Good Morning, Killer

dark green Dodge van registered in Arizona and California. Eliminating the owners by gender and age, there were only a dozen under thirty-five and male. Improbable? You had to believe in your own logic. You had to choose a source of power, or become immobilized. That is why, when I was ready to cash out and close the books on Andrew, I chose the Boatyard Restaurant. The prosecution made it look like I went there only to humiliate him, but logic would say the opposite: after the incident on the Marina Freeway, wasn’t it a safer bet for both of us to meet in public?

He was at the bar, drinking with Barry Loomis and a couple of cronies from the department. It was a loud, bright, old-guard kind of joint that smelled of sawdust and beer-soaked timbers, where the steaks were overrated but it didn’t matter because the waitresses were slim as trapeze artists, spinning platters of creamed spinach and onion rings at an impossible pace. I think the place must have been there forty years. They say it really was Sal Mineo who carved his name into the table at the far booth.

Andrew was a regular. No wonder he liked the timeless atmosphere, since he was always bitching and moaning about how things changed. How the new recruits, who lived in far-flung developments sometimes an hour and a half away from Santa Monica, did not subscribe to drinking after shift. Hell, they even refused to work overtime, which the veterans considered to be free money. Their work ethic sucked — they wanted to go home and have fun! To them law enforcement was a two-year gig on the way to something else, no longer “a life”—while Andrew and his contemporaries had made one deliberate choice a long time ago, and stuck to it, with what he considered to be a vanishing standard of honor.

When I came up to the bar, he was retelling the legendary story of an arrest of a bunch of drug dealers in a ludicrously bad neighborhood in Compton. The dealers lived in a house with a lot of dogs behind big gates.

“We pull up to the gate and somebody says, ‘Where the hell are the bolt cutters?’ Somebody else says, ‘The sheriff will have them.’ Well, the sheriff’s car is gone. No bolt cutters. So now we’re into Keystone Kop anarchy. Guys are hopping the fence and getting hung up on the spikes. They could have been shot. Runners are going out the back door — this is what you’re talking about when you talk about two agencies cooperating,” Andrew was saying as I approached.

His look shifted instantly from unaware to cautious. Here comes another strange and unpredictable female in my life. It broke my heart to see that on a face I had held between my hands and kissed.

“Don’t worry.” I smiled. “I’m not here to make a scene.”

“Sit down, have a drink.” He offered his bar stool, made introductions to the other detectives. There was Jaeger, who looked like a three-hundred-pound beagle made of melting lard, and a rigid African-American named Winter, both in jackets and ties. They would testify against me at the trial.

“No thanks, I just wanted to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“The nine hundred dollars.”

This was not the speech about intimacy and commitment I had rehearsed in the shower, but when it sprang out, the number seemed right, a searing response to the way in which he had reduced our lovemaking and closeness and adventure and laughter to another sum in a meaningless progression of conquests.

“Oh, okay.” He laughed. I think he was drinking scotch. “I’ll give you your nine hundred dollars.”

“Good.”

“Now will you have a drink?”

“I’ll just take a check. You can postdate it, that’s all right.”

Andrew said dismissively, “Why don’t you chill?”

Barry Loomis was leaning in. “How’s it going?” he asked. “I got the fax about this scum Brennan.”

“See?” I said sweetly. “We’re keeping you in the loop.” To Andrew: “Come on, you must be making lots of overtime.”

“This is not the time and place.” Andrew’s face was turning dark, uncomfortable with his boss so close to the heat.

“Let’s just be done with it and then I’ll go.”

“Don’t go,” said Barry, looking to make it worse, whatever it was. “The Dodgers are on.”

“You want to mail it to me?” I persisted.

“What?” Barry chortled. “The results of the test?” and clapped Andrew on the back.

Clown.

“What did you spend it on?”

“I told you,” Andrew said, “the Harley.”

Barry and I rolled our eyes at each other, both long-suffering victims of our mutual pal’s obsession.

“Ohhh,” we said in unison. “The Harley.”

Andrew shrugged stiffly. “Had to fix the muffler.”

Barry nodded sympathetically. “He had to fix the muffler.”

“I know. He treats that pile of crap better than he treats his ladies—plural.”

At this, Jaeger and Winter broke up. One of them howled, “You go, girl!”

“Look,” said Andrew, hunched even farther over the bar, “I’ll call you. We’ll work it out.”

“Really?” I did not go. “When was the last time you called me?”

Barry, teasing: “What’s the matter? Why don’t you call the lady?”

“You know what?” Andrew stammered, clamping down on the violence he must have felt pushing out of his throat. He drew out his wallet, pulled some bills, and threw them in my direction while the others started to holler and hoot.

“I’m not the whore, Andrew. I don’t go down on senior detectives on Sunday morning in a car.”

Barry was bent over double, Jaeger and Winter smirking and snorting and turning away. Andrew was appalled at this betrayal, sucker-punched by his best friend, and for a moment I was ashamed. But as the fury started to work the lines of his forehead, I held his eyes: See this? This was me when I saw you with her.

But it did not make anything even or okay, it just made me sick.

“I’ll see you,” I mumbled, and turned away.

Disoriented, I threaded through the bar crowd and in between the whirling nineteen-year-old waitresses, down the hallway, past the rest rooms, to the rear lot. I hadn’t even parked back there. I just wanted to get out fast into the humid cool night air.

“Don’t fuck with the Harley.”

Hopeful at hearing his voice, I turned with disappointment to see that Andrew had left the leather jacket inside, which meant he wasn’t following so quickly because he wanted to talk or reconcile; he really thought I’d trash his bike.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said. “See?”

It stood unscathed inside the chain-link.

“Where’s your car?” he demanded.

“On the street. What do you care?”

“I want to know what you’re doing back here,” he said suspiciously.

My arms raised and lowered incredulously. “What do you think? Getting out of your way. Isn’t that what you want?”

“What is this bullshit about the nine hundred dollars? You had to bring that up in there?”

I put my hand on my hip. “You going to pay me, or what?”

“Is that what it all comes down to for you, too? Money? Is that the gig with women?”

I was so angry I could hardly speak. “I don’t know, Andrew, you tell me. You’re the one who slept with the biggest gold digger of all time. After her husband dies. Very classy. I gave it to you for free. Everything! Free and clear,” I screamed suddenly, in the middle of the alley.