Читать книгу Dukkha the Suffering - Loren W. Christensen - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

“Glad to see you back on board,” Mark booms, pumping my hand and nodding toward a chair. My boss is handsome, fifty-eight years old, trim, with dark hair sprinkled gray. He’s been my lieutenant for the three years I’ve worked in detectives, but we’ve been friends much longer. He’s twenty-three years my senior so sometimes our friendship is a tad father/son, and I’m okay with that. As a boss, I consider him one of the good guys, a leader unaffected by his rank, one who loves his people, and who has never used anyone as a stepping stone to get ahead. That’s rare in the police biz.

“Thanks, Mark,” I say, plopping into the chair at the front of the desk. “Sort of glad to be back.”

Laughter erupts outside the glass-enclosed office where the night shift dicks are slipping on their jackets and exchanging barbs with the day shift crew as they remove theirs. I’ve missed the camaraderie.

“So,” Mark says in a between-you-and-me tone as he moves around behind his desk. He doesn’t sit. “You’re ready to do it?”

“I am. I think.”

“Tiff okay with it?”

Tiff and I enjoyed a few dinners with Mark and his squeeze, David. Mark’s gay, no biggee to me, though I’m guessing it is with some of the guys in the squad. I’ve seen the occasional smirks and eyebrow bobbing, but I’ve never heard anyone trash talk him, probably because he’s one of the best lieutenants around.

“We had our weekly last night. That part was fine, but it’s pretty clear it’s not happening.”

“Too bad.” He said once that we make a beautiful couple and that Tiff could turn a gay man straight. Asking me about her is his way of asking how we’re doing. He doesn’t say it, but I know he thinks we’re just having a bump in the road, that we’ll work through it. He knows a lot about our relationship, but he doesn’t know everything.

“Not really.” I sigh. I’m tired of thinking about Tiff. “So what do you got me doing?”

Two months earlier, I was working the Burglary Unit and returning to the office after interviewing a witness, when radio sounded the hot-call warning beeps, followed by dispatch announcing an armed robbery in progress at a second-hand store at the intersection of Southeast Fifteenth and Taylor. As fate would have it, the address was right outside my car window where I was waiting at a stop light. Half a minute later, the hold-up man was taking a non-stop to Hell, and the old man and I were enjoying breathing.

Mark moves around to the front of his desk and sits on its edge. He looks down at me. “The doc ask you the question?”

“Can I drop the hammer again? She did and I said, yes.”

“Let’s just pray that you never have to. But no one will work with someone who can’t.”

I nod at my friend. “I know the drill, Mark.”

“I know you do and you know I got to ask it. Okay, enough of this shit. You got your gun back from the Evidence Property Room, right?”

I pull my jacket flap back and reveal my Glock. “A couple weeks after the Shooting Board gave me their stamp of approval.”

“You’re back in the Burglary Unit and I’ve teamed you up with Tommy for a few days. He’s on his second day off and will be back tomorrow. Why don’t you set up your desk or something, and then take off early. But come back mañana raring to roll.”

“Can I work these short hours everyday?”

“No.”

By noon I’ve cleaned everyone’s lunch remnants off my desk, made sure my computer was working, talked with several of the dicks, and had coffee with a uniform friend. Now I’m taking a stroll along Water Front Park which parallels the Willamette River to soak up a little spring sun and watch the first sailboats of the season skim over the water. I think it’s still too chilly for sailing but in rainy Portland any brief sun break brings out the shorts and water toys.

It feels good to be back at work, better than I imagined considering that I’d been having second thoughts about police work even before the shooting. I joined the PD for the classic reasons, security, and to help others, but I quickly found out that most of the time crime fighting is tantamount to trying to lower the ocean by removing one glass of water at a time. Liberal judges release dangerous predators out onto the street, the media criticizes the PD’s every move, new laws and restrictions make it ever more difficult to protect and serve and, with the exception of Mark, too many in command positions use the backs of those under them for knife plunging practice.

I knew about these things before I took the long battery of tests to join fifteen years ago but, in my naiveté, I was convinced I could handle the challenge. Now I’m starting to question if I want to. Do I want to do this for the rest of my working life? Is it satisfying enough? Do I want to spend the next fifteen years dealing with all the politics and the monstrous negativity? If I’m growing weary at the half way point in my career, at a time when I can resign and move somewhat easily into another job, how weary will I be ten years from now when I’ll no longer be as marketable to employers? I don’t know the answer.

Then there’s the shooting.

The uniform officer I had coffee with summed up his shooting this way. “I went to work, met a man, and I killed him.” That’s it stripped of all its fat. Problem is, it’s the fat that rips and chews the soul. I’ve been dealing with it, though, with hard training, a half dozen visits with Kari and my love shack meetings with Tiff. I might be feeling better, but the bottom line is that I didn’t sign on to kill people. SWAT guys have a saying: “The man deserved killin’.” That was the case with the tweaker, but that’s not why I want to work in law enforcement. Damn, I’m thinking in circles. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Monkey brain.

There is one place I can clear my mind: my dojo. A few hundred punches will organize my thinking. Besides, I got a new private coming in this afternoon at four.

I wait for a blue Toyota Corolla to pass and jog over to my car.

*

Although I’ve thrown hundreds of punches and kicks in my private training room for the last forty-five minutes, and I worked the heavy bag last night until I nearly collapsed, my jab and cross punch still rip through the air with authority.

I lash out five more, then spread my feet and bend forward until my chest nearly reaches between my thighs. I hold the stretch for a few seconds, feeling the tightness dissolve in my legs, lower back and in my over-worked shoulders. After a minute, I straighten and begin pulling off my T-shirt as I walk out the door and head to my office to get a dry one. Before I get there, the street door opens at the far end of the room, bringing inside a blare of traffic noise, light, and a slightly silhouetted figure. It belongs to a big man, twenty-something, longish blond hair, neck like a Grecian column and, obvious even from thirty feet away and with harsh backlight, a palpable attitude. He hip bumps the door shut behind him and looks around the room with disdain. His eyes stop on me. He doesn’t smile; he just looks.

“You must be, Torres,” I greet with a smile.

“Yeah, must be.”

In only three words and a silhouetted demeanor, the guy manages to tell me that he’s defiant, arrogant, and a basic asshole. Why would a new student come in with an attitude like that when the private lesson is costing him seventy-five bucks an hour?

Relax, Sam. Maybe he’s just nervous.

“Let me put on a dry T-shirt, Torres,” I call out in my best customer relations voice as I back into my office. “I’ll be out in twenty seconds.”

“Whatever floats your boat, man,” he says, which sounds more like I-don’t-care-if-you-eat-shit-and-die. My fight or flight juices begin to percolate. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Why am I letting this bozo get to me so fast? Why have I let other people get to me this week? Get control of yourself, homeboy and give him the benefit of the doubt. I tuck in a dry, black T-shirt and tie my belt around my waist.

“Sorry about that, Torres,” I say, moving across the floor. “Just had a little training session myself.” I extend my hand. “You said on the phone that you’ve done some martial arts before?” I casually quick-scan the way his thick chest and arm muscles strain his white T-shirt, and how his ham hock forearms look as if they’re stuffed with steel cables.

There are three indicators that hint at how well a guy might do in a fight: his neck, forearms, and his ass. A strong neck means he pays attention to details in his fitness regimen and that maybe he can absorb a punch; muscular forearms means he has strong hands for grabbing, pulling, and punching; and a strong butt means he might be a kicker, a powerlifter, or a wrestler.

Torres is wearing baggy jeans so I can’t tell about his ass, but he’s got the neck and forearms working for him. He stands over six feet, weighs maybe two-ten, two-fifteen.

“Yeah, I’ve trained,” he says, his handshake like a dead fish. For a second I thought he wasn’t going to take my hand. His eyes size me up but he doesn’t check out my ass. Pfft. Novice. “Cop, huh?”

“Yes, I am,” I say, noting the disdain-thick tone. “Did you bring your gear?” It’s a rhetorical question since he’s empty-handed.

“Nope. I train in whatever I’m wearing. Aren’t you supposed to teach a street style?” He reaches toward my belt. “What’s up with the belt and karate pants?”

I turn my hip a couple inches so that Torres’s fingers flip the air. I smile, as if my casual evasion were a coincidence. Was he really going to flip the end of my belt?

“Oh, you know. Old habits are hard to break. The belt’s part of my roots.” The guy’s starting to crank me off and I’m not sure what my tone was just now. “Listen, Torres,” I say, kicking up my friendliness shtick a notch. “This is your time. What would you like to work on? I can show you our basic punching style, a couple of kicks, maybe a—”

“I want to see you block some of my attacks to see if I’m wasting my money.”

Okay, I get it. I haven’t been around assholes for a couple of months so I’m a little slow on the uptake. Only two men have come into my school to challenge me. The first one ended up being a student and the second one went to the PD to file a complaint after I smacked him around a little. Okay, I smacked him around a lot. I might have gotten in hot water over that one but luckily he had warrants and the desk officer arrested him before he could file his complaint.

There are always those who see a martial arts school as a threat. These are the same bozos who pick a fight with the biggest man in the bar. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, at least in their little brains. Then there are the trained fighters—people who never learn the discipline and self-control aspects of the arts—those who see every other martial artist as a personal challenge.

Whatever the psychology is with Ol’ Torres here, I’m not in the mood for it today. Kari might have released me to return to work, but I still feel like a coiled spring.

“Look, Torres. How about I give you the first class free and you can decide if you want to continue on a paying basis?”

The big man looks around the school for a moment, eyeing the hanging bags at the far end, the stack of hand-held pads against the wall, the belt display over the dressing room door, the wall-to-wall mirrors. He looks back at me. “Sure,” he says, somehow making it sound like a challenge.

“Okay, great.” I smile, pouring it on. “Why don’t you loosen up and—”

“You don’t loosen up in the street,” he says, mocking my choice of words. “You just bang.”

‘True,” I say, again with my fake smile. “But we’re training and—”

“I’m ready.”

“Okay. Go ahead and remove your shoes and—”

“You don’t remove your shoes in the street,” he says, in that same mocking tone.

Okay, I’ve just about had it with this prick. “You’re right, Torres. So where have you trained?”

“Here and there.” He steps out into the training area. “A little in the joint.”

There it is. An ex-con. Cop hater.

“Show me your blocks,” Torres says, setting himself into a stance, feet staggered, hands at his side.

I start to say that there’s seldom time to assume a stylized stance in the street, but I decide not to antagonize him. “I’ll try,” I say.

He launches a fast chest-high roundhouse kick. I turn a little, allowing the big foot to streak past. “Nice kick, Torres. Surprisingly fast for a big man. But try not to lean your upper body so far forward. Leaning back a little will open up your groin area, and give you greater stretch and distance.”

Torres’s face reddens but he doesn’t say anything. Again, he assumes a staggered stance, hands down at his sides.

“Good stance,” I say. “Looks like taekwondo. For the street you might want to keep your hands up near your head.”

Clearly angered by the instruction, Torres kicks again, same leg, but higher and harder.” I slap the leg by with an open palm.

“Much better. See, you didn’t cramp yourself that time and your kick looked more effortless. Good flexibility, too. You should move out of range when your kick is evaded or checked. If you stay in range, you need to follow up with something. If you don’t, your opponent can easily—”

Torres snaps a lead-leg front kick at my groin. I twist a little so that my hip catches most of the impact, though the tip of his Nike just barely nicks my ever-so-more sensitive target. It’s obvious he isn’t trying to control his blows. I keep my face neutral, although I feel a surge of hot adrenaline surge through my muscles.

I swat his jab aside. He jabs again, this one hitting a strand of wet hair hanging down my forehead. “I’ll take that as a hit,” he says, chuckling. “Good thing I don’t have to pay for this lesson.”

I nod, as more adrenaline charges my muscles. “Good thing.”

I’ve been told many times that when I get angry or when I’m completely absorbed in hard training, my eyes assume a sort of luminescence. Either Torres doesn’t see it or he’s too stupid to recognize a bad thing when it’s standing right in front him. He pops out a backfist. I turn my head just enough to avoid his big knuckles. Had it landed, I would have been visited by Tweety Bird. “Good one,” I say flatly. The young man is clearly getting frustrated. He can’t hit me, intimidate me, or get any emotion out of me. Actually, he’s provoked my adrenaline, but I’ve done a marvelous job hiding it, if I say so myself.

Okay, I’m tired of this dickstick. I have too many other things on my mind to have to deal with an upstart gunslinger.

“Would you like to see a counterattack, Torres?”

He chuckles. “You want to try to counter me? I’ve gotten a piece of you two times. Let me see you try.”

“I’ll show you what we call ‘Lesson Thirteen.’”

“Lesson Thirteen? Why do you call it that?”

“Just makes it easy to remember. I’ll control myself, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Worry?” he says, sneering like a bad guy in a Hong Kong chop-socky movie. He throws a punch.

I smack my palm against his arm hard enough to spin him around. He’s mine now and I commence to do a little saturation bombing with kicks, punches, elbows, and knees, hitting him just hard enough against the back of his legs, spine, kidneys, and ribs to let him know he’s been tagged. I slap my palms down onto his shoulders, sending a shock-shimmy through his big body, and spin him around to face me.

The look on his mug nearly makes me laugh before I flick my fingers against his eyebrows, lightly smack his throat with my other hand, and snap a kick just short of his groin. The fingers into the eyes would have temporarily blinded him, the fist could have sent him into a choking spasm, and the kick could have crumbled his cookies for a couple weeks.

“That’s twelve,” I say, calmly, my breathing normal. “The last and thirteenth move—hence the name—Lesson Thirteen, could be—oh—how about this.” I slap my left palm against the right side of his shocked face and hook my right index finger just barely inside his right nostril opening. I grin at him. “Here’s how this works, Torres. If I ram my finger deeper into your nose and then rip it toward me as I push your head away, you’ll experience a lot of hurt. It’s a good technique, as you say, for the street.”

The big man’s eyes couldn’t be larger as his head vibrates on the verge of exploding.

I step back. “That’s Lesson Thirteen. Controlled of course, unlike the blows you were throwing at me. I controlled them because I’m a martial artist. I have nothing to prove by hurting you. You, however, are a thug and a very stupid one.”

Torres rubs the back of his hand over his eyebrows where my fingers had touched. “I just—”

“There is nothing for you to say and it’s time for you to go.”

Looking like a deflated tire, the big man nods and turns toward the door.

“Think about what just happened. And should you want to come back sometime, you’re going to have to take off your shoes.”

He nods and leaves.

I shake my head and move toward the dressing room. That’s all I needed with all the other stressors in my life. I sit on a bench and roll my shoulders a few times to rid some of the tension there. What’s going on with me? For a moment, I wanted Torres to push it so I could grind him into hamburger. What’s that about? That’s not like me at all. I have a rep on the PD for being the last one to engage in a fight. I’ve never administered street justice as some coppers do, though I’ve definitely gotten into my share of brawls. I’m known for BSing violent people into compliance and for using force as a last resort. So why would I want to trash Torres when it would serve no purpose?

In a grocery store a couple of days ago, I thought about how good it would feel to break a rude clerk’s kneecap. Last week, I imagined pulling an idiot tailgater out of his truck and beating him into a gutter drain. I guess the good news is that I didn’t act out on any of these things. The bad news is that I’m fantasizing about it.

Kari would probably say that I’m psychologically beating up myself because I feel guilty. Tiff would probably high-five her.

Of course, that’s ridiculous… Or is it?

I pick up a bucket of cleaning supplies, step into the shower and spray cleanser on the walls. The butterflies in my stomach have a riot every time I think about going to work tomorrow. Funny how a shooting and two months away from the street can make me feel all twitchy, as if it were my first day out of the academy. Not funny ha-ha, but funny weird. Funny unpleasant.

Kari said it was a common worry among officers who have used deadly force; it haunts them that they might get into another shooting. I get that. Most cops never fire their weapon outside of the firing range. They train for it and talk about it all the time, but most believe deeply inside that it will never happen. Then when they do have to drop the hammer, the ugly reality of it shocks some to their core. The it’s-never-going-to-happen-to-me barrier comes down with a bang, and it stays down. The officer becomes hyper-vigilant and the thought that he’ll have to kill again makes his insides feel as if he had chugged a bottle of Drano.

Kari said there is no greater chance of it happening a second time than there was the first. Easy enough to grasp intellectually, but emotionally…

I inhale deeply and blow it out. Okay, a little more cleaning before tonight’s first class. Tomorrow will come soon enough.