Dave Zeltserman: Fast Lane

He must have guessed I had a gun because he broke off trying to kick in my teeth to start tearing my desk apart. In the position I was in, I was about as much use as a turtle flipped on its back. It was about all I could do to get to my knees. As he was taking the gun out of the drawer I threw myself at him.

The rest of it, at least until the shots were fired, is pretty much a blur. All I can really remember is fighting like hell, thinking that I was going to die, shot to death for something that just didn’t make any sense. And then came the explosions. Two of them. If I had to swear on it, I would have said that bombs had been set off under me. But there weren’t any bombs. There were only two things under me-my gun and him, at least some of him. I jumped up and saw there was a lot less of him than there should have been. Most of his head was gone and a bloody mess remained where his belly used to be.

The toughest thing I ever did in my life was to stay put and call the police. I didn’t think anyone could possibly believe me. The whole thing was so damn crazy, but I guess if you think about it, any other explanation for what happened would have been even crazier.

As the police questioned me, I sweated bigger bullets than the ones that chewed up Murphy. I had convinced myself it was useless, and was more shocked than anyone else about how things turned out. Because in the end, three things happened: the cops believed me; my hair turned gray as a cigar ash; and my career shot off faster than the top of Walt Murphy’s head.

All of a sudden I was a hero. At least that’s the way the media made me out to be. With all the newspaper stories and the radio and TV appearances, I became just about the best-known private investigator in Denver. Not only did I have clients lining up outside my door to hire me, but the papers were knocking down that door to get whatever piece of me they could. The Examiner paid me to write up my own firsthand account of the incident, which evolved into my regular monthly feature ‘The Fast Lane-from the files of Johnny Lane’. It has appeared faithfully ever since, and, along with my smiling mug shot, has become an institution to the Denver public.

I’m grateful for my success and I don’t want to sound as if I’m complaining, but I wish it had happened another way. I don’t like thinking of Walt Murphy lying dead on my floor. I don’t like to think I benefited from his death. Maybe if I’d tried humoring him that afternoon none of it would have happened. Maybe he would’ve been able to get some help and would’ve pulled his life back together. Or maybe not. Maybe things would have ended up worse, with him blowing his wife’s head off. You see, I don’t know whether I screwed up or not. I don’t have a clue.

I had done what I was hired for and there wasn’t any reason to hang around. I went back to my motel and packed up. I was feeling empty inside so I stopped at a diner and had a second breakfast of steak and eggs. After adding a piece of pie I headed off to the station. I always like traveling by train if I can. When you’re sitting back in a train you can put your feet up and take time to sort out what’s troubling you. And I had quite a problem to sort out.

I arrived at the station a little past ten and the next train to Denver wasn’t leaving until one, so I settled down to think things through. I didn’t like the way it stood. Mary hired me to find her birth parents and I did-at least her mother. It certainly seemed I should give her what she’d paid me for, but I also had an obligation to do what was best for my client.

I knew Rose Martinez wouldn’t be too happy about meeting her daughter. When the media took the Walt Murphy shooting into its jaws and started shaking it, I landed pretty much on my toes, but they dumped Rose hard on her ass. And while she was flat on the ground they kicked the tar out of her. By the time they were through with her, she was the biggest tramp in Colorado-a cheating whore who drove her husband to the edge of insanity.

Whether or not there was any truth in the accusation, the result was that Denver became an unwelcome place for her. It’s pretty easy to understand why she’d wanted to put it all behind her. The baby would’ve been a tough thing to come home to every day, a reminder of all the humiliation and pain she’d suffered. I guess putting little Mary up for adoption was her way of escaping it.

I had to agree with Mary’s mother. I couldn’t see any good coming from Mary finding Rose. And I’ll tell you, I looked at it from so many angles I started to get dizzy. You could bet how it would hit Rose. Like a sucker punch to the gut. And of course, she’d take it right out on Mary. To let it happen would be sadistic.

So there it was. I could do what I was paid for and ignore the right and wrong of it, but what the hell would that make me?

An old man sitting nearby was giving me a cold stare and it knocked me out of my thoughts. With his round bald head and big rubbery face, he resembled a bloated bullfrog. I gave him a friendly smile; my Poppa always taught me that it never hurt none to be nice to folks.

“Howdy. Anything I can do for you, sir?”

He seemed a little startled. “Thank you, no. Where you heading?”

“Denver, Colorado.” I extended my hand and introduced myself. “Johnny Lane. Pleased to meet you.”

He ignored my hand and kept staring at me. “You live in Denver?” he asked after a long while.

Now, when you go out of your way to be friendly, people should be friendly right back. There is no reason not to, and with the snub the old man gave me I started feeling a little hot. But you can’t always account for other folks. I pulled my hand back.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’m sort of a celebrity there.”

He shook his head. “Never been to Denver. You from there?”

“As far back as I can remember.”

With that the old man leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

I looked him over, feeling a burning around my neck as I did so. Sitting there, looking at the old man’s toad-like features I felt the hotness spreading, tightening the veins in my throat. I got up quickly and found the men’s room. After splashing cold water on my face, I stood quietly and studied myself in the mirror. Slowly the hotness faded and the muscles in my jaws softened.

There was no point in letting that old man upset me the way he did. You have to figure he was senile and didn’t realize how he was acting. It’s just that, well, forget it.

* * * * *

I’d spent most of the trip back to Denver worrying, and by the time I arrived home I was worn out. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to concentrate on what I needed to. For some reason I kept letting that old man at the station pop into my head. It bothered me that I let him get to me. But this picture of me holding out my hand only to be made to look like a jackass kept getting me more and more sore. It was so pointless letting that bother me that it just got me angrier. And what bothered me more than anything was how close I came to losing control.

* * * * *

By the time I laid myself out on my bed, I wasn’t any closer to figuring out how things needed to be handled. I tried again to think things through, but everything got more jumbled than before and soon I wasn’t making any sense out of anything.

I had myself a beer and brought a bottle of whiskey back to bed. After a couple of shots, the muscles in my neck relaxed. I turned off the lights and closed my eyes.

I had a restless time of it. Images of Walt Murphy and the shooting raced through my mind, and at times I was probably closer to hallucinating than dreaming. The whole incident played itself out as it happened, at least to the point where the police showed up. Then it got crazy. The cops wouldn’t believe me and kept laughing and poking at me. I tried to tell them how it had happened, but they were laughing too hard to listen. Before I knew it, they had me by the collar and were dragging me down a hallway, handling me as if I were nothing more than a rag doll-kind of the way Tiny had dragged Debra Singer from the back room of his peep show.