Skells

by F. P. Lione

  “10-4,” Connelly responded.

  Romano had already stepped out of the car when he heard the transmission, and he walked back up and reached for the door handle.

  “Come on, Nick,” I said as I heard Joe tell Central that South David was on the back.

  I pulled away a little as Romano tried to get in the door, just to let him know he didn’t get the upper hand when he stormed out of the car.

  He stopped and gave me a bored look, like I didn’t bother him in the least. When he got the door open, he jumped in before I could take off again and gave me a smirk. I made a sharp right turn so he had to wrestle with the door as gravity made it hard to close.

  “Cut it out, Tony!” he yelled.

  “Cut what out?” I asked.

  “You two sound like my kids,” Joe said, shaking his head.

  “He started it!” Romano whined.

  “Next time don’t slam my door when you get out,” I snapped back.

  “Next time don’t lecture me—”

  “Are you two done?” Joe cut him off. “Or can we back up Eddie on this job?”

  “Joe, we’re a block and half from the job—we’ll probably get there before them,” I said.

  When we pulled up in front of the hotel, Sector Eddie’s RMP was parked out front. I pulled in behind them, and we walked into the lobby.

  Rooney and Connelly were in the lobby, talking to who I guessed was the manager. She looked about twenty years old and reminded me of a librarian. She was all business in her pressed gray uniform and yuppie glasses. As we walked up to them, we overhead her saying, “He’s in Room 1025; he destroyed the room. I went up there and heard him screaming and breaking things. I saw the fire hose in the hallway—he broke the case and there’s water all over the place.”

  “When did he check in?” Rooney asked her.

  “This afternoon—he seemed fine then,” she said.

  “How many people are in the room?” This from Connelly.

  “As far as I know, just him.”

  “You got keys for the room?” Rooney asked.

  She held them up and nodded.

  We walked over to the bank of elevators and the six of us piled in. We got off at the tenth floor, pausing to listen as we got out. The only sound was the ding from the elevator and the muted sounds of our footsteps on the carpet.

  I was surprised there was no one in the hallway. Usually people love this kind of thing, and you find them standing around with their arms folded, shaking their heads in disgust as they point to where the trouble is.

  The glass case where the emergency fire hose is usually folded up like an accordion was broken, and the hose was stretched about a quarter of the way down the hall and lying on the floor outside the last door on the left. As we walked down the hallway and got closer to the door, our feet started squishing in the wet rug. The manager put her hands over her face when she saw how much water was in the hallway. I guessed she was gonna get in trouble for it ’cause the damage was happening on her watch.

  “Maybe he’s a disgruntled hosehead,” Rooney whispered.

  We were keeping quiet as we walked toward the door, holding on to our cuffs to keep them from jangling.

  As we approached the door, I noticed there was a six-by-six-inch cutout in the door where the peephole usually is. I didn’t understand why it would be like that, but I didn’t want to ask the manager and risk having him hear us outside the door.

  I walked up to the hole in the door and stood on my tiptoes to look in.

  The room was destroyed. The mirror over the desk was smashed, the beds were overturned, with the sheets and blankets strewn all over the floor. The TV was facedown on the floor, and the cable had been pulled out of the wall. The lamps were broken, and the furniture looked like it’d been tossed around the room.

  To my left I saw this huge musclehead guy wearing a T-shirt and a pair of blue gym shorts. He had short black hair and he was breathing heavy, flexing and pumping his arms like the Hulk. He was pacing while he flexed, and it looked like he was psyching himself up for his next wave of destruction.

  I pulled my head back before he could see me and looked at Rooney. When Rooney saw the expression on my face, he pushed past me and said, “Let me see,” as he put his face up to the hole in the door. Since Rooney’s bigger than me, he didn’t have to stand on his tiptoes, and I heard him mumble, “Look at this psycho.”

  Rooney looked back at me, and I could see we were both trying to figure out how to get this guy out of there without any of us getting hurt.

  Rooney turned the knob on the door and found it unlocked. He pushed it quietly until he hit resistance, and we could see the chain lock was on. Rooney closed the door as quiet as he could while I waved Joe and Romano up to the door. Joe, Romano, and I stood to the right of the door, while Rooney, Connelly, and the manager stood to the left.

  Romano’s radio let out a blast, and we heard Central yelling something to South Charlie. We all turned to look at Romano, who obviously forgot to lower his radio and gave us up. He fumbled to turn the volume down while we shook our heads at him.

  Then we heard the chain on the door slide. From where I stood, I could see the top of his head. I could hear his breathing and see his hair was soaked with sweat.

  The door flew open and he stepped into the hallway one leg at a time, swaying his arms. His eyes were going from one side of the door to the other, sizing us up; he looked like King Kong. I half expected the manager to put her hands on her hips and stamp her feet and say, “You big ape! Who’s gonna pay for this mess?”

  Instead she skulked back behind Connelly and looked over his shoulder as he pulled out his mace.

  Kong was breathing so heavy now it almost sounded like a growl. He was mouth breathing, with his bottom lip protruding out, wet with saliva.

  Rooney stepped up to him and said, “Hey buddy, where’s the fire?”

  We hid our smirks as Kong looked up at Rooney from the corner of his eye. I was thinking, How are we gonna take this guy down without him going berserk and Connelly macing us by mistake? I pictured us holding our eyes and bumping into each other while he ran down the hall morphing into the Hulk.

  He fixed his eyes on me since I was closest to him. I was aware of Joe next to me, ready to move. I pulled out my cuffs and looked straight at him. “Do you want to cuff yourself, or do you want me to do it?” I asked, jingling my handcuffs in front of him with my index finger and thumb.

  He seemed to be thinking about it as he did some more deep breathing. I couldn’t tell what was going through his mind, and I was watching to see if he was gonna come at me.

  Then he turned around and put his hands behind his back for me to cuff him. I was thinking, This guy’s done this before. He was still breathing heavy while I got the cuffs on him.

  Rooney handed me his cuffs, shrugged, and said, “That was easy,” as I stuck them in my cuff holder on my belt.

  “You want your shoes?” Rooney asked him.

  He nodded yes, and Rooney went into the room to look for his shoes. He found one sneaker on top of the overturned dresser and searched around until he found the second one under the mattress. Kong stuck his feet into the unlaced sneakers and didn’t say a word as we all took the elevator back down to the lobby.

  When we walked outside, the sun was starting to come up. Streaks of pink crossed the sky against the darker blue. It was a cloudless day with a warm breeze, the kind that would heat up later. Rooney and Connelly took the collar back to the house. Romano walked back to his post, and we told him we’d stop back with some breakfast.

  We went back to our vertical patrol of our sector, driving west to east between 34th and 40th streets. We were driving westbound on 37th Street when we got a call from Central for a drug sale at west 36th and 8th. When we got there no one was around, so Fiore radioed Central for a callback number. There was none, so we sat there to see if anything happened.

  We drove up to the Sunrise Deli and picked up breakfast
. I got two bacon, egg, and cheese—I figured I’d be nice and get Romano a sandwich. Joe got an egg whites and turkey on a roll.

  Bruno Galotti, another rookie who reminds me of an Italian Baby Huey, was waiting with Romano at his post on 44th and 8th, so we picked them both up at 7:20 and drove back to 36th and 8th to see if anything was up with the drug sale.

  There was a small group of people in front of a brick building near 35th Street. It’s a methadone clinic that opens up at 7:00 a.m. A couple of minutes later, the first methadonian, as we call them, came around the corner.

  “Here’s some entertainment,” I said.

  He was emaciated, his brown stingy hair was shaggy, and his ears stuck out. He was wearing black jeans with a black fanny pack around his waist, a grey button-down shirt, and white sneakers. He had hollowed-out, sunken eyes, and you could see the pronounced skeletal structure of his cheekbones and chin.

  He was high as anything and doing the methadonian shuffle down the street. It’s not like a drunk who takes exaggerated steps; with junkies it’s all in the upper body. They barely move their feet, and their arms are weightless. As he shuffled toward us, people were looking at him as they walked by. One good Samaritan, a heavyset woman in a floral print dress, stopped to say, “Are you okay?”

  He moved in slow motion, and it looked like it took some effort for him to shift his eyes from his walking semicoma to look at her. He didn’t answer, just slowly moved his head forward again. His movements looked like they were being orchestrated by a puppeteer.

  He finally got to the corner. He stopped and his knees bent forward, his back arched, and he kept his weight in his middle while he rocked inch by inch toward the ground. He lowered in slow motion until his knuckles just about touched the ground.

  “He’s gonna fall!” Bruno said, sounding worried.

  “They never fall,” I said.

  “Look, he’s falling,” he said again.

  “Trust me, he won’t fall,” I said as Romano and I laughed.

  “Good morning, Mr. Methadonian,” Romano said in a radio announcer’s voice. “How was your fix today?”

  The clinic pumps methadone addicts full of methadone for what they call “a safe and effective way to treat drug dependence and withdrawal.”

  “Look at this, Bruno,” I said. “Our tax dollars at work.”

  “Why do they give them this garbage?” Romano asked.

  “So they don’t kill themselves,” I said. “They don’t want them getting AIDS from an infected needle, and supposedly this stuff keeps their blood levels stable so they can engage in everyday activities. They say they can work and do anything the rest of us can do. What do you think, Bruno, would you go to this guy for a haircut? He looks like he could be a barber.”

  “Isn’t this killing him?” Bruno asked.

  We all looked at him, drooping down again in slow, jerky movements.

  “Ya think?” Romano said.

  “Only if he walks into traffic, otherwise he’s fine,” I said as Romano and I started laughing again.

  I saw Joe bowing his head, and I knew he was praying for the guy.

  “Alright, I’m sorry,” I said. “Let’s pray for him. Lord, please help this methadonian get home safely so he can come back tomorrow and get more drugs.”

  “Amen,” Romano said, making the sign of the cross.

  “There’s something wrong with you guys,” Bruno said, and just like that the fun went out of it.

  “Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with him, though,” Romano said. That made me feel worse because I realized that instead of looking at Joe’s good example, Romano was looking at me—and I wasn’t acting anything like Joe.

  The methadonian’s knuckles scraped the ground, and he jerked back up.

  “He’s a walking dead, right, Tony?” Bruno asked.

  “No,” I said quietly. “Walking dead is a crackie looking for a vial in the gutter.” So much for me being better with the skells.

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes, it’s like this stuff just flies out of my mouth before I even realize I say it. I was disgusted with myself for acting like that in front of Romano and Bruno.

  We drove back to the precinct and signed out for 7:50. I changed into street clothes and was on my way home by 8:00.

  Northbound traffic on the West Side Highway was bumper-to-bumper, but it was lighter on the southbound side. The sky was overcast. We were supposed to get thunderstorms today and about half an inch of rain. When I lived in Shore Acres, the streets never flooded. Where I live now, half the streets fill up every time it rains.

  The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel was down to one lane to accommodate the inbound traffic. I lit a cigarette and lost my radio signal, listening to the hum of my tires as I drove through the tunnel.

  When I came out on the Brooklyn side, there was a torrential downpour. It was raining so hard people were pulling over on the side of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. I was driving pretty fast and hit a puddle on the Gowanus near 38th Street and hydroplaned, so I took it easy after that.

  I got most of the way home without incident but had to go around to Lincoln Avenue because the block before mine was flooded.

  I was soaked from the sprint from my car to the side of my house, and I fumbled with my keys as the rain dripped off my nose.

  I changed out of my wet clothes and checked my messages. Michele was in class already, but she called to say good morning and that her mother would be taking Stevie to the doctor today.

  I took out my Bible to read before I went to sleep. I wasn’t sure what to read—I had read the book of John so much I could practically recite it, so I went over to Psalms. Fiore always reads Psalm 91, so I figured I’d stay on that one for a while. I don’t understand a lot of it, but Fiore’s been studying it a long time and I get a lot out of what he tells me.

  I started at the beginning. “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.’”

  Fiore says when you dwell in the secret place, the hiding place of God, you have to live there. He said it can’t be that you run in and out when you’re in trouble. If we stay there every day, we’ll remain under God’s shadow. It says in the Amplified Bible that no foe or enemy can withstand God’s power when we’re under that shadow.

  The next part is “I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.’” Fiore says that when the Lord is our refuge and fortress and the one we trust, it says in the Amplified that then God will deliver us from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence.

  I can understand why most people don’t understand the Bible. Before I met Fiore, I had no idea what half this stuff was. Like this fowler thing—I figured it had something to do with birds, but Fiore told me it was a bird catcher. This kind of bird catcher would take young birds with a trap made with hair or something and tame them. When the young birds were big enough to make some noise, the bird catchers would hide them in cages to attract other birds. Sometimes they would sew the birds’ eyelids shut so they would squawk enough to attract large numbers of birds for them to kill or catch.

  So to deliver us from the snare of the fowler is to deliver us from evil plans to ruin us. “I take God at his word,” Fiore always says. “He loves me, and he’s not gonna be vague and tell me something that isn’t true. If he says he’ll deliver me, then he will.”

  Farther down in verse 7, it says that a thousand may fall at my side and ten thousand at my right hand, but it shall not come near me. Last week we were talking about it while Romano was pretending he wasn’t interested. He does that—he snaps at us for talking about God, but I see he’s soaking it up like a sponge. Joe was saying that if there are eleven thousand people dead around him, he trusts God that he will be the guy standing.

  Romano was asking how eleven thousand people could be dead around us and did we think a bom
b, terrorist attack, or something else was gonna happen.

  “Nick, I don’t worry about stuff like that,” Joe told him. “Because even if something did happen, I know I’m protected. When I pray this psalm, I put myself in the prayer.”

  “How?” Romano asked.

  “I say, ‘Lord, I thank you that I dwell in your secret place, under the shadow of the Almighty. Lord, you are my refuge and fortress, you are my God, it’s in you that I trust. And you will deliver me from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. You cover me with your feathers, and under your wings I take refuge—’”

  “But people get hurt and die all the time,” Romano said. “What if you pray that and die anyway?”

  “Then at least I died believing,” Joe said. “I have faith in God’s faithfulness. I believe he’ll protect me.”

  “Why don’t I understand all that?” Romano asked.

  Fiore shrugged. “I guess because Jesus isn’t your Lord.”

  “I believe in God, Joe,” Romano spat.

  “I know, but he’s not exactly running your life, is he?”

  Romano accepted that with a shrug. “I guess not.”

  “You know, Nick, it says in the Bible, in Joel 2:32, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” Fiore said. “So anytime you’re ready, just call on him.”

  “And say what?” Romano asked.

  “Whatever’s on your mind, he’s always listening,” Fiore said, then added, “Jesus is a good guy, he’ll never do you wrong.”

  “That’s what you keep telling me,” Romano said.

  I fell asleep reading the psalm and forgot to set my alarm clock. I woke up at 5:30. I could hear the rain falling steadily outside my window and the sound of an ambulance going down Greely Avenue.

  I showered and shaved and called Michele. She said Stevie went to the doctor and got some antibiotics, but they hadn’t kicked in yet and he was still running a fever. She gave him some eardrops and Tylenol, and he had been sleeping on and off most of the day.

  We made plans for the next day. I was off tomorrow night so I could do a day tour Friday, and I would head out to Long Island in the morning. Michele would be at work and Stevie would be at her mother’s, so I’d let myself in and sleep there. I told her if Stevie was feeling better, we’d go out to dinner and to a movie.