Макс Коллинз - No One Will Hear You

“What’s that?”

“Don Juan has to go down — soon. He has all the earmarks of somebody who will kill and kill and kill again.”

“No argument.”

He extended his hand.

They shook. His hand felt warm, not at all moist, strong, reassuring.

“Go get him,” Harrow said.

At six-foot-three, weighing in at around one-eighty, Danny Terrant sometimes felt that in his Santa Monica police uniform he resembled nothing so much as a sandy-topped, navy-blue number-two pencil.

This morning, he and his partner Bobby Nucci had caught a domestic disturbance call at an apartment on Euclid — their first of the day, but one of countless in their experience.

Short, plump, black-haired Bobby was Oliver Hardy to Danny’s Stan Laurel. The pair had buddied up at the academy and, not long ago — after stints for both with older, more seasoned partners — had found themselves back together.

When they got to the Gruner residence, the wife met them at the door, one hundred pounds of frazzled punching bag for the angry three hundred pounds of husband looming behind her. Patsy was a thirtyish bottle blonde and husband Lloyd was a helmet-haired behemoth in a XX–L Knicks T-shirt.

Nobody was screaming, which was good, but Danny could sense the Gruners were merely resting between rounds. As Danny took Patsy’s statement, Nucci led the husband to a neutral corner in the cracker-box apartment. This was not far enough away to prevent Lloyd from hearing his beloved refer to him disparagingly — i.e., “That fat-ass son of a bitch hits me all the goddamn time and I’m sick and goddamn tired of it.”

And the bell rang and the battle was on again.

Burly Lloyd, his lank brown hair running down over his shoulders, made like a bull and charged past Nucci, heading for the kitchen table where Danny and Patsy sat.

Nucci got knocked out of the way by the husband and could do nothing to halt the giant except grab a handful of hair and another of Knicks tee and hang on, getting dragged like Randolph Scott behind an Indian’s horse.

Rising from the table, right hand going for his hip holster, Danny just managed to get between husband and wife as Gruner barreled into him, cabbage-sized punches coming from every angle as the giant and Danny crashed into Patsy and sent furniture and bodies careening to the floor in a cracking crunch that the lanky cop hoped was wood and not bones.

Although Patsy managed to roll clear, Terrant hit the tile floor hard, Gruner landing on him, still punching, Nucci jumping on top of Gruner and trying to restrain him. Danny felt like he’d been working under a Buick and somebody kicked the jack out.

For a moment the skinny cop thought he might die, the air driven from his body by the weight of the pair wrestling on top of him, a big fat man and a small fat man. It probably looked way more comical than it felt...

Danny struggled to get out from under, grappling with the pepper spray at his belt, while Patsy was getting to her feet. Hoping she might supply some sort of help, Danny was dismayed when her contribution turned out to be leaping atop Nucci, pulling the policeman’s hair, and yelling shrilly to “leave my poor husband alone!”

This change of heart on Patsy’s part put three people on top of skinny Danny Terrant, and he could feel himself growing lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. I’ll be the only underweight person , he thought, ever to die from not shedding enough fat...

But then the pepper spray found his hand and he was spritzing it everywhere he could. If his partner caught some, well, that was tuff-ski shit-ski...

As if by magic, the bodies atop him tumbled away in various directions. Nucci and the Gruners were yelling and flailing and rubbing their eyes as they rolled around on the tile.

After sucking down two deep breaths, blessed oxygen once again coursing through his lungs, a triumphant Terrant rose, his Glock drawn.

Amid the screaming, Lloyd blindly lumbered toward Danny, yelling, “You mother fuh—”

That was as far as the big man got before Danny sidestepped him and brought the pistol down on the back of a neck rolling with fat. Despite the padding, Lloyd sagged to his knees, paused in what appeared to be buggy-eyed prayer, then flopped to the floor, unconscious. With some difficulty, Danny managed to handcuff the man, wrists behind him.

Nearby her tubby hubby, Patsy writhed, feverishly rubbing her eyes and screaming incoherently.

“Stop rubbing,” Danny advised the woman. “You’re only making things worse.”

“Go screw yourself!” she shouted, still rubbing away.

Ah, he thought. To serve and protect...

“You got it, Mrs. Gruner,” he said.

“You sprayed me,” Nucci moaned, as his partner helped him up. “I can’t believe you sprayed me.”

“I didn’t spray you. I just sprayed. I was getting my ass crushed.”

Nucci had nothing more to say, too busy trying to keep from rubbing his own peppered eyes. Danny knew what kind of agony Nucci was in — their training included getting similarly sprayed — and felt bad for his partner. But he would have done it again.

With the cuffs from Nucci’s belt, Danny returned to Patsy and restrained her, as well, while she shrieked about “suing you and your goddamn department.”

This and other obscene threats were hurled by the woman who had summoned them via 911 as Danny helped navigate the tap at a sink full of dirty dishes so his partner could flush his eyes.

They got the Gruners off to jail without further incident. The unhappy couple would face an impressive list of complaints, but other than a possible court appearance, Danny figured that was the end of it.

Not hardly.

Once the story got around the station, embellished vigorously by the red-eyed Nucci, Danny took a merciless ribbing from fellow officers the rest of the day. Danny pepper-sprayed his own partner, high-lar-ious! This, even though everybody agreed he’d done the right thing, even Nucci himself, when his eyes gradually cleared.

In fact, Bobby had said in the locker room, “You know, Danny boy, you probably saved both our asses. Those two mighta killed each other and made collateral damage out of us along the way.”

Bobby was a good guy, but Danny didn’t hang out with him off-duty much. Single, living in a lowrent apartment on Twenty-eighth Street, Danny Terrant didn’t often socialize with his brother officers. Most were family men, and the few single guys hung out at meat-market-type clubs, trying to look as cool as the drug dealers they busted.

Danny Terrant wanted none of it. Just wasn’t his style. Instead, he would go to Reseda, by himself, at least once every couple of weeks, to the Prairie Lights Bar. There, he could be somebody else, not an off-duty cop, just a nice single guy with an interest in something that was really fun, real fun... but something his coworkers would likely have made a laughingstock out of him over, had they known.

Line dancing.

Yes, Danny Terrant was into line dancing, into it all the way, and he didn’t care to expose himself and his wholesome hobby to the ridicule of his “cool” brother cops.

That evening, having grabbed a fast-food supper on the way home, Danny outfitted himself in black western shirt (snaps not buttons), black chinos, his favorite cowboy boots, and a black cowboy hat. Finishing touch was the black belt with audaciously large silver belt buckle he’d won a couple of years ago in a mechanical bull riding contest.

In apparel like this, his lanky frame looked good. Looked real good. Checking out the effect in the mirror, he pronounced himself ready for fun, and hit the trail. Driving his new Mustang, he took off north from Santa Monica on the 405 headed for Reseda, listening to a Clint Black CD.