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Most people talk to their cat or dog or
occasionally their family, but our hero has a different kind of friend… THE TALKING GUN by NATHAN CARTER When I arrived at the crime scene,
the deceased were already posing for their evidence shots. Phil Rudman was
gleefully snapping away as if he were shooting a fashion ad for Cosmopolitan. I
mused he would be rattling off instruction and encouragement if he knew it
wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. The female victim seemed to enjoy the attention,
and proudly paraded her corpse on the sidewalk. Two feet over, her male counterpart was
less enthusiastic, and showed clear displeasure at the multiple knife wounds in
his throat and chest. Both were clad in sweat-pants and tee-shirts, tennis
shoes and wristwatches. I stood next to Phil and pulled a cigarette from my
inside pocket.
I exhaled a healthy fog of smoke in Tina’s direction to insure she came
no closer than she had to. She wasn’t calling me a monster. Frankenstein was a
nickname I picked up early on from friends and enemies alike. First name Frank,
last name Stein, you do the math. I considered my options. I could be truthful,
explaining I just got here and point her towards the rookie, or I could tell
her to blow while I questioned the officer myself.
“Good idea...”
Tina stopped just short of my Marlboro barrier and cut her eyes to the
fashion shoot. “How many victims? Just these two?”
“Oh... these aren’t the victims, these are the witnesses... you’ll have
to wait until we’re finished questioning them, but I can tell you it involves a
highly influential political figurehead, a Jamaican peanut vendor and several
midgets of unknown origin... should make quite a story...”
Tina frowned. “You’re so... strange, Frank.”
I couldn’t argue of course. Although the random comment was only my
attempt at making a joke, I was without doubt the strangest person I knew. Two
years ago I worked a four month stint in narcotics. I had put in for the
transfer after spending twelve years in homicide and someone finally cut me a
break. Twelve years of studying death will take its toll on one’s family life.
Zoe, my daughter, grew up to daddy in the living room floor with dozens of
snapshots of bloody corpses. My wife was disturbed at her spiral towards the
goth scene, but it all made sense to me. She was saturated, if not obsessed,
with the ever-present human condition of decay. Couple that with my inattention
and her mother’s Ferris wheel mood swings, and frankly, I’m surprised she
didn’t attempt to slit her wrists earlier than fifteen. I was the one who had
the pleasure of finding her in the bathtub that Friday night, and the image is
forever burned into an isolated corner of my retina. Zoe survived, but was in a
coma, narcotics was supposed to be a vacation, however, I found that the
position had its own pitfalls.
“What pitfalls?” Tina asked, breaking me out of my reverie.
I blinked and my breath caught in my throat. Was I speaking out loud
again?
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Frank, are you going to stand there acting like a jackass or will you
give me a statement?” The kid turned to me and nodded.
“Detective.” He greeted. “That won’t be necessary.” After a few more routine questions I turned
to leave, brushing past Tina who continued to jabber nonsense at me. Getting
into my car, I hauled out with a screech of my balding tires and headed into
the night desperado style. Dennison had several known hangouts around town, but
no known physical address. Finding him wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but I
had a stop to make first. The street lights blurred past me as King Crimson
sang about the Great Deceiver on my tape deck. I grew up on Joplin and Hendrix,
you know, “psychedelic” music. Looking back, however, it never seemed so far
out there. Having never indulged in any unlawful mind alteration, I was always
able to relate to John Lennon and Jim Morrison. But Crimson... what in the
world were they on? The
Quality Inn turned out to be a sunken rathole on the lower east side.
One officer swung the battery into the door and four other bullet-proof civil
servants rushed in with guns drawn. Ceaser was on the floor, with a knee in the
back of his neck, before he could go for the Uzi on top of the television. I
walked in behind and began to take account of the goodies. I
turned back to inspect the duffle bag on the bed. About half a kilo was
present. I assumed the visitors Thad had mentioned were in possession of quite
a bit more. Next to the duffle, were several guns, a scale, and a few syringes.
Other objects lay haphazard across the room, like porn rags with some of the
images cut out, and a few jars housing several insects. There was a milk crate
full of doll heads in one corner, and Q-tips littered the floor. Ceaser was a
strange one. As I played the “what does Ceaser do with those Q-tips” game in my
head, I came upon the most out-of-place object in the entire place. On the
bathroom counter stood a half-inch vial of clear liquid with a happy-face logo
stamped on the cap. Recognizing it instantly to be acid from a raid on a van of
deadheads two weeks prior, I snatched it up and slipped it into my shirt
pocket.
I took my daughter's hand and slid into the chair adjacent to her
hospital bed. She stirred and turned to face me. Looking at her serene face, my
gut clinched and I had to swallow back something I didn’t want to surface.
She lay still, eyes closed and motionless aside from her shallow chest
falls as she exhaled.
“Zoe, it’s daddy...”
I began to wonder if she would talk to me tonight. Of course, on
average, when one visits a loved one who has been comatose in excess of two
years, they rarely expect a conversation. But Zoe and I spoke regularly.
“Zoe... I...”
There it was, the peculiar glow that illuminated her face as her eyes
fluttered open and blinked the sleep away. Looking up to me she offered only
the faint hint of a smile. As if she didn’t really want me to know how glad she
was to see me. Our relationship had improved over the last twenty some odd
months, but I knew there was still resentment. I’m not sure if she blamed me
for her condition, but I was certainly a contributor to her careless mistakes.
Parents are supposed to guide their kids out of danger zones long before
something like this happens.
“Time to go home?” She said in a small seventeen year old voice. My
heart imploded.
She was testing me. Knowing I had no option but to leave her here and
let the doctors feed her intravenously and care for her around the clock
potential needs.
“I wish for nothing more...” I finally replied.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I know... how are you?”
“You know me... content as ever...”
“See
any dead bodies lately?”
“As a matter of fact...” I recalled the night's earlier carnage. “I
did.” I tried my best not to encourage her morbid daydreams by describing the
details as she would have liked. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, peachy... they fed me tube today... yummy...”
I smiled and brushed her hair away from her eyes. “Now listen young
lady, there’s children in Africa who would kill for some good tube.”
“I’d kill to eat some Ethiopian slop... with my mouth.” “I brought you something...” I decided to
change the subject. “I saw it, and it reminded me of you.” From my pocket I
pulled the troll doll. Just like the ones that were so popular in my era, with
the pug nose and frizzy hair, except this one was decked out Gothic style,
complete with black hair, eyeliner and clad in leather.
“That's pretty rad...”
I placed it in her limp hand and closed her fingers around it.
“He’s been complaining all night...” I made my bored goth-guy face. “I’m
so depressed... life is hell... America is a nightmare...”
“America is a nightmare...”
I began to speak, but stopped myself. I was a homicide detective, could
I argue?
“He’s cute though... I think I’ll call him... Poindexter.”
“Oh yeah... that’s real tough...”
“He isn’t tough... he’s smart... and sensitive... and he brings me
Cheerios every morning, with honey...”
When she was six, and had chicken pox, I brought breakfast to her room
one morning. I told her that I did something special to the Cheerios to make
them fix her all up. It was only a few tablespoons of honey, but it did the
trick. After that she wasn’t happy unless daddy made her Cheerios every
morning. For years I made her breakfast. I’m ashamed to say that I can’t recall
when I stopped. You would think that would be something a parent dreads to give
up. But it passed without my recollection, and then came Skinny Puppy. “Cheerios,
huh?”
“Mmm hmm, with honey.”
“How would he carry the bowl? His arms are all stiff and he’s too
small... he’d be spilling the milk everywhere...”
“Shhhh... I told you Poindexter is sensitive...”
Grinning, I just sat for a while admiring her simple beauty. So much a
reflection of Theresa when I first met her. The pale skin in contrast to the
dark brown hair offset her features perfectly. A slender nose and full, but
subtly shaped lips were graced by the occasional ultra light freckle that stood
out so prominently when she was a child. As beautiful as she was, her face will
now forever bring with it the memory of her lying in a blood red bath. For the
first year I could barely get the image out of my mind. I remember sitting on a
motel bed, the night after the raid on Ceaser’s. Torrents of tears came gushing
from my eyes. Self pity mixed with unbearable guilt can bend even the
straightest of arrows.
Drawing the vial from my shirt pocket I stared at the liquid inside. The
promise of euphoria lay in it. An indescribable enlightenment that was supposed
to push my problems in the far distance, if only for a little while. I removed
the plastic cap and took a deep breath. Just a dab on the tip of my finger
would have penetrated my pores and given me the desired effect, but I was
adventurous. Slowly, I poured a drop, or what felt like a drop, on the tip of
my tongue. Regret set in almost the moment the cool liquid hit my saliva.
Quickly placing the cap back on, I lay the vial on the night-stand and stood.
What had I done? This was the very mentality I had spent my life fighting
against. The mind set that takes a bad situation and does whatever possible to
make it even worse.
I went to the bathroom and washed my face. I couldn’t feel anything, I
thought maybe it wasn’t really acid. I lay on the motel bed and turned on the
tube. There was a documentary on about UFOs. Eerie music, à la Unsolved
Mysteries played over still shots of pie tins and light reflections, as the
narrator rambled on about the similarities between witnesses miles apart. My
mind was elsewhere. I lay there for some 45 minutes, but all I could think
about was Zoe. She had stabilized, but not regained consciousness. The doctors
were characteristically vague in their prognosis. I stared passed the backwoods
machinist being interviewed to the image of a humble farmhouse where he had
presumably found countless cattle mutilations. I watched as one of the gutted
dairy cows lifted its head and grinned at me.
What struck me odd was the apparent lack of pain in the animal's
expression. It’s guts were scooped out like a jack-o-lantern but it looked
serene. I was reminded of dissecting frogs in high-school biology. It is a
natural instinct to believe living things feel sensations in the same way we
do. But that isn’t correct, is it? How could something that looks so different
feel the same? From an introverted perspective you might say that a living
thing is the sum of it’s feelings. From hindsight you would say we are the sum
of our experience. Yet to everyone else, upon initial inspection, you are only
the sum of your material, physical appearance, and nothing more. As I pondered
this, I felt I had breached a new level of maturity and enlightenment. The
euphoric personal glory lasted only a few moments before I once again began to
think about Zoe. I had the overwhelming impulse to drive to the hospital to see
her so I could tell her about my enlightenment, but it was her mothers shift,
and I was forbidden.
“How can you even work at a time like this?”
“It’s the only thing that keeps me from completely breaking down.” I
replied defensively.
“Nothing is the same from this point on... you have choices...”
“I don’t have choices...”
“You have the choice to walk away.... find a new life, change your name,
your profession...” “I could never do
that...” I answered. The voice was blissfully androgynous, and spoke to me like
it had access to my thoughts.
“Then you can choose to end it now... a nice clean break from
existence...” “That isn’t what I
want.”
“What you want is not attainable... you can’t fix this one... there’s
nothing to solve, no lead to follow... your life from this point will always be
marked by misery...”
“Then I choose misery...” I closed my eyes and buried my head into the
motel pillow, which I perceived on a subconscious level to have the faint odor
of vomit.
“At least you’ve managed to lessen the blow...” The voice was stronger
now, seemingly whispering directly into my ear.
“I thought it would be different...”
“You didn’t know what to think, you acted out of impulse... a wave of
desire you had no idea existed... and now you are something you never were yet
always will be.”
As I opened my eyes, my vision adjusted to the night stand and the
barrel of my 38. I was pursed to respond for only a sliver of a moment before I
realized I was talking to my gun. For some reason, that fact, in a sea of
abnormalities, struck out and bit me in the face. I recoiled off of my bed in
fear, letting out a gasp that sounded shamefully feminine. I stumbled backwards
until my back was against the wall. Everything around me seemed drained of
color, and distorted in a carnival fun house mirror reflection. I could hear
countless voices, all spraying a fountain of emotions. For what felt like
hours, it was my sole ambition to reach out and take hold of the positive
emotions, and dodge the negative ones, a frustrating game that seemed safe if
merely in its repetition.
Repetition became a staple of existence. My life carried on like a
broken record. On some level of consciousness I understood I was moving, making
my way to the bathroom, but every material object I laid my eyes upon became a
world unto itself. I was forced to land on that world and explore. I soared its
skies and braved its dungeons, laughing and crying as the cascade of eternal
proximity gave me constant relation to my existence. At times my journey was
scored by symphony and choir, at other times demented laughter or horrific
screaming. I was looking in the mirror. I hadn’t come there, nor was I taken, I
was simply there, and every line on my face carried with it a new facet of my
being. Stories revolved over and over again as I seemed to relive and reevaluate
my past and future.
The future had arrived. I dragged a new cancer stick and glared at my
steering wheel. I didn’t remember leaving Zoe’s room. Frankly I didn’t even
remember lighting my cigarette. But this was my life now. All I can do is carry
on and trust the gaps will fill themselves in as I progress this trip. Part of
me is still there. Part of me will forever be there, staring at my face in the
bathroom mirror of a cheap motel, frying on acid. It’s not always so intense,
I’m even able to manage my life to a reasonable degree, but there is an opening
in my mind that will forever inhale intangible phantoms and let some lucidity
escape. After researching the matter further, I learned how lucky I was. All
statistics on the matter show me to be in a one-percent bracket of people who
suffer permanent effects from their initial use of LSD. The condition is called
LSD psychosis.
“Thadius Dennison.” I said flatly to the bartender.
He looked at me as if cops annoyed him hourly and shrugged.
I sized him up for a minute. He wore a sleeveless leather vest and no
shirt. Sporting a shaved head and loop earrings, I figured him for the decent
church going type.
Cutting my eyes to the stage I asked. “Wouldn’t you get warts from
touching that?”
He crossed his full sleeve tattooed arms and clinched his jaw in a way
that made his ears twitch. “Why doncha go find out.” Donning a look of disappointment I shook my
head. “Look... if you want, we can play it your way, and I’ll have officers in
here every other hour enforcing the laws of lap dance limitations. I’m sure
your profits will soar when your patrons realize what a fine upstanding joint
you’re running. Then again, you can point me in Thad’s direction and I’ll be on
my merry way. You and your bullfrog can go do lines off a lilly pad for all I
care.”
I pulled out my notebook. “Is Gina reptile or amphibian?”
“What?” He almost sounded panicked.
“Forget it, where does she live?”
“Look, I don’t know alright... you’re kind of freaking me out...”
I narrowed my eyes and felt my impatience swell. As of late I had
developed a temper. Rage would boil inside me and I would act out of character.
I even scared myself. When anger got the better of me my hallucinations would
also follow suit. The world became a tumultuous and highly unstable nightmare.
“I don’t want to become angry with you.” I said in a voice that was
deceptively calm, underlain with tension. I could tell by the look in his eyes
that my intensity was coming through loud and clear. “The number you call when
she doesn’t show up, the information on her W2s, I don’t care. I just want it
now.” “R-right... right... just hang on...”
I watched him make his way to the office tucked behind the bar and
listened to the condemned scream from hell below. The shot glasses were all
full of blood and I hadn’t realized it, but my nails were digging into the bar
top.
“Easy frank, save it... save it for tonight...”
“I’m OK.” I said.
“You lose it now, and you may not have another chance... self deception
is a tricky game...”
“I said I was alright...”
In under a minute the bartender came back out with a piece of paper in
his hand. “This is all I got. No phone number, but there’s an address on
Garfield. I don’t know if it’s legit or not... Gina really just comes and goes
as she pleases...” Thadius
springs upright from inside the bed in the tiny studio apartment. I fire a shot
into the headboard just left of center to immediately establish just how
serious I am. Aiming at the succubus who shares his sheets, I tell her to
leave. She obliges without a word. Thadius is talking but I can’t hear him. My
heartbeat is thundering in my ears like a machine shop. He becomes the
scapegoat for everything wrong in my life. My entire plate of torment seems to
have been served by one malicious waiter, and now it’s time he got his tip. If
I stop to rationalize, I might come to another conclusion, so I keep pressing
this swelling urge to complete the cycle I’ve started. He’s resisting arrest.
He must be resisting arrest. Shoot Frank. Shoot. If you don’t shoot he’ll get
away. Will you let a murderer get away? I shoot. One shot goes through his left
eye. The second shot pierces his jawbone. I hear the residual echo of my
gunshots in a sea of silence. It’s over. ***
I sat at my desk staring at my hands. Most people never stop to think
about the significance of their hands. The majority of your sins as well as the
good you offer to humanity are accomplished by the oddly yet conveniently
shaped extremities we so often take for granted. I wondered what stories could
be told if the cosmic record needle of time was set into the continuous and
unique groove that makes up a handprint.
“You should be happy such a thing doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t know... it would make my job easier... I’m a cop, I’d probably
be exempt...”
“Exempt from what?” Said Chief Holloway, sneaking up from behind me.
I swiveled in my chair and shook my head. “Nothing... I was talking to
my gun...”
“Right, whatever Frank... listen, I got a hysterical woman on Garfield.
Says she was forced out of her apartment at gunpoint, and when she came back
this morning, found her boyfriend all shot up. It’s one of our informants...
could be connected to something recent.”
I grimaced in thought and rubbed my stubble. “You know... I’m still up
to my neck with those stabbings across from Brady’s. Give it to Connelly, he
owes me a favor.”
The Chief shrugged. “Long as it gets done. How’s that case going anyway?
You follow that lead from the officer on scene?”
“Yeah, that was a bust... “ I reached into my shirt pocket for my
notepad. “Uh... Chad Benjamin... he was stirring things up in Brady’s a few
hours prior, but he went home and slept it off... just a local factory worker.
I’m looking into friends and relatives at the moment... trying to sort out the
details.”
“Yeah... alright, fine... let me know what comes up. And go home and
take a shower for cryin out loud, will ya?”
As he walked away I winked at the devil sitting
on his left shoulder. His angel wouldn’t look at me. In all of this, I have to
say, I’m still the most coherent person I know.
“Ironically, jogging is supposed to extend
life...”
“Tell me about it.” I replied.
Phil looked over to me. “What was
that, Frank?”
“Nothing.” I waved him off. “I was
talking to my gun... where’s the lucky constable who discovered the scene?”
Phil pointed me to a squad car,
parked illegally, in a handicap slot ten yards north of the bodies. A young
Latin-looking buck was conversing exuberantly, yet with his arms folded, to a
group of three peers. I sensed this was likely his first grisly murder
discovery, and he held the self-conscious macho composure of all
fresh-from-the-academy grinder meat. Through the thin veneer of his toothy
smile, I could see the troubled nausea in his eyes. He was fully humoring his
peers, but inside wanted to run to a desolate alley and puke. To his right I
watched a news van pull up. Tina Hardley, channel seven, rustled for a moment
in the front seat then exited the vehicle, directing her driver and cameraman
to the scene. I recalled that she hated my guts, because I was a man. Her
cameraman also hated me, because I was white. Hey, eighty-seven percent of
American police officers are white males, I just go with the majority.
“What’s the story, Frankenstein?”
“Why don’t you just screw with
her...”
Inna-godda-davida played in the
background as her fiery red locks swayed to the groove. The effect was quite
mesmerizing and I had to make a sincere effort to pull myself away from it.
“I like your hair.” I commented, and
walked towards the rookie.
“Frank Stein, homicide.” I said all
official like, as if he hadn’t just acknowledged me as a detective. “When did
you find the bodies?”
“Twenty-two hundred hours...”
Dominguez (according to his name-plate) replied, like I was his drill sergeant.
“We were following up an earlier complaint at the bar across the street.”
“Brady’s?” I asked, scribbling in my notepad.
“Affirmative.”
“What was the complaint?”
“A fight had broken out in Brady’s.
A local was drunk and was making threats to several patrons... we escorted him
outside and he agreed to go home...”
“Name?”
“Dennison, Thad.”
The very mention of the name sucked
me into a time warp. I remembered the call in vivid detail and clarity. I had
been in narcotics for three months, but my situation at home failed to improve.
Zoe still lay comatose, and Theresa only grew increasingly bitter and
aggressive, no matter what I did for her. She had kicked me out of the house
the night before, and I had slept in my office. Coming out of the 14th
precinct’s men’s room, where I had shaved and washed up, I was informed of the
call. An informant was on the line with the whereabouts of a perp we had been
tracking for weeks.
“This is Stein...”
“Yeah, you lookin for Ceaser right?”
Came the hard-edged gangsta-rap dialect.
“You know where he is?”
“Look, I usually deal witah that
dude Jackson... Jackson always make sure I get paid an everything, but when I
asked for him they gave me you... I don’t know you... and I don’t trust
cops...”
“Everything will be the same, as
long as you’re not jerking us around. My name is Frank Stein, this is my case
now... where is Ceaser?”
There was a hesitant pause on the
other end. I patiently waited it out. Sometimes being a cop is like being a
salesman, you push too hard and they run.
“This mornin...” He Continued. “He
checked into The Quality Inn... one of my girls work the counter there...”
“One of your girls?” I asked.
Dealing with informants offers a mixed bag. Was he a pimp? A polygamist?
“So anyway...” He ignored me.
“Fool’s in room 231, he’s had three visitors so far and six phone calls...”
“You’re quite the efficient informant...”
“Make it worth my while and I get you that nigga's blood type...”
“Fine, I’ll be expecting the usual.”
“Sure, sure, as soon as we make the arrest. What is your name and address?”
“You don’t need no address... this is Thadius, Thadius Dennison... ask around
your station, Frankenstein, they all know me...”
“Sir?”
“Sure, ok, we’ll get on it and you’ll be taken care of, don’t worry...” I said.
“I’m sorry?” Said the rookie, looking concerned, like he missed something
important.
I blinked and stared at officer Dominguez, slowly trailing my way back into the
present. His thick, short-cropped hair was at least easier to focus on compared
to Tina’s disco snakes. His mustache, however, was another story. What was once
a short trimmed cop job, had become long and twisted at the ends like a
ninetieth-century gentleman. I had to look away.
“You sure about the name?”
“Yes sir, we were coming back on a routine checkup of the situation, not even
planning on getting out of the car, when we spotted the victims.”
“Any witnesses?”
“None.”
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of
the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary. Yes, there was the old girl now, in her usual
pose, adorning the entrance to my daughter's hospital. I parked in back and
made my way through the doctors entrance. All the staff knew me on a nickname
basis, and I traversed the corridors undisturbed, barely offering nods of
acknowledgment to those I passed. As I made my trek to the south wing elevator,
I replayed the eventful bust in my head. Thad was on target, as expected.
Minimal surveillance verified Ceaser was right where Thad told us. We didn’t
see the point on sitting on our thumbs with this one. There was already
substantial reason for prosecution, and we needed to sweat him into a deal for
bigger fish.
“Check it out Frank, he’s got
pantyhose on!”
I glanced at Jason Simms, who was
kneeling on Ceaser’s back. His pants had started to come down, revealing his
sheer elegance obsession.
“Don’t get him too excited then...”
I said.
In the world of narcotics there are
certain politics and factions at play. Your crack heads group together,
sometimes mingling with the sherm freaks, while heroin and meth addicts make up
the other major half of the junkie pie chart. Then you have the party kids with
their lines of designer drugs and varied smokables. LSD is an odd bird these
days. Since the arrival of ecstasy, it isn’t much in fashion. There is a core
group of hippie throwbacks and ravers that keep it in the market, but the
chances of them mixing it up with the likes of Ceaser’s peers is substantially
low.
“Anything interesting?”
I spun around to see Simms leaning
in the bathroom doorway, grinning like he just gave Ceaser a pantyhose wedgie.
“No...” I said too fast. “Nothing in here...”
“Well the lab team is here, we’re
about done, and “He’s got legs” is en route to the station, awaiting your
company...”
“Thanks, Simms...”
Simms was an alright guy. Too bad he
had to get shot in the throat by Ceaser, three weeks after we released him on a
plea bargain. It would seem that humiliating a cross-dressing Argentinean
heroin dealer carries its consequences. The real kicker, was that we never even
got to bust Ceaser’s supplier, because Ceaser had killed him as well.
The doll heads in that milk crate turned out to have heroin sealed into the
inner molding of the plastic, awaiting their counterpart bodies in Ceaser’s
van. This made little sense, considering they were already stateside. Where was
he smuggling them to? Unfortunately, the discovery wasn’t made until we had
already let Ceaser go. Everyone on the investigation team got reamed real good.
The whole thing was a nightmare holocaust. And it all went down when I was in
the throngs of my initial psychosis.
“Zoe...”
I headed towards Seduction, a dumpy
little strip club on 5th that Thad was known to frequent. It was the closest to
the crime scene and seemed the best place to start. A handful of scattered
patrons were laying about the place, most barely paying attention to the
entertainment. The stage caught my eye however, as on it sat a giant,
wart-laden bullfrog. I swallowed back my disgust as it glared at me and
croaked. Forcing my attention towards the bar, whilst keeping one eye on the
slimy green pole dancer, I slipped my badge out.
He held an expression that was half
intimidated and half confused. “Listen man... I don’t know where he is... he
left with Gina earlier, that’s all I know.”
I took the address and shoved it
into my coat pocket. “I’ll be back if I don’t find him.”
On the drive to Gina’s, my mind
replayed several eventful moments in my life. My honeymoon was a fond
recollection, but it left only a sour aftertaste as I considered my rocky
divorce. I could recall every smell and sound from the hospital room the day my
daughter was born, all the while flashes of her suicide attempt contended for
dominance. Then there was the day she began to speak to me from within her
coma. I swear if it wasn’t for that small ray of sunshine in my dark expanse of
hell, I would have surely gone mad. And now I’m in front of Gina’s apartment
building. And now I’m walking down the hallway on the fourth floor. And now I’m
kicking in the door with my gun drawn.