Welcome to Cooper

by Tariq Ashkanani

  Cumstain and Tubby emerge from the guys’ restroom—probably been sucking each other’s dicks—and the two of them push open the glass doors and walk outside. I hear one of them laugh and then cool air washes over me and I nearly buckle, nearly start running there and then.

  Rookie takes me down another corridor and through some double doors. We pass a few cops on the way but it’s quiet in here. Down a set of stairs and to a row of cells. All empty, ’cept for mine. The bars roll smoothly on their tracks until the lock kicks in, then I stick my hands through so Rookie can uncuff me.

  He keeps his keys on a small metal chain on his belt, on his right side.

  Chapter Seven

  I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I woke up. Sprawled across my bed, still wearing my shirt and khakis. I couldn’t even remember getting home. My clock read 5:26. A half-empty bottle of Gentleman Jack on my nightstand told me I’d been out for a while. I sat up and looked out the window and it was dark, and for that brief moment between dreaming and living I felt like everything might turn out alright.

  I rolled my legs free of the tangle of sheets. Her photo was lying face down on the floor.

  Rachel.

  I bent to collect it; my stomach rolling. She smiled at me from a warm summer’s evening. A little crumpled around the edges but nothing too bad. I smoothed her out as best I could. Went to sit her next to the bottle, found my backup pistol there already. A Taurus 850 snub-nosed revolver. Fully loaded and with the safety off. I flicked it on and stuffed it into my pocket. Rested the photo in its place.

  Rachel never liked guns, never liked the idea of me carrying one, of me bringing it into our home. A point of view that couldn’t have been further from my own. I didn’t worship them or anything like that, I wasn’t some sort of MP5-loving freak. Didn’t go to gun shops on my weekends and ask to hold a Magnum. I respected guns, though that was as far as I’d take it; when you carry one every day it’d be foolish to do otherwise.

  So anyway, Rachel didn’t like guns. Which was fine, didn’t matter to me either way. She understood it, of course. Understood that I had to have one, had to wear it when I was working, keep it somewhere safe when I wasn’t. That was our agreement. Wear it when you’re working, somewhere safe when you’re not. What did I need a handgun for when I was sitting down to dinner?

  They always showed it like that in the movies, though. The detective getting in from a long shift and dangling his holster off the back of a kitchen chair. Like he’s just hanging up his coat. And no doubt some do that. We preferred to use a safe. Rachel used to say the only thing worse than me using a gun was someone breaking into our apartment and using it on us.

  A switchblade, however, that was okay with her. I never really got it myself, but there was some sort of distinction in Rachel’s mind. She bought it for me our first Christmas together, not long after I’d started working the late shift in some of the more disreputable parts of the city. Anacostia wasn’t exactly DC at its finest. She told me she wanted to feel like she was helping protect me. I guess it was sweet.

  Okay.

  Where were we?

  Oh right, the morning after my bender in Stingray’s. The Wednesday.

  I yawned, stretched my back out. Stood and slid my knife into my other pocket. Three years old and the most it had ever been used for was slicing the occasional apple, and that was fine with me. It had been so long now it was just another thing I carried. Keys, wallet, switchblade. I doubted it’d ever get used.

  From somewhere in the sheets my cell buzzed. A message from Joe.

  I’m outside.

  I pulled out my Taurus again and spun it around in cool hands that didn’t shake as much as I thought they would. I flicked the safety off and on, off and on, strode to the window where I saw an unfamiliar car parked across the street—running lights only, thing thrumming like a stealth sub—and pointed the revolver at it. I still remember the clink as the barrel touched glass. The room was dark so I knew he couldn’t see me, and if I’d thought I could actually hit him from there I might’ve done it.

  I wasn’t thinking so clearly back then, you see. Not that I’m necessarily thinking any more clearly now, of course. I did always have a violent streak in me, but I was the sharing type and I reckon I thought about dishing out the same to myself, too. Sliding back that hammer and sticking the barrel in my mouth. A desperate idea turned good by lack of reason not to.

  But giving up wasn’t exactly my style. I might’ve been self-destructive, sure, but I was also a hypocrite. Besides, a bullet was too direct. I preferred the bottle.

  My cell buzzed again. We need to talk.

  I looked over at Rachel. The clock said 5:31. I could still smell orange, like lipstick on my collar. I’d wanted a reason to keep on moving forward, and maybe that was reason enough.

  Now for this next part to make any sense, I’m going to have to give you some backstory. Joe said he knew what happened in Washington, and I guess you do too. Or at least you think you do. The highlights, maybe. And great, you’ve got a file, whatever. That isn’t everything. That isn’t me.

  Like I said earlier, I worked Homicide back in DC. In a southeast part of the city called Anacostia. Crime rates were high; someone once told me that nearly half the murders in the capital happened in this neighborhood, and I didn’t disagree. Drive-bys, child prostitution, junkies cooking their babies in microwaves and stabbing each other for dimes. It was our beat. Me and Isaac, my partner. The dark corners, the real places where people went to die. That was our jurisdiction, what me and Isaac lived and breathed and absorbed through our pores every damned day.

  And the stuff we’d find at these crime scenes. Bottles of pills, bags of coke. Heroin. Needles and half-melted spoons and rubber tubing. All of it just lying around for anyone to take.

  And so that’s what we did. We’d go through these places, these junkies’ dens. Before Forensics arrived we’d comb it for drugs, leave with our pockets bulging. Nothing serious, just pills and weed, mostly. I had no interest in the hard stuff at that point. Guess I thought that made me smart. Whatever we found we split, and whatever I ended up with I’d split again with Rachel when I got home.

  Course, like any other dumb idea, it grew. I found out Isaac wasn’t keeping the stuff for himself—not all of it anyway. And before you call me a phony, I don’t mean he was sharing it with his girl, like I was. I mean he was selling it. Was selling it to other cops.

  When I found out, I flipped. I don’t know what scared me more, Isaac selling to some IA asshole and naming me to save himself, or just losing my easy access to dope, but I went crazy. I thought I was going to have to beat him half to death to make him see sense.

  Only it didn’t quite work out like that. Turned out maybe I was a phony after all, because he persuaded me to get on board and I don’t think I took all that much convincing. I reckon all it took was a whiff of the cash Isaac had made and I was only too happy to make the leap from dumbass to dealer.

  I don’t really want to get too bogged down in all this. I’m sure you can work out what happened next. Pills and weed became cocaine and heroin. Became beating down doors to shake down junkies. Became pointing my gun in their faces or blowing a hole in their sofa to make a point. It got so I wasn’t even in it for the money or the drugs anymore. I was in it for the rush. One time I cut up a guy so bad, Isaac made me burn my clothes to get rid of the blood.

  But in the end it was the pills that did it. I think I can still remember the exact bag. They’d been wedged under a dirty mattress that belonged to a woman who had just murdered her partner in the room next door. Some domestic dispute, I don’t remember the details. She’d killed him with a yellow spoon. Jammed it in his throat as he slept. Funny, the things that stick in your mind.

  It happened about a week after that. I’d kept the bag for myself. Me and Rachel had been planning on sharing some that night. Just popping a couple each and drifting off for a few hours together. Only I was late getting home, and
she must have decided to run herself a bath. Maybe she thought she’d hold off on the pills until I came home. So I was God knows where and she’s running this bath, and finally she decided she couldn’t wait anymore and she got in and took the pills and she drowned. The water was still warm when I found her.

  I tried to keep it quiet—where she’d gotten the pills from, I mean—but I couldn’t. I told my captain, told him about everything. About the drugs, about the dealing, about Isaac. I turned on Isaac like that. Wore a wire for IA and got him to admit to all sorts of shit, handed him over without a second thought. Like he didn’t mean nothing. And I was the one worried he’d name me.

  Worst part was, I didn’t even feel bad about it.

  Hypocrite, remember?

  I should have been fired—I should have gone to prison. IA gave me a couple of options instead. Get out of DC or find a new line of work. No cop wanted to work with a rat. My old captain knew Morricone from the academy, and for whatever reason Morricone liked the sound of me. Maybe he pictured me like Serpico. Cleaning up the station from the inside. Whatever. Guy offered me a ticket out from under all that shit and I practically bit his hand off to take it. I’m sure everyone back in DC was only too happy to see me go.

  So keep all that in mind when I tell you what happened next. Remember that streak of self-preservation, and listen when I tell you that it never went away. If anything it only festered, and grew rank. And maybe don’t be too surprised with the choice I made, or too disappointed with how easily I chose it.

  Believe me, I’m not worth it.

  Chapter Eight

  She came to life as I approached. A meaty roar and the dazzle of headlights. I pulled my coat around me and felt the reassuring presence of the Taurus against my side. Joe watched me cross the hood from behind a darkened windshield, and when I put my hand on the door I checked the back windows to make sure we were alone.

  He barely looked at me when I climbed in. There was a duffel bag in the footwell I had to straddle, and it clattered as we pulled away from the sidewalk. I belted up.

  We drove in silence because I didn’t want to be the first one to speak. Joe was listening to a cassette, and some woman sang about beers and heartache while the tape player warped her voice like she was melting. I wanted to tell him to turn it off but I kept my mouth shut.

  We were headed out of Cooper, riding that single highway through the cornfields. Harvest time long over. Fields of bare stalks, most of them twisted and broken. Bent ends that fluttered in the breeze. I wondered what this place was like in the fall, when the tufts grew high above your head.

  This early, the traffic was sparse. Our only companions the hazy lights of an occasional tractor, drifting through the fields alongside us for a short while.

  Eventually Joe looked over at me. I could feel his eyes, like a physical pressure. He shook out a cigarette and lit up, not bothering to ask if I wanted one this time. The click of his silver lighter, a flickering glow, then a long and measured sigh and I could smell tobacco in the air.

  “Here’s the deal, son,” Joe said. I wished he’d stop calling me that. “Bob and the boys back at the station fished your brain-coated bullet out of some drywall late last night.” He took another drag. “While you were getting good and loaded, by the look of you.”

  “How long until it’s my door getting kicked in?”

  “Well now, that’s where you’re lucky. Cooper doesn’t have a ballistics unit, see? That buys you some time. Not much though. At six a.m.—that’s twenty-four minutes from now—that bullet is leaving Cooper in the back of a police transport headed north. To the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives down in Omaha. Once it gets there, that bullet is on record. You understand what that means?”

  “Means all you have to do is hand over my revolver and I’m finished.”

  “That’s right.”

  I suddenly had the crazy idea of jumping him. Did he have my Smith and Wesson on him now? If I could get it off him, I might be able to turn things around.

  “Pull over,” I said. “I need to piss.”

  “Not here.”

  “I’ve been drinking, Joe. I’ve been drinking all night and most of the day before, too. I’ll piss my pants all over your nice seats if you don’t.”

  “You piss your pants, I’ll shoot you in the fucking head. We’re stopping soon, keep it in till then.”

  I paused. “Where we going?”

  “To kill two birds with one stone.”

  “What?”

  “Open the bag, Thomas.”

  I glanced down at the black gym bag by my feet. “What’s in it?”

  “Christ, just open the goddamn bag.”

  I reached down and unzipped the duffel bag. A pair of clown masks grinned back at me; comical red lips and crisscross blue eyes. Two sawed-off shotguns were stacked beneath them.

  Joe swung the car off the main road onto a curving single-lane track.

  I rolled back in my seat, disbelief sapping my strength. “What are you planning to do with these? And whose car is this, anyway?”

  “Doesn’t matter whose car it is.”

  Joe slowed us to a gentle halt maybe fifty yards off the highway. He killed the engine, the car rattling into silence. I stared forward through the windshield.

  Ahead of us was a body of water. Hard to see in the gloom, a thin shimmer of moonlight across its surface. With the heating off, the car quickly began to cool. I shivered.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Cowan Reservoir. It’s nicer in the summer.”

  “Joe . . .”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars,” Joe said, his eyes trained on the snowy highway alongside us. “Cartel drug money seized during a raid last month. It’s being moved right now to lockup at ATF.”

  “The cartel bothers with Cooper?”

  “No, the cartel bothers with Omaha. We just handle their product.”

  “Not very well, by the sound of it.”

  “Don’t start that, Tommy. You don’t have any idea what goes on around here.”

  “Dirty cops moving dirty money. I think I get the gist.”

  Joe turned and stared at me. He leaned forward, his bulky frame filling the dark car. “Son, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You’re not in the big city anymore. We’re on the edge out here, you understand me? Sure, it’s dirty money. And the man it belongs to is coming to town. He wants his money back. We get that done and we’re squared away. But trust me, he isn’t someone you want to piss off.”

  I looked out at the water. “You need my help to hit the van. You get your money, I get my bullet. That why you shot Foster?”

  “Foster murdered that woman. He had it coming.”

  “Maybe I just let this guy whose money you lost roll into town, let him take it up with you. Maybe he solves my problem for me.”

  Joe turned back to the highway. “Trust me, he won’t.”

  We sat there in silence for another couple of minutes. Then Joe said, “You help me snatch it, you can keep five percent.”

  “What?”

  “You know how much five percent of half a million dollars is?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “It’s twenty-five with a bullet, Tommy. So what’s it gonna be? You want to make some money or you want to go to prison? Make up your mind, but do it fast. That van is due any minute now.”

  I glared at him. My mind racing through it all. I thought about pulling my Taurus. Handcuffing the bastard to the steering wheel and calling it in. I thought about the bullet, rattling around in its little case. And yeah, I thought about the money, too.

  You know what’s coming next. I told you already, I’m a selfish asshole. For me, it was never even a choice.

  “When do I get paid?”

  “Soon as we’re done.”

  “You hold out on me, you try to play me, you pull a gun on me, I’ll arrest you. You understand?”

  Joe glanced at me with a smile on
his face that screamed mistake. “Good boy,” he said, and jerked his head back. “There’s body armor in the trunk. I suggest you strap some on.”

  Chapter Nine

  My mother used to say there’s positives in everything. You just need to know where to look.

  So I flipped down the sun visor and tried the vanity mirror and a laughing clown looked back. Cheap rubber, sealing my face in a grinning cocoon. My scalp tingled with beads of sweat and the sawed-off felt heavy in my hands. I’d thought they might tremble, but they didn’t.

  When Joe started the engine I thought of Mary. As we rolled back toward the highway with our headlights off I saw the sadness beyond the surface of her green eyes and I remembered what she’d told me. What we did before doesn’t matter, she’d said. Only what we do now.

  We slipped behind the police van, riding in its wake. There was a positive here, I just had to find it. Maybe it had already passed. Maybe it was standing on a riverbank and drinking a can of Pepsi. I could still feel her hand on my arm and then too soon the engine was roaring as Joe flicked on his high beams. I pictured the cops up front squinting. Too distracted to notice the spike strip up ahead.

  As Joe pressed down on the gas pedal I sucked in air hard through the open mouth of the mask. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath under this thing, the tight rubber making me sweat, so hot I thought I might pass out. My hands were trembling now and I grabbed at the door panel as the van’s front and then rear tires blew with a sound like two rounds of gunshots.

  The van swerved in the snow, the driver overcorrecting. With a slow, sickening lurch it slid sideways. Then the nose swung forward again and it left the highway. Came to a sudden halt facedown in the ditch. Ass in the air, back wheels spinning.

  Joe brought us to a skidding halt by the side of the road. We jumped out into the snow, my hard breathing visible in the cold air. By the time we got down there, the driver’s door was open. Guy was on the ground and climbing to his feet. Clutching the van’s wheel for support. His face was bleeding badly and I saw his eyes go wide as we approached. He reached for his weapon but I’d already closed in on him and I didn’t even think, I just swung the butt of my shotgun into his face. His head recoiled violently; I tasted blood in my mouth and it wasn’t mine. The officer slumped to the snow and stayed there. When I turned I saw Joe watching me silently.