Burning Moon

by Richard Barre

  “What?” Frowned. Just bought stamps a couple weeks earlier. “How many?”

  “Whatever. Five rolls. Some of those guys send lots of letters.”

  “Uh…sure.”

  “Make it seven.”

  Didn’t bother to look at me as he left. “Six months. On the extended probation.”

  Hallway swallowed him like a cheap whore finishing off a trick. Seconds ticked, clocked by my pounding heart. A minute. Maybe two. Maybe an eternity. Then I heard him. In the radio room with some other deputies. All laughing. None on probation. None sweating. No, every one of them was high and fine and secure in their jobs.

  My jaw clenched. Dull pain stumbled in my head.

  Went back to the jail. Hoped the sound and smell of thirty men would assault me. Hoped their talking and laughing, their snoring, the snap of flesh against flesh, violent, sexual, sexually violent, would drown out Lt. Les Haley’s voice.

  It didn’t.

  Swallowed back an angry tear as I moved amongst the inmates.

  Not a damn thing fine and high and secure in my job.

  ***

  There was no tornado that night.

  But there was rain. Clouds had promised all day. Finally broke under their own pressure. It was a springtime rain, filled with towering thunderheads. I reveled in the violence of those purple clouds. Soon enough, Indian country would drown in flash floods. The sound of frying flesh, that rain against the roof and windows. Breathed in that sound, deep into my lungs.

  Burned five or six candles; the scents Mitch loved. Rose Morning. Lilac. Mountain Mist. Bullshit Blue. Kiss My Ass Vanilla. Don’t like candles, but Mitch loves them and I love her so I burn them for her.

  Later, when the night is at its darkest and the rain is at its hardest, Mitch and I will go outside. We’ll turn our faces up, as we always do and always have done, and let the violence pelt us. Who knows why she does it.

  For me, it’s penance.

  Shove that night out of my head. “Mitch? I’m having some problems.”

  Stared into her candles. Nodded. “Stupid ones. What’s the deal?” Looked at me, her eyes so penetrating, like they had been the night she was still young. “You’re a mile smarter than the smartest guy in that jail.”

  Looked away from my sister. Annoyed. But gently so. Could I tell her being a jailer—a keeper of society’s dregs—was a fuck of a lot harder than I’d thought? Could I say Haley singled me out because he was a dumbass country boy? Or that he hated that I had more education? A thousand bullshit things. None of them mattered.

  Only one thing mattered.

  Getting to the goal.

  Had to get there through the jail.

  “Straight up,” she said. “Gotta pay them dues. Gotta learn the work.”

  “Learn to work the work.”

  “Stopping grinding your jaw, Kinney.” Grabbed my hand with a fierce devotion. “I love you. Now pull your head outta your ass.” Almost glared at me. “Lose this job and you’ll never find him.”

  Couldn’t find anything interesting in my shoes so I looked back up at her. “I’ll. Find. Him.”

  Rain pounded harder. We headed outside.

  Still holding my hand, she said, “Good. Then don’t screw the pooch anymore.”

  A harsh rain. Hard against our faces. But warm. Maybe hot enough to burn. Leaned my head back, let it pummel me. When it was done, went inside and pummeled a fifth of mescal.

  ***

  Headache next day. Slow pounding like a tired old miner swinging a pickaxe. Every bang of cell door closed, every call of inmate another swing of that pickaxe.

  Head popped into the booking room. Lt. Jimmy Stanley’s heavy-lidded eyes found me. “Taco Heaven?”

  Last three days’ paperwork splayed out in front of me. A dissected animal. From now ‘til fucking Rapture I was in early, out late. Double triple quadruple check every scrap of paperwork. Find the mistakes long before Haley did. “No, thanks.”

  Jimmy, a lieutenant from way back and sitting his ass in the chair I wanted, stepped in. Closed the dented and scarred door, made sure we were alone. “What’s up, bub?”

  Keep your yap zipped. Talking out of school is never good.

  But Jimmy and I had a solid history. Trailed out from years and years burned past. Hesitated. What happens in the jail stays in the jail. “Got written up.”

  His jaw flexed. Kept his eyes tight on mine. Pulled a metal desk chair out, sat, hands flat on the table. “Again.” Like he was trying to stay calm, trying not to lose himself. “For?”

  Anger seared my blood like the mescal I swilled every night. “Ease up, Jimmy.”

  “Lt. Stanley.”

  “What? Well, okay, then. Yes, sir.”

  Lots of silence in that room. Heavy and dark, like the night I failed to keep chained in the sub-basement of my memory. Never made me stand on ceremony and titles before so wasn’t sure what this was all about.

  Lowered his head. Leaned back. Rubbed his neck. “That was shitty of me. My point is that sometimes your need to get Mitch’s guy gets in the way of getting to the guy.”

  Stared at the room. Didn’t want to catch those eyes, as full of truth was they were. And a little angry at him throwing weight. That had never been our relationship. The room stared back, dull and broken. Crammed with too much equipment, not enough space. Booking desk, fingerprint machine, medical file cabinet, Intoxilyzer for drunks, lockers for inmates’ personals, barred gates between this room and the next. Washer and dryer in that room, shelves sagging with jail clothing, more lockers, drunk tank. All covered in dirty beige. Knicks and knocks where men and women, bound in cuffs and fighting off batons, had pounded the walls. Stains looked like nicotine. Actually pepper spray.

  “Don’t stare at me like that.” Jimmy glaring, but trying to soften. “You know I’m right. I’ve been right since day one.” Pause. “Right?” Another pause. “Kinney…right?”

  A nod into the silence. Right about everything so far.

  “Kinney, you have to do things the right way or you’ll never get the chance to find the guy. Right now, for you, the right way means getting the details right and letting Lt. Haley get over on you. He needs to feel like he’s the man. Let him. Ain’t no sweat off your balls.”

  Deep breath. Steadying and calming. “You’re probably right.”

  “What’d he hit you for?”

  Shook my head. “Man, I’ll take the hit on the court dates. That’s a legit mistake if I made it. But fuck, Jimmy, Haley wrote me for arrest times? Penny-ante bullshit.”

  Frowned at me.

  Shoved my paperwork away, disgusted. Wasn’t paper and records and court orders. Was a prison sentence. “Yeah. Wanted them on the back of the card. I wrote them on the front. Come on, that’s cheap shit.”

  From deep in the back, where men and women spent days wandering concrete floors or trying to sleep in metal cots bolted to the walls and floors, someone shouted. A full chorus of ‘fuck you’ in response.

  Jimmy took a deep breath, stroked his salt-and-pepper—mostly salt—beard. “You gotta do things right, no way around it. But listen, Haley’s a chump.” Paused with a look toward the door. “Shouldn’t be saying shit, command staff and all that, but…Lt. Chump’s got a mistake or two in his career.”

  “Yeah?”

  Jimmy’s wheels turned. “Yeah. He left the jail doors open once.”

  “What?”

  “Moving in some new equipment and he left three doors open.” Forefinger came up. “Dayroom door.” Another finger. “The booking room door.” A third finger. “And the main outside door.”

  The three main secured doors; carved a path from deep in our jungle to the street. All three open? Straight shot to freedom.

  “Everyone was in their cells so it didn’t matter, but don’t let him give you any crap. Listen to what he says, do what he says.” A quick wink. “Then blow him off.”

  “Blow him off?”

  “I know, not so easy for a proba
tionary deputy, but you wanna put your behind in my chair?”

  Let the question lay. He knew the answer, didn’t have to say anything.

  “You wanna find Mitch’s guy?”

  “Yes.” Said quick and certain, harsher than I’d meant. Not as harsh as I’d expected.

  “Work the jail as well as you can. Head and shoulders above. Then when you get on the road you work it, too. Head and shoulders. You’ll get to investigations before you know it.”

  The promised land. Investigations.

  Jimmy dropped his voice. “People already talking about you for investigations. The way you handled McCauley was great.”

  McCauley. I’d floated in the clouds for nearly a week after. Wanted to tell everyone at the department what I’d done, though they already knew. Told the local city cops who stopped by. Told a couple of people at the grocery store.

  Rumors of a weekend-only inmate slipping contraband. Inmate grapevine said McCauley took money from inmates’ families. Told them he was going to buy books or mags or skivvies for their inmate. Instead scored drugs—scag, Oxy, meth, rainbow of pills. Walked them right through the three secured doors Lt. Haley had once left open.

  Everyone wanted the catch. Entire jail staff jockeying, wanting to be on duty, wanting to rip McCauley’s shoes apart, wanting to find those pills. Wanting the story to tell everyone. Day comes to report and he shows an hour late. His regular time and it would have been me. Todd pulls lucky, finds fourteen pills in the soles of McCauley’s shoes. Immediately goes to work on the inmate, hard and fast. Fills the air with screaming and fist banging on the tables.

  McCauley laughed. Clammed up dead silent.

  Got charged, no more weekends, but full-time inmate. Two days and not a sound outta him. Jailers kept at him. Who you buying for? Who’s dealing inside? Who’d you buy from? How much you bring in before we snagged you? McCauley mute quiet. Playing everyone, like a first grade primary colors game. That simple. They were outclassed from the first moment and had no idea.

  McCauley and I talked. Long before the pills. Every weekend I was on duty, we’d talk. Movies and books. His time in the military. No friendship, but an understanding. He was a straight up junkie who knew he didn’t have the guts to cut bad news people from his life.

  For three days after the pills, I said nothing. He responded to the cold shoulder. Tired of the jailers hounding him, I guess. Few days later, we talked about bullshit. Minor this and inconsequential that. But wedged into the mundane was the important. Pills, tell me about the pills.

  He knew. Knew from the first moment. Answered my questions, but not until we danced. Talked about sin and redemption, about addictive personalities. We talked about the price of addictions; his was drugs and the need to be loved. Mine was memory and the need to forget. Son of a bitch carved up me up like a master chef. But not malicious, not tearing me down. Listening, I think, for what ticked inside me.

  Eventually, he gave it up.

  To me.

  And I gave it to the State’s Attorney.

  That was what I wanted: getting the guy. Being smarter than the guy, nailing his ass to the wall, leaving him for the prison vultures.

  No prison vultures for McCauley, though.

  Girlfriend bonded him out. Ten grand in green bills on a hundred thou bond. Went straight to his preacher’s house, prayed with the man for an hour, kneeling on the floor, hands on each other’s shoulders. Then outside to his g’friend’s car. Gun in glove box. Bullet through his skull. G’friend’s gun, g’friend watching.

  And g’friend at the courthouse next day getting that 10 large back. Told the judge McCauley was dead, wouldn’t make his court date. Judge agreed and gave her the money back.

  Wasn’t smarter than McCauley. By the time we talked, he’d already made the decide. Knew he was cashing out. Wasn’t going to glory, though, without coughing it up to somebody. Put a finger on my forehead and then gave exactly, no more no less, what he wanted to give.

  Why me? Hell only knows. Don’t really give a shit. Only cared that his give got me noticed.

  Shrugged off Jimmy’s compliment. “It’ll take me so long to get to investigations you’ll be dust in a cheap pine coffin.”

  “Cheap pine is more than I can afford.” Slapped me on the back. “You’ll get there and it’ll be fun, but don’t sweat Lieutenant Chump.”

  Easy to say. Tough to do.

  Jimmy misread everything? Didn’t feel as simple as Jimmy made it sound. From where I stood? Felt like something else entirely.

  ***

  From the Tipton (OK) Police Department files, investigator’s notes:

  …missing female…

  …name of Mitch…

  …8-years old…

  …height 3’ 8”…weight 57 pounds…

  …brown hair…hazel eyes…

  …yellow pajamas…

  …missing from bedroom…

  …last seen at 19:57 hours…

  ***

  Gulped down three or four shots of mescal. Chased that liquid mess with a sixer of Corona.

  Cheap cliché. Cop getting drunk. The world’s assumption. We’re all drunks. All will, eventually, accidentally shoot ourselves while ‘cleaning our weapon’.

  It’s never an accident.

  And it’ll always be in the head.

  ’Cause you gotta end it quick. So said the deputies. Sitting around the squad room, eating meals, laughing at arrestees, reliving their best war stories. Always got around, eventually, to suicide. How would you do it? Gun knife pills? Hanging drowning jumping? Where? Don’t want family to see the mess so somewhere anonymous. Park or country road or rat-infested back alley.

  In the squad car? A giant ‘fuck you’ to the sergeantlieutenantcaptainsheriff?

  Ultimately, every time, wondering if a bullet in the head would silence the voices.

  Sergeants’ voices and lawyers’ voices and judges’ and victims’ and the dead you pull from wrecked cars and the dead you scrape off asphalt and the dead you find lonely in their homes surrounded by weak memories of dead parents and dead brothers and sisters.

  Listened to every deputy and all wondered if maybe, just maybe, every person they dealt with became a demon with an unsilenceable voice.

  Wondered if cops drank because there was no other way to shut the demons up.

  ’S why I drank. That and nothing else.

  The Demon. The one I tracked in my dreams and thoughts and nightmares.

  But now Demon Haley, too. His voice so casual, but underpinned with absolute contempt. Shoved icicles in my blood. Only ever wanted to be a cop, at least since the night I met Jimmy Stanley. After so many years of wanting, finally wearing a badge was as natural to me as wearing clothes. But Demon Haley was stripping me naked.

  Needed those clothes. Needed that badge. Wanted to rid the streets of bad guys, sure. Had more baggage than that, though. Have enough self-awareness to understand my big demon. Didn’t want just garden-variety dope smokers or drunks or white-trash thieves. Didn’t want to waste my time on low-rent burglars shagging desk drawers for petty cash, or check scams that might net twenty bucks.

  Wanted the real deal. The big time. The cases that dried the blood and shriveled the nuts of most investigators.

  Sexual predators. Sexual killers. Molesters and rapists, flashers. Deviants. Freaks and parasites. Dreamt of hammering anybody and everybody who beat and raped their kids. Who left their kids with their dealers as collateral against a stolen car used as payment for twenty minutes worth of skag. Fantasized about stuffing those people into a barrel and tossing the barrel over the side of the world into nothingness.

  Give me all those people.

  But give me Him, too. Give me the one who shoved me down this particular path.

  Mitch came in, face full of storm-curiosity. “Candles smell good.” Nodded toward the storms. “Might get loud tonight.” Face burned with anticipation. There’d been storms that night, too. How could she love them so much? Remind
ed me of that night. “How’d it go in the jail today?”

  Quick shrug. “Fine.”

  “But?”

  The bond sheet Haley shoved down my throat. Sat in my throat. A blade I couldn’t yank ’cause I might bleed to death. How I filled it out, how I signed it, how I completed it. Fuck, how I failed to complete it. “I’ve been filling those bond sheets out that way for a year and now suddenly they’re wrong?”

  Never looked at me. Intent on the clouds. Swollen to bursting. Leaking blue and purple all over the sky. “Yeah, but sometimes the details get away from you.”

  My terrible secret. Sometimes the details did get away from me. Sometimes I got too bogged down in the big picture. Sometimes forgot the big was made up of lots of small. “No. Not these details. Not this often.”

  “Something else going on?”

  Thunder. Close. Was Zeus throwing directly at me? Mitch’s face lit up. Raced outside to play in it. Loved it.

  Unnerved the hell out of me.

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview from Bill Moody’s Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz…

  Preludes

  East Germany—May 1968

  Hidden in the shadows, near the edge of the clearing, Keppler glanced at the luminous dial of his watch and silently cursed all Czechs.

  Where was the man? Fifteen minutes overdue and now, even the weather was conspiring against him. He gazed at the sky and watched helplessly as pale slivers of moonlight began to seep through the cloud cover. Another few minutes and the entire clearing would be bathed in a soft glow. An altogether perfect night for a stroll with Helga.

  For a moment, Keppler allowed his thoughts to linger over the silken thighs and ample breasts of the young girl waiting for him at the inn. Helga had proven to be a welcome diversion on this operation. He regretted he would have to end it so soon.

  He jerked his mind back to the present, once again frowning at his watch. There was nothing to do, but check the drop and call it a night. Perhaps the delivery had already been made. Keppler hoped so. His legs were cramping and even thoughts of Helga were not enough to ward off the chill night air.