This Wicked World (12 page)

Then along came Tom and Jeannie Anderson.

The gig was cake. Tom Anderson, an oil-company executive from Houston, had a few weeks of business in L.A. and brought his wife, Jeannie, and eight-year-old daughter, Adelle, along with him, renting a villa in Malibu: a palatial main house, two guesthouses, a pool, and a tennis court, all on two acres overlooking a stunning sweep of California coastline. Ironman was hired to provide security.

Usually, Boone and Carl would have put a couple of new guys on such a routine assignment, but they were shorthanded, and Boone called heads when the quarter came up tails. He took days, and they gave nights to Rodney Parker, who’d played one season at tackle with the Oilers back in the seventies before blowing out his knee and was now the oldest guy on Ironman’s payroll.

The two men set up camp in one of the guesthouses, which Rodney declared was bigger than any dump he’d ever lived in, and things settled quickly into a routine. During the week, Anderson left for work early in the morning and returned after dark. When Jeannie and Adelle went on shopping trips to Brentwood and Beverly Hills or jaunts down to the beach, Boone accompanied them, riding in the front seat of the limo. But mostly the girls hung around the house, where they ate lunch by the pool and watched lots of TV.

Jeannie was quite a bit younger than Anderson, one of those skinny, brittle blondes with perfect hair and makeup who seem born and bred to marry rich older men. She looked right through Boone when they had any occasion to interact, but this was nothing new. Many of his clients made it a point to ignore his presence, and they were doing him a favor, as far as he was concerned. Nobody yet had paid him enough to be their friend.

Little Adelle took after her dad physically: dark hair and big sad eyes. She hadn’t learned the rules yet, so she often treated Boone and Rodney like babysitters, peppering them with silly questions and begging them to join in her games. She swam in the afternoons or sang along to her
Little Mermaid
DVD but still seemed a bit lonely stuck up there in that big house with Mommy and the help, once even asking Boone if he had any kids she could play with.

The vague air of unease that hung over the family was explained when Rodney heard Anderson and Jeannie arguing late one night as he was making his rounds of the property. “Going at it like a couple of back-alley knife fighters,” he told Boone the next morning. “Screaming about divorce and custody, him saying if she ever leaves him, he’ll fix it so she never gets any money or sees that little girl again.” The tension between the couple was palpable after that, and Boone himself witnessed a couple of heated exchanges.

The second weekend the family was in town, Anderson threw a party for one hundred guests. Catered barbecue, a country band, cowboy hats — the full Texas hoedown. Boone and Rodney stuck to the perimeter, Rodney grumbling the whole time about having to turn around afterward and also work the night shift.

At one point Adelle and a couple other little girls approached Boone, and Adelle announced, “Here’s our bodyguard. He has a gun.”

“Really?” one of the girls asked.

“Show her,” Adelle said.

“Come on, now, I don’t need to carry a gun here,” Boone said. “Not with all these nice people.” He was packing his Glock in a shoulder rig under his coat but certainly wasn’t going to let the kids see it.

“Do you want me to get you some ice cream?” Adelle asked.

“No, I’m fine. Thanks,” Boone said.

The little girl suddenly stepped forward and hugged him tightly around the waist. “Thank you for taking care of us,” she said.

Something about that got Boone right in the chest. He reached down and tousled the girl’s hair and had to swallow to get the quaver out of his voice before saying, “You guys better head back now. Sounds like the band is starting.”

He turned to catch Jeannie staring at him so intently, it looked like she was trying to read his mind. Their eyes locked briefly, and then she walked off into the crowd of guests.

The last weekend of their stay, Anderson took Adelle to Disneyland, just the two of them, no Jeannie, no Boone or Rodney. This didn’t sit well with Jeannie. She drank wine by the pool all day, threw a glass at the cook when he tried to serve lunch, and screamed to someone on the phone that she was going crazy.

That evening Rodney was on duty and Boone was watching TV in the guesthouse when there was a soft knock at the door. Boone answered and found a bedraggled Jeannie on the porch, eyes swollen from crying, hair hanging in her face. She needed to talk to someone, she said, and, in a hoarse whisper, asked if Boone would take a walk with her. Every alarm in Boone’s head went off at once, but he couldn’t come up with a reason to refuse her.

Jeannie was silent as they strolled side by side up the dimly lit path past the tennis courts to a bluff with a view of the moonlit ocean. She stood with her head bowed, her arms wrapped around her bare shoulders, and the same breeze that made her shiver in her thin sundress brought the faintest sound of crashing waves to Boone’s ears.

“I think my husband is molesting my daughter,” Jeannie blurted, as if the words burned her tongue.

Boone’s stomach twisted, but he kept his voice calm as he asked, “What does that mean, you ‘think’? Have you seen anything? Did Adelle say something?”

No, Adelle hadn’t said anything, but there had definitely been some weird moments, Jeannie replied. She’d walked in on the two of them a few times, and Anderson had looked so… well… guilty. “I realize that’s not any kind of proof, but I’m absolutely certain something’s not right,” she insisted. “A mother knows.”

She turned to Boone then, tears shining on her cheeks, and said, “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. What can I do about it?”

Without solid proof, Boone told her, not much. He suggested she keep an eye on her husband and talk to Adelle in a roundabout way, try to coax something out of her.

Jeannie cried harder. Boone laid a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, and she crumpled into him. “He’s hurting my baby,” she sobbed.

Boone walked her back to the main house after she’d calmed down. She thanked him for listening and apologized for being such a mess. When Boone told Rodney about it, Rodney said, “She’s a client, Jimmy, and that’s a personal problem. You see how much money this man has? He can fuck up your life in one hundred ways.”

Boone didn’t sleep at all that night. Sickening visions of Anderson abusing Adelle swirled in his head, and he twice ran into the bathroom, thinking he was going to vomit. He arose at dawn as jagged as a broken bottle.

Anderson and Adelle got back early Sunday, and the family began to pack for their return to Houston. Boone and Rodney packed too, so they’d be ready to roll as soon as the Andersons left for the airport the next morning.

Rodney was eager to get back to his wife and new grandson, and his happy chatter calmed Boone some. He started to think that Jeannie might have been overreacting the night before, that it might have been the wine talking. Truthfully, he just wanted the fucking job to end. He planned to fly to Vegas, hang out with a dancer he’d met on his last gig there, booze it up for a few days, and put the Andersons out of his mind.

About seven thirty, as the sun touched the ocean and set the sky on fire, he was making a final sweep of the grounds before turning things over to Rodney for the night. He was on his way back from checking the front gate when Jeannie appeared in the driveway in front of him. She approached at a run, her face clenched into a mask of agony.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She thrust a pair of underwear at him, little girl’s underwear — white cotton, flowers — and pointed out a spot of blood the size of a quarter.

“He’s with her now,” she rasped in his ear. “In the first upstairs bathroom. You have to stop him.”

Her urgency propelled Boone into the house without further questions. The front door was wide open, and he raced through it, a human cannonball. He took the stairs two at a time, keeping to the edges to avoid squeaks.

Anderson’s voice floated out of a room down the hall, something about “Love you, baby doll.” Boone put his back to the wall and slid sideways toward the door, which was slightly ajar. He peeked through the crack.

Anderson was kneeling next to the bathtub with his back to Boone, wearing Bermuda shorts and no shirt. Boone could just see the top of Adelle’s head. She appeared to be on all fours in the tub.

“I love you, baby doll,” Anderson crooned again.

A bomb went off somewhere behind Boone’s eyes. He drew his gun, moved away from the door. “Mr. Anderson?” he called out.

Anderson stepped into the hall, red-faced and scowling. “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

Boone stuck his gun in the man’s ribs, hissed at him to shut the fuck up, then said, “Adelle, honey, I need you too.”

“Now wait a goddamn minute,” Anderson said.

Boone jabbed him with the gun again and said, “I
will
shoot you.”

A few seconds later Adelle came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, wet hair plastered to her forehead.

“Go downstairs,” Boone said, putting his hand on her shoulder and giving her a little shove. “Mommy’s waiting.” She was frightened and glanced up at Anderson as if asking if it was okay to leave.

“Go on, sweetie,” Anderson said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

The little girl ran off without looking back.

“What is this?” Anderson said to Boone. “A robbery?”

The outrage and disgust that had been building in Boone since the previous night got the best of him. He swung his gun, hitting Anderson on the side of the head. The man’s eyes rolled, but he didn’t go down, so Boone grabbed him by the throat, took him to the floor, and began punching him.

He kept it up until his hands hurt too much to go on and Anderson’s face was a bloody mess. When he finally came back to himself, he crawled over and sat against the wall, gasping for air. Footsteps pounded on the stairs, and Rodney appeared in the hallway.

“What the fuck did you do?” he yelled. “What the fuck did you do?”

The paramedics arrived, the police. They cuffed Boone and took him away. At the station he gave a brief statement about what Jeannie had told him, about what he’d seen in the bathroom, then decided he’d better keep his mouth shut until he talked to a lawyer.

It was touch and go for Anderson for a few days. Shattered cheekbones, a broken jaw, nose pulped, brain swelling. He pulled through, though, so murder wasn’t added to the litany of charges against Boone, which included felony aggravated assault, felony battery, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a firearm, attempted murder — it went on and on.

Ironman’s attorney, Danny Berkson, showed up for the arraignment, where Boone pleaded not guilty. Carl posted his bond. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for a week later, and Boone kept close to home in that time, nursing two broken knuckles and replaying the scene in the Malibu house over and over. He’d fucked up for sure, gone way too far, but he figured he’d probably get off easy when what Anderson was doing to Adelle came out.

Berkson, a hulking, worn-out teddy bear of a man, paid him a visit the day before the hearing, his face grim, his shoulders more slumped than usual. “We’re in a pickle,” he said.

Turns out Jeannie had denied telling Boone that Anderson was molesting Adelle, denied showing him the bloody panties, denied there was ever any trouble at all. Furthermore, she claimed that Boone had been eyeballing her during the family’s stay and, on a few occasions, had made comments that indicated he was attracted to her.

“You see how it looks, don’t you?” Berkson said. “It looks like you busted into the house while Anderson was giving his darling daughter a bath and beat the guy half to death because you wanted to fuck his wife.”

All the air went out of Boone, and he slumped on the couch, his chin resting on his chest. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Do you know Him?” Berkson cracked. “Because we could sure use His help right about now.”

“She played me,” Boone said.

“How?” Berkson asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but she played me hard.”

Berkson leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “Well, look,” he said. “What it boils down to is that Anderson’s attorneys have got the DA by the balls somehow, and he’s saying that the only way he’ll deal with us is if you retract your original statement about what Jeannie told you and what you saw in the bathroom.”

Boone exhaled hard and shook his head. “This is so fucked up,” he said.

“If you retract, they’ll settle for eight years,” Berkson continued. “With good time and work credits, you’ll do four.”

Four years. Boone stared out at his swimming pool sparkling in the sunlight. Four years. He felt like he’d been turned inside out.

“If you don’t retract and this goes to trial, they’re gonna come down on you with a sledgehammer,” Berkson said. “That motherfucker was this close to dying, so we’re talking fifteen, twenty years.”

“Danny, man, what do I do?” Boone said.

“What do you do!” Berkson exclaimed. “Retract, retract, retract.”

Boone could barely muster the energy to raise his head and look into Berkson’s eyes. “At least you believe me, right?” he said.

Berkson smiled. “You gonna trust an old shark like me if I say I do?”

Boone briefly considered cutting and running. He could sell the Porsche and raise enough cash to make it to Panama or Colombia. But he wasn’t the fugitive type. All that lying and hiding and scheming didn’t sit right with him. So he took the deal, his hand shaking as he signed the papers. And when they cuffed him and led him out of the courtroom, he felt he might fall down dead of shame.

Not two months after he walked into the fish tank at Corcoran, he learned from Berkson that Anderson and Jeannie were divorcing. They’d share custody of Adelle, and Jeannie would receive a hefty settlement.
Ha!
he thought.
There it is
. He ran the whole thing through his head that night in his bunk.

It was clear that Jeannie was desperate to get out of the marriage and that Anderson didn’t want to let her go. Hadn’t Rodney heard him threatening to take the kid and give her nothing if she left? So she needed something to use against him. She revs Boone up with phony abuse stories, shows him a doctored pair of panties to push him over the edge, and lets his righteous anger do the rest.