Mickey Finn Volume 2, page 21
A second copper—Officer Tim Roberts—goes down, bullet in the spine and I watch the carnage unfold.
I fucked up.
Officer Timmy had promised me.
After the bench trial was over—manslaughter pleaded down to unlawful restraint, sexual assault, and possession of methamphetamine by a DA eager to keep the police department out of the news and three whores eager to stay out of jail—and after my then-wife had served me and after my attorneys had me sign my pension over to pay my legal bills and after the bailiff had shackled, chained, and cuffed me, Officer Timothy Roberts put himself less than two feet from me.
“Guess it’s different now. Guess you’re rethinking coming to that call stoned outta your fucking head, aren’t you?”
“I am so sorry, Tim. I’ll carry this for the rest of my life.”
“Shove your sorries up your ass. I’m always going to have a bullet next to my spine. Always going to limp. I’m always—” He grabbed my collar and yanked me close while the bailiff looked elsewhere. “Always going to be rocked out of law enforcement on medical disability. You son of a bitch. I promise you: when you get out, I will kill you.”
I break away from work and race to my apartment. Slam the door, shove a chair beneath the knob, and check my Glock. Full magazine and one in the chamber.
I hide between the bed and the wall, and point the gun at the door.
The itch takes over. Slides across my eyes like skin across bones. I see their faces. Not the bloody, dead faces from after it was over, but the clean faces of life.
Christ, I want to fix, but when I go to the toilet and see the H, I flush it. I’ve managed to stay off the horse for six days, I’m not going back now. It’s a process: beat the heroin, then beat the whiskey, then save a few pennies and a few more. That’s when life will be on the right track. That will be the beginning of me getting out of here and getting right with the World.
I grab the Old Crow and down it hard. The bird pecks my throat and I listen at my door. Is he there? Maybe he’s standing on the other side of the door, waiting to kill me.
Pressing the gun against the door, I say, “Wanna kill me? Stupid fuck, I died with those kids.”
I hadn’t been able to do anything about Trevino’s ex and his parents, Trevino had killed them before I even knew he existed. But after I got the call? An innocent cop, Trevino himself, his children?
Those dead are at my feet.
Moving to my closed curtains, I down another blast of Old Crow. The bird goes down harder this time. A ragged skeleton of dirty sunlight dances into my room. Another shot of Crow and this one goes down hardest of all.
I open the curtains about halfway. I need to see the sun. I need to look for God. Maybe I can see if he’s paying attention, or if I’ve forsaken him completely.
Instead, I see Officer Timothy Roberts.
Sitting on the hood of my car. Calm AF. When he sees me, his face slips into a predator’s mask. He stands and slowly, like some shitty reality show, pulls a gun and shoots my car. The windshield explodes and tinkles of safety glass rise almost in slow motion. They catch the light of the sun, glint and wink at me.
Laughing, he shoots the quarter panels. He puts rounds into the dashboard before going to the trunk. I hear the gunshots and stupidly expect to hear the metal tearing beneath the bullet.
I shoot out the window in my room and lay down the entire magazine. “Lemme put a few more in your back, asshole.”
He ducks behind the car and I shoot and shoot and shoot until the magazine clicks empty and the slide locks back. There’s nothing left and I laugh at the metaphor. The gun is me…clicked empty and slide-locked back.
He knows I’m empty. Face stone-set, Timmy steps from behind the car, limps to the street and disappears with a wave.
I stand at my window, breath fast and hot, heart pounding so hard my chest is screaming, my finger gone bloodless white it’s wrapped so tight on the trigger.
Magpie bangs on the door. “What the fuck is going on? You dead?”
I’ve been at this motel for a while now, and I’ve seen everything this nasty cesspool can vomit up. I’ve seen tweakers and junkies, heard every moan of the beaten and abused, the pleadings of the victims and the laughter of their tormentors. By the time the customers get here, they’re dead, even if they don’t realize it. Even Dylan.
I was dead the moment I took a room, the moment I put on Arnie’s shirt.
A guy here when I first moved in said this place was for the expiation of sins. I thought he was full of shit. Staring at my car now, remembering their faces, I think maybe he was right.
I’ve many sins. But my greatest sin, resultant from my smaller sins, is the death of two children, murdered by their father just before he was gunned down by angry and horrified cops.
Time to pay for those sins.
Finally.
The itch is back. Hardcore, hard-assed.
Why is it in my eyes? Because I saw them die, because I see their faces. Physical manifestation of guilt, as simple and cheap as that is.
When Timmy finally kicks in the door, he stands tall, packing a semi-auto and already firing. Bullets pinpoint around the room. Wall board shatters and dust fills the room. Timmy does a tactical reload, drops his mag, shoves in a full one.
I rush him. I crash him. His gun goes flying as he falls out of my room and hits the hallway wall opposite my door. He recovers quick and blocks the way to the elevator.
I fly up the stairs, taking two and sometimes three in a single step. I barely see the motel around me. The holes in the walls, some patched and painted, some barely patched. The carpet is loose beneath my feet, where it still exists, and I slip a little.
As I run, I listen for his steps. I gotta be losing him, I run…he limps. He has to be falling behind.
The halls are mostly dark, lights burned out and doors closed. Windows at the end of the hallway have tattered curtains that blot out most of the sun. At the third-floor landing Marguerite blows a john. I shove them out of the way and keep moving. The fourth floor and I know Timmy is miles behind me now. Maybe he’s not even coming. Maybe he’s given up.
I go to the roof. I can take the fire escape down, get to the office where the shotgun is, circle back around and stop this bullshit dead in its limping tracks.
I bust open the roof door and am two, maybe three, steps onto it before I see him.
Dylan’s father.
Lurching around the roof, screaming for Dylan, bottle in one hand…
…gun in the other.
The sun is high and burns us with something like yellow or maybe even greenish-yellow out of Dylan’s Crayon box.
“The fuck’re you?” He drinks as he swivels the gun lazily toward me.
“Whoa.”
“You’re that shit-worthless janitor. Used to be a cop.”
Scared words dribble over my lips. “Don’t know about shit-worthless but yeah, I was a copper once. Long time ago. It didn’t work out.”
He grabs a vent pipe to steady himself. “Here to arrest me?”
Rumor says he’d popped two people last year at a homeless shelter when some residents had tried to snatch Dylan to get him to Family Protective Services. No one had seen those residents since then.
“Just working on the AC.”
“Ain’t no idiot.” A long pull of vodka. This guy is so blown my nerves ratchet up. “There ain’t no AC in this rathole.”
I see Dylan then.
On the far side of the roof, hidden between a storage bin and the parapet. All I see is a small foot, clad in a sock.
I move slow. To my right but also toward Daddy. I move my arms out rather than up. I want to fill his vision to keep him from seeing Dylan.
“You know,” I say, “I don’t even know your name. I’ve been trying to learn all the residents’ names, and I know Dylan, but I don’t know you.”
“Don’t cuddle up to me, Bitch, we ain’t buddies.” The bottle jams up at his lips and the gun plays near his waist. “Fucking kid. You know that retard ain’t even mine?”
Fear is a boulder on my chest, Niagara Falls in my blood, panic that sounded like the air-shattering fusillade of bullets from the SRT boys when they cut Trevino to ribbons.
“His mama, that stupid bitch, managed to kill herself two…no…three months ago. Maybe four.” His eyes flatten and look backward into the alcohol-haze of memory to dredge up some accuracy. “She bought some shitty skag. Blew her brains out right there on the bathroom floor.”
“That’s tough, man.” I keep moving and start praying for Officer Timmy, too. He’s armed, he’s angry, but he’s also a decent man and a former cop. He’ll either grab this fuck or whack him straight out.
“I don’t even want no kids but…that bitch can suck. Took the skin right off’a my dick. Best mouth fuck I ever had, man.” His eyes are sharp now. “Where you goin’?”
“Trying to get the sun outta my eyes.”
He looks over his shoulder and tries to find the sun, then back at me. “Quit moving, Mister Pig Cop. Trying to do your cop voodoo on me.” His chest puffs. “I’m immune.”
“Yeah? Not many people are immune. When I was copping, I could hypnotize damn near anybody. Just like that.” I snap my fingers loud enough to draw his eyes to my outstretched hands.
“That ain’t being me.”
“Well, I ain’t trying to be no cop anyway.” I keep stepping toward him, waving my fingers while I talk. Keep your attention on me, asshole, I think. “Like I said. Fixing the AC. I been up here all damn day, working for the man, you know.”
He laughs and waves the bottle as some sort of liquid high five. “Right? ‘Working for the Man, every night and day.’”
Maybe twenty feet away now. He backs up and doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Moving farther from Dylan. “You got it. ‘Never lost one minute of sleeping—’”
Over his right shoulder, deep behind his peripheral vision, I see Officer Tim Roberts, pistol clamped in his hand, eyes searching for me. When he sees us, he stops.
And keeps staying stopped.
I’m confused. Can’t he see what’s going on? Why’s he not doing anything?
Dylan’s dad’s head goes back in a triumphant howl. “‘Worrying about the way things might have been.’ That’s fucking right, asshole. I am who I am, and I didn’t need no fucking woman with no fucking kid.”
Maybe eight feet now between us. He’s still backing up, lost in the song and whatever yawp of freedom the Creedence song was for him.
I am three feet away when he sees me. That boulder of fear explodes like a mine shaft collapsing. I know what will happen from here: he will raise the gun and—
His eyes go wide. “There you are, you fucking punk bitch. I told you to clean that fucking bathroom.” He drops the bottle and tries to push me back. At the same time, he tries to get a bead on Dylan with his gun.
“Run, Dylan.” I hope he can hear me.
Daddy stumbles to my left and I counter, trying to trip him. “Tim, let’s go. I need some help.”
Timmy just watches.
Daddy howls at Dylan. “Come on, boy, time to pay the daddy.”
Fuck you, I owe that debt. Do your worst.
He lurches the opposite direction and I counter again.
I see his gun come up, see him yank back the hammer, see him squeeze the trigger.
Timmy finally raises his gun. Finally fires at Drunk Daddy.
But Drunk Daddy gets his shot off.
I hear the hammer grind against the frame. I hear the hammer hit the firing pin, hear the firing pin strike the primer in the round. I hear the powder explode to life, push the bullet down the rifled barrel and out toward me.
I hear it and am amazed. Had never thought I’d hear my own death.
Timmy fires. Twice. Thrice. Four times as I also hear Drunk Daddy’s .380 round tear into my guts, into my liver and stomach, my colon and intestines. Probably the round is going to fragment and damage my kidneys and bladder. Probably I’ll piss myself and then lay here and bleed out ’cause this motel is at the end of the world and ain’t nobody coming for me.
Drunk Daddy is dead, four rose blooms on his chest puddling on the roof.
Officer Timmy stands over me. “That son of a bitch fucked up my play.”
“Dylan’s dad. Well, dead mom’s boyfriend.”
“I wanted to shoot you.”
“I know.”
His face is cold empty. “In the back.”
“I know.”
Curiously, there is no pain. Not yet or did the round sever my spine so I feel nothing?
“I wanted you shitting in a bag.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“You think that absolves you? Some self-sacrifice that makes the world whole again?” Officer Timothy Roberts spits on me.
“Hey, man, you’re the hero now.” Something is coming at me in the distance. Sounds like a freight train but feels like someone stomping on my feet with steel-toed boots. “You get to walk Dylan downstairs and call the cops and tell them how you saved him from his drunk daddy and a useless old junkie cop who’s already killed kids.”
“Maybe, but I’m still taking what’s mine.”
I open my mouth, but the stomping works up through my guts and catches fire.
He wrenches me over, belly down, and shoots me twice.
The growing pain hammers to a stop and it’s a relief. It’s almost the soft haze of my dear old friend heroin.
I watch Dylan go with Officer Timmy while I bleed. The former cop talks softly and moves as slowly as Dylan needs. Dylan never looks back as they walk through the door and down the stairs.
Officer Timothy Roberts does. Once. Quick and final; a facial fuck-off.
Back to TOC
The Rundown
Gabe Morran
Derek
Panicked, the old man looked over his shoulder as the headlights lit up his back and the road around him. He ran at little more than a hobble, his long, scraggly hair drifting back and forth across a tattered green jacket. I pushed harder on the accelerator and started to close the distance. Beside me, Arlo wiggled his finger around in a can of chewing tobacco and turned around to Clint in the backseat.
“When we get him down, you’re the one doing this,” Arlo said as he put a dip in his mouth.
“Okay,” Clint said.
As our truck drew closer, the man turned off the road and lumbered into a cornfield. The stalks were brown and only about knee high, stunted by the summer floods earlier in the year. I whipped around and continued chase. I glanced over at Arlo. His eyes fixed on Clint.
“You know if it was anyone else, they would be fucking dead right now. If any one of us did something half as stupid, your brother would have shot us himself.”
“Yeah,” Clint said.
The old man looked back at us again. I didn’t say anything because it didn’t matter, but Bob Ramley wasn’t a bad guy. As a kid I remembered him working at the school and around town as a handyman. By the time I was a teenager, he was the go-to guy for anyone underage who wanted beer from the mini-mart. One pack for you and one pack for him, and no hard liquor. No hard liquor because he always said he didn’t want to be a bad influence. I don’t know when he added meth to it all, but it also didn’t matter. I looked over and saw the silhouette of a large grain silo in the distance.
“We’re coming up on a canal soon,” I said.
Arlo turned around. “I was hoping he would wear himself out. Well, go ahead and tag him, just make sure you don’t run him over.”
I pushed the accelerator to the floorboard and lined my edge of the bumper with Bob’s right leg. He screamed as the lights got closer. I barely felt a bump as the truck hit him, but the impact sent Bob face first onto the ground. I backed the truck up and parked so the lights shined on him. Bob struggled to get to his feet. I saw a long streak of blood running down his jeans and a broken bone jutting out above the knee.
Clint, Arlo, and I climbed from the truck and walked toward him. Bob tried to get up again and I saw the bone stick out farther. He yelled and rolled onto his back, his breath lit by the beams of the truck.
Arlo turned to Clint. “Forget something?” he said. Clint put his head down and walked back to the truck. As Arlo and I approached, Bob fumbled through his coat pockets and pulled out a small wad of cash. “Here,” he said shaking the money at us. “Just take what’s left and I will make it up to you.” Arlo and I stood over him. I heard the gate of the truck open and shut and Clint coming toward us. Bob reached back into his pockets and pulled out a bag of meth. “Take this too, there’s about a hundred left.”
Arlo put the heel of his boot against the exposed bone and pressed down. Bob screamed and clawed at Arlo’s boot. “The blue trailer at the back of the lot, where’s the computer?” Arlo said. Clint joined us, carrying a large piece of lumber. Bob laid his head back and started to cry. Arlo pressed down harder, and Bob yelled again. Clint shifted from side to side, head down, and hands shaking. As soon as I saw the cash I knew where he had taken the laptop, but it wasn’t my place to tell Arlo or Clint what to do. The only place that could pay a damn for anything second hand around here was Alleycats Pawn Shop in Sutton about ten miles up Highway 44. I picked up the money and meth and handed it to Arlo.
“Alleycats Pawn Shop,” Bob said. “The door was wide open, I had to get something.”
Arlo let his foot off Bob and looked at Clint. Clint shook his head and trembled. Arlo spit out a thick glob and looked at me. “You let some junkie walk into your house and take your shit today?” he said.
“No,” I said and turned to Clint.
“Neither did I, so I guess that leaves you,” Arlo said.
Clint held one end of the lumber with both hands and slowly walked to Bob. Bob raised a hand toward Clint and tried to push himself off the ground with the other. “I didn’t know it meant that much. I’m sorry, I swear I won’t tell anyone, and I’ll never take from you again,” Bob said.
