I hit the floor, waiting for more shots, hoping to hear Red Eye move. Even groans of agony would have been welcome.
The bedroom door was closed and I was in no hurry to open it. I crawled to the edge of the bed, reached up under my pillow and grabbed the Walther. The black steel felt good in my hand. There was movement in the living room—someone slithering across the floor.
“You all right?” asked Red Eye.
“Yeah, is it clear?”
I wiggled to the door like a fat dog sliding on its belly. I turned the knob, remaining below the line of sight for a sniper rifle. Those TV cops who barged into rooms with their guns drawn were sitting ducks. I believed in the power of crawling low to the ground.
I peeked through the crack in the door just above the bottom hinge. Red Eye stood in front of what used to be my kitchen window. The remains littered the counter. A foot-long glass wedge stuck up from the front burner on the stove.
“Someone jumped over the fence and threw a brick through the window,” he said. “I’m not sure where the shot came from. Maybe there were two of them.”
I felt brave now. If Red Eye could profile himself in the window frame, I could stand up and hug the wall.
I went into the living room, then to the sliding doors, my Walther at my side. As I stepped onto the patio, I grasped the 9 mm in both hands and pivoted in half circles around the yard, looking for anything suspicious. Maybe there was something to what those TV cops did after all, though I was pretty sure the intruders had gone. As I reached the corner of the house I did a quick 90-degree turn and pointed my pistol down the narrow alley between my house and the fence. Toodles, the cat from next door, jumped down from a window ledge. Luckily my shot missed her.
I ran along the fence toward the front of the house. I wondered if my neighbors had ever woken up to gunshots before. When I got to the front all I found was the cat squeezed under the Volvo in the driveway. I didn’t fire a second shot.
I went as far as the sidewalk. No cars in the street. No lights on in the houses. I figure a gun goes off maybe once every ten years in this neighborhood. I also figure the well-healed are expert at diving under the blankets when a neighbor is under attack. My little trauma wasn’t going to disturb their beauty sleep as long as the bullets and bricks didn’t fly through their windows. Had Prudence screamed that day as she tried to fight off her attacker? Did those frantic cries fall on unresponsive ears tuned into HBO or blocked with space suit style headphones? She’d have had a better chance soliciting aid from the African wilderness.
Red Eye was busy sweeping up the glass. A strange moment to become fastidious about cleaning. He’d swept the big pieces off the counter onto the floor and started cruising over all surfaces with the dust buster. Then he showed me the brick that came through the window. The thrower had etched “Next time you die Winter” on its face in a black marker. This brick was definitely not a teenage prank.
Red Eye carried on sweeping the glass away, attacking the counter with a sponge.
“The little pieces can get into your food,” he said, “they’ll tear you up from the inside out.”
“Who did this?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he said, “they got away. But I did my job. If I wasn’t here, homeboy, they’d have come through the front door.”
I wasn’t convinced by Red Eye’s self-important evaluation, but he was right. I wanted him there, late-night soccer, pizza boxes, the whole nine yards.
I expected the police to arrive, but the quiet through the rest of the night was only punctuated by two more Manchester United goals and Red Eye’s slightly repressed reaction. I heard him mumble something about winning $500 from “those motherfuckers.”
The next morning a woman from the police phoned. They said they were following up a report of a “loud banging noise.”
“Our call is part of the ongoing process of evaluating police services,” she said.
“How did you find out about this incident?” I asked. “Did the pony express deliver the message?”
“I’m looking at a report,” said a Miss Francona. “Someone called at 1:46 a.m. A squad car arrived three minutes later. They reported that it was all quiet. I’m just doing a follow up. Trying to maintain a high level of communication with our clients.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I never saw any police but maybe they spoke to someone else. Who phoned in the report?”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,” Miss Francona said.
“Have a nice day,” I said and hung up. Even when they were trying to do the right thing the police pissed me off. I would have let them know it too, if I didn’t have so much to lose. I had a shot of Wild Turkey and decided I’d give Miss Francona a piece of my mind after all. I hit the call back button on my phone. I got a recording saying that the number I had reached was out of service. Miss Francona lucked out. She wasn’t going to like what I would have said.
But the more I thought about that brick, the more I realized police weren’t really the problem. I had been violated again. I had to fight back with everything I had or just keep getting punked until one day I ended up lying on my living room floor just like Prudence. I needed a little more firepower than that Walther could provide.