Vic nudged the door open with his elbow and looked around the apartment. A countertop island separated the living room and kitchen, stacked with colored envelopes with sympathy cards. Behind the island, the body of an elderly man hanged by a rope suspended from the ceiling. “We’ve got this,” Vic said.
They went into the apartment and closed the door behind them, blocking the view from passing neighbors but sealing in the stench. Frank opened all of the windows in the living room as Vic went around the island and stopped in front of the body. There was a two-by-four set above the cabinets on either side of the kitchen with a rope tied around the wood on one end and pulled tight around Al Charon’s neck on the other. The neck had started to stretch. Lengthening under the weight of the body to something unnaturally long and thin like taffy.
There was a chair kicked over near the kitchen entrance, close to Al’s dangling feet. As Frank reached down to move it, Vic said, “Don’t touch anything. Not yet.” There was a handwritten letter stuck to the refrigerator by a heart-shaped magnet, written to Andi and the Kids. “Who’s Andi?”
“Heck’s wife,” Frank said. He leaned forward to read the letter but Vic snatched it off of the fridge and crushed it between his hands. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I remember him. You selfish, stupid, son of a bitch,” he muttered. He looked around the kitchen and cursed.
“Hey,” Frank said, pulling on his shoulder. “I’m lost here.”
“Heck’s mom died less than two years ago. I remember talking to this dickhead at her funeral and he said he hoped he died next. He told me he took out a big life insurance policy in hopes that when he passed, Heck and his family would be all set.”
“So?”
“So life insurance policies don’t cover suicides, Frank.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have one and if it was covered by suicide, Danni would have made me eat a bullet years ago to collect.” The two men looked at one another and then back at the body. It swung side to side, the old man’s bare feet two inches off the ground. “He was a widower, right?” Vic said softly.
“Yeah.”
“Stay put.” He walked into the kitchen, moving carefully around the body. He looked up at the corpse and said, “It’s for a good cause, Al. I’m sure you don’t mind wherever you’re at anyway.” He reached for Al’s belt and fumbled with the buckle.
“What in the fuck are you doing?”
“Shhh!” Vic hissed. He quickly undid the belt and worked the button and fly on the old man’s pants. “Step back and hold your breath.”
Frank covered his face as Vic yanked down the corpse’s pants and boxer shorts, spilling a pile of excrement and bodily fluids onto the linoleum below. “This is more disgusting than the babyshit diapers,” Frank whined.
Vic backed into the corner, desperately trying to keep his shoes out of the spreading puddle of fluids. “Listen, go find me his stash.”
“What stash? You think he was doing drugs?”
“Not that kind of stash, retard, his porno stash. Go find me a magazine.”
Frank disappeared into the back bedroom and started rooting around in the nightstand. “There’s nothing here but medications and a bible, for Christssakes!”
“Keep looking!”
“He’s an old man. He wasn’t into that stuff anymore!”
“Find me something, Frank,” Vic said. He looked at his watch, “Hurry up before we get company.”
Frank’s voice was muffled and there was the sound of “This is the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever had me do, and we’ve done some really stupid shit together, Vic. I can’t find any pornography. There’s nothing… wait a second.”
He came back to the kitchen holding a balled up piece of white fabric. “I think I know what you’re up to, and this is all I could find.” He unraveled the ball to reveal an enormous pair of satin granny panties. “It was in a box in the back of the closet. I’m guessing Mrs. Charon was a big lady.”
Vic held out his hand and said, “It will do. Throw it to me.”
Frank tossed the panties across the kitchen and Vic nearly lost his balance catching them. He caught himself against the refrigerator before stepping into the wide circle of yellow fluids. There was more distance between him and body than he could reach by leaning. “The things I do for people,” he said.
Vic stepped lightly into the murky water and winced, watching his brown shoes turn dark and wet. “It’s soaking through my shoes.”
Frank covered his face and said, “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
Vic lifted the corpse’s shriveled penis and wrapped the pair of panties around it. He grabbed Charon’s stiff right arm and forced it to bend toward its crotch. He managed to get the hand to stay close enough that the panties stretched from its penis to its curled up fingers just as there was a knock at the front door.
* * *
Chief Midas looked at them in disbelief. Vic was wearing his dress shirt and tie with a pair of Al Charon’s sweatpants and flip-flops on his feet. “The Coroner said he died jerking off?”
Vic shrugged and said, “That’s what he said. One of those auto-erotic something-or-others.”
“Like the guy from Kung-Fu?” the Chief said.
“Exactly,” Vic nodded.
“I never tried that.”
“Apparently it’s more common than you’d think,” Vic said. “The restricted blood flow makes an orgasm ten times more powerful. At least, that’s what Frank told me.”
“No I didn’t,” Frank snapped.
“What you do in the privacy of your own home is your business, Frank,” the Chief said. “Anyway, nice work coming out so fast to that call. If you two keep up the good work, I might be able to make room for two detectives.”
“Does that mean I can get a fancy gold shield too? Vic keeps picking on me because I don’t have one.”
The Chief stuck out his bottom lip as he thought about it, looking up at the ceiling tiles like the answer might be written there. “I’ll think about it.”
Vic and Frank walked out of the Chief’s office toward the stairs, grinning at one another, with the sound of flip-flops smacking the ceramic tile with every step.
* * *
It was the same episode of the same cartoon for the fifth time in a row. Penelope liked nothing better than watching the same thing over and over. Vic didn’t mind. He’d read that children learn from repetition. “Turn it on again for your sister?” he said to Jason.
Jason was clicking through a webpage on Vic’s laptop, sounding bored when he said, “Again?”
Vic went into the kitchen and opened his refrigerator, taking a bottle of Miller Lite out of its six-pack carton. “You’re playing on the computer, what’s the difference?”
He cracked it and drank half the bottle in one easy swallow. It was cold as ice and went down smooth. He grabbed two more and went back into the living room, plopping down next to Penelope as Jason turned the show back on.
“Can we play a board game?” Penelope said.
He put his arm around her and nodded, “As soon as this is over. Let’s just sit here for a few minutes and when it’s done, we’ll shut the TV and the computer off and play anything you want.”
Penelope laid her head against him as he stroked her hair, now finding the stupid cartoon somewhat pleasant. Everything settled inside of him and resolved itself, like sediment floating to the bottom of a canister. Vic finished the second bottle and leaned his head back against the couch. He closed his eyes and soon heard the sounds of snoring coming from his open mouth. Everything was all right, though. Everything was good.
The sound of Jason’s voice woke him up. He opened his eyes to see his son sitting on the coffee table, hunched over as he talked on the phone. Penelope’s head was down in his lap and she was asleep. Jason had covered her up with a blanket and taken off her shoes. “I can’t put him on, Mom. He’s sleeping.”
“Give me the phone,
” Vic said.
Jason’s head popped up and he handed Vic the phone. “What’s up?” Vic said.
“You fell asleep? You’re supposed to be watching them. It’s only nine o’clock at night.”
“We were sitting on the couch watching TV and I closed my eyes. What’s the big deal?”
“Were you drinking?”
Vic looked at the bottles on the coffee table and then at his son. Jason shook his head silently and Vic said, “No. I’m just tired from work.”
“Put Jason on the phone.”
Vic wiggled out from underneath Penelope’s head and snapped his fingers at Jason, directing him to the bathroom. “I can’t. He just went into the bathroom to get freshened up for bed.”
“Make sure he calls me the second he gets out.”
“Okay. How are you doing?”
“Tuition for her pre-school is due. I need a check from you when you drop them off in the morning.”
“I don’t have it right now.”
“When will you have it by?”
“When we get our overtime check, I guess. Why can’t you pay for it out of the money I give you every week? Why does the three hundred dollars I fork over every paycheck not cover anything they need?”
“Because I am a single-mother and have no help, Vic. Thanks to you I have no help.”
Vic moved into the kitchen, keeping his hand cupped over the phone to muffle his voice. “You aren’t a single mother. That’s asinine. I have them three days a week and give you more money than I take home every paycheck. Is that what you tell people? That you’re a single-mom with no help?”
“Well it’s true,” she said.
“It is not fucking true. Listen to me—”
“Don’t curse at me! And don’t talk to me that way in front of my children!”
“I’m not in front of the children! Listen to me!” He continued to talk but quickly realized that she’d hung up the phone. He ended the call and put the phone down, fighting the temptation to text her: FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING CUNT. He typed it into his phone but did not send it. It felt better just to write it.
Jason was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing his teeth. Vic leaned up against the bathroom door and said, “Thanks. You know how she gets. Every little thing just… you know how she gets.”
“No problem,” the boy said.
“Listen, I’ll put Penelope to bed and how about you and me watch a movie?”
“I kind of wanted to finish my game, Dad.”
“Oh. Okay. That sounds good,” Vic said. He followed his son out of the bathroom and watched him sit down in front of the computer again, quickly immersing himself in the bright screen and theatrical sound effects.
Vic lifted Penelope and put her back in his lap. He reached for another beer and opened it. It was warm. He drank it anyway.
* * *
Frank finished his fourth beer and sat back, clutching his stomach. The aspirin was not mixing well with the Miller Lite. His whole body tingled and although his knee ached, he was only dully aware of its mild throb. He’d already ground up the remaining Percocet in the garbage disposal. Somewhere, a hundred miles downstream, a little old lady is going to drink a glass of tap water and be high as a kite. Oh well, he thought.
His phone rang. Frank picked it up and looked at the numbers in confusion. “Hello?”
“Hey, Frankie. You know who this is?”
Frank did. “Special Agent Dolos?”
“Just call me Dez. What are you doing?”
“Watching TV and drinking beer. We had kind of a crazy day after the meeting. There was this dead guy—”
“Uh-huh. Can you talk?”
Frank put down his beer and said, “Yeah. What’s up?”
“Vic was bullshitting me earlier today. Are you going to bullshit me too?”
“No, of course not.”
“There’s room in our operation for good people, Frank. Especially people who have a family history of doing the right thing, you know what I’m saying?”
Frank paused. “Kind of, I guess.”
“Good. Because we’re all big fans of your old man’s work. It’s the kind of thing that’s missing from police work today. The kind of thing it takes certain people to understand. I need a guy like you out in the boonies, Frank. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure about Vic anymore.”
“I know he can be hard to take sometimes, but he’s a good guy.”
“Everybody that works with me makes a lot of money, Frank. They all go on to exclusive assignments that take them far away from the shitholes like where you work now. Stick with me, and you can go places.”
“Okay,” Frank said.
“What’s the real reason you guys didn’t sign that CI up yet?”
Frank took a long sip of beer. “I have no idea. Vic talked to him without me there.”
“Really?”
“Honest to God.”
“All right. Listen, I need that CI flipped. I need you to make sure we get him one way or another. If Vic can’t make it happen, I want you to find a way for me to get in touch with him, understand? We have resources you guys could never dream of.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Frank said.
“Say hello to your old man for me. Let him know his friends down here haven’t forgotten him. If he ever needs anything, you make sure he has my number.”
“I will,” Frank said. The line went dead. Frank’s first instinct was to call Vic, but he found himself staring at the phone without dialing. He tossed the phone aside, then finished his beer and turned the TV back on.
9
Vic was sitting at his desk, waiting as Frank walked into the office. He smiled broadly and said, “There he is. Our Miss America. How you feeling?”
“Like hell,” Frank said. “My knee is killing me.”
“I can see the pain in your eyes,” Vic said. “It’s how I know you haven’t been taking that shit anymore. How you making out with that?”
“What I don’t understand is if my doctor says it’s okay, and the Chief of Police says it’s okay, why do I need to listen to a not-even-promoted Detective who says different?”
“How many drug addicts does the Chief know?”
“He doesn’t need to know any drug addicts. He has the Staff Sergeant at his side, who is an expert in all aspects of law enforcement. That’s a real police officer, with a real rank, Vic…” Frank stopped talking and held up his hand, “I really tried to get all that out without laughing. Let me try again.”
“No need. So how was your night, last night?”
“Good.”
“What did you do?”
“Iced my goddamn knee because I’m not allowed to take the proper medicine for it.”
Vic started tapping his pen on his desk anxiously. “Did Dez reach out to you? I figured he would because that’s his M.O. He likes nothing better than to divide and conquer.”
“Really?” Frank said.
“So did he?”
“Did he call me?”
“Do you know what the number one thing people do when they are confronted in an interrogation situation and they do not want to answer the question? They repeat it. It allows them to create psychological space and distance from the interrogator so that they can gather their thoughts. Do you know what the number two thing they do is?”
“No,” Frank said.
“They swear they are telling the truth. They swear to God, swear on their lives, swear on anything really. I once had a man swear on the soul of his dead child that he was telling me the truth. He was actually wearing a t-shirt with a silkscreen of the kid’s picture on it that said, IN MEMORIAM.”
“That sucks,” Frank said.
“So what did Dez want?”
“He wanted to know why we hadn’t signed up Billy as a CI yet, and to tell him if you weren’t going to do it.”
Vic nodded, still tapping his pen anxiously. “So were you going to tell me about it?”
“Maybe. I was trying to decide if it was necessary or not.”
Vic came forward on the desk, “Necessary? You mean a guy I introduce you to tries to cut my throat and turn you against me and you have to decide whether or not it’s necessary? After everything we’ve been through? That’s bullshit, Frank. You were waiting to see if you could play the cards in your favor. Well I’ve got news for you, pal. Dez promises a whole lot and delivers very fucking little. He creates discord and misery wherever he goes just because he likes to see people fight. And then, when you think he’s your friend, he jams it up your ass sideways and moves on to the next person!”
Frank waited to speak until Vic had finished and caught his breath. “Can I talk now? I was trying to decide if it was necessary to get you all upset about it. I have no interest in the FBI or anything like that. All I ever wanted to be was a town clown, and that’s what I am.”
Vic sat back down and said, “Oh.”
“So let me ask you, just from me to you, with no hidden meanings, are we going to sign Billy up as a CI or not? The guy he can work seems like a badass and we should focus on getting him while we can.”
Vic looked like he was having trouble making sense of Frank’s words. “You’re a cop all of a sudden?”
Frank pulled out his badge and showed it to Vic, “You see this? It might be silver now, but it’s about to turn gold. I am the next not-even-promoted detective, buddy, and you better get used to it. I swear to God.”
* * *
Vic raised his hand to knock on the door, but stopped and said, “You do it.”
Frank rapped gently on the screen door, and Vic scowled and pushed him out of the way. “Nobody’s going to take you seriously if you do it like that. Here, watch this.” Vic put his hand flat against the metal frame to hold it in place and kicked several times, loud enough to make Frank cover his ears. “You need to get their attention or they think you’re the landlord coming to collect rent or something.”
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