Good Morning, Killer

was good at it, and in this new world of upside-down loyalties and reversed color fields, I moved with remarkable confidence, able to have several conversations with Andrew that smacked of normalcy. It is different when you know what you want. You behave like a phantom, clinging to walls and molding into corners to hear what you need to hear, coax what you have to coax. Unknown to him, our next few phone calls took on a subtle but interrogatory tone. I fairly purred with newfound interest in his preferences and found out things: He wasn’t at all sure about his birthday; he might go up to see his sister in the Bay Area. The Harley would need a new muffler. Someone he had gone to high school with just died of a heart attack. He was swamped with work. Willie John Black could not be located, which was frustrating because we were soon to get a military ID of Richard Brennan. Ross Meyer-Murphy was calling Andrew every day, as he was calling me, demanding that we “get the guy.” The department had busted Laurel West Academy wide open with an expanding drug investigation that would hit the papers any day. Andrew wasn’t even getting to the gym. The most he could manage was a drink after work at the Boatyard or breakfast at Coffee Craze in the Marina, where he knew the beach ’n’ biker regulars. That’s right near me, could we meet there? I asked, guessing the answer. Well, he didn’t really get around that often.

The address on Sylvia Oberbeck’s driver’s license was a white stucco sixties apartment building in Mar Vista with a wire sculpture of three fish and ocean waves over the front entrance. I would take the G-ride because the Barracuda would have stood out in the residential neighborhood. Still, Andrew had a sixth sense on him, which I had to take into account, so instead of parking on the street I would pull into a driveway behind somebody’s car already tucked in for the night and watch the apartment through the rearview mirror.

Sylvia Oberbeck’s balcony was the one crowded with Japanese lanterns and discarded dining room chairs, an old TV. She lived alone (no other names on the mailbox). I once observed an athletic woman arriving on a mountain bike, which she hefted onto her shoulder and carried inside. She then emerged with Officer Oberbeck, and they drove off in her Mazda. This created a short-lived lesbian fantasy.

I would stay only briefly, not vibrating with tension like the rookie on stakeout I had once been, but a lazy predator on nature’s time. I was patient, collecting information. I wanted to be immaculately prepared — get it done, if it had to be done, with one swift blow.

Sunday morning I cruised by Coffee Craze and saw them together. They were sitting at a table sharing the newspaper — she in a visor with her hair in a ponytail, he wearing shades, a warm-up jacket and sweats. He sat hunched over his food, the way he does, concentrating on sawing something on his plate, glancing at a section folded back on the table. She lay back, inside the open tent of the paper, hefty legs in black exercise tights, one foot in a dirty old running shoe up on a chair.

Nothing even barely sexy was going on, and after a few nights of unremarkable surveillance, I was beginning to feel relieved. In fact, I was prepared to have a big laugh on myself. So he had been chasing a kid on the Promenade. So they were two old friends meeting for Sunday brunch. Andrew had been ducking me, but this was not a felony.

I sipped the coffee I had brought in the G-ride, almost ready to walk across the street and clap them both on the back as if it were all a happy coincidence. I watched as they split the bill and got into Andrew’s Ford, then followed at a distance as they ambled through traffic and eventually got onto the Marina Freeway, euphoric at the thought that I was just a silly, jealous girl.

The Marina Freeway is basically an access road, a short connection between the 405 and Lincoln Boulevard. It is not well traveled, especially on a Sunday morning. You could, if you timed it right, get three to five minutes of uninterrupted cruise along a straight-ahead stretch that pretty much requires minimal concentration.

And that, apparently, was the plan, for as soon as they turned onto the Marina Freeway, Sylvia Oberbeck’s head disappeared out of sight below the front seat, into Andrew’s lap, and stayed there.

The speed of the car dropped to thirty miles per hour. It began to wobble along the slow lane.

Instantly, an uncontrollable force like a conflagration consumed both me and the car as one. I revved the engine and leaned on the horn. Sped up beside them, made Andrew swerve. He saw me. I gave him the finger. Kept honking. Accelerated. He accelerated, but he couldn’t get away. We were one on one, expert drivers going ninety miles an hour in high-performance muscle cars. I pulled behind him, kissed his bumper. Drew up side by side, then gunned it and cut him off, forcing him to skid into the breakdown lane. I could see him swearing, spinning the wheel with grim concentration. Officer Oberbeck was sitting up now.

Our cars swiveled to an uneven stop in a hot rain of pebbles. I threw my door open wide.

“Get out,” I screamed. “I know you’re screwing that bitch.”

He lowered the window half an inch.

“Will you calm down? Relax. I’m driving her home—”

“Get out!” I screamed again. “Get out of the goddamned car!”

I yanked the handle, but he had locked it.

Incredibly, I was still holding the coffee cup.

“Fuck you,” I cried and threw the hot coffee at his face. He flinched as it slung across the glass, splattering through the open crack and in his hair.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Let’s just go,” said Oberbeck. “That bitch is crazy.”

“We are talking about moving in together at the same time you’re screwing her?”

He made a move to open the door, but Oberbeck pulled him back.

“Don’t!” she said. “Just get the fuck out of here,” and hit the button so the window sealed tight.

Andrew hesitated, put the car in gear.

“Move away. I don’t want to hurt you, move away from the car.”

His voice was muffled. He let her cut him off from me, and now he was looking up, expressionless, like some red-faced lying civilian, safe behind the glass.

I picked up handfuls of gravel and pelted the departing car. I threw them and threw them and threw them and threw them until they began to slow down and float like shooting stars burning out in the empty air.

Fourteen

That night the stars were obscured by a scrim of cloud. You could see airplanes, heavy with lights, marching toward LAX, and hear their booming vibration, but the sky was just a formless haze. Lying back on a beach chair on the balcony of my apartment, I wished for the enormity of the heavens to fill my sight, leave no room for anything but misty blue; to feel nothing but the soft worked cotton of my grandmother’s quilt wrapped around my body.

It was nearly 5 a.m. No lights were on behind the drawn window drapes of the opposite bank of apartments. Pale beige drapery was standard at Tahiti Gardens, which created a pleasing unity in the ziggurat pattern of jutting rectangular balconies, dark on dark. Some had plants, some had whirligigs and wicker and cats; from my corner unit I could see hundreds of insipid variations on a theme.

I had woken up at four with absolute clarity. The clarity was that I would capture and mutilate Ray Brennan. I would hammer nails into his brain. Shoot him in the kidney so he’d remain alive while strung up by his heels and slowly skinned. Why should I let you live? I would ask, and when he tried to answer I would stuff his throat with paper towels. I didn’t care for trophies — nipples, fingers, testicles or scalp — I wanted ruined pieces hacked to bits and hacked again, nerve cells active to the twitchy end, and when it ended he would become whole and I would start again with better methods — electric shock and caustic lye — again and again because fantasies are perfect.

I was sipping Baileys Irish Cream and warmed-up milk. Across the path, in the diffuse glow of vintage- looking street lamps, thousands of sailboats huddled close, sighing gently, rocking in their berths. Alternating