No Such Thing as a Lost Cause

by Shelly Fredman

  When I was a kid, I’d briefly entertained the idea of becoming a cop. I like to call it my “Charlie’s Angels’” phase. I even went so far as to fill out an application for the academy, but that was before I realized you were actually expected to follow the rules you were hired to enforce. Rule following is not my strong suit.

  “I’m working on an idea for a feature story on cops,” I told him. And it will be great and everyone will love me and then the station will be sorry they ever thought about letting me go and I’ll be asked to run the entire news network and pigs will fly and everything!

  “Just make us look good,” he said, and hung up.

  Nick called while I was watching an old episode of The Nanny. It was the one where Mr. Sheffield told Fran he loved her and then he took it back.

  “Hello, Angel.”

  “Hey,” I murmured, suddenly shy. “What’s up?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  “About what?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea.

  “About Fran’s pregnancy test. So—is she?” he asked, lightly. I’ve learned not to let that fool me. Santiago’s training in the martial arts has enabled him to appear calm, even in the deadliest of circumstances, whereas I couldn’t keep my feelings a secret if my life depended on it, a theory that has been tested and proven on a daily basis.

  I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. “No,” I whispered, leaning back against the couch cushions. “She’s not.”

  I waited a beat, and when he didn’t say anything I added, “Nobody is.”

  And then I burst into tears.

  Once the water works started I couldn’t stop. “Eric’s making me play Godfrey the Traffic Dog,” I snuffled. “I’m very upset about it!”

  “Apparently,” Nick said, softly. “Brandy, I may be going out on a limb here, but I think something else might be bothering you.”

  “Nope. That’s it. Um, listen, Nick, I’ve gotta go. I’m running late for my—uh—Intuitive Eating class.” Why did I say that? He knows I’m not a joiner.

  “See, I’m respecting my body. It’s a temple, and, um, all that crap. Anyway, I’m supposed to bring dessert, and you caught me just going into the bakery. I’ll take a dozen cannolis,” I yelled across the room to my cat, Rocky. She was busy licking her girl parts and didn’t bother to look up.

  “I really have to go.” I clicked off with Nick, and then I sat back and watched the rest of The Nanny, and cried some more.

  *****

  Officer Dave Wolinski is a twenty-five year old rookie cop with a passion for video games and nine-ball. He grew up at “F” & the Boulevard, attended Father Judge and married right out of high school. His ex-wife “is a bitch—no offense” and the new love of his life is an adorable, seven-month old Lab mix puppy.

  I’d learned all this in the first ten minutes of my ride along. I also learned that working the beat is a lot like war—mostly boring, punctuated with sudden moments of sheer terror.

  We’d been cruising around West Philly for a couple of hours, stopping briefly to grab some coffee and yell at an old guy who’d peed in the doorway of a laundromat. For some reason I’d been feeling kind of down, so it was nice to have something else to focus on.

  As we climbed back into the patrol car, a late model, silver, m300 Chrysler barreled through the red light, going fifty miles an hour. The windows were rolled down and music blared from the radio. It was chock full of bass and expletives and seemed a tad on the hostile side, but maybe that’s just me.

  “Hey. Did you see that? The jerk almost ran over that woman in the crosswalk.”

  “It’s show time,” Dave announced. He pressed a button on the dashboard, setting off the flashing lights on the roof of the cruiser.

  Okay! Now we’re cookin’. We’re gonna bust us some serious traffic scofflaws!

  Dave hung a quick u-ie and followed the Chrysler. The driver caught sight of the patrol car in his rear view mirror, and Wolinski signaled for him to pull over. The guy slowed down, faked right and turned left, cutting off a couple of lanes of traffic, and sped away.

  “So that’s how you want to play it. Well, you’re on, buddy.” Dave glanced over at me. “Hang on tight,” he yelled and tromped on the gas.

  I started to get nervous. “Maybe you should just let me off at the Acme on the corner. I need to pick up a few things.”

  Dave grinned. “I thought you wanted the full cop experience.” He radioed for backup and switched on the siren, while I clung to the door like a kid on a thrill ride, sure I was going to die. I hoped I’d remembered to put on clean underwear in case I got carted off to the morgue. I didn’t want to embarrass my parents unduly.

  We followed the guy for about eight blocks, and then he veered off onto a side street and zipped down the alley.

  “Bad move,” Dave said. “He just turned into a box canyon. We got him.”

  The driver sped up. He made it halfway down the narrow alley when he lost control of his vehicle and slammed into a dumpster.

  Wolinski slowed to a stop and turned the patrol car sideways to block the exit.

  We waited a beat, but there was no movement from inside the Chrylser.

  “Stay put, and keep your head down,” Dave ordered. He didn’t have to tell me twice.

  I scrunched down as he exited the car, gun drawn. Almost instantly, the crackling sound of gunshot pierced the air. Without thinking, I popped my head up over the dashboard and spotted Officer Wolinski laid out in front of the cruiser, blood oozing from his chest. The shooter hopped over the dumpster and fled down the alley.

  Oh, shit.

  I bolted out of the car and knelt beside Dave, pressing my hand to his chest to try and stem the flow of blood. He was out cold but still breathing. Blood seeped between my fingers. Frantically, I looked around for something to put pressure on the wound. I couldn’t find anything suitable, so I yanked off my tee shirt, and shoved it against his chest, which left me sitting in the middle of the alley in my push-up bra.

  Dave stirred and briefly opened his eyes, and I swear I saw a smile on his ashen lips.

  While I waited for backup to arrive, a thought began to nag at me. Wolinski said the shooter had turned into a box canyon. Where had I heard that phrase before? And then it hit me. When I was a kid I used to watch old westerns with my dad. The bad guys always seemed to get trapped in box canyons—places with an entrance but no exit.

  Oh, double shit!

  Wolinski’s gun lay inches away from me. I tried to grab it, but my hands were trembling so much it was tough to get a grip. Just as I was about to wrap my fingers around the handle, a shadow crossed my line of vision. In the next moment an enormous tennis shoe-covered foot stomped hard on my wrist, grinding it into the pavement.

  Pain shot up my arm. I raised my eyes and saw the barrel of a .38 aimed directly at my head. The shooter stretched out a tattooed arm and pressed the gun against my temple. The only thought in my mind was that I was going to die, and everybody would know I wasn’t really a 34C.

  “Um, could I persuade you to rethink this?” I was beyond reason and figured there was no harm in asking.

  The sound of sirens drew closer, only he didn’t seem to notice. The man exuded arrogance. He pulled the gun away from my head and leered at me, his mouth forming a word so disgusting I wanted to wash my ears out with soap. Then he reached down and grabbed my boob. Eeeww!

  “Party’s over, asshole.” I yanked my hand out from under his shoe, catching him off-balance. He stumbled backwards and I pounced on Dave’s gun, aimed low and fired.

  The bullet struck him in the thigh. He screamed and crumpled to the ground in agony, shattered bone poking through his skin.

  “Cocksuckin’ bitch,” he screamed.

  “Fuck you, you fucking jerk!” I screamed back and punched him hard in the testicles.

  I kept on punching until suddenly I became aware of a pair of hands hauling me off the guy.

  “It’s okay,” the cop said gently.
“We’ll take it from here.”

  “No, no. I’ve got it.”

  He threw a blanket around my shoulders and handed me off to his partner. “I think she’s in shock,” he advised her.

  “No. Hey, I’m fine.” The temperature was in the eighties, and yet I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Spectators were gathered on the sidewalk, some cursing the police, some videotaping the events. The EMT’s flipped the shooter onto a stretcher while one of the officers cuffed him.

  “Get this guy in the van before I kill him,” the cop growled to the ambulance driver.

  I looked around in a daze. Wolinski was being hoisted onto a stretcher. He was wearing an oxygen mask, which told me he was still alive. I walked over to him and squeezed his hand. My cheeks felt wet, and it took me a minute to realize I’d been crying.

  I wandered over to the car. The front end was crumpled beyond repair, and yet the radio kept on playing, spewing shit that passed for music. Next to me stood another cop; a burly, middle-aged guy named McCabe. He looked like a seasoned vet, hard and cool and no one you’d want to mess with.

  He reached a meaty hand in through the car window and turned off the radio. In the relative quiet I thought I heard someone whimper. McCabe heard it too.

  “Stand back,” he told me and grabbed the key out of the ignition. Cautiously, he approached the trunk and popped it open.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said, and I swear there were tears in his eyes.

  Chapter Two

  “You don’t want to see this,” the cop warned. He was right.

  I turned my head, but not before I caught a glimpse of two dogs—bloody and torn—one lying motionless, the other, eyes wide open, tummy heaving, whimpering in pain. It looked young and frightened.

  “It’s called ‘trunking’,” Officer McCabe explained to me, later, on the way to pick up my car at the station. “Takes dog fighting to a whole new level of torture.”

  “So—you mean this is like a real—thing?” It was hard enough to believe it was the brain child of one lone nut case, let alone a thriving business enterprise.

  McCabe pulled his cruiser up next to my car and cut the engine. “It’s a real thing all right. Gang Bangers love it because there’s no overhead. They just throw the dogs into the trunk of a car and ride around town with music blasting to drown out the sound of them tearing each other apart. Whoever’s left breathing at the end is considered the winner. Sick, fucking sons of bitches,” he added. “Pardon my French.”

  Officer McCabe dealt with more horrific acts of inhumanity in a single shift than most people experience in a lifetime. I did not envy the man his job.

  I opened the car door. “What’s going to happen to the dog?”

  “Depends. He’s in pretty bad shape. He may have to be destroyed. And even if he makes it, who would want him? The poor bastard is so traumatized. Listen, you gonna be okay?” he asked as I hopped out of the patrol car.

  “Absolutely. Thanks for the ride.”

  I watched him head into the police station, and then I walked over to the nearest bush and hurled.

  *****

  “Pass the beer nuts.”

  “You’ve had three bowls already, Sunshine.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s the only thing I can keep down. There’s just something about witnessing the decline of western civilization that wreaks havoc with the digestive system.”

  My friend John and I were seated at the bar at DiVinci’s, a local pizza joint. We were waiting for my Uncle Frankie and his girlfriend, Carla, to arrive. For some reason, they thought I needed “emotional support.” Personally, I’d rather forget the whole thing, but they weren’t about to let that strategy fly.

  John shoved the bowl of beer nuts toward me and gave me a look I knew only too well.

  “Uh, oh, here it comes,” I mumbled.

  “Bran, would you stop minimizing what happened to you? I thought the one and a half sessions you spent in therapy last month cured you of that.”

  “It was three sessions, and the issue never came up.”

  “I saw you being interviewed at the scene,” he continued, ignoring my response. “It was all over the news. You were covered in blood from head to toe.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like it was mine. I wasn’t in any real danger.” Okay, so I glossed over the part where psycho-man pulled the gun on me before I blew his leg to smithereens. My friends didn’t need to know it could have been me they were hosing off the pavement. And to be totally honest, I wasn’t in love with the thought either.

  Thank God John knew better than to bring up the dogs. It had been a week, but I’d only just stopped crying.

  “Johnny, could we just drop this, please? I have bigger things to worry about. The news crew got there so fast I didn’t have time to clean Wolinski’s blood off me, and now everybody down at the station is calling me Carrie. So, anyway, where’s Garrett? I’ve barely seen you since you started going out with him. Hey, why don’t you guys come over for dinner tomorrow night? I could order in from that new Thai place.”

  I’d hoped the switch to John’s new favorite subject would let me off the hook for a while. John had been peering at me, trying to discern my true frame of mind, which was fragile, at best. Now, he glanced away, inspecting his manicured nails.

  “I’m working at the gallery tomorrow night.” The gallery being Lucinda’s on South.

  “Oh, well, what about Sunday? I want to get to know Garrett better. I only met him twice, but he seems really nice.”

  “Sunday, Sunday. Let me think. Oh, we’ve got tickets to the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. I’d invite you along, but it’s sold out. Sorry, doll face.”

  “Get out! I love Annie Leibovitz. I’m sure I can get in on a reporter’s pass. What time should I be at your place?”

  “Ah, well, here’s the thing, Bran. Garrett’s kind of… shy. I want to wait a while before bombarding him with everybody. Oh, hey, here come Frankie and Carla.”

  Frankie is my mom’s much younger brother, and one of my favorite people on Earth. My uncle, the manager of a boxing gym, graduated from State Pen U. He and Carla met when he sobered up and stopped knocking off liquor stores to feed his habit.

  Frankie walked over to me and kissed the top of my head. “How ya doin’, kiddo?”

  I flashed him two thumbs up and reached for more beer nuts.

  Carla brought up the rear. She was wearing half a tube of eye shadow and balancing her signature five-pound beehive on her head. She smothered me in a “poor baby” embrace and then leaned across the bar to talk to John.

  “We had a blast at Garrett’s the other night. What a great guy.”

  John rolled his eyes in my direction. “Ixnay Arla-cay” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. Carla glanced my way and blushed, and began picking invisible lint off her halter top.

  “Wait,” I said. “You guys went over to Garrett’s?”

  “No.” Carla sputtered. “And neither did Paul.”

  An awkward silence ensued. I tried to cut John a “WTF,” but he was busy taking inventory of his feet.

  Uncle Frankie ordered a coke and sat down on the bar stool next to me. “I hear Dave Wolinski’s expected to make a full recovery. I can’t believe the numbnuts wasn’t wearing a vest. Said they’re too hot and uncomfortable, but I’ll bet it beats a bullet in your chest.”

  “How do you know Dave?”

  “He works out at the gym. Word has it you saved his life.”

  “It was the least I could do. He let me play with his siren.”

  It was easier to make a joke than to dwell on what might’ve happened if I hadn’t been there. Dwelling’s for losers. I’m all about denial, baby!

  The door opened and homicide detective Robert Anthony DiCarlo walked in. His handsome, Irish-Italian face was edged in five o’clock shadow, his mouth upturned into a killer grin. Bobby DiCarlo’s got dimples a girl could get lost in. I should know. I navigated the depths of that smile for ten years
. Now we’re strictly friends, but it still manages to give me a thrill.

  I was about to wave when I noticed he had company. He was talking to a uniformed cop; tall, blond, cute, and female. She leaned in close and whispered something in his ear which, apparently, was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, because he threw back his head and guffawed so hard everyone began to stare. (Okay, just me.) He even punched her arm the way eleven year-olds do when they want to touch a girl but are trying not to be obvious about it. She eyed him coyly and punched him back. Funny, I felt like punching him, too.

  DiCarlo watched her grab a to-go menu and head back out the door. He was still smiling when he reached the bar. He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and sandwiched in between John and me.

  “Who’s the uniform?” John asked, thrusting his chin toward the take-out counter.

  DiCarlo followed his gaze. “Nobody. Just someone from work.”

  “She’s pretty,” I said.

  Bobby shrugged. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Oh, gimme a break, you big fat liar. “Well, trust me, she is.”

  A seat opened up on the other side of me and Bobby nabbed it. “So, how’re you holding up, Sweetheart?” He reached for the bowl of nuts, but I beat him to it and grabbed the last handful.

  “Good. Great,” I told him. “I’m always so invigorated after I shoot someone.” I didn’t mean for it to come out bitchy. It just did.

  John and DiCarlo exchanged looks.

  “What?”

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

  Why, yes. Yes, I am. How dare you move on in your life and be all flirty with someone new, even though we mutually agreed we’re not meant for each other and I’m in love with Nick?

  “No,” I sighed. “Sorry.”

  He nodded and ordered us a couple of Rolling Rocks, tipping the server more than the price of the beers.

  Frankie and Carla wandered down to the other end of the bar to watch the Phillies’ game, and John had to take a call from Garrett, (for some reason that Garrett was really beginning to bug me) so that just left Bobby and me.

  Bobby took a slug of his beer. “I got some news about the shithead that fired on Wolinski,” he told me. “He’s a twenty-seven year old gang member from North Philly, named Mario Lewis, with a laundry list of felony charges including assault, dog fighting, and drugs. When they picked him up he was high as a friggin’ kite, which explains why you were able to take him down when he pulled the gun on you.”