by Paul Bishop
It had been a couple decades since I’d employed it, but I still remembered how to use my brand name Mark of Cain Elbow Smack. When thrown properly—with the weight of my entire body propelling the blinding thrust of bone and muscle—even a big man stood little chance against the devastating impact.
As he moved past me, my elbow slammed into the unsuspecting suspect's right temple. The impact caused instant disorientation for the suspect while darn near fracturing my arm in two places. When he stumbled right into me head down, my right knee broke his nose and snapped his head back with a sickening crack. He crumpled at my feet. It was over that quick.
He was moaning, not quite unconscious, but definitely out of the fight. He still clutched his revolver in an iron-tight grip. When I tried to pull it free, his trigger finger functioned as God intended and the pistol discharged, ripping the pretty biker buckle off the side of my Engineer's boot. I twisted his hand with as much strength as I could muster, heard two fingers break, and the Colt was mine.
The suspect remained semi-conscious, groaning non-stop in pain. Blood trickled from his right ear. It also dripped more liberally from both his nose and mouth. This concerned me because shards of nasal cavity bone can penetrate the frontal lobes of the brain if struck with too much force. Not a lot of people know this, but all cops do.
I flipped open his pistol's cylinder, noted four.357 cartridges intact, slammed the cylinder shut again. I tucked the revolver under my belt until it was seated firmly against my crotch. The long barrel fought for space with the odd erection this whole confrontation had unexpectedly given me.
I made some adjustments to be sure the barrel was pointing safely away from my family jewels. Murphy's Law was no stranger to me—I'd butted heads with it numerous times in my various careers. I was resolved to the fact that whatever could go wrong in my professional life usually did.
Out of habit, I reached for the handcuffs case that wasn’t there. I considered removing my civilian belt and tying the suspect's hands behind his back. Dip-wads like this guy always recovered consciousness before help arrived, and this bastard was six inches taller than me. He also outweighed me by fifty pounds, most of it muscle laced with meth, PCP, or something equally dangerous.
However, removing my belt would result in gravity-prone pants, and I was smart enough to know I didn't have a gangbanger's ability at keeping loose trousers from falling to their knees. I left the belt on.
I was kneeling on one knee by the suspect, mentally considering my options, when a three-wheeled contraption skidded up the wet pavement into my peripheral vision. Its lone headlight came to a stop inches from my face. The cutest little rent-a-cop jumped out, her nightstick at the ready.
"I heard a shot," she shouted. "I was patrolling across the street at the strip mall and heard two shots. Can I assist you, sir?"
"Loan me your handcuffs," I said. I glanced at the web belt straining to pop forth from beneath her rain slicker. There was no handgun visible, but it had everything else imaginable hanging from it.
I expected a protest, but she produced a set of pink designer cuffs before I'd even finished my sentence. I sensed cars pulling up behind me, but their headlights were on high beam so I couldn’t tell who they were.
"Help me search him for more weapons," I said after the security guard helped me force the gunman's steroid-swollen arms close enough together for the handcuffs to secure both vein-popping wrists.
A husky male's voice erupted above and behind me. "Do you have this situation under control?"
I glanced back to discover an Adam's County Sheriff's unit had pulled up to the scene. Neither deputy had bothered to draw their service weapons, but stood with hands on hips, trying to assess the bizarre situation.
Snowflakes the size of silver dollars began to fall from the sky in force. The lack of wind and the eerie red beams of the patrol car swishing lazily back and forth gave the parking lot around the coffee shop a distinct fairytale feeling.
"This guy just robbed the coffee shop," I told the deputies. "An easy collar, if you want it. I can write-up a Supp' for you in five minutes if you scribe the Face Sheet. I think the PD is busy up north with a shooting. Some female officer was calling for help."
"Yeah," came a chuckle from one of the deputies. "One of their Affirmative Action hires tripped over her training bra or something. Accidental discharge. Roy Roger-That is on top of it. But, yeah, we'll take the arrest if you don't want it."
"You off duty?" the other deputy placed the slightest bit of command authority in the tone of his voice.
"Retired," I coughed a bit, out of breath and feeling my age. I took in a deep breath, held it, exhaled slowly, took another deep breath. My heartbeat slowed a bit. I hoped I didn’t drop dead then and there. I did not want to die of a heart attack or stroke in the town that had black-balled me forty years earlier—even if success was the best revenge and now a lot of coppers seemed to welcome me back as a semi-celebrity, which was mind-blowing.
"Where's the perp's gun?" The first deputy lost the humor in his voice.
"Stuffed down the front of my pants against my crotch," I kept my hands away from my torso, but not dramatically. "I've also got a.45 holstered on my right hip. My CCW permit is in my wallet."
The cop challenged me. "Why do you have a license to carry concealed if you're retired?"
"Because I've been one sort of cop or another for forty-two years but never stayed any one place long enough to qualify for a Leosa Card." I used the slang term for the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, which regulated the ability of retired coppers to carry their concealed firearms anywhere in the country.
After they secured both weapons, one of the deputies took my ID's over to his patrol car to run verification checks. The other officer allowed me to go back into the coffee shop when I noticed I was missing the blue silk packet containing the obsolete badge Roy had given me.
The waitress was holding it toward me with both hands in a sort of peace gesture. "You shoulda shot that sum'bitch," she said decisively. She made it a pouting pronouncement as she touched the trickle of blood smeared across her upper lip from having a pistol barrel jammed her nose, nearly breaking it. "He 'bout walked right into you—I saw da whole thing!"
"Hold that thought," I said, raising a finger in the air for emphasis as I felt my cell phone vibrating. Service had apparently been magically restored.
There was a text from my wife—Are you still lollygaggin' around, having fun with your pals up at the Big T?
Just 'bout done, I texted back, despite fingers that wouldn't stop shaking. They're getting busy up here. We're saying our goodbyes.
Her reply came back quickly—Don't forget you have a date with Dr. Andrews at the museum in Morrison first thing tomorrow. Don't stay out too late.
I glanced at my watch. I'd no doubt I’d be here writing a witness statement until well after dawn.
Roger your Last, I texted. Looking forward to helping Dr. Andrews clean strata from that Brontosaurus skull using dental picks.
I'd spent the summer accompanying the famed paleontologist on a dinosaur dig just west of the Red Rocks amphitheater. Currently, a Pink Floyd tribute band was booked there for the entire month. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album had been a favorite during my entire tour of duty with the 281st MPs in Thailand, circa 1974-75. I still kept a CD of it in my truck.
My phone vibrated again with another text from my wife—That buddy you were worried about down in Trinidad. Ex-cop type. It's on the news: he killed himself. Some kind of barricade situation. Sorry, baby-san. Another one bites the dust. Soon you won't have any friends left except ME.
I replaced the cell phone in its holder without responding. She could be ice cold at times, but it had been just her and me through thick and thin, and she was all I had to fall back on.
"How much you want for your groovy wristwatch?" I asked the waitress, motioning toward the BLA commemorative. She quickly slipped it off and handed it to me.
"Honey, after the way you cold-cocked that loony-tunes tonight, you can have whatever you want. Coffee, tea, or ME, baby!"
"Thanks," I set it back on the counter and smashed my fist down onto it—destroying most of the crystal and watch face beneath it. I enjoyed the sight of her jaw dropping. I slid off my own black, quarter-inch-wide rubber wristband with its neon blue letters proclaiming Blue Lives Matter. I handed it to her and was happy when she accepted it. "You don't have to wear it."
"Don't plan to," she said, her defiant bluster returning.
"Just keep it someplace safe,” I said. “Remember what went down here tonight and think about it."
"Only if you promise to watch some Denzel." She grabbed her purse and produced a banged-up DVD disc without the protective container of the black actor's greatest movies.
I glanced at the DVD. It was one of my Top Ten favorite cop flicks of all time "Training Day," I said. “Denzel was the bad guy.”
I detected a bit of a smile as a truce seemed in effect, but she remained silent. I turned away, slipped the DVD in my shirt pocket, buttoned the flap, and exited the coffee shop.
I was stopped by one of the deputies.
"Change of plans," he said. His demeanor was unsmiling, all business.
A white van slowed to a stop on 84th Avenue and began backing into the coffee shop's parking lot. Stenciled across the double back doors was the word CORONER.
"Aw, shit," I felt my body temperature plummet, my heart starting to palpitate once again.
The deputy motioned at the robbery suspect's unmoving body lying at our feet. "Bastard had the gall to go and die on us." He stifled a laugh. "I'll need to hold onto your Sig a while longer. You're gonna have to accompany us to headquarters in Brighton. Maybe Commerce City, if there's not anyone at the station house this late. Detectives are gonna wanna interview you formally, draw a blood-alcohol sample, you know the gig. I'm gonna have to advise you of your Miranda Rights—nothing personal."
"I already know them by heart," I said. I could taste blood from chewing my lower lip, the way I used to back in the day when I was in uniform—like the night Roy put out a back-up call from behind a deserted collection of dilapidated shops and vacant restaurants in the narrow, unlit alleys of District 2.
I was the only other unit available for twenty miles, and I jumped on the call. An eternity passed in less than a minute before I skidded into the alley. In the light from the beams of blue and red fired from my rotating overheads, I saw the Boogey Man—the man whose son was currently growing cold on the ground in front of me.
He was the man said to be a legendary black belt who knew the secret Chinese death grip, and he had Roy in a vise-like chokehold. Siren echoing off the back walls of dark stores rising all around, I tried to brake but slid sideways, nearly running them both over. As I finally rocked to a stop, I was already pulling on my weighted sap gloves.
Adrenaline pumping, I jumped from my squad car, half-falling and twisting an ankle on a sheet of frozen sewer runoff, the stench curling my nose. Limping frantically forward, I saw Roy's eyes were bulging from lack of oxygen. I entered the fray in a fury, slamming my sap-gloved fist into the Boogey Man’s left temple again, and again, and again...
Even after the layer of powdered lead sewn into the gloves cracked two of my right-hand knuckles—which swelled so badly we had to cut the glove away later with a switchblade—I kept punching.
The Boogey Man, the dysfunctional, degenerate, larger-than-life alley monster, finally went limp, the arm he had around Roy’s neck loosening slightly. I saw the silent rage in his bulging eyes, and then I saw the life go out of them.
Roy pulled himself free from the standing corpse, which seemed to melt to the ground. Gasping for air, Roy started going ballistic with his nightstick on the thug's uncaring body until the hickory stick finally snapped with an ear-splitting crack!
There came the whop!-whop!-whop! of a helicopter, and my heart started to race as if it might explode in an ironic end to a real-life horror movie. Then I spotted DPD's Air One far to the south. Its blinding thirty-thousand-candle-power spotlight was turning solitary shafts of night into day, but it was circling a different Officer Needs Help call, this one in the high crime area near 52nd and Washington.
I had forced myself to resume breathing, to concentrate on the matter at hand, which could go sideways on us in a nanosecond if we got careless. Standing next to Roy, I stared down at our handiwork. I sighed long and hard.
"You know this is gonna mean a ton of paperwork,” I said, simply to be saying something, anything. “No doubt the Chief will have our badges this time, brother."
Roy said nothing, just popped the trunk of his patrol car.
Then he broke his eerie silence asking, "Know a good dump site for this kind of trash?"
I glanced around, but the strip mall was empty, the streets deserted—no one else had answered his call for assistance. Back then, in the seventies, on graves, we only had four cars to handle the entire city. There was a roving sergeant, but he was always drowning in paperwork at the station.
Even at the moment, I was disappointed in myself for hesitating only a second or two before volunteering, "There's that sinkhole up near 132nd and Quebec. A pack of mean coyotes hangs out there. Legend says it’s where Pat Garrett dumped Billy the Kid before Hollywood got it all wrong."
Roy stared at me in silence, probably not sure if I was pulling his leg about Pat Garrett. He was maybe wondering if I’d fallen into the mental sinkhole some coppers step into and never return. I certainly didn't sound worried about anything or even our current predicament in particular.
Roy spat a wad of bloody phlegm onto the black ice. He wiped his mouth with the back of his bruised and battered fist, and said, "Quit pontificating and help me lift this Adam Henry into the trunk. Watch his feet—might throw one of them fancy Bruce Lee high kicks like a dead rattlesnake that'll still strike."
"Better leave this chapter out of your autobiography," I said. Then, unbelievably, I started laughing despite the dark and dire circumstances.
"You’re the writer, Wambaugh, not me," Roy said. "I never write anything down unless the Colorado Revised Statutes require it." He started laughing too. "The sinkhole it is," he said.
"Works for me." I grabbed the Karate Kid's shoulders, heaved, and felt a twinge of protest in my lower back. I sent a silent prayer up to St. Michael, protector of policemen, having a vision of Roy also throwing me into the sinkhole if I collapsed on the ground in pain. The moment passed. My back relaxed, but I was breathing hard. The stiff seemed to weigh a ton.
"Let's do it," Roy said, his confident order clearing my head.
After the incident, I often volunteered to work graveyards in District 1, which covered the intersection of 132nd and Quebec. Nobody wanted the assignment, because it was too quiet with mostly upscale houses belonging to the rich residents who lived on the city's outer perimeter. There was no action except the occasional family disturbance or request for a welfare check. There was nothing but coyotes and rattlesnakes beyond the blue haze of suburbia—and a hidden secret.
I'd park my patrol car on the edge of the sinkhole. I’d sit there and sip hot coffee from the thermos my dear, loyal, trusting wife always prepared for me. I’d watch the orange crescent moon setting along the southwest horizon, and think about the madman who’d burst from the darkness of a deserted back alley at the witching hour and drop-kicked Roy to the filthy blacktop, then coldly tried to kill my best friend with a vicious chokehold.
I'd say a silent prayer for all the lost souls out there in Never Never Land, those the police had killed and those who had killed the police. Then I'd walk to the edge of the sinkhole and peer down into the abyss, careful not to slip in. I’d pull down my zipper and relieve my bladder, aiming for the center of the bottomless pit, proud to be a Seventies copper—pistol on my hip, badge over my heart, upholding the tradition of American lawmen since the days of the Wild, Wild West, when they charged toward the sou
nd of gunfire aboard Appaloosas instead of Interceptors. I knew sometimes they were also forced to take the law into their own hands for the salvation of humanity.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," Edmund Burke, the author and philosopher, had said two hundred years before I was born. His were words I tried to live by. We were the Thin Blue Line that held back anarchy. We were the righteous.
Back in the present, the crystal-clear memory of forty years earlier fragmented like a bad dream at dawn, when you awake unable to recall what so terrified you in the dark. The deputy who was standing next to me now got down on one knee and unfolded a shiny tinfoil survival blanket. He draped it over the gunman's facial features, which were frozen in an ugly, accusing grimace.
"Congratulations, champ,” he said to me. “Another victory for the good guys. Looks like you killed him with your bare hands."
Gentle Insanities
Christine Matthews
Christine Matthews’ terrific short stories have been praised by such writing icons as Ed Gorman, Martin H. Greenberg, John Lutz, and others. I’ve long enjoyed her Gil & Claire Hunt mystery series (written with Robert Randisi) and was excited to have her contribute one of her patented twisted crime tales to his anthology...
Gentle Insanities
“They hired me because I’m a crazy lady.” I squinted into the camera. Was my eye shadow smeared? Please don’t let me sweat through this new blouse—it’s silk. God, I was enjoying my fifteen minutes of fame.
“A crazy lady? Is that what it takes to be a private investigator in Omaha?”
“It can’t hurt.”
The audience laughed.
It was 1983, and Phil Donahue’s talk show was killing its late-afternoon competition. The topic of today’s Donahue was Daring People—Exciting Occupations. I admit I’m more exciting than the fire-eater sitting stage left. What does it take to douse a flame? Lots of practice and some sort of protective coating gargled inside your mouth. But I don’t think I’m as daring as the eighty-seven-year-old skydiving great-grandmother. Now that takes real guts.
