Frank Zafiro - Under a Raging Moon

He remembered how firm and luscious her body had been the first time he’d had her. So supple and willing. Over the months, though, it had deteriorated rapidly. Her breasts sagged, her athletic frame shriveled, and sores broke out. And, of course, the track marks.

They’d met Leslie at a party. No one would sell them anything until he started dancing with Leslie and kissing her. Andrea hadn’t minded once he told her Leslie knew somebody who was holding.

Leslie got the ‘H’ and they left. He remembered feeling excited about sex for the first time in months as they drove to the apartment. When they arrived and all three fell into the bed before shooting up, he could hardly believe his luck. What a wild night!

So Leslie stayed. And for a while, it was great, but now, both of them were junkies. They couldn’t control their habit. Instead, it controlled them. Not him, though. He could thank the Army for one thing: discipline.

Mace decided to take advantage of the fact that both women were sleeping. He went to the cabinet where he stored his works-and found the baggie empty beside the leather holder. He stared at it for a long moment, disbelieving, as if his gaze would cause the missing heroin to somehow materialize.

Fucking bitches! They raided his shit.

He flew across the room at Leslie, slapping her as hard as he could. The force of the blow knocked her from the chair to the floor where she lay, staring at him, blinking stupidly.

“You stealing, worthless bitch!” he shouted, slapping and punching without mercy. She covered her head with her hands, absorbing the blows without a sound.

Mace turned and headed for the bedroom. His rage subsided but his body had started to itch and shake. Nausea swept over him, even though he knew it was too soon for that. He had to get some more.

He shouldered his way through the bedroom door. Andrea sat on the bed, staring at him, her breasts exposed, the small tuft of hair below her belly clearly visible. The vision held no interest for him.

“Do you have any money left from your welfare check?” He asked her.

She shook her head.

“Any cash at all?”

Another shake.

No use asking Leslie, he thought. She wouldn’t have raided his shit if she had money.

He studied Andrea and knew immediately she’d be no good, too strung out to help him. That was the way of it, lately. She wouldn’t help, couldn’t help, but she’d be there for her share when the goodies arrived.

“Leslie?”

No answer.

“Leslie? Don’t make me come out there.”

“What?” she replied sullenly.

“Are you cool? Can you drive?”

“I can drive.”

Mace opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and withdrew a long black wig and a.38 revolver. Wordlessly, Andrea watched him, a dull stare in her eyes. Mace suddenly felt a stab of pity for her. He sat down beside her on the bed, the gun and wig in his lip.

“Be back soon, baby.” He caressed her shoulder and tried to smile. “Be back with some medicine for what ails ya.”

Andrea smiled back, small and child-like.

God, she’d been such a beautiful woman. His baby. And now…just a shell. A junkie shell.

Mace called for Leslie and they left.

Tuesday, August 16th

2118 hours

Television. Thomas Chisolm sighed. The world’s most worthless invention.

Fifty-seven cable channels, including movie channels, and yet he sat staring at the guide channel because he liked the music they were playing. Always a classic rock fan, before it was considered classic, Chisolm had slowly drifted towards country music over the past several years.

He drank a cold bottle of Coors. On his workdays, he rarely touched a drop of alcohol, but his night off, he sometimes had a few. Tonight, he’d made a considerable dent in the beer left over from the last shift party three weeks ago. He managed to achieve a steady buzz over the last couple of hours and now he’d hit his stride. The proper rate of consumption would keep him at this level of intoxication without advancing or retreating for several more hours.

Goddamn Hart , Chisolm grated inwardly. He raised his bottle in mock tribute. “Here’s to you, Lieutenant Alan Hart. Screw you, you pencil-necked prick.” He took a hearty swig of the cold-filtered brew. Good stuff.

Hell, Hart wouldn’t have lasted a week in Vietnam. Never would’ve made it through Special Forces training, the pansy. Probably’d gone crying home to his mommy inside of three days. Even if by some miracle, he’d made it through the training, once in the bush, a prick like that would have gotten fragged by his own men inside of a week.

Vietnam. Chisolm sipped his Coors and shook his head. How alive he’d been then. And how dead.

“The police department has some unrealistic expectations on how to deal with crime,” he lectured the television. “We are too nice. Criminals don’t respect that. They view it as weakness.”

Chisolm twirled the bottle, watching it turn and wobble on the coffee table. “As police officers, we’re expected to clean up crime. But our hands are tied.” He shook his head. “In ‘Nam, our company had free rein to do whatever it took to flush the Viet Cong out of their sector. My commanding officer took the hard line. If we even suspected someone of so much as lighting a cigarette for the VC, it was lights out for that poor sonofabitch.”

He grinned.

Captain Mack Greene. Now that had been a commanding officer. Hart looked like a little boy sucking his thumb next to Captain Greene. About the only River City officer that came close to Greene on the department was Lieutenant Robert Saylor, Chisolm’s lieutenant on graveyard.

He wondered briefly if he should talk to Saylor about Hart, then dismissed the idea. Hart oversaw the FTO program. No use going to Saylor. Besides, Chisolm wasn’t about to whine to his superiors about something as inconsequential as Alan Hart.

“Fuck,” Chisolm whispered for no specific reason, repeating his father’s favorite curse phrase. “Fuck a duck and make it cluck.”

He glanced at the letter on his kitchen counter, where it had sat for a month. The ragged edges where he’d torn open the envelope stared back at him.

The letter came from his sister in Portland. She’d written to tell him that Sylvia had gotten married. She wondered if he had known.

He hadn’t.

Chisolm sighed heavily. He often wished he hadn’t blown things with Sylvia, but it wasn’t until that letter arrived that he realized how deeply those wishes went.

Well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. He smiled bitterly. And if worms had.45’s, birds wouldn’t fuck with them.

After receiving the letter, he’d promptly gone to Duke’s, picked up a twenty-five-year-old cop groupie, brought her home and nailed her. Afterward, he found himself wondering if his pulse had even quickened during the entire affair.

Sylvia had dignity, and with his reaction to her recent marriage, he’d proven he had none.

Chisolm finished the bottle and strode to the fridge to get another. The bottle hissed slightly as he twisted the top off. She got married. So what? She left River City two years ago. What did he want her to do? Brood forever, like him?

Besides, she wasn’t the only ghost threatening to visit him tonight.

The television guide channel suddenly annoyed him. He grabbed the remote and flicked the off button.

“You know,” he said to the small pinpoint of light on the TV screen, “the thing that bothers me the most about losing the FTO gig is that I am good for those kids. They come out of the Academy and can barely tell the difference between a bad guy and a magpie. I teach them what they need to survive.”