The officers jumped out of their cars, drew their weapons, yelled at the thieves to stop.
The one on the dirt lot kept running. The one who’d run to the van climbed in and started the engine. The one in uniform who’d stepped forward when he was told to lowered his hands and took his service pistol from its holster. A gunshot exploded-not from his gun. Everyone froze, even the thief on the dirt lot. All was silent except for the hum of car engines.
I switched the dome light all the way off in my Skylark, took my Glock from its holster, opened the door, and slipped out into the garage.
A tall cop, who seemed to be in charge, yelled at the thieves, “Put your guns down!”
The one in uniform stooped and laid his gun on the dirt, stood with his hands in the air. He was shaking.
Another gunshot exploded and the tall cop went down. A cop screamed, “Fuck!” and opened fire. Then everyone was shooting. The uniformed thief who’d just laid his gun on the ground took a bullet in his head, flew back, and landed in the dirt. The thief on the dirt lot sprinted toward a Dumpster. Some of the others followed him. The van spun its tires in the dirt and headed toward the police. A gunshot from a crouching officer blasted its windshield. The van slid, turned, headed back toward the trailers, and bounced over the open lot. Then it slowed, the passenger door opened, and the thieves who’d run onto the lot climbed in.
The three men who were still hiding in trailers-the other uniformed thief and his friends-poured out and ran. The one in uniform ran to a van and hid behind it. He was twenty yards from me, no more. His friends ran to another van, got in through the back, started it, cut a hard circle. A hand holding a pistol stuck out of the passenger-side window. The pistol aimed at an officer who was shouting into a handheld radio and fired. The officer stopped shouting and fell face forward into the dirt. The van bounced away over the open lot.
The only thief who remained was the patrolman hiding behind the van. He must’ve known there was no way out. Bullets had blown out the tires under his patrol car and shattered the lights on top. His partner had a slug in his head. He couldn’t drive away in the van and pretend he hadn’t been on the scene. He was already worse than dead. At most, he could delay the officers and help his partners get away.
He raised his gun over the hood of the van.
The cops huddling behind their squad cars fired at him-fifty shots, a hundred, more, a wall of noise. He ducked back and the shots sank into the dirt and into the side of the van.
I aimed my Glock at him. It was an easy shot. But I couldn’t take it. I’d been a cop until my bad habits had gotten me fired. My dad had been a cop. A good one.
Everything got quiet.
The officer who’d gotten shot while shouting into his radio pushed himself onto his elbows and crawled toward the squad cars. The other officers saw him. One of them ran to help.
The man hiding behind the van raised his gun over the hood and aimed at them. I shook my head, sadder than I’d ever been before. I squeezed the trigger and felt my Glock bolt against my palm as it fired.
I heard nothing.
I saw nothing.
I knew that I’d shot a thief who was aiming his gun at two officers, but I also knew that the thief was wearing a police uniform. I stumbled back to my Skylark, sat in the front seat, and closed my eyes.
TWO
A TREMBLING COP HANDCUFFED me, took my gun and ID, and shoved me to the ground. I stayed where I landed, my cheek to the cold dirt, like a hunter’s kill trussed and ready to be strapped to the hood. If I stood and ran, if I moved, if I even twitched, the cop would shoot me. He told me he would. I said nothing. I didn’t move. I kept my cheek to the dirt.
For a long time they left me there. Like a dead animal. Cops ran across the lot, yelled at each other, peered into empty buildings with flashlights. Someone was sobbing. Sirens howled on all sides, far and near. Five men had taken bullets. Six ambulances pulled into the street. You get little extras like that if you wear a uniform, even if you’re a thief. Police helicopters scoured the ground with searchlights. News helicopters flew above them.
Two men and a woman approached. They were cops too. The men wore jeans and heavy jackets. The woman wore gray slacks and a leather coat. The men grabbed my arms and hoisted me to my feet. The woman gritted her teeth and looked me in the eyes. She brushed the dirt off my face with the back of her hand. Not gently. Like the dirt annoyed her and she thought it ran deep into my skin. She nodded toward an unmarked sedan, and the men steered me to it.
The men got into the backseat with me, one on each side. The woman got into the front. Like the cop who handcuffed me, she trembled, but with anger. “Okay, Mr. Kozmarski,” she said, “what happened here?” Her eyes had fire in them. I figured mine did too. I looked out the window into the floodlit cold. An hour had passed since the shooting stopped, maybe more, but cops darted from building to building, car to car, like they were running for cover. The night had gone bad and looked like it was getting worse. “Mr. Kozmarski?” the woman said.
My lawyer, Larry Weiss, who usually got me out of jams, would’ve told me to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t care. I gave it all to her. Jen Horlarche hiring me to secure the Southshore Village property. Me drifting to sleep in the garage. Two cops breaking into the construction trailers. Six men arriving in vans and stealing spools of copper wire. The chaos that followed. Me drawing a bead on the thief-cop, hesitating until he pointed his gun at other cops, then pulling the trigger. “Is he dead?” I asked when I finished.
“He died on the way to the hospital.”
“Damn,” I said. I figured that the partner of the man I shot-the one who’d tried to surrender when the squad cars arrived-was dead too. You don’t take a bullet in the forehead and survive. “The others?” I said.
“One critical, two stable.” She turned away as though looking at me disgusted her. She lit a cigarette, threw the lighted match out of the window.
The first light of morning was graying the night sky. Soon the sun would rise and dry the pools of blood. Or else a cold rain would wash the blood into the dirt. Then kids would play baseball on the dead-end street and a middle-aged couple would sit on a porch swing at the house where I’d hidden in the garage and watched as the shooting started.
In the front seat of the sedan, the woman cop pulled my wallet from her coat pocket. She leafed through the cash and pulled the credit cards and ID from their slots. She read them like she was going to tell my fortune. She looked at my detective’s license. “Says you’re a PI since 1998. What did you do before then?”
I swallowed. “I was a cop.”
She laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “Let me guess. They fired you.”
I shrugged. “Something like that.”
The man on my right said, “Let’s hear it.”
I said nothing.
The other man said, “It’s on file. You can tell it or we can read it.”
I shrugged again. “I was drunk and high and crashed my cruiser into a newsstand.”
I wished they would laugh. The woman cop nodded like she’d expected as much. The man on my right said, “Were you high tonight, Mr. Kozmarski?”
If the handcuffs hadn’t been chafing my wrists, I would have hit him. I said, “I’ve been clean for seven years.”
“I want a toxicology test,” the woman said to him. She threw my wallet at my chest. It bounced to the floor.
“Do I get my gun?” I said.
“Yeah, I’ll throw that at you too.” She looked me in the eyes. “No, you don’t get your gun. It’s impounded. Maybe in a year, if you’re lucky, you’ll see it. If ballistics shows that you shot more than the one round that you admit to, or if that round turns up in an unexpected body, you’ll never see it again. Won’t matter, though-you’ll be in jail or strapped to a gurney waiting for an injection.”