by Frank Zafiro
I kept my eyes locked on his but I concentrated on that right hand. Was he carrying or was he bluffing?
“You think you’re tough, ese? Hmmm? Not so tough without your badge and uniform. Not so tough without your homies.” He leaned in toward me and lowered his voice. “Not so tough without your gun, huh, ese?”
“You’re out of bounds, Rueben,” I told him evenly.
He cocked his head back and to the side at the sound of his name. “Out of bounds? What the fuck you mean, ese?”
“I’m off-duty. You’re not with your homies. This is out of bounds.”
He regarded me in silence for a moment, his eyes flat and unrevealing.
“Let’s save this for another time,” I suggested. “This isn’t the time or the place.”
A smile touched the corner of his lips. “You’re scaaaaared, ese. Fucking tough guy is scared.”
I changed tactics. “I don’t want any trouble, Reuben.”
His gaze swept over me, took in the T-shirt and shorts. Saw the small fanny-pack around my waist.
“You got trouble, puto.”
I didn’t reply, but moved my hand slowly to the zipper of my fanny-pack. I watched his eyes calculate the size of the fanny-pack. Could I fit a .38 in there? A .25? Maybe a .22?
“Is this going to be a fist fight, Rueben, or a gun fight? Or nothing at all?”
His eyes met mine again. I gave him a calm stare. Back down, you son of a bitch, I thought. Just turn and walk away. Find me another day and I will oblige you. Not here. Not now.
I don’t know how long he stared at me before his eyes flickered. I was watching for that flicker and I hoped it was going to be a flicker of doubt. That it would flicker and then he would slink away and make up some story to tell his cronies about how he faced down a cop at the McDonald’s.
But it wasn’t a flicker of doubt.
“Fuck you, puto,” he said and pulled his hand out of his pocket.
He was fast but I was ready. I exploded from my seat toward him. Even so, it seemed like I was moving in slow motion. I saw the silver metal come out of his pocket surrounded by his tan hand. I recognized it as a gun. It could’ve been a .380 but at that moment it looked like a Dirty Harry Forty-four.
I grabbed onto that cannon with my right hand and squeezed as hard as I could. I could feel him pulling the gun away from me, but my grasp held. He reversed direction and tried pointing it at me. I forced the muzzle toward the floor.
Motherfucker was strong.
Stronger than me, I realized.
I evened the odds. I buried my thumb in his left eye and gouged like I was scooping ice cream.
He screamed out in pain and turned his head, but his grip on the gun remained firm. I pulled my left hand back and hit him in the throat with all the force I could muster. There wasn’t much on it because of the angle, but the throat is a vulnerable target.
He grunted and the gun went off. The blast shook my hand. I heard the loud thud of the bullet impacting.
I struck him in the throat a second time.
He began coughing.
I tore the gun from his grasp. Without thinking, I cracked him upside the skull with the handle. He collapsed like a tub of shit.
I dropped down onto his back with my knees, trying to drive him through the porcelain. I felt the breath whoosh out of him.
“Hands on your head, motherfucker!” I told him. I fumbled with the gun momentarily. Once I had a good grip on it, I jammed the muzzle behind his ear. “Do it, asshole!”
Reuben groaned but slowly moved his hands headward.
I glanced up at Rebecca and the kids. All three were staring with shocked expressions.
“Get to the back of the kitchen and call 911,” I told Rebecca.
She was a cop’s wife. She grabbed the kids, one by each hand and hurried toward the counter.
Rueben groaned again.
A man in a McDonald’s shirt was staring at us from behind the counter.
“Are you the manager?” I asked him.
He continued to stare.
“Are you the manager?” I asked again, louder. This time, he nodded back at me slowly.
“Get your people to the back of the kitchen. Call 911. Tell them that an off-duty officer has a suspect in custody for attempted murder. Tell them what I am wearing. Do you understand?”
He gave me a slow, frightened nod.
“Say it back to me.”
“Wha…?”
“Say it back to me. Say what you’re going to tell the 911 operator.”
“Oh. Uh, you’re an off-duty cop and you got some guy under arrest. And what you’re wearing.”
Good enough. “Do it,” I told him.
He turned and ran toward the back of the kitchen.
I took a breath and looked down. Rueben’s hands hovered next to his ears. I grabbed onto them and squeezed them together on top of his head. “You son of a bitch,” I hissed at him. “I should fucking kill you right here.”
Reuben coughed weakly and groaned.
“Oughta put a bullet behind your fucking ear.” I pressed the muzzle into his head for emphasis.
“Do it, pig,” he rasped. “Chinga tu madre.”
I almost did. I swear to fucking Christ I almost pumped some lead love behind his ear. Instead, I told him, “Forget it. I’d rather you died in prison of AIDS after getting raped by a bunch of Aryan Brothers.”
He laughed wetly, then coughed again.
“You ain’t got the cojones, pig. Don’t fool yourself.”
“Fuck you.”
He gave another gurgling laugh.
An eerie silence set in. I could hear the sizzling of meat back in the kitchen and the incessant beeping from the order screens. Someone was not getting their quarter pounder on time.
I listened for the sirens. Nothing yet.
I grabbed onto Rueben’s hands with my left hand. I kept the muzzle of that pistol pressed against his neck. I watched him. Dared him silently to move, to fight. Reach for a second gun. A knife. Give me enough of a reason to end your miserable life.
“Your brother cried all the way to jail, Reuben,” I whispered.
I felt his body tense.
“Cried like a little bitch.”
A twitch. Not enough.
“Once they booked him in, his broken nose kept him from being the prettiest one on the floor. He made up for it by giving the best head, though. Benito the Blowjob King. We even heard about him outside the jail, he was so famous.”
Another twitch. No fight.
“I hear that runs in the family. Cocksucking. Maybe you could get by throwing blowjobs in the cell bloc, too.”
I glanced over my shoulder at his feet to see if he was trying to get them underneath him. They were pointed harmlessly. The left one was twitching.
“I figure you and Benito learned how to suck cock from your mother, no? She was a real pro, I hear. Made a good living at it.”
Now he was shuddering. I could feel the anger radiating off his body. But that son of a bitch didn’t break. Unlike his dumb ass punk brother, he knew when to fight and when to wait.
“Someday, ese…” he rasped, “…you pay.”
I started to ask him why not today when I heard the wail of sirens.
Last chance.
I pressed the muzzle deeper into his flesh. My finger tickled the trigger.
Fuck. I couldn’t do it. And he wasn’t going to give me the justification.
I grabbed a handful of hair, pulled back and then smashed his face into the porcelain. He grunted. “Cocksucker,” I hissed at him again.
I glanced up and around the dining area, checking for latecomers. The elderly couple was staring at me, frozen. The two teenagers lovers were nowhere to be seen, but the polyester cow and her kids were all gazing at me with their jaws hanging open. One of the kids was moving his lips slowly like he was trying to say something, but no sound came out.
A siren approached. Tires screeched and the siren
abruptly died. The slam of a door. Other sirens in the background, further away.
I took a breath, hoping I knew the cop that came through the door.
I watched as a head poked out from the threshold of the glass door and pulled back too fast to have seen anything.
Great. A fucking rookie.
I prayed briefly that those other cars hurried. The sirens yelped and wailed in the distance.
The head bobbed back past the edge of doorframe. This time, he took a look around. I didn’t know him. His smooth face looked about fourteen.
His eyes held excitement and fear. I vaguely remembered that feeling. I don’t think I could dredge it up for even a second, but I remembered that I used to feel it on every hot call I went to for the first year or two.
Would he be a cowboy, this kid? Or wait for back-up?
“Wait for back-up,” I said, barely above a whisper.
The glass door swung open violently.
Of course. He had to be a fucking cowboy.
He slipped right through the fatal funnel and advanced on me, his Glock pointed right at my head.
“Police! Don’t move!” he screeched at me.
Fuck. His voice was in the stratosphere and that forty caliber was looking like about a twelve gauge as it shook in his hand.
“Easy, man.”
“Put down the gun! Police! Put down the gun! Don’t move!” His voice cracked every second word. He licked his lip and I could hear his breath coming in short gasps. He reached for the microphone with his left hand, then changed his mind and went back to two hands on his gun.
“Easy,” I repeated. “Take a breath. I called you.”
“Put that gun down! Police! Do it now!” His voice was still as high-pitched as a fucking Bee Gee.
This was going nowhere. “Listen, son. I can’t take my gun off this guy. He’s the sus—“
“Don’t move!”
“Okay,” I said. “Listen, just cover me until your backup gets here, okay?”
“Put that gun down right now!”
“I can’t.”
“Do it! Police! Do it now!”
“Just cover me until you have back up.”
He finally heard me. I saw his wheels turning inside his eyes while he processed what I said.
“Just cover me until your back up gets here.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “Then I will put my gun down and move off this guy and –“
A new voice cut in. “This is not a debate. Put that fucking gun down or I will shoot you dead.”
I turned slowly to the opposite door. Another face I didn’t know. But this had resolve and a calm voice.
“I’m a police officer,” I told him.
“Says you. Now put that gun down slowly or you are dead.”
I put the gun down and slid it out of reach.
“Now get the fuck up off of him. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I rose slowly, my hands at shoulder height.
“Vickers, keep the one on the ground covered,” he told the rookie.
Vickers nodded, nervous and excited.
We stood there for another thirty seconds, the four of us. Well, except for Rueben. He lay still, not even coughing.
Another officer arrived. Another face I didn’t know. Great. A fucking hat trick. I followed their directions and was quickly cuffed and removed from the dining area, out the door and toward the patrol car. The cool metal bit into my wrists. The cop must’ve had the air conditioner in his car cranked up.
This was too surreal. I almost said something about how tight the cuffs were, but stopped. I remembered all the suspects who bitched to me about that through the years and all the witty responses I shot back at them.
They’re not built for comfort.
Could I get you some coffee, too?
I left the fur-lined ones next to your girlfriend’s bed.
Fuck it. It wasn’t going to make a difference, anyway.
“I’m a police officer,” I told the second cop again.
“You said that.” He removed my fanny pack and started searching my waistband.
“Sergeant O’Sullivan. Badge number 105.”
“Uh-huh. Bend over at the waist.”
I bent over and he bent with me, checking my socks.
We stood back up. “I’m in Special Police Problems.”
“Well,” he said, popping the car door open, “I’d say we have a bit of a special problem here, huh?”
I quit talking. Fucking smart-ass.
“Watch your head as you get in.”
I slid into the back seat, behind the shield. The plastic that coated the seat was cold on my bare legs. I felt the tiny needles in my hands as they started to fall asleep. I stared at the dried blood and spit on the back of the shield that separated the prisoner area in the back seat and the passenger compartment. This was unbelievable.
The longest minutes of my life had been spent at Anthony’s grave-side, listening to the police chaplain mutter meaningless platitudes that were of little or no comfort to Rebecca or the kids. But after that, the ninety seconds I spent sitting in the back of that police car with cold metal biting into my wrists and my hands going numb finishes a strong second.
Pete Schmidt’s face appeared at the window. Pete was a good guy and I’d known him for years. The shocked look on his face mirrored my own emotions.
Pete opened the front door and hit the door release for the back seat.
“Jesus, Connor! What the fuck?”
I slid my feet out and Pete helped me out of the back seat.
“Hey, Pete.” I said.
Another shocked look. “Hey, Pete? What the fuck is that? What is going on?”
“You remember about three years ago when—ah, fuck it. It doesn’t matter.” I tipped my head toward the restaurant. “Motherfucker in there tried to shoot me. I took him down and held onto him. The fucking cavalry shows up and it’s all rookies, so I get slammed into these cuffs and tossed into the car.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No, I’m not. They wouldn’t listen to a word I said.”
Pete winced a little. “New guys, you know?”
I nodded. “I figured.”
I noticed Sergeant Rick Hunter near the doors to the restaurant. He was talking with the first two rookies. They were motioning in my direction and Hunter’s angry glances followed their gestures.
“Must be that they didn’t know you. Being over in SPP.”
“No shit, Pete.”
“Still, they shoulda maybe listened to you a little more…”
Hunter started walking this direction.
“Fuck,” I said involuntarily.
Pete’s head swiveled around, following my gaze.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
Hunter was a prick. He had one setting on his dial and it read “pissed.” One critical son of a bitch. I don’t know of anyone in this world who’s ever been right except for him.
“Turn around, I’ll get these cuffs off of you,” Pete told me.
I turned and tilted my handcuffed wrists to him.
“Leave those goddamn cuffs on!” Hunter boomed from fifteen yards away.
Pete froze for a second.
“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Sarge – “ Pete began.
“You heard me, Schmidt. Don’t touch those fucking cuffs.”
I lowered wrists and turned to face Hunter. This was unbelievable.
Hunter’s eyes bore into me as he closed distance. He didn’t stop until his nose was about to butt into mine. I could smell the coffee on his breath and see the white phlegm in the corners of his mouth. I noticed a small patch of stubble just below his nostril that he missed shaving.
“What is your problem, O’Sullivan?” He barked at me.
I looked back into his hard eyes. “You have got to be kidding me.”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. I want to know where the fuck you get off.”
“Sarge �
��” Pete started again.
“Shut the fuck up, Schmidt.” Hunter continued to stare at me. He was waiting for me to answer. It was going to be a long wait.
We stood there, locked in a battle of wills, in some sort of Mexican standoff, which I guess was pretty fucking appropriate for the situation. I watched Hunter’s nostrils flare as he did his best to intimidate me and I waited for him to get tired of not bitching at someone.
True to form, he couldn’t stand not hearing himself for longer than a minute. “Why didn’t you do what the officer on scene told you to do, O’Sullivan?”
“Because I had a suspect in custody that needed to be covered.”
“To my officer, you were the fucking suspect.”
“Maybe your officer should listen to the fucking dispatcher.”
Hunter cocked his head and the corners of his mouth turned up in a small, sarcastic smile. “What, you had a radio to go with your gun and handcuffs? You know what the dispatcher said?”
“I know what I told –“
“Do you know what the dispatcher said?” He repeated, raising his voice as he spoke.
I didn’t answer.
Hunter nodded his head. “I didn’t think so.” His gaze never left my face. “What my officer was told was that there was a suspect with a gun and shots had been fired. That was it. Then he shows up and you have a gun and you fucking argue with him. Now, I want to know – where do you get off?”
“Right about here,” I told him and turned my back on him.
There was a moment of stunned silence, then I felt a hard grip on my shoulders. Hunter spun me around to face him. “Don’t turn your back on me!”
“Then take these handcuffs off of me and calm the fuck down,” I told him. I struggled to keep my voice low. “Besides, I had the situation under control and your rookies were coming in too hot.”
“Too hot?!” Hunter snorted. “You know what that sounds like to me, O’Sullivan? That sounds like the guy hiding over in Special Police Problems trying to tell the real police how to do their jobs. That’s what it sounds like.”
Ignorant prick, I thought.
“Go fuck yourself” is what I said.
“What did you say to me?”
I stared him dead in the eye. “I said, go fuck yourself. One sergeant to another. You don’t like it? Go fuck yourself again.”
