by Thomas Laird
Her eyes stare past me for a moment, but then they focus again. She just scared hell out of me. I’ve seen soldiers stare the way she just did. They look beyond anything living and they see something else. They see things only the dead and dying see. They called it the ‘thousand yard stare’ in Vietnam.
She tries to say something, but she can’t. I take her hand because it’s hopeless to attempt to stop the blood flow.
“Celia. Squeeze my hand. Please. Squeeze my hand.”
She tries, but her pressure is faint. Where are the goddam medics? It’s no use calling out for them because Doc’s certainly already taken care of it. I look up and I see him headed my way.
The auditorium is empty except for the patrolmen and me and Celia and Doc and Bobby Wells and his bodyguards. Wells sits on a chair in the middle of the stage. You could describe Riad as visibly shaken.
“Hold my hand, Celia! Don’t give up! It’s just a few more minutes and they’ll be here! Hold on!”
Her grip is faint. It’s almost non-existent. I’ve got hold of her, but she’s not there.
But her eyes are still focused on mine. She’s not gone yet. She’s still here and it gives me some flagging hope that she can last until they arrive.
“Why’d you do this, Celia? You knew you couldn’t get to him. I told you it wasn’t possible. All you had to do was disappear. People do. You could’ve gone somewhere and just vanished. Or you could’ve come in like I told you and you could’ve—”
She freezes up in pain. She winces harshly. There’s a shudder, and then whatever it was she felt passes.
She’s drifting. Wandering away from me just the way she used to before she kicked me out of her life temporarily, those few months ago.
“Celia! Don’t you do it, dammit! Don’t you go away! Celia, goddammit!”
“She’s gone, Jimmy. Take it easy,” Doc says from behind me. “Let go, now. There ain’t anything to do for her now.”
I clutch her to myself, and then I lay her down gently. I bolt upright and I attempt to rush toward the stage and Bobby Wells. His bodyguards straighten up when they see me coming, but Doc’s grabbed me from behind.
“I’ll shoot you, you son of a bitch!” I scream at him.
The goons have their pieces pointed at us.
“You going to pull on a police officer?” Doc warns them.
Riad tells them to put away their pieces, and then the five of them leave the dais and the auditorium.
I sit down in a heap next to Celia. I have no strength left in my body. But I summon the will to close her eyes with my fingertips. I can’t bear to see the stare.
I finally look down at her right side and I see the toy pistol clutched in her right hand.
“Jesus, Celia,” I mutter.
There’s nothing else to tell her. She couldn’t tell me anything those last few moments, and now I become mute, like her.
Doc leaves me alone in the hall. He tells the other coppers to come along with him out into the lobby for a few minutes.
I bend over her and I position my face above hers. Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted. The bleeding on her throat and chest has slowed down drastically. I want to kiss her lips, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Celia’s gone. Doc was right. There’s no one here by her name any longer.
I watched them close the coffin on Erin, and now I’ve seen Celia leave me in front of my own eyes. Celia’s left me. She’s not here anymore, I keep telling myself repeatedly.
I kneel next to her. I remember she was a Catholic.
“Get a priest!” I yell out to no one in particular.
I try to pray over her, but I fail. I wind up just sitting next to her until the medics do arrive. I can’t be angry at them. Either shot she took would’ve killed her no matter how quickly they arrived on scene. She was dead when the first round got her.
“Give me another minute,” I tell the two emergency guys. They nod and walk off a ways.
I hold Celia’s hand, her right hand. I press it to my lips, but she feels cold already.
Doc walks into the auditorium.
“Time to go, Jimmy. Come on with me,” he says.
I rise off the floor. I look at him standing ten yards from me.
“Come on, Jimmy. Leave her to them. Let’s go.”
I walk toward Gibron and the two medics haul the bodybag and the stretcher past us both. They kneel down by Celia. The first medic checks her life signs. They’re confirming her death, I think to myself.
Then the second medic unrolls the plastic bodybag. I think I hear helicopter blades whirling above me again, but I manage to make it out into the lobby where another set of emergency people are still working on the wounded white woman. There is blood down the entire front of her dress. I want to stop and say something to her, but Doc directs me out the front door of the hall.
*
After an hour downtown, Doc and the Captain insist that I go home. Gibron drives me. It’s after midnight when I arrive at my house. Eleanor is still watching television. Conan O’Brien or someone. I can’t tell.
“You’re home early,” she says as I sit down next to her on the living room couch.
“Yeah. I’m early.”
I feel like telling her why, but I don’t. We sit watching the talk show and my mother sips at her cup of hot chocolate.
“The kids have been in bed since ten-thirty,” she tells me.
“That’s good.”
“Michael wants to go to the beach tomorrow. It’s Saturday. You said it was your day off, didn’t you? Saturday?”
“Saturday, yeah. It’s my day off. Sure, we’ll go. We’ll all go.”
“Something wrong, Jimmy?”
I look over to her, and she suddenly knows without being told.
“No, Jimmy. No.”
She comes closer to me and puts an arm over my shoulder.
“No, Jimmy. No.”
Then she puts her arm down and takes hold of my hand.
We direct our attention back at the screen. Some actress is on with Conan and she’s promo-ing her new tv series on NBC. She’s wearing a ridiculously low cut dress, and the host teases her about her boobs falling out on national television.
My mother gets up and leaves me alone in the living room. I turn off the set with the remote, but I don’t get up. I sit there and stare at the blank screen.
After a while I rise and head toward the bathroom in order to get ready for bed. I’m tired and I want to sleep for weeks. I never want to get up again. I want to zee my way into eternity.
Then I remember I owe my son a trip to the beach, so when I get into the bedroom I set the alarm for 8:00 A.M.
Michael likes to get on the sand before it gets too hot. He likes to let his skinny little body heat up before he runs into the water and dives into Lake Michigan head first. Kelly can lie on the sand all day without ever getting near the water. She can listen to the soft nudging sound of the water’s edge and she can lie there all day, content and peaceful.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There is yet another burial to attend. Celia is put into the sod next to her son Andres. The priest who Celia’s mother brought to the funeral tells the few of us who’ve shown up for the rites that he’s wearing white since white is the color of resurrection. I don’t know if I can handle talk about coming back to life at this point, but I figure this priest has his job to do just the way I do.
Doc is present. So is Mari and Celia’s mother and sister Jean, and also here are Evelyn Matthews and Martinson, the Tribune columnist. After the burial is over, I stand alone at the grave site while Doc walks his wife to the van that the three of us rode over here in. I have to have a few minutes with her by myself. Doc sees it as soon as the priest finishes up, so he takes Mari by the arm and leads her toward the parking lot.
Evelyn shows up, and God knows how she knew about this, but she’s here. She can only nod and smile as she walks away from Celia’s grave.
Martinson stops and trie
s to say something consoling to me. He knew Celia and I were lovers because I told him so in confidence while he was interviewing her about Andres’ murder. But he can’t seem to find much to say other than ‘I’m sorry.’ He lets it go at that, and I shake his hand as he departs.
No one cries during all this. I think most of us are either too numb or too angry. I came within a thread of actually shooting Bobby Louis Wells. I actually visualized pulling the .44 and making melon-sized holes in that thug’s backside. Doc stopped me, but I’m sure I would’ve stopped myself before I pulled the trigger. I would’ve become just like Rahaan Abu Riad if I’d pulled that trigger. I would’ve become the point of my own profession. I had the emotional fire to pull on Riad, but I pray to Christ I really wouldn’t have needed my partner to ultimately stop me from getting into the mud with someone like Bobby Wells.
I stand here trying to think of the things I should have told Celia while she was still with me. How I should’ve told her I loved her a lot more than I did. Standard remorse, of course. I should’ve taken her more places, done more things with her, let her know more about me than I did. It all sounds very trite inside now, but that’s the way it goes with after-the-fact. It’s how most of us live. ‘If only I’d done’... Whatever. I played this game with Erin, lamenting all the missing pieces of a complete life with someone. All that reflection did was make me angry. Angry at myself, angry at the world, angry at the Big Weight who put all these elements into motion.
I’m still very angry at Abu Riad and at whichever of the four goons it was who put those two rounds into Celia Dacy. My rage doesn’t turn anything around. I’m supposed to be a Catholic and a Christian. I just heard the talk about coming back to life, about the resurrection of the body. The priest says this isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. I don’t know why it should sound as hollow as it does, but it does ring up empty. I’m too caught up in this life to give much worry to the next existence. Celia had her life boosted, robbed, ripped off. She doesn’t get another shot. But she was so close to getting herself out of the projects, with her son intact, and then she made the mistake of just trying to cross that bloody boulevard at the wrong time of day when Chaka got in her path. So she snaps from the grief of losing Andres and she takes matters into her own hands. Three worthless pieces of shit are slain, and little does she understand that she’s knifing herself while she’s cutting into them.
Of course I’ll never know. Neither will Celia. Erin and she are gone, and I’m alone in another graveyard. I keep saying that homicide is my life. Maybe I’m not being all inclusive enough. Erin died of what they call natural causes, but it doesn’t make her loss any easier to take. Celia was a suicide if you want to look at it technically. What the fuck was the point of her walking up with that facsimile piece in her right hand? What was the motive to walk into the faces of four armed killers and beg for them to open up on her? Did she ever try to get a real weapon, like the .38 I gave her? Did she ever think about trying to really pop a cap on Bobby? Or was she the way Jean said she was —just tired of breathing. Was it a statement? What in God’s name was her message?
I walk slowly to the parking lot. I see Doc and Mari standing next to my van. It is a hot, late summer’s day. A good day for the beach. That’s where I’ll take my son and daughter when I get home. It’s still early enough in the afternoon, and I don’t have to go into work today.
I unlock the passenger’s side for my partner and his wife. I open the driver’s side door and I leave it opened to let out the wilting heat inside the mini van. But I have to get in there and drive off eventually, I understand. There’s no going back to her. There’s no going back to Erin, either. This is the way it is.
I start up the engine, and then I turn on the air, the fan going at maximum. It seems like the interior will never cool down, but as we pull out of the lot, the frigid breeze kicks in. I feel the icy air against the flesh of my face.
*
The fall comes on slowly. It’s torrid in September, the way it was last year. And then October sends the mercury down to the basement and I find myself turning the furnace on at home.
Natalie shows up at my cubicle in Homicide, here at the Downtown Headquarters.
“Hello, you.”
She smiles and disarms me. Any typical, bullshit salutation toward her just won’t do, and she’s serving me notice with the sharp stare she’s throwing my way.
“I was just heading out. Going home,” Doc stammers. Then he leaves before I can argue with him.
“Good evening, Detective Gibron,” Natalie chirps.
God, she’s lovely. Why haven’t I called her? Why’ve I let it go and let it go?
“You doing all right, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah. I’m good. How’ve you been, Natalie?”
“Waiting by the phone. All these weeks.”
“I’m sorry—”
“You don’t have to be sorry, Jimmy. I understand why you haven’t been around. I thought I’d make the first move. Break the ice. If the ice can still be broken or even thawed with you.”
“It’s been a hard couple of months, Natalie. A real bull bitch of a year, as a matter of fact.”
“I understand... Are you back among the living, Lieutenant?”
“I think I am. It’s hard when you deal with dead guys for a living.”
She sits down opposite me. She’s in the interrogation chair, I call it.
“You need some more time?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I haven’t changed my mind when it comes to you, Red.”
“And what’s on your mind?”
“Buffalo wings.”
She laughs. The woman has the most genuine, open-mouthed laugh I’ve ever heard.
“I’m ready to get back in the mainstream, Natalie. Are you going to be my guide, my spiritual advisor?”
“If that’s what you want me to be.”
“As long as you don’t try to make me dance the fast ones at Brannigan’s.”
“I won’t make you try the fast ones, Jimmy. We’ll take it slow. As slow as you want... Jimmy?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not going to die on you, Jimmy. I promise to God I won’t.”
She starts to cry, and I find I’m crying with her.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t at her funeral, but I just didn’t want to intrude.”
“It’s okay. It really is okay.”
“No. I want to be wherever you are, from here on out. Does that sound all right to you?”
I wipe my cheeks and then I reach over and dab at hers with my fingertips. She laughs her good laugh again.
“This is one swell beginning,” she smiles as she finishes the facial cleanup I just began.
“It’s working pretty well with me,” I grin.
She reaches her hand across my desk. I look at her thin, feminine fingers stretched out toward me. I wait just a few beats, and then I put my own hand over hers.
EPILOGUE
We investigate a female jogger who’s been sliced and diced in Grant Park. The kick in the ass is that she’s had her heart and her liver removed. As in surgically.
When Doc examines the body, he looks over to me, his latex-covered hands resting on the carved torso of a once very pretty young woman, and he tells me,”We got us a brand new Jack the Ripper fellow here, Jimmy P.”
Then he stands and looks at me with a sad glance.
“This ain’t going to be a no brainer. This guy did a professional piece of work. I don’t mean medically, either.”
“I thought you were retiring in October.”
“When I get the caseload cleared up.”
I moan. He’s doing it again. Procrastinating about his retirement. And here I had a big party all planned up for him at the Garvin’s Comeback Inn with thirty or forty of our most intimate drunkards and lechers.
The rookie uniform who was standing behind me is now off in one of the lilac bushes, puking his innards out. Apparently he got an upclos
e and personal look at the body, finally.
“Homicide. It’s my life,” Doc chants.
*
And what about Bobby Louis Wells, aka Rashaan Abu Riad?
We never laid a glove on him. But he had other difficulties. Namely that Bobby wound up being a switch hitter — a bi-sexual, I mean. He had a thing going on with one of his bodyguards. Unbeknownst to Bobby, the bodyguard was carrying full blown AIDS. So the gunman gives his lover Rashaan a dose, and six months later Bobby’s got himself the deadliest disease he can acquire. The cops never laid a hand on him, but his immune system is going to fucking kill him very shortly, I hear. Bobby’s not responding well to the drugs that are out there.
So he’s doing a number of public appearances to ignite interest in finding a cure. But far be it from a lowly Homicide Lieutenant to question Rashaan Abu Riad’s motives in dealing with a serious disease like AIDS.
It tickled Doc all to hell when he heard about it, but he won’t comment on it when anyone else is around us.
*
I don’t hang too much at Garvin’s with Doc or with anyone else, these days. It’s late fall. The Holidays approach and my credit cards are already maxed out.
There’s been another jogger slashed to death in Grant Park. The papers have already jumped on the serial killer bandwagon, and somebody in the newsprint has copied Doc’s idea about a ‘Ripper’ lurking in the Loop. That’s all we need. Mass hysteria.
The reason I haven’t been hanging around with my male cronies is because I’m fairly booked up with the redhead. Natalie goes where I go, when I’m not carting my kids from activity to activity.
Am I in love with Natalie? Yes. And she’s taught me not to be afraid of falling for her. I think I know a little about impermanence. I think I follow the temporary quality of human relationships. We’re all just a blink of the eye, so who am I to pass up a chance like Red? Natalie is too young for me and I don’t give a shit. We haven’t talked about commitment, but I know I can trust her. She’s there when she says she’ll be there. She’s not at all hard to look at, as I’ve already explained. Doc teases me about robbing the cradle and all the usual, attendant crap, but he doesn’t jab me too often.
