Getting Rid of Bradley

Zack froze. “Okay. Fine. No problem.” He gauged the possibilities of taking Jerry there in his office. They weren’t good. Jerry was very nervous and the office was very small, leaving them no room to maneuver and nothing to take cover behind. It was furnished only with a metal desk, two plastic chairs, and Jerry. The furniture was marginally more interesting than Jerry, or had been until he’d reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the gun.

They deserved this. Just because the guy was pathetic, they’d gotten careless. Zack looked at the gun wobbling in Jerry’s hand with respect. A .45. The office currently had no windows, but Zack knew it could have a couple at any minute, a .45 being the kind of gun that left large holes in walls.

And people.

“Why do we do this?” Zack asked Anthony, scowling at the gun. “Life isn’t depressing enough, we have to do this, too? I’m not kidding, I’m quitting.”

“Stop complaining.” Anthony carefully picked a speck of nonexistent lint off his tailored tweed sleeve, keeping his eyes steadily on Jerry the whole time. “You’re the probable cause of this anyway. You walked in here in that black leather jacket, looking like you hadn’t shaved in a week, and Jerry probably thought you were some lowlife.” He smiled at Jerry, an oasis of perfect calm in a very sweaty situation. “I’d have pulled a gun on him, too, Jerry. I understand. Why don’t we talk about this?”

Jerry shook his head, but he kept his eyes on Anthony, listening to his even, relaxed voice. Zack moved very slowly a few inches to his right, taking care to seem as if he were only shifting on his feet.

Jerry suddenly shifted his eyes to Zack, so Zack picked up the conversation. “Oh, and if we’d both been dressed in pimp suits like you, he wouldn’t have pulled the gun. I ask you, Jerry, was it the jacket that made you pull the gun? Or the badge?”

Jerry narrowed his eyes at Zack, and Anthony moved slightly to the left.

“Just don’t move,” Jerry said as he swayed back and forth. “Keep your hands up.”

“We’re not moving, Jerry,” Anthony said soothingly. “You are. Relax. You’ll feel better.”

“Don’t get smart,” Jerry said, and the gun wavered between them again. “I’ll shoot.”

“You don’t want to shoot us, Jerry.” Zack spread his hands apart. “The hassle from shooting a cop is enormous. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jerry looked at Zack as he talked, distracted by the movement, and Anthony eased another couple of inches to the left. “And the hassle from stealing thirty thousand from your boss is nothin’.”

“Well, it’s not like shooting a cop,” Anthony said, and Jerry’s eyes darted over to him. Zack moved a little more to the right. “Shooting a cop?” Anthony shook his head slowly. “They throw the key away. We don’t want that. Put the gun down, Jerry.”

“I don’t think so.” Jerry breathed a little faster and shifted his eyes to Zack. “I don’t think so. And you guys are moving.” He closed his eyes as he aimed the gun at Zack and squeezed the trigger.

Zack dove for the floor as he fired, and Anthony yelled, “Jerry!” and Jerry swung the gun toward where he’d been. Zack threw himself over the desk as Anthony flattened himself on the floor, and Jerry put a bullet neatly through the center of the door.

Then Zack slammed Jerry down on the floor.

Anthony rolled to his feet to help. “You all right?”

“Me? Oh, I’m as good as I get,” Zack said, breathing a little heavily as he reached for his handcuffs. “Which is a hell of a lot better than Jerry is right now. How about you?”

“There were people in that hall.” Anthony went out the door to see what Jerry had hit on the other side while Zack cuffed him.

“You have the right to remain silent, you jerk,” Zack said and finished reciting Miranda sitting on top of him. Anthony came back and lounged in the doorway.

“Congratulations,” Anthony said to Jerry when Zack was finished. “You shot a water fountain.”

“Up yours,” Jerry said, but it came out more embarrassed than defiant.

Zack stood and glared down at him. “We’ve got to start hanging out with a better class of criminals.”

“Actually, this is the cream,” Anthony said, checking his jacket for damage. It was, as always, spotless. “You want to work Vice or Homicide?”

“No,” Zack said. “I want to arrest polite people who don’t point guns at me. In fact, I don’t want to arrest anybody anymore. I want to hang out with good people. Is that possible? Are there any good people anymore?”

“Well, there’s you and me,” Anthony said patiently. “We’re supposed to be the good guys. Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve been acting strangely lately.”

“Could you guys hurry this up?” Jerry whined from the floor. “I’m not real comfortable down here.”

“You know, Jerry—” Zack was suddenly soft-spoken as he looked down at him “—I could kick your brains out very easily right now.” He gently nudged Jerry’s head with his foot. “Resisting arrest. Don’t push your luck.”

Jerry shut up.

“Here’s some advice, Jerry.” Anthony reached down and hauled him to his feet with one hand. “Don’t get smart with a guy you just pointed a gun at. He’s likely to be feeling hostile. And frankly, Jerry, we didn’t like you much before you pulled the gun.”

Jerry closed his eyes.

“I was kind of hoping he’d resist arrest,” Zack said.

“No, you were not,” Anthony said. “You have plans for lunch. You’re arresting a master embezzler at Harvey’s Diner. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Zack pushed Jerry into the hall. “The weather. I hate February. And I hate office buildings.” He looked around at the smooth gray walls. “Maybe I will quit. Get a nice job out in the open someplace. No guns. You think I’d make a good forest ranger?”

“You know, you worry me,” Anthony said.

“That’s your problem.” Zack moved down the hall, prodding Jerry in front of him. “So, Jerry, what’d you do with the money?”

LUCY SAT SLUMPED across from her sister in a battered turquoise booth in Harvey’s shabby diner and tortured her salad.

Tina scowled down at her own salad. “Are you sure it’s safe to eat here? I think turquoise Formica is bad for you, and I’m positive this lettuce is. It’s white.” She tapped a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it smoothly, like a forties’ movie star.

Lucy leaned forward to put her chin in her hand so she could pretend to listen to Tina, and her brassy hair fell into her face again. Tina smoothed a dark, silky strand of her own precisely cut hair, and Lucy looked at her with envy. Maybe they weren’t sisters. Maybe Mother had lied to them. No, they had the same cat face: wide forehead, big eyes, little mouth, pointed chin. It was just that Tina looked like a purebred, and she looked like something condemned at the pound.

Stop it, Lucy told herself. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re just having a bad hair day.

Well, okay, a bad hair week. And then there was the divorce.

You’re just having a bad month. Pull yourself together. Spring is coming.

“You are going to get rid of his name, aren’t you?” Tina asked. “Lucy Savage Porter always sounded like you’d married a rabid bellboy.”

Shut up, Tina. Lucy blinked. “Could we talk about something else?” She squashed her hair back to peer around the dim restaurant, hoping no one else had heard. Since the place was not only dim but small, it was a real fear, but it was also almost empty. There was only a bored waitress leaning on a chipped plastic counter beside a fly-specked case of doughnuts, and two men in a booth identical to theirs on the opposite side of the room.

Lucy was having a hard time ignoring one of the men.

One was tall, slender, and elegant, leaning calmly back in the booth, not a crease in his beautifully cut tweed suit.

The other man was his antithesis. Shorter, thicker, tense as a coiled spring in a creased black leather jacket, he leaned across the table and stabbed his index finger into the Formica. His unshaven face looked as if it were made of slabs, his hair was dark and shaggy, and his smile came and went like a broken neon sign. He was so intense, he was practically bending the table with the force of his personality. Lucy had been reluctantly aware of him ever since they’d entered the diner, kicking herself for stealing glances at him but stealing them just the same.

This was the kind of man who could leave a woman scarred for life. She wasn’t so dumb after all. She could have ended up married to somebody like him instead of Bradley.

But think how much excitement she would have had before the end.