by Lex H Jones
C arl’s mind was a mess as he walked the distance to Smedley’s pharmacy. It would have been quicker to take a cab, but he needed the walk and the time it would bring him. If his head wasn’t at least partly clear when he arrived at his destination then nothing would be gained from going there in the first place. How could Smedley be mixed up with Petroni and his large-scale operations? There was ‘out of character’ and then there was this. The Smedley’s pharmacy had been there as long as Carl could remember; first run by the current Smedley’s grandfather, then his father, and now Kenny himself. All three of them had been honest guys making an honest buck. They wouldn’t even overprice their products, which could easily be done given what dumbass sick people will pay for meds they think they need. Something was very wrong at the pharmacy, and no question.
Limbo greeted Carl with its usual mixed aura of light and dark, a thin veil of fake joy wrapped around a black core of desolation. The whole damn section of the city could be summarised with the image of smiles painted on toothless grins and neon light-bulbs filled with dead flies. Smedley’s Pharmacy had its own illumination outside, but it was a simple logo of a red cross and the name of the owner in the middle. Carl came here a lot, every month in fact, and had done as long as he could remember. He refused to pick up his pill prescription from the hospital pharmacies as he could never guarantee that it would actually be there waiting for him. With Kenny there was no such worry. Carl would turn up on the seventh of each month to find a neatly rolled-up brown bag waiting for him. As he approached now, Carl noticed something that caught his eye immediately; there was no board over the large window nearest the till. That window was always boarded up, because every time Kenny replaced it some crack-head dipshit broke into the place. Now it was a clean sheet of glass, unbroken and naked to the world. Carl supposed that it could be new, but why would Kenny change his mind about never paying to have the damn thing replaced again?
“Hey Kenny,” Carl nodded as he entered the pharmacy, squinting as he always did under the bright strip-lights on the roof.
“Little early for your refill, Carl,” the small, overweight pharmacist smiled at him between handfuls of the potato chips he held. “Not overdosing, I hope?”
“Nah. If I was gonna do that then I’d take better stuff than the crap you give out,” Carl joked. “So how have you been, Kenny?”
“No change since last month,” Kenny shrugged.
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“I hear otherwise, that’s all,” Carl replied with a slightly narrowed gaze as he studied Kenny and noticed the beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
“So my doctor says I gotta lose a few pounds for my heart, or whatever. Who cares? I know medicine, I know about shit like that, it ain’t up to him to tell me about my own health, you know? Arrogant prick,” Kenny scoffed as he wolfed down another handful of potato chips.
“Not what I’m talking about, Kenny.”
“No? Then what’s bugging you?”
“What’s with the window? Thought you were done replacing it?” Carl asked, nodding towards the new pane of glass on the left-hand wall.
“Insurance is a wonderful thing, Carl. I ain’t got to pay for shit anymore.”
“You don’t believe in insurance, you never did. Used to say it was like paying for stuff that might never happen.”
“A man can change, Carl.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” Carl sighed. “Who paid for the window, Kenny?”
“I paid for it, who else would have?”
“Then let me ask you another question; who was it that gave you a guarantee your store wouldn’t be broken into again?” Carl asked as he walked over to the counter where Kenny was sat.
“I, uh... I don’t know what you’re...”
“Cut the crap, Kenny,” Carl demanded, slamming his open hands down on the counter with such sudden volume that Kenny dropped his bag of potato chips on the floor.
“Carl, you don’t understand, man... they just... I...”
“What happened, Kenny? What have you gotten yourself into?”
“It’s... it was my mom. She needed medical stuff, Carl. Stuff I couldn’t afford... they got her on this gas tank thing just so she can breathe. That stuff ain’t free, Carl! I got to pay to help her breathe, can you believe that?”
“That’s why you have insurance, Kenny,” Carl said with a soft sigh. “Go on.”
“I couldn’t afford it, my business doesn’t make enough to... but I couldn’t just... so I started to sell some pills, for more than I usually would. Only, um... not to people who, um... need them.”
“You were selling them to crack-heads?”
“Please don’t arrest me, Carl. If I went to jail then my mom would... I mean, she wouldn’t have anyone to...”
“Keep talking, Kenny, ‘cause I got the feeling you ain’t told me everything yet,” said Carl. “Then we’ll decide what I’m obligated to do about it.”
“Well, I was selling some pills to the addicts and stuff, the ones who used to rob me, ironically... and I started making enough to help my mom get her stuff, but then, well… it got out of hand. I couldn’t fill my actual prescriptions so I, um... started to substitute pills...”
“For what?” Asked Carl.
“Sugar Pills. Basic painkillers like ibuprofen. Anything that wouldn’t be harmful, you know?”
“Holy shit,” Carl gasped, as things started to piece themselves together in his mind. “Was Judge White getting his calcium meds from you?”
“Um, yeah, he was. His wife would pick them up. Man, she was hot, I used to look forward to Wednesday when she would...”
“She’s dead, Kenny,” Carl snapped.
“What? She... she is?”
“Taylor’s pirate crew killed her. Just like they tried to kill me.”
“Kill you? Oh shit. Oh shit, Carl, they didn’t say that they’d... oh shit...”
“And the Judge died because he took a lot of pills everyday that ended up firing up his heart a little too much. Could Ibuprofen do something like that if you take too much and are kind of heavyset to start with?”
“Yes, it could. But I didn’t think that he was taking so many that it might…”
“How many prescriptions have you been substituting, Kenny? What else is going on here?”
“I just picked a few names at random, you know? If I chose all the diabetics or all the guys with bad hearts then it would be obvious that something was wrong if they got sick or...”
“If they died.”
“Carl, I swear to God I didn’t want to... but... my mom, if you could see her...”
“Did you change any birth control pills? Meds to stop epileptic seizures?” Carl asked, recalling Amber DuBois getting pregnant despite her pills, and her sister’s client who died in front of her.
“Yeah, a couple of each I think...” Kenny nodded nervously, sweat dripping from his podgy nose onto the counter.
“Jesus, Kenny... do you have any idea what you’ve... there was a girl, nineteen years old, who got killed by her pimp because she got pregnant. You’re responsible for that, do you understand?”
“Carl, I’m sorry... I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t want it to go this far. I started to get worried, started to think about the people who might be... might get sick and stuff, so I... I wanted to stop doing it. But...”
“Someone else got in on it, didn’t they?” Carl asked with a deep exhalation through his nose.
“Yeah,” Kenny nodded, wiping the sweat from his head.
“How did Petroni hear about it?”
“I was giving meds to one of his nephews for a rash he’d gotten. It didn’t go away so he came back and threatened me, said I’d given him bad pills. I realised that he was one of the ones who—”
“Fucking Christ, Kenny! You switched the pills for a family member of a Mafia boss? Are you insane or just retarded?”
“I didn�
��t know who he was, I don’t know about stuff like that...” Kenny said quietly. “But I had to tell him what had happened, he threatened me, he... he had a gun... he said he’d forget all about it if I let his uncle in on the deal. I didn’t want to, I was done with the whole thing, but...”
“Carlito Petroni isn’t a man you say ‘no’ to, is he?” Carl nodded. “So now he’s paying for your mom’s medication, your new window, and keeping the shit-heads away from your door. And you’re stuck in the great big hole that you started to dig yourself.”
“I know, I know... I want to stop all this, but...”
“And now they want me dead because your new benefactor evidently heard about the cases I was investigating... wouldn’t surprise me to learn he had moles in my own station... and he thinks I might be getting close to the truth. Fei Ling White and Felicity DuBois are just side lines, people who were close to the victims and it’s smart to get rid of them ‘just in case’.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want any of this. I just needed some money, I swear to God.”
“You should have called me, Kenny.”
“I didn’t think... I just... I’ve never been in any situation like this, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Carl!”
“I want to help you, Kenny, I do,” Carl sighed. “But I keep picturing the face of the girl who washed up on the shore of the Styx because of you... and it’s all I can do not to pull my gun on you.”
“Please don’t hurt me, Carl. I... I’ll testify, I’ll do whatever it takes, but... I can’t go to jail or anything. My mom doesn’t have anyone else. You gotta understand that.”
“I do,” Carl nodded, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes. As he opened them again he put his hands on the counter and suddenly noticed something just under the lip of the customer-facing side where he was stood. “Kenny... you had any other customers in here tonight?”
“A guy came in about ten minutes before you,” Kenny nodded. “He wasn’t one of Petroni’s boys, I don’t think.”
“What did he look like?” asked Carl, putting his hand around the small object he had noticed and removing it with a sharp pull.
“Quite tall, bald head. Weird tats on his hands,” Kenny said nervously. “Is he one of Petroni’s boys? Are they checking on me?”
“He’s not one of Petroni’s boys,” Carl said with a deep swallow, looking at the small black microphone surveillance device that had been placed under the counter. “Did he say anything to you?”
“Just bought some headache pills, I think. Over the counter stuff...” Kenny stammered as he wrung his hands one over the other.
“There might be more of these things, if you didn’t notice this one...”
Carl moved around the store quickly checking for any further devices that might have been planted there for the purpose of listening in on what Kenny had to say. Pope had known the pharmacist was involved with the death of Amber DuBois from his earlier conversation with Carl, but the detective had never imagined that he’d go to this much trouble to find out how. Why did he even care what this pharmacist had to say? It was Carl who’d been targeted, not Pope.
“Alright, I can’t see any others. He must’ve known that I’d most likely talk to you right there at the counter, and...” Carl stopped as he saw that Kenny had left the counter, taken his coat, and was quickly making his way to the exit. “Kenny, don’t go outside!”
The warning didn’t come quickly enough to save the fat pharmacist from the gunshot that split the cold night air in half. It screamed down from the roof of his own store, tearing through the back of his skull as he ran away from whatever invisible opponent he was imagining. Terrified out of his mind and not even close to logical thought, Kenny hadn’t even known what he was trying to escape from or where he was going. He’d just wanted to run. Evidently he wasn’t fast enough.
“Shit. SHIT!” Carl yelled.
He glanced left and right and noticed the door at the back of the counter, then quickly made his way towards it. The door opened onto a stairwell that led up to a small apartment. As Carl ran through, he noticed that it had signs of being lived in, and it occurred to him that perhaps Kenny had actually lived above his own store. Not anymore. Kenny had slept in this dump for the last time. Carl found the emergency exit that led to a final staircase and finally the roof, which he came to just in time to see a black-clad figure vaulting the small gap between the roof of the pharmacy and the adjacent building. With a deep breath Carl ran after him and leapt the small gap, landing badly on his ankle and stumbling forwards to keep his balance.
“Pope!” Carl yelled, hoping to distract his prey as he knew he had no hope of physically catching up to him.
“What do you want, Detective? What’s to be gained by following me?” The hit-man asked as he turned to face his pursuer.
Carl didn’t answer as he closed the gap between himself and Pope, but merely leapt at him in a football tackle and grabbed him around the waist. They both hit the roof hard, but Pope took the brunt of the fall on his back, leaving Carl free to instantly hit him across the jaw with a hard right hook.
“You didn’t need to kill him, you prick!” Carl yelled.
Pope narrowed his eyes and moved himself beneath Carl’s weight, positioning his arms in a way that he could flip the larger man from his person and get back up to his feet. Carl came at him again, swinging with a right hook that Pope successfully blocked, and then a straight left jab to the chest. The hit-man wasn’t so lucky with that one, staggering back and holding his chest where the blow had forced the air from him.
“He was part of it,” Pope said weakly, one hand on his chest as he hunched over slightly.
“I told you to take Felicity out of here, then you’d both be safe!” Carl yelled as he kept his fists clenched and his arms raised, just as he would have done when squaring off against an opponent in the old boxing ring.
“This wasn’t about the hit that was put on you and her,” Pope explained as he stood upright, grimacing slightly at the pain in his chest. He’s forgotten how hard Carl could hit and now he was suffering through a tough reminder. “Felicity loved her sister more than you could know, Detective. Do you have any idea how many times she tried to stop her getting involved in the same industry that she herself was forced to work in? She’s famous in her trade because she does things… allows things to be done to her... that others don’t. Do you know why? Because she saw it as the only way to make enough money to get her sister out of here!”
“And now she’s dead before Felicity got the chance, I know,” Carl nodded. “And that’s gotta sting like hell, but what exactly does that have to do with you?”
“I love her!” Pope yelled, losing his cool for the first time in Carl’s recollection. “The first time I met her... she was so young and fragile... I just wanted to wrap my arms around her and take her somewhere safe... but I didn’t. My life should have been kept well away from hers. Then her sister came out to the city as well, and she finally had a reason to leave. By that time she didn’t know me the way I wanted. I’d kept away, I thought she’d forgotten about me.”
“She hasn’t,” Carl stated firmly. “You’re pissed off at yourself because you didn’t get both of them out of here when you had the chance. Now it’s too late. I get that, I really do. You have no idea how much of a goddamn failure I feel as a cop every fucking time a girl her age finds her way to a slab in the morgue at the back of my office... but you didn’t need to kill Kenny. That was out of line, even by your standards.”
“He was part of it,” Pope repeated. “His little money-making scheme led to her getting pregnant, which led to her running from Dice and being killed by her new pimp. It all starts with that fat coward down there.”
“It doesn’t end with him, though, does it? What about Dice? And Petroni? You actually going to go after a US Senator as well?”
“I’ll do what I have to.” Pope nodded.
“Get out of here,” Carl sighed. “Just go.”
“I was expecting you to actually arrest me this time.”
“If I make a move on you then one of us is going to end up dead, the other something close to it. That leaves Felicity alone, and right now that’s not a good idea. Petroni still wants her dead, so—”
“She needs us both.”
“We’re not okay, Pope, you understand? Taking Kenny down that way was over the line. The guy just wanted to help his mom, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you understand that?”
“I understand, but that doesn’t grant him absolution. He ran his own business, he could have taken a bank loan, committed insurance fraud, or even some form of embezzlement. There were numerous options available to him that wouldn’t have cost any lives.”
“He was desperate and he was an idiot. That doesn’t always lead to the smartest decisions.”
“For what it’s worth, I’ll light a candle at the church for his safe passage. I may not be able to grant him forgiveness, but the Lord will.”
“Hallelujah,” Carl sighed, turning to look out across the city. Despite the fact he hadn’t heard a sound, he knew without question that Pope would long since have gone by the time he turned back around.
Chapter Thirty-Two;
Rest in Peace
C arl had waited for the meat wagon to come and collect Kenny’s body, and the CSI's to examine the scene. He explained what Kenny had told him, and that he was shot by an unidentified assailant on the roof. Glass would back that up from the trajectory of the bullet wound, but he’d be unable to trace the bullet itself. The guy had probably pulled dozens of unmarked bullets from Pope’s targets over the years. Perhaps he knew who they came from, perhaps he didn’t. No one in the police department would go after Pope either way, as that would require growing a pair of balls. The crazy thing was, if they actually bothered to send a SWAT team after the guy, they’d take him down no question. He was dangerous as hell, sure, but he wasn’t a superhero or a vampire or some other comic book bullshit. Pope was a well-trained, ahletic guy who could kill six people with five bullets, but if you hit him between the eyes with one of your own, he’d go down as easily as anyone else. It’d never happen, though. Any mention of “His Holiness” around most of the City’s crooked cops would be enough to make the boys in blue wet their regimental pants. If ten of them went after him, Pope himself would be brought down, but maybe six cops would come back. No one had the guts to risk being one of the other four, so he was left to carry on doing what he did best.