Lockdown

Eighty-three

Caffrey had just dug a plastic fork into his Holy Molburrito when he saw the woman struggling towards him, a crutch under one arm, a cooler in her other hand. ‘Shit.’

He stepped from his cruiser, drew his weapon, an old-school stainless-steel Smith and Wesson 64 revolver, and levelled it at the centre of her chest. ‘Stop right there.’

She kept coming.

He’d heard something at one of the briefings about a woman. He knew she was foreign. Someone had said something about her not speaking English. Or was it that she could speak it? Damn. He should have been paying more attention, instead of texting one of his patrol guys to swing by Burritoville.

‘Lady, stop right there.’

He looked around for back-up but everyone seemed to be pouring, like flies to shit, through the gates towards the buildings.

Still she kept coming. Utterly calm. No sign on her face that she even saw his gun.

A woman. Fresh off the boat. Who maybe didn’t understand what he was saying.

Then she stopped. Maybe ten feet from him. Maybe less. Never breaking eye contact. Never looking at his gun. Tuning it out.

‘OK, that’s good. Now, stay there and don’t move.’

But move she did, placing the cooler on the ground. One hand reaching across her chest.

‘I said, don’t move.’

She was wearing a padded man’s ski jacket, or at least that was what it looked like to Caffrey. Her hand wrenched at the zipper.

He’d have to wait to see a weapon. Couldn’t shoot someone for unzipping their jacket.

‘OK, that’s far enough.’

She kept going, yanking the zipper free at the bottom.

‘Lady, I don’t have time for games.’

‘Neither do we.’ A man stepped from the shadows. White. A young guy. Covered in a thin layer of grey dust that made him look like one of those human statue guys who hung out in Midtown making money from tourists. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Show him.’

Slowly, deliberately, the woman pulled the jacket to one side, and the hand holding Caffrey’s gun stopped working. The Smith and Wesson tumbled to the ground.

Twenty-four years of jumpers, jackers, slashers, stoners, rapists, recidivists, baby killers and crackheads. Twenty-four years of witnessing what was very often the lowest point in someone’s life. Over and over again. A never-ending loop of human failing, which occasionally seeped into evil. Caffrey was sure he had seen, smelled, tasted, heard, touched and, yeah, even sensed it all. But this, this went way further.

She held the jacket open with a stage magician’s flourish and Caffrey stood there, half expecting her to take a bow. But all that happened was that the guy who was standing behind her ran forward to retrieve Caffrey’s service revolver.

Still transfixed, Caffrey didn’t try to stop him.

‘You have a cell phone?’

‘What?’ said Caffrey.

The guy pointed the gun at Caffrey. Caffrey barely registered it.

‘Do you have a cell phone?’ the guy asked again.

‘In the car.’

‘Go get it,’ he instructed. ‘I need the number.’