It took maybe a minute’s worth of teamwork to put an end to the struggle. I managed finally to get a two-handed hold on Kyle’s arms, which allowed Runyon to step free and slam the edge of his hand down on the exposed joining of neck and shoulder. The blow paralyzed the right side of Kyle’s body. After that we were able to wrestle him to the wet pavement, stretch him out belly down. I pulled his arms back and held them while Runyon knelt in the middle of his back, snapped handcuffs around his wrists.
I stood up first, breathing hard — and a white, scared face was peering at me through the rear window. A little boy, six or seven, wrapped in a blanket, his cheeks streaked with tears. Past him, on the other side of the car, I could see Lila standing, quiet now, with both hands fisted against her mouth.
Runyon said, “Where’s the gun?”
“I don’t know. I heard it hit the pavement—”
“I’ve got it.”
I turned around. It was the guy from the car that had pulled up across the street; he’d come running over to rubberneck. He stood a short distance away, holding the revolver in one hand, loosely, as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Heavyset and bald, I saw as I went up to him. Eyebrows like miniature tumbleweeds.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Police business.”
“Yeah? You guys cops?”
“Making an arrest.” I held out my hand, palm up. “Let’s have the gun.”
He hesitated, but just briefly. Then he said, “Sure, sure,” and laid it on my palm.
And I backed up a step and pointed it at a spot two inches below his chin.
“Hey!” He gawped at me in disbelief. “Hey, what’s the idea?”
“The idea,” I said, “is for you to turn around, slow, and clasp your hands together behind you. Do it — now!”
He did it. He didn’t have any choice.
I gave the gun to Runyon. And then, shaking my head, smiling a little, I snapped my set of handcuffs around Floyd Maxwell’s wrists.
Funny business, detective work. Crazy business sometimes. Mostly it’s a lot of dull routine, with small triumphs and as much frustration as satisfaction. But once in a great while something happens that not only makes it all worthwhile but defies the laws of probability. Call it whatever you like — random accident, multiple coincidence, star-and-planet convergence, fate, blind luck, divine intervention. It happens. It happened to Jake Runyon and me that stormy February night.
An ex-con named Kyle Franklin, fresh out of San Quentin after serving six years for armed robbery, decides he wants sole custody of his seven-year-old son. He drags his girlfriend to San Francisco, where his former wife is raising the boy as a single mom, and beats and threatens the ex-wife and kidnaps the child. Rather than leave the city quick, he decides he needs some sustenance for the long drive to Lila’s place in L.A. and stops at the first diner he sees, less than a quarter-mile from the ex-wife’s apartment building — a diner where two case-hardened private detectives happen to be staked out.
We overhear part of his conversation with Lila and it sounds wrong to us. We notice the blood on his coat sleeve, the scraped knuckles, his prison pallor, the Odin’s cross — a prison tattoo and racist symbol — on his wrist, and the fact that he’s carrying a concealed weapon. So we follow him outside and brace him, he pulls the gun, and while we’re struggling, our deadbeat dad chooses that moment to show up. The smart thing for Maxwell to have done was to drive off, avoid trouble; instead he lets his curiosity and arrogance get the best of him, and comes over to watch, and then picks up Franklin’s gun and hands it to me nice as you please. And so we foil a kidnapping and put the arm on not one but two violent, abusive fathers in the space of about three minutes.
What are the odds? Astronomical. You could live three or four lifetimes and nothing like it would ever happen again.
It’s a little like hitting the Megabucks state lottery.
That night, Runyon and I were the ones holding the winning ticket.
Ibrahim’s Eyes
by David Dean
© 2007 by David Dean
“ ‘Ibrahim’s Eyes’ was inspired by a largely forgotten, unhappy chapter in our military history,” David Dean told EQMM. “I was with the Army’s 82 Air-borne when the events described occurred, and remember the anguish we felt for our brothers in arms, the Marines. Those days were to have far-reaching repercussions. We should have paid more attention at the time.”
Sean Lafferty slouched be-hind the counter of the Quik and EZ Mart and watched his reflection stare back at him from the plate-glass doors that fronted the small store. If he stepped away from the counter his phantom self would vanish from the glass, sucked into oblivion by the remaining illumination. Occasionally, he would shift to one side or the other and his ghost would mimic him, wavering slightly, or disappearing altogether as a pair of headlights swept across the store from a car entering the parking lot. When the headlamps were switched off, his pale Doppelgänger, drained of blood by the softly buzzing fluorescents, would reappear to resume its study of its earthly counterpart. This could go on for long periods of time, and often would but for the interruption of customers, yet the sign, the thought, the emotion that Sean kept looking for remained steadfastly locked behind his own alien visage.
He knew that seen from outside, he would appear to be waiting for the Q&e’s nocturnal patrons — nervous teenagers in need of condoms; even more nervous young mothers who had woefully miscalculated the diaper count and were now forced out into the midnight world; or perhaps a sudden brash invasion of young men intent on menace and calculating the odds of taking the store’s earnings by force, or just sheer intimidation. The graveyard shift was a perilous, haphazard world and Sean’s apparent alertness was not altogether a front. Once another human being appeared from the darkness beyond his image, Sean’s attention was subtly refocused, and he bid farewell to his mute self.
The customer that stepped onto the lighted stage beneath the working outside lights raised a hand in salute, and Sean did the same. Moments later he emerged from the pool of darkness that shrouded the double doors into the store.
“Those lights, Sean.” The police sergeant pointed over his shoulder. “They’ve been that way for months. Not smart.”
“No, sir,” Sean agreed. “I keep tellin’ Mr. Corrado about ‘em.” Sean was older than the officer by at least seven or eight years, but he could not refrain from calling him “sir” — it was the three stripes on his sleeve. A long time before, Sean had been a marine, and it was the only time in his life that remained vivid in his mind. His present was hazy and insubstantial, and he just a ghost that haunted it. “He’s busy opening that new store on the other side of town,” he added by way of explanation. A long cardboard box of the tubes lay untouched in the storeroom, and whenever the manager thought to ask about them, Sean would lie and say simply that he had forgotten to install them. This explanation would suffice as the harried Mr. Corrado scurried from crisis to crisis in stores that lay scattered across the city.
The policeman, a somewhat portly but light-footed man, suddenly diverged from his course toward Sean and glided over to the coffee stand. Sean watched as the sergeant carefully chose a flavored coffee from the row of stagnant pots and proceeded to add a different flavored creamer and two packages of sugar substitute to his choice. After stirring all these ingredients to his satisfaction, he waltzed over to the counter and plopped the concoction down in front of Sean, his breathing slightly labored.