Cutter

by Laird, Thomas

  And it might not be The Farmer who showed up. He might send a rep, just like the Internet message said. I don’t know why, but I had the impression this guy worked solo and that he was going to be here in person.

  Doc walked over to the concessions and bought a hot dog. We were making our way slowly toward the area where they housed the giraffes. I had taken my kids here twenty times, at least. But every time I returned, there was a new wrinkle. They added something I had never seen before. The dolphin house was off to our left, at the center of the park. There were shows indoors with the porpoises every half-hour, but those events might have been canceled after the summer became the fall. I couldn’t remember.

  The lions and tigers and bears (oh my) were ahead of us, and behind them were the long-necked varmints we were looking for.

  Wendkos, with his bright green windbreaker, was directly in front of us. He was eating popcorn and trying to become unnoticeable. Which was hard for him to do, especially with the female population. As I said, he had Hollywood looks, and women were constantly mistaking him for Val Kilmer or for some other blond La La Land hunk. Since he’d separated from his wife, I assumed he’d been leading a very active social life. He never talked about women, however. Too bad, because everyone in Homicide wanted to know if he’d scored with the well-built waitress we saw at the pizza joint. Doc had made a legend of that young woman’s mammaries by now, and it was like a continuing series on TV, finding out if Jack ever got his hands on her goodies. He didn’t talk, though. Said it was wrong to talk about ‘private matters’. He was pissing a lot of coppers off. Many of us lived very vicariously.

  We approached the bears’ enclave. The polar bears lay on the concrete, undisturbed by the plainclothes policemen who ambled past them en route toward the lions and tigers.

  ‘Let’s go by the monkey island,’ Doc pleaded.

  He smiled and took the last bite out of his hot dog. Then he slurped down the ice in the bottom of his Coke cup.

  ‘I love to watch them abuse themselves. I swear they do it to insult us human critters.’ Gibron smiled.

  ‘I do not understand your amusement at watching some ape pound sand in public,’ I told him. ‘You want to see a bunch of whackers, go down to City Lockup around 11.00 p.m. The jailers have to wear earplugs.’

  ‘Ah bullshit, guinea.’

  ‘Nah. I swear that’s what they say —’

  ‘There are the giraffes. Right ahead,’ Doc said. The smile was off his face.

  These animals were housed on the eastern edge of Brookfield. We had guys heading toward them from the north, south, and west. The cars were parked just beyond the giraffes, on the east perimeter. There were fifteen-or twenty-feet-high chain-link fences that separated man from beast here. I saw the other coppers walking slowly toward Jack Wendkos. But they stopped short to give the man in the green coat some space. We saw no one else in front of that tall barrier.

  The giraffes were elegant and awkward, all at once. They stared very interestedly at Jack and at the rest of us who stood twenty and thirty yards behind Wendkos. The other plainclothesmen started to move about, to appear as though we were not congregating behind the man in green. Doc and I sat down on a bench, with Jack thirty yards off to our right. The other police were walking past Wendkos and the giraffes and were about to make a cordon around the area so that a crowd didn’t form around the homicide detective.

  There was still no one else in front of the long-necked creatures we had come to observe. Until a woman with a baby carriage approached from the west. We couldn’t see what was in the stroller. There were blankets piled on top of whatever it held.

  Doc nudged me and I nodded.

  ‘It is two minutes after two,’ he whispered.

  Doc talked quietly into the tiny microphone on his jacket collar. It was about the size of a pimple, and it was the same color as his windbreaker. We all had the small audio phones, flesh-colored, inserted in our outer ears. He was telling all of us to watch the woman.

  ‘She might be carrying, under those blankets. Nod if you hear me, Jack.’

  Wendkos’s head bobbed very subtly, but he kept staring straight ahead at the giraffes.

  The woman with the stroller came up behind our man. She tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Would you happen to have a light?’ she asked him.

  We could hear her clearly. Jack’s microphone was hidden beneath the flap of a collar on his kelly green jacket.

  ‘No. No, I’m afraid I don’t smoke. Don’t you think it is kind of dangerous to smoke around a little guy?’ he asked the woman.

  She was wearing a scarf and big black sunglasses. Her knee-length black leather coat had its collar pulled up at the back to block the breeze.

  ‘I don’t believe in everything the government says. Do you? My aunt lived to be ninety-six, and she smoked a pack a day. I thought it was all just the paranoia of our age.’

  It appeared that her lips curled upward into something like a smile, but then she abruptly pulled away from Wendkos. And just as abruptly she halted once more and turned back to the detective.

  ‘You know, you look a lot like …’

  The microphone didn’t pick up the end of her sentence. Then she did retreat for real. She pushed the stroller ten yards, stopped again, and this time she leaned into the carriage and removed a squalling child, dressed in pink, and embraced the kid until it ceased squealing.

  ‘You look a lot like who?’ Doc said.

  ‘Liberace, sweetheart,’ Jack piped back at him. ‘Fucking woman wants to gas her own kid with her stink. We ought to arrest the bitch. Attempted murder.’

  ‘Hey. Cool down, big man. It’s early yet,’ Gibron said.

  The other detectives continued to make a casual circuit around the giraffe enclave, so Doc and I got up and moved too. We walked back toward the concession stand because I was hungry and thirsty, having missed lunch in the rush to get everybody and everything here on time. And I was too wired to eat back then anyway. But now the boredom of the stakeout settled in, and the pangs had hit me in the middle.

  I ordered a hot dog, fries, and a large diet pop. It came to six bucks. I winced at the young girl behind the cash register, but she couldn’t understand my consternation at their high prices. Doc got a drink too, and we sat at a table with a rainbow-colored umbrella.

  ‘Maybe McGinn didn’t give them the right high sign or whatever, Jimmy. Maybe they smelled us coming. Maybe he sniffed us out. I don’t think this onewants to get caught.’

  ‘I want all you guys to pull back on Jack. Give him some room. Stay out of the immediate area until he thinks we’ve got an authentic shake,’ I ordered into my microphone. They all replied that they copied, and from here, about 150 yards, I could make out clearly that lonesome bright green jacket standing in front of a cluster of brown-and-white-dotted giraffes. We could be on top of him in ten seconds if he called out, so I knew we had to give him a wide berth.

  I continued to check the locations of my coppers as I finished my expensive lunch.

  ‘What would this have cost at Garvin’s? Two-fifty?’ I asked Doc.

  ‘You’re still living in the fifties, Beaver. Get with the program, guinea,’ he quipped.

  ‘Hey,’ Jack said. He didn’t utter anything else.

  ‘Oh-oh,’ Doc said as he stood.

  ‘What the fuck.Oh-oh?’

  I was trying to finish my glass of diet pop.

  Doc nodded toward our man. Someone dressed in one of those sweatshirts with a hood was coming at Wendkos from the west. The coppers who were also coming at Jack from that direction had sniffed out our new arrival. They were closing toward the policeman in green and that new face at this moment. The plainclothes guys from the north were hurrying on down, too. I threw my wrapper into the trashcan, and Doc and I were hustling toward the pair.

  Sweatshirt person stopped ten feet from our detective in the windbreaker. The new arrival stared straight ahead at the inhabitants of the twenty-feet-high fence
d enclosure.

  But we didn’t hear anything from Wendkos’s microphone.

  Doc and I were fifty yards from Jack. I could see our fellow policemen closing to about the same range, so I said, ‘Stop.’ And everybody halted. The cops wandered off toward neighboring benches, but the figure in the hood hadn’t been watching our approach. He had his eyes on the attractions in front of him.

  Doc and I sat on a bench that was perhaps thirty-five yards from the duo we were watching.

  Doc whispered, ‘Stand there, Jack. We’re right here.’

  ‘It’s a woman,’ I heard Wendkos whispering back. But he didn’t dare add anything to the statement.

  ‘Woman?’ Doc mouthed, almost silently.

  ‘They are so graceful, aren’t they?’ a new voice began.

  Wendkos turned toward the hooded woman.

  ‘Yes. They are.’

  ‘I like the jacket. It is my kind of color.’

  ‘You do? I wore it because I was supposed to be meeting a business partner here.’

  ‘Business?’ the female voice countered. ‘What kind of business would intrude on a lovely fall day?’

  ‘My business is very special. I have a customer who has very extraordinary needs, and I’m supposed to meet someone who deals in very exotic kinds of products.’

  ‘What company does your friend work for?’

  Wendkos hesitated. He must have wondered if he was being hit on or if this broad was checking him out for references.

  ‘Imperial Products of Bridgeport,’ he told her. I wondered if he blinked when he said it.

  She straightened up noticeably.

  ‘Funny you should mention that name.’

  ‘Why? Have you heard of them?’

  Then she appeared to become a bit more animated. She turned about and looked all around her.

  ‘I said, have you heard of them?’

  She started to withdraw.

  ‘She’s made you, Jack! Grab her!’ Doc demanded

  As Jack reached out, she bolted away from him.

  ‘Close her in!’ Doc barked into the microphone.

  The woman in the hooded sweatshirt was into full gallop toward the west. Then she spied the quartet of men headed her way, and she turned in a hurry and attempted to come back toward us. She saw that the north, south, and west were all clogged with policemen, and so she raced toward the only direction left. She hit the twenty-foot fence in a hurry, and then she began to climb.

  ‘Stop!’ Jack yelled.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ We were all groaning from the loudness in our ears. I pulled the flesh-colored device from my ear as we ran toward the woman scaling the fence.

  She was halfway up the twenty-foot chain-link as Wendkos arrived. Then Jack was up on the links too, and we were almost to him.

  The hooded woman climbed as if she was an athlete, a gymnast. Very lithe, very smooth. Then she lifted a leg over and she scrambled down onto the ground where those enormous giraffes stalked. There were six of them in the enclosure, and from what I had read about them, they could be very nasty beasts when they were provoked.

  Wendkos had reached the top of the fence when Doc told him to get the hell back down. We had patrol cars outside the far fences. They’d get her, Doc tried to persuade him.

  But Jack was coming down on his side, and I found myself on that same fence, going up. Doc screamed at me. He called me something obscene, but I couldn’t make out his words, only his inflections.

  I was over and down in a minute or so, and then I was racing across the open field. The giraffes were off to my right, and I could feel them watching the two of us chasing this hooded female who was ahead of us both.

  Jack stumbled and fell. I caught up to him, helped him up. He had ripped his jeans open at the knee and his leg was bleeding.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he shouted.

  The woman had a hundred yards on us. The fence she was aiming at was another hundred yards away. She sprinted like an athlete, too. She was way ahead and I knew we didn’t have a chance of catching her.

  I grabbed Wendkos by the back of his green wind-breaker and I forced him to halt.

  ‘Stop, Jack ... Whewww! Stop. It’s no use. Doc’s radioed the guys outside to take her.’

  Then I looked up and I saw two of those towering creatures striding determinedly toward us.

  ‘I think we better just stand still,’ I told the junior officer. ‘What?’

  He was still examining the wound on his kneecap.

  The giraffes were thirty feet away and closing. I was reaching for my Bulldog. It had the better stopping power of my two weapons. I bent over and tore it out of my ankle holster. The two long-necks approached us slowly now.

  ‘I really don’t want to hurt you two boys,’ I told the lofty animals.

  Jack had his Nine pointed their way too.

  ‘I really don’t want to shoot you boys. Please stop.’

  They halted abruptly, about ten feet away from us.

  ‘Go on! Get!’ Jack yelled.

  ‘Please shut the fuck up,’ I told Wendkos.

  ‘You want to explain to the Captain why we shot two Brookfield Zoo giraffes, Jimmy?’

  ‘I’d rather it was them than me, if it comes down to it.’ ‘HEY!!’

  The ‘Hey’ was followed by a piercing whistle. The giraffes turned toward the south where they saw one of the zoo attendants at a shed. Then the two loped off toward him, like a pair of trained Dobermans.

  After the animals arrived at the shed, I could see them bending over a bale of something. Hay? I couldn’t tell what it was.

  The attendant in his tan zoo shirt walked up to us.

  ‘You two guys want to get squished? You know how close you came?’ he asked us. ‘Jesus Christ. I mean, do youknow?’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘We found this at the base of the back fence,’ Jack said as he held out a hooded sweatshirt to Doc and me.

  Doc took hold of the garment.

  ‘She got away clean, Jimmy. The bold bitch took off the hood and walked right on past the patrolmen outside the fence.’

  ‘How could they let a single female walk on by without even stopping and questioning her?’ I asked.

  ‘General stupidity, I guess, Lieutenant. I don’t know what to tell you,’ Jack lamented.

  Doc was so angry that I knew the two of us had better give him some space. So Jack and I took a walk down the long length of the twenty-foot chain-link fence that our girl had recently flown over.

  ‘Did you see her face?’ I asked the younger detective.

  ‘She was wearing shades. And the hood was drawn tight. All I could see was that she was young, probably in her mid-twenties, late twenties, and she was white. Sort of pale, I’d say. I’m sorry I can’t do better, Jimmy. I only saw her full-front for a few seconds. She looked to be about five feet four, maybe 115 pounds. Hard to tell about the body size with that floppy-assed sweatshirt on top of her torso ... Jesus. How could she skip on by those guys!’

  ‘Let it slide, Jack. Like you said, it happens. Now we know he’s got help, at least. How close she is to our guy, I don’t know.’

  ‘She sounded fairly swift, for the few words she said to me. I mean she sounded witty or intelligent. She was no bimbo. You could tell. She was being, like, playful, I guess you’d call it. She only said a few words, but that’s the impression I got.’

  ‘Let’s wander back toward Doc. Maybe he’s cooled off by now.’

  We walked in silence the block or so back to Gibron.

  He was sitting inside our unmarked Taurus. Still seething, it looked like. Jack got in the back seat.

  ‘She’s working tight with this guy, Jimmy,’ Doc said.

  ‘How do you figure?’ I asked.

  ‘She got away because she had a plan. I don’t just mean scaling the walls and running like an Olympic queen either. I mean she didn’t appear panicked. She was cool when we squeezed her. Some messenger girl would’ve laid down and cowered with all those cops
after her ass.’

  I thought he was right and I nodded in affirmation.

  ‘Which doesn’t excuse those goofy uniforms from letting her slide. They should’ve grabbed anything moving on the edge of this goddamned zoo.’

  He started up the Ford, and we were on our way back downtown.

  *

  ‘We haven’t had a nibble. Not even a flasher. I feel like I should be disappointed,’ Natalie told me.

  We were in bed at her apartment. Then she told me she still wanted a spring wedding and she also went off on all the particulars involved in the nuptials. She was a Catholic, as I was, and she wanted the official ceremony in the Church, which was also fine with me.

  ‘Don’t feel disappointed. I know this’ll piss you off, but I hope you never lay eyes on our man, except through the media the day we put the irons on him and his girlfriend.’

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  I probably shouldn’t have told her, but I knew she could keep her mouth shut, and it was not likely the media creeps would be all over her to become a source on the case.

  ‘He has at least one, someone who’s working with him.’

  I told her the adventure of the giraffes.

  ‘Are you crazy, Jimmy? Climbing a fence and going into an area with big, scary —’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing, staking yourself out for The Farmer?’

  I had shut her up. For once in my life, I had stopped her cold.

  ‘Point taken. But at least the guy after me is somewhat human.’

  I watched her eyes. Then she knew we were wasting time talking shop again.

  I kissed her eyes once she’d shut them. Then I kissed her throat, her breasts, her belly, her thighs, and finally her toes. Which caused her to giggle. When I came back topside, she was not laughing anymore. I kissed her lips and I found her tongue. Then I mounted her and I raised her thighs with my arms beneath her upper legs. She lunged at me quickly, and we maintained a locking embrace for an extended moment. We were frozen there, and even though we were both aching by now, neither of us wanted to disengage.