Joel Goldman - No way out

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure if Brett hit his dad, his dad would be bragging to his buddies about how he broke every bone in Brett’s body.”

“Hey, I’m not recommending it. I’m just saying how it was for me. That stuff about your funeral dress. That about what happened at LC’s?”

She went back to her desk chair, motioning me to a pair of black leather chairs in front of the desk. They were the nicest furnishings in the office, Roni’s mother understanding that the customer came first. I sat opposite her. She ran one hand through her hair, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, nodding her head.

“Yeah. Brett’s a romantic.”

“Romantic isn’t the word I’d use to describe him.”

She laughed. “I know, but he’s all hard muscle and soft heart. I think he was more scared than mad.”

“The woman I was with, her boyfriend got on me the same way Brett got on you.”

She sat up. “Got on you? Why? What did you do?”

“Left my gun at home.”

“That’s what I don’t get. Why do men always assume they have to save us?”

“That’s the way people think about the ones they love.”

“Oh, c’mon. It’s more than that. It’s the you’re the weaker sex so watch me flex my pecs bullshit mentality guys are born with. You saw the way Brett looked at you when you showed up.”

I nodded. “He lifted his leg a little bit.”

“Like you didn’t. Jeez, men are so pathetic. You should have seen yourself. You had a look on your face, eyes all bunched up, mouth tight like you were about to spit and couldn’t wait for Brett to start something.”

She was right. That’s what I’d done with the gangbangers from the bus, and I’d done it again with Brett. The first time, I knew it. The second time, I was oblivious, on autopilot.

“You don’t even know me,” she added. “And you were ready to throw down with someone half your age and twice as tough because you thought you had to save me. What is up with that?”

I shrugged. “We’ve all got a history.”

“Yeah, and who’s going to save us from that?”

History comes with options. We can ignore it and repeat it. We can learn from it or revise it, changing winners into losers. It gives us opportunities and excuses, lifting us up or weighing us down. Though our history is as embedded in our DNA as the genes that make us tall, dark, and handsome or short, fat, and good company, it doesn’t have to be our destiny. The hard part is being able to tell the difference between being chosen and choosing.

Simon and Roni had told me the same thing: Let her save herself. But here I was anyway, unsure if she needed saving or, if she did, what she needed saving from. Whether I had come to her office because I was gallant or guilty, I was there, and she’d told her boyfriend to leave and asked me to stay.

“Maybe we’ll save each other,” I said.

She smiled. “It’s like I said yesterday. I saved your life, and now you owe me.”

“And I pay my debts in full. So, how’re you doing?”

Her face darkened, and her shoulders sagged. “I don’t know. I didn’t sleep so good last night. I kept seeing Marie lying there on the floor. She was always nice to me. And that stupid asshole Frank tried to trick me so he could kill me too. And he’d only known me my whole life! He was at my Communion, and he was going to kill me and you and your friend and LC. And for what? Because Marie pushed his buttons one too many times?”

She stared at me, her eyes filling, hands gripping the edge of the desk, demanding answers that wouldn’t tell her what she needed to know.

“If you want it to make sense, you won’t get past it because it never will.”

She sniffled, wiping her eyes and nose. “The other thing that gets me, the thing I keep seeing over and over is me shooting Frank.” She shook her head, eyebrows raised. “I didn’t hesitate. I just pulled the trigger. The really crazy part is that when I see it in my head, I’m watching me do it, like I’m having an out-of-body experience. And, I’m not sorry I shot him. I’m just amazed I did. Is that wrong? What does that make me?”

There are no rules for how to cope with shooting someone. Circumstances matter, whether it was premeditated aggression, self-defense, or the heat of the moment, but each person has to navigate through the shock, sorrow, and amazement that follow. Though the law will impose its judgment, Roni was the type for whom the personal verdict would matter most.

“No, it wasn’t wrong. It makes you someone who can be counted on. It makes you a survivor.”

“Maybe, but I like it better when the bad guy just gets voted off the island.”

“Kind of takes the TV out of reality TV.”

“Yeah, and now the TV stations won’t leave us alone. Same for the newspaper reporters. Grandma Lilly unplugged our phone and threatened to shoot the next one who came to the door.”

“Good for Grandma Lilly. All that will pass. The media is a movable beast. They’ll find someone else soon enough, and you’ll be forgotten.”

“Not soon enough to suit me. You can have my fifteen minutes of fame.”

“What have the police said about whether you’ll be charged?”

“Detective Carter said it’s up to the prosecuting attorney, but he didn’t think that I had anything to worry about on the shooting.”

I knew Carter well enough to know that he chose his words carefully. If he’d said she had nothing to worry about on the shooting, he didn’t mean she had nothing to worry about. Frank Crenshaw shot his wife with a stolen gun during a meeting with Roni, who returned the favor and shot him. Carter was leaving his options open, waiting to see where his investigation would take him.

“You should talk to a lawyer.”

“What for? Detective Carter said it was self-defense.”

“All the same. I can give you some names, make an introduction, if you change your mind. What do you hear about Crenshaw? How’s he doing?”

“He’s at Truman Medical Center. I went to see him last night, but a policeman was guarding his room and the nurse at the nurse’s station wouldn’t even let me go down the hall. I asked her how Frank was doing, and she said she couldn’t tell me anything because of privacy laws. On my way out, I ran into another nurse who knows my mom. She told me that she heard that the bullet didn’t hit bones or nerves. He lost a lot of blood, but it looks like he’s gonna be okay.”

“The cop is there to make sure Crenshaw doesn’t check out against medical advice before they can lock him up and to make sure you don’t shoot him again.”

She gave me a sour smile. “Very funny.”

“Don’t be bitter. The state is very particular about these things. You had your crack at killing Frank. Now the state wants its chance.”

“Yeah, that’s wild, isn’t it? Save a life to take a life.”

“Everybody has a job to do.”

She pointed to a stack of papers on her desk. “Tell me about it.”

“I’d rather you tell me about it. What were you doing for Frank Crenshaw besides keeping his books?”

“Trying to figure out a way to keep him afloat, but business had dropped too far off and, in this economy, it wasn’t going to come back soon enough. He’s like a lot of my clients. They aren’t perfect people, but they’ve worked hard all their lives and now they look around and it’s all gone because an economy they can’t begin to understand collapsed on their heads. Some of them, I don’t know how they’re going to survive.”

“How did Marie react when you told her how bad it was?”

“She was mad, not about the business so much as she was mad at Frank for not telling her sooner how bad it was.”