Orchard Grove (20 page)

Carl’s hands were raised up in surrender. But I wondered just who he was surrendering to.

“I won’t see her ever again,” he said. “I promise, John.”

“Sure you do, Carl. They always make promises they can’t keep.”

He shifted the pistol back to his wife.

“This thing ends today, Lana,” he said. “You got it? My partner is entirely off limits. You got that?”

Lana issued him a stare, her blue eyes unblinking. She nodded.

As John returned his service weapon to its hip holster, he once more turned and stared directly at our window, offering up a wide, strangely satisfied, if not evil grin, as if he knew full well I was watching. Then he disappeared back inside the house, with Carl on his tail. Less than a minute later, we heard the SUV starting up, and backing out of the drive.

Lana crossed her arms over her chest and stared down at her bare feet, the crying heart tattoo plainly visible. I couldn’t be sure, but I swear she had to be crying. For certain I knew she was crying when she wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands and slowly, achingly, stood up.

Susan and I turned toward each other at the same time, locked eyes.

“I’m going to buy some wine,” she said. “Some red, bloody fruit of the vine to bring as a gift tonight to the Cattivos.”

“Then you agree to Lana’s plan?”

“I’m agreeing to seeing that horrible piece of scum go to hell, even if it means we follow him there.”

W
e didn’t discuss what would or wouldn’t happen at the Cattivos house anymore that afternoon. Resolved to what we, or I, had to do to save Lana’s life and rid the world of John’s, we simply went about our business with a strange new sense of optimism. So optimistic in fact, that I sat in front of my typewriter and began to write something other than notes.

FADE IN: I typed.

I began a script about a writer who lives in downtown Manhattan and who falls hopelessly in love with a married woman when she and her banker husband move into the vacant apartment next door. He’s not sure why he should fall so desperately in love with this woman whom he knows nothing about. Only that he does.

The wrinkle comes about when the woman asks him to help kill her husband. The husband is worth a lot of money dead, and if it was made to look like an accident, they both share in the insurance money and become millionaires overnight.

I guess it was the same plot as the 1940s film classic,
Double Indemnity
. But I didn’t care. It was a timeless story that resembled real life, and the studios, especially big Hollywood studios, were suckers for new twists on old classic plots. Even if in the end, I had no choice but to shelve the project or else implicate my own participation in a murder-for-money-and-lust scheme, it felt good to be writing scripts again. To hear the clatter of the typewriter, to be filling the blank page with directions and dialogue for first time since Lana moved in next door, and wrapped a ball and chain around my soul.

B
y the time Susan returned from the liquor store with three bottles of red wine, I’d already written five pages. It was going on five o’clock and if what Lana told me was true, John would be arriving home drunk from his Friday afternoon out with his fellow officers within the hour. Heading into the bedroom, Susan changed out of her jeans and into a short denim skirt and a tight black T-shirt accented with a silver necklace that supported a metal cross. Her dark hair was long and brushed out, and I wanted to swim in it. Wanted to swim in it along with Lana.

Taking her into my arms, I kissed my wife on the mouth. I was dreading what I was about to do to John, but at the same time, feeling somehow optimistic about the future. About the three of us together. I felt like a man who was about to enter into a decisive battle, but somehow knew of the outcome before anyone else did. And the outcome was wonderful.

“Do you think it’s possible for three people to fall in love with one another?” I said.

“Life is strange,” she said. “That’s as far as I go with this.”

She grabbed up the wine bottles and made for the back sliding glass doors.

L
ana was already waiting for us on the deck. Despite the ordeal she was put through earlier with her husband, his partner, and a gun pointed at her face, she looked fresh and lovely in a short, white, summer-weight skirt that stopped just short of mid-thigh. Instead of wearing her leather sandals, she chose to go barefoot, her toes having been manicured and painted in lipstick-red nail polish. A fresh application of makeup covered up her shiner, and the blood tears that fell from the crying heart tattoo on her ankle seemed to pulsate with her every step, as if they were fully anticipating precisely how this night was going to end.

“Come in,” she said, wrapping her arms around Susan, kissing her gently on the mouth. “John’s not home yet.”

She took the wine bottles from Susan and set them out on the outdoor table beside a wood cutting board that contained a hunk of blue cheese and a green apple that had already been sliced up into several wedges with the paring knife that also rested on the board. Lana did not say a word about our plan to kill her husband, but instead she insisted that I open up one of the bottles and pour three big glasses, which I did.

“To us,” she said, her smile sly and somewhat energetic, as she raised her glass with one hand and fingered an apple wedge with the other. “To a brighter future.” She sipped the wine, then bit down on the slice of apple.

Raising our glasses to our lips, Susan and I drank. The wine was warm, rich, sweet and bitter at the same time. I swear, as the liquid descended into my body, I felt something more than just liquid enter into me then. It felt warm but also cold, and it seemed to lodge itself inside my ribcage beside my heart where the soul resides. All that needed to happen then was a lightning bolt to strike the apple tree out back, and the voice of Satan rising up from out of the depths screaming, “You’re mine now!” But of course, it was a nice peaceful evening on Orchard Grove, with a welcome breeze soothing us from out of the north.

The strange thing was that I hadn’t yet let on to Lana that Susan knew about our plan. But somehow Lana already knew the truth. I could read it on her face like the title page on a script. Maybe the last thing Susan wanted was to openly speak about assisting in a murder, but as soon as her eyes met Lana’s I’m sure she had nothing else in mind other than getting rid of John before he got rid of her first and did so under the guise of a legal circumstance… a tragic, but oh so common, accident. If it could only be accomplished so that it looked like an accident, all the better.

We stood on the back deck drinking wine, eating cheese and apple wedges as the late afternoon sun assumed its summertime orange afterglow. Susan and Lana seemed as happy as two girlfriends who’d just spent the day shopping. How is it that they were so calm? So confident? At the same time, my heart was pounding and I could feel cold droplets of sweat pouring down my backbone.

Holy Christ, I was about to become a murderer… Didn’t matter that the guy who was going to die had it coming…

Something else made the situation surreal: The sexual tension between the three of us was so thick and palpable you could cut it with the paring knife that rested on the cutting board. But it was replaced by sudden alertness and a kind of call-to-action when we heard the SUV pulling up in the driveway, its tires squealing on the macadam when it came to an abrupt stop.

“And that, my lovelies, will be the resident evil of the Cattivo household,” Lana said, her face growing noticeably tight. She finished off her wine, set the glass down onto the table.

Turning to Susan, we locked eyes. She didn’t have to say word for me to know what she was thinking.
Do what you must do, and I will support you one hundred percent because I love you and because the man who is about to die aimed a loaded gun to my head and plans on killing Lana.

Coming from inside the house, a door opening and slamming shut. Heavy footsteps followed, and after that, the sliding glass doors were thrown open. John walked out, his face red, wide-eyed and as agitated as an angry pit bull. His 9mm was holstered to his hip.

“Well if it isn’t my friends, Hollywood and Suzy Q,” he barked. “So who wants to get naked first?”

O
ne thing quickly became evident: drunk as a skunk or not, John could be tamed. At least, for a brief time anyway. And, not surprisingly, the tamer of the beast was Lana. She immediately took him by the arm, led him back inside the house where she proceeded to speak with him. I can’t be certain the words exchanged between them, or if John even said anything at all. But all I know is that when he returned to the deck, he’d washed his face, straightened out his shirt, and seemed far less aggressive and insulting in manner. He’d even removed his sidearm which took me completely by surprise since I could only assume it was biologically attached. In a word, he seemed suddenly to be acting on his best behavior. Naturally, his sudden attitude adjustment, temporary or not, made the task I was about to perform all the more difficult to contemplate.

He popped the top on a tall-necked beer and took a seat at the table while Lana and Susan did the grilling. I was thankful that we didn’t attempt to shake hands or come too close to one another. After all, the palms of my hands were sweating, and my heart was beating so loudly I couldn’t believe no one else heard it. I needed to get this over with. Do it now.

While the steaks roasted, I made my move.

“You know, John,” I said. “I very much admire you.”

He drank some beer and issued me a slanty-eyed look like,
You’ve got to be kidding me.

“Must be because of the wife,” he said.

I laughed, trying my damnedest to be convincing.

“Oh, you got me there, John,” I said, masking the fear in my voice. “But I was talking more along the lines of your occupation. You know, I write about cops in my scripts.”

He shook his head, rolled his eyes. “TV and movie guys like you always get it wrong, Hollywood. Like I said before, you never get your facts straight.”

Lana snuck a look at me over her shoulder from where she was standing at the grill with Susan. The look told me I was doing great, baiting John perfectly.

“Facts,” I repeated. “How do you mean, John?”

“I mean you guys have no idea about police standard operating procedure. You always get it wrong. You arrest guys without reading them their Miranda’s. You put a homicide dick in charge of a drug bust. You conduct high-speed chases in quaint suburban puckered ass neighborhoods like Orchard Grove. And then the next thing you know you’re winning some prestigious award like an Oscar or sticking your hands in wet concrete outside the TLC Chinese Theater. It just doesn’t go down like that in real life, Hollywood.”

He drank down the rest of his beer, set the empty onto the table. He got up, retrieved another one, sat back down.

“Well, believe me when I say I admire what you do, John,” I said. “Putting your life on the line day in and day out. It not only takes firepower. It takes guts. Real guts.”