Cry Baby

by David Jackson

  And then she’s on the floor and she’s screaming and crying and wishing the world beneath her would open up and swallow her and end her life because of what she has done to her poor sweet baby.

  11.05 PM

  Detective Second Grade Callum Doyle would go home now if he could. But he can’t. He has almost two hours of his shift left. He started work at four this afternoon, and isn’t due to finish until one in the morning.

  The unsociable hours are one of the downsides of being a New York City detective. Doyle thinks it’s a pity that the criminals in this fair city haven’t yet adopted the more reasonable nine-to-five working day to which anyone with common sense adheres. Maybe they should form a union. Take strike action. The criminal fraternity is certainly being short-changed in this regard.

  That said, tonight it would seem that the felons have finally seen sense. Either that or they’ve all taken themselves off to a conference somewhere. It has been a deathly quiet shift in a deathly quiet day. The Christmas and New Year festivities are well and truly over. Not so much drunken carousing. Not so many suicides. The two ends of the happiness spectrum have been replaced by a middle ground of people returning to the mundanity of everyday life. This is a lull, though. The brief respite provided by the holidays will soon be forgotten, and people will resume where they left off. They will return to their feuds, their hatreds, their greed, their pettiness. Conflict will be re-ignited. All will be as it was. As though the message of Christmas was written in disappearing ink.

  Doyle can’t wait.

  Which is not to say that Doyle has less love for his fellow humans than the rest of us. In an ideal world he would be the first to vote for scrapping the police force. He would be the first to sign up to no more murders, rapes, robberies, assaults and other forms of nastiness. But it’s not an ideal world, is it? These things happen, and if they’re going to happen then they may as well happen on Doyle’s shift, because right now he is bored stiff. He is bored of paperwork, and he is bored of taking phone calls from mentally disturbed people who want to report aliens under their beds, and he is bored of trying to keep himself interested in things that don’t interest him.

  He is not alone in this. When he looks around the squadroom, he sees his colleagues yawning, stretching and scratching. It’s not as if they can even do much in the way of chasing up leads on active cases. When it gets this late, people don’t like to receive calls from cops, asking them what they saw or heard or did. They want to go to bed. Requests for interviews at this time of the night just make people irritable and uncooperative.

  Rachel, his wife, might also be a tad annoyed if he called her again. He spoke to her less than an hour ago. And an hour before that. And an hour before that too. She saw right through it. Said, ‘You don’t build up credit, you know. Making all these calls tonight when you’ve got nothing else to do doesn’t mean you don’t have to call on other nights. You’re not allowed to average things out like that. It’s in the rulebook.’

  He smiled at that, but although he didn’t protest, he actually did have reasons for calling other than boredom. That’s the thing with working these late shifts. He misses out on precious family time. The evening meal together. Putting Amy to bed. Earlier, his daughter told him on the phone about a flower she had made with the new craft set she received for Christmas. To anyone else it would be insignificant news, but to Doyle it was fascinating. He listened intently to her squeaky little voice and told her how clever she was and about how he was dying to see it, and then she told him she would leave it by his bed for him to see, and he wished he could be there right then, sitting with her on her bed and looking at this beautiful flower his child had created.

  And sometimes, when he gets all melancholy like that, he thinks about how he has let his family down. He thinks about all the terrible things he has done. Things that include killing and maiming. Things he cannot tell anyone about. Things he finds difficult to admit even to himself. He knows he has been changed by these things, and sometimes it worries him that he will lose himself and he will lose his family. And then he gets scared.

  Shit!

  Too much time to think, that’s the problem. Snap out of it, man.

  He clears his throat. Gets up from his desk. Rotates his shoulders and shakes the tension out of his arms. He’s spent the last hour typing up DD5 reports – a task which he hates – and his posture feels all out of whack. He reckons he’s not built for desk duties. He’s built for being active. For doing stuff. In his younger days he boxed. He was good, but not brilliant. Not top-notch enough to make it his career. But he’s never stopped doing the exercises. He still jogs, he still does the sit-ups and the press-ups, and he still pounds the punch-bag. And he doesn’t do all that just so he is better prepared for the demands of typing.

  Doyle picks up the mug from his desk. Given to him by Rachel, it has a picture of Popeye on it. ‘Popeye,’ she explained at the time. ‘Because you’re Doyle. Popeye Doyle? The French Connection?’ To which he replied. ‘Thank you, Olive. Where’s me spinach?’

  He strolls over to where Tommy LeBlanc is pouring himself a thick, strong dose of coffee. Sets down his mug next to LeBlanc’s.

  ‘Fill her up,’ he says.

  LeBlanc smiles. ‘Regular or premium?’

  ‘Gimme the highest octane you got.’

  LeBlanc brings the jug across and pauses. ‘You really need this? With all the excitement we got going on here?’

  Doyle shrugs. ‘What can I say? I like living on the edge.’

  Not so long ago, most of Doyle’s conversations with LeBlanc were not as amicable and relaxed as this. LeBlanc is the youngest and least experienced member of the Eighth Precinct detective squad. That in itself does not make him a bad or ineffectual cop, and in fact Doyle now thinks of him as having the makings of an excellent detective. A few months ago, though, his view of LeBlanc was as a snot-nosed fashion-obsessed newbie who probably didn’t know shit. Which, Doyle now accepts, was completely unreasonable of him. What prompted that way of thinking was that LeBlanc’s usual partner on the squad was, and still is, a man called Schneider, who hates Doyle’s guts. It was guilt by association – a specious syllogism that went something like: Schneider hates Doyle; Schneider’s partner is LeBlanc; therefore LeBlanc hates Doyle too. And without any evidence that this had some basis in fact, Doyle went on the defensive and mentally slotted LeBlanc into the category of ‘opposition’.

  Things came to a head last October, when Doyle and LeBlanc were paired up for the first time on a case. From the get-go it was not a harmonious partnership. Doyle did his best not to involve LeBlanc. He didn’t even let him into his thought processes. It didn’t help matters that this particular case, involving the torture and murder of a teenage girl, really fucked up Doyle’s mind, and that the man he believed to be the killer was adept at fucking up Doyle’s life. A partner he could have trusted and relied upon would, he now acknowledges, have been a tremendous asset.

  Doyle knows all this. He got it wrong. He made a mistake. He acted like an asshole.

  But good things can arise from bad situations. And arising from this one was what he learned about LeBlanc, which is that underneath the trendy suit and the skinny tie and the snazzy glasses and the waxed blond hair there is a stand-up guy who has balls. A guy with a moral compass that points in the right direction despite the spiteful magnetic pull emanating from people like Schneider.

  In short, Doyle has taken a shine to LeBlanc. He would welcome the opportunity to partner up with him again, and this time on much more conducive terms.

  Says Doyle, ‘You get any good toys for Christmas?’

  LeBlanc’s smile shows that he doesn’t mind the jibe. His youthful, fresh-faced appearance belies the fact that he is actually only a few years younger than Doyle.

  ‘Yeah. I got a nice train set. You want, I’ll let you come over and use it some time. It’s got little action figures and everything.’

  ‘Cool. Is it as nice as our subway? Do
es it come with a pickpocket and a homeless guy and a drunk and a flasher?’

  ‘Sure does. Even has this one little guy, throws himself onto the track at random intervals. It’s very realistic.’

  Doyle issues an exaggerated sigh. ‘Ah, don’t you just love the romance of those traditional toys? Much nicer than the modern crap.’

  He takes a sip of his coffee. Tries to peer through the grime-caked windows of the station house.

  ‘What’s wrong with people tonight? Don’t they know there are things worth stealing out there? People worth assaulting? This rate, we’ll be out of a job.’

  LeBlanc starts back to his desk. ‘It won’t last. Make the most of it. Something big goes down now, you’ll be here all night. Just type up your fives and punch out. Tomorrow you’ll be praying the shift could be as peaceful as this.’

  Doyle nods. Wise words from such a young head. Make hay while the sun shines. Except that the sun isn’t shining because it’s a miserable, depressing January night, and making hay is the last pursuit he’s likely to undertake in a squadroom full of tired, bored cops.

  He sighs again, this time for real, and drags himself back to his desk. He sets the coffee mug down on a Guinness coaster, then flicks the head of the bobble-headed leprechaun that was bought for him by the squad as a welcoming present. Something to do with him being Irish, ho, ho.

  He sometimes wonders what would have happened to him if he’d stayed Irish. If he hadn’t been whisked across to New York when he was only eight years old. Would he still have become a cop? A member of the gardai? Was he always destined to become an enforcer of law?

  And sometimes he wonders whether that’s still what he is. Whether the line between right and wrong is still as clear as it seemed to him when he was a hopeful young man in the Police Academy. That line seems so much fuzzier now. Some of the things he’s done…

  His phone rings. He snatches at the receiver and stabs the flashing call button before some other bastard can steal his action.

  ‘Cal? It’s Marcus, downstairs.’

  Marcus Wilson. The desk sergeant. Doyle likes Wilson. He likes LeBlanc too. Hell, it seems to Doyle as though he likes everyone at the moment except the criminals, who are just not living up to expectations tonight.

  ‘Hey, Marcus. How’s it going?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. You know how it is. Busy, busy, busy. Right?’

  Doyle frowns. How is it that Marcus has so much to do, while we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses? Where’s the fairness in that?

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Up to our eyes here. Whaddya got?’

  ‘A live one. You interested?’

  Am I interested? All the activity we got going on, not a moment to ourselves, and he asks if I’m interested?

  ‘Shoot,’ says Doyle.

  11.11 PM

  ‘Erin, you need to stop this now. You need to calm down.’

  She is on the bathroom floor, having just spent the last fifteen minutes with her head in the toilet bowl. There is nothing but bile left in her stomach. She can still taste the foul acidic fluid in her mouth, steadily dissolving her teeth. She wishes it would continue on through her jaw and her skull, liquefying them as it goes. Wishes her whole body could dissolve into a rancid puddle on the floor.

  ‘Erin, are you listening to me?’

  She’s not sure she can be bothered to answer him. Everything seems too much effort now. She is responsible for injuring her own baby. No mother can be forgiven for that.

  ‘ERIN!’

  ‘WHAT?’ she yells back. Then, softer: ‘What? What do you want from me? What did you do to Georgia? Is she… Is she… ?’

  ‘She’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking. You can still get her back alive. But what you need to understand is that I’m not fucking around here. I am serious. When I say I am going to do something, I will do it. Do you believe me, Erin?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispers.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘YES! But…’

  ‘But what, Erin?’

  ‘I need to know. What you did. Is she hurt? Badly, I mean?’

  ‘She’ll live. That’s all you need to know. I could’ve hurt her a lot worse, and next time I will. But there won’t be a next time, will there? You know now that you have to do what I say. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes. But…’

  ‘The buts again, Erin? More buts? Are you sure you want to keep questioning me like this?’

  There is a razor-edged tone to his voice. A tone that will cut. A tone that will slice her baby into tiny pieces. Ever since she heard Georgia’s cry of pain, all kinds of images have been jumping into her head of what might have been inflicted. Images of wounding and dismemberment that no mother should conceive of happening to her child. She will have nightmares about those images when this is over. She will have them even if she can get her Georgia back safely.

  But there can be no ifs about it. Protecting Georgia is paramount. She will get Georgia back. Even if that means…

  A life. Another human life. He wants her to take a life in exchange for the life of her baby.

  She knows this already. This is nothing new. But she has to keep repeating it to herself. Has to try to make it real in her head. Because still it seems so absurd that anyone could demand such a thing.

  She says, ‘It’s just that… I don’t know if…’ Her lower lip begins to quiver as she wrestles with the thought of what she is being asked to do. ‘Physically, I mean. I don’t know if I am physically capable of killing someone. I could say yes to you now, and then… later, when I’m actually there, with another person, the person you want me to kill, I’m not sure I could do it. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not that I’m saying no to you now, okay? But, but… even if I agree now, that doesn’t mean I would have the strength to… you know… when it comes to it.’

  ‘Erin. Remember what I said to you before. You’ve been chosen for this. I picked you because I know – I know, all right? – that you’re perfectly capable of this. You’re stronger than you think. You can do this.’

  She shakes her head in confusion. What does he know? What does he know about me that I don’t even know myself? Where does he get the idea that I’m capable of murder?

  Because that’s what this is. Murder. It can’t be dressed up as anything else. There will be no pretending that I didn’t mean to do it. It’s all being planned in advance right now. It will be deliberate, cold-blooded murder. And just because I’m being pressurized into it, will that make me any less guilty? Will an argument of that kind wash with a judge and jury? I was only following orders. Yeah, right. Heard that one before. You really want to be associated with the type of people who tried to use that as an excuse?

  She says, ‘What if they catch me? If I do this and I get caught, I’ll go to prison. They’ll take my baby from me. Even if I do what you say, I could lose Georgia.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I know how clever and resourceful you are. You won’t get caught. I’ll be with you all the way. I’ll tell you what to do.’

  He makes it sound so easy. Like cooking a meal, or learning to drive a car. You get up, you go out, you kill someone, you come home. What kind of day did you have today, dear? Oh, you know, the usual. Managed to squeeze in a murder in my lunch hour. Nothing special.

  She’s still not sure she can do this, but what choice does she have? Doesn’t she at least have to try? Doesn’t she at least have to get some more details? Try to familiarize herself with the situation? Maybe, once she gets a lot more information, maybe then it won’t seem so daunting. Maybe he’s already got something in place for his victim, and all he needs is somebody else to push a button or something like that. Couldn’t that be it? Is she jumping ahead of herself, making something out of what could be nothing?

  ‘Tell me what you want me to do.’

  ‘That’s my girl. First thing is to get up off that floor. Go over to the mirror.’

  She gets to her feet. Walks unsteadi
ly over to the washbasin and stares at herself in the mirror above it. What a mess. Her dark hair looks like it’s just been subject to a small explosion, and a section of it is covered in puke. Her tears have carried dark rivulets of mascara down her face, her lipstick is skewed across one cheek, and a glistening mucus trail runs from her nostrils down to her chin. Right now she’d make a terrific evil clown.

  ‘Nice.’

  She nods in agreement. ‘I’ve had better days. When I’ve showered, when I’ve slept properly, I’ll look better. In the morning I’ll look okay again. And then we can talk more about what you want me to do.’

  ‘Uhm, no, Erin.’

  She looks in the mirror at the brooch pinned to her lapel. Tries to picture a man’s face behind it. A face that will match this voice of pure evil.

  ‘What? What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I mean not tomorrow. This can’t wait. This happens now.’

  She feels her pulse start to race again. How much more of this stress can her body take?

  ‘Now? No. I can’t. I’m not ready.’

  ‘Erin, you can’t sleep. Not without your baby. You’re just trying to put off the inevitable. And the longer you put it off, the longer you go without Georgia. It happens now, or not at all. And if it never happens, then Georgia never comes back to you. Do I make myself clear?’

  She nods into the mirror. She was fooling herself. She could have guessed it would have to be now, while he has her in the palm of his hand. She just didn’t want to face up to it.

  ‘I… I need to get cleaned up.’

  ‘You can do that. You can wash, fix your makeup. Then we go, Erin. Okay?’

  ‘All right. But… but I don’t know anything. You haven’t given me any details. I don’t even know who you want me to kill. Who is it? Somebody important? An enemy of yours? Who?’

  There’s a lengthy pause then. It lasts so long she thinks the connection has been broken. She looks quizzically at the brooch.

  And then it starts. A low rumble of amusement that steadily increases in volume and pitch until it becomes a roar of laughter in her ear.