The takedown had gone about as badly as one could. Lucy killed two members of an international gun smuggling cartel that we now believe is connected to Chandonne’s crime family. She inadvertently wounded Jo, a DBA agent who at the time was her lover. Red tape is not the word for it.
“But I’m not sure you know the part about Jo,” I tell Anna. “Her HIDTA partner.”
“I do not know what HIDTA is.”
“High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. A squad made up of different law enforcement agencies working violent crimes. ATF, DBA, FBI, Miami-Dade,” I tell her. “When the takedown went to hell two weeks ago, Jo got shot in the leg. It turned out the bullet was fired from Lucy’s own gun.”
Anna listens, sipping Scotch.
“So Lucy accidentally shot Jo, and then, of course, what comes out next is their personal relationship,” I continue. “Which has been very strained. I don’t know what’s going on with them now, to tell you the truth. But Lucy is here. I guess she’ll stay through the holidays, and then who knows?”
“I did not know she and Janet had broken up,” Anna observes.
“Quite a while ago.”
“I am very sorry.” She is sincerely bothered by the news. “I liked Janet very much.”
It has been a long time since Janet was a topic of conversation. Lucy never says a word about her. I realize I miss Janet very much and still think she was a very stabilizing, mature influence on my niece. If I am honest, I really don’t like Jo. I am not sure why. Maybe, I consider as I reach for my drink, it is simply because she isn’t Janet.
“And Jo’s in Richmond?” Anna digs for more of the story.
“Ironically, she’s from here, even though that’s not how she and Lucy ended up together. They met in Miami through work. Jo will be recovering for a while, staying in Richmond with her parents, I guess. Don’t ask me how that’s going to work. They’re fundamentalist Christians and not exactly sup-portive of their daughter’s lifestyle.”
“Lucy never picks anything easy,” Anna says, and she is right. “Shootings and more shootings. What is it with her and shooting people? Thank goodness she did not kill again.”
The weight in my chest presses down harder. My blood seems to have turned into a heavy metal.
“What is it with her and killing?” Anna pushes. “What happened this time worries me. If what I’ve heard on TV is to be believed.”
“I haven’t turned on the TV. I don’t know what they’re saying.” I sip my drink and think about cigarettes again. I have quit so many times in my life.
“She almost killed him, that Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. She had the gun pointed at him but you stopped her.” Anna’s eyes bore through my skull, probing for secrets. “You tell me.”
I describe to her what happened. Lucy had gone to the Medical College of Virginia to bring Jo home from the hospital, and when they pulled up to my house after midnight, Chandonne and I were in the front yard. The Lucy I conjure up in my memory seems a stranger, a violent person I don’t know, her face unrecognizably twisted by rage as she pointed the pistol at him, finger on the trigger, and I pleaded with her not to shoot. She was screaming at him, cursing him as I called out to her, no, no, Lucy, no! Chandonne was in unspeakable pain, blind and thrashing, rubbing snow into his chemically burned eyes, howling and begging for someone to help him. At this point, Anna interrupts my story.
“Was he speaking French?” she asks.
The question catches me off guard. I try to remember. “I think so.”
“Then you understand French.”
I pause again. “Well, I took it in high school. I just know it seemed at the time he was screaming for me to help him. I seemed to understand what he was saying.”
“Did you try to help him?”
“I was trying to save his life, trying to stop Lucy from killing him.”
“But that was for Lucy, not for him. You weren’t really trying to save his life. You were trying to stop Lucy from ruining her own.”