Revolver

by Duane Swierczynski

“Yeah,” Audrey says. “So…will you help?”

  The Captain stares at her for a while, then says,

  “Good night, Audrey.”

  Audrey’s bedroom is still painted pink—which she still hates—and just as claustrophobic as ever. Both of the bedrooms are empty, hers and the boys’, and the boys had the bigger room. But she prefers to stick to known territory, at least for a few days.

  She hadn’t planned on staying in Philly for longer than a day and night, so her wardrobe is pretty much limited to three T-shirts and one pair of jeans. Oh, and that long-sleeved black dress. She’s even going to have to sink-wash her panties in the man-bathroom, hang them on the shower curtain rod to dry. Boy, Dad will love that.

  She gets the eerie feeling that this is it—that Philadelphia has lured her back home to trap her, like one of those fly-eating plants. She sleeps inside this pink nightmare, she may never wake up.

  But she’s too pissed off to sleep. She turns and fidgets and sticks her bare leg out from under the dusty old comforter, then sticks it back under again. The more people who tell her no, the more she wants to solve this goddamned thing.

  Stan and the Plan

  November 4, 1964

  Terrill Lee Stanton looks as if he’s been scrounging around on the streets for days on end. Stan’s been in the Jungle long enough to know his type. Shifty look on his face, like he’s just broken a window or lifted a TV or boosted a machine and is waiting to see if you’re smart enough to catch him. They can tell just by looking at you.

  “My mama always told me I’m like the boy who cried wolf,” says Terrill Lee. “And Pastor knows that yeah, maybe I do sometimes. But not now. I’m telling you, the wolves is real. I’ve seen ’em.”

  Stan chokes back a sigh, struggling to maintain his calm demeanor. Wolves? Yeah, sure, wolves. This punk is probably hooked on something and seeing wolves in his drugged-out nightmares. What the hell are they doing here, anyway?

  “Slow down now,” Wildey says, almost cooing. “You’re all right here. Pastor Stebbens wasn’t lying to you. You can talk to us.”

  The kid turns and points at Stan. “What about him? Huh? I don’t know him. Shit, I don’t know either of you. Just a couple of fucking pigs for all I know!”

  Oh boy. Pigs, wolves, we got the whole barnyard here. Stan gives Wildey a hard look. Can we get on with this?

  Pastor Stebbens tut-tuts. “Terrill, we talked about language in the house of the Lord.”

  “Easy, brother,” Wildey says, pulling up a wooden chair next to Stanton and easing into it. “The good pastor told me you might know something about a couple of ruffians down on Columbia Avenue. You know, the kind who might set a couch on fire, heave it off a roof?”

  The pastor nods, puts a hand on Terrill Lee’s shoulder, as if channeling courage from the Lord Almighty into this boy’s scrawny frame.

  Jesus Christ, Stan thinks. So this is what this is about. Woke him up from his nap for the goddamned sofa-tossers. He’s gotta hand it to Wildey. Once something crosses the man’s path, he don’t forget about it. Stan’s partner really wants to see these little bastards fry.

  Terrill Lee’s mouth pops open, but it’s like his throat is changing gears.

  “Look,” Wildey says. “This is just between you and me. Nobody’s gonna hang a snitch jacket on you. That’s why you reached out to Pastor Stebbens, right? Well, we go way back. He can vouch for me. And I can vouch for my partner here. Whatever you tell me, I didn’t hear it from you.”

  “Well…”

  “Go on, son,” Pastor Stebbens says.

  “I don’t know nothing about no couch,” Stanton says. “I just said that so you’d listen to me. But I’m telling you, we’ve got wolves out there. And things are about to get real scary.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’ve started the Plan, man.”

  For a moment, Wildey keeps his cool. Looks at young Terrill Lee, smiling and nodding.

  And then he goes into overdrive. Terrill Lee is lifted off his feet and out of the chair and the next time he blinks he’s pressed up against the kitchen wall, his back spasming with 210 pounds of Officer George Wildey in his face.

  “Why are you wasting my time with this bullshit?”

  “George!” the pastor admonishes. “Language!”

  Wildey isn’t concerned with his language, though. He’s about to explode all over this skinny punk—who’s now got this dead earnest look on his face.

  “Guess we had too much fun,” Terrill Lee says.

  “What fun?” Wildey says through clenched teeth.

  “Columbia Avenue. You have to admit, brother, you never seen anything like that before. All those fires! They didn’t think we’d do it like they did up in New York. But we forced their hand. They’re coming after all of us now.”

  Stan shakes his head. “Come on, Wildey, let him go.”

  Which only attracts Terrill Lee’s wild eyes. “MMMMMM, is that roast pig I smell? You’re part of the Plan, you blue-eyed motherfucker! We’re not gonna let you win! Your whole family’s gonna burn!”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Wildey says.

  “George Wildey!”

  “And you, my brother,” Stanton says, “will be the first swinging by your neck when the Revolution comes.”

  Wildey can do one of two things in this moment. He can either pop this stupid prick’s head off the kitchen wall. Or he can let him go. Wildey chooses the latter and releases his grip on Terrill Lee. After all, they’re still in the Lord’s house. The pastor takes a deep breath and tries to bring logic and reason back into the conversation. “Terrill Lee, you sit down and tell these policemen what you told me.”

  “I ain’t telling them shit. They’re agents of the devil, Preacher—don’t you know that? They’re sizing me up for a body bag. Especially that blond one.”

  “Terrill Lee!”

  The young punk sighs, then opens his mouth and lets the words pour out a mile a minute.

  “Look, they’re startin’ the Plan, man. They’ve been gearing it up for years now but the riots gave them an excuse to do it. I’m seeing the white wolves all over. You ask around. They’re everywhere, selling the poison—shit, they’re even giving it away. You want it, they got it, and brothers are lining up for it. Not me, though, man, I don’t trust anything on the street no more.”

  “The Plan,” Wildey says.

  “Come on, man, don’t be pretending you haven’t heard about it before. You know they’ve been dying to do it!”

  “No, I’ve heard of it.” Wildey stands up and shakes Stebbens’s hand. “Thanks for your hospitality, Pastor.”

  The man of the cloth, however, is confused. “Can’t you stay a little longer and hear what this boy has to say?”

  “All due respect, Pastor, I’ve heard enough.”

  When Stan was working the vice district back in the fifties, they had a favorite interrogation technique for crazy punks like Stanton here. They kept it in a cardboard box in a supply closet and only broke it out on rare occasions. They built it up, too, talking between themselves, ignoring the suspect. Should we? Absolutely. I don’t know, Loot. You think he deserves it? Yeah, this guy’s a real cutie-pie—go ahead into the closet and bring it out. Aw, Loot, you can’t do that. Remember what happened the last time?

  Building it up, and meanwhile the suspect starts sweating bullets.

  Eventually they send one guy out “to the closet.” And then they leave the suspect alone for a while. Maybe a half hour, forty-five minutes, with his mind running wild. What could possibly be in that closet?

  Finally the door opens, and in walks…

  A giant bunny.

  Specifically, a cop in a bunny suit. White and pink, with big sad eyes and floppy ears. The fur is old and full of dust and matted and worn in places. They take turns wearing it, but honestly, it only fits a couple of them comfortably. Not that it’s comfortable. The head smells like onions and beer, and the interior is scratchy. But perhap
s the toughest thing about wearing the suit is not sneezing during the interrogation.

  At this point the suspect is looking at the giant bunny and thinking, What the hell is this all about?

  And then maybe he’ll laugh a little, because, you know—it’s a giant bunny.

  The bunny will bounce a little, closing the distance between him and the perp.

  The suspect’s laugh at this point dies away quick, because he sees something in the bunny’s body language he doesn’t like.

  Which is smart, because

  POW.

  The bunny gives the suspect a right cross that makes the suspect’s eyes tear up.

  Then

  BAM.

  A left hook.

  And

  POP POP POP.

  Hammerlike punches to the ribs.

  Sure, the fluffy gloves pad the hits a little, but they still hurt like hell. The suspect is cuffed to a chair, wrists behind his back, unable to protect himself.

  The trick, though, is to keep the beating swift and strong. Then get the hell out of there while he’s still dazed and all teared up.

  The detectives then return and ask, “You ready to talk now?”

  “The f-f-fuck’s with that bunny?”

  Bunny? What bunny. Kid, you must be goofy in the head.

  Of course, if the suspect still won’t talk, you ask the bunny to make a return appearance. But usually, once is enough. Because even the dumbest skell knows that he’s never going to tell anyone—not his friend, not a judge, nobody—that a giant white-and-pink bunny beat the shit out of him down at the station house.

  On their way out, Wildey apologies to Stan for waking him up early and for the wasted trip. He should have known better. They climb into their car, Stan behind the wheel as usual. Wildey sinks into the passenger seat, sulking.

  “Pastor Stebbens told me the crazy asshole was scared to come to the police directly,” Wildey says. “So he arranged this meeting. I thought he was gonna offer up the assholes with the sofa.”

  “You’re really stuck on that whole thing.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Stan shakes his head. No, he’s not. Somebody ought to be stuck on it, it should be Taney. Let him climb out of bed early to go to a Baptist church and be called a blue-eyed devil. Told he’s gonna see his family burn.

  “Your friend back there sure hates police,” Stan says.

  “Yeah, well, he’s not going to like them any better after I’m through with him.”

  “What’s this stuff about the Plan?”

  Wildey sighs. “You really want to hear this?”

  Stan spreads his hands as if to say, Would I ask if I didn’t?

  “Remember I was telling you most black folk have had some kind of run-in with the police?” Wildey says. “I was no different. And I was the son of a cop! Sure, it pissed me off, and it was easy to get bitter. But soon I learned that life goes on. You can’t hold on to grudges, otherwise one day you’re a seventy-year-old angry man with a lot of hate in your heart and wasted years behind you. What the hell good is that? Instead I became a cop, trying to help everybody, white, black, or whatever.”

  “So what’s the Plan?”

  “The Plan is paranoid talk from bitter people who aren’t happy unless they’re frightening other people. The Plan is that the US government is trying to kill off the entire black race. That they’re poisoning black kids with vaccines. Putting drugs in free lunches in black schools. Passing out heroin and pot and coke and guns like it’s Halloween and everybody in the Jungle is trick-or-treating. The Plan means don’t trust any white man. Especially don’t trust a white man with a badge. Or a black man with a badge, for that matter. ’Cause, see, to their way of thinking, we’re all part of the Plan. We’re the ones who are gonna set it in motion.”

  Stan doesn’t know what to say in response, so he lets the words just hang there in the quiet space of the car. It’s up to Wildey to wave them away.

  “Come on, let’s go get something to eat before our shift.”

  Stan says sure, but he’s not hungry. Because he’s thinking about the Plan, and thinking about his father. Rosie and her family, too. They all think black people have a Plan of their own.

  Jim and His Vow

  November 4, 1995

  Jim doesn’t manage to put his hands on the binder until long after everyone else has gone to sleep. Go figure, it’s in the very last box in the stack. Jim takes it back to his office in the basement and stays up until after three leafing through its pages, sipping on a vodka rocks as he reabsorbs the case. He hasn’t looked at this book in ten, fifteen years. But the details are surprisingly fresh in his mind, just waiting for someone to blow the dust off a little.

  When he does manage a little snatch of sleep the gory details tumble around in his brain. The past and present collide with no concern for dates, logic, or reason. The murder of Kelly Anne Farrace. The murder of Stan Walczak. The murder of George Wildey. They’re all part of the same conspiracy. In the wee hours his mind is like a fevered bloodhound, racing from scent to scent. Around 4 a.m. the two cases merge and he starts confusing details, one for the other. The same guy who raped and strangled Kelly Anne Farrace and threw her down a cement staircase knows something about the guy who killed Jim’s father and his partner.

  He rises before the rest of the house and manages to slip out even before Audrey can catch him leaving.

  Imagine that.

  Jim drives to the national cemetery in Beverly, New Jersey, a drive he’s made a thousand times. Jim didn’t understand why his dad was buried all the way over here in another state until his mother explained it. Your father was a veteran, she said, and this is a national cemetery for soldiers. His younger self asked: Isn’t there a soldier cemetery near us? His mother nodded. There is, but it’s all full up. So they put him over here.

  The gates are not open yet, so he parks on the street, hops the fence, and makes his way to his father’s grave.

  STANISłAW WALCZAK, PFC, WORLD WAR II

  The marble slab is set into the grass at the base of a tree on the edge of the grounds. Jim has watched that tree grow over the past thirty years. He’s also watched the sharp lettering of his father’s name fade.

  The air is humid, and the overcast skies could burst at any moment. His shoes sink into the grass and mud as he walks up to the headstone.

  “Hey, Pop,” Jim whispers.

  His father, of course, does not reply.

  Over the years Jim has left flowers, toys, cigarettes, booze. Even a few polka records, which have always disappeared by his next visit. You’d think the polka, of all things, would be safe. But the groundskeepers must be serious about keeping this place pristine. You look in any direction and you see a row of perfectly symmetrical white tablets, lined up in formation like they’re still fighting a war even after death.

  When he was younger, Jim would imagine his father waiting until he left the cemetery before reaching up out of the grave with bony fingers to snatch a smoke, or maybe a bottle he left behind. Jim wasn’t a dummy; he knew cemetery employees cleared away the flowers, downed the booze, and smoked the cigarettes themselves. And apparently, enjoyed the polka.

  Eventually Jim stopped bringing things—what was the point, really—and started having one-way conversations. What would you do, Dad? I’ve got this really tough case, Dad. You won’t believe it. Yeah, I’m finally getting married, Dad. And Mom even likes her, so there’s that.

  And he’d remember the promise he made.

  His father’s wake is an event Jim still remembers in astonishing detail, from the suit worn by the undertaker (shiny, pegged pants, skinny tie) to the fragrance of the flowers arrayed around the coffin to the selection of organ music being played on a perpetual loop by the ancient woman who smelled like wet paper.

  The casket had been gray and streamlined like a new car. Fancier than his father’s car, or any piece of furniture in the house, for that matter. The padding on the inside looked plush
and comfortable. You’ve had a tough life, Stan. But look, we saved all the luxury for the end.

  At wakes you were supposed to kneel down and say a prayer for the deceased. But all twelve-year-old Jim could think about was how unnatural his father looked. As if they’d replaced him with a wax dummy. Jim’s young mind ran with the fantasy for a few moments. Somewhere out there a gang was keeping his real dad hostage, waiting for his son to save him…

  But no. This was his father. Someone had shot him, repeatedly. Now that Jim was close, you could see the damage the mortician had struggled to repair.

  So as Jim touched the sleeve of his father’s dress blues, he said a quick prayer. He made a promise.

  I’m going to find the man who did this to you.

  And I’m going to make him pay.

  The drive back down the Boulevard is hazy. Jim is operating on practically zero sleep. Aisha’s waiting for him at the Roundhouse practically bursting at the seams. Almost nobody’s ever happy to be at work on a Saturday morning, but today is different.

  Forensics says the blond hair in the garage is a definite match for Kelly Anne Farrace’s; they’re still working on the jogging pants. As a consequence, the ADA likes them for it. Aisha likes them for it. The mayor’s office certainly likes them for it. Two white rapist dumb-asses? This could be the best news they’ve had for months. They were probably doing cartwheels in City Hall once they heard the perps were white.

  It’s been a tough year for this (still) racially divided city. First the whole Thirty-Ninth District scandal blew up over the summer. The goddamned Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, raiding drug houses on the sly and stealing whatever cash they found, hassling innocent people (mostly of color). Word had it that the Feds were going to start digging into over a thousand cases, most of them cases against black citizens.

  Jim doesn’t give a shit about the racial politics of it—that’s Sonya’s headache, the mayor’s headache. He simply wants justice for Kelly Anne Farrace. And the sooner she gets it, the sooner he can get back to serving justice to Terrill Lee Stanton.