“Is it safe?”
“I don’t know, man. I wouldn’t go putting my head out the window. But I do know one thing.”
“What?” Em asked quietly from the floor.
“It’s gonna be a mess. Windows, the computer, the lamp.”
“Holes in the wall. God, I hope they didn’t hit the beer or the refrigerator. Why us?”
I didn’t have an answer. A couple of guesses maybe.
“You guys know more than you think you do.” Em was still hugging the floor, her face buried in the cheap carpeting, stained with beer and cigarette burns.
“But Skip-” James sounded more upbeat. The fact that no bullets had flown by in the last ninety seconds may have had something to do with that.
“What?”
“Is it safe?”
“Safe?”
“Is it safe?”
It had been a long time, but I remembered the answer. Amid all the craziness, the gunfire and near death experience, James was still playing. It was dangerous because someone was still out there, trying to kill us. But I answered. “Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, it’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.”
Em raised her head, looking at the two of us, still lying flat on the floor. “Are you two crazy? Wait. Don’t answer. I know.”
“You already know we’re crazy, Em,” James chuckled softly.
“Yes. There’s no question about that. Crazy enough to almost get us killed. But I know the movie.”
“Movie? What movie?”
“Guys, I know the name of the movie.”
James strung her along. “How do you know there’s a movie involved? Em, don’t give me that. No. No, you don’t know what movie that’s from.”
The siren shrieked as it pulled into the parking lot. I could see purple light, combination of red and blue, as it streamed through the window, or what was left of the window. There was a slight commotion as voices outside got louder, and still we lay on the floor, afraid to sit up.
The siren drifted off, and there was a pounding at the door. “Police, open up.”
Slowly I pushed myself from the floor, and as Em stood up she brushed at her clothes, shaking shards of glass from her hair.
I turned to my two best friends. “We cannot say anything about who might have done this. We’ve got no proof. Agreed?” The two of them nodded their heads. “Officer, I’m going to open the door. Nobody in here has any weapons.” The cops hadn’t asked, but I didn’t want any accidents. We’d already been shot at from a distance. Didn’t need to have it happen at close range.
I pulled the door open, and two young officers with pistols drawn stood on either side of the doorway. A small group of neighbors was gathered outside, and I thought I saw Jim Jobs at the head of the group. I remembered his scolding voice when I first had James install the fire alarm in Sandy Conroy’s office, and I wondered if my comments to him were strong enough to give him reason to shoot out our windows and blow our computer to kingdom come.
“Thank God you’re here.” James crawled up off the floor and offered his hand. Neither officer took it.
“Who called about the gunfire?”
“I did.”
“It came from-”
“The parking lot.”
“We have another officer checking that out.” He glanced around the apartment. “Do you have any drugs in this apartment?”
I couldn’t believe he was even allowed to ask the question. “A case of beer is about the strongest thing we carry.”
He nodded. “I’ll need to take a report.” The younger uniformed officer walked in and started making notes as he moved around the living room. The guy was probably about our age, maybe younger. This was the officer of the law who was going to save us from a sniper? A guy younger than I was?
“Marathon Man, James.” Em gave my roommate a grim look.
“Pardon?”
“When Laurence Olivier is torturing Dustin Hoffman he says ‘is it safe?’ and Hoffman, trying to get away from the pain says, ‘Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, it’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.’”
James shook his head. “You’re good. You’re very good. I can’t believe you came up with that.”
“Sir, would you step outside for a moment?” The older officer motioned to James and the night got a lot longer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
T he cops left a little after midnight. They’d questioned us individually, then together. Did we owe anyone any money? Did we use drugs, did we buy drugs, did we sell drugs? After the exhaustive interviews, they worked the apartment over, digging out three slugs from the walls. They combed the parking lot, looking for I don’t know what. All I know is that we were glad when it ended.
We’d called a 24-hour home improvement company, Twenty-Four Seven, that the police recommended and they boarded up our windows. Em stuck around and helped clean up the broken glass and computer pieces. The computer hadn’t been worth much, but it’s all we owned. The company laptop was untouched. My jackass boss Michael would be so happy. I promised myself when I got paid from everyone, I would buy the apartment its own computer. Something new and state-of-the-art. Something cheap. I had a lot of plans for that money. Travel with Em, a new car, computer, maybe upgrade our lodging-the list was endless. Maybe put back a couple of bucks just in case Em and I decided to take this relationship to the next level. Not that either of us was ready for that.
“We should have told them about Feng. About Jim Jobs.” James was having second thoughts. “Skip, we should have told them the whole story. Carol Conroy and Sandy and Sarah.”
“Hey, James. You did a great job in giving them just the basic facts. We were sitting here and somebody started shooting. That’s all we know for sure. Don’t even think about blowing it now.”
“Blowing it?” He buried his head in his hands. “Skip, I wanted to tell the cops everything and ask them to solve the problem. It’s been a game up until now. It’s no longer a game, pard. We came this close to being killed.”
“The cops made it clear they thought it was a drug thing.” Em sat on the couch, scowling. “Our age, this location,” she flung her arms out. “You guys need to get out of this place.”
“It’s what we can afford, Em.” James shot her a dirty look. “It is what it is.”
“James, maybe it was a drug thing.” For the last hour I’d had this thought in the back of my head.
“What?”
“Maybe somebody picked the wrong apartment. It’s not that we haven’t seen deals going down here before.” We’d seen drugs being sold in the parking lot, and the cops had conducted at least three raids in the two years we’d lived here.
“Yeah. Maybe. But what are those chances?”
“James, Skip is right. If we told the police about Feng and the rest of that crew, the cops would think we were smoking something. What were you going to say? That Skip is pretending to be Sarah’s boyfriend, so maybe her real boyfriend shot the place up? Or maybe her boyfriend’s wife shot the place up? Or would you tell the story about you guys bugging Feng’s car and maybe Feng shot the windows out to get even or to scare you? Or would you use the story about bugging Sandy Conroy’s office and maybe he found out and decided to kill you?”
Em brought it home. Each one of those scenarios was entirely possible. We were in some deep, deep shit.
We sat on the couch, the three of us, drinking strong, black coffee at twelve thirty a.m. We should have all
