by Steve Bailey
Margaret, hyperventilating, gets into the car and climbs over to the passenger seat. Terrific pain now sliding into her body, Abby sits in the driver's seat as another bullet cracks against the windshield. She shuts the door, puts it in reverse, twists in the seat and floors the gas pedal, driving them out down the long muddy road.
Another gunshot sounds behind them.
She manipulates the car perfectly, turning around and plowing through the woods, looking for the highway, looking for somewhere to go, looking for anything. The blood cools on her legs; it's pumping from somewhere.
"Mom!" Margaret says, realizing that her mother is shot.
"It's okay, Margaret," Abby says. "It's okay, you're safe now."
She doesn't know how badly the gunman was injured. She doesn't know if he has enough left in him to pull himself out of the mud and to get into the Jeep and pursue them. She realizes now that she left those keys in the car behind her. She thinks that they are safe, for now, as long as she can get herself and her daughter to a hospital, as long as she can get them both out of these woods.
Almost, she thinks. She's almost done it. She's almost achieved a happy ending for her and her daughter both.
"Mom, Mom, Mom…" Margaret is saying automatically, tearing through Abby's clothes, trying to find the bullet hole. There is so much dark blood.
Almost. Almost pulled off that happy ending. But not quite yet.
She knows she needs to keep her eyes on the road. She knows this isn't over. But she can't help herself. She's chuckling, almost squealing with delight. The words Flawless Execution are repeating in her head.
On the road ahead, a coyote stands in the rain. He stares forward at their car, examining it, as though he is confused. Behind the animal, foggy headlights glimmer like halos, and while listening to the incessant panicking of her daughter, Abby looks at the coyote's glimmering eyes and she wants to nuzzle and position her own mouth directly into its perked ear and scream like a buzzer.
"Why are you laughing, Mom? Mom?" Margaret asks, eyes wide.
"Because I'm back, baby!" Abby says, feeling a huge smile spread across her face. "Big Hard Squall!"
Not a Sailor's Girl
by Eddie McNamara
I experienced pure joy the moment a piece of steel flew from the rubble that used to be the World Trade Center and smashed my face. I smiled, with bloody teeth dribbling out of my mouth, like I won a world championship. The fireman I was bagging body parts with applied pressure to my nose with his dirty-gloved hand. My partner Jimmy Keane held me upright, his hands under my armpits like a boxer's corner man after a knockout. I felt great. I felt relieved.
All I could think was: This is going to get me a few days away from the Trade Center. I couldn't wait to get home to wake my wife, tell her, "I have good news and bad news. The good news is I'm finally getting some time off. The bad news is: my face looks like this."
She'd have hated that I didn't call her right away and asked her to be with me at the hospital. She'd feel left out. I get it, but my day-to-days aren't the kind you talk about with somebody you love. I'd give her a long hug and we'd connect again. We really needed this time together.
Keane had to drive me home on account of the concussion and the pain pills they gave me in the ER. I had a bottle of Vicodin in my hand, my nose was almost at a right angle, and there was dried blood all over my face
But I was smiling.
I can't remember much of what happened between then and now. I'm not even sure if I know when now is or then was. My eyes were burning and shutting. Too exhausted to think.
I lifted my head and saw a jailhouse shrink sitting across from me. I figured he wasn't there to help me even if he could because my right hand was cuffed to the table like I was some kind of animal. I couldn't figure out how I ended up there, but I knew it couldn't have been under my own free will. I was forced to sit and watch him nod in the affirmative and make that practiced-in-the-mirror sad face where the bottom lip is pushed out like a pouty child's. It's supposed to convey empathy and concern to me, but it was making it hard for me not to lash out at him.
He was telling me about the destroyed marriages, huge uptick in spousal abuse, and eight times the national average suicide rate for Oklahoma City first responders after the bombing, like I gave a fuck.
"Those guys did 200 hours in the rubble," I told him, "We've been in The Pit since the 11th, ten times longer than those Oklahoma guys." His eyes got watery and he looked at me like I was a lost cause. What kind of shrink cries to your face when you talk to him? How fucked was I?
I wasn't angry at the start of the evaluation, but that phony expression of his must have been designed to set me off and get a reaction. It wasn't going to work. I was going to keep a level head. I would make him an ally. Whatever this was, it couldn't be good if I was in cuffs. I needed this guy on my side.
"Doc, what the hell am I doing here? Like, why am I cuffed? Why am I with you?"
"Officer Riordan, are you telling me that you don't remember the events of last night?"
"I don't remember anything…except…it was freezing. I was in the street with just a t-shirt and underwear…and I was flagging down a bus—an ambulance. That's all. I must have blacked out.
"Wait." I remembered something else. "I got hit with some steel. Broke my nose at the end of tour. I had to go to the hospital. They gave me pills for the pain, told me not to go to sleep on account of the concussion. I could die or something."
"Interesting," he said, stroking his stubble like he was Sigmund Fucking Freud. "When is the last time you had a good night's sleep?"
"I don't know." I laughed, not because it was funny, because I really didn't have an answer. "What's today's date?"
"January 17th. Today is January 17th, 2002."
"I'd been working the site steady since the planes hit. Sixteen hours on the night tour, 6 p.m. to 10 a.m. If I'm lucky, I'll catch four hours drunken sleep. Nothing changed; it's like Groundhog Day—same thing over and over again like some kind of nightmare. No joke, my last full night's sleep was September 10th."
He laid off and let me rest.
The next morning I was talking to the cops from the perp's side of the table. I couldn't sleep for shit and my head wasn't any clearer.
Mosca was lead detective, which was good news. Italian detectives are easy; so pleased with themselves when they finally get out of uniform—they'll spend a year's salary on suits so they can look in the mirror and say, "Hey, look at me, I'm a detective." This idiot in Armani couldn't find a hooker in Bangkok.
His partner was Victor Restrepo, a Puerto Rican kid who just got made. I worked with him when he was on patrol. We used to go to the fights at The Garden and Atlantic City together. He was an ex-Marine and an active cop—a former badass from the South Bronx until he turned his life around. I'd work Mosca.
Mosca paced and pretended to study the paper in his hand. "Officer Riordan, our shrink says you talked to him for four hours and never asked for your wife once. Don't ya think that's kinda strange?"
"No. Why should I worry her? How's she gonna help? She ain't a psychiatrist or a lawyer."
Mosca rapid fired another question. This wasn't a conversation; it was an interrogation. "Did you really like her better when she was fat?"
I looked up at him all confused and couldn't stop myself from laughing. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Your wife. You told your wife on the recorded precinct phone that you liked her better when she was fat because she wasn't a white trash whore back then. Any of this ringing a bell for you? It happened last night during your tour. I got it all in the transcripts." He shrugged his shoulders, "Interesting marriage you got there, Riordan."
The anger opened my memory up. I did like her better when she was fat. She was the most unique and honest person I'd ever met. Our first date was memorable because she was unashamed of her appetites. She ordered samosas and ate the entire order herself, tore tandoori chicken off the bone with
her teeth, finished a whole lamb biryani and that weird rose-flavored rice pudding dessert they serve at Indian restaurants, then washed it all down with a mango lassi.
She spilled out of her thrift-store Quinceanera dress, her smeared red lipstick made it look like she was bleeding from the mouth, her hair was dyed so platinum it was almost white. Everyone in the room—waiters, skinny boring girls, Indian women in saris and their mustachioed husbands—couldn't take their eyes off of her. I felt like a creep for staring, but I couldn't look away. She had to be mine, and then she was.
Her tastes and opinions were truly her own. She never tried to say or do the right thing, or agree with the popular opinion. She voted for Pat Buchanan and didn't care who knew. I loved that most about her. No fucks given.
She got a trainer and lost something like 40 pounds while I was in The Pit and did that former fat girl thing where she had to make up for everything she thought she missed out on when she was chubby. She'd cry and bring up the fact that I was the only white guy that ever asked her out. I don't know why it mattered, but it did to her. I'm not much to look at. Maybe she thought the new her could do better than a balding civil servant with a beer belly and spaghetti arms.
Something else came back to me. Something terrible. I shook like I was freezing for a second, and let out a deep breath. "It was a rough night. We recovered. P.O. Mosley…Sterling Mosley at the start of the tour. You probably know him. Everybody called him Old School— Jamaican accent, kind of a Hitler mustache." I rode with that guy my first two years on the job. He was my field-training officer, my friend. I just went to his grandkid's Christening a few months ago. "Last night I had to use a fucking Sawzall to cut his body out of a web of steel over by where Building 1 used to be. Then I carried his arm and torso to the temporary morgue. No fucking bag, just like that…. in my hands."
I bit down on my knuckle until it bled a little. "Seeing that must have fucked my memory up, like shock or something. Then a couple of hours later I ended up getting a concussion. What the fuck do you guys want from me?"
They looked at each other like they weren't sure who should talk next. I managed to get them off script.
"Tommy," Restrepo said, "we all appreciate what you and the guys did last night, but I think your Vicodin overdose might have had more to do with your blackout than finding Old School or the bump on your head."
Mosca cut his partner off and went face to face with me like he was a drill instructor. "You swallowed all the pills they gave you in the ER. You missed roll call. We had go by your apartment and do a wellness check. That's when we found her."
Everything he said made sense but none of it seemed real.
"Riordan…like I said, we got the whole thing on tape. You called your wife around midnight looking for a shoulder to cry on about finding your buddy Old School. I heard the whole thing." Mosca leaned over me with his hands on the desk like a TV detective does. "She doesn't give a shit about you. She was asking about an open marriage, seeing other people. You're trying to spill your guts out and she hits you with that. Believe me, I get it. She wasn't a sailor's girl. She wasn't a trucker's wife. She didn't sign up to be left alone. She needed attention." He took a dramatic pause then dropped a bomb, "What a Grade A cunt."
Just because she was a cunt, didn't mean that cunt could call my wife a cunt. He said that to unsettle me and gauge my reaction. If I didn't flip out, he'd think I didn't care. That's how it was with this guy.
I closed my eyes and thought about her fucking some Wall Street douche while I was pulling my friend's body out of the wreckage. The rage became real. I grabbed his silk tie and wrapped it around his neck. Restrepo tried to pry me off, but I pushed him to the ground and continued to choke Mosca. Restrepo got up and popped me in the mouth. It felt hot and tasted like iron. I let go.
Snot dripped from Mosca's nose and his eyes teared. "Riordan, you prick. What's the matter with you? We're on your side. What kind of a selfish wife hits you with shit like that on the worst day of your life? Even if she hadn't slit her wrists in the tub while you were still at work, I wasn't trying to look too hard into you for this after hearing that phone call."
"Slit her wrists? What the fuck are you talking about? Is she okay? I need to talk to her now," I screamed and punched my thigh as hard as I could. Were they fucking with me? They were under no obligation to tell me the truth during questioning, but the mook wasn't that good of an actor. I sat silently and stared at the detectives, waiting for them to speak.
Victor looked me straight in the eyes. "Tommy, I'm sorry. She's gone. She took her life. Didn't the shrink or the arresting officers tell you?"
I didn't remember anyone telling me that my wife was dead, and that's not the kind of thing just slips your mind.
I was afraid. Not just because those morons were looking at me like a suspect. I'd be going back to an empty apartment and an empty life without her.
Mosca shouted, "That's why you're here. That's why we're all here."
A kind of paranoia came over me. I started to question myself. My heart was beating like crazy. Did I do something terrible? I felt like I was going to throw up, or pass out, or have a nervous breakdown, but none of those things happened. I had to hold it together and stop thinking like that.
Restrepo held his hands to his lips like he was praying. "Tommy, we just need you to tell us how things went down. Maybe you took too many pain killers and OD'ed by accident?"
Detectives don't ask questions they don't know the answers to, but I didn't have an answer for them. I didn't have an answer for myself.
Mosca put his hand on my shoulder like he was my buddy. "Maybe she saw you looking dead to the world, went to the bath and cut her wrists out of remorse. Or did you swallow the pills after finding her in the tub?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't answer.
Restrepo shrugged his shoulders and started fast-talking. "Look, seeing your partner in pieces, then your wife like that a couple of hours later—you can't judge what a guy does in that situation."
Mosca fixed his tie again. "The whole recovery team vouched for your whereabouts last night. Jimmy Keane said he was with you in The Pit until you got whacked in the face at 0430. He accompanied you to the hospital and drove you home at 0900. It's all in his memo book. The medical examiner says she took her life between four and six—before you even got home. We're sorry Tommy, nobody wanted this conversation to go sideways like this. We just had to do our job and follow up."
I was smiling like a happy jackass when I heard that.
"You're clear with us," said Restrepo, "but Psych Services, that's another story. The pills don't look good. Maybe you get lucky and score a disability pension. You gotta be half-shot from working down in The Pit all this time."
Mosca patted my back, gathered his papers, put them in his Guinea detective briefcase and left the room. I couldn't help but like the incompetent clown.
Restrepo stayed behind. He got real close and squatted next to me. He whispered, "Tommy, female suicides don't use box cutters. It's too macho, too violent. Broads take pills when they want to kill themselves—to die pretty."
Fuck. I knew he was going to be a problem. I should have never let my guard down. I had to scramble for something. "I don't know what to tell you. Maybe her suicide was symbolic. This whole 9/11 mess started because of box cutters." I was pleased with myself for the answer until it occurred to me that it might be true. She was either gone because of my hand or because of my work. How the fuck was I supposed to live with that?
"Come on. I remember her before she was your wife. She was an attempted suicide, right? You met her on an Emotionally Disturbed Person call. You and Old School were the first on scene. You slapped the pills out of her hand and kept in touch, right? I was working with you back then."
"Yeah, I met her on a job. We had a connection. I thought I could save her if I gave her some stability. She needed it. It looked good for a while. She was doing better."
Restrepo stood and looked
down at me. "Yeah. And that whole crazy conversation conveniently happened on a recorded line. You know how the phones work around here. You're a private guy. You don't put your business in the street. Why didn't you use your cell phone?"
"I broke it. I wanted to tell her about finding Old School, but she wouldn't stop talking about seeing other people. I smashed it. I lost my shit like I did with Mosca before. I think I'm going to need help with the anger."
Restrepo shook his head, then removed the phone from his pocket and dialed a number. My ringtone buzzed from inside his suit jacket. He pulled out my cell phone in a sealed evidence bag.
He tossed the bag to me.
"Don't say I never did anything for you. Just remember, you're the one who has to sleep at night."
I put the phone in my pocket. "Victor, I don't sleep. Nothing's going to change that."
Power Play
by Dave Reddall
The old party in the guardhouse resembled a septuagenarian W. C. Fields: doughy, squint-eyed, the veins in his cheeks and nose busted out.
Procope, Raymond, eyed my driver's license, peered over his glasses at me, reached for a clipboard. Beyond the black and white gate barring my way, I could make out a row of tire shredders folded down into the roadway.
"Mr. Rackham is expecting you Mr. Stubblefield." It was 11 a.m., but the 80-proof bouquet hit me from several feet away. Procope pointed up the road. "Bear right at the fork, right again on Cranberry Trace. Fourth house on the left."
Hillbourne Estates. A gated community located on a peninsula jutting out into Nantucket Sound, an enclave for the superrich who simply have to own a Cape Cod getaway cottage. From a brochure I learned that Hillbourne Estates offered its residents "prestige, privacy, security, and a renewed sense of place." Not to mention a couple of miles of prime beaches, also private.
I drove past Peregrine Trace and Blueberry Trace seeing not a trace of bird or berry. The "cottages" started at around five thousand square feet and went up from there, each an ostentatious bid for validation from other millionaires. The locals have a name for these homes: starter castles.