Bone Deep

6

Karen walked into the little spare bedroom they had dubbed their study, where Becker was tapping keys on the computer. Their small machine was hooked up via modern to the Bureau system, allowing Karen, as an associate dep duty director, to conduct work from her home office. It was not a privilege allowed to most field agents because of the potential breach of secrecy if too many agents had access to the main terminal, but Karen was not most agents.

Becker turned to look at her as she came up behind him, then leaned his head against her, dropping one arm to en circle her legs.

"Interesting phone call," Karen said.

"Has it occurred to you that our domestic life is a little unusual?"

"I'd say it's pretty normal."

"Except that while you're on the phone talking to somebody about the PTO function for the sixth grade, I'm in the other room searching Bureau files for anyone who puts bodies in trash bags and plants them under trees."

"You find something unusual in that?" she asked. She handed him the glass of wine he had left half finished on the dining room table.

"It seems to me you should be researching friend Johnny while I do something more manly in the evenings, like bowl. "

"What did you call him?" Karen asked.

"I'm calling him Johnny, for Johnny Appleseed, another lover of trees."

"Disney will be pleased," Karen said. "Have you found anything yet?"

"Nothing useful. A couple of woodsy types in the Northwest who liked to tie people to trees while they killed them, but I don't think that's much of a connection. What was the interesting call? I thought it was the P'TO."

"That was the first call. I got another one from someone named Tovah Kom." Becker chuckled mirthlessly. "Know her?"

"I met her. I told you about her. The doctor's wife."

"Yes, she made that clear. Is 'Mrs. Doctor Kom' really the way to say that? Isn't it just 'Mrs. Kom'?"

"They do that in the Army, too. Mrs. General Jones. Like Doctor is a first name."

"Or a rank."

"Some people look at it like that, I guess. So she actually called. I was hoping it was just one of those things people say, like let's have lunch."

"She invited us to dinner," Karen said.

"Did you tell her no, I hope, I hope."

"Oh sure. I told her no, we don't eat."

"You could have told her I was antisocial."

"You said she'd met you. She must have figured that out for herself.

Apparently she doesn't care."

"You could have told her you were antisocial."

"We have to keep that our little secret," Karen said. "Remember, social ineptitude is perfectly all right for a big strong man, but for women it's still not done, liberation or no. Anyway, it might be fun."

"Alternately, it might not."

"Do you have anything in particular against the Koms, Doctor and Mrs.

Doctor? Or is it just your general dyspep sia'?"

Becker sighed. "Not really, I suppose. The truth is, I would rather spend the evening alone with you, or with you and Jack, than with anyone else in the world."

"I know. Me too. But it's just one evening. We'll be alone again when it's over."

"if I must, then I am, as always, your slave."

"Dinner sounds good at least," she said. "Mrs. Doctor tells me we're having lobster."

McNeil entered the jail cell with the warder of the Bridgeport police behind him. The perpetrator, looking young, nervous, and sullen, sat on the cot. His eyes never met McNeil's directly, but seemed transfixed on the bars at the opposite end of his cage. McNeil was accustomed to the middle-distance stare; it came as regulation issue to everyone he contacted in the Bridgeport jails. From some it arose from a rage so deep that direct eye contact must lead to violence. From others, from most, it was the ghetto version of a teenager's feigned indifference to authority. It sprang, McNeil knew, from confusion, from profound ignorance of the way the world worked, and from an intense desire to appear cool, regardless of the circumstance. Occasionally he would come to pick up a Clamden youth who had wandered into Bridgeport in search of drugs or trouble and had found both. They were quick to abandon the stare when they saw McNeil, a familiar face in a bad situation, appealing to him with all the sincerity and innocence they could muster.

At that moment at least, they looked on McNeil as a friend.

Tyrone Kiwasee did not regard McNeil as a friend, and he was right in his assessment. "I'm Sergeant McNeil of the Clamden police," McNeil said, giving himself a promotion as he often did under these circumstances. "You Tyrone… Kiwasee?" McNeil played with the last name as if he regarded it a joke.

"That's him," said the warder.

"He doesn't seem too sure about it," said McNeil. "Tyrone's a little confused about a lot of things," said the warder.

Kiwasee had not yet stirred or made any recognition of McNeil's presence.

"I'm from Clamden," McNeil repeated. "You know Clamden, don't you, Tyrone?"

Kiwasee shrugged imperceptibly.

" Sure you do, Tyrone. Bridgeport cops found your house stuffed full of stolen goods-about half of them came from Clamden."

"Wasn't my shit," said Kiwasee. "I got nothing to do with it. "

" They found it in your house, Tyrone. In your room, tucked under your bed. How'd it get there? we got to wonder. We don't wonder where it came from though, you know why, Tyrone? Those people in Clamden don't like punks from Bridgeport coming into their town and stealing everything in the house. That's how some people are, I can't explain it. So know what they do? They mark that stuff. They record serial numbers on all their valuable little goodies. They get special machines to put special codes right into the merchandise so it can be identified later when we find it under your bed. Isn't that selfish of them, Tyrone?"

Kiwasee continued to gaze blankly at the bars of his cell.

"So, you know what else, Tyrone? That makes the police in Clamden just a s eager to talk to you as the police right here in your own hometown.

You are an inner-city, intercity celebrity, Tyrone. You and your pals are the burglars who been stealing from those nice folks in Clamden for the last three years, aren't you?"

"Ain't stole nothin'. Don' know where that shit come from."

"Well now, that's a good story. it is." McNeil looked to the warder for support.

"It's a good story," said the warder. "I believe it."

"Anybody would believe it, except maybe the judge. The judge might not believe it. But, hell, you don't expect me to explain judges to you, do you, Tyrone? You already have more experience with them than I do. So I tell you what, Tyrone. I'm going to take you back with me to Clamden and you're going to talk to us some, and look at some houses and tell us why you broke into them and tell us what you did with the other things you took from those houses, and generally be cooperative. You'll like that, won't you, Tyrone? A nice ride in a police car? We can even swing through your old neighborhood and let everybody see how you're getting on. Most of them'll be proud of you, we know that much, don't we?"

For the first time Kiwasee lifted his head and looked directly at McNeil. His eyes were deep brown, the whites clouded and rheumy as an oyster. "Then let's go," he said.

"VVhat's your real name, Slick?" McNeil asked. Kiwasee sat in the back seat of the cruiser, separated from the driver by a screen of wire mesh.

"Tyrone Kiwasee."

"I mean your street name. What do the bros call you?"

Kiwasee was silent. He watched the trees of Clamden sail past the window.

"They call you Skids, right? That's your street name, Skids. What's that mean?"

"Means I run so fast, when I turn a corner I skids."

McNeil studied his prisoner in the mirror to see if he was being mocked.

"I know your street name," Kiwasee said. "I heard about you. "

"I don't have a street name."

"Sure you do, everybody do."

"My name's McNeil."

"That ain't what the bros calls you."

"What do they call me?"

Kiwasee allowed a slow grin to steal over his face. "They call you the fat-ass jack-jawin' motherfuckin' cop from Clamden."

"Oooh, dat what dey call me, Tyrone?"

"No, that's too long. They just call you Pussy, 'cause you loves pussy."

McNeil laughed. "You're funny, Skids. I like that in a felon. What else they say about me?"

"We don' talk about you a whole lot, you unnerstan'. Ain't nobody studying on you 'cause you ain't that important. Jus' once in a while when your white-ass preppies come to the Port to buy a ho or some snort.

They tell us about you."

"What they say?"

"They say you go to Clamden, don' get caught by ol' Pussy McNeil 'cause he one mean-ass racist sonofabitchunless you a ho. Now if you a ho and McNeil catch you, then he really going' to fuck you. You be better off if he just beat you with his nightstick. If you an underage ho, that the worst of all. Then ol' Pussy McNeil gon' make you suck on his little dick for years."

McNeil pulled the car to the side of the road and turned to face Kiwasee through the mesh.

"You're real talkative all of a sudden, Skids. And here I thought I was going to have to kick shit out of you to make you talk, but I guess I was wrong, wasn't I?"

"You wrong about me in a lot of ways," said Kiwasee. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That- mean don' try your nightstick shit with me, Pussy. I know about you and I ain't afraid to tell."

"Tell what? What are you going to tell?"

"I ain't going' tell nothing you treat me right. You mess with me, I'll tell the world."

"Tell what, Tyrone? What you got to tell?"

"I seen you."

"Seen me what?"

"Seen you come out of a window, pulling your pants on. "

"Bullshit."

"I was there. Three, four in the morning? A week ago? You 'remember that. I was doing a job, I hear a noise, look out the window, who do I see coming out the window with his dick in his hand? 01' Pussy, looking guilty. Well, no, you wasn't looking guilty, neither. You was looking happy, grinning and all."

"You saw me grinning at three in the morning, Tyrone? You got real good eyes."

"There was light coming out the girl's window. Guess her old man was coming to see who was making the noise. Must have been you making the noise, Pussy. You couldn't work no ho up to that."

"You're bullshitting me, Tyrone."

"We done pass the house not two minutes ago."

McNeil wheeled the cruiser into a U-turn. "You show me where, you hear?"

"You know where," said Tyrone. "Or you been jumping out of windows all over town?"

"Must have been my brother."

"Your brother drive off in a police car too?"

"That's right, Skids. I got an evil twin."

"See, that's what's wrong with you people right there. You think getting a little pussy he's evil. I ain't saying there's nothing wrong with what you up to, McNeil. You be saying that."

"Show me the house, Tyrone, or I'm going to beat you for giving false information to a police officer."

"You ain't gon' touch me, Pussy. This ain't L.A… There the house, right there."

McNeil slowed the car and they crept past a large, white Cape Cod with green shutters and trim.

"You know they been robbed a week ago, I know you got a report on that."

"That was you, was it?"

"And there's where I seen you, coming out the window right there. "

"You didn't see me, Tyrone. First of all, I wasn't there, second, you can't even see this house from the other one."

"You can from the second floor, you look right down there and here come of' Pussy, tugging on his pants and laughing. I figure, shit, I don' have to worry about the police tonight. They ain't coming back here."

McNeil made another three-point turn and headed away from the site of Tyrone's story.

"You made out a living will, Tyrone?"

"Say what?"

"A living will. It's the latest thing. It's in case somebody shoots you in the spine and you can't walk, you can't move, you can't feed yourself, you're paralyzed, live your life in a chair. You can't jerk off because your dick don't get hard anymore. Well, actually, you can jerk off with a soft dick, you know that, Tyrone? So, maybe you can sit there and jerk off the rest of your life, but you'll never have another woman because it just won't get hard. You can't even control your bladder or your bowels, spend your life shitting yourself, Tyrone. A living will allows you to say, I don't want any more of this, let me die … You got one of those, Tyrone? In case somebody shoots you in the spine? That last house you burgled? Man there's got a gun, got it just cause of you, now he's waiting there for you to come back. Think I should take you to see him? Want to make a visit?"

"Just jackin' your jaw, ain't you, Pussy. Must be hard, driving around all day, nothing to do but look at trees, guess you got to talk to yourself." McNeil drove past the town dump and recycling station, heading for a section where the houses were smaller, older. In a small enclave off a private road that turned from asphalt to rutted gravel and finally to hard-packed dirt, sheltered from the eyes of the more affluent residents of Clamden, sat a series of houses that looked as if they belonged in another place, another era. Five cars, three of them on blocks, occupied the yard of one of them. Another sported a small boat that had not been seaworthy in years. McNeil drove to the end of the hard-packed road and into a dirt driveway that rose and twisted itself up the hill and away from the other houses. Sheltered among the trees, invisible even from the beginning of the driveway, sat McNeil's house, a squat one-story building, one side of which was covered in a huge blue plastic tarpaulin, evidence of a renovation effort that seemed never to finish. A sawhorse sat in the yard surrounded by bits of scrap lumber and a bucket of rusting nails.

"It's not what you're used to, Tyrone. I know you like to burgle the bigger houses, I know you like to sneak along those terra-cotta hallways and leave your muddy footprints on shiny oak floors, but they, it's all I can afford, and a man's home is his castle, you know?"

McNeil drove the police car into the garage and stepped out, leaving the engine running.

"Besides, I got such an awful lot of privacy here. Nobody ever comes around here except some deer. You like deer, Tyrone? You ever even seen a deer?"

"What we doing here?"

McNeil closed the garage door, plunging them into sudden darkness.

"What you playing at?" Tyrone tried the doors of the car without success.

"You afraid of the dark? Don't worry, your eyes will get used to it."

"Let me out of this car, man."

"You a prisoner, Tyrone Abdul Skids Kiwasee. You ain't getting out until I let you out. Go ahead and kick that mesh, beat on the windows.

What do you think this car is designed for? You couldn't break those windows with a sledgehammer. There's no way out."

McNeil reached into the front seat, tapped a button, and one of the rear windows moved down an inch.

"There you go, a little ventilation."

"What you playing at, McNeil?"

"See, that's the first thing you have to learn, Tyrone." McNeil thrust his face close to the window. "I ain't playing! "

Stepping away from the car, McNeil pulled a roll of aged carpeting away from a wall of the garage and kicked it out against the door, pressing it against the crack where the door met the concrete slab.

Kiwasee put his fingers through the mesh and shook it, then lay on the back seat and kicked at the windows with his feet. "Don't you make a mess in there now," said McNeil, unconcerned. "That car was nice and clean when you got in there. "

"What you want, McNeil?"

"I want you to think real hard about a living will, Ty rone. Looks like you're going to need one. Things happen to a bad man like yourself even if you don't get shot in the spine. There's all kinds of ways to get fucked up for life. Carbon monoxide poisoning, for instance, just to take one example. You know what it does? It shuts off oxygen to your brain. That goes on too long, of course, and you die. If it goes on just long enough, then you're a vegetable. You not only got a limp dick, you don't even know if you got a dick. The secret is in the timing. Just enough gas, not too much."

McNeil removed a yellow slicker from a hook beside the garage door and pressed it against the base of the door that led into the house.

"Man, turn off the engine," said Kiwasee, struggling to control his panic. "Le''s talk."

"You done enough talking, Tyrone. You just don't seem to be the kind who can keep his mouth shut."

"Tell me what you want. I'll do it."

"You know what I notice, Tyrone? I notice you're not calling me Pussy anymore." 'I is sorry about that. Didn't mean nothing by it."

McNeil looked around the garage. "Let's see, what did I forget?

Everything looks all right, what do you think?"

"Turn off the engine, man. Le's talk, le's just talk this out. I cooperate, you know that, I cooperate with you. Whatever you want, whatever you want."

"It takes about ten minutes, Tyrone," McNeil said. "You can tell the time right there on that nice big clock on the dashboard. Ten minutes to make a veg out of you. What kind of vegetable you like? Yam? Grits?

Corn on the cob? How about black-eyed peas? Let me see if I got the right recipe for black-eyed peas. Ten minutes, ten seconds, that's my guess. Of course, it depends on how much breathing you do. The more you struggle and try to get out, the more you're going to be breathing, so in that case, maybe nine minutes, eight and a half. Hell, I haven't got it down to a science, Tyrone, so don't blame me if I screw it UP."

McNeil opened the door leading into his house. "Got to go now, Tyrone.

It's starting to have a funny smell in here. Smell it? Is that gas? Or is that you, shitting yourself already?… Bye, Tyrone Abdul."

When McNeil stepped into the mud room leading into his kitchen and pulled the door closed behind him, Kiwasee's cries were muffled. When he closed the kitchen door as well, he could barely hear them at all.

Kiwasee was broken by fear and panic, his face streaked with tears and mucus, his eyes wild with terror. The clock on the dashboard had advanced nine and a half minutes when the radio suddenly came alive.

"Central to Car Two," the voice crackled. "Come in, please, Car Two."

"Man, I'm in here!" Tyrone screamed at the radio. "I'm in his garage.

He's killing me!"

"Come in, Car Two."

"He's killing me! McNeil is killing me! Help!"

"Two, come in, please."

"Get me out of here, lady! Lady! Help!"

"McNeil," the voice on the radio said testily. "Respond please."

"Lady! Lady! Get me out of here, you ho!"

The radio clicked into silence. Kiwasee, his nervous system assailed to the point of breakdown by adrenaline, anger, and horror, pulled his shirt over his face in an effort to keep out the gas, then alternately laughed and wept, until he heard the engine suddenly turned off. He looked with disbelief to see McNeil opening the garage door. Sun streaked into the darkened building.

McNeil lowered the back seat window another few inches and Kiwasee winced, not certain if the extra space was letting in more fresh air or more gas.

"You should have put your shirt in the window, Tyrone, block up the crack-that would have given you longer to breathe the oxygen in the car."

"Ten minutes, man, you left me for ten minutes."

"I told you, this ain't a science, not yet."

"I could be dead, I could be dead," Kiwasee said, incredulous, addressing his fingers, which he wiggled back and forth in proof of his vitality.

"Look at you, Tyrone Abdul, you made a terrible mess of yourself. Is that the way you do back in Bridgeport? Folks don't live like that in Clamden. We're a clean people, Tyrone. Look at me. You see any snot on my shirt? You see any pee stains on my trousers?"

"You left me for ten minutes," Kiwasee repeated, not looking at McNeil.

"I asked you a question, Tyrone."

Kiwasee turned immediately to the command in MeNeil's voice. His chest rose and fell in great panting breaths, trying to make up for ten minutes of not breathing.

"Sir?" Kiwasee asked.

McNeil smiled. "You can talk right, after all. I always thought you people could if you put your minds to it. You see any snot on my shirt, Tyrone?"

"No sir."

"You see anybody climbing out of the window of that house last week?"

"No sir, I did not."

"Were you in the house next door that night?"

"Yes sir, I sure was." Kiwasee searched McNeil's face for the proper answer. "No sir, I was not."

"That's right. You were everywhere else all those other times though, weren't you?"

"Yes sir… Which ones?"

"All the other burglaries you did in Clamden the last three years, you're going to tell Chief Terhune about each one, honestly, aren't you?"

"That's right, sir. I done 'em all. I'm guilty as can be."

"Except for which burglary?"

"The one last week, the one in the house we just looked at. "

"Were you there or not?"

"No sir, I was not."

"Ever?"

"Never, I never was there.

"Ever hear of anyone else who was there?"

"No sir. Never. I ain't even been in Clamden in over a month. Ain't heard of no one else who was, neither."

"Ever see anyone leaving that house next door?"

"I ain't never seen that house next door 'cause I ain't never been in the other one in the first place."

"Good, Tyrone. Very good. That gas didn't affect your brain, after all. In fact, I'd say you're a little smarter than before, definitely.

You're a better man for the experience."

"Yes sir, I am."

"How about your dick? Your dick still work?"

"I don't believe so, sir. It sure ain't working right now."

McNeil laughed. "You're all right, Tyrone. Now step on out of there.

First you're going to clean up my car, then you're going to clean up yourself, then we're going to talk to Chief Terhune."

"Yes sir." Kiwasee slid quickly out of the car.

"Don't think about crying to Terhune or any asshole lawyer about police brutality either. You haven't got a mark on you."

"I wasn't thinking about that."

"Don't ever think about it."

"I won't.

"And Tyrone?"

"Sir?"

"Now that you're out of the car, do anything wrong and I'll shoot your head off… You believe me, don't you?"

"Yes sir," said Kiwasee. "I surely do."

Later, McNeil wondered if he had overreacted, if he should have just laughed off Kiwasee's account instead of proving its importance. He did not second-guess himself for long, however, and he did not chide himself for making a mistake. He was, at all times, extremely forgiving of himself. To McNeil, McNeil was always right.