Dead Man's Badge

by Robert E. Dunn

  I splashed it on and stroked it down my neck. He handed me a towel for my hands. I went out smelling like I’d just spent a month in a secluded north woods whorehouse. It grew on me. The smell disappeared as soon as I stepped into the joint next door. It was replaced by the glorious scent of grilling meat and corn frying in hot oil. Then there was the beer. It must have been soaking into the planks of heartwood pine flooring for generations. The old wood was black as cast iron and worn into depressed trails around the bar and kitchen. As I stood there taking in the atmosphere that already felt like home, someone called, “Chief.”

  Lenore had her hand up at a back table. “Chief Paris,” she said again, waving me over. She was alone with a beer and a pile of chips in front of her. Everything about the little scene was shining. Her smile. The glistening glass of beer. Even the chips had a glossy coating of oil. It was like having died and finding myself in Tex-Mex Valhalla.

  “End of your shift?” I asked when I stepped to the table.

  Lenore kicked a chair out. In one smooth motion, she pointed to it and then lifted her hand to wave in the air. “You a beer-drinking man? Join me?”

  “Oh, my God. My momma said there’d be girls like you.”

  She kept waving her hand, but the rest of her stopped everything to look and smile at me. It was a nice smile.

  “You mean temptation?”

  “I mean the kind of girl I’d want to marry.”

  Even the hand stopped moving for an instant before she burst into a kind of seated-dancing gyration. The laugh that accompanied her wiggle was a funny, weird guffaw that still managed to be girlish. Sexy as hell.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said and then waved with new force. “Ernesto! Un cervesa por favor.” Her Spanish was as elegant as mine. There was something else, though, a different kind of accent that I couldn’t place. When she brought her hand down, she held it in front of my face and waggled her fingers. “For future reference, I like emerald cut. Nothing too big but very shiny.”

  “Yellow gold or white?”

  “Look at my skin.” She ran a finger up her left arm and back down. Her skin was dark. Part of the color came from her ancestors and part from the sun. It was impossible to say how much from which.

  I must have looked confused.

  “White gold or platinum.” She said it like I was missing something obvious. I liked the way she looked at me even when her look said I was a little slow. “It would stand out on my skin.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And tell your mama.”

  “I would if she was still around.” I thought of my mother, Dotty. For a second I thought I had made a mistake before I realized Paris’s mother was gone as well.

  Ernesto sat a beer down in front of me and asked if I wanted a menu.

  “I’m starving,” I said and then looked at Lenore and asked, “What’s good?”

  Without a hesitation or worrying about what I liked, she told Ernesto to bring me an enchilada platter. Then she told him, “Grande.” As soon as he left, she said, “I am sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “Your mother.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “It bothers you. I can tell.”

  I shrugged and then dipped a chip into salsa and ate it. There was almost no flavor. There was instead a flowing current of pain that split at the back of my throat. Some of it rose, like a hot gas, into my sinuses. Some fell slowly, like thick clots of blood and acid. A bit lingered at the back of my throat. What reached my gut bloomed into a churning heat. My eyes watered, and I coughed hard.

  Lenore pushed my beer forward, into my hand. I was gulping it down as she said, “Habanero dip. I should have warned you.”

  As I was chugging and coughing, two people stepped up beside the table. Lenore said to them, “Have you met the new chief?”

  I raised my head with the glass still pressed to my lips. Then I raised my free hand in greeting. Nearest me, grinning at my distress, was a woman in uniform. She was almost as tall as me. She was wearing boots that pushed her up past six feet. Like Lenore, she was womanly—not girlish at all, with hips and bust—but this one had muscles too. Even with the definition in her arms, she still managed to make the khaki shirt and badge look feminine. MMA champion feminine, but still…

  As I set the empty glass down, I turned to the other person, a man, also in uniform. He wasn’t grinning. I couldn’t tell what his expression was because it fell as soon as I looked at him straight on. It not only fell; it broke when it hit the floor. He struggled to put it back together. What he constructed was something hard and angry. Something about me surprised and pissed him off. He was Hispanic, shorter than the woman, a lot smaller than me, slim but cut, and gym-built hard.

  Before I found my voice, he turned and walked out without looking back or answering the female officer’s calls.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s been a bit moody lately.”

  “Because of me?” I managed to ask.

  “Some, I think.” She examined me without the smile then. It was an honest look that said I wasn’t what she expected, but judgment would come later. “Some romantic problems too, I think.” She turned to look at Lenore when she said that, and I was grateful that Ernesto chose that moment to place a fresh beer in front of me.

  “Habanero dip,” Lenore said to the other woman as though that explained every shortcoming I could ever have.

  The officer nodded. I took the chance to look her over her again while my mouth was engaged. She was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic beauty who looked like she could lift a truck. Her name tag read Gutiérrez.

  When I sat my glass down, she put out a hand. “Officer Bronwyn Gutiérrez.”

  “Really?” I asked, taking her hand. Score one for tact. “I mean…” I shrugged and said again, “Really?”

  She smiled, a practiced and familiar kind of smile that, I was sure, she saved just for this conversation. “Mother was a USC English major. Dad was a labor organizer and lawyer.”

  “And you’re a cop.”

  “And I’m a cop.”

  “Which way do you lean, Officer Gutiérrez? Literature or labor organizing?”

  “I lean more to nine-millimeter, sir.”

  Lenore grinned at me and then looked away with the expression behind her beer glass. She was saying, “You’re on your own.”

  “Well…” I started but stopped. I didn’t have any idea what to say.

  “I notice you’re more of that old-school kind of cop,” Gutiérrez said.

  It was an opening. I thought, only for a second, that I could say, “I’m no cop,” and walk away. But there was beer, food, and pretty women with interesting edges to them. I wasn’t going anywhere yet.

  “What makes me so old school?”

  “The forty-five behind your back.”

  “You like the forty-five?”

  She shook her head. “The nine-mil is all business. That big thing is all carnage and anger.”

  “My father gave me my weapon when I became a cop.”

  “Oh, I—”

  “That pretty much describes him too. Carnage and anger. I’d say you have a lot of your mother in you after all.”

  She smiled again. A little relief was showing. She was a hard person not to like.

  “What’s that smell?” Gutiérrez asked.

  Lenore took her face from behind her hand long enough to say, “He got a haircut. Next door.”

  “Ohhhh, I see.”

  Ernesto placed a heaping plate of enchiladas in front of me and another plate with tacos for Lenore.

  “Join us, Bron?” Lenore asked.

  “Can’t,” Gutiérrez answered. She canted her head in the direction of the door. “Work and Hector call.”

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told her.

  “We’ll be on at three,” she said and then left.

  “That could have gone worse,” I said to Lenore, who was already biti
ng into a taco she’d slathered in the habanero sauce.

  FIVE

  Lenore was as easy to talk to as she was to look at. We spent another half hour talking and laughing in between eating the amazing food. There was a small awkward moment when I was thinking about asking her back to the motel room and she looked like she was thinking of saying yes if I did. I didn’t. There were too many questions and way too many secrets to make that a good idea. Yet I think she knew I was interested. She looked back and caught me staring at her ass as she went to the door.

  I paid the bill even though she’d offered it as a welcome dinner. Despite my roving eyes, I can be a gentleman. For once in my life, I was a rich gentleman. After paying, I lingered at the bar. More beer was a temptation. Getting drunk felt almost like a necessity. I hadn’t in quite a while, and I’d had more than my fair share of excuses. There were plenty of excuses not to as well. Most of all I didn’t because it was not what Paris would have done. I was Paris, and I wanted the masquerade to keep me safe. There was something more. Something I would not have imagined when he was alive. I couldn’t have thought it about myself when I was walking around as Longview. I didn’t want to shame him—me—us. Whatever we were. Paris was the better part, and I didn’t want it tarnished by the weakness and failings of Longview.

  All that feeling was a long way of thinking that brought me around to ordering an iced tea at the bar. No sugar, slice of lime. That was the way Paris liked it and how I had it. Drinking—life in general—seemed simpler when I was Longview. I don’t mean the people-trying-to-kill-me, digging-my-own-grave moments. I had led a dangerous life, but even so, those kinds of experiences were not how I lived day to day. Who could? Thinking was the issue. Since I had run from the trailer with my brother’s identity in my pocket, I had spent a hell of a lot of time thinking. Longview reacted. Things happened around me. I moved from one situation to another. Rarely did I examine the paths I was on or look beyond the cash I was earning. Paris was thinking about everything and worrying about it all. I can’t claim that I was thinking like Paris, simply that being him required a lot more thought and effort than I was used to.

  That’s what my brain was gnawing at when someone sat two stools down from me at the bar. He was a hard man with a big, soft belly, Mexican, with pointy-toe boots and a hand-tooled leather belt buckled with a rodeo trophy. He was an echo of the man I had killed on the couch. Like me, he was wearing the western uniform of a plaid pearl-snap shirt. His was short sleeved and tight around meaty biceps that were colored by swirls and arcs of tattoo ink. The main design on the arm closest to me was another colorful display of reverence for the dead. It featured a skeletal cowboy with two guns and a broad sombrero. When he turned to wave at Ernesto, I saw that the other arm carried a female skeleton. She was wearing a black dress and veil. Man and woman, lovingly detailed in death.

  Once the man had gotten Ernesto’s attention he said, without turning to look at me, “What are you looking at?” It was a challenge.

  “Ink,” I said without looking away. I knew how things worked when someone tried to take your measure in a bar. Normal guys, the ones who listened to their mothers about manners, the ones who never had to fight, would excuse themselves or try to explain. In a testosterone pissing contest, backing down invited more trouble. Anything less than standing up and giving back was backing down.

  Ernesto set the bottle in front of the man and then went back to the far end of the bar.

  “You looking at the ink, but you thinking about something else. That right? This that kind of bar?”

  “No, sir. If you’re looking for a date, I think you’re in the wrong place.”

  Ernesto snickered and then turned his back to wipe down a bit of bar that was clean to begin with.

  “What you saying, man?”

  It was a good feeling. Taunting and posturing were the kind of thing Longview excelled at. There was a fight waiting to happen, and I was looking forward to it. The harm I might do to that guy or to myself was like a cork that perfectly fit the hole through which my life was draining. There was a moment where I needed the violence. In that moment was illuminated the faces of the men I’d killed in the drop house. Flashes of gunfire and the rush of justified rage. The funny thing was, I started looking for other faces—anyone who would not look back at me with anger or disappointment. There were more holes draining my life than plugs to fill them.

  “Forget about it,” I said to the man. Then I lifted my tea in salute. “No harm, no foul.”

  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  I turned away from him to take a long drink of my tea. It was cold. The glass was dripping wet. The feel of it in my hand helped me to ignore the desire that my fingers seemed to have to curl around the grip of the .45. Lime in the tea added a bright tang that cut away the vague feeling of hot blood I had in my mouth. When I set the glass back on the bar, I said, “It means I’m not letting you get to me tonight. It means your manners don’t control my actions. You good with that, compadre?”

  He was leaning on his left elbow the side closer to me. With his right hand, he took a swig of beer. It was quick and loud. There was no savoring to it. The action was a placeholder, something to let him think about what to do next or what to say.

  When he sat the bottle down, it clunked loudly on the varnished wood.

  Maybe to be helpful—maybe because I’m more of an asshole that I like to admit—I slid a coaster across the bar and in front of him.

  He stared at the offering as if I’d pushed a naked picture of his mother under his nose. “Well, maybe you already got to me. Compadre.”

  “Can’t see how,” I said, swirling the tea and ice. Both hands itched for something. I wrapped them around the glass, wetting the palms and fingers in the condensation, and then rubbed the moisture in. “I don’t even know you, do I?”

  That was the first time it hit me. It could be the other me he had something against. Paris.

  He took another quick swig of beer that he swallowed behind clenched teeth and open lips. I was gratified to see when he set the bottle down that time, it was on the coaster. Then he lifted his left hand with the back presented to me.

  “See this?”

  It was hard to miss. I was amazed I hadn’t noticed before. The ring finger of the hand was gone, the nub covered with a dirty bandage stained through with cream yellow and rust red. The other fingers were dark and shot through with coarse black hairs that matched the grime under the nails. On his middle finger was a bit of color. Upside down but still grinning at me was an intricately tattooed skull in bright white with pink and turquoise. This was the second time I had seen a Día de los Muertos skull tattooed on a man’s fingers. There was still no doubt about the meaning.

  It caught me off guard, but I wasn’t going to share that information. “See what?” I asked. “The nub or the Mexican Hello Kitty?”

  “You got a big mouth.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  He put the hand down on the bar and took another quick drink of beer before he said, “Día de los Muertos. You know what that means?”

  “Day of the Dead,” I said. “But I don’t think you’re talking about a fiesta day.”

  “I’m talking about accounts. You know what I mean? Compadre? I’m talking about bones and doing what you say you will do. I’m talking about mi lugar en la familia. Mi lugar en la mesa. My place in the family. My place at the table. You get me? Usted cucaracha blanca.” After he called me a white cockroach, he took another drink of beer keeping his gaze locked to my eyes. His stare never wavered. Swallowing and then gasping loudly, he put the bottle back on its coaster and leaned in. “I’m talking about respect, motherfucker.”

  He put his wounded hand on the edge of the bar to push himself back as he stood. At the same time, he reached around behind his back with his right. There was nothing subtle about his actions and no surprise. As soon as the remaining fingers of his left hand wrapped around the bar sill, I raised
my glass. I brought the thick bottom down like a hammer on his bloody stump.

  Forgetting the gun at his back, he clutched the hand; its bandage was already seeping fresh blood. He tried to say something. I couldn’t understand a word through the screaming. I dropped my glass on the bar and stood, extending my right leg behind him at the same time. Then I put my left hand at his throat and pushed, twisting and leveraging my body with all my strength. He hit the old beer-soaked floor with a loud thump.

  I thought he would stay down for a few seconds at least. My new friend was tougher than that. He rolled over to get his hand on the pistol in his belt. Unfortunately for him he had a choice as he went left. He could either roll onto his wounded hand or extend it away from his body.

  “Don’t do it,” I yelled as his right hand reached for the weapon.

  He didn’t listen.

  The impact of my glass on his stump had been a kiss compared with the feeling of my heel stomping on it. Bones broke. I could feel the snapping through my boot. Fresh blood flowed out from under my foot to soak with the beer into the floor. For a moment, I thought there were sirens from approaching police cars. It was more screaming. I had to give him credit for stones if not brains. He reached again with his right hand, trying to get the pistol at his back. That time I didn’t stomp. My foot was already there, and I simply ground it down, adding more weight and pressure with each inch his other hand moved closer to the gun. There’s no telling if he passed out or gave up first. My bet is on passed out. He was too stupid to give up.

  For several seconds, I watched him. My boot remained pressed down hard on his bleeding hand until I was sure he wasn’t faking. Even then I didn’t lift my weight off him until I had taken the weapon from his belt. It was an ancient .32 automatic with broken grips wrapped in tape—a drop piece, a gun you can use and then leave at the scene, disposable and untraceable.

  “Call 911,” I said to Ernesto. When he stayed where he was, staring over the bar at the man bleeding on his floor, I said, “Ernesto. Llama a la policía.” He nodded and went to the phone at the other end of the bar.