BY BENJAMIN M. SCHUTZ
6th & O Streets, N.W.
(Originally published in 2005)
Sharnella Watkins had never walked into a police station in her life. She’d been tossed in delirious or drunk, carried in kicking and screaming, and marched in on a manacled chorus line. But walk in on her own, never. That would have been like sex. Another thing that if it was up to her, she’d never do.
She checked both ways before she crossed the street, searching for witnesses, not traffic, and clattered over on her nosebleed heels.
She knocked on the bulletproof plastic at the information center.
The desk sergeant looked up from his racing form. “Help you, ma’am?”
“I’d like to talk to that detective, the big one. He’s bald and he gots a beard down in front, ah, you know, ah Van Dyke they calls it, oh yeah, he wears glasses, too.”
“That’s detective Bitterman, ma’am, and why would you like to talk to him?”
“It’s personal.”
“Well, he’s working now. Why don’t you come back when his shift ends?”
“When’s that?”
“Six o’clock.”
“I can’t wait that long. Can you give me his phone number? I’ll call him.”
“Sorry, ma’am, I can’t do that. Unless you’re family. You aren’t family, are you?” The desk man sniggered. Big Bad Bitterman and this itty-bitty black junkie whore.
“No, I guess you’re not. Sorry ’bout that.” The desk man looked down, trying to root out a winner in all those optimistic names.
Sharnella knew the truth would be pointless, but along with a nonexistent gag reflex, the other gift that had kept her alive on the streets all these years was the unerring ability to pick the right lie when she had to.
She leaned forward so that her bright red lips were only inches from the divider and sneered. Then, shaking her head, she said, “You think you’re so smart. Well, lets me tell you something. It ain’t me what needs him. He’s been looking for me. He wants to talk to me. And now, I’m telling you both, to go fuck yo’selves. I ain’t coming back, and I ain’t gonna talk to him and …” She got close enough for the desk man to count her missing molars: “I’m gonna tell him it was your sorry bullshit what pissed me off and he should see you ’bout why he can’t solve no cases no more.”
The desk man had been following her little breadcrumbs of innuendo and found himself ending up face to face with Mount Bitterman. The explosion wouldn’t be that bad. Bitterman had made enough enemies that if he declared you one, you’d as likely be toasted as shunned. Bitterman never forgot and never forgave.
The desk man had endured too much inexplicable disappointment and loss to risk an angry Bitterman.
As Sharnella turned to walk away, the desk man said: “Hold your horses, bitch. This is his number at headquarters.” He wouldn’t write it down for her, hoping her memory would fail. She’d be fucked and Bitterman would have no cause. As she backed away, mouthing the numbers to fix them in her disloyal mind, the desk man said, “You know Bitterman only listens to the dead. I hope you find him soon.”
Across town, Detective Avery Bitterman reached down and pulled on his dick. One of the advantages of a closed front desk. He’d notice himself doing this more since his divorce. A dispassionate review told him that it wasn’t for pleasure but rather to reassure himself that he was still all there, a feeling he had less and less often these days.
The receptionist at headquarters told him that he had a call from a Sharnella Watkins and that she said it was an emergency. “Put it through,” he said.
“Is this Detective Bitterman?”
“Yes, it is. How may I help you?”
“You probably don’t remember me, but I remembers you. You arrested my boy Rondell. You was the only one who didn’t beat up on him. You wouldn’t let nobody hurt him.”
Bitterman shook his head, remembering. That’s right, ma’am. I wouldn’t let them lynch him. I thought it would be more fitting if your son got sent to Lorton, where he could meet the two sons of the woman he raped, sodomized, and tortured to death. Those mother’s sons and some friends tied him down, inserted a hedge shears up Rondell’s ass, opened him up and strung his intestines around him like he was a Christmas tree. When, to their delight, this didn’t kill him, they poured gasoline over him like he was a sundae and set him on fire.
“No, I do remember you, Sharmella.”
“SharNella.” She knew she was right to call this man. He remembered her. He would help her.
“It’s my baby, Dantreya. He’s gone, Mr. Bitterman. I know he’s in some kind of trouble …”
What a fuckin’ surprise. “Ma’am, I’m a homicide detective. You want to go to your local district house and file a missing persons report. I can’t help you with this.”
“Please, Mr. Bitterman. They won’t do anything. They’ll just say, ‘That’s what kids do,’ and with me as a mother why not stay out all night. But he’s not like that. He’s different than my others. He’s a good boy. He goes to school. He’s fifteen and he never been in no trouble. Never, not even little things. He likes to draw. He wants to be an artist. You should come and see what he draws. Please, Mr. Bitterman, he’s all I got left. It’s Christmas tomorrow. I just want my baby home.” Wails gave way to staccato sobbing.
Sharnella’s tears annoyed Bitterman. I’m a homicide detective, that’s what I do, he said to no one. I can’t deal with this shit. It ain’t my job. Come back when he’s dead. Then I’ll listen.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I understand how you feel. But the beat cops can keep an eye out for him. You tell them where he’s likely to go. That’s your best bet, not me. I’m sorry. I gotta go now.”
Bitterman hung up over her wailing “No’s.” Where was he going to go? He was head of the cold case squad. These days, everything was a cold case. Arrest and conviction rates were lower for homicide than for jaywalking. The killers were younger, bolder and completely without restraint. The law of the jungle, “an eye for an eye,” would have been a welcome relief. The law of the streets was “an eye for a hangnail.” Everything was a killing offense. Motive was nothing, opportunity and means were ubiquitous. Children packed lunchbox, thermos, and sidearm in their knapsacks for school. The police were the biggest provider of handguns. Three thousand had disappeared from the city’s property rooms to create more dead bodies that the medical examiner’s office couldn’t autopsy, release or bury. That for Bitterman was the guiding symbol of his work these days. Handguns on a conveyor belt back to the streets, and the frozen dead serving longer and longer sentences in eternity’s drunk tank.
The phone jerked Bitterman back from his reverie.
“Mr. Bitterman, this is Sharnella Watkins. Don’t hang up on me. I can help you. My boy’s gone, ’cause they want to kill him.”
“Who’s they, Sharnella?”
“The 6th and O Crew.”
“Sharnella, you said your son had never been in trouble. The 6th and O Crew is nothing but. Why am I listening to this?”
“He didn’t do nothing. He was coming home from school with a trophy he got at a art show, and Lufer tried to take it from him, but my baby wouldn’t give it to him and when Lufer tried again he hit him with it and knocked him down and my baby ran off. He said Lufer went to get his gun and was yellin’ that he’d kill him for sure. And he would, that boy’s purely mean. He kill you for no reason.”
“Sharnella, this still doesn’t help me. Get to the help-me part or I’m hangin’ up.”
Sharnella had never given a policeman a straight answer in her life. But her baby was in danger. Sharnella never stopped to think why she felt so differently about this child, her fourth, than any of the others, only that she did and that his death, after all the others, would kill her too.
“This boy, Lufer Timmons. He’s killed a bunch of people. That’s what everybody says. Everybody afraid of him. They say he’s the Crew’s main shooter. But he does it when it ain’t business, just ’cause he likes it. And he said he’ll kill my boy. Doesn’t that help you, Mr. Bitterman?”
The Crew favored death as a solution to all its problems. Giving the delivery man a name was a help. “Tell you what, Sharnella. You go over to the station house like I said and give ’em all the information about your son. Bring a picture, a list of all of his friends and where they live, and where he’s been known to hang out. Tell them to fax me a copy of all that. I’ll look into it.”
Her story was probably 90 percent bullshit and 10 percent horseshit for flavor, but Bitterman knew he’d check it out. You turned over every rock and picked up every squiggling thing. That was his motto: No Corner Too Deep, No Corner Too Dark.
Bitterman tried to remember Sharnella from her second son’s trial. She’d started dropping babies at fourteen and was done before twenty. That’d make her around thirty-five now. She looked fifty. Flatbacking and mainlining aged women with interest. Beginning as a second-generation whore, Sharnella’s childhood had been null and void; her prime had passed unnoticed, one sweaty afternoon in a New York Avenue motel.
Bitterman was more aware of time than ever before. He’d lifted and run and dragged his ugly white man’s game to basketball courts all over the city. Elbow and ass, he rebounded with the best even though he couldn’t jump over a dime. No one ever forgot a pick he set or an outlet pass that went end to end, but he remembered not to shoot too often or try to dribble and run at the same time. His twenties and thirties didn’t seem all that different, but now at forty-five he knew he wasn’t the same man. Bald by choice, rather than balding. Thicker but not yet fat, slower both in reflexes and foot speed. Maybe mellowing was nothing more than realizing that he couldn’t tear the doors off the world anymore. The long afternoon of invincibility had passed.
Sharnella’s second son, Jabari, had killed a rival drug dealer in a rip-off attempt that also killed a nursing student driving by. Her only daughter, Female, with a short “a” and a long “e,” so named by the hospital and then taken by Sharnella, who liked the sound of it, had died of an overdose of extremely good cocaine at the age of sixteen. Everything she delivered died or killed someone else.
Bitterman called down to Identification and Records.
“Get me the file on Lufer Timmons. If there’s a picture make a copy for me and send it up with the file. And see if there’s a file on Dantreya Watkins.”
Bitterman sat at his desk awaiting the files, massaging his eyes.
Bitterman had tried to catch a case of racism for years, a really virulent one, but to no avail. He had mumps when he needed anthrax. It would have made his job so much easier. No sadness for the wasted lives, no respect for the courage of the many, no grief for the victims, no compassion for the survivors.
He’d been a homicide cop in a black city for almost his entire adult life. He’d seen every form of violence one person could do to another. He’d seen black women who’d drowned their own babies, and ones who’d ripped their own flesh at the chalk outlines of a fallen son. Men who’d shot and stabbed an entire family, then eaten the dinner off their plates and men who’d worked three jobs for a lifetime, so their children wouldn’t have to. Bitterman just didn’t get it, how anyone could conclude that they were all of a kind, that they were different and less. He wished he could, it saved on the wear and tear.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the Lufer Timmons file on the desk and a note saying no file on that Watkins. Maybe he was his mother’s pride and joy.
Lufer Timmons had been raised by strangers, starting with his parents and moving on to a series of foster homes, residential treatment centers, detention centers and jails. Now at seventeen, he was well on his way to evening the score with a number of crimes to his credit starting with the attempted rape of his therapist at the age of eleven.
Bitterman studied the picture of Timmons. Six-one and a hundred sixty-eight pounds. He had a long face with deep crevices in his cheeks, thin lips, a thin nose, prominent cheekbones, and bulging froggy eyes. Bitterman pocketed one photo, Xeroxed the page of known associates and family and put the file in his desk drawer. A call to operations yielded the very pleasant news that one of his known associates was currently in custody at the downtown detention center.
* * *
Bitterman drove slowly along “The Stroll” looking for Sunshine, as in “put a little Sunshine in your day,” her marketing pitch to the curbside crawlers. Sunshine was a six-foot redhead, natural, with alabaster skin, emerald green eyes and surgically perfected tits. Bitterman had decided that Sunshine was going to be his Christmas present to himself. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to have sex with her. He just wanted to look at her, all of her, without having to hurry, like when she was on display, so he could memorize her beauty. Lately he’d been thinking about what he had to show for forty-five years, and all the fucks of a lifetime hadn’t stayed with him as sharply as his memory of her on a warm summer’s eve, leaning against a lamppost, trying to stay one lick ahead of a fast-melting vanilla cone. Her tongue moving rapidly up the sides of the cone until anticipating defeat, she engulfed the whole mound and sucked it out of the cone. Beauty baffled Bitterman. It seemed fundamental and indivisible. He could not break down his response into pieces or explain it away by recourse to another force or power. Sunshine was perfect and her beauty touched him in a way he couldn’t avoid. He hoped that she wouldn’t be easy to find. He knew that she would turn out to have bad teeth and bray like a donkey.
Lafonzo Nellis was waiting for Bitterman in interrogation room six. Bitterman sat down and the guard left.
“So, Lafonzo. Tell me about Lufer Timmons.”
“Fuck you.”
“Glad we got that cleared up. Let me give you some context, here, Lafonzo, before you get into more trouble than you can get out of. Because it’s Christmas, God gave me three wishes. The first is a known acquaintance of Lufer Timmons in custody, that’s you. The second is to have you locked up but not papered. The third is up to you. See, if you don’t talk to me, that’s okay. I hear that Lufer is a reasonable man, fair with his friends, not likely to do anything rash. I’m gonna leave here, head over to 6th and O and start asking about Lufer, and talking loud about how much help you were to me. The street bull who brought you in hasn’t papered you yet. He can let you go and he doesn’t have to explain a thing. You’re just DWOP: Dropped Without Prosecution. Now, I hear that a lot of your buddies saw you get busted and righteously, too. How you gonna explain being out of here right after we talk? Huh?”
“You ain’t got the juice to make that happen.”
“Oh, yeah. You been around, Lafonzo. Let’s get a reality check here. You know that a street bull’s got two jobs. His shift and court time. Court time is time and a half. You sit on your butt, you drink coffee, you tell lies, you hit on the chippies, nobody’s shooting at you, and it’s time and a half. Now, I just promised that guy I’d list him as a witness on my next two homicide trials. They’re usually three or four days each. Easy time, easy money. What do you got to offer him?”
Lafonzo had a friend who was a cop and he’d pocketed $100,000 in court time and he’d only made three arrests all year. Lafonzo had a vision of trying to ’splain everything to Lufer. Lafonzo made his mind up immediately and forever. “Okay, okay. What do you want to know?”
“We’ll start with the easy stuff. I got a picture of Lufer from his last arrest. Look at it, tell me if he’s changed any.”
He slid the picture across the table. Lafonzo didn’t pick it up. “Yeah, that’s him. He ain’t changed none.”
“Okay, so tell me about him. What’s he like?”
“He’s a crazy man. I mean, what you want to know? He’s in the Crew, 6th and O. You know what that means. I don’t got to tell you. Let’s just leave it at this, if there’s trouble, Lufer fixes it. Period. Understand?”
“We’re getting there. If I was to go lookin’ for him, where would I find him?”
“Dude moves around a lot. See, there’s plenty of other people, like to find him, too, you see what I’m saying. If he has a pad, it’s a secret to me.”
“What kind of car does he drive?”
“A ’Vette, a black one.”
“You know the year, the tags?”
“No, man. Why should I care?”
Bitterman knew he’d find no such car legally registered to Timmons.
“Okay, where does he hang out? I’m gonna put a man at 6th and O with his picture every day from now on. So where else will he show up?”
Lafonzo was running out of room for evasions; a full-blown lie was called for here. But present danger prevailed over the future.
“They’s a few bars he fancies. Nairobi Jones, Langtry’s, the Southeaster.”
“What else can you tell me? Any trademarks, things that he favors?”
“I don’t know. He always wears that long coat. You know, the ones that go down to your boots.”
“A duster?” Bitterman was finally interested.
“Yeah.”
“What color?”
“Dark. Dark red.”
“Like burgundy?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it made of?”
“Leather. Musta cost plenty.”
“What about a bandana?”
“Yeah, that too. He wears it around his neck, not on his head.”
Glory to God. The red leather duster and the bandana could make him “Johnny-Jump-Out,” wanted in six daylight shootings. Bitterman put what he knew from the files together with Nellis’s information and began to understand his quarry a little better.
“He fancies himself quite a shootist, doesn’t he?” Bitterman began. “No back of the ear, hands tied, in a dark room for him. I admire that. Straight up in your face, shoot and shoot back. He must have quite a reputation in the ’hood. You don’t fuck with Lufer Timmons, do you?”
“What do you need me for? You seem to know everything.”
“That I do, Lafonzo. I know that Lufer steals a car when he’s gonna whack someone. He’s got a driver he trusts. He cruises the streets till he finds his target, then he jumps out, which is why we call him ‘Johnny-Jump-Out.’ No pussy bullshit drive-bys for our Johnny, no, he jumps out, calls the target by name, pulls his piece and does it right there, trading gunfire on the street, broad daylight, then back in the car and he’s gone. Cool customer, our Lufer, drawing down on a man telling him you’re gonna kill him and then doing it. Nice gun he uses, too, .44 Magnum. Holds on to it. Does he wear a holster, Lafonzo?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What for?”
“Because I want to know, Lafonzo.”
“It’s on his left hip, facing the other way.”
“A cross-draw, how elegant. And so cocky. Most guys just shoot and throw down. He doesn’t think he’s gonna get caught. I know he wears armor because one guy hit him right in the chest before Lufer put one between his eyes.”
“So how come you know so much, you ain’t got him yet?”
“All we had was an M.O. No pattern to his killings. Now, I know that there isn’t one. Lufer gets hot, you get shot. Now I’ve got a name, a description, and some places to look for him. He got a name for himself? All the great ones had nicknames. What about Lufer?”
“Fuck, man, he don’t need no nickname. You hear Lufer Timmons looking for you, that’s like hearing the Terminator wants you.”
Bitterman pocketed his photograph and smiled at Lafonzo. “I guess you’ll be wanting to spend some time indoors, right?”
Lafonzo sat up straight. “Don’t you be putting me out there, now. That motherfucker’ll kill me.”
“Relax. I’m not gonna screw around with you. I’ll make sure you’re papered and held, maybe get you a nice high bond you can’t post. How’s that sound?”
“Great. Fuckin’ great. Thanks.”
No other city in the world had as much of its population behind bars. Even the bad guys prefer to be in jail rather than on the streets. Bitterman was optimistic about nailing Timmons. A guy so caught up in building a reputation wouldn’t be able to wait for it to be bestowed upon him. He’d help it along with plenty of boasting. All they had to do was find the right pair of ears. Secondly, he liked his gun too much. Holding on to that was a mistake. If they found that, they’d match it to bullets in his six victims. Once he was off the streets, they’d go back and talk to the deaf, dumb, and blind who’d seen and heard everything and convince just one of them to talk. Once gone he would not be coming back.
Bitterman left the detention center to get an arrest warrant from a judge. If he got it soon, it’d make the 3 p.m. roll call for the next shift. By tomorrow morning, every active duty officer on the streets would be looking for Lufer Timmons. A Christmas present to the city.
* * *
Dantreya Watkins had been going about this all wrong. He’d approached the “gangstas” on the street looking for a piece and received the short course on urban economics: Desperation drives the price up, not down. Once his ignorance of makes and models was established, his “brothers” tried to sell him .25-caliber purse guns for four hundred bucks. Poverty only served to delay his fleecing. After three unsuccessful tries, he knew enough to ask for a .380 Walther. That seemed to be a respectable gun. He found a kindly gentleman who sold him such a gun and a full clip of ammo for three hundred bucks, which was all the money he could steal from his mother.
It wasn’t until later, in an abandoned warehouse when Dantreya squeezed off a practice round and saw the cartridge roll out of the end of the barrel, that he learned that the clip was full of .32-caliber ammo and completely useless. Dantreya was now armed with a three-hundred-dollar hammer.
Dantreya’s descent into the all-too-real world, far from the comics he read, rewrote, and illustrated in his room, was now complete. He was waiting nervously at the side of his friend TerrAnce’s house for TerrAnce to get his father’s gun for him. In exchange, Dantreya had offered TerrAnce his entire collection of X-Men comics, which they would go get as soon as TerrAnce lifted the gun from his father’s holster in the closet.
TerrAnce pushed open the ripped screen door with his shoulder and, holding the gun carefully in both hands, took the steps, one at a time. He walked around the side of the house and approached Dantreya, both hands grasping the trigger and pointing the gun at him. Dantreya stepped aside as gracefully as any matador and took the gun out of his friend’s hands.
“Thanks man,” he said, as he spun the chambers of the revolver. The bullets looked like the right size. Now, all he had to do was find Lufer Timmons. His older friends could help with that.
TerrAnce looked at him expectantly. Dantreya slipped the gun into his jacket and shrugged, “Hey man, I gotta go. I’ll get your stuff and bring it right back.”
That said, he took off across the street and ran up the alley away from his friend TerrAnce, now crying with all the disappointment an eight-year-old has.
* * *
Bitterman pulled up to the corner of 6th and O. He got out and put the cherry on the roof to simplify things for the locals. Up here, a white man with an attitude had to be crazy or a cop. Bitterman wanted to make sure they made the right choices.
Fats Taylor was poured over a folding chair.
“The fuck you doin’ up here, Bitterman?” Fats asked, his chest heaving with the effort of speech.
“Just came up to hear myself talk, Fats. You bein’ such a good listener and all.”
“I hear everything, sees everything, and knows everything.” Fats chuckled and smiled.
And eats everything, Bitterman thought.
“I’m looking for a faggoty little nigger, name of Lufer Timmons, you know him?”
Fats’s face sealed over, as smooth and black as asphalt in August.
“Well, you listen, Fats, and I’ll talk myself. This little queer thinks he’s a real pistolero, a gunslinger. Well, I think he’s a coward. I know who he’s shot, where, when, and why. Pretty tough with kids, and cripples, spaced-out druggies, welshing gamblers that don’t carry. You tell him I’m looking for him, Fats. And you know who I’ve put in the ground.”
Bitterman closed his show, went back to his car and drove away. Fats could be counted on to spread the word, emphasizing every insult. A punk like Timmons, to whom respect was fear and fear was all, wouldn’t let this pass. Bitterman was already wearing armor and would until Lufer was taken in. Although facing a .44 Magnum he might just as well be wearing sun block.
Bitterman repeated his performance in Nairobi Jones and the Southeaster.
For fun, in Nairobi Jones, he told them he was Charlie Siringo, the Pinkerton who single-handedly tracked the Wild Bunch until they fled to South America. In the Southeaster he was Heck Thomas, one of the legendary “Oklahoma Guardsmen.”
Bitterman wanted Lufer to stay put, and challenging him would do that. He wanted him angry and impulsive, so he insulted him. He wanted him confused, so he multiplied his pursuers.
Bitterman drove over to Langtry’s via all the “cupcake corners” in the first district. His latest ex-partner had suggested that the politically correct term for these young ladies was “vertically challenged,” and they should be so described in all police reports. Bitterman got himself a new partner. He’d seen only a few working girls out on the sidewalks. Cold weather and the new law that allowed the city to confiscate the cars of the johns caught soliciting had forced one more evolution in the pursuit of reckless abandon. Now the girls drove endlessly around the block until they pulled up alongside a likely customer. The negotiations had more feeling than the foreplay to follow. Then a quick sprint to lose a police pursuit and the happy couple was free to lay down together, take aim and miss each other at point-blank range.
Sunshine’s Mercedes was off line. Bitterman figured she was probably curled up with some rich young defense attorney in one of the city’s better hotels. Next to a Sugar Daddy John, a Galahad Defense Attorney was a girl’s best chance to get off the streets and get some instant respectability. Just another reason to hate those scumbags. Bitterman gave up after talking to Betty Boop. She’d shown up around the same time as Sunshine, and Bitterman had fancied her, too. Now her looks had gone like last week’s snow.
Bitterman pulled up across the street from Langtry’s and started over when he saw Sunshine’s Mercedes. He turned back and got into his car to consider his options. If she was in Langtry’s alone, he’d pick her up and put her somewhere until he was done looking for Lufer and then celebrate Christmas Eve with her. If she was somewhere else nearby and he went in looking for Lufer, he’d miss her when she came out. He didn’t like that plan much. Of course, she could be with someone else already. As long as it wasn’t some fuckin’ defense attorney he’d flash some badge, heft a little gun, and requisition her on police business. Bitterman decided that this year the city could wait to get his gift.
He hadn’t been this excited since he was four years old and came down in the middle of the night to see if Santa had brought the baseball glove that would make him Willie Mays. Just give me this one thing, Lord, just because it’s something I can ask for. Everything else I lack is so huge, so vague, so damned close that I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
* * *
Dantreya Watkins hurried halfway down the alley, then slowed and moved cautiously along the wall to the intersection with the street. He was trying to think of what his heroes would do. Batman would swoop from the dark and knock Lufer down, then disarm him, tie him up, and leave him for the police. The Punisher would kick down a door and come in guns blazing. Dantreya tried to conjure courage but all he got was a tremor in his legs and a wave of nausea. He turned back to the alley and threw up all over his shoes. Courage had not delivered him to this place. He had nowhere near enough money to pay for Lufer’s death, and he could not imagine running away to live elsewhere. He could leave his world as a superhero, but not as himself. Like his mother, he had an allergy to the police and would not take a step toward one. He knew Lufer was a guarantee of death, only the date on the death certificate was missing. His fears and beliefs, what was impossible and what was certain, had brought him to this alley. His mind had painted him into a corner and it didn’t bother with a small brush.
The tremor in his legs increased and Dantreya gripped the pistol in his pocket even tighter, hoping that would slow down the shaking that surged through him. He thanked God for the gun. Without it he knew he was a dead man looking to lie down.
* * *
Forty minutes later Lufer Timmons in his long red duster pushed open the door to Langtry’s and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Avery Bitterman sat up, cursing his luck that Timmons would be the one to show first. Timmons held the door and his companion stepped out into the night. She really was lovely, a thick mane of brick-red hair, pale skin and deep dimples when she smiled. Sunshine, in her knee-high boots, towered over Lufer, who traveled up her length slowly, appreciating every inch of her. He was gonna love climbing up this one. Lufer wasn’t particularly fond of white meat, but that crazy honky who’d been jivin’ with him put him in the mood to fuck this bitch cross-eyed, then maybe mess her up some. Called him a faggot, a punk. He’d show him who the real man was. First he’d teach this white bitch about black lovin’. That’d ruin her for white dick. Then he’d go find that motherfucka, kneecap him, make him beg for the bullet, then shove his gun all the way up his ass before he did him. Lufer smiled, goddamn that felt good. Life was good to Lufer, offering him so many avenues to pleasure.
Sunshine slipped her arm through his and they walked down the street, Lufer showin’ off his prize and she whispering in his ear about what she had in mind for him. Bitterman let them pass his car, then got out and walked up the opposite sidewalk. Oh my, he said to himself as he felt something leak out of him. Sunshine was still as beautiful as ever, but her smile as she lay her head on Lufer’s shoulder was not one he wanted anymore. He couldn’t kid himself about what they would mean to each other, not any longer anyway.
Lufer pushed open the door to a three-story walk-up between a Brazilian restaurant and an erotic lingerie store. Bitterman pulled out his radio, gave his location, who he was watching, and called for backup. If he’d been able to see down the alley across the way, he’d have seen a slim figure back away, turn and run to the fire escape and quickly begin to climb.
Bitterman crossed the street and stood by the door to Timmons’s crib. He opened his jacket and thumbed back the strap on his holster. A level-three vest was supposed to be able to stop a .44 provided it wasn’t too close, but they said the shock would flatten you and you got broken up inside even if there wasn’t penetration. Where the hell was backup, Bitterman thought.
He scanned the street in both directions and saw nothing. Right now he was the thin blue line.
A shot rang out, then another, then a scream and a third one.
Bitterman yelled into his radio, “Shots fired, I’m going up!” He pulled the door open and heard things falling, scuffling and screaming from above. Both hands on his pistol, he followed it up the stairs. He hit the second floor and pointed his gun at all the doors and then up the stairs.
The noise was coming from the door at the far end. Bitterman closed in rapidly and pressed himself against the wall. He reached out with his right hand and touched the doorknob. It was unlocked.
“Wonderful, I get an open door but no backup,” he said to himself.
Bitterman slowly turned the knob. The noises had stopped.
No banging, no screams. When it was fully turned, he flung it open and stepped through into what he hoped was not the line of fire.
Lufer was on the floor. His pants were down around his knees. Sunshine was under him, twitching. Lufer’s cannon was in his hand and there was a bullet hole in the sofa. There was also one in his neck, and the blood was pooling under his chin.
Bitterman saw a young boy to his left, holding on to a snub-nosed .38. The gun was jumping around like it was electrified. His left leg tried to keep time but it couldn’t. There was a large stain on the front of the boy’s pants.
“Put down the gun,” Bitterman barked, but the boy didn’t respond.
Bitterman searched his face. His eyes were wide open and unfocused.
“Put down the gun,” Bitterman asked, more gently but to no avail.
The boy was clearly freaked out by what he’d done. Maybe he could get close enough to disarm him.
“Son, please put down the gun. You’re making me nervous the way it’s shaking there. I don’t know what happened here, but I know he’s a bad man. Why don’t you tell me what happened here.”
Bitterman edged closer to the boy, who was facing away from him. Maybe he could get his hand on the gun, then hit him in the temple with his pistol. At this range he couldn’t afford to let the boy turn. Even shooting to wound him wouldn’t work. An accidental off-line discharge could be fatal this close. Should he tell him he was going to reach for his gun, or just do it? And where the fuck was backup anyway?
Bitterman moved slowly toward the boy until he was about two feet away. If he turned on him he’d have to shoot him. He had no choice. Why wouldn’t he just put the gun down and make this easier on both of them?
Bitterman slowly reached out for the gun. The boy’s eyes snapped into focus and he tried to pull away. Bitterman grabbed for the gun. It swung up toward his face, he pulled it down toward his chest and slammed the kid in the head with his pistol. The .38 went off and Bitterman fell back gasping. Dantreya Watkins hit the floor and lay still.
Bitterman, on his back, reached up and touched his chest. He could feel the .38 embedded in the Kevlar. God, did he hurt and was he glad he could say it.
He lay there on his back, like a Kevlar turtle, his hands clenching with the pain of each breath. He saw Sunshine push Lufer Timmons up off of her, until she was clear of his now and forever limp penis, roll out from under it, stand up and stagger to the door without a backward glance. Bitterman tried to call out to her for help but could only groan instead, as she banged her way down the stairs. The front door slammed and Bitterman lay there in the enveloping silence waiting for the sounds of backup: screeching tires, sirens, pounding footsteps. Above all else he wanted there to be someone in a hurry to find him. Bitterman closed his eyes and whispered, “Merry fucking Christmas.”