Shooting Elvis Page 20

  I figured the guy slumped in the front seat of the brown sedan parked down the street was FBI surveillance. I knocked on the window to wake him, slouched up the walkway to the front door, took out my key and opened it. The living room was empty, dark. A wedge of light came from the kitchen, angled across the far wall. Everybody was in there having dinner, I could hear the wordless clank of knives and forks. I walked through the dark, past the living room into the light.

  Pop sat at the far end of the table, he saw me first, was spooning down his soup when I came in, the sight froze the spoon to his lips. Next chair over, Ray sucked in a lungful of air. Mom turned in her chair, cried out, at first I thought because she was afraid, didn’t recognize me, but she jumped up, ran at me with her arms out. I nearly knocked her over I hugged her so hard. Nothing was going to stop her from crying, and there was something about seeing my mom cry almost made me cry too. Maybe I would have cried, if I had a little more time to work up to it. Maybe not. Maybe I was a little dead inside. I didn’t get much time to try.

  Pop stood up at the far end of the table, said, “What’re you doing here?”

  Mom’s arms went stiff around my neck.

  Pop said, “Stand away, she’s not our daughter anymore.”

  Mom said I hadn’t meant any harm.

  Pop yelled, “Stand away!”

  Mom jumped. She didn’t want to, but she did. She moved to Ray. Ray put his arm around her, watched Pop.

  Pop said, “If you ever show up here again, I’ll break your neck.”

  I knew then where I got my anger. I knew how it was possible for me to kill people. I got it from him. He gave it to me with my bones, my teeth, my ligaments and joints. It was encoded in the DNA at the moment of my conception.

  I said, “I didn’t come to see you. I came to see Mom.”

  I saw it happening to him. The beast coming out. It didn’t take much time. One second. Maybe two. Coil and spring. He came across the linoleum, cocked his fist and roared, “Get out of this house before I kill you! Get out of the goddamn—”

  I jerked the gun out, stuck it in his face before he could finish the sentence. It stopped him cold.

  I said, “Have a chair, Pop.”

  I saw him thinking. Thinking too much. About whether I had the guts to actually shoot him. I cocked back the hammer. Motive. Opportunity. Weapon. Guts. I had them all. I said, “At the table. Like you usually do. Chair turned around backwards. We’ll sit around the kitchen table, just like regular family.”

  He knew I’d shoot him. He wasn’t a coward, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t afraid. But he knew. He backed up to his chair, turned it around, sat down. Mom and Ray, they took their places at the table. Ray’s eyes were on the gun, Mom’s eyes on my face.

  I said, “You thirsty, Pop? Of course you’re thirsty. You’re always thirsty.” I opened the refrigerator door, tossed him a beer. “Have a beer. Have several beers. Get stinking drunk. Get piss-stinking angry drunk. Get so drunk you forget I have a gun.”

  He set the bottle on the table, said, “You made your point, Mary.”

  I put the gun to his head. The rage shot through my nerves so hot and strong my hand shook. “I said drink.”

  He broke the seal on the beer, took a long swig.

  “How can you say I’m not your daughter?”

  Mom said, “He didn’t mean it that way, honey.”

  Pop said, “Goddamn it, of course I meant it. Don’t you tell me what I mean or not.”

  I came perilous close to shooting him then.

  Ray knew it, said, “Mary.”

  “What?”

  “Put the gun down, okay?”

  I didn’t put the gun down, I said, “Tell me why I’m not your daughter.”

  The gun barrel pressed against the bone behind his ear. If I shot him, the bullet wouldn’t penetrate his skull, alter his convictions at all. The bullet would bounce off, no harm done. His head was harder than steel plate. Everything about the man was hard.

  He said, “I did the best I could with you, but you stopped being mine. I got no idea who you are, and I don’t care.”

  “You disown me?”

  “That’s right.”

  I showed him the gun, barrel first.

  “I shot three men. I thought about you coming after me with your big hands and I shot two of them dead. I thought about all the times you hit me and Mom, and the anger came up so hot and hard I knew it had to come from you. Only my fists aren’t as big as yours and I can’t hit as hard. So I got a gun. I got a gun, but it was your finger helped me pull the trigger.”

  He said, “I raised you the best I could.”

  “You didn’t raise me. You stunted me.”

  The phone rang. We let it ring.

  I said, “Get out of the house. Get out of the house before I get angry again. I don’t want to shoot you. If I shot you, I’d have to shoot myself after, and I’ve only got one bullet left.”

  He looked at me like I was kidding him, there was no way I could order him out of his own house. I pointed to the back door, I roared, “Get out of the goddamn house!”

  He edged away from the table, unlocked the back door. He didn’t want to walk straight out of the house like I ordered him. Walking out was too much like turning tail. He said, “I did those things because, well, because that was me. Just like you do the things you do because that’s you. You throw all your sins at my feet, I’ll just kick ’em away. Your sins are yours.”

  Then he walked out the door, didn’t bother to close it behind him. Typical. I walked over, slammed it shut. The phone was still ringing. I told Mom to answer it.

  She picked up the phone, said, “Yes, yes it is. Just a moment.” She cupped the phone in the palm of her hand, whispered, “It’s the FBI, honey. Do you wanna talk?”

  I grabbed the phone. The guy on the other end of the line seemed nice enough. I think he was anxious it might be a hostage situation, asked if I was carrying any weapons. I told him of course I was carrying weapons, what kind of dangerous criminal would I be if I wasn’t even carrying a gun? It would be a waste of media space and FBI time if I didn’t have at least a pistol on me. If I didn’t have any weapons, they could send the meter maid to arrest me, and that would make everybody look kind of silly, now wouldn’t it? California’s most dangerous criminal apprehended by off-duty meter maid. The news ratings would fall, the advertisers wouldn’t be happy, nobody would go out and buy extra newspapers, what an anticlimax, I couldn’t afford to disappoint the public like that.

  I suspect the FBI agent thought I was a little crazy. He told me to calm down, everything could be worked out, the last thing he wanted was for anybody to get hurt, including me. I laughed at him. I said he was too late. He should have come by here twenty years ago if he wanted to stop people from getting hurt. Then I hung up the phone.

  Mom put on a brave face, said, “So. You’re in a little trouble.”

  “Sure am.”

  “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll get the best lawyers.”

  “You can’t afford it, Mom. You don’t have any money.”

  “We’ll sell the house.”

  “Over Pop’s dead body.”

  “Don’t be so hard on your pop. Life’s been tough for him, you know.”

  “Tougher than for everybody else? Tougher than for you? So tough he’s gotta beat the hell out of you or anybody he can get his hands on when he gets mad? That tough? And what the hell’s wrong with you that you stay with him? Are you sick in the head? Are you so weak you’ll suffer any pain, take any abuse, just so you won’t have to live alone?”

  Mom’s eyes were shining blanks. This is the look she always gets when the talk is about something she doesn’t know how to handle. She lived with the guy forty years. I sometimes think the beaten and broken value loyalty because nothing else glues them together.

  Mom said, “We can talk about this some other time?”

  “I want to talk about it now!”

  Ray said, “Mary,
please, give me the gun.”

  I glanced down at my hand, saw the barrel pointed toward my mom.

  I said, “I’m sorry. Things are just a little tense for me right now.”

  I set the safety, dropped the pistol onto the table. Then I sat down, stared off into space, wanted to cry but couldn’t come close, was too hard and dry inside. Ray shoved the pistol to the far side of the table, asked if I wanted a beer, got us all one. The heavy clatter of helicopter blades flew over the house, turned a wide circle, flew over again. A bright light beamed into the back yard. The sound of a helicopter, that’s always scared me. A helicopter overhead, it’s looking for somebody, and if it’s you, there’s no escaping it. Can’t outrun a helicopter.

  Ray opened three beers, handed one to Mom, one to me. We drank. I could hear the machinery of law and order out on the street. Motors, car doors, voices. Mom reached out, held my hand. The helicopter flew in circles, around and around the house, the searchlight swept the back yard corner to corner. Looked like a spotlight, waiting for somebody to step into it. I heard a gate close, sudden and sharp, knew time was about out.

  I said, “Take care of Mom, Ray.”

  I stood, gave him a kiss, embarrassed him. Except for me and Mom, we weren’t a kissing family.

  Mom said, “Do you want me to go with you?”

  I said, “No, Mom.”

  She said, “I’m not . . .,” then stopped.

  I looked at her, waited, asked, “What is it?”

  “It’s not dying I’m scared of.”

  I smiled, kissed her cheek. She knew I understood. I walked to the front door, opened it, stepped onto the front porch.

  They didn’t expect me to just walk out like that, not a dangerous renegade like me. There were over a hundred of them out there. Sheriffs’ cars lined both sides of the street. Each car had two sheriffs, each sheriff had a gun, minimum two pistols, one shotgun per car. Some guys in blue suits, they had guns too, stood behind brown cars. Everybody with a gun had it pointed at me. I heard clicks go up and down the line, the sound of bullets being chambered. At the far end of the street, a fire truck, an ambulance, four or five vans. The vans were all marked with call letters and slogans, had people running over with cameras, microphones.

  Overhead, the helicopter flew around and around. The searchlight danced over the roof, the front yard, and then I was in it, spotlights came on from twenty cop cars, I was lit from above, the sides, dead ahead. White, searing light. The light scorched, blinded me. I put my hands to my eyes, stumbled down the steps.

  A voice came out of a bullhorn, a voice stern and commanding, the tone of the voice said don’t fuck around, do what we tell you. The voice said, “Put your hands behind your head, kneel to the ground.”

  I put my hands up, didn’t want them to think I had a gun, was going to shoot all one hundred of them, but I wasn’t going to kneel for anybody.

  The voice said, “Kneel down, kneel to the ground.”

  I said, “Go ahead and shoot, but I’m not kneeling.”

  The voice said, “This is your last warning. Kneel to the ground.”

  I turned my hands around in the air, gave them the finger, said, “Fuck you.”

  The voice couldn’t think what to say next, nobody seemed willing to shoot me, at least not live on television. I saw six of them coming at me out of the lights, six guns sighted down on my chest. The cops moved like cops do when they’re making an arrest of a dangerous suspect, inching forward one step at a time, the way the light hit them from behind, they looked like angry beings from another planet. When they got close, two of the cops circled to the side, kept out of each other’s line of fire. The cop most in front, his face stretched back so I could see his teeth, he barked, “Kneel to the ground!”

  I said, “Never.”

  I wound up flat on my face a second later, a boot on my neck, my arms yanked back and wrists nylon-cuffed together. People who watched the news that night say it was the strangest thing, I was smiling when the cops pulled me up, and when they led me past the news crews, the lights and cameras, I gave a bigger smile, made me look like I was either crazy or a wannabe movie star. It wasn’t that at all. Maybe I had just been arrested and was going off to jail for a hundred hard years, maybe I had just lost everything a normal person values in life, but I didn’t do what they told me. They didn’t break me, that made me the freest person on earth.

  24

  I’m in county jail now. Seems during what the newspapers call my two-week crime spree, I broke half the criminal code. The district attorney couldn’t make up his mind where to start there were so many things he could charge me with. Murder one, murder two, manslaughter, multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft, unlawful discharge of a firearm, unlawful possession of explosive materials, not to mention two unpaid parking tickets and driving a motor vehicle without a valid license. The prosecutor claims I’m the worst nightmare a society can have. A rogue feminist killer. I have a history of hating men, beginning with my father. It seems Lizzie Borden was a saint compared to me.

  I never expected to get out of all this with a stern lecture and a slap on the wrist. Wrex cut a deal with the D.A., looks like he’s going to skate on all charges. According to him, it was me who knew the Drake brothers. He was a pitiful figure in court, crutched up to the witness stand, right leg in a cast. Even cut his hair, wore a suit. Under oath, he admitted it was his gun that shot the older Drake dead, but his version of events that night is considerably different than mine. He claimed I double-crossed the Drake brothers, and in retaliation they kidnapped me. He was following the Drakes, because he knew they were bad hombres. It was his bet they’d track me down, hurt me when they did, maybe even kill me. The prosecutor asked him why he went to all that trouble on my account. In front of judge, jury, and world press Wrex sobbed, “God forgive me, but I still love her.”

  How I wished then for just one more bullet!

  Under expert guidance from the prosecutor, Wrex said he waited outside the house until one Drake left, then broke in, got the drop on the other. The situation was tense, he said, but no sir, he didn’t shoot nobody. He had to make a phone call to set me up with a safe place to stay for the night. He wanted to take Frick out to the phone with him, but I told him to give me the gun, I’d watch Frick while he was gone. Wrex had just picked up the phone when he heard first one shot, then another. Frick was dead on the floor when he ran back to see what happened. Then he saw me pump three bullets into Frick’s dead body.

  “And what was the defendant’s reaction?” The prosecutor asked, his voice gentle, as though poor Wrex’s nervous system couldn’t take the excitement.

  “I asked her, you know, like what happened, did he go for the gun or something? The look on her face, that’s Mary’s face, the defendant’s face I mean, well, it was kinda crazy. All she said was, and please excuse me for using a cuss word, but I’m repeating what she said, which was, ’Rest in pieces, asshole.’”

  That’s murder one in the D.A.’s book. With both Drake brothers dead, no way I could prove Wrex wrong. My prints were on the gun, my paraffin test positive. He testified I shot him in the leg out of pure meanness, then ran him over with his own bike. I went on to kill the other Drake brother, gun down Mike Fleischer and threaten to put a bullet through my own father, establishing what the prosecutor called a pattern of wanton homicidal behavior. This isn’t even counting the charges against me for terrorism, murder and mayhem in the airport bombing. So far, the only shooting I haven’t been charged with is Elvis’s. I’m sure I’ll hear from his lawyers before this is through.

  Nobody believes my story about what I found inside the case, nothing was left after the gas station explosion to prove or disprove anything. Billy b and Bobby Easter have kept their mouths shut on the advice of their lawyers. The prosecution theorizes Kabyenko was smuggling heroin into the country, hidden in Russian plumbing supplies. Half the trial, I waited for my lawyer to present the letters Kabyenko wrote to Fle
ischer, and the videotape Cass and I shot of Fleischer in his office and the Drake brothers on the street. Was sure it would all prove my innocence, until the prosecutor got up, played the tape again, showed how I set up a deal with Fleischer, pointed to the paper bag of cash I traded for the case, said what we were seeing was obvious. A simple case of drug smuggling and murder for profit, gone terribly wrong. I could see how someone might see it that way, based on looking at the tape alone, felt pretty stupid after that. The letters he discounted as forgeries. Cass took the stand to testify to what she saw, told everybody the tape was a trick we were playing to prove my innocence, admitted she didn’t see what was in the case, then she started talking about government conspiracies to support the cocaine and heroin cartels, didn’t end up too credible.

  All in all, jail isn’t so bad. I have time to read. After fourteen years of school, I feel I’m finally getting an education. I get visitors. Mom comes once a week, sometimes with Ray. Rachel came once, to talk about Ben. Cass comes to visit every now and then. The studio never hired her to write the script of my life story, big surprise, now she wants to make a documentary of me in jail, is pestering half the officials in the county trying to get permission. Some art professor came to see me, my lawyer sent him as part of my defense strategy. When I told him what was in the case, he said I was lying or crazy or both, such a thing wasn’t possible and he’d testify to that in court. My lawyer says there’s no use trying to prove something you can’t prove, advises me to keep my mouth shut about it.