Good Neighbors (16 page)

Easy-peasy.

Like pouring a drink, she tells herself. Like changing a tire.

She focuses on the keys. She won’t take her eyes off them. She focuses on the keys and she puts one raw, raggedly skinless arm forward, and she pulls herself bodily six inches closer to the door. Six inches closer, she thinks. Four and a half feet. I only have to do that nine more times, she thinks, and I’ll be there. And she does it again. Eight more, she thinks.

Eight.

Attainable goals, she thinks.

Like pouring a drink.

Then she hears a noise from the street that makes her panic.

She hears the sound of a vehicle pulling to the curb and coming to a stop. She wants to believe it’s help. She wants to believe it’s someone who will see her and say oh my God, you poor thing, you poor, poor thing, what’s happened to you, let me help, but it’s not.

She recognizes the loose, jangly rattle of the engine. She’s heard it before. She heard it immediately after the man who attacked her ran away, ran out to the street. It’s his car, and he’s come back. He must have come back.

She can see the light of the headlights splashing across the oak trees at the front of the building.

Don’t panic, she thinks.

And then she puts an arm forward and pulls her body forward behind it.

Seven, she thinks.

The headlights go out.

She puts her other arm forward.

The engine goes quiet.

Six, she thinks.

A squeaking car door opens and she hears feet hit asphalt.

Five, she thinks.

Don’t panic.

The door slams shut and she hears footsteps coming nearer.

Four, she thinks. Don’t panic.

Four, she thinks.

28

Frank watches in his sideview mirror as a pair of legs scissor their way around the police cruiser’s door, as they head toward him. The police cruiser followed him for only a few hundred yards before its light flashed and the cop waved him to the curb. And then sat. They sat on the side of the road for several minutes before the cop finally pushed open the driver’s side door of his patrol car and stepped from within, Frank getting more nervous as each second passed. But now the cop is walking toward him, holding a bright flashlight up by his right shoulder as he walks.

Frank sits stiff, his hands on the steering wheel. The guy’s trouble, obvious trouble, and Frank doesn’t want him to claim that he was reaching for something, that he thought Frank had a gun, say, and that’s why Frank is dead. He knows it doesn’t really make sense, doesn’t really matter – if the cop wants to shoot him or do something else he’s just gonna do it and he can make up whatever he wants – but Frank will take no chances.

A chest fills Frank’s driver’s side window. A flashlight beam shines in bright so that when Frank tries to look at the cop standing outside his car he can’t see anything but an explosion of blinding light. It’s like trying to see someone clearly when they’re backlit by the sun.

‘Good morning,’ the cop says.

‘Morning, officer. Something the matter?’

‘You don’t know why I stopped you?’

‘Should I know, sir?’

‘You being smart with me?’

‘No, sir. I just don’t know why you pulled me over.’

‘Then that’s what you shoulda said in the first place. I’m the one asking the questions.’

‘Okay, sir.’

‘Give me your keys.’

‘That’s not a question, sir. I don’t mean you any disrespect, but I just don’t know why you would need my keys.’

‘And you don’t need to know.’

‘Sir?’

‘Someone fitting your description was seen fleeing the site of a burglary,’ the cop says. ‘I’m gonna check your trunk.’

‘Fitting my description?’

‘You’re colored, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then he fit your description.’

Frank doesn’t move.

‘If there’s nothing in your trunk, you got nothing to worry about. I’ll give you back your keys and you can be on your merry way to wherever colored folks go at five o’clock in the morning.’ The cop puts the beam of light directly into Frank’s eyes. ‘Is there something in your trunk?’

‘No, sir.’

But he still doesn’t move.

‘Give me your fuckin’ keys before I lose my temper.’

Frank reaches to the ignition and slowly pulls out his key and hands a ring of them over to the cop. The cop takes them, snapping them violently out of Frank’s hand.

‘Don’t move,’ the cop says. ‘Just sit here and be a good boy.’

The cop smiles, taps the roof of Frank’s car, and then turns and walks away. Frank can see him walk to the back of his Skylark and pop the trunk. Then the trunk lid swings up, blocking Frank’s view of the cop and his car.

He does not like this. Something is wrong. He checks his glove box for an old pack of Chesterfields but finds nothing. Frank quit smoking two years ago – mostly. Now he only smokes in moments like this. There have been a lot of moments like this tonight.

He hears a noise that sounds like it might have come from the cop car, a door opening or something, a squeak. He hears a grunt. He wants to get out of his car and see what’s going on but he doesn’t want to get shot. He feels trapped in here.

When he was in the army he often had to deal with officers that acted just like this cop. Lieutenants, second lieutenants, fresh out of academy and simply handed their rank. They were green and still high on their new found authority. They were the most likely to give you shit about having your sideburns a bit too long. About not having shaved close enough. About not saluting immediately or sharply enough. About not having your BDU in perfect condition, crisp and ready for war. Your boots gotta shine if you’re gonna bayonet a son of a bitch, private. I wanna see my reflection in ’em. They thought they owned the fucking world because they were simply handed authority without having to earn it, without having to earn it or the respect that should come with it. They thought respect came with the lieutenant insignia they bought down at the PX. Soldiers hated them – the privates and specialists Frank knew, anyway – and this cop is just like that. Some people get a uniform and they think they answer to no one. Or they know they answer to someone and they hate it, but the rest of the world better watch out, goddamn it, because the rest of the world answers to
them
.

Frank hears a thud, and his car groans, his rear shocks squeak.

What’s going on back there?

Why is he taking so long to find nothing?

Frank closes his eyes.

If he gets through this he may take up smoking fulltime again.

He hears the sound of something metal – he thinks – dropping to the asphalt, and then a whispered, ‘Shit,’ and then a scraping sound, maybe the sound of it – the metal thing that dropped – being picked up.

He looks in the driver’s side mirror but sees nothing on the street-side but empty. He looks in the passenger’s side mirror next, but too late; all he sees is a blue blur of cop disappearing behind his car, hidden by his open trunk’s lid.

He hears a clatter and then silence.

‘Sir,’ the cop says after a while. ‘Sir, would you please step from your vehicle.’

Truth is, he’d rather not, but he pushes the door open and swings his body around, stepping out of the car, closing the door behind him. He cannot see the cop. The cop is hidden by the trunk lid, but he thinks the cop is watching him – no, he knows the cop is watching him.

He doesn’t like this at all.

He exhales and inhales and walks toward the trunk of the car.

Something bad is about to happen and just because he doesn’t know what doesn’t mean he doesn’t know it won’t be pretty. It won’t be pretty for him, anyway. He tries to brace himself for whatever it is, but that’s a hard thing to do, brace yourself, when you don’t know what direction you’re about to fall in.

He walks around the back of his car, around the raised trunk lid, and as soon as he does, the cop grabs Frank by the back of his neck with a rubber-gloved hand – rubber gloves? – and shoves him toward the trunk, shining his flashlight inside it as he does.

‘What the fuck is this?’ the cop says, spittle flying from his mouth.

‘I don’t—’ he begins, but then stops. Because he does. He does know. He knows exactly. And he knows, too, there’s nothing he can say or do to avoid this turning ugly fast.

‘That’s the television you just put in my trunk, sir,’ he says.

The cop slams the flashlight into Frank’s gut, bending him over. He feels the air rush out of his body and he hears himself groaning.

‘Fuck,’ he says, gasping for air.

‘Smart-mouth nigger,’ the cops says. ‘A man was killed in his own home not half a mile from here. Killed with a tire iron. Bludgeoned to death. That tire iron looks like it’s got blood on it to me. Is it yours?’

‘How do you know it was a tire iron he was bludgeoned with?’

Another swing to the gut.

‘Answer the question. Is it yours?’

‘If it’s got blood on it, it’s not.’ Gasping.

‘That’s pretty fucking convenient.’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘It’s in your trunk.’

‘It’s not mine.’

‘Pick it up and take a closer look, and then tell me it isn’t yours.’

Frank is just getting his breath back. He stands up and straightens out, breathing in and breathing out. He looks at the cop. He swallows.

‘Pick it up and take a closer look,’ the cop says again.

‘I will not,’ Frank says. ‘I’m not touching it, sir.’

‘Pick up the fucking tire iron,’ the cop says, more spittle flying from his mouth, some of it splashing on Frank’s neck. Frank does not move to wipe it off.

‘No, sir.’

‘You think you’re smart? Pick up the tire iron or I’ll fucking kill you.’

‘If you kill me, I’ll be dead and you’ll have no one to frame for whatever it is you’re trying to frame me for, sir,’ Frank says. ‘Murder, it sounds like.’

‘You think you’re smarter than me?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You ain’t smarter than me. I got no problem framing a dead man. Fact is, though, I don’t even need you dead. I don’t need you dead and I don’t want you dead. I want to teach you something about mouthing off to your betters, though,’ he says, nodding. ‘I do want that. Smart-mouth nigger. When you wake up, you’re gonna learn something.’

And with that, the cop swings the flashlight at Frank’s head, cracking it across his skull. The flashlight breaks, the plastic shattering, flying off in several directions. The batteries fall out and scatter like cockroaches when the kitchen light’s turned on.

But Frank does not fall.

He is dazed though and is trying to blink the dazed feeling away, trying to blink his vision back into existence, when the cop pulls out his billy club and slams it across his forehead.

This time Frank does fall.

He can feel himself going down, dropping to his knees.

The ground rushes up at him.

He sees a penny, face up, near the back-right tire of his car.

Good luck penny, he thinks.

And then he falls flat on his face and he doesn’t think anything else – not for a while, anyway.

29

Alan looks at the poor stupid motherfucker lying on the ground in front of him. The guy’s face-down on the asphalt, blood leaking from a split in the swelling lump on his forehead.

He’s already working out his story for having to club the guy. He doesn’t need much. He caught the son of a bitch red-handed, the guy resisted arrest, and Alan had to restrain him with force. A lot of force. That’s all. That’ll be plenty. It has been in the past. Who trusts a civilian over a cop? No one. Even civilians don’t trust civilians over cops; put the testimony of a cop against the testimony of a guy who claims he didn’t do it, your honor, I swear, and you get a conviction every time – every fucking time. Especially if the guy’s colored.

Alan slides the billy club back into his belt, bends down, and flips the guy over. Heavy son of a bitch. Alan is lucky he didn’t fight back. He suspects he might have lost that match. Once the guy’s on his back, Alan has to heft the TV back out of the trunk. He’s goddamn tired of hauling it around and he’s glad it’s almost over with. Whoever invented the television should have made it lighter. Jesus. He sets it on the guy’s chest, holding it balanced there with one hand. With his other hand, he grabs the guy’s right arm and presses his fingerprints onto the surface of the television. One set of fingerprints done, he drops one arm, picks up the other, and presses some prints into the other side. Best to be thorough.

With the fingerprints planted on it, Alan puts the TV back into the trunk.

Then he takes out the tire iron. As he’s pulling it out of the trunk, he decides he’ll have to hit himself with it. Once on the arm and once on the neck. Just for safe measure.

Then he’ll drop it by the unconscious colored bastard and call for backup. The guy went for the tire iron, see, hit me, I had to fight him, and I took him down. He almost got away, but I took him down.

Alan nods. That’s how it’ll go, he decides.

He may even get an MPD medal for this.

He grabs the cold metal in his gloved right hand, standing there in the morning darkness by the side of the road. He looks at the sticky blood drying on its surface. He breathes in and out.

‘Okay.’

He swings his fist and the tire iron in it toward his neck, but misses the soft part he was aiming for. The tire iron slams into his jaw and his ear instead – with an audible metal-on-bone
crack!
– and pain shoots out in every direction from the contact point in a jagged ripple.

He drops the tire iron.

‘God fucking
damn
it,’ he shouts through gritted teeth as blood begins to leak from his ear. He stomps the asphalt. ‘Fuck!’ He stomps around in an angry, pained circle, then manages to regain his senses. He touches his ear, looks at the blood on his fingertips. He hears nothing but a high-pitched hum in that ear, as if it had an insect trapped inside it.

‘It better be temporary, you fuck,’ Alan says, kicking Frank in the ribs. Frank groans but doesn’t come to.

Then Alan picks up the tire iron again and holds out his left arm.