She waves a hand at me, like she’s saying, Get on with it, before picking up a spoon.
I don’t waste any time. I head straight for the kitchen.
4
I glove up and open cabinets as Jackson stations himself on the other side of the counter, with his back facing me. He’s watching Angela for the purposes of officer safety, but it helps that she’s gorgeous. I make a show of it because I can’t hide the gun in the first place I search. More importantly, I need to be seen searching thoroughly by Jackson so he can later write it in his report. He’s my witness. What he sees and does here will help me cover my ass.
There’s nothing worth finding under the sink: a box of trash bags, soaps, a bag of dried corn husks. I check the pipes. I feel behind the exposed metal basin of the sink, running my fingers between it and the wall. One time I found a guy’s stash this way, tacked to the sink with magnets. Here, there’s nothing.
I finish up by going through the mail, facing the table where Angela crunches quietly and turns a page. My eyes aren’t on addresses. They’re on the base of her neck, and I’m wondering what it’d be like to kiss her there: what her skin smells like, tastes like, how she’d react if I bit.
(Okay, now, I say to myself, settle it down. Go slow. Be methodical.)
I move to the living room. I toss the couch and check under it, and then put everything back as it was. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell she appreciates it. There’s a chair in there I turn upside down. I check the television for loose paneling. There isn’t any.
I enter the hallway where the bedrooms are, and Jackson looks to me as I’m about to go into Wizard’s room.
He says, “You need anything?”
“I’m good,” I say. “I’ll let you know if I do.”
He’s twenty-two, but Wizard’s room looks like it belongs to a kid: World Series Dodgers pennant (1988), a Fernando Valenzuela poster, old car photo spreads he ripped out of magazines. He has a small tape player setup and stacks of tapes (rap crap mostly, but some heavy metal and Latin stuff). The first time I ever entered, I thought it was either the room of a person you’d never have figured for prison, or that he simply never changed it when he came back home. I spend extra time in here. I toss the bed. I do the closet next, every inch of it.
I’ve never been able to ascertain how Wizard pays for the house he lives in, but I’d not be surprised in the least if it was propped up with drug money. I believe his mother owned it (and then she died, or just left?). It’d be good to know that. In case I need to use it at any point.
After I’ve spent over twenty minutes in Wizard’s room, I make my way to the room Angela shares with Dreamer. Before I go in, though, I shoot a quick glance to the front of the house. Angela’s still there reading. Jackson’s staring at his fingers. Just walking in nauseates me. That a girl this fine wastes her feminine gifts on a scumbag is a fucking tragedy. It’s hard being so close to the bed where I know she sleeps. I toss it, but I do it quick and light. I go through the sheets. Angela’s pillow is the one with her long hairs on it. I check the door, then smell it. It’s cinnamon. My heart goes crazy at that.
(You can do this, I tell myself. Slow down. Breathe. No one can see you.)
I check under the bed. I check the closet, but I’m done in a moment. Next to it is a poster of Princess Jasmine from Aladdin: brown skin, silk clothes. Seeing that? Wow. It’s like she’s handing me a key to her fantasies. I make a promise that I’ll treat her like a princess sooner than she thinks, and I turn to the dresser.
It’s old and wooden, with chipped white paint. There’s plenty of room between drawers and the base, which is to say that if a revolver were to be placed underneath the bottom drawer, it would not impede the motion of the drawer above it. It could be used normally, and nobody would know it was actually there unless they looked.
I take my time with each drawer. The top one is Angela’s. It’s full of her underwear: beige, purple, light blue cotton. I want to touch them with my bare hands, but I don’t dare remove my gloves. The second is also hers: shirts, skirts, jeans. The third is Dreamer’s. The bottom one is his, too. That’s the drawer I remove fully from its tracks.
When it’s out, I check the door behind me to make sure Jackson’s not standing there. I glance at the window. Nobody is watching me.
The drawer feels light in my hands as I transfer it to my left arm just long enough to pull the revolver Augie found from my back waistband. Since my belt is tighter than it has ever been to hide this piece, I have to wiggle the handle (extra, extra carefully) to get the bulky cylinder out from under my belt and vest. When I get it, I double-check that it has three bullets still left in it and three spent casings. I place it on the carpet with all the reverence the gift-wrapped conviction of two worthless scumbags deserves.
I raise my voice. “Jackson? You’ve got to see this.”
Jackson enters the room with Angela in front of him and has her sit on the bed. He looks to me, and I nod at the dresser. His stare penetrates into the cavity where the last drawer used to be, and where the gun is now.
“Would you look at that?” Jackson grins. “I need to call this in.”
He looks to Angela. “Can I use the house phone in the kitchen?”
She looks stunned.
“Yeah,” she says.
Before he leaves the room, I tell him to also call Montero to see if he got my note.
Jackson goes out to the kitchen. I hear him report the parole violation of Omar “Wizard” Tavira, and the discovery at Wizard’s residence of a .38-caliber revolver possibly employed in the shooting of Lucrecia “Scrappy” Lucero. He asks if someone will be sent to photograph and bag it. He apparently is told no, that resources are not currently available, because he says he will preserve chain of evidence himself. Beside me, on the bed, Angela looks devastated. Tears hang on her eyelashes. She looks down, and they fall on her shirt.
I want to hold her. I don’t. I can’t (not yet).
“I have a camera in my car,” I say to Jackson when he comes back in. “I can photograph it.”
“Good,” he says.
Jackson keeps eyes on the weapon and Angela when I go outside and put new film in my camera. I drag the process out: a photo of the house from across the street, a close-up of the painted address on the curb, a photo of the front door, one of the living room, one of the hallway, one of Dreamer’s room, a photo of the dresser with the gun clearly visible inside the hole. I do all this for documentation, but also to make absolutely certain that the gun isn’t still warm from my body heat when Jackson picks it up.
Before Jackson bags it, I take close-ups with a flash. He then takes custody of the weapon. As far as the report is concerned, he’ll state: While conducting a parole search of the residence of record for Omar Tavira, Parole Agent P. Petrillo located a Rossi, nickel-plated, .38 Special with a faux-wood handle and the serial number ground down. The gun was removed from the second bedroom, which was unlocked and accessible to Tavira. The gun was concealed inside a dresser located at the southeast corner of the room which roommate Jacob Safulu shares with Tavira’s cousin, Angela Alvarez.
He’ll include Angela’s DOB as well. He’ll also make certain to note how it was found (Petrillo, during a search of his parolee’s residence), how it was documented (Petrillo, photographs), and how it was retrieved (Jackson, using gloves). His report will state that I never touched the weapon; my report will reflect this fact, and reinforce Jackson’s statement of events. Our asses will be fully covered.