by John Dunning
She didn’t say anything. I said, “We just keep going over the same ground. It won’t get any easier. One way or another, you’ve got to face it.”
“Don’t tell me what I’ve got to face. You won’t be here, you won’t have to face it. Why should you care? You just want one thing; you don’t care what happens to me.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. You hate him so much you’d use me to get him. At least be honest enough to admit that. Who was it that took me out of his place? If you’d left me alone I’d probably be fine now. He’d’ve done what he wanted and that would be the end of it. But you had to take me. You had to put me between you, and now you tell me there’s nothing you can do. Go on, get out of here.”
I couldn’t go after that. I still didn’t know what to say to her.
“I don’t understand you two,” she said. “How do two men come to hate each other that much?”
“I don’t know. It’s not covered in the police manual.”
“It’s called human nature,” she said. “I guess they don’t have writers for that.”
• • •
Here’s how it happened. I put Barbara to bed and settled down on her sofa. I watched TV till my brain went limp, then I turned it off and lay quiet with my own thoughts. At 2:30 I heard a car door slam. I went to the window and looked out. Jackie was across the street, looking up at me. I knew he couldn’t see me with the light out, so I stood still and watched him. Poor Barbara, what a mess she’s in, I thought. He really is crazy, I thought—here he comes now, across the street, into the dark places under the window, up the stairs. In another moment I could hear his footsteps. I had maybe twenty seconds to decide what to do. Whatever I decided, there wouldn’t be any logic to it. None of this made any sense: it never does when you’re dealing with a Jackie Newton. I will kill him, I thought: when he comes through that door I’ll blow his brains out and take all the heat tomorrow. This was a rational, cold decision: in that twenty seconds all the consequences raced through my head. I saw it with crystal clarity: all the flak that would trickle down from City Hall to the cop on the beat. All over town tomorrow, guys in blue would be asking one question: What the hell was Janeway doing there at that time of night? Did I set Jackie up? Did I goad him, then execute him with no more thought than a gangster gives his enemy? Everyone knew I hated the man: even Barbara knew it, and she barely knew me. All this flashed through me with the power of instinctive knowledge, something as simple as your own name, something you don’t have to ponder or weigh. Give me some time and I could describe every memo and phone call, everything they’d be saying tomorrow from the mayor to the manager of safety, and from there to the chief of police. Give me time, I thought.
Then Jackie came to the door, and my time was up.
I eased back into the bedroom and woke Barbara. “Don’t make a sound,” I said. “Just get up and put on a robe. Jackie’s here.”
I had to put my hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. Luckily, I had anticipated that.
I got her up, though it wasn’t easy. She had gone rigid with fear. I pushed her into the closet and closed the door. Then I got in her bed and pulled the covers up to the top of my head. I’m as crazy as she is, I thought: I’m as nuts as Jackie. Is this police procedure? Is this the way you catch a guy? All I can say is, it felt right. I took out my gun and held it like a hot water bottle, tight against my heart. I savored the surprise Jackie had coming: I could hardly keep from laughing.
Nothing from then on seemed real.
I heard him kick the door in. It’s amazing how quiet that can be when it’s done in one swift blow. The unbreakable deadbolt ripped through the wood like so much cardboard and he was coming fast. He crossed the room in four giant strides and came into the bedroom. He jerked back the covers and even then I didn’t know whether to kill him. I came up with the blanket, the gun leading the way. “Kiss me, sugar,” I said, and I cracked steel against his head. He went down like I’d shot him, and before he could move I had the light on and the gun cocked against his head.
I had him facedown on the floor beside the bed, the gun jamming him behind the ear. One move and Barbara Crowell would have Jackie Newton’s brains for a throw rug. He knew it too: the blow had dazed him but he was coming out of it now. He kept trying to look back at my gun. He was bleeding out of the left eyebrow where I had opened his head to the bone. I kept him there, kissing the floor for another minute while I patted him down. He wasn’t carrying anything, the arrogant bastard. I backed off slowly. “Just stay where you are, Newton. Don’t even think about getting up.”
When I was ready, I told him to get up. “Get against that wall,” I said, “face-first.” He didn’t say a word, just let his eyes rake me over like before. I was terrified so it must’ve worked. “Turn around,” I said again. I shoved him against the wall and jerked his hands behind him. Then I got the cuffs and shackled him. I made it tight; I didn’t care much about chafing him. I called Barbara out of the closet but she wouldn’t come. I called her again, louder.
“Just stand there, punk,” I said. “Keep your face to that wall and you might make it downtown in one piece.”
I went to the closet and opened it. Barbara was sitting with her hands over her eyes. I took her by the arm, but she looked to be in shock. I told her it was okay, she could come out now, but she didn’t seem to believe it.
“Come on,” I said. “You’ve got to get dressed and go downtown with us.”
She didn’t seem to understand simple English. She couldn’t look at Jackie, who had turned slightly so he could see her. Jackie knew what intimidation was: he knew what a hold he had over her. I kicked him in the ass, hard enough to break a bone, and he turned slowly back to the wall. Blood was everywhere, on the wall, on the floor, and all over Jackie.
“Get dressed,” I said to Barbara.
She didn’t move. I went to her closet and took out a blouse and a pair of jeans. “Go in the bathroom and put these on,” I said. When I looked in her face, I saw a picture of fear and despair so absolute it was heartbreaking. “C’mon, Barb,” I said, as gently as I could. “Get dressed, hon, we’ve got work to do.” She shook her head and dropped the clothes on the floor. I picked them up and guided her to the bathroom. I left the door open a crack, and every so often I peeped in and tried to talk her into her clothes. Put on the jeans, Barbara. That’s good. Now the blouse. Real fine.
Suddenly she found her voice. “Tell him to go away,” she said through the door. “I don’t want him here.”
When she came out of the bathroom, I took her under my arm and gave her a big hug. It only got the tears started again. She began to tremble and whimper and I didn’t know what to do with her.
Jackie began to laugh.
I knew how to stop that. I whipped him around and cocked the gun and rammed it in his mouth. “Laugh now, asshole,” I said. He didn’t seem inclined to. I held him like that for a full minute, my eyes burning into his: I let him see my hand tremble, my finger waver on the trigger. “I may kill you yet, Newton,” I said. “Just give me an excuse, just any at all, and they’ll be picking pieces of your head out of that wall for a month. You got me, pardner?”
Jackie got me. I turned him to the wall and tried to work on Barbara. She had begun talking again, dangerous, mindless drivel in monologue, nonstop. “I think we could just let him go,” she said. “Just make him promise not to come back if we let him go this time.” The same thought came up, over and over, in different words. Let him go. Turn him loose. Get him out of here. Do this and Jackie, I guess out of gratitude, would leave her alone in the future. Bullshit, I said. She talked over my one-word argument as if I weren’t there. “Bullshit, Barbara,” I said, louder. This was not looking good: she’d make the worst kind of witness, assuming I could get her downtown to sign the papers in the first place. I don’t know what else I expected: the fact was that, for the first time in my career, I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to deal wit
h even the most obvious problem. The victim was going to let Jackie walk: I had to’ve known that, so why was it making me so angry? I was almost beside myself with rage.
“Bullshit!” I shouted, loud enough to wake the block.
Barbara just stared at the floor and said she was sure he’d leave her alone if we let him go this time.
And Jackie was laughing again. He wasn’t, really, but I could hear him anyway.
Something frightening happened inside me. Sometimes it happens to an old cop when one asshole too many has been patted on the head and turned back on the streets—you want to go out and take care of a few of them yourself, the fast and easy way. A few cops had done it: maybe I would too. I grabbed Barbara by the scruff of her worthless neck and pushed her to the front door. Jackie I handled a good deal rougher. I pushed them down the dark stairs and into the deserted street. Barbara was still muttering about turning him loose. I told her to shut up and walk, and a moment later we reached my car.
I opened the trunk and got a roll of electrical tape out of my toolbox. I fished a handkerchief out of Jackie’s pocket and told Barbara to bind up his wound with that. I didn’t want his crappy blood all over my car. But Barbara wouldn’t touch him, so I wrapped the tape myself, right over his hair. Then I pushed his head down and forced him into the front seat. Barbara said she didn’t understand why we couldn’t just let him go, if he’d just promise not to come back. I told her to get in back. I got behind the wheel and started the car. I made Newton roll over with his head against the door. Then I drove up to Speer Boulevard and turned north.
We weren’t going downtown, that much was certain. Jackie didn’t say anything, but there was a feeling of tension in the car, of an act yet to come. He had misread me all the way: I had seen the fear in his eyes when I stood him up with the gun in his mouth, and he waited now for a telltale sign. You assume when you’re dealing with a cop that everything gets played according to Hoyle. It doesn’t always happen that way. Cops roll with the tide like everyone else. The good ones don’t let the tide swamp them and so far I had been one of the good ones. But tonight I hadn’t even read Jackie Newton his rights.
I hit the interstate, heading north, then east. Now they were both quiet, waiting to see what I was going to do. I didn’t know either. I was driven by long frustration and the dim outline of a foolish idea. As a cop I had only two choices—let Jackie go or take him downtown and try to make a good case out of bad evidence—and I was quickly pushing myself to a third choice that, as a cop, wasn’t mine to make. Procedure was out the window, but as I drove that mattered less and less. All I can do now, as I look back on it, is plead temporary insanity. It works for the assholes, why not for me? Answer—I’m supposed to be better than that. I’m supposed to know what the law says. I knew this much: there comes a point when a cop stops breaking procedure and starts breaking the law. An arrest becomes an abduction, and blame shifts easily, almost casually, from his shoulders to mine. Go far enough and you might as well go all the way.
The city limit slipped past us and so, in my mind, did that fine line.
Ahead lay five hundred miles of open prairie. We were playing on Jackie’s court now, with his rule book. That didn’t seem to please him much. I didn’t blame him; it wouldn’t’ve pleased me either, in his place. I understood suddenly that this was a solitary thing between Jackie and myself: Barbara had no place in it; she was simply the instrument that had pushed us over the limit. I’m not thinking clearly, I thought—should’ve left her home. But by then we were fifteen miles out of town.
I pulled off the road. The morning was still very dark. I bumped along a dirt trail until I came to the river. There I told them to get out of the car.
Jackie found his voice. “What do you think you’re doing, Janeway?” His big bad silent act was finished. He was trying to sound tough but it wasn’t working: his voice was thick with worry. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said. Barbara said, “What are you gonna do, Janeway?” as if she hadn’t heard the question just being asked. There was no fear in her now, just wonderment. They had both glimpsed the shadow of my foolish idea.
“I think I’ll kill him for you, Barbara,” I said. “Would you like that?”
She didn’t say no. Again I told them to get out. Jackie was convinced: he turned to me and his mouth moved in the dashboard light as if to form a word, but nothing came out. He looked a lot like Barbara had looked back at the apartment. I guess real fear is the same all over.
We got out. A streak of light had appeared in the east and we began to see each other not as dim shapes but as people, faces, types. The thug, the brittle beauty, and me. What type was I? What type was I?
I gave Barbara my keys. “Here. Take the car and get out of here. Park in your spot behind the house. Lock it up. I’ve got an extra set of keys…. I’ll come by for it later.”
She looked reluctant, suddenly unwilling to leave. “What are you gonna do?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“How will you get back?”
“Barbara,” I said, anger rising in my voice, “get out of here, right now.”
She got in the car and drove away. Jackie Newton and I stood alone on the empty prairie and looked at each other.
I pushed him down toward the river. He was trying to talk again—“Listen, Janeway,” he said—but I told him to keep walking and shut up. We came to a little grove of trees. Daylight was coming fast: I could see the fear working at him. I took off my coat. Jackie Newton watched every move I made. I folded my coat and put it on the ground. “What are you doing?” he said, his voice suddenly shrill. I was taking off my gun, unstrapping the holster from under my arm. I draped it over a low-hanging branch. “Head down that way,” I said, pushing Newton along a path by the river. We went about thirty yards. He turned and his eyes went past me, to the gun hanging from the tree. It dropped like a piece of deadly black fruit.
He began to grin as he realized that I wasn’t going to shoot him.
Slowly, he understood.
I had circled him a couple of times. The last time, I came in close and unlocked the cuffs.
All that stood between Jackie Newton and the gun was me.
“Okay, tough guy,” I said. “There’s the gun. Why don’t you go get it?”
He took a deep breath. The old arrogance came rippling back. He flexed his hands, rubbing the circulation into his chafed wrists. He threw the handcuffs to the ground and stood up tall.
“That’s the biggest mistake you ever made,” he said.
• • •
I walked up through the trees, alone. I had come with a question and was going home with an answer.
What type was I?
You’re a killer, Janeway. Oh, what a killer you are. I knew what Kong felt like after the big tyrannosaurus fight, how the soul of David must’ve soared when he cut down Goliath. I felt the joy of victorious underdogs everywhere. It was a crummy fight, if I have to hang a label on it. Jackie hit me with everything he had: when I didn’t go down, that was the end of it. His little chicken heart crumbled and broke into a thousand pieces. I ducked under his next punch and pounded his guts on the inside. He exploded in a hurricane of bad breath. I came up fast and got him on the button. He tottered and I punched him again and he went down. He sat on his ass in the dirt and I knew he wanted to quit but he couldn’t. I let him get up in his own time and I moved in and let him hit me. I started to talk to him. Fuck you, Jackie, I thought you had some balls. I punched his stomach into great swollen slabs of meat, then went upstairs, for his eyes and chin. He toppled and went down. He rolled in the dirt and I waited for him to get up. Three more times he got up, just enough to salvage some pride and get his face caved in. I punched him with both hands, butted him with my head, and put him down for the count.
Hallelujah, brother. I had no illusions about what this would cost me, and it felt great.
I looked back once. He was still lying in the dirt. I thought he had a
broken nose and two or three cracked ribs. I had the skin peeled off my knuckles and a mouse under one eye. It didn’t hurt a bit.
A killer. God, I shoulda stayed in the ring.
The thug, the beaut, the killer.
Me.
I was finished as a cop. I strapped my gun on and threw my coat over my shoulder.
Soon I was on the highway, heading west. The morning rush hour was getting started and there was a steady flow of traffic into Denver.
I walked for a while, not wanting company.
My police career was over. I didn’t need a mystic to tell me that. A line kept running through my head, that famous speech of Lou Gehrig’s when he was losing not only the job he loved but also his life. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
For the first time in years, I knew where I was going.
I flagged a state cop, showed him my badge, and let him drive me home.
16
Ruby Seals and Emery Neff were working late, still pricing books from their big score.
They hadn’t been listening to the radio. The newspaper accounts were still twelve hours away, but the TV and radio guys already had it.
I wanted to buy something I couldn’t begin to afford.
“What’s the best piece of fiction in the store?” I asked.
Ruby showed me a Catcher in the Rye, crisp, lovely in its first-state jacket. I stared into the impenetrable eyes of J. D. Salinger and bought it.
Four hundred dollars, a steal.
“What else’ve you got?”
Ruby looked at Neff and Neff looked back at Ruby. They cleared their throats and went to work.