. Ha. Next time.
I’ll have to check my calendar. Then he laughed. I was the last person to hear him laugh. It was his final gift. To me.
If he was here I’d point out the bottles that lined the back of the bar, and I’d point out how nice some of them looked under the lights, and I’d point out that I was certain, certain that the vodka in the blue bottle tasted no different than the vodka in the frosted icy looking bottle.
You asshole, he’d say. Of course they taste different. One is $9.99 a liter and the other is $39.99 a liter. And then he would prove it by ordering some crap like Kamchatka, and a shot of Goose Gray, and a shot of Absolutely certain, then something fancy-sounding like ‘Ice’, and we’d try them all. And we would end up not being able to tell the difference, but we would be very drunk. And then we’d sing, maybe. I mean, two drunk guys singing in a bar is not so attractive to the ladies, so maybe we would pass on the singing.
I had boarded the bus and I was headed out. I did not plan to return. I was without. I was empty. I couldn’t breathe, and so I decided to just tune in, tune out. I ordered another drink.
He laughed. It was that sound I would live with always. Not the gurgling, the barely forming words telling me nothing, except that he was dying. No, it would be his laugh I’d hang on to, like a tether. I was spinning, and I didn’t know how to stop. Stop the parade, I want to get off. Too much cotton candy, too much hall-of-mirrors. Another one I couldn’t save. I had another drink.
I sat for a long time, suddenly coming-to, and remembering where I was. The room spun when I closed my eyes, like the time I chased after Karen, chased her to the fundraiser for Art McGann. I spun for love on that night. I was spiraling now. I closed my eyes again. I heard music. Santana, maybe.
I opened my eyes. The people at the bar had changed—morphed into living, breathing humans I no longer knew. I felt hands on my shoulder, pats on the back, new drinks appearing in front of me. Blue-gowned fireflies hovered above the bar—the same gown Karen wore on the night of the fundraiser. I tried to catch one in my bell jar, but there were too many holes. My mother collected bell jars after she read the novel by the same name. She kept my oldest sister’s first pair of shoes under one, and my father’s badge under another, on top of the long dresser in their bedroom. I collected fireflies under another, and sometimes I would collect one or two dozen under one bell jar, and then watch it magically illuminate our closed-in porch. But none of them wore gowns.
I came to again, and the room had gone white. Brown bag luminarias lined the bar, and a homeless man with foil in his hair was selling them for a quarter. I asked where the white ones were, the ones with the snowflake cut-outs and the silver glitter. Fresh out of purity, we are, we are, he said. He spoke French. Ninety-seven Vestal Virgins bled through the mirror behind the bar, one for every day I’d known the beauty of Karen, even if only from a distance. They wore cerulean scrubs with jewel-encrusted doo-rags on their heads. The tallest held a scalpel, and she was covered in blood.
I’m sorry, Johnny. I tried. I tried. I tried. I tried. I tried. I tried.
ItriedItriedItriedItriedItriedI’mtiredI’mtiredI’mtiredI’mtired.
I’msofuckingtired. . . . .
Medusa pulled rank. Snakes coiled around the vestal surgeon, licking the blood off her face and hands, then flicking their forked tongues along her jaw, and then across lips shaped to kiss a man into an early grave.
NO, I screamed to the empty room, and the snakes stopped. The largest turned its diamond-shaped head around, set his beady eyes on me, and then sat straight up, eye-level. He pulled his head back and spit, covering me in blood—hers, Gonzo’s, the old man’s . . . mine. The blood smelled of gunpowder and conspiracy.
A bell jar sat in front of me. Three butterflies flew around inside. The blue one tossed a kiss to me over her shoulder, and the black one raised his glass. The white one just smiled.
What now, Johnny? What now? the white one asked. I did not know. I’d taken vengeance on his behalf, putting my gun against the teeth of his killer, so his mother wouldn’t recognize him at his funeral. I had earned the man’s trust, and then I gunned him down. I wore a badge then, similar to the one I wore now. I took vengeance, then I vowed to rid the streets of L.A. of the type of vermin I’d become. Did you ever kill anyone, Karen asked. Uh huh, babe . . . oh, yeah. And I did it with a pleasure that stunned me at the time.
The bar was emptying now, and the bartender stopped serving me a long time ago. I was burning up inside, like an acid fire that just wouldn’t stop. I screamed at it to stop but nothing came out. She was the only one for me, the only one who could save me, but I’d never ask it of her. I couldn’t. I could never taint her with the stink of the crime I’d committed. I could never saddle her with the burden of loss, like my mother had to endure. I’d come so close to bending a knee and asking her to be my bride in blush. She’d have said yes, affirmed, even money on Affirmed. She’d cry diamonds, and I’d wipe them away, and when she wasn’t looking I’d gather them up in my big hand, the hand that made her feel so safe so long ago, and I’d set them carefully into a red rose and place that rose on her finger.
I love you, John, she would say. And I would say I love you back, Karen, with bells on. If I were a bell, I would ring from the hilltops so that everyone would know you were everything I’d ever whispered about during midnight dreams and wakings. God, don’t touch me there, baby, because I’ll want you to do it again. And again.
And again.
I was going now. I was going to go. I was going to go to her and explain. I had to tell her. I was going to go to her, yes I was. And I got up. And I was grabbed. And I sat again.
“John. JOHN.” It was her. Oh, thank God. Oh, Karen, I want to talk to you, Karen, but I don’t know how. It will hurt too much if you say no, so I don’t . . . “JOHN.”
“What, Karen?”
“Let’s go home, baby.”
“Yes. Right. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
††††
I was coming up from down below. I was deep. I was twenty-thousand leagues out of my league. The bends. That’s what it was called, this ache. My head was pounding. I was coming up too quickly. I opened my eyes too late. I was opening them now, hoping I would get a different scene, but the scene looked the same. The voice was the same, but the picture was different—muted, blac
k on black. She was standing at the foot of my bed.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”
I nodded.
She sighed, as if addressing a poorly behaved five-year old. “I’m done here, John. Do you hear me? I won’t do this again.”
I understand, I heard myself say.
And then Rachel, the cocktail waitress I’d kept time with before all other women became a blur to me, walked out of my house. One of the others. God, help me, there were no others.
I got out of bed, headed into the bathroom and threw it all up. And when I was finished, I sat on the tile of my bathroom and I cried diamonds. They fell from my eyes and when they hit the hard tile, they bounced around, making a clicking sound. Clickclickclickclickclick. I tried to gather them up because they were precious, but most of them landed in the toilet, and before I could stick my hand in to retrieve them, Gonzo came along and flushed them down.
We liked her, Johnny. We liked her. And then diamonds came flooding from his eyes, right into mine. I opened my hand, and the yellowed piece of newspaper fluttered to the floor.
And I bowed to him in gratitude for giving me one more chance.
THIRTY ONE
The clattering of dishes wakes him . . . or is it the smells? Maybe it is the din of a thousand voices, coming up the stairs and under his door like a colony of bees. He’d gone to bed with a headache, but it is gone now. He didn’t want to have a headache tonight. Not tonight.
He gets out of bed and pulls his pants on. He opens the door and stands for a moment, inhaling the aromas that drift upstairs from the kitchen. The smells from his mother’s cooking are often richer, stronger upstairs, with almost no odor, it seems, once you get into the kitchen. He hears his father laughing at a joke, and he hears his aunt talking to his grandfather in Italian. He descends the stairs and when he gets to the third step from the bottom, the red-haired man steps in front of him. He reaches out and the boy jumps into his arms.