Tim Maleeny: The Weight

Copyright (c) 2007 Tim Maleeny

Edward Kinsella III

“I found a dead pimp last week.”

Danny Rodriguez spoke the words without inflection, his eyes flat, utterly devoid of emotion. Sometimes a dead body was a friend, a partner, a fellow cop. But most days it was just another corpse. After eighteen years on the job, he’d stopped counting.

“Anybody we know?” Sam disappeared behind his kitchen counter as he opened the door to his refrigerator, bending at the waist to retrieve another beer from the bottom shelf. He stood and gestured toward the small living room as he handed a bottle to his former partner.

“Gracias.” Rodriguez twisted open the beer. “I needed a drink.”

Sam waved his arm in the direction of his kitchen. “This bar never closes.”

“Never?”

Sam nodded toward the open window across the room, sunlight streaming in. “Some would say we shouldn’t be drinking at all.”

“Only a civilian would say that,” countered Rodriguez. “My shift ended at six this morning. Right now, it’s the middle of the night for me.” He moved his chin in the direction of a clock above the stove. “What time do you pick up Sally from school?”

“Don’t worry, not till three.”

Danny raised his bottle in a quiet toast. “How’s retirement?”

“It’s only been a couple of months, Danny.”

“That bad, huh?”

Sam laughed as he took a seat on the small sofa. “I’m busy as hell but bored out of my mind.”

Rodriguez smiled. “So it’s good I still come over for a drink.”

“Beats watching Oprah.”

“I was worried you were getting tired of my stories,” said Rodriguez. “Hadn’t heard from you in a while.”

Sam shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve been busy lately.”

“Watching Oprah?”

“I prefer Ellen, you want to know the truth,” said Sam with a straight face. “You try playing Mr. Mom sometime.”

Rodriguez shook his head. “I’m not ready.”

“You better get ready,” said Sam.

“Still can’t imagine what it’s like.”

“Like nothing else,” said Sam. “You’ll think your heart’s going to explode. You’ll do anything to make them happy, keep ‘ em safe. How many more weeks till the bambino arrives?”

Rodriguez sighed. “Three. My wife’s as big as a house.”

“Don’t tell her that.”

“Too late.”

Sam chuckled. “You’re too honest for your own good.”

Rodriguez raised his beer. “Coming from a cop, I’ll take that as flattery.”

“Ex-cop.”

“You can always come back, you know, we still got plenty of homicides. We’re up to ninety this year, and it’s not even September.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m not that bored.” He absently rubbed his right pant leg, feeling the hardened plastic of the prosthetic through the denim. Part of his brain still registered surprise at the lack of sensation, though at times he’d swear the leg was itching. Not for the first time, he wondered where the hospital sent all the severed limbs, and whether there was some mass grave where someone’s arm lay buried next to his leg, idly scratching it for him.

Rodriguez broke Sam’s morbid reverie by moving across the living room to the small fireplace. Sam watched a pair of cop eyes soften as Rodriguez slowly scanned the photographs along the mantel.

In the first set Sam was holding a young girl who looked a lot like him, brown hair going in all directions, hazel eyes set wide. Moving along the mantel she aged, each click of the shutter a year or more. Rodriguez chuckled softly when he saw himself smiling back from one photograph, his arm around Sam, their patrol caps askew. The girl was sandwiched between them, almost as high as their shoulders.

“Sally grew up fast, didn’t she?”

Sam smiled but didn’t say anything.

Rodriguez moved along the row of photos, his eyes clouding as he found Marie. Sam’s wife was always smiling, her warmth palpable even from an old photograph. And Sam looked more alive whenever Marie was in the frame, much younger than the man sitting on the couch, even though some of the pictures were only a few years old. Rodriguez turned toward his ex-partner slowly, feeling older himself from the weight of it all.

“I still expect to see Marie every time I come over,” he said quietly. “Can’t believe she went so fast.”

“Cancer’s a lot more deadly than any bullet,” Sam said, rubbing his false leg. “It never misses.”

Rodriguez nodded. “I know it’s been tough on Sally.”

Sam worked the muscles in his jaw. “She’s still angry.”

“With you?”

“With everyone,” said Sam. “Mad at the doctors. Pissed at me for not being able to save her mom.”

“Don’t you think she’s being a little hard on you?”

Sam shrugged. “I was never around much.”

“Because of the job.”

Sam nodded. “But her mom made it okay when she was little-made me seem like some kind of hero or something. Told her stories about her dad at bedtime. Now her mom’s gone, and she found out her dad isn’t Superman after all, just Clark Kent. Can’t say I blame her for acting out. No one should lose their mom like that.”

“Or their wife.”

Sam didn’t say anything. The two men sat silently for a long minute, looking at the bottles in their hands. This always came up, no matter where the conversation started. And despite all the times Sam had wanted to talk to someone about Marie during those long, dark months in the hospital, he couldn’t change the subject fast enough when someone else-even a friend-brought it up. He refocused his eyes and set down his beer.

“You were telling me a story,” he prompted.

Rodriguez took the hint. “It’s a good one.”

“A good story about a pimp.”

Rodriguez nodded. “A dead pimp.”

“Someone we know?”

“Remember Shortball?”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Bill Jackson.”

Rodriguez nodded. “His legal name.”

“The midget pimp.”

“A real scumbag-all three feet of him.”

“Worked the Mission District.”

“Yeah, kept a bunch of rooms in the dive motels, next to the Grand Cinema.”

Sam nodded.

“Specialized in runaways,” continued Rodriguez. “Nice girls from the suburbs, looking for a little excitement. Local girls from the public schools, hooked on some shit they tried on a dare but can’t afford anymore. Most of them no more than fourteen, if that.”

“The only good pimp…” Sam let his voice trail off.

Rodriguez nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Where’d you find him?”

“One of his dive apartments,” said Rodriguez, wrinkling his nose. “Been dead two days.”

“It’s been hot lately-how’d he look?”

“Like a dead midget pimp,” replied Rodriguez. “Body was bloated, the skin split in places. Looked like he was gonna pop, shoot across the room at any moment. I asked the M.E. if the cause of death was a bicycle pump.”

Sam smiled despite himself. They’d both told that joke a thousand times, but for some reason the medical examiners never thought it was very funny. The M.E.’s reaction was the best part.

“Shot?” asked Sam.

“Nah,” replied Rodriguez. “Overdose. Our man Shortball shot up one time too many.”

“Smack.”

“Yup. Right between the toes.”

“So it’s not your problem,” said Sam. “It’s not a homicide.”