Stagger Bay

by Pearce Hansen

  Jansen’s smile hadn’t twitched throughout. “So, is it time for a cutting contest?” he asked me. “For you to hold forth with your impassioned list of grievances?”

  “That ain’t on the agenda tonight,” I said. “This isn’t about you. You’re not in control.”

  I glanced up at the hall-side wall behind Sam and Reese and saw the book cases lining it. The shelves were crowded with Milton and Blake, Rabelais and Erasmus, Thucydides and Marcus Aurelius and Mina Loy.

  He read them in here, when he was taking a break from… I felt dizzy as I looked away from those books; it was a travesty seeing the Canon in this room. Jansen laughed, ever sensitive even to momentary weakness.

  He’d lost a lot of weight even in the short time since I’d seen him last at the bank – his skin hung off the bones underlying that once much huskier frame. His makeup was pan-caked on thicker tonight too; he hadn’t been wearing it just for the camera at my deposition. The cosmetics were a by-now futile attempt to conceal the ever-increasing blotches covering the exposed skin of his face and arms here near the end of his disease’s progress.

  “He killed Kendra,” Reese reminded me from where he knelt. “What are you waiting for?”

  Jansen laughed, but his having to turn his head and spit out a mouthful of blood detracted from any levity he was trying to convey. “Not with my own two hands, but it was my will that made it happen, yes,” he said. “He played you into coming here, Reese. It looks as though he played us both.”

  “Who is ‘he’?” I asked.

  “Why, Tubbs of course,” Jansen said. He looked at Reese. “You see? I am not afraid to say the name.”

  “Oh, you do babble on for a dead man,” Reese moaned. “He’s lying. Mr. Tubbs has nothing to do with any of this. Kill him, what are you waiting for?”

  “I gots to agree,” Sam said, still holding Reese tight in the arm-bar. “Why are you debating with this piece of shit? Hurry up and get it over with. Let’s roll.”

  I stepped over to Moe, whose eyes were lemur-big in his little face as he stared unblinking at the Driver squirming on the floor. I set down my hammer with the other tools, plucked off the tape binding Moe to the gurney and helped him down before turning to answer: “Who says I’m killing him?”

  “You promised,” Jansen said. Sam and Reese both looked at me, with varying degrees of contempt.

  I picked up the hammer. “I changed my mind – it’s a free country last time I checked.”

  Sam said, “Give me the hammer then.”

  I studied, him, considering my best approach. Should I tell Sam that when he killed, nothing would ever be the same for him again? That after going through that exit-only door, he’d never be able to go back to what he was before? No: Sam wouldn’t care about any of that.

  “You don’t get it,” I said instead. “I never thought we’d take him alive, never thought we’d get this opportunity. But don’t you see? He’s not our target anymore: now, he’s our weapon.”

  Sam shook his head, not understanding.

  “This one here, he’s just a dog turd, and for all his grandiose pretensions a little one at that,” I explained. “I don’t want him; I want his masters – I want the swine who profited from him.”

  “Stagger Bay wants us to sweep all this under the rug,” I said, trying to convince Sam to see past his hate. “They want us to just clean it up and make him go away. They refuse to look at the mess they made nor to think about it. But I’m not their bus boy, or their servant either. I’m not gonna let them hide from this; I’m dragging him out into the light for all to see.”

  “You saw what he did to Mai,” Sam said. “He has to pay.”

  “Pay?” I asked, incredulous. “Kid, you have no idea.”

  “They’ll spit on him on his way to and from the courtroom,” I said, smiling. “Once he’s in prison he’ll dissolve like an oil slick spreading across tainted water; he’ll fade away into the walls of his cell. The head-shrinkers will study him like a lab rat, and every time the Badge talks to him, he’ll see the contempt in their eyes for a punk bitch like him who hid behind the uniform and shamed whatever clean cops may be.”

  “And an ex-law-dog in prison? He’ll have a real active sex life, I’m sure. Well,” I said, gesturing towards the AIDS medications, “given his condition the violating will probably be with foreign objects. Of course there’s solitary confinement if he don’t want that kind of interaction with fellow prisoners, I was no stranger to the Hole either. But in the end he’ll die miserably, surrounded by apathetic medical staff in the most ill-equipped health care system in America.”

  “No Gotterdammerung for you,” I said to Jansen with a smile. “No transcendence, nothing sublime. Just meaningless, whimpering oblivion, like any of the sheep you despise.”

  “We’re nothing like you, you see,” I explained to the Driver.

  Jansen laughed quietly, a horrible sound like marbles grinding in a garbage disposal, and more blood spattered his already crimson lower face. “You are ridiculous. I know you better than you know yourself, soul brother. Admit it, my friend: You came here as much to see my face as to end this.

  “You are the Other, Markus, just like me. You think I hate you? Hardly, even though I know we could never be friends. We are both self-constructs; we both had to make ourselves – the sheep misunderstand you as thoroughly as they misunderstand me.

  “Perhaps if you stay downwind they will not smell the wolf on you. Oh yes, that strategy has worked quite well for you thus far, has it not, Markus? But do you really think they will ever allow you to be part of them?

  “As soon as you have taken out the trash, as soon as you have disposed of me? Once the dragon is gone they will be more and more uncomfortable with the dragon slayer. In the end they will be afraid of you, as well they should be.

  “That day at the school? You were never more alive that at that moment – that was the high point for you, it is all down hill from there and you know it. Confess it: You loved it when you killed those men. The feeling of power, seeing the terror in their eyes as you took their lives like a god? You know the pleasure you felt then.

  “But why does that truth make you look so guilty? Why do you think you are less because of it, when you are more than the equal of any of the weaklings you fight for? I know why.

  “I know your secret, brother. I know why you run from the sheep’s adulation so persistently. Because you have done it before – and you are fool enough to be ashamed of it.

  “Am I the only one who wonders how you were able to do so well at the school? I am Chief of Police here; I was able to talk to quite a few detectives in various Bay Area police departments. It is amazing what off-the-record tidbits brother officers will share, suspicions they may never be able to substantiate enough to get a warrant, but informed enough to be damning.

  “Shall I tell your son about you, about the things you did when you were his age?”

  My face was hot; I didn’t want Jansen to continue discussing that feral young hellion Angela had helped me lay down so long ago. That boy I’d been was a nasty little beast, even if I’d never had a hard-on for deliberate sadism like Jansen did. Still, I sure didn’t want to walk down memory lane.

  “Don't you even talk about him like that,” Sam said, startling me with his vehemence. “I don’t care what he did. That don’t matter to me.”

  Jansen turned his bland attention on Sam. “Ah,” the Chief said. “In that case, allow me to tell you about your mother.”

  “She killed herself. She was weak,” Jansen said, relishing the expression that instantly crawled across Sam’s face. “Your mother chose drugs over her own child. She abandoned you.”

  “You really might want to stop now,” I said.

  But Jansen, as was his right, opted to continue provoking Sam: “Your precious uncle and Ms. Hubbard enjoyed each other’s company so immensely before you ever became intimate with her. Do you like that image, of your uncle and Elaine naked behind closed
doors, doing the exact same things you and she do together now? Do you think she asked him to perform the exact same actions she demands of you? The same positions, the same… timing?”

  He returned his attention to me. “Your brother and Elaine allowed you to languish in a cell for seven years, when I was here before them all along. They were trying to deal with Tubbs, and sell him the evidence package. Karl only called Agent Miller to make the threat look legitimate to jack up the price – Tubbs took umbrage at their greed, had Karl killed, and stole the evidence without paying Ms. Hubbard.”

  Back to Sam: “Do you really think your lover is going to fight for the Gardens with her feeble injunction? She will sell you out, and you know it – you are a boy, your type is a dime a dozen and she can pick up a new one of you anywhere by rubbing two nickels together. How awful for your friends when she ‘loses,’ pockets the money Tubbs hands her and leaves town. Do you-”

  I took a quick step forward to hover over Jansen with the hammer raised high, and he stopped in mid-sentence.

  “You promised,” he said again as he turned his head to the side with eyes scrunched tightly closed. His hollow voice wobbled. He was sweaty, agitated and rigid as he squirmed on the floor, pressing his good hand against his hip.

  “You little, little man,” I said, shaking my head at his foolishness. “What a keen eye you have for other people’s thumbscrews. I’ll be sure and let you know if you ever get close to one of mine.”

  “As you say, Reese killed Karl, not you,” I admitted. “No one wants to give you credit for something you didn’t do after all.”

  I squatted down on my hams by Jansen’s head. “You admit yourself you only engineered Kendra’s death; you didn’t have the balls to kill her with your own hands, personally I think she would’ve cleaned your stinking clock. And as you were kind enough to point out to my son, my Angela killed herself. She was weak, as you say.”

  I smiled. “Thanks for offering us your so very useful insights. I’d like to return the favor if I may.” I tapped the floor next to him with the framing hammer – whak – and he twitched.

  “I’m figuring you probably wet the bed as a kid. Did your folks hang the pissy sheets out for all the neighbors to see?” I tapped the floor with the hammer again, this time up by his head – whak – and Jansen flinched again.

  “Poor boopie. Were Mommy and Daddy mean to you? ‘I deserve better, life is so unfair,’” I crooned. WHAK – an inch from his ear – and Jansen almost levitated off the floor.

  “I’m betting you got your start tearing the wings off flies. Then what? Maybe graduating to helpless small animals – you know, puppies, kittens – something harmless and cute that trusted you enough to let you get close?” WHAK! – close enough to tear out some hair – and there were tears in Jansen’s eyes now.

  “But I understand you, ‘friend.’ I figured you out. I know your secret.” I put one hand on the floor and leaned in close, so our faces were only inches apart. “You’re the one who’s afraid. You make them scream, you send them into the dark – because the dark is what you’re most terrified of.”

  “Nothingness,” I breathed, watching his eyes turn inward away from me to face his own ultimate nightmare. “Meaninglessness. Coming for you, and there’s no escape. It’s here for you, right now.”

  A sob leaked out of him. Jansen was fully engaged now, with the life long fear his arrogance was a mask for. A mask I’d finally seen past.

  “So. A weak little bedwetting boy, afraid of the dark and pulling the wings off flies his whole life to keep the nothing away. Am I close?” I asked as I stood to tower above him once more with the hammer in my hand. “No, don’t answer. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “So you’re saying death now would be kinder for him than doing life in prison?” Sam asked.

  I nodded. “Oh, yes, son. A thousand times so.”

  As Jansen lay weeping in self pity, he squirmed on the floor with his hand under his back, cradling his butt. His face flowed like melting wax, like the shape shifter he was.

  “Can’t you see how he hates it?” I said. “Can’t you see how much crueler this is? I really don’t want to kill him, Sam. I don’t want to be the garbage our enemies say we are, and I don’t want this weakling to go out thinking he could provoke us with mere words.

  “But if you need me to, if it’ll make you feel better even the tiniest little bit? Just nod, you don’t even have to open your mouth. I’ll do it, and we’ll never speak of it again.”

  Sam’s eyes still glittered from Jansen’s venomous words as he thought hard. I readied myself in the ways I knew so well. “No,” Sam said with an evil smile. “He doesn’t get the easy road. We feed him to the Man.”

  I held my hand out to Sam, hiding my pride. “Give me the phone, then.”

  “You promised,” Jansen yelled, and I turned to tell him to shut the hell up.

  That old exultant grin leapt onto my face as he pulled his Glock service pistol from underneath him, where it was holstered at the small of his back this whole time. I dropped to one knee and the hammer came down hard, not slowing even as the pistol’s shot flashed, its blast roared, and I felt the round whizzing past my head to embed itself in the ceiling.

  His suddenly terrified expression and futilely outstretched arms made a gratifying tableau: he didn't appear to like my inner killer as much as he’d thought he would. I brought the hammer down onto his face again and again, grunting with effort at each blow. His bleating stopped as soon as the first blow landed but I just couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop.

  When I was finally done my eye patch dangled down off my ear -Jansen had apparently scrabbled at my face without me even noticing. I stood and turned away from Sam and Little Moe until I had that evil red eye pulled back up and in place.

  I looked down at Jansen’s corpse. Was it a dragon I’d slain tonight? An ogre?

  No: It was just a rag-doll meat puppet lying in front of me, the final leavings of a sick hot-brained monkey that mind-fucked himself into believing he was god. All his victims had been no more than pointless human sacrifices to his own delusions, their dissolution into agony a Darwinian waste.

  I looked at Sam looking at what was left of the Driver, seeing that same old combination of titillated excitement and horrified revulsion in his eyes.

  Did you like it? I almost asked my son. Was it as much fun as you thought it would be? But of course I didn’t shame him so.

  Little Moe’s eyes were rapt upon the body as well. The Driver would be visiting him in his nightmares soon enough; and at least now Moe would have this image to use as a weapon in dreamland self-defense.

  “Let Reese up,” I said. Sam let him stand but kicked his Magnum away and kept a firm come-along hold on his arm that Reese didn’t resist.

  I picked up Jansen’s pistol before returning my attention to Reese. “There’s no escaping this. You know that.”

  Reese looked at the bloody hammer in my left hand. I was swinging it idly, twitching it from side to side as his gaze followed it.

  “You gonna dangle hope in front of me too?” Reese asked. “Be kind of hard to make it fly; my credibility might be a little strained here. But I’ll confess to being as unenthusiastic about meeting the Feds as the Chief was.”

  Had I been toying with Jansen? Sure. But I could still convince myself I’d been going to let him live, couldn’t I?

  “What we was talking about before, about your brother,” Reese said. “I’ll admit I could've just wounded Karl and busted him. But I guess I did have my instructions, you know?”

  “From who?”

  Reese laughed. “Maybe Jansen was a rat, but I’m not. I told you before I won’t apologize, but I know its all unraveling now. One thing I’d like to know first, though – about Kendra.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, not about her exactly. About the slime that killed her.” He looked at me, eyes still hawk-bright even in defeat, not afraid to lock gazes with h
is own murderer. “I’m not asking, you can stick it up your ass if you think I am. But I wouldn’t mind knowing they died badly.”

  It didn’t even occur to me to snub him. “They didn’t enjoy it a bit. And none of them died like men. Unlike her they all died like squealing rabbits – like this one,” I said, gesturing at Jansen.

  He nodded. “That’s good, then,” he said in a quiet, satisfied voice. “That’s good.”

  It was strange to see him studying me like he thought I was watching a TV show he desperately wanted to see for himself, if only he could find the right channel button to press on his remote.

  “Maybe you two want to get a room,” Sam said.

  “You should show more respect for your elders,” Reese chided him.

  “Go fuck your mother,” Sam said. “You know who you serve.” Reese winced as if those last words were ones he’d heard before from someone else.

  “If Sam hadn’t taken you down, you were gonna do us when you were finished with Jansen,” I pointed out. “Little Moe, too.”

  “Are you complaining?” Reese asked, voice cold. “Snivel, whimper, whine. You won here. Things turned out the way they turned out.”

  “The hell with might have beens,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment then looking down at Jansen’s corpse. “He crossed the line when he went after Kendra. But I knew she was sniffing around all the wrong places. I knew some of the guys were talking, and I knew she was blowing it too.”

  “And I didn’t say nothing to her nor to them. I didn’t do a thing. I left her hanging.” Reese looked at me and licked his lips. “I’ll give you another freebie, so you can laugh at me some more when you’re done here and you leave. Kendra broke up with me the morning she died. The wedding was never gonna happen.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”