FOR A LONG TIME AFTER LESTER LEFT WITH THE COLONEL AND HIS son, I just stood in the bedroom and listened to Mrs. Behrani quietly cleaning up out in the kitchen. I didn’t like being left alone with her. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and I wished I hadn’t volunteered to stay. Lester had told me to think of someplace sunny we could go to, but all I could think of was my family, my brother Frank and my mother, their faces when they found out I not only sold Dad’s house without telling them, but that all I got was an auction price for it before I fled town to spend it. And then they’d get the whole story: my drinking, the gun, the pills, Lester and the family he took hostage. My brother would roll his eyes at me one last time, then write my name permanently on the expensive side of his internal cost/benefit sheet. My mother would just curse me for good. I felt queasy, like an important organ inside me wasn’t attached all the way. My front shorts pockets were heavy with Lester’s bullets.
Yesterday I was convinced that by this time today he’d be back with his wife and kids, back to his life in Eureka Fields. But instead he ended up committing a string of crimes to sit and watch over me in my drugged sleep while he didn’t sleep at all. When he made the colonel park my car out of sight in the backyard, I came into the bedroom and watched from the window as he leaned forward and pushed his unloaded gun into the colonel’s neck. Lester got out first, stuffing the gun into his pants and covering it with his shirt. And when the colonel followed, the morning sun in his face, it felt good to see him afraid, see him bullied by someone.
Your shit is my shit. But I never wanted this problem solved bad enough to scare a woman as sweet as Mrs. Behrani. And what was I supposed to do? Go out there and watch her like a prison guard? But then how could I do anything but help Lester get us out of this trouble, which was really more mine than his?
It was quiet out in the kitchen and I pictured her running down the hill into town to find a cop, tell him everything. Maybe they’d catch Lester on the road, think he was armed when I knew he wasn’t. I let out a long weak breath, and stepped fast into the hallway.
She was still at the kitchen sink. The breakfast dishes were stacked neatly, and she was just standing there, looking out the window, though there wasn’t much to see but the wooden staircase up to the new roof deck that was hers now. I used to like looking out that window while I rinsed a plate or coffee cup, see my small side yard and the drop of the hill into town.
Mrs. Behrani slowly turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder. It seemed to take her a second or two. Her hair was still flattened a little on one side, and I pictured her sleeping in the bathroom, in the tub or on the floor. I guess I expected her to look ready to fight me somehow, but instead her lined face seemed pained, her eyes taking me in like she wanted to understand me before it was too late. It was almost my mother’s look.
“Please, your friend—” Her voice was weak and she looked down and pressed her hand to the side of her head, then took a deep breath and looked back at me. “Will he to hurt my son?”
“No, he doesn’t want any more trouble, Mrs. Behrani. He’s just trying to finish all this, I guess.” I thought about reaching into my pocket for the bullets.
She stood still, looking at me, her hand pressed to the side of her head. I was about to tell her I was selling them the house, but her eyes were almost black, like she was imagining something that really scared her, and I knew what it was.
“He has a son of his own, you know.”
She nodded once and took a breath. Then she closed her eyes and pressed until her fingertips whitened.
“Are you all right?’
“Migraine. Please, I must—” She moved by me and I watched her walk down the dim hallway as slow and careful as an old lady, one hand in front of her, the other pressed to the left side of her head. She left the bathroom door half open and I could see her feet and lower legs as she knelt on the floor at the toilet. I felt so strange, like it was almost fate that I walk over and hold her forehead as she retched her small breakfast, then sniffled and let out a long moan.
“Are you all right?”
She raised her head, her face grayish white. “I must to medicine.”
On the sink was the brown vial I’d emptied the night before and my face flushed as I opened her medicine cabinet thinking, please, please don’t be that one. But there were only vials with that snake alphabet on them, and I wouldn’t know which one she needed even if I could read them. I picked up the empty vial on the sink and turned around, but Mrs. Behrani was up and halfway out the door.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Behrani, I’ll drive downtown and buy you some right now. I’m really sorry.” I saw myself getting pulled over in the car, arrested for yesterday’s slip over the edge at the gas station, never getting back here to relieve Mrs. Behrani’s agony. I would have to walk or run down the hill into town, or maybe their son had a bike. But could she be faking all this to get me out of the house so she could call the police? No, she looked too terrible; she was dragging her fingertips along the wall, then she was in her bedroom and so was I, watching her sit on the bed and pull open the nightstand drawer, take out a prescription bottle. I was so relieved I hadn’t robbed her of what she needed right now, I felt almost cheerful. She dropped her chin as she tried to get the lid off but couldn’t, and I took it from her hands and opened it.
There was half a cup of cold black tea near the lamp, Lester’s I guessed, and Mrs. Behrani shook out two capsules, palmed them into her mouth, then drank the rest of the tea. She pressed her fingers to the side of her head, her eyes closed, her hand shaking slightly. “I must for rest.”
“Okay.” There was nothing else to say or do. I watched her lie back on the bed and draw her knees up. She rested her arm across her eyes.
“Please.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “Close for me window light.”
I did as she said. I went to the window, my red Bonneville parked under it in the sun, and I pulled the heavy curtains shut. I heard the click of her tape player, then that same music she’d been playing when I came here yesterday to talk. I could see her thin arm adjusting the volume, though her other arm was still across her eyes, and I knew this was something she’d done too many times, come to this darkness and lain down on this bed with this music that at first made me think of fairy tales I’d read as a girl, snakes with the heads of princesses, carpets that would fly over black deserts under cold stars, men with long curved swords dancing around a pit of flames. But then a woman’s voice began to sing in their language, high and mournful about something she’d lost, and I suddenly felt I was standing where I had no business being at all, like I was watching a stranger die, or two people making love.
I left my old bedroom and my old house. I went out to my fugitive car, sat in the driver’s seat, and smoked. My head didn’t feel stuffed with wet rags anymore, but still, everything seemed too bright and downy: the sun’s glare across my hood, the way the hedges around my back door seemed to hover slightly off the ground, the muffled and tinny sound of Mrs. Behrani’s music coming from inside the house. But the cigarettes were helping, the nicotine sticking its legs down into my chest like a baby, and I sat there in my Bonneville, the seat cover too warm under the sun, and I smoked and waited, waited for Lester.
LESTER HAD THE COLONEL TURN LEFT ONTO SYCAMORE STREET. THE county tax office was on the corner, not a half minute’s walk from the old domed courthouse and the Hall of Justice on the other side of Broadway, and Lester was relieved there were no parking spaces this close to the corner. He began to tap his fingers on his knee, his mouth and throat as dry as paper. The colonel drove slowly, scanning both sides of the street for an available spot. The street was lined with tall laurel trees, and Lester was grateful for the shade. As soon as they’d turned east off the freeway onto Woodside Road, the sky had gone from its coastal gray to a pale, metallic blue, the sun shining brightly everywhere. Now it made Lester’s eyes ache.
Nearly three blocks from Broadway a yellow cargo van pull
ed away from the curb, and Behrani began to take its place. He backed the car carefully, turning to look over his shoulder and out the rear window. Lester knew he was sitting directly in the colonel’s line of vision, but he didn’t move; to do that would be courteous, and right now, just before he sent the colonel out on his own to do the right thing, Lester couldn’t afford to appear courteous. Or thoughtful. Or soft in any way.
Behrani finished parking and turned off the engine. Lester picked his pistol up off the floor, then pulled from his front pocket some loose change and handed two quarters over the seat. “This’ll give you thirty minutes on the meter. They’re expecting you, so you shouldn’t have to wait.” Lester made a point of looking at the boy, whose eyes were dark and expectant, seeing only his father, and again, Lester wished the teenager wasn’t part of any of this at all, but he was and this was the time to use him.
“Your son stays here with me. If you’re not back by then, Esmail and I will be gone. Are we clear on this?”
The colonel turned in his seat. His eyes were slightly yellow at the whites, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead and chin. He looked at his son, both of them locking eyes for a moment, and Lester felt instantly dirty and wrong, like he had just violated something precious, but he couldn’t backpedal now; there was too much on the table and he was already waist-deep in his own bluff.
Behrani looked back at him, and Lester could see the twitch of a small muscle up near the Iranian’s temple. “But we have an agreement.”
“That’s right, so go get the check and come back to the car, Colonel.”
“No. I will for you do nothing without my son. Nothing.”
Lester took in a long breath and let it out. He imagined the three of them strolling into the county tax office together, his service pistol barely covered by his shirt while he somehow stayed close enough to the colonel and kept the boy in check too. And it was midmorning and at least a half-dozen men from the department would be on the sidewalk making a run to the bakery on Stockton and Broadway, and what if one of them happened to be Lieutenant Alvarez, or anyone else in IA who might know about this Iranian and his complaint against Les Burdon? The colonel’s olive face was as still as a mask, but his dark eyes were full of heat and iron and the miles he was prepared to go. Then came the click of heels on the sidewalk outside, a young woman walking past, a black-haired stenographer Lester had seen in the old courthouse many times sitting erect at her small desk silently tapping in every word anybody said out loud, a shiny black crow on a limb. Soon she was out of sight and Lester could feel the heartbeats behind his eyes. He had to stay disciplined and controlled. Rational and in charge. The colonel’s eyes were still on him. The truth was, Lester knew he’d never leave his son like this either; his judgment seemed to be getting worse with each breath.
THEY BEGAN WALKING toward Broadway in the shade, Lester keeping three steps behind them. Both father and son walked at a normal stride, not too hurried, with their backs straight. But Lester’s chest felt sunken with fatigue, his neck and shoulders were stiff, he was thirstier than he could ever remember being, and every time he stepped forward the butt of his gun rubbed against his lower back. To his left was the bright concrete yard of the old domed courthouse, and just beyond the laurel trees a hot dog vendor was setting up his cart. He worked under the shade of his blue-and-yellow umbrella, sticking Coke cans into a cooler full of ice. Lester wanted one badly but the courtyard was full of people. A small group of receptionists leaned against a low concrete wall drinking from their office coffee mugs and smoking. Lawyers and clients stood in twos and threes conferring over cigarettes. And uniformed officers entered or left the building with paperwork under their arms. One of them was Brian Gleason, a stocky blond-haired kid Lester had trained eighteen months ago. He’d seemed kind and conscientious, and when Lester promoted him he’d found himself thinking Gleason wouldn’t last. His heart was too big, too geared for the positive, and he wouldn’t know what to do with all those images he would get of fatal car accidents, beaten wives and abandoned children, random shootings, drunk mothers you sometimes had to manhandle into the back of your patrol car. But now Gleason was cutting across the yard right for the vendor’s cart, and Lester turned away, thick heat unrolling behind his face.
“Move, Colonel. Move.”
The colonel and his son were walking fine but it felt good to say that, to shove some of the edge back onto them. But now they were walking too fast, running the risk of drawing attention to all three of them, and Lester had to almost swing his arms to keep up. “Slow down.”
Behrani stopped there on the sidewalk. His son took a few more steps before he realized he was alone, then he turned around. But the colonel kept his back to Lester and Lester wanted to kick his foot right into the colonel’s slightly wrinkled and damp white shirt. Who was he to keep his back to him? To stand there like he was waiting for Lester to make up his mind? His grip on the colonel’s imagination was beginning to slide off like a hand that’s fallen asleep, and Lester regretted ever having ejected rounds from his semiautomatic.
“Deputy Sheriff Burdon? Sir?” Gleason was walking through the row of trees onto the sidewalk, an open Classic Coke in his hand, and Lester needed to say something to the colonel’s back, something to hold him and his son just where they were, but it was too late. He turned, putting his back and covered piece to the street, the smile on his face feeling waxy and wrong. “Hey, Deputy.”
Gleason was smiling too, his cheeks flushed. He offered Lester his hand, and Lester shook it. The young deputy’s uniform was clean and freshly pressed, his gold star polished and new, and Lester wanted almost desperately to be in his own uniform, to be behind the wheel of his patrol car driving up the coast with a cold Coke, the wind in his face, the green artichoke fields to his right, the Pacific with all its blue-gray possibilities to his left. Gleason let go and his eyes took in the colonel, who had turned around. Lester saw the question in Gleason’s boyish face but no words came to Lester, nothing that would make any sense.
“Court, Brian?”
“A DV. I was an actual witness; the husband was going at her when I showed up.” Gleason glanced from the colonel to the boy, then back at Lester. “I know you’re busy, sir; I just wanted to tell you I really appreciate everything you taught me.” The young deputy smiled. “It’s funny. I keep hearing your voice while I’m out on patrol, you know, letting me in on this or that, on code and following your gut. I don’t know, I just wanted to tell you, I guess.”
“I appreciate that, Brian.”
“Well—” Gleason looked once more at the colonel. “I’ll let you go. Thanks again.” He raised his hand, then cut back through the trees for the sun-bright courtyard and his walk to the motor pool. Lester nodded for the Behranis to keep moving, and as the three moved closer to the midmorning bustle on Broadway, Lester kept his eyes on the colonel’s balding head, hating each hair, hating the fold of dark skin just above his starched white collar, hating the way he held his shoulders back, but more than anything, Lester hated the way he himself felt right now, hot-faced and thick-tongued with shame, undeserving of any of that young deputy’s respect at all.
The Behranis began to cross Sycamore for the corner of Broadway, the boy glancing behind him at Lester, Lester following, his dream coming to him as suddenly as a wind that blows up from the ground, the image of him sitting in his patrol car in an empty lot with a broken radio while every man, woman, and child he’d ever confronted pressed their faces to all his windows, waiting for him. He came up behind the colonel and his son and ordered them to cross the street, but they took their time doing it, especially the colonel, as if nothing serious were at stake here at all. People were walking by them, a young woman pushing a baby in a jogging stroller, two young men in shirts and ties with short stylish haircuts and tanned faces, each holding a bottle of mineral water, both laughing at something, and Lester was breathing deeply through his nose, trying to get his feet flat on the earth, feeling his dr
eam fade back and away like a car horn at high speed.
At the sidewalk the colonel stopped and Lester pushed two fingers hard against Behrani’s lower back and walked him and his son quickly into the small shaded entryway of the county tax office, nudging the colonel ahead of him into the corner of the brick wall, the glass doors to Lester’s right, his back naked to the bright sidewalk and street. The boy stood almost to his side, as if it was now the two of them against the colonel. Lester’s face was so close to the Iranian’s he could smell his old tea breath, and he just had to put things back where they belonged, to impress upon Behrani the new truth, that Les Burdon would do whatever it took to see this through to its just end. The colonel kept his arms at his sides and at first his dark eyes were startled but now they were calm, waiting Lester out as if he was a child throwing a predictable fit, someone’s unruly kid. Lester poked a finger into the colonel’s sternum and backed him a half step to the wall. He was gritting his teeth so hard his head hurt and he knew he had to pull away now before anyone began to take an interest, but it was like willing his body to stop sneezing or to hold off an orgasm once it had broken free. He could hear the scuff of somebody’s shoe soles on the sidewalk as he stopped to watch, and he knew he wasn’t gaining any precious ground now, but losing some, and with this knowledge he felt almost nauseated with a sudden weakness in his legs, stomach, and arms. He stepped back, and he wanted to say something to at least keep things on an even keel before they went inside, but then his service pistol was jerked free of his belt and he turned to see Esmail pointing it at him, backing into the sunlight, his other hand raised like he was getting ready to flee, his bare shoulders looking smooth and brown under the sun. A woman let out a shriek, and a businessman backed away as if the boy was a fire spreading at his feet, and Lester had one hand on the colonel behind him, was conscious of this just as his wrist was squeezed, his arm yanked down and twisted up behind his back, a burn ripping through his shoulder girdle. The colonel fumbled for Lester’s other hand but Lester jerked it away, his attention still on the boy. Behrani yelled something in Farsi to his son, then in English for help, for someone to call the police. Lester could feel a half-dozen or more people watching, but he didn’t look at them, only felt them standing there twelve or fifteen feet away, a man’s voice telling someone to get to a phone. But Lester was looking at the boy, at his eyes, which were darker than his father’s, more like his mother’s—deep ellipses, beautiful really—now moist with fear and confusion. The boy’s hand and arm were trembling, his lips beginning to move as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. He glanced quickly at his father behind Lester, then back again. Lester could hear someone running down the sidewalk, maybe into a nearby shop. It would take two or three seconds to get out of this hold, but by then the boy might flee and run down this congested street. His eyes were still on the boy’s, and he knew he should tell him the gun was empty, that he was calling dangerous attention to himself for no reason, but saying that would rob Lester of any leverage once he got the gun back, would make it impossible to get both Behranis back down the street and into the Buick and away. Lester tried to be the boy, tried to will his own body to become blood and breath, but the colonel pushed harder, forcing Lester to bend forward even more, half in the sunlight now, half in the dark of the entryway. The colonel was saying more in Farsi to his son, his voice calm, waiting the moment out, as if he was sure things had turned now in their favor. Then Lester heard running footsteps on the bright sidewalk, the familiar throaty leather bounce of more than one departmental gun belt, and then he was them, running from the bakery, pushing through carelessly unshielded bystanders to see a dark boy holding a piece on two men, and there was no more time: Lester stomped the colonel’s instep, heard him grunt as Lester pushed backward, then swung his free elbow twice into Behrani’s temple, Behrani falling, someone yelling, “Drop it! Drop it!” And Lester jerked around, saw Esmail turn to the yelling, his eyes wide, his mouth a dark oval, the gun unmoving in his hand, pointing now in the direction of the man Lester couldn’t see. Lester shouted: “Hold it! Wait!” He began to step out of the entryway but his movement had sound, a blast that hit the boy high in the torso and jerked him sideways, his arms swinging loose, Lester’s pistol clattering to the concrete as the second shot buckled the boy’s legs and he dropped to the sidewalk, his legs bent and separated, one arm stretched out as if he were reaching for something.