Crystal Meth Cowboys

by John Knoerle

  Cosmo looked cross. "Oh yeah. Like that commercial. Where the guy is shaving his face and turns into an Chinaman."

  "Right. And then he morphs into a black guy and then a Native American and …."

  "I didn't think they shaved. Indians."

  "What? No. Whatever. The point is the cop on the beat can be a bridge between all strata of society. The power structure, the working class, the, uh, disenfranchised." Wes stood up to keep his calves from cramping. "He doesn't have to be an asshole. He doesn't have to be the hammer of Thor…"

  "You're thor?" said Bell. "I haven't been able to pith for a week!"

  The other cops laughed loudly. Chug's head rested on the bar, cradled in his folded arms. The cops had decorated his hair with swizzle sticks and drink straws.

  Cosmo placed a fresh martini in front of Lyedecker and collected two dollars from his pile of cash. Wes pushed a buck tip into the gutter where the ashtrays sat. The Budweiser clock said 12:18.

  Bell stood and addressed the troops. "You think the rookie's ready for the joke del muerte?"

  Jake Hansey said, "Ooooooo."

  Renaldo assayed Lyedecker with a cool eye. "I don't know if he's ready for it."

  Bell crinkled mustache hair into his nostrils. "What the fuck," he said. "He survived Biker Bob, I think he can handle it."

  Wes shifted on his stool to face whatever new humiliation was in store for him. The Academy was rife with tales of grotesque hazing rituals for rookies. At least they weren't going to handcuff him to a corpse.

  Bell stepped closer. Renaldo, Hansey and Little Jim clustered behind him. "This is the greatest joke of all time," explained Bell. "The 'joke del muerte'. Dozens …hundreds…thousands of people have expired from extreme hyperventilation while uncontrollably laughing at this joke."

  Wes eyed the other cops. Their jaws were clenched with suppressed laughter.

  "Yo, rookie," snapped Bell. "Over here." Bell held the comatose Chug's head up by his hair. He ducked down behind him. He flapped out one of Chug's ears. "Did you hear about the talking hat box?"

  "Uh, no," answered Wes.

  "All it could say was…" The chorus of cops drew a breath. Bell pushed Chug's slack jaw up and down. "'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!'"

  The cops bent over and bumped into one another, laughing so hard that, for a moment, Wes actually did fear for their health. Bell's face lit up like a circus clown. Even Cosmo snuffled in amusement. Wes Lyedecker had no earthly clue.

  ------

  The pale orange glow of the Budweiser clock showed 2:29 but that was bar time. Lyedecker's wristwatch read 2:14. Either way Cosmo was serving past the state mandated closing time. Not that he had much to worry about from the Alcoholic Beverage Control or anyone else. A mountaintop defended by cops and bikers appeared a very secure spot for Cosmo to live out his golden years.

  Wes took a sip of ice water. Bell was drinking red beer at Cosmo's suggestion. Everyone else had gone. Wes held Bell's car keys in his fist, having bought Bell a round and said, 'Drink up, I'm driving.'

  Wes Lyedecker felt he should have felt more. He had just witnessed a man's death for the first time in his life and all he could think about was Cyril Reese giving Bell his service weapon.

  Bell shifted on his stool. Over the course of the evening the scarlet on his neck had risen like the mercury in a thermometer till the tip of his nose glowed purple. "They won’t let me carry my Russian-made assault rifle so I'm going back to a wheel gun," he said.

  "Oh yeah?" said Wes.

  "A man needs some stopping power out there. You put two .357 magnum slugs in the X-ring at ten paces and that sucker is on the ground!" Bell slapped the bar, making a sound like a gunshot. "Ain't that right, Cosmo?"

  Cosmo looked at his watch. "Yeah, sure. Why the fuck not?"

  "It's like they say…" Bell turned to Lyedecker and waited.

  "What do they say?"

  "If the nine millimeter worked the Pope'd be dead!" Cosmo sounded like a sputtering outboard as he snorted through his congested nose. Bell leaned back and beamed. Wes wanted to slap him.

  Wes was grateful to Bell. Bell hadn't put his shit in the street with regard to losing his weapon to a much older man. Bell hadn't discussed the shoot with the other cops at all as far as Wes could tell. But a man had died an upclose bloody death at their hands. It was possible that they would be sued for wrongful death, suspended from the force, even charged with homicide. Humor seemed inappropriate.

  Bell tossed off his red beer and plunked down his pilsner glass. Cosmo immediately made him another, though Wes noticed it was mostly tomato juice.

  "They say in a firefight your brain clicks off and your training takes over," said Bell. "It's true. I trained with a six shooter, gawd, over twenty years ago in Yermo. That's what they taught you. Two shots and stop. You cain't be wastin' no ammo with a wheel gun. You might need it for other customers."

  Then you don't need to revert to a revolver, thought Wes, you just need to update your training. In a genuine life threatening situation Tactical Jack, Wes’Academy instructor, recommended getting it over with as quickly as possible. One continuous burst, not two shots and stop. Wes sipped his ice water.

  "Ol' PsychoSarge was a happy camper, wan't he?" said Bell.

  "Who?"

  "Sgt. Harrick. Catching us bad boys with a naked dead man, blood everywhere. I don't know who was more excited when they burst in, him or Ramsey the dog."

  Wes blew out a breath. He thirsted for a beer to bolster his courage but settled for a sip of ice water. "Why did you have to shoot him?" he asked. Wes continued before Bell could object. "Why didn't we just dogpile him? You could have jumped him when he was grabbing for my gun. Any number of times. I don't see that it was really all that necessary to, you know, shoot him."

  The bright red of Bell's cheeks contrasted nicely with his blue eyes, making them seem less watery as he gazed upon his rookie with a look of infinite patience. He waited a good five seconds before he said, "Are you through?"

  Wes placed his hands in his lap. Bell sat back on his barstool. Cosmo dunked pilsner glasses in the rinsing sink.

  "One," said Bell, thrusting an untapered index finger between Wes Lyedecker's eyes as if conducting a field sobriety test. "Say I pile on, jump in the fray. Now shithead has two guns to choose from and I'm too close to get a clean shot. Might waste my brand new partner by mistake."

  Wes remained silent.

  "Two." Bell held out two fingers. "The suspect was amped out of his skull." Bell withdrew his fingers. "Cop in Santa Barbara emptied 14 rounds into a speedfreek chasing him down the hall with a steel pipe. This was in the…one of those transient hovels on lower State." Bell's eyes wandered.

  Wes jumped in. "Sir, if you felt you were experiencing a life threatening situation that justified the use of deadly force…" Wes paused and hyperventilated, chasing words around his head. He would have to be quick. Bell was puckering up his lips to speak. "I believe I am correct in stating that departmental guidelines require an officer to command the surrender of the weapon before firing…at, you know, the subject with the weapon."

  Bell leaned his cheek on three fingers. "Did I say 'drop your weapon' before I fired?"

  "Well…"

  A thundercrack of fury flashed across Bell’s face. "Did I say 'drop your weapon' before I fired?!"

  "Yes. Yes, yes. But you didn't give him time to!"

  Bell swiveled to face Cosmo behind the bar. "This just happened. Off duty cop in Bakersfield's waiting in line at the supermarket. Nastyass homies burst in, waving gats, and demand dinero. Well, OK. Not worth a shootout in a public place to save a few hundred bucks, so the off duty o'ccer plays it cool. Then the head shithead pistolwhips a cashier when she's a little slow with the geet. The o'ccer unholsters his roscoe and, in full compliance with departmental regs, identifies himself as a police officer and says 'Drop your weapons', giving the homies all the time they need to unload their firearms in his direction." Bell pushed his glas
s into the gutter for another round. "The officer is now deceased."

  Bell looked over his right shoulder at Lyedecker. "No longer among the living, crossed the Stygian ferry, tits up, taking the dirt nap, wearing the pine kimono." Bell stood up and balanced himself on the steel tube that ringed the lower legs of the barstool, flung out his arms and, in the neon beer sign backlight, looking like Frankenstein's monster arisen from the slab, yelled, "He dead, Fred!"

  Cosmo filled Bell's mug with flat beer from the spill pitcher below the tap. He slid it across the bar and selected a quarter from Bell's dwindling pile of loot. Bell sat down and addressed his beer. "I hit that fuckstick, crown of the skull, the sweetest baton blow I ever landed in my life. I mean I parked that baby in the upper decks. And ol' Biker Bob just grinned. Like he liked it. Like…" Bell held his elbows out and spoke in a cockney accent. "Well, now…That's a bit of all right, that is!" Bell took a sip of flat beer. "That's when I knew I had to shoot him."

  This made sense to Wes, which infuriated him even more. He strummed his finger over the gouge wound on his palm. It was still raw. The naked man had been trying to tell him something. On the back of his brain plate Wes saw the man's pleading look as his hands gripped the butt of the nine millimeter in Wes Lyedecker's holster. He'd been begging.

  Wes said, "I think he wanted my gun to shoot himself," and Bell did a spit double take with a mouthful of beer. Cosmo stopped stacking bowls behind the bar. He looked from the cackling Bell to the morose Lyedecker. "It's gettin' late," said Cosmo. "Last call."

  Bell perked right up. "Stoli martini, straight up, one olive, vedy dry."

  Cosmo surveyed Bell's cash pile and said, "It's on the house." He turned to Lyedecker.

  "I'm good," said Wes.

  The cops watched Cosmo repeat his martini ritual for the umpteenth time. Cosmo set the brimming glass down on the unvarnished bar with great care. Bell braced his hands on the wood and bent his lips to the glass. He sipped. He faced the ceiling and shook his shaggy mane like a blue jay at a birdbath.

  Wes sucked on the ice cubes at the bottom of his glass. Looking down he saw Cyril Reese's nine millimeter sitting snugly in Bell's off duty holster. Was Bell rubbing it in? Surely he had a backup pistol at home he could have brought.

  After Sgt. Harrick collected Bell and Lyedecker's guns, he got on the radio, summoning detectives. Cyril Reese, who arrived just after Sgt. Harrick and witnessed their ritual emasculation, wasted no time. He pulled his nine millimeter from his holster and presented it to Officer Bell. Wes understood that this was a gesture of ultimate respect. A cop disarming himself in the presence of a superior to show support for his comrade. None of the other officers who crowded into room #12 thought to do the same for Wes Lyedecker. He crunched an ice cube. "So, what do you want me to say at the Shooting Review Board?"

  Bell reared back and looked offended. "Just tell the truth."

  Cosmo flicked off the overhead lights. The beer signs in the window buzzed neon reds and golds into the blueblack night.

  Chapter 5

  "'8/21/93. Officer Bell stood with both feet on the back of a handcuffed juvenile,'" said Chief of Police Frank Sunomoka, a taut, handsome man with a high forehead. "'He was suspended for three days following a citizen complaint.'" The Chief pushed up his reading glasses as he shuffled Officer Policy and Discipline reports inside a yellow file folder.

  Of course, thought Bell. The surfing on a Mexican call. Shitamoko would be sure to dredge that up.

  "'11/14/92. Officer Bell broke two ribs of a handcuffed female suspect in the process of placing her in the rear of his squad car.'"

  Bell almost laughed. Under the informal rules of the Chief's Shooting Review Board he was entitled to object at any time. But it was too stupid, and too goddamn early in the morning. The woman had been out of her skull on jug wine and misery, and well in excess of two hundred pounds.

  "'4/30/91. Officer Bell shot a burglary suspect in the scrotum at close range. The Shooting Review Board found the shooting unjustified and recommended a two week suspension.'"

  Bell snorted. First of all the guy was at least eight feet away. Many's the time cops and crooks emptied their weapons in an eight foot firefight and not a bullet landed. He had fired only twice at eight feet and hit a junkie bagman ripping off a drug store and brandishing a two-foot pigsticker in the dark of 3AM, NOT killed him (though prospects for a bouncing baby Junkie Jr. were sadly slim) and still took ten unpaid days on the beach.

  Bell pried the seat of his wool uniform pants from the sticky vinyl of the secretary's chair with an audible squeak. The chair had been wheeled in to accommodate the makeshift hearing. The moment he'd sat in that sticky chair Bell knew he should have brought a PORAC attorney. The Chief's Shooting Review Board was not a judicial proceeding. Testimony was unsworn. Bell had explained things to the rookie. There was no one still alive who would contradict his account of what had happened. But this Chief's Shooting Review Board was being held in the office of the Mayor.

  The rules governing the SRB permitted the officers being questioned to select one member of the panel. Bell nominated CJ the narc because he had the most lead in his ass on the crucial question of the dangers posed to cops dealing with crazed speedfreaks. The Chief of Police was the second member of the panel and entitled to select the third and final member. When Bell and Lyedecker arrived at the Chief's office at 0800 one week to the day from the fatal shoot and were told by a smiling PsychoSarge to report across the plaza to the City Administration Building, Room #100, they knew who that final member would be.

  Wes Lyedecker thought Mayor Lester T. Krumrie's office looked more like a den, with golf trophies on the shelves of the pressed oak bookcase and framed photos of the Mayor in garish golf outfits doing the grip-and-grin with retired athletes on the eighteenth hole. The Mayor's clear acrylic desk wasn't wide enough to accomodate all three members of the Board, so Chief Sunomoka and CJ the narc, a gaunt acne-pocked man with long orange-rinsed hair, sat angled in at the corners. Bell and Lyedecker sat facing them.

  The Chief looked to the Mayor, who was studying copies of the reports in Bell's jacket. Wes couldn't remember ever seeing a bald politician before. All the pols in Massachusetts had serious hair. And why did they call him 'Boss Hogg'? He wasn't fat. Perhaps it was the slight upturn to his nose that let you see up his nostrils.

  Boss Hogg raised his head from the reports. Though he never looked, he seemed to know that the Chief was waiting for him. The Mayor rapped his knuckles softly on the desk. "Quite an impressive record," he said. "Quite an impressive record." Mayor Krumrie laid his hands flat on the desk. One was suntanned, one was pale. Wes wondered why.

  The Mayor picked up a copy of form 5683-F and studied the first page. He turned to the Narrative Supplement. Wes studied the pale hand and saw a tan line at the wrist. Ah. Golf glove. "Officer Bell, in your report you say that Mr. Bjornstedt was unarmed."

  "Initially. Yes, sir."

  The Mayor turned a page. The Chief and CJ did likewise. "You say he, Mr. Bjornstedt, took Officer Lyedecker's gun." Boss Hogg looked up, showing his nostrils.

  "Yes, sir."

  Wes held his breath. The Mayor was going to ask if the naked man had ever proffered the weapon. Bell had insisted on 'the subject raised the weapon' in the Narrative Supplement, neglecting to mention that the subject had raised the weapon all the way to the ceiling. This was going to be the key question, Wes felt sure.

  "Yet the subject never fired that gun. Is that correct?"

  "Yes, sir," said Bell through his teeth.

  The Mayor tapped his pen on the last page of the Narrative Supplement. "Yet you fired three two-shot blasts…at extended intervals."

  "The intervals were very brief, sir."

  Boss Hogg fished around amongst the sheaves of papers splayed out in front of him. He found the affadavit he was looking for and held it up for Bell to see. "Well, according to a guest in a nearby room at the Coach House…" The Mayor read from the affadavit. "'There we
re two gunshots. Then a long pause, some yelling and two more gunshots…Another long pause, no yelling. Then two final gunshots.'" The Mayor lowered the affadavit to his desk and waited for an explanation.

  Bell worked a piece of grit from his eye. He didn't get it. Boss Hogg was a gold-plated card-carrying asshole, everyone knew that. But he liked to portay himself as pro-police. Why was he doing this with an election just around the corner?

  Wes felt both relieved and guilt-stricken. The Mayor had apparently assumed that 'raised' the weapon meant 'pointed' the weapon. If the gun were aimed at Bell then the intervals between shots hardly mattered. Their lie of omission on the Narrative Supplement had worked.

  "Mr. Mayor, sir," said Bell, folding his hands in his lap to keep himself from wagging his finger at the Napoleonic little prick. "I could have squeezed off six rounds in quick succession. I did not. The reason I did not is that, in a small, enclosed space, my partner close to the line of fire, an adjoining motel room next door, I wanted to neutralize the threat to our lives with the smallest possible expenditure of rounds." Bell ached to tell the famous story of the accidentally discharged pistol round that exited the wall of a house, shattered a kitchen window next door, ricocheted off a neighbor's forehead and zzzz'ed around and around a crystal bowl spinning foil-wrapped candies all over the linoleum. But all he said was, "Every round out can end up killing someone you have no interest in killing."

  "But you were interested in killing Mr. Bjornstedt."

  "No sir," replied Bell, his voice rising. "I was interested in getting him to drop the weapon." Bell paused. "Unfortunately it took six bullets to convince him."

  The Mayor sharpened his stare. The Chief dropped his head and shook it. CJ winced. But Bell grinned like a just-popped Jack in the Box, his head bobbing at Boss Hogg.