This Is What I Want

by Craig Lancaster

  “Mayor, I don’t—”

  Swarthbeck reared back and planted a steel-toed boot in Henrik Kelvig’s rib cage.

  THE CHIEF

  Adair passed a cup of coffee through the bars to the mayor. It’s a hell of a thing, she thought, to arrest your own boss. LaMer, Sakota, Eldrick Sloane—the whole lot of them—had looked at her as though she’d lost her damn mind when she slapped the cuffs on Swarthbeck. Adair didn’t see how she couldn’t.

  “That lady from the Times sure is interested in you,” she said.

  Swarthbeck hung his head and stared into his cup. “What’d you tell her?”

  “I said I’d be happy to release my report when it’s done. Probably Monday. She asked me to e-mail it to her.” The chief tapped the business card in her front pocket. “She’s leaving in the morning.”

  “This is silly, Adair,” he said. “Let me out.”

  “Is that an order, like last night?”

  Swarthbeck didn’t look up, didn’t say anything.

  “Sorry, Mayor,” she said. “Battery is a crime. Even for you.”

  He sloshed the coffee from his cup, dumping it at her feet. Adair jumped back.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you just ask Henrik if he plans to press charges? Why don’t you just see what he says to that? And after you get your answer, you ask yourself whether you think you can make this stick. Or whether you want to.”

  The words came out of him calm and evenly paced, as if he were reading a list of ingredients. Adair stepped back.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  He looked at her, poker-faced. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No shit you don’t know, Adair.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Fine, we’ll play it your way. Get me another cup of coffee, would you, please?”

  Officer Sakota radioed in, saying he was coming back to town with Henrik Kelvig.

  “What’s the damage?” Adair asked.

  “Some facial lacerations. Bruised ribs, probably from where the mayor kicked him. They stitched him up and said he was good to go.”

  “Hear anything about the others?”

  “Negative.”

  “OK, bring him in.”

  She exchanged text messages with LaMer, and he hadn’t heard anything, either. When she told him what the mayor had said, LaMer wrote back, Well, he’s got a point.

  What point?

  Henrik won’t cooperate.

  Why do you say that?

  He just won’t.

  What in the blue blazes is with this town? Adair wondered. She paced the floor, trying to work the angles through in her head. She didn’t much care for where she kept landing.

  Her phone buzzed. LaMer again.

  Listen.

  Yeah? she typed.

  Let Swarthbeck go.

  No.

  Now the phone rang. She punched up the call. “What?”

  “He isn’t going anywhere,” LaMer said. “Let him go for tonight. You can always cite him later, if that’s what you want to do.”

  She hung up on him, then resumed pacing. She stopped at the coffeepot and filled the mayor’s cup. When she caught Swarthbeck out of the corner of her eye, watching her, she stopped and considered her options, and she realized, again, that she didn’t have any that appealed to her. She reared back and threw the cup against the cinder block wall, where it shattered, leaving an angry brown splatter.

  The New York Times, Saturday, August 1, 2015

  That incident, as it turned out, wasn’t the biggest challenge Chief Underwood faced during Jamboree weekend. During the Saturday town parade, the centerpiece of the celebration, the proceedings were brought to an abrupt halt when Henrik Kelvig, the 55-year-old brother of Sam Kelvig, attacked his brother on the viewing stand. Sam Kelvig came out of it with a concussion after taking a glancing blow to the head from a tire iron, and Henrik Kelvig was injured in a subsequent attack by enraged townspeople, among them the town’s mayor, John Swarthbeck.

  Mr. Swarthbeck, 62, a larger-than-life character who has led the town for the past thirty-three years, was cited for his role in the brawl and paid a small fine. A few hours after he was briefly detained by Underwood, Swarthbeck was making rounds during a downtown concert. While declining to go into specifics, he suggested that he was merely acting according to a code widely followed in Grandview.

  “We take care of our own, and we take care of our own problems,” he said. “If I have a problem with you, I’m going to take it up with you. If you have a problem with me, I’ll expect the same.”

  Asked if he considered that a recipe for lawlessness, Mr. Swarthbeck said, “On the contrary, I think it’s a recipe for politeness. That’s the problem with the world today: nobody gets called out for the things they do wrong. In Grandview, we’ll do that. And we’ll still love you afterward. A pretty nice way to live, don’t you think?”

  SATURDAY NIGHT

  THE MAYOR

  Swarthbeck sauntered out of the Grandview police station, gave the first gaggle of partiers a stern look that sent them back to their own drinks and their own business, crossed the street, and slipped into the Sloane Hotel. He hooked a hand under Joe LaMer’s arm as the deputy passed him in the foyer.

  “Alfonso,” the mayor said. “He’s talking out of turn.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “He’ll be at the Double Musky. He doesn’t wander far.”

  Giving LaMer his leave, the mayor pushed through the double doors of the restaurant, found Eldrick Sloane, and whistled. When Sloane looked up, the mayor rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, and Sloane nodded.

  “Hey, Mayor,” a voice called out from the filled tables in the restaurant. Swarthbeck knew the voice and turned to meet it. “Was there a jailbreak?”

  A nervous titter moved through the room.

  “Eat a dick,” Swarthbeck said, and then he left.

  Officer Sakota had brought Henrik Kelvig in just as Adair was wrapping up the mayor’s paperwork. To move it along and to give Adair a win he knew she was dying for, Swarthbeck had agreed to a disorderly conduct charge and a citation, fifty-five bucks at the county courthouse in Sidney. He figured he could live with that, and he’d noted with some pleasure the relief on the police chief’s face that he wouldn’t be fighting it.

  “Mr. Kelvig, I’m going to have to detain you here while I finish this up, then we’ll book you,” she’d said, escorting Henrik into the cage.

  When she came back, Swarthbeck said, “Can I talk to him?”

  “Only if he wants to talk to you.”

  The mayor had approached the cage on tentative feet. It was a testament to just how erratic Henrik was that Swarthbeck didn’t know what response he was going to get. They’d tangled a couple of times over the years, nothing too serious, and if Henrik were in his right mind, he wouldn’t put up a fuss about this. But then, who in his right mind attacks a man with a tire iron while a thousand or so people are watching?

  “Henrik.”

  The elder Kelvig brother, his body lithe and hard, like he was made out of barbed wire, kept his head low but acknowledged Swarthbeck.

  “Mayor.”

  “Sorry it came to this,” Swarthbeck said.

  Adair reared up her head. “You can still press charges if you want, Mr. Kelvig.” Swarthbeck yanked around and glared at her. Dirty pool.

  “No, no charges.” Henrik looked now at the mayor. “How’s Sam?”

  “I think he’s OK. A little rattled.” They both looked to Adair, who acknowledged the information with a nod.

  “I shouldn’t have done it.”

  That drew a chuckle from the mayor. “No shit, you shouldn’t have done it. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “He’s not your lawyer, Mr. Kelvig,” Adair said. “Yo
u don’t have to answer that.”

  “Adair, please,” the mayor said.

  Henrik leaned forward and cupped his forehead in his hands.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a long story with me and Sam. Long time. A lot of frustrations and arguments. I just snapped. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  Swarthbeck moved closer, till his ample gut was protruding through the bars. He slipped his hands around them up top.

  “Well, don’t let it worry you too much,” he told Henrik. “You’re in a mess, but it’s the sort of mess that maybe resolves itself. Do you need a beer or something?”

  Adair dashed over, her angry strides echoing through the room. “No, he does not need a beer.” She slapped a piece of paper into the mayor’s hand. “Here’s your ticket. Time for you to leave.”

  SAM

  Sam leaned his bandaged head against the passenger window and watched the beet fields rush past. A slight concussion, the doctor had said. Sam took issue with that word, “slight.” He didn’t think anyone should be in the business of discounting bruises to the brain. The doctor had smiled, his lips forming two thin lines, and said, “What I mean, Mr. Kelvig, is that you can go home. It could have been a lot worse.”

  For the life of him, Sam wasn’t sure how Henrik had missed with the brunt of the tire iron. Maybe it was just dumb luck. Maybe Sam had moved slightly, or maybe Henrik had lost his nerve. In any event, Sam still didn’t see how it qualified as slight. He’d been out, hadn’t he? A more precise shot would have fractured his skull, or maybe killed him. A hell of a thing this falling out with Henrik had become. He wondered if he was going to have to watch his back from now on. He sure hadn’t seen this one coming.

  “I don’t feel right, leaving Mama there,” he said. Damn, his head hurt, like a cinder block wall had been dropped behind his eyes.

  “Samuel’s with her,” Patricia said. “She’s sleeping. They said she’d be OK.” He looked at her. She held the steering wheel with both hands, and her fingers fidgeted.

  She found him with a nervous glance. “What’s happening to us?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, all of us.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  He turned back to the window. They were halfway home now. The doctor had prescribed rest and acute attention to Sam’s condition. If one little thing changed, they were to come back right quick. Patricia had been instructed to wake him every few hours and run him through a battery of questions: name, address, favorite book, whatever.

  “How’s Samuel getting home?” he asked.

  “Megan Riley is there with him. She said she’d bring him back.”

  “Megan Riley.” Sam said it with some pep in his voice, a decision he instantly regretted as his head throbbed disapproval.

  “Relax. They were talking at the parade.”

  “This is good.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s good that they’re being friendly. I always liked that girl. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “About what?”

  “About what you’re getting your hopes up about.”

  He nestled into the bucket seat. “You think you know me so well,” he teased.

  “You have no idea.”

  He reached for her right hand, pulled it off the wheel. “Don’t,” she protested, but he’d made up his mind. He brought her hand down to the console and he held it, massaging her knuckles under his thumb.

  “When was the last time you drove?”

  “When it was you and me?” she asked.

  “Yes, silly.”

  “Because I drive a lot. Every day.”

  “You know what I mean, silly girl.”

  She laughed and held his hand, and he squeezed hers tight.

  “I’m thinking maybe the Denver trip, a couple of years ago,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  Denver. What a fiasco that had turned out to be. A blown water pump in nowhere Wyoming cost them a day and the Neil Diamond concert he’d hoped to take her to. Even back then, he could feel the distance moving into their marriage and he’d glommed onto the trip as a sort of last-ditch play to show her he still cared. They’d come home tired and hot, several hundred dollars lighter, and scraping at each other, and that had continued until, well, now. Sometimes it seemed that some low-boil quarrel was their baseline condition.

  She let go of his hand and brought hers back to the wheel. “What are you going to do about Henrik?”

  “Not much I can do. He’s the cops’ problem now.”

  “Do you think he wanted to kill you?” Her voice wobbled through the question.

  “I don’t know.”

  For as long as Sam could remember, that had been the incomplete answer where Henrik was concerned. When you love someone—and Sam figured he did love his older brother, at least in the obligatory sense that being family conveys—it can be much harder to divine his motivation. A stranger comes after Sam with a tire iron, yes, it’s attempted murder, plain as day. His troubled brother is the assailant, and he looks—even hopes—for a more satisfying explanation.

  But what if this is as good as it gets?

  Sam’s memory flashed on a night during the winter of his fourteenth year, when Henrik came in from feeding calves. Sam, already asleep in the cramped room they shared, came awake and cursed Henrik for turning on the light. Henrik, in turn, had gouged a finger into Sam’s eye, and the melee that resulted drew Big Herschel into the room, squinting, promising to crack the head of the next boy who said so much as boo. That night ended with Henrik whispering threats into the darkness between their beds. He’d always led with his fists, and Sam had always been afraid of him.

  Even now, Sam was afraid.

  “I wish my dad were here,” he said.

  They hit the town limits, and Sam told Patricia to stick to the main drag and take him to the police station.

  “Are you sure?” she asked as she pulled into a parking spot just beyond the roped-off barrier of downtown.

  “Yeah.”

  “Doctor said you need to get some rest.” She put her hand on his arm as he reached for the door handle.

  “I won’t be long.”

  Sam waved at some early nighttime gatherers and endured the one-beat-too-long stares at his bandaged head, and then he slipped inside the low-slung building. Phil Sakota leaned against a wall just inside the door, a cigarette vibrating in his twitchy, dangling hand.

  “Henrik in there?” Sam asked.

  Sakota nodded. “How’s your head?”

  “Dented. Adair’s in there, too?”

  “Yep.”

  Sam grasped the handle of the door.

  “Mayor just left,” Sakota said. “He roughed up your brother pretty good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good for him.”

  By the time Sam made it through the door, took the inventory of the place, and fended off Chief Underwood’s wave of objections—“Relax, Adair, I’m not pressing charges,” he’d said. “Let the county attorney decide”—Henrik was in full hangdog mode. Sam squared a folding chair in front of the pen and sat down.

  “Look at me, Henrik.”

  Haltingly, Sam’s brother lifted his angular face. Sam saw not the wild irrationality of the past few days. This was fear and reckoning. Realization. This was Henrik absorbing what he’d done, showing remorse. Sam had seen this look before.

  “I’m sorry,” Henrik said.

  Sam crossed his arms on his chest. “You always are after the damage has been done.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sam felt his resolve crumble, same as always, no matter how much he wanted to stick it to Henrik. He knew the issues too well. He swallowed hard and steadied himself. There were things to say.
<
br />   “Mama’s down at the hospital. You sorry for that, too?”

  “Is she OK?”

  “She’s an old woman who’s had enough of your bullshit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  Henrik pivoted away from his gaze. Sam dropped his arms and leaned back. His head throbbed. Patricia would be waiting, growing impatient.

  “Why now, Henrik?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why’d you decide now that I’ve screwed you over? Are you taking your medicine?” Sam figured he knew the answer. The biggest losses in Henrik’s life coincided with his walkabouts from the pharmaceutical straight and narrow. It had been hard enough to convince his brother to see someone, to get at a reason for his breaks with reality and its demands for proper behavior. But that was only half the fight.

  Henrik turned back to him.

  “I had the five grand,” Henrik said. “I was working a rig around Stanley, and I had it. You came out to pick it up—”

  “I never went out to Stanley.”

  “—and we were going to be square, and you didn’t do what you said you’d do.”

  “I never went out to Stanley, Henrik.”

  “Where’d the money go, then?”

  Sam threw his hands in the air. What kind of question was that? It could be anywhere. It might never have existed. Henrik’s fleeting acquaintance with his right mind made for a constellation of possibilities.

  “I never went to Stanley,” Sam said again. “You never gave me any money.”

  “That’s—”

  Sam put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Don’t you get it? It didn’t happen. Just like Joanna never stepped out on you, Dad never tried to get you fired, and on and on. It didn’t happen, Henrik. Have you been taking your medicine?”

  Henrik ran a hand down his face, squeezing at his eye sockets. “Don’t remember.”

  “Well, goddamn you for this.”

  They made it home, Sam telling the tale with silence. Patricia parked the car and prodded him to get inside and lay his head down.