Tropical Depression (5 page)

“Captain,” I said, and flinched away as those terrible fingers came for my shoulder again.

“Relax, son. I’m taking extra special care here. Nothing can go wrong. Just take it easy.” He leaned closer. I could see his teeth. Two of the front ones were slightly whiter than the others, obvious caps. “I got an observer circling the rooftops. He’s checking it all out, looking into every corner of the room from every angle. He’s not even going to use the radio, he’s coming right back to report to me in person.”

He gave a squeeze. His fingers put pressure on the exact same spot he’d been squeezing since I got there. I almost moaned. “You see, son? It’s all thought out. This is a family matter, and I’m not leaving anything to chance.”

I heard the soft patter of sneakers. Levine, a young cop I hardly knew, slid up beside Captain Spaulding. A pair of very good binoculars hung from around his neck. Levine was lean and intense and still idealistic and about as streetwise as a Shriners parade. He was the kind of cop who put in five years on the force and then left for law school.

“Captain,” he said softly, looking at me nervously.

“What’ve you got, Levine?” Spaulding said. The tone of his voice snapped Levine’s head back around to look at the captain.

“Sir. I checked them out from every angle.” He glanced at me again, out of the corner of his eye. “Red has a MAC Ten. He’s by the window. Uh, the hostages are fine, sir. The woman is in the corner. Blue is sitting on the floor with the kid. He’s got something in his lap, uh—”

“What kind of something?” the captain demanded.

“Uh—” Levine started, then broke off to collect himself. He didn’t want to look vague in front of Captain Spaulding. That would show up on his rating and screw up his chance at law school. “It’s a Walkman, sir. I could see the wire coming out the top.”

Spaulding nodded. “These guys always have to have music. Okay.” He turned to pick up the radio. “Spaulding,” he said. There was an answering crackle. “Mendez,” the bored voice answered.

Something was bothering me, and as I heard Spaulding say, “Ten—Twenty-three,” it hit me. I turned to Levine.

“How sure are you that was a Walkman?”

He glanced nervously over at Captain Spaulding. “I’m sure,” he said.

“Did you see headphones?”

“N-no—he was holding one in his right hand, I think—”

“You think? But you didn’t see for sure?”

He licked his upper lip. “Headphones had to be there. I saw the Walkman.”

Spaulding’s radio squacked. “Ready blue,” it said.

“What did the Walkman look like?” I said, coming to my feet now.

Levine was backing away a half-step at a time. “Just—you know. A Walkman. A black plastic box. Red wires coming out the top—”

The radio squacked again. “Ready red,” it said.

I lunged for Spaulding’s arm. “Captain, wait—” I started, but he was saying, “Do it!”

I was already running for the building. The shots came exactly together and sounded like only one shot. Like I say, those guys are good. I was through the front door and halfway up the steps when the explosion came.

It wasn’t all that big. Probably just a couple of sticks of dynamite wired to a thumb switch. Push the button down and it turns on; take your thumb off and boom. It’s called a dead man’s switch, since it turns on only when the man holding it is dead. It’s easily wired to any charge, big or small.

This one was pretty small. It was barely big enough to throw me backwards down the stairs and out into the street on my head. Just big enough to take out most of that corner of the building and all the windows in the building next door.

Plenty big enough, of course, to kill everybody in that small corner room of the Rossmore.

I woke up in the quietest room I’ve ever been in. Everything was white. I had a bad taste in my mouth and I couldn’t hear anything except an annoying hum. My head hurt. I was lying down in some kind of bed. There was a stiff, crusty feeling on my left cheek. I raised a hand to touch it and felt bandages. My hand fell away all by itself and I was asleep before it hit the bed.

I woke up again. I still heard the hum, but I could hear other noises in the background now. A man in a three-piece suit was leaning over me. I decided he wasn’t a doctor. He didn’t look like a doctor. He looked like a hyena. That probably meant he was a lawyer.

He held up a sheaf of papers and moved his mouth in an exaggerated, overcareful way, like he was talking to a retarded foreigner. “Can you just sign here, please?” he said.

Yup: a lawyer. I closed my eyes.

I woke up again. This time it was a doctor. He was a mean-looking old man with a bow tie, a beard, and a nasty glint in his eye. He wore a white coat. He was holding up my left eyelid with a hard thumb and shining a bright light into my eye.

“Cut it out,” I yelled. Or at least, I thought I yelled it. What came out was a kind of muffled, raspy whine.

“Good. You’re awake,” the doctor said. He snapped off the light. “I think you’re going to live.” He sounded like that offended him.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to live. I wasn’t even sure what it meant. I closed my eyes.

I woke up again. Captain Spaulding was sitting in the chair beside my bed.

“Billy,” he said, and stopped. The hum was gone now. I could hear fine, although everything still sounded like it was coming from the next room.

“Billy,” Captain Spaulding said again. I closed my eyes, but this time I didn’t go to sleep. This time I couldn’t. Seeing Spaulding there, hearing him calling me Billy—

It had happened. It had really happened.

They let me go home the next day. The house was neat, a little too neat. It had been cleaned up by someone who expected to be away for a while.

They had given me the note Jennifer came down to the station to leave for me. It said she’d had about enough and she was taking our daughter away for a few weeks. They would stay with her brother in Paso Robles and call in a few days. She hoped we might be able to work things out, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

That night was the first time I tasted my gun. It tasted pretty good.

But I didn’t pull the trigger. I don’t know why. Maybe I was just being stubborn. Jennifer always said I was too stubborn. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t seem to summon up the energy and motor skills to do anything but turn on the TV and fall into the easy chair.

And maybe it was curiosity. Some funny things had been going on and I guess I wanted to know how it was going to come out. That hyena-faced lawyer was on the phone to me a dozen times over the next few days and came to see me in person four times, since I kept hanging up on him. He’d come to my house, where I was just sitting in a chair with the TV on. I had special condolence leave. Hyena would knock and when I didn’t answer he’d kind of oil in the door and wave his stack of papers and wheedle for me to sign. It turned out he worked for the city. I was supposed to sign a half-dozen forms that said I didn’t hold the city responsible for the deaths of my family.

I didn’t sign. Even when Captain Spaulding showed up at my house and asked me in person, as a personal favor to him, I wouldn’t sign.

I was not holding out for anything, not planning to sue, not trying to prove anything. I just didn’t feel very much like signing anything. I really didn’t feel capable of anything that complicated. I would look at the heap of forms requiring my signature, and my eyes would drift away. I couldn’t concentrate on anything long enough to sign. All I could think about was all the really good reasons to swallow a slug.

The City, meanwhile, was worried sick. Mind you, L.A. has two dozen excellent reasons for being worried sick every day of the year, but now they thought they had a new one.

When a cop was injured trying to save his wife and kid from a bomb blast caused by what might have been overzealous aggressiveness on the part of the cop’s commanding officer, the City figured it had a PR problem. The media agreed.

Nobody knew where the gangbangers had learned how to rig a bomb with a dead man’s switch, and I guess we’ll never find out. But a few of the reporters figured somebody should have known. And the City decided I was stonewalling, refusing to sign because I was gathering my dark forces to sue the shit out of them.

So about two weeks after the Rossmore’s surprise remodeling, a different lawyer came to see me. He was much more refined than the hyena. He looked like an Episcopalian bishop. He wore the nicest suit I have ever seen in my life and carried a $3,000 briefcase.

He told me that the City still hoped to avoid any kind of difficulty over the matter and if I was simply willing to sign a release, a quitclaim, a statement, and a waiver, the City would, while certainly not acknowledging any culpability, nonetheless be willing to make a final payment in appreciation of my cooperation in letting this whole painful matter come to a quiet close. The bishop said he was authorized to go as high as a half-million dollars on the condition that I sign a couple of standard forms, which he happened to have with him in his $3,000 briefcase.

When I still didn’t answer, he gave me a small sympathetic smile and left the forms on the table. He put the check on top of them.

If I’d been firing on all cylinders, and if I’d been in any shape to give a damn, I would have realized that all this attention meant the City was scared to death I would sue. There’d been an awful lot of suits against the city the past two years, and they’d been paying out damages in the millions on a semiregular basis.

A half-million bucks looked like a pretty good bargain compared to a long and drawn-out lawsuit that would certainly create a wave of negative publicity and probably end up costing $5 or $10 million anyway. Especially since as part of the bargain they got a statement signed by me—written by them, of course—clearly stating that I forgave them completely for everything they had never even done.

It was a couple of months before I put all that together, though. For the first few weeks it was all I could do to get up in the morning and reach for the coffee instead of my weapon.

About ten days after the bishop left his stack of papers I had a spasm of neatness. It was three A.M. I was watching an old sci-fi movie. I’d seen it before. But the sudden sight of giant ants terrorizing Los Angeles had a funny effect on me. It made me see myself from one step away, in just the same way seeing the giant ants on familiar streets made me see the City in a funny way.

I was suddenly filled with a strange energy for the first time since I’d come home. The place was filthy. I jumped up and loaded dirty dishes into the dishwasher. I threw all my laundry into the washing machine. I took a shower and shaved. I swept the floor. And in clearing off the stacks of mostly unread newspapers from the dining table, I found the stack of papers from the bishop.

The papers were unfinished business. I couldn’t throw them away; more would come and that would make more clutter. The neatest solution, clearly, was to sign them and mail them immediately.

I circled the room at high speed, looking for a pen. I had to stop to organize the magazine rack by my easy chair. I got the spines lined up and put the older issues in the recycle stack by the back door. That reminded me of the empty bottles in the kitchen and I moved them to the recycle box for containers.

Back in the living room, I saw the stack of papers again, and again circled the room looking for a pen. I found one by the stereo and paused to alphabetize the tapes. When they were straight I hurried back to the papers. I signed them. I stuffed them into the envelope provided. I made out a deposit slip and signed the check. I put it into an envelope and had to go look for a stamp. I went by the bedroom and noticed the sheets needed changing. I stripped the bed and took the dirty sheets to the washing machine. The first load was done and I moved it to the dryer. I put the sheets in the washer and headed back for the living room.

I saw the envelopes sitting neatly on the table and slapped my forehead: a stamp, of course. I found one in a small drawer of the telephone table. But there were several directories there that were more than a year out of date. I carried them to the recycle box and decided I should move the box out to the curb. I did, and noticed that the yard was a mess.

I turned on the spotlights, got a rake, and managed to pile up several large heaps of leaves, dead grass, and so on. I went back into the house to get garbage bags and saw the envelopes again. I remembered the stamp, now in my shirt pocket. I put it on the envelope and took both envelopes out the front door. There was a mailbox on the corner, and no time like the present.

But as I reached the sidewalk in front of the house I noticed a stack of newspapers I had never gotten around to picking up. I grabbed them and took them to the recycle box. I carefully leaned the two envelopes against the recycle box so I would remember where they were. I took the plastic bags off the newspapers, sorted the newspapers by date and stacked them in the recycle box. I took the bins to the curb.

I got back from the curb and saw the heaps of refuse in the yard. I walked back into the house for garbage bags and noticed the dryer had stopped. I put the sheets into the dryer and took the dried laundry out to sort it.

I carried the stuff to my bedroom and dumped it on the bed. On top of the heap was a tiny pink sock.

I picked it up. It must have been left in the dryer. It was just one small, pink sock. It had been my daughter’s.

I fell on the floor beside the bed as if somebody had bashed all my bones in with a mallet and I lay there, holding the sock. I just lay there and cried for over a half hour. After a while no more tears would come; I’d dried up my tear ducts. I lay there for another twenty minutes making raw, ratchety sounds until I just ran out of energy. Then I just lay there for another half hour. Finally I got up and slumped wearily down the hall. I got my pistol.

This was the second time I tasted the barrel. There was such a pain in my heart that I didn’t even have the strength to pull the trigger. I would have loved to, but all the energy was drained out of me and into that small, pink sock. I sat there in my easy chair with the gun in my mouth and watched the sun come up.