The Death Panel

by Cheryl Mullenax (Ed)

  “If you hang up right now, can you get your quarter back?” she whines.

  Probably not, he thinks, hanging up anyway. Wait, did she just say, “quarterback?”

  He suddenly remembers something and runs through the bloody junkie pile toward the kitchen. Something crunches under his shoes, and he almost trips.

  That’s the thing about junkies, he thinks. Celery where their bones used to be.

  He sweeps a year of empty cereal boxes off the counter to reveal the prize. A goddamn glass cookie jar, shaped like a football, of course, full of rolling papers and fortune cookie fortunes. He feels the weight, tries it out under an arm. It was made to carry fish. All of them.

  He grabs a coffee can off the floor and empties the butts. Scooping and splashing green water like a baby’s first bath, he manages to wrangle all the goldfish into the cookie jar. At the last second, he snatches a glass starfish ashtray from the bottom of the tank and shakes it dry, just in case he needs it. He screws the lid back on the cookie jar football, the tiny handle where the stitches would have been, and he holds it up to the light to watch them swim around. He’s wondering if he can see the money cube through their stomachs when he hears a car door slam out the window. Tucking the glass football under his arm and the starfish ashtray in his pocket, he bolts for the stairwell.

  It’s three hundred yards to the slumlord, he thinks. That’s only like three touchdowns.

  At the end of the hall, he sets down the football in a pile of pizza boxes, pulls out the ashtray, and stands where the door from the stairs will swing. He glances into the cookie jar again, glad he doesn’t have to kill all the fish right now. Why bother? That money’s not going anywhere. But he doesn’t think twice about killing this cop.

  The door swings opens, and when it creaks back to reveal Jack, he buries the ashtray in the cop’s face, right around the bridge of his nose. It goes in so deep that the lenses of the cop’s sunglasses snap shut around Jack’s fist like a Venus flytrap. Snorting blood. Sinuses collapsing. The weight of the cop’s utility belt, along with a typical lack of physical fitness, drags him down the stairs so fast that Jack has to chase him.

  High-stepping after the rolling cop all the way to the basement, he starts realizing that cops are much easier to kill than you think. He stuffs the body out of sight behind the last row of steps and takes his gun. .357 Magnum. He thinks that’s a good trade for the ashtray.

  “All you need is something to protect,” he tells the starfish as he wipes his hand. “That’s the key. You can drop any cop if you’re protecting something, anything at all. A woman, a dog, even a goldfish. Hell, if you don’t have an actual goldfish, even a goldfish cracker would do. Empty a bag, eat all but one. The one you save, give it a name. Then ask some pig to fucking try to take it from you. Wish him luck.”

  He spits, retrieves his football, and counts the fish. Nine. All still swimming.

  “But don’t try this with animal crackers, boys,” he tells them. “You’ll get so attached to the gorilla cookie you won’t eat, the killing might never stop.”

  Outside, he squints down the street, mapping out his path to the goal line. All he has to do is run across the parking lot where the car wash used to be, through the alley where the baseball card shop used to be, up the steps where his mother used to be, then give the money to the slumlord. Never talk about the stain where the junkie’s head used to be.

  But running with anything under your arm looks suspicious, especially something shiny. He’s rounding the corner where the miniature golf course used to be when he’s arrested.

  * * * *

  “It’s impossible, asshole. Don’t you know there’s no way to fold any piece of paper in half more than eight times?”

  “Bullshit. Nine. It’s a new record. I saw him do it.”

  Jack is talking through the cage to the cop in the front seat. The football full of fish is sitting on the dashboard while he waits for Jack’s name to come back from dispatch. The cop turns the football around and around, looking for any sign that Jack’s story is true.

  “No way. Can’t be done.”

  “I saw it.”

  “You thought you saw it.”

  “What are you, a magician?”

  “Used to be.”

  “Let me guess,” Jacks snickers. “The Amazing Andy.”

  “Fuck you. So, where were you running again?”

  “You know, like Andy Griffith? Get it?”

  “Yeah, I got it. I’m telling you, he palmed it. You can’t fold any bill more than eight times. After that, the area can no longer be manipulated by human hands. The force required is 256 times more than when you started.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “You don’t know what you saw. That’s my point.”

  “A magic cop, huh, Andy? Can you get out of a coffin underwater? Can you get out of the belly of a fucking whale? Because that’s what I need.”

  “I can slip handcuffs.”

  “So what.”

  “It’s easy. If you have long fingers like me, you just put your middle one down so the cuffs click on it, then slip it out. Leaves enough of a gap to get loose. A similar technique can help you pick pockets, too. Even take a slow cowboy’s gun. But I can’t tell you all the tricks.”

  Jack notices him fiddling with the snap on his holster, something he recognizes as a “tell” in poker. And if there was one thing Jack hated more than cops, it was poker players. Mostly because they dressed like magicians.

  “I can’t wait to kill you,” Jack mutters.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Jack figures he doesn’t have long before they find that dead cop with a starfish where his face used to be crammed under those steps. He’s kicking himself for even telling The Amazing Andy about the $1,000 bill, but there was no story he could come up with that made any sense for why he was running down the street with a cookie jar. He’s glad he tossed the starfish cop’s .357 into a random mailbox before he got picked up. He put the flag up.

  “He fed the fish something else,” Amazing Andy said. “You should go back and make that man give it back. Your money’s still in that apartment. Not that you’ll ever see it again. Hey, which apartment did you say it was?” Jack ignores the question.

  “Did you know it’s also impossible to eat more than nine crackers,” the cop goes on. “Six in sixty seconds is the limit. Your mouth won’t make enough spit to keep getting them down.”

  “What kind of crackers?”

  “Regular crackers. Cracker.”

  “What about goldfish crackers?”

  “Something like twenty. The same age I was when I first shot somebody.” He leans down to mumble to the radio on his shoulder then turns around to Jack.

  “Tell you what, why don’t you stop talking awhile? Looks like I’m handing you off to someone else. Unpaid speeding ticket in another county, eh? You didn’t look that fast to me.”

  “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!”

  The cop has his hand in the cookie jar. He catches a fish and lays it down on the dash while Jack punches the door. And before Jack can blink, the fish is ripped in half. Andy shakes the end with the tail, showing Jack it’s empty. Then he reaches in and grabs another fish. Rips it in half. Jack grinds his teeth so hard one cracks. He wants to know if the junkie really fed a fish the money, but he can’t stand to watch this cop shred another fish. Now he knows he won’t do it.

  Can’t do it, he thinks. It would be kinda like playing Russian Roulette. Except that you’d want the bullet. And, of course, it would be with fish …

  * * * *

  Another cop car is approaching, and Amazing Andy quickly drops the third fish back in the bowl, tucking the glass football down by his feet and out of sight. Fake yawn and stretch to cover the movements. Right then, Jack knows he wants the money. Not because he killed the fish, but because when the cop yawned Jack swears he saw his tongue curl like a cat’s.

  * * * *

  Jack was born
with long fingers. “Piano playing fingers,” his daddy once laughed. “But that’s not what the girls will love them for, better save ’em.” Then he bent Jack’s fingers back with his own, short as sausages, black as crickets, to drop Jack to his knees. It was the day he found out Jack had tried out for football.

  But tonight, Jack uses those fingers to cut half moons into his palms until his hand are red. And when the third cop spins him around to switch handcuffs, he noticed Jack’s wrists and stands him up straight, turning to Andy.

  “Uh … what’s wrong with …” the third cop starts to ask right when Jack slips a hand free and unsnaps the cop’s holster. Glock in his fist, Jack spins and pumps three shots in Andy’s chest, aiming for the badge, a target over their hearts that Jack always thought was a great idea. Then he drops and puts a bullet in the third cop’s back as he’s running for the car. The way he falls under his wheel, no hands to stop his mouth from cracking the curb first, Jack knows he’s dead. So he concentrates on Andy.

  His face is so blue, he seems like an empty uniform, and for a mad minute Jack thinks his clothes deflated like a balloon. Then Jack sees his eyes open, aware, a glare of black and red.

  “Are you dead or just angry?” Jack shrugs. “’Cause either one will do.”

  He claims Andy’s .38 Special. Old-school. Feels good.

  In the glare of the cruiser’s headlights, Jack quickly gets the keys from the third cop’s belt to take off his other cuff. Then he starts thinking about the money that might not be in the fish after all, and he glances at the third cop’s ear against his hubcap. Time for an experiment.

  It turns out you can fold a cop in half only once, no matter how hard you try. Even if you jump up and down with both feet.

  But if you use the wheel of their car, you can get at least three.

  * * * *

  With a football full of fish back comfortably under his arm, Jack is running again. He has a Glock in one pocket, a .38 in the other, and a stomach full of more excitement than fear. He looks for some landmarks. The Amazing Andy drove them about three blocks in the wrong direction, putting him back on his own goal line.

  Kind of like a penalty, he thinks. Loss of down.

  So he moves faster, trying to avoid a delay-of-game, too.

  When he’s gained back all the ground he lost from the arrest, he notices a fish floating in the cookie jar. He stops to catch his breath, holding it up under a streetlight. He remembers this streetlight. It’s where him and his woman had their first kiss. Then their first fight. It’s brighter than the rest, never goes out, and it’s the only streetlight harsh enough to see through anything, your hand, even someone’s head. He holds the fish high, looking through its red belly like the webs between his fingers. There’s nothing in it. Nothing at all. He starts to raise the bowl over his head to check them all.

  Nothing in their guts, he thinks. Maybe I should feed them …

  But he’s interrupted before he can remember where a pet store used to be. It’s cop number four, walking the beat, twirling a whistle like a lifeguard. And it’s the easiest one to kill yet, still trying to sneer while the slugs stretch his lips into a smirk. He watches the Fourth Cop’s shoes wiggle as he shoots him one last time to make sure. It’s the same thing his toes do every time he jerks off.

  See, he thinks, firing again. How can you feel bad when they clearly fuckin’ love it?

  * * * *

  Jack’s about fifty yards from where the pet store used to be when the Fifth Cop gets the drop on him, quick-draw squeezing his 9-millimeter Parabellum fast enough to send a spray across his scissoring legs. Jack takes two bullets to the meat of his thigh. The blood that fills his shoe is cold. But the Fifth Cop expects him to fall, and Jack lights him up when he goes for another clip.

  But the shoot-out costs more than he thought. Another fish is floating in the football, and he’s surprised how upsetting this is. He plucks it out, looking crazily for a bullet hole before he feels for the $1,000 bill. It’s empty, but he’s got to be on the 60-yard line by now. He’s running again, faster than he has in twenty years, feet slapping from the effort, the cookie jar splashing, spilling, water level getting low.

  “Why are you running?” his daddy scoffed once. “Only suckers run.”

  Now Jack knows he was wrong. Sucker makers run. Widow makers, too, it seems.

  He’s actually smiling to himself when the Taser darts hook his neck. He expects the same surge of electricity he felt last time he got in a fight on Spring Break, but the jolt never comes. He runs out the wire and the darts rips free. Then another dart catches him in the lip. He slows, again ready for the jolt. Nothing. He decides the cop’s Taser must be broken because he doesn’t feel shit. Then remembering the way the walleye played dead until you reeled them close to your boat only to snap back to life and stab hapless hands with those spines, Jack falls to a knee, setting his glass football down like an egg. He shivers, giving the worst performance in the history of fake electrocutions. And when the Sixth Cop is close, right before his head vanishes under his hat in a supernova of pink, black, and powder flash, his black cop eyes go big like a man who just realized he hooked a sperm whale instead of a bluegill.

  “Fuck that,” Jack tells him. “More like you hooked a submarine.”

  Curious, he tests the Taser barbs on the water in the football. There’s sparks, but the fish don’t seem to care. He thinks maybe they have the same small heart he does, and he’s really starting to love the little bastards.

  * * * *

  Okay, pet store, slumlord, home. 6:35.

  He’s got time to stop where the pet store used to be for fish food and fresh water. It’s been out of business for years, but he knows there’s still plenty of tanks inside with shit swimming around. He’s seen them through the window when his P.O. forces him to drop off job applications.

  He pries the wood loose around the lock with the barrel of the .38 and slips through. Inside, the place smells like a slaughterhouse. The tanks are still there, and the water in every one is green as grass. But he starts scooping it into his football anyway. Jack doesn’t notice the extra fish he’s splashing in with his goldfish, and he’s retrieving some off the floor when someone pumps a shotgun. The fish tanks light up, now purple instead of green, and Jack sees a black man with an explosion of white hair creeping by the wall. He reminds Jack of a ’50s blues man gone to seed. Except for the shotgun.

  “Blues Man With A Shotgun,” he thinks. I always knew those songs were easy to write …

  As he gets closer, Jacks sees that the Blues Man is covered with every hair, feather, and scale known to science. He’s 6’5”, about 300 pounds, same dimensions of Howlin’ Wolf, of course. And he knows this judging by the song Jack hears crackling on a turntable upstairs. Like the Wolf is singing, he looks like he “eats more chicken than any man seen.”

  “You went for the right tank, boy,” the Blues Man whispers. “Goldfish are the only things left alive in here. How’d you know that?”

  “I was just looking for some water for my own.”

  “I see.” He steps closer to get a look in his bowl. He makes a quick diagnosis.

  “Goldfish are the cockroaches of the fish tank. They don’t need much of anything. Barely even need you at all.”

  “Is this your pet store?”

  “Ain’t no pet store!” The Blues Man levels the shotgun at Jack’s face. “This was an ‘aquarium.’ Too bad black people don’t buy fish tanks. Don’t commit suicide neither.”

  “Do you have any …”

  “No reported black suicides since the 1800s. True story. No black serial killers neither.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Which part? About the fish? Sure is. That’s why you’ve gotten as far as you have. No cop thinks a black boy like yourself would be running with a fish bowl. Football in one hand maybe, with a scholarship in the other. But not a fish bowl. They think you’re white. That’s why you continue to get the drop on ’em.”

>   “How did you know I was … I mean, even my own daddy thought I was white. Called me his ‘little cracker’ more than once.”

  “Oh, I can tell. I’ll bet you’ve even been known to eat mayonnaise from time to time, trying to hide that shit. Don’t worry though. One more generation and we’ll all look the same.”

  “Can you lower that thing a bit?” Jacks says, pointing up toward the shotgun.

  “What, this? My baby Remington 187? Sure won’t.”

  “Actually, I think it’s called a 1187.”

  “Sure ain’t.”

  “You know, there’s new music out now,” Jack says, pointing up toward the music.

  “At some point, a man has to stop and make do with the music he’s got. New music is just someone’s old music. You take the music you been given and stick with it. It’s all you get.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “No idea. Remember, there’s worse things to be called than ‘cracker,’ son.”

  “I’ll remember that. So, do you have any fish food? You know, those little pellets?”

  “Try these.” He smiles and hands him the shotgun.

  When Jack leaves, he’s covered with every hair, feather and scale known to science, too. But it’s invisible to the naked eye, not enough of a disguise to fool the animals waiting outside.

  Didn’t Odysseus try clinging to the bottom of a pig to escape? No, that was cousin Odell.

  He looks into the cookie jar. The water’s still low, but there’s a gas station on the way. Gas station, slumlord, home. Reaching behind his back to secure the shotgun, his jeans stretch and he suddenly realizes he’s got about five more fish jammed in his front pockets. He stares at them twitching in his palms, not remembering how he gathered them up like loose change. They’ve been without water for a half hour, almost as long as he’s been without killing a cop. He sees pennies in the bottom of his football. Oops. Back in the water, the two fish do a lap and then start floating.