RCC01 - Under a Raging Moon

by Frank Zafiro

  When he arrived in River City, he found some of both. Of course, it was the riches he noticed first. He recalled the first time he stood in a Safeway store and struggled not to weep at the shelves bulging with food, coffee, and toilet paper. America was wealthy indeed.

  He quickly enrolled in English classes and studied for his citizenship along with Olga, his wife. Their son, four-year-old Pavel (they called him Paul now), didn’t remember Minsk and as he grew older, his appreciation for America obviously did not mirror that of his parents. Now ten years old, Paul spoke English better than both his parents and without an accent.

  America was good to him and his family. He could apply for any job he wanted and the best applicant usually got the job. His work as farmer in Minsk didn’t qualify him for many jobs here in America. The convenience store provided a great opportunity for him. More importantly, his son could go to an American school, learn English and become an American. Yes, America was good to him.

  Of course, Peter saw some of the evils, too. Six years in this country and this was the best job he had been able to get so far. It paid just above minimum wage, with a few extra cents an hour for working the evening shift. Peter got off at eleven, in time to meet Olga at the bus stop and ride home. She worked cleaning rooms at a local motel.

  Crime. That was the biggest difference he noticed between the two countries. Not language, philosophy, or government. Crime. In Minsk, crime existed but as a subtle presence, if not outright rare. KGB and local police made sure of that. Penalties were severe. People still disappeared, even as of six years ago. Here in America, the justice system seemed almost worthless. People shoplifted all the time from the store where he worked, or did gas drive-offs, and nothing happened. Nothing could be done. He felt sorry for the police, who had to deal with the same criminals again and again. Even if they caught them, the judges set them free. It was shameful. America was wealthy, but she had too much freedom.

  Peter cleaned the counters around the register for the fifteenth or twentieth time that night. He took pride in his work. He hoped the store manager, a gaunt man with a red nose that reminded Peter of his Uncle Ivan, would notice and promote him to night manager. They could use the money.

  He considered going to the supply closet to get the broom and sweep the floor when a customer entered. The man appeared shaken. Peter wondered if he had been involved in a car accident or something. Even though it was against the rules, he allowed people to use the business telephone for such things.

  The customer’s long black hair fluttered in the artificial breeze created by the closing door.

  Peter started to smile a greeting, when the man shoved a dark gun in his face, touching him on the end of the nose. Peter’s hands flew up instinctively.

  “Give me the fucking money in the register. Now!”

  Not taking his eyes off the man’s face, his fingers fumbled with the register. The drawer slid open.

  “All of it, in a bag. Let’s go.”

  What a terrible scar, Peter thought absently, shoving bills into a plastic bag. Flat eyes, like those of a shark, peered out from beneath thick eyebrows. The lids beneath them twitched rapidly.

  Cold realization knotted his gut.

  This man wants to kill me.

  “The money, asshole. Let’s go!” The robber pressed the gun against his forehead.

  It was then Peter remembered something from the newspaper. This is Scarface. He’d robbed almost a dozen stores.

  Peter’s heart raced and his thoughts turned dark. Is he going to shoot me now? I can’t afford a bed at the hospital.

  The man snatched the bag from his hand. He glared at Peter with the eyes of a predator. Peter wanted to close his eyes and pray, but he couldn’t move.

  I have come all the way from Russia to die in River City, Washington. How tragic. Dosteovsky would appreciate the irony.

  The man removed the barrel of the gun from Peter’s forehead and pressed it roughly against his chin. A single, stoic tear slid down Peter’s face as he waited. He now had the presence of mind to ask God silently to care for Olga and Paul.

  The man paused half a breath, then pushed the barrel into Peter’s chin again. He could see the man’s finger twitch as it pressed against the trigger. He repeated his prayer quickly, hoping that God would hear it before he was killed.

  Please, God. Care for my wife and child. Please, God—

  In a rush, the man lowered the gun and ran from the store. The bell dinged to signal his parting.

  Peter stood stock-still, wondering that he was alive and thanking God over and over again. He looked at the clock. 11:10 PM. Every moment from now on was a gift from God.

  His gift was already two minutes old when he thought to push the robbery alarm button located under the register drawer.

  2310 hours

  Threes and sevens. Coffee breaks and meal breaks in police radio speak. Some days you lived for them.

  Katie MacLeod sat with Matt Westboard, gingerly picking at her sub sandwich. Westboard devoured half of his in two large bites. Their dinner so far had been a quiet one, radio chatter at a minimum on a slow graveyard shift. She commented on that.

  Westboard nodded as he took a long sip on his soda.

  “Nothing like last week,” she said. “Scarface. And Elliot.”

  He continued to nod and sip.

  Jesus, Katie thought. Is he ever going to breathe? She picked at an olive and popped it in her mouth.

  With a sigh, Westboard came up for air. “That call was intense. That idiot had serious problems with women.”

  “Yeah. Especially me.” Katie tried to be casual. “I thought I was going to have to shoot him.”

  “Might’ve had to,” Westboard agreed. “He was all jacked up. Meth would be my bet. You found some on him, right?”

  Katie nodded.

  “You should have seen the girlfriend. He stabbed her three times.” Westboard pointed at his own body, pantomiming the injuries. “Once in the arm and twice in the belly. She had some defensive wounds, too, on her hands.”

  “I never did figure out what the fight was about,” Katie said.

  “Who knows?” Westboard said with a shrug. “You know what she told me on the way to the hospital?”

  “No. What?”

  “That he didn’t do it. She came up with some crazy story about a burglar.” He shook his head in disgust and took another long draught of his soda.

  Katie frowned. Stupid woman. Then she asked, “Did you think you were going to have to shoot?”

  Westboard met her eyes. She wondered if he could sense her inner doubt.

  “It was a fifty-fifty chance,” he said. “Either he had a problem with anybody there or he had a problem with you in particular. Given his attitude about women and the names he was calling you, I kinda figured he might listen to me.”

  “What if he hadn’t?”

  Westboard smiled, but kept his eyes on hers. He formed a gun with his thumb and forefinger and pointed it at her. “Little red dot.” He dropped his thumb like a hammer. “Bang. Big red dot.”

  Katie gave him a small smile, but his antics didn’t ease her doubt.

  Westboard took a huge bite of his sub sandwich. “Yu evah heah abow Huk?” he asked with his mouth full.

  “What?!”

  Westboard grinned while he chewed. She recognized his poor table manners were an act intended to lighten her mood.

  He swallowed. “I said, did you ever hear about the guy they called Hulk?”

  “No, not really. Wasn’t he some guy that quit a year or so before I was hired?”

  “Yeah. His name was Joe Grushko. Everyone called him Hulk because he went about six-four and easily two-fifty. Solid muscle. He still holds the bench-press record at the station gym. Anyway, you ever hear why he quit?”

  Katie shook her head, not really interested. She picked absently at a piece of shredded lettuce.

  Westboard went on. “Hulk was not afraid of anything that I could see. Getting
into a fight around him was like being front row at a WWF bout. Guys and furniture flying everywhere.” He waved his arms for emphasis. “So one night, he goes on a suicidal with a gun call. They get to the house and there is this little five-foot, ninety-pound woman waving a Beretta nine-em-em around. Hulk had a dead drop on her when she pointed the gun at him, but he didn’t fire. He said later that he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t shoot a woman, even though she had a gun.”

  “What happened?” Katie asked, her interest piqued.

  “She capped off a round at him and missed. He still didn’t return fire. You know Tom Chisolm, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Chisolm did her with the shotgun. One shot. Nearly ripped her in half.” Westboard leaned back in his chair. “Justified shooting, case closed. But Hulk turned in his badge.”

  Katie nodded but sighed inwardly. This did not exactly make her feel any better.

  “You would have done it, Katie,” Westboard said, his voice quiet but firm. “I saw your finger on the trigger, and I saw the steel in your eyes. I never doubted for a second that you would have dropped him.”

  Katie felt a tear well up and turned her head, wiping it away and composing herself. “I didn’t want to,” she muttered. She felt momentarily stupid for crying in front of Westboard. It was so…female. But it was better than talking to her boyfriend Kevin about it. At least Westboard understood the job. And he listened. Kevin didn’t do either one.

  “No one wants to,” Westboard told her. “But you would have. Don’t feel bad. Everyone wonders a little bit. Everyone. I wondered that day with Elliot. Hulk wondered. I’m sure Tom Chisolm wondered right before he blasted apart that woman who was shooting at another officer.”

  Katie turned back to face him, composed. She looked around the sandwich shop to see if anyone had noticed her moment of weakness.

  “Don’t second-guess yourself, Katie,” Westboard told her. “You’re a good cop. You’ll always do what you have to do.”

  Katie took a deep breath and let it out, wanting to believe him. Knowing she should. Only time would tell. “It’s just been a bad couple of days, is all.” She shrugged. “First the deal with the robber and then that meth freak Elliot.”

  Westboard nodded, his eyes sympathetic. “When it rains, it pours.”

  The unmistakable sound of an alarm tone came across both radios.

  2312 hours

  Lieutenant Alan Hart sat in his office, idly twirling his gold pen in his fingers. He’d worked late, ostensibly to catch up on FTO reports, but found himself lost in thought more often than not. After reading Payne’s first weekly report since the transfer to Officer Glen Bates, he was pleased to see that the recruit’s marks had increased over those Chisolm had given him. They weren’t stellar, but improved.

  Chisolm. What a burnout. Hart hated the way the man was so condescending toward him. I’m a lieutenant. Chisolm only had one stripe on his sleeve, making him a Patrolman First Class, an automatic promotion and basically just a pay raise over a slick-sleeved patrolman. No authority or extra duties. What a loser. Chisolm hadn’t tested for promotion in fourteen years on the job. Yet he sauntered around, acting like the cat’s meow.

  Hart snorted. Well, he put that cat’s meow in his place last week, hadn’t he? And when Payne made probation, Hart’s judgment over Chisolm’s would be vindicated.

  Some men were just not born to lead other men.

  He stared absently at the promotion list for Captain. He’d heard rumors that Captain Rainey would retire before Thanksgiving. That opened up a slot. He occupied the number two position on the list, directly behind Lieutenant Robert Saylor.

  Saylor. Hart’s lip curled. Saylor liked Chisolm, which pretty much summed up Hart’s opinion of him. He had no respect for any officer who curried favor with his troops.

  Still, list position was only worth sixty percent on the promotions. Twenty percent went to seniority, negligibly in Hart’s favor. The other twenty points were awarded by the patrol captain, based on performance reviews. He needed to find a way to impress the patrol captain. It was as simple as that.

  But how? Reott was an old school, cigar-chomping leader who prized action above intellect. Hart knew he favored Saylor over him. So what could he do to reverse that trend?

  With a barely perceptible sigh, Hart turned back to the FTO reports. He read absently about a brand new recruit named Willow. The radio, tuned to channel one, was turned down to the point of a whisper, but the high-pitched alarm tone came through clear. Hart turned up the radio.

  “All units, hold-up alarm at 1643 E. Francis. Suspect is a single, white male, unknown clothing, long black hair, bearded, with a scar on left side of his face. Suspect displayed black handgun, then fled southbound on Pittsburg.”

  Hart sighed in exasperation. That Scarface robber was making a mockery of River City PD. Already this week, the local paper ran a front-page story on the department’s seeming inability to nab Scarface. Shawna Matheson, the bubble headed blonde reporter on Channel Five, ended every broadcast from the scene of a convenience store with some kind of subtle barb at the cops.

  “Units responding on Francis. Time delay is three minutes.”

  Hart let out a mild curse, listening as the units drove into the area and set up a wide perimeter. A K-9 officer responded as well, but Hart knew it was useless. Too much of a delay.

  Someone has to do something about this! He raged, then stopped suddenly.

  Of course. Someone did.

  He set aside Willow’s report and put a yellow notepad in front of him.

  Someone should form a task force and work tirelessly until Scarface was brought down. Someone like him. Someone who would be the next captain on this department.

  Lt. Hart wrote feverishly, drafting a plan to submit to the patrol captain in the morning.

  2318 hours

  Anthony Giovanni sat at the bar, sipping his light beer. Duke’s, essentially a cop bar, drew most of its business from off-duty or retired cops, their families and those who wanted to be around cops. This included some wannabes, usually coolly rebuffed. Others just hung out, never asking a cop to tell a story and frequently found themselves rewarded with a doozy. The clientele also included some badge bunnies, which was exactly what Gio was talking to at the moment.

  She was a redhead, that soft strawberry hair rather than the wiry, copper color. Her green eyes caught his from the end of the bar almost forty minutes and a drink ago, and now they’d been dancing the pick-up waltz for a steady half-hour. She made the first sexual innuendo and after that, Gio set the hook.

  When Johnny asked if they wanted another round, he looked at her questioningly.

  “Okay,” she said. “Unless you want to go somewhere else.”

  Gio glanced at the rise and fall of her bosom for a long second then met her eyes and flashed his best smile. “Just the tab, Johnny. Thanks.”

  He paid Johnny and tipped him well. Johnny always clued him in on the new bunnies, so Gio always took care of him. As he slid off the barstool, he found something was missing. It took him a few moments before he realized what it was.

  He felt no excitement.

  The realization was a strange one for Gio. This chesty, beautiful, redheaded woman had consented to go home with him, yet he found himself almost bored before it had even happened. The promise of her breasts seemed empty.

  At the door, he brushed past a woman that stopped him dead in his tracks. Their gaze met and locked for a moment. Her pale blue eyes struck him like a punch in the chest. Then she continued past him. Shorter than the redhead behind him (Gio struggled to remember her name was Tiffany), this woman had blonde hair, a trim figure and walked with confidence.

  Gio watched her go, feeling a tug, surprised to feel it come from his chest and not his loins.

  Those eyes…

  Tiffany, his hand in hers, stepped ahead of him and pulled him toward the door. Giovanni glanced at her and the irritation on her face barely registered wi
th him as they left the bar.

  2322 hours

  From his vantage point in the corner of the bar, Karl Winter watched Gio leave with the redhead, while at the same time ogling the blonde. Winter shook his head. Seated with his back to the door, Ridgeway hadn’t noticed.

  “What?” Ridgeway asked, turning to look.

  “Gio just left with the redhead,” Winter told him, glad he hadn’t taken Ridgeway’s bet earlier. “On the way out, he was eye-fucking the blonde over there.”

  Ridgeway looked at the blonde, nodding with approval. “Good taste,” he said, then turned to face Winter. “Poor boy thinks too much with his little head instead of his big one.”

  “A wine glass and a woman’s ass,” Winter quoted the maxim that every policeman had been told since time immemorial. Those were the two things that would get a cop into more trouble than anything else. He wondered if they told the women officers something similar. Or if they had to.

  Winter noticed Sgt. David Poole seated at the end of the bar. He considered inviting the sergeant to join them, but the way Poole hunched over his drink and the sour look on his face told Winter he didn’t want the company. Besides, Ridgeway seemed particularly gloomy tonight and one dark mood at the table was enough for Winter.

  Ridgeway drained the bottle of Budweiser. “You want a shot?” he asked Winter.

  Winter shook his head.

  Ridgeway shrugged. “Forget it, then. Can’t drink that shit alone.”

  Winter sipped his beer, his second. Ridgeway waved to Rachel, the waitress, for his fourth. After patiently waiting for almost two hours, Winter sensed that Ridgeway was about to crack.

  Ridgeway paid Rachel and sipped the beer. His eyes avoided Winter’s. “Alice is having an affair,” he announced; head down, looking at the table. “She wants a divorce.”

  Winter pressed his lips together and sighed. Ridgeway’s first marriage had ended in divorce after eleven years when they both realized they hated each other. Vindictive as hell, his first wife, Cynthia, took him to the cleaners. Ridgeway was still bitter over it. Two years passed before he met Alice and things softened up. Now he and Alice had four years together. Winter guessed the problems had begun about a year ago when Alice, fourteen years younger than Ridgeway, stopped coming to platoon functions with him.