Wolf Hour

12 Hanson, October 2016

After saying goodnight to Kjos, Olav Hanson crossed the parking lot. Looked at his watch, a present from a time long gone. Already he regretted drinking those three beers. Or had it been four? In the first place there was the risk of being stopped, and he knew that one day he would meet some keen young policeman who would not be influenced by the fact that the man in the car he stopped was a fellow officer. There was a new generation coming up now, one that didn’t respect the old rules. In the second place, Violet would moan. Women were like dogs, the smaller they were, the more noise they made. But then Violet was one of the reasons he needed these few hours to himself after work, either in a bar or down by the river with his fishing rod. How come he’d ended up with her? Shouldn’t he have seen the warning signs when she said straight out she wouldn’t have Sean — Olav’s adult son from his first marriage — in the house? She hadn’t been willing to listen to Olav’s explanation that Sean had certain difficulties, she made him choose, her or his son, no discussion. So he’d made his choice. The wrong one. The way he’d got it wrong twice, with two different women. As he walked along Olav had to laugh. Bad choices, wasn’t that the story of his life? With the start in life he had he should have owned the world by now. If not for a bad knee and a wrong choice made over thirty years ago now. He’d never been caught, but there had been rumours back then. Enough that it was convenient to hop over him the next time a pawn was due for promotion.

Then, of course, it was more opportune to give a hand up to someone like Kay Myers. Female, black, probably lesbian too — the bosses could tick all the diversity boxes there. Diversity, my ass, meaning that now white, heterosexual men had to work twice as hard to achieve the same results. But that wasn’t what had tripped up Olav Hanson, he’d done that himself. And everything was down to a single moment of weakness, one single bad decision taken thirty years earlier. Did he regret it? Of course he did, but once you’ve let the genie out of the bottle... Sure, he’d got out before the train really left the tracks. And in days to come there would be times when he regretted that too. Regretted not going down in style. Instead, the daily regret and the humiliation of suspicion and the bitterness consumed him, reducing the giant he’d once been to a man whom even a hag like his wife thought she could talk down to.

Olav pulled out the keys to the Ford Mustang. Not that they would help him find a car that was so old you still had to use a key to lock it and start it. Back when he’d bought it and paid in cash it had been a beauty. Back in the days when he could pay for dinners and holidays, and Violet thought he was a helluva guy.

A figure ghosted out from between two cars.

Die Man.

That was Olav’s immediate response when he saw the hoodie. In the days when he was on patrol, a hood was always reason enough to stop someone, and surprisingly often it resulted in illegal weapons, narcotics or someone they were looking for. Only when he saw the glint of a knife did Olav start to doubt that he was seeing Die Man. And his mistake was confirmed — fortunately for him — when he heard the trembling voice:

‘Give me your money!’

The voice was that of a boy, and he was standing so far away he would have had to take at least two steps before he could use the knife. Die Man would never have sent a frightened amateur out without a gun.

‘Easy now, got my wallet here,’ said Olav as he dug his hand in under his jacket. The boy didn’t protest. Olav pulled the SIG Sauer P320 out of its shoulder holster and levelled it at him.

‘Don’t move or I’ll kill you,’ he said calmly but very clearly. In his experience, use of the simple, precise word ‘kill’ had a more powerful effect than any macho stuff about ‘blowing your brains out’ and other such euphemisms.

The figure twitched. Flight mechanism — the fight reflex had already disappeared.

He stayed where he was. The freeze alternative had triumphed.

Definitely an amateur. A pro would know the chances of someone bothering to shoot a fleeing would-be robber in the back, someone armed only with a knife, were minimal.

‘I’m a police officer,’ said Olav. He pulled his jacket aside with his free hand to let the boy see the badge on his belt. ‘Drop the knife and raise your arms up in the air. Do it quickly, because I still feel like killing you.’

The boy did as Olav said, and Olav felt something he hadn’t felt for years. A combination of excitement and calm. Of control in a critical situation. Of mastery. That was what he had been so good at, on the football field, on patrol, and in his first years as a homicide detective. Too good, perhaps. He had started to believe he could control everything.

The knife clinked against the asphalt and when the boy raised his arms above his head his hood slid down. Olav nearly jumped. Not just because the kid was so young, but because for a fraction of a second he reminded him of Sean. Sure, the kid was younger, and he was black, but the next thought came along just the same. That it could have been Sean standing in this kid’s shoes. That he could only hope Sean hadn’t already made the wrong choice, like the one the kid standing in front of him had made this evening. The boy’s lower lip was quivering, as though this was a result, a defeat, that didn’t come as any surprise. How old could he be? Sixteen? Seventeen? Alone, in a world of gangs, armed with a knife in a world of guns, still an amateur when kids of fourteen already had three or four shootings behind them. It was probably not the first criminal act the boy had committed, but perhaps the first robbery, it almost looked that way. And in doing so he had taken that decisive step into a world in which he did not belong, but one in which the door would slam shut behind him. The one wrong choice he would have to look back on for the rest of his life. Unlikely maybe, but not unthinkable either.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Olav.

The boy stopped staring at the gun and looked up at him and said nothing.

‘Your first name’ll do,’ said Olav.

The boy swallowed. ‘Elliot,’ he said, a sob in his throat.

‘OK, now listen here, Elliot. What do you need money for?’

‘Need?’

‘Is it for dope? Or for your sick mother?’

‘For shoes,’ said the boy.

‘Shoes?’

‘New Nike shoes.’

Olav wasn’t shocked. He gave an exasperated sigh. ‘How much do they cost?’

‘Cost?’

‘Roughly?’

‘Two hundred and forty-one dollars.’

‘OK,’ said Olav. He pulled out his wallet, wondering whether he was about to make yet another wrong choice. He lowered the gun and counted out the notes. ‘Here’s two hundred, it’s all I have. Is that enough to...?’

The boy nodded hesitantly. He looked as though he was wondering what kind of trap he was being lured into.

‘All I ask is that you promise me... or no, that you promise yourself one thing. That this is the one mistake you get away with. Like a mulligan in golf, get me?’

Olav saw that the boy didn’t understand. He held out the money to him.

‘Go buy yourself those shoes, Elliot. But every time you lace them up I want you to think that you got them so you could run from the life that’s chasing behind you. And I hope you win, boy.’

Elliot grabbed the notes and the next moment was gone in the darkness.

Olav stayed where he was. He could hear himself panting and guessed that his pulse was racing faster than he realised. He knew he could never tell Violet what had just happened. She wouldn’t understand, she’d say he threw his money away, even rewarded a criminal for being just that. Nor could Olav explain to her that he’d been thinking of Sean, and that maybe the world would reward his action by giving his own son another chance. She would have laughed herself sick, and Olav hated, hated that laughter.