Charlie Huston - Sleepless

My home became a spiderweb of sorts. An elaborately arranged mosaic of architecture, landscaping, and possessions. Strictly organized, my familiarity with the placement and resonance of every element was literally sensuously intimate. I could, without exaggeration, feel when everything was right with my home, as well as when discordance intruded. It took little more than a raccoon crossing the deck and upsetting a planter in my herb garden for me to wake from a sound sleep.

So it was not by sheer surprise that I was taken when I returned home from Culver City very early that morning, but rather by overwhelming force.

THERE WAS NO BAG ON THE HEAD THIS TIME. INSTEAD HE waited to be booked at the front desk by a level III reserve officer showing clear early indications that she was sleepless.

A skinny black man in an orange jumpsuit, the slack in his ankle chains looped around the leg of a heavy wood bench bolted to the floor, eye-balled him and grunted loudly.

“I know you? Yeah, I know you. I know you? Yeah, I think I know you.”

Turning away from the man, Park faced toward the reserve officer as she spoke on the phone with an IT intern, trying to determine why she’d lost access to the National Crime Information Center, and found himself trying not to focus on her red eyes, stiff neck, and profuse sweat but unable to do otherwise. Reminded by every minute that passed, Rose home alone with the baby. He shifted his gaze and watched Hounds scroll through the contacts list in his phone, deleting names, talking to himself.

“Dead. Who the fuck? Dead. Dead. Don’t know and don’t care. Dead. Dead. Dead.”

The man on the other bench rattled his chain.

“I know you? Yeah, I must know you.”

Park turned farther away from the man, tilting his head to look down at Hounds’s phone.

Hounds looked up.

“Something you’re curious about, asshole? A peek in my little black book, intrigues your ass? Back the fuck off, motherfucker.”

Park shifted, still looking at Hounds.

“Where’s Kleiner?”

Hounds snapped his phone shut.

“‘Where’s Kleiner?’ That what you asked? ‘Where’s Kleiner?’”

Park shrugged.

“Just wondering how you split up my watch if he’s not here.”

Hounds growled, a phlegmy rattle that warned of imminent police brutality.

The man on the other bench was leaning forward, trying to get a better look at Park.

“Know you? Sure. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Park scratched his head, covering that side of his face, and ignored the growl.

“Or do you just pocket it and Kleiner can go fuck himself?”

Hounds slapped him, a heavy open hand that knocked Park from the bench to the floor, drawing a hushing gesture from the reserve on the phone, and an admiring whistle from the con in the orange jumpsuit.

“No windup. Just bang. Damn.”

Park got back on the bench.

Hounds opened his phone again.

“‘Where’s Kleiner?’ Tell you.”

He showed Park the screen of his phone, an entry displayed: kleiner, cecil. He pushed a button; the entry blinked twice and disappeared.

“Kleiner’s in the land of motherfucker better not ever show his face around me if he knows what’s good for him.”

He closed the phone.

“In the land of gone over the fence. Partnered five years. Know what I know about Kleiner? Turns out I know what his farts smell like and fuck-all besides.”

The reserve hung up her phone.

“What?”

Hounds looked at her.

“Said nothing. Said my fucking partner bugged out.”

She shook her head.

“One of those.”

Hounds pulled Park to his feet.

“One of those.”

He pushed Park against the high front desk.

“Used to play, during Katrina when we heard about those cops walking out on the job, used to play would he or wouldn’t he? Looking at other cops, talking about which ones we figured as the assholes who’d bolt when the shit dropped like that. Cops started making for the exits this last year, he talked about what he’s gonna do he ever sees one of those fuckers. Now, what, gone. Waited to collect his last pay, and gone.”

She pulled her earlobe.

“You got paid?”

Hounds held up a hand.

“The fuck. That’s what? We got paid. It’s staggered, yeah. Some precinct gets paid here, some other gets paid there. Alternating whenever the fuck they feel like it. First pay in nine weeks. Point is he chickenshitted and. Fuck this. Fuck. Just. This asshole, deal with him.”

He watched as the reserve dropped Park’s wallet and keys and the thumb drive into a property envelope. He gave her Park’s name, and she punched it up on the now-connected computer.

“Why did you pick him up?”

Hounds was fiddling with Park’s watch; he looked at her.

“Because I got a tip.”

She sealed the envelope, looked at something on her computer monitor, tapped a button a few times, frowned, and rubbed her eyes.

“You picked him up before?”

Hounds buckled the watch on his wrist.

“Yeah. Another tip.”

“And he got cut loose because?”

“Fuck do I know? What’s it say?”

She tapped the screen.

“Says because you blew Miranda. Someone still cares about Miranda.”

He looked at Park.

“Asshole, did we card you last time? Honestly, did we? I can’t even fucking remember.”

He flipped over the badge folder hanging from his neck and displayed a Miranda card with frayed edges.

“But check this out. Call me nostalgic.”

He looked at the reserve officer.

“He’s someone’s snitch. What the fuck do I know what they want? They want it to look like a bust is what they want. What they put there for why the charge doesn’t stick, fuck do I care.”

She rubbed at a visibly knotted muscle in her neck.

“Looks bad on your record, not following procedure.”

Hounds adjusted his sunglasses.

“Hey, part-timer, fuck you.”

She stopped rubbing her neck.

“Excuse me?”

“Excuse you what the fuck. I care, my record? Fuck you. I care about I do my job. I’m, you know what, I’m past my fucking twenty, lady; think I give a shit what some fucker wanting to talk to this piece of shit does to my record with his whatever the fuck sleight of hand trying to cover his tracks? I don’t. I don’t give a fuck. Someone calls on the radio, says, ‘Pick the fucker up,’ I pick the fucker up.”

The reserve rocked back in her chair and wiped sweat from under her chin.

“Hey, asshole.”

Hounds smiled at Park.

“Here it comes, man, about to get my comeuppance.”

The reserve settled her hand on the butt of her sidearm.

“Comeuppance this, asshole. I’m fucking dying. I haven’t slept in like two weeks. I’m running my brain on Diet Coke and NoDoz and chocolate-covered coffee beans. I’m not so far along that my hormones have gone off the rails, so I’m also on the fucking rag. I got no kids, and my husband, a fucking cop who I thought I might understand better if I became a reserve, left me for a younger model three fucking years ago. Now, the job, it’s the only thing I got in my life that I give a shit about. And at the end of next week my captain says he’s gonna have to put me on unpaid leave because I’m losing it. So I’m gonna go home and die alone.”

She leaned forward, hand still resting on her weapon.

“You think I give a fuck if I die in jail, or get popped myself, if before I go I can shoot some big shot fucking dickhead detective like my ex?”

She stared at Hounds.

Hounds took off his sunglasses and looked at the reserve.

“I’m sorry for your troubles.”

Her lips thinned, she took her hand from her gun, and she wiped her eyes.