Ben Winters - World of Trouble

“Police,” I say, one more time, and a hail of rocks and loose dirt flies out of the sky onto my face and my head. Tiny pebbles bounce off my scalp, dust fills my eyes.

I grunt, spitting debris out of my mouth, and look up.

“Oh, no! Policeman!” It’s Cortez, just his face, big and ugly and leering, jutting out over the lip of the building. “I didn’t see you there!”

He cackles while I lower my gun. I clear my throat and hawk a thick clod of dirty spit out onto the lawn. A nasty trick, childish, somehow out of character for the man. All I can see of Cortez is his upper half. He’s lying down flat on the roof of the building, his torso extended over the edge, his big hands dangling down. His right hand is open, showing the palm, where he just let go of the dirt and rocks. His other hand is a tightly clenched fist. Behind him the sky is a fabric of gloomy gray clouds.

“What are you doing up there?”

Cortez shrugs. “Killing time. Hanging around. Investigating. I found solar panels up here, by the by. Hooked up to battery chargers. Whatever your sister and her playmates have got down there, it’s all charged up.”

I nod, combing grit out of my mustache with my fingertips, recalling Atlee’s description of heavy crates, tromped down the stairs one at a time. What’s in the crates? And then that question provokes the other, the question I can’t answer and can’t shake: Where’d they get the helicopter?

I swat it away, set my jaw against it. Stay on target.

“Cortez, can you come down from there? We’ve got to get to work.”

He stays where he is, props his face up on one hand, like he’s lolling on a summer lawn. “Cortez, they’re down there. I talked to the man who dropped in that wedge. What it sounds like is this was the backup plan, this was plan B. They realized that all this stuff about the scientist and the standoff burst was a fairy tale, and they went to ground.”

“Oh,” he says. “Fascinating.”

Cortez opens up his other hand and tosses a fresh rain of rocks and dirt onto my face. A small sharp shard catches in the corner of my eye.

“Hey,” is all I have time to say before Cortez launches himself off the roof, his whole body all at once, flying down with arms extended, landing on top of me like a giant bat. He grabs the back of my hair and twists my head around and shoves my face into the muddy ground. Cortez’s arms are strong, he’s always been much stronger than he looks, he’s a tightly twisted coil. I thrash around, lift my mouth from the ground to say “Stop it,” and he bears down, a knee planted in my back. I don’t know what’s happening, this is somewhere between childish play-wrestling and him actually trying to hurt me right now, trying to break my back.

“I also had my bucket up there,” hisses Cortez, “the bucket I’ve been pissing in. I was going to dump it on your stupid fucking cop head, but this is better.” He twists my neck hard to one side, crams my face deeper into the mud. “More intimate.”

I’m lying here sputtering and wondering in what year of my theoretical future police career I would develop the skill to occasionally be the one who surprises the guy, instead of being the guy who gets surprised. In Next Time Around at Abigail’s mercy, her festooned with weaponry like a Christmas tree. Atlee frog-marching me through the woods. The unseen man in Rotary, behind his concrete blast wall, the nose of his machine gun. It’s like a joke, I’m like a cartoon character. Everybody gets the drop on Detective Henry Palace!

“I thought we were friends,” Cortez growls. “Aren’t we friends?”

“Yes.”

I have managed somehow to wriggle around onto my back and face him, but now he’s clutching my face with his hand, ropy fingers spread out across my jaw and cheeks like a hockey mask. Mud and grit still thick in my throat.

“Cortez—” I manage, through his fingers, and he tightens his grip.

“I thought that we were partners .”

Suddenly I get it. What he’s talking about. “I’m sorry,” I say.

The girl, the cell, the key. It all seems so long ago: that flash decision, locking her up and hurling the key in there. The intervening days have been busy ones.

“I am, Cortez,” I say. His eyes are angry slits, holes cut from a mask. “I’m sorry.”

“You were just doing what you thought was right, is that it?” I nod, as much as I can with his fingers like tentacles wrapped tightly around my face. He tightens them. “You always do what you think is right. That’s your deal with yourself. Right?”

“Yes.” My voice comes out muffled and distorted. “That’s right.”

“Ech. Policeman.”

He spits the word like a curse, an insult— Policeman —but then all at once he lets me loose and stands up laughing, a bully’s loud victorious laugh. He turns away because he thinks the conversation is over, but it’s not over, and I get up on all fours and launch myself like a wrestler at his knees and bring him down, I topple him like a tree and I’m on top of Cortez now, just like that, and throw a rabbit punch across his face.

“Ow,” he says. “Fuck.”

“How did you know?” I say. Gathering up the front of his dirty T-shirt. My hand hurts from hitting him, the palm burns and screams fire, folded tightly inside my fist.

“How did I know what?” But he’s grinning, licking the droplet of blood that’s sprung up on his lower lip. He knows what I mean.

“How did you know that I locked the cell door?” He leers. I lean in. “How?”

The grin widens, showing all his crooked teeth, before abruptly disappearing. His face becomes sincere—confessional. I’m still on top of him, pinning him. “I got lonely,” he says. “I have been so lonely. And time is running out, you know?” His voice lowers to a ghoulish whisper. His eyes are frozen pools. “I thought I would just go and have a big time. Her and me.” He licks his lips. “You would have done the same thing.”

“No.”

“Yes, Henry boy. Lonely boy. Look into your heart.”

“No,” I say, and I pull my face away but he curls his head up toward me and whispers, right in my ear. “Hey. Idiot. She’s awake.”

I let go of Cortez and leap to my feet and run. Oh, God. Oh, no. He’s laughing on the ground, dying laughing as I barrel toward the entrance, laughing and yelling at my back. “She’s been up since last night. She woke me up screeching but she won’t let me in!” His voice gleeful, rich with delight, me grabbing the handle and yanking open the door. “She’s pretty upset, Henry, old boy. Pretty upset.” He’s reveling in my distress, hollering after me as I run. “I can’t believe you hit me!”

Lily is standing against the back wall of the cell, shivering, with her arms wrapped around her body, holding herself tight. The umbilical stub of the IV line dangles from her forearm where she tore it free. She has also torn the package of gauze off her throat, and her wound is raw and pink and glistening like grotesque alien jewelry.

“Who are you?” she says fiercely, and I say, “My name is Henry. I’m a policeman,” and she howls, “What did you do to me? What did you do?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing.”

She stares at me, fearful and defiant, like she’s a sick animal and I’m here to put her down. She points with a trembling finger at the IV bag hung from the ceiling behind me. “What is that?”

“Saline solution, that’s all. Ninety percent sodium chloride,” I say, and then when I clock the disbelieving horror in her eyes I say, “ Water , Lily, it’s salt water, to rehydrate you. You needed fluids.”

“Lily?”

“Oh, right, I…” Why am I calling her that? Where did we get that name? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. She’s gaping at me. Baffled, distraught. My fingers are white where I’m gripping the bars.