When she turned, Crocker recognized Carla from the photo his dad had shown him. She looked harder and more haggard in the stark kitchen light, but still attractive, with straight bangs and big brown eyes.
So much for her being in rehab, he said to himself.
Standing in the rain, his muscular body buzzing, he considered his options.
First he thought of circling to the front and ringing her buzzer. Then he saw the two of them exit the kitchen and noticed that the window was partially open.
He scanned the yard and parking lot behind him to make sure no one was watching, then climbed up to the sill, pushed the window open, and pulled out the screen. He set it down gently on the kitchen counter and climbed in over the aluminum sink, taking care not to touch the bowls and plates piled inside.
It resembled other post-World War II brick apartments he’d been in. A galley kitchen with gray linoleum floor.
Marvin Gaye asked, “What’s going on?” from a stereo inside as Crocker squeezed his body around the corner into the living room. Opposite a sloppy brown leather couch, the TV was tuned to Fox News, but the sound was off. A little Christmas tree with white lights sat in the corner, even though it was the second week of April.
He heard a man’s gruff voice in a room to his right off a narrow hallway. The door stood partially opened and a light burned inside.
“Mother, mother; there’s too many of you cryin’…”
He stood in the strange, sour-smelling space and waited. Water dripped from a sink in the bathroom behind him. He sniffed something that reminded him of a burning plastic shower curtain, pushed the bedroom door open, and entered.
Carla sat on the edge of the bed, sucking crystal meth vapor through a three-inch glass pipe. The man knelt beside her, cooking it with a lighter on a piece of aluminum foil.
He had a sharp profile and coarse straw-colored hair that stood up straight. He turned, saw Crocker, and asked, “Where the fuck did you come from?”
Crocker let the situation sink in and the anger settle inside him.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man demanded.
“A friend of a friend,” Crocker answered, his arms at his sides.
“How’d you get in?” the man asked. He had hard blue eyes and a rough confidence.
“I slid down the chimney.”
This guy didn’t appear to be the sharpest knife in the set, or maybe his perception was warped by the meth. Blinking several times in succession, he asked, “What’d you say?”
Carla sat with her head craned back and her eyes closed, enjoying the buzz. So she didn’t witness any of this. Nor did she notice when the man beside her set the cooked meth on the floor and stood to confront Crocker.
“You a friend of Carla’s?” the tall man asked.
“No.”
“You work in the building?”
The scene struck Crocker as absurd, so he said with a straight face, “Santa Claus sent me. I came to tell both of you that Christmas is over.”
“What?”
“Hi, Carla,” Crocker said.
Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t fully open.
The man stepped closer and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He was taller and bigger than Crocker, with steroid-enhanced biceps that bulged from under a gray Georgia Tech T-shirt. He pushed a Fairfax County Police Department badge toward Crocker and snarled, “I’m a cop, so get the fuck out.”
“I came to talk to Carla,” Crocker countered, the tension between them growing.
“Well, she’s busy now. So either turn around and get out the way you came, or I arrest you for breaking and entering!”
“I don’t think so.”
They were practically nose to nose. So close that Crocker could smell the mildew on the man’s clothes and the cheap vanilla-scented cologne.
“All right, asshole,” the man growled, his eyes shining with crazy meth energy and belligerence. As relaxed as Crocker appeared, he was completely alert to what was coming. So when the tall man cocked his fist back to clock him, he grabbed the man by the collar and used his momentum to throw him into the lamp on a corner table near the wall. The small table fell over, the lamp shattered, glass went flying, and the man crashed to the floor.
Carla looked up. She wore a red tank top with no bra. Lank hair hung over her bleary eyes.
Crocker said, “I guess you’re not in rehab, are you?”
“What? I mean…what did you…?” She pointed to the man groaning in the corner.
“Don’t worry about him.”
“You…you from the center?” she asked.
“I came here to tell you to stop taking money from my father,” Crocker said.
She squinted up at him. “Who are you?”
The man behind him was trying to pull himself up as blood dripped from a cut on his forehead.
“My dad’s Jim Crocker.”
He saw the recognition reach her eyes, then watched her make the decision to reach back across the bed toward the dark brown nightstand. He didn’t know if she was going for the phone or something else. But when he saw her slide open the drawer, he sprang forward and slapped her hand away.
She shouted, “Hey! That hurt!”
He saw the silver pistol inside the drawer and grabbed it.
She pushed the pipe and foil with the meth under the bed and said, “I know who you are. I’m calling the police.”
“I thought your friend was a cop.”
The man behind Crocker had managed to get to his feet and was leaning against the wall for support. Crocker walked over and kicked his feet out from under him, then turned back in time to fend off the blow from a charging Carla. He twisted her arm behind her, spun her around, and threw her onto the bed.
“You’re asking for it, fuckhead!” she shouted. “You’re messing with the wrong people!”
He leaned on the bed with one knee, clamped a hand over her mouth, and pointed the pistol at her head. “You want me to end your miserable life right now, Carla? Do you?”
Part of him wanted to rid the world of a useless parasite. But another reminded him that she had a nine-year-old son who was probably somewhere in the apartment. Carla shook her head vigorously from side to side. “No. No, please!”
“You take another penny from my dad, and I’ll break every bone in your body. You understand?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.”
He let go of her and started to back out the door, stopping to give the tall man on the floor another kick in the ribs.
From the doorway, he said, “Easter is past, Carla. So it’s time to take down your Christmas tree. And get yourself to rehab. You need it.”
Lisa Clark dreamt that she was at the beach and the sun was in her eyes. Squinting into the bright light, she saw chubby two-year-old Olivia playing happily in the sand like an angel. She wore a pink bathing suit and held a little green shovel in her right hand. Her face shone with pure delight, and her hair was so blond it looked almost white.
“Look, Mommy,” she squealed as she threw a shovelful of sand in the air. A gust of sea air pulled the sand and tossed it back, so that most of it landed on top of Olivia’s head and got into her mouth and eyes.
In an instant, the little girl’s expression changed from happiness to distress. She scrunched up her mouth as though she was about to cry.
Lisa lunged forward to pick her up. But when she tried to locate Olivia, the sun blinded her. So she reached out across the hot sand.
A stern voice said, “Don’t move, Señora!” Firm hands held her.
“What?” She squinted into the bright light and saw a man with gray hair looking down at her.
“This will just take a minute,” he said gently.
She saw that she was lying on a beige sheet and a heavyset woman was holding her right arm. When a needle entered her finger, she tried to pull away.