Prescott frowned, gawked, and pursed his lips like an administrator. Looking vexed, he raised his palm, spat, then looked away. “Lotta nerve. Lotta nerve, Leo—”
“It’s none of your business when we’re gonna catch him. You got a lot of nerve asking me all of this. And you already see there’s a police sweep in progress.”
Prescott glanced at Leo reprovingly. “But maybe that’s none of your business neither. Don’t insult police work again.” He began nodding his head stupidly, and he wouldn’t leave until Leo copycatted the gesture, and began wagging in agreement. “Comprende? No comprende? Scram.”
A police sweep? An unusually high number of police vehicles on the street? Definitely. Roadblocks. Cops checking civilian vans. Leo approached; red and blue lights spinning like shadowy genies escaping a million bottles.
“Sir. You have obviously been drinking. You either go someplace and have a coffee or I’m going to have to pull you in. I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”
An officer looking up from another driver’s license inspection, “Sir! Is there something that you want? Need?” Leo got scared, stumbled away.
Slouching to his knees, too enervated to bother himself over the consequences, he stationed himself at the doorstep of the only diner left open this hour. Three police cars meanwhile ran up and down the Cerrillos neighborhood. Lotta cops in the wrong location, Leo mused, so drowsily that the thought mattered less than that the patrons entering and exiting Denny’s politely sidestepped him. First piece of luck all day. He had raged all day long. Raged when he read the Santa Fe New Mexican. Raged when he read about the killer. Raged when he repeated his mantra. Raged until he couldn’t — he had to let the bile seep out of him. Couldn’t do anything about killers. They strike. They strike again. Killers kill. Drinkers drink. Just fall asleep here. ’Cause least people have the courtesy to sidestep me. Two of ’em. Blue devils. “It’s the fucking level of unprofessionalism,” one complained, entering Denny’s.
The other cop stopped, tapped his shoe. “This is not the place to sleep.”
A black cop gazed down at him. “Especially not tonight.” He sounded like he had something special in mind. “Get it? You must have noticed the sweep? Have you seen anything unusual?”
Say: I tackled the killer. And I tried to tell ya fellow officers. Can’t talk with all the bullhorns and sirens.
Say: And I feel ashamed looking at ya, officer. I don’t want to tell ya the crazy thoughts I was thinking.
He prattled, maybe he sounded like a baby with stones in his mouth, maybe he raised his voice when he sounded slurpy in his own ears. He couldn’t stop himself, still blathering while the shoes disappeared, seconds gone.
Leaving Leo babbling to thin air. Huh? The black cop returned. He held several pamphlets. The first pamphlets in the stack ubiquitously read, Help for the needy, or, Social Resources. The next set extolled church and Christianity with titles like, The Lord Provides. The black cop insisted, “Get off the street,” intended in a different sort of way than the others.
Thanks. Thanks for your concern. Thanks for Jesus. Presences nudged him left, then right. Gently rocking waves, leading him, leading him along until the thought broke through: Rage. I just got rage. But I ain’t him. Me. Him. Me. Him. Nothing else matters. But at least the killer wasn’t me. They might not know that. They gotta understand it wasn’t me.
Leo lumbered directly toward the blue, the red lights, converging at the street meridian. Everything shape-shifted. Cops, human figures emerged from the bulbous glow. A cop car tapped him, swinging open; he kicked back, like an emotional yo-yo.
The angriest cop, billy club in hand, stepped out of his car, still fuming, before he swung into Leo’s mouth and belly like he was swinging a golf club.
And where was he? And who was speaking? Leo moaned lying facedown, handcuffed, pretty much welcoming the zero/void. Officer Prescott at last had something significant to say — “Let’s drop the assaulting-an-officer charge, okay? Can you speed up, please? He’s about to get sick back there.”
The other cop in the front seat grumbled, hearing Leo retching up.
Prescott turned to the backseat and grumbled, “Damn, Leo. Sorry about this. Sorry this happened. But we’re jittery tonight. You better sleep it off in the cell. We’re looking for a real killer out here.”
Officer Prescott may have been right. Maybe the county jail was the place to recover. The rainstorm was a precursor to two days of somber weather. Leo spent his brief jail stint lulled by the pitter-patter, sleeping in a warm, dry place, listening to the rain without hearing the old refrain: Disappointment. Disappointment. Disappointment.
He didn’t bother pleading his case; his stomach panged. When he signed his release papers on the third day (guess the cops really had dropped the assaulting-an-officer charges), the jail officials at the desk handed him a list of fees and sums he owed the county — fees he would have to pay before he could have his bike returned. He thumbed a ride “home.”
He recognized within a few hours that he was still sick. The hurt sustained layers down; down in the pit of his stomach where the billy club sucker-punched him. He took to his natty cot. Lying hours face upward. Dieted on bottled water and canned tuna. Nothing else left at the trailer. Not even a Camo.
He dreamed the same scenes, over and over. He revisited the house fire, less hysterically, in particular the moment which he usually couldn’t stand revisiting when he put his hands over his eyes and (pretty bravely) leaped through the blazing door. He really did it. The dream paired with imagery of the killer? But had that really happened? Pictures of binding/rebinding the Santa Fe killer but good. Brave, too, he supposed, assuming the imagery was real.
It wasn’t worth believing in it. It wasn’t worth revisiting his zero/voids. Leo Malley. $3.85 man. It sort of wasn’t worth believing in himself.
He dreamed he told Giggles the whole story, before she collapsed into giggles. Or congealed like a pillar of salt. In any case, in his memorable moments, seconds, split seconds, he remembered his mantra, Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Racial epithet. Racial epithet. And, rolling over, feeling self-disgust, he realized none of it could have happened anyway.
The next morning, he felt strong enough to hitchhike. Hey Giggles, hey Paula at Wendy’s, starting to miss me yet? Who misses me?
Making his way into Santa Fe, he was halfway to the interior. A newspaper bin. Lo, behold. Sure, he prevaricated when he told Paula and Connie at Wendy’s that he had gotten into a fight, sort of the truth. Connie slipped him a coffee and a Santa Fe New Mexican.
“We don’t really know what happened,” read the official quote.
Leo thought: Who? How? Where?
Suspect found in a Southside alley. “We really don’t know what happened. We found him with his hands tied, his feet tied. He won’t offer an explanation.” The suspect is believed to have attempted a murder on that very evening, leaving Ms. Yevette Sandoval bruised and battered in a Burger King parking lot. The victim was discovered shortly before the suspect. The victim has been hospitalized and is expected to live.