David Putnam - The Disposables

Jumbo was wearing a wire.

He was cooperating with the police.

I took a long step toward him. Before my foot had a chance to touch down, there came rapid crackling on the pool deck, storm troopers, their boots treading upon millions of little ice-cubed glass on the concrete. Behind me the thump of running feet. I was surrounded. Rage enveloped in a blanket of red. I raised the gazelle and advanced, determined to take out the rat who’d ruined everything.

“Freeze, don’t move. Asshole, don’t you move.”

I was focused on bashing in Jumbo’s head. In my peripheral vision I processed the words, the commands from Deputy Mack as he stepped into the living room, his large-caliber handgun pointed at my chest. The ugly image of the dead kid shoved up against the wall of Mr. Cho’s store flashed on the wall of my brain, the unstoppable revelation of how in a couple more seconds I, too, would be posed in the same manner.

I thought: go ahead and shoot. My Marie was gone from me forever. I took another long step. Jumbo lost his arrogant smirk, tried to scramble away from me. I was too quick. I was on him, pulled back for a deadly bludgeoning.

Mack, stopped, yelled, displaying a crazy man’s eyes, spittle flying, his gun, a large dark train tunnel pointed at my nose. Still undeterred, I took another step.

“Bruno, stop right there, or I’ll blow your black ass right to hell.”

For two years, these very same words in quiet moments alone in a cell, echoed in my brain. They triggered some kind of primordial survival instinct that froze all muscle and bone. Even if I wanted to act, I couldn’t. I couldn’t override the instinct put there to save my life. Those same words were said the last time a second prior to the bullet blasting through my shoulder and knocking me on my ass. The same words said by the same person. I held the gazelle cocked over my head and slowly turned my torso to where Robby stood in the entry, his gun pointed right at me, the same as the last time. Robby, my old friend and supervisor.

“Shoot me. Please shoot me.”

Robby smiled. “Can’t. We got video rolling. Or, believe me, I’d love to save the state all the money it’s going to take to put you on death row.”

I yelled and charged.

Mack tackled me from behind. Then two tons of rhinos fell on me.

I was handcuffed and hobbled, my hands behind my back, feet bound and hooked to the handcuffs, hog-tied.

One of the deputies involved in the dog pile skewered his upper thigh with the gazelle horn. He bled copiously onto Jumbo’s white Berber rug. Jumbo jumped around, “Get him out of here. Get him off the rug. You’re kidding me, right? Get him the fuck outside. Who’s going to pay for this? Who’s going to pay for the window this black bastard shattered?”

Robby stepped over to a lamp and draped a towel over it. One of the many towels a deputy retrieved from the bathroom to use as a pressure bandage on his partner’s leg. A motel-like lamp that I should’ve immediately noticed when I walked in, should have recognized. A lamp camera, the same model we had used on other operations, the county too cheap to buy the updated version. Another in-your-face detail Robby would gloat over and tell in war stories again and again. I’d been too intent on looking for the real threat, Crazy Ned Bressler. All the people at the party a distraction as well in Jumbo’s well-appointed house. Like a fool I’d been taken in by it all.

Once the camera was out of commission, Robby stepped over to Jumbo, C-clamped him with one strong hand around his throat, got up in his ear because there was still audio and whispered. Jumbo turned ashen and nodded again and again.

Paramedics clamored in with all their gear and immediately went to work on the African-gazelle-gored deputy who no longer moaned and lay absolutely still in a sea of turmoil. Two deputies leaned hard on blood-soaked towels that plugged the wounded leg.

Robby said, “Get this piece of shit out of my sight.” He kicked me in the side.

Mack and two other deputies picked me up like a suitcase. My arms and legs and wrists screamed in pain.

Robby looked at his watch. “Put him in my car. Mack, you stay with him. I’ll be right out.” He turned to the paramedic. “How’s he doing?”

The paramedic stood, his latex gloves splotched with blood and nodded his head for Robby to step aside. They moved with the group carrying me to the door. They stopped, but I heard the medic. “His femoral artery is severed. We have to scoop and run. We can’t wait on the airship. Can you give us a code-three escort?”

“Shit. Shit. Hell yes. Jenkins, you and Fong, you know the routine. Call ahead, leapfrog the intersections and don’t spare the horses, you understand? I mean haul ass.” I was outside in the cold night air and didn’t hear the response, if there was one. Robby was looking out for his own.

I didn’t hurt the deputy. It was an accident. But even so, I still owned a piece of that emotion.

I was in the car facedown and still I heard Jumbo yell, “My God, look at all the blood. There’s blood everywhere-There’s-” His words artificially choked off with outside assistance.

Car doors slammed, tires screeched.

The earth slowed on its axis. After a long ten or fifteen minutes that could’ve easily been only three, the two front doors to the car opened simultaneously. Mack and Robby got in. Strangely, I thought, in another time that would’ve been me with Robby.

We drove in silence until Robby said, “Reach back and take that hobble off. I want him sitting up. I want him to see this.”

“Pull over,” Mack said. “I can’t do it while we’re moving.”

“Cut the son of a bitch off. I’m not stopping. There isn’t time.”

Mack turned and leaned way over in the seat. With a razor-sharp knife he cut the nylon hobble. My legs sprang free from my hands and my feet kicked the door. My feet were still tied together and tingled as the blood returned to the nerves.

“Get him up.”

Mack leaned back over and tried to grab me by my hair, only I kept it cut too close to my pate. He took hold of my shirt and yanked. It tore. With both hands he pulled on my shoulder until I sat up. There was nothing in this world I wanted to see. Not anymore. All I could think about was escape. What it would take. What I had to do. Would I go through both of these men? Yes, I would. I had until they got me behind concrete walls, then it was truly over. I made plans.

Until I recognized the narrow street Robby brought us to.

We were headed down 133rd.

I couldn’t breathe. The thought of what was about to happened set me firmly down in my own personal hell, one I’d have to live with for an eternity.

Four cop cars, all at the same time, pulled up out in front of our safe house. We’d made it in time all right, in time to see what Robby wanted me to see. Two plainclothes cops came over with Marie handcuffed behind her back. I was ashamed. I was emotionally bankrupt. A long, low moan slipped past my lips. Part of me wanted to slide down into a deep, dark hole and stay there until the pain went away. The other part, the controlling part of me that was still sane knew this would be the last time I would ever see Marie. I tried to etch her image into my memory, as bad as the memory was going to be, I had to have it.

Her expression was at peace. There wasn’t any fear, no remorse. My brave girl. When the bright spotlights hit, she squinted, ducked her head.

Marie’s expression stayed the same for a second until the light illuminated the interior of the car. She saw me and broke from the cops’ grasp, screaming, keening, “Bruuunooo!”

It ripped my guts out. “Marie!”