Gabriella Luna watches the sun come up. It’s bright and blinds her, the light blasting across her windshield, catching the cool dew on the glass. The orange-yellow rays show how chilly the air is outside the car and the promise of the new day’s warmth. It means the morning is here, which means she’s still here, which means she hasn’t slept, hasn’t eaten, and hasn’t been home. She’s been sitting here, across the street from Gold’s Bar, waiting to kill Kevin Alexander.
Gabby parked outside of the strip club across the street to lie in wait, to watch, and to think. Nobody asked her why she was there or what she was doing except one stripper, a lovely blonde girl who looked twelve but claimed to be twenty, who was maybe one-hundred pounds. She reminded Gabby of herself when she met Alejandro. She’s a young, lithe thing with a strong body, healthy hair, perky tits, youthful ignorance.
It reminded her of a different time.
The girl came by after two in the morning. Gabby watched her exit the club, look around as if looking for a ride, smoke, and then flick a cigarette to the ground. She then noticed Gabby in the car. Gabby hid the gun in her purse as the girl strolled over to her vehicle, a silver Toyota Camry. She walked with one arm bent up, palm to the air, fingers out, with her overly large purse that doubled as a clothing bag hanging from her arm, a strap hanging over the side. She was dressed in a fluorescent orange Sherpa jacket resembling a feather boa rather than something a guide in the Himalayas would wear. Certainly, nothing Gabby’s ever worn. She moved gracefully in her high heels, never once stumbling, feet shuffling forward quickly in short, small strides. When she reached the car window, she bent at the waist, with the firm posture of a dancer, and knocked on the glass, her delicate and boney fingers balled into a loose fist.
Gabby sat there, staring straight ahead, trying not to make eye contact, mentally sending signals she didn’t want to talk, wanting the girl to go away. The girl didn’t mind or couldn’t read Gabby’s mind. She knocked again.
Once Gabby rolled down the window, the girl asked if Gabby was okay. She had a thick country accent, “I noticed you sittin’ over here when I went into work, which was at four this afternoon, and now it’s after two in the morning, and you’re still here—everythin’ alright, hun? Need anything?”
The woman was fishing for Gabby to open up to her, tell her yes, she needed help—help to kill a man. Gabby didn’t say that.
Gripping the edges of her purse in her lap, Gabby looked the girl’s way and told her she was okay.
She thought about what lie to tell the girl, thinking of telling her how she was thinking of going in and applying for a job but she hadn’t decided yet if she wanted to work there. She figured that wasn’t very believable. She didn’t fit the mold, didn’t look like the skinny things coming and going out of the place, not anymore. Maybe she could have when she was younger.
So instead, Gabby said she got into a fight with her boyfriend and needed time to think. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
That was believable. Passing headlights revealed Gabby’s tear-soaked cheeks, which helped sell it, and Gabby couldn’t help but stare at the girl who studied her.
The girl nodded and said in an all-knowing tone of voice, “To see if he shows up here, right? I did that once; tried to catch the bastard outside my best friend’s house.”
Careful to keep the purse closed to not reveal the gun, Gabby retrieved and then wiped her cheek with a napkin and nodded, pretending to go along with the girl’s misplaced conclusions.
The girl showed Gabby appropriate sympathy, turning the corners of her mouth down dramatically to make a sad face. She patted Gabby’s shoulder through the open window, telling her, “Be strong, girl,” which was both uncomfortable and awkward for them both. Then a car honked, breaking the moment, and the girl turned, face transforming into an ecstatic smile. She said that was her ride without turning to look at Gabby and shuffled off in those heels in those same small strides.
Leaving Gabby alone with herself and her thoughts. Leaving her to wait to kill Kevin Alexander.
Gabby doesn’t know why after the whole night, she hasn’t either done it yet or left.
At first, she was waiting for business to slow down. Then she was waiting for him to come out of the bar. Kevin Alexander did come out a couple times. The guy’s hard to miss, can’t dress. He smoked a couple times and enjoyed the cooler air. And now she’s just waiting, and she doesn’t understand why she’s postponing this—why hasn’t she done it yet?
It should be easy.
Kevin killed her boy.
That’s all she needs to know.
She should just drive across the street, get out of her Toyota, go inside, and shoot him. That was her original plan, but that didn’t happen. She didn’t do that. She couldn’t do that. She doesn’t know why. It makes her feel like she’s failed as a mother. Flavia told her the truth about her boy. Gabby believed her. She didn’t have to see any evidence. Her heart isn’t a court of law. Her son is gone, and Flavia provided the answers, the names. Flavia told her where to find Kevin Alexander and gave her the gun to do the deed. All of it should have been clear, straightforward.
’Course, Gabby can’t help but feel Flavia wound her up like a doll and set her loose. So maybe that’s why she hasn’t done it yet. Maybe there’s another reason. Maybe there is no reason at all.
Gabby glances down at the small silver revolver in her lap. Five rounds. A metal cylinder. Black hand grip. Small. Smith and Wesson. Light. Something Flavia thought Gabby could handle. Something Gabby can handle.
In her mind, Gabby saw it so clearly. She sees how she would do it. She sees how it would happen. It would be like that scene in The Godfather. But instead of going to the bathroom to retrieve the gun, instead of having dinner with the man, which Gabby doesn’t think is something she could ever do—she would sit down with Kevin Alexander; she doesn’t want to hear his voice or know why he killed Reni—she would just walk inside, find him at the bar like Flavia said, then she would shoot him, placing all five rounds into Kevin’s chest. She would drop the gun. Maybe sit down and have a drink; wait for the cops.
Unlike the movie, Gabby wouldn’t run off. There wouldn’t be a car waiting for her. She wouldn’t flee to Italy. No, she intended—intends—to stand up for what she did and tell the world why. “He killed my son.”
That’s what she would say.
“My boy, my wonderful boy. He killed him and made him disappear.”
That’s why yesterday Gabby went to Whisper’s Salon—Rumor Hall is the owner and an old friend, and Suzanna did her hair—she wanted to look her best.
Gabby’s been a customer for years. She and Rumor used to have beers together. They would talk about men who didn’t love them, the men who they couldn’t stop loving or seeing. Often they were the same men. They talked about kids and single motherhood, schools, jobs and about the salon, about gray hair, and about the right hair coloring to cover up aging. They talked about how nothing stopped time or changed what’s happened.
After the haircut and Rumor argued with her two children, Gabby asked Rumor to help her with her make-up. She said she had a big date. Rumor obliged. So Gabby watched the woman’s deadbeat son, the poker star wannabe—not that Gabby ever seriously considered someone a star for sitting around a table and bullshitting—leave in a rush to go pick up a friend from jail, if she heard right. The daughter, who worked the broom, wiped the stations and tidied up while managing two little girls in the back. She reminded Gabby of her younger self, of those conversations with the girl’s mother, and of Renaldo.
Then Gabby went home, changed into something nice but comfortable, and drove to Gold’s. First, she parked in the parking lot of the bar, three spaces from the front door, under a camera. Later, she moved across the street to … wait? She still doesn’t know why. He killed her son.
But he’s a son, someone’s son, right?
All night, Kevin never left the bar to go anywhere. He must sleep inside somewhere.
At six in the morning, Gabby’s about to give up. She can’t go in there. She can’t kill him. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.
As she’s about to leave, shifting to drive, something catches her attention. She sees a lifted pickup truck with a loud exhaust pull off the main street and park in the bar’s parking lot. A well-dressed young man wearing sunglasses gets out and goes inside. A minute later, a man on a motorcycle with a bald head, or balding, hard to tell from here, wearing a black motorcycle vest and blue jeans, arrives and goes inside the bar. Finally, a green Marquis rolls up and parks by the bar’s front doors. The driver gets out and stretches. He leaves the car running; Gabby can hear the music from here. He sucks up the last of whatever he was smoking and tosses it to the ground. Gabby recognizes the boy’s face. She knows him, watched him drink a can of Coke at Whispers, and watched him rush out to bond a friend out of jail.
Rumor’s boy.
Why is he here?
Slamming his driver-side door shut, muting the music, he joins the others inside.
Gabby shifts back to park and waits.
The three are inside for less than ten minutes. Gabby watches as they walk out of the bar, all dressed the same, like they are going to work. Dark blue coveralls, tan jackets. Two of them are holding something flimsy and green in their hands. She knows it’s each of the men she observed arriving because of how they walk. The young, good-looking man carries a shotgun, holding it low at his side, trying to conceal it by his leg, but Gabby spots the telltale shape. The young man gets in the passenger seat. The bald man comes out of the bar with his hands shoved in his pocket and gets in the backseat behind the driver. Rumor’s boy, the driver, stops at the car door and slips the flimsy green thing over his head, pulling it all the way down to his neck, revealing it’s a ski mask, then he rolls it back up to his forehead like a beanie.
Guns. Masks. Matching outfits. What is Rumor’s boy doing? What’s he into?
Rumor’s boy—Gabby searches her memory for his name—Jeremy. He slips in behind the wheel. The bald man in the back playfully slaps the back of Jeremy’s head, skewing the beanie/ski mask. Jeremy backs out of the space and maneuvers his vehicle to the parking lot exit. He throws his blinker on and takes a right onto the main roadway.
Gabby doesn’t know why, but she follows, pulling out of her spot and edging into traffic, taking a left to follow them north. She’s careful to keep her distance.
While she drives, she thinks that Jeremy and Reni were the same age. How they weren’t friends, but to their mothers, there was still a connection. The two boys probably never said two words to each other, but their mothers did, bragging or, in some cases, bitching about what each son was doing. Rumor never talked much about her daughter. She’s younger than her brother. The daughter always seemed to have a boyfriend; if Gabby remembers correctly, she fell hard for some shitty high school sweetheart. Both boys had their troubles. Rumor used to complain about Jeremy’s marijuana use. She couldn’t keep it out of his mouth. She tried, Gabby knows, but working all the time made it tough to be home, which was something Gabby was all too familiar with. Reni wasn’t doing well in school and was skipping class. She suspected he was running with a rough crowd. She couldn’t understand it and would tell him, “Why? I give you a good home, food; why do you act like it’s nothing?”
Reni didn’t understand the value of what his mother was doing, the value in the good home, the good food. All he seemed to care about were sneakers and looking nice, always spending his money on shoes and clothes, and if he wasn’t able to afford it, he just took it, shoplifting, which resulted in several phone calls from police officers asking Gabby to leave work to come pick up her son, or leave work to take her son to court, or leave work to make sure he did his community service.
It was Rumor—when Reni was having these hard times in school, and after Gabby caught him smoking marijuana—who suggested Gabby introduce him to his father. Rumor is the only other person who knew who Renaldo’s father was. She said, “Sometimes a boy just needs to know his father.”
But Alejandro didn’t want Renaldo to know he was his father. Alejandro wanted nothing to do with Gabby or the boy. He had his own family. He didn’t need them, but Renaldo needed him. That’s what Rumor said.
“So, fine,” Rumor said, “don’t give the bastard a choice. He doesn’t want to know him, then make it to where he doesn’t have an option.” She explained that Gabby could just start leaving Renaldo at the restaurant while she worked. It was in the same building. She could keep an eye on him and make sure he got his homework done. Rumor said, “The best part is when Alejandro finally comes around to the boy, ’cause he will, he’ll feel like it was his decision, not yours.”
And that’s what happened.
But maybe Reni didn’t need to know who his father was. Knowing him led to his death and disappearance. Knowing him led to Renaldo killing his father. Maybe Gabby made a mistake. Maybe if she hadn’t done that, Reni would still be alive. Maybe he would have been a businessman like she knew he wanted. Reni loved selling things, used to trade shoes for other shoes like some kids did baseball cards.
Driving behind Jeremy’s Marquis, Gabby is careful to not be seen. She keeps a few spaces back. She watches as Jeremy drives to a suburb and watches as they park around the corner of a building. Gabby pulls into a nearby gas station to watch them watching something. Then she sees a yellow box truck and a small Chevy Impala pull out from behind the building across the street where the others have parked and watches as it enters the main roadway. The Marquis falls in behind the Impala. Gabby falls in behind the Marquis. They travel like this for some time. The Impala on the box truck’s tail, the Marquis a few cars back keeping pace, and Gabby behind them.
They travel north toward one of the highways that cross the state and go out of state, I-44. The box truck could have gotten on any of the other highways, but it took city streets and traveled the speed limit to make a straight shot for I-44.
Traffic thins and then compresses. Now the Marquis is near the box truck’s passenger side, obscured by another car and a pick-up truck with hay forks. Gabby can only see the corner of the vehicle, the rear taillight. She’s directly behind the Impala, which is still behind the box truck. She can see both drivers in their side mirrors. The driver of the box truck looks bored. Drives like it, too. The fat man who drives the Impala appears to be alert. His suspicious eyes scan everything yet see nothing. He doesn’t notice the Marquis, doesn’t look side to side, and barely checks his rearview mirror. He never sees Gabby.
Then everyone comes to a stop at a traffic light. The fat man unscrews the lid of a thermos and fills the lid with something hot, probably coffee. Gabby watches him in his mirror, his window down, as the filled green metal lid slips out of his fingers. It must splash across his crotch. She hears him curse as he jumps in his seat and swats at his lap, taking his eyes off the box truck.
Gabby’s so distracted by the man in the Impala that she nearly misses the appearance of the younger man who’s carrying the shotgun, pulling his evergreen ski mask down over his face. The sight surprises her. It’s surreal. The man walking with a gun, wearing that ski mask, marching between the car and the box truck. He doesn’t look around. He’s intent on circling the box truck to get to the driver’s side. Gabby notices another ski-masked figure, already standing in front of the truck, a silver pistol pointed at the driver of the box truck, yelling at him, giving him directions.
The yells reach the fat man in the Impala, who looks up from swatting at his burnt crotch and yells out, “Shit.” He jumps in his seat and scrambles, searching for something.
The light changes, and a couple of cars take off through the intersection. Several don’t.
The ski mask at the front of the truck yells louder. His voice sounds stressed. He says a name that Gabby doesn’t understand. Then there is more screaming and yelling. The shotgun man hasn’t reached the driver’s side door. The man in the front of the truck pops off a round through the front windshield. Glass breaks. There’s an exchange of gunfire. Gabby doesn’t know guns but can distinguish the two different types of gunshots, which nearly run together. The man in front of the truck jerks three times. Blood appears on his tan jacket. His gun lowers. The shotgun man reaches the driver’s door as his ski mask partner falls to the pavement. The shotgun man reaches up and rips the door open. There’s a single pop and yell of defiance. The shotgun man shifts to the side and lets off a load from the shotgun that catches the driver’s side door and window of the box truck, shattering glass.
Then the fat man in the Impala is out of his vehicle, bumbling with the door and his jacket, raising his gun, shouting, and calling the man a son of a bitch. The shotgun man whirls around toward him, eyes protruding from the mask, wild.
The fat man shoots at the shotgun man twice, his small handgun popping in his hand. At the same time, the shotgun man lets off a thunderous boom. The shotgun man takes the two rounds. Gabby can’t see where. The round from the shotgun catches the fat man in the stomach, turning him, causing him to shoot three more times, and dropping him. The shotgun man staggers, dropping the barrel of the shotgun to the pavement, scraping it on the pavement as he takes two stumbling steps and collapses backward.