Fire Lake (11 page)

"You asshole," he said, staring at me.
"Either you're going to move or we are. I'm sick of this shit."

I laughed dully. He went back in his apartment,
slamming the door behind him. The sound echoed down the hall. I
stared at the gaping hole the shotgun had made in the ceiling, at my
gun lying halfway down the halfway, at the razor pinned in the wall
above my head. Outside, the police sirens had become very loud.

Lonnie, I said to myself, fuck you.
 

16

My first impulse was to tell the cops everything I
knew. I was that frightened and that furious. But as my pulse slowed
down and my temper cooled, I started thinking clearly enough to
realize that telling them everything meant telling them about the
Encantada and Claude Jenkins. It meant explaining why I hadn't
reported the murder on Friday night. It meant dragging Karen into it.
And it meant putting Lonnie back in jail-this time, probably,
for good.

Not that I felt that Lonnie didn't belong in jail. He
did. He was too fucking stupid to be running around on his own. And
apparently he was still doing just that. At least according to Bo, he
was. If Lonnie's idea of a "big score"--of going off to
Fire Lake--was to deal cocaine with folks like Bo, Maurice, and the
guy with the shotgun and then to leave me and his wife holding the
bag, he deserved to be betrayed to the cops.

But I didn't do that. I couldn't do it. Instead I
ended up making excuses for him, like 1968 all over again. I told
myself he must have been at the end of his rope. He had to be at the
end of his rope to grab at the cocaine deal to begin with. I told
myself that he couldn't have known that in signing my name on that
motel register, he was signing me up for a visit from Bo and the
boys. I told myself that, in spite of everything, in spite of what
had gone on between Karen and me, he was still a friend--a friend who
had turned to me when he'd had nowhere else to go. And you don't
betray your friends.

So when the cops finally came piling up the Delores's
stairs--six of them in close order, their faces cocked like their
guns--I made out that I had been assaulted by three strangers, when
I'd walked in on an attempted burglary of my apartment. I figured
that the fact the three felons had been blacks would be enough
incentive to keep the beat cops from asking too many embarrassing
questions about the way my apartment had been torn up. But the cops
weren't nearly as stupid or as racist as I'd expected them to be. And
then I hadn't counted on what Bo or one of his friends had left
behind him on the living room floor.

A little tube of crack had fallen out of somebody's
pocket and landed in front of my rolltop desk. Just a few rocks, but
enough to catch one cop's attention. I saw it, too, a second after he
did. But by then it was too late. The beat cop immediately called in
two investigators from narcotics. The narcs listened to my
explanation of what had happened and took down my descriptions of Bo,
Maurice, and the guy with the shotgun. Then they took a look at the
tube of crack and at the way the stuffed furniture had been ripped
open, and spent an hour trying to get me to admit that I had been
involved in a drug deal that had gone awry.

About half past three, I realized the narcs weren't
going to go away. Like Bo, Maurice, and the guy with the shotgun,
they wanted the lady and they wanted me. In covering up for Lonnie,
I'd put myself back on the spot. I didn't know how long the narcs
were going to keep badgering me. They did have the tube of crack as
evidence. But they didn't have my fingerprints on it. And given the
circumstances, my story-that one of the burglars had dropped the
tube during the fight--was as good as any. Good enough to stand up in
court. But I couldn't help thinking it was a very lucky thing that
the narcs didn't know about my bloody footprints in the Encantada
office, or about my name on the motel register. If they ever made
those connections, I was going straight to jail.

My clothes had been pretty well powdered over with
plaster dust, after the scuffle in the hall. And that turned out to
be a break. The dust prevented the cops from noticing the bloodstains
on my pants cuffs. It also gave me an excuse to wash up and change my
clothes. While I was in the bedroom, I phoned Karen at the hotel and
told her, as delicately as I could, that there had been some trouble
at my apartment.

"Are you all right?" she said anxiously.

"Yes," I said. "But I think maybe
you'd better come over here."

"Why?" she said.

I didn't tell her the truth--that I was afraid to
leave her alone in that hotel, with Bo and his friends still on the
loose. Instead, I said, "I need you."

"I'll be right there," she said
immediately.

"Karen," I said. "Don't make any side
trips, okay? Just go down to the lobby, have the doorman hail a cab,
and come straight here." I gave her the address on Burnett.

As soon as I got off the phone and came back in the
living room, the narcs started in on me again. They were playing the
old Ike-and-Mike game--the vicious cop and the pally one. If I hadn't
just been shot at and threatened with emasculation with a razor, I
might have been impressed. As it was, I was only irritated. And the
longer they kept it up, the angrier and more short-tempered I became.
I'd had enough excitement for one afternoon. I figured the narcs
should have known that.

They were good at their act, especially the butch
cop--a muscular, middle-aged sergeant named Jordan. Jordan had a
walrus mustache, straight brown hair that looked as if it had been
trimmed with a hatchet, acne-scarred cheeks, and the droopy, pitiless
eyes of a predator. He didn't know I'd been a cop myself once,
because I hadn't played that card yet--I was saving it for the
station house, if it came to that. But I'd heard a story about Jordan
once when I was working for the D.A.'s office.

He had been a vice cop before he went to narcotics.
And in this town, vice meant rousting whores and homosexuals. The
whores could usually buy themselves out of a bust with a blow job.
But the fags were out of luck. Inevitably, they got kicked
around--sometimes pretty badly kicked around. Jordan, especially, had
a reputation as a fag-hater. The story I'd heard was about a drag
queen whom Jordan had busted in a club by the river. Instead of
taking him to the station house, Jordan took the queer down beneath
the Suspension Bridge. Jordan beat the guy up pretty badly. Then he
drew his pistol and threatened to kill him if the queen didn't jump
in the river and start swimming. It was Jordan's idea of a joke that
the guy should swim over to Kentucky and never show his face back in
Cincinnati. Jordan actually fired a couple of shots at the poor
bastard to get him moving. The fag was so frightened that he jumped
in the Ohio and started to swim.

It would have been a typical rogue-cop story if the
fag hadn't drowned. But he did. His body washed up on a bridge pylon
downriver a couple of days later. Jordan's partner covered for him.
And the death was ruled a suicide. A few months after that, Jordan
was transferred to narcotics. I hadn't heard any other stories about
him. But getting transferred obviously hadn't changed his
personality. From the moment he stepped in the door, he started
baiting me.

There was nothing subtle about his tactics. Jordan
thought I was a drug dealer and he told me so. He called me a lot of
other names too. His technique was so crude that it would have been
laughable, if I'd been in the mood to laugh. But I wasn't in the
mood. And after an hour or so of being pushed around by that tough
bastard with the dead eyes, I lost my cool completely. I started
shouting back at him, while his partner stood by with a weary,
witless smile on his face. The partner, a cop named Lewis, was about
ten years older than Jordan and a lot less energetic about the
interrogation. He gave up playing his nellie part about halfway
through the hour and just stood there and watched as Jordan and I
went at it.

Jordan and I kept yelling and jockeying with each
other, until we were very close to throwing punches. Even Lewis
sensed it. He moved a little closer to where we were standing and
kept his hand close to the gun in his belt.

"I'm taking you downtown, cocksucker,"
Jordan finally shouted, and jabbed his right fist into my chest.
"You're connected and I know it." He jabbed me again, hard.

"Connected to what, asshole?" I said,
slapping his hand away--hard. "I've given you a description of
three drugged-out scumbags. Why don't you go after them, for
chrissake? They can't be that hard to find."

"And get the niggers off your back, huh, Harry?"
Jordan said. "Why should we do you any favors?"

At that moment, Karen walked in.

Jordan gave her a withering look. "Who's your
cunt friend, Harry? Another junkie?"

Karen blanched.

I stared at Jordan for a long moment. I wanted to
throw that punch at him. He wanted me to try.

"Read me my rights or get the hell out of here,"
I said through my teeth.

"What's your name, lady?" Jordan said,
turning to Karen.

"Her name is none of your business," I
said, stepping between her and him.

"I think she's holding," Jordan said to his
partner. "Don't you, Carl?"

Lewis looked unimpressed. Jordan turned back to me
with a vicious smile.

"I think we're going to have to take her
downtown for a strip search, Stoner." He turned to Karen and
grinned. "Unless you'd prefer I do it here, honey."

"Son of a bitch!" I said, and threw that
punch.

It was a stupid, stupid thing to do. Stupid for me;
stupid for Karen. I knew it while I was doing it. But I just didn't
have it in me to pull the punch.

Jordan was facing Karen when I let go, so he didn't
have a chance to do anything more than turn his head into my fist.
And the whole thing happened too quickly for his partner to get in
between us. I put my whole body behind a straight right hand and hit
Jordan squarely on the chin. He went down in his tracks, like he'd
been standing under a piano. Karen let out a little yip, as if I'd
stepped on her toes, and jumped back toward the door.

Lewis, the older cop, jerked out his pistol and stuck
the barrel in my nose. "That was really stupid, buck-o," he
said in a level voice. He glanced down at Jordan, who was sitting on
his butt. "You okay, Glen?"

Jordan didn't answer for a while. After a time, he
nodded weakly and looked up at me. His eyes hadn't cleared, but they
were already filling up with hatred. "You're going to regret
that," he said, rubbing his chin. He held out his hand to Lewis
and said, "Help me up."

Lewis pulled the gun out of my face and lifted Jordan
to his feet. Jordan was still shaken by the punch, but he didn't want
me to see it. "Cuff him," he said to Jordan. "I'm
going to clean up in the john."

He walked unsteadily down the hall to the bathroom,
went inside, and slammed the door behind him.

"You got a good lawyer, buck-o?" Lewis
said, pulling the cuffs from his belt. "Or a relative on the
force?" He holstered the pistol and cuffed my right wrist.

"I used to work for the D.A.'s office," I
said to him.

"You were a cop?"

I nodded.

"You might have said something earlier," he
said, glancing down the hall. "It would have saved us all a lot
of trouble. I'm never going to hear the end of this." He pulled
my left arm behind me and cuffed my hands behind my back. "He's
going to try to kill you when he comes to. You know that, don't you?"

I nodded again.

"Even if you can get bail tonight, you're going
to take a beating."

"I know that," I said. "What would you
have done?"

Lewis laughed grimly and said, "One thing I
wouldn't have done is mess with Jordan."

"About the girl ..." I said, glancing at
Karen, who had been taking all of it in with a horrified look on her
face.

"She's free to go," Lewis said.

I turned to Karen. "Go home," I said to
her. "Go back to St. Louis. Tonight."

She stared at me as if I were out of 'my mind. "And
leave you to these bastards?" she said, staring right at Lewis.
The old cop ducked his head.

"Karen," I said softly, "whether you
stay or not isn't going to make any difference where they're
concerned."

"How about where you're concerned?" she
said angrily.

"I can't look after you from jail," I said.

"I can look after myself."

"You don't know what's going on here," I
said helplessly. I wanted to pull her aside and explain it to
her--about Bo and his pals and the cocaine. But there was no way to
do it without letting Lewis in on it too.

I heard the john flush. "Please," I said
again. "Go home."

Karen shook her head. "I don't understand this,
Harry. Any of it."

Jordan stepped out of the john into the hall. He
walked up to us and said to Lewis, "You take him in. I've got a
couple of things to take care of." He didn't even glance at me
just walked out the door.