Capital Punishment

by Stephen Penner

  Gang graffiti was rampant. The neighborhood was Crip, but it was right next to Blood territory, so every now and again the Bloods would cross over and tag the hell out of the place, just to piss off their rivals. Fences and mailboxes and the sides of buildings were covered with alternating red and blue graffiti.

  I drove past one exchange���“Fuck the Crabs” crossed out and replaced with “Kill the Slobs”���as I drove into the neighborhood. I barely noticed it, though, or the pack of five or so tough-looking young men adorned in blue bandanas, milling around outside the local stop-and-rob store. I was too worried about my meeting with Mrs. Ellison.

  No, not worried. Pissed. And ashamed. I shouldn’t have been doing it. I shouldn’t have been raising rates on an elderly woman just because my new boss wanted even more money in the firm’s coffers. The only reason I’d decided to make the trip was to give me an excuse to leave the office before Fletcher figured out a better comeback and tracked me down.

  I saw the little dive bar I always drove past on the way to Mrs. Ellison. It was open already. I didn’t drink much anymore, and never that early. But I needed a drink. Or at least a reason to put off doing something I knew I shouldn’t do.

  I pulled into the gravel parking lot and locked the rental car the insurance company had given me. I shook my head at the “64th Street Crips” sprayed on the side of the bar right over the “Parking for Ice Cave Tavern Only” sign. They hadn’t even tried to clean it off.

  Doesn’t anyone care anymore? I wondered as I walked into the windowless bar.

  It took my eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness, but there wasn’t all that much to see anyway. A long bar running down the left side, some booths on the right side, and a pool table and dartboard in the back. A fat guy in a sweatshirt was sitting in the middle of the bar. I sat down near the door, two chairs in between us.

  The bar top was sticky.

  “Hello there,” the bartender���a woman who probably wasn’t as old as her lifestyle made her look���stepped out from the kitchen behind the bar. “What can I get ya?”

  “Eh, just a beer thanks.” It was too early for hard stuff. Honestly, it was too early for beer. “Whatever’s on tap.”

  “Comin’ right up.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure why I had stopped, other than I was stalling against meeting with Mrs. Ellison. But it had already been a long day so I decided to use the time to try to clear my head a bit.

  So of course, that’s when Janie called my cell.

  Even in divorce she could still nag me.

  My ring tone was the first strains of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Not that I was that into classical music. It just sounded really impressive when it went off while meeting with a new client or waiting outside court. Never understood why a grown professional would have the latest pop song as his ring.

  Beethoven. Now that was dignified.

  Except right then, right there, it made me feel like a pompous ass.

  I scrambled it out of my pocket. I actually didn’t know who it was until I said, “Hello?”

  “Mike? It’s Janie.”

  Crap.

  “Did you get my message?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” I started. “I just haven’t had a chance to call you back. I’ve had a crazy day. First, I woke up late then���”

  “That’s great, Mike. I don’t have a lot of time.”

  God, it was like we were still married.

  “So what do you think?” she said.

  I thought it sucked. “I guess. Sure. I mean, I was looking forward to seeing the boys this weekend. I even got tickets to���”

  “No, Mike. The money. What do you think about the money?”

  I could feel the acid start to spill into my stomach.

  “Uh yeah, see,” I started.

  “Derek hasn’t found a job yet,” she interrupted.

  “Yeah, you said that in your voicemail,” I answered. “Listen. Do you get how crappy it is for you to cancel my weekend with the kids and then ask me to pay for Derek to take them to an amusement park?”

  She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, “It’s always about you, isn’t it, Mike?”

  “Me?” I snapped back. “How is this about me?”

  My voice was getting too loud for the small, nearly empty bar.

  “How is this about me?” I repeated, more quietly. “You didn’t even want to hear about my day.”

  “Exactly, Mike,” she shot back. “I call about the kids and you want to talk about yourself.”

  “You called about money,” I reminded her.

  “For the kids!” she shouted. “You know what, Mike? Never mind. Just never mind. Go to hell.”

  And she hung up.

  I closed my eyes and held the phone against my forehead.

  She could still really piss me off.

  But I didn’t get to dwell on it for long.

  “You gonna eat those?”

  It was sweatshirt guy. He was already reaching across me for the basket of pretzels at my end of the bar. He pressed his stained sweatshirt against my hitherto clean suit coat as he tried to reach the snacks.

  “Uh, do you mind?” I said, trying to lean away from him but unable to fully evade his considerable gut.

  He stopped reaching, but didn’t really move. He did take his eyes off the pretzels long enough to turn his face right into mine and grunt, “What’s your problem?”

  His breath was foul with pretzels and beer and God knows what else. I grimaced and half turned away.

  “Don’t you have your own pretzels down there or something?” I asked. There was a basket at the far end of the bar. I could see that much.

  “It’s empty,” Sweatshirt said. “I’m hungry.”

  I nodded, trying not to get sick from the smell of his breath and the feel of his flab. “I can see that. Can you back up a little?”

  He stared at me for a moment through beady eyes, then flopped back on the stool next to me.

  “You gonna eat those?” he repeated, pointing at the pretzel basket.

  If I’d been hungry before, I sure wasn’t anymore.

  I slid the basket to him. “All yours, pal.”

  He shoved a fat handful of pretzels into his mouth before replying, with pretzel shards flying from his lips, “I’m not you’re pal.”

  “I can see that too,” I mumbled.

  Just then the bartender set my beer down on the counter. “Here ya go, sir.”

  I handed her a five and told her to keep the change. Beer before noon. I was going to enjoy this guilty pleasure.

  “What kinda beer is that?” Sweatshirt guy asked.

  And of course, he didn’t just ask. He grabbed the beer to look at it, spilling the head onto the bar top. And of course, more half chewed pretzels rocketed from his mouth. I didn’t know if any actually went into the beer, but I could imagine it. And that was enough.

  I grabbed onto MY beer and tried to push his hairy hand off the glass. But he held on.

  “Do you mind?” I said.

  “I asked you a question.” A few more pretzel crumbs spilled onto his chin but then, mercifully, he swallowed. “What kind of beer is that?”

  I just looked at him. He probably would have seen the disgust in my face except that he leaned over my glass and gave a wet snort of a sniff. “Smells good.”

  I let go of the glass, which sent it tumbling toward him, more foam spilling out.

  “You can have it, pal,” I said. “I think I’ll just get going.”

  He looked amazed. “Why don’t you want it?”

  “Because you’ve got your fat hands all over it!” I shouted. “And because you practically just sneezed in it!”

  He looked at his hands, then the beer, then his stomach, then the pretzels. He shoved a few more pretzels in his mouth, and chased it with a loud slurp of what had been my beer. He chewed and swallowed just enough to let his mouth say, “Go to hell.”


  Then he took another swig and pushed in a few more pretzels.

  I bit my tongue and stood up off the barstool.

  God’s way of keeping me from drinking before noon, I told myself as I walked to the door

  He works in mysterious ways, I reminded myself as I walked though the doorway.

  “And he hates me,” I said when I stepped into the parking lot.

  My car had been broken into.

  The driver’s window was shattered. The back door was ajar.

  My briefcase!

  I ran over, crunching the gravel under my dress shoes, and confirmed it. The thief had stolen my briefcase. With the Ellison file. And my planner. And my netbook.

  None of which I cared about.

  But the Yankees tickets were in my briefcase too.

  I kicked the back door shut and said a bunch of words I shouldn’t have. Just like I shouldn’t have left my briefcase where it could be seen.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. As the call connected I leaned against the car and looked across the street. There were three Crips standing on the corner, all flagged out, and laughing at me.

  “911. What are you reporting?” came the dispatcher’s voice as the call was connected.

  “Somebody broke into my car,” I said, but my attention was divided between reporting the crime and watching the criminals across the street who had probably done it. They stopped laughing and turned to watch me. They were all young, late teens probably, maybe early twenties. Two were tall and one was short and all of them were sizing me up.

  “Do you have a suspect description?”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Did you see the person who did it?”

  “Uh no. I was in the bar…” I realized how that sounded even as I said it.

  “Okay.” The most judgmental ‘okay’ I’d ever heard. “What location?”

  I looked over at the wall again. “The Ice Cave Tavern.”

  “Not the bar location,” she said. “The vehicle location.”

  “Uh, the parking lot?” I tried. I wasn’t finding her very helpful.

  “Hold on a moment, sir. I’ll look it up.” Then, after a moment, “Is it at 2455 64th Street?”

  “Uh sure,” I replied. It wasn’t that I didn’t know, although really I didn’t. It was that the Crips, after watching me reporting the crime, were starting across the street toward me.

  “Okay, we can have an officer out there in about an hour.”

  “An hour?” My heart was racing as I watched the young thugs heading toward me. “I’m the victim of a crime!”

  “A property crime, sir,” the dispatcher replied. “I only have one officer in that sector and he has a lot of calls to respond to. It’s a high crime area.”

  “Probably because you only have one officer assigned to it!” I shouted. They had crossed the street and were stepping up on the curb.

  “Don’t lose your temper, sir,” she said. “I understand you’re upset, but���”

  “I have to go now. Please send an officer as soon as you can.”

  I hung up on her “Sir?” and tried to figure out what to do as the three gang members crunched onto the gravel. I suddenly realized just how empty a high crime area can feel even in the middle of the day, especially when you were about to become another crime victim.

  “What up?” the biggest one said to me. “You lost, man.”

  It wasn’t a question. My heart was pounding in my throat and my hand shook as I slid my phone into my pants pocket. Then I remembered my morning and pulled back my suit coat to expose my gun holster.

  Big Guy tipped his head back at the sight of it, and took a wide step back toward the sidewalk. “C’mon, cuz,” he said to the other two. “Dude’s strapped.”

  They looked at him, then me, then shrugged and fell in behind their leader. Slowly they walked down the sidewalk, past the entrance to the bar, with Big Guy looking over his shoulder a couple times. The last time he gave me a huge smile, with his tongue sticking out. He raised his hands over his head, twisted into some gang sign I didn’t recognize, and yelled, “Sixty Four Crips, mother fucker!”

  Then they disappeared around the corner. I didn’t know if they’d come back, but if they did, I knew they’d be ‘strapped’ too.

  An hour? I figured I might have to take my chances in the bar with sweatshirt guy.

  Then my phone rang. “Hello?” I figured it was 911 calling back since I hung up on them.

  “Okay, one hundred.” It was Janie.

  “What?” I said, stunned at the sound of her voice.

  “One hundred bucks, Mike. That’s all. We’ll figure out the rest.”

  I ran my hand through my graying hair. “This isn’t a great time for this, Janie. I���”

  “Oh, sorry Mr. Big Shot. You don’t have time to talk about your kids?”

  “You’re not calling about the kids!” She’d actually managed to get me to forget about the murderous thugs going to fetch guns. “You’re calling about money. You don’t give a damn about the kids!”

  I knew that wasn’t true, but I was angry. She did care about the kids. But that asshole Derek didn’t.

  “How dare you?” she shrieked.

  “Look, I’m sorry.” And I was. “I didn’t mean it. It’s just that right now is a really bad time. Can we talk about it later?”

  “No. Let’s talk about it now. You’re a real asshole, you know that, Mike?”

  I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at it. I knew I was going to say something I would regret. So I pressed the “end call” button and leaned against the car again to wait for the cops to arrive.

  It didn’t take an hour. It took an hour and fifteen minutes. Not that it mattered.

  “Just so you know,” the cop said as soon as he walked up, “we’re not gonna find who did this.”

  “Wow, that’s the spirit,” I replied in disbelief.

  “We might get your stuff back,” he went on. He was older than me, with some stripes on his sleeve and a mustache on his lip. But whatever passion there might have been in his eyes twenty years earlier was long gone. “If they dumped it in a nearby trashcan. That’s usually what they do if it’s stuff they can’t pawn or trade for drugs.”

  “It was my briefcase,” I said.

  “Oh yeah, we’ll get that back,” the cop nodded. “That’ll be in the nearest dumpster. What was in it?”

  “My netbook,” I started.

  “That’s gone,” he announced, disturbingly undisturbed. “What else?”

  “My planner.”

  “Electronic or paper?”

  “Electronic.”

  “Yeah, that’s gone too. Anything else?”

  I thought for a minute, still stunned by the officer’s apathy. “Three tickets to Saturday’s Yankees game.”

  His eyes finally lit up with something close to interest. “Oh yeah? Good seats?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I stammered. “Right behind third base.”

  “Those must have been expensive.”

  I could feel the acid dump into my stomach at the thought of Derek taking my kids to the amusement park with my money. “Yes, they were.”

  “Well those are gone too,” he shrugged.

  “Wha���?” Now that made no sense to me. “Can’t you just���?”

  But my question was interrupted by my phone ringing. I was so flustered I actually answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Mike, it’s Janie.” Her ears must have been burning. “Don’t hang up on me again. We really need to figure this out.”

  “This is a really bad time,” I started. “I’m standing here with a cop and���”

  “A cop?” Janie barked. “You called the cops on me?”

  “On you?” I was confused. “No, of course���”

  “Jesus, Mike, it’s one weekend. It’s not like you always drop them off on time. But I don’t go calling the cops.”

  “No, it’s,
my car, the tickets,” I tried, but I couldn’t string a sentence together.

  “Derek said you’d be an asshole about this,” Janie went on, “but I stood up for you. I told him���”

  “Derek said?!” I forgot all about the cop and my car and even the Goddamn tickets. “Derek said?! That mother fucker has the gall to take my fucking kids to the fucking amusement park on my fucking weekend and then put you up to ask me to fucking pay for it?! And then he’s got the balls to say I’m gonna be an asshole about it?!”

  The cop, who had turned away to inspect the gravel, couldn’t help but look back at me.

  “Don’t you get angry at me, Michael,” Janie hissed.

  She always called me Michael when she was about to lecture me about how I failed to meet her standards and expectations. Like I was a little boy.

  Before she could say anymore, I said through gritted teeth, “We’ll talk later,” and hung up.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the rage to subside. It didn’t. But it was interrupted.

  “I’m divorced too,” said the cop. I wasn’t surprised.

  “Congratulations,” I quipped. “I don’t really want to talk about it. I shouldn’t have answered the phone. Sorry. What about my car?”

  “Well, like I was saying,” he shrugged off my declining to discuss our similar marital status, “there’s not much we can do.”

  I remembered what I was going to say before my phone rang. “Can’t you just go to Saturday’s game and arrest whoever’s in my seats?”

  He shook his thick head. “Nope. That won’t work. Just because they’re in your seats doesn’t mean they stole it. They could’ve gotten them from the thief.”

  “What about possession of stolen property or something?” I suggested.

  “Sorry, that won’t work either.” He didn’t seem particularly sorry. “You gotta prove they knew the tickets were stolen. They’ll just say they bought ‘em from some guy named Johnny, don’t know his last name, in cash, didn’t know they were stolen, blah blah blah.”