“All right,” she said, “what did happen in there, Colley?”
“They surprised us, that’s all. Jocko threw down on the guy behind the counter, and next thing you know there was fuzz.”
The cop is about to say, “Police officers!” again. He gets only part of the word out. He says “Po—” and then the bullet takes him in the mouth. It’s as if the bullet rams the rest of the word back in his throat and breaks it up into a thousand red and yellow and white globules that come flying out the back of his head and splatter all over a Seagram’s poster behind him. He does an almost comic skid, the force of the bullet knocking him backwards, his feet still moving forward and flying out from under him. He goes into the air backwards, hangs there for an instant in an upside-down swan dive, his arms thrown wide, the shield in one hand, the gun in the other, his back arched, his head thrown back and spurting blood. Then he crashes suddenly...
“...started shooting?”
“What?”
“Who was the one started shooting?”
“The one coming at me,” he said. “Holding out his badge. He was left-handed, Jeanine, both of them were left-handed. They had their pieces in their left hands, how you like that?” he said, and shook his head in amazement. “Listen,” he said, “you got anything to drink around here? I could really use a drink.”
“There’s booze in the kitchen,” she said.
“You want one?” he said.
“Mix me a light Scotch and water.”
“I’m not moving in,” he said, “I just want to see the news. I’ll go right after the news, you don’t have to worry.”
“Who’s worrying?” Jeanine said, and looked at him.
“Well, I didn’t mean actually worrying.”
“What did you mean?” she said.
She was still watching him. He couldn’t read the look on her face. He knew she was angry because of the shooting in the liquor store, and Jocko getting hurt. But there was something else mixed in with the anger.
“What I meant is I know you’re upset right now,” he said, and got up quickly and went out into the kitchen. On the counter, near the refrigerator, there was an almost full bottle of Scotch and an unopened bottle of bourbon. He pried an ice-curs tray loose from the freezer compartment and put a few cubes in each of two glasses. He was pouring Scotch literally into both glasses when he remembered she’d asked for a light one, so he poured more heavily into his glass, which made hers light by comparison. “Did you say water in this?” he called to the living room, but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to answer him. He himself. wanted soda, but there wasn’t any in the refrigerator, so he put a little water in both glasses and then carried them out to the living room. The living room was empty. Down the hall, he heard the shower going. He looked at his watch again. It was quarter to eleven, plenty of time before the news came on.
He turned on the set, and then sat on the sofa and took a good heavy gulp of his drink, and then another heavy gulp, and then just began sipping at it slowly. Down the hall, the shower was still going. The apartment was still except for the steady dramming of the water and the drone of the television set. A movie was on, he watched it only because he did not want to think about what had happened in the liquor store. He did not want to believe that either of those two cops were dead.
He could accept them being hurt bad, but he didn’t want to believe they were dead because then he might just as well admit he himself was dead. You kill a fuckin’ cop in this city — any city, for that matter — that was it, Charlie. So he didn’t want to believe he had killed that cop. Until he knew otherwise, why then he chose to believe the man was only hurt bad. Stupid bastard, running at him that way, holding out the badge as if it was a shield could protect him from harm. Like people hanging St. Christopher medals in their car. All those crazy bastards on the highway, you needed more than a St. Christopher medal to survive.
The sound of the water stopped. He kept watching the movie. He had no idea what the movie was about, no idea who the actors were. Down the hallway, he heard the bathroom door opening. Silence. The ticking of the clock. On the street outside, filtering up to the open windows, the distinctive laughter of a black woman. In the distance, the sound of an approaching train rattling along the elevated tracks on Westchester Avenue. Summertime. It was summertime in that apartment and beyond those open windows. Summertime. And he had shot a cop.
When she came back into the room she was wearing faded blue jeans and a white cotton T-shirt. No bra, her breasts moved fluidly beneath the thin fabric as she came barefooted into the room. She looked clean and cool and she brought the scent of soap with her. She looked younger, too, possibly because the narrow jeans hid the fleshiness of her thighs and gave her a long, slender look. Stopping just inside the door to the living room, she put her hands on her hips, and stood there watching the television screen. The movie was ending. Another train went roaring past on the avenue a block away, smothering all sound. Jeanine looked for her drink, saw it on the coffee table and leaned over to pick it up.
The anchorman came on just then to give a quick summary of the news. They both turned to watch the screen, Jeanine standing to Colley’s left, the drink in one hand, the other hand still on her hip. The anchorman was saying something about a demonstration outside the U.N. building. Jeanine sipped at the drink, her eyes on the screen. Now the anchorman was talking about a three-alarm fire in the Wall Street area. Colley was hoping there wouldn’t be anything about the robbery. If they didn’t report it on television, that would mean neither of the two cops had been hurt bad. But then the anchorman said, “In the Bronx tonight, one detective was killed and another was seriously injured when a pair of armed men attempted to hold up a liquor store on White Plains Avenue. And in—”
“There it is,” Jeanine said.
“Shhh,” Colley said.
“...the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, a three-hour traffic jam caused tempers to flare while temperatures soared. Details on these in a moment.”
“One of them’s dead,” Jeanine said.
“I heard.”
“Great,” she said.
“Shhh, I want to hear if they—”
“Just great.”
She seemed about to say something more, but instead she angrily plucked a cigarette from the box on the coffee table, and struck a match with the same angry 1 impatient motion, and then walked to the easy chair across from the sofa and was about to sit in it when she saw she still had the burnt match in her hand. She pulled a face and came back to the coffee table and put the burnt match in the ashtray there. Then, instead of going back to the easy chair, she sat crosslegged on the floor in front of the couch, and silently and sulkily watched the screen. The commercial was over, the news team came back to elaborate on the events the anchorman had earlier summarized. Jeanine dragged on the cigarette and let out a streak of smoke. They were showing footage of the Wall Street fire now, it was really fascinating, fires fascinated Colley. They began interviewing a fireman, he was telling all about the people they’d rescued from the top floor of the office building. Then, suddenly, the liquor store appeared on the screen.
There it was all right, it was really funny seeing it there on a television screen. Earlier tonight, Colley had felt the job itself was like a goddamned movie, and now it really was a movie, right there on television. Only thing missing was the actors. Camera was roving around outside the store, showing the lettering on the plate-glass window, Carlisle Liquors, and the bottles in the window, focusing on a sign that was advertising something for $3.99, and then moving away to the front door, the door was opening, the camera was moving into the store itself, going in through the door, showing the bloodstains on the floor, and then continuing to move deeper into the store, toward the cash register, to show where the second cop had been shot.