by Luis Samways
I stood there for a good while, just staring at my boss. I knew he was right. He had me at that conclusion as soon as I walked in. I was just angry at myself. How could I even contemplate covering up for someone? Was I going insane? I guess that was why I had to look at myself long and hard before walking into his office. Maybe that was why I didn’t like what I saw. I guess now I know why I felt the way I did. Trust Shaw to help me see the light. That fucking no-good good-hearted-man!
“I’m sorry, boss – I don’t know what came over me. It’s just my damn head — it gets to me, you know, all this shit. Day in, day out, always the same shit. It’s hard for me. I know I sound like I’m making excuses, but maybe it’s time I realize what I’m doing to myself. I’m seeing a shrink, you know. Started yesterday. Signed myself up and everything. My first appointment is after work,” I said.
Shaw just blinked at me. He looked confused.
“I’m sorry, Frank, but forgive me for sounding blunt, but I couldn’t give a flying fuck about your damn appointments. Just tell me who shot Larry!”
I nodded my head and got to telling him what happened. Everything was told, even down to Ricardo asking me to wipe down the gun after giving it to me. I knew something was up right then, and after a few beers at home, I figured it out. Ricardo had shot Larry on purpose. I suppose I wanted to make Ricardo pay my own way. Maybe that was why I held information back from Shaw. Truth be told, I didn’t have the foggiest idea what I had planned for Ricardo, but I guess now it didn’t matter. Shaw was surely going to cuff Ricardo and do him for murder. I heard a rumor that cops don’t do too well in prison. Cops that kill cops? Maybe they don’t even reach prison before their number is up. Who was I to deprive the inmates of a blue blood?
“You did the right thing, Frank. Larry can rest in peace now,” Shaw said, still standing, this time reaching over the table and patting me on the shoulder.
“What about Ricardo? Will he rest easy?” I asked.
Shaw shrugged his shoulders in earnest. “Fuck knows, but cop killers don’t tend to rest that easy come yard time down county lockup.”
I nodded.
“I guess I can rest easy now,” I muttered.
“You did the right thing, Frank,” Shaw repeated.
I didn’t feel as optimistic. Doing the right thing is one thing, but selling out is another. I guess I was torn on which I had just done.
“Get to that damn shrink. I bet you have a lot to get off your chest, my boy,” Shaw said, patting me on the shoulder once more.
“I feel like a rat, Shaw,” I said.
Shaw rolled his eyes and made his way next to me from behind his big desk. He put his arm around me, trying to comfort me.
“Rats are vermin, Frank. You are a lifesaver. A good detective. Sure, you have some issues, but you are a good man. A rat wouldn’t give a shit about a fallen comrade, but you, you care. That’s why you did what you did. And any officers out there who think different are the true rats. Because doing the right thing isn’t something vermin do. They shit on everything, infecting it. What you did was clean this case up and give Larry’s wife some justice. Rats don’t care about justice,” Shaw said with a smile on his face.
He was right, but I still couldn’t help feeling like a rat.
Two
I shut my locker door with authority. I wasn’t in no mood to be quiet about it. The locker room was empty anyway, so it was just me and my frustrations. I punched a dent into the hard metal grated surface. I was in pain, but my anger was far greater than the inconvenience of a bruised knuckle.
“Get it together, man,” I whispered to myself.
My lungs were convulsing under the stress of the situation. For some unknown reason, I was far from all right. At first I feared the worst. Maybe my lifestyle of prescription drugs and recreational partying had caught up to me. I felt a knot in my chest. I held my hand over my center and tried to steady my breathing. Was I having a heart attack? No – I was just stressing out. As soon as I calmed myself down, my body regained its composure and I felt okay, if not a little on edge.
I caught myself staring at the dent I had made into the locker door. I winced as I spotted a blood smear on the dent. I looked down at my still clenched fist and saw what was more than a bruised knuckle. I had sliced it open. There was a fair amount of blood on the floor. I hadn’t noticed the warm trickle until I looked down.
“Just great,” I muttered to myself.
Now if anybody was going to make themselves present in the changing room, then I’d have to explain why I was leaking life fluid from my hand. I shook my head and opened the locker again. Inside were a few old T-shirts of mine that I had used many a time. They were crinkled and un-ironed, much like the clothes I was wearing then. I ripped one of the old shirts and made a makeshift bandage. I wrapped it around my hand and fastened it with some loose string from the garment. My bloody hand was showing some red through the bandage. I decided to ignore it and got on with my cool-down period after my shift. Usually I wouldn’t have much time for cooling-off after I punched out, but seeing I was being let off a couple hours early, I thought I’d sit down on the bench in the middle of the room and collect my thoughts.
My locker was still open, but I didn’t really care. There was no use shutting it; I had managed to bend it at the rim where the lock would go. I’d have to get a replacement door. I didn’t have anything of value in my locker, unless you considered a few poster girls on the inside valuable. The stale smell of body odor drenched the dry atmosphere of the locker room. It was a smell I was used to by now, but it had always hit me in the face with surprising impact every time I set foot in the room. I didn’t know who was to blame for the smell, but whoever it was, it wouldn’t kill them to take a cold shower once in a while.
I sat on the bench, looking at my feet. I noticed my shoes looked scuffed. Maybe I should have bought a new pair, but I wasn’t one to flash cash on some pumps. I remained fixated on my thoughts of what had occurred that day. Plenty of questions were making their rounds in my dome. Plenty of self-doubt accompanied it. I had never felt so torn before in my life. Did I do the right thing? And then I realized something; there is no right thing. Either way I would have felt shitty. But I guess the consolation prize was the fact that Larry Burns’ wife would now know who killed her husband. Would it help her get over him? Probably not. In my opinion, it would make things worse. I mean, who in the hell would prefer to hear that their beloved relative didn’t die by the hands of a criminal but by the hands of one of the good guys? Does anybody truly want to hear that sort of truth? I know for a fact I wouldn’t.
I felt my heart do a backflip in my chest. Thinking about Larry’s loved ones made me think of mine. The ones who were not with me anymore. Namely my wife. She died a good few years ago. She left me before that happened. It was like a double blow, if you will. The fact that she was fed up with me long before she kicked the bucket made me even sadder. In a way, I had killed her. I wasn’t the one who shot her on her way home and mugged her for the little alimony that she got from me, but I was the one who drove her away. This job drove her away. I knew that for a fact.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out my pills. I chucked a few into my mouth and swallowed them dry. They made a weird detour down my gullet, but thankfully a few heaves of my chest made them go down safely. My pills were my vice. Not out of choice, but out of necessity. If I didn’t take them, then I’d be hearing intrusive thoughts in my head. Some people call it a conscience but I call it the devil. I know I’m not possessed, by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know I suffer from a mild case of schizophrenia. I have all my life, but getting past it has been a challenge. Some say I handle the voices well; I guess in reality I don’t let them control me. These voices never tell me to do anything; they just utter nonsense once in a while. The police department knows of my ailment, but because of my sort of stellar record as a homicide detective, I guess voices don’t really constitute a firing.
; My methods of police work have always been questioned, and I get into trouble with the Chief a lot. But I never do anything out of malice. I guess back in the seventies, you would have called me a maverick. In 2014, though, you’d just call me a prick.
I put the pills back into my jacket pocket and cracked my neck. My thoughts returned to my dead wife and how I felt responsible for her death. The reason I decided to go to a shrink in the first place was because of my guilt for her death. The department jumped on the opportunity to fund my rehabilitation. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell them no. Seeing a shrink was expensive. I didn’t have money, and the little money I did have was tied up in paying my bills. I didn’t live a life of luxury. Luxury for me was a glass of whiskey and a few cigarettes in front of HBO. That was my one luxury in life. Damn good TV and a bottle of Jack.
I decided that my cool-down period was over and thought that maybe it was best I got to walking and did less thinking. I’d have plenty of time to re-evaluate my life while I was at the shrink. Like it or not, I knew that it was the best thing that could happen to me. I knew that seeing a psychiatrist was only going to do me good. It had to; after all, I had seen a lot of shit in my life. Getting help from somebody about my feelings could only help me forget about the stuff I’d seen. Well, that was what Shaw had said when he convinced me to go through with it when I had my doubts. I was falling for Shaw’s golden tongue once again. I only hoped that Shaw was right, or I’d be a rat visiting a shrink to get my vermin head examined. God, I hoped he was right.
***
I washed my face in the sink and looked at my wet reflection in the mirror. I noticed my black circles were fading; maybe all the thinking was helping to release my inner demons, which I knew were causing me to look older than my years. I heard the restroom door open, and someone’s footsteps made their way toward me. I heard a light-hearted laugh and turned around. My good buddy and long-term partner Santiago was standing tall, facing me. He had a look of admiration on his face. I cocked my eyes at him and shrugged my shoulders.
“What?” I asked in wonder.
San gave me a smile and came closer to me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and forced a hug. I squirmed a little, I wasn’t one for man hugs, but I made the exception for my friend, even if he knew how much I hated hugs.
“Come on, man, don’t be like that,” he said, feeling my reluctance. “I’m proud of you. You did the right thing,” he said under his breath.
I could feel the words echo into my ear and vibrate off my neck. To say I was uncomfortable was an understatement. “I don’t know what you are on about, San,” I replied, gently pushing him away.
I was met with a cheeky look on his face. He held his hands out wide, as if he wanted another hug.
“Come on, man! I know you know what I know!” he said, still smiling.
For a moment I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, trying to construct a sentence that didn’t consists of “fuck” and “off.”
“I guess every man has his breaking point,” I offered instead.
Santiago nodded his head in agreement. He managed to succumb to my body language and lowered his hands.
“You didn’t break, Frank. You told Shaw about Ricardo popping Larry. We all knew it was him. It didn’t take a genius to work that out, but we just didn’t have any proof. I knew you knew — you always know! Good riddance, I say. The man can’t be one of us if he’s popping people like Larry in the back. Sure, maybe it was an accident, but even if it was, covering up isn’t the way to go about it,” San said to me, turning around and walking up to the urinal to take a leak. “You did the right thing,” he added as he undid his zipper and commenced the waterfall that followed.
“I’m pretty fed up with everybody telling me how good I did. As far as I’m concerned, I wasn’t covering for anybody. Someone accidentally shot someone else with my weapon. That isn’t exactly going to make me look good. If anything, I was covering my ass,” I replied.
San stopped pissing and did his zipper back up.
“Say what you want to say, buddy, but I know the true reason you did what you did.”
“And what is that, then?” I replied.
“Justice, Frank. No matter what everybody else says, justice shouldn’t get in the way of covering a fellow cop’s ass,” he said.
I nodded.
“I hope everybody else sees it that way. I just don’t want to wake up one day and find a disgruntled patrol officer standing over my bed, ready to fill me with lead,” I said, coughing a little as I did so. The pills I took played havoc with my gullet.
“You won’t. We’re the good guys, Frank. You seem to be forgetting that,” he reassured me.
I waited for a bit and watched him wash his hands. The light in the bathroom flickered a few times. It always did that when somebody washed their hands. I wondered if it was faulty wiring that caused that.
“You seem to be forgetting, San, that cops are supposed to look out for each other. No matter what, no rats.”
San shrugged his shoulders.
“Ricardo wasn’t looking out for Larry when he clipped him, was he?”
I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to get out of work and get to my shrink. At least I’d be getting that out of the way as well. I wasn’t really in any mood for speculating on accidental deaths and cover-ups. My mind was racing with other problems.
“Fuck him — if he feels like I ratted him out, maybe he shouldn’t have killed one of us,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.
“That’s the spirit. Aren’t you supposed to be home? I heard Shaw gave you a half day.”
“Yeah, I’m about to leave, just needed to sort out a few things, that was all,” I replied.
I left through the bathroom door and made my way out of the precinct. I didn’t bother looking at any of the officers at their desks. I knew they were all looking at me. I just quietly walked out into the cold Boston air. I got into my Ford Capri and hauled ass out of the parking lot. I was behind on time anyway. I’d have to go to the shrink’s office as I was. I had put on some gloves a while ago to cover up the bandaged knuckles. Santiago hadn’t even noticed my gloves. I guess no one would; it was cold, after all. I hit the shifter into third and pulled off into the sunset, destination psycho town. Time to get my melon evaluated before it split in two.
Three
I pulled into the Day Square business area. I knew the shrink I was penciled in for was somewhere around here. I was using my GPS system to work out exactly where it was supposed to be. I wasn’t having much luck at all. I had spent twenty-five minutes coasting around Bennington Street. I had asked a guy I thought looked as loopy as I was if he knew where Dr. Martins’ Shrink House was. To be fair, the guy I asked looked at me as if I was crazy. He had a vacant look on his face. I thought that part of him was offended at me asking him if he knew where it was, but, as luck would have it, he did know. Well, that’s what he had told me. He said to go down to Day Square and pull into the towered area where the insurance company was located. I did what he said, and on my way through Day Square I spotted the unmistakable emblem of “Boston Insurance Brokers.”
I couldn’t really miss it; those were the same guys who insured my old house that the wife and I had shared before she was taken from me. So, feeling like an old movie was playing out in my head, all grainy, the image accompanied by a stutter, I made my way toward the sign I recognized so well. I pulled into the complex and parked. I sat there for a while, contemplating whether or not coming to the Shrink House was a good idea. First and foremost, I wasn’t overly excited by the name “Shrink House.” At first I could have sworn it read “Shrimp House” in the ad I saw, but after talking to a few close friends, they had told me they’d seen this “Dr. Martins’’” Shrink House commercials on the tube. Apparently the guy was a quack, but he was good at his job. I preferred the idea of getting seen to by some guy who wasn’t afraid to make jokes. I didn’t want to see some psychiatrist who was all melancholy a
nd serious. That wasn’t what I needed. I needed someone who wasn’t afraid to just talk.
I was certain of the fact that I had pulled into the wrong complex when I saw a neon sign a few feet away, just above my rearview mirror. I cocked my head a little and tucked it in. I was trying to read the sign. After a few seconds I saw what it read. It turned out I was at the right place.
“Shit,” I said to myself as the realization of what I was about to do kicked around in my head like a piece of shrapnel pinging off metal walls.
I took a deep breath in and exhaled. I felt nervous but wasn’t going to chicken out. Besides, Shaw was behind me on this, and if I pulled out of seeing the psychiatrist, then I could face some stern words, or even disciplinary action against me. I knew this was what the department wanted. They were behind me on getting some help, but it had taken a long time for me to realize I might have needed some help. I guess I knew then; that was why I was going through with it.
I got out of the car and immediately felt my legs wobble under my weight. I felt stupid. I had never been this nervous about anything in my life. It was embarrassing, if you ask me. I turned around after steadying myself and locked my car door. I heard the metal scrape as my key locked itself in position as it turned. The sound it made when I ejected it from its lock rattled in my ears. I was feeling the onset of one of my panic attacks.