Richard Doetsch - Half-Past Dawn

“No. At least, I don’t think-” Jack paused. Something gnawed at the periphery of his mind, just out of reach of clear thought, like a two-day-old dream that was discarded as insignificant… although he couldn’t grasp it.

“Listen,” Frank said, “you said you remember last night, you remember the attack, going over the bridge, climbing out of the water. But how did you get home?”

Jack remained silent.

“Someone else was there,” Frank said slowly.

Jack didn’t respond.

“Stitched you up. Do you remember and are just not saying?”

“No,” Jack said.

“Jack?”

“Don’t you think if I could remember, I would?”

“Someone helped you, kept you alive. Maybe if we could figure out how you got home-”

“How did I get home?” Jack asked rhetorically. “How the hell did I survive the fall off the bridge? Being shot? I’m not Rasputin. Who sewed me up, got me back to my house? Who wrote this crap on my arm?” Jack pulled up his sleeve, revealing the dense black symbols, the unfamiliar language. “What the hell is going on?”

• • •

It was on a hot August day when Jack completed his tenure with Frank. And while Jack regretted parting ways, he was looking forward to shedding his apprentice label and getting more actively involved in homicide. There were six guys in the Manhattan Detective Bureau’s Homicide Division, a breed apart from the other divisions. They were tenacious, hardened by what they had seen, and thankful for new blood with Jack’s arrival. It was more akin to a club, with their own way of doing business, ensuring arrests, making sure the cases they built were seamlessly turned over to the DA’s office for successful prosecution. No cop wanted a murderer back on the street as a result of his incompetence.

A tight group, they all had nicknames for one another: Double D for Dicky Donaldson; Shank, short for Hank the Shank, whose real name was Hank Ramon and who had a tee shot that went forever to the right; Sean Sullivan arrived at homicide with the name Red for obvious follicle reasons; Two used to be called Two Ton Tonelli but had lost so much weight that they shortened his name; for Apollo, there was debate about whether the name came from the Greek god, the solving of some murder near the Apollo Theater up in Harlem, or Rocky Balboa’s toughest opponent and friend, Apollo Creed; and there was Deuce, not to be confused with Two, who loved playing poker, both literally and figuratively.

That evening, Jack was asked by Shank to follow up on a lead on a gang murder. When he got into the car, he found Apollo in the driver’s seat, his thick, meaty hands wrapped around the wheel as he drove out of the garage.

“So, Jack, unless you came into homicide with a nickname like I did, we get to name you.”

“So, the name Apollo has nothing to do with a murder at the Apollo Theater?

“You don’t see the slight resemblance to Apollo Creed?”

Jack smiled.

“Irony of ironies, I was on a case near the Apollo Theater, but truth be told, my uncle was kind of a mythology buff and gave me the moniker when I was eleven.”

“Why?”

“You want to hear the big story?

Jack nodded.

“There isn’t one.” Apollo laughed. “It’s what my uncle called my father when they were kids.”

Jack rolled his eyes.

“Laugh it up, Shooter.”

“Shooter? You’re kidding, right?”

“Well, we thought about Lily for Lily White, you being so pure, but that would be too cruel. Then Golden for Golden Boy, seeing you were the pride of the force who got fast-tracked onto our team. But Shooter won out, because we all had to admit it, you’re a hell of a shot.”

They drove over to Alphabet City, and Jack hopped out of the car while Apollo parked. Although Apollo had told Jack to wait, Jack was overanxious and figured nothing could go wrong in speaking with the grandmother of the victim. Apollo would only be two minutes behind him.

Jack met the grandmother in her apartment on the sixth floor of the 1920s walk-up and asked her a few routine questions about the grandson she had raised only to see him lose his life at the age of sixteen during a drug deal gone bad. Jack promised her that they would do everything to find his killer.

As Jack emerged from the tenement, he saw Apollo racing down the street, pursuing two thugs. Jack took up the chase, following the three as they sprinted across the city streets. They cut down through the subway, leaping turnstiles, across platforms, hopping up the far stairs, emerging onto the street and crashing into a vacant loft building. Apollo and the thugs seemed to have vanished as Jack entered just steps behind them.

The building was dark. Rats scurried in the shadows, and the stench of urine filled Jack’s nostrils. Several homeless people lay on cardboard in their makeshift homes, casting their eyes downward, paying no attention to the pursuit in their midst.

Jack crept along, working his way up the stairs, four stories up, following the elusive sounds of racing footfalls.

There was a sudden shouting of “Police! Stop where you are! Drop your weapon!”

And then a gunshot. And another. And another.

Jack honed in on the cacophony of violence and burst through a door to see the two thugs with their guns aimed at Apollo, who was pinned behind a column in the wide-open space. A hail of bullets erupted, shredding the column, skipping along the floor around Apollo.

The world seemed to slow down. It was as if Jack could see every bullet explode from the barrels of the guns, as if life had fallen to half-time while his senses and reflexes doubled.

And for the briefest of seconds, Jack froze.

On the range, with paper targets popping up left and right, Jack was supreme, decisions made on instinct, his reaction time barely measurable. But this was real life, with real consequences; this wasn’t for a medal, a trophy, or first place. This was for survival, both his and Apollo’s.

Jack quickly recovered. His hand suddenly rocketed to his hip, quickly drawing his Sig Sauer. He raised his weapon and, without hesitation, fired two shots. The two assailants were thrust back as if a rope had wrapped around their bodies and yanked at them, a single bullet erupting out of the backs of their heads. They were both dead before they hit the floor.

Jack ran over to the two bodies and leaned down, confirming that they no longer posed a threat. He looked at the small bullet wounds in their foreheads, almost identical in placement, just like in target practice. And while the backs of their heads had been blown out, their faces were serene and unmarred but for the single bullet hole. And it hit Jack that the two young faces before him were not men, as he had assumed-they were teens, hardened children of the street, and he had killed them both. It was the first time he had killed, and he was overwhelmed by what he had done, a sudden nausea taking over his body.

He heard movement, a subtle moan. He raced to Apollo’s side, where he lay sprawled on the bare concrete floor, a bullet wound to the chest.

“Took you long enough,” Apollo said with a smile.

And the world seemed to fall into double-time, moving at hyperspeed now. The bullet had missed the bulletproof vest; like threading a needle, it had found the small gap beneath Apollo’s armpit. Jack tore Apollo’s shirt open, ripped the vest off, and quickly examined the wound. Blood pumped out of the hole on the left side of Apollo’s chest in a rhythmic pulse, his life flowing out of him with every beat of his heart.

Knowing that he was in a war zone, Jack hoisted Apollo off the floor and threw him over his shoulder. He raced down the stairs, his partner on his back, and out the door.

After laying him down on the sidewalk, Jack grabbed the med kit from the back of his car, trying desperately to plug the wound while he waited for the ambulance to respond to the “officer down” call.