Time Bomb (18 page)

“Guitar.” Her mouth turned down. “How nice.”

The chill.

I said, “Another danger zone, Linda?”

“What . . . what are you talking about?”

“When I get near certain topics—cops, now music—the No Trespassing signs start flashing.”

“Don’t be silly.” She pointed toward the shampoo bottle. “Do you want me to do your hair or not?”

I gave her the bottle. She lathered. When she was through she handed me a towel and left the bathroom.

I toweled off, dressed, and went into the bedroom. She was sitting at her vanity, putting on eye shadow. Looking miserable.

I said, “Sorry. Forget it.”

She began combing her hair. “The cop’s name was Armando Bonilla. Mondo. San Antonio PD, rookie in a squad car. I was just twenty when I met him, a junior at U.T. He was twenty-two, an orphan. Old Mexican family, but he barely spoke Spanish. One of those Latin cowboy types you see in Texas. He wore his hair longer than the Department liked, spent his nights playing in a band. Guitar.” She shook her head. “Good old guitar. Must be in my karma, huh?”

Her laugh was bitter.

“Six-string guitar and pedal steel. Flying fingers, self-taught—he was a natural. The other three guys in the band were cops too. More Latin cowboys. They’d known each other since sixth grade, joined the Department to have something stable, but the band was their first love. Magnum Four. Fantasies of recording contracts but none of them was ambitious or aggressive enough to pursue it and they never got out of the bar circuit. It’s how I met them . . . met him. Amateur night at a place near the Alamo; they were the house band. Daddy was a Sunday fiddler, used to push music on me all the time. Push me to sing. Traditional country, western swing—the stuff
he
liked. I knew every Bob Wills song note for note by the time I was eight.

“That night he dragged me there, then made me get up and sing. Patsy Cline. ‘I Fall to Pieces.’ I was so nervous, my voice cracked. I sounded horrible. But the competition was thin and I came in first—gift certificate for a pair of boots and an invitation to join the band. They were into country rock—Eagles, Rodney Crowell, old Buddy Holly stuff. Mondo did a mean ‘La Bamba,’ putting on this humongous gag sombrero and this thick Spanish accent, even though he didn’t know what all the words meant.

“They renamed the band Magnum Four and Lady Derringer. I started to get into performing. You would have thought Daddy’d be overjoyed—music plus a bunch of cops. But he didn’t like the fact that they were Mexican—though he never would come out and admit it. In San Antonio the big myth is that brown and white live together in harmony, but that ain’t the way it goes down when tongues loosen at the dinner table. So instead of just coming out and saying it, he griped about the kind of garbage we were playing, how late I was coming home from gigs, stinking of booze and smoke. Mondo tried to relate to him on a cop level—Daddy’d worked in the same Department, made sergeant before getting accepted into the Rangers. But that didn’t make any difference. He cold-shouldered Mondo. Told me the guys were no-account punks masquerading as peace officers, nothing like the upstanding buckaroos of
his
day. The thing that made him maddest was that he’d gotten me into it in the first place. The more he bugged me, the more resolute I got. Closer to Mondo, who was really sweet and naïve beneath all the macho posturing. Finally, Daddy and I had a big fight—he slapped me across the face and I packed up and moved out of the house and into an apartment with Mondo and two of the band guys. Dad stopped speaking to me, total divorce. A month later—just after Christmas—Mondo and I got engaged.”

She stopped, bit her lip, got up, and walked back and forth in front of the bed.

“About a month after the engagement, he got pulled out of uniform and put on some kind of undercover assignment that he couldn’t talk about. I assumed it was Dope or Vice, or maybe some Internal Affairs thing, but whatever it was, it changed our lives. He’d work nights, sleep days, be gone for a week at a time. The band fell apart. Without him it was nothing. I used the extra time to study, but the other guys got depressed, started drinking more—bad vibes. Mondo started drinking too. And smoking dope, which was something he’d never done before. He grew his hair even longer, stopped shaving, wore ratty clothes, didn’t shower regularly—as if the criminal thing were rubbing off on him. When I ragged him about it, he said it was part of the job—he was just playing a role. But I could tell he was really getting into it, and I wondered if things would ever go back to the way they’d been.

“Here I was, all of twenty, lonely, scared about what I’d gotten myself into, unable—and unwilling—to go back to Daddy. So I swallowed my pride, put up with whatever Mondo wanted—which really wasn’t much. He was hardly ever around. Then, early in February, he traipsed in, the middle of the night, dirty and smelly, woke me up and announced he was moving out. Something really big, a new assignment—he’d be gone for at least a month, maybe longer. I started crying, tried to get him to tell me what was going on, but he said it was the job, I didn’t need to know—for my sake I shouldn’t know. Then he kissed my cheek—a passionless kiss, as if we were brother and sister—and left. It was the last time I saw him. Two days later he got caught in a dope burn and was gunned down, along with another rookie. The other guy survived but was a vegetable. Mondo was the lucky one—dead before he hit the floor. It was a big screw-up—dealers and junkies, and cops dressed as dealers and junkies, waging war at this dope factory out in the barrio. Four bad guys were killed too. The papers called it a slaughterhouse, made a big deal about how poorly prepared the two of them had been for the assignment. Lambs to the slaughter.”

She hugged herself, sat down on a corner of the bed, out of reach.

“After that, I fell apart, crying for days, not eating or sleeping. And there came good old Dad to the rescue, carrying me—literally—back home. Sitting me in the parlor, playing his old seventy-eights and fiddling for his little girl, just like old times. But I couldn’t deal with that, and I got really hostile to him, snappish, fresh-mouthed. In the old days he never would have tolerated it—he’d have taken a switch to me, even at my age. But he just sat there and took it, docile.
That
scared me. But mostly I was angry. Enraged at life. Insulted by God. And then the question marks started bugging me. Why
had
Mondo been thrown into something he wasn’t equipped to handle?

“The funeral made it worse—all those gun salutes and rah-rah speeches about valor. I rode to the grave site in the same car as Mondo’s commander and demanded to know what had happened. The bastard was an old friend of Dad’s, still considered me a child, and he patronized me. But when I showed up at his office the next day and got pushy, he lost patience—just like a father would-—and told me since Mondo and I had never been legally married, just
cohabitating,
I had no rights to any information or anything else, shouldn’t start thinking I could put in a claim on Mondo’s pension.

“I went home sobbing. Daddy listened, got all indignant and protective, and told me he’d take care of that S.O.B. Next day, the commander came calling, Whitman’s Sampler tucked under his arm for me, bottle of Wild Turkey for Daddy. All apologetic, calling me Miss Linda and Pretty One—Daddy’s pet name for me when I was little. Sitting in the parlor and going on about how the strain of the tragedy was getting to all of us, what a great guy Mondo had been. Daddy nodding as if he and Mondo had been best friends. Then the commander handed me an envelope. Inside were ten one-hundred-dollar bills—money the other cops had collected for me. Letting me know without saying it that even if I didn’t legally have rights, he was granting them to me. I told him I didn’t want money, just the truth. Then he and Daddy looked at each other and started talking in low, soothing tones about the dangers of the job, how Mondo’d been a true hero. The commander saying Mondo’d been picked for undercover because he was top-notch, had great recommendations. If only there were some way to turn back the clock. Daddy joining in, telling me about all the close calls
he’d
had, how scared and brave Mama had been when she was alive. How I had to be brave, go on and live my life.

“After a while it started to work. I softened up, thanked the commander for coming. Began to let my feelings out—to grieve. Started to finally be able to lay it to rest. Con-centrate on what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Everything seemed to be going as well as could be expected until, about a month later, I got a call from Rudy—one of the other guys in the band—asking me to meet him at a restaurant out in the suburbs near Hill Country. He sounded uptight, wouldn’t tell me what it was about, just that it was important. When I got there he looked terrible—drained, pale. He’d lost a lot of weight. He said he was quitting the Department, moving the hell out of state—to New Mexico or Arizona. I asked him why. He said it was too dangerous sticking around, that after what had been done to Mondo, he’d never trust anyone in the fucking Department. I said what the heck are you talking about. He looked around—he was really jumpy, as if he was scared of being watched. Then he said, ‘I know this will blow you away, Linda, but you were his lady. You’ve got a right to know.” Then he told me he’d found out Mondo hadn’t been pulled off patrol because of his excellent performance. The opposite was true: He had a bad record—demerits for subordination, the long hair, borderline probation, low competence ratings. He’d been given dangerous assignments as a favor to someone.”

She stopped, touched her gut. “Lord, even after all these years it gets to me.”

“Your dad.”

Dull nod. “He and his old buddy, the commander. They set him up, put him in a situation they knew he couldn’t handle. Like throwing a new recruit into the jungle— sooner or later, you know what’s going to happen. Lamb to the slaughter. Damned close to premeditated murder, said Rudy, but nothing anyone could ever prove. Just knowing it put
him
in jeopardy, which was why he was getting the hell out of town.

“He left the coffee shop, looking over his shoulder all the while. I drove away at about ninety per—feeling out of my body, numb, like a player in my own nightmare. When I got home Daddy was sitting in the parlor. Fiddling. Grinning. After one look at my face, he put his bow down—he knew. I started screaming at him, hitting him. He reacted very calmly. He said, ‘Pretty One, what’s done is done. No sense fretting.’ I just looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. Feeling nauseated, wanting to throw up, but determined he wouldn’t see me weak. I snatched the fiddle out of his hands—an old Czechoslovakian one that he really loved. He’d been buying and trading them for years until he’d found a keeper. He tried to grab it but I was too fast for him. I held it by the peg head and smashed it against the mantelpiece. Kept smashing until it was splinters. Then I ran from that house and never returned. Haven’t spoken to him since, though a couple of years ago we started exchanging Christmas cards again. He’s remarried—one of those men who needs a woman around. Some bimbo from Houston, half his age. She’ll get
his
pension, and the house I grew up in, and she’ll be the one tending his old bones.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Cops and guitars.”

I said, “A long time ago.”

She shook her head. “Nine
years
.
God.
Haven’t had much of a taste for music for a long time—don’t even own a phonograph—and here I am
humming
to you and playing geisha and I barely know you.”

Before I could answer, she said, “Haven’t had anything to do with
cops
, either, till this mess.”

But I remembered that she’d mentioned being a Ranger’s daughter to Milo. Pushing the door open a crack.

“Maybe the time’s ripe for change, Linda.”

A tear made its way down her cheek. I moved closer to be able to hold her.

15

After a while she got up and said, “There’re some things I have to take care of. Boring stuff—shopping, cleaning. Been putting it off for too long.”

“What are you planning to do for transportation?”

“I’ll manage.” Restless. Embarrassed by it.

I said, “I’ve got some things to take care of too. The glories of the single life.”

“Oh, yeah.”

We left the bedroom and walked to the front door, not touching. I opened the door and stepped out into the green corridor. Weekend-silent. The mildew smell seemed stronger. Newspapers lay in front of several doors. The headline was something about Afghanistan.

She said, “Thanks. You’ve been wonderful.”

I held her chin and kissed her cheek. She gave me her mouth and tongue and gripped me for a moment, then pulled away and said, “Out, before I yank you back in.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?”

She smiled, but so briefly it made me wonder if I’d imagined it. “You understand, I just need to . . .”

“Breathe?”

She nodded.

“Nothing like breathing to liven things up,” I said. “Would asking you out for tomorrow night lower the oxygen level?”

She laughed and her damp hair shook stiffly. “No.”

“Then how about tomorrow? Eight
P.M
. Take in a couple of art galleries, then dinner.”

“That would be great.”

We squeezed hands and I left, feeling a curious mixture of melancholy and relief. No doubt she viewed me as Mr. Sensitive. But I was happy to have some breathing space of my own.

When I got home, I called Milo.

He said, “How’s she doing?”

“Coping.”

“Called you an hour ago. No one home. Must have been an extended consultation.”

“Gosh, you must be a detective or something.”

“Hey, I’m happy for you. The two of you are cute together—a regular Ken and Barbie.”

“Thanks for your blessing, Dad. What’d you learn at Ferguson’s?”

“Good old Esme? That was fun. She reminded me of the kind of teachers
I
used to have—more into what lines had to be skipped than what you actually wrote in the composition. Her house had this permanent Lysol smell—made me feel as if I was polluting it just by being there. Porcelain poodles on the hearth, little groupings of miniature doggies in glass cases. But nothing animate. She had me leave my shoes at the door—thank God I’d worn the socks without the holes. But for all the spick and span, she has a nasty little mind. Textbook bigot to boot. First she tested the waters with a few sly comments about the city changing, all those Mexicans and Asians invading, and when I didn’t argue, really got into how the coloreds and the other
outsiders
have ruined things. Listening to her, the school used to be a regular junior Harvard, chock full of genius white kids.
Refined
families.
Fabulous
school spirit,
fabulous
extracurricular activities. All her star pupils going on to bigger and better things. She showed me a collection of Dear Teacher postcards. The most recent one was ten years old.”