Mean Business on North Ganson Street (3 page)

Bettinger's extrapolation was instantaneous. “Where am I?”

“Did you see these?” the boss asked as he opened a catalogue and set it upon the edge of his desk. A finger poked a glossy photograph in which a woman who was far too pretty to be a police officer modeled a bulletproof vest. “A good one saves lives,” the fellow remarked, turning pages until he reached a dog-eared photograph of a hunk who held a sleek assault rifle in his well-manicured hands. “And guns that don't jam are helpful when people are trying to kill you.”

Inspector Ladell closed the catalogue, leaned over, and dropped it in a garbage pail.

“Because of you,” he continued, “we lost all of that gear—shit I've been lobbying for since the time when black presidents were science fiction. And incredibly enough, that's not even the worst part. Commissioner Jeffrey is now no longer certain that the mayor will approve our new benefits package.”

“Christ's uncle,” remarked Bettinger.

Inspector Ladell reclined in his leather seat. “The commissioner and I talked. He believes that the mayor would appreciate us getting rid of a certain detective.” The boss crushed the mint with his teeth and swallowed the shards. “Want another singular-choice question?”

No words came out of Bettinger's mouth.

“Is there any chance that you might just disappear somewhere?”

“As in teleport?”

Inspector Ladell nodded. “Something like that.”

“Never learned how.”

“Anything you can overdose on? Some medication your wife takes?”

“No. She's very healthy.”

“That's unfortunate.”

Bettinger needed a solid answer. “Does all this mean I'm fired?”

“I called around. Said I had a bloodhound that does really good work, a top-notch sleuth that shit on a priceless rug and can't stay in the house anymore.” Inspector Ladell opened a drawer. “You know anything about Missouri?”

Chills tingled the nape of the fifty-year-old detective. He hated cold weather and thought that people who chose to live in it were aliens. Reluctantly, Bettinger pushed the conversation forward. “It's a place, right?”

“Achieved statehood a while back. Has a city in the northeast part called Victory. Heard of it?”

“Has anybody?”

“Part of the rustbelt. Had a future back when Asians were Orientals.” The boss hitched his shoulder, and a manila file slid across his desk, stopped, and overhung the precipice like a diving board. “When you flush a toilet in Missouri, that's where it goes.”

Bettinger opened the folder and scanned the cover sheet, which told him that Victory had an alarming number of abductions, murders, and rapes. The city looked like a hunk of third-world flotsam that had somehow drifted into the middle of America.

“They want you,” stated Inspector Ladell. “They're reorganizing and need a detective. If you transfer, we'll pull the suspension.”

“I'm suspended?”

“Didn't I tell you?” A shrug curved Inspector Ladell's shoulders. “At this stage, I need to hurt you or the department, and I won't even pretend there's a dilemma. You're an asshole. But I'm trying to give you something because you're talented. Go to Victory. Finish your itinerary. In four years, you can retire, come back here, and throw eggs at the mayor's house.”

“Five years.” Bettinger looked at a photo of a ghetto that resembled Nagasaki after the bomb, peopled by the black survivors of a concentration camp.

“You might be able to swing a transfer at some point, though I doubt it—they're desperate for badges up there.”

The detective thought about his wife and children. Rubbing his temples, he looked at his boss, who had tented his long fingers.

“This is garbage.”

“It is,” replied Inspector Ladell. “And you earned it.”

 

IV

Smudged

The detective carried a box that contained clothing and forensics books through the revolving door and into the parking lot. Walking toward his dark green sedan, he noticed a discarded whiskey flask.

“Bettinger.”

The detective turned around and saw the anxious and wrinkled face of Silverberg, a man who had saved his life once and whose life he had saved twice.

“It's not right,” stated the Jewish fellow. “If a civilian wants to blow his brains out, let him. I approve. So would Darwin.”

Bettinger shrugged and continued toward his car, accompanied by his peer.

“Where're you going?”

“Home.”

“Call if you want to get a drink. Or go to the range. Or drink at the range.”

Bettinger unlocked the passenger door of his sedan and set down the box.

“You okay?” inquired Silverberg.

“Fine.” The distracted detective shut the door, rounded the vehicle, and reached the driver's side.

“You still have a marker with my name on it.”

“We're even.”

“We aren't. Anything. Anytime. Anyplace. You can call it in.”

Bettinger nodded, flung the door, and sat upon the warm upholstery. As he slotted his key, he glanced at Silverberg, who was one of the few friends that he had in the precinct. “Take care.”

“Anything. Anytime. Anyplace.”

The detective shut the door, jerked the gear, and departed from the parking lot of the building in which he had worked for the last eighteen years.

*   *   *

Suddenly, Bettinger was home. He could not recall the trip nor any navigational details like stopping or turning, but when he looked through his windshield, he saw that he had somehow arrived.

The sedan slowly drifted up the driveway toward the beige, four-bedroom house where the detective and his wife had lived since the birth of their first child. Its façade grew until it was all that he could see.

Both of the kids were still at school, and Bettinger knew that he should speak with his wife before they returned. He killed the engine, and the quietude that followed was like a headache.

Suddenly, the detective was walking toward his house, holding his keys, but not the box of possessions that he had taken from his office. Three stone steps altered his altitude, and soon he was on the landing, where he slotted metal and snapped bolts. He then entered his air-conditioned living room, discarding the circular shadow that the sun had stuck between his feet.

“Jules?”

“It's me.”

Soft footfalls sounded in the den, and Bettinger turned around. Approaching him was his wife, Alyssa Bright, a black woman who had a caramel complexion, deep dimples, big eyes, a small nose, and hair that was a dandelion array of medium-length twists. Her ripped jeans were discolored by royal blue paint as were the fingertips on her left hand, her Sierra University T-shirt, and her sharp chin, which she had evidently rubbed while inspecting her art.

“Is everything okay?” asked the woman, glancing at the clock on the wall.

“I was suspended for some stupid bullshit, and the only way I can dodge a termination is by relocating to Missouri.”

Alyssa was stunned.

A moment later, she padded across the room and took her husband's hands. “Is this definite?”

“Yeah. Name of the city is Victory.” Bettinger snorted. “Think of the worst slum you've ever been to, shit on it for forty years, and you'll have an idea.”

Alyssa pondered the thousand-pound lumps of information that her husband had just heaved onto the living room floor. “I spent some time in Missouri when I was a kid,” she remarked without any fondness.

The detective looked into his wife's eyes. “We'll do whatever you want and think is best for the kids.”

“Thanks for saying that.” Alyssa squeezed his hands. “Is there a decent city near Victory? Someplace safe where we could live?”

“Stonesburg. Eighty-two miles away.”

“A highway connects it to Victory?”

“Yeah.”

“Speed limit?”

“Varies, but mostly sixty-five.”

“So you'd have a ninety-minute commute each way?”

“About that.”

Alyssa rubbed her chin exactly where she had earlier applied the dollop of blue paint. “Let's go online and look at Stonesburg.”

“If you want to.”

“I'm portable. Karen doesn't like her new school, and Gordon could use some better friends.” The woman motioned to the study. “We need to see what our options are.”

Certain that he had married the loveliest and most pragmatic woman in existence, Bettinger set a kiss upon his wife's mouth and slung an arm around her shoulders, which were five inches below his own.

The couple entered the study.

Alyssa flicked a switch, and a standing lamp threw light on a desk that had a computer. “You're a total baby when it comes to the cold,” she said to her husband, “and you'll have to wear layers. Lots of them. Long johns and undershirts. Gloves and sweaters.” She turned on the central processing unit. “Socks. Earmuffs.”

“I hate it already.”

The computer began to whirr, and to Bettinger, it sounded like a blizzard.

 

V

Decapitated Signs

A thin slice of nighttime remained. It was the hour of newspaper delivery guys, people who worked the late shift, and tacit weirdos. Wearing a blue parka, brown corduroy pants, and gloves, Bettinger backed a yellow hatchback out of a two-car garage in Stonesburg, Missouri. His green sedan had died after six days of cold weather (which seemed like a prophecy), and since most of the family money was tied up in bonds and the Arizona house, the detective had been forced to buy himself a cheap replacement. This lack of available funds had also impacted the quality of their new home, which was small and the color of salmon. Bettinger did not relish the idea of signing a deed of ownership in Missouri, but if the place down south sold, the family would move into a better house, and he would buy a car that did not resemble a condiment.

Clenching his jaw so that his teeth did not chatter, the detective ratcheted the heater to its maximum setting, passed the edge of the frozen grass, cut the wheel, and drove along dark suburban streets until he arrived at the interstate, which he employed. The lavender night sky glowered as he sped north.

Bettinger surveyed the local radio stations and learned some stuff about Jesus Christ, who seemed to have an especially wrathful disposition in Missouri. A preacher spoke of omnipotence, and the detective cut him off mid-sentence so that he could drive through the cold without being browbeaten. The stereo that came with the car accepted only audiocassettes, and he needed to purchase a few for his daily commute. (Gordon seemed to think that tapes—like records—were making a comeback, but Karen had been completely oblivious of the format.)

Bettinger drove north. The few cars that he saw on the road were being driven by hunched creatures that had no faces.

An hour passed.

Golden light was shining on the hem of the eastern horizon when the detective saw a bent and gunshot sign that read
EXIT
58
: VICTORY
. He nudged his car toward the off-ramp and looked out beyond the safety rail. There lay a vast gray metropolis that resembled a capsized sewer.

Something growled deep within Bettinger's guts.

The lane veered sharply, and he dialed the wheel counterclockwise, matching the deviation. Loose stones rattled in his wake.

Ahead of the detective and down a steep decline stood a yawning mouth that was an underpass. The hatchback's headlights stabbed into the darkened enclosure, and a moment later, the vehicle was swallowed.

Muscles tightened along Bettinger's shoulders as he drove through the passage. Standing at the far end of the tunnel was a silhouetted figure who had an unnaturally long right arm. The detective slowed down, and it soon became clear to him that the asymmetrical fellow was holding a baseball bat.

Stopping the car, Bettinger glanced in his rearview mirror and saw a second man—a black fellow in an overcoat who stood seventy feet behind the hatchback. A metal pipe slid out of his right sleeve and clanked against the stone.

The trolls approached the purring vehicle. Red taillights and white high beams turned their eyes into glowing gems.

“Step out your car,” said the fellow with the baseball bat.

Bettinger withdrew his gun from the holster that lay on the passenger seat and then rolled down his window. “I'm a policeman.”

“No cop drives a vehicle like that,” remarked the troll who carried the pipe. “It's ridiculous.”

“I've got some proof I can give you.” Bettinger displayed his semiautomatic. “Nine pieces.”

The trolls paused.

“They're kinda hard to see,” the detective added, “but I'm pretty sure you'll feel them.”

“Don't,” said the one who carried the baseball bat. “We just messin' wit you.”

“Drop your weapons and step aside.”

The trolls bolted into the shadows.

“Don't be here the next time I am.” Bettinger's imperative echoed throughout the tunnel like the voice of a deity.

“We remember that car for sure,” replied one of the trolls.

The detective rested his gun upon the passenger seat and accelerated. Cold poured through the open window, burning his skin as he traversed the remainder of the tunnel.

Bettinger cleared the enclosure and continued underneath the lavender sky until he arrived at a red light, where he stopped, rolled up the window, and looked for signs.

Affixed to a pole on the right side of the road was a wooden plank that read
WELCOME TO VICTORY
. Human excrement had been smeared across the greeting.

“Classy.”

A glance at the bent sign on the opposite corner told him that he had come to a street named “Fuck Y'all”—a road that he did not at all recall from his map. The light turned green, and he accelerated, continuing down the decline. Scores of dilapidated charcoal-hued tenements drifted past, as did several nameless streets.