The Rescue

37

Bettina and Strickland walk the San Diego Embarcadero in the blustery dark, spring rain tapping their umbrellas.

This touristy cruise ship hub is only lightly attended tonight, mostly groups of young people taking selfies under their umbrellas. The Midway looms at berth like a floating city, lights and towers and the huge runway jutting out over dark water.

They walk past the sculpture Unconditional Surrender, up-lit and monstrous to Bettina’s eye. To her it looks more like a sexual assault than a kiss, and it makes her remember Jason blubbering for mercy in his office. But there’s something almost comic about that now, she thinks, a reminder that she’s free of him forever.

She takes Strickland’s arm and squeezes in closer, their umbrellas bumping together above them.

“You know the thing I couldn’t tell you about at my place that night? One of the things you saw on my face?”

“Sure, I do. Coming back to bite you again?”

“No, the opposite. I tracked the guy down and threatened to post the truth about him.”

“Congratulations.”

“I scared the bejesus out of him too,” she says. “It felt so good. Now when I look at that poor nurse over there getting manhandled by the sailor, it doesn’t remind me of what the guy did, only him breaking down like a child and admitting it. That’s all it took. I carried that night around for eight years, in knots about what to do. And when I did it, it was so... liberating. Like being let out of a cage. And so easy! I was just a tad jacked up. I blasted his truck with my shotgun, though. It was either the truck or him, which I’d considered as a possibility, depending on how things developed. Really glad I didn’t shoot him.”

“Smart move, Bettina. We’d be talking through Plexiglas right now.”

She glances at him, sees the wry smile.

“But you understand all of that, don’t you?” she asks. “You understand the wild, and the thrill of throwing yourself in, and you know that beautiful calm it takes to size things up and act. And the way you feel when it’s over. How full and alive you are for having done what you just did. A wave. A bike blast. A horse race. I’m sure you’ve got your list of wilds.”

“You bet.”

“What’s on it?”

“War. Chasing bad guys. Protecting innocent people. Hand-to-hand stuff. Competition handgun shooting.”

“Have you killed?”

No quick reply from Strickland. Bettina feels him sizing her up. She realizes how little she really knows about him.

“Sangin, Afghanistan.”

“Jihadis?”

“To the core.”

“How about as a cop?”

“Never drew my gun.”

Bettina pulls Strickland to a stop, looks up into his sturdy, closed face. She studies that face a good long time, listens to the raindrops tapping on their umbrellas, picks a dog hair off the collar of his raincoat. One of Felix’s, she thinks, heart sinking. From the old days.

Then she kisses Strickland briskly on the lips.

“You carry that, don’t you?” she asks. “Sangin.”

“I took pictures of their faces. Out of respect.”

“Did you carry them in your wallet for a while?”

“I did.”

“Creepy,” says Bettina. “But I get it. It’s like me taking pictures for my stories, or my videos — a way of preserving a moment. Making it important. Maybe even permanent.”

“And it’s about honoring what you take.”

Drinks in the Gaslamp district, then back to the Apex Self-Defense building. Near the Apex entrance a bedraggled middle-aged couple sits on the curb near their white, blue-and-yellow Corona Light dome tent, a pale gray pit bull leashed to a street light.

“Good evening, Pam,” says Strickland, leaving Bettina to approach them. “Evening, Roy.”

They say hello. The dog growls.

“Lighten up, Wiley,” Strickland says, and the dog’s tail starts up.

“Where have you been?” asks Strickland.

“Rode out the rain in the shelter,” says Pam. “Left a little early. What a hell hole that place is.”

Bettina watches as Strickland pulls a folded-in-half white envelope from his wallet, slides the wallet back into his coat and hands the envelope to the Roy.

“Thanks, Dan,” he says.

“You’re the man, Dan,” says Pam. “I’d get up and hug you if I wasn’t so dirty.”

“You can use the showers tomorrow when classes are over,” says Strickland.

“Maybe,” says Roy. “Hate to impose.”

On the spacious third-floor penthouse deck, Bettina lingers upwind of the barbecue, where Strickland mans the meat, lobster tails, and asparagus wrapped in foil. He cooks with the over-seriousness of men. He’s actually using a stopwatch. He reminds her of brother Nick. Something in the inner quiet he has. Maybe killing in a war quiets you down, she thinks, Nick having served in Iraq — Fallujah — and taken life there. She looks out at the harbor and the big hotels. The rain has passed and the low clouds are snagged on the sharp roof of the Hyatt.

She sips a bourbon, going very slow on it. Ditto Strickland and his wine.

“I miss Felix,” she says. “I wonder if he’s alive in Tijuana, working for El Gordo. Do you think that’s possible?”

Strickland looks back over his shoulder at her, apparently unwilling to leave his demanding project.

“I do. El Gordo originally said he wanted to buy Joe from you, for revenge on the New Generation. People say he’s a man of his word. Honest — for a drug kingpin. That’s his myth, anyway.”

“You know a lot about drug cartels.”

“I have friends on both sides of the border. Mostly Apex clients. Some cops from the PD.”

“And it was a DEA friend of yours who got you Joe.”

“Yes, why?”

“Just curious. Do you think he was shot on accident?”

“Possibly,” says Strickland, his back to her, consulting the stopwatch. “It’s more likely the Sinaloans did it. Joe was certainly an enemy.”

“That shoot-out must have been chaotic,” says Bettina.

She flashes back to that cold day in Tijuana, interviewing the veterinary doctors and falling in love with the wounded street dog.

“The clinic where I got him was run by a married couple,” she says. “Both veterinarians. He said the shooting was probably an accident, but his wife was absolutely certain it was an event directed by God.”

“I think God’s less interested in directing than in being entertained,” says Strickland.

His pointed spiritual arrow sticks her. “I’ve thought that too. We sure provide a lot of entertainment. We human types.”

Strickland pockets the watch, tongs the steaks and the lobster tails and asparagus to a large platter, lowers the grill top, and turns to her.

A small smile on his handsome face.