by Steve Gannon
Laughter forced McGowan to pause. What’s more,” he finally continued, “Detective Kane was not even present at the time of the gassing. He had just suffered a small emergency of a personal nature and had to run to a local drugstore to buy some tampons.”
Everyone again raised his voice in full-throated laughter. McGowan waved his hands for silence. “Kane’s right about one thing, though,” he said. “It is true that I was Detective Mercer’s TO when he first came on the force, and right from the start I sensed he would go a long way on the job. Beneath that thick skull is a razor-sharp mind, as the following tale will demonstrate: Arnie and I were working a series of robberies over in Baldwin Hills. Some guys were mugging drunks coming out of the local bars, so Arnie and I started trading off hanging out in various sleaze joints, wearing a wire and acting as decoys—with the other guy in a car around the corner ready to swoop in for the bust. Not long into it I exited some shit-hole late one night, and these two punks step out of an alley next door.
“They brace me up against the wall. One of them has a knife; the other’s hefting a brick. The one with the knife says, ‘Gimme the money.’ I’m stalling, waiting for the cavalry to show, beginning to wonder if my wire’s still working. When Arnie doesn’t make his appearance, I figure I’m on my own. ‘No problem,’ I say, reaching under my coat for my weapon. As soon as they see my piece, they take off. I grab one. The other guy gets away.
“Better late than never, Arnie comes flying blind around the corner with his lights off. He accidentally hits the runner doin’ about thirty and knocks him halfway down the block. I’ve got the first guy down. Arnie jumps out and collects the track star. He can’t believe how far the guy flew and all he has is a dislocated shoulder. The perp’s moanin’ and groanin’ when Arnie drags him back—why are we hassling him, he didn’t do shit—the usual. ‘Didn’t do shit?’ says Arnie. ‘Hell, even if we don’t nail you for robbery, we’ve got you on a charge that’ll stick in any court of the land.’ ‘What’s that?’ the guy asks.”
McGowan paused. Then, lowering his voice, “It was at this point I realized that Arnie had a true genius for police work,” he said, coming to the end of his story. “Anybody guess what charge he came up with?”
“Leaving the scene of an accident!” Kane yelled from the back.
“Exactly,” said McGowan, grinning at the renaissance of laughter and clapping inspired by his story.
Kane joined in the ovation. Then, knowing from past experience how much Arnie hated to speak at public gatherings, he started chanting, “Speech! Speech! Speech!” Others quickly echoed his call. Arnie scowled at Kane, then reluctantly rose to his feet.
“Gentlemen,” he said self-consciously, his eyes sweeping the room. “First off I want to thank Gassman for that horseshit tale. I would also like to express my heartfelt appreciation to all the rest of you for attending. I realize all too well the sacrifice you have made tonight, not being with your wives and children to come down here and drink with a bunch of degenerate fellow officers.”
At this point Arnie was forced to wait out a cacophony of whistles and foot stomping.
“A lot of you have expressed wonder,” he continued when the noise had died down, “that someone so obviously in the prime of life as yours truly would choose to retire. To that I can only reply: When it comes time to cash in your chips, hardly anyone ever complains about not having worked enough. I, for one, don’t plan on making that mistake. Nonetheless, I have to admit there are a few things I’m going to miss on the job. There are some things I’m not gonna miss, too.”
“There’s a downside to bein’ a cop?” Banowski hollered in mock disbelief, inspiring another round of laughter.
Ignoring the interruption, Arnie took a long pull on his drink and plunged ahead. “I remember being a raw P-two graduating from the academy, green as they come—thinking I was going to make a difference, do some good. Superman with a badge and a pension plan. Like all of you, I got over that real quick, put my ideals behind me, and did the best I could. Why? I don’t know myself. Maybe just because somebody has to. But after twenty-five years on the force I’m not gonna miss being stuck at a desk shuffling papers, takin’ shit from the gold braids, and putting up with departmental bullshit. I won’t miss overtime cutbacks and last-minute scheduling changes, second-guessing myself because I think I might do something wrong and wind up looking like an idiot, drinking stale coffee on stakeouts, worrying about my clearance rate, and seeing people’s eyes glaze over at parties when I tell ’em I’m a cop. Last of all, I definitely won’t miss a couple areas of our profession that nobody talks about much: drinking, divorce, drug abuse, and losing friends who happen to go through the wrong door.”
Arnie hesitated, seeming lost in thought. Finally he continued. “I know some of you younger guys are bucking for homicide. The cream of the crop, the top of the heap, right? Well, if you succeed, lemme tell you what you’ll find when you get there. Most of your cases will be stupid, brutal, and uncomplicated. Eighty percent will be domestic—husbands killing wives, mothers killing children, kids killing kids. The motivations will range from who’s-screwing-who to a fight over somebody’s changing the TV channel. The weapons will include just about anything you can name: guns, cinder blocks, knives, shovels, fists, scissors, frying pans. Of the five to ten percent of your cases that turn out to be true whodunits, you’ll be lucky if somebody, probably a fellow officer, hasn’t screwed up the scene by the time you get there. And once you have your suspect in interrogation, you’re going to discover that after a little lying they can’t keep their mouths shut. Then, when you get to court, you’ll watch your case plea-bargained away, placed on the inactive docket, or maybe the guy’ll simply walk on a technicality. On the rare occasions when everything goes right, the press will step in and make you look like shit anyway. Those are the things I’m not gonna miss.”
An uncomfortable silence had fallen over the room. With some embarrassment, Arnie realized he’d thrown a damper on the proceedings with his vitriolic speech. Nevertheless, he plowed on. “Now, having got that off my chest, and so you don’t get the impression I’ve been bellyaching, which I guess I have, let me say there is one thing I’m going to miss, and miss a lot.”
“What’s that, Mercer?” Lieutenant Long shouted from the back. “Badging your way out of traffic tickets?”
“Doughnuts?” suggested Deluca.
“Stakeout pizza?” offered someone else.
Arnie smiled. “Nope,” he answered, glancing around the room. “It’s working with you guys. That’s what I’ll miss. And with that said, I ask you to join me in a toast.” Arnie raised his glass.
Every officer in the room stood and lifted his drink. “Here’s to the Los Angeles Police Department,” Arnie said solemnly. “And to you, who despite all its failings, make it one of the finest law-enforcement institutions in the world.”
After everyone to a man had drained his glass, Arnie continued in a lighter tone. “Now, last off, I want to thank my longtime friend and partner, Dan Kane, for organizing this little shindig. Although most of you don’t know it, Dan’s had a lot on his mind lately—medical problems and such—but he’s not a man to trouble others with his worries. As always, he puts his friends before himself, so I ask you to once more raise your drinks and join me in wishing Detective Daniel Kane a long life, continued success in his career, and the best of luck in his upcoming hysterectomy.” Arnie sat amid a tumult of cheers, satisfied he had properly reset the mood of the evening.
And so, the business of speeches and testimonials behind them, the men of the Los Angeles Police Department began drinking in earnest. As expected, the evening quickly deteriorated to a debacle of rising volume and sinking propriety, with chairs toppling and glasses breaking amid an atmosphere of good-natured roughhousing.
Having unobtrusively continued drinking only Coke, Kane ran interference, acting as the group’s liaison to various restaurant personnel periodically sent to seek an abatement
of the noise, which grew steadily more obnoxious as the night wore on. He brushed aside all complaints with universal good humor. Along with a continuing supply of beer and liquor, he prudently directed that platters of potato skins, nachos, and chicken wings be brought with each round of drinks to sober the men. For those who had to leave early, he called cab transportation, arranging for their cars to be left overnight in the parking lot. Last, and most important to the Fox Inn’s manager, he promised to pay for all damages, tip well, and never return.
Undaunted, the levity continued. Their cocktail waitress, increasingly terrorized as the party spiraled toward anarchy, became conspicuously absent during the later hours. As a result, the group routinely required someone to run to the bar for fresh libations, and being one of the few celebrants steady enough to make the trip, Kane was unanimously elected.
As he elbowed his way through the crowded room outside on his fourth refueling mission, a waitress timidly plucked at his arm, informing him he had a call from his wife.
25
Exhausted, Travis sat in a small alcove on the fifth floor of the hospital. Down a green corridor to the left he could see the nurses’ station; to the right he could make out a pair of wide swinging doors marked Authorized Personnel Only. In one of the sterile, brightly lit chambers beyond, he knew Tommy lay under the surgeon’s knife.
Excepting brief and fitful snatches, Travis hadn’t slept for nearly thirty-six hours. He ached with a bone-deep weariness of total fatigue, both physical and mental. Running, walking, and jogging the eighteen miles of mountainous terrain back to the Mineral King ranger station had taken longer than expected, and then he had been forced to wait another frustrating forty-five minutes until the emergency medical team from the Ash Mountain station arrived. Praying Tommy would still be alive, he had ridden back in the helicopter and shown them where he’d left his brother.
They had found Tommy still unconscious. All attempts to revive him on the flight to the hospital had failed. Travis had seen the look the park medic had given his assistant when he’d folded back Tommy’s eyelids and checked his pupils. Even from where he’d been sitting, Travis had noticed that one appeared larger than the other, as vitreous and unchanging as death.
The pilot had radioed ahead on the flight in, advising the hospital they were bringing in a head-injury victim, and an emergency crew had been waiting on the helipad when they had arrived. Travis had followed the gurney as they’d wheeled Tommy into emergency admitting. While others tended to his brother and a hospital official called their parents, an ER doctor had bandaged Travis’s hands, then sutured the gash on his forehead. By the time he’d finished, the triage personnel had already transferred Tommy to an operating room on the fifth floor. Travis hadn’t seen him since.
Now, as he fought to stay awake, Travis reviewed his actions. Could I have done more? he wondered miserably. Could I have reached him quicker, rappelled down faster, made better time on the way back? Even a few minutes might have made a difference. Just a few minutes …
Around him, as doctors in green surgical scrubs paused for charts and the central station and white-clad nurses wheeled trays of medications down the hall, Travis remained in his alcove, watching the clock above the door ticking out the seconds and minutes and hours of his nightmare. And gradually, as the night wore on, his eyes began to close. He slept.
And as he slept, he dreamed.
“Come on, Trav. You can do it.”
He looks up.
Tommy is forty feet above, his hands and feet jammed into the crack. He’s younger somehow, can’t be more than twelve or thirteen. “Come on,” Tommy calls again. “Try.”
He puts his hand in the crack, feeling the rough crystals of quartz monzonite digging into his fingers. Joshua Tree National Monument, an isolated part of his mind observes with surreal detachment. We’re in Indian Cove campground, doing one of the climbs Dad started us on when we were kids. But how … ?
“Forget Travis and get moving, Tommy,” another voice commands. “We don’t have all day.”
He glances over at his father. He’s belaying Tommy, with the top-rope he set up earlier wrapped behind his back, as he’d taught them. The rope ascends to a fixed bolt above the first belay point, then down to Tommy’s harness. Dad squints up the face of the rock. “Let’s go!”
“What about Travis? Doesn’t he get a turn?”
“He can have one right now. Go ahead, boy. Give it a try.”
He looks up at Tommy, then turns to his father. “Don’t I need a belay?”
“You’ll be okay. Just don’t go up too far.”
Travis tries the crack, jamming his hands and feet into the rock the way he saw Tommy do it. Slowly, he moves up. The break in the face is narrow at the beginning, providing excellent support for his small hands and feet, but before long it widens. He looks down. He’s eight feet up without protection. “That’s it for me,” he says, dropping clumsily to the ground. He tears the skin on his knuckles as he slips from the rock.
“Not bad for a first try,” Dad says. “And you’ll do better next time. I’ll rope you up when Tommy gets to the ledge.”
“I’m not sure I can do this one, Dad. Can I try an easier climb?”
“You’re gonna do this one, kid. You’re better than you think.”
“But—”
“No buts. You can do it. And you will.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Attaboy.” Then, to Tom, “Damn it, Tom. Move!”
Tommy grins and starts up once more, heading for the belay ledge. As he’s about to surmount the final difficulty, his left hand slips. His right hand can’t hold him. He topples backward. The rope catches him, but he winds up inverted, one foot still stuck in the crack above.
“Damn,” Dad yells, pulling hard on the rope, vainly trying to lift Tommy so he can dislodge his trapped foot. The rope drag against the rock is too great.
Tommy screams in pain.
Dad’s eyes search his surroundings, looking for a way to tie off the rope. The picnic table is too far away. So is the car. “There’s nothing to tie to,” he yells up to Tommy. “I have to stay on the rope. Travis, climb up and help him.”
“Dad, I …”
“Get up there!”
“Please help me,” Tommy screams.
“Goddammit, Travis! Get up there!”
He places his hands on the rock, his mouth filling with the coppery taste of fear. He starts up. He hesitates at the first difficulty, then forces himself to continue. He peels from the face and lands on his back. Hard. Both hands are bleeding. He can’t breathe.
“Get up, Travis. He’s your brother.”
“Dad, I can’t …”
“Get up!”
Again he tries. Again he fails.
Inexplicably, Petrinski is now belaying the rope. “What are you afraid of, Travis? Get up.”
“I can’t.”
“He’s your brother, Travis. Don’t you want to help him? Do you hate him so much you won’t help him?”
“I don’t hate him!”
“I think you do.”
“No!”
“Then get up!”
“Please, Trav. Help me …”
“Get up!”
His eyes fill with anger and frustration. He rises from the ground and lowers his head, feeling helpless and small, hating himself for his weakness. He trembles as he again places his hands in the crack, knowing he’ll never forgive himself for his cowardice. As though sensing his terror, the rock itself begins to shudder beneath his hands, trembling with the same fear that has locked him in its hateful grip, shaking, shaking …
“Wake up, boy!”
Travis opened his eyes. He found himself staring into the angry face of his father. Kane released Travis’s shoulders, allowing him to slump back into his chair. “You have some explaining to do, kid.”
“Dad …”
“Talk. What the hell’s going on?”
Travis’s mouth went dry. “Where …
where’s Mom?”
“She’s over there trying to get some news,” said Kane. “Talk.”
Travis peered past the looming bulk of his father, spotting Catheryn speaking to an older woman at the nurses’ station. She glanced over at him and smiled reassuringly, then resumed her conversation. Travis returned his gaze to his father and shook his head, wondering where to start.
Construing his son’s action as a refusal, Kane grabbed Travis’s shirt and jerked him to his feet. “Tell me what happened!”
Travis’s eyes blurred. “Tommy fell, Dad. He fell. I did the best I could, then went for help.”
“You left him? He was hurt and you left him?”
“Dad, you don’t understand …”
“I understand just fine. You and your brother lied to me. You climbed that wall anyway, didn’t you?”
Travis lowered his head.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.”
Travis raised his eyes.
“Answer.”
“Yes, sir. We climbed the wall anyway.”
“And when something went wrong, you left your brother when he needed you.”
“No, sir. That’s not the way it happened.”
Kane continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I swear, if this screws up Tommy’s football scholarship, I’m going to wring his neck.”
Travis remained silent, wishing Tommy’s football scholarship were the only thing in jeopardy. Kane glared for several seconds without speaking, inspecting Travis’s bandaged hands and the dressing on his forehead. For some reason the injuries seemed to inflame him even more. He tightened his grip on Travis’s shirt. As he started to issue another warning, Catheryn rushed over. With surprising strength she wrenched free Kane’s hand. “Don’t,” she said, her voice smoldering with anger.