Sinister Shorts

They heard her say, angrily, almost petulantly, “Renee, you stay dead this time-”

– and Fleck shot her, from fifteen yards away. She fell slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, still holding the stone, eyes wide and startled. Her big handsome body twitched, would never move again-

– and he was holding Charisse, crying out her name. Her eyes were closed and her hair in back was matted with blood.

“Can you make it, pal?” the old biker said. He scooped Charisse up, and they ran down the trail, taking turns with her. Halfway down she roused and said she wanted to walk, so they supported her the rest of the way.

ER at Alta Bates Hospital admitted her. When Fleck passed out in the waiting room, they admitted him, too, and pumped the rotten food from his stomach. “Health department closed that place down where you ate today. You're our fourth customer,” the nurse told him.

He slept then, and a few hours later two officers he knew came to talk to him.

Through the window in her door, on the outside looking in, he could see only the bottom part of her body on the bed, the sheets lifting and falling with her breath, one elegant hand at rest.

She sat up, saw his face in the window, and wiggled a finger at him. “Aren't we a fine pair?” she asked when he came in, adjusting the white gauze bandages in back where hair used to be.

He gathered her up. Neither of them talked for a long time, until she said, “You were right to bring the gun. In the camera case, wasn't it?”

“Ex-cop, ever vigilant. I was afraid-”

“Of me. You think everyone around you dies-”

“You almost did. You walked into her zone.”

“You didn't let her take me. You saved me, John.”

Snatched her off the dangerous street, and loved her.

“It wasn't random,” Charisse said. “She had her reasons.” She held him even tighter.

Charisse and her big thoughts-

Fleck wondered where she was-Renee, the woman who looked like Julie, who looked like Charisse. Out there, everywhere, women who wouldn't stay dead.

Success Without College

Paul van Wagoner swiveled in his desk chair, observing the bustle at the Hog's Breath I

He had started his morning with a steaming espresso at a sunlit café for breakfast, and finished it up with a few phone calls to organize his subcontractors for the next day. He would leave about four, he decided, and take a long fast walk up the beach, get his feet wet, let the waves bury his feet and the sandcrabs tickle his toes. In the late afternoon on a glorious blue-on-blue day like today, all the pretty women would still be out baring their midriffs to the air and his gaze. He didn't want to miss that. And now that he had his own business, he could do as he pleased on any fine afternoon.

After spending years getting educated on the East Coast, he loved everything about California. Even crime paid here, for him as it did in Hollywood. California could transform the most venal crime into a song and dance and success for somebody.

He liked his work. He dealt in issues of life and death. What could be more important? And if lately the rest of his life seemed less vital than usual, well, that was subject to change. That could be remedied instantly, with a certain sway of the right someone's hip.

Today, he had new clients coming in at two o'clock, the Maldonados, Victor and Delilah. They were parents whose son had been shot four times, allegedly by a drive-by shooter. In the hospital now, in intensive care, the teenager was just barely alive. When Paul spoke on the phone to the parents right after the incident, their son had not been expected to live.

Matter-of-fact people who never expected a tragedy to blow their simple dreams for their son and themselves sky-high, he could tell the Maldonados had gone through several phases by the time they called him, using voices calm and hopeful. They had entered the denial phase, one that Paul recognized all too well. Years ago in Nepal, Paul had seen a woman hang a strip of cotton with inked messages on it onto a line, next to a dozen others, multicolored, at various stages of fading. She hung it there as a message to a presumably benevolent god. As the flag faded, her god absorbed the message. The Maldonados had been hanging out their prayer flag, not giving up. He didn't know what to expect from them.

He poured himself another jolt of coffee for fortification. This part of his job could get him down.

Victor Maldonado entered the room first. His wife trailed in behind. They sat side by side in his client chairs, not touching, but bouncing thoughts off each other the way married people did, flinging questions and arguments his way. He imagined they'd been married for a very long time. The wife's whole milk-colored face seemed to be a frame for a generous mouth with perfectly straight white teeth. Her skin had lost its youthful flush, and lines ran along the edges of her lips, but the lines told Paul about a life full of laughter and smiles.

She didn't smile now; the face that was made to smile looked painfully tense. Her husband sat close by, tall and dark and round around the middle, his voice booming, and his body movements closely aligned to hers, responsive to her nuances, physical and verbal. They were close; Paul could see that. Good. They needed each other now. Roman, the shooting victim, nineteen years old, was their only son.

“How's Roman?” Paul asked.

“We called this morning,” said Victor. “They took him out of intensive care. The doctor said he was ‘cautiously optimistic.'”

“Great,” Paul said, surprised. He had steeled himself for bad news, he realized now, as the tension in his neck relaxed, and he felt the ache of holding it stiff for the past few minutes. How amazing to be shot four times and hang in there anyway. Good for Roman. He asked them to fill him in on the events surrounding Roman's shooting.

They explained that he had been working for two months at Taylor 's Corner Store, north, up near Gilroy, being paid under the table, in cash.

“We can't afford college, even though he really wants to go.” Roman's mother spoke in a voice loaded with regret and guilt. “We have just enough on paper so nobody would give him the financial aid he needed, and his test scores were okay but not great. He was sick the day of the test, and too demoralized to try again. He's actually a smart kid. Always got real good grades. I worry about what's going to happen to him. You can't get anywhere today without a college education.”

“Don't beat yourself up about that anymore, Delly. He'll get there. Have a little faith.”

Delilah adjusted her purse on her knees. “Victor buys twenty bucks' worth of faith every week. Thanks to the lottery, he dreams away our bills, our bad health…”

“Our mortgage,” teased her husband, shrugging, looking okay with the characterization.

“Lord,” she said to Paul, “if dreams were real.”

“So your son went to work to save money for college?” Paul prompted.

“So he got this dumb job that hardly kept him in black T-shirts. He never meant to stay long, just until he could get something that paid better and had some benefits,” said Victor.