The Last Exit

by Michael Kaufman

  Leah said, “Zach told us about your new interest.”

  “My what?”

  “Gabriel Cohen’s work.”

  She scrunched up her face in a look of incomprehension.

  “But you were reading about the DC18, weren’t you?”

  Just then, Zach came into the kitchen. “That’s not what I said. I said you left a piece of paper on my dresser with a URL and his name.”

  “Oh, that!” Jen said. “He’s some old guy at the retirement home. Says he was a journalist.”

  Leah said, “That’s kind of like saying, ‘Albert Einstein says he was a scientist.’”

  Raffi said, “He was a local hero, at least in our circles. Won two Pulitzers.”

  “He figured out I was a cop and wanted me to read what he wrote back then,” Jen said. “That’s all.”

  “It’s been several years,” Leah said, “but I’m guessing he’s still worth reading, especially for a woman in the police force. Dear,” she said turning to Raffi, “I think that’s at a full boil.”

  The next minutes were the ones needing maximum concentration. Raffi stirred the boiling jam so it didn’t burn, and when he turned off the stove, he skimmed off white foam. Jen pulled trays of sterilized jars from the oven. Leah ladled jam into the jars. Zach pulled lids out of the boiling water and plopped them on top. Jen screwed the tops down.

  They cleaned splattered jam from the counter, the stove, and the floor.

  Leah counted. “Fourteen jars! Fantastic.”

  At one jar of raspberry jam every four months, they’d finish the last of them about three years after Raffi and Leah were dead.

  25

  Monday, July 30—07:31:17

  Jen was feeling pretty damn good. I figure I’m usually the first to know.

  “Nice weekend?”

  “On Friday night, Zach and I went dancing to celebrate the end of my probation. On Saturday, we made jam.”

  I guess humans find that exciting. But when she feels good, I feel good.

  Got buzzed by P.D. and Les. “Mariam Zhariri died yesterday. We’re going to interview her spouses.”

  Jen didn’t feel so good anymore.

  It was the part of her job she hated the most. I told her she was doing important work. She knew this was my program speaking—garbage I seem to automatically trot out at moments like this, even though I know it’s gratuitous and superficial.

  Daniel and Cari were inconsolable. Jen and Les apologized over and over for bothering them, but Les said he knew that Mariam had obtained an illegal version of the treatment—neither Daniel nor Cari denied this—and that Mariam wasn’t the only one who had been harmed. We needed to catch whoever was pushing this stuff before more people were killed.

  Daniel’s right hand gently rubbed his pregnant belly, and I wondered if they were worried he was going to lose the baby. Cari had her arm around his shoulders, as if she could protect him from our intrusive questions.

  But our invasion of their mourning was all for naught. Neither had any idea where Mariam had obtained the fake treatment or who had administered it. They said Mariam had gone for two treatments, one week apart. This was new information.

  Jen was thinking about this and missed Les’s next question, but it was clear from their answer that he had asked them how she had gotten the treatment and who had administered it. Cari said they didn’t know. Mariam hadn’t wanted either of them getting in trouble if she got caught.

  Then Jen asked whether they owned a Bible or had ever been to the computer co-op. They’d heard of the first, but the answer was no; double no to the second.

  In the end, it was simple. Mariam was terrified of getting ROSE. She knew the only way she could receive the treatment was if her parents exited and if Daniel were to give up the baby. She wasn’t going to let either of those things happen, and she paid with her life.

  * * *

  Police HQ. A new building that was supposed to echo the police stations of old, with sunset-orange bricks and offices with transom windows. Add a few spittoons, fat black telephones, and segregated washrooms, and you’d have it made.

  Grumps Barfield was one of the department lawyers and damn if he didn’t fit right in. He was a white guy with slicked-back brown hair, a baby-blue pinstripe shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and baggy white linen trousers held up by suspenders that he tucked his thumbs into when he spoke. He had a gold pocket watch attached to a fine chain—I didn’t even know what the damn thing was until Jen told me. I figured that Barfield had memorized To Kill a Mockingbird as a child and was now living the dream, soft Southern drawl and all.

  “Well, Detective,” Barfield said. It came out as “whale, duh-tayek-tive.” And really, really slow. “It looks to me we’re havin’ a heck of a showdown here with one … very … rich customer.”

  Jen jumped in with a rat-a-tat-tat paragraph about the assault charges. Her strategy for the rest of the meeting was to anticipate his next slow homily and fill in a lot of blanks.

  But the conversation was inevitably recaptured by Barfield. “You can see, Detective, the upshot is that y’all are in trouble up to that fine little neck of yours.” He bent back his baby finger. Then did the same with his ring finger. “The second upshot is it makes the whole department appear like a gang of thugs. Y’all can appreciate that, can’t you now?” More fingers, more upshots: bad for her captain. And bad if the implant program got exposed.

  “I’d hate to see y’all lose your job over this.” He picked up his tablet with her personnel file. “Y’all’ve already been disciplined once this year.”

  And on it went. A slow, relentless discussion about the case, what Jen had actually done, what I’d actually done.

  “And I see you met up with Mr. O’Neil before his son’s trial,” Barfield said.

  “I was ordered to do that.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe so. But y’all see, don’t you, how this sort of thing looks to the general public. Let me tell you this, young lady: whatever you do, don’t you go speakin’ to him again until this is resolved. You hear me now?”

  She said, “Loud and clear.”

  After we left, all I could do was apologize to Jen. I liked how she replied: “Chandler, you screwed up. You’ve apologized. We’re partners. We’re not going to let this get us down.”

  * * *

  Jen, Les, me, and P.D. went cruising for Child’s Play. We probably should have taken bikes, but Les had pulled something on the weekend (which led to an avalanche of sexual innuendos from Jen, two of which I needed her to explain to me, and a third I explained to P.D., who doesn’t like talking to Les—well, anyone, really—about sex).

  We were checking out Michigan Park. There wasn’t a park worth the name anywhere, although there were a couple of dead-grass fields where kids were playing ball. The whole neighborhood felt like someone had dug up a square mile of suburbia and dropped it on DC—the street landscape, detached houses, bored kids, and all. City boy that I am, I instinctively hated it.

  Les was talking to Jen. “Things better with you and Zach?”

  “Another hump we needed to get over.”

  “Love’s a long line of humps.”

  More sexual innuendoes ensued.

  “Love,” said Les, getting the final word in on humps, “is a caravan of camels.”

  “Zach and I are so different from each other,” Jen said.

  “We’re all different. That’s what makes it a relationship.”

  “Oh, wise one, tell me all.”

  “That’s easy. Life—”

  “Shit! Over there!”

  Jen lunged out of the car. It was Child’s Play, wearing a shiny purple jacket. He spotted Jen and took off along the dead-tree-lined street. Les raced ahead in the car to cut him off. Child’s Play slipped between two houses and we followed. Les zoomed up the street to make it around to Puerto Rico Avenue.

  Child’s Play crashed open a metal gate, startled a German shepherd, and scrambled over the back fence, which fr
eed the dog to vent his full fury on us. Saliva flew, deep barks broke the air, and malice blazed in dark eyes that distilled ten millennia of dog resentment against humans for treating them like pets. I sent Jen’s hand to her belt, grabbed her pepper spray, and as the hysterical creature lunged with dreams of tearing lunch from Jen’s face, we shot it into the poor creature’s eyes. Sorry, kid. But the beast got his revenge, because momentum carried his body forward and his teeth cut a gash into Jen’s cheek.

  Jen vaulted the fence, and we were going for the two-hundred-meter record across a vacant lot. Bad choice for the bad guy, Jen thought. Les would arrive from the north in sixteen seconds. South was an exposed road, and west was the barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence barring access to the Metro tracks.

  We had lost time dealing with the dog, but we were gaining again on Child’s Play. Cars were tearing up and down Puerto Rico, and when he ran into the street, one car screeched to a stop and another swerved around him, horn blaring. I thought Child’s Play might be planning on hijacking a car, but instead he yanked off his purple jacket, flung it over the barbed wire, and with surprising agility climbed the fence. As we ran into the roadway, he glanced back at us and with two tugs, ripped his jacket free. He scrambled up the gravel embankment and started crossing the tracks. A train horn blared, a train shot past, and he disappeared from sight.

  By then, we’d also run into the street, where a car slammed on its brakes and skidded to a stop. Jen slapped her hands on its hood and kept running. She wrestled into her gloves, and we were soon over the rusty fence, but as we started up the embankment, a Red Line train blasted out of nowhere—damn, they’re fast— and the combination of her surprise and the hurricane wind sent us tumbling back down, landing us with a thud against the fence. We pulled ourselves up and blazed across the tracks and over the second fence. We looked down the road and saw Les holding Child’s Play by the biceps.

  We reached them and slumped against the side of the car. Les was looking awfully relaxed. “Phew,” he said, “that was one hell of a chase.”

  * * *

  The interrogation room stank of bodies fresh off a chase on another blast-furnace July day. At least it was the second-to-last July day for another year.

  “Child’s Play,” Les said, “staying silent isn’t going to help you.”

  “I’m not being silent. I told you, I don’t know nothing about no Eden.”

  “We didn’t mention Eden,” Les said. “We said ‘the treatment.’”

  Child’s Play sucked in his cheeks like he was going to bite them off from the inside. “Ain’t you clever,” he managed to say.

  Jen said to Les, “Not a bad recovery, was it?”

  “Speaking of which,” Les replied, “you need stitches.”

  Blood had seriously stained the front of her shirt and there was a bloody pile of gauze pads on the floor.

  Jen said, “Think we can get him for assaulting an officer?”

  “Don’t see why not. Maybe you’ll get rabies and die, and then we’ve got him for murder.”

  “We’ve got him for that anyway.” She turned back to Child’s Play.

  “You’re crazy,” he said. “I didn’t murder no one.”

  “You sold Eden. Eden kills people. You’re in for murder.”

  Les said, “Maybe prison won’t be so bad.”

  Jen said to Les. “He won’t have to worry about paying bills until he’s about eighty.”

  “Or decide what to eat for dinner.”

  “Or see his girlfriend.”

  “Or shit in private.”

  Child’s Play finally jumped in. “I told you—”

  But Jen cut him off, her voice losing any playfulness, but still calm. “Child’s Play, I’ve never fucked with you? Have I?” He didn’t disagree. “Well, I’m not fucking with you now.”

  “Then why are you saying shit?”

  “Because that shit is the true shit you’ve fallen into, and I’m trying to throw you a rope to pull yourself out of the sewer.”

  Les said, “Jen, that’s pretty good.”

  Jen shrugged. “Apparently wasted on Child’s Play.”

  We stood up to leave, with no intention of actually doing so.

  “Hang on, man.” Child’s Play scrunched his hand in his hair. “Just hang on. I gotta think.”

  The speed of human thought is appallingly slow at the best of times. I like to picture the human brain as old technology.

  Finally, Child’s Play spoke. “Look. You gotta promise—I don’t know—promise you let me go.”

  We didn’t even bother to answer.

  “Forget it, then,” his mouth said, but everything told us he didn’t mean it.

  This time we did leave.

  We went back an hour later, well after Child’s Play had started yelling that he wanted to talk.

  Les said, “You’ve got one minute to start telling us something we want to know.”

  Child’s Play said, “The thing is, I don’t really know nothing.”

  Les sighed. “Jen, want to go for a beer after work?”

  They discussed it.

  Jen eventually said, “Child’s Play, we have some questions. You give us credible answers that help us catch these bastards and we’ll recommend the DA goes easy on you.”

  He nodded.

  A good grilling takes a lot of time. It ebbs and flows. You play with words. You circle back. You listen for hints and hesitations, anything that will point you in the right direction.

  In the end, this is what we got:

  First, Child’s Play was the weasel we always thought he was. He kept trying to manipulate us. He groveled. He obviously didn’t give a shit about who got hurt.

  Second, he hadn’t been totally lying to Olive and Pancho. He had heard about the counterfeit treatment. He met someone who promised he could get it. But the weasel got out-weaseled, and the guy ripped him off.

  “Where do you think we can find him?”

  “You won’t.”

  “Because …”

  “He’s dead.”

  “You killed him?”

  Child’s Play exploded. “You think I’m talking if I killed him?” You think I’m that stupid?”

  Les said, “Not quite that stupid.”

  “Word is he ripped off one too many people.”

  He told us what he could about him. Assuming the guy was simply a con man, it wasn’t any use to us.

  Third, he admitted he was now “negotiating” with several people to buy the treatment. That’s why he had been in Michigan Heights. One couple was ready to score, and he had been going to pick up their deposit.

  “You guys cost me a bundle,” he said.

  “May have saved you from killing someone,” Les pointed out.

  He shrugged.

  Jen said, “This means you have a new source?”

  He nodded.

  “And you’re going to tell us who they are?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Because you’ll end up like your ex-friend.”

  “He wasn’t no friend. Because I don’t know.”

  “Really.”

  “I’m not shitting you.”

  Les rolled his eyes, perhaps a bit theatrically for my taste, but Child’s Play was a B-movie actor and seemed to bite.

  And gave us the fourth thing, which was the most interesting.

  “It’s the guys who sprung me from the hospital. I don’t know who they are.”

  Les said to P.D., who said to me, who said to Jen, Fuck a duck. We had, of course, assumed it was Gray Suit’s people who got him out—simply because they were the only ones with the power to make him disappear from the records.

  Jen said to me and I said to P.D., who said to Les, Outside.

  Jen said, “Child’s Play, you need to take a leak? Need a coffee? Let’s get you straightened out and continue in ten minutes. What do you say?”

  Twenty minutes later, we returned after playing with this new information every which way.


  Jen said, “Child’s Play, who sprang you?”

  “You’re kiddin’.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I describe them, and I’m dead.”

  Les said, “You don’t describe them, and you spend the next ten to twenty in prison.”

  “Better than dead.”

  “True,” Les said. “But you help us, and I’m sure they’ll put you up for witness protection.”

  “You can arrange that?”

  “Sure,” Les said, stretching the truth … well, lying, actually. “We know exactly who can work that out. But you got to give us something.”

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  But after twenty more minutes of circling around, it seemed he did know. On the one hand, his answers were a letdown. He didn’t have any names. He was appallingly bad at describing the two people who got him out. He said perhaps because he’d still been doped up. We described the woman who was guarding the room that day, and it was clear it hadn’t been her. We even described Gray Suit and his sidekicks, but of course that went nowhere.

  Whoever they were, they named the price for the treatment—it was surprisingly low—and they said Child’s Play could triple it. If he tried to get more, if he screwed them around, they would find out and cut off his legs.

  “Cut off your legs?”

  Child’s Play let out a demonstrative sigh. “It’s an expression. They’re tough guys.”

  He had an address he could contact when he had a confirmed sale. Dark web, I said to Jen, but we took it anyway.

  “You can’t tell us anything about them?”

  “Gang types, all I know.”

  “Gangbangers? Bikers?”

  “No, classier. I figure mob types.”

  “They sprung you from the hospital?”

  “Yeah, tiptoed me straight out.”

  This didn’t make sense. Guys like Child’s Play might have a good nose for cops, but an even better nose for other bad guys, particularly of the scarier variety. So if he said they were gangsters, I would’ve laid odds he was being legit.