Dave Zeltserman - Killer

It was laughable. His buddy out cold, him bleeding and with concussion, and he was still thinking of robbing the liquor store. I shook my head at him, and something about my expression made him listen to me and get down on his stomach.

A couple of people came out of the liquor store curious about the commotion. Their faces blanched when they saw the two punks bleeding as they lay on the sidewalk, and me holding a gun on them.

“Can someone please call the police?” I asked them.

Somebody already had. The next moment I heard the sirens approaching, then tires screeching. Without turning to look I knew that two cruisers had pulled to a stop behind me. I didn’t want them coming out with their weapons drawn and me holding a gun on these two. I lowered the gun I was holding and placed it by my feet, then raised my hands so they were visible. The punk on his stomach watched this, and I caught the calculating look in his eyes as he tried to decide whether it was worth making a run for it, or maybe even a dive for the gun. I heard the doors to the police cruisers being thrown open, then one of the cops yelling for nobody to move.

“Officer, I have another gun in my jacket pocket,” I yelled to them. “I took both guns off these two meth heads right before they were about to rob this liquor store.”

“That old man’s a psycho,” the punk on his stomach tried arguing, his voice barely a rasp. “We weren’t going to rob nothing, and I ain’t on any meth. This psycho attacked me and my brother for nothing. And those guns are his. I never saw them before.”

Maybe what he was saying would’ve carried more weight if he and his brother weren’t wearing ski masks. I glanced over my shoulder and saw one of the cops giving the punk a glazed-eyed stare. This cop noticed me looking at him and told me to stand where I was, then walked over to me so he could take the gun from my jacket pocket and pick up the one by my feet.

“Any of you see what happened?” this cop asked the bystanders. He was a good ten years younger than me, but still looked older than the other cops at the scene, with gray hair cut close to the scalp and a fatigued expression on his long face. He reminded me of an older version of Roy Scheider from The French Connection.

The bystanders shook their heads in response to his question. One of them told him that they came out of the store after they heard a fight outside, but didn’t see anything except me holding a gun on the two youths.

This older cop let out a tired sigh. He told me I could lower my hands, and asked me to tell him how I knew these two were planning on robbing the store. The would-be robber lying on his stomach tried arguing that they weren’t planning on robbing anyone. Another cop who was in the process of handcuffing him pushed his face into the sidewalk to shut him up.

“The two of them looked suspicious standing outside the liquor store,” I told the older cop. “When I saw a gun sticking out of that one’s waistband” – I nodded towards the one who was out cold – “and then saw them both putting on ski masks, I knew what they were going to do, and knew that if I didn’t stop them, as hyped up as they were acting, they were going to be killing people in there.”

The cop I was telling this to stared at me incredulously. “What did you do to stop them?” he asked. I told him and his incredulity only intensified. He looked as if I were telling him a joke and he was waiting for the punchline. One of the other cops recognized me then. I could see it in the shift in his expression. He pulled this older cop aside and said something to him. I was warned then to make sure to keep my hands visible, and I watched as the cop I’d been talking to went back to his squad car and got on his two-way. When he came back his attitude towards me had changed.

“Put your hands behind your back,” he told me.

“What for?”

“We need to bring all of you in and sort this out,” he said.

I caught the rapt attention on the punk’s face. Concussion or not, he knew something was up, and he was trying to figure out what it was. I looked back at the older cop in front of me, the one who wanted to handcuff me. His eyes wavered as I met his stare, and I could see some worry there. I was sure he dealt with more than his share of violent crime, but it was probably domestic stuff or kids acting stupid. I was different; a hit man with twenty-eight kills, and someone who had been all over the news for months. He wasn’t quite sure how to deal with someone like me.

“What’s there to sort out?” I asked him. “What the fuck do you think went on here with these two meth heads wearing ski masks and carrying guns?”

“We took the guns off you, not them,” he said stiffly. “And until we sort this out the only crimes we have evidence of so far are assault and battery committed by you, and possession of unlicensed firearms, also committed by you. Now put your hands behind your back. I’m not telling you again.”

There was still a lot of worry in his eyes. The other cops with him edged closer to me. I put my hands behind my back and felt a throbbing pain in my right shoulder. I must’ve hurt it earlier and didn’t realize it until now because of the adrenaline rush. I told the cop about the pain in my shoulder and asked him if I could be cuffed in front instead. He ignored me and cuffed me behind. The punk who had been on his stomach was pulled up to his feet. He smirked at me. He had no idea what was going on but he knew something was working in his favor.

While I was being put in the back seat of a squad car, an ambulance pulled up to the scene. The guy I had knocked out cold was mostly still out, and they were loading him on to a stretcher. I watched all this until the squad car I was in drove off.

At the precinct, I was brought to an interrogation room, and only then were the handcuffs taken off. They took my cell phone from me, and I was left alone for an hour until a Detective John Fallow came in. He was in his forties, balding, pasty complexion, and in his cheap suit looked more like an accountant than a cop. I told him about my shoulder hurting. He ignored me and told me we needed to clear up what happened at the liquor store, and he had me go over my account of what happened.

“Here’s the problem we have,” he said. “One of the men you accosted, Jason Mueller, has given us a completely different version of the events. The other man, his brother, Thomas Mueller, has only recently regained consciousness and is receiving medical attention, but we’ll get his version soon.”

“Did Jason tell you why he and his brother were wearing ski masks on a day when it was over sixty degrees out?” I asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact he did.” Fallow offered me a grim smile. “He claims you tried forcing them into committing armed robbery. That you made them put the ski masks on, but that when they refused to rob the liquor store you beat them both up.”

He had said that with a straight face. All I could do was stare at him and wonder where this was coming from; whether someone in the District Attorney’s office thought they could use this to send me back to prison, or whether they believed that punk’s story. Or maybe it was a matter of them wanting badly to believe his story.

Fallow and me kept up our staring contest; him offering his grim, polite smile, me trying hard to keep my temper in check.

“This is ridiculous,” I finally said, breaking the silence in the room. “If you check their arrest records, I’ll bet they’re lengthy and with other armed robberies.”

“Possibly,” he admitted, “but I doubt they’re as lengthy as your own.”

“You’ve got a bet,” I told him. “I was only arrested once.”

He smiled at that. I could see the argument forming that all the crimes I admitted to would be a far longer list than their arrest records could possibly be. Instead, he asked why I would’ve wanted to stop them from robbing the liquor store.