Shoot the Moon (and more)

Public Servant

I felt great, my heart was pounding, but I should have slugged her harder. Or killed her, one of the two. I was hardly out the window and onto the lawn when she woke up and started in screaming her head off.

“Shut up, you bitch...” My voice hissed through my teeth like air from a punctured tire. “I’ll hit you again, Goddamnit, shut the fuck up.”

But it was too late.

Too late to climb back in and shut her up and too late to get away. I moved past the bushes along the side of the house and went back to my car in the alley. I could hear voices only a block or so away, so I had to work fast. I pulled the tactic I’d thought about a few times but never used. I reached in the back seat and grabbed my holstered gun, blue shirt with badge, and cap. Put them on faster than hell. Then I reached around into the front seat and flipped on the radio and grabbed off the mike and spoke into it.

“Ralph, hello Ralph, this is Harry.”

His voice came back tinny over the cheap squawkbox speakers. “What’s the trouble, officer?”

The mayor must have been in the station or Ralph wouldn’t have called me “officer.” Ralph was the chief but we didn’t have many formalities, not in a town of a few thousand.

“Look, Ralph, I think the raper’s hit again. There’s a woman screaming and I’m heading over to look into it. Okay, Ralph?”

He forgot the newfound formality fast. “Jesus H. Christ, another rape! Damn it, damn. Any sign of the bastard?”

“Ralph, I’ll shoot the damn bull with you some other time, okay? I’m going over and see what the hell’s going on, you don’t mind.”

“I better send somebody over to help you.”

“Good idea.”

“Frank’s hanging around the building somewhere. He’s off duty, but he’s the only one here so I’ll send him.”

“We’re going to get this guy, Ralph.”

“Damn right we will, Harry.”

I clicked the mike off and put it back on the radio and headed for the house. Things’d been happening fast. Almost forgot to zip my fly.

She was still screaming, so I didn’t go in. Besides, there was a crowd of people in bathrobes and dressing gowns and such milling around, and I had to keep them cleared away as best I could till Frank got there to lend a hand.

When Frank finally did show, I told him to go in and do the questioning. An ambulance, Frank said, was on the way. I stood outside and worked at moving the funseekers away.

After a while the ambulance pulled up and I went inside and helped Frank and some guy from the hospital ease the bitch onto a stretcher and out the door and into the back of the ambulance. She looked right at me once and didn’t bat an eye. The ambulance tore away and Frank stood there looking after it, shaking his head.

“Damn that bastard anyway, Harry, that damn bastard’s going to get his, I swear.”

“Same guy, suppose?”

“Sure as hell is. Same as always. Woman at home alone, her husband on the night shift or off on a National Guard stint or something of the like. The son of a bitch jimmies open a window and attacks her in her sleep, then knocks hell out of her.”

“Have a cigarette, Frank.”

Frank was in civvies, a T-shirt and white jeans as a matter of fact, and he stood there looking toward where the ambulance’d been, rubbing his hand over the place on his sandy crewcut where it was thinning. He said “Thanks” when I handed him the cigarette and lit it off his own lighter.

“You ain’t letting this thing get you, are you, Frank?”

“Guess maybe I am. Jesus, let me tell you, it’s enough to scare hell out of a married man. Christ, I mean you, you aren’t married, you can’t understand just how bad it is. But me, hell. A young wife. A kid in a crib. Me gone nights a lot. Scares the crap right out of me, a nut like this loose.”

“Sure, Frank,” I said. “I can see what you mean. I mean, I ain’t married or anything, but I can see what you mean.”

Frank rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Hell, Harry, how do you figure him? A psycho, sure, but how do you figure him?”

I smiled. “How do you figure a psycho?”

“I don’t know. I honest to God don’t know. But he gets his jollies making people hurt, I can see that plain enough. He always slugs hell out of the women, after he’s had ’em. Didn’t beat this as bad as the others, though, did you notice? Must be getting careless or something. Getting used to getting away with it. I mean, shit, we make it easy enough for him with our Mickey Mouse force.”

“We’re doing our best, Frank, ain’t we?”

“Yeah. Our best. Dedicated public servants. Yeah.”

He arched the hardly smoked cigarette out into the street.

“He’ll probably be more careful next time, you know,” I said.

“No next time about it,” he said, “not if I can help it.”

“Know what you mean, Frank, I mean wouldn’t you just like to get this bastard down and kick the hell out of him?”

Seemed like Frank’s eyes were almost glowing. “That would be sweet. That sure as Christ would be sweet.”

I patted his shoulder. “Well, we’ll get him, Frank, don’t you worry. I mean, after all, you figure him a nut, how long can a nut last?”

“Oh, but a damn smart nut, remember. There’s never a fingerprint or clue of any kind around.”

I checked my watch. “I wonder what’s keeping Ollie with that damn Boy Scout crime lab of his? He ought to be here by now.”

Frank shrugged. “Probably so used to this he’s finishing the Late Show or something before he comes over. Besides, what’s the use? That nut’s a thinker, he never leaves anything to trace him. Anyway, nothing a small-scale set-up like we got could ever pick up on.”

I lit myself a smoke. “But like you said, he’s getting more careless. Had so much fun raping this one he didn’t slug her as hard as he should’ve. Maybe this time he slipped up.”

“Maybe you’re right, Harry. Maybe old Ollie’ll find something this time around.”

“Here, Frank, have another smoke.” I shook one out of the pack and fired him up off my lighter. “Stay out here and relax, I’ll go back in, and make sure none of the neighbors messed anything up before we got here.”

Frank nodded. I went back in and looked around. Wiped off the windowsill with my handkerchief, a few other things, too. Had to make sure I wasn’t getting too damn careless.

When I was on night duty I’d go to bed around nine o’clock in the morning and sleep till six or seven. Then I’d go over to the Seaside Motel to see Molly, and sometimes sponge a meal off her. Molly was sort of my girl. She thought she was, at least. She ran the Seaside, which is right by the lake. Her old man, who built the place (both him and the old lady kicked off in an auto wreck five, six years back), would’ve called it the Lakeside instead of the Seaside, only somebody else on the other side of town thought of it first. And the other motel wasn’t even on the damn lake, ain’t that the shits.

The “No Vacancy” sign wasn’t on because the Seaside’s whole neon system’d blown a few months before. But a wooden sign hung in the window of the office saying no dice to any travelers. Not that many stopped, only the regular round of salesmen who filled the Seaside’s seven dumpy little cabins during the week and the teenagers and college kids who used ’em on weekends.

The door was locked but I had a key. I went on in to Molly’s living quarters beyond the office. She wasn’t around. Probably down the hill by the lake.

The night air was chilly, though it was summer, high summer. Of course it’s always cool on the lake, nights. I don’t like the lake much. It’s pretty, like a picture in a travel book, with the neon reflected on the rippling water and all that sort of shit. I’m not much for pretty things, except for pretty things like Molly. Or most any woman.

Down the gravel hill path and onto the beach I went, keeping my hand over the holstered rod at all times. Never could tell when somebody would catch up with me and then all my fun and games’d be over. So I kept my hand over the rod constant, so I could take the pleasure of blowing out some guy’s guts before they took me. Sure they said I was a nut, a psycho (don’t you believe it!) but I was having a hell of a good time being one.

Molly was standing on the beach in a blouse and loose skirt that was blowing up over her thighs in the gentle lake breeze. She was looking out onto the picture-book lake, watching the easy movement of the waves.

She’d heard me coming, knew I was there without looking around.

“Hi, Harry. Nice night.”

“Hi.”

“How about some supper? I could go back up and fix us some.”

I didn’t answer her right away, so she turned and looked at me.

She was pretty, pretty near, her nice hazel-blue eyes the best part about her. Her hair was all right, too, for being all bleached out.

“Well, Harry, what do you say? Is it going to be supper? It’s a really nice night, maybe you just want to go for a row or something?”

I grabbed her at the waist, pulled her in close to me.

“A row, Harry? How’s that sound? The boat’s tied down at the dock. Come on, Harry, what do you want to do?”

I squeezed. Tight. “Trouble with you, Molly, is that you don’t know when to shut up. You shouldn’t talk so damn much.”

“Harry...” She laughed. I was squeezing her so hard it must have hurt like hell, but she only laughed. “Jesus, you’re mean, Harry, you’re one mean son of a bitch.”

I squeezed even harder. “And that’s what you like about me, ain’t it, baby?”

She threw back her head and laughed some more. “You’re goddamn right, Harry, you’re goddamn right.”

I latched onto her blouse and ripped it half off in one yank.

“Hey, you bastard! Take it easy on the clothes.”

“What’s wrong, honey? Thought you liked your Harry to be mean.”

She stood there and the cold got at her, turning her blue and goose-pimply. She clutched her arms over her breasts and her teeth chattered as she said, “Be... be-being mean’s one thing, Har... Harry... But wasting my damn m... money like that’s an... another.”

I wasn’t worried, even if I’d cost her some in torn clothes and the like. What the hell. I reached for her skirt to rip that off her, too, but she jumped out of reach.

“Damn you, Harry! Damn you!” But she wasn’t as mad as she was acting. “I’ll unhook it, damn it, don’t rip it off!”

She got out of the skirt before I could get my hands on it. She walked up to me and I slugged her right in the teeth and she went down like soft rope. I gripped her shoulders and pulled her up and bit into her mouth.

“Oh... Oh, Jesus, Harry, I love you...”

I laughed and bit into her bloody lips again. I liked the taste.

After I left Molly’s I stopped at the diner along Fourth Street for a bite to eat. Usually I ate at Molly’s, but she had this thing about if I came to supper, fine, I can have supper and what else I wanted after, but if I took what else first, I could go out and buy my own damn chow after.

The counterman’s name was Lou and he said, “Evening, Harry, what’s it to be?”

“Gimme number two on the breakfasts, Lou.”

I sat down on a stool at the counter and brushed the crumbs away from in front of me. A guy sat next to me sipping at his coffee. He turned and smiled and started in to talking like people do to cops sometimes, like they’re trying to get in good with them or something. He sounded like a salesman; they’re always getting friendly with cops. That’s how a lot of them find a woman for the night in towns. But you’d think a guy could tell just looking at me I’m no goddamn pimp. Anyway, he starts in to talking:

“You always have breakfast here, officer, at eight o’clock in the evening like this?”

“Sure I do, mister, if I don’t eat at my girl’s place.”

“Why breakfast? Any special reason, or you just like it?”

“I’m on night duty this week, pal, just got up. So I’m having breakfast.”

“Oh.” Back to his coffee for a minute, then: “Hear you’ve been having some trouble around here lately.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to get pissed at the guy; I hate pests, but I had to grin and bear it with guys like this so’s folks wouldn’t find out about the “beast” in me. “Yeah, trouble.”

“I don’t envy you guys on night duty when there’s a lunatic running loose. You work in pairs, surely?”

“Nope. Can’t afford to. Ain’t enough men to go around.”

“One man to a car? You have a small force, huh?”

“Yeah, the wages for a cop ain’t worth crap.”

“Pay is low, huh? That’s the trouble everywhere. It’s a wonder they find decent guys like you to take the job, fella.”

“Thanks, pal.”

“When a town pays low wages to cops, lots of times it attracts scum. You know, some nut who wants to wear a uniform and a badge. And carry a gun and a club.”

I turned around on my stool and looked the guy over. A short guy in a brown suit, with small blue eyes in an oval face and receding gray-brown hair. Little punk.

I said, “I don’t mean to be nasty, mister, but don’t put cops down, okay? They get paid nothing while they work their tails off for the public. Jesus, the b.s. people hand out to cops! How would you like to be a cop where there’s a psycho loose? You got some nerve, buddy, some nerve, you and all the others who don’t appreciate what cops do for you. Police brutality, police brutality, that’s all we get from Mister Public. Why, it wouldn’t be safe to walk the streets at night without us suckers in blue to do the dirty work for John Q. Citizen.”

The guy was sort of shaking now, spilled a little of his coffee. “Look... look... I didn’t mean anything... I just think you guys should get paid better, that’s all. That’s all.”

I smiled at him, both rows of whites. “Want sugar’n cream in your coffee, pal?”

He nodded nervously. I passed them to him and he poured a touch of each into his cup, then started in stirring, still nervous-like.

“I always take sugar’n cream in mine,” I said. “Can’t stand coffee black. Too damn bitter.”

My breakfast came and I started in on it, three pancakes, two sausages, some scrambled eggs, milk, and coffee. The guy next to me went through a hamburger and fries. Or tried to anyway. He was so damn nervous he could hardly swallow a bite. I convinced him to stay on with me for another cup of coffee. After a bit we started in walking out of the diner together, having gotten more palsy with each other.

Out in the cold night air he put a hand on my shoulder and said, “You seem like a decent guy to me, officer. I didn’t mean for you to take offense back there or anything. I just meant for you to see how I felt about cops getting paid bad. I mean, they should pay you guys more and keep out the riffraff, is what I mean. Those guys that just want to be a cop so they can hurt people and get away with it, you know, wear a blue suit and badge and carry a gun. No offense, right?”

I said sure. Did he want a lift?

“Well... my hotel’s just a couple blocks, officer.”

“Come on, I’ll take ya there.”

“Well... oh hell, okay.”

He climbed into the front seat of the car. He fiddled around with the call box under the middle part of the dashboard like a kid in a toy shop. I began to think he’d had a little to drink or something, the way he fooled with things and the way his mouth was slack. But I couldn’t tell for sure. Anyway, I got in and started the car.

“I’m staying at the Carleton, officer.”

“My name’s Harry. Wish you’d call me Harry.”

“Sure, Harry. Mine’s Joe, Joe Comstock. Salesman. Never been here before.”

“We got a nice little town here. Friendly.”

“Say, uh, Harry, I’m at the Carleton.”

“Yeah, Joe, I know that.”

“Well, uh, that’s the other way... down the street that way...”

“I thought maybe we’d go riding for a while, Joe. I sure could use a little spot of company. Nothing wrong with a little ride is there, Joe?”

“Oh... no. Okay. Sure. Hell, I got nothing else to do.”

He lit a cigarette and we drove in silence for a while. Then he came up with the best yet:

“You know, Harry, I been thinking. About this low pay for cops bit? Why, hell, Harry, what with the low pay luring the kooks and sadist-types, these eight rapes you’ve had here over the past few months? Guy in a bar told me about them this afternoon, you know. Those eight rapes?”

I kept my eyes on the road. “Yeah?”

“What with the low salaries and all, the rapist, don’t you think he... well, hell, he could even be a cop.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t mean anything against cops, mind you, Harry, you know that, I explained that... But don’t you think that could be possible?”

I braked the car.

“What are you stopping for?”

“Get out of the car, Joe.”

He opened the door and climbed out; I got out and walked around the car and motioned him over toward the bushes. He started looking around but he didn’t see nothing but trees and bushes and empty highway and night. I went over and clutched him by the arm.

“Now, Joe,” I said, nice and friendly like, walking him along, “let me tell you the real reason I brung you out here. You look like a fella I saw on a wanted circular at the station the other day. Now since you seem like a right guy, I brung you out here where you ain’t likely to be embarrassed. So now talk to me like a brother and tell me who you really are.”

His mouth dropped open. “Hell, Harry, I’m just a salesman.”

“The truth...”

“Harry... hell, Harry...”

“Put your hands in the air.”

He shrugged and put them up. I swung a hard right to his groin. He rolled up into a little ball and made crying sounds. Then I got him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him behind the clump of bushes, where we wouldn’t be seen if a car happened by on the highway. He kept on crying as I’d hit him pretty hard and I proceeded in to kicking him a few times while I fished out my big revolver. I spent a good five minutes whipping him with the gun butt. He made some sounds but didn’t say anything, except “Jesus,” once, just before he died.

The rest of the night was quiet.

That was my last shift of night duty before the weekend, which I got free. I’d be back to days starting Monday, always got a free weekend after working seven nights straight.

I stopped in at the station to see the chief. It’s not much as stations go, really, just one room in the city hall basement. It’s a white-walled room with lots of dirt rubbed in; only part that doesn’t show the dirty white walls is the part covered by the big bulletin board with the wanted posters and the like plastered to it. The chief sits in one corner behind a desk piled high with papers and a file cabinet on each end like two big bookends holding him in. That’s about it for our station, except for our traffic officer who’s got a real small office all to himself and the tons of unpaid tickets. Also there are a few cells adjoining the one main room. Otherwise, there’s only Jim Oliver, a guy who is a technician of some kind out at the hospital and tries to help with our “scientific methods” since our force ain’t exactly crime lab size. Mostly Ollie has been a joke with us.

Anyway, I stopped in to see the chief.

“Hiya, Ralph,” I said, both rows of white on parade.

“Hi, Harry.” Ralph didn’t look up from the paper he was reading. He was in his TV cop mood today, I could tell right off. Chewing on a cigar and not smiling. Rubbing a hand over his bald spot and tweaking his bulbous nose once in a while. Maybe he pictured himself like a TV cop, since he had an actual case on his hands for the first time. The rapes, I mean.

“Got anything on the raper yet?” I asked him.

“Nope. Not a damn thing. Ollie tried looking around that place the other night but, hell, he doesn’t do any good. I wish some of the state cops’d help out.”

“Ain’t their affair. ’Sides, Ralph, they wouldn’t do much better than old Ollie.”

“Sure they would. The bastard’d get his if there was some kind of responsible-type investigation made. But there’s not much chance of that in this town.”

I shook my head in concern. “It’s an outright shame a nut like that runs loose. A damn shame. Too bad the feds ain’t in on it.”

Ralph smiled around the cigar. “Damn right. They’d crack this thing in a hurry, wouldn’t they? But how the hell would the FBI get in on a local deal like this? Rape’s no federal offense.”

I shrugged, said, “No chance of the feds coming in, I guess. But this lad’d get caught real soon if somebody who knew what they was doing was after him, ’stead of us.”

Ralph shook his head. “Sometimes I wish I would have stayed over at the cigar store, but I thought this job’d prove easier.”

With a grin, I lit up a cigarette and said, “It would have if this sex nut hadn’t’ve turned up.”

“He’s not so nuts, Harry.”

“Oh, no, he’s not nuts, he just rapes and kills.”

“Kills?”

“Well, damn near kills. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t think he’s a nut all the way, you know. After all, he picked a town where he’ll like as not get away with all of it.”

“Maybe, Ralph. How about pouring me some of that coffee?”

There was a pitcher of hot coffee on his desk, from which he kindly poured me a cup.

“You know, Ralph,” I said, taking the cup from him, “there’s a joke been going around town lately.”

“That a fact?”

“Uh-huh. It’s about this girl who was married three times and was still a virgin. Know how she managed that? First she married a midget, see, and he was too small. Next she married a preacher, and he was too religious. Then she married a small-town cop, and he couldn’t find it.”

Ralph laughed and said, “There’s more truth than poetry in that one, Harry.”

“Got sugar?” I asked. “And cream? I always take sugar’n cream. Coffee’s way too bitter without ’em.”

It was a pity what happened with Molly.

It was a couple weeks later, I was back on the night shift and the night before I’d pulled off number nine, a plump blonde bitch whose hubby was off at reserve camp. It had been awful quiet on the day shift, no one had found the salesman’s body. They were all too busy worrying about rape number eight. Now that rape number nine’d come along, I figured that would give everybody something else to worry about for a while.

But I was wrong.

Because that night when we were sitting together down on the beach, Molly dropped a bombshell and told me she figured me for the raper.

“You’re wrong, Molly, dead wrong. I didn’t ever lay a hand on any woman but you.”

“You’re lying to me, Harry, I know you are.” Her eyes looked green in the light of the quarter moon. I smoothed a hand over her arm as gentle as I could, but she jerked away and looked out toward the water. The lake was smooth, with only a few easy waves.

“Nice night, ain’t it?” I said. “Be a nice night for a row.”

“I don’t... I don’t feel like a row tonight, Harry. I don’t... don’t know anymore.”

I grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head back — real gentle-like, of course — and said, “Molly, honey, would I ever think of touching another woman? You think I’d need to force a woman to get love off her?”

She pulled away again and started drawing in the sand with her finger.

“You ain’t listening to me, Molly.”

She kept on drawing in the sand. She seemed like maybe she was crying, but her voice was steady. “You’re a funny man, Harry. You like your love to hurt. You’re all take and not a damn bit of give.”

I gripped her arm, hard, and she yelped a little. “You’re dead wrong, Molly,” I said again. “Let me prove it to you. Go out for a row with me. Come on. I love you, Molly, you’ll see. Come on out for a row.”

She stood up, circling her bare feet in the sand. Her face looked almost beautiful streaked with tears the way it was. “You’re all I’ve got, Harry... I guess, if I’m right in what I say about you, then I don’t want to live anymore. And if I’m wrong about you, well, then things’d be okay again. But even then, even if you didn’t rape those women, it’ll be bad, though, won’t it? You and me just aren’t right, Harry, so I guess things couldn’t ever be fine, or good. Cause just like you like to hurt me, I like getting hurt by you, Harry... and that’s not right. But if you... if you haven’t been the one doing all those bad things around town, then a little boat ride wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

“Why, course not.”

“But if you were the one raping and all, then I probably wouldn’t be coming back from that little boat ride, would I?”

“That’s right, Molly. If I was.”

“But if not...”

“Then it wouldn’t hurt nothing at all, Molly, nothing at all. Come on, it’s a nice night. Come on.”

She turned and headed for the dock down the beach where the rowboat was tied. Her hair looked nice in the moonlight. She had nice legs when she walked, too.

We untied the boat, then I kicked off my shoes and together we waded into the water and pushed the boat out a ways. We climbed in and I started rowing. She didn’t look at me, just stared out at the reflection of the quarter moon on the glassy surface of the lake.

About halfway out I threw her over, held her head down till she drowned. She didn’t fight it at all. The place where she went under rippled out for a while, like a target, then got smooth again.

Later on I stopped at the diner on Fourth Street. I ordered a breakfast from the counterman, Lou, and started reading the evening paper.

Lou brought me my coffee and said, “Those guys ever find you, Harry?”

“What guys?”

A voice from behind me said, “Hiya, Harry.”

“Well, Frank, how the hell’re you? Going on duty soon?”

“Yeah, in a few minutes. You just finishing up your shift, huh?”

“That’s right. How’ve ya been?” I hadn’t seen much of Frank lately, since that night a while back when I had to stick around and play cop after that one deal. Should have hit that bitch harder.

“Been rough, Harry, what with my regular tours of duty and trying to look into this rapist thing in my spare time.”

“Any luck?”

“Not a bit.”

Frank was a small guy, but even a heel like me couldn’t help but take a shine to the son of a bitch. He was everything a cop ought to be, honest and family-loving and all like that. Only his clean living was taking wear, putting deep lines in his face, around his clear blue eyes, and it seemed like his sandy crewcut was starting back farther on his head every time I saw him.

“Say, Harry,” Frank said, “did you hear about the guy on the highway?”

I put down the paper. “What guy?”

“State cops found a dead guy out here along the highway a couple weeks ago, hushed it all up, not even the chief knew about it.”

“Oh, really? Ain’t that something.” Lou was there with my breakfast, but all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry

“That’s what I was trying to tell you about, Harry,” Lou said, putting the food down in front of me.

“What?”

“Those two FBI men was in asking about that little guy you was talking to in here a couple weeks ago. That little guy, remember? He was the one got killed, I guess.”

“FBI?” I said.

“Yeah,” Frank chimed in, “seems this guy was important or something. Joker was a government courier of some kind.”

“Govern... government courier?” I took a sip of my coffee as casually as I could.

“These FBI guys are putting on a full-scale investigation,” Frank said. “I talked to them this afternoon, before they started going ’round town to ask questions. Too bad we can’t get them to work on this rapist deal while they’re at it.”

“Yeah, too bad.”

“What’s this about you seeing that guy the night he was killed? And right here in the diner?”

“Oh, uh, I was just...”

Lou said, “Haven’t you talked to those guys yet, Harry? I sent ’em out to your girl’s place, figured you’d be out there at the Seaside with Molly. You must’ve just missed ’em.”

I took another swallow of the coffee and tried to think.

“What’s wrong, Harry?” Frank said.

“Hell,” Lou laughed, slapping the counter, “he’s drinking his coffee black. What’s with you, Harry? You know you can’t stomach it without cream and sugar.”