The Devil Next Door (8 page)

Humming, he began to suck the juice from it…

11

After Louis was long gone, Officers Warren and Shaw and Kojozian stood around staring at the dead boy on the sidewalk, each happily reminiscing about other stiffs they’d been called in on. How they looked, how they smelled, what happened when they tried to bag them up. Warren was an old hand, just like Louis thought, and he seemed to have the best stories by far. But the other two kept trying to outdo him like a couple guys reliving their high school glories on the gridiron.

Kojozian, who’d only been a cop five years by that point, kept trying to come up with something that would impress Warren. “I tell you about that nut over on Birch Street a couple years back? Some old guy, retired railroad man, he took to the bottle and took to it hard.”

Warren nodded, as if he’d heard it too many times. “The sauce gets ‘em every time. Take my word for it. I could tell you some stories, boy. The old Sweet Lucy, they get a taste for it, look out, brother.”

“
Sure,” Kojozian said, “sure. This guy’s got it so bad that his wife decides he’s going cold turkey so she up and locks him in the coal bin down in the basement. Keeps him there like a week. You believe that shit? He’s in there, living in the straw, shitting and pissing himself. She slides food under the door for him, but no booze. She wouldn’t have called us, but she broke the key off in the lock. Well, let me tell you, we broke the door down and the smell that came out…oh boy, not nice. The old man was out of his tree with the D.T.s. He’d torn up his nose, clawed it right to hamburger because he thought there were bugs crawling in and out of it. We took him out and it was no easy bit, he bled all over my uniform shirt, just screaming about the bugs living inside him.”

Warren just kept nodding, watching the flies gathering on the kid’s corpse. Right then, they were investigating the crater at the top of the head. Warren finished his cigarette and flicked it at them. It scattered them, but the butt lodged right there in the sticky goo coming out of the skull.

It sizzled and went out.

Kojozian said, “Hot out today.”

He yanked his tie off and threw it. Then he unbuttoned his uniform shirt, took it off, and pulled off his T-shirt beneath. He threw it in the grass. He put his uniform shirt back on, but did not button it back up. The sun felt good on his bare chest.

Shaw mopped sweat from his face, just shaking his head. “Sure, goddamn booze. You remember old Father Brown over at St. Luke? Oh, now that was long before your time, Kojozian. Father Brown was a hell of a guy, let me tell you. That old sonofabitch ran the church, St. Luke’s school, the whole nine yards. Christ, he’d been over there since the forties.”

“
Forties?” Warren said. “Try the thirties.”

“
Yeah, well, Father Brown he had quite an operation going over there. Everyone loved him right to death. The church picnic in the summer, the fall carnival, the Halloween spookhouse, the Christmas programs…hell, what a guy. Every old lady in town worshipped that man.”

“
He used to have supper at our house twice a month when I was a kid,” Warren said.

“
Sure. He was like that. But what very few in this town knew was that he had an awful thirst. Once a week, usually Thursdays, old Father Brown would just get pissed three sheets to the wind. His housekeeper would always call down to the station and we’d go off looking for him. One time, there he is on Main, leaning up against a parking meter, pissing on the sidewalk.” Shaw was grinning now and couldn’t help himself. “Well, we get out of the squad car and he sees us right away, tells us to go get fucked and when we’re done with that to go fuck our mothers. That’s the truth, Kojozian. He was one mean sonofabitch when he got a bellyful.”

“
He was,” Warren said. “Christ, was he ever.”

Shaw went on. “Well, me and my partner, Bill Goode…you remember Goody, Sarge? Yeah, well we had a hell of a time with him. Brown had been a boxer in the old days and he still thought he was. He was swinging at us and we were dodging and ducking, but finally we got him under control. Neither of us thought about his johnson that was hanging in the wind. He pissed all over Goody, saved a few squirts for me. What a goddamn mess that was.”

Kojozian tried to think of another one, but drew a blank. He worked his shoe under the dead kid’s arm and made it bounce up and down, made the palm of his hand slap the concrete in a jumpy rhythm. Slap, slap, slap-slap-slap.

“
Boy, I’d hate to get piss all over me.”

“
Well,” Warren said. “That’s nothing. If all you get in this job is some piss on you, you’re doing all right. We picked up this character on a parole violation out at his house down by the train yards…one of those old houses down there, you know? Well, we came right in and the guy says, I gotta take a shit. Just let me take a shit. But we weren’t buying it. We cuffed him and threw him in the back of the squad car. We’re pulling out of the driveway and he shits his pants. Damn, I don’t think he shit in two weeks. He filled his drawers and it overflowed right down the leg of his pants. Christ, the smell. We took him down to the jail and hosed him off. I spent the afternoon cleaning shit out of the back of the squad car. Every time it got warm in there, even a month later, you couldn’t smell nothing but that guy’s shit.”

“
Oh yeah?” Shaw said. “I can live with the shit. That’s nothing. It’s the vomit I can’t stand. I pulled over a guy for drunk driving when I was working midnights. I pulled him out of the car and he vomited right on me. It was summer and I had my collar open and he puked right down the front of my shirt. For the next two hours, my belly is coated with this guy’s puke.”

Warren just laughed. “Puke is just puke. I ever tell you about the train that plastered that bum the first year I was on the Department? Holy O. Christ. It hit him and he got tossed underneath, cut into about fifty pieces. Middle of goddamn winter and we’re poking around in the snow, bagging up pieces of him. There I was, just green with it, carrying around an arm in one hand and a foot in the other. Another rookie found a hand and he stuffed it in my pocket because we didn’t have anywhere else to put it. We had those old leather coats with deep pockets then. It fit just fine. Well, it was a busy night and I forgot about the hand in there. We got off shift and we went and got loaded. I come home and I hit the hay. You shoulda seen the look on my old lady’s face when she looked through my pockets!”

They had a good laugh over that one.

Cars kept coming by, slowing down to get a look and Kojozian waved them along. This was police business here. When they got a look at him, they sped away.

“
Well,” Warren finally said. “This isn’t getting this stiff off the public sidewalk.”

“
We need a shovel,” Shaw said.

Kojozian was wondering where they’d get a shovel when he saw a guy down the block trimming his hedges outside a trim little ranch house. They all saw it same time he did.

Warren in the lead, they went on down there…

12

“
Excuse me, sir,” Warren said, taking his hat off. “We’re on police business here. What’s your name?”

The guy stood there in blue jeans and a tank top, clippers in hand. He was very neat and immaculate as was the lawn behind him, just as green as emeralds. He was staring at Kojozian. His shirt open, chest glistening with sweat.

“
What are you looking at?” Kojozian asked him. “You never seen a cop before?”

“
No…no…it’s just that…um…”

“
I asked you your name,” Warren said.

“
Um…Ray Donnel. What’s going on here…what’s this about?”

Kojozian chuckled. “He wants to know what this is about.”

“
Sure, he does,” Shaw said. “He’s just being a concerned citizen, that’s all.”

But Warren shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Donnel. This is police business and we’re not at liberty to discuss the particulars. We need a shovel, maybe those clippers, too.”

Donnel looked from one to the other. The blood had drained from his face. “I have tools in the shed.”

“He says they’re in the shed,” Kojozian said.

“Sure, where else would they be?” Shaw said.

He led them back behind the house and they all commented on his yard, how nice it was, how green the grass was, the nice edging job he’d done on his walk. They were all really impressed and they told him so. Inside the shed there were racks of gardening tools, spotless and shining. Shovels arranged by size. Donnel was definitely a guy who believed everything in its place and a place for everything.

Warren grabbed a shovel, admired the clean blade on it. “Nice,” he said. “Real nice. We’ll try not to dirty it up too much.”

“That’s okay,” Donnell said, fumbling over his words. “I’m…I’m just a neat freak, I guess.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Shaw said, mopping more sweat from his face.

“As long as I get ‘em back, I’m not worried.”

Warren handed the shovel to Kojozian. “You’ll get it back. I’ll see to it. We’re cops and you can trust us. We’re not thieves, you know.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that.”

“You believe this guy, Kojozian?” Shaw said. “He thinks you’re a thief. Thinks you won’t bring his shovel back. How do you like that?”

The big man bristled. “I don’t like it at all.”

Donnel looked at them like maybe it was a joke, but they were deadpan to a man. They saw nothing funny about a guy like him who thought cops were thieves. In fact, in their book, there was nothing worse than a guy like him that didn’t trust cops. What was the world coming to?

Donnel just shook his head, smelling something on these three he did not care for. Something savage, something desperate.

“
Listen, officers, I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t mean anything at all.”

The three of them were circled around him now like they didn’t want him getting away and Donnel was starting to sense that. Their faces were hard, their eyes shining like basalt. They licked their lips with the pink worms of their tongues. Shaw’s belly growled.

“
Maybe he wants the shovel back right now,” Warren said. “You better give it to him.”

Kojozian shrugged and swung it with everything he had at Donnel’s head. There was a clanging and Donnel dropped to their feet, a gash opened from his left ear to his right eyebrow, blood pooling out. Kojozian kicked him with a gore-encrusted shoe, but Donnel did not move. He just bled some more.

“
What a guy,” Shaw said. “You just can’t reason with some of ‘em, you know that, boys?”

They knew, all right.

They gathered up three shovels, a rake, and a wheelbarrow which would make carting the stiff around a lot easier. Shaw and Kojozian stepped out into the sunlight.

“
Hey,” Warren said. “You’re not gonna just leave him there, are you?”

“
Why not?” they said.

Warren shook his head. “This guy likes things neat. We should at least respect that. Give me a hand with him.”

Kojozian lifted the body up where a hook was sticking out of the wall. While he held Donnel, Shaw and Warren pushed the body onto the hook. It entered just beneath the back of his skull with a moist, grating sound. He hung there just fine.

“
That’s better,” Warren said. “Donnel would have appreciated that.”

“
I hope I look so neat when I’m dead,” Shaw said.

Kojozian studied the blood all over his hands. He was fascinated by it in a way that blood had never fascinated him before. He kept sniffing his hands. Finally, a loose and almost comical smile on his face, he rubbed blood all over his right index finger and painted his face with it. A huge red X that went from jawline to temple, the apex being dead center of his nose.

The other two did not seem to notice.

They all just stood there for a few minutes, approving of what they had done. Donnel was hanging from the wall, blood running down his face and out of his left eye. They listened to it drip to the floor for a time, then they went to take care of the kid…

13

Macy Merchant walked home from school that day in something of a daze. She did not understand what had happened. She only knew that it left her feeling very scared. Very disturbed. She thought it over and kept thinking it over and all she came up with was a blank. An absolute blank.