The Man Who Killed His Brother Read Free Page A

sidewalk.
    Lona lives down on Mission Street in a neighborhood that’s only about two levels up from my apartment building. None of the houses for blocks in all directions are new, none of them look big enough to have more than two bedrooms, and none of them are out of spitting range from the house next door. But it’s a nice enough neighborhood, and people don’t spit. Lona’s house is adobe, but that squat brown shape is softened by rose trellises that frame the top and sides of the front door. She must’ve watered those roses twice a day to make them look so nice.
    I spent a minute standing on the sidewalk, looking around. Trees along the walk cut out a lot of the sun, and after the glare of the roads and traffic it was restful in a way to just stand there, looking. The whole place was restful—shade, trees, grass, tidy brown houses. It looked like the kind of place where nothing ever happens. I didn’t want to move—didn’t want to find out any different.
    But Ginny took my arm again, and before I knew it we were standing in front of the door, and the door was opening, and Lona was telling us to come in. Then the door shut behind us, and my retreat was cut off. I felt like I’d made a fatal mistake. The voice in my head started to shout, You need a drink ! It sounded desperate.
    Dumbly, I let Ginny steer me. We followed Lona into the living room and sat down.
    I couldn’t see very clearly. The room was too dark—she
had all the shades pulled down and didn’t turn on any lights. That made the air dim and cool and comforting, which was nice. It almost seemed like she did it for my benefit, as if she had any reason in the world to give a good goddamn how I felt. But it didn’t let me read her face. I wanted to know how hard she was taking this thing. That would tell me a lot.
    The outlines I could do from memory. She was small and vague and somehow brittle, like most wives of cops I’ve ever met. They don’t start out that way. It just happens to them because they’re afraid of losing their husbands, and they can’t share the danger—or even the strain—and they can’t feel good about it because nobody loves a cop. It’s like living with a man who has some kind of terminal disease. She had medium-length brown hair and a habit of pushing both hands through it, pulling it away from her temples as if she were trying to drag some horrible grimace off her face. Even before she lost her husband she used to make me nervous. Now she could’ve made me scream with no trouble at all.
    She sat Ginny and me down on the Naugahyde couch across from the TV, then asked us if we wanted any coffee. Ginny said, “Yes, thanks,” before I could even think about the question. Lona pushed her hands through her hair, then left us alone.
    I suppose I should have been thinking about Alathea—as a way of fighting off the need—but I was too strung out to have any control over my thoughts. I was sitting exactly where I used to sit when Richard and I watched football together. I knew from memory that there was a picture of him sitting on top of the TV, staring at me with that lopsided grin of his. Richard Axbrewder, my younger brother. Rick and Mick. It was when he died that people stopped calling me Mick.
    Died, hell. I killed him, and half the city knows it. The papers didn’t exactly play it down. One of them had it right there on the front page,
    PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR KILLS COP. BROTHER
SHOOTS BROTHER. There’s no way I can pretend I didn’t do it.
    It happened five years ago, when Ginny and I were partners. I remember everything about it. I was sitting at a table by the window in Norman’s, which is one of those downtown bars that caters to the business-man-getting-off-work trade. It just happened to be right across from the First Puerta del Sol National Bank. I was having a few drinks—exactly six, according to the testimony of the barkeep—and trying to make up my mind about whether I wanted or had the nerve to ask