I don’t know how long I was alone. Maybe a half hour, maybe longer, but when the door opened again a different cop walked in. This one was bulkier with a face like a bulldog’s, his hair silver, his suit more expensive. He looked uncomfortable as he cleared his throat and introduced himself as Captain Edmund Gormer.
“I would like to apologize for any inconvenience that has been caused you,” he muttered in a rumbling voice. He looked past me, unable to meet my eyes, his voice sounding as if he hated every second of what he was doing. “We had to clear up a confusing situation, but that has been done, and as captain of this precinct I would like to thank you for doing your civic duty today, both in thwarting a felony and in apprehending two dangerous criminals. I believe these are yours.”
He handed me my wallet and cell phone. So either the other brother was stupid enough to give a statement instead of claiming a loss of memory, or a witness had come forward to corroborate my version of the story. I kept a stoical exterior. I wasn’t going to show this cop shit.
“What about the bottle of aspirin your cops took off me?” I asked. “That Roy Scheider lookalike patrolman of yours injured my shoulder when he handcuffed me behind my back.
I need those aspirin.”
His skin color was a muddled gray as he told me he’d find out where my aspirin was. He cleared his throat again, and with a false smile that badly contradicted the glumness in his eyes, he told me there was going to be a press conference soon at which they were going to explain my heroism to the media. “We would like you to be there to answer their questions,” he added half-heartedly.
I shook my head. “I just want to get my aspirin and get the hell out of here.” While I told him this I had looked through my wallet. I stared up at him and told him a hundred and fifty dollars was missing. “Fuck it, maybe I will speak to the media after all,” I said.
Alarm showed in his eyes. “I’ll look into this,” he said. “Please wait here.”
Nothing had been taken out of my wallet, but I figured a hundred and fifty was more than a fair price for the ordeal they had put me through. Less than ten minutes later Captain Gormer returned handing me a new bottle of aspirin and a hundred and fifty dollars. All I could imagine was them sending out a squad car with the siren on to buy me the aspirin. I opened the bottle with my left hand, dumped a couple of tablets into my mouth, then asked Gormer whether the media was camped outside. He told me they were.
“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked.
He nodded, relief in his eyes. “I’ll have a patrolman show you the way,” he said.
I should’ve asked Gormer how they were able to corroborate my statement. I had assumed it was either Thomas Mueller fucking things up for him and his brother or a witness coming forward. It turned out it was something else entirely, and it creeped me out when I saw what it was.
I was sitting in a bar having a few Michelob drafts and trying to get my nerves under control when the news came on and a video was played that had been sent to them anonymously earlier in the day. The video showed it all; from when I stopped to watch the Mueller brothers outside the liquor store, to me running across the street and everything that followed until the police showed up. It would’ve been impossible for the police to have twisted that video to support Jason Mueller’s statement, and I should’ve been grateful that that video existed, but I couldn’t help feeling a queasiness in my gut realizing that someone had been following me without me realizing it. Not only following me, but videoing me.
Several of the other bar patrons had started staring at me as they recognized me from the video. When they showed my prison photo and talked about my recent release from prison and my violent history, more eyes turned my way. After the photo, they cut to a press conference where Captain Gormer talked about my heroism, all the while looking like he had a tooth that needed pulling. The bar became deathly quiet, the only sound coming from the TV set. No one spoke a word to me. The bartender stood off to the side looking increasingly uncomfortable as he tried to catch glimpses of me without meeting my eye. I sat silently drinking my draft, the tips of my ears burning hot. When I finished I got up and left, feeling all eyes in the bar following me out the door.
While I walked back to my apartment, more heads turned my way. This was what I didn’t want. I had started to fade from the news and become invisible, and now I was being put right back on the front page. Knowing that that would happen had frozen me earlier and almost had me turning a blind eye away from the two punks gearing themselves up outside the liquor store. As awkward as it was watching the news in that bar, it was also interesting seeing the confusion on the anchor’s face as she struggled with knocking my horns off and putting a halo on me. All in all, though, it left me unsettled.
I stopped off at a convenience store for a bag of ice. I wasn’t sure if it would do any good, but I thought I’d use the ice for my shoulder. When I got to my apartment door and saw the match I had forced between the door and the doorjamb lying on the floor, I knew someone had been inside. The lock hadn’t been tampered with, so that person had either been given a key or was good with locks. I went into the apartment and saw pretty quickly that the place had been searched. It wouldn’t have been obvious to the average person since clothes hadn’t been tossed on the floor and nothing appeared out of place, but to me it was as plain as day. I had done things to let me know if drawers had been opened or items moved. I made a quick search to see if anything was missing, and found that the money I had taped on the inside of the radiator cover was still there. After dusting myself off and chewing on a few aspirin, I went to the apartment building’s administrative office.
The same dull heavy woman from before was working, or at least she was supposed to be. She offered me an empty fish-eyed stare before turning back to the magazine she was reading.
“Someone was inside my apartment,” I said.
“Apartments were sprayed today for pests,” she said flatly and without looking at me. “Notices were sent last week.”
“I didn’t get a notice.”
“You should have.”
She went back to reading her magazine. I watched for a minute before telling her that I wanted the name of the pest-control service they used. “Whoever it was, they searched my apartment,” I added.
She put down her magazine and turned her fish-eyed stare back at me. “How do you know this? Your place trashed?”
“No, but whoever did this went through my drawers.”
“Anything missing?”
“No, nothing’s missing.”
“Then what’s your beef?” she asked, challenging me more with that ugly fish-eyed stare.
“Are you sure it wasn’t the police in my apartment?”
“I told you who it was.”
I couldn’t read whether she was lying or not. “Did someone pay you to get inside my apartment?” I asked.
Her mouth tightened as she stared at me. “I’ve had enough of your nonsense,” she said, her voice still flat and dull. “You don’t like our policies here, find yourself another address. Now get out of my office before I call the police.”
There was no point in trying to get anything out of her, at least not by talking, and I wasn’t about to resort to my old methods. I left her and went back to my apartment where I first looked around the kitchen for any chemicals that a pest-control person would’ve left, then put some ice in a plastic bag, sat down in my recliner and held the ice against my right shoulder. If a pest-control person had been in there, I couldn’t find any sign of chemicals being sprayed in the kitchen, nor could I smell much beyond the damp mildewy odor that my apartment always had.
When I showed up at work later the kid working security gave me the same sort of confused look that that TV anchor had showed earlier. “I saw that video,” he said.