by Neal Arbic
Frightened screams came from all around: pedestrians ran for cover, drivers sped away or abandoned their vehicles. All down the street doors slammed, windows shut. With all the blood pumping to their heads, Jack and Delware heard none of it.
Jack’s face was turning every shade of red. “I’ll kill you, boy!”
Delware frowned fiercely back. “I’ll fuckin’ blow your fuckin’ brains out.”
“This ain’t the fuckin’ jungle!”
Delware barred his teeth, his whole body seethed like fire. “You’re dead, you’re fuckin’ dead! You think you’re going to push me around! Control me!!”
Both men stared down the dark barrels of the other’s single-action revolver.
Jack’s finger squeezed tighter on the trigger. “Porch monkey!”
Delware squeezed tighter. “Trailer trash!”
“Sambo!”
Delware’s face twisted fierce and ugly. “Cracker!”
The cylinders of their .38s shifted slightly, the loaded chambers aligning with their hammers.
“Goddamn spook!”
Fingers squeezed tighter; hammers pulled back.
“Fuckin’ redneck!”
Like cobras drawing back to strike, their hammers were closing in on the point of no return. Both their wild, wincing eyes saw far too much daylight between each other’s hammers and bullets. But the parts of these men who knew better were drowned out by ego, anger and adrenaline. They could almost hear their guns going off, the quiet click that would release the hammers, the dead thuds of hitting bullets, the loud fiery punch of gunpowder igniting in chambers - rocketing bullets out with sudden fury into each others’ brains.
“Fuck you, you dumb ass PECKERWOOD!”
The endless drinking, days without sleep, finally took their toll. Jack let out an involuntary burp and his gun fired.
The shot punctured the air and echoed down the street.
Delware’s gun went off.
The second shot punched and echoed.
The street fell silent. The doors remained closed. No one came to the windows. Inside people cowered, listening. But there was nothing left to hear.
Inside Mickey's Irish Pub, the hiding bartender peeped over the counter where Jack had left his files. He saw no bullet holes in the front window, but kept his head low just in case. Across the street, an elderly Mrs. Fairfield, who was already on the phone reporting two men with guns outside her apartment, fell speechless against her wall, as the operator asked if she was still there. Finally, the bartender slowly walked to the window and craned his neck to see outside.
He saw two men facing each other, guns drawn.
Jack blinked. Delware opened his eyes slow. Each was surprised to see the other standing. Jack’s bullet had only left a hole in Delware’s afro. Jack’s hand went to his chest, his fingers blindly felt under his jacket. A second later, he realized Delware must have missed. Neither could see any blood. Delware watched Jack’s face. Jack smiled with relief. Delware almost laughed. Like a thunderstorm, the gun fire had killed the tension between them.
Jack steadied himself against the Packard. “Kid.” He caught his breath. “You’re a lousy shot.”
“Me?” Delware pointed at himself. “How about you?”
“Hell, I’m stone drunk. What’s your excuse?”
They looked around, surveying for bodies. There was no one even on the street.
A far off siren started. Delware had a what-now? look on his face.
Jack held up a finger. “Start the car!” He ran to the bar door and yelled in at the bartender, “Sammy, put those files under the bar! Say it was a white guy and black guy, but you didn’t get a good look.”
Another distant siren started and another. Jack ran back and jumped in. “Get going!”
The sirens swelled.
Delware hit the gas.
As the Packard raced, Jack kept smiling. Delware looked over at Jack and couldn’t hold back a grin. Suddenly, they were both laughing like schoolboys making a get away from the girl’s change room.
Delware said in dread and excitement, “Jack, we’re fucked!”
Jack shook his head, his speech all a slur. “We’re fine. This is LA, kid. No one was hit, so it’s just ‘shots fired’. Big deal! A patrolman will file a 10-10 report. No corpse, no investigation.” Jack convulsed in laughter. He caught his breath and squeezed out, “Peckerwood.”
Delware stared confused.
Jack repeated, laughing, tearing, “Peckerwood?!”
Delware gave a short laugh. “Yeah. So? I called you a peckerwood.”
“God, that’s the stupidest goddamn word I ever heard. I swear, it’s ri-goddman-diculous! I’ve been meaning to ask youse people for years, what on God’s green earth is a peckerwood?”
“It means…you got a small white dick, mothafucka!”
Jack laughed so hard, he farted.
Friday, September 26th, 1969, 6:40 PM
Jack drove and hadn’t had a drink all day despite a hell of a hangover. They had hit six communes and it had rained through most of it. The skies cleared as the sun sunk into a misty glow over LA. Jack held out an empty palm. “I need a nickel.”
“You gonna make a call?”
Jack nodded.
Delware grinned. “It’s a dime now.”
“Dime then. And forget the station. We’ve got something to do.”
Delware fished his pockets for change. “Jack, where we going?”
“We’re off duty. This is extracurricular.”
The Packard rolled up to a phone booth. Delware waited while Jack made the call. The conversation was brief. Jack hopped back into the Packard.
Driving through the early dusk, the streets darkened all around. With a crooked smile and a strange glint in his eyes, Jack headed deeper and deeper into the rundown eastside. More and more boarded up stores and houses appeared. They entered an abandoned industrial park; dilapidated, nameless warehouses flanked them. Delware remembered rumors that one of these old warehouses used to be the unofficial LA Morgue back in the 40s. Jack turned into a short drive that opened up into a large loading yard. The rusted chain linked gates were left open, as if they were expected.
Jack slowed among puddles and potholes. Delware craned his neck, to get a glimpse of an old man in a trench coat waiting at the top of a loading dock. The Packard stopped just below him. Exiting, Delware gazed up at the large man and guessed he was retired police. They made their way up short cement steps and walked towards him. The light was almost gone and shadows filled the yard.
The waiting man eyed Delware suspiciously and raised his chin. “Who’s he?”
Jack glanced at Delware. “Don’t worry. He’s one of us.”
The waiting man studied Delware’s face - a cop mentally filing a description. He slowly stepped backward and without turning, kicked the large metal door behind him with his heel. The loud hollow sound echoed in the empty yard.
Scuttling feet approached from behind the door. Two large men, retired cops from head to toe, appeared. Between them was a small man handcuffed with a hood over his head. The hooded man shook and whimpered. There was blood on his hood.
Delware turned questioning eyes on Jack, but found Jack was already back at the car, opening its trunk. Without a glance at Delware, the two men moved the hooded man past him. From the top of the loading dock they threw the bound man off the platform and towards the open trunk below. It was a good throw, but the man’s head clipped the raised lid and his head snapped back before landing in the trunk.
Jack reached in the trunk and felt for the man’s pulse - more out of curiosity than concern. He nodded a thank you to the men and looked at Delware, tilting his head towards the car. Delware made his way down the stairs staring at the three men whose eyes followed him.
Delware was glad to be back in the Packard, even though it was not Jack’s Packard anymore, not with somebody locked in the trunk it wasn’t. Hell, even Jack wasn’t Jack anymore and what was happening now, whatever it was
, was no longer police work.
They drove through the night, headed north, skirting the Hollywood Hills and then out towards the desert. Delware slumped low in his seat, knowing by the silence of the men at the dock that this was ritual - nothing needed to be explained. And nothing needed to be explained to Delware. He realized what this was; he knew what Jack was doing. This was justice that would never see the light of day.
The desert road was dark. Only the headlights illumined the black asphalt and the endlessly broken yellow lines appearing, approaching and then disappearing underneath the car. Houses had vanished over an hour ago. Delware couldn’t do this in silence. He feigned innocence. “Where are we going?”
Jack didn’t answer for a long time. Then his voice broke the silence in hoarse deep tones, “Death Valley.”
“Why?”
Jack tilted his head towards the trunk. “It’s where guys like him end up.”
Delware knew the answer, but had to ask. “You gonna kill him?”
Jack ignored the question. He looked at Delware with an emotionless face. Muffled bumps started to come from the trunk. Delware looked across the desert night. There was no end to the darkness.
After a few more minutes, Jack spoke, “You know, kid, when LA was a frontier town our murder rate was ten, even twenty times higher than New York City. Back then there weren’t enough jails to hold all the criminals. They needed somewhere to put the undesirables.”
Jack said nothing more. The road kept coming. They could hear the man in the trunk whimpering.
The desert road stretched on and on. Delware felt he was in some kind of weird hell and, that for his sins, the road would never end.
In their headlights shone a sign. It was but a speck in the darkness, but slowly it grew until its letters seemed larger than life: Dead End. Jack killed the engine. The full moon appeared low and huge on the horizon.
Jack got out of the car and opened the trunk, pulling the whimpering man out of the back. He was bleeding badly and stumbled as Jack pushed him toward the edge of a dark, deep ravine.
To Delware, the dream of some endless hell ceased. It was now all too real. He jumped out of the car. Hearing coyotes yipping very close and pebbles running down nearby cliffs, he turned to look. The coyotes ran between the shadows.
Jack pushed the man to the ground. He lay at the edge of the ravine which yawned deep and dangerous.
“Jack, don’t!” Delware ran to him. “What the hell?”
Jack unclipped his holster, pulled out his revolver and checked its chambers in the moonlight.
“Jack! We’re cops. Police don’t do this!”
Jack looked around at the desert. A lone coyote sat on a tall cliff, watching them like a judge in the rising moonlight.
“You know, kid, this is the unofficial graveyard of LA. The first marshals brought scum out here, sparing the public of unwanted trials.” Jack looked into the shadows of a ridge where a pack of coyotes were gathering. “Whole generations of desert dogs have been fed and raised on thousands of corpses in this spot. But you won’t find a single bone. The desert takes them, like they never existed.”
The man on the ground tried to get up, wrestling to his knees, but Jack kicked him hard. He fell moaning.
Delware grabbed Jack’s arm. “Jack! Let’s go back and we’ll lock him up and do this right.”
Jack turned to Delware and spoke causally, “You’ve heard of this place?”
“Jack, I thought it was a legend. I didn’t think it was real.”
“No. Very few cops come here these days. But now, you’re one of them.”
The hooded man got to his feet and ran. Delware turned towards the running man and felt what every cop feels at the sight of an escaping suspect. His hand went for his gun, but it stopped at his holster. He saw Jack’s gun already drawn.
Jack kissed his .38. “Don’t fail me now.” He leveled the gun at the hooded shadow running into the darkness. Jack squeezed the trigger, slow. The gun clicked, the hammer fell. The shot punched the silent night. The man’s head jerked. His hood spattered red. A yelp came through the gag as he fell.
Delware yelled, “Jack!”
Walking to the wounded man, Jack pulled off the hood. The guy’s ear was missing, half his face was gore, but he was still breathing. Jack pulled off the gag. The man pleaded, “No, no, NO! Please!”
Jack aimed the gun at his head. “Adios.”
The .38 rang out in the desert, echoing among the cliff walls. The pleading stopped, but Jack kept pulling the trigger, four more shots and still he pulled, the hammer clicking on empty chambers. “Goddamn it!”
He stormed past Delware, reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out another revolver. Walking back to the body, Jack emptied the gun into it. The six shots seemed louder than the first and echoed across the sands. The endless reverberations made Delware feel he was listening to eternity.
Jack stared down at the lifeless man. Delware’s eyes were wide and unbelieving. The silence was eerily deafening. It all seemed a dream again, but the pungent smell of burning cordite told him it was real.
They stood for a long moment, two shadows in the desert night.
Delware spoke slow and shocked. “Jack, you shot him…twelve times.”
Jack holstered his gun and shrugged, his voice soft, almost apologetic, “I know. I ran out of bullets.”
Turning, he surveyed the dunes, the stars, the shadows of coyotes running along the ridge and then his eyes fell on the lone coyote on the cliff. It got up on all fours still watching them, a judge, a witness, unafraid. From somewhere in the dark came a long lonely howl.
Jack turned to Delware. “There’s a lot of ghosts out here.”
***
Delware sat in the car, head down, almost comatose. Jack stayed out in the moonlight watching the coyotes feeding, tearing the corpse apart.
Turning, Jack scanned the barren horizons, the long stretches of sand. There was something in the desert wind. He walked away from the Packard towards the horizon. Stopping, he scanned the desert night again. Slowly, he squatted and scooped sand, letting it run through his fingers. Like a hound closing in on its prey, he felt them, whispering, “Goddamn Death Valley, where else would they wait out the Apocalypse?”
Jack brushed off his hand and stood. Perfectly still, he listened as if he might hear them: Evil Jesus and his tribe of female disciples.
The wind shifted. The feeling evaporated.
Jack walked back to the Packard and slid in. “Kid, we’re narrowing our search. We’ll stick to communes located in or around Death Valley.”
Delware did not respond.
Jack looked out the window. “They’re here, kid.”
***
The way back seemed longer to Delware. Though he had not pulled the trigger, he had not stopped Jack. He was an accomplice to murder. Delware wondered if he had pulled his gun to arrest Jack, would his body be lying back there too. In the darkness of the car, he felt a heavy weight around his neck - a crime that would never be cleansed.
They drove for an hour in silence.
Delware didn’t even mean to speak, but his thoughts escaped anyways. “We’re supposed to be better than that, Jack.”
Jack looked over. “What did you say?”
“We’re supposed to be better than that.”
Jack stared, sizing him up. “You think you’re better than me?”
Delware didn’t answer.
Jack was offended by his silence. He turned his eyes back on the road. “Well, quit your bellyaching, will ya? Cause you’re not. You’re just like me – only younger, you still got dreams, you ain’t sick of it yet. Just wait.”
Delware pointed back to Death Valley. “That’s fucked up!”
Jack barked, “The world’s fucked up!”
Delware turned away.
Jack glared at him. “Look, a dozen younger officers would squeal, but you won’t. I know that. You don’t think I can read you? I know exactly the type
of cop you are and the type you’re going to be: respectable up front, but when the coast is clear, you’ll drive out here…to make sure…that justice is served.”
“You call that justice?!”
“Damn right! Absolutely! I’m not afraid of what justice demands. I will do whatever it takes.”
“Justice isn’t just for victims, Jack. It’s for everyone!”
“Yeah, but the innocent deserve more of it.”