Isolated Judgment

by Jonathan Watkins

  “I didn’t peg you for a late sleeper, Chief.”

  Fish swiveled his head around, craning to see over his left shoulder. His captor was sitting in the leather La-Z-Boy on the other side of the room. He looked freshly showered, with his hair swept back tight and gleaming. The jacket of his jumpsuit was folded neatly over the back of the chair, and Fish saw that he was wearing a sleeveless white undershirt. His arms and shoulders were thick, and wiry curls of white hair stood out across them.

  He leaned forward in the chair and poked a fork across a plate set on the coffee table that separated the two men. The fork came up with a clump of runny eggs, streamlets of yellow running with it from plate to mouth. The man chewed, belched and swallowed.

  “I think maybe I don’t have to kill you,” he said, and his expression didn’t change. He shoveled in another mouthful of dripping eggs, talking around it as he spoke. “I looked your whole place over. I wake up at the crack of dawn. Always have, ever since the army. I guess you probably never served. S’why you just wake up any old time.”

  Fish remained silent, but his eyes drifted from that mouth full of food, finally coming to rest on the shiny silver skin of the tackle box he’d stolen from the Bass Tackler. It was sitting on the far end of the coffee table, its lid yawning open. From his position on the floor, Fish couldn’t see the box’s contents, but he knew what was in there all the same: a horde of jewelry that was worth a fortune.

  It was also evidence, of course. Evidence of whatever happened out on the Judge’s island. Evidence of his impulsive betrayal of his position. All for some idealized dream of belonging. Tuxedos and champagne. Lazy, carefree afternoons. Respect.

  He saw how pathetic it was now. He had imagined that a box of silver and gold could make him someone other than himself, as if it could not only transform his station in life, but his very nature.

  A taller, straighter fish, with shiny white teeth and all the confidence in the world, he thought, and almost barked with laughter.

  The handcuffs dug into the skin of his wrists, and he ached from head to toe, but he was glad for it. The pain was real, and some part of him wanted to hold on to that pain, to keep him here in the real world, far away from the destitute fantasies that had prompted him to betray who he was.

  “I peeked around some,” the man continued. “You know, I—”

  He stopped, another forkful of eggs suspended halfway between the plate and his mouth.

  “You never asked me my name,” he said.

  “You’re going to tell me?” Fish asked, and his throat was a dry constriction.

  “Yeah, probably I shouldn’t. You are the chief of police, after all.” He said it in a sarcastic drawl, driving home with how little respect he regarded Fish and his office. “Anyway, I searched your place while you were sleeping the morning away. You know what I figured out after that?” He waited a beat, until it was clear Fish had no answer to offer.

  The man set his fork down, reached over and tapped his index finger lightly along the edge of the tackle box. He held his other hand against his mouth in a fist and belched loudly.

  “This ain’t yours,” he said. “Is it?”

  “Take it,” Fish said. “Can’t you just take it with you and be done?”

  “Oh, I am taking it.”

  “Then what does it matter how I got it?”

  The man stood and took the plate off into the kitchen. Fish heard the sink begin to run, and some clattering. It occurred to him that the man wasn’t just returning the plate and silverware to the kitchen. He was washing them. “Like I said. Army. They drill that shit so deep in you, you can’t ever get it out. Gotta be squared away, you know? No, I guess you don’t. Ain’t nothing about you seems squared away to me. Tidy? Sure, you keep a neat little house here, Chief. Got a closet full of ironed shirts. But that’s just OCD or being kinda gay, you know? It ain’t trained into you. It ain’t about being prepared. If it was, that little six-shooter of yours wouldn’t look like it’s been left out in the fucking rain. A guy has a gun like that? Maybe he’s neat, sure. But neat ain’t the same as prepared.”

  His kidnapper’s dim view of him didn’t bother Fish, not after the terrible night of beatings and his own confrontation with the ludicrous fancies that had prodded him to steal the tackle box.

  The pompadoured man wasn’t only interested in the treasure. He was interested in where it came from. He was going to ask. He’d do it calmly once or twice more. But then the beatings would start again, Fish was certain. He’d have to take a lot more. He’d have to be willing to do that and not shout out the Judge’s name.

  He heard the man’s jogging shoes squeaking across the linoleum of the kitchen, rounding back toward the living room, and part of Chief Fish wanted to just tell the man everything—the missing boat, the lawyers, the Judge and his island. Every last thing, before the first kick drove up into his belly.

  As the pompadoured man sat heavily back down in the La-Z-Boy, Fish told himself he would hold out. However long he could manage, he would keep the Judge and his island from leaping past his lips.

  “Alright, then,” the man said, and his caterpillar eyebrows lowered down over his eyes, a cruel little grin blooming on his blunt face. “I guess we have to do this now, Chief. Gotta see it through to the end.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Where’d you find all that jewelry?”

  “On the beach,” he said, settling on the half truth that came to mind. “There was a storm. It was buried, but the storm kicked it up enough that I saw it.”

  The pompadoured man’s cruel grin spread, and he chortled.

  “Buried treasure, huh? That’s cute.”

  “I know I shouldn’t have tried to sell it online. I know that.”

  “I’m going to go downstairs and get that ball-peen hammer I saw down there.”

  “What? Get a—”

  “Ball-peen hammer. Yep.”

  “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

  “I’m going to, Chief. See? Here I go,” he said, and pushed himself back up out of the chair. “I’m getting that hammer, buddy. I’m going. Here I go.”

  “Jesus, don’t do this.”

  “Where’d you get the jewelry?”

  Fish felt his entire body go rigid with fear and desperate resolution. Nothing came out of his mouth. His hands were bunched in fists, and he sucked air in through his nose in short, sharp huffs.

  “Don’t,” he hissed. “Please. Just don’t do it. Just make that choice.”

  The pompadoured man shook his head, a mixture of amusement and confusion on his face.

  “I guess every guy tries to find his spine sooner or later.” He sighed. “I guess that’s just how we’re built, right? Don’t go anywhere.”

  Fish watched him walk away out of sight down the hall.

  “It’s your choice! Don’t do it!”

  Soon, he heard the pompadoured man’s heavy footfalls plunging down the basement stairs. Fish blinked tears out of his eyes. A ferocious thing seized hold of him, equal parts wild panic and green nausea. He began to jerk against the sofa leg so hard the cuffs dug deep scarlet furrows in his skin. His vision swam and an animal grunt rushed out of his throat each time he yanked on the unyielding leg.

  By the time the pompadoured man had returned, holding the heavy-headed hammer loosely in his hand, Fish had only managed to scoot the sofa a few inches. He was panting and covered in sweat, staring with an unblinking, transfixed fear at the man and the hammer.

  “Well—” the pompadoured man sighed “—I guess you had to get that outta your system. It’s normal, far as I can tell. I seen it, even in hard guys, you know? You take a guy who’s hard as nails and put him where you are now, eventually he’ll drop the silent act and flail all over like he can maybe hulk his way out. “ He nodded once, as if
confirming the truth of what he’d said. Then he sighed like a man confronting a tiresome chore and said “Alright, here we go, Chief.”

  The pompadoured man bent down and gently lifted Fish’s thick-rimmed glasses off his face. He folded them together and set them on the coffee table.

  Looming over Fish, the man was a blur—a mass of lilac and white, shifting around to get a better position. The hammer was clear, though. It was close to him, and its heavy iron head was the realest thing in all the world.

  “Please don’t.”

  “Where’d you get the jewelry, Chief?” the lilac blur asked again, and Fish knew it was the last time those words would be spoken until some part of him was broken. Something small, perhaps, to start. Then they would be spoken again. And if he was still holding on to the certainty that he must make his stand here, now...then something else would get broken. Something not as small.

  “I want to tell you,” he cried, and it was true. “I can’t. I can’t. Can’t you understand that? I can’t be the reason someone else gets hurt. I’ve messed everything up so bad already.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Chief.” The blur chuckled.

  Then it went to work with the hammer.

  * * *

  There was no identifying sign on the narrow, single-story building, other than a defective neon tube that had once said OPEN, but now said PEN. The building was fashioned of old, crumbly brick, the only visible structure still standing on that deserted and silent west-side street. Any newcomer who nevertheless found a reason to venture inside would have learned that Winkle’s Tavern was a run-down bar standing alone among the debris of that deserted west-side neighborhood.

  Darren was anything but a newcomer. He had a key ready in his hand when he approached the front door of the tavern because this early in the morning it was most certainly not PEN, no matter what the sign claimed.

  He’d turned the key in the dead bolt when the door swung inward and he was abruptly nose to nose with the round, blunt-featured face of his friend, Theresa Winkle. The short, heavy-set proprietor wore a pair of faded jeans and a purple T-shirt. Her generous bosom stretched the words written on the shirt in big block letters: PART-TIME NINJA.

  “I was going to come fetch you,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Grab a drink, you mean.”

  “It’s a bit early.”

  “Well, I guess that’s progress. Get out of my way already, Fletcher.”

  Behind her, in the dim and unlit interior of the bar, he could just make out the nearest members of her herd of unicorns. Over a hundred of them were hanging from the ceiling on fishing line and glued to every flat surface throughout the bar. The herd of figurines and statuettes was his friend’s most prized possession.

  Darren felt himself smiling as he took a step back. Theresa stepped out and relocked the door.

  “What’re you so happy about?” she mumbled, then turned around and fell silent.

  Darren watched his good friend stop and stare at the black limousine parked on the curb. It was improbably long, a purring line of shiny black and chrome.

  “Cripes. You and the princess getting married or something?” Theresa said. “You don’t look dressed up for a wedding.”

  “Ah, no. Not married. Are you still needling Izzy with the princess label? I thought you two bonded.”

  Theresa cocked her head and wrinkled her nose.

  “Bonded? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When I got grabbed last year? You and Izzy storming around town together like two desperados? That didn’t earn her an upgrade from princess?”

  “Since when is princess a bad word?”

  “It’s the way you say it. You know what, never mind. Let’s get rolling.”

  Darren opened the limo’s rear door, revealing the black leather interior. Issabella popped her head out and smiled at them both.

  “We’re abusing our fiduciary duty to a client we don’t like anymore,” she said. “Climb on in.”

  Theresa shot her a skeptical look.

  “It’s billable,” Issabella said.

  Theresa started to climb into the limo, but stopped and peeked her head over the door at Darren.

  “Where we goin’?”

  Issabella exchanged a knowing grin with him.

  “Somewhere you’ll love,” she said.

  * * *

  In the third level of the basement below 1114 Washington Avenue, Chicago, a landline receiver registered an incoming call at 9:37 a.m., and a small green light on its smooth skin lit to life. The receiver transmitted the incoming signal seventeen floors up, and passed it along to the mainframe housed in an atmospherically controlled room between a janitor’s closet and the northeast stairwell. There, the signal was picked at, all of its information filtered, strained and pondered over for less than a millisecond. Satisfied, the mainframe allowed the signal to continue on, directing it up thirteen more floors and to the personal computer in the southwest corner office. There, the signal was converted into a numerical representation on the monitor, and a soft, jingling chime issued from the computer’s speakers.

  Luther’s pen paused over the stack of papers he was signing and he glanced up at the monitor, his slate-gray eyes picking over the series of numbers displayed there. He recognized them immediately. He had committed the series to memory the day before.

  He lifted the receiver off his desk phone and put it to his ear. He tapped the keyboard once.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Hey,” a man answered. “So, my guy told me call this number if any questions came up.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Okay, well, some questions came up.”

  Luther leaned back in his chair and swiveled around until he was facing the wall of windows that looked out over Chicago’s downtown.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  The man started talking in the short, to-the-point sentences he’d noticed men with military experience in their background were prone to. Not military service, alone. Veterans. Men who had fought and, out of dire necessity, had learned to communicate with exact precision. He was rattling off facts to Luther in perceived order of importance.

  The brooch had been found, along with a sizable quantity of other items of jewelry. The man who had advertised the brooch on an internet auction site was in his possession, and was offering everything he knew.

  Luther listened, pushing away at his habit of leaning forward and writing notes out on a pad when taking information by phone. This was not a conversation that would ever be recorded in any way whatsoever.

  The man continued, “And he says the jewelry came from a smaller, private island near this one. Wailing Isle. Owned by a retired judge who lives out there in a three-story house. Him, a groundskeeper named Lou, and a Labrador he says isn’t trained to attack. Says the Judge and this Lou are both in their eighties, and the Judge is in a wheelchair.”

  Luther pursed his lips, his handsome face turning dyspeptic as the man talked.

  “Is the Judge federal or state?” he said.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters,” he snapped. He pivoted back around and tapped keys, opening the web browser. “Give me his name. I can’t send you out after someone we’ve got a relationship with.”

  “Prosner. Bernard Prosner.”

  Luther started looking.

  “And this Lou?”

  “Well, that’s where it gets interesting.”

  “Okay.”

  “The cop says he’s just some old friend of the Judge. Never comes off the island unless it’s to get supplies. Keeps to himself, doesn’t linger. And, ah, apparently speaks with an accent makes him sound like he’s Schwarzenegger’s daddy.”

  Luther stopped h
is search.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s the bonus objective. That’s him.”

  “Uh, yeah. I actually figured that out on my own.”

  Luther disdained sarcasm, and he nearly said as much, but he remained silent. This wasn’t an employee on the phone. This was a man he’d had to find out of necessity and haste, someone close enough to Put-in-Bay to get there and secure the brooch before it was sold. Lecturing him on decorum wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

  “If I give you the all clear,” Luther continued, “you’ll have to acquire proof of identity. You understand?”

  “Yep. How long? I have to sit around in this guy’s living room all day, this can get complicated. I don’t need some deputy dropping by with coffee and doughnuts, you know?”

  “One minute,” Luther said, and scanned the Judge’s name through two more of the firm’s databases. Nothing returned.

  “You’re good to go,” he said, and relaxed back into the chair, allowing it to swivel lazily around as he nudged the carpet with the toe of his shoe. This was good. His client was going to be more than pleased. Getting the Austrian meant guaranteed future accounts. It meant another powerful man would forever look upon Luther and the firm as a personal benefactor.

  The man on the other end of the phone muffled an unhealthy cough, and for the first time Luther wondered what he looked like. He sounded older.

  “There’s something else,” the man said.

  “Alright.”

  “Two lawyers. This guy says they came out to see the Judge the same morning he found the jewelry. Says he thinks something happened out there. Something bloody. Says he thinks these lawyers were maybe supposed to come out and clean it up or something.”

  Luther’s blooming self-satisfaction began wilting, and he closed his eyes against the sudden fear of victory being snatched away. Blood and treasure. Whose blood?

  “The man you have there?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is he certain this Lou is still alive?”

  “Yeah. Says he saw him when the lawyers got flown in. Says he’s sure Lou and the Judge are alive, but that’s all he knows. The lawyers wouldn’t tell him shit, apparently.”