Judgment (2 page)

"If he said, 'Simon says cut off your wang,' three million people would drop their pants and reach for a meat cleaver. Ain't that criminal?" Moe said. "The way he talks, you'd think God was a fuckin' bank."

Macklin reached deep into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled bill and some change. "Say, Saul, gimme another one of those chili dogs, will you? I'm in the health-food mood tonight."

Saul swept the money into his hand, joking, "JD here is gonna put me through college."

They laughed again and Moe asked for a second helping of ice. When the chili dog was ready, Macklin scooped it up and ate it as he walked down the street. Monday was winding down. Shopkeepers were drawing their barred curtains across the outside of their windows and padlocking them. Waving to Macklin as he passed.

Emil the shoe shiner gave Macklin his nightly nod. "How ya doin', JD?"

"Real good, Emil. How was business today?" The tall black man wore a flowered shirt over his hunched torso and had wisps of gray in his hair.

"I'm gonna eat," Emil laughed. "Some days, that's enough." He turned and shuffled away. Macklin kept walking, munching on the chili dog.

He paused outside the Pistol Dawn and peered through the window. Fat Tommy smiled from behind the bar and motioned Macklin inside with broad arcs of his arm. A large group of guys huddled under the television set watching football. Macklin smiled his thanks and moved on. Tommy shrugged his shoulders. Cops made him nervous anyway.

A couple of kids on the street skirted Macklin as if he were a great white, not wanting him to chide them about being on the streets this late. Macklin grinned. He and the neighborhood were one and the same, and he liked it. No, he
loved
it, especially at night, when they looked at him with that familiarity, that respect, that security. That look, more than the gun strapped to his waist or the badge on his chest, gave him the strength he needed to maintain a semblance of law and order on the streets.

He had long since given up the idea of ever getting ahead of the crime. It was just a matter of keeping things reasonably in check. But lately, Macklin realized, things were getting bad. Rumors of gang violence kept getting back to him, and each story he heard was worse than the last. He resolved to get to the bottom of it, at least the part of it that happened on his beat.

Macklin still believed that being a police officer meant something, that it was a social responsibility accepted with pride and honor. He didn't see any reason why Sergeant Joe Friday or those fine boys riding around in
Adam-12
couldn't exist. It was a stereotype he embraced.

He could have been a detective by now, a desk boy, a gray four-door Plymouth Fury kind of guy if he had wanted it. He didn't. Above all else, police work always meant the streets to him, a blue uniform and a gun holstered securely against your side. The few guys still around who had attended the academy with him made a point of ignoring him, not wanting to associate with some nut who willingly flattens pavement when he could let his fingers to the walking from the fifteenth floor of Parker Center.

"Hey, Joe."

The voice was almost a whisper but broke through Macklin's thoughts like a scream. He broke his stride and stopped, listening for another sound.

"JD?" The voice implored from the alley Macklin had just passed, "C'mere, I gotta talk with you."

Macklin sighed, turning back and walking to the alley's mouth. He recognized the squeamish tentativeness behind the words. It was Enrico Esteban, the Bounty Hunters gang's nervous errand boy. Every now and then someone would put a scare into Esteban and he'd go running to Macklin for help. In return, Macklin pumped Esteban for information on gang activities. Lately, Macklin had been using Esteban to ferret out the truth behind the rumors the cop was hearing on the streets.

Esteban's constant nervousness made Macklin uneasy. The cop tried to keep their meetings as short, and infrequent, as possible.

Macklin peered into the darkness. "Where the hell are you, kid?"

"Back here, man." Esteban was scared, Macklin realized. So what else was new?

"All right, I'm coming." Macklin reluctantly swallowed the remainder of his chili dog and stepped into the shadows. The moon cast a narrow beam on Esteban's pockmarked cheeks and large, frantic brown eyes. The kid had a fleeting, uncomfortable smile on his face.

"What's your problem, Esteban?"

"I got no problems, JD." The smile jittered. "But you do."

Macklin's internal alarm went off too late. As he reached for his gun, someone grabbed his arm from behind, wrenching it back until his tendons screamed. Before Macklin could react defensively, two guys sprang on him from the darkness and spun him around.

He saw the alley closing in on him and then felt his nose smash apart like an egg, bursting with blood and cartilage. Intense pain bore deep into his head like a screw, leaving him limp and disoriented in his captors' grip. The alley walls whirled past him and he found himself facing a dark-complexioned youth, just over five feet tall, a tight sneer underscoring his pencil-thin mustache. His hands were behind his back and he shifted his weight anxiously.

Macklin recognized him immediately: Primo Manriquez, leader of the Bounty Hunters gang.

Esteban, his smile gone, slipped quietly into the darkness behind Primo. "Howdy, Officer." Primo's sneer grew into a sadistic smile as he approached Macklin. "How are you doin'?"

Macklin swallowed, his mouth thick with the sour taste of blood. "You're making a big mistake," Macklin said quietly.

"Really?" Primo laughed. "Shit, man, you
are
a mess. What you need is a bath."

Primo nodded and Macklin was forced to his knees.

Macklin, breathing hoarsely through his mouth, glared into Primo's gray eyes and strained against his captors.

Primo smiled down at him. "Time to wash up." He brought a rusted gasoline can out from behind his back and tipped it over Macklin's head. Macklin felt the gasoline splashing over him, soaking his wound with a sharp, stinging pain that brought tears to his eyes. The heavy fumes churned his stomach. Macklin closed his eyes tightly, trying to choke back the rising bile and overcome the pain.

"Pick him up," Primo said with disgust. Macklin was pulled to his feet and pushed back against the wall.

Through the blur of gasoline and tears, Macklin saw Primo strike a match. The flame was sharp and cast a glow that flickered on the youth's face. "I'm gonna barbeque a pig."

Primo met Macklin's gaze, searching for a trace of fear, and found none. It unnerved Primo, and Macklin knew it. A small, final victory.

Macklin spit into Primo's face. "Fuck you, shorty."

# # # # # #

Bertrum Gruber sucked gently on the chalky antacid tablet as he leaned forward and cranked the steering wheel, twisting the groaning bus through the empty intersection.

The bus smoked and coughed its way down the street while Bertrum thought about his favorite
Honeymooners
episodes. He was trying to take his mind off the Hoagie Steak sandwich that crouched in his stomach like a brick. The next time he took a shit he figured he'd have to bring along some dynamite to clear the pipe afterwards.

Ralph Kramden, as immortalized by Jackie Gleason, was the only hero Bertrum could identify with. Bertrum had a nagging wife and a shithole apartment and drove a bus full of noisy punks and smelly winos just like hapless Ralph. He never missed an episode, rushing home for the two a.m. rerun on the UHF channel that
never
came in clearly. Under his driver's seat he kept a ninety-eight-page handwritten script for the ultimate
Honeymooners
episode. Should a Hollywood producer ever step on the bus, Bertrum planned to convince him that the world was waiting to see Ralph and Norton become folk singers. Bertrum had even written the songs.

The acid bubbled in Bertrum's stomach as he wrestled the bus around the next corner. A light of flame burst out of an alley, screaming across his path like a crackling fuse. He knew his eyes were playing tricks on him again; it looked like a human being at the center of the flaming torch.

Bertrum gasped, choking on the tablet and wrenching the wheel hard to the left. The back end fishtailed and swatted the burning body into a row of parked cars. The bus started to roll, hesitated on two wheels, and then slowly regained its equilibrium.

Bertrum lay across his huge steering wheel, gurgling for air, the right side of his head pressed on the horn, filling the darkness with a wailing bellow.

A speeding Camaro screeched within inches of the bus before Bertrum saw it veer away, plowing through the window of the Pistol Dawn. The customers fled as the car splintered the bar apart and smashed into the wall just under the TV set.

An instant later he saw another car closing in on the bus. He closed his eyes.

POW! ZOOM! To the moon, Alice!

Bertrum was knocked to the floor by the impact. An explosion rocked the bus, lifting the tail end up like a teeter-totter.

The customers stumbling out of the Pistol Dawn cowered against the searing heat of the flames that enveloped the bus. Arms of fire seemed to reach out to the adjoining buildings, wrapping around the structures and spiraling upwards. The customers scrambled down the street and could hear glass shattering like firecrackers in the inferno behind them.

The flames were licking the night sky when the local precinct desk sergeant, eating from a bag of corn chips, got the first call. The woman wanted to report an earthquake.

Now, this is a fucking car.

Long, sleek, and black, the body arced forward like a wave. The shiny front grillwork, sharp and mean, tapered back to a pair of sharp fins that sliced the air so bad you could swear it whined.

Now, this is a fucking car.

"What are you doing, Brett, waxing the car or making love to it? Shit, I can read your mind. It's written all over your face. 'What a car.' It's another dinosaur, that's what it is. I'll keep my Chevette, thanks."

Brett straightened up and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. "It's more than a car, Mort. It's an experience."

Mort groaned. "Wait, wait, I know the next golden words that are gonna come out of your mouth. 'You haven't driven a car until you've slid down the road in a fifty-nine Caddy.' Gimme a break, will you?"

Brett grinned, damp with sweat in his UCLA jersey and dirty jeans. "You're a real asshole, you know that, Mort?" He bent over the trunk of the car, rubbing a rag across the black finish. "Turn on the set."

Mort finished his Tab, crinkled the can, and shuffled across Brett's garage to the cluttered workbench, flicking on the black-and-white portable and tossing his can amidst the tools and auto parts.

A great gray fuzzstorm filled the screen.

"Smack it, Mort."

Mort slapped the side of the set, kicking up dust, and Elias Simon filled the screen, heading full throttle towards the end of his evening sermon.

"Simon says it's time to give some WORTHSHIP, to give to the Lord and show Him the VALUE of His work, to give the money that can keep this ministry and Jesus alive in our sin-ridden city."

"I love this guy," Brett said."Best comedy on television." He caressed a Caddy fin with his rag.

"So, lemme tell you about my date last night." Mort popped open another Tab and adjusted himself on three weeks' worth of the
Los Angeles Times
.

"Shoot."

". . . Simon says give; Simon says HE must know the value of your faith . . ."

"First I took her to McGinty's for a drink. Course, I had a club soda."

"Yeah, I bet."

Mort Suderson had been an LAPD copter pilot until one night, while blind drunk, he flew over downtown Los Angeles and dropped wine bottles full of piss on city hall, superior court, Mel's Meat Burgers, and a sleeping derelict.

The derelict, who took a shower for the first time in seven years and needed thirty-seven stitches to patch up his wounds, filed a $3.2 million lawsuit against the city.

Mort was promptly fired.

Brett hired the boozing pilot, on the recommendation of Brett's friends in the department, and brought him to work as a mechanic at his Blue Yonder Airways hangar at the Santa Monica Airport. Once Mort dried out, Brett used him as a pilot on a limited basis.

Although he was sober most of the time, Macklin suspected Mort still courted the bottle.

"Hey, I don't get bad drunk, you know that." Mort swished the gulp of Tab between his cheeks like mouthwash and then swallowed it. "Only thing that happens to me when I'm drunk is that I think as fast as I talk."

Brett glanced at the set. Simon, trim and crisp in his blue suit, his eyes sparkling, moved along the stage like a cat on a fence.

The television audience applauded and Simon soaked it all in with a broad grin.
"What are you saving your money for? Material things? A new Mercedes? These things won't bring you closer to HIM . . ."

"She had blond hair and dark eyebrows," Mort said. "I couldn't help thinking what color her pubes were, ya know? It was a sick thought but I couldn't help it."

". . . use your money in a way that will make HIM proud. Come Judgment Day the Almighty doesn't want to see your Mercedes. He wants to know you helped His ministries, that you helped bring JEEESSSSUUUUSSSSS to others."

"Her boyfriend is a urologist. He's in Boston now. She's good people. She's interesting." Mort looked at Brett, who was rubbing down the driver's side of the car and shooting glances at the set. "Hey, are you listening to me?"

"Yes, yes. She's good people. So, what happened?"

"Nothing happened. We went to her place, she talked about her boyfriend, and I left. I'm seeing her again tonight."

"Uh-huh."

"I think she wants me, Brett."

Brett groaned. "C'mon, Mort. It's always the same story. You always say they do and they don't."

"No, I can feel it. I saw it in her eyes:
I want you, Mort Suderson.
It was right there." Mort finished his TAB and winced. "I just gotta get over this premature ejaculation thing. I don't mind it, but they always do."