No Accident (30 page)

The next morning, Alex strapped on his gun beneath his jacket and drove to the church.

Alex arrived well in advance of the starting time for the funeral; he didn’t want to miss Crash’s arrival, assuming he came. A small old woman entered the sanctuary just ahead of him and crossed herself before taking a seat near the front to pray. Alex self-consciously tried to mimic the gesture and then quickly found a seat in back, in a shadow between two of the kaleidoscopic beams of sunlight that shone down through the church’s stained glass windows. After a while, the old woman left. A while after that, two young men brought in a coffin on a wheeled table. Flowers were already set up near the front of the sanctuary. Off to the side were confessional booths
—of no further use to Les Frees, Alex thought.

Alex had never understood the concept of confession. Why tell all your personal problems to someone else, particularly a man who didn’t have sex? How could someone living a lifestyle from the Middle Ages possibly tell you how to live your life in this world?

A priest escorted an older couple in through a side door—Les’s parents, Alex figured. They spoke quietly to each other. A little while after that, Alex noticed a pair of large men in suits enter from the back of the sanctuary and sit down a couple of rows behind Alex and across the aisle from him. Les’s parents kept looking their way, waiting for them to introduce themselves and give their condolences. They never did.
Cops
, Alex thought. Alex buttoned his jacket to make sure the gun under his arm wasn’t visible. What if the cops spotted Crash first? What if they—or Crash—started shooting?
This could get complicated
, Alex thought.

A few minutes later, Les’s friends and other family members arrived. There were a few guys that Alex knew from Liberty. Alex averted his head and pretended to read a Bible that he took from the pew. Having someone recognize him or sit with him would make his job harder.

The mourners all sat together in the front. They only took up the first few rows of pews. The sparse attendance made Alex happy, in a vindictive way. The priest started the service. Still no Crash.

The priest, a younger man, was somber but not sad
—Alex figured he must not have known Les. The words he said could have been spoken at just about anyone’s funeral, but Les’s parents looked moved. Les’s cousin gave a eulogy, then a high school friend did, then his father did. And then it was over. The cops left first, then the mourners left in a group up the aisle. As they did, Alex tiptoed off to the side of the sanctuary and stood behind a column so he wouldn’t be recognized.

Alex couldn’t believe it. He had been sure Crash would come to his friend’s funeral. When the mourners were gone, Alex took a stroll around the sanctuary. Could Crash have been hiding behind one of the other columns? By a doorway? Under a pew? No, that was ridiculous. An older priest coming in from a side door encountered Alex at the front of the sanctuary as Alex stood up from looking under the pews.

“Are you here for confession?” the priest asked. His bushy eyebrows were unkempt, and there was hair growing out of his ears. He looked like he could have just returned from a hermitage high in the mountains.

“No,” Alex said, “I was just leaving.”

The priest searched Alex’s face for some deeper meaning. “Well, we’re always here,” he said.

Great
, Alex thought,
now he thinks I’m keeping some deep secret
. He started walking toward the front of the church to leave. Behind him, he heard the priest open the door of the confessional.

“I’m sorry,” the priest said, surprised. “I didn’t know anyone was in here. Are you here for confession?”

This priest is like a broken record
, Alex thought.

“No,” came the reply, in a deep baritone. “I’m just leaving.”

Alex turned around on hearing the voice. Next to the priest he saw a tall, muscular man in a dark hoodie with short silver hair. Crash had been in the church all along, just hiding.

“Stay, my child,” the priest said. “
I can see your soul is burdened . . .”

Crash didn’t respond to the priest. Crash was staring at Alex. Without thinking, Alex reached a hand under his jacket, where his pistol lay nestled in its holster. The colored light from one of the windows momentarily blinded Alex, so he stepped out of the aisle to see. Too late, he saw Crash race through a side door and outside. Before Alex followed, he reflexively caught the eye of the priest. In an instant the priest’s gaze traced a crooked line from Alex’s eyes to his shoulder, his shoulder to his arm, his arm to his hand. Alex’s hand was in his jacket.

Their eyes met again, and the priest transfixed Alex with a look of recognition. It was the look of a man who understood cause and effect, of a man who recognized sin.

*
* *

Outside the church, the hearse and the mourners were long gone. Alex was too far behind Crash to stop him from climbing into a parked sedan and driving off. Finding Crash and then losing him was more pathetic than not finding him at all.

Alex called Luke. To Alex’s surprise, Luke took the news calmly, though he probed every detail of what Crash had said and done. When Alex finished, Luke said, “And I have some news for you.” Luke explained that the night before, the security cameras at his house had captured a man lurking around the gate outside. Luke had looked at the footage himself and was sure the man was Crash.

“I’d like you to come to my house tonight, because I think Crash will come to find me. I could use your help.”

On the one hand, Alex thought, helping Luke meant putting himself in harm’s way if Crash showed up. On the other hand, what better way for Alex to entrench himself once and for all in Luke’s inner circle? Alex said yes. Then he called Sheila and told her about finding Crash and Luke’s request. She begged him not to go to Luke’s house. Alex told her he could take care of himself and asked her if she still had Beto’s pistol. She did. “Hold onto it,” he said.

Luke lived in a mansion, but he answered the door himself. It was grand for L.A., like a poor man’s Versailles hidden behind high walls and hedges. Alex felt like he should say something admiring about the property, so he did, but Luke’s reaction was muted.

“This was all Sheila’s thing,” he said, gesturing toward the gardens. “I’ll probably just sell the place with the divorce.”

Luke looked tired. He explained to Alex the layout of the property and what he wanted Alex to do, which was stay during the afternoon and night, keep an eye out for Crash and prevent him from entering the house. The cries of a young child echoing from another room interrupted them. Luke excused himself. “Petra’s son,” he said, “now my son.”

Luke motioned for Alex to follow, and led Alex to the child’s room, where a nanny was comforting the boy. “Dmitri, say hello to Mr. Franks,” Luke said. Dmitri looked blankly at Alex. Luke stayed with Dmitri and had a servant show Alex the rest of the house.

In the kitchen, a cook asked Alex if he was hungry, and Alex had her make him a couple of sandwiches to last him through the evening. Alex took the sandwiches and went outside.

He walked around the property all afternoon and became familiar with it. Eventually the sun began to set, and tall cypress trees that ringed the expansive property cast long shadows across the gardens. The outdoor lights came on. Alex made several easy circuits around the grounds, staying out of the light so as not to be seen by Crash if he tried to sneak in.

Close to midnight, Alex was tracing the dark perimeter behind the house when he noticed movement in the shadows on the other side of the gardens. He pressed himself into the hedges near the wall and watched.

For a while he wondered if he had seen nothing. It could have been a bird, it could have been the wind. Alex was about to give up and keep walking when he saw it again—movement against the far wall, a large shadowed figure. It stopped just as suddenly as it started, like the person on the other side was pausing after each few steps to see if he had been spotted. Alex stayed where he was and watched without following. After another long interval the figure moved again, only now he moved continuously toward the house.

Alex figured that meant the man wasn’t looking behind him anymore, so Alex, keeping against the hedge, moved toward the house as well. The gardens ended a few yards before the house, and Alex saw the man dash over that last, exposed territory. The man was big enough to be, he could only be, Crash. In the shadows of the house, the man quickly opened a side door and disappeared inside.

Alex sprinted across the gardens, indifferent to the artificial light that shone there, awkwardly hurdling waves of shrubbery, until he reached the same door. It was unlocked, and he opened it and stepped inside. Crash was gone. A console on the wall began beeping. It was the alarm system, giving Alex a chance to prove he belonged there by punching in a code that would prevent the alarm from sounding.

Alex of course didn’t know the code, so he just kept on, running upstairs to where Luke’s room was. After about a minute the alarm sounded, and a few seconds after that, footsteps sounded from throughout the house, all going at once, as if a giant centipede had gotten itself tangled up in the mansion’s halls and stairways. Alex was running so fast he nearly knocked over Luke, who was hurrying down the hallway in his pajamas.

“Crash is in the house,” Alex said.

“I know,” Luke said, shouting over the din of the alarm. “Take Dmitri away.”

Alex ran down the hall, trying to remember which was the boy’s room. He heard a small voice wailing from behind one door and opened it to find Dmitri standing up in bed and crying. “Your father asked me to take you away,” Alex said.

“No!” cried the boy.

Alex heard a large, deep voice from down the hall shout Dmitri’s name, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps running toward them, and Alex decided it wasn’t safe for him and Dmitri to leave by the door. He looked out the window and saw that it opened onto a sloped roof covering a portion of the first floor. Alex threw open the window, gathered Dmitri under his left arm and stepped up and into the open window frame.

“Stop.” The voice was Crash’s, loud but calm and commanding. He loomed as a menacing silhouette in the doorway of Dmitri’s room. Alex froze in the window frame. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled his gun. He pointed it at Crash. Alex’s wrist wobbled with the heavy gun as if it were a divining rod. Alex had never pointed a gun at anyone before.

Slowly, as if he understood he shouldn’t spook Alex, Crash drew his own pistol from his waist and pointed it steadily at Alex. “Put the gun down. Give me my son.”

Your son?
Alex thought. “OK,” he said. “Gun down. Right.” Slowly, Alex lowered the gun and set it on a nearby toy chest. He raised his right arm in the air as if in surrender. In his left arm, he still held Dmitri.

“Now give me the boy,” Crash said.

Alex squeezed Dmitri a little tighter and, without a backward glance, rolled his body out of the window and onto the sloping roof. He heard a gunshot and the window pane shattering above him. Their rolling accelerated. Alex threw a leg out sideways to slow them down, but they kept tumbling.

*
* *

Luke heard the gunshot and sprinted back to Dmitri’s room. He found Crash standing by the open window, aiming his gun outward toward the roof outside.

“Crash!”

Crash swiveled and pointed the gun at Luke. Luke raised his palms.

“Crash, what are you doing?”

“Keeping a promise,” Crash said.

“To whom?”

“To a woman I hurt.”

Crash’s responses came quickly, and Luke’s came more slowly, as if he’d arrived late to a party and was trying to catch up with the conversation. Luke stepped cautiously up to Crash. With steady hands, he lowered Crash’s gun. “I can help you. You don’t have to run.”

“I can’t let you take Dmitri from me.”

Luke gave a pained smile. “Dmitri’s . . . your son?” Crash didn’t answer. “H-how?” Luke asked.

“You r
emember when I rescued her from . . . where she was,” Crash said.

“Petra,” Luke said.

“When we were running from the gangsters who were after her, we were together for a few hours. And it happened.”

“Crash, I trusted you.” Luke stood with his hands at his sides and regarded Crash thoughtfully. His eyes were filling with tears. “Why’d you kill her?”

That was a question Crash had to think about a moment. “She wanted to take Dmitri away from me, too.”

Luke nodded, but looked confused. Then, almost bashfully, he said, “How many others?”

Crash didn’t answer. Police sirens now rang out in the distance. Crash noticed the sound, cast a final glance out the window, then fled past Luke into the hall. Luke went to the doorway and watched as Crash left him.

*
* *

As Alex felt the end of the roof pass under his backside, his thoughts raced for ways to protect Dmitri from the fall.
Don’t crush him. Get my legs under me. Roll with it. But don’t crush him.
Turf would be better than concrete. They landed in a hedge, which was a blessing but which terrified Alex because the sensation of a thousand twigs pricking him all over came as a surprise. Alex didn’t crush Dmitri. Alex sprang up immediately from the ground and, with Dmitri tossed over a shoulder, ran to where he had left his truck. About halfway there, he realized that he hadn’t broken any bones. He also realized he’d left his gun in the boy’s room.