I let the air out of my lungs. We had had this conversation before.
“Last time, I convinced you to stay,” I said. “Talked until I was blue in the face. Do you remember what I told you I would do if you did this to me again?”
“Yes,” she said. “You said you wouldn’t try to stop me the next time.”
“Yes.”
The napkin was wasted, rendered perfectly useless. She pushed it aside and drank deeply from her martini. So deeply, in fact, that she finished it. I said nothing. There was nothing for me to say. I was not going to keep having this conversation with her. I loved Cindy with all of my heart, but I was not going to make her do something she did not want to do.
The waiter saw her empty glass and came over.
“Another?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
She still hadn’t looked me in the eye. I studied her closely. She was behaving very un-Cindy like. Small, jerky movements as she tapped on the now empty cardboard coaster. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
I said nothing.
“Jesus Christ, Jim, you beat the unholy shit out of another human being. Your life has been threatened by a hired killer. A dead cat shows up in your office. Cut in fucking two. And now you’re drinking again. It’s not that you’re drinking, really. It’s that you are getting drunk, and doing it in secret, which makes it dirty and dangerous and all-consuming. And, ultimately, sad. Very, very sad.”
I said nothing.
“You didn’t answer the phone last night because you were passed out.”
Her second apple martini came, followed by a second waiter bearing our food. The food was placed before us; it went ignored.
“And now you’re trying out for the Chargers in a few weeks. What if you make the team? I would never see you. I know that’s selfish of me, but it’s true. You would throw your whole life into it, like you do everything else, and the NFL would own your heart and soul. Would there be any room left for me?”
She drank her martini. Her eyes were wet. Hands shaking. She spilled some of the drink, and used the shredded napkin to clean up. The napkin only managed to smear the liquid.
“Christ, aren’t you going to say anything?”
I said nothing.
“And I love you so much, you big sonofabitch. You worked your way deep into my heart like a damn thorn. A thorn that hurts, but has so much love to give.”
I didn’t like the analogy, but said nothing.
“I worry so much about you. But you can take care of yourself. I’ve seen it. And you have Sanchez and your father to help you. The three of you are an amazingly formidable force. And you are so brutal and deadly, but moral and just, and so fucking hilarious. Shit.”
She stopped talking and picked at her salmon. She even went as far as to bring up a forkful, but then got distracted by her own thoughts, and set it down again.
“You are a wonderful man, but you fuck me up.”
She started crying. She brought her hands to her face, and the tears leaked from under her palms. I resisted the strong urge to reach out to her. She needed to make a decision. I was not going to influence her decision in any way. I held on to that thought, no matter how hard it was for me to do so.
“Are you just going to sit there and let me cry?”
I said nothing, and didn’t move, although my hand flinched.
“I think I need to leave,” she said.
She did, getting up quickly and dashing through the dark restaurant. I watched her go, and when she was gone I set aside my Coke and signaled the waiter.
I was going to need something a little stronger.
Chapter Thirty-nine
It was almost 1:00 a.m. when I came home that night.
With a twelve-pack of MGD in hand, I took the stairs two at a time, climbing my way to the fifth floor, where my apartment and drinking sanctuary awaited. I had made it a point recently to always take the stairs, to augment my training. I figured every little bit helped.
I was regretting that decision now. Especially at this hour, and what had happened over dinner.
Maybe I should have said something to her, I thought.
But I was determined not to sway her decision. She needed to decide for herself whether or not she wanted me in her life. Me prostrating myself, switching into used car salesman mode, and listing my strengths and perks did no one any good. It debased me on one level, and clouded her thinking on another.
Cindy and I had been seeing each other steadily since my senior year in college. At the time, she was in the master’s program at UCLA. I had met her through a teammate of mine, her brother Rob. Cindy had come from a football family, and although she made no real effort to understand the sport, she at least understood the men who played it, and we were a good match. She went on to get her doctoral in anthropology, her expertise the anthropology of world religions. Turns out, there’s a lot of world religions out there, and so she keeps fairly busy writing papers and what-nots. She’s only recently been tenured at UCI, which is great because now she really has to royally screw up to be fired. Luckily, she rarely screws up.
After my injury, she had been so supportive during those years of rehabilitation. She had also been supportive of the idea of me following in the footsteps of my father, although I had sworn long ago to never be a detective. I mean, I was destined for a long and rewarding career in football, right? Say ten years in the NFL, another ten in broadcasting, and finish things up as an NFL coach. That had been the plan.
Things change.
Especially when you’re hit by a cheap chop block, and you hear the sound of your bones fracturing in so many places that you still have nightmares over it. It was only later, after my drinking had started, that I found amusement in the fact that the fracturing of my leg had sounded like the popping of popcorn.
I was now on the fifth floor. I was not winded, but there was a healthy burn in my legs. And as I stepped through the stairwell door, I saw a man smoking a cigarette five feet away. He was waiting by the elevator door, and there was a pistol hanging loosely by his side. He did not see me.
It was Fuck Nut.
Chapter Forty
I eased the stairwell door shut, removed the Browning from my shoulder holster and set down the beer. This wing of the fifth floor is reserved for four apartment suites. The elevator lets you out under a veranda outdoors. From there one can choose four different routes: immediate right or left, or straight ahead and then right or left. My apartment was straight ahead and then right. The whole area is flooded with outdoor lighting.
He had been leaning behind a stucco pillar, just feet from the elevator, gun hanging idly by his side, blowing smoke from his cigarette straight into the air. I could smell the smoke.
I had the element of surprise, of course, being that he did not expect anyone in their right mind to walk up five flights of stairs, especially someone with a bum leg. And if Fuck Nut was a professional killer, as I assumed him to be, he had done his research on me; he knew about the bum leg. He was confident I would take the elevator. He did not realize I was a hell of an example of human perseverance in the face of tragedy.
In the least he should have positioned himself to see the stairs and elevator.
Expect the unexpected, as my father would say.
I eased open the door and raised the Browning.
But he was no longer standing behind the pillar. No, he was now waiting off to the side of the elevator. His cigarette, tossed aside, was glowing ten feet away, half finished.
Because the elevator door was about to open.
Shit.
He raised his own weapon. In the glow of the outdoor lights I could see he had a silencer on the end of his pistol. A true killer.
The doors slid open.
Yellow light from the elevator washed across the veranda, and out stepped my Indian neighbor from across the way. My neighbor who had told me his name seven or eight times but I could never remember it. Poorjafar? I always felt like crap askin
g him to pronounce his name again, so we both accepted the fact that he was known as “Hey!” And I was known as “Jeemmy!” Normally, Jeemmy is an unacceptable variant of my name, but I let it slide in this case.
The man who might be Poorjafar was a big guy who lifted weights, and he stepped confidently out of the elevator, swirling his key ring on his finger and whistling. I didn’t recognize the song, but it had a sort of Bollywood feel to it. And, for effect, Poorjafar stopped, did a little dance, turned around—
And saw the hitman.
“Oh, shit,” said Poorjafar, stepping back, startled.
Fuck Nut said nothing.
“Are you waiting for someone?” asked my neighbor.
“You could say that,” said the hitman.
I knew something about assassins. They didn’t like witnesses. They saw themselves as living outside the real world; in fact it was a fantasy world of their construct, where they were king and God, pronouncing life and death on mere mortals.
The killer had just pronounced death on Poorjafar.
There would be no witnesses tonight, if the killer had his way.
I stepped out of the stairwell, losing my element of surprise, my own gun hidden behind my back. “He’s waiting for me,” I said.
Poorjafar turned. “Jeemmy! How you doing, man?”
“Hey...hey.”
Poorjafar pointed at the man in the shadows. “This is a friend of yours?”
The killer didn’t move, but his eyes wanted to bug out of his skull. He shifted uneasily, but kept his gun out of sight. I kept my eyes on him.
“He’s a recent acquaintance,” I said.
“Well, your acquaintance scared the shit out of me.”
“Yeah, he likes to do that. Of course, it doesn’t help that he’s such an ugly bastard.” I gave a big, fake hearty laugh. The killer didn’t laugh. “Probably scared the shit out of his own mother when he was born.”
Poorjafar laughed, and I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“Shit, Jeemmy. That was a low blow. He’s a friend, man.”
“No, I’m not,” said the man. “I’m very much not his friend.”
And he stepped sideways, keeping his hand behind his back, and stepped into the elevator. He pressed a button; the door closed. He pointed a finger at me and fired a blank bullet. And he was gone. I went back for my beer, and Poorjafar danced and whistled his way into his apartment.
Chapter Forty-one
I was at East Inglewood High, my old high school, practicing hitting drills with my even older high school football coach. Twelve years ago I made a name for myself on this field, where I was loved and worshipped. Isn’t football just swell?
Coach Samson was a big black man, now in his fifties, and I still feared him on some level. But more than fear, however, was deep respect and admiration. He was more of a father figure than my father.
“Jesus Christ, son, you still have it,” he said.
Coach Samson was riding high on the back of a padded hitting dummy. Currently he was getting a sleigh ride across the football field, benefit of my churning legs and sweat. He had agreed to go over the basic fundamentals, because I had been out of football for seven years. And even a battle-scarred old war horse like myself could always use some basic training.
He blew a whistle and I stopped, dropping to my knees. We were alone on the varsity football field, although the school marching band was practicing in an adjacent field. School was still forty-five minutes from starting. The band, as far as I could tell, was one hundred percent African-American.
I might have been the last white to come through here.
Without his prodding, I got down into a three-point stance, and then lunged forward, hitting the padded dummy hard. Coach Samson held on, and I proceeded to push that goddamn thing up and down the field.
The coach instructed and advised as I went, reminding me to keep my head up and my back straight and to keep my legs churning.
I churned and churned all morning long, and I did not once think about Cindy, or that I had not heard from her in two days. And I did not once think about Derrick or the hitman, either.
Instead, I focused on football.
Sweet football.
A sport I had been born to play, a sport that had been taken from me. But I was determined to reclaim it—and my life.
Most of all, I tried to ignore the pain in my left leg.
That endless goddamn pounding.
Chapter Forty-two
My father’s offices are on the fifteenth floor of a major LA skyscraper. I regretted the decision to walk the stairs by the seventh floor. At the fifteenth floor, I found the nearest bathroom and splashed water on my face and neck, then headed through some heavy double doors. Above the door were the words: KNIGHTHORSE INVESTIGATIONS.
A big, bald security guard was waiting behind a desk. He was about fifty. His uniform was neatly pressed. Probably a retired cop, or a retired colonel, a man who commanded respect. I immediately disliked him, partly because he worked for my father, partly because he was glaring at me.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a thick Boston accent.
“You’re pretty big for a secretary,” I said. “Do you also fetch the coffee?”
He frowned and his bushy eyebrows—the only hair on his head—formed one long bristly line. “I’m not a secretary.”
“I’m sorry. Is that not politically correct these days? How about front desk technician? Is that better?”
He stared at me. The hairy caterpillar above his eyes twitched.
“Waddya want?”
“Cooper Knighthorse. He’s the small guy with the creepy eyes.”
“Yes, I’m aware of who he is.”
“So you agree he has creepy eyes?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, I thought I would surprise him. Dad always likes a good surprise. Take the time when I threw a brick through the car window when he was screwing a neighbor’s wife in the back seat.” I laughed heartily. “Let me tell you, good times for one and all.”
“Dad?”
I nodded encouragingly.
“Mr. Knighthorse is your father?”
“I see you’re no slouch. In fact, you might make a hell of a detective some day.”
He ignored me. “Didn’t know Coop had a son.”
“Obviously, I’m his pride and joy,” I said. “Now my father usually boffs his front desk engineers in the back room. Perhaps you were unaware of your full job description.”
He made a move to stand up. “Don’t push it, buddy.”
I leaned over the desk. “But pushing it is what I do best.”
He was a big guy, maybe a little soft around the middle. It would have been a hell of a fight if a voice hadn’t come from my left. The voice belonged to my father. “He’s okay, Reginald. He’s a hardass, but he’s okay.”
“Your kid has a big mouth.”
“Always has,” said my father.
I walked around the desk and smiled at Reginald. “I’ll take cream and sugar in my coffee.”
Chapter Forty-three
The entire fifteenth floor was occupied by my father’s agency. His office was big, but not ornately so. There was a leather executive chair with brass nail trim behind a black lacquered desk. Piles of case folders everywhere, and from all indications, business was booming. No surprise there. He sat and motioned for me to do the same in one of his client chairs.
“Why you giving Reggie such a hard time?” my father asked.
“Just making friends and influencing people.”
On his desk, angled in one corner and slightly pushed askew by an errant folder, was the picture of a blond woman and a little boy. I had no idea who they were. A different family, a different life. For all I knew the little boy could have been my half brother.
“Tell me about the pictures,” I said.
He sat back in his chair and studied me silently. His gaze was unwavering. So was mine. Through the op
en window, in my peripheral vision, I saw a helicopter hover past, then dart away like a curious hummingbird. I tried not to let it distract me.
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you gave them to me now.”
“I only discovered them a few years ago.”
“Why not give them to me then?”
“Because you were still working here as an apprentice.”
“What does that matter?”
“You didn’t know what the hell you were doing,” he said.
I smiled, realizing what he was getting at. “You waited for me to become a detective.”
“Actually, I waited for you to become a good detective.”
“So you think I’m good?” I hated the fact that this news pleased me.
“That’s what I hear.”
“You’ve been checking up on me.”
He tilted his head toward me and shrugged. “I hear things.”
“Meanwhile you just sat on these photos.”
He shifted in his chair and looked away. “Yes.”
“Tell me more about the photos.”
“When I moved in with Candy,” he nodded toward the blond on his desk, “I found them at the bottom of a box. I flipped through, the first time I had ever done so. To be honest, I don’t know when they were developed or when I picked them up. Probably they were included with some other pictures, and got forgotten.”
Something rose within me. Blood, anger, revulsion, hatred. “These were pictures of your murdered wife taken on the last day she was alive, the mother of your son, and they were forgotten in the bottom of a box?”
“Those were tough times. I really didn’t know my head from a hole in the ground.”
“Not a good analogy. Trust me you did just fine in that department. Remember, I saw first hand.”
We were silent. I did my best to control my anger. On the wall behind him was a picture of a lighthouse. His paperweight was a lighthouse, as were his two bookends. Since when did my dad like lighthouses? There was so much I didn’t know about the man, and so much I didn’t care to know.
“They were fishing together, and one of them appears to have taken an interest in the two of you.”
He sat back. “That’s how I see it.”
“It might have been more than an interest,” I added.
“Perhaps. Could also be a coincidence.”
I said, “Any idea who Blondie is in the picture?”