This Wicked World (11 page)

“I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“I don’t. I didn’t. It’s a temporary thing until I can find him a home.”

Amy steps off her porch and walks across the courtyard toward Boone and Joto. “What, is it a stray or something?” she asks.

“Kind of like that, yeah,” Boone replies.

“Can I pet him?”

“Sure, but be careful. I haven’t quite figured out his temperament yet.”

Joto sniffs Amy’s hand when she presents it to him, then licks it. She scratches his back.

“He doesn’t have any teeth,” Boone says.

“What?”

“I don’t know why. He looks pretty unhealthy though.”

Amy drops to her knees and runs a finger over Joto’s gums. “That’s so weird,” she says.

“Best kind of pit bull to have, I guess,” Boone says. “At least I don’t have to worry about him mauling the mailman or anything.”

“Does he have a name?”

“The people I got him from called him Joto.”

Amy looks up at Boone and says, “That’s Spanish, right?”

“It means
faggot
.”

“Nice,” Amy says with a chuckle. “Hey, wait a second, okay?”

She stands and walks back inside her bungalow, returning a few seconds later with a bottle of wine, which she holds out to Boone. “I wanted to thank you for fixing my window,” she says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Boone replies. “That’s how I pay my way around here.”

“Come on, come on, take it. Don’t make me feel stupid.”

Boone accepts the bottle and decides, what the hell, cop or no cop, might as well be neighborly. “Hey, if you’re not doing anything right now, we could open this,” he says. “Seeing as how it’s Friday night and all.”

Amy cocks her head for an instant, considering the offer, then says, “Sure. Okay. But my place is still a mess.”

“Mine’s not much better, but you’re welcome to come over,” Boone replies.

“Give me five minutes.”

“No problem.”

Boone leads Joto to his bungalow, unlocks the door, and ushers him inside. The dog sniffs his way around the place while Boone tidies up, tossing dirty socks into the closet and clearing junk mail off the coffee table. He scrubs the toilet, wipes out the bathroom sink, and, after a glance in the mirror, decides to change into a shirt he hasn’t wrestled illegals in.

When Amy knocks, he’s searching for a corkscrew, which he has, and wineglasses, which he doesn’t. Joto goes nuts, leaping at the door and barking.

“No!” Boone yells. “Sit!” Remarkably, the dog obeys.

Boone lets Amy in, and he’s suddenly aware of how impersonal his place is: no photos or houseplants or softball trophies. The bungalow is as stripped down as he used to keep his cell, like he’s still worried the guards are going to bust in any minute and toss everything in a search for contraband. It’s strange to him; he hopes it’s not strange to Amy.

“All I’ve got are these,” he says, and holds up two water glasses.

“That’s cool,” she replies. “The wine’s just something that was on special at Trader Joe’s.”

Boone notices that she’s applied fresh lipstick and run a brush through her hair. So she’s trying too. Good.

He sets the glasses on the coffee table next to the wine, then remembers that he’s forgotten to feed Joto. He mentions it to Amy, says, “It’ll only take a minute.”

She picks up the corkscrew and the bottle. “Go ahead,” she says. “I’ll handle this.”

In the kitchen, Boone opens one of the cans of Alpo he bought on the way home and scoops it into a bowl. Joto sits at his feet, drawn into the kitchen by the smell. He stares up at Boone with his tongue hanging out, big drops of saliva splashing on the linoleum.

Boone puts the bowl down in front of the dog, and he’s on it in an instant.

Amy comes in carrying two glasses of wine. “How’s it going?” she asks.

“Poor guy’s starving,” Boone replies. He takes the glass she offers and sips from it as they watch Joto wolf down the slop. When the dog has emptied the bowl, Boone dumps in another can.

He and Amy return to the living room and sit on the couch, he leaning back on the cushions, she with one leg tucked under herself, facing him. She clinks her glass against his and says, “Here’s to the handyman.”

“So the window works okay?” Boone asks.

“Good as new. Was it a pain to repair?”

“The right tools, the right parts — piece of cake.”

“Have you always been good at fixing things?”

“Not really,” Boone says. “At one time I was better at breaking them — noses, arms.” He stops suddenly and frowns. “I probably shouldn’t be joking like that around you.”

Amy draws back, confused. “What? Why?”

Boone can’t believe he brought this up right off the bat, but now that he has, there’s no graceful way to change the subject. “This is gonna sound bad,” he says, “but while I was in your place this morning I saw some photos on your dresser.”

“So.”

Joto trots in from the kitchen, collapses in the corner, and begins to scratch behind his ears.

“So I didn’t know you’re a cop.”

Amy narrows her eyes and smiles warily at Boone. “What’s the problem?” she says. “Are you a criminal?”

“Ha!” Boone says, ignoring her question and hoping she’ll let him slide.

“Actually, I’m an
ex
-cop, if that makes you feel any better,” Amy continues. “I quit about five years ago and became an English teacher, middle school.”

“That makes more sense,” Boone says.

Amy gives him a dirty look. “Yeah? How so?”

“It’s just that most cops… Well, you seem so cool.”

“I
am
cool,” Amy says, and they both laugh.

“Okay, so then let me ask you this,” Boone says. “What made a cool girl like you want to be a police officer?”

Amy purses her lips, thinking. She looks down at her glass and swirls her wine. “Ah, jeez, man,” she finally says. “Why does anybody want to do anything?”

“Well,” Boone says, “I wanted to join the Cub Scouts so I could play with matches.”

“Come on, you know what I mean,” Amy says. She pulls a pack of American Spirits from her pocket. Something has made her nervous, Boone can tell. “Do you mind?” she says, opening the pack.

“No, no,” he says. “It’s fine.”

He gets up and goes into the kitchen for a mug she can use as an ashtray.

“It’s totally gross, I know,” she calls after him. “But I only do it when I drink.”

“Your dirty little secret,” Boone says as he hands her the mug and sits on the couch again.

“One of them anyway,” she says.

“So forget about being a cop,” Boone says. “Tell me about teaching instead.”

Amy smiles and takes a drag off her cigarette, blows the smoke out of the side of her mouth. “You’re a nice guy,” she says. “I’m only reluctant to talk about the cop thing because the whys of stuff are weird. They sound so stupid sometimes when you say them out loud.”

“That’s definitely true,” Boone replies.

“Part of it was just that I wanted some excitement. I was working in a bookstore in Portland, and I was bored to death. But part of it was also that I believed — still believe — in right and wrong and good and evil. And that’s silly, because I knew full well before I even put on the uniform that things don’t break that cleanly, that that’s just us trying to draw lines.”

Boone sits back and raises his eyebrows. “Wow,” he says.

Amy takes another hit of her cigarette. “Yeah, I’m full of shit,” she says. “But you asked.”

“You’re not full of shit,” Boone says.

“My parents sure thought I was. When I told them I was moving down to L.A. to go to the academy, they were like, ‘Do you know what kind of people become police officers? You have a college education. Just last month you were talking about going into the Peace Corps. You’re a Democrat, for God’s sake.’ But that just made me want to do it even more. Now I had something to prove. I was going to be the one good cop in the whole wide world.”

“Hoo-fucking-ray,” Boone says.

“Exactly.”

Amy exhales a cloud of smoke and sips her wine. Boone’s a little dizzy watching her. You meet someone, you’re not expecting anything, and
boom!

“So what happened?” he says. “Why aren’t you still protecting and serving?”

“Well, for one thing, I got shot.”

Boone sits up straight, shocked. “Whoa! Really?”

Amy rolls up the sleeve of her T-shirt to show him a scar about the size of a quarter on her upper bicep and a long jagged one on the back of her arm.

“I chased down a thirteen-year-old psychopath high on paint thinner who’d cut up an old woman for her social security check, and he whirled on me and started shooting,” she says. “My vest stopped two of the rounds, but the one that got through broke my humerus and nicked an artery. It’s still a little numb sometimes, nerve damage, but nothing too bad.”

“Jesus,” Boone whispers.

Amy shrugs her shoulders as if to say, “There you have it.”

“So then you were like, ‘Forget this’?” Boone asks.

“It had been three years,” Amy says, “and I was still reasonably happy, meaning I didn’t dread going to work, but I was always glad to go home. I’d resigned myself to the fact that most cops are only out there for the money and the benefits, that it’s just a job for them, one they don’t particularly like. And I’d accepted that most of the people you’re dealing with on the street don’t want your help. They want to be free to beat and be beaten, rob and be robbed, kill and be killed.

“I knew a lot of cops, though, who stayed cops because the years flew by and that got to be all they could do. I felt like I still had it in me to be something else. After I got shot, the way things panned out, I had a chance to leave the department without feeling like a quitter, so I took it and looked for another way to save the world.”

“Did you find it?” Boone asks.

Amy smiles sadly as she tosses what’s left of her cigarette into the mug on the coffee table and dribbles a little wine on it to put it out.

“Teaching?” she says. “Nah, that didn’t turn out to be what I thought it would either. Most of the kids think they’re smarter than me, even though they’re reading at a third-grade level, and my job is to do what I can for the few who pay attention and try to keep the rest from killing each other on my watch. But it’s one more step, you know. Hopefully, in the right direction.”

“What’s your master plan?” Boone asks.

Amy shrugs. “Move to Montana, open a used bookstore, marry a rich cowboy — something silly and selfish like that.”

“Sounds like you’ve earned the right to be a little selfish,” Boone says. “You’ve done your best to do good and paid your dues in full.”

“I guess so,” Amy says like she doesn’t believe it. She thumbs the rim of her glass absentmindedly, suddenly somewhere else. Boone is about to say something to bring her back when she brightens and asks, “And what about you?”

“What about me what?” he replies.

“You ever done any good?”

Boone hesitates, unsure how to respond. He’s never been much for tap dancing around the truth, but he also doesn’t want to scare her off. “Let’s just say that I did my best too,” he finally replies.

“And let’s just say that you’re going to tell me all about it,” Amy says. “I’m not going to be the only one to spill my guts tonight.”

“How much wine is left?”

Amy picks up the bottle and holds it to the light. “Plenty,” she says before topping off his glass, then hers.

“You’re sure you want to hear this?” he says.

“Absolutely.”

“It’s not pretty.”

“I was a cop, remember?”

Boone exhales loudly and settles back on the couch. This is going to hurt.

H
E BEGINS WITH
the rough period after his marriage to Lila ended. He was still installing stereos, still living in the apartment he’d shared with Lila, still wondering what had gone wrong with his life, when he got a call from his old Marine buddy and sparring partner Carl Perry. It had been a couple of years since they’d last talked, and Carl had some news: he’d started a bodyguard service in L.A. and wanted Boone to come up and work for him.

Boone turned him down, said it wouldn’t be a good idea. He’d convinced himself he wasn’t the man he’d been before the marriage, that the disappointment he’d experienced had diminished him somehow. Carl was persistent, though. “Come on, Jimmy. You’re just the guy I need,” he said. “You’re tough, brave, smart. A little crazy, maybe, but honest about it. I’m looking for someone I can trust with my life, buddy, and that’s you.”

Carl’s confidence in him shocked Boone out of feeling sorry for himself for half a second, long enough to realize that the man’s offer was what he’d been waiting for all these months: a chance to get the hell out of San Diego and wipe the slate clean. He spoke quickly, before he could change his mind, told Carl that he’d drive up the very next day. If it was truly possible for someone to start over, he meant to.

Carl put him up in his apartment, and he became the newest operative at Ironman Executive Protection. He took all the shit work in the beginning. Things like accompanying a loudmouthed TV actor to clubs where Boone’s job was to get between the punk and the girls he pissed off by grabbing their asses. Things like babysitting a famous model’s pug while she spent hours snorting coke in the bathroom of a Beverly Hills restaurant. And then there was the senile movie producer who hired Boone to start his Mercedes and ride with him to the pharmacy because he was certain the Mob was still out to get him for some dirt he’d done back in 1972.

Boone was a hit. The clients liked him, requested him, and recommended him to others, and within a few months he was able to move into his own condo in Hollywood. Things continued to go well for the next six years. Boone became Carl’s partner in the business, and they got bigger and better jobs. He accompanied a Saudi prince to Monaco and stood by his side while he gambled away a small fortune, and he and a team he assembled spent a whole month watching over a movie star and his family during their vacation in Hawaii. He moved into the Hills, leasing a house with a gym and a pool. He bought a Porsche 996 Turbo the first year they came out, dated a slew of very beautiful but very fucked-up actress/model/waitresses, and often lay awake at night marveling at where life had taken him. By the time he was thirty years old, he couldn’t think of much more to ask for.