THUGLIT Issue Two, page 9
The guy I’d put the bullets into hadn’t moved in the ten minutes or so it had taken me to work up the strength to make a try for the door.
I planned on just sitting there, waiting for the emergency personnel to find me on their own, but there are a number of doors leading off the main hallway and I don’t want to take the risk of them checking every room until they find me passed out from blood loss.
Besides, there’s always the chance the siren isn’t coming from an ambulance. I want to be out in the open, with my service pistol ready, in case a cop car arrives first and I have to aim the business end of the gun between ill-formed talons.
*****
The police station was next to the City Hall, the whole municipal complex sharing a central parking lot, typical of suburban towns in New Jersey.
We passed a young guy dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase, on our way to the patrol car. The guy couldn’t have been more than two years older than me. He looked nervous, like he was going to his first real job interview after college. Scanlon stared him down, almost forcing the guy off the concrete walkway as we passed him.
Scanlon didn’t even turn to make sure he was out of hearing distance, then he said, “That was the Boy Wonder; the guy cutting off our budget like a tourniquet.”
“I thought you said the Mayor was responsible for the budget shortfall,” I said.
“He is. That’s him. I heard some corn-fed idiots elected an eighteen-year old Mayor in the Midwest someplace, but Wonder Boy’s the youngest in New Jersey. I think he just turned twenty-four.”
We stopped before a beat-up police cruiser. Rust touched places on the hood. The tire grooves were worn nearly smooth. Red-colored duct tape covered a hole in the light on the top of the car.
“She don’t look like much, but she can haul ass,” Scanlon said, the screech from the driver’s side door almost drowning out his words as he opened it and plopped down behind the steering wheel.
There were a few other black and whites scattered around Scanlon’s chariot, each of them in similar condition. The car started up after a couple turns of the key, and Scanlon began the tour of my new beat.
I hadn’t been to Keansport since my parents brought me to the local amusement park on the Raritan Bay when I was a kid. The only thing I remember about the trip was the carcasses of dead horseshoe crabs vying for beach space with abandoned tires and washed-up hospital waste. I’d hoped that my recollections of the town that’d sworn me in as a police officer were exaggerations of a child's overactive imagination. Reality was more pitiful viewed through the eyes of an adult.
After decades of decline, most of the towns ringing the Raritan Bay were supposed to be in an economic upswing. Fast ferry services across the bay providing thirty-minute commutes to downtown Manhattan brought in ambitious young businesspeople with a thirst for renovation on their weekends.
The economic spurt had somehow missed the town of Keansport. The average house was a shotgun shack originally built in the fifties for summer tourists. Sometime during the late sixties or early seventies entire families decided to move in full time. Most of the fires dealt with by the volunteer fire company were caused by space heaters attended by drunks. The locals couldn’t afford permanent heating solutions.
Scanlon pulled up in front of a small general store in the downtown area. A couple of men, loitering on bar stools outside a bar across from the place, quickly hid their beer bottles behind them.
I started toward them, but Scanlon grabbed me gently by the shoulder. “I’m not in the mood to bust balls. I want to get you something.” He led me into the store.
Scanlon smiled at the girl manning the counter. She looked like she was about sixteen, dressed in an oversized hockey jersey that wasn’t oversized enough to conceal her pregnancy. “Can I get two packs of Marlboros, hon?”
She grabbed three packs from the overhead rack, putting an opened one back before she set the two full packs down in front of Scanlon. I guess the opened one was for selling loosies, one at a time for a quarter a pop.
“You’ve got to be careful about the ruts on the sidewalks in this town,” Scanlon said on the way to our patrol car.
“Ruts?” I asked glancing at the sidewalk.
“Ruts worn in by girls too young to drive cars pushing around baby carriages.” Scanlon handed me a pack of cigarettes. “Here you go rookie.”
I ignored them, said, “I don’t smoke.”
“Drunks are probably the biggest problem you’re likely to run into on this beat. The only thing that can calm them down most times is more liquor. We can’t give them that, but a cigarette usually serves as a pacifier in a pinch. Besides, you’ll probably start if you don’t pick up any worse habits after a couple of years out on the street.”
He jammed the pack in my khaki-colored shirt pocket.
*****
Turns out Scanlon was wrong about one thing. I wound up having to deal with a lot worse things than pacifying a drunk. He was right about me taking up smoking though.
I shake one out of the pack, put it in my mouth and reach into my pocket for a lighter with the hand unoccupied by my service gun. I get the lighter working and take a deep drag. I pull myself together and crawl a couple feet down the hallway, trailing my blood behind me.
*****
“I’ve got to stop here for a second,” Scanlon said on my third day on the job. He parked the cruiser in front of a real estate office next to the convenience store where he’d purchased the cigarettes.
“I think I’ll join you. I’ve got to find a place to live in town.”
Scanlon looked over at me, amused. “Why would you want to live in this shithole?”
“Your department has a residency restriction. The application said you have to live in the town if you have a municipal job.”
“You’d be the first cop on the payroll to comply in thirty years. You can come in, but I wouldn’t worry about moving in, unless you’re into slumming.”
“I can’t afford much else on my salary.”
“Don’t worry too much about money,” he said as he eased out of the car. “Things have a way of working out.”
There was only one man in the real estate office. A balding guy dressed in an out-of-style suit with a tie that had been too wide in the seventies. He looked from Scanlon to me nervously.
“This is the new kid,” Scanlon said, introducing us.
I was surprised by the firmness of his hand when we shook.
“I’m thinking of getting someplace local,” I said.
The man laughed, looked from me to Scanlon again. “You really got me this time Scanlon.”
“I wish I did, but the kid’s serious.”
The man stopped laughing. “Maybe we can get you in on the…”
Scanlon gestured to a private office, said, “Let’s just work on getting something without too many roaches. I’ve got to talk to you in private.”
The man set me up in front of a computer. I scrolled through listings as he and Scanlon went into the office.
There were plenty of rentals in my price range, but I didn’t really want to live in a shotgun shack, or rent a garden-style apartment, and those seemed like my only choices based on the listings.
I looked up after giving up on finding something I liked, and saw Scanlon and the real estate guy arguing through the opened glass window of the agent’s office.
Scanlon looked out the window in exasperation at one point, noticing me watching the argument. He lowered the blinds while he stared at me. After about ten minutes of waiting for him, my eye wandered out onto the street. Looked like the men who had been drinking beers on the bar’s stoop on my first day hadn’t moved.
I headed across the street. The men looked up at me, nervous, hiding their beer bottles behind them except for one seated at a duct tape-covered stool he must have dragged out of the bar. Tattoos covered his arms, mostly of fantastic creatures: a couple of dragons, a gryphon, a feathered serpent. He looked up at me expectantly when I planted myself in front of him.
“It’s illegal to have an opened container of alcohol on the street,” I said.
The men shuffled to their feet, mumbling softly, started toward the bar entrance.
Not the guy with the tattoos though. “Why don’t you calm down and give us a break Kojak? We’re not bothering anyone,” he said. He looked me up and down and took a long pull from his Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle.
“You’re bothering me,” I said.
“Fuck off,” he said.
I smashed the bottle out of his hand with my baton, shattering the glass against the outside wall of the bar. He leapt out of his chair, started toward me.
“Got a problem Lester?” Scanlon said calmly. Lester stopped, the veins in his reddening forehead and thick arms bulging out.
I gave my head a half turn, keeping Lester in my line of site. Scanlon had come up behind me was looking at the scene with an amused smile.
“No problem,” Lester said, staring at me.
“I hate to contradict you, Les, but when one of my officers feels the need to draw his baton, we have a problem.” Scanlon came around my right side, said, “Up against the wall.”
Lester turned his head to his drinking buddies, smirked, spat on the ground, and smacked his palms on the bricks.
Scanlon shook his head at me, said, “Frisk him and we’ll run him in on a disorderly. But you’re doing the paperwork.”
Stapled to the wall next to Lester’s head was an ad for an apartment, a third-floor walk-up above the bar. I cuffed Lester and guided him into the back seat, then went back and ripped the paper off the plywood.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Scanlon said, as he maneuvered his bulk behind the driver's seat.
“Just what I need, a zealot for a neighbor,” Lester said from the back seat.
“Don’t forget to give him a cigarette before we bring him into the lockup,” Scanlon said.
*****
The closest thing to action I saw after arresting Lester was taking our almost daily drive by the real estate place. Scanlon would go in sometimes, leaving me in the car while he argued with the real estate man.
I asked him about it once. He said it was nothing to concern myself with, he was trying to buy a commercial property and he and the agent had a disagreement about the price.
A couple of the cops volunteered to help me move into my new apartment, but I turned them down. I didn’t have too much to move: a futon, my laptop and a TV.
On the last day of my rookie tour Scanlon led me to the back of the cruiser, popped the trunk and reached under the tire. He yanked out a plain brown paper bag.
“I know you’re a Boy Scout and all, but if you ever need a throw-down piece, this is untraceable.” He pulled a snubnosed .38 revolver out of the bag. The metal was dark-colored, the wooden grip worn. The handle looked like it was made of sun-bleached driftwood. “I just wanted you to know about it, since you’ll be using my rig at night.” Scanlon put the gun back in the bag and slid it under the tire.
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t say another word Plumber Boy. You keep spare toilet parts in your trunk for emergencies. This is the exact same thing.”
I didn’t say another word, but we both knew it wasn’t the same thing.
*****
Word got around the neighborhood that a cop had moved in. No one drank in front of the bar after we'd booked Lester. I kept my eye out for him, but because I was working overnight, I didn’t have too much of an opportunity to run into him, and I never got a call to go to the bar where he apparently spent most of his waking hours.
I did see him one Saturday afternoon though, when I was bringing some groceries in from my car. He was leaving the bar with one of his buddies. He glared at me as I fumbled for my keys, juggling the bags in my hand.
“Got a problem, Lester?” I said, placing the groceries on the ground. Neither of them looked drunk, and I wasn’t really in a mood to deal with him off-duty, but I couldn’t let him intimidate me.
“No problem officer,” Lester said. He and his buddy walked past me without saying another word.
*****
I’d been on the force six months, still settling in really, when I ran into the young Mayor. My girlfriend and I were on a date at The Dublin House in Red Bank. The guys surrounding the Mayor at the bar, clinking shot glasses together, were all dressed in expensive suits—except for the real estate agent Scanlon had been feuding with. He was dressed like he was stepping out to happy hour at the Regal Beagle in 1977.
The Mayor spilled Jägermeister all over his new suit, and noticed me watching him from my table as he wiped the alcohol off his shirt. My girlfriend excused herself to the bathroom. The Mayor said something to his drinking buddies and walked over to my table.
“How’re you settling into Keansport?” he said, swaying slightly in front of me, obviously drunk.
“No problems so far.”
“My buddies and I are celebrating.” A smile spread over his face.
“Congratulations, I guess.” I looked past him towards the bathroom, hoping he’d be gone before my date returned.
“Scanlon’s gonna be even harder to live with for a while.”
“I don’t see too much of him. We’re on different shifts.”
“You’re one lucky man. He’s gonna shit in his hat when he finds out I outbid him.”
My girlfriend hesitated as she approached our table. The Mayor looked at her and suddenly took on a façade of sobriety. He introduced himself and made some pleasant small talk. My girlfriend was charmed. I wasn’t.
He eventually rejoined his friends and sent over a bottle of wine to the table. He winked at us as the waiter popped the cork.
Just for kicks, I checked the wine list. A box from the supermarket would have set him back more.
*****
I was dead-tired after working overtime booking a belligerent drunk. It probably would have gone smoother, but I’d smoked the last of my cigarettes the night before. Therefore, I was unprepared when I picked him up out of his own puke on the boardwalk. My housekeys must have slipped out of my pocket while I changed into civilian clothes at the police station. Lucky for me, the landlord kept a spare key behind the bar.
It was almost eleven in the morning by the time I walked through the door into the dim light. The bar usually opened around 7am to cater to the fishermen coming in from the bay after a long night.
A girl and a man argued out of sight in a booth to my right. Four other men slumped around the bar, nursing draft beer. Their argument grew in tempo as I waited for my landlord to top off the guys around the bar before he went out back to retrieve my keys. The girl sounded frightened, so I headed over to the booth.
“Are you okay Miss?” I asked. She looked like she was probably too young to imbibe legally. A large glass sat in front of her. I thought it was just a glass of coke, but I'd have bet she had some rum laced in it.
The guy she was arguing with had his back to me. “Why don’t you mind your own business, asshole?” he said, turning to face me.
Lester’s eyes widened when he saw me standing behind him.
“I’m off duty Lester, but I’m not gonna to let you shout at this young lady in a public place.”
“No problem officer, I was leaving anyway.” He grabbed the sides of the table with both hands and jerked it toward him, spilling the drink in the girl’s lap as he pushed himself up.
Maybe it was because I’d had to deal with him before, maybe it was because of the cheap shot with the girl…maybe it was just because I was tired and a bad mood. I tackled him to the floor and started working on his head with my fists.
Scanlon must have been across the street yelling at the real estate guy, because he and another cop were pulling me off Lester before I could do any real damage.
“Ease up partner,” Scanlon said, holding my arms against my side with a bear hug.
The other cop cuffed Lester, then hauled him to his feet. Lester didn’t look too bad; he’d gotten away with only a split lip. He said, “I’ve got a whole room of witnesses. I’m gonna sue your ass for police harassment.”
“Why don’t you go upstairs and relax,” Scanlon said, pulling his notebook out of his pocket. “I’ll stop by after getting a couple of statements.”
I went to my apartment, but didn’t get any rest. The pot of coffee was half empty by the time Scanlon knocked on the front door. I invited him in and poured him a cup.
“One of the assholes at the bar is a buddy of Lester’s. The girl says you attacked without any provocation. Everybody else says they didn’t see anything.” Scanlon sat down awkwardly on my futon, took a sip, said, “Shithead’s gonna press charges.”
Just what I needed—a brutality charge with a little over six months on the job. Not the precedent I wanted to set.
“Don’t look so glum kid. These things have a way of working themselves out.” Scanlon said. He lumbered off the futon, put his coffee cup in the sink and walked out. I never got used to the permanent indent his ass left in the mattress.
*****
Scanlon was right, things worked themselves out—or more accurately, Scanlon and his boys worked them out for me. I saw Lester on the street a couple of days after he’d been released and had dropped all charges. He glared at me from behind two black eyes as I passed him in my patrol car. A cast on his left arm covered up the tattoos.
*****
A week after my run-in with Lester, the guy who usually worked the Tuesday night shift with me called out sick. Scanlon asked if I wanted to get someone else to help out, but I declined. Tuesdays were our slowest day. I’d be lucky if I got even one call.
The night was uneventful. Or rather, I should say I didn’t get any calls, because something very serious went down while I was cruising up and down Bay Avenue, past the amusement park and dilapidated shotgun shacks in my beat-up patrol car.
