Poisonous Kiss (3 page)

    "Do you love him?" He asked.

    "I do. And you? How did you feel about your partner?"

     Sometimes you have to be cruel. But maybe that was too much. I didn't expect this pained—hateful—look. So much hate I thought for a second he was going to hit me.

     "He trusted me," he answered. He dropped his head and I ached to hold him close to me.

     "I suppose it hurts." Stupid remark. Unprofessional. A question you would expect from a bewildered, middle-aged woman.

     "I killed him!" he moaned. He looked up, looked into my eyes and suddenly he seemed like a child. It was disappointing. All the mystery disappeared, replaced by the banal pain that I've seen before. Every cop whose partner was killed feels this way. They all blame themselves.

     I didn't tell him that. I figured he wasn't interested in other people's pain.

     "Nonsense. You did everything you could."

     Once again hate filled his face. He lunged and I expected him to hit me, but he just grabbed my shoulders.

     "I didn't shoot!" he said looking into my eyes. "Did you know that? If I had fired, Carl would still be alive. But I didn't shoot."

     He slowly released me. I reached toward him, gently touching his hand. "I read the report, Arany. You did fire. You emptied your gun."

     He bowed his head again. He looked at my hand. I knew I ought to pull it back, and I nearly moved it, but as he began to speak I somehow left my hand on his arm. I felt a muscle quivering.

     "I fired too late. By the time I shot, Carl had been killed and I had been wounded. I saved myself."

     A painful half-smile flashed across his face for a second.

     "The gun was in my hand." He looked down at his hand now, as if he expected to see the weapon still there. "I'm a good shot, I was one of the best at the Academy. The son of a bitch was close to me, three feet at the most. It was dark, but I saw him, I felt him. I should have fired just once."

     I felt all my muscles tighten. Martin, I thought, my old genius. Maybe this is what you have been waiting for. I watched him, neither of us talking. He suddenly dropped facedown on the bed. I saw him wince as the abrupt movement pulled at his stitches, but he didn't make any sound. Then he spoke quietly:

     "I couldn't pull the trigger. Do you understand? I simply wasn't capable of pulling that goddamn trigger."

     I do, I thought. I understand more than you imagine.

Arany walks to the end of the short corridor and around a glass partition into a small anteroom. He slips past the two desks there and knocks on the door behind them. He still feels weak. From time to time he's overcome by dizziness, but the attacks are brief, and pass quickly. He hasn't received today's shot from Dr. Allesandro.

     "Come in." The voice is sharp, almost unfriendly.

     Arany turns the knob, enters and stands in the doorway. It's a worn little office, built into the end of the corridor. Its only window faces a back alley. On the captain's desk, between official forms and files, an inch-long plastic figure swings from a tiny toy gallows. Aside from the desk, the office contains two uncomfortable chairs, a cheap coffee table in a style that was considered dated fifteen years ago and a few pitiful signs of a decorative intent: A faux-Navajo table cloth, the postcards on the wall beside the city map, an old Colt under them and a wanted poster from the last century—the original item, not some cheap reprint. A few framed certificates of merit hang on the other wall. One mentions honorable service in the Korean War, another is a memento of the 1964 police boxing championship (fifth place) and the most recent notes twenty years of service with the Police Department. Then there are a couple of black-andwhite photos. A print of Capt. Ericsson shaking hands with some city politician, forgotten long ago. Another, a yellowed newspaper clipping behind a plate of glass, shows him as he takes a handcuffed prisoner into the police station. It's a plain, slightly drab space, but it clearly belonged to a man who had always understood what was right and always did it. It would be hard to tell such a man that you are a coward.

     The captain glances up, blinking short-sightedly through his reading glasses.

     "That you, Arany? Come on in!"

     Arany stops awkwardly in front of the desk. He gets the feeling that the captain expected a salute, or some other, more military greeting. Instead he studies the mass of papers on the desk, absent-mindedly reading the upside-down words.

     Ericsson stands up and goes around his desk. He is close to sixty, and his body is no longer in boxing shape. Arany knows the captain is not well, and has to live on a strict diet. Ericsson faces Arany and pats him on the shoulder.

     "I'm glad you thought it over, son."

     He embraces Arany with the short, shy moves of an old man. "It'd have been a shame if the force lost two good officers."

     "Yes sir." Arany nods.

     "I heard you had the typical reaction—blamed yourself." Ericsson trudges back to his chair, and drops himself on it. A tiny curl of his thinning white hair falls on his brow and he sweeps it away with an angry move, as if it's a fly. "Bullshit," he mumbles at last. "You did everything possible. You had no reason to suspect that this guy sleeping on the stairs was Frost's partner. And how could you know Frost is some kind of damned amateur contortionist. He had to be double jointed or something to get the handcuffs round in front of him."

     Arany takes a deep breath.

     "We should have searched his pants more carefully before we let him get dressed."

     Ericsson hits the table with his enormous fist and curses. He belongs to the old school, and believes that well-placed anger helps more than any heart-to-heart talk.

     "Your partner should have found the knife! Carl—" the captain catches himself and then continues in a calmer voice. "Carl made a mistake, a bad one. I'm as sorry about the whole mess as you are. He was one of us. I feel responsible for all my men. But I don't let it shadow my judgment."

     "Yes sir." Arany nods again. Even though the captain seems a bit theatrical, he knows the older man means what he's saying.

     "I'm glad you had a talk with the psychologist," says Ericsson. "You pay attention to what she says. You can't just give up. I'm not giving up. We're going to catch that son-of-a-bitch and I'm going to wring his neck with my own hands if I have to. Understood?"

     "Yes sir." Arany feels dizzy again. Suddenly he sees Ericsson's broad, flat nose, the face dotted with liver spots, through a trembling mist, but he continues speaking anyway. "Unfortunately, that won't bring Carl back."

     He loses his balance for a moment and leans on the desk. Beads of perspiration appear on his forehead. What the hell is this? Is it from loss of blood? The doctors warned him he would feel weak for a while. Or can it be the shots he got from Dr. Allesandro? She said there could be possible side effects. A medicine to assist psychological recuperation—he never would have suspected that something like that existed.

     The attack passes; his sight clears. Arany slowly turns and walks out.

     He is assigned to a desk job, "till you're back in top shape." He feels waves of heat and nervous tension while he works. At lunchtime he grabs a sandwich and coffee at the corner deli and eats at his desk. Then he hesitantly reaches for the phone.

I drove past the house. A week ago I couldn't imagine myself going to this place ever again. But now I was parking in front of a fire hydrant on the other side of the street, about thirty yards away from that dark doorway—the one I've been seeing in my nightmares.

     I had nothing to do here. A dozen detectives searched the whole building that night. They had found Carl's body on the landing between the second and third floor. And they had found me too, lying in a puddle of my own blood and looking like I wouldn't last very long. I was lucky. Nobody knows who dialed 911 and said there was a gunfight in the staircase. The first cops on the scene hadn't recognized us. Then they found the badges in our pockets and got half the force down here. They'd checked the whole building. Every door they tried was the residence of hard-working people who'd slept through the whole thing. No one knew Frost or the fat man on the stairwell. Aside from the holes they made in me and Carl, the only trace that either of them left behind were a few drops of blood, probably from a wound I'd inflicted. I was lying half-dead in the hospital, when the captain came to visit. He said he'd put me in for a special commendation.

     God! if it wasn't for this psychologist, I might have killed myself.

     The apartment where we'd arrested Frost had been found deserted. The woman, the ageing whore with dangling breasts, bad teeth and tired eyes, had disappeared. According to her driver's license, her name was Gladys Ferrow. Funny, I only glanced at her license while I was searching her purse, but the name was seared into my mind. I couldn't explain why I remembered the name, or why I didn't mention my memory to Captain Ericsson. I should talk it over with Dr. Allesandro. That woman could read my soul, and I didn't mind. In fact I liked it. It felt like she was touching my thoughts, climbing inside and caressing my heart.

     I lit a cigarette before getting out of the car. A man emerged from the doorway, blinking in the late afternoon sunshine. I couldn't explain why I was watching the house. I didn't expect to find any evidence or suspects. I guess I just wanted to see myself here. To walk through the door that'd been haunting my dreams. I took a deep drag on the cigarette, exhaled and step out onto the street. Six or seven young males— they look too full of hate to be called boys—were leaning on a car parked near the doorway. They frowned at me and stared as if their eyes were lumps of cold glass. One of them, he couldn't be more than ten, threw a cigarette down and spat. I'd be mad too if this was my home, this dirty, dangerous block where no one cares. I'd probably hate everything.

     But just then, it was mostly me they hated, and they weren't interested in my pity. They read through my jeans and my Phillies T-shirt. They knew I was a cop.

     I entered the doorway. This time it wasn't a dream. After stopping a moment in front of the elevator, I walked toward the staircase. The smell of piss hit my nose, and a visual memory of that night—the fat guy lying there—flashed through my mind. I climbed a flight and a half and crouched down at the spot below the second floor landing, to contemplate the dirty, smudged steps. It was hard to tell which one of the dark stains in the concrete was from my blood. An old man walked out of a second floor apartment. He shuffled over to the elevator. Maybe he had called the police. This shuffling old man could have saved my life.

     I stayed there for a while, hunched over my dried blood—or maybe it was just an old pool of piss. Nothing happened. I think I was expecting to discover something, or at least trigger some kind of emotional reaction, but all I felt was a slight tremble in my weary thighs. I still wasn't up to full strength. I stood, clumsily, and slowly walked downstairs. Did I get what I was looking for? Did I find some answer? I don't even know what the question was.

     One of the kids was leaning over my car. He was probably only about sixteen, but he was big, with weight lifter's muscles bulging on his bare back. And he was doing something to my windshield wiper. He ignored me and continued trying to work my wiper blade loose. I had no gun. I acted like I didn't see him as I got into the car and opened the glove compartment. Now I had a gun and I liked it. I glanced to my left and saw the rest of the crew, still leaning against the car across the street and watching to see what would happen. With my right hand on the steering wheel, I leaned my head out the driver's side window and let my left arm hang straight down toward the ground.

     "Hey son, why don't you clean it off and check the oil while you're there?"

     He cursed and I slowly lifted my left arm up, so the gun I was holding was pointed at his chest. He smirked at the weapon, then looked at my eyes. Something he saw there made him freeze. The wiper snapped back against the windshield.

     I gave the gang across the street one more quick look, then floored it. The guy had good reflexes and he jumped away in time to avoid being hit. I heard his startled cry then an angry curse as I barreled down the block.

     It was only later, when I could no longer see the guy in the mirror and I was stuck in traffic on Main, that I began to wonder why I hadn't been afraid. I didn't experience the usual creeping anxiety, the heart-stopping fear. It didn't even bother me that I was dealing with a kid. The only feeling I had was the certainty that I would shoot.

Noise: Music, feminine laughter, masculine shouting, all louder than necessary, all in competition. The men's shouts show that they're in charge, and they can do what they like—at least here in this club near the corner of Market Street. The women's laughter advertises that they are available to those who know their language. It makes it clear that they are women—at least here near the corner of Market they are.

     One of these women might be Gladys Ferrow. She has several arrests for prostitution. She is thirty-six, younger than Celia. According to her file, she used to frequent this dive.

     Arany stops at the door for a moment as his eyes get used to the semi-darkness and his ears adjust to the waves of noise. Then he walks quickly up to the bar. He doesn't want to stand there calling unnecessary attention to himself.