The Good Boy

by Schwegel, Theresa

  “Morning,” the female officer at the front desk says to Pete, a statement more than a greeting.

  He supposes it’s as close to morning as it is night, but the shift clock is always disorienting—particularly when he breaks for lunch at three A.M. “Morning,” he says anyway, approaching the desk.

  Her nameplate reads CREASY—unfortunately also a description. It’s terrible, what first watch does to a person. Shrinks the bones. Beads the eyes. Cloaks the mood.

  “Where you headed?” she asks and yawns, a mouth full of fillings.

  “McHugh’s shooting in Twenty,” Pete says. “They transported here.”

  Creasy checks her online files. “Mi-cue mi-cue mi-cue,” she mutters, scratching at discolored skin on her face. She doesn’t exactly make Pete want to wait around this place, either.

  “They’re upstairs,” she says, indicating the door to Pete’s right. She leans over, remotely buzzes its lock.

  “Thanks,” he says, dropping his badge into his shirt pocket.

  “Enjoy the show.” Her smile is the kind you only master after forgetting why you smile at all.

  Upstairs, the main floor is chaos, a dozen or so guys doing theatrics, the stage set for Jake Brogan. Behind them, a conference room with pulled blinds is an ominous backdrop. Pete recognizes a couple of uniforms from the scene but he doesn’t see McHugh. Just as well; he isn’t here for the official story.

  An empty office is the usual place to store a witness, so Pete walks the perimeter checking for lit-up transom windows and open doors. He looks in on a room where a pair of young dicks have taken over its couch, a little downtime during overtime. One cop’s throwing magnetic push pins at an area map stuck to a whiteboard, which wouldn’t be weird if he were wearing pants in addition to his boxers and boots. The other is twiddling his thumbs. Literally. Pete saw them at the scene, but he can’t place either of them anywhere else, so he figures the chances of them jamming him up on this are slim as jim.

  “Hey,” Pete says, “either of you care to wager on the Brogan game?”

  “You kidding?” the pantless one says. “It’s over.”

  “The kid copped,” the other says. His badge says FINCH.

  Pete eases into the room, steers clear of the whiteboard. “I heard. I also heard there was a witness.”

  “Brogan doesn’t need her,” says Finch. “Fowler’s attorney already agreed to a deal.”

  “Why so easy?”

  “You heard of Curtis Fowler?”

  “No. Is he clout?”

  “I suppose, if you’re his kid and he’s got your fingers in a vise.” Finch links his thumbs, brings his arms around his head and leans back, elbows out.

  The pantless cop throws a red pin that clings to the map smack in the middle of Pete’s neighborhood. “What Finchie means is, Fowler’s old man’s got a reputation—”

  “And a record—”

  “For handling family issues with sensibility and discretion.”

  “His wife was missing for a week before they found her in the trunk of his car.”

  “At the tow yard.”

  “She cracked up his car,” Finch says, “he cracked up her face.”

  “Imagine what the old man’ll do when he finds out his kid was at his house selling dope and shooting at people while he was pulling a double shift at the Amoco.” He picks up a pin off the floor.

  “You got Zack on a drug charge, too?”

  “Nah. Brogan doesn’t need that, either.”

  Still, the dope explains Butch’s interest: if he alerted, and Joel didn’t understand, he might have gone wild enough to jump the fence, try to make the bust on his own.

  “Where is Zack now?” Pete asks Finch.

  “Sitting tight in one of the interview rooms while the grown-ups talk it over. Counsel figures young Zachary is better off back in the system. Let the joint do discipline instead of dad.”

  The other cop stands up, adjusts the waistband of his boxers. “No doubt this means Brogan’s got a steak dinner and at least one lap dance coming to him.”

  Pete looks down at the cop’s unlaced boots and asks, “Your pants part of the deal, too?”

  “Funny.”

  Finch says, “The witness puked on him.”

  “Is she still here?”

  “McHugh said to let her sleep it off in his office.”

  “I’m going to go talk to her,” Pete says. “Somebody’s got to be wondering where she is.”

  * * *

  He stops by the vending machine for a sports drink, then taps on McHugh’s cracked-open door. The lights are out.

  “Miss Lee?”

  No answer, so he taps again, a little more knuckle this time. “Miss Lee?”

  “I’m right here,” she says from behind him, one knee-high leather boot propped against the men’s bathroom door across the hall. Her hair is black and runs straight out from under a huge cowboy hat. The fucking party hat.

  “Will you stand out here so nobody comes in?” she asks. “There’s no toilet paper in the ladies’ room.”

  “Sure.”

  She slips inside and when she’s done she throws open the door and asks, “Are you the one I’m supposed to be waiting for?”

  “That depends. Are you thirsty?”

  “I’m fucking parched.” She comes straight for him, hand out, not a bashful bone.

  Pete hands her the bottle and backs toward McHugh’s door. “Mind if we sit?”

  “Might as well.” She pushes past him into the office, tossing the cowboy hat onto the desk. She sits in the sole wooden chair and kicks one long, skinny leg over the other. Her thighs are bone white and her denim skirt is too short but there’s not an ounce of shouldn’t on her. Her face is angular, drawn up at the eyes. Pete can’t believe she’s McKenna’s age. She seems so certain. So ready.

  “I’m Officer Pete,” he says, easing his way into this room too. He doesn’t want to come on too strong or be too specific.

  “That’s nice, Pete,” she says. She twists the cap off the drink, takes a long sip.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asks, real nice as he walks around the desk. He’ll be the schlub, if that’s what it’ll take for her to talk.

  “I’m fine. I get drunk fast but I also get sober fast. I don’t know what you all are waiting for.”

  “We want to be sure you remember clearly.”

  “Yeah, well I’m going to tell you the same thing I told them before I got sick. You won’t believe me.”

  “You haven’t told me anything yet. How do you know I won’t believe you?”

  “Because you’re all the same.”

  Pete isn’t going to run that downhill route so he gets right to the point: “Tell me about the dog.”

  She takes a drink, says, “Fucking thing came out of nowhere. Zee and his boys were outside talking and all of a sudden the dog was there and everybody ran off. A kid got bit.”

  “Who got bit?”

  “I don’t know him. Some kid from the west side. He showed up with a bunch of guys. One Zack knows from his old school.”

  “There was no dog-bite victim at the scene,” Pete says, flustering.

  “Come on,” she says, “I wasn’t the only one waiting for the Thirty-six bus when my conscience caught up with me.”

  Pete walks back around the desk, gets into her periphery so he doesn’t have to look at her directly. “Can you describe the bite victim?”

  “Don’t you want me to describe the fucking dog?”

  “The dog’s not going to have much of an explanation. The victim might.”

  She sips again, says, “All I know is that he pimp-limped in and got carried out. Dude doing the carrying was tall. Black. He wore a hood with a solid on it.”

  “A solid what?”

  “The word solid. Actually the s was a dollar sign.”

  “Solid.” Pete steps back toward the door so Linda Lee can’t see him completely knocked off-balance.

  Solidarity, in Hus
tler vernacular. Hustler, as in Four Corner.

  He’s seen the catchword worn on clothes, spray-painted in gang territory—hell, it’s tattooed on Ja’Kobe White’s forearm. He hasn’t seen it in this neighborhood. He’d have noticed.

  He asks, “Where did Zack used to go to school?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Do you know if this person in the solid sweatshirt is part of a street gang?” Person because if he is a Hustler, he is not a victim or a kid. He is a threat.

  Linda Lee recrosses her legs. “What, just because he’s black you think he’s in a gang? I guess you think I paint fucking fingernails after school.”

  “Did you see this person leave?”

  “His boys carried him out. I didn’t see after that. And really, I don’t see what any of this has to do with Zack.”

  “Every detail helps, whether you see or not.”

  “Why doesn’t it help when I tell you what happened? I said it already but I’ll say it again: if Zack shot Aaron—which I don’t think he did—it was because he was trying to shoot the dog, and that’s because the dog was attacking his friend. It was an accident.”

  “What makes you think Zack didn’t do it?”

  “He doesn’t carry a gun. Aaron will tell you the same thing.”

  “If Aaron makes it.”

  “You are an asshole.”

  Pete walks around the desk again and kicks the high-backed leather chair out of the way. He leans in on his hands, nice-guy strategy revised. “Maybe you’re right, and I am like the rest of them. Maybe I think you’re the type of girl who loves attention, and you’ll say anything to get it. Or—here’s a good one—maybe you’ve got a thing for Zack Fowler, and you think you’re helping him.”

  She sits up and looks at him directly—her eyes blown out like McKenna’s. She asks, “Why’d you ask me anything if you think I’m bullshitting?”

  “I don’t think you’re bullshitting.”

  He feels awful, being this way just to try to get her to cooperate.

  “Actually,” he says, “I believe you. But I don’t matter. Zack already pled to the charges. He’s done. That means the only thing you can do for him now is quit remembering. Apparently, he doesn’t want your help.”

  “You’re lying,” she says, certain as ever.

  Pete doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t say anything, just gets up, makes for the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “To find some other asshole to take you home.”

  Out on the main floor, most of the cops have vacated, probably spending the rest of the shift on the street. The clock above the head desk reads ten after four, the start of the wooden hour, the only time silence over the radios feels at all natural. If silence ever feels natural.

  In the conference room, the lights are still on, blinds still drawn. McHugh and company must be hammering out one hell of a bargain.

  Pete cuts through the maze of desks back to the office where Finch and his partner were hanging out; he figures he can put the onus back on them to make sure Linda Lee gets a ride. He wishes she’d been able to tell him more.

  The media-room door is open just off the perimeter, and a flickering monitor catches Pete’s eye. The picture is both blurred and grainy, the closed-system camera’s resolution akin to videotape, but he can see well enough: it’s interview room 6. There, a teenage boy sits alone at a table, a grease-bottomed brown bag, a full paper plate of tacos, and a large, sweating Coke the untouched meal in front of him.

  Zack Fowler.

  He hasn’t had a haircut in a while, the top layer hanging bleached and dry over darker roots. His face is pocked with untreated acne. His tan work shirt is rumpled and stained down the front. He looks like he’d fit in at a warehouse sooner than a classroom.

  He places his hands on the table and looks up at the camera—at Pete—open-eyed, as though he is the observer. He looks exhausted, but nowhere near sleep, and he seems to blink in slow motion, distinct, like an insect.

  After a while Zack turns back to the table and picks over the tacos like he’s thinking about eating, but instead he slides the food off the plate and into the bag and shoves the bag off the table. He leaves the empty plate next to the Coke, and seems aware of the camera as he does this, but he does not look up.

  Pete’s not one to interpret behavior—he’s never met this kid and certainly, he saw no signs that his own kid would go off the rails—but if there’s one thing he’s noticed about suspects over the years, it’s that guilty people eat. Zack Fowler is not the bad guy he says he is. There’s more to this, and God help him if it has anything to do with Joel.

  “Murphy?” It’s McHugh, and he’s coming down the hall from the conference room with two uniforms and twice as many suits in tow. He doesn’t look surprised to see Pete but he doesn’t look happy, either.

  “Morning,” Pete says to the group, but McHugh keeps them walking right on by.

  Pete supposes that’s his cue to get out of there, but there’s one more thing before he goes: he picks the first desk inside the perimeter, takes a seat and uses one of the phones.

  He’s on hold when McHugh comes back around the corner. Alone.

  “Seeing you again gives me heartburn,” he says.

  “I couldn’t wait.”

  “Understood, but you could have waited somewhere else. You aren’t the kind of guy who goes unnoticed.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “Even so, you can relax. Fowler took the plea.”

  “I heard. I don’t get it.”

  “What, you want this to be complicated?”

  “You think Fowler is telling the truth?”

  “I don’t give a shit.”

  “What about Linda Lee?”

  “Don’t worry about her.”

  “She says there were some other kids at the party with gang ties. Four Corner Hustlers. She thinks there’s more to the story than Zack’s telling.” Not her words exactly; not at all, actually, but—

  “I don’t give a good god damn what she thinks. We’ve got a confession from a suspect with priors, and an unconscious victim with potentially litigious parents. We’ve got Fowler pled down to reckless conduct and we’re shaking hands now, while everybody’s still willing. This is the best possible outcome.”

  “But there are things that don’t fit.”

  “Brogan doesn’t care.”

  “Why don’t you care? What about marker sixteen?”

  “How do you— Are you kidding? It was blood. We don’t know whose.” McHugh takes off his eyeglasses, wipes them with his shirttail. “Anyway, why do you care? It’s not like it was your daughter’s.”

  “I’m not here about my daughter.”

  “Officer Murphy,” the dispatcher says when she returns to the line, “thanks for waiting.”

  “Go ahead,” he says to the phone, then mouths, Hang on, to McHugh, who looks miffed, or else he can’t see so well.

  The dispatcher says, “Aaron Northcutt was transported to Illinois Masonic. I’m sorry, but I wasn’t able to get an update on his condition.”

  “All I need is a starting place,” Pete says. “Thank you.”

  “What are you here for?” McHugh asks as soon as the phone hits its cradle. He hooks the temples of his glasses around his ears and studies Pete through split lenses. Still, Pete knows, he won’t see.

  “I’m not here,” Pete says. “I’m going.” He zips his coat. “Thanks for your help.”

  He puts out his hand to shake, while McHugh’s still willing.

  14

  Joel peeks in through the display window at Dinkel’s Bakery where a multitiered wedding cake decorated with thick sugarpaste flowers stands over smaller, simpler variations, each one tinted a shade of pink by the neon-tube sign above that advertises PASTRY and CAKES.

  Joel’s stomach rumbles.

  A line of folks spills out the shop’s front door and stretches along the sidewalk: men, women, and children,
all bright-faced, numbered tickets in hand, await their turn. Once there, blond ladies in matching white aprons will use wisps of paper tissue to collect iced cookies, vanilla custards, jelly tarts, cream puffs, and cinnamon twists from their shiny glass cases. They will fill boxes; they will fill bellies.

  Joel’s sweet tooth aches as a mother dressed in a fur coat brings her young son out through the double doors, the boy’s smile ringed with white powder. Mother carries a red-bowed box that must contain a wonderful assortment of doughnuts, rainbow sprinkled and chocolate glazed and crumb-caked. She is smiling, too, until she looks down at Joel.

  It’s a buyer’s market, she says, and throws the box up in the air, its ribbon unspooling in long coils. Joel steps back and looks up as the box rises, caught on the wind, a helium balloon.

  Of course, the asking price reflects the understanding that the buyer would want to remodel, she says. Her deep voice seems much farther away than her mouth, and when he looks again, she has gold fangs.

  Her son grunts, and then everyone in line turns to look at Joel, their faces painted black. Joel tries to run but the red ribbon comes down all around him like ticker tape.

  “My dad is parking the car,” he tries to explain, but no one can hear him over the sudden, deafening growl of his stomach.

  The boy shakes his head and sounds like a grown-up when he says, We would tear it down.

  The mother insists, “We can certainly have that conversation,” her voice immediately more distinct as she reaches for Joel’s arm, but then she isn’t a mother anymore and he jerks away—and awake—and then it isn’t his stomach growling, it’s Butchie, his nose between cross-strips of lattice, wanting to know who in the hell is standing on the back deck of the empty house.

  Joel takes Butchie by the collar, pulls him in. “Schweigen,” he whispers, his back bent against the curve of the tub. “Shh.”

  “The backyard here adds another hundred square feet to the property,” a man says. Through the lattice, Joel sees two pairs of legs from the kneecaps down: one wears blue jeans and white sneakers, the other, slacks and black loafers. They step off the wooden deck and onto the grass.