Читать книгу Dukkha the Suffering - Loren W. Christensen - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

We’re at the Kick Start coffee shop on Weidler Avenue getting exactly that, a morning kick start, and doing the buddy-bonding thing before jumping on our first case. I drain the last of my Americano, eyeing Tommy as he sits perched on the edge of his chair carefully wrapping the Earl Grey tea bag string around his spoon. I’ve always thought he looked a little like Niles Crane, Frazier’s woosie brother on the old Frazier sit-com. His impeccably tailored suit and slacks are too spendy for police work, he has a demeanor that’s a little on the prissy side, and with his fair skin and blond hair, it’s hard to imagine him ever getting dirty. My mother would say that, “He could fall into a toilet and come up smelling like roses.” The big difference between Tommy and the actor is that my partner has a physique like a football linebacker, which he was in college, and he can bench four fifty.

I’ve never worked with him, but word has it he’s a good investigator with a gift for gab. I’ve heard that during interrogations, he often turns hardened criminals into slobbering infants wanting their mothers. Supposedly, the captain has a foot-thick folder of commendations from people who wrote that his compassion and gentle words were comforting during their frightening ordeal. A separate folder contains a dozen letters from the joint written by crooks he’s put away, all thanking him for being respectful during their frightening ordeal, their arrest and interrogation.

Tommy and I have chatted in the office break room and the police gym a few times, mostly about lifting weights. One time we got all touchy-feely, talking about how citizens and other coppers see us. We’re both long-time iron pumpers, though he’s probably tipping the scale at two thirty and I’m bouncing between one ninety and two hundred. He told me that people see him and instantly think that he’s all about his muscles and that he’s as dumb as a rhododendron. I told him that I’ve always been seen as a muscle head, too, and because I train in the martial arts some people think that I’m just itching to go all Jet Lee on someone.

The truth is that Tommy has a master’s degree in European history, which he jokes has hardly helped him at all on the job, and he teaches a course in Ukrainian folklore two nights a week at Portland State University. He definitely lifts hard and eats healthfully, to the point of being a fanatic, but he always dresses to play down his physique at work.

I have a bachelor’s in social science from PSU, and I always, always, use my fighting skill as a last resort. In fact, I’ve never had a hint of an excessive force complaint, not even from the guy who spent eight days in Kaiser after our mano y mano in a skid-row armpit of a bar.

I’m partnering with Tommy until I get my groove back, probably for a week or so, then I’ll be handling my cases all by my lonesome. He’s a good guy and I enjoy chatting with him, but I prefer working alone, always have. I liked working a one-man car when I was in uniform and I like working alone as a detective. I’d rather just focus on a case and not have to think about what my partner is or isn’t doing.

Since we sat down, we’ve been talking about ways to increase poundage on our bench press. He wants to add a little more chest size because he’s thinking about entering the Mr. Northwest Physique Championships in six months, and I want to increase my poundage to add a little more zip to my punching power and speed.

“I suppose we ought to do some detective work,” I say during a pause. “What’s on the agenda?”

He dabs his mouth with a napkin. “Got a burglary of an Asian boutique. Uniform took the report and found some good prints. The owner left a message on my phone this morning that she had some photos of the missing items, real unique stuff. We just have to retrieve the pics and do a little PR with her.”

“Sounds good. Let’s do it.”

Ten minutes later, Tommy is guiding our brown, unmarked sedan through the core area of downtown Portland. It feels good to be in a police car again but also a little strange. It’s at once new, familiar, comfortable, and off-putting. What would Kari say about that? Probably that I’m like that soldier who returns home and thinks everything is different, when in reality only he has changed.

Tommy stops for a light. I watch a bag lady push a loaded-down-with-crap grocery cart across the crosswalk. She shoots us a toothless smile, not fooled by the unmarked police car. I start to ask Tommy if she might be carrying his baby when it dawns on me where we are. Forty feet from the driver’s side window is the now infamous second-hand store. I squirm a little and drum my fingers on my knees. I’ve got to deal with it. It’s a main intersection and I’ll be driving through it for the next twenty years.

“Sorry, Sam,” he says, looking over at the store and then at me. “I wasn’t thinking. I should have gone another way.”

“That’s okay.” My voice is tight. I know why I’m reacting to it but knowing doesn’t keep me from feeling like girly man.

“How long were you off, anyway?”

“Two months.”

“Why?”

I look over at him. “Why what?”

“Why did you take so much time off? It was a good shoot.”

I tighten my lips and take a deep breath. I look at a cluster of people waiting at a bus stop. Tommy might be the first but he won’t be the last to show his ignorance. I tell myself to calm down, stop over-reacting to innocent questions.

“I needed the time. It’s one thing shooting at paper targets and bullshitting about blowing somebody up, but it’s a whole other thing to do it and then watch the life drain out of the person’s eyes.”

He frowns. “The guy deserved to be—”

“True,” I interrupt. “But it’s still hard. Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing, but it’s hard to have killing etched on my soul.”

“Understood,” he says softly. He drives another block, then, “Please don’t think I’m being insensitive. I’m just interested in this new program the bureau has for cops who’ve used deadly force. I minored in psych.”

“No offense taken,” I say, meaning it, and happy I didn’t give voice to my initial conclusion jumping.

“Speaking of religion,” he says, “I don’t know if it helps, but what I understand of the Bible is that the commandment is supposed to be ‘thou shalt not murder,’ but it was changed in translation to ‘thou shalt not kill.’ You didn’t murder the guy. The decisions the suspect made created a situation where you had to make a choice: Stand there and allow the perp to kill an innocent man, or shoot the perp to save a life. You did what you’d been trained to do: Protect the people. You did the right thing, Sam.”

I nod. “I’ve thought about it a lot. In fact, I thought about it for two months, ad nauseam. Sometimes thinking about it as ‘the right thing to do’ helps and sometimes it doesn’t help at all. What does help is to hear someone else say it, especially a copper.”

Tommy grins. “Good, you can buy lunch.”

“Soy burger with tofu and sprouts?”

“Ten four, spaghetti arms. Hey, what’s dispatch saying?” He turns up the radio.

“… Tenth and Yamhill. All uniform cars are tied up on a fatal.”

I retrieve the mic. “Four-Forty, we’re at Twelfth and Yamhill. Say again.”

“Thank you Four-Forty. All district cars are tied up on a fatal crash on Four-oh-Five. Need someone to see a white male transient at Tenth and Yamhill. He’s thirty to thirty-five, medium build… appears to be drunk, shadowboxing and swinging at passersby. Complainant is anonymous.”

“Let’s do it,” Tommy says.

“We’ll take it,” I tell radio. I replace the mic feeling myself smile. It feels pretty good to be back in the saddle. I might have some doubts about remaining in police work, but I can’t deny the adrenaline rush I still get from it, even on a no-big-deal call like this one.

A couple minutes later we’re at the corner and, sure enough, there’s a raggedy-looking guy in front of Oscar’s Jewelry dancing around and snapping out air jabs like a white Muhammad Ali. A huge backpack leans against the store’s wall, complete with bedroll, an attached canteen, and dangling eating utensils. An uncapped bottle of wine lay on its side by the pack. Curious faces peer out the jewelry store window and a group of noontime office-types look on from the sidewalk.

Tommy activates the flashing grill lights and anchors it about twenty feet away from the guy. We get out and excuse our way through the rubberneckers.

“Sir,” Tommy calls out, moving to the guy’s front, stopping about ten feet away. I move around behind him and stay back a couple of strides, an old trick that splits and confuses the subject’s attention. Tommy casually raises his palms. The man stops bobbing and weaving, and blinks dumbly several times at him.

“Good morning, sir,” I say, to make him turn around, which he does with a stumble and a couple of sways that nearly sends him to the sidewalk.

“Who the fu…?” he mumbles, struggling to focus on me.

“Sir, look back this way,” Tommy says. “Right here, at me.”

“Godz-damn-its,” the man slurs, working his way back around.

“How can we help you?” Tommy asks kindly.

“Joo a big one. But I canz still take joo.” He stumble-turns and gives me another struggled look. “Joo looks like a punk,” he slurs, blinking slowly. “I can take joo, too.” He thinks about that for a moment. “Jootoo. Jootoo,” he sings, then laughs, which evolves into a wet, hacking cough.

“Sir, Tommy calls. “Look back at me. Good, thank you. Listen, we’re the police. Understand? We’re detectives. We don’t want to fight you. We want to help joo, er, you. How can we do that?”

I stay quiet letting Tommy do his thing.

The man jabs toward Tommy, though they’re ten feet apart. “I canz takes joo,” he slurs again. “Don’t need nose goddamn help. I just want to kicks schome ass. Fought pro for twee years in the… eighties, I think it was.” He jabs again. He might be drunk but the jab looks good, trained.

“Listen,” Tommy says, resting his foot on a fire hydrant. He fakes a good casual but I can tell he’s ready should the man move into his space. “May I ask your name, sir?”

My first year on the job, I worked just one day with an antagonistic hate-filled uniform cop named Stan. We got a call almost identical to this one, except the wino had wandered into a Victoria’s Secret store at Lloyd Center Mall and plopped himself smack in the middle of a discount bin of frilly panties. The guy clearly hadn’t showered or changed his clothes forever and, judging by the horrific smell that greeted us as we approached him, he’d just released a whole lot of wine-diarrhea into his greasy trousers.

First thing old Stan asked was, “What’s your name, pal? The name your whore mama gave you on that dreary day she gave birth to the shitbird sitting and shitting here in this pile of thongs and French cut skivvies?”

Asshole Stan was a master of clever insults. The drunk must have had some pride left because he launched himself out of that bin with both arms flailing like a windmill, and the fight was on.

After the shift ended, I asked the sarge never to work with Stan again.

“My name’s Tommy, sir. That’s Sam behind you. What’s yours?”

The guy snapped out another jab. “Jace ‘The Ace’ Widmer.” He’s jabbing faster now. “Fifteen… fifteen sometin’… oh yeah, twelve wins by KO, one lossh. Got disqualified for thumbin’ Ricky ‘Too Tall’ Place’s fuckin’ eyeball.”

Tommy moves a stride away from the hydrant but not enough to be a threat. His arms are still up and bent, his palms toward the guy. “Listen Ace, I bet you were one hell of a fighter. I can see that you got the moves.”

“Oh, I gotch duh moves.” He jabs a couple of times. “I canz kick the asshole of any cop in front of me.” He shuffles two steps toward Tommy and throws a jab-cross combo. They look good.

“Hold on, Ace,” Tommy says without reacting to the man’s advance. “Here’s how I see it. No doubt you can kick my ass. I’m big but I’m slow. But if you kick my ass, you’re going to have to kick Sam’s ass.”

The man shuffles around, bobbing and weaving in place. He looks at me, registering slow surprise, as if he’s forgotten about me. “Oh I canz kicks his asshole, too. You damn betcha.”

I shrug and nod. No need to antagonize. A couple of people in the gathering crowd chuckle.

“Ace, look at me.”

The Ace laboriously shuffles back around to face Tommy.

“So after you kick Sam’s ass, there’s going to be another police officer show up. Then you’re going to have to kick a new guy’s ass. By the way, Sam and I are the smallest cops working today.”

The Ace stops shuffling but he keeps his guard up. “I canz do thats,” he says, but with a tad less confidence than a moment ago.

“You beat him up, and another police car will come and that one is a two-man unit, real short-tempered guys. Red heads. We got twelve two-man cars working this morning. East Precinct has sixty-eight guys working, and North Precinct has one hundred and six working the day shift. You’re going to have to kick all those guys’ asses, too. Let’s say you indeed do kick ‘em all, and that’s what… a hundred fifty asses? The chief will call in the night shift or maybe the fire department. That’s nine hundred more asses. Then you got the city street sweepers, the road maintenance guys, and maybe even the mayor will get in line. I know he’s in shape because he swims at the Y.”

The Ace laughs at that and so does the crowd. “The mayor schwims?” he asks, lowering his guard a little. “How’s thats going to help his asshole?”

Tommy nods. “I hear what you’re saying, Ace. I do hear what you’re saying, and it’s a good point. But remember, you got to go through a thousand some asses first before you got to deal with the mayor’s skinny one. By then you’re going to be so tired and bruised that His Honor will easily smack you with his soggy swim trunks.”

Someone applauds in the crowd and Ace laughs again, though his merriment quickly fades and his expression changes to uncertainty. He unclenches his hands and lowers them.

“How about this instead?” Tommy says conversationally, stepping toward him a little, still showing his palms. “We give you a lift to the Drop in Center where you can hit the shower, get lunch in an hour and maybe some clean clothes. Doesn’t that sound better than fighting a boatload of cops just to prove something we already know? That you’re one hell of a fighter? Wouldn’t you rather be a cleaned-up lover?”

The Ace points at Tommy and giggles. “You got that right, Tommy my man. I’m one hell of a lover, too. Aaaaand…” He lifts his pointing finger to the sky in a Statue of Liberty pose, and slowly turns toward the crowd, searching, searching… He points at an attractive lady in a business suit standing with a group of others, “I want that one.”

“Ace,” Tommy says to distract him as the frightened woman scurries away on clicking heels. “Come on. Hop in our ride. My pard will grab your gear and put it in the trunk; I think we can make it in time for lunch. You like turkey and mashed potatoes?”

The Ace nods as he saunters toward our car. I grab his backpack and follow them, feeling like a third wheel. Tommy buzzes open the trunk and opens the back door of our car. “Have a seat, Jace ‘The Ace’ Widmer. We really appreciate your cooperation. A fighter should also be a gentleman and you are one for sure.”

“Don’ts forget I’m a lovers, too,” The Ace slurs.

Tommy slaps him on the shoulder, guy style. “Ha. I bet you are, Acey. For sure. But first you got to get a shower.”

“And cakes. I get some goddamn cakes at the Center, toos, right?” the man asks, plopping onto the seat.

“Pull your feet in there, sir. That’s it. Yes, yes, and cake. Two pieces, damn-it. You get two.” Tommy shuts the door and winks at me as I close the trunk.

The small crowd begins to disperse but not before half a dozen of them applaud.

Tommy wraps one arm across his waist and bows deeply. “Thank you ladies and germs. We’ll be right back after a little break. And don’t jaywalk.”

The crowd laughs again and disperses with a story to tell back at the office.

I smile at Tommy over the top of the car as we open our doors. “You’re good,” I say. “Everything I heard about you is true. You’re definitely good.”

We lodge Jace “The Ace” Widmer into the Drop in Center without incident. He even shakes our hands and wishes us a safe day. We wish him the same.

Back in the car, I tell Tommy again that I think he did a good job talking the guy down. We both know we could have ended up on the cold, hard sidewalk thrashing around with him, all of us getting scuffed and Tommy and me ruining our sports coats. Tommy’s threads must have set him back a stack of hundreds. Mine, not even one bill.

“You know,” Tommy says, as he steers the car out into traffic, “there have been a couple three incidents during my time when guys like him, street guys, winos, guys who we deal with every day, have stepped out of a crowd and saved some cop’s bacon.

“About six months ago, a gangbanger had the drop on a uniform guy out in North Precinct, Tim Storlie, I think it was, and a guy like Ace bashed the banger in the back of the skull with a wine bottle. Probably saved Storlie from eating a round or two. Point is, every time someone asks the street person why they helped, the guy said that some cop treated him with respect once, and he wanted to return the favor. Sort of a pay it forward, I guess. So I always think about that when I deal with people. Plus it’s just the right thing to do.”

I agree with him one hundred percent, but I can’t resist. I put my hand gently on his shoulder and stroke it a couple times. “I am sooo turned on right now.”

“Okay, okay,” Tommy laughs. “Let’s go get those photos at the Asian store.”

The rest of the day is routine. We chat with the shop owner, get the photos, and suggest ways to better secure the business. In the afternoon, we get statements from two witnesses of a church burglary and then finish the day picking up a still-in-the-box surround-sound system that an honest homeowner had found in his shrubs. Apparently, the thief had gotten spooked carrying it down the street and stashed it with the intention of retrieving it later.

All in all it’s a good day, a nice transition into the job after two months off. I didn’t realize I’d missed it so until after we had lodged Ace. I like the feeling of treating a guy right, of making one little corner of the city safe for passersby, and about being part of a bigger picture. For the last several weeks, it’s been all about me and my effort to come to terms with taking a life. Today was all about problem solving and making other people feel a little bit better. Corny, but that’s what I’m feeling.

I get off work on time, which is always a good thing since it rarely happens, and I grab a burger at Wendy’s on the way to my school. I have just one class to teach, a group of twenty-five beginners. They’ve been training about a month, so they know enough now that I can work out with them a little.

I worked up a nice sweat with the students and after the class I don’t feel a need—mental, spiritual, or whatever—to beat the heavy bag to a pulp. Maybe this getting back on the horse idea really does work.

So I head home, shower, watch CSI, and hit the rack at eleven.

I’m almost asleep when the phone jolts me awake. It’s eleven ten.

“Reeves.”

“Hey, did I wake you?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I wanted to ask about your day and how you’re feeling.”

Tiff doesn’t like what I do but she wants to know how my day went? I don’t’ think so. Damn, she’s hard to figure out and I’m tired of trying. To be nice, I tell her about Tommy and how he handled The Ace. She laughs hard and says that that was really good police work. I’m not sure if she’s implying that shooting someone isn’t really good police work, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.

She asks how I’m feeling. I know she’s referring to how I feel after going back to work, but her tone, a sexy one, sounds more like she’s asking what I’m wearing. I tell her that I’m feeling good, better than I have in a while.

“I’m so happy to hear that, Sam, I really am.” I picture her hair fanned out on the empty pillow next to me.

“Thanks,” I don’t know what else to say.

“So what are you wearing, good lookin’?”

I grin. “A smile.”

“Mmm, and you have such a beautiful, uh, smile. So tell me…”

“Yes?” I whisper.

“Is that beautiful smile getting bigger?”