School Days

Chapter 21

TWO DOWLING COPS were leaning on a squad car outside the coffee shop. One of them stepped in front of me on the sidewalk.

"Chief wants to see you," he said.

"Everybody does," I said.

There was a black Chevy sedan with tinted windows parked on the curb behind the squad car. A cop in plainclothes got out of the front seat and opened the back door.

"In here," he said.

I looked into the backseat. Cromwell was there. I slid in beside him, and the plainclothes cop closed the back door and opened the driver's door to get in.

"Wait outside the car," Cromwell said.

The cop closed the door and went and leaned with the two uniforms on the squad car in front of us.

"This mean you like me?" I said.

Cromwell was wearing his big, terrifying pearl-handled revolver. I felt honored. Cromwell ignored my question. Probably felt it was frivolous. He looked at me with his eyes half closed. It was supposed to make my blood freeze.

"Optics are amazing, aren't they?" I said. "We can see out fine through the tint, but people outside can't really see us much."

"Shut up," Cromwell said.

The eyes behind the rimless glasses narrowed some more. I squinted back at him.

"Hard to see, isn't it," I said, "with your eyes three quarters shut."

"This is your last chance," Cromwell said finally.

"It is?"

"After this, it gets very rough."

"Oh," I said. "That's when."

The front windshield wasn't tinted. Through it, the three cops leaning on the squad car could look in at us.

"You might get hurt bad," Cromwell said, "resisting arrest."

"Gee," I said, "maybe this doesn't mean you like me."

"Do I make myself clear?" Cromwell said.

"Actually," I said, "I'm a little murky on some things. Like when your guys arrived, why did they secure the perimeter and stay there while the shooters inside kept shooting?"

"It was a hostage situation. Anybody knows anything about policework knows you don't go charging into a hostage situation."

"But it wasn't a hostage situation. It was serial murder in progress."

"We had no way to know that," Cromwell said.

"The sound of gunshots inside didn't suggest anything?" I said.

"Besides, it might have been booby-trapped."

"But it wasn't," I said.

"We had no way to know that, either."

"So you didn't go in."

"We weren't going in until we had proper intelligence and appropriate backup."

"You're telling me," I said, "you didn't go in because it might not be safe?"

"Goddamn it, that's not what I said."

"It is what you said; it's just not what you wanted me to hear."

Cromwell's voice had gotten hoarse as we talked.

"We contained it," he rasped. "Goddamn it, we contained it."

"You were scared," I said. "And you didn't know what to do. And there are some kids dead who would be walking around today if you'd gone in there sooner."

"You sonovabitch," Cromwell croaked.

He took his big pearl-handled revolver and started to point it at me. I took hold of the barrel before he leveled it and bent it back so the gun was pointing at the roof of the car. He struggled to level it. But I held it there. So we sat, sort of frozen in place. The three cops out front glancing through the windshield couldn't see much in the backseat, and whatever they saw didn't look like trouble. They stayed where they were.

"Let go," Cromwell said, "or I'll shoot."

"You're a small-town police department. You never saw anything like this before. You had no hands-on experience. You were scared. So you hunkered down and waited for the Staties."

"Let go," Cromwell said.

His voice was so thick, he seemed to be having trouble squeezing his words out.

"Okay, it was a fuck-up," I said. "And it cost lives. But it was sort of an understandable fuck-up, unless it was one of your kids got killed."

"Let go."

"It's the coverup that's going to kill you," I said.

Cromwell didn't speak. He had taken hold of his gun with both hands and was trying to force it down enough to point it at me. He couldn't. Then he tried to pry my fingers off the gun barrel. He couldn't.

Through the front windshield, I saw the three cops at the squad car turn their heads to stare at the coffee shop. I looked out the back in the same direction. The kids had come out of the coffee shop to see what was up. They stood in a ragged row on the sidewalk, watching.

I was holding his gun barrel with my left hand. I shifted slightly in the seat and, with my right hand, punched him in the crotch. He gasped and doubled over and I took the gun away. While he gasped against the pain, on the seat next to me, I snapped open the cylinder, took out the big .45 slugs, closed the cylinder, and put the empty gun back in his holster.

"You been hit in the balls before," I said. "You know the pain will pass. While it's passing, let me hold forth for a moment. I am going to find out what happened and why and where they got the guns, and how they learned to shoot, and then we'll see. I am going to share my concerns with the State Police Homicide Commander in Boston, guy named Healy. If he doesn't hear from me every day he'll be out here looking for me, and he'll know who to ask."

Beside me, Cromwell, still bent over, had started taking deep breaths.

"That aside," I said, "I got no reason to embarrass you. I will leave you out of anything I can, as much as I can, unless you're guilty as hell ... or unless you annoy me."

Cromwell slowly straightened. His shoulders were still hunched, and he kept his hands over his groin, but he was sitting more or less upright.

"Where's my bullets," he said.

I handed the six big bullets to him. He took them and made no move to reload.

"I don't want trouble with you," I said. He didn't look at me.

"But remember one thing," I said. "YOU don't want trouble with me, either. It might work out well if we gave each other a good leaving alone."

Cromwell still wouldn't look at me. I waited a moment. He didn't say anything. So I got out of the car. The three cops looked at me carefully. Several of the kids started to clap, and most of them joined in. I gave them a V -for-Victory sign. Cromwell never moved from the backseat.

Pink Top said, "You go, Big Daddy."

"I do," I said.

And did.

As I strolled off down the street toward my car, with the plaudits of the crowd still ringing in my ears, I had a sort of tense, targety feeling between my shoulder blades.

I'd had it before.