Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

Paula waved for Pinty’s attention. A deaf woman, she signed angrily, hands picking apart the air as though arranging her words letter by letter on an invisible board.

Pinty turned to Tracy, who looked sheepish and almost teenager-disappointed in her mother. She translated flatly: “‘Aren’t you going to do something about this?’”

Pinty looked back at Paula. “About what?”

Then he heard the Indian cry. It was the Black Falls Police Department come marching. Bucky Pail led the way, showing off an antique musket to the crowd and exhorting their cheers, while brother Eddie and the three others followed in tow, each gripping one handle on a rescue stretcher bearing a cigar store Indian. It was the wooden statue that greeted customers at Big Bobby’s Gas-Gulp-’N-Go, adorned now with a headdress of turkey feathers and bandaged in ketchup-stained gauze.

Some spectators joined in the jeering salute, though most, like Pinty, watched in stunned silence. He felt Donny stiffen next to him and reached out to hook his arm just as Donny started to move, holding him back.

“Don’t,” Pinty said.

Maddox held still, watched them pass. Pinty released his arm and returned both hands to the grip of his walking stick. He absorbed the ridiculous display because he had to, using it to feed his inner resolve, as he knew it was feeding Donny’s.

How had things gone so wrong since his retirement? The police department’s troubles began in earnest with the passing of Pinty’s successor, Cecil Pail, who looked like Johnny Cash but died like Elvis Presley, of a massive coronary inside the station john three years ago. Pail was by and large a good man, but foolish and half blind when it came to his sons, Bucky and Eddie, whom he indulged. He had elevated his boys to the only remaining full-time positions on the shrinking force, in part to keep a closer eye on them. Pinty and the other selectmen refused to promote from within, yet were unable to attract a suitable replacement at the salary offered, to a town with no budget for police uniforms. So the chief’s position remained vacant, and into this vacuum of power had risen Bucky Pail, with his brother at his right hand.

They stopped to rest in the middle of the intersection of Main and Mill, standing the bloodied Indian right out in front of the station, below the flag. Stokes swapped his ball cap and sunglasses for the headdress of turkey feathers, and the rest of them amused themselves posing for pictures like jackasses.

Pinty saw parents turning their kids away from the vulgar effigy.

“Pinty,” said Donny.

Pinty squeezed the handle of his walking stick and shook his head. “If I can take it,” he said, “you can too.”

Tracy Mithers looked at them, confused. Her mother signed something, her daughter refusing to translate it until Paula Mithers clapped and pointed angrily at Pinty and Donny.

Tracy could not look at either of them. “My mother says to say that — you are both a disgrace.”

Pinty watched Donny’s eyes go dead. Pinty tried to grab his arm again, but it was too much for Donny, seeing Pinty’s honor suffer like that. He pulled away and started off the curb toward the jackasses, Pinty calling after him, “Donny,” and then once again, as loud as he dared, “ Donald.”

If Donny had one weakness, it was him: it was Pinty. What he felt he owed the old man. But Pinty didn’t mind playing possum, now that the plan was in action and there was finally some hope. The town had abided these overgrown punks for too long now. Pinty only hoped that Donny didn’t let them push him too far too soon.

Maddox was tunneled in. Bucky stood a few steps away from the spectacle, eyeballing the parade crowd through his dark shades, the old musket in his hands. Maddox remembered something from a college survey course on twentieth-century history about all despots having in common an innate knack for symbolism.

Maddox still carried pressure on his elbow from Pinty’s surprisingly strong grip as he went up to Bucky and said, “That’s enough.”

Bucky looked at him. Maddox was close enough to see his buzzard eyes through the tinted shades. Pure amusement. “You say something, rookie?”

Bucky’s intimidation came less from his size — he was big enough, but no bigger than Maddox — than from his eyes. Carny eyes, Maddox thought, assessing you while his dirty hands ripped your ticket, a guy with nothing in his life except dark thoughts. As a sergeant, Bucky outranked him, Maddox being just an auxiliary patrolman with the minimum 120 hours of in-house training. But Maddox could not stop himself. He could not stand by and let Pinty suffer this indignity. “I said it’s time to break it up. Move on.”

Bucky’s grin widened. He looked over at the others, including them in this, then checked back once more as though Maddox might be putting him on. “Hey, boys?” said Bucky, speaking through his grin. “Maddox here is shutting us down.”

“You put me on parade security,” Maddox said. “This is disturbing the peace. It’s time to move along.”

“Disturbing the peace?”

“You’re scaring kids.”

“ Scaring kids?” said Bucky, gesturing at the bandaged statue with his musket. “This here’s a history lesson.” Bucky turned back in such a way that the long, thin barrel of the musket was directed right at Maddox’s gut. “This pop gun right here is a genuine Indian killer.”

Maddox grabbed the muzzle and shoved it backward so that the butt of the weapon jabbed Bucky in the ribs, then pointed the muzzle skyward.

Bucky’s eyes flared a moment behind his glasses — as shocked by Maddox’s impudence as he was by the speed of his reflexes — lips curling to reveal the savage lurking inside the grin.

Maddox saw how far he had overstepped then. Bucky shook his grinning head, barely able to contain himself, overwhelmed by this great gift. The chance to belittle and demean Maddox in public. To humble him in the crossroads of Black Falls.

The others spread out around him, Maddox having nowhere to go. His neck burned, not because he would lose this confrontation, but because he had allowed himself to be drawn into it in the first place. All the station house tensions came bubbling to the surface. He had crossed a line, and things would only get more difficult from here on in.

“If I got this straight,” said Bucky, “you’re saying if we don’t move our Injun friend here in a timely and forthright manner, you gonna cuff us all and take us in?” His half-clever smile fell away. “All by yourself?”

Maddox could not back down, and anyway, he wanted this too, more than anyone. He went cap brim to cap brim with Bucky, ready to jeopardize everything just to throw down with these goons.

A shadow fell across him. Maddox heard the prodding of the walking stick on pavement, and his heart simultaneously rose and fell.

“Hot one today, isn’t it, boys?” said Pinty, appearing at Maddox’s right shoulder.

Behind Bucky, Eddie Pail eased back. Even Bucky’s eyes flickered a little, the way a candle does when a door is opened.

Maddox said, still staring hard at Bucky, “This is nothing, Pinty.”

“Good,” said Pinty. “Because it just wouldn’t do to have Black Falls’ own sworn peacekeepers brawling in the center of town on its two-hundred-fiftieth birthday.”

Bucky pulled off his sunglasses, trying to turn his deep-eyed stare on Pinty, but it got him nowhere. As an elder statesman, Pinty still wielded a bit of moral authority.

“Now how about showing a little respect for the town and for yourselves,” said Pinty, crowbarring Maddox and Bucky apart with his walking stick, “and let’s everyone go on his merry way.”