“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.
39.
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.
40.
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 asking 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.
41.
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?