Adam Levin - Hot Pink

Another cop grabbed me just outside the door. He got me by the elbows and I twisted and pulled, but it wasn’t even close. In a million years, with a billion chances, I couldn’t have gotten away from this guy. He was bigger than my dad. I just wasn’t strong enough. And something about that… something really got into me. It was partly the Dirt Gun — that stuff can spin you out — but only partly, I think. I didn’t think it was right that this guy, cause he was bigger, was able to hold on to me. I don’t mean it was wrong or that it didn’t make sense, but… I don’t know what I mean. I just hated how it was, and something got into me. I spit on the guy. I tried for his face and what I got was his tie-knot. That was enough, though. He gave me this shake. He couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t really either. Spitting on a cop.

And then I heard a woman’s voice, Franco’s ma’s voice, a kind of pretty voice that didn’t sound like she looked. It sounded much younger, almost like a girl’s. She was standing right there, right behind the cop shaking me, and she said to him, “Please, Detective Rizzo, be gentle. This is Clifford Martinucci, Franco’s best friend. I’m sure that he’s just upset on our behalf.”

The cop stopped shaking me. He even let go of one of my arms. I was surprised to hear Franco’s ma say my name — I’d never really met her and didn’t think she knew me — and more surprised to hear her call me Franco’s best friend, which, now that I thought about it, seemed to make sense since we’d hung out for fifty-four days in a row. What surprised me the most, though, was what the cop said back to her.

“Martinucci like the pilot, you’re saying?” he said.

And she told him, “His son.”

And he let go my other arm.

I didn’t know why it mattered I was my father’s son any more than I knew what I was supposed to be upset about on whose behalf. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and wait to find out later, though.

“Baby,” Franco’s ma said to someone behind me. I figured it was Franco, but nope — it was the sleaze. He limped through the doorway, into the yard, bleeding on the cheek, holding his gut area.

He said, “Here I am, your killed messenger, returned.” He laughed a thin laugh.

“Killed?” Franco’s ma said. “That’s how you talk at a time like this?”

“You know what? Don’t guilt me. I was trying to do right by your piece-of-work son — and for you —and what happens? He pummels me’s what happens. I don’t need to feel worse now.”

“You what?” Franco’s ma said. “A who?” she said. “Pummeled?”

“Look at my face, honey. Look at my clothes.”

“That was Franco did that?”

“Who else?” said the sleaze.

“Did you do like I asked?”

“I did just like you asked.”

“Did you tell him you were there for him? Did you tell him you’d be there if he needed to talk, or someone to lean on?”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him! I told him all of that shit. I told him we could bond about it. I told him we should. And that’s when he came at me! Ask him , you don’t believe me.”

“Him” meant me. I didn’t know what to say. I squinted at a patch of yellow grass behind the sleaze.

“Never mind,” he said. “Listen. It’s feeding time. I’m going.”

“Forget about those parakeets, Alan,” Franco’s ma said.

“They’re hatchlings,” he said. “It’s important to keep them on a very strict regimen.”

“We need you here,” she snapped.

The sleaze stood up straight and stomped on the ground. “He jumped on me, Angela. He knocked me down with a television, and jumped on me and struck me!”

“Yeah, struck you, I struck you,” Franco muttered — he was being led from the garage, in cuffs, by the fat cop. “He got struck cause I struck him and next thing’s I’ll kill him. Go fuck yourself,” he said to his ma or the sleaze or all the world.

“Please don’t arrest him,” Franco’s ma said to the fat cop. “He didn’t mean any harm. You’d be upset too, you just found out your father died.”

“Wait,” I said. “Hey,” I said.

Nobody waited.

“I won’t be pressing charges,” the fat cop said, “but we’re gonna hold on to him until he cools down. He attacked Mr. Smucci, I think he’s on drugs, you just heard him making threats, and we’re standing right here. We don’t really have any other choice, Ms. Iafarte.”

“Hey, wait,” I said.

“Are you taking drugs, Franco?” Franco’s ma asked.

“Aw, shut up,” he told her. “Take care of my dog, please, Cliff, please, okay? She’s over by the motorcycle, whining and shaking. I promise she won’t hurt you as long as you’re nice to her. ”

Before I could answer, the fat cop told Franco, “Your friend’s gonna be in the car right next to you.”

The other cop, Rizzo, said to the fat cop, “You know, this is the pilot’s son. Maybe we shouldn’t—”

“I know who he is,” the fat cop said. He waved around the can of Dirt Gun XL. “Believe me, his dad’ll want to know about this. Your dad’s gonna hear about this, Clifford,” he told me.

I said, “That ain’t mine.”

“Your dad,” I said to Franco. “I don’t understand.” We were locked in back of the cops’ car, waiting. I didn’t know for what. The cops were outside.

“It was money,” Franco said. “It had to be money. He owed people money.”

“That’s not what I mean — I mean, we saw his ghost fifty-three days ago, Franco.”

“I know,” Franco said.

“But he wasn’t dead then?”

“No,” Franco said.

I said, “But why’d we see his ghost if he wasn’t dead, though, you think?”

“Because he was fucking with me,” Franco said. “He was always fucking with me.” Then he started crying, so I squeezed him on the shoulder and didn’t bother arguing. He rubbed his ear around, against my knuckles, which I guess is how you signal “I need a hug” if there’s a hand on your shoulder and your hands are cuffed.

I squeezed the shoulder a couple more times.

An Animal Control wagon entered Franco’s alley and the fat cop and the other one got into the car.

The cops split us up when we got to the station. I never got put in a cell or anything. They made me stand in a squeaky hallway off the lobby with a woman cop who was pretty for a woman cop. She gave me a couple LifeSavers, butter-rum-flavored, which are actually really good, and we talked about the Bulls. She didn’t know a lot about the Bulls and neither did I, so mostly what we said was stuff about Michael Jordan, and how he was the greatest because of how he dunked or whatever and had expensive shoes, and the cop thought he was handsome.

I don’t know what they did with Franco. He told me later that they tied him to a chair and slapped him around to try to get him to confess to having a dog that would kill on command, but they couldn’t break him. After that, he told me, his ma picked him up, and on their way out of the station a “special forces homicide cop” took them aside and told them it was Finch who murdered his father. Franco’s a liar, though, and he’s crazy. I mean, a lot of bad stuff kept happening to him, and it happened in stupider ways than it should have — like I still don’t get how his ma thought he’d bond with the sleaze if the sleaze delivered him the news about his dad. About his dad being dead. I don’t get how anyone’s ma could think something like that, but especially not Franco’s. Maybe she was crazy, too. Or just temporarily. Maybe she went nuts cause she still loved Franco’s dad. Or maybe it was one of those things where you want something to be one way so bad that even though it’s the exact opposite way you’re still hopeful. And maybe I’d be the same way as Franco if all the same stuff that kept happening to him kept happening to me. But tied him to a chair and slapped him around, though? Come on. And his dad wasn’t murdered. He drove into a tree and it might have been on purpose. It was right in the newspaper that afternoon.