Dog Eat Dog

by Edward Bunker

  “Good. Move it.”

  The old man came outside and closed the door. Diesel pressed close, holding the pistol down by his leg on the side away from the old man—the way police are trained to do. He was going to take the old man with him. Two in a car might allay suspicion. He could imagine the hornet’s nest of enraged police pouring through the streets.

  They both came down off the porch, down the driveway beside the house, and went to the garage. It was unlocked and the old man lifted it, exposing the rear of a ten-year-old Cadillac Seville, the kind with the humped trunk.

  As they stepped inside, the spotlight hit them from the street. An amplified voice bellowed: “Police officers! Don’t move!”

  Diesel looked over his shoulder. The spotlight nearly blinded him. He could barely see the outline of the prowl car.

  “Be cool, old man,” he muttered. “Don’t say nothin’.” Diesel’s first bolt of despair and terror was replaced by a kind of indifference. If this was the end of the game, so be it. He’d gone too far to give up now. “What seems to be the trouble, officer?” he asked, looking through the glare to see if it was one or two.

  “Stay where you are,” said a different voice. Two of them. He heard their footsteps moving down the driveway. He could see the figures against the light.

  The back porch light went on, and the back door opened. The old man’s wife stuck her head out. “What’s going on out here, Charlie?” she asked.

  The porch light illuminated the cops. One turned to her, swinging his shouldered shotgun away. It took Diesel a couple of seconds to lock his courage into place and raise the pistol.

  “He’s armed!” yelled the other cop.

  The shotgun swung back.

  Diesel shot first. The bullet missed. The policeman pulled the shotgun’s trigger. Click. The hammer fell. He had forgotten to cock it. His partner shot with his pistol. Diesel felt the punch in the abdomen; then a hot poker in his guts, a weird sensation. The Python jumped in his hand again. This shot hit the first officer in the hip, breaking the bone and knocking him down.

  The retired marine hit the garage floor as his wife screamed and fell back into the house onto the floor.

  After he shot, the second officer ducked behind the garage wall. The spotlight beam from the street brought daylight to the garage interior. Diesel was half-blinded by the glare in his eyes as he crouched beside the car’s front fender. The cop had him pinned. He would be duck soup if he tried to run out of the door. Yet he couldn’t stay where he was. Where was the old man? He would be his hostage.

  As if Diesel’s thought was a trigger, the retired marine jumped up on the other side and ran out: “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he yelled, his hands up.

  The officer held his fire. He could see his partner writhing on the ground, which was dark from the blood. He knew the suspect was on the other side of the car. “Give it up,” he yelled. “You can’t get past me. We got backup coming.” As soon as he yelled it, he moved along the outside of the garage, using his flashlight to guide himself. If Diesel had run out in those few seconds, he would have had a clear path to the street. The officer came around the rear and up the other side of the garage. He was next to the opposite wall from where Diesel thought he was.

  Diesel’s body shook in spasms. Reinforcements would arrive any moment. He had to make a move. He watched the corner he thought the cop was behind, held his breath and creeped along the side of the car. He coiled himself and ran out to the right, charging around the corner, firing twice as he came. No cop.

  “Freeze!” yelled the officer from behind him.

  Diesel whirled. The cop’s head and arm with the pistol were visible—he was standing in the spotlight glare. Diesel ran at him, pulling the trigger—but the .357 Python was a six-shooter, and six shots were gone. The hammer fell on empty chambers. Damn, he thought.

  It was his last thought. The officer carefully shot him twice in the chest and once in the head. Diesel felt the impact as he tumbled through momentary pain and blinding light that flared and went out, taking his soul with it. He was meat when he hit the pavement, the hot pistol falling from his hand.

  17

  At the police station, Troy was dragged out of the station wagon. Officers were waiting with tight leather gloves and clubs. They beat and kicked and dragged him across the pavement and up the short stairway. Heavy boots kicked him in the head. Inside, someone held his head up by the hair and smashed a fist into his face. His nose crunched with every blow. His jaw fractured.

  After he was booked and certified as okay physically, they handcuffed him to a barred gate beside the main hallway and anyone who so desired could kick and punch him until they were exhausted. True enough, the man who’d shot two officers and sent fear through all of them was dead, but here was his partner. When word came that Melanie might be partially paralyzed, the frenzy increased for a few minutes. Troy screamed hate and defiance as best he could.

  When the shift changed, he had a fractured wrist so swollen that the blue-black flesh hid the handcuff. He was spitting out blood and pieces of teeth, his jaw was broken, and his ribs were broken. His broken nose and eyes were so swollen that he could barely see blurred movement. A drunk deputy who arrive late climbed up on the bars and jumped down on his handcuffed arm. The snap of bone was audible. The bolt of pain was so great that he fainted.

  Before dawn, an hour ahead of the shift change, the watch commander came from his office for coffee and saw Troy still hanging from the bars. “Get this garbage out of here,” he said, nudging the inert figure with his toe. “Take him to the county hospital before one of those Jew ACLU bastards sees him and starts crying police brutality. If anybody asks, he got hurt in the parking lot and was jumped by some niggers in the tank.”

  “Got ya, Cap’n,” said the sergeant. “Them cocksuckers don’t care about a paralyzed cop … just about a piece of shit like this. I’d take him out and shoot him if it was up to me.”

  “They got the right idea in Brazil. Due process there is a bullet behind the ear.”

  “We’re gonna have to do that, too, pretty damn soon. Get him outta here. I don’t wanna look at him anymore.”

  Thus was Troy put in the back of a police car with two police officers. “Patch him up and bring him back. The detectives want to talk to him before he goes to court.”

  While bouncing along in the backseat, Troy wished they would stop and kill him. They could say he was trying to escape. Had he been able to, he would have forced them to do it. He envied Diesel.

  The emergency room staff tended whatever the police dragged in. Shot, stabbed, drugged out of their minds, what they saw was all the same to the doctors and nurses. They treated physical ailments and made no moral judgments or inquiries. On this occasion they knew who he was. The story had filled the local airwaves all night long, plus they had already treated two wounded officers and the citizen from the barber shop, so they knew why he was beaten up, but nothing more. The doctor insisted on admitting him. His hand, arm, and some ribs were broken, his cheekbone caved in, and he had a severe concussion. When they told the escorting officers, they called the watch commander. He disliked leaving the suspect outside the jail, especially when they weren’t even sure of his true identity, but the procedure manual was clear: Medical personnel had the last word. “Make the doctor sign,” the watch commander said, then designated an officer to stay at the hospital. The suspect would be leg-ironed to the bed frame. The hospital lacked a jail ward, but the room windows had flat bars. The watch commander had covered his ass. That was what concerned him.

  When Troy came out of anesthesia after surgery, his wrist in a cast, his jaw wired, he no longer wanted to die. Morphine had worked its magic. It made bearable both physical pain and mental torment. He would withstand whatever happened without a whimper. He even managed snatches of sleep and pieces of dreams, one of them being Diesel’s son, now grown, pointing at him with a finger of accusation, which made him feel terrible as he cried out hi
s denial. Another dream awakened him full of fear and covered with wet bedclothes. He tried unsuccessfully to recall the dream, and then he laughed, which hurt his ribs. What the hell did he have to fear? The whole world had already fallen on his head. He thought of Diesel with mixed emotions—sympathy for Diesel’s wife and son, and questioning anger as he remembered seeing Diesel in the crowd. Why the fuck hadn’t he helped when he saw the cop? And if he wasn’t going to help, why the fuck hadn’t he gotten away when he had the chance? Troy ran the scene through his mind frame by frame and realized it was a question that Diesel would never answer.

  The sound of rattling keys made him look at the door. It opened and a nurse ushered in three men. Two were granite-jawed detectives; the third a pink-cheeked youth with a briefcase who announced himself as an assistant district attorney. The detectives glared with hostility; Troy was the shooter’s partner and equally responsible for Melanie Strunk being paralyzed. Troy ignored them and studied the baby-faced district attorney. His eyes were a flat blue, expressionless. Troy sensed that he was the dangerous enemy.

  Out came a billfold and a badge. “Sergeant Cox,” said the man who held it. “This is Detective Fowler and Mr. Harper. Mr. Harper is from the district attorney’s office. He wants to ask you some questions.”

  Mr. Harper cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”

  Troy’s wired jaw impeded his speech, but he managed to slur out: “I’m okay. When do I go home?”

  “Home! You think you’re goin’ home?”

  Troy tossed a shoulder. “Di’nt do nuthin’.”

  Sergeant Cox sneered. “What about that money in the trunk? Where’d that come from?”

  Troy shrugged.

  “We know your name isn’t Al Leon Klein. Who are you?”

  Troy managed the semblance of a smile despite the wired jaw.

  “We’ll know in a few hours,” Sergeant Cox said. “I’d bet my ass you’ve got a record.”

  “We’re booking you on suspicion of murder.”

  “Murder! Whose murder?”

  “Carl Johnson.”

  Troy sneered, but he felt sick inside. He’d thought of the felony murder rule whereby crime partners are legally responsible if anyone is killed during a crime. If the police drive up during a robbery, mistake the store owner for a perpetrator and kill him, the robber is guilty of murder. And if the police or store owner kill a robber with a partner, the partner is guilty of murder. But what was the felony being committed? Besides, he’d already been in custody, handcuffed and on the ground, before any crime started. Was there any other crime except the shootout?

  “We’re also planning to charge you with conspiracy to commit robbery.”

  “File it,” Troy said. “Then prove it.”

  The detectives rolled their eyes. Mr. Harper produced a Miranda warning card and read it. “Sign this waiver,” he said, “and we can talk about it. If you haven’t done anything, tell us what happened so we can clear you.”

  Troy tried to ask with a look, “Are you insane?” Then he began shaking his head in disbelief and laughing. If he signed the waiver, there was nothing in the world to stop them from getting on a witness stand to recite a detailed confession, each corroborating the other. They might not do that, but there was no way to be sure. A friend of his had once gone to trial and had an LAPD detective sergeant swear under oath that the defendant had confessed to a safe burglary. If the defendant got on the stand to deny the confession, the prosecutor would drag out his record to impeach him. Troy refused to risk it by signing a Miranda waiver. Rule number one when dealing with the police: Don’t answer any questions without a lawyer on hand.

  “You know what,” he said between the wired teeth. “I think I better talk to a lawyer now!”

  The detectives and district attorney looked at each other and shrugged. They got up to leave. The nurse opened the door. When the prosecutor and one cop were heading toward the exit with their heads turned, Sergeant Cox leaned forward as if to say something sotto voce. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder, made sure nobody was watching, and backhanded Troy hard across the face.

  The splat made the others turn to look, but nobody knew what was going on. Cox draped an arm around each of them and said, “Let’s go eat.”

  Later in the morning, the door opened. A deputy accompanied the doctor and a nurse with his chart. The doctor looked at the chart; then checked him, flashing a tiny light into his eyes, feeling the cast on his arm, poking a finger into the yellowish blue discolorations on his body. “You’ll live,” he pronounced as he wrote on the chart. He turned to the nurse. “We’ll keep him another day.” They went out. The deputy locked the door.

  Ten minutes later, the deputy unlocked the door for the janitorial crew, a trio of blacks with mop and broom and rags. The deputy had to step out of the doorway while the wheeled mop bucket was pushed in. The black man who was wiping off the nightstand looked back to make sure the deputy couldn’t hear. “Chuckie Rich is my cuz, man. He say tell you hello and what can he do?”

  Chuckie Rich! Troy had known Chuckie since juvenile hall, and even though racial hostility permeated prison, they had been friends. Chuckie had been an All-City halfback at Roosevelt High School and had a scholarship to U.S.C. until he got busted with a gram of heroin. That was when he met Troy. Since then he played short con, boosted—and repeatedly went to prison for minor offenses.

  “Where is he?” Troy asked. “Is he out?”

  “Oh, yeah. He say what can he do for you?”

  “I need a pipe wrench—about so big.” He held his hands eighteen inches apart.

  “I’ll tell him, man. You be cool now.”

  The deputy had reappeared in the doorway. Chuckie’s cousin finished wiping the bed stand and went out. The deputy locked the door.

  Troy fought down his excitement. Nothing would come from this. Even if Chuckie wanted to help, what were the chances of Chuckie’s cousin risking jail? A pipe wrench would bend the flat window bars until they snapped, but how could he get it? The deputy stood watching when the door was opened for food and cleanup and medication. Even if someone did bring it, it would be tomorrow at the earliest. Tomorrow Troy was being discharged to the county jail. No, he knew how to delay that by at least one day.

  He’d seen a rusty double-edged Gillette blade in the bed stand drawer. He opened the drawer and took it out. When the door opened for the lab technician, Troy had his legs drawn up enough to hide him nicking his thumb with the tip of the blade—just enough so pressure would squeeze out a tiny drop of blood.

  The lab technician drew blood while taking his temperature; then did a blood pressure and, finally, handed him a urine specimen bottle. As he pissed in the bottle, he let the piss hit the tiny speck of blood on his thumb. Blood in urine could be many things, from kidney stones to cancer to internal injuries. It would necessitate more tests, perhaps even an X-ray. It would surely mean another day in the hospital. He had no faith in Chuckie’s cousin, but he had nothing to lose by playing out the faint chance that maybe something would happen. Escape was his only chance of ever being free again. Escape from the hospital was more likely than from the jail, and escape from Folsom bordered on the miraculous.

  When the door opened for the evening meal, the food on his tray, turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, reminded him that this was Christmas. He had totally forgotten—and now was washed through with an ineffable sadness, fertile soil for self-pity, which was something he seldom indulged in. How could they charge him with murder? What had he done? All he’d robbed was a nigger drug dealer and a drug smuggler and killed a homicidal maniac. The kidnapping, well, that was bad, but that was to make a sucker pay a debt; it wasn’t for ransom. And even if it was bad, it wasn’t that bad; it wasn’t justice that he spend the rest of his life in prison. That was bullshit.

  Justice, that was what he wanted. Then he realized what he was thinking and began to laugh. He didn’t want justice; he didn’t even know what justice was. He wan
ted what he wanted, just like everyone else, and the rest was bullshit, verbiage.

  To escape its anguish, his body demanded sleep. It pulled him down. Maybe he would awake in another world.

  Before daylight, the door opened. Troy heard rattling chains. Two deputies entered, one pushing a wheelchair; the other had his torn and stinking clothes. “Wanna wear ’em?” the deputy asked.

  Troy shook his head. He felt sick. He thought they were transferring him to the county jail. They pushed the wheelchair to the back door into the parking lot; then told him to get up and walk. One deputy told the other that they had plenty of time, the judge never appeared before ten-thirty. Troy felt hope ignite. He was going to court, not jail. He might get one more night in the hospital. Maybe Chuckie Rich and his cousin would come through.

  The Municipal Court was across the street from the main courthouse. While they were still several blocks away, they got a call that television news cameras and reporters were waiting at the front entrance, so they parked in an alley and took him in a rear door. The courthouse hallway was already filling with lawyers and litigants, cops and defendants on bail and bail bondsmen. A bailiff unlocked the door to the still-empty courtroom. They took him down the aisle and past the high bench. Even a runt becomes a giant when he wears black robes and sits on a courtroom bench. The courtroom was paneled in dark wood and had the look of a manor. The bailiff opened a door into the bullpen next to the courtroom, which looked like an outhouse, with graffiti-marred concrete walls, the stench of a plugged-up toilet. At least he was alone. He’d been in courthouse bullpens where fifty prisoners were jammed in an eighteen-foot room.

  As the bailiff and deputies unlocked the leg irons and handcuffs, their eyes showed their special hostility. He tried to radiate a haughty indifference in return.

  Through the door, he could hear people gathering in the courtroom. At ten-thirty, the court was called to order, and a minute later the door opened and the bailiff motioned him out. The courtroom was empty of spectators, but it had a full complement of prosecutors, clerks, armed bailiffs, and a judge who remained looking small and bald even in robes on the high bench. Everyone took their places and the court clerk called the case: “The People of California versus John Doe Number One, Criminal Number six, six, seven, four, eight dash ninety-four.”