Superbia s-1

by Bernard Schaffer

  Then he woke up.

  * * *

  The sun was out as Frank pulled into the station’s parking lot. Vic’s car wasn’t there. He parked and got out, feeling his heart beating harder with every step toward the door. Both the Chief and Staff Sergeant’s cars were there. Is that normal? Aren’t they normally in later than this?

  They came in early to initiate the firing of one cop and the indefinite suspension of his partner for not reporting it, he thought. That son of a bitch. If I survived getting shot just to lose my job over your bullshit I’ll kill you. His heart pounded so fast now that he thought people would be able to see his shirt move.

  Frank punched his code into the door and went in. The hallways were empty. He headed for the Staff Sergeant’s office. Empty. He went to the Chief’s office. The door was shut.

  They’re in there. No doubt about it. I might as well clear out my shit now and get it over with. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He turned toward the squad room and headed for the water cooler. Jim Iolaus was sitting at the computer terminal typing up a report. He looked up at Frank in surprise and said, “You all right?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Frank snapped.

  “I mean, are you all right. You look like shit.”

  Frank wiped his forehead and nodded. “My leg hurts. That’s all. What’s going on around here? Anything? The bosses in? I checked their offices but the Chief’s door’s closed.” He knew he was speaking rapidly but was too busy searching every inch of Iolaus for information. “Any clue what’s up?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Iolaus shrugged. He turned back to the computer and started typing.

  Frank limped dramatically over to the coffee machine and poured himself a fresh cup. He was about to turn when he caught sight of something bald and enormous waddling toward him. Here it comes. The old, “See me in my office, Frank.” He set his coffee cup down and put his hands on the counter top to keep them from shaking.

  The Staff Infection came up behind him and said, “Just the man I was looking for. What is the status of the Lamia case I assigned you yesterday?”

  Frank turned slightly and said, “It’s already down. We arrested the old man last night and put him in jail.”

  “Last night? What the hell took so long?” Erinnyes said, his usual sarcasm tinted with humor. He leaned over Frank’s shoulder and said, “I’ll take one.”

  Frank snatched a cup from the stack and filled it so quickly that it spilled over the ledge and burned the tips of his fingers. He ignored it and finished pouring, then replaced the pot and headed for the stairs as quickly as he could.

  “You talking about Peter Lamia?” Iolaus called out. “The seventy-five year old you put in County?”

  Frank stopped at the hallway and said, “Yeah. Why?”

  “His wife posted bail for him before he was even through intake. He was home in forty-five minutes.”

  Frank cursed and kept walking.

  * * *

  The office door was closed and it was dark inside. Frank pulled out his phone and dialed Vic’s number, letting it ring until it went to voicemail.

  He ended the call and punched in a text message: Call me. Asap.

  He set the phone down on his desk and slumped down in his chair, and jumped up again when the phone rang. “Vic!”

  There was a snicker on the other end. “Not quite, Frankie. It’s Dez. We grabbed Paris coming back to the house. I need you and Vic to get down here right away for when we interrogate him.”

  Frank swallowed. “Vic sicked out today. Do you want me to still come down?”

  “Typical. Yeah, hurry up. You don’t want to miss this.”

  Frank tried to call Vic again and it rang until voicemail. He left another message telling Vic about the interrogation. Telling him to pick up. Telling him to call. He kept redialing as he went up the stairs to the hallway, and again as he walked toward the keybox. He opened the keybox and saw that the only set of keys left was for the marked unit Erinnyes had assigned him. Frank hung up the phone and took them.

  * * *

  Frank parked his patrol car on the street near the shipping dock, ignoring the strange looks of truckers as they drove past. He hurried toward the unmarked door on the brick building and pounded on it, remembering to have his badge ready. Dez Dolos opened the door and pushed him back toward the street. “Did you come alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dez looked up and down the street, checking for people. He handed Frank a balled up ski mask and told him to put it on when they went inside. “Under no circumstances are you to use anyone’s name, agency, or other identifying information. Do you understand?”

  Frank looked down at the mask and said, “Are you being serious right now, or is this some sort of joke, because I’m seriously not in the mood.”

  Dez leveled his eyes at Frank and said, “Vic told me you were a cop.”

  “I am a cop. Things have just been a little weird lately, that’s all.” Frank went past the door and pulled the mask over his face as Dez did the same. The warehouse past the first door was lit by a single floor lamp that was plugged into the wall near a folding chair. A black man sat in the chair, hands cuffed behind his back, wearing only his underwear. Sweat dripped from his dark skin so profusely that a puddle was forming under his seat on the concrete floor. Frank adjusted his mask and the man turned to look at him with wide eyes that showed white all the way around the irises. Paris Deimos, Frank thought.

  Men from Dez’s team stood around Paris in a circle, all of them masked.

  Dez walked in front of Paris and leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees so that he was looking directly in Paris’s face. “So where were we?”

  “We was at fuck you, fuck these other muh fukkin’ pigs, fuck yo mamas, fuck yo grandmamas, fuck yo kids, fuck yo skank-ass, scandalous ass, dick-sucking babymama, and fuck whoever the fuck it is you think I kidnapped because I ain’t done shit.”

  “Right,” Dez said. He stood up and sighed, “Well, we tried everything else. Now that we’re all here, I guess we should just get down to it.”

  “Yeah, right,” Paris sneered. “You bitches don’t scare me. I ain’t never scared, faggots.”

  “Okay,” Dez said. He looked over at the closed door of their meeting room. “You ready in there?”

  Something pounded on the door in response. Hard.

  Paris turned toward the sound and laughed sharply, “What? You think I never took a beating before? I’ve been getting my ass kicked by the police my whole life. This ain’t shit. You hear me? You ain’t shit in there, whoever the fuck you are.”

  “I’d like to welcome you to a very special club, Mr. Deimos,” Dez said. “Since the seventies, police have relied on one singular entity to gain information from subjects when all else failed. Not many people have ever seen him, but those that do never forget it. And I can assure you that neither will you.”

  Paris had gone silent and was now watching the door.

  “Allow me to introduce you to a friend of mine,” Dez said. He turned toward the door as it slowly opened to reveal a six-foot man in a dirty, blood-stained bunny costume. He came out of the office carrying an orange nightstick, heading directly for Paris. “This is the Truth Rabbit.”

  * * *

  Paris Deimos slumped forward against his seat and spat blood between his knees. He worked something inside his mouth with his tongue and grunted, then spat a piece of broken tooth at the Truth Rabbit. “I don’t know where they at!” he screamed. His eyes were swollen shut and his black skin was covered in bloody welts flecked with pieces of orange paint.

  The rabbit turned toward Dez. The Special Agent nodded and pointed at two of the other men standing near Paris’s chair. They grabbed the prisoner under the armpits and threw him face first onto the floor. His bare chest slapped against the concrete and he moaned and cursed at them as they pinned him to the floor.

  The Truth Rabbit walked behind them and kicked Paris’s legs apart
with his large fuzzy bunny feet. Two more men came forward and grabbed Paris’s ankles, pulling his legs apart and holding them.

  Dez walked around to Paris’s face and bent down. “What’s the address of the house where you’re keeping them?”

  “Fuck you!” Paris shrieked.

  Dez flicked his head up at the Truth Rabbit and Paris started screaming as the furry bunny fingers wrapped around the waistband of his underwear and pulled it off. “You’re going to get a little practice for the Joint, Mr. Deimos.”

  Paris cried out in terror as the bunny put the nightstick’s tip between his buttcheeks, sliding it forward. “All right! All right! Stop. I’ll tell you.”

  The Truth Rabbit withdrew his stick, but held it at the ready.

  “They at my baby mama’s sister house in Camden, on Tartaros Street,” he whimpered. “The little girl is with my baby mama an’ that junkie bitch wife of Billy’s is probably shooting up in the bathroom.”

  “Where’s Billy?”

  “Chained up to the water heater in the basement.”

  “How bad is he?”

  Paris closed both of his eyes and pressed his forehead against the floor. “I cut off two of his fingers because he wouldn’t tell me who took my shit. He kept saying some bullshit like the police took it but didn’t arrest him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” Paris said quickly. “Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “Nothing even as bad as what y’all did to me today. Except he’s gonna smell like piss when you go to get him, so take a bucket of hot water with you.”

  Dez chuckled under his mask and said, “Why, pray tell, is he going to smell like piss?”

  Paris looked up at him and said, “Because… every morning I go down there and piss on him.”

  * * *

  Everyone else left after two cops smuggled a blindfolded Paris outside and dumped him in the trunk of a car. Frank listened to him pound against the inside of the trunk as they drove off, calling them all bitches, swearing to take revenge. The sun was setting, casting the trash and bottles littering the street in a soft orange hue. A man walked up beside him. “How in the hell are you going to arrest him now after all of that?” Frank said.

  “We’re not,” Dez said. “Not yet anyway. They’ll dump him a few blocks away from his house after we pick up the Helens. I’ve got guys on their way over to Camden now acting on an ‘anonymous’ tip. After that, Billy can give us Paris and we’ll get a warrant for his arrest. Pretty freaking cool, huh?”

  “Right,” Frank mumbled. “Pretty cool.”

  Dez clapped him on the shoulder, “You did your old man proud today. Ask him what he ever did with the old suit. We’ve got kind of a pool going, and I have twenty bucks that says it’s still in his basement.” He waited for Frank to respond, but when he didn’t, Dez smiled at him and headed toward the door. “I know. It takes a minute for it to all sink in. Give me a call tomorrow or something. You’re gonna fit in here real well, Frankie.”

  The agent opened the door and went inside as Frank stood there, watching the trash blow from the street to the sidewalk, and up against the walls of the building. The gates to the shipping docks were closed and locked and the rest of the street was empty. Frank walked back to his police car and sat down with both hands on the wheel. He gripped the wheel as hard as he could but could not stop them from shaking.

  14

  The station was dark by the time he returned. There was a vehicle in the parking lot that made Frank’s eyebrows raise. He’d never seen the Chief’s car there so late. He backed into Unit 6’s assigned spot and got out, limping across the lot. He opened the station door and turned on the hallways lights. The Chief’s office door was open.

  “Chief?” he said. He walked down the hall toward the office and as he looked inside, he let out a burst of air like someone had punched him in the gut. There were spots of discolored wallpaper where various framed pictures and certificates had hung for years. The desk had two pens and a blank notepad sitting on top of it with a large imprint of where the Chief’s desk calendar had been. Even the damn horseshoe was gone.

  The station door creaked opened, and Frank did not turn to see who it was, but the sound of labored breathing made it unnecessary. Staff Sergeant Erinnyes came waddling down the hallway carrying a large cardboard box of his belongings. He frowned at Frank’s proximity to the empty office and said, “Can I help you?”

  “I take it I missed something.”

  Erinnyes smiled thinly. “Welcome to the brave new world. You’ll appreciate it once you get used to it, Frank.”

  Frank ignored him and said, “I needed to tell the Chief something important about Vic.”

  Erinnyes’s eyes flashed and he said, “I am all ears.”

  “He’s missing. I haven’t seen him since yesterday and have been trying to reach him all day. He’s not answering his phone and I think something’s wrong.”

  “Very funny, Frank. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to drop this off so I can go home.”

  Erinnyes pushed past Frank to go into the Chief’s office and Frank said, “I’m not kidding, sir. I’m really concerned.”

  “Vic was sitting in his office this afternoon when I left, Frank. I was able to give him the good news in person and deliver him a fresh new pack of traffic tickets.” Erinnyes’s face lit up, “You should have seen him. I’ve been waiting to have that conversation for over five years.”

  “He was here?” Frank said quickly.

  “Still is, I think. His car is still parked in the same spot. Didn’t you see it when you came in?”

  Frank turned and bolted down the hallway, ignoring the spike of pain in his leg.

  “I told him to get his uniforms ready, effective immediately,” Erinnyes called down the hall. “Make sure you do the same. You’ll be doing high-intensity traffic details first thing Monday morning! From now on, we will be focused on real police work!”

  Frank grabbed the handrails on the steps and swung down three steps at a time like a gymnast. He reached the landing below and started hopping on one foot to make it the rest of the way. “Vic!” he called out. “You son of a bitch, you scared the shit out of me. Vic?”

  The detective’s office door was open and the light was on. Something familiar stung his nose as he approached, like the burner on a stove left on for too long. Gunpowder. There were a dozen brand-new traffic tickets scattered on the floor in front of the door. Frank called Vic’s name again as he stepped over the tickets and came around the corner.

  Detective Vic Ajax was sitting upright at his desk. His eyes were turned up to the ceiling in wide, unblinking amazement. His mouth was open. Dried fluid had crusted under his nose and dripped from his lower lip onto his shirt.

  A dark, bloody bullet hole ran through the center of his chest.

  Blood was spattered in a fanned web behind his chair.

  Frank opened up his mouth and covered it quickly, stifling a scream. He limped forward and saw Vic’s gun on the ground beneath his right hand where he’d dropped it.

  Frank covered his face and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, feeling the sting of tears. A million thoughts raced through his mind like the sudden burst of static that drowned out his thoughts and left him unable to do anything but stand there, covering his eyes so he could not see the dead body sitting directly in front of him.

  There were five folded letters sitting on the desk in front of the body. The first said To My Beloved Children. The second said To My Wife. The third, To Frank and the fourth, To Aprille. And finally, To the Lying Sacks of Shit that Run this Police Department and Everyone Else in It.

  Frank picked up the letter written to him and was about to read it when he crushed up the page in his hands. He grabbed the rest of the letters and crumpled them up, trying to catch his breath enough to curse and scream but all that came out of his mouth were muted bursts of anguish and spittle.

  “No,” he whispered.
“God damn you. Not like this.”

  He stuffed all of the letters into his pockets and picked up Vic’s gun. There was a round in the chamber. Frank dropped the magazine and racked the slide, keeping it in the locked back position as he laid it down. He grabbed Vic by the shoulders and rolled him out of the chair, letting him fall on the ground, then he rolled him onto his back and ripped open his shirt.

  Frank spun around the office, looking everywhere. He rummaged through the drawers of his desk until he found a gun cleaning kit. He unsnapped the lid and threw pieces of dirty cloth across the desk and unscrewed the cap to a bottle of cleaning solvent. He splashed the fluid across Vic’s computer keyboard and turned it sideways on the desk, watching the rest of the bottle drip onto the floor.

  He bent over Vic’s body and scrubbed his hands in the clotted blood around the dark hole in Vic’s chest. He smeared the blood all over his arms and face, then started pumping Vic’s chest several times until fresh blood squirted out of the bullet hole. Frank kept pumping until the blood stopped bubbling through the hole, then lifted his head and screamed for help.

  * * *

  “I don’t really remember,” Frank said. He was sitting in the interview room with his sleeves rolled up, his arms still covered in Vic’s blood.

  Two County Detectives from the District Attorney’s Office sat across the table from him. An older man and a woman. Frank had never seen them before. “It’s okay,” the woman said. “Just do your best.”

  “I came downstairs and saw him slumped over in his chair. I must have panicked and tried to give him CPR. I remember pumping on his chest and all this blood was coming out.”

  “What about the gun?” the male detective said. “Where was it?”

  “I don’t even remember seeing it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see it or touch it.”

  The two detectives looked at one another. The woman scribbled something on her notepad and said, “What would you normally do if you found a gun at a crime scene?”