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...The blow nailed me on the back of the head and put me down on the spot. It also knocked me out, cold. I don’t know how long I was out. One or two seconds, one or two minutes, one or two hours...it’s not easy to tell. All I know now is my head hurts. Really...fucking...hurts. And when I reach for my gun, it’s gone. As my eyesight begins to refocus, a man begins to take shape. He’s standing just a few feet in front of me. He’s not holding his service weapon on me, but my own 9mm semi-automatic. Rather, Sean’s 9mm.
Detective David Danish.
He’s smiling that same smile he wore on his smooth round face the morning he first stopped me in my minivan for a busted brake light back when he was still a uniformed traffic cop. Only now, he’s wearing one of his blue suitcoats, a light gray button down, and a brown necktie. His tan trousers appear professionally pressed and his brown shoes are polished. Even his stand of short white hair looks perfect.
“Well, Mr. Jones,” he says after a time, “you sure have come a long way since being a postal worker. Or am I missing something here? By the looks of it, you’ve come back to real, honest work.”
Sitting up, I feel the back of my head. There’s no blood, but the lump that’s risen is already the size of an egg.
“Mind if I get up, Detective?” I say. “Or are you going to try to sucker punch me again?”
He laughs. “That wasn’t a sucker punch so much as a pistol whipping you never saw coming. It was also my way of taking control of the situation. You and your wife have become quite the Bonnie and Clyde these days. The body count you’ve left behind, the drugs you’ve cooked, the money you’ve laundered...my oh my.” He shakes his head slowly, like he’s also about to say Tsk, tsk, tsk. “You just might go down in the history books as one of Upstate New York’s most notorious crime teams. Congratulations. That’s quite the feat for two middle-aged people who drove a minivan and lived a sedate life of work, TV, bed for ages and ages.”
Slowly, I get myself back up on my feet. I’m a bit out of balance, but I’m confident I’m not about to fall back down again.
“Where’s this going, Danish?” I ask. “You gonna arrest me already, or what?”
He’s still aiming my weapon at me.
“That’s the thing,” he says. “To be honest, I had several chances to nab you already. But I’ve been holding back. When you killed the Camps, I was right behind you. When you killed your fellow mailman, Martin, I was close by. I was even there when your boy was gunned down in cold blood. Witnessed it with my own eyes. When you drove to Catskill to hide out, you never noticed me on your tail. But I was there, all the time.” Pointing his extended index finger at me. “And let me ask you a question, Jones. Who disintegrates two grown men, buried what’s left of their bodies in the basement, then tosses all the empty plastic acid containers, cement and lime bags in the recyclable waste can? Everybody knows cops always go through a suspect’s trash.”
Joanne would know that...
A slow burn emerges from my toes, up my legs, to my belly, past my beating heart and into my brain. It mixes with the adrenaline to form a red rage. I feel my hands forming fists. If only I had my own gun, I’d take my chances and pull it out. But then, I’m not sure I’m pissed off at him or me. I recall the few times I’d seen him drive past my house. Or seen him hanging around the Perez brother’s crime scene, or even the Camp’s crime scene. Now that I think about it, I do recall him driving past the same day my son got shot.
“So, the million-dollar question,” I say. “Why didn’t you arrest me when you had the chance? When you could have nailed me and Joanne red-handed?”
His smile grows wider.
“Let me ask you something else, Mr. Jones,” he says. “How much did you make as a postal worker? Fifty, sixty K per year? Was that enough to put a roof over your head, send the kid to college and med school, plus keep your mother-in-law happy and cozy in her old age in a private elderly facility?”
For a long beat, I just stare at him, wondering what he’s getting at.
“We never had enough money if you wanna know the truth,” I say. “We were always in the red.”
“And then, when your wife accidentally kills the two Perez brothers, and finds all those drugs and all that money just for the taking, you can’t help yourselves. Not only that, you imagine the possibilities of entering a business where you can make not tens of millions, but hundreds of millions. And you know what? You’d reached an age where you were sick of the struggle. Sick of never getting ahead. Sick of seeing the neighbors get rich all around you, while you’d grown old, tired, and fat. How am I doing here?”
I’ll be damned if he isn’t right about everything. I nod.
“So, you get into the drug business thinking, what the hell. What could go wrong? Turns out your happy-go-lucky, drunk-as-a-skunk casket-selling neighbor, Sean, had been pushing drugs on the side for years and years for a nice Russian fellow by the name of Carcov, and nothing ever happened to him. For Sean, it was a matter of staying financially solvent. And isn’t that what life comes down to? Staying financially solvent for your family? Never mind the kids or adults the drugs will hurt. The addicts are always going to find drugs no matter what. That’s a cultural, political, and legal issue. You didn’t invent it and it wasn’t your idea. It’s nothing personal when you sell drugs. It’s just a case of supply meeting demand. A business no more deadly than selling booze or cigarettes.”
Again, he’s right and he knows it.
“So then, what about me?” he goes on. “How much money do I make? Do I have enough at the end of the month to make the private school tuition? The big house in the ‘burbs? The wife’s new Lexus? The country club she insisted we join? The weeklong trip to Turks and Kakos next month? The Macy’s credit card, the Mastercard, the Discovery Card, the weekly donation to St. Pious Church? It’s not all coming out of a cop’s salary. Even a detective’s salary. Maybe I make more than a mailman, but not much more. But you see, Mr. Jones, I want better for the wife and kids. I want what everybody wants. I want us to live the American Dream.”
Now it’s all becoming clear to me what he’s getting at. He’s not a cop, so much as he’s me. Me and my wife.
“You want to live the American Dream,” I say, after a time, “even if it means committing American crimes.”
He smirks and laughs again.
“Hey, if you wanna put it that way,” he says.
“Who’s paying you, Danish? If you don’t mind my asking. That’s assuming I’m not walking out of here alive anyway.”
“Jeeze, you gotta ask, Jones?” he says. “You didn’t think Perez was going to let that performance you pulled off at King Fuels this afternoon go unanswered, did you? And let me tell you something: Bravo! You and the missus did some real Van Damage on those filthy gangbangers.” He looks over both shoulders, as though someone out there is listening to us. He leans into me a little. “If you want to know the God’s honest truth, you did us all a favor by getting rid of those bald headed, tattooed gangbanger creeps. They make me sick to my stomach.” He glances at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he goes on. “I could chit chat with you all day. I like you, Jones. You and your wife. You’ve got balls you never knew you had. It’s too bad it comes down to this, but you had to know deep down inside that once you got involved in the drug smuggling business, something like this was a real possibility.”
My head is pounding, my stomach so tight it feels like it’s about to split in two, my heart throbbing in my throat. In my head I picture Joanne. I picture Bradley. Will I ever see them again?
“I understand,” I say through a dry mouth.
“Listen,” he says, “I’ll make it real quick. In the end, it will just look like you came back to this place to end your life. You couldn’t take it anymore...the guilt, the shame, the sadness you caused so many people...so you returned to the one, pure place that was more sacred to you than church. The good old United States Postal Service where the people’s mail gets delivered no matter what, by honest men and women in their gray postal uniforms. Get where I’m going with this, Jones?”
“I see the logic, Danish.”
“Okay then, down on your knees, please.”
I exhale, and suddenly take on this feeling of weighing twice my normal weight. Slowly, I drop to my knees, head down, chin against chest, hands resting on my head, fingers locked at the knuckles. I just want to get this the hell over with. The detective steps up to me, plants the pistol barrel against my right temple. In my mind, I picture what he’s going to do when it’s all over. He’s going to wipe away his prints from it, and place it in my hand, wrap my finger around the trigger, just like Sean attempted with Mark Camp. Only difference is, Detective Danish won’t fuck it up.
He presses the barrel tighter.
“By the way, Mr. Jones,” he says. “I’m curious. What were you really doing back here in your old mailman uniform anyway?”
The shot reverberates through the distribution center. It also startles me enough to cause me to jump back up onto my feet while Danish drops to the floor, deadweight. I press my hand against my head. Is there a bullet in my brain and I just don’t know it? But then I see my wife standing a few feet away, her short barreled semi-automatic gripped combat style in both her hands.
“Jesus, Jo,” I say. “You scared the crap out of me. But goddamn I love you. You saved my life again.”
“You owe me, Bradley,” she says, her voice echoing in the big, wide open distribution center.
I gaze down at Danish. He’s been shot in the lower back and the bullet has exited his upper right chest. There’s a big round blood stain that’s expanding on his expensive Oxford. He’s also got a little blood exiting his mouth, like the bullet might have shattered and nicked his windpipe.
“What the hell happened?” he grunts, his eyes wide, his face turning pale.
Bending at the knees, I snatch my gun out of his hand before he shoots me with it.
“Somebody beat you to the draw, cowboy,” I say. “That’s what happened.”
“You son of a bitch,” he says, through his pain. “I should have shot you in the head the second I saw you.”
“That’s not nice,” I say. “I thought you liked me, Danish.”
“I’ll tell you what else is not nice, you lucky fucker,” the cop spits, “I hope you get caught and sent to prison for the rest of your sad lives.” He spits some blood. “And I hope your son dies. How’s about them apples?”
“Wow,” I say. “Some pretty harsh words for a dying on-the-take cop.”
“We’ll see who dies,” he grunts.
The blood stain from his chest wound is growing wider and wider.
“What do we do with him?” Joanne asks.
My eyes go from her to the conveyor belt and back again. An idea fills my head.
“Joanne,” I say. “Give me a hand.”
Like I did with my son earlier, I position myself behind Detective Danish. Bending at the knees, I slip my arms under both his arms and heft him up. He squeals in pain.
“Grab his legs,” I say, grunting.
“Where are we taking him?” Joanne asks, taking hold of his limp legs.
“The conveyor belt.”
Together we manage to place him on his back on the belt.
“What the fuck are you doing to me?” the cop begs, his fear as palpable as the blood leaking onto the wide black belt.
Mounted to the concrete block wall, near the double swinging doors, is a big green button. I go to it and punch it. An alarm sounds. That’s followed by a loud buzzer and then the sudden coming to life of the conveyor belt. A loud mechanical noise fills the giant distribution center as the belt starts running in the direction of the giant mail bins located in the adjoining building. When Detective Danish feels himself being carried away by the belt, he begins to panic and scream.
When he reaches the portion of the belt that’s elevated at a thirty-five-degree angle, he starts heading upwards.
“No!” he screams. “Stop this now, Jones! Please stop it! Please....”
First, he disappears from view as he enters into the next building. Then we hear a shrill scream as the belt drops him two full stories into one of the empty bins below. A distinct thud follows and then nothing. Tomorrow, he’ll be quite the sight for the mail sorters. If only I could see the looks on their faces when they come to his pale, stiff, wide-eyed body.
“Wait right here, Jo,” I say.
I go to the wall, hit the red button that stops the conveyor belt. Then, heading further into the building, I enter the men’s room, grab some paper towels from the dispenser and soak them in warm water. Exiting the bathroom, I rejoin Joanne. Dropping to one knee, I clean the relatively small amount of blood from off the floor. I’d look for the spent bullet, but we don’t have the time for that. Anyway, when the postal workers discover the body in the morning, it will make any attempt at cleaning the place moot. It just seems like the right thing to do at the time. Making my way back to the bathroom, I flush the bloody paper towels.
When I come back out, I can’t help but notice the sly smirk on Joanne’s face.
“Did you really have to pull that conveyor belt stunt, Bradley?” she asks.
I cock my head over my shoulder, purse my lips. “I didn’t like what he said about our son.”
“I didn’t either,” she says.
“Follow me,” I say. “We need lodging for the night, and I think I know how to find it without attracting anymore police.”
Taking Joanne by the hand, I lead her through the swinging double doors and into the general post office.