by Luis Samways
Martins shrugged. “Is what possible?”
I took a moment to think about what I was going to say, and then I knew exactly how to put it across.
“Is it possible to live something out twice? To see a premonition of one’s mistakes and have a second chance at rectifying them?”
Dr. Martins started to jot down some notes. “You a religious man, Frank?” he asked suddenly.
“Nope,” I replied.
He jotted something else down.
“Good. It’s harder to explain miracles to a non-religious man. It’s hard to tell a man that he has been touched by God with a second chance. But sometimes it isn’t hard to tell somebody when the time to change has come. You see, people are set in their ways. I feel like before you came here, you, too, were set in your ways. I see a difference in you, Frank. Could it be God? Maybe. Will you ever find out what exactly gave you this second chance? No, probably not. But you need to embrace it. Grab it with both hands and run with it,” Martins said.
I sat there in the comfy chair that he had propped in the middle of the room. I was confused by what he said. I could see he knew I was starting to make sense of it all.
“This is the first time I’ve come here, though. My first ever appointment. How could you even know how I was before?” I asked.
Martins smiled at me and gave me a look. It was the same look he’d given me in the dream. “When is it truly our first time, Frank? How do we not know we haven’t lived this before?”
I stood up and was ready to leave. Either he was fucking with me, or I had gone truly crazy.
“This doesn’t make sense. I had a dream that played out an entire three days of my life, and then I lived that same dream in the real world. How am I supposed to know which one was real?”
Martins stood up, too, this time stepping closer to me. He got right up to my face and then whispered into my ear.
“It doesn’t matter which one is real, Frank. You lived to see another day. Some people aren’t so lucky. You did the right thing.”
***
I left the shrink’s office and made my way into the car. I sat there in the driver’s seat for a moment or two, trying to figure out what was real or what wasn’t. I realized two things from that moment on. One, it doesn’t matter what’s real or what isn’t, as long as you survive. And two, baseball bats hurt when they hit you.
I looked to my left and saw the figure step up to my driver’s window. He swung the bat and broke the glass. He dragged me through the broken window and shoved me to the ground. Just as he raised the bat high in the air, I saw his face. And then I opened my eyes.
I looked around the room and realized I was in bed. It was 2 p.m. I didn’t usually sleep half the day away, but when I did, it usually meant I’d had a rough night.
I sat up fast and tried to gasp for some air. My lungs weren’t functioning properly. After a few seconds of wheezing, my airways cleared and I could breathe.
Was I still dreaming? No. I knew I wasn’t. I knew that everything I had witnessed these past couple of days was just one big dream. A nightmare that wouldn’t hold off until it consumed me. I didn’t know when it would stop, but I knew that I would beat it. I knew that I had to seek help.
That was the day I rang Dr. Martins’ Shrink House. It reminded me so much of shrimp when I first saw the ad. Thinking back on it, I knew I wasn’t well. I knew that throughout my career I had witnessed things that had rattled me down to the core. I would imagine things, different outcomes to the scenarios I had seen play themselves out in my job. I would trick myself into thinking the little girl made it, the one who died on the lawn next to her older sister. I had tricked myself into thinking that the boy who was nailed to his bedroom wall all those years ago also made it.
I told myself my wife was still alive. I would keep that letter for years even though I knew she wasn’t. It told me to do the right thing. Even in my messed-up mind I had to. I knew that everything I dreamt about, all the horrors, the cop shooting, the shrink, and the carjacking in which I got a face full of bat was just that, a damn nightmare that never ended. I decided that my nightmare needed to end, and the only way to end it was to see what it was trying to tell me.
It was trying to show me that I could be the hero if I wanted to be. A cop didn’t need to lose his life in the reality I lived in, but maybe I could pull through for Shaw once in a while. Maybe I could fill out the right paperwork when he tells me to. Maybe I could stop bitching and moaning. I suppose I could be a hero in that sense of the word. Trudging on whatever life throws at me.
The two girls on the lawn are dead. So is the boy. But I’m far from dead. My life is still relevant. Maybe it’s time I realize that and stop letting my nightmares consume me. Maybe a visit to the shrink will help me be a little less fucked up, because God knows I feel ALL FUCKED UP.
Ice Cold Case
One
When Bobby Sanders got out of his delivery truck that fateful evening, he was more than ready to call it quits. He longed for the sound of midnight to chime in the distance as he clocked off and cracked a Bud open for himself. The thing that bugged him about his job was that he got to see a lot of people having a good time while he remained as happy as anyone could be working late shifts and missing out on the weekend.
Bobby Sanders was a delivery man. He delivered crates of beer to nightclubs all around the city. No matter what night it was, Boston always had a thirst on. It was Bobby’s job to quench the people’s thirst, and he did so, six nights a week, all year round - holidays included.
He got paid about four bucks an hour. Below minimum wage. It was all he could manage, really, considering the job he had wasn’t exactly sanctioned. He wasn’t any ordinary delivery man. He didn’t deliver any old ordinary beer. No, Bobby Sanders was a moonshine-man. A big-city moonshine company had him by the balls and was paying him very little to do his job with his mouth shut. The thing was, they paid him two sorts of wages: an hourly wage that would make most people sniff, and a pro-rota bonus of a hundred bucks per delivery, no matter what was in the back of the van. That was the catch, you see. Ask no questions, see no wrongs – do the dang job smiling!
Bobby had clocked off and was sitting outside the warehouse where he received his deliveries from other delivery men. It was a vicious circle of corrupt packages and moonshine. Clubs bought the cheap, untaxed hooch, and punters bought special-delivery coke and meth from the back of the van. It was the perfect cover-up.
The perfect drug deal.
In the day and age that Bobby’s bosses lived in, one had to be smart when it came to selling drugs. Gone were the days when a dealer could just walk into a club and hand out his stash. That wasn’t how things worked anymore. Nah, things were different now, and you had to be a smarter businessman.
Most club owners would take a percentage off the drugs coming into their establishments. They were aware of what was going on and let the dealers into their domain. It was good business, after all. More drugs meant more good times, and those good-time gals and boys would spend their good-time money on some drinks. It was a vicious circle, but that all changed when the bouncers were not just your average Joe from the block. New rules and laws were put in place, making it harder for dealers and club owners to reap the rewards of some coke on the side.
But that was where Bobby Sanders’ bosses came into play. They saw the potential disruption to their money train and decided that initiative was needed. They came up with the plan of making a legit company that sold booze to the clubs and used the delivery trucks to sneak drugs into the establishment. That was the game, and it worked well. The legit booze was hardly ever actually sold, though. Most of the booze bought was imported, but cops don’t go snooping into pubs and clubs looking for dodgy liquor. They go in looking for drugs. And if they found them in any of the clubs in Boston, they would be hard pressed to find the people responsible, because they were cruising down the highway, going to their next delivery point.
It was th
e perfect con, indeed. Drugs were flowing back into the city, and that made Bobby Sanders’ bosses happy. He was happy as well. Making up to three grand a night had its perks; so did staying out of jail. A new hybrid dealer was born.
Everything was going fine until somebody killed Bobby Sanders. And then everything came undone, and the perfect con turned into a nightmare for the dealers. All hell was about to be let loose on the dirty streets of Boston. All because of one fatal shot to the head.
“Hey, Sanders!” a voice said out of the shadows. Bobby lit up his cigarette and turned around. He was met with a muzzle flash and an unflinching shot to the head. The gunshot echoed off the warehouse parking lot. The man in the shadows put his gun back into his pocket. “Message delivered,” the man said as he walked off.
Two
Frank McKenzie was doing his rounds at the office. He was handing the usual incident reports to the usual suspects. It had been a quiet week for the homicide detective, and he was bound to office work and paper-pushing. He was usually busy at all times of the week, but that week in Boston, there was a cold snap when it came to the murders. He was fresh out of work and didn’t fancy taking on any of the legacy cases some of his men were working on. Whenever jobs dried up, most homicide detectives did one of two things: They went home to catch up on sleep, or they slogged through some of the cold cases.
No detective liked working the cold ones. Everybody preferred the new cases where a fresh crime scene was present and a barely dead corpse was in the morgue. It made the work easier for them. It was terribly hard to beat a cold case. Witnesses tend to run dry after a few months, and people forget. Not because they are cold-hearted or without understanding. They forget because something else comes along. Usually one of those fresh murders that detectives prefer.
“What you doing, Detective McKenzie?” a voice from afar asked. Frank turned around and saw the Chief of Police approaching him.
“Nothing, just handing out reports to the uniformed officers. You know, paper-chasing boredom and all,” McKenzie said, the hint of dissatisfaction ever present in his downbeat tone.
Chief of Police Shaw gave him a forced smile. He didn’t like seeing his usually upbeat, off-kilter detective in the dumps. He knew how much solving crimes meant to detectives, and saw that it meant a whole lot more to this one. He saw the absolute need to be the best in Detective Frank McKenzie’s eyes. Along with other things, the detective in front of him was a peculiar one, indeed. He knew McKenzie had his demons and was a tortured soul, but he saw what most didn’t in McKenzie, and that was brilliance.
“I might have something for you,” Shaw said, seeing the lights come on in Frank’s dome, lighting up his eye whites like candles in winter.
“Really? What have you got?” Frank asked, putting down his folder of paperwork and facing the Chief directly. He was giving Shaw his full attention. He only managed to do that when he wanted a case. It was his way of proving that he wouldn’t mess around, and he had full intentions of solving everything he touched. He felt he needed to do such a thing because of the reputation he carried. A reputation of a maverick cop. The reputation of an unstable detective.
“There has been a shooting down a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. One man down, dead on the scene. Gunshot to the head. Looks pretty clean,” Chief said.
Frank nodded his head and cracked his knuckles under all the excitement.
“Sound interesting. Anything else? A few bombs, maybe a meth lab?” Frank said, laughing a little under his breath. He was one for excitement. He enjoyed the thrill of a good manhunt and loved a good backdrop to an epic tale of good versus evil. That was Frank McKenzie all over. A real 80s maverick stuck in the year 2014.
“Matter of fact, there is a meth lab — well, sort of,” Chief Shaw found himself confessing — light-heartedly, considering the seriousness of the situation. He always felt a slight ease on a case when handing it over to his star detective.
“A meth lab? Wow, nice one,” Frank said, getting even more excited.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, McKenzie. Anytime drugs are involved, the DEA get a hard-on for our crime scenes. I’m thinking of playing this one on the down-low until we at least have an idea of what went down.”
Frank nodded his head in agreement. The hustle and bustle of the police precinct echoed in the background as he got the information he needed from his boss.
“So, you’re saying that the meth lab is in the back of a van? Some sort of delivery truck?” interrupted Frank as his boss Shaw slowed down his case briefing.
“It’s not quite a meth lab, but it’s the next best thing,” Shaw said.
“Like what?” McKenzie snapped impatiently.
There was a slight pause in the conversation, long enough for the adrenaline in Frank’s body to kick in and his bowels started to rumble.
“We have a small warehouse packed to the roof with drugs and moonshine. Looks like we just stumbled on a little special delivery service that could really bust the streets wide open,” Shaw said.
Three
The dapper man in the suede suit walked into the downtown diner with a look of unease on his face. The man sitting across the room in the booth to the back noticed that look. He could smell fear and failure a mile away. What he smelt then was a mixture of pancakes, bagels, topped with a little fear. The failure part must have been missed, because he wasn’t expecting the shit-storm of failure that was about to be splattered all over him and his men. If he were aware, he would have met up with the man in the suit at a discreet location so he could bust a few of his ribs and make someone pay for the failure at hand.
“Have a seat,” the big plump man in the booth said. The man in the suede suit obliged and pulled up a chair. The horrible screeching sound of the chair being pulled up to the booth made the man sitting in it squirm in protest. “Oh, God, do you have to pull the seat like that? Didn’t the teachers at school when you were a little shit tell you to lift a chair up and not pull on it like that? You’ll scratch the damn floor up like that!” he said, his big burly shoulders moving up and down with every syllable he spoke.
The sound of the man’s voice made the other man in suede a little nervous. He knew how powerful the man in the booth was. He knew how much trouble he was in and was very thankful for the fact that they were sitting in a public diner. If it were anywhere else, he wouldn’t be so ready to deliver the news he had. He knew that if it were anywhere else besides the diner he was in, he’d be minced meat and sucking on heavy blows to the face. They’d do him proper. Probably wouldn’t kill him; that wasn’t like them. Not for a man like him. He knew he was valuable, but the question was, how valuable after news like this? Only time would tell, and that time was edging ever nearer.
“I have some bad news, boss,” the man in suede said, stuttering under his breath. He picked up a sugar packet and started playing around with it.
The man in the booth noticed it and disapproved of it straight away. “Are you going to use that packet, Fred?” he asked the man in the suit.
“No, I’m just nervous, Harry, that’s all,” the man called Fred replied.
“Well, put it down! People have to use that after you, and I’m positive they don’t want your damn dirty fingernails all over their fucking sugar!” Big Harry in the booth said.
Fred immediately put the sugar packet down. He looked at his boss, Big Harry, and gave him a coy smile. Harry knew what that meant.
“Tell me the bad news already!” Harry huffed, taking a chunk out of a donut that sat on a plate below his great girth. He chomped on it a few more times, awaiting the bad news, but Fred was taking his time, and that wasn’t going down as easy as the donut was. It left a sour taste in Harry’s mouth, and he would have slapped the crap out of Fred if he were anywhere else. If only, though.
“The shipment has been hit,” Fred finally said, sounding like a vinyl record that was about to split into two, rendering its sound quality scratchy.
“Hit by whom?”
Harry said. The diner itself was near empty, except for a few old-timers drinking their coffee. It was early morning, after all, but Harry didn’t want to cause a scene. He looked around and repeated the question, this time at a lower decibel level. “Who hit the fucking truck?” Harry said.
Fred started playing around with the sugar packets once again. Harry grew impatient and slapped him in the face. The slap was so hard the sugar packets went flying off the table. The sound of the slap seemed to echo in everybody’s ears, making a few brave souls stare into their direction. They soon stopped staring and went back to business. That was what it was like to be Harry Donavon. He didn’t get bothered by onlookers. People wouldn’t dare utter a word against him.
“It wasn’t only the van, sir, it was the whole downtown warehouse. One of our delivery men was shot outside the warehouse. Police were called, and the feds now occupy the area. All our new gear is gone, sir. Six trucks were in that warehouse. A few kilos of…”
Before Fred could finish off his sentence, Harry interrupted him. “I’m fully aware of what was inside the warehouse, dipshit. I put it in there!”
Fred nodded, this time reaching for his cigarettes. He was nervous as he put one in his mouth, the butt shaking between his lips. He lit up and inhaled a large mouthful. He looked to calm himself down a little. He watched as his boss just sat there in the lonesome booth, contemplating what to do. He could see his boss’s mind click. He could practically hear the gears and cogs getting to work. And then the heavy silence was broken.
“We do nothing. We sit and wait,” Harry said.
Fred looked surprised. His suede suit creased a little under his flexing arms, which he lifted to his face. He smoothed back his hair, soon grabbing for the ashtray and taking another drag on his cigarette.
“Why would we do that? Shouldn’t we run, boss?”
Harry shook his head.
“No, we wait. We wait, and then we hit the feds themselves,” Harry said, his voice bearing both menace and tranquillity at the same time.