Elmore Leonard: Freaky Deaky

"You like guns?"

"Do I like them? I know guns, I'm not a collector."

"How many do you own?"

"I carry a thirty-eight Special and I have a Clock my dad gave me I keep at work. I don't want to get burglarized and have some head running around with a seventeen-shot automatic."

"That's what a Clock is?"

"It's Austrian, nine millimeter. Very lightweight."

"Even with all those bullets in it?"

"That's correct."

There was a silence. Then the sound of a throat being cleared.

"You've been with the Detroit Police since June 1975."

"That's correct," Chris said.

"Another month will be twelve years."

The young doctor said, "You don't have to tell me when the information is correct. Only when it isn't correct." So when the doctor said,

"You were in the military, honorably discharged, but you served less than a year," Chris didn't say anything. That was correct. He was stateside five months and the rest of the time with the Third Brigade, 25th Infantry, in Vietnam. Chris had a feeling the doctor didn't like to ask a question unless he already knew the answer. He was the type of person witnesses never remembered. The wedding ring didn't mean shit. He probably vacuumed and washed the dishes in his lab coat. It was like he wanted you to know he was a doctor, but wasn't that sure of it himself. Why did he wear a lab coat to sit at his desk asking questions? What did he think might get spilled on him?

Why was the chair, where Chris sat next to the desk, turned around instead of facing the doctor? So that they were both looking in the same direction, at framed diplomas on the otherwise bare wall. Two of them, from Wayne State. Chris would have to turn and look over his shoulder to see the doctor. But wouldn't see his face anyway, because of the afternoon glare on the windows and because the doctor almost always had his head down. Why was he hiding?

His voice said, "I gather, while in the army you suffered some type of disability?"

He gathered correctly, so Chris didn't say anything.

There was a silence until the doctor cleared his throat a few times and said, "Is that correct?" Breaking his own rule.

Chris told him yes, it was. Then had to wait some more.

"You attended the University of Michigan two years."

"I quit to go in the army."

"You enlisted?"

"That's right." There was no reason to tell the doctor he'd flunked out and would be drafted anyway.

"Why?"

"Why'd I enlist? I wanted to see what war was like."

There was a dead silence, not even the sound of the guy clearing his throat.

"When I came out I went back to school."

"And got your degree?"

"Well, actually I was about ten credits shy."

"So you're not a university graduate."

Jesus Christ. Chris waited again while the guy made corrections, got that record straight.

"You're single, have never been married."

That was correct, but required an explanation.

"You might want to know I almost got married a couple of times," Chris said.

"What I mean to say is I'm not single by choice, I would've married either one. But once they start wringing their hands you know it's not gonna work. See, they were afraid, more than anything else."

There was a silence again, behind him and off his right shoulder, where the young doctor was making notes.

"Why were they afraid of you?"

"They weren't afraid of me. They were afraid, you know, something could happen to me, being a police officer. It's the same kind of situation I'm in right now, why I want to transfer. I've been going with a young lady actually we're living together, in her apartment.

It's right up the street, as a matter of fact, on East Lafayette. I can walk to 1300, or Phyllis drops me off if she goes in early.

She's with Manufacturers Bank, in the Trust Department."

Chris paused. What was he telling him all that for? But then felt he should explain why Phyllis drove him to work.

"See, my car was stolen last month. Parked right across the street from 1300, if you can believe it. On Macomb. Eighty-four Mustang, they never found it."

The young doctor didn't seem to give a shit about his Mustang. Chris heard the pen tapping.

"Anyway Phyllis, we start out, was always a little nervous about what I do. The last couple months she's gotten more and more paranoid I'm gonna lose my hands.

It's not what if I get blown up, it's just the idea of losing my hands that seems to worry her. How would I eat? How would I dress myself? I told her I'm not gonna lose my hands, I'm very careful in my work. But if I ever did, I told her she could help me out. See, at first I tried to kid about it, tell her different things she could do for me. Like when I go to the bathroom, things like that. But I realized it was the wrong way to handle it. She'd turn white. You could see her imagining different situations. But she brought it up so often I started looking at my hands. I'd be looking at them," Chris said, holding up his palms, looking at them now, "without even realizing I was doing it.

I'd see things in my hands, lines, I never noticed before. I finally decided it wasn't worth it, talking about it all the time; I'd transfer to another section. Also, you have to understand, it isn't all that exciting. Most of the time you're just sitting around." Chris waited.

Then glanced over his shoulder.

The doctor was busy making notes, shielding the pad with his left arm.

"How long were you on the Bomb Squad?"

"Six years. I started out in radio cars, Twelfth Precinct.

Sometimes I worked plainclothes. You know there's quite a gay community there, around Palmer Park, and when you have that, you have fairy hawks, muggers that specialize in gays. I'd dress up like a fruitcake and stroll through the park, you know, asking for it."

"That sounds like entrapment."

"It does, doesn't it. I transferred to Arson, I had some experience in that area from before. Three years I worked for an insurance company as a claims investigator. But I didn't care much for Arson. Walk around in water in burned-out buildings, your clothes smell all the time. I think that might've been the reason the second young lady walked out. I had to hang my clothes by an open window.

So I transferred to the Bomb Squad."

"Why did you do that?"

"I just told you, to get out of Arson."

"I mean why did you choose the Bomb Squad?"

"I knew the guys there, I'd run into them."

"Was there another reason, a motivating factor?"

There might've been. Chris wasn't sure if it made sense or if he should bring it up.

"Something you wanted to prove to yourself?"

"Like what?"

"Say a test of your manhood."

"My manhood?" Chris looked over his shoulder at the doctor in the lab coat, head down, writing away.

"Why would handling explosives be a test of your manhood? It can end your manhood in a hurry, blow your balls off."

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it.

"That's why I suggest you might have approached it as a test, a challenge."

Chris said, "You don't stay on a job six years to prove something. You have to like it. There's risk, sure. You accept that going in and you handle it, or you get out."

Chris waited. The young doctor was hiding back there writing again, drawing conclusions, making judgments about him. Chris said, "I don't know what attracted me… There was something I've wondered about that happened in Vietnam, if it had anything to do with it. You know, like in my subconscious mind."

The voice said, "You were in Vietnam?"

"It doesn't seem to have a direct connection, though."

"What doesn't?"

"See, when I was over there I was assigned to a Recon Intelligence platoon, working with mostly a bunch of ARVNs. You know what I mean?