Fail

by Rick Skwiot

  “Kill the engine.”

  “Scenic,” said Stone.

  “Turn off the lights.”

  “Now what?”

  Gabriel took a breath. “We wait.”

  Stone stared ahead at the river. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Gabriel turned to the professor and repressed an urge to slap him. He wished he had brought a flask.

  “Stick to grammar, Stone, as you know fuck all about police work.”

  “Where’s the F.B.I.?”

  “If you could see them then Cira could certainly spot them.”

  “Wait a minute....” Stone turned to Gabriel. “How do they know where we are? After you got the call from Cira you didn’t tell anyone the time and place.”

  Gabriel looked out the side window at the snow-covered earth.

  “Where are the feds?”

  “We don’t need no stinking F.B.I. fucking up my deal.”

  “What are you saying, Carlo? Didn’t you go to them?”

  “Yeah, I went.”

  “And what?”

  “I showed them the files and filled them in on everything. Their preliminary take mirrored Laura Berkman’s. ‘We need more evidence. This is going to take an investigation, subpoenas, et cetera.’ They wanted to vet you to see how useful you’d be and then set up an elaborate sting to get Cira to cop to what he told me in the steam room, that he shot your wife and wants you dead, too. Then the other dominoes—the chief, the developers, the bankers—would fall.”

  “Why aren’t we doing that?”

  “Cira won’t wait. And they wanted to run me and the whole operation and turn it into a Broadway production. They were going to get the credit for it and I’d get dick. Guys on the job wouldn’t respect me ratting to the feds. There’d be nothing in it for me.”

  “What is it with you, Gabriel? You want to be chief of police?”

  “No, Stone. Nothing to do with promotion or retirement package or anything like that. I want to do the right thing, like you said. But the right thing for me. Which means standing up to Cira and standing up for myself.”

  “Mother of God. You mean it’s just you?”

  “After I met with the F.B.I. this morning I got a call from Cira pressing me. If I tried to stall him to fit the feds’ schedule he’d smell a rat. They don’t know Ange like I do. I figured I better move. Just wing it solo and hand everyone a fait accompli.”

  “Wing it? What about the wire, the bug?”

  “The Gecko’s got it all fixed. I’m wired like a grand piano.”

  “I don’t know, Carlo. This is making me nervous.”

  “You’re making me nervous.”

  “It’s so fucking dark and desolate here.”

  “Exactly. Now just shut up. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”

  “I do, but I … maybe I shouldn’t.”

  Gabriel turned and studied Stone’s profile in the dim light. “You are right about that, Stone. You’re a trusting bastard, and that trusting nature is a two-edged sword. Leaves you open to both good people and bad.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “As with your wife?”

  “That’s cruel, Carlo. Unworthy of you.”

  Gabriel sniffed. “You think I’m a good guy, on the side of God, on your side. But maybe you’ve miscalculated.”

  “You’re spooking me, lieutenant. Stop it.”

  “You study the Apocrypha in religion class? Stories thought to be true but are misleading.”

  “Of course.”

  “So follow me. I once told you a story to help gain your trust. About how a pissed-off cop shot an unarmed suspect in cold blood and got his partner to cover for him.”

  “That didn’t happen?”

  “Oh, it happened all right. But I altered the plot a bit.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Gabriel took a breath. “It wasn’t Angelo Cira who pulled the trigger, Stone. It was his partner. It was me.”

  “What?” Gabriel could hear Stone breathing hard.

  “Me who compromised Cira and got him to cover my ass. I’m the one capable of cold-blooded murder, Stone. I’m the one who owes Angelo Cira a big favor, which I’m now going to square.” Gabriel reached for his Beretta. “Get out of the car.”

  “You can’t mean it!” Stone’s eyes showed the realization taking hold, the rising panic. Voice cracking, he whispered: “You can’t just kill me. I … I…”

  Gabriel reached across and patted his knee. “See what a silly, trusting bastard you are, Stone? Nah, I’m not going to kill you,” he said re-holstering his Beretta. “I just made all that up to show you you’re way out of your league.”

  Stone sat glaring at Gabriel. “You vicious son of a bitch.”

  Gabriel laughed. “That’s the way we roll. When it comes to vicious, you backstabbing English teachers got nothing on the S.L.P.D. The old adrenaline’s going now, eh?”

  “Liked to stop my goddamn heart, you bastard. If we get through this alive I’m going to kill you with my bare hands.”

  “Judas. But at least you’re finally manning-up.”

  Headlights swept across the riverbank in front of them and dimmed. A Buick SUV pulled beside them.

  “Don’t lose that adrenaline rush, Stone,” Gabriel muttered. “And follow the goddamn script.”

  They rose from the Chevy and moved toward the Buick. As they did, its door opened and Angelo Cira stepped out in a black overcoat. Stone stopped in his tracks and turned to Gabriel.

  “What’s he doing here? What’s going on?”

  The mayor approached and stood beside Gabriel. “Your man sounds surprised, Carlo.”

  Gabriel smelled the dark Mississippi rushing by, the scent of earth brought from the plains by the Missouri, which joined it scant miles upstream. “He was expecting the F.B.I.”

  “The F.B.I.’s downtown, Stone. You made a wrong turn.”

  Stone closed his eyes and lowered his chin as if praying. Then he looked up to Gabriel. “You never went to them?”

  “Nope. Spent a relaxing day playing hoops and meditating in the sauna.”

  “I trusted you with my life.”

  “We gave you a way out. You decided not to take it.”

  Cira said, “You got the files, Carlo?”

  Gabriel reached into his coat pocket and withdrew two flash drives. “Right here. They can go in the river with the professor.”

  Stone turned on Cira. “I guess you gave Ellen the same chance before you killed her.”

  Cira looked at Stone then shifted his eyes to Gabriel. “Come on, let’s get this over with. Fucking amateurs, both of them, him and his sweet-assed wife.”

  Cira strode toward the river. Gabriel, heart pounding in his throat, reached for Stone. Stone tore lose from his grasp and rushed Cira from behind.

  “What the hell!” called Gabriel.

  Cira turned at the sound. Stone reached him and threw a wild right that caught the mayor behind the ear. The two went to the ground hard, wrestling on the snow-covered earth. Cira quickly threw him off and rose drawing a pistol from his coat pocket.

  “You motherfucker!”

  Gabriel dashed forward to lay a hand on Cira’s arm. “Don’t, Ange! We need him in one piece. This needs to look like a suicide, not an execution.”

  “Then club the bastard and dump him in the goddamn river.”

  “Okay. Just put the gun away and give me a rock. This has to look right in case they find him.”

  Gabriel pulled Stone from the ground and marched him toward the river. Cira awaited them on the bank, grasping a rock from the riprap there.

  “Go ahead and do him if you want, Ange.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Gabriel’s cell phone binged. With his left hand he lifted it from his coat pocket and read a text message from The Gecko: “Got it!”

  He turned to Cira. “No, let me do it. You don’t want any blood on you for your meeting.”

  Cira handed him t
he rock.

  “Now,” said Gabriel, “hand me your gun, Ange.”

  Cira turned to him slack-jawed and focused on Gabriel’s Beretta, now trained on him. “What the fuck?”

  “Sorry, Ange. This is where our one-sided relationship ends. Angelo Cira, you are under arrest for all kinds of nefarious shit: murder, racketeering, corruption, et cetera, et cetera. I’ll read you your rights, all recorded, so there’s no Miranda bullshit in court.”

  “You fuck! You won’t pull this off, Gabriel. You’re nobody.”

  “I’m going to try. Give me your gun.”

  “Fuck you. I’m leaving. I have a meeting. I don’t think you’ll shoot me in the back. Wouldn’t look good to assassinate the mayor.”

  Cira turned and moved toward his SUV twenty yards distant.

  Gabriel licked dry lips, watching, mind racing. When the mayor reached the vehicle and grabbed the door handle Gabriel raised his pistol, aimed, and fired, the explosion echoing off the floodwall and ringing across the river.

  Cira pressed himself to the car then turned to see the shredded front tire. Gabriel aimed next at the rear tire and squeezed off a second round. Cira started. Then he turned, pistol in hand. Gabriel aimed a third time.

  “Put the gun on the ground, Ange, or I start with your kneecaps.”

  Once he had Cira handcuffed and in the back seat of Stone’s Chevy, Gabriel called his FBI contact and asked for a ride. It took a couple minutes to convince him it wasn’t a prank and he was mostly sober.

  He and Stone awaited the feds’ arrival, standing off to the side in the trees, Gabriel alert to whatever might be coming down the bike trail. He doubted that Cira had involved Donnewald or private backup—i.e., mobsters or gangstas—in tonight’s meet. But he had come too far at too much risk to get lax now.

  “You went off script, Stone. Big time. What the hell got into you? A fricking English teacher jumping an armed excop.”

  “I told you I wasn’t much of an actor. But I do have an imagination. Looking at Cira I saw him and Ellen in bed together. Then I pictured him putting the gun to her head, heard her pleading for her life. And the dismissive way he treated me … I just snapped.”

  Gabriel kept scanning the dark scene before him as the river roiled behind him. “If you jump everyone who’s dismissive you’ll grow a hell of a rap sheet.”

  “Anyway, it worked. Got him pissed-off enough to drop his guard and want to kill me, too.” Stone’s breath came in short bursts, white vapor clouds hanging in the icy night. “Never thought I’d like police work. It’s not so bad.”

  Gabriel glanced at Stone then returned his gaze to the darkness before him.

  “You’re still on the adrenaline high, Stone. And tonight’s not normal … But no, it’s not so bad, not if you’re doing it right. We’re all on the same side—coppers, teachers, snowplow drivers, judges, and politicians. Or should be. And maybe you were right after all, we all need to do the right thing to make it work.”

  The harsh searchlight from a towboat moving upriver flashed by the shore and laid a bright silver band across the black Mississippi.

  “Where do you think this will land you?” asked Stone.

  Gabriel again became conscious of the river’s fertile aroma and the sound of its rush. “God knows. Could end up as chief of police or in the big house. More likely somewhere in between. But wherever, I’ll land on my feet. Always have. I suspect you will too once you sort through all this.”

  Stone nodded. “Neither one of us is up the river or the creek yet.”

  Soon headlights—two pair—appeared coming north up the bike trail and stopped before the turnoff to the treeless area where Stone’s Chevy and Cira’s shot-up Buick sat.

  Gabriel stood with a gun in both hands, watching, praying.

  - 30 -

  Carlo Gabriel sat at the umbrellaed café table in slacks, loafers, and guayabera, studying the lunch menu and sipping a lemonade. Its scent and a warm westerly breeze wafting down the street from Forest Park made him think of hot childhood days and trips to the zoo.

  He glanced up to see Stone—now clean-shaven and wearing cargo shorts, tee shirt, and sandals—coming down the sidewalk on Laclede Avenue from his apartment building, looking like a college kid. They shook hands.

  Stone sat across from him and said: “You seem relaxed.”

  Gabriel studied a chirping sparrow in a nearby gingko tree shading them. “Feeling very chill these days despite the heat.”

  “What’s changed?”

  Gabriel held his arms out to his sides. “Notice anything different? Perhaps my new streamlined look.”

  “Lost weight?”

  “A pound and a half: my pistol.”

  “You get busted?”

  Gabriel laughed. “Not that they didn’t try, for all the irregular crap I pulled. No, I turned fifty-five last week and took retirement. Funny, after carrying a gun for thirty years, I feel naked.”

  “What prompted this?”

  The waitress came and Stone ordered iced tea. When she’d gone, Gabriel said,

  “There was nothing more to prove.”

  “What about promotion and getting back in the loop at headquarters?”

  “You’ve been following Laura’s stories, I guess. You see how the legal stuff’s dragging on. Looks like Cira could take a walk on Ellen’s murder. He’s fighting admissibility of the audio files from the night we took him down. All they may have left is me versus the mayor, he said, she said, so to speak. And the other stuff—the corruption, the conspiracy to commit murder, et cetera—will take years to prepare and adjudicate. Meanwhile I’d be in limbo.”

  “At least he and Donnewald are gone.”

  “Not sure Holmes and Coleman are a marked improvement. Same for the new treasurer. They’re covering the tracks on everything you exposed. And it looks like the Stadium Towne deal will go ahead, though with a different starting lineup. Everyone wants it: the team, the fans, the developers, downtown businesses, the bankers. Hell, I’ll probably go enjoy a few brews there.”

  “Who said you can’t fight city hall.”

  “You can fight it, but it fights back. And I’m tired of struggling. I’ve got better things to do and enough money to do it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Been brushing up on my Spanish, which I haven’t used since my mom died. I’ve got cousins in Jalisco whom I haven’t seen in years. I’ll start there. Then likely some fishing village far away from the narcotraficantes. Maybe I’ll write a memoir, minding my misplaced modifiers. Or maybe I’ll just try to forget it all. Speaking of writing, how goes your work?”

  “Finished and submitted my dissertation just because I don’t like loose ends. Working my ass off at the charter school, focused on the real world, the here and now. Nice to see tangible results, helping kids who need it and want it.”

  “So it’s all good?”

  The waitress reappeared with Stone’s tea and he sipped.

  “Ellen still haunts me, but I’ve forgiven her. Still trying to forgive myself. If I hadn’t acted like a schoolboy, she’d still be alive.”

  Gabriel recalled the snowy day in Quincy, where he told him his wife was dead, and Stone, crushed and guilt-ridden, racing away as if to throw himself into the Mississippi.

  “I don’t know about that, Jonathan. Sooner or later you would have confronted her with your knowledge of her involvement in Cira’s schemes, and you both might have ended up dead. You believe in God and providence and whatnot, right? Why not believe He had a hand in this?”

  Now Stone studied the sparrow, pursing his lips. “I also believe in free will and being accountable for our acts.”

  Gabriel leaned forward. “Look, Stone. Let’s make a deal. Flawed human being that you are, you start cutting yourself a little slack and stop trying to be the Son of God, himself, and me, created in His image, will start acting a little more like Him. Deal?”

  Stone smiled. “Agreed. But I have another deal for you. You remember
Alonzo Watkins, the chess player who got shot? He’s okay now, physically, at least.”

  “But not otherwise?”

  “He’s bailing out, fixing to join the Army. I can’t blame him. You know why he got shot?”

  “I’ve found that people don’t need good reasons.”

  “For acting ‘white.’ For carrying a book bag and a chessboard. For standing his ground when he probably shouldn’t have.”

  “So he knew who shot him.”

  “Seems so. But he’s understandably tight-lipped.”

  “Maybe a gang thing, an initiation. Wrong place, wrong time. Who knows?”

  “I suspect he’ll do all right in the service. But I’m also worried about the punks who attacked him and other kids who turn bad—not to mention their victims.”

  Gabriel nodded. “I’ve seen it ruin schools and neighborhoods. Just a few assholes terrorizing, intimidating, and undermining a community. Some of these kids are just irreversibly screwed up, kicked around, abused, abandoned, left to run wild. By the time we get our hands on them, it’s too late.”

  “But it’s not too late for my students,” said Stone. “They come to the charter school hungry to grab something of life. But poverty’s the thing that holds them back—not financial poverty, but a poverty of ideas and morals and a sense of responsibility for their own lives. The things parents and families are supposed to provide. It shackles them.”

  “I’m not optimistic you can set them free.”

  “But we have to try.”

  “Challenging work, Stone. Exactly what you were looking for.”

  “But I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Luckily I work with some good people who are trying to give the kids what their families and neighborhoods aren’t.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Not as easy as teaching grammar. We’ve got social workers and psychiatrists and preachers helping us, but when the day is done most of the kids still have to go back to dicey neighborhoods.”

  “Any success?”

  “These kids can do it if they work, but it’s tough. Too many smart ones drop out, too many capable ones don’t go to college.”

  Gabriel sipped his lemonade. “You said you had a deal. What does this have to do with me?”