Tales of River City

by Frank Zafiro

  And nights out with the girls? Probably the same goddamn thing. Drinks and shoulder pats and “what should I do?” and “leave the worthless bastard.”

  And for Christ’s sake, what kind of paranoid, insecure prick examines credit card charges and tries to discern whether it was a single entrée or a pair of salads?

  Me, I thought, staring at the red plaid plastic tablecloth.

  “I’m not lying,” Kat repeated. “Phil is not the reason—”

  “I know,” I croaked. “I believe you.”

  What a goddamn fool I was. What a…joke. I’d come her to kill them both but I’d chickened out, so I’d talked with her and now I was once again coming to the inescapable conclusion that I was wrong, that I was a big, fucking joke and everyone had known it but me.

  “Then…why did you say that?” she asked me.

  “I thought…I was just…” I shrugged. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “It’s over, Brian. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. “But it’s over.”

  I wanted to cry, but once in twenty-five years was enough, so I forced the inclination down. My life might be a joke, and everyone might have been in on it before me, but I didn’t need to give them any reason to keep up their dark laughter.

  “I know,” I said. “Give me the papers. I’ll sign.”

  My acquiescence caught Phil by surprise and he didn’t react right away. After a moment, though, he stirred and attempted to regain control of the meeting. “Ah, uh, all right. Well, we need to go over—”

  “No.”

  “—the details of the assets—”

  “No,” I repeated, this time a little louder. Maybe too loud. At the next table, a woman with red hair and light brown freckles looked up from her salad at me. “I don’t want to discuss details. Just give me the papers and I’ll sign them. I won’t fight it.”

  “The documents aren’t complete, Brian,” Phil said. “We need to decide—”

  “I’ll sign them and you can fill in the blanks. I don’t care.”

  Phil squirmed. “That’s, ah, not really ethical.”

  “I don’t care,” I repeated.

  Phil sighed and tried to act like this wasn’t a dream come true for a lawyer. The only thing better than a blank contract was a blank check. He opened the manila folder and handed me a heavy pen. I signed in all the places he pointed to and then initialed in a few other places. When I was finished, I handed him back his pen and pushed the papers toward him.

  “Congratulations,” I muttered bitterly. A moment later, I felt a little bad for being a dick, but the words had already escaped and there was no putting Pandora back.

  He didn’t seem offended. I realized that he was probably used to cutting remarks and parting shots from people signing papers they didn’t really want to sign. His fat, doughy skin was probably pretty thick.

  “I guess that’s it then,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Still time to finish my sandwich.”

  His self-congratulatory tone perturbed me, but I pushed that emotion aside. I stared at Kat a little longer, storing up some memories. The waitress returned to the table and slid a salad in front of her. She mumbled her thanks, but didn’t pick up a fork.

  The smell of grilled cheese rose in my nostrils as the waitress thunked the plate in front of me.

  Kat looked at her salad as if it had answers to some burning question, then glanced up at me. When she saw that I was staring at her, she glanced away, then reached for the napkin and put it on her lap. She picked up her fork and very deliberately began to eat.

  I pushed my plate away.

  “My Dad used to fix grilled cheese sandwiches for me,” I said to no one.

  Kat stopped eating, her fork frozen halfway to her mouth. She caught my eye and set the fork down. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  I wasn’t sure what she was sorry for—us or my Dad or the fucking grilled cheese, but I nodded anyway. “Yeah.”

  “Stay,” she said softly. “Order something else.”

  I shook my head no. “Better that I go.”

  She nodded.

  I nodded back.

  Phil set down his sandwich and wiped his mouth. He motioned at our lunches.

  “Ah, don’t, uh, don’t worry about this,” he said. “We’ll take care of it.”

  I nodded woodenly and stood to go.

  “I’m glad I got to see you again, Kat,” I told her.

  She didn’t answer.

  I looked at the grilled cheese sandwich and the little sprig of parsley next to it.

  Don’t worry about this, he’d said. We’ll take care of it.

  My brow furrowed and the words echoed in my mind.

  We’ll take care of it.

  We’ll take…

  We’ll…

  And then I replayed Kat’s words, hearing them truthfully for the first time.

  Phil is not the reason.

  …not the reason.

  …not THE reason.

  I’d accused her.

  And her answer had been a lawyer’s answer and it wasn’t really a proper denial, was it?

  Both Kat and Phil were looking me and I knew in my gut that they were eagerly waiting for my departure.

  I tilted my head and looked directly into Phil’s face. I could see that web of small red capillaries straining against his cheeks. I read the smug look in his eyes.

  “Tell me something, Phil.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why’d you fuck my wife?”

  Both of them jumped slightly and Phil shot a glance to Kat, but I didn’t follow his gaze. I just waited for his eyes to snap back to mine and I read the answer there.

  “I, ah, I—” he stammered.

  “Why, Phil?”

  He collected himself after a moment, glancing back at Kat again, then looked me in the face. “It was just the one time, Brian. More of an accident, really. Job stress, circumstances, you know? Things, ah, well, they didn’t really start between us until after—”

  And I thought I had been paranoid.

  The thing is, I didn’t have a plan. Once I started things rolling, I didn’t really know how things would end, at least as far as what an epilogue might be for our quaint little lunch date. Would I control the ending, or would some poor bastard in a uniform have to be responsible for ending it if my courage didn’t hold? Or maybe I’d make a dash for greener pastures. Who knew? Like I said, I didn’t have a complete plan.

  Just an idea.

  Sudden moves were a bad thing, they caused people to react, so I reach calmly and slowly into my pocket and pulled out the small, black piece of metal. I wished it were a .44, like Dirty Harry had, but it would have to do.

  I remembered thinking when I had first walked into the restaurant about giving Phil a third, red eye and a smile curled up at the corner of my mouth. One sharp crack later, he had his third eye, though it didn’t have the same surprised oh shit look as the other two.

  Kat was frozen in place, her lips slack and parted in horror. Her eyes were glued to Phil as he toppled heavily backward in his chair.

  I didn’t wait. To coin a phrase, it was too late.

  I gave her three shots square in the chest and a fourth shot in the throat. One bullet for every year of marriage. Blood spurted and leapt from her wounds. One large drop arced toward her water glass and plopped in, racing to the bottom of the glass with a streaming red tail, making it look like a demonic tadpole.

  Screaming erupted from all around me.

  Burn, baby, burn.

  My house was on fire, and my frantic painting would soon be ashes, but I was sure, I was fucking certain, that my masterpiece would not go unnoticed.

  Harry and the Bird

  I pulled into the parking lot, stopped and waved at the ancient guard in the shack with my Styrofoam cup. He waved back and raised the parking arm. The long red and white blade rose up in a quick jerking motion. It looked like it was made out of
the same stuff as my cup. That was security at the River City PD. I shook my head in disgust.

  It was early yet, so there were plenty of stalls available. I glided into the angled slot and shut off the engine. Outside the car, I double-checked the lock on the door. Supposedly secure parking or not, I didn’t need some mope who’d just finished over at the courthouse to drift through the lot and find my door unlocked.

  The morning air still had a little of the late Spring bite to it. I couldn’t see my breath, but if I had to guess, it was hovering in the forties. Heavy drops of dew beaded up on the grass. I curled my hands around the warm cup and sipped the coffee inside.

  I made my way to the side doors to the police station. At the doors, I fumbled in my jacket pocket for my identification so that I could scan it across the electronic sensor.

  “John.”

  I turned and looked over my right shoulder. Ray Browning stood next to the planter, his red coffee cup hanging easily from his fingers. The teabag string looped over the side. He was looking behind me, stroking his black and grey goatee.

  “What do you make of that?”

  I followed his gaze. A large man in a cheap suit stood in the grass near the Juvenile building, just twenty-five yards away. Hell, I must’ve walked right past him.

  “Is that Harry?” I asked.

  Browning nodded. “Sure is.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Don’t know exactly,” Browning said, his voice low. “But he was standing there just like that when I got in myself.”

  I glanced over at Browning, surprised. He usually arrived a full half-hour before me. I looked back over at Harry. “He was standing there just like that?”

  “Exactly like that.”

  “How long?”

  Browning shrugged. “I had time to get my coat off, get my desk opened up. Microwave the water. Make my tea. Figure at least fifteen minutes.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  Browning brought the cup to his lips and sipped the hot tea. “Looking at that bird.”

  “Bird?”

  “On the grass. About five feet in front of him.”

  I squinted. After a moment, a little brown dot twitched in front of Harry. “I see it,” I said.

  “You see the gun, too?”

  “Gun?” I shifted my gaze to Harry’s hands. A black object dangled from the heavy man’s left hand. “Jesus.”

  “Some detective,” Browning said wryly. “The question remains, though. What is he doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “But it seems kinda weird. He’s not even moving.”

  “Still as stone,” Browning agreed.

  “He works General Detectives, right?”

  “Yes. Burglaries, if I remember.”

  “Who’s his partner in the G.D.?”

  Browning shook his head. “I don’t think he has one. After Winokur retired, he flew solo.”

  “Winokur retired a year and a half ago.”

  “I know.”

  I took a sip of my coffee. “People are going to start showing up for work here pretty soon. And court after that.”

  “Yes, they are.” He glanced over at me. “We should call someone.”

  “Who? Patrol?”

  “No.”

  “Who then?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “The lieutenant, maybe.”

  “We call Crawford, Harry gets days off. At a minimum.”

  “Probably.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “Maybe we should do something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Talk to him. Something.”

  “He hasn’t exactly done anything wrong,” Browning said.

  “Ray.”

  “What?”

  “Ray.”

  Browning turned to look at me. I gave him a knowing stare. “What he’s doing isn’t exactly right, though, either. Is it?”

  “You think he’s going a little forty-eight?”

  I hated hearing the code for mentally ill applied to a cop we worked with, but I guess the shoe fit today. “A little bit,” I said. “I mean, it looks a little crazy, doesn’t it?”

  Browning nodded.

  “He must have something going on,” I said. “Do you know anything?”

  Browning thought about it. Then he let out a long sigh and shook his head. “I don’t really know him. I heard his wife was sick, though.”

  “That could be it. Maybe he’s just thinking about that.”

  “Thinking about it and staring at a bird with his gun drawn,” Browning said.

  “Yeah.” I took a deep breath of my own. “I’m going to talk to him.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Browning said. “If he’s feeling suicidal—”

  “What? He’s going to try suicide-by-cop?” I shook my head. “No way.”

  “Still.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “We call patrol. And the lieutenant.”

  “We’ve already been over that,” I said. “We do that, he’s screwed. He gets days off or sent to a shrink or whatever they decide. Then he’s in the cross-hairs for every little thing. A guy like that, they’ll push him hard to retire.”

  Ray nodded wordlessly.

  I chewed on my own words for a moment, then thought aloud. “If he’s just a little forty-eight over something, we can solve it. Just us and no one needs to know.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  I took a gulp of the coffee and put the Styrofoam cup in the planter. “What’s his wife’s name?”

  Browning eyed me closely. “Laurie, I think. Something like that, anyway.”

  “Good. What kind of sick is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it serious sick? Cancer or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Lotta help you are,” I groused. I reached down and broke the snap on my shoulder holster. Then I gave Browning a short nod and walked slowly toward Harry.

  I approached at an angle. I didn’t want to surprise him. The fat detective stood stock-still until I was ten feet away. Then he raised his right hand for me to stop.

  “You’ll scare the bird,” he said quietly.

  I looked down at the brown bird as it hopped around on the grass not five feet from Harry. Its little head bobbed down into the grass every few seconds, gathering up whatever it was that birds that size eat. Bugs, maybe. It wasn’t worms. I could see that.

  “What’s going on, Harry?” I said in a light voice. “You all right?”

  He hushed me in a long hissing sound. His hand lowered as he made the sound, almost as if the air was being let out of his arm.

  “You okay, Harry?” I asked in a whisper.

  Harry grunted.

  “You think you can put your gun away?” I asked him. “Before people start showing up?”

  Harry shook his head.

  “I just don’t want you to get in trouble,” I said. “You know how Crawford can be. And Lieutenant Hart—”

  “Fuck Hart,” Harry said flatly. “Fuck Crawford and fuck you, too.”

  Sweat popped out of my forehead. I brought my hands to my face, camouflaging my right hand as it settled onto the butt of my gun in the shoulder holster. I hoped Browning was wrong.

  “I say the same thing,” I told Harry. “Fuck them all.”

  Harry grunted and watched the little bird.

  “But, Harry, listen to me. Fuck them or not, they can bring the hammer down on you for something like this. So whatever’s bothering you, let’s put the gun away and go get some coffee. We’ll talk about it, huh? You and me.”

  Harry turned his eyes to meet mine for the first time. “You don’t know me.”

  “Not very well, no.”

  “You have no idea what’s bothering me. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

  “I don’t,” I agreed.

  “She’s gone,” he said.

  “Laurie?”

 
His eyes narrowed. “Lorraine. She was my world and she’s gone. So fuck you.”

  Harry turned back to watch the bird.

  I stood still and silent. I thought of all that I’d been through myself in the past few years. Thought of how I lost Stephanie. But that had been via divorce and a bitter one at that. It wasn’t the same thing. So I forced myself to remember when my sister died. Then I imagined losing my nephew Ben, who I took in after my sister’s car wreck. Pain welled up in my chest.

  “I’m sorry, Harry,” I whispered.

  Harry watched the bird.

  I tightened my grip on the pistol in my holster. Harry’s eyes had been dark and empty. I’d seen eyes like that before.

  “Harry, please,” I pleaded in a soft voice. “Put that pistol back where it goes and let’s walk away from here before anyone else gets involved.”

  Harry didn’t move a muscle.

  I tried to put myself into his mind. Thought about all the frustrations of the job. The unending parade of other people’s problems. I tried to imagine the pain he was feeling.

  And still he stood there, watching the small bird hop and bob its head into the grass. I wished it would fly away so I could get through to him, but the little bastard stayed. It hopped and bobbed and Harry kept staring at it.

  I licked my lips. “Come on, Harry. What is it with this stupid little bird, anyway?”

  His eyes snapped to mine. “Stupid bird?”

  “Wait. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, you’re right. The bird is stupid.”

  He leveled his pistol at the small bird and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked in the quiet morning air. I jumped. The bird exploded into blood and feathers.

  Harry turned his gaze back to me. “Stupid,” he said.

  I realized my own gun was out of the holster and at the low ready in front of me. Harry didn’t move his own gun, but kept it pointing at the grassy ground where feathers still fluttered in the air.

  “Jesus, Harry. Stop. Please.”

  “No more bird,” Harry said.

  “Harry, don’t make me do this,” I begged him. “We can still walk away from this. It was nothing. Just a stupid bird.”

  “Just a stupid bird.” Harry blinked. “Life is stupid.”

  “Jesus, Harry. No. It’s not.”

  His gun hand twitched. Time slowed. I watched the black metal of his old revolver swing inward. I raised my own gun and centered the barrel on his chest. I took a breath to shout at him, but it seemed to take forever to fill my lungs.