by Jerry Stahl
“Zank’s,” he ranted, slamming his cuffed hands off his forehead, hopping around in a way that reminded Manny of Rumpelstiltskin. They were about the same size. “Where Zank is, where Zank is!”
“Where Zank is, huh?” Manny’d booked a zillion pipeheads. The harder they tweaked, the steadier you needed to be to deal with them. “I don’t know where Zank is. Probably out crippling the weak. Just relax, okay? You’ll be all right as long as you shut up. You want, I can hit you in the head with something, knock you out. Might make the ride easier. Your call.”
“No, no, no!” cried McCardle, emerging into something like coherence. “You don’t understand!”
Manny grabbed him by both shoulders. “I understand fine, okay? I understand if you don’t calm down, it’s ’cause you want me to take a blunt object to your skull. It’s not the kind of thing I like to do, but if it makes you happy, I’ll go along. But only ’cause I like you.”
McCardle lapsed into stunned silence. Tina killed her cigarette.
“You can be a cold son of a bitch,” she said, without sounding particularly upset about it.
After Tina finally headed to the car, Manny hung back with McCardle, who’d started to spasm again. His teeth sounded like cuff links in a spin dryer. Manny dug in the side pocket of his yoga pants, unearthed the pair of soggy pills he’d retrieved from his soaking trousers, and offered them to the crack-damaged felon.
“Codeine,” Manny told him. “It’s still good, just a little mushy. Takes the edge off.”
Offended, McCardle frowned at the drugs and raised his eyes. “No way, man. That shit’s addictive!”
THIRTY-SIX
The idea came to Manny as they passed the Parakeet Lounge. McCardle, who’d been bouncing on the seat since Manny’d locked him in, seized up at the sight of the place.
“Scene of the crime, huh, buddy?”
This perked up Tina. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t watch TV? Macky here’s a celeb. Got that Hollywood mug on America’s Most Wanted. Am I right?”
McCardle slunk lower in his seat as Manny slowed beside the bar, a powder-blue storefront with a yellow-and-green neon parakeet, dead in the daytime, perched over the entrance.
Tina wiped a porthole in the unwashed passenger window and peered out. “Isn’t that a gay bar?”
“Only one in town. But we don’t judge,” said Manny. “The Skank-mobile is a judgment-free vehicle. Whatever goes on between consenting pervs is okay by me.”
They watched a pair of pigeons roost on the neon parakeet, and Manny smiled over his shoulder. “Of course, I don’t know if the boy Mac here wanged with a shovel actually consented. But who knows? Maybe he begged for it. Maybe he was one of those crazy shovel-freaks, and things got out of hand.”
“Go ahead, make fun,” McCardle whined, scratching his nose with his plasti-cuffs. “It’s not your keister about to get fried. Bad enough I gotta go through what I’m about to go through, I gotta have some white sumbitch with a pompadour on the TV talkin’ about it. No offense.”
“None taken,” said Manny, steering away from the bar. “Sometimes I’m ashamed to be a white man myself. Thing is, Mac, there’s a way you could get your ass out of this shit.”
“Which part of this shit you talkin’ ’bout my ass gettin’ out of?”
“The getting-on-TV part, for starters. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you walked. Period.”
McCardle sighed. “Your gratuitous barbarity is uncalled for.” Then he slammed back in the seat and pouted. “Why you wanna do me like ’at?”
Manny met his eyes in the rearview. “Is it me, Mac, or are you some kind of a schiz? Half the time you sound straight outta Compton, the other half I’m thinking, ‘This guy majored in humanities at Dartmouth and he’s keeping it under his hat.’”
“Now you be talkin’ just like Zank. Maybe I got dual citizenship.”
“Nicely put,” said Manny, switching lanes. “I’m no stranger to identity crisis. I’m a cop, and I don’t like cops. But because I’m a cop, people who aren’t cops don’t like me. It’s no picnic.” Manny cleared his throat. “But enough about my little problems. What I’m saying is, you don’t necessarily have to end up on national TV. Not if you don’t want to. Though what I hear, once you make it onto AMW, you’re a big man in the joint.”
“That’s great,” sneered McCardle. “Problem is, people in law enforcement, all them DAs, are so down with that show, they’ll jack up your sentence just to kiss John Walsh’s balls. Some no-name do what I do, maybe he gets twelve to life, gets sprung in eight and change. But they flash your face on America’s Most Wanted, don’t matter what you did, they’ll give you five lifes consecutive. Shit, they’ll give you the goddamn chair, just so’s that dude can get on TV and brag on your dead ass.”
Manny laughed. “Call me a party-poop, you did kill a guy. But like I say, in this car we don’t judge. I’m just telling you, pal, you wanna go for it, I’m giving you a way to improve your situation.”
“Uh-huh. You’re gonna do that, with the reward they got hangin’ over my dusky butt.”
“Well technically, no. Only the chief can let you go. He’s the one hung up on the reward. Though personally, I think the whole thing’s bunk.”
McCardle rehurled himself against the seatback. “See, there you go. Fuckin’ with me. This whole time, gettin’ my hopes up, talkin’ ’bout ‘maybe this, maybe that,’ this whole damn time, you just fuckin’ with me.”
“McCardle, I’m not fucking with you. You do me one favor”—Manny snapped his fingers—“I can make it all go away.”
“Oh yeah? And what I gotta do? Maybe I did smoke somebody, which I didn’t, that don’t mean I meant to. And it sure as shit don’t mean I’m gonna smoke somebody for you. You wanna hit, you come to the wrong nigger. You wanna play that way, talk to Zank. He’d shoot a motherfucker just to see which way he bleed.” Mac banged his bound hands off his knees for emphasis. “That man is plain amoral.”
Manny caught Tina’s eye and winked. He wasn’t usually a winker, but lately it seemed called for. He cocked his finger for Mac to lean forward, then whispered in his ear. McCardle let out a gasp and shrunk to a far corner of the backseat. “No way, man! No way I’m gonna do that!”
“Come on, just one kiss,” Manny said, catching the prisoner’s eyes in the rearview. “How bad can that be? I’m sure you’ve done worse for less. I know I have.”
McCardle lowered his eyes, going for his “pleading-Dino” look, and Manny ignored him. He picked up the phone and punched out a number. “Fayton? It’s Rubert. I’m coming in with McCardle…. Hey, spare me the faux-surprise, I know about the tap. That’s not why I’m calling. I just want to make sure you remember the deal…. No! No, no, no! We talked about this. No press. Nada…. Because I fucking say so, that’s why!”
Manny threw the phone down on the Impala’s floor and grinned happily. Tina had to ask. “Isn’t Fayton the chief of police?”
“That’s what it says on his door.”
“And that’s how you talk to him?”
“We have an understanding. So what’s it gonna be, Mac?”
McCardle scrunched up his gigolo’s face, conflicted. “A thing like that could ruin a man’s reputation.”
“Is that right?” Manny hit the brakes so suddenly Tina fell forward and McCardle, who wasn’t wearing his belt, was thrown face-first into the back of the front seat. Ignoring him, Manny opened the glove compartment, selected one of the eight-by-tens Roos developed from the dildo-cam, and tossed it over his shoulder.
“While you’re thinking, Macho Man, take a peek at this.”
“Shee-it,” said McCardle theatrically, acting put out until he picked the glossy off the floor. Then he shrieked. “Oh man, this is…this is inappropriate!” He began to breathe rapidly, switched to sniffly weeping, and worked his way up to full-blown sobs before Tina dabbed his tiny nose with a Kleenex. “We didn’t wanna do this,” McCardle blub
bered. “She made us. That big lady, from the home. The one with the beehive. Carmella. She pulled out a gun and said I had to do Tony or she’d blow my pinga off.”
“Your what?”
“What do you think? My bone phone…my love-thang…my manhood, okay? She had a gun on it. Lord, I didn’t even see no camera! Musta been somebody under the bed.” His sobs grew plaintive. “You gotta believe me!”
“Whatever.” Manny smiled sympathetically into the rearview. “I believe you, Mac. But that’s just me. Once this picture starts showing up places, who knows? What I hear, a lot of your finer homosexual magazines pay top dollar for a shot like this. You bein’ such a beefcake and all…. Of course, the worst thing would probably be if copies of this got in the joint when you were in there. Imagine if the fell as on the yard had a chance to check it out…. Now that could fuck up a man’s reputation. But hey, no pressure, brother. You do what you gotta do.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Massive shoulders hunched, a copy of Mademoiselle raised in front of his face, McCardle did the perp walk from Manny’s Impala to the sliding doors of the police station. The Mademoiselle was Manny’s idea, and they’d stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way down to pick one up.
“Keep ’em guessing,” he explained, when McCardle asked why he couldn’t go with Muscle and Fitness.
“But Mademoiselle’s not me,” he protested, and Manny had to launch into his my-way-or-the-highway rap all over again.
Tina walked behind them, ready with the story Manny’d supplied in case Fayton asked what the hell she was doing there. “Get teary,” Manny’d told her in the car. “Get all new widowy and distraught. Tell him you’re so grief-stricken about Marv you were gonna do yourself, then you found my card and I swung by to pick you up, get you into some grief counseling down at U. M. General. But we had to make a stop.”
Chief Fayton, meanwhile, waited just inside, hopping from foot to foot like a nine-year-old who had to to go the bathroom. Merch was theoretically desk sergeant but rarely bothered to man the fortresslike desk that flanked the entrance, preferring to hang out in back by the candy machine. It wasn’t like the station did a lot of business. Whole days went by with no more than the odd bar-thug or bus-flasher. Seeing Fayton in such high dither, however, brought Merch up front. Krantz, too, had rolled in to check out the action.
These were the moments the chief lived for, and Fayton intercepted Manny the second he came through the door. After glaring at his outfit—somehow, the yoga-wear seemed more orange under police station fluorescents—he edged in front of Manny, next to the suspect.
“This him?”
Fayton grabbed McCardle by the arm. He loved to get tough with perpetrators. To show what he was made of. Manny noticed a photographer from the Trumpet. He leaned in close to the chief and whispered.
“I told you, no pictures.”
“Officer, I don’t think—”
“You don’t think what? You wanna fuck everything up?”
“Well no, but…but can we at least call now?” Fayton could not keep the greed out of his voice. “Ruby, we don’t want to lose that reward.”
Tina sized up the situation and pulled her Viceroys out of her purse. Fayton stopped pleading long enough to nail her. “This station is a smoke-free zone, young lady.”
“Fine with me,” she said, announcing to anyone who cared. “I’d rather catch cancer outside anyway.”
She planted a smooch on Manny’s cheek and sauntered off with an extra twitch in her walk. Fayton and Manny both watched her move, McCardle hovering uncomfortably between them. His huge bicep had begun to tire from holding up the magazine. It was the Fall Fashion Issue, and it was bulky. He switched hands as Krantz, Merch, Mindy the Dispatcher, and a moody ex-con named Melvin who delivered sandwiches crowded in for a peek.
“Very nice, bringing a date to an interrogation,” the chief huffed. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Detective.”
Manny stepped past McCardle, so close to Fayton he barely had to whisper. “My days of explaining anything to you are over. You wanna pretend you’re the Man to the rest of the world, fine. I know what you are.”
Fayton glowered. “Very well. But I still think we should lock up that reward money before it’s too late.”
“You call now,” Manny lectured him, “they’re gonna take all the credit. You want that? No! What you want is for everybody to know it was Chief Lyn Fayton’s superior police work that snagged this guy. You want the money and the props. You want it all, or am I wrong?”
“No, no,” said Fayton. “You’re right.”
“Good. I’m glad we agree. So do the right thing for once. The smart thing.”
Manny gave the chief ’s arm a knowing squeeze, amazed all over again at the power of greed and ego to render a human stupid. In fact, he knew exactly what would happen if the chief called the AMW people. They’d send down a crew, do an interview, have the chief swear that it was seeing the killer’s face on America’s Most Wanted that led to his capture, and make Fayton famous for a week. The downside, of course: It would fuck up Manny’s personal plans.
Fayton grumbled but had to concede; when it came to scheming, nobody could outdo Rubert. The bastard had him licking his boots in his own station. All because he’d bumped off Chatlak, who was nothing but a dandruff factory anyway. He’d done the old guy a favor. It was all so unfair. So unenlightened! A person could only take so much….
Catching Manny before he could step back to the prisoner, Fayton stammered sotto voce, “There’s no harm in a couple of photographs!”
Manny pretended to scowl. “I’m telling you, don’t do it!”
The chief ignored him and waved the shutterbug over, and Manny gave McCardle the nod. They’d rehearsed it all on the ride over. The photographer swooped forward and assumed a crouch. Fayton shoehorned himself beside McCardle, fixing his face in a crime-fighting scowl. The five-four felon glanced in panic at Manny, who nodded again. Now.
The photographer pressed his eye to the camera, finger poised to shoot, and McCardle jumped forward, thrusting his puckered lips toward the chief. He kissed Fayton hard on the lips at the exact instant the shutter clicked.
“You big stud, I’ve missed you so much!” Mac cried, before Fayton could react. “But sometimes you make me so jealous! You know you’re the only man for me! Have you told your wife yet?”
Fayton’s face collapsed in terror and McCardle moved in. He kissed him again, and the chief tried to slap him away.
“What the—? Stop! Stop the pictures! Stop the fucking pictures!”
But the photographer, sensing that this was his Ruby-shoots-Oswald moment, ignored him. He snapped away as Mac launched himself upward for another smooch, catching the chief square on the mouth.
Krantz and Merch were both snickering, until Mindy, who’d refound Jesus after a brief lapse, thrust the wooden cross she wore around her neck toward the chief and let him have it. “Abomination!” she exclaimed. “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”
“Shut up!” Fayton shouted, turning in desperation to his nearest underlings. “Goddamnit Krantz, get this pervert off me! He’s insane! Merch, use your stun gun!”
Shocked as they were, neither policeman could find the will to move. Finally Manny came to his boss’s aide.
“I told you not to bring in photographers,” he whispered. “I was trying to protect you.”
Manny faux-struggled to peel McCardle off Fayton, but the diminutive criminal continued shrieking, arms flailing as Manny tugged at him. “I love you, Poopy. I’ll always love you! I just want to feel your arms around me again! Please! I want to be your chocolate love-toy! How can you pretend you don’t know me, after all those nights of ecstasy? Lyn, please! You said you loved me! You said we were going to find a Unitarian minister and get married! You promised me a gown!”
Fayton’s face had gone ashen. For one bad second Manny thought he was going to pull a Cheney, have a heart attack on the spot. “Get this man down to interr
ogation,” he ordered Krantz. The Mullet was eager to please after the dressing-down Manny’d given him for barging in when he caught Manny with his face between Tina’s thighs. (“Lesson One, Rookie: No matter what it looks like, never question another officer’s tactics. It could mean the difference between life and death!”)
Manny, guiding the still-stunned Fayton down the hall, called over his shoulder to Merch. “Do me a favor, get the photographer out of here.” Then he leaned back in to the chief. “We’re just going down to question the suspect. It’s going to be okay. Trust me.”
In the tiny Interrogation Room, Manny and Fayton watched through adjoining peepholes as Krantz unfolded a metal chair and shoved McCardle into it. They’d ordered a two-way mirror years ago, but it was installed backward and shattered when Merch cracked it with his forehead trying to get it out of the wall. He claimed shrapnel from the Tet Offensive made him pitch forward occasionally, but the city managers thought he’d been drinking and refused to reorder. So they’d gone with peepholes.
“I want you to know, I’m not judging you,” Manny whispered, keeping a supporting hand on the chief ’s back. “I understand.”
Fayton blanched. “What are you talking about? This is some fabrication! He’s deranged!”
“Of course he is.” Manny put on his most soothing voice. “And I’ll do my best to try and keep Mayor Marge from hearing about it.”
“Mayor Marge?” Of the myriad hellacious consequences inflaming his brain, this was one Fayton hadn’t considered. “Why does Mayor Marge have to hear about it?”
“She doesn’t. And I’ll do everything I can to make sure nobody leaks it to her. I know how bad that would be for you.”
“But it’s all lies! I’ve never seen this man, except on TV. He’s making it all up!”
“You know it, and I know it. But you have to admit, it doesn’t look good.”
“What?”
“Think of the headlines: POLICE CHIEF’S SECRET TRYST WITH EXCON HOMO-KILLER! How do you think it sounds? This thing goes national, I don’t even want to think about it….”