THUGLIT Issue Two (9 page)

"We..." Cap started.

"That is..." Red tried.

"The thing being..."

"You want to take a few idiots for a bus trip, I don't care. Just get off the damn tracks and stay out of my way. This is my route."

"That's mighty decent of you," Cap said.

"You mean this isn't a real bus?" a voice queried from inside.

"Shut up, of course it's a real bus," Red turned and shouted.

Laughing, the driver of the other bus motioned Red and Cap to move out of the way.

Cap picked the rei
ns back up and coaxed the horses into a shuffle. They moved over a few steps; a bit of cajoling and they moved a few more. Cap and Red didn't notice the new huffing quality of their wheezing. With each step, they breathed harder and the one on the left started up a pathetic coughing that sounded like Old Man Waters, their lunger neighbor, who inhaled his pipe-smoke against his physician's orders.

Little by little, the bus moved, and then stopped, the Clydesdales stood shivering between the struts and staring straight ahead.

"What's going on?" Red asked Cap.

"I don't know."

"Maybe they're seeing spirits."

Cap turned slowly to look at Red.

"What?" Red asked. "Could be."

"You guys gotta keep going.  I can't get through," the real bus driver said.

"I want my money back," said the small voice from somewhere in the bus.

"Who the fuck keeps saying that?" Red asked.

"Look, I don't know how to make them..." Cap said to the other bus driver, but a gut-wrenching whinny cut him short as the Clydesdales slumped to the ground in a leaning pile.

"They fall asleep?" Red asked.

Cap closed his eyes and h
is knuckles whitened on the rei
ns.

The driver of the real bus was laughing, doubled over in the seat and clutching himself.

Cap and Red's bus chattered like a hencoop.

"What's happened?"

"Why's everybody laughing?"

"I want my money back."

"I've a mind to write to my friend Horace Greeley!"

"Lady, watch where you're pointing that thing!"

Cap and Red ignored them and looked at the dead Clydesdales.

"Poor, Jonathan, poor, Edward. At least they died free, doing what they love," Cap said.

"Yeah, I bet they l
oved pulling busloads of morons,
" Red muttered.

"What'd you say?"

"Nothing, Cap. Nothing."

"Don't you dare piss on their memory."

Red patted his friend's shoulder and saw a bit of blue uniform about a block away but getting closer.

"Shit." Red jumped down and shoved his way past the gawking and protesting people inside the bus. Drawing out his hatchet, the circle around him got bigger and he looked over at the portly woman edging forward with her firearm.

"Lady," he said, hefting his hatchet," if you point that at me, you'd better pull the trigger."

She stopped and the barrel dipped.

"And if you don’t kill me, I’m going to chop so many holes in you you’ll whistle when I throw you off the bus."

"I... You can't..."

"I can. And I'm going to." He gestured with his hatchet at the folds of her. "All that blubber isn't going to protect you."

"Why I..."

Turning away, Red hacked at the tin bands that secured the cash box to the frame of the bus. It fell to the ground with a jangled, meaty thump. Red hefted it with a grunt and jumped out.

"Cap, lets fuckin' go!"

Cap hadn't moved, staring at the two dead horses with his chin in his hands.

"Cap!"
Red screamed. Taking a penny out of his pocket, he beaned it off the side of Cap's head.

"What?" Cap's reply was dull, even grieved.

"We gotta go, pal."

"I can't just leave Jonathan and Edward."

"The cops are coming, Cap."

Cap roused himself. "Oh shit, really?"
             

He leapt down from the driver's seat and they raced off down Broadway and dipped down a side street.

"What now?" Cap asked.

"Now?" Red wheezed.

"Yeah," Cap huffed.

"For now, hold this," Red said, and tossed his friend the heavy cash box. Cap stumbled and scrambled, nearly falling under the weight.

"For now, run faster," Red said, laughing as they disappeared into the West Side.

Back on Broadway, a crowd had the bus and the two dead horses surrounded. The people who had been riding it spoke to whoever would listen.

"They dragged us in off the street, forced us to ride the bus they did."

"I want my money back."

"Stealing from working people, I never."

"I want my money back."

"I knew something was wrong, I haven't seen one of these since I was just a slim, wee girl!"

"I want my money back."

"Jesus,” said one of the cops.
“Here's a nickel. Now shut the fuck up."

b
y Patrick J
.
Lambe

I’m asking you to bear with me on this one, because I’m in a bad way, and there is a good chance I’m going to have to fire a gun in the general direction of a police officer in the next couple of minutes.

And that is not going to be an easy thing for me to do.

*****

I should have handed the uniform back to the sergeant the second after he gave it to me, thanked him for his time, and gone back to my job at the Home Depot. Another opening had to come up. It was just a matter of stacking lumber until the phone rang. I’d taken enough tests, one in
practically
every town in New Jersey that had posted an opening for a police officer. But I was young and impatient.

The first alarm bell went off with the khaki uniform. The last time I’d seen one on a cop was watching Barney Fife and Andy Taylor in black-and-white television repeats. Nowadays black and blue were in, with an occasional riot of yellow for visibility. I’ve even seen elite S.W.A.T. units dressed in full camouflage.

It wasn’t just the khaki color, it was the style: straight pants with a neat crease down each side, two front pockets
and one on the back, a buttoned-
up collared shirt, a pocket on each breast. Police uniforms had been evolving along military lines since the early nineties at least. The number of pockets on a modern uniform had multiplied exponentially with the amount of gear that had become available to help put the bad guys away.

The badge was the second sign that this might not be the job for me. The one on the cop who’d be showing me the ropes had a bird of some type perched on the top of it, gripping the edges of the metal with its talons. I think it was supposed to be an eagle, but it looked more like a vulture to me. The name between the talons was Scanlon.

*****

At least I have a few minutes to think about my fashion and career mistakes. I can hear a siren angling in on my location. I hope it’s an ambulance, because I’m not sure how much more of my blood the k
haki-
colored shirt is capable of absorbing
from
the wound
through
my chest.

*****

Scanlon’s feet were perched on his filthy desk blotter, fingers laced across the bursting seams of his uniform shirt. An ancient computer monitor occupied one corner of his metal desk. The screen was covered in small yellow Post-it notes, and I’d bet anything that the only things the computer would be capable of, if it was still functional at all, would be spewing out thin lines of green text against a dark background. Maybe a beta version of Pong.

Scanlon noticed me evaluating the obsolete electronics on his desk. “Our scumbag Mayor’s been cutting our budge since he took office.”

“I thought Captain Anderson was going to introduce me around.” I surveyed the station. The only thing that had been changed sin
ce the bicentennial was a light
bulb or two.

Scanlon moved his feet from desk to floor, made eye contact with an officer sitting at an outdated desk next to him. They both smiled.

“You probably won’t be seeing too much of Captain Anderson,” Scanlon said, turning his attention back to me. “He likes to work from home.” Scanlon pushed his bulk out of the chair and went over to the coffee machine, asked, “How do you like yours?”

“Black with sugar.” I’d arrived early, eager to begin my first day on the job. A couple of cops filtered in, ready, if not exactly eager, to start the day shift. Some of them could have benefited from a shave or a trip to the dry cleaners to clear stains out of their gear.

A uniformed cop gave me a weird look as he dropped off paperwork on Scanlon’s desk.

“You’ll have to excuse us. We haven’t had a rookie in fifteen years.” Scanlon placed the Styrofoam cup in front of me and slumped back behind his desk.

“You won’t be disappointed.”

“It’s hard to feel disappointment when you get to be my age.” He leaned back in his chair sipping from his coffee mug. “I guess you’ll ride with me the first couple of days, till you get the lay of the land. Then it’s off to the night shift. Low man on the totem pole and all.”

“I don’t have any problems with that.” I’d expected I’d have dues to pay. I was so green I was actually looking forward to it.

“Good, we’ll get started in a minute, just as soon as I go over some of this paperwork.”

He started with a local newspaper, ignoring me as I sat right in front of his desk, fidgeting. When he was done sorting through the Home News he moved onto a Star-Ledger.

“Can you show me the bathroom,” I asked after the watery coffee went to work on my kidneys.

Scanlon pointed to a hallway toward the end of the building. “You’ll have to use one in a holding cell. Ours has been out for a couple of weeks.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“I hope you don’t get pee-
shy. We’ve got a guy waiting to transfer to county in the other cell.”

There were two cells adjacent to each other, a line of bar
s separating them. A disheveled-
looking man snored on the metal bed in the cell to the left. The ot
her cell door was propped open
. I ambled up to the exposed off-white toilet in the unoccupied cell and peed, marveling how the acoustics of the room echoed the sound of water hitting water.

I stopped by the main bathroom on the way back to Scanlon’s desk. He didn’t look
as if
he was in any hurry to hit the streets, and I wanted to see if the bathroom was really out of order or if he was just pulling a fast one on the rookie.

He was telling the truth:
the bathroom door was covered with yellow caution tape. I tore it off and went inside. I jiggled the handle a few times, opened up the top. The inside stopper was worn, preventing a good seal.

I got a spare replacement toilet kit out of my car trunk from my Home Depot job. Took me about two
minutes working with my pocket
knife to get the bathroom back in working order.

A crowd of cops gathered around the bathroom door, watching me work.

Scanlon tore himself away from his papers and made his way to the front of the crowd. I depressed the handle, impressing the assembled crowd as the water went down into the sewer as designed.

“Looks like the taxpayer’s already getting a return on their money,” Scanlon said. “Let’s saddle up and hit the streets Plumber Boy.”

And with that, I earned my cop nickname.

*****

Plumber Boy. I wish I c
ould
live up to my name and slow down the sewage of red spewing out of the bullet wound. I try to keep my gun trained on the body across the room from me as I struggle to the doorway in a kind of three-legged crab-walk.

The guy I’d put the bullets into hadn’t moved in the ten minutes or so it had taken me to work up the strength to make a try for the door.

I planned on just sitting there, wa
iting for the emergency personnel
to find me on their own, but there are a number of doors leading off the main hallway and I don’t want to take the risk of them ch
ecking every room until they fi
nd me passed out from blood loss.

Besides, there’s always the chance the siren isn’t coming from an ambulance. I want to be out in the open, with my service pistol ready, in case a cop car arrives first and I have to aim the business end of the gun between ill-formed talons.

*****

The police station was next to the City Hall, the whole municipal complex sharing a central parking lot, typical of suburban towns in New Jersey.

We passed a young guy dres
sed in a suit, carrying a brief
case, on our way to the patrol car. The guy couldn’t have been more than two years older than me. He looked nervous, like he was going to his first real job interview after college. Scanlon stared him down, almost forcing
the guy
off the concrete walkway as we passed him.

Scanlon didn’t even turn to make sure he was out of hearing distance, then he said, “That was the Boy Wonder; the guy cutting off our budget like a tourniquet.”

“I thought you said the Mayor was responsible for the budget shortfall,” I said.

“He is. That’s him. I heard some corn-fed idiots elected an eighteen-year old Mayor in the Midwest someplace, but Wonder Boy’s the youngest in New Jersey
. I think he just turned twenty-
four.”

We stopped before a beat-up police cruiser. Rust touched places on the hood. The tire grooves were worn nearly smooth. Red-colored duct tape covered a hole in the light on the top of the car.

“She don’t look like much, but she can haul ass,” Scanlon said, the screech from the driver’s side door almost drowning out his words as he opened it and plopped down behind the steering wheel.

There were a few other black and whites scattered around Scanlon’s chariot, each of them in similar condition. The car started up after a couple turns of the key, and Scanlon began the tour of my new beat.

I hadn’t been to Keansport since my parents brought me to the local amusement park on the Raritan Bay when I was a kid. The only thing I remember about the trip was the carcasses of dead horseshoe crabs vying for beach space
with abandoned tires and washed-
up hospital waste. I’d hoped that my recollections of the town that’d sworn me in as a police officer were exaggerations of a child's
overactive imagination. Reality was more pitiful viewed through the eyes of an adult.

After decades of decline, most of the towns ringing the Raritan Bay were supposed to be in an economic upswing. Fast ferry services across the bay providing thi
rty-
minute commutes to downtown Manhattan brou
ght in ambitious young business
people with a thirst for renovation on their weekends.

The economic spurt had somehow missed the town of Keansport. The average house was a shotgun shack originally built in the fifties for summer tourists. Sometime during the late sixties or early seventies entire families decided to move in full time. Most of the fires dealt with by the volunteer fire company were caused by space heaters attended by drunks. The locals couldn’t afford permanent heating solutions.

Scanlon pulled up in front of a small general store in the downtown area.  A couple of men, loitering on bar stools outside a bar across from the place, quickly hid their beer bottles behind them.

I started toward them, but Scanlon grabbed me gently by the shoulder. “I’m not in the mood to bust balls. I want to get you something.” He led me into the store.

Scanlon smiled at the girl manning the counter. She looked like she was about sixteen, dressed in an oversized hockey jersey that wasn’t oversized enough to conceal her pregnancy. “
Can I get two packs of Marlboro
s, hon?”

She grabbed three packs from the overhead rack, putting an opened one back before she set the two full packs down in front of Scanlon. I guess the opened one was for selling loosies, one at a time for a quarter a pop.

“You’ve got to be careful about the ruts on the sidewalks in this town,” Scanlon said on the way to our patrol car.

“Ruts?” I asked glancing at the sidewalk.

“Ruts worn in by girls too young to drive cars pushing around baby carriages.” Scanlon handed me a pack of cigarettes. “Here you go rookie.”

I ignored them, said, “I don’t smoke.”

“Drunks are probably the biggest problem you’re likely to run into on this beat. The only thing that can calm them down most times is more liquor. We can’t give them that, but a cigarette usually serves as a pacifier in a pinch. Besides, you’ll probably start if you don’t pick up any worse habits after a couple of years out on the street.”

He jammed the pack in my khaki-colored shirt pocket.

*****

Turns out Scanlon was wrong about one thing. I wound up having to deal with a lot worse things than pacifying a drunk. He was right about me taking up smoking though.

I shake one out of the pack, put it in my mouth and reach into my pocket for a lighter with the hand unoccupied by my service gun. I get the lighter working and take a deep drag. I pull myself together and crawl a couple feet down the hallway, trailing my blood behind me.

*****

“I’ve got to stop here for a second,” Scanlon said on my third day on the job. He parked the cruiser in front of a real esta
te office next to the convenience
store where he’d purchased the cigarettes.

“I think I’ll join you. I’ve got to find a place to live in town.”