Caught Stealing

by Charlie Huston

  They’re tight little punches that pepper my lower ribs. And that’s about it for boxing. I flinch back, ducking and turning, and he just plants a good one right on my wound. I give a sound halfway between a scream and a gasp and my body twists back toward the pain, and he flattens his hand into a spear point and drives it into my solar plexus. I fold. He grabs me, puts me into some kind of hold, spins me and drives me back into the stall, kicking the door closed behind us.

  —Fuck Roman. I want the key.

  He’s got me pressed face first against the wall across from the stall door. He’s knotted the fingers of his right hand into the fingers of both mine in some fucking Shaolin Super Death Grip. And as a bonus, he’s digging the thumb of his left hand into my wound, living up to all the clichés of the Asian torture master.

  —I want the key.

  —Yeah, I got that part.

  He digs the thumb in a little harder and I bite my lip.

  —The key.

  —Yeah, look, I told Roman—

  He gives me the thumb and does something to my hands and I swoon. My knees buckle and all the air goes out of me, my vision blackens and I only stay up because he keeps me there.

  —I’m just gonna kill you right now. Right now, just kill you and find the key on my own. Now fuck Roman. I want the key.

  —I don’t have it. I didn’t get it yet.

  —Where is it?

  —I gave it to a friend.

  —What friend? We know all your friends. Which one?

  They know all my friends.

  My boxing instructor, he’s a badass. He also teaches street fighting. When I came to him to start boxing, he asked me why I wanted to study and I told him that I had trouble in the bar from time to time and wanted to be better equipped to handle it. He took me on for the boxing but suggested I take some of his other classes as well. He thought they might serve my needs better. And you know what? He was so right.

  I shift against the wall and gasp like I’m trying to get room to breathe. Red moves his feet back a bit for better leverage and I lift my left foot and rake it down his shin and slam it onto his instep. His upper body lurches back, but he keeps his grip. I snap my head straight back. I’m too tall to plant it in his nose like I’d like to, but I catch him a good one on the forehead. And before I can think about the pain that shoots through my own skull, I crack him again. This time his face is turned up and something goes mushy against the back of my head and he lets go.

  I lurch to the right and turn. He’s slumped against the stall door and his eyes have gone funny. I’ve evened the score on broken noses. His looks pretty munched and it’s streaming blood as he slides all the way down to the floor. I take a quick step across the stall and kick him once in the head to make sure he doesn’t get up and hurt me again.

  I grab my sweater and jacket, push him aside and take off. On the escalator, I pull my clothes back on and then I’m in the lobby, heading for the door. I pass the ticket guy and he waves at me.

  —Hey! Hey, if you’re looking for your friend, he just went down looking for you.

  And I’m through the door and back out on the street.

  I feel great. I hurt. My wound hurts, my nose hurts, my ribs and gut hurt, my hands hurt, my feet hurt. Man, I hurt everywhere. But I feel fucking great. It’s close to 5:00 now, just starting to get a little dim here in the city and I bounce down the sidewalk, heading back to Paul’s. There’s some blood trickling down the back of my neck, but it’s not mine and that makes me feel even better. If Red was working solo today, then my plan with Roman still holds. And I’m gonna just assume that’s the case. Like I have a choice.

  When I get to Second Avenue

  , I head up to 14th Street

  and then turn east toward Alphabet City. And how about this? There’s my Love Stores bag still on the sidewalk where I dropped it. I pick it up and everything is still inside. I stand there on the sidewalk with a big shit-eating grin on my face. Sometimes, baby, you just eat the bear.

  I trot happily down the street to Avenue B, take a right and cruise into Paul’s. A few more folks have come in to warm up for happy hour and I get a nice chorus of greetings. I nod and smile as I head for the bathroom in the back and toss the carton of Marlboros to Lisa behind the bar, still sipping her drink.

  —What took you so long, Sailor?

  —Just had to stop in somewhere, baby. Just had to stop in.

  —Hey, I only needed a pack, Hank.

  —No problem, baby.

  —Well, thanks. When you get out of the john, I’m gonna buy you a soda or something.

  I smile at her and go into the bathroom and lock the door. Out in the bar the jukebox is playing Joe Cocker, his cover of “With a Little Help from My Friends.” I hum along while I check myself over. First, I clean Red’s blood off the back of my head. Then I strip the bandage from my nose and take out the little gauze plugs I’ve been using to prop it up. It looks stable at this point, so I just clean up the flakes of dried blood and leave it alone. My wound is another matter. It’s oozing blood again. I clean it and dry it off as best I can, slap some gauze over it and tape it down. I look at the bottle of Vicodin. I can have two an hour, but they’ll make my head foggy as hell. I take one out of the bottle, bite it in half and dry-swallow it. The adrenaline is wearing off and I’m starting to crash from the fight high, but I still feel pretty damn good. I look myself over in the mirror; no doubt about it, I’m a wreck. But I’ll hold together for now.

  Back in the bar, the bell for happy hour has rung and things are starting to cook. Tim is down at the end of the bar, getting a quick one in before he does his evening deliveries. Some of my other regulars are around now, too. I get a lot of back pats and commentary about the nose.

  —Ali! Hey, Ali!

  —What’s the other guy look like?

  —Did you get the license on that truck, Sailor?

  I laugh it all off and pull up a stool next to Tim. He gives me the once-over and shakes his head.

  —Jesus.

  —Yeah.

  —Jesus.

  —I know.

  —Man, you need to make some healthy life choices but soon.

  —I’m making them, Timmy, my boy, I’m making them.

  —Damn.

  Lisa comes over and passes me my bag and I stuff all my new first-aid crap into it.

  —Ready for a drink yet?

  —Naw, just get me a . . .

  —Yeah?

  —Fuck. Get me a seltzer.

  She chuckles and gets me my seltzer. Tim tosses back a shot of Tullamore Dew and shakes his head.

  —Seltzer! Now that! That is what I call a healthy life choice.

  Lisa plops the soda down in front of me and I pick it up and raise it in Tim’s direction.

  —To healthy life choices.

  He lifts another shot and clinks it against my glass.

  —To health.

  We drink. He slams his empty shot back down on the bar and Lisa tops it right off. With Tim you don’t have to ask, you just keep him full and put another mark on his tab. The seltzer’s not bad, not bad at all, kind of refreshing and I feel good, here in the bar with people I know and like, with friends. And in my head I hear a voice telling me, We know all your friends. Which one?

  I don’t say good-bye. I just pick up my bag and leave.

  It’s rush hour. Impossible to find an empty cab. I start jogging west. I could call, but if someone is there, it might freak them out or something. Fuck, I don’t know. I jog and keep looking at the traffic, searching for an in-service cab. At Third Avenue

  I strap the athletic bag on tight and start to run. I reach, I stretch for my stride and, this time, I find it. I blow down the street. It’s too far to keep this up all the way. Across Union Square

  , on University, a guy is just getting out of a cab and the cabbie is flicking on the off-duty light. I cram myself through the door and into the backseat. The cabbie starts yelling something at me in whatever his nati
ve tongue is. I push a big wad of cash through the Plexiglas shield and he shuts up.

  —West Side Highway and Christopher.

  He looks at the money I’ve dropped on the front seat. It’s well over a hundred dollars and he pulls away from the curb. We don’t talk. He looks at me from time to time in the rearview, but we don’t talk at all.

  He stops on the highway where it meets Christopher, I climb out and he drives off. The traffic is too dense for me to try to cross, so I have to wait for the lights to change. When they do, I run over to the building, let myself in and run up the stairs. None of the locks to the apartment door are fastened.

  Just inside there is a grocery bag full of cat stuff spilled out over the floor. I don’t want to look up from the mess, but I do. She’s all over the table, spread-eagle with her limbs strapped to its legs. Lying in the same space I occupied a few hours ago. They’ve done something horrible to her. The kiln is still on and the whole room smells like burning. I approach her with my head turned away. Then, with my eyes closed, I place my ear against her chest to hear that she is dead. I run to the futon for a blanket and cover her. Then I crawl under the table to hide.

  In action movies, there is a moment where the hero is just pushed too far. The bad guys have stolen his money, taken his good name and beat him up and he’s swallowed it all. But then they go that one step too far: they kill his partner, his wife, his kid, whatever. This moment is indicated by the hero tilting his head back and releasing an agonized scream: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Then he gets mad.

  I don’t feel like that at all. I want to sleep. I want to roll over and die. I want to give up and lose. I don’t care. I just don’t care.

  They followed me. They followed me from my apartment to Yvonne’s and then they waited. They watched her come and go and kept waiting until they saw me leave and saw the cowboys throw me in the trunk. Then maybe someone followed us, and Paris lost them or maybe fucking not. But they waited until she left again and they went up to look for the key and when she came back they asked her where it was and she didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about because I didn’t tell her anything that might have saved her life.

  I hear a soft, regular thumping on the floor and look up to see Bud coming towards me. A cat walking in a cast. He manages to get into my lap and curls up there and promptly goes to sleep.

  This is it, this would be the time to finally call the police and let them sort it out, take my chances with Roman, and have it over with. But I find that it really is too late for that because, just as I’m thinking about it, several officers of the NYPD come running in and stick their guns in my face.

  They find I have no record in New York. They find I was once arrested as a juvenile in California for breaking and entering and burglary, that I pled the case, served a year of probation, and did over a hundred hours of community service. They find these things out without my help because I’m not talking.

  My eyes have become little glass windows at the ends of two dark, narrow tunnels. I sit at the other end of the tunnels and look at all the things happening out there. People talk to me and it sounds like voices traveling between paper cups tied together by long pieces of string. Deep inside, back behind the tunnels, I am aware that I am in shock. And at a deeper level I realize that I am also thoroughly fucked.

  They have me in one of those little rooms with steel screens on the windows, where all the furniture is bolted to the floor and the wall opposite the door has a small one-way mirror. They think I’m a toughguy. They think I’m giving them the freaked-out-psycho-killer-silent-treatment. The fact is, I just can’t talk. Words form in my mind and I send them to my mouth, but they never get there. What I really wish they would do is take the pictures off the table in front of me because, no matter how hard I try not to look, my eyes keep getting dragged back. They beat her. They didn’t cut her or burn her or strangle her or rape her. They beat her until she was dead.

  Yvonne shared the top floor of her building with a guy. He lives in a loft at the end of the hall. He came home and saw the door of her place wide open and, like a good neighbor, he took a quick look to see if everything was OK. When he saw the covered thing on the table and me sitting under it, he crept back to his apartment and called 911. Nice guy. A lot of people wouldn’t have bothered. He told them I was a guy Yvonne saw sometimes and there I was, catatonic, holding a cat, all bruised up with blood still on my clothes from the fight with Red. It sounded perfect to the cops, some kind of freaked-out sex/violence jealousy crime. Case closed. Except I gather now that there’s a problem because people keep coming in here to whisper stuff to the cops who have been questioning me.

  The two detectives in the room with me both drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. They are both balding, paunchy, and ruddy and have matching mustaches. I can tell them apart because one has a terrible cold and keeps blowing his nose and hawking and spitting into the wastebasket. He’s clearly pissed at me because he wants to be home in bed. The other cop is pissed at me because he thinks I’m a “sick, murdering fuck.” They tried a little good cop, bad cop at first. Then they tried bad cop, bad cop. Now they’re really just Sick Cop, Bored Cop. They keep asking questions though and, through it all, I keep trying to say the same thing and stopping myself just before I say it because I just don’t know what will happen when I finally say the words Roman did it.

  Sick Cop launches a lung oyster into the trash and Bored Cop stubs out his cigarette. Then they look at each other and have one of those cop telepathy moments and Bored Cop lights another smoke, looks at me and tells me what’s fucking up their case.

  —So, OK, so we know something. We know that more than one person did this. We have hairs, right. We have fibers and scuff marks and bruises on the body and we know this was two, maybe three people. We know you didn’t do this alone. So fine, so paint the picture: It wasn’t really you, you were just there. OK? Something got out of hand with you and your girl and some friends. You were just there and you didn’t do anything. That’s fine, that’s OK, we can live with that. So paint that picture and tell us how it happened, how it wasn’t you, and tell us about the guys who did do it. Tell us about your friends.

  The strings snap. I race down to the end of the tunnel and the glass over my eyes shatters. I reach out and flip the pictures over. I look directly at the one-way mirror because I know who’s on the other side.

  —They’re not my fucking friends.

  And Roman walks in.

  Sick Cop and Bored Cop look over and nod at him. Sick Cop takes out a tissue from the little plastic pack in his shirt pocket and blows a hole in it.

  —Lieutenant.

  Roman makes a little grunt noise and waves the two detectives over to where he stands by the door. The three of them huddle up with their heads close together and suddenly burst into laughter. Sick Cop laughs and chokes on his own phlegm while Bored Cop guffaws and slaps his knee. Roman chuckles and pounds Sick Cop on the back and they all settle down. Then Sick Cop and Bored Cop start picking up their stuff and getting ready to leave. Roman holds the door open for them and, as they exit, he says something else to them I can’t hear and they start laughing all over again. Roman closes the door. He walks over to the table, picks up the full ashtray, takes it to the wastebasket and dumps it out. He walks over to the intercom box next to the door and makes sure it’s off. Then he comes back to the table and sits across from me. He reaches out, scoops the pictures together, taps them into a neat stack, flips through them, places them facedown back on the table, looks me dead in the eye and nods at the pictures.

  —I didn’t do this.

  Roman is a very good driver. He obeys all traffic laws and, more than that, is courteous to a fault toward other motorists and pedestrians. I admire that. I sit in the passenger seat of his unmarked police car while he drives. My hands are uncuffed and Bud is in my lap. I have not been charged with murder.

  I am being held for suspicion of murder, but no official charge has been made. In the m
eantime, Robbery/Homicide has put me in Detective Lieutenant Roman’s custody because of my connection to a case he is already working on. Any assistance I can give him will only help the disposition of my own situation.

  Roman has driven into SoHo. He cruises around, turns onto one of the little cobbled streets, parks and shuts off the motor. The clock in the dash says it’s 1:57 A.M., about eight hours since the cops found me. Roman rolls his window down a bit. The street is very quiet and the loudest noise is Bud’s purring. The animal control people hadn’t arrived at the station to pick him up and, as we were leaving, I saw him curled up on a desk. Roman got him for me along with my personal belongings, which are now in my bag in the backseat. Roman loosens his tie a bit and undoes his top collar button.

  —I have a “Contact Officer” attached to your name.

  I look at him.

  —Anytime your name, the name of one of your associates, or one of a few key addresses pops up on the computer, it’s tagged and they let me know. Same thing with Miner. That’s how I ended up at your apartment in the first place. Miner’s address came in associated with a disturbance and, eventually, someone let me know.

  —Clever. I thought it was because you were the one who had just broken in there.

  —That too, that too.

  He reaches into his jacket, takes something out and hands it to me. It’s Ed’s business card. The one I had in my pocket when I was arrested.