Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [94]
“On a Saturday night he went out with some pals to this place that used to be down in Venice, isn’t anymore—a whole group of guys met, a number filtered out, Dad stayed, another group filtered in. They drank until the place closed and went in two cars to another party supposedly somewhere up in the Palisades Highlands.
“On the way over there, the other car, the one his friends were in, starts driving erratically, and a third car, driven by civilians, starts honking and getting into the mix, so at a stoplight, they all stop—everybody stops—and my old man gets out. He’s this big guy, right?”
Andrew paused to cup hot water, let it draw down his reddened face.
“So my dad instructs the civilian driver to pull over. He was always a team player, standing up for his buddies, you see. He goes up to the driver and he’s got his gun out. Big, big mistake. He’s going to pull this guy out of the car. He’s not in uniform, he’s drunk, the civilian doesn’t know what’s going on, his friend cell phones the cops. They have a vehicle in the area, and they swing over in seconds, and they seize my dad. Take him into custody.”
“Where was this?”
“Pacific Palisades. LAPD.”
I nodded.
“In trying to get the story from a bunch of inebriated witnesses, all they focused on was that my dad had a gun and tried to pull this guy out of the car. So they book him for attempted car jacking and put him in jail.
“I’m a rookie, I’m living with two roommates in a dive off Pico, and I get the call from my lieutenant on a Sunday morning. ‘Your father’s in jail.’ Not only in jail but on a felony charge. You have to remember, nothing like this ever happened to my dad. This is like Sandy Koufax robbing a bank. It just doesn’t happen. Turns out, they called the office, verified his status as a captain in the Santa Monica Police Department, and now I go over there to bail him out.
“He’s okay, he’s sobered up, a little chagrined but not majorly, or so I think,” Andrew said, wagging a reproachful finger. “So we go and have breakfast at Rae’s, and I drop him off at his house and go play basketball. That’s what I do. I play basketball.”
He took a jagged breath.
“When I go back to the house later on, I find he’s penned a note, indicating that he wants me to have all his possessions”—Andrew’s voice cracked—“because I’ve been such a good son … And he says he’s going down to the beach.”
He waited. I held on to his shins.
“So I call the department and I say, ‘You’ve got to find him, he’s going to blow his brains out,’ and they did find him at the end of a strand, he’s sitting on a rock, two uniforms approach and talk to him, and he’s not responding, and he pulls out his service weapon, and he did kill himself.”
Again he lifted cupped hands like a chalice and water ran down his face.
“I’m so sorry.”
“All his life my dad wanted to be a police officer. He thought that at the end of his career he would go out under a veil of shame, and he couldn’t live with that. It got to the point very quickly where he decided to take his own life.”
“It wasn’t only that.”
“What?”
“How did he feel about retirement?”
“He wanted to retire. Planned for it for years.”
“You can still be afraid of what you want.”
Andrew just sighed, exhausted.
“You have to forgive yourself, Andy.”
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
“You’re a loving son. Remember that.”
“Oh, he wasn’t even my real dad, why should I care?” Andrew smiled ironically and quickly tweaked my toes, to show it was a joke, a painful joke. “Who are you?” he mused. “How did you come into my life?” and whispered my name just to hear how it sounded now that everything was different, and slipped farther, chest-deep, into the warm suds, sloshing water on the floor. We stayed so long in that common pool that when we slept entwined in each other’s arms that night, it was as if we had become transparent to each other.
Twenty-one.
Devon County simply lied to Juliana, assuring her she would