Chris Grabenstein - Free Fall

“Step out where I can see you.”

“Why? I thought you wanted to talk.”

“I do.”

“Then talk. You don’t have to see someone to talk to them. That’s why they invented the telephone.”

“Still got a mouth on you, huh, Adele?

“That’s right, Joseph. And I still know to use it.”

“Okay, okay. Ease up already. Seriously, babe-what the hell happened to us? Where’d we go wrong?”

Great. Mr. Ceepak’s drunk has moved into the sloppy sad stage.

“I thought this was about money, Joseph, not us.”

“It is, it is. But we’re a team, remember? You and me against the world. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine.”

“That stopped the first time I caught you stealing beer money out of my purse.”

“Why do you have to say things like that, Adele? What’d I ever do to you?”

“You mean besides murdering my youngest son?”

“That was a suicide.”

“No, it was not. You just fooled everybody into thinking it was for years and years. You killed your own son.”

“I had to. Billy was a weakling. Hey, I did him a favor. The world was too tough for a sissy boy like him.”

“Sir?” says Ceepak, stepping forward an inch or two, his mother scooting up behind him. “Currently, you are the one wasting valuable time. I suggest we add a few more minutes to your countdown clock.”

“What? No way. The SWAT team is coming …”

“Be that as it may, it will take considerable time for mother to organize the one million dollars you have requested.”

“How long?”

“Well,” says Mrs. Ceepak, “the bank’s closed. But they open tomorrow at ten …”

“Not gonna work. I need my money, Adele. I need it now. Hell, I earned that million dollars.”

“Oh, really? How?”

“Hey, I was married to you for twenty years, wasn’t I? I deserve that much in hazardous-duty pay.”

Mr. Ceepak wheezes out a laugh. Guzzles more booze.

“I’ll give you your money tomorrow, Joseph.”

“Tomorrow? I need to fly to Cuba.”

“Well, what do you propose I do? Write you a check?”

“No. Because no one would cash a check for a million dollars. Not unless you had a bank account with them, and I don’t have a bank account in Cuba.”

Yes, the drunker he gets, the stupider he becomes.

“So, what exactly is it you want, Joseph?”

“One million dollars!”

“Will you take cash?”

“Yeah. Fine. Cache.”

Mr. Ceepak sounds half asleep. His eyelids look heavy. His eyeballs blurry.

Mrs. Ceepak keeps going. “Does it need to be in unmarked bills? Tens and twenties only, like in the movies?”

“Are you mocking me, Adele?”

“You bet. Because you deserve it. Who the heck do you think you are, anyway? What you’re doing here is wrong.”

“No, Adele, what you did in Ohio was wrong. Taking all that money from Aunt Jennifer and not sharing it with me, your lawfully wedded husband.”

“You are not my husband. We are divorced.”

“We’re Catholic, Adele. Divorce is against the rules.”

“That’s why I got an annulment, too.”

“You can’t annul diddly. What God has joined together … let no man put us under a bus …”

I think the alcohol has officially destroyed all the brain cells that used to be employed memorizing bible verses.

“You stole from me, Adele. That’s a sin.”

Mrs. Ceepak jabs up her arm to point at David Rosen’s perch atop the Free Fall. “Nothing I have ever done or ever will do is half as sinful as what you’re doing here.”

“That boy murdered his father!”

“Then let the police deal with it.”

Mr. Ceepak brings up the brown paper bag and takes yet another swig. Or at least he tries to.

He shakes the bag.

I think his bottle is officially empty and the drunken fool doesn’t look happy about it.

“Why didn’t Aunt Jennifer put me in her will with you?” he mutters, sounding like a mad six-year-old.

“Maybe because she hated you for killing your own son.”

“Billy deserved it!”

Mrs. Ceepak disobeys her son. Steps to his side so she can directly confront her ex-husband.

“No. He deserved better. Better than you, anyway.”

“Screw you, Adele. Hey, am I in your will?”

“Ha! Over my dead body.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Mother?” says Ceepak “Get behind me. Now.”

Mrs. Ceepak holds her ground. “I’m not afraid of you, Joseph. Not any more.”

“Mother?” Ceepak reaches for her,

Mr. Ceepak stumbles off his stool. “You ungrateful bitch. After all I did for you.”

And up comes Mr. Ceepak’s pistol.

Every trigger finger in the pizza parlor is ready to fire.

“Don’t!” shouts Ceepak.

We all think he’s talking to us.

He isn’t.

He’s yelling at his father while jumping in front of his mother.

A shot rings out.

Smacks Ceepak.

He goes spinning. Blood is spurting out of his thigh. As he twists around, he grits his teeth hard, grabs hold of his mother. The two of them topple in a heap to the boardwalk. My friend covers his mother, shields her from Crazy Joe’s second shot.

I am so ready to take the bastard down.

But Mr. Ceepak moves his free hand over that blinking green button.

“Anybody takes a shot, David dies!” he screams.

“Stand down!” orders the chief.

“Don’t shoot!” shouts Mayor Sinclair.

Mr. Ceepak’s hand inches closer to the button.

And that’s when my whole world goes into free fall.

There’s a video game I sometimes play called NCAA Football by EA Sports.

In the “Road To Glory” mode, you can flick a trigger on the game controller and enter hyper reality. The action slides into super slow motion so you can see every little detail of the play while you’re in the middle of running it.

This is what happens when I tug back on the trigger to my Glock.

I can see blood arcing in bursts out of Ceepak’s leg, keeping time to the thundering beats of my own amped-up heart.

His father hit him in the femoral artery.

My partner is going to bleed out, right here on the boardwalk, if those paramedics don’t start administering first aid immediately. John Ceepak is going to die shielding his mom, something he has done since he was a teenager. A fitting end for such a brave man? Maybe. But this is not his time. It can’t be.

I won’t let it.

And so I fire at his father when Mr. Ceepak’s hand moves half-an-inch closer to the green button glowing on, dimming off, glowing on, dimming off.

My first round rips across the twenty open feet of air separating us. I swear I can see the slug soaring like a guided missile to its target.

It slams into Mr. Ceepak’s shoulder. Hard.

He flies backward. Looks stunned.

But his liquor-soaked brain has been numbed down to its reptilian stub. It’s fight or flight time. He chooses to fight. He fires his own weapon.

“Down!” someone shouts behind me.

I hear bodies thudding to the floor.

Mr. Ceepak’s bullet whizzes past my head.

Glass shatters.

Christine screams.

I cannot turn around to see if she is okay.

All I can do is line up my next shot.

Mr. Ceepak drops his pistol.

He lunges forward and fights through the pain searing his shoulder to place both hands over that glimmering launch switch. He is ready to kill David Rosen, to make that his final, dying act.

But I kill him first.

My second bullet blows through Mr. Ceepak’s chest.

He glares and snarls at the world one last time.

And then, thank God, Ceepak’s father finally dies.

When I am absolutely certain that Mr. Joseph Ceepak has lost the ability to harm anyone else, I whirl around.