“Murray, launch the team!”
Talley shouted at Murray Leifitz just as a loud whipcrack echoed from the house. A second shot popped even as the tactical team breached the front door.
Talley ran forward, feeling weightless. Later, he would not remember jumping onto the porch or entering through the door. Malik’s lifeless body was pinned to the floor, his hands being cuffed behind his back even though he was already dead. Malik’s wife was sprawled on the living room sofa where she had been dead for over fourteen hours. Two tac officers were trying to stop the geyser of arterial blood that spurted from the neck of Malik’s nine-year-old son. One of them screamed for the paramedics. The boy’s eyes were wide, searching the room as if trying to find a reason for all this. His mouth opened and closed; his skin luminous as it drained of color. The boy’s eyes found Talley, who knelt and rested a hand on the boy’s leg. Talley never broke eye contact. He didn’t allow himself to blink. He let Brendan Malik have that comfort as he watched the boy die.
After a while, Talley went out to sit on the porch. His head buzzed like he was drunk. Across the street, police officers milled by their cars. Talley lit a cigarette, then replayed the past eleven hours, looking for clues that should have told him what was real. He could not find them. Maybe there weren’t any, but he didn’t believe that. He had blown it. He had made mistakes. The boy had been here the entire time, curled at the feet of his murdered mother like a loyal and faithful dog.
Murray Leifitz put a hand on his shoulder and told him to go home.
Jeff Talley had been a Los Angeles SWAT officer for thirteen years, serving as a Crisis Response Team negotiator for six. Today was his third crisis call in five days.
He tried to recall the boy’s eyes, but had already forgotten if they were brown or blue.
Talley crushed his cigarette, walked down the street to his car, and went home. He had an eleven-year-old daughter named Amanda. He wanted to check her eyes. He couldn’t remember their color and was scared that he no longer cared.
PART ONE
1
Bristo Camino, California
Friday, 2:47 P.M.
DENNIS ROONEY
It was one of those high-desert days in the suburban communities north of Los Angeles with the air so dry it was like breathing sand; the sun licked their skin with fire. They were eating hamburgers from the In-N-Out, riding along in Dennis’s truck, a red Nissan pickup that he’d bought for six hundred dollars from a Bolivian he’d met working construction two weeks before he had been arrested; Dennis Rooney driving, twenty-two years old and eleven days out of the Antelope Valley Correctional Facility, what the inmates called the Ant Farm; his younger brother, Kevin, wedged in the middle; and a guy named Mars filling the shotgun seat. Dennis had known Mars for only four days.
Later, in the coming hours when Dennis would frantically reconsider his actions, he would decide that it hadn’t been the saw-toothed heat that had put him in the mood to do crime: It was fear. Fear that something special was waiting for him that he would never find, and that this special thing would disappear around some curve in his life, and with it his one shot at being more than nothing.
Dennis decided that they should rob the minimart.
“Hey, I know. Let’s rob that fuckin’ minimart, the one on the other side of Bristo where the road goes up toward Santa Clarita.”
“I thought we were going to the movie.”
That being Kevin, wearing his chickenshit face: eyebrows crawling over the top of his head, darting eyeballs, and quivering punkass lips. In the movie of Dennis’s life, he saw himself as the brooding outsider all the cheerleaders wanted to fuck; his brother was the geekass cripple holding him back.
“This is a better idea, chickenshit. We’ll go to the movie after.”
“You just got back from the Farm, Dennis, Jesus. You want to go back?”
Dennis flicked his cigarette out the window, ignoring the blowback of sparks and ash as he considered himself in the Nissan’s sideview. By his own estimation, he had moody deep-set eyes the color of thunderstorms, dramatic cheekbones, and sensuous lips. Looking at himself, which he did often, he knew that it was only a matter of time before his destiny arrived, before the special thing waiting for him presented itself and he could bag the minimum-wage jobs and life in a shithole apartment with his chickenshit brother.
Dennis adjusted the .32-caliber automatic wedged in his pants, then glanced past Kevin to Mars.
“What do you think, dude?”
Mars was a big guy, heavy across the shoulders and ass. He had a tattoo on the back of his shaved head that said burn it. Dennis had met him at the construction site where he and Kevin were pulling day work for a cement contractor. He didn’t know Mars’s last name. He had not asked.
“Dude? Whattaya think?”
“I think let’s go see.”
That was all it took.
The minimart was on Flanders Road, a rural boulevard that linked several expensive housing tracts. Four pump islands framed a bunkerlike market that sold toiletries, soft drinks, booze, and convenience items. Dennis pulled up behind the building so they couldn’t be seen from inside, the Nissan bucking as he downshifted. The transmission was a piece of shit.
“Look at this, man. The fuckin’ place is dead. It’s perfect.”
“C’mon, Dennis, this is stupid. We’ll get caught.”
“I’m just gonna see, is all. Don’t give yourself a piss enema.”
The parking lot was empty except for a black Beemer at the pumps and two bicycles by the front door. Dennis’s heart was pounding, his underarms clammy even in the awful dry heat that sapped his spit. He would never admit it, but he was nervous. Fresh off the Farm, he didn’t want to go back, but he didn’t see how they could get caught, or what could go wrong. It was like being swept along by a mindless urge. Resistance was futile.
Cold air rolled over him as Dennis pushed inside. Two kids were at the magazine rack by the door. A fat Chinaman was hunkered behind the counter, so low that all Dennis could see was his head poking up like a frog playing submarine in a mud puddle.
The minimart was two aisles and a cold case packed with beer, yogurt, and Cokes. Dennis had a flash of uncertainty, and thought about telling Mars and Kevin that a whole pile of Chinamen were behind the counter so he could get out of having to rob the place, but he didn’t. He went to the cold case, then along the rear wall to make sure no one was in the aisles, his heart pounding because he knew he was going to do it. He was going to rob this fucking place. As he was walking back to the truck, the Beemer pulled away. He went to the passenger window. To Mars.
“There’s nothing but two kids and a Chinaman in there, the Chinaman behind the counter, a fat guy.”
Kevin said, “They’re Korean.”
“What?”
“The sign says ‘Kim.’ Kim is a Korean name.” That was Kevin, always with something to say like that. Dennis wanted to reach across Mars and grab Kevin by the fucking neck. He pulled up his T-shirt to flash the butt of his pistol.
“Who gives a shit, Kevin? That Chinaman is gonna shit his pants when he sees this. I won’t even have to take it out, goddamnit. Thirty seconds, we’ll be down the road. He’ll have to wipe himself before he calls the cops.”
Kevin squirmed with a case of the chicken-shits, his nerves making his eyes dance around like beans in hot grease.
“Dennis, please. What are we going to get here, a couple of hundred bucks? Jesus, let’s go to the movie.”