Fear itself

Warm Water, No Pain
1

“Ed, you up?” Sid rapped on Pender’s door, then let himself in. “Come on, wake up and smell the coffee.”

“Eat the shit and die.” Pender didn’t bother opening his eyes-he had no intention of getting out of bed, then or ever. It was the worst kind of hangover, the kind that comes, not from having been too drunk, but from having been unable to get drunk enough, no matter how hard you tried. And Pender, despondent over Dorie, had tried-he’d tried his heart out, and a lobe or two of his liver, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. That laugh, that hug, those cornflower blue eyes-even that zigzag nose.

Nor was there enough Jim Beam in the world to help him forget their last conversation. We’ll get him, says the famous G-man. Don’t worry about a thing, says the famous G-man-be another two months before he kills again. You sure called that one, famous G-man. Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity? Fumbling Bumbling Idiot is more like it. Probably forced the killer’s hand just by showing up.

“Let’s move it, Sparky.” Sid crossed the room, parted the curtains, opened the jalousies. “Plane leaves in an hour.”

That got Pender’s attention. “I thought we said we were going to stick around for a few days, try and make ourselves useful.”

“No, you said we were going to stick around and make ourselves useful. I said we were flying to San Francisco, as scheduled, changing planes, as scheduled, and that as soon as we got home I was going to recommend a good therapist to help you work through the grieving and the denial.”

“What the hell are you talking about, grieving?” Pender, who’d fallen asleep in his underwear, sat up reluctantly, belched swamp gas. “I hardly knew her-she was an interview.”

“That’s not what I was referring to-although it is interesting that that’s what came up for you.”

“Don’t play the shrink with me, Dolitz.”

“I’m telling you this as your friend, Ed.” Sid smoothed the crumpled coverlet with his neat little hand and sat down on the foot of the bed. “You’re retired. The purpose of this trip-in addition to using up some frequent flyer miles before they expired-was to put a period-no, a big, fat exclamation mark-at the end of your career. To make it easier for you to accept the fact that you are no longer an officer of the law, and that catching every serial killer that comes down the pike is no longer your responsibility. Which is just as well, frankly, because you are obviously not up to the job.”

“Now you’re just trying to piss me off.” Pender swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat there for a moment with his shoulders slumped and his heavy head hanging. When he realized that his nausea was not going to subside, and that the next belch was likely to contain more than swamp gas, he made a desperate dash for the bathroom, where he knelt to assume the position known as driving the porcelain bus.

“You said as much yourself, last night,” Sid called after him. “In Jim Beam-o, veritas. Ten years ago-hell, five years ago-would you have just left her alone like that, somebody who fits the victim profile for an active serial killer? At the very least you’d have contacted the locals, let them know what was going on so they could keep an eye on her. Instead, you acted like a lovestruck teenager. ‘Sid, whaddaya think, should I ask her out? I think I’m gonna ask her out, Sid. Sid, should I ask her out?’”

Pender, chalk-faced, reappeared in the bathroom doorway. Beard stubble, bags under his eyes, strap undershirt, pendulous gut, rumpled boxers, one sock. “You think I don’t know I fucked up, Sid? You think I don’t know it’s my fault she’s probably dead now? If she’s lucky? And now I’m supposed to pack it up and go home? Oops, mea culpa, so sorry, so long.”

“Precisely. You’ve already accomplished everything you came out here to do. Let the pros handle it from here.”

“But-”

“Ed, you can’t be half a cop and half a civilian. People get themselves killed that way-themselves and others.”

Pender couldn’t think of an answer. He turned and went back into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

“You look like shit,” he told the old, fat, bald guy in the mirror.

“Didn’t you used to be a famous G-man or something?”

“Used to be,” said the o.f.b.g. “I’m retired now.”