Dead Boyfriends

by David Housewright

  Payback is a bitch, and I was plotting my own as I rested uncomfortably on a one-inch-thick blue mat stretched over a two-foot high concrete bed in an eight-by-six concrete room, my fingers locked behind my head, drifting in and out of sleep . . .

  Twelve-fifteen P.M. I received the call. The two-second alert tone preceding the call told me it was trouble.

  “Four forty.”

  “Four forty, go.”

  “Four forty, possible robbery in progress at the Food & Fuel convenience store.”

  The dispatcher gave the address at the same time as the information appeared on the squad’s MDT screen, along with RE-MARKS: alarm tripped, attempting callback at store.

  I fingered the button on my shoulder microphone. “Four forty, copy.”

  Eighty seconds later I slowly drove past the store, lights and siren off, hoping my arrival had gone undetected. I could see no one through the store windows. The parking lot was deserted. My own windows were rolled down, yet I heard nothing. I drove another fifty yards and parked where I could see both the store and the lot without being clearly visible myself, taking up a position of observance, just like I had been taught at the skills academy.

  “Four forty, arriving.” I spoke softly.

  “Four fourty, copy,” the receiver crackled.

  I slipped out of the car, surprised by how quiet it was. The Food & Fuel was located kitty-corner to the campus of the College of St. Catherine, yet there was no traffic, no pedestrians, no music or TV sounds coming from the houses and apartment buildings. I could hear crickets, and in the distance a dog barked twice and then was silent. It was as if they were whispering to me.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Now it was just a matter of staying put and watching until dispatch found a sergeant to call the store and determine if there was a robbery in progress or if some clumsy cashier had tripped the alarm with his knee, which happened only once a day and twice on Sundays. True, I could have ridden the hammer into the lot and kicked open the door, gun drawn, but then I would have been stupid. Probably dead, too. Always better to wait. Always better to take the bad guys outside instead of forcing a possible hostage situation inside. If there were bad guys.

  “Four forty, the parking lot is empty, I see no movement inside the store.”

  “Four forty, copy.”

  I unholstered my nine-millimeter Glock, then thought better of it—I was never comfortable with the grip. Instead, I opened the door and leaned back inside the squad, hitting the button that released the standard-issue Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun from its rack. I liked the heft of it. That and its eight rounds of double-aught buck, four in the magazine. After activating the shotgun, I set it on the trunk lid of the car, the barrel pointing away from me, and waited some more.

  Moments later, a late-model sedan turned into the parking lot of the convenience store, heading into harm’s way.

  “Oh, no.” I lifted the shotgun from the trunk lid. “No, no, no.”

  I activated the radio.

  “Four forty, we have a car heading into the lot. I’m moving up on the scene.”

  I jogged down the street and into the parking lot, carrying the shotgun in the port position.

  The car stopped to the left of the entrance. Two doors opened. A couple emerged—a black man, maybe thirty, from the driver’s side and a black woman, same age, from the passenger’s side.

  “Police. Get back in the car.” My grip tightened on the shotgun. “Get back in the car.”

  The couple froze, deer in the headlights.

  “Get back in the car.”

  The glass door of the convenience store swung open. A man was backing out fast, butt first, holding the door with his hip. His eyes were fixed on something inside the store, and he didn’t see me. I pivoted toward him as he cleared the doorway. I was shouting before he could turn.

  “Police. Police.”

  I braced the stock of the shotgun against my shoulder and sighted down the barrel. “Police. Drop the gun. Put your hands in the air.”

  The suspect turned his head just so. Then his body. He was facing me now, and for the first time I noted the caramel color of his skin. I guessed his age at around twenty.

  “Get your hands in the air, get your hands in the air, I want to see your hands!”

  The suspect let his hands hang down below his hips. In his left was a paper bag with the store’s logo. In his right was a Smith & Wesson .38. The man didn’t move. He was considering his options.

  “Don’t think.” I was surprised by how calm my voice sounded. “Drop the gun. Drop it now.”

  I had trained for hours and hours with the firearms training simulator, going over shoot/don’t shoot scenarios until they all blurred together. This was different. My hands trembled. They had never done that with FATS. And my vision—I could see only what was directly in front of me. It was like looking down a long tunnel.

  “For God’s sake drop the gun.”

  The suspect raised his hands.

  I fired once.

  A spread of double-aught buck hit the suspect squarely in the chest. The impact from the blast lifted him off the pavement and hurled him against the glass door of the convenience store. He caromed off the glass. His legs folded and he pitched forward onto his face. He was still holding the gun and the bag shoulder high, away from his body.

  The woman screamed.

  The man shouted an obscenity.

  I moved forward slowly, still pointing the shotgun at the suspect. When I reached his unmoving body, I kicked the Smith & Wesson out of his hand.

  “Four forty, shots fired, suspect down, officer requires assistance.” I was shouting. I didn’t mean to shout. I simply couldn’t help myself.

  “You killed ’im, you killed ’im,” the woman railed.

  “He had his hands up,” the man added.

  “You killed ’im while he was trying to surrender.”

  “Racist pig.”

  They served breakfast, lunch, and dinner on thick brown plastic thermal trays. Each meal was nutritionally balanced, and the portions were certified by a registered dietitian to provide each inmate with approximately 2,200 calories per day, along with all the daily requirements of whatever it was the Minnesota Department of Corrections deemed necessary to a healthy diet. The meals were all quite good, better than some restaurants I could name, and obviously prepared by someone who took pride in his work. There were five meals in all—which is how I kept track of time, by the number of meals.

  No one spoke to me, and I refused to give the cops the satisfaction of hearing me ranting and raving and demanding my rights. Instead, I was determined to remain quiet and still, to lie on my mat and stare at the ceiling and do nothing but sing softly to myself.

  Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.

  Nobody knows my sorrow.

  Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.

  Glory hallelujah!

  I must have done that one thirty times. It seemed amusing at first.

  My stomach was telling me that I was due for a sixth meal when the door swung open. I stayed on my back, staring at the ceiling, not moving until the officer announced, “You’re free to go.” I rolled off the concrete bed without speaking, taking my time, acting as if the officer had just told me that the dentist was ready to see me now. The officer led me to a desk in the booking station. The sergeant was leaning against the wall behind the desk. His name tag read J. MOORHEAD. I pretended not to see him.

  The officer retrieved a large envelope and dumped the contents between us—my belongings. I slowly counted the cash. “It’s all there,” he insisted, so I made a big production of counting it a second time.

  “Now then, what lesson have we learned?” the sergeant asked.

  “What’s the name of the woman—the one your officer beat up?”

  The sergeant pushed himself off the wall. “Be careful what you say,” he told me.

  “Did you arrest her, too?”

  Let it go. />
  The officer behind the desk handed me a clipboard holding a single sheet of paper. “Sign here,” he said.

  I took the clipboard and flung it across the room.

  I intended to say what I had to say quietly, only it came out loud. “I appreciate you standing up for your rookie, but I was doing you both a favor by keeping Baumbach from beating on a suspect—and you put me in jail for it? That’s wrong. You should have checked me out first. You would have learned that I have eleven and a half years on the job with the St. Paul Police Department, five million bucks in the bank, and a bad attitude.”

  The sergeant smirked like a guy who’d heard it all before.

  “Some people need more than one lesson,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it, Sarge. You’re gonna get more than one.”

  It was three in the morning with the moon not shining when I stepped out of the City of Anoka Public Safety Center. I might as well have stepped into my own backyard for all the light and noise I found. The redbrick building, which housed both the police and fire departments, had been built in a residential section of the city well off the main drag and was as quiet as any of the old Victorians and English Colonials surrounding it. The only sound I heard was the scraping of my shoes on the concrete sidewalk as I skipped around a bronze statue of a child holding the hand of a benevolent police officer. I considered it yet another example of deceptive advertising.

  I was just as lost as I had been the previous morning. Still, there were lights in the distance, and I followed them to East Main Street, which, surprisingly enough, actually was Anoka’s main street. Unfortunately, nothing was open. No bars, restaurants, gas stations—ah, but a couple of blocks east I found the Anoka County Correctional Facility, which should not be confused with the City of Anoka Police Department. The Anoka County Correctional Facility—or jail, to use the politically incorrect term—is housed in the same building as the Anoka County Sheriff’s Department and the Anoka County Court, the operative word being “County.” It was located in the “City” of Anoka just to confuse outsiders. Like me.

  The guard at the gate was stunned to see me at that hour. He took one look at my two-day beard and rumpled clothes and probably thought I was looking to break out one of the inmates. I asked him where the county would have towed my vehicle. He gave me directions to a lot off Highway 169. I asked him what the chances were of getting a cab. He thought I was kidding him. He laughed even harder when I assured him that I wasn’t.

  It was nearly 5:00 A.M. by the time I hoofed it to the lot. Naturally, it was closed. I waited. Rush hour traffic heading into the Cities was at its height when they finally got around to releasing my Audi—for about the price of a monthly payment—so you can imagine my frame of mind when I finally arrived home at eight forty-five.

  Two editions of the St. Paul Pioneer Press were waiting on my porch along with a pile of day-old mail. I glanced through it while I listened to the eight messages left on my voice mail. The first was from Meyer, who wanted to know where in hell I was and did I still want the dining room set.

  “You sorry bastard,” I yelled at the recording. “If you could get your directions straight. . .”

  The next message cheered me somewhat. Bobby Dunston’s daughters wanted to come over and feed the ducks. For the past several years I’ve had a family of ducks living in the pond in my backyard. They arrive in the spring, leave in the fall, and return the following year, probably because my neighbor Margot and I feed them. Originally there were seven, then nine, then five. This year there were eleven. I used to name them but stopped because I lost track of who was who. Except for Maureen. Maureen was named after my mother, and I always recognized her. The girls seemed to be able to tell them apart, though, and they were always welcome.

  The next four messages were left by Nina Truhler.

  “Hey, McKenzie. Are you taking me to dinner before we go to the ball? You know a girl can’t subsist solely on hors d’oeuvres and vodka martinis. If I can’t get you on your cell, call me.”

  “McKenzie, you didn’t forget we had a date, did you?”

  “Dammit, McKenzie, where are you? If you stand me up—these tickets cost five hundred dollars a pop, and I bought a new dress.”

  “Forget it. You’re not the only guy I know who owns a tuxedo, and you’re sure as hell not the only guy who finds me attractive.”

  The Second Harvest Charity Ball. It had a James Bond theme that year. Nina bought the tickets. I had promised to take her. Only I had been unavoidably detained. Emphasis on “unavoidably.”

  She won’t be angry once I explain, I told myself. Nina and I had been involved for nearly two years now. We’ve even discussed the M word on occasion. She was a reasonable woman. I reached for the receiver, hesitated. Nina owned and operated a jazz joint in St. Paul called Rickie’s—named after her daughter, Erica. The hours she kept were more nocturnal than those the rest of us lived by. No way she’d be up yet. Besides, it’d be better if you go to the club and see her in person, my inner voice told me.

  Except she didn’t agree.

  The phone rang while I was still standing there.

  “Where have you been, McKenzie?”

  “Nina? I was just thinking of calling you.”

  “Sure you were.”

  “No lie. I wanted to explain about the other night.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m—”

  “Were you in an accident or something?”

  “Accident? No, nothing like that.”

  “Did anyone shoot you?”

  “No. What happened was—”

  “Where were you? Did you forget about me?”

  “Of course I didn’t forget—”

  “Then where were you?”

  “I’m trying to explain.”

  “Then explain. Who’s stopping you?”

  “I was in jail.”

  “In jail?”

  “I was in jail and they confiscated my phone.”

  “Why were you in jail?”

  “There was this woman—”

  “I’m sure there was.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Nina.”

  “There was this woman who needed help and so you helped her.”

  “Okay, maybe it was like that.”

  “It’s always something with you, you know?”

  I’m sorry.

  “You’re always sorry.”

  “Nina, it wasn’t—”

  “And it’s never your fault.”

  “No, it’s not. I mean, sometimes it is, but this time it really wasn’t.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The Anoka cops threw me in jail.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Actually, it’s kind of a funny story when you hear it.”

  “I bet.”

  “Tonight, let me come by and I’ll—”

  “I have a date tonight.”

  “A date.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a date.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tonight.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a date tonight.”

  “You’re slow but sure, McKenzie.”

  “With who?”

  “With whom.”

  “With whom do you have a date tonight?”

  “The man who escorted me to the ball.”

  “You went anyway?”

  “Of course I went anyway. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I just thought. . . No, it’s good that you went. Was it fun?”

  “You would have liked it, McKenzie. Free vodka martinis, shaken, not stirred. Strippers, too. Very tasteful. They danced to songs from the James Bond movies—Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Goldeneye. Cheryl Tiegs ran the auction.”

  “Cheryl Tiegs the former supermodel?”

  “She looked damned good for a woman her age. In fact, I’d say she looked damned good for a woman of any age. You would have liked her. You would have liked the purple dress
I wore, too. But what is it you like to say? Oh, yeah—you snooze, you lose.”

  “Nina—”

  “Anyway, I have a date tonight. With the man who was kind enough to drop everything and escort me to the ball—on very short notice, no less.”

  “I don’t blame you for wanting to punish me, but if you let me explain—”

  “I’m not punishing you, McKenzie. I’m moving on.”

  “Nina.”

  “Good-bye, McKenzie.”

  The click of the connection being severed sounded like a cannon going off in my ear. I kept calling Nina’s name, even though I knew she was gone.

  “This is not fair,” I shouted at the wall.

  Can you blame her for being angry? the wall replied.

  “It’s not my fault.”

  Whose fault is it?

  “Baumbach and the Anoka fucking Police Department.” I was still yelling.

  I was too angry to sit, so I started stomping from one room to another, vengeance on my mind. I thought about it as I went into the “family room,” slipped a Toots Thielemans CD on the machine, and listened to his jazz harmonica from nineteen speakers strategically placed in eight rooms and my basement. I thought about it as I ate a dish of leftover beef lo mein in the kitchen. I thought about it as I paced the empty living room and the dining room—at least it will be a dining room once I buy a table and a few chairs.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t thrown a single dinner party in the past two years without inviting Nina.

  “Dammit, I’m going to get those guys.”

  How?

  I knew I couldn’t bring myself to sue them. I couldn’t sue cops—I used to be a cop. I couldn’t file a complaint with the Justice Department for the same reason. Besides, my inner voice reminded me, you and the FBI aren’t exactly like this.