April Smith - Good Morning, Killer

“If I were facing attempted murder? And I wanted to prove self-defense? The guy came at me because I had the goods on him? You bet I would,” but it was bravado because now he was afraid, too, I could feel it.

“Nothing would have happened if we didn’t have that fight—”

“I came at the wrong person,” he shrugged.

“I never would have put you together with the ski mask. I never would have had a reason—”

“Shhh. It’s done. It’s survival.”

“Survival is ugly.”

He laughed. “So is a newborn baby. You think you arrived on this earth any different?”

The house was immensely quiet. All the clocks had finally stopped.

“We’ve run out of time, Andrew.”

He nodded. “You’re wearing a wire?”

“No, I’m not wearing a wire. But I’m armed.”

“Right.”

“I told them to give me half an hour.”

“I’ll make you a deal.” He smiled faintly. “You and me. Take the money and run.”

“I wish. I really, really wish.”

“Let’s go. Come on. It’s not too late. You know you want it.”

“I want it, all right.”

“I can get the money. We can go right out that back door now. They never cover the back door—”

I laughed.

“—One of the most common tactical mistakes.”

The look in his eyes was meant to be hopeful, but his rakish despair was breaking my heart.

“Oh, Andrew, this is so making it worse. Don’t try to do this now. Don’t try to — oh, God, I just want it all to go away.”

“We can, baby.”

“What are you talking about, anyway? You gave the money to Margaret. Why her ?”

“I was practically a godfather to her kids. Cute little kids. The boy’s a natural athlete.”

“Is that why you robbed the bank?”

“She got screwed by the department,” Andrew said. “She should have been compensated when the Hat died.” He sounded tired. “The guy had almost twenty years in.”

“So you robbed a bank?”

“Somebody had to take care of the kids.”

“Really? I think not. I think she was blackmailing you. Emotional blackmail.”

“For what?”

There was knocking at the door. I startled. No, wait, stop — it was too soon and too late at the same time.

“Listen,” I said with crazed desperation, “you can make a good deal.”

He replied with a doleful look. “I used a weapon in the commission of a bank robbery. That’s twenty-five years, no questions. And I’m a cop.” He shook his head.

More knocking, harder now.

“Ana? You okay? Andrew! It’s Barry. It’s me, buddy. We’ve got to talk.”

We smiled at each other. He had automatically locked the door.

“I hope he brought a tape recorder because I’m only going to say it once.” Andrew put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad it’s me, not you. Going to prison.”

“I’ll stand by you,” I promised. And then I felt a great liberation, as if an old, worrisome question had been resolved.

“Andrew, let’s get married. I love you.”

He kissed me, hard.

He would not surrender in his father’s house. He would not surrender to his buddies, knowing it would be something they could not live with afterward. Out of deference, because he was a cop’s cop, they gave him a break and took his weapons, and we all followed in a caravan — my car, him in his car with Lieutenant Barry Loomis, and two vans of Santa Monica officers, over to the closest strip mall we could think of that would be in Los Angeles County, out of the jurisdiction of the Santa Monica police.

It was one of those neighborhoods where the haze is always hanging low, scouring the eyes and the hoods of dented cars with patched-up ten-year-old paint jobs, where wide commercial avenues, built for a dense mix of fast food and retail, instead are empty and scrawny as cheap Christmas trees. Everything seems to be on a slant. Signs are broken or defaced. Figures do not walk upright, unless they are mothers dragging double loads of grocery bags; buses don’t stop very long and drivers keep their eyes straight.

There was a Laundromat and a Lucky supermarket, a used record store, a bright blue Caribbean restaurant with beaded curtains and exuberantly painted suns and moons and fiery cockatoos.

Andrew’s car pulled into the center of the lot. It was mostly empty, the middle of the afternoon, except for indigents who were lounging at the outdoor tables at McDonald’s. Too early for the hookers. Barry got out quickly, turning his anguish into clipped, efficient movements, getting on the radio and telling everybody where to go.

The vans had rolled in and the guys were keeping their distance, waiting for the LAPD captain to arrive.

“Ana!” Barry snapped his fingers. “Andrew wants to say good-bye.”

Why don’t you go back to the seventies? I wanted to say to him and his ridiculous mustache. I don’t need orders from you about when and where I should talk to Andrew Berringer, sashaying past the uniforms, who were still trying to make sense of what was going on.

Andrew was sitting alone in the car, fingers drumming the steering wheel.

“How’re you doing, babe?”

“I’ve had better days,” he said.

“I am serious. I want to marry you.”

He snorted. “Is that your ambition now? To be a prison wife?”

“I don’t care. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He gave me an unreadable look. “Do I have safe passage?”

“Always,” I assured him, and waited for the question.

It was not an answer that he wanted but a promise.

“One last time?”

“Don’t say that.”

We kissed through the open window, then he turned the ignition.

“You better not do that.”

He had me by the neck—

“Andrew!”

— and pulled me halfway inside the car and with the other hand, he steered.

“Andrew! Please! Stop!”

It was a muscle car, in seconds we were going in treacherous, widening circles.

“Stop the car!”

My feet were lifted off the ground, yet I was pinned through the window by his desperate strength.

“Kill me,” he said.

We were going faster, wider, a death spiral.

“No, I won’t, I love you—”

But it didn’t stop anything or change anything. Figures were scattering and weapons were drawn and there were shouts, “Get down, get down! Police action, get down!” Andrew’s teeth were clenched, but with effort, not rage. Our foreheads banged, I bit my tongue.

“Kill me. Please, just do it.”

There was shouting. Gunfire. They blew out a tire and the car veered crazily.

He pulled tighter so I could not breathe. My body flew like a rag doll as he relentlessly and with purpose kept doughnuting the car in wilder circles. The glass façade of the supermarket came rushing at us, gleaming shopping carts and spinning women grabbing babies. “It’s all right,” he said, and I pulled the nine-millimeter Sig Sauer and his eyes were closed so I closed mine, and point-blank put it in the only place where I could reach, against the side of his rib cage, underneath the armpit, and fired.

His hands dropped. His head slumped forward. He lost all animation, his foot put no pressure on the gas. The car slowed and coasted into a parked truck and I rolled free, to stare up at the empty sky. Andrew’s buddies tried to cover the hole, but the contact shot had penetrated the aorta and spinal column. He did not have fifteen seconds to imagine that his life might continue; that the wound might not be grievous, his case might be dismissed or won, or that he could save his partner or his father, or be given any other kind of freedom, any kind of chance. In an instant, oblivion, not love, had flooded his chest.