They did a good job.” Jim held his right arm up, showing it off. It was in a cast from the wrist almost to the elbow. He was lucky, he thought, he could still drive and dress himself.
“ Now we go to the station.” Washington’s tone was more subdued. Jim thought he probably didn’t get too many prisoners paying their own hospital bill after the police had roughed them up.
“ All right, I’d like to get this over with,” Jim said.
“ That’s right, you’re a big man,” Walker said as he came into earshot from the other side of the emergency room. “You’ve done time. For murder, isn’t that what you said? So why did they let out after only four years if you killed two people?”
“ The war was over. They let us come home.”
“ Where did you do your time?” Washington said.
“ In a small camp south of Hanoi.”
“ The child molesters you killed were Viet Cong?”
“ Yes.”
“ And you could have gotten away if you would have killed ’em quick and quiet?”
“ Probably.”
“ Why didn’t you?” Walker asked.
“ I was a little upset.”
“ Boy, you and me are gonna get along fine.” Washington said. “It’s a shame we gotta take you in, but that man you half killed is gonna press charges, sure as I’m my momma’s son.”
“ I understand.”
“ You know,” Washington said, “we’ve been through so much together and we don’t even know your name.”
“ Jim Monday.” Jim held out his left hand as the right was in the cast.
“ Hugh Washington.” The big cop took the hand with his own left, “and this is my partner, Ron Walker.”
“ The Jim Monday?” Walker said.
“ I didn’t think anybody still remembered.”
“ How could a guy like me forget. I learned all about you in boot camp.” Now Walker was being respectful too. “You were like a god to us. I campaigned for you. I got all my friends to vote for you.”
“ What are you talking about?” Washington said.
“ This is Monopoly Jim Monday, Silver Star, Navy Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor. He used to be our congressman.”
“ That was a long time ago,” Jim said.
“ Did you really get that name the way they say you did?” Walker asked.
“ I really did.”
“ I don’t understand,” Washington said.
“ They called him Monopoly Jim because he loved to play the game. In Vietnam he had this set and when he wasn’t in the field, he played. They say when he couldn’t find anybody to play with, he played himself. That true?”
“ Yes,” Monday said.
“ They told us you only did two things in Vietnam, Monopoly and kill. They said that you didn’t go for the girls, you didn’t drink, you didn’t take R amp; R. They said you didn’t even like to eat. They said you were one crazy motherfucker.”
“ I was.” He had spent a long time trying to forget, but now it was all coming back. The long days, the longer nights. He joined the Marine Corps to get out of school and they turned him into a killing machine, probably because they’d discovered he had an aptitude for it. However it changed him, made it so he was unable to communicate in a normal way. So he played the game.
“ They said you played imaginary Monopoly when you were a POW to stay sane. They said you didn’t break under torture, you didn’t sign anything and you never gave an inch. They said it was because of the Monopoly you played in your head.”
“ I still play, only now it’s for real. I buy and sell real estate.” He remembered the nights of the imaginary game. They couldn’t crack him because his mind was somewhere else. They could never understand that. He lived on Boardwalk and Park Place. He rode the Reading Railroad, paid Luxury Tax and tried to stay out of Jail. He played the game in his head and after a while they figured he was crazy and they left him alone. He used to wonder why they didn’t kill him and be done with it, but sometime about ten years ago he stopped wondering.
“ I know who you are now,” Washington said. “You’re the Jim Monday that owns half of Long Beach. You own the building I live in. You’re my landlord.”
“ Probably.”
“ Are you still crazy?” Walker asked.
“ No, now I’m rich.” Jim smiled, secretly pleased somebody still remembered him.
“ We still have to take you in, sir,” Hugh Washington said. “Small matter of assault and battery.” His words brought back with frightening clarity the picture of David, dead and covered in glass. This wasn’t just a friendly conversation with two policemen. He was being arrested for attacking Bernd Kohler, a man he believed had tried to kill him. Twice. That meant that he would probably try again. Maybe he had someone waiting at the house, or the condo at the beach. He needed someplace safe. He needed it quickly, he needed it now and he needed a little time to plan. He needed to get even, but he couldn’t go running around with guns blazing. He wasn’t a kid anymore. It had been almost four decades since his war, he was five years shy of sixty and he’d always considered sixty old.
But still, almost over the hill or not, he had to find out what he was up against.
“ It doesn’t seem right bringing you in like a criminal.”
“ It’s okay, Walker, I don’t want any special treatment, never have.”
“ You want us to call someone? Your lawyer maybe, so you can make bail as soon as possible?” Washington asked.
“ I don’t have a lawyer anymore. He was just murdered on Second Street. He was my best friend.”
“ I’m sorry,” Washington said.
“ That’s okay, you couldn’t have known.”
“ What do you want us to do, sir?” Walker asked.
“ Take me in. Book me. Let me spend a couple of days in a cell. I need the time alone, to think. When I get everything straight in my head, I’ll make bail.”
“ That doesn’t seem right. Don’t you have someplace you can go?” Walker said.
“ I have a condo in Huntington Beach I use sometimes, but somehow I don’t think that’s safe, because if someone is trying to kill me, they’d know about that. No, I think I’d rather spend some time in the lockup.”
“ It doesn’t seem right, a man like you in jail,” Walker said.
“ A few days behind bars isn’t going to bother me much. For a man like me it would almost be like a resort hotel. I’ll be safe from whoever is trying to kill me. I’ll be able to think. I’ll be able to grieve, alone. I need the solitude.”
“ There’s no solitude in our jail, Mr. Monday. It’s full of drunks, drug addicts and punks.”
“ That’s okay, Walker, for me that would be solitude. I don’t want any favors, except one.”
“ What’s that?”
“ Forget about me. Pretend we never had this conversation. Just book me like you would anybody else. In forty-eight hours the public defender will come to see me and find out I’m not a charity case. Then I’ll make bail. That’s all I ask.”
“ That’s what you want, you got it,” Walker said.
“ Don’t sound right to me,” Washington said, “but if you want us to forget about you, well then I already forgot.”
Chapter Two
Donna Tuhiwai opened her eyes and lay still. She was back in the dream. This time she didn’t ask questions. She didn’t want to be forced away. She would keep her thoughts to herself. She would observe, nothing more. She would watch the dream like a television. She would be good. Then maybe the dream would let her go and she could wake up.
She studied the man on the bench in front of her. Rumpled clothes, like they had been slept in. Unshaven face, deep hooded eyes, weak chin, thick mustache, hollow cheeks, balding head with a scabbing cut over the right ear, like he’d fallen down recently. Not a nice face.
His clothes were spotty and stained, dark pants, open flannel shirt and a black tee shirt underneath. On the front of the tee shirt, sticking out and glaring at her through the open flannel, was the caricature of a one-eyed pirate and the word, Raiders.
“ That’s one of those American football teams,” she thought aloud.