by Paul Bishop
Roy's eyes fell from the sap gloves in my hands to my black cargo pants, which hid most of my high-topped leather boots. He then looked up at my tactical mustache and the close-cropped thinning hair on my head.
"What happened to that full head of pitch black Dago hair I remember?" Roy feigned a disapproving snort. "What I'm seein' here is sun-bleached, like you been hidin' down in the tropics again,. Have you been playing pirate with Maggie Q or Michelle Yeoh?"
"My wife prefers the Doc Savage bronze skullcap look," I said, playing along.
"At least you still got those bedroom blue eyes that always got you into trouble." Roy rose on his tiptoes until our noses almost touched. He produced a mini-flashlight and shined it into my eyes without warning. "Pupils are a bit dilated."
"Glaucoma meds," I said. "Cataracts from retirement in red rock country, but on my worst day, I can still Roy Rogers your ass on any range of your choice."
He was unfazed. "Still married to that refugee-turned-interpreter who could out-shoot both of us even on a bad day?"
"Guilty, Chief," I assumed the position of attention, still mocking him somewhat.
Without warning, Roy slugged my gut hard, but not hard enough to double me over. Instead, I backed away into a mock karate stance, hands raised defensively. We engaged in the obligatory five-second shadow boxing, then slapped each other on the shoulder again. With the back of his hand, Roy tapped my gut a second time. "You're looking...svelte," he said.
"It's the morning workouts," I told him. "Keeps my back from going out."
"Service!" One of the officers pounded a fist lightly on the counter in mock impatience, yet with enough weight behind it to make some nearby silverware rattle.
The waitress, still standing in the distant archway to the dough ovens, appeared agitated. She started to say something snide, but thought better of it and began biting at her thick lower lip. She grabbed a pot of hot coffee and sauntered over.
I recalled how some of my fellow officers refused to take breaks at this particular coffee shop, claiming the floor to ceiling windows made it a sniper's delight. I did not mention the Code-3 incidents I'd witnessed outside upon my arrival.
I glanced out the plate glass windows at the three police cars. "Slow night?" I asked Roy.
"Been babysitting a bunch of politicians and back-stabbing wannabe's at a city council meeting that went until two a.m." Roy sighed loudly as he poured powdered cream into the cup of steaming coffee the waitress had placed in front of him. He glanced up at her. "Snort some snot into it for me, Kaneesha?" Two of the officers snickered while the other two appeared aghast. "You know I like my coffee strong and snotty."
"Been savin' up a big hack all night just for you, Rowdy Roy," she turned away, giving her ample derriere an exaggerated swish as she headed toward the back room. Roy grimaced and feigned a shudder.
He turned to me and muttered under his breath, "She don't like cops."
I nodded. "Kinda got that impression."
Outside, through the grimy plate glass, we all watched in silence as the powerful beam from a low-flying police helicopter swept back and forth through the industrial park across the street.
"Denver PD's Air One?” I asked. “Or Adams County's airship?"
"She’s one of ours," Roy said proudly. "We call it ‘Night Sun’ and actually have two up on weekends, budget and parts permitting. The city's really expanded, Jonathan—more than doubled in size since you were here. We're on course to break two hundred thousand Thorntonoids this year."
"Sixth largest city in Colorado," One of his men added, beaming. "We're even building a fancy, new, top-of-the-line police sub-station way up at a hundred-and-thirty-second and Quebec."
Hearing that intersection spoken of so matter-of-factly was like an unexpected slap in the face. However, no one seemed to notice my spasm-like reaction.
Roy frowned. "Building was going fine until workers digging the foundation found some friggin' Triceratops. It brought everything to a halt until they could fully excavate the site under the supervision of the state geologist."
"It was a Torosaurus," I corrected him, and chuckled at the number of raised eyebrows. I shrugged. "I wanted to be a paleontologist before I wanted to be a cop."
"And now you is an old dinosaur yourself," Roy said. "Like me." He seemed uncomfortable with the subject, rubbing the back of his neck.
"They found human remains among the dinosaur bones," another officer said.
I glanced at Roy to find he was already staring at me. "Human, huh?" I said, my eyes locked with Roy's. He raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly as if acknowledging an old secret rising to the surface—sins of the Blue Templars, come back to haunt us.
"Probably an old caveman," Roy said. He took a long sip of brew, then tugged at one end of his drooping mustache. He looked grim but straightened his posture as if he'd remembered something important. “You heard Dante retired after forty years?"
“Great copper—a real stand-up guy,” I said. “What about Glenn?" I'd heard rumors through the wait-a-minute-vine but decided to ask anyway.
"Suicide," Roy said matter-of-factly.
Everyone at the counter stared down into the depths of their coffee cups.
"Twenty years ago,” Roy said. He smiled sadly.
A deep sigh escaped me, then I heard myself saying, "That would explain why he never answered my letters."
Roy’s voice was flat, not responding to my dark humor. "Danny-Boy and Keith-Two-Guns also suck started their guns. A couple years apart. God rest their tortured souls."
The voice of one of the officers cracked slightly as he said, "We lost more police officers in this country last year to suicide than to hostile gunfire from suspects."
Everyone nodded, but no one said anything.
The waitress reappeared noisily, like a janitor interrupting communion at a Catholic mass. She began refilling coffee mugs. "Seems I got the whole damn police force sittin' right here in my little ol' coffee shop." She glanced at her oversized wrist watch. It had a stylized fist outlined on the crystal. "If I was a criminal, dis 'ould be the perfect time fo' me to be out there commitin' my crimes.” She stopped in front of Roy. "Another Long John, Chief? I just fried up a batch the ways you likes 'em—dark chocolate." She leaned on the counter, the tops of her ponderous breasts straining against her low-cut blouse. Roy made a point of ignoring her.
The waitress's watch crystal gnawed at me. The fist etched on the crystal was a symbol of the BLA radicals responsible for the ambush murders of dozens of police officers across the country during the 1970s. I resisted the intense urge to reach out and grab her by the throat.
Five pak-sets began crackling as their portable radios emitted a three-toned scrambler alert, followed by a woman's out of breath voice saying, "Officer Needs Help..." Static overwhelmed the radio net, then her voice returned, a bit more powerfully. "Hundred and sixty-third and Washington...Shots fired...One suspect down...One fleeing northbound on Washington toward the Costco parking lot..."
The officers beside me were already on their feet, jamming through the doorway as they raced out of the coffee shop. Roy and I sat calmly watching as the cruisers fired up and nearly side-swiped each other backing out onto 84th Avenue. Tires spun and sirens yelped—a metallic cat fight. Roof strobes momentarily blinded us as they flashed on with brilliant rays of red and blue, then a pulsating white star blazed out in the middle, twice as bright as all the others.
"Impressive," I said, trying not to sound sarcastic. "A brighter light show than we had on our old Novas and Malibus back in ‘81."
Roy shook his head. He'd seen it all a hundred times. "I tell 'em and I tell 'em, but nobody listens—back your patrol car in so you can split like Batman if you get a hot call."
He slowly rose from his stool, adjusting the squelch on his own pak-set as he slipped it into its leather holder. "I better get up there and see who shot who." He curled his fingers, glanced at his fingernails as if deciding if he needed a man
icure.
I remembered how he used to do the same thing forty years ago, after a knock-down-drag-out fight at the Ghetto Bar or M-80s or the crazy cowboy juke joint boasting the longest bar counter west of the Mississippi. It was called The Wild Wild West, and bull riders from all over the country came to get drunk and ride the mechanical bull. They also ended up challenging the Thornton Thumpers to a round of fisticuffs so they could return to Dallas or Helena, Las Vegas, or Queens and boast they'd fought with Colorado's finest.
Roy had always checked his fingernails at end-of-shift for dried blood or bits of flesh because he didn't like to bring the filth home to the childhood sweetheart who'd been his dedicated, supportive wife for the past forty-some years.
"So, they found a body in the field up at hundred-and-thirty-second and Quebec?" I asked calmly.
Roy massaged the back of his neck again then rubbed at the stubble on his throat. It was a bad sign.
"No comment, brother,” Roy said. He then lapsed into a bad Marlon Brando accent, "Fo'getta 'bout it. Forty years is forty years. Nobody cares anymore about the past 'cept them damn dinosaur hunters."
I thought about one of our problem children from back then. He was a homeless character who always wore a dark, threadbare suit. No one could figure out where he lived, but people were always calling the police on him. He had a habit of lurking in the back alleys behind the shops of District Two, and he always fought any cop who encountered him. Legend had it he was some sort of black belt and had killed a man with his bare hands. He supposedly served a couple years for manslaughter before returning to his old stomping grounds in the Big T. He got off stomping on cops, so two units were always dispatched to any call involving him.
Until one night when Roy and I were dispatched...
"What was that Adam Henry's name?" I asked.
Roy instinctively knew who I was talking about. He had an almost photographic memory, but he didn’t answer me directly. Instead, he said, "It’s all roadkill to me, brother. Good riddance."
"I heard he had a kid,” I pushed. “Must be thirty or forty now."
"I don't know, and I seriously don't care, brother—and neither should you. Let sleeping mutts lie. No reason to stir up the coprolites. There’s already some lowlife reporter from the Sentinel snooping around the dig site. It’s the same long-haired bastard who gave you such a hard time in the press when you were writing stories for Soldier of Fortune magazine back in the seventies. Don't give him a bone to start gnawing at unless you wanna open up the whole can o' maggots."
Roy waved toward his city crate while turning off the squelch on his portable radio. "Better see if I can catch up with 'em. Of course, I just switched my rear-wheel studs to all-season radials 'cause I thought winter was 'bout over. Wanna come along—for old time's sake?"
"Not sure the old ticker could take it, Chief—you drivin' Code 3 up I-25 on the black ice buildin' up out there." I tried to appear sad at the missed opportunity.
Roy finished off the last of his Long John and washed it down with a gulp of lukewarm coffee. He set the mug on the counter and curled lips. I’d seen him do the same thing after he killed a last Viet Cong for laughs from atop the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975. He’d been the Marine Corps' top sniper in-country during the Fall and had seemed in no hurry to leave.
"Suit yourself, Slick." There it was again, the word I'd first heard—that all new military recruits heard—at Boot Camp, just a couple of months shy of high school graduation. Even at age sixty-five, it still sent a weird chill down my aching spine.
"But before I go,” Roy said, “I’ve got a little something for you in memory of the good ol' 70s." Roy produced an object the size of his backup Derringer. It was wrapped in blue silk. With a flourish, he pulled the silk cover back, revealing my old badge from forty years earlier, its menacing eagle sparkling up at me.
"The Chief said to just give it to you with his blessing." Roy showed some teeth in an odd version of a smile. “They were just gonna melt these old ones down,” he said. “The design is obsolete. They did away with the eagle tops on the new ones. They stuck Marijuana Hill on instead."
He tapped the silver oval on his own chest, recited the private little joke. "We chopped off the top of the mountain and built police headquarters where we used to run off the potheads and bang the groupies."
I fought back something I hadn't felt in decades—a sentimental tear. I closed the silk folds over the badge, tucked it precariously under my belt, and changed the subject.
"163rd Avenue?" I was impressed. "I remember when the northern city limits was ass-backward to that at 136th. Whoever thought they'd build anything but cattle fences or pig farms up there?"
"We're big city now." Roy shook his head then patted me on the shoulder as he headed for the door. "Take care, my brother."
"Stay safe," I replied. I put a lone dollar bill on the counter. From her expression of defiant disapproval, the waitress obviously felt the tip was beneath her.
"What did youse mean by black ice?" she asked accusingly after Roy had left.
I thought about punching her in the face for old time’s sake, but I’d spotted the three closed-circuit TV cameras in the ceiling. Instead, I snatched up the dollar bill and slowly and clearly said, "I'm sorry you are so miserable and full of hate."
I took a last sip of my coffee and headed for the door. Roy's taillights were growing smaller down 84th Avenue. Then he activated his lights and siren, sending blue and red beams pulsing from one side of the Interceptor's rear window, like a fallen angel's halo.
I regretted not accepting the ride-along offer, but I was no longer driven by my old, personal motto—Seek danger and adventure each new day. These days, I just wanted to be left alone with my out-of-print books.
"I spitted in your coffee," the waitress called after me.
"You ‘spat,’" I corrected her English. "And no, you didn't. I was watching you the whole time. Closely."
While still in the doorway, I bumped into what could only be described as a ghost from my past—a skinhead of large stature, in his thirties, wearing a black and gray Raiders hoodie and sporting a Fu Manchu prison goatee. Behind the facial hair, however, was the spitting image of the man who legend said could kill with his bare hands, albeit thirty years younger.
I hesitated, but he ignored me. Instead, he lunged in to confront the waitress, a blue-steel revolver with an eight-inch barrel in one hand. He pressed her flaring nostrils flat with it as her wide eyes bulged in terror. "Gimme your twenties," he demanded. He pulled a Capri pillowcase from inside his waistband, tossing it on the counter between them. "No small bills—do you understand? Only twenties.” He paused. The waitress’ oversized watch caught his eye. He ripped it off her wrist, glanced at it for a second then threw it back at her.
He saw her hands drop to her waist, out of sight.
"Lemme see your hands!" he shouted. "Get ‘em up here! No alarm buttons! If you tripped the alarm, you are dead, bitch. You understand me?" His words slowed, each one coated with determination. "You want to die here tonight? You get paid enough to make it worth it?"
She glanced in my direction, but I was already out the door, standing beside an ancient oak coated in white and wider than me. I started to unholster my Sig-Sauer semi-automatic. “One of the most expensive handguns in the world.” Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry voice echoed in my brain, which was already operating in fast forward due to three cups of coffee. However, I thought better of my knee-jerk reaction. I slid the.45 back into its customized holster, which was decorated with a subdued combat patch of the 18th MP Brigade, Vietnam.
I pulled out my cell phone. No service appeared on the screen. "You've got to be kidding," I muttered, replacing the Android in its waterproof sheath. I could feel my heart racing, pounding to get out of my chest. As cops called it, I was drunk on adrenaline. I mentally warded off the stress-induced tunnel vision trying to cloud the dangerous scene before me.
Hand resting on the butt of my holste
red pistol, I assessed the situation. Everything was happening fast. With all the Code-3 Action up north, it was doubtful any local LEO would show up. There was a chance a state trooper or Adams County deputy would stop for a coffee break, but the odds weren’t good.
My choices were simple. I could draw my Sig and blast the gunman between the eyes as he exited the coffee shop. Or I could remain unseen behind the tree then follow him. I might get a license plate number if he went to a hidden vehicle, or get an address if he disappeared into the many apartment complexes nearby. It was probably best to simply be a good observer, a solid witness. My days and nights of crime fighting had been over for a while. It just didn't seem worth it anymore.
I was no longer a twenty-five-year-old single street cop living in an apartment with no assets a civil attorney could go after regardless of my actions being right or wrong.
I was now married to a woman who worked hard seven days a week so I could remain retired. I owned multiple homes and had responsibility for a lot of people. With all the ambulance-chasing attorneys out there, even a righteous shooting would put it all in jeopardy. I was too old to start over.
"Come on!" I could hear the robber yelling at the waitress as he scooped up the large denomination bills she'd dropped and scattered across the countertop before tipping over the coffee pot on them. He kept glancing back over his shoulder but was having a difficult time seeing the dark streets outside through the semi-reflective sheets of plate glass.
Frustrated, he raised his revolver and fired a shot into the ceiling. Even from where I stood, the Magnum’s discharge was deafening. My ears started ringing. This dip-wad definitely meant business and was loaded for bear.
The discharge was louder than even he'd anticipated, and he was thrown into panic mode. He scooped up the half-filled pillowcase, ignoring the scattered five- and ten-dollar bills, and dashed for the door.
I was hoping he'd exit to his right, which would take him away from where I stood beside the tree. He, of course, ducked to his left, bent over as if expecting a fusillade of bullets to greet him.