“Stop wasting my time. Are you going to do it or not?”
“See?” I said. “Instead of giving us soothing words, you give us abuse. You try to make us feel even more worthless, because you think we’re going to react against it and tell ourselves we’re really okay. We listen to you and think you’re a jerk, but we say to ourselves, ‘Hey, why should I listen to this guy?’ and before you know it, you’ve cured us of our mania and sent us on our merry way. Isn’t that how it goes?”
The voice on the help line gave a rude, audible yawn.
“Hello?” I said. “Are you still there?”
“I’ve been making a sandwich. You were saying?”
“Never mind what I was saying. I’m onto you, and it won’t work. Maybe with some other schlemiel, but not with me, man.”
“What won’t work?”
“The reverse psychology trick. You’ve just proved to me what a lousy world it is that we live in. I don’t want any part of it. I’m going to clean my gun up and blow my brains out.”
“Do you really mean it this time?”
“Of course I mean it! “ I shouted. “If you want to hear it for yourself, just stay on the line. It won’t take very long.”
“You promise? You’re not just pulling my leg?”
“I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“That’s the spirit! Where do you live?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not telling you. Now you believe me, and you want to send somebody over. Somebody from my precinct, maybe, or an ambulance or some goddamn social worker.”
“No,” he said in that calm, level voice of his. “No, I want to come over. I want to see it for myself. Maybe I can even help you do it. That is, if you really want my help —”
“I can take care of it myself, thank you very much.”
“I’m not so sure. You sound chicken to me.”
“Chicken?” I said. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”
“What’s your name?” he asked, unfazed by my suggestion.
“Tom,” I said.
“Tom what?”
“Just Tom, okay? I don’t want you reporting me.”
“I’m not going to report you. You can trust me, Tom. My name’s Ray. I’m your friend Ray. I’m here to help you.”
“Lot of help you’ve given me so far, pal.”
“I have,” Ray said. “Only you just don’t appreciate it. Now why don’t you tell me where you live? I want to come over.”
“As long as you promise not to interfere,” I said.
“Oh, I won’t,” Ray said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
I gave him my address. He said he lived only fifteen blocks away and could be there in ten minutes. We hung up.
I laid out some newspaper and started cleaning my gun.
~ * ~
“Why a nine-millimeter?” Ray asked from across my kitchen table. He was my age, with an altogether too intense look in his eyes. “Why not a revolver? Revolvers never jam. You never would have had this problem. You never would have had to call me.”
“If you must know,” I said, carefully reloading seventeen live rounds into the clip, “I really believed the nine-millimeter was the way to go. Right after I joined the academy, the department had just changed regulations to allow us to carry something more powerful than a thirty-eight.”
“Thirty-eight Special,” Ray beamed. “Standard police issue.”
“Yeah, in the old days,” I said. “Most of us supported the change, but the old-timers were opposed. They kept nagging at us that semiautos were unreliable and prone to jamming.”
“See?” Ray said. “They knew whereof they spoke!”
“They were so scared of the change, they drummed up other reasons. They thought that we youngsters would lose control and empty our clips into every unlucky punk who crossed our path.”
“Did they switch?”
“No. They kept their thirty-eight Specials. Switching would be like ending a love affair. Most of us under forty went for the nine-millimeters, though. We were the ones facing the front-line action. The gangstas were outgunning us, with AK-forty-sevens, sometimes. We had to be on as equal a footing as possible.”
“Thus the Glock,” Ray said admiringly. “It is nice, Tom.”
“Thanks. My Glock and I have been through a lot together. I had to use it once to stop a sixteen-year-old kid who was armed with a beautiful silvery Colt Double Eagle ten-millimeter.”
“Do tell!”
“The kid had just robbed a liquor store. I identified myself and asked him to drop his weapon. He refused to do so. He wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, I guess, and I had little choice but to oblige him.”
“Good for you,” Ray said with a gleam in his eye.
“Ever since, I wished he could have got a bead on me and let fly. Anything to make it seem less like an execution. But to do that, he would have had to have had at least a few shells in his gun. Once the kid was down, we examined his Colt, and we found his magazine just as empty as mine was after I’d shot him.”
“Oh, too bad!” Ray pouted his lips. “Poor Tom!”
“It only takes a second holding that trigger down to let all those slugs come spewing out. I thought I only let him have a few, but the count we did of his chest came up seventeen. “
“Wow! “ Ray said. “And you didn’t get in any trouble?”
“Of course not,” I said. “It was all okay. I’d done what I had to do to protect my fellow officers and the citizenry. My captain, Captain Feliciano, said, ‘Good work, son,’ and gave me this big slap on the back. ‘Don’t sweat it,’ he said. ‘He was asking for it, and you gave it to him. Go home and take a nice long shower. You’ll feel fine by tomorrow. ‘ “
“Your captain sounds like my kind of guy,” Ray said. “Was he right? Did you feel okay about it the next day?”
“Sure, I felt fine. I mean really fine. I believed what my captain said. I’d done my duty. If the kid’s gun had been loaded, I might have gotten a commendation for saving the lives of all those pedestrians standing outside the store to watch all the fireworks. Officer Grant to the rescue. Handshake from the chief. Kudos from the mayor. Champagne all around.”
“Tell me about the other times,” Ray said huskily.
So I told him about the high-speed pursuit up the FDR Drive, when we managed to bring the driver to a stop, and I stayed by my vehicle to cover my partner while he approached the car, and the driver leapt out brandishing a Rossi 851 .38 Special in blued steel. I had no choice but to bring him down. Captain Feliciano later agreed with my course of action, and everything was okay.
Then there was the out-of-control traffic incident, when a Sikh taxi driver cut off a Jamaican bike messenger at a stoplight, and the messenger retaliated by shattering the driver’s side window with his bike lock and beating the driver across the turban with it, and the bloodied driver reached under his seat and pulled out a bright stainless Colt King Cobra .357 Magnum and aimed it at the messenger’s head with a shaky trigger finger. I was on the corner and calling for backup when I saw the gun. I pulled out my Glock, identified myself as a police officer, and told the Sikh to throw down his weapon. I gave him more time than I should have, really, but he kept the gun trained on the messenger. Again, I had no choice. I shot the driver dead and charged the messenger with assault as well as criminal damage to property. We later learned that the driver never understood a word of English, but Captain Feliciano insisted that I’d done the right thing. He even bought me a beer.
“I think this captain of yours has the hots for you,” Ray said. “He lets you get away with murder because he wants to get into your pants.”
“Feliciano? No. If you knew him, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Yes I would,” Ray said. “Isn’t that reason enough to go through with killing yourself? I mean, doesn’t that just disgust you? You’ve killed all these people in the line of duty, and you don’t even get any suspensions or reprimands because you
r captain thinks you’re a dish. Believe me. I may never have met him, but I know human nature. You’re his little buddy, his one special boy. He goes home at night and dreams of you, Tom.”
“I doubt that.” I laughed nervously. “Feliciano’s married.”
“As if that meant anything! Tom, don’t be so naive!”
“I left him a suicide note,” I said.
“You did?” Ray’s dark eyebrows rose. “Can I see it?”
“It’s sealed, taped to the bathroom mirror.”
Ray got up.
“No!” I said. “I told you, it’s sealed.”
“So we’ll reseal it!” Ray said, heading for the bathroom.
“It’s for his eyes only,” I said, getting up and going after him. I don’t want you reading it!”
“I bet it’s a love letter!” Ray shot ahead of me.
“It is not!”
Ray got to the mirror first and snatched the middle envelope of the three, the one clearly addressed to Captain Feliciano.
“Ha-ha!” Ray said, backing up to stand in the bathtub. “I’ve got it.” He ripped open the envelope, started reading it, and began to laugh. “Oh, this is great! I love suicide notes!”
“Give it to me!” I said, reaching out for it.
Ray snatched it away and started reading it aloud:
“‘Dear Tony’—Tony, eh? You two are that buddy-buddy? You don’t call him captain? Oh, well, never mind— ‘Dear Tony, What you see is the end result of my wasted life. I don’t know what ever kept me going this long. I guess it was you. You were always there for me when the going got tough. If it weren’t for you, I don’t think I would have even lasted this far.’— Oh, Tom, this is a riot! — ‘But it’s all catching up with me, Tony. I’m a bad cop, and you know it. I can’t walk into any situation without my gun going off and leaving somebody dead. No matter what you say, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Someone should have taken me off into a room somewhere and punished me.’— Oh, now you’re asking Captain Tony for a spanking! Tom’s been a bad boy! — ‘I don’t deserve to wear this badge. But what else can I do? This was my last chance. If I’m a failure at this, I’ll be a failure at everything else. I’ve failed at life. I’ve got no choice but to end it. Sorry for being such a screwup. Don’t bother sending flowers to the funeral. Save the money for yourself and Stella. Good-bye forever— Tom.”‘
“Give that to me,” I said, finally snatching it away.
“Tom, that is so precious!” Ray said. “Can I have a copy? I could just run this down to the Kinko’s around the corner —”
“No. Get away from me.”
“Oh, Tom! Don’t be like that!”
“I think you’re the one who’s got the hots for me, Ray,” I said, heading back to the kitchen table.
“I shall but love thee better after death,”‘ Ray said. “That’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning, you know.”
“I used to own a Browning,” I said.
I put the letter back in the envelope, resealed it with cellophane tape, and posted it back up on the bathroom mirror.
“What do the other letters say?”
“More of the same. Don’t you dare touch them.”
I grabbed Ray’s collar and threw him out of the bathroom.
“Hey!” he said.
“In fact, I think you’d better leave.”
“Oh, no, Tom. I’ve got to stay and make sure you follow through with this. You might turn back, for all I know. I’d hate to come back here tomorrow and find you’re still alive.”
“Beat it. Out. Sayonara. Asti Spumante.”
I gave him a push toward the front door.
“I knew it,” he said. “You’re chicken. You don’t want me around because you’re too chicken to go through with it. You’re not man enough. You don’t have what it takes to put that gun in your mouth and blow the back of your head off. You’re more of a pansy than I am, Thomas.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Pansy, pansy, pansy,”
“I said shut up!”
“The minute I’m out that door, you’re going to turn around and pout and say, ‘Oh my God! What was I thinking? I can’t go through with it! I love life so much! Life is so good!’ And then you’re going to put your gun away, lock it up in its box, get it out of your sight, and try to get it out of your mind. You’ll go back into your bathroom, rip those suicide notes off the mirror, tear them into confetti, and flush them down the toilet. You’ll look at yourself in the mirror and thank your lucky stars that your gun jammed and you’re still alive. Only I bet it didn’t jam on its own. You fixed it up that way.”
“I did not,” I protested.
“Did too,” Ray said. “It wouldn’t be so hard. You knew just what to do to make that bullet lodge there in the chamber. Maybe you did it unconsciously. Whatever, you didn’t want to do it. Why not? Because you’re weak! You’re not a man at all. You’re just a fluffy little kitten, playing a fun game with a bright, shiny toy. And when the kitten gets tired of playing, it curls up in its little basket and falls asleep. Beddy-bye. Nighty-night. Sweet dreams, little kitty.”
I held Ray by the front of his shirt and gave him a left uppercut to the jaw. He swayed, but I held him up.
“Oh, Tom,” he said. “You didn’t have to hurt me. But the fact that you did only proves my point. What I’m saying is true. You don’t have what it takes to kill yourself. You’re pathetic.”
I let go of Ray, went back to the kitchen table, and stared at the gun. I picked it up and put the last of the parts in place. I slammed the clip firmly into the grip and loaded one more slug directly into the chamber.
“It’s all set to go, now,” I said.
Rubbing his jaw, Ray came back and sat down across from me.
“You sure you’re going to be able to do it?” he asked.
“Sure, I’m sure.”
“If you can’t quite manage it, you could let me.”
“No thanks. I can do it myself.”
“No one would ever know,” Ray said. “I could kill you myself, and no one would ever know. Just by putting that gun in my hands and letting me do the job, why, I’d be a murderer. But you’ve got those notes all neatly prepared — for your landlord, your captain, your mother — and no one would ever suspect a thing. I’ve got no connection to you. We’ve never seen each other before. The only person who knows you called is me, and I won’t tell anyone! “
“That won’t be necessary. I can take care of myself.”
“I’m not so sure,” Ray said. “Let’s see you do it.”
“You better stand back,” I said, turning the Glock around toward me, just outside my mouth. “It might get messy.”
“I know where to sit to get out of the way,” Ray said. “I’ve done this dozens of times.”
“You’ve what?”
“You don’t believe me? You think you’re the only special person in the universe? That’s not the first time I’ve run that ad, you know. You’re a cop, you’re probably aware of how many people commit suicide in this city every year. A lot of them call for help. Some call me. I try to talk them through it over the phone, but every once in a while I get a really special case — like you — and no matter what time of day or night it is, I drop what I’m doing and come over to see how I can help. I was asleep when you called tonight, did you know that? Yet I hopped out of bed and came on over. How’s that for dedication?”
“Then it’s not really a twenty-four-hour help line, is it? When you’re over here helping me, you’re not taking calls.”
“I can only help one person at a time, you know.”
I had the muzzle almost to my mouth, but I was curious:
“How many suicides have you witnessed, exactly?”
“I’ve lost count. Funny, isn’t it? You’d think that a guy like me would keep a log or something to keep track, but I don’t bother with it. Each customer deserves my undivided attention. I don’t want them ending up just another statistic. I
don’t always just witness, you know. Sometimes I assist. It’s perfectly legal, you know.”
“Bull.”
“Assisted suicide? Of course it is! Dr. Kevorkian paved the way. I bet he’s lost count of all his assisted suicides.”
“There’s a difference,” I said. “You’re not a doctor, and you’re not helping people who are terminally ill.”
“Don’t pick nits with me, Tom! Dr. Kevorkian helps people who are in great pain and want out. I’m no different. Everyone who calls me is in excruciating pain. Aren’t you? I mean, Tom, the kind of sickness you have, it just eats at your heart, doesn’t it? It’s painful, and you can hardly bear it.”
The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 Page 8