by Anthology
At the end of the hour, when she was close enough for me to see the empty sockets where once resided the eyes I loved, I took aim and pulled the trigger. But there were no more bullets left.
Fast Eddie’s Big Night Out
JOHN L. FRENCH
Safe, that’s what he felt like when he finally became aware of himself. Safe and warm. He hadn’t felt like this since, since––he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Wherever he was, he was at peace.
~
He called himself “Fast Eddie.” It wasn’t his real name. That was Wallace––Wallace Cromwell. He’d hated that name. Hated being called Wallace. Hated “Wally” more. Hated being asked how the Beaver was. Then one night he saw a movie on late night TV about some guys shooting pool, Paul Newman and a fat guy. Newman’s name was Fast Eddie. He liked that and started using it as his own.
By then he was typically alone. He still lived in his mother’s house, but his bedroom was in the basement. He came and went as he pleased. Mostly he went home to eat, sleep and get clean laundry. Some days he didn’t go home at all. There was too much happening on the street––people to see, stuff to do.
Some of the stuff involved drinking––beer, wine, whatever he could get. And some of it involved girls––those who gave it away, those who traded it. And some of it involved drugs––reefer, crack, whatever made him feel good and forget the boredom that was at the bottom of his life. And all of it involved money. Money he usually didn’t have and always needed. Money his mother had stopped giving him. Money he had to get from somewhere no matter what.
He tried street jobs, but that was low percentage. The guy you robbed might not have any more than you. Or he might be armed, and your payoff would be a knife in the side or a nine in the head. It was better to B&E. Less chance of getting caught, and VCRs, DVDs and computers always brought him enough to get by.
He went home less and less. One night he went back and didn’t have his key. Hadn’t had it for a long time. How long, he didn’t know. He pounded on the front door. No answer. He went around and pounded on the back. Still nothing. He broke the pane of the basement door, reached it and unlocked it.
Things were changed. None of his stuff was there. He didn’t know the man standing in the basement. He did know the man had a gun. And he knew that the sirens in the distance were coming for him.
Nobody believed that he thought it was still his house. His mother hadn’t lived there for months. What had happened to her he never found out. Without money for bail he sat in the Baltimore Detention Center for six months, awaiting trial. In that time his prints came back on six other burglaries. He got three on top of the half he’d served. Overcrowding forced him back on the street inside the year.
When Eddie came out he went back to the B&E, back to yoking tourists who went down the wrong street, back to jacking cars from the fools who came down from PA looking to buy drugs. He had to. Inside he had picked up the habit, and now it needed to be fed every day.
He went inside the second time because he got stung. The guy in the Honda looking to buy turned out to be a cop. When Eddie pulled his piece the cop pulled a bigger one. Without turning around, Eddie knew that there were two more big guns pointing at the back of his head.
Two years this time. Eddie’s cellmate was a no-parole lifer who had found Jesus. Or was it Allah? Whoever It was, the lifer always talked to Eddie about a better way. With nothing else to do, Eddie listened.
It didn’t make sense until three months after Eddie was out. Out in the cold and rain, huddling in a doorway, the better way that the con had talked about seemed very good to Eddie. He’d change, Eddie told himself. He’d find a program and get clean, give up this half a life and start living again.
Getting clean was harder than scoring without cash. All the programs were full. The drug treatment centers had waiting lists. Despite his wanting it, no one was offering any help. Desperate, and willing to do anything to escape the Limbo he was in, Eddie did the one thing he never expected to do. He called a cop.
~
“Yeah, I’m interested… Thought there might be, how much?… Oh! That might take some doing… No, didn’t say it couldn’t be done, have to pull in a few that’s all… Give me your cell… Thought everybody did… Pager then… Well then, call be back in two days… Yeah, this number. I’ll work something out, get you clean.” Detective Dante Amberson hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Andy Russell asked his partner.
“Some stoner called Fast Eddie,” Amberson replied, turning to his computer. He logged on to the Citynet and searched “drug treatment centers––open beds.” There weren’t that many.
“I remember Eddie, we almost shot him, what, two years back?”
“That’s why he called us, because we didn’t shoot him when we could have. Thinks he can trust us.” Amberson started copying names, numbers and email addresses into a document, highlighting the ones he’d try first.
“What’s he want?”
“To give us Santos.”
Russell’s eyes widened. Antoine Santos wasn’t a major drug dealer, but he was big enough that once arrested, he could be squeezed until he gave up a few people who were. “How’s Eddie know Santos?”
“Used to work for him, still does some running.” Amberson hit print. Two lists came out of the printer.
“And for Santos he gets––?
“Placement in a drug treatment center. He wants out of the life.”
“That’s it, no money?” Russell was amazed; everybody wanted money.
“He wouldn’t turn it down, but without treatment, no Santos.”
“We better make some calls.”
Amberson handed Russell one of the lists. “Tell me about it. Start calling, partner.”
Two days later Eddie called back.
“All arranged, my man,” Amberson told him. “Got a room at the McCulloh Treatment Facility with your name on it… That’s right, where Church Home Hospital used to be… You’re getting the works––detoxification, blood cleaning, counseling, job placement, everything. You be there tomorrow morning, eleven sharp. We’ll get you settled, then you give us what we need on Santos… What’s that?”
But Eddie hadn’t been talking to Amberson. The detective heard him say something to somebody, his voice low as if turned away from the phone. There was a muffled reply, then three loud pops.
“Oh shit! Eddie! Eddie!” Amberson yelled into the receiver. To his partner, “Andy, call 2284. Get this line traced. Get an ambo started. Eddie!” he yelled again. No answer.
“Got it,” Russell said calmly. “Units and medics are rolling. Anything on your end?” Amberson shook his head. “Damn. Well, let’s get out there.” Amberson looked at the admissions folder they’d gotten from McCulloh. “Damn,” he said again, “and after all our hard work.”
When the two detectives rolled up on the scene they saw the ambulance pulling away.
“Follow that,” Amberson told his partner. “Let the district guys and the Lab worry about witnesses and spent casings. If Eddie’s still alive we’ll get his statement.”
Russell followed the ambulance down Wolfe Street. He groaned when it turned right, bypassing Johns Hopkins.
“Taking him right to Shock Trauma,” he said. “Must be bad.”
Madison to Central. Central to Fayette. From Fayette straight to Shock Trauma and the best emergency care available. Russell knew the way––every detective did––and he stayed close to the wagon. He wanted to be there when Eddie was pulled out, to hear him say who shot him, hoping the name was “Santos.”
Lights flashing and siren screaming, the ambulance raced down Central. But when it turned on Fayette, it went silent and dark as its emergency system shut down. It slowed, now keeping pace with traffic rather than weaving in and out.
There could only be one reason for the sudden lack of urgency. “Damn,” Amberson’s fist hit the dash. “They lost him.”
Still, Russell followed. From Faye
tte Street the wagon turned on to Penn Street and from there, down the ramp that led to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Russell parked along side the ambulance. The detectives caught up to the paramedics just as they were wheeling Eddie into the receiving area.
“He say anything?” Amberson shouted as soon as he got into the room.
“Like?” asked the medic. He was on the twelfth hour of a sixteen-hour day. He’d had two “breaks.” Once he stopped for a coffee and doughnut at a convenience store, both of which he gulped down rushing to yet another overdose call. An hour later at Hopkins he stopped briefly to call his wife and use the bathroom. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to get as excited about this dead junkie as the detective was.
“Like did he say who shot him?”
The medic shrugged. “Maybe. I wasn’t listening.” In fact, the medic had stopped listening a year ago. He’d heard a dying declaration from a gunshot victim, reported it to the police. That lead to his going to court several times, spending hours waiting in a cold, dark hallway only to be told the case was once again postponed. When he finally did get to testify, he was on the stand three hours, as a team of defense attorneys challenged his competency, questioned his hearing and subtly suggested that he’d let the victim die so that declaration could be used in court. When a “not guilty” verdict came back the medic decided that from then on, he’d be deaf to anything not directly related to treating his patient.
~
Like a baby, Eddie felt himself being cradled in someone’s arms. There was a gentle, rocking motion. Gradually, the arms became a hand, with Eddie cupped in its palm as if being weighed. He became aware of all the decisions, good or bad, he’d ever made in his life. He saw too all the decisions he’d failed to make. Every path his life could have taken was revealed to him. Some were worse than the one he had lived. Most were better.
From somewhere there was a voice. “A life mostly wasted. An effort at redemption towards the end.” A light appeared––a golden light. Eddie was drawn toward it. But he knew without the voice telling him that despite his yearning, he’d get no closer to the light than where he was now.
~
“Can you make the ID?” the attending examiner asked Amberson and Russell.
The detectives looked down at the body. There wasn’t much to see: a body ravaged by drugs, thin and dirty from too many months on the street.
“Yeah,” Russell answered. “For your records, I identify this body as one Wallace Cromwell, a.k.a. Fast Eddie.”
“And do you agree, sir?” the examiner asked Amberson. There was a slight lilt of the Caribbean in his voice.
Amberson nodded. “Well, Eddie,” he said to the corpse, “I guess you won’t be needing that treatment now. I just wish you’d held on long enough to give us Santos.”
Now would be a good time, the examiner thought. In his six months in this country, five months doing this job, he’d seen too much of this tragedy, too many wasted lives. It was time to do something about it, if these men were willing.
“He still could.”
Both detectives looked at the examiner, who had finished weighing the body and was now filling out a toe tag.
“Excuse me, Mr.––?” Amberson asked.
“Jones, Dominic Jones. I said that maybe he still could.”
“And how, Mr. Amberson, could he do that?”
“I am from the Dominican Republic. My country, as you may or may not know, shares its island with Haiti. When I was in medical school, it was close enough to Haiti that, occasionally, myself and other students would slip across the border to study, shall we say, comparative medicine and religion.”
“Voodoo,” Amberson said softly.
“Vodou,” Jones corrected, giving the word a slightly different pronunciation.
“Wait a minute,” Russell said, almost shouting, “you’re saying you can bring this guy back from the dead?”
Jones smiled. “Not exactly. Rather, it may be possible to awaken a soul, as if from sleep, before it passes on. If so, one can ask what questions one needs to, before the soul is called away forever.”
Russell gave a derisive laugh. Amberson, on the other hand, asked, “And you can do this?”
“I have seen it done. An old man, called back to tell where he had hidden his wealth. A woman, dead after childbirth, summoned from the dark to say which man in the village fathered her child. In each case, the priest performed the ritual. In each case, an answer came from the corpse.”
Russell interrupted. “And there are guys in Vegas who stick their hands up dummies’s butts who can do the same thing.”
“Ventriloquism, Detective? Maybe. But the money was found where the old man’s ghost said it would be. And the child grew up in the image of his announced father.”
“Do you know the ceremony?” Amberson asked suddenly.
“This is crazy!”
At his partner’s exclamation Amberson said, “And we haven’t seen crazy before? Besides, it’s not like we got anything to lose. Unless you’ve got a better idea?”
“I can do it, Detective. I have watched the priests and studied with them. One thing about this place: it’s got everything I need, except… do you know where we can get a live chicken?”
~
Eddie drifted. Try as he might, he couldn’t move closer to the glow. Then he felt himself being pulled away. He thought he heard someone call his name. And then––something else. There was something else he had to do. The golden light got fainter, smaller. Like the dot on an old TV, it faded away.
~
“Eddie, Eddie, can you hear me?” Amberson shouted, shaking the corpse. “Come back, Eddie! Give us Santos!”
“It’s no good, partner.” Russell drew Amberson away. “It was dumb idea to begin with.”
“It should have worked,” a despondent Jones said. He looked at the bodies of the dead pigeons in the biohazard waste bin. “We should have used chickens.”
“Yeah,” Russell turned on him, “and I should maybe run us all up to Mercy for an emergency commitment. Me searching the parking garage for those birds, catching them yet. I have to be crazy.”
“The only other choice was regular or extra crispy,” Amberson said. “Come on, we’ve already wasted two hours. Let’s get some papers signed and get back to work. Mr. Jones, thanks for your effort, but let’s not mention this to anyone.”
“Agreed, detective. Now if you two will step into my office, we can get the paperwork out of the way.”
It took Jones about ten minutes to find and fill out the forms. Amberson signed them and gave them back. Jones was just putting them into a folder when an alarm sounded.
“What’s that?” Russell asked.
“The door to our vehicle bay,” Jones explained. “Someone’s coming in.”
They went out into the receiving area to see who it was. Russell was the first to notice the empty gurney where Eddie’s body had lain. “Or someone left.”
Beside him, Amberson swore quietly.
“You know,” Jones said, staring at the empty place where Fast Eddie had been, “when you use a chicken they don’t get up and leave.”
~
Eddie woke up, sort of. Light and sound rushed back in. His chest hurt. He felt the cold steel of the gurney beneath him. Not knowing where he was or how he got there, Eddie got up and walked toward the door. It opened automatically, as did the gate of the vehicle bay when Eddie crossed the electric eye. Driven by a need he didn’t understand, Fast Eddie walked out into the night.
He was confused. Memories of a warm, safe place where he was loved conflicted with other thoughts. He was talking to someone, someone who was helping him. He heard a noise. He turned. Talking, then more noise, louder this time. Pain. Eddie looked down at his chest. His shirt was open. He could see the holes the loud noise had put there. A clear liquid was seeping from them.
Eddie was still looking at the bullet wounds when he wandered into the street. There was a screechin
g of wheels, then Eddie was struck by steel, glass and steel again as he went up and over the car that hit him. Eddie stood up and, ignoring the curses of the driver, slowly walked away.
~
“Now what do we do?” Amberson asked no one in particular.
“I don’t know about you two, but if he’s not back by six a.m., I’m shredding everything and he was never here.”
“We’ll find him, Jones,”
“We will?” asked Russell.
“Of course,” Amberson assured him. “How far can a dead guy go?”
The detectives left the ME’s and walked out on to an accident scene: a late-model sedan with pedestrian damage to the hood, windshield and roof; two patrol cars blocking the street; a uniformed officer taking a statement from a distraught driver. No victim, no ambo.
“What happened?” Russell asked one of the officers standing by.
“Damnest thing,” came the reply. “Driver here says some junkie walked out in front of him. He couldn’t stop in time and the guy went up and over. Says he came down hard, then got up and walked away.”
“Driver didn’t try to stop him?” Amberson asked.
“Would you?” The officer shook his head. “You’d think the guy would be dead, wouldn’t you?”
Amberson looked at Russell. Russell looked back. Neither said a word.
