Behind the Badge

by David R Lewis

  “How do you like me now?” he whispered, pulled the trigger.

  EPILOGUE

  Crockett knew it by scent and sound without opening his eyes. Hospital. Jesus. Memories of the loss of his leg, Doctor Kelso, Spike, and Ruby washed over him for a moment; and he slipped away again. The next time he came around, he had a better grasp on reality and forced his eyes open. It was dark outside the window and dim in the room. Satin was curled up in a chair against the wall, sleeping. For the only time since he’d known her, she looked frail.

  “Hi,” he croaked.

  Her eyes opened and she peered around the room, a bit confused.

  “This can’t be heaven,” Crockett rasped. “You’re too far away.”

  Satin smiled and approached his bedside, but he couldn’t stay. Once again, Crockett retreated to that warm and dark place where nothing hurt and time didn’t happen.

  When he swam to the light again, Smoot was sitting where he last saw Satin, and sunlight was streaming into the room.

  “Hey, Dale,” he said, and was a little surprised to find his voice stronger.

  “It’s alive,” Smoot said, moving to stand beside him.

  “Where am I?”

  “Ray County hospital in Richmond,” Smoot said. “It was the closest.”

  “Satin?”

  “She and Stitch been here all night. He went over to Taco Bell to pick up lunch. She went outside to walk around. Said you’d been awake once. Be right back.”

  “How’d I get here? Don’t remember.”

  “You called 911 on your cell. They sent a deputy and an ambulance. Found you on the porch layin’ in your own blood, out like a light, with only one leg, and Shorty, layin’ on his back beside a thirty-ought-six, deader’n Elvis.”

  “Good.”

  “Damn right, good. Two rounds, dead center, less than two inches apart. Good shootin’ for a one-legged wounded man. Like to scared that deputy to death when he saw you and your leg layin’ there beside each other.”

  Crockett grinned. “I crawled out of my leg and left it exposed so Shorty would do what he eventually did. He had me pinned on that porch for about three weeks waiting to see if that foot would move or something. It was close, Dale. Really close. If Shorty hadn’t been mostly crazy, it could have gone the other way.”

  “The doc told me you got a broken collar bone, a bunch a tissue damage, and are about a quart low. You’ll be in here for at least two more days. Says with physical therapy, you’ll recover okay. That’s good. You lose an arm to go with that missing leg, best job you could get would be in the circus. Want me to get a nurse or something?”

  “No. Just need to sleep.”

  “Save ya a taco?” Smoot asked, but he was too late. Crockett was gone again.

  *****

  Crockett surfaced about dinner time as a heavy handed nurse was changing his bandage. He opened his eyes and looked up at her.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  “Hard not to be,” Crockett grunted.

  Her smile was fleeting. “Sorry. I know it hurts.”

  “That’s okay. I been shot before.”

  “Irate husband?”

  Crockett grinned. “You’re about a smartass, you know that?”

  “Takes one to know one,” she said, patting him on the tummy. “Enjoy your Jell-O.”

  When she left Satin came in and kissed him on the cheek. “How ya doin’, Crockett,” she asked.

  “I’m on drugs,” he replied. “That’s about as good as it gets. How are you?”

  “Better, now that you’re awake. Shorty almost got you, huh?”

  “Shorty did get me. I just got him more. Stitch still around?”

  “Oh yeah. He’s out at the nurse’s station, trying to make a new friend.”

  “Ol’ Stitch,” Crockett said.

  “The doctor says you’ll be outa here in another day or two, but you’ll be laid up for a while. I called Danni to let her know what was going on. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “She’s coming over?”

  “Couldn’t stop her. Says she going to stay until you’re up and around.”

  “Any idea how long that’ll be?”

  “The doctor has you slated to start physical therapy in about three weeks. He says you shouldn’t try to use that arm for anything for at least two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “Yep.”

  “You know what that means doncha?”

  Satin looked a little suspicious. “What?” she asked.

  “You’ll have to pick up the new fish.”

  “Oh, hell,” Satin said, and walked out of the room.

  Crockett grinned and waited for his Jell-O.

  ******

  Please continue reading for a note from the author about Crockett 8, SIX CUT KILL and an excerpt of COWBOYS AND INDIANS.

  Author’s notes:

  Save an author; write a review.

  I would love to know what you think about BEHIND THE BADGE. Ratings and reviews are a great way to applaud (or boo) an author, so please consider leaving a review.

  For more information regarding other titles in this series, please visit my website, ironbear-ebooks.com or visit us on our FACEBOOK page, Ironbear eBooks.

  Click here to sign up for our newsletter, WRITER’S BLOCK. (Ironbear sends out our newsletter once per month. We promise not to swamp you with emails. And, we will never share or sell our mailing list. To me, that’s just wrong.)

  The 8th and final book in the CROCKETT series, SIX CUT KILL, will be released in late 2017.

  Thanks,

  David

  *****

  An excerpt from COWBOYS AND INDIANS

  By

  David R Lewis

  Copyright 2013

  DISCLAIMER:

  This book is a work of fiction largely based in fact. Most of the characters are composites of people I knew or worked with back in the day. It is not politically correct. It is honest, accurate, and raw. The names have been changed to protect the guilty as well as the innocent.

  *****

  This novel is dedicated to Laura, for her strength

  and confidence through those years.

  The only thing harder than being a cop,

  is being married to one.

  *****

  CHAPTER ONE

  L.C. Bailey was pissed. He ducked back in the alley next to the Blue Lagoon tavern as the black and white squad car rolled by. L.C. wasn’t angry because the war in Viet Nam was claiming over a hundred American lives a week, a great many of them black. He didn’t care that Richard Nixon was president. Martin Luther King’s verbiage and Jessie Jackson’s mouth didn’t stir him. L.C.’s scope was far too narrow for that. The events of the planet pulled him less than the orbiting moon, but he was pissed all right. L.C. was thirty-seven years old and the world had yet to give him his due.

  At ten o’clock that morning he’d awakened on the floor behind the counter of the Delight Snak Shop with a screaming hangover. Delight Brown, owner and proprietor of the Delight Snak Shop, prodded L.C. with the toe of his shoe.

  “Git yo’ ass up, Muthafucker, an’ git on outa here. I ain’t got space for no raggety niggah layin’ on my damn floor.”

  L.C. moaned. “C’mon, Delight,” he said, “I sick.”

  “Damn right you sick! Lookit the damn mess you made. Clean that shit up an’ git outa here for I call the police. They lookin’ for your ass anyway.”

  “Wha’?”

  “What, my butt! You whup up on Minnie Hudson one too many times. She sign a complaint on your ass. Now the police lookin’ for you, Elsie, an’ I doan need no police sniffin’ round here. Git the fuck up an’ git your black ass out.”

  Delight shuffled his heavy seventy-year-old body back to the front side of the counter and eased his bulk down into a ratty green recliner, the only chair where he was even close to comfortable.

  “You doan git up an on outa here, Elsie, I go an’ git Rackjack. Rackjac
k be lovin’ to throw you out on the street for me. Special since the police got paper out on you for kickin’ the shit outa his half-sister.”

  The mention of Rackjack pushed L.C. into action, and he got to his hands and knees. He’d seen Rackjack get arrested once, and the handcuffs wouldn’t fit around his wrists. L.C. lurched to his feet and bright lights fired behind his eyes. He leaned against the counter and panted.

  “Gimme a drink, Delight.”

  “Fuck you, niggah. You ain’t gittin’ shit from me. I oughta charge you for sleepin’ on my damn floor. My girls had to step over you all night long, layin’ there in your puke an’ snot. You better git your ass low an’ slow, boy. Minnie Ha-Ha all bandaged up an’ shit, cops lookin’ for you, Rackjack looking for you. Damn Elsie. What the fuck is the matter wif your mine?”

  A strangled scream came from overhead, and the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

  “Shit,” Delight said, forcing his mass out of the chair and lumbering toward the stairs in the backroom. “That’s Precious. She done hit a john jus’ ‘cause he want somethin’ she doan like. When I git back, Elsie, your ass better be gone.” He waddled through the curtains and disappeared.

  L.C. leaned on the counter for a moment, then reached beneath it and opened a worn cigar box. He withdrew nearly ninety dollars in ones and fives that he put in his left front pocket, and an old Smith and Wesson snub-nose thirty-eight that he put in his right front pocket.

  “Muthafuckahs!” he said. “I got the shit now. Ya’ll doan give me no shit. I got the shit.” In spite of the tilted room and the flashing lights, he made it out the door and headed off down the street toward Poochie’s Place. He could lay up in the alley until Poochie opened, then have some ribs and fries. Git some a his strength back. Shit. Got some money, got a fuckin’ piece! Hell, Saturday night was comin’. He wasn’t gonna hide from no goddam body on no goddam Saturday night.

  Bunker Scott was pissed. Thirty-one years on the force as a line patrolman and that new dispatcher had the balls to order him around. Bunker was perfectly happy sitting in the squad car under the shade of the big elm on the northeast corner of Piper Park, taking the occasional sip of Black Jack from his silver plated hip flask. Less than six months away from retirement on that little lake down in Tennessee, Bunker didn’t deserve to be hassled, but here he was, dragging his six-foot-five inch, two-hundred-ninety pound, high blood-pressured frame out of his un-air-conditioned squad car, sweating like a pig in the July heat, at the goddammed Delight Snak Shop like some fuckin’ rookie.

  Delight was behind the counter as Bunker squeezed through the flyspecked door and looked at him. “What the fuck you want, Brown?” Bunker growled, then grinned in spite of himself.

  Delight smiled. “Bunker. How ya doin’?”

  “Well, I ain’t fuckin’ retired yet.”

  “How long?”

  “Soon. Then I leave your black ass behind. Why don’t you retire? You’re a damn sight older than me.”

  “Shit. I look like white folks to you? How a poor man like me gonna retire. Somebody gotta keep this shop open.”

  “And run the games in the basement and the dope off the back porch and the girls upstairs. Delight, if you left, the whole damn north end of town would shut down. You are a man of the people, Brown. You were when I was a rookie and you still fuckin’ are.”

  “Can’t bullshit you, can I, Bunker?”

  “No more than I can bullshit you. What’s up?”

  “That black trash Elsie Bailey spent the night on my floor an’ got up this mornin’ an’ walked off with my money out the cigar box.”

  “How much?”

  “Damn near three hunnert dollars.”

  “How much?”

  “I tole you how much.”

  “Uh-huh. You wanna sign a complaint?”

  “Naw. Jest thought you oughta know they might be some trouble ‘cause a that low life cocksucker.”

  “He hit the cigar box you keep under the counter?”

  “Das it.”

  “L.C. get your gun?”

  “Gun? Shit. I ain’t got no gun. I’m a convicted felon. Convicted felons can’t have no guns.”

  “I need to know if he got your gun, Delight.”

  “Now he might a had a gun on him. I don’t know for sure, but he coulda had one.”

  Bunker smiled. “What kind of gun might he have had, if he had a gun?”

  “It coulda been a six shot thirty-eight with a little bitty barrel, I really don’t know. You police lookin’ for him ‘cause he touched up Minnie Ha-Ha. She sign papers on his ass. Just thought you might need to know he most likely got a gun.”

  “Thanks, Delight.”

  “Slip an’ slide, Bunker. Watch yo’ fat ass. It make me sick to see you get shot this close to retirement. Hate ta lose another old white guy.”

  “Stay away from the pussy upstairs, old man,” Bunker said. “At your age you got a prostate the size of a bowlin’ ball.” He could hear Delight chuckle as the door slammed behind him.

  Gary Frost was pissed. Gary Frost was pissed because it took him almost two years to figure out his wife was cheating on him, and she still ran up the credit cards, cleaned out the checking and savings, and didn’t make a rent payment for two months before she left. Gary Frost was pissed because his unfortunate financial condition forced him to share a goddamn ten by fifty-foot Magnolia trailer with a fuckin’ rookie so he’d have a fuckin’ roof over his head. Gary Frost was pissed because his wife took the good car and left him with a beat-to-shit ‘64 Thunderbird with a power steering fluid leak that he couldn’t find, bad tires he couldn’t afford to replace, and nearly a hundred thousand hard miles on its back. Most of all, Gary Frost was pissed because the results of the detective exam had been posted, and he was second behind Fred Baker. Fred Baker, for chrissakes! Fred Baker was a fuckin’ dumbass. With twelve years on the department and three years in the army, Baker was awarded fifteen bonus points on the exam to Gary’s nine. He beat Frost by one point. Even though no detective slot was open and might not be for a year or more, Fred dumbass Baker would get it, then there’d be another exam and Frost might not do as well. Shit.

  Gary walked into the cop shop at about two-thirty in uniform with his gun belt thrown over his shoulder. On the way downstairs to the locker room he met a day-shifter named Cramer on the way up. Cramer was laughing.

  Gary grinned. “What’s so funny?”

  Cramer leaned against the wall. “I’m ridin’ to the city garage with Brady to pick up an unmarked car, and we cut through campus on the way. We’re stopped at 6th and Wright, an’ here comes this hippie kid, got hair down to his ass, boppin’ down the sidewalk, stoned out of his tiny freakin’ mind. I mean the little fucker is so high, he wouldn’t leave footprints on wet toilet paper. He gets to the curb on the west side where the bike lanes are and see’s us sittin’ there in the squad. Almost dislocates his spine tryin’ to straighten up. Down the bike lane, here comes another hippie on one a them ten speed bikes about thirty miles an hour, hair flappin’ behind him like Underdog’s cape for chrissakes, and hippie number one, lookin’ at us and nowhere else, steps right out in front of hippie number two. Blam! Hair, teeth, elbows and wheels flyin’ all over the place, two hippies and the bike all mangled and tangled. Ol’ Brady pulls up beside ‘em, keys the mike, an’ says, ‘seventeen to headquarters, I wanna report a freak accident’, then drives away an’ leaves ‘em bleedin’ in the bike lane. I thought I’d shit, Frost. I ain’t laughed so hard since the night Jackson got his earlobe bit off.”

  A freak accident. Frost chuckled halfway to the locker room. Life could be worse. He could be pumpin’ gas someplace.

  CHAPTER TWO

  L.C.’s hangover peaked about noon. He sat behind the dumpster next to Poochie’s Place cussing the world and bemoaning his life until around two, when he heard Poochie’s Buick crunch gravel in the back lot. He swayed to his feet and headed for the rear door, arriving just as Poochie unlocked it.

>   “Hey, Poochie,” he said, forcing a grin to his dirty face. “How you doin’ man?”

  “Elsie. What can I do for you?”

  “I hungry. Gimme somethin’ to eat, man,” L.C. replied, wiping snot off his lip.

  “Look at yourself, Elsie. You is fucked up! You been sleepin’ out by my dumpster?”

  “I been waitin’ for you, man. I need somethin’ to eat.”

  “Why doan you go on home an’ git yourself somethin’? I ain’t open for three more hours.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Aw shit. You in some kinda trouble agin’, ain’cha?”

  “Police lookin’ for me, Rackjack lookin’ for me.”

  “You slap Minnie Ha-Ha aroun’ agin’?”

  “Bitch talk shit to me, I slap her ass down!”

  “Oh yeah. You a real man, Elsie.”

  “Damn right! Motherfucker tell me I doan know nothin’, cain’t do nothing, an’ git the fuck out! I ain’t gonna take that from no bitch. I knock her on her fat ass.”

  “An’ now Rackjack after you. They is a whole bunch a folks I’d soon have lookin’ for me as Rackjack.”

  “Rackjack ain’t shit,” L.C. said, trying to wipe some dried vomit off his sweat-sticky nylon shirt. “I pop a cap on that motherfucker, he fuck with me, an’ the goddamn pigs, too. Rackjack, police, doan make no shit to me. Lookie here, Poochie, lemme git somethin’ to eat. I kin pay.”

  Poochie looked at the skinny, filthy, figure swaying before him and took pity. “I doan want your fuckin’ money, Elsie. Git on up in here and have some soup an’ bread.”