21
“You need to get a bigger place,”Z states the obvious as she pulls out the blunt and then passes it to me. She has the beach chair to sit on while I’m leaning against the balcony railing, tomato plant leaves rubbing against my leg.
I take a drag and blow out the smoke, gazing out at the dark sky littered with traffic lights and lights from the apartments opposite us. “You say that every time you come over. How about reading from a different script,” I growl, placing the blunt between my lips and taking a pull, although I’m not feeling it.
“Someone is in a grumpy mood,” she sings, then coughs out smoke and sings again.
“I have man problems,” I confess, bending down to grab my wine glass from the balcony floor, half filled with my favorite Sav Blanc.
“Not enough man or too much man? Because I could see it being a problem either way for someone like yourself who is partial to a bit of cock,” she states mischievously while using her tongue to play with her lip ring.
I snort in laughter as a raspy dryness in my throat forces me to cough. “This is good shit,” I tell her, pointing to the blunt between my fingers.
“The best money can buy,” he says proudly. “And is one of these irresistible cocks you’re stressing over happen to be Blake?”“I’m doing a great job restating them, actually,” I admit. “I’m too busy with work and class.”
“I knew it!” she blurts, and I startle in fright by her boisterous voice. “You’ve got a thing for Blake.”
“No,” I hit back, taking a long sip of my wine.
“He’s very charming, you know. Could turn a devout nun into a raging cocksucking hornbag in half a second.” How Z manages to say these things with a straight face is beyond me.
“You’ve said the word ‘cock’ three times in about two minutes. I’m starting to wonder whose team you’re batting for,” I tease.
“My own team. Anyway, are you going to tell me what your man problems are? So, I can start charging my consultation fee of three hundred dollars per hour.”
“Three hundred is reasonable, considering your experience in dealing with psychos ie. Smiler and Co. And maybe Blake is part of the Psycho Gang.”
“You voluntarily mentioned Blake again because you’re crushing on the crusher,” she says, spacing out on the blunt.
“He taught me how to shoot Glock, which is good,” I tell as I step inside to grab the packet of salt and vinegar potato crisps. Food is what we need now to steer away illness later on.
“That’s nice of him,” she says. Then I notice the picture above my dresser and panic.
How could I be so fucking stupid to leave that up? I rushed home, and Z arrived only ten minutes later. I neglected to take The Pig’s photograph of the dead men down. Again, I pause to consider the fifth person, the one taking the photograph, as I slip it into my top drawer. I really hope Z didn’t notice it, although I’m sure if she did, someone as blatantly honest as her would ask questions.
Stepping back onto the balcony, I hand Z the giant bag of crisps, and she immediately breaks it open and stuffs a handful into her mouth while muttering how starving she is.
“So, what’s the deal with Blake anyway?” I ask, examining the cherry tomatoes reddening despite the lack of sun since it’s hidden behind the buildings for half the day.
“Corporal punishment for anyone who puts pineapple on pizza,” Z states, pointing toward the pineapple experiment. “It’s a crime.”
“There’s more than one way to eat pineapple,” I argue. “In fact, eating it on its own is very nice.”
“I had a Pina Colada once,” she screws her face up. “You know, if you’ve ever vomited up a food item, you never want to eat it again. That’s how I feel about Pina Colada.”
“I feel that way about coleslaw with raisins.” I shudder, remembering little black raisins floating around the toilet bowl after I drank too much at a beach party my parents had when I was about fourteen. Max tormented me with raisins for weeks afterward, hiding them in my bed and my clothes drawers.
“What the fuck? Why would anyone put raisins in coleslaw? That’s just fucking gross,” she snaps, munching on crisps and spitting bits out onto my leg. “An insult to gastronomy.”
“Too many rules have been broken in the name of fine cuisine,” I say, biting a crisp. I enjoy the salty fat wash across my tongue, hitting the spot after consuming sweet wine.
“He’s a good guy,” Z states, gazing out at the black sky twinkling with tiny golden stars, ” despite his moonlighting.”
“Are we talking about Blake?” When Z drinks and smokes, her conversation topics veer off in various directions, and it can take some effort to keep up with her.
“Yeah, he was asking me about you, so I think he’s keen,” she sips her wine and wipes her face with the back of her hand. But what sort of future can you have with a midnight runner?”
“He confessed that if we’re going to keep seeing each other again, then I need to understand that there are parts of him he can’t share,” I explain soberly.
“Well, at least he’s being honest, and you know where you stand with him from the start,” she says flatly, frowning as she gazes down onto the street below. “So, what happened to that other guy we saw in the shopping center that day?”
“Cormac, the swimmer. Yeah, I caught up with him earlier today,” I sigh, conflicted. “Both men come with baggage and conditions…” I trail off because she’s barely listening and is focused on something that caught her eye on the street.
“Shit’s going down,” she states, rising onto her feet and grabbing her phone from her lap to film the action.
Naturally, I twist around to inspect the action. There are three cop cars with red lights flashing, no siren blocking the road, and two black unmarked vehicles parked. They file out of the vehicles, and I spot the silver-haired hunk Detective, just call me Gabe Bernardi, in the group. He seems to be leading the force, and, on his word, the police ram an enforcer against the door, and it flies open. Quickly, they file inside the entrance and up the stairs leading to the apartments above.
“I saw him casing the joint yesterday,” I mumble to Z, who’s not paying attention. She’s too busy watching the action through her phone with her mouth slightly open.
We wait expectantly for signs of movement in the apartment windows above as traffic builds up down the blocked-off street as frustrated people jump on their horns. It must be enthralling to have so much power that you block a busy street and not apologize for it.Most rooms have lights on; we can see right into their apartments if their drapes are open. I scan the building, searching for the police officers, but I can’t detect what floor they’re on. There are muffled shouts and strongly asserted demands, followed by a bang that I assume is another door being rammed.
“This reminds me…I should pay my parking fines,” Z says. Normally, I would laugh, but the drama across the street consumes me.
Finally, police officers emerge from the ground entrance, guiding a man with his arms behind his back and struggling against his restraints. They urge him to climb inside a marked police vehicle, and when he fights against them, he’s given a good shove.
“I wonder what his crime is?” I mumble, not expecting an answer from Z because she wouldn’t know. But then I remember the elderly couple in the elevator informing me of the stalking who attacked a girl in the underground parking garage, and I wonder if it’s him. I hope so.
Other uniformed police officers flood onto the street, and I wait eagerly to see the silver-haired fox emerge so I can whet my palette. Officer after officer belches out from the ground doorway, and still, there is no Gabe. I inspect the entire street to see if I’ve missed him and wonder if he’s snuck inside one of the unmarked vehicles.
“Fuck,” Z snaps, and I turn to her to see what the problem is, and she’s holding her phone up at a 45-degree angle to the apartments opposite a couple of floors above mine.
A man is climbing onto the window edge to tread across to the fire escape ladder leading down to the first floor. Any attempts to grab him are lost as he ventures further away from the window out onto the ledge, almost at arm’s length of the ladder.
One of the plain-clothes officers pokes his head through the drapes and attempts to talk him down in a steady, calm voice. My guess is that Det. Gabe is still in one of those apartments, perhaps hunting down another suspect.
The man has reached the story level with us and claims the ladder, athletically swinging to the next floor.
“He’s getting away!” Z cries, punching the air with her fist, championing him along. Of course, she’d sympathize with the crim, eager for him to flee the bad guys, the police. I’m on Gabe’s side—his front side and backside. Hell, I need to get a man between my legs before I lose the plot altogether.
From the street, an officer yells, “Stop” at the assailant as they gather below the fire escape ladder to grab and arrest the man as soon as he’s close enough. Seeing the sea of officers below, the assailant stalls on the ladder halfway down to the fourth floor and scans outside the building for his options. Quickly, he climbs off the ladder and inches his way across the ledge to the nearest apartment window, which is open, and the drapes are waving in the breeze. There’s a trough on the ledge abundant in growing herbs, and I regularly see an elderly lady water them.
“Oh no,” I breathe, “an elderly lady lives there.”
He reaches the window edge, grabs the trough, and throws it over the side, aiming for the officers below. A woman screams from inside the apartment, and my hand goes to my chest.
Z has fallen silent, perhaps regretting her initial reaction to the wayward crim, while I feel utterly useless standing here watching as he moves deeper inside the small living room. We see a glimpse of a tiny, hunched-back old woman before the lights are switched off, and the room is steeped in darkness.
Even though I detect movement inside the apartment, it’s too dark, and the gap through the drapes is too narrow to pick up on what they’re doing. Meanwhile, the uniformed officers have been ordered to go back inside the apartment building, just as the old woman in the apartment opposite lets out a gut-wrenching scream.
“Oh my gosh,” I cry out. “Please don’t hurt her.”
There’s a loud bang that I assume is another door being kicked open, followed by shouting. A gun is fired, and excitement stirs down the street below, but we still can’t see what is going on. There’s more shouting and the sounds of furniture being thrown about, then the assailant appears at the window, desperate to climb out, but something…or someone has a hold on him.
My heart pummels in my chest as I catch the sight of a white shirt. I hope it’s Gabe, but his face is hidden behind the drape. Besides, there were a couple of other plain-clothed officers there, too, so it could be one of them. I’m expecting the white-shirt man to pull the assailant back inside, but there seems to be a conversation between them.
It isn’t until the perp is shoved further out the window that I realize what’s going on. The white-shirt man has a hold on him and threatens to drop him off the side while the perp struggles against his grip.
There is no use. There is nowhere to go and nowhere to hide because the sea of uniformed officers and their guns will get him one way or another. The way I see it, he’s got two options: escape White Shirt’s grasp and head down the ladder to be arrested by cops, or go up the ladder to the roof of the apartment building, and I don’t know where he’d go from there.
A sharp buzzing noise from the street below forces Z to lean over the balcony railing to see what it is while I keep my eyes on the man dangling from the window by the White Shirt.
Before my eyes, the White Shirt releases the assailant from his grasp, and he falls from the window and slams onto the roof of a parked car. It happens so fast, yet he falls in slow motion in my reflective mind, and the crashing sound of the assailant landing on the car’s roof shudders through my body.
When I check back at the window, I catch sight of the whites of someone”s eyes, not looking down at the dead man but gazing up at me. It’s only for half a second before he disappears back into the shadows while I wonder what I just witnessed.