William Bernhardt - Murder One

This is wrong, a voice inside his head told him, but a thunderous throbbing throughout his body told him it couldn’t possibly be wrong when it felt so right. When she needed him so much, and he so desperately needed her.

20

BARRY DODDS TOOK IT slow and easy as he made his way home from Scene of the Crime. He was a short man, short and pudgy, to be honest about it. He hadn’t always been that way. Back when he’d had a street beat, just after he finished college, he’d been downright buff. But after four years of that he accepted a promotion and a desk job downtown. Better for his blood pressure, if not for his waistline.

Dodds had a tendency to waddle when he walked, and never more so than when he’d had a bit too much to drink. And tonight he’d had much too much to drink. That seemed to be happening more and more of late, and the scary thing was, he had no idea why. He wasn’t under any more stress than usual, he wasn’t any busier than usual, and he hadn’t had any traumatic incidents in his life. None that he recalled anyway. But something seemed to be bothering him. Either that, or he was slowly but surely becoming an alcoholic.

Ah, what the hell, he told himself. All this serious thinking was making his head hurt. Come to think of it, his head was throbbing, although he wasn’t sure that could be blamed entirely on thinking. There was another possible explanation, and it rhymed with thinking, but …

He chuckled, then steered himself through Manion Park, the shortcut to the nice two-story he shared with his wife and three kids. A cool breeze caught him, easing his tension, and he felt himself relaxing, drifting into that lovely post-booze presleep quietude that could do a man a world of good …

“One too many, Barry?”

Dodds froze in his tracks. It was dark in this park. The lampposts shut off at nine o’clock.

“Who is it? Who’s there?”

“Who do you think? The bogeyman?”

Dodds spun around in a circle, tripping over his own feet. “Where are you, damn it! I’m warning you—I’m a cop and I’ve got a gun!”

“No, you don’t. Harry doesn’t let people bring guns into the bar, and you didn’t pick one up on the way out. I watched very carefully. So don’t feed me any more baloney, okay?”

This time, he’d heard enough of the voice to get a fix. “Loving? Is that you?”

Loving stepped out of the shadows. “It is. Nice park you got here, Barry. Wanna play on the teeter-totter?”

Dodds wiped his brow. “You stupid fool. You had me scared to death.”

“I don’t know why,” Loving replied. “I didn’t do anythin’ scary. Maybe you’ve got a guilty conscience.”

“What in the—Is this about Kincaid? Because if it is, you can forget—”

“That your house?” Loving asked, pointing. “On the other side. The one with the white picket fence?”

Dodds’s already tiny eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at? Is this some kind of a threat?”

“I bet that’s a nice place to live,” Loving continued, ignoring him. “Comfy. Bet your wife and kids like it there.”

Dodds was still sweating. He didn’t know whether he should run, shout, or fight, and given his current condition, he suspected he couldn’t do any of them very effectively. “Yes, Loving, we like our house. I worked hard for that house. A long career catching bad guys. I earned that house.”

“Earned that house. What a pompous ingrate.” Loving walked closer to the much smaller man, his immense shadow dwarfing him. “You’d be living in a goddamn flophouse right now if it weren’t for Ben Kincaid. Your wife would’ve left you years ago, and you’d never see your kids at all, except maybe once every other Saturday for a trip to the zoo.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talkin’ about givin’ a man his druthers, you pissant,” Loving said, jabbing Dodds in the chest. “I’m sayin’ you owe him.”

“I don’t owe that lousy cop killer anything.”

“You do,” Loving barked back. “And I’ll tell you somethin’ else. You owe me! I’m callin’ in my markers.”

“You’re crazy, Loving. Delusional.”

“You know damn well Internal Affairs had you dead to rights. Not that you’d really done anything wrong. Nothing major, anyway. Nothing half the force hadn’t done. But they had you cold. More than enough of what passes for evidence these days to toss you right into the unemployment line, if not in prison. Ben Kincaid saved your sorry butt.”

“He did his job and I paid him for it.”

“You paid him peanuts. You couldn’t afford a real attorney. Too much money blown at the bar and the bingo parlor. If Kincaid hadn’t taken your case, you wouldn’t’ve stood a chance. And if I may remind you, he took your lousy worthless case because I asked him to, as a personal favor.” Loving squared his shoulders. “You owe him, and you owe me, Barry. And today is payback time.”

Dodds moved away, reeling sideways. He grabbed the back of a park bench to steady himself. “Loving … I can’t talk to you. You know what would happen.”

“What? The Blue Mafia gonna put a horse head in your bed?”

“If Matthews and the boys knew I was talking to you—”

“They don’t need to know. No one’s gonna know but me, and I won’t tell. I’m not askin’ you to take the stand, Barry. I just need some background information. I need to know what’s goin’ on.”

Dodds stared down at the park bench, his lips trembling, but no sounds coming out.

“It’s the Blue Squeeze, right, Barry?”

Slowly, trembling, Dodds began to nod.

“Who’s behind it? Who’s doing it?”

“I—can’t say—”

“C’mon, Barry, you can do better than that. It’s Matthews, ain’t it?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. The strength of his voice seemed to startle even himself. “I mean, I assume it is, but I don’t know. I just hear whispers.” Dodds started moving away, as fast as his rapidly sobering feet could carry him. “I can’t say any more.”

Loving grabbed his wrist and slung him around. “Talk to me!”

Dodds’s eyes roamed wildly on all sides of him. It was pitch-black, the dead of night, and they were obviously alone, but none of that seemed to comfort him. “There’s this secret group of cops, see.”

Loving’s face crinkled. “Like a special task force?”

“Yeah, sort of. Except it isn’t official, if you get my drift. It’s … private.”

“And what exactly does this group try to do?”

“Fight crime. Right wrongs. Prevent injustice. All the things cops are supposed to do. Except … without the problems cops have. Without the obstacles.”

“You’re sayin’ a bunch of the boys get together and play Dirty Harry in their off-hours?”

“You have to admit, Loving, things are pretty screwed up these days. Cops work their butts off, putting their lives on the line, taking all kinds of risks. We’ve got bad guys out there with Uzis, terrorist weapons, stuff that shouldn’t even be allowed in a civilized nation, and they’re out there taking potshots at us. And we hang in there like clay pigeons so we can catch the creeps and bring them to justice. And what happens then? Half the time some judge lets them go free on a technicality.”

“Gimme a break. Outside of movies and TV, that rarely happens.”

“The streets get more and more dangerous, and it gets harder and harder to convict anybody. So what are cops supposed to do? Watch all the bad guys get away? Or try to do something about it?”

“How long has this gang been operating?”

“I can’t say for certain.”

“What have they done?”

Dodds began wringing his hands. “I don’t know how far it’s gone. I thought it was mostly talk. You know, barroom bluster and poker table bravado. But then this thing with Joe McNaughton came up and … well, everything changed.”