Butcher's Moon

Twelve

O’Hara spotted the diner up ahead on the right, and nodded to it. “Time we got some coffee,” he said.

His partner, Marty Dean, said, “Good idea. I’m goddam tired.”

They both were. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, meaning they’d both been on duty now for a full twelve hours. Driving around in this patrol car, their uniforms getting itchier by the minute, their guns and cartridge belts a dull weight pressing against their stomachs.

And O’Hara, besides being tired, was in a foul mood. This whole business was connected with that amusement-park mess from two years ago, which O’Hara didn’t like being reminded of in the first place. And he’d gotten the word that one of the guys involved in last night’s robberies was the actual son of a bitch from the amusement park himself, and oh, how O’Hara wanted to be the one to catch up with him. He could taste it, he needed it, he had to even the score or die.

The diner. O’Hara turned the wheel, steered them over into the parking lot, and nosed into a space between a gray pickup and a red Toyota. The two men climbed out of the car, snicking the doors shut in the sunlight, and Dean stretched hugely, arching his back, saying, “Jesus God, it’s good to stand up.”

“Yeah, it is,” O’Hara said. He was trying not to let his bad mood out on the surface, because he had no explanation for it beyond the tiredness and overwork they had in common. He couldn’t very well explain to Dean that two years ago a lousy bandit had forced him to strip out of his uniform, had tied him up, and had used the uniform to make a clean getaway. And that instead of the eighteen thousand dollars he’d been anticipating for helping to run the bastard down in that amusement park, how much had he wound up with? Two grand. That money was long since gone, but the humiliation was as fresh as ever.

O’Hara and Dean walked into the diner together and found a couple seats at the counter. Somehow it was less like being off-duty when you sat at the counter; sitting in one of the booths would be more slothful, more as though you weren’t ready to leap back into action at any second.

They ordered coffee and pastry, and then O’Hara said, “I’ll be right back,” and went off to the men’s room.

He was standing at the urinal, brooding, when the men’s-room door opened, off to his right. He looked over at the new arrival, and his face showed his surprise. “Well, hello,” he said.

“Hello, O’Hara.” The guy smiled and stuck the barrel of a .25 automatic in O’Hara’s eye, and pulled the trigger.