Bad People (3 page)

Luke let his hands free and shook them, fingers loose. Sweat pooled under the latex gloves but he couldn’t take them off and still ensure he’d be able to get them back on in time, should he need to hurry. The gloves, it turned out, were coated inside with something like talcum powder, but even then—even though he’d bought the largest size—they were hard to get on. Now the talc had turned to a mealy slippery mess inside them. Is that how surgeons operated? Maybe he should’ve take a page from O.J.’s playbook and gone with leather gloves. Though that ultimately hadn’t worked out too well.

A car came by, but the engine was too quiet to be Robb’s Infiniti Fx Sports Utility. It might have been the son Stephen-David’s Prius, but the car kept going, so it wasn’t. There must be a story behind the Prius, but Luke hadn’t discovered it. The mother’s Jetta was serviceable and in good condition, but certainly not as good as she could have; Robb’s Infiniti was not bad, but it was no Lexus. They lived in a large, but not palatial, home on a street with a lot of foreclosures, in a great, but not spectacular, neighborhood. They were just like the couples in “The Millionaire Next Door”: successful in business, prudent in lifestyle.

An entrepreneur must take risks, but they must be calculated risks.

None of this explained the Prius. Those were about twenty thousand, and trendy. True, as a hybrid, a Prius yielded a two thousand dollar tax break, or it had at one time, but even that was only in the year of purchase. The tax break for an SUV that could have been registered in the name of one of the businesses would have been much better—and ongoing.

The baseball game ended on a bad call against Oakland. If Robb had stayed until the bitter end, and was only now filing out of the ballpark, he would be home in less than an hour. Safeco Field hadn’t had a sold-out game all season; I-5 would not be too much trouble this time of night. He might have left earlier. Luke would have.

Luke heard Robb’s engine. Headlight beams splashed under the garage door. Robb hadn’t stayed for the whole game after all. The garage door cranked open. Robb’s Infiniti taxied into the garage.

Luke waited, still in his crouch in the shadows, where, as he had foreseen, the worktable shielded him from the splash of lights. Robb cut the lights, and the engine. The garage door closed. The engine clacked as it cooled but Robb had not yet opened the car door. Luke heard Robb’s voice—muffled but forceful—from inside the cab, and his guts knotted, at the notion Robb might have somebody with him.

Luke peered from the dark. He felt like Batman, Wolverine; fiery eyes burning in the night. Robb was alone, he was arguing with someone on his cell phone.

Robb popped the door open, sounding dings and illuminating the overhead. Luke watched him snap the cell phone shut and throw it down. He’d parked very close to the wall and, as he moved to get out now, Robb pushed the door open with such force it seemed as if he didn’t even known there
was
the wall. “Fuck!” he shouted. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he said, ramming the door against the wall three more times. He turned back to the steering wheel, put his head down on it, and breathed deeply. His breathing was interrupted by short, quick sobs. Luke shifted his weight. Robb was crying.

Robb jerked up. “Who’s there?” he said.

Luke waited.

“Who is it?” Robb said again, his words slurred. Too much beer at the game.

Robb pulled the door shut again, enough to extinguish the overhead light. Luke heard him fumble around inside the car. Luke worried Robb would reopen the garage door, turn the ignition, and back the Infiniti out. That would be the smart thing to do. He didn’t do that. Robb opened the car door again, stepped almost silently onto the pavement and close the door.

Luke heard Robb feel and shuffle his way toward the house entrance. He stopped. Luke’s eyes had recovered enough from the headlights now; he could see the outlined figure of Robb. He was standing in front of the grill of the Infiniti. He faced the corner where Luke waited. Luke had planned to wait until Robb was opening the door into the kitchen, when his back would be turned, but Robb appeared to be holding his cell phone. If he opened it to dial 911 Luke would have to act immediately.

He didn’t open it. He merely held onto it, like a shield.

Luke stood up.

Robb stepped back. “I have a gun,” he said, bluffing and thrusting the cell phone forward, which in the dark did appear to be a gun. It couldn’t be. It must have been Robb’s cell phone; Robb wouldn’t have a gun.

“Calm down,” said Luke. “It’s okay.” This, he noted was the first time he had actually spoken to the man he’d gotten to know these long months.

“Get out!” cried Robb.

Luke took a step.

“Get out of my house!” shouted Robb.

Robb was standing with his back to the wall lined with paint cans. Dozens and dozens of them. He took a step toward Robb.

“Stop!” shouted Robb, stepping back.

“You want me to leave, you don’t want me to move. I can’t do both.”

Robb breathed.

“Okay Robb…“ This wasn’t going well. It should be over by now. Robb shouldn’t have been able to sense Luke’s presence. Luke ground his teeth.

“You know my name?”

“Robb, this is an extraordinary opportunity—meeting a man like you.”

Robb gasped. Then he guffawed. He began to laugh uncontrollably. The hand with the cell phone dropped to his side and Luke sprang.

Robb cried out, raised the cell phone, which spit fire—not a cell phone—a gun after all. The bullet slapped past Luke’s ear. Luke leaped. He fell onto Robb knocking him back. The gun hit the concrete and slid away.

Robb batted at Luke until Luke pinned Robb’s arms using his knees. He covered Robb’s screaming mouth with one big hand, and squeezed his throat with the other. This was not the way. The way was for Luke to have come up behind Robb and in one motion snapped his neck. He’d practiced, mentally. He had books.

Robb stopped moving. It had been a minute—no—
two
minutes at least since the gunshot. No one had come. Or they were still on the way. He’d never anticipated the gun. Stupid. Four months and he’d never learned Robb owned a gun.

Luke slid off the body and listened to his own heavy breath in the darkness. The gloves had ripped. Stupid latex. He remembered his ear, and slapped his hand to it. Wet, very wet, but cold, and he hoped it was his sweat not his blood. He honestly couldn’t tell whether the bullet had grazed him or not. The ringing still filled his ears. An eardrum might have burst.

He thought he heard Robb’s breath but he couldn’t say for sure with the ringing. He put his hand on the body’s chest, waited for it to rise or fall. Nothing. “Robb?” he whispered. Nothing. But how to be sure? He put Robb’s head in his hands and twisted it quickly to snap the neck, but the head merely turned. No strength remained in Luke’s arms. He should be out of there by now. All that planning, and everything going wrong anyway. He roared at the unfairness of it, and swung his fists at the air. If it was blood on his ear then maybe his DNA was all over the garage. He snatched a can of paint from the shelf and brought it down hard against Robb’s skull. The third time he did that the can’s lid came off and oily paint welled over his hands and forearms.

He roared at the body and gripped the shelf of paint cans. Who had that much paint on hand? They had things they didn’t even need. Things they’d never get around to using. Enough paint to paint and repaint a neighborhood for a century. Luke rocked the shelving, working loose the stays that kept it fixed to the wall. He pulled the whole thing onto Robb’s body. The top slammed against the Infiniti’s hood and the paint cans broke open everywhere.

Luke cursed and stumbled out of the garage the way he’d come in, through the door to the back yard. Still no sirens. He stepped onto a pile of hose then followed it to the spigot near the back porch, which tripped the porch light on. The paint on his hands, on the ripped gloves, and spattered all over him was purple, dark purple. Who had purple house paint? He had tracked through the paint too, and was leaving eggshell white footprints all over the patio. He check his eye by pressing his sleeve to it. No blood. The dampness was only sweat.

He turned the faucet on, and at the same time it started to rain. Just a few drops a first, large ones, and then more.

Luke held the hose over his head letting the cold water drenched his hair and neck. Still no sirens. If they were coming they were coming, if not, then not.

He rinsed his hands as best he could then turned the hose on the faucet to clean off the paint.

The rain came harder now, suddenly, with thunder and lightening, like a Midwestern summer downpour, uncharacteristic of Seattle, where it usually drizzled, or misted, or mizzled or wore down the weak-minded a hundred other ways.

The drops felt like pebbles. Good pebbles. He stood with his mouth open to heaven, drops exploding on his tongue. His sweats were soaked and hung off his body like fresh animal skins.

He pulled out one of the large black trash bags he’d put in his back pockets and put his sneakers, socks, and shirt in. He hadn’t intended on doing that here, but he hadn’t intended on tracking paint either. Good foresight to have carried trash bags with him.

He left the yard and continued with the plan.

The street was empty. Luke lurched through the rain past several vacant homes. He reached the corner where the earth sloped off toward the freeway fence, far and below behind a half-built residence. Lightning lit up its skeleton for an instant.

The grass was slick and muddy. He mostly slid down the hill to the freeway barrier fence.

It took him more than a few minutes to find the garbage bag in which he’d stored other clothes. Peeling the soaked pants and underwear off felt good, liberating, but the fresh clothes became soaked in the downpour even before he finished putting them on. He put all the crime-scene clothes into one garbage bag. He found his way along the fence until he found the tree which marked where he should ascend for Ardiss’s old ‘85 Datsun. He climbed the hill by grabbing mud and grass in fistfuls. He reached the crest.

The rain stopped.

Late now; the street was quiet. He shivered in his heavy clothing. He retrieved the key from where he’d taped it in the left rear wheel well.

He got in, soaking the cloth seat and dropping the garbage bag on the passenger side. The Datsun took its time turning over. Luke had no vehicle of his own right now, he could not justify the expense. He wanted a Lexus. When he borrowed Ardiss’s car he paid her. Fifty-bucks hard cash, which she didn’t want to take, but he insisted she did.

Ardiss had no business acumen and the car was her only asset, if you could even call it that. She lived with Luke, on top of him really, in his small studio on Fire Hill, now that she’d managed to lose her place, but he accepted no money from her for that, because she was his girlfriend.

He drove to the commercial dumpster he’d pre-selected to throw away the clothes and sneakers. The length of the job, and the difficulty changing and getting down and up the slope, put him behind. He only just beat the garbage truck’s scheduled 1:45am pickup.

He threw the things away then backed the Datsun down the street and around the corner. He cut the lights. Might as well stay for the pick-up now.

The garbage truck came and beeped as it backed up, running its tines through the dumpster’s sleeves.

Luke breathed deeply, let his muscles relax. He jerked his head up, after almost nodding off. He didn’t feel the adrenaline one was supposed to feel at a time like this. He nodded again, this time shocked awake by the blast of the Datsun’s horn.

The blast echoed down the empty street. The dumpster had already gone. He slapped the sides of his face.

He drove home.

He found a place to park right in front, unheard of on the hill on a weekend night, and he could see that all the basement apartment’s lights were on. Ardiss might be up, but in all likelihood she’d fallen asleep with them on again. She had to have light all the fucking time.