by Jerome Wilde
“And that big Greek word means what, exactly?” Daniel asked.
“Adrenaline,” Durmount said. “Epinephrine is like adrenaline. Too much can cause all kinds of trouble. Now can I do my job, or are you guys going to harass me with questions for the rest of the goddamn day?”
“What about asphyxiation?” I asked.
“You gonna harass me the rest of the day?”
“I’m just curious.”
“I found some increased CO2 levels, but not enough to account for his death.”
I asked because crucifixion normally led to death by asphyxiation. The victim got to the point where they simply couldn’t expel breaths any longer, leading to a build-up of CO2 in the body.
“Any idea about the time?” I asked.
She shrugged noncommittally. “Friday night, maybe. I’ll have a better idea when I can do my job properly.”
I could take a hint.
IV
IT was past 6:00 p.m. when we decided to call it a day. In the morning, the reports would be ready: the autopsy report, as well as the reports from the tech guys about the murder scene, the barbed wire and nails, the fingerprinting, and so on. A sketch artist would create a sketch of the victim to be broadcast on the evening news and in the morning newspapers, in the hopes that someone, somewhere could identify the deceased. With the sketch, we could also start digging through the missing persons reports.
“What now?” Daniel asked.
“We wait,” I said.
I was just about ready to go back to what was left of my Sunday when the receptionist, Mary Beth, paged me over the intercom.
“Lieutenant Noel, your mother’s here to see you.”
My mother?
I thought about the letter in my desk drawer and frowned. There were some sorts of trouble you could hide from, and some you could not, and this was apparently going to be the latter.
“Mary Beth, do you remember what I told you a couple of weeks ago?”
I had told her that if my mother ever showed up at the station, she was to be told that I was not in and that the restraining order I had against her was still valid. Of course, Mary Beth could never remember anything.
“I, like, forgot. Anyway, she seems like such a nice person.”
“That’s what they said about Stalin,” I replied. “And most serial killers too, for that matter.”
“Really? Are you, like, going to come talk to her?”
“I told you that if my mother ever comes to see me, you’re to tell her I’m not in.”
“But she’s, like, so nice! And she’s been calling and calling, wanting to know whether you were here or not.”
“Did you tell her?”
“What was I supposed to tell her? Do you want me to, like, lie?”
“I’ll be right there,” I said.
I hung up the phone and made a face.
“You don’t like talking to your mother?” Daniel asked, giving me an odd look. “What kind of shit is that?”
“Technically, she’s not my mother. She lost custody of me when I was fourteen. Apparently beating your kid with a frying pan is a crime in the state of Missouri. Especially when you break a few bones. Who knew?”
He made an uncertain face, as if not sure how or even whether to respond. Eventually, he said, “Wow.”
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and marched out of my office and down the hall to the reception desk. Mary Beth, chomping on her gum like a cow, offered a sheepish, apologetic smile.
My mother was sitting in the waiting room, and when she saw me, she stood and came to the desk. She looked the same as the last time I’d seen her: deceptively small but incredibly strong, with long stringy hair I’m not sure she bothered to wash with any sort of regularity.
“Tommy, I’ve been calling. Why don’t you answer my calls?”
“You know better than to bother me.”
“I need money.”
“You know you’re not supposed to come to my job. You’re not supposed to bother me. Is that so hard to understand?”
“But I need money. I just got out.”
“Like I give a shit.”
“Tommy!”
“Why don’t you leave?”
“It’s been six years and you ain’t even gonna fucking talk to me? You ungrateful piece of shit! All they gave me was a lousy fifty bucks! What am I supposed to do with fifty bucks? Huh? You tell me!”
How about buying some razor blades and killing yourself, I thought, but held my tongue.
“Would you please leave?” I asked. “Stay out of my life. Is that so hard to understand? I mean, haven’t I made my feelings completely clear to you? What else do I have to do?”
Mary Beth was watching us and making horrified faces at me, as if I was the scumbag of the universe. Daniel had come down the hall and was now standing behind me, the look on his Asian features impossible to decipher.
They must have thought me rather frightful.
I had my reasons.
“I’ve got nowhere to live, goddammit!” she snapped. “They gave me a lousy fifty bucks! You want your own mother out on the street?”
“I have a restraining order against you, and you could be arrested for coming here.”
“So arrest me, you fucking faggot!”
“Get out,” I said. “Don’t be coming to my office.”
I tried to sound brave, to talk tough.
“You’re going to talk to your mother like that?”
“You’re lucky that’s all I do,” I said.
“Well, where am I supposed to stay?”
“That isn’t my problem.”
“Why don’t you let me stay with you? It’ll be all right, you’ll see. It won’t be like it was before.”
“Why don’t you leave?” I suggested again, knowing it would be exactly like it was before.
There was a hurt look in her eyes. She was desperate. But then, she always was.
“But I’m clean now, baby,” she said.
“Are you taking your meds?”
“Where am I going to get the money?” she demanded.
“The same place you get money to buy drugs.”
“You think you know so much!”
“I know enough.”
“Come on, Tommy, let me stay with you for a few days. Just till I get something sorted out. Jesus! Is that so much to ask? You’re a fucking priest, for Christ’s sake.”
“No,” I said.
“What?”
“No. N-O. No. And I’m not a priest anymore, but then again, how would you know since you’ve been in the slammer most of my life? So, the answer is no. N-O. Am I perfectly clear now?”
“No?” she said, raising her eyebrows in a gesture I remembered only too well. “No? You’re going to tell me no? Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we, Tommy? We’ll see about that, you and your little smart mouth. We’ll just see, won’t we?”
I did not like the tone of her voice. It made me feel like a helpless twelve-year-old.
She turned to the waiting room. “My son, the queer!” she announced loudly. “My son, the big queer! The dick-sucking faggot! Won’t even talk to his goddamn mother! Some kind of son, ain’t he? And he’s a fucking priest too. Can you believe that? What a fucking hypocrite! Too busy having those altar boys suck his little dick for him. That’s what I think!”
“You get out!” I shouted at her.
“What are you going to do, Tommy? Arrest your mommy? Hide behind your police friends because you don’t have half the balls your father did? You make me sick, you little faggot! Do you hear me? You make me want to puke! Fucking hypocrite!”
I turned to Mary Beth. “This woman is violating a restraining order. Would you page someone to come and arrest her?”
Mary Beth’s eyes went wide and she stopped chewing her gum. She looked at the phone as if it was a live reptile that might bite her.
“Jesus!” Daniel exclaimed behind me, a look of surprise on his face.
Daniel was already in motion, trying to swerve past me, but he was not fast enough.
I turned just in time to see my mother stab me in the upper part of my arm with a syringe she must have grabbed out of her purse. She grinned a mad, insane grin that I was, unfortunately, all too familiar with.
Chaos ensued.
I sank to the base of the receptionist’s desk. Mary Beth screamed, a high-pitched, panicky sound. Daniel jumped over me and tackled my mother, who was laughing and cursing. The people in the waiting room jumped up, muttering, backing away from my mother.
She had left the syringe buried in my right arm, and I yanked on it, tossed it aside, and tried very hard to ignore the desperate, angry pain. Like a little boy in front of his friends, I struggled not to cry, not to show how much it hurt.
Mary Beth flew around the desk. “Oh Jesus! Lieutenant! Are you, like, all right? Oh Jesus!”
She was a stupid cow, I thought.
I clutched my injured arm, ignoring her. I wondered if the needle had hit the bone because that’s what it felt like. I was also wondering—trying not to, but unsuccessfully—if the needle was one she’d shared with her junkie friends. I hoped to God it wasn’t, but why would she waste a perfectly good new needle on me?
“Lieutenant?” Mary Beth exclaimed. “Are you, like, okay? Should I, like, call someone?”
I closed my eyes and began to cry. I was in pain, yes, but I was also embarrassed. Humiliated, in fact. One thing you didn’t do with my mother was tell her no. The word “no” was not permitted in her world. Tell her no and you could watch her grab the nearest thing at hand that could serve as a weapon. She was completely fearless. She had taken on men much bigger than I was and had come out none the worse for wear. And since she was mentally ill and not quite aware of what she was doing, she very often left a trail of destruction in her wake that she did not even have enough presence of mind to be sorry for. Or to remember afterward.
By now, officers had arrived to drag her away. Daniel was crouching down, giving me anxious, bewildered looks, as if this was the last thing he expected on his first day of work, which it probably was. Mary Beth was still piping away about whether I was, like, all right or not.
I tried to stand, grimacing at the pain it caused. I was no longer a young man, no longer able to bounce back from injuries the way I had once been able to.
“Man, you need to see a doctor,” Daniel said.
He was certainly observant.
Captain Harlock, my boss, came bustling through the hall and around the desk. “Tommy, what the hell?”
“Stabbed with a syringe,” Daniel said, something in his voice a bit hysterical. Absently, I thought I was going to have to watch that. His first crisis, and he was ready to lose it.
The syringe was still lying on the floor where I’d tossed it. “Mary Beth, why don’t you get the syringe and shut your mouth?” I nodded in its direction. She went about this task as if I had asked her to pick up live ammunition that could take out sixteen city blocks if she so much as burped.
“Will someone pick up the fucking syringe?” I demanded, getting angry now. “It’s going to need to be tested. Are you all complete morons?”
Then, having uttered these words, I passed out. One moment I was fine. The next moment, I felt very strange. I saw the floor rushing up and wondered briefly why everyone had suddenly started shouting.
V
SHE had not hit the bone. I was told to be grateful. I found gratitude difficult to come by. My arm and shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch, and my mother had used a dirty needle to do the job, and the doctor had instructed the nurse to draw blood so that an HIV test could be done. Then she gave me a tetanus shot, just to add to the misery. This after the doctor had driven me half insane by endlessly squeezing the wound, trying to get every last drop of blood out of it that he could, for my own good, of course. He finally stopped when I told him I would use my service revolver to give him a free face-lift if he didn’t take his fucking hands off me, and immediately.
By the time Daniel drove me home, I was completely out of sorts.
Home was a two-story brick house with a large backyard, fenced in with hedges for privacy. It had been left to me by my grandmother, perhaps out of pity for what her daughter had put me through. The property was not going to win any awards, but it was comfortable. It was set up on a hill, right off State Line Road, so I could sit on the large front porch, which I often did, and stare across the street into the multitudinous glory that was Kansas City, Kansas.
We stood on the porch as I fumbled for my keys.
“Can I get you anything, man?” Daniel asked.
I shook my head. I appreciated his helpfulness, but at that moment I wanted to crawl off somewhere and lick my wounds in privacy.
“Should I pick you up tomorrow morning?”
“At seven,” I said.
“You gonna be all right now?”
“Of course.”
He did not seem convinced.
I could not hold my hands still enough to get the key in the door. The painkiller they’d given me was making everything swim in front of my eyes. It seemed cold, as if it ought to be snowing.
“Let me help you,” he said, taking the keys from me and unlocking the door.
I went inside.
He followed.
“Thanks for your help,” I said, my tone of voice suggesting that now would be a good time to say goodnight.
“I’ll make you some coffee.”
“That’s all right.”
“What are partners for?”
“I’d rather be alone right now.”
“Oh, come on, man. Why don’t you let me help you? It’s no problem. Really. It’s cool. And you look like shit.”
I was in more pain than I cared to admit, and he probably knew it.
“Should I make coffee?” Daniel asked.
“I’m going to bed. Thanks anyway.”
“I could just sleep on the couch,” he said.
“No, really, you don’t need to.”
“I know,” he said, “but I want to. Chinese style. You’re my boss-man. I’m supposed to help you, make a good impression. Besides, you might have trouble during the night, and you might need someone to drive you to the hospital or something. Really, it’s no problem. It’s cool. You know?”
I frowned at him. Not because I didn’t appreciate his help, but because it was so unexpected. I was injured and supposed to act like it didn’t hurt. He was supposed to go along with me and not injure my male pride by being overly solicitous. He was supposed to pretend, along with me, that everything was perfectly fine even if it very obviously wasn’t.
“I’m going to bed,” I said, turning to march upstairs.
Daniel Qo followed.
I took a shower, feeling generally miserable and very sorry for myself. I made the water as hot as I could stand it and let it pound against my back for many minutes.
Back in the bedroom, I found Daniel in his white underwear, displaying his very finely muscled body.
“Maybe I could borrow some pajamas?” he asked, smiling at me.
I preferred seeing him just the way he was, but I nodded at the dresser. “Top drawer.”
He retrieved a pair but did not immediately put them on. Instead, he approached me, surveying the bandage on my shoulder, frowning deeply, his concern very much apparent.
“Shit, man,” he said, as if that was a complete sentence.
“I think I’ll just go to bed,” I said, the painkiller making me feel groggy. “Just help yourself to whatever. Mi casa, su casa, all of that.”
“You got the bandage wet,” he said, his voice accusing. I didn’t really give a shit, not at that moment. He took the towel from around my waist as I crawled naked into my bed, feeling suddenly like I couldn’t keep my eyes open a moment longer. I thought about how nice it would be if he would crawl into bed after me and press his brown b
ody against my complaining, aching white one, maybe even bugger me while I was helpless to prevent him.
It would be a perfect end to an otherwise crappy day.
I eased myself back into the pillows. Daniel sat on the bed next to me, lifting the covers up to my chest. I pushed them down a bit, wanting him to see my bare chest, wanting him to get suddenly bold and daring. The business between my legs got a little hard at the thought.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asked quietly.
I would be, I thought, if you’d throw back these covers and fuck the daylights out of me. I would be if I could lay on my back with my legs spread watching you huffing and puffing—watching those muscles on your chest ripple and tingle, watching you catch your breath and groan and moan and carry on like a dog in heat.
Oh Christ, I would be.
He put a hand to my forehead, checking for a temperature. A needless gesture, but I didn’t complain.
“You’re kinda hot,” he said with the hint of a smile in his eyes.
“Yeah,” I said.
He put his hand on my chest and rubbed a small circle as if I was a little boy with the flu and he was Mama Bear, all care and concern. Would he kiss me on the forehead next? I hoped so.
“You sure you don’t need anything?” he asked.
Pretending like I was relaxing and preparing to go to sleep, I pushed the covers down to expose my belly. I acted as though I always slept with the covers down to my crotch, a bulging cock evident for anyone who had the eyes to see. I closed my eyes and sighed. I hoped it was a provocative, come-hither sigh. In my grogginess, I wasn’t completely sure.
Daniel made no effort to move. I was glad of that, but now, with my eyes closed, I could not see his reactions. The last thing I wanted was for him to get up and leave, thinking I was asleep. I opened my eyes. I let one hand drift over to him. It fell on his leg close to his underwear. I tried to be all nonchalant and everything, which was hard because I was so suddenly and inexplicably horny.
“Why don’t I stay a while,” Daniel suggested. He put a hand on my chest, let it slide to my belly. “You look like you could use a little… help.”
The hand slid down farther into the patch of pubic hair where the beast lurked.
