Dave Zeltserman - Bad Thoughts

As he hobbled along he spotted her-a college girl, no more than eighteen, struggling with both groceries and the front vestibule door of a small brick apartment building. He swallowed hard as he watched her, his throat constricting. Blindly, automatically, he started to move. A patrol car pulled up next to him. The officer in it shined a flashlight in his face.

“Sir, I would like to talk with you.”

Winters turned towards the patrol car, his eyes squinting against the light. Behind him he could hear the vestibule door closing shut. The echo of it vibrated in his head.

“Did you hear me?” the officer repeated.

“I heard you,” Winters whispered in a soft, wispy, singsong voice.

“Do you live in Brookline?”

The officer holding the flashlight was middle-aged with a square, red face and a marine style crewcut. He involuntarily grimaced as he smelled Winters.

“Do I have to live in Brookline?” Winters asked, a soft lisp worming its way into his voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m walking to my car. Is there a law against that?”

The officer kept the flashlight aimed at Winters’s face. “Would you like to tell me how you got so dirty?”

“Poor personal hygiene. Again, is that breaking any law?”

The flashlight moved up and down over Winters before settling back on his face. Winters was asked for identification.

“And why do you need that?”

A shadow dropped over the officer’s eyes. “I’ll only ask you once,” he said. The muscles along his jaw tightened as he reached to open the door.

Winters handed him the Washington State driver’s license he got after he was released from prison. The officer took it from him and told him to wait. He then rolled up the window of the patrol car and got on the police radio.

Winters stood in the freezing rain and waited, the water running streaks of dirt and grime down his face. After about five minutes, he knocked on the window of the patrol car. The officer inside gave him a dull stare, his hand resting on his service revolver.

“Excuse me, Officer,” Winters said, his soft, singsong voice straining to be pleasant. “It’s cold and I’m getting wet. And I think I’m beginning to feel ill. I would like my license back.”

“You just stay put,” the officer ordered.

“I would at least like to see your identification,” Winters said, his thin, twisted lips pulled up cheerfully. “I’d like to know who I’m going to sue for this harassment.”

The officer looked long and hard at Winters and then, with his eyes dulling a bit, flashed him his identification. Winters made a mental note of his name.

“Do you mind if I sit in the patrol car?” Winters asked.

“You just stand out there and wait.”

Ten more minutes passed before the officer rolled down the window and asked for a local address. Charlie Winters gave him the rooming house in Somerville he was staying at. It was another ten minutes before the officer opened the door of the cruiser and stepped out. He walked over to Winters until he was no more than a foot away. If he could’ve stomached it he would’ve gotten closer. Using his right hand he started to slide his handcuffs from his belt.

Winters spoke quickly, softly, “I’m sure at this point you know about my prison record. I’m sure you also know I’ve paid my debt to society, and that there are no outstanding warrants out for me. What you don’t know is that I spent my twenty years in prison studying law books so I’d be able to sue anyone who chooses not to observe my constitutional rights.”

The officer hesitated. After a long ten-count the handcuffs slipped back onto his belt. “What are you doing in this neighborhood?” he demanded.

Winters fingered his malformed chin. “I told you before, I’m walking to my car.”

“Yeah, I think you’re doing a little shopping.”

Winters didn’t say anything.

“Looking for another boy to put in your trunk?”

Again, Winters didn’t respond. The officer spat on the sidewalk, nearly hitting Winters’s boots. “I don’t want you ever in Brookline again,” he said.

“I thought this was a free country.”

“That’s a mistake pedophiles like you make.”

“I’m not a pedophile,” Winters said with both sincerity and hurt.

The officer held out Charlie Winters’s license, waited until Winters started to reach for it, and then dropped it. Winters reached down and picked it up off the ground.

“You’ve kept me out here over a half hour,” Winters said. “I’m wet and I feel ill. Could you give me a ride to my car?”

The officer didn’t bother answering him. He got back into his patrol car and then followed alongside Winters as he hobbled the remaining three blocks to his beat-up Subaru.

The officer pulled the cruiser up to a forty-five-degree angle to the Subaru, blocking it from being able to pull away. He got out and shined his flashlight through its interior.

“Would you mind opening the trunk?” he asked.

“Do you have a warrant?”

The officer shook his head. “If you’d like to wait, I could try and get one tomorrow morning. We could make a night out of it.”

The trunk was opened. As the officer bent over it and poked around, it was all Charlie Winters could do to keep from slamming the trunk on the cop’s neck. It just wouldn’t work. He’d have the cop but they’d have him. Maybe not right away, but eventually. So all he could do was stand there and take it. Blood boiled in his eyes as he plastered a thin smile across his face.

When the officer was done he returned to his patrol car and pulled it up and waited for Winters. He followed Winters out of Brookline and halfway through Boston before veering off. All the while Charlie Winters made plans for him. He recited the cop’s name to himself. Ed Podansky. Eddie Podansky. Eddie baby.

A family man, right, Eddie baby? Yeah, I’m sure you are. Wife and kiddies, right? More the merrier, Eddie, more the merrier. ’Cause we’ll all have a big surprise for you later tonight; me and your fat little wife and your fat little kids. Chips off the old block, are they? Well, their little faces will be burning in the window for you tonight. Guaranteed. The rest of them might be someplace else, but their faces, Eddie, their piece-of-shit, fat, little faces…

As he pulled up to a pay phone he was feeling better. Information didn’t have an Ed Podansky listed in Brookline but did have one in Brighton. He got the number and tried calling it. An answering machine clicked on and then the cop’s tired voice saying he couldn’t come to the phone right now but please leave a message.

He couldn’t come to the phone… The answering machine message shouldn’t have been like that. It should’ve been something about how he and his fat-assed wife couldn’t talk now because they were too busy beating their children or banging away at each other. It should’ve been something like that. Since it wasn’t, the cop had to’ve been divorced with his wife and kiddies living elsewhere. He knew they existed. Charlie Winters could feel their existence. Eventually he’d find them in his dreams, but not for tonight. For tonight it would have to be someone else.

He spotted her then. The someone else. A hooker, young, strung out on heroin, on the street trying to hustle some money. She looked tired and worn out and cold. All she was wearing was a short, black leather jacket and matching mini-skirt and boots. As cars rolled by, she halfheartedly tried to slow them down by flashing them some skin. There weren’t any takers. Winters sighed to himself as he put the phone back down. Hookers were cheap and easy and not all that satisfying. How can you really enjoy yourself when they’re faking the emotion and not giving a shit about what’s happening? Oh well, Winters thought sadly to himself as he headed across the street. Oh well, a body’s a body.