Harley hurled. It was actually the flu, but vomiting worked well toward legitimizing his police undercover role as a junkie/dealer. Tossing your cookies into a street trash can is hard to fake, so it is accepted as legit. He was pissed that there was no one around to witness.
His cell phone vibrated in his inside pocket. It was his personal phone and he knew who it was. She had already left three unheard messages that he hadn’t listened to because he knew what she would say. His wife was “fed up with this shit”. The incoming call likely meant that message number four was being harangued at that very moment. He ignored the call; it wasn’t like he was in any position to answer anyway.
He had been undercover for almost three months. His hair was spiky with uneven blonde and red tips. He hadn’t shaved in four days and the splotchy stubble felt like a Brillo pad. He had endured three months of going to family functions, slumming like a lowlife, unshaven, often bruised, and always anxious. Three months of trying to explain to his wife that he might not be home for a few days. Three months, where he was mostly successful, ducking the hookers and coke whores who would do anything for a toot. Three months of lying, dealing, cheating, maneuvering, convincing, conniving, stealing – all while using public restrooms with foul smells and no toilet paper.
His whole life had become one fluid, mercurial lie that he had no way of tracking and no chance of changing. He had lost the point, blurred the line, lost sight of where his undercover life stopped and his real life began; if he even had a real life, it was hard for him to tell.
Today was the same ol’, same ol’. Harley looked up from the trash can just in time to see the big, bondo-pasted 1989 Impala screech around the corner and head straight for him. Echarnito Jones, a nasty street lord, built like a brick shit house, was behind the wheel. Echarnito hit the brakes at the last minute, which allowed Harley to dive onto the hood to avoid being run down. The screeching stop then deposited him onto the sidewalk and almost into the trash can he had just been retching in.
The door burst open and Echarnito Jones jumped out. He was wearing a black muscle shirt that highlighted every tendon. The dark tattoos pasted up and down his arms and neck blended into his even darker skin. He took three powerful strides and stood over Harley.
“Harley V-Rod! You just the white-assed motherfucker I been looking for. What’s the matter dawg? You look like shit.” Echarnito’s yellow and gold teeth flashed as his smile widened.
Harley pulled himself off the curb. His stomach rolled and he managed to swallow the bile before he chucked it. He examined his bloody knee through his torn jeans and said, “You just hit me with the fucking car, asshole.”
“Shit, you call that gettin’ hit? Hell, you ax Jerome what getting’ hit mean, he tell you a whole diff’nt story. ‘Course, he would, he could still talk,” Behind Echarnito stood two soldiers, both muscle-bound black men in their late teens. Apparently, they remembered Jerome and found his untimely end a source of intense humor.
“Who’s Jerome?” Harley asked, satisfied that his knee was just scraped and no significant damage had occurred.
“Make no difference, he gone. So dawg, I hear that you doin’ retail now. That true?”
He looked at Echarnito and hoped to see that mischievous glint in his eyes that said he was bullshitting. What he saw were fisheyes, cold, dark, and empty.
“What asshole told you that? You know better. I only wholesale and at this point in time, you are my only customer. What reason would I have to retail?” Harley stood up and brushed off his jeans in an aggressive, put-out manner.
Echarnito slid onto the front fender of his Impala. He put one foot on the fender while the other was on the ground. His right arm rested on his elevated knee. He spat something green onto the street. “Now, that what I say. What reason you got to retail? I got no fuckin’ idea, so you tell me?”
He looked at the two soldiers standing next to Echarnito and saw them start to fan out, one to the right, one to the left.
“Look man, I got no nerve to retail, I got no time to retail and whoever the motherfucker is that told you I retail, I want to see them right away, and I’ll be sure he meets Jerome.”
Echarnito let out a howl. “Meet Jerome! That a good one, V-Rod, that’s fuckin’ funny.” He slid off the car, bent over in laughter.
The soldier on the right had a huge burn scar on his left bicep; the one on the left had a lip ring. Both were taking nonverbal cues from Echarnito. They started to laugh as well, and they all moved a bit closer to Harley as they did.
Using the laughter to motivate their move, the two positioned themselves in an attack position, flanking him. Judging from the aggressive movements of the one on the right, Scar Guy, Harley knew that this soldier would be the first to make a move. He shifted his stance to a right-hand attack.
Harley saw it coming before Scar Guy had made a fist. Scar Guy swung upwards from the ground like a Tiger Woods driver. His punch was aimed to smash into Harley’s head. But when the punch got to where it should have connected with his face, it found an elbow. Scar Guys knuckles shattered. As Scar Guy screamed, Harley grabbed him by the back of the neck and swung him around just in time to let him take the full force of the punch thrown by Lip Ring. Lip Ring caught Scar Guy right on the jaw and Scar Guy fell like a Communist dictator.
Harley reached over and grabbed the upper lip of Lip Ring. He was a smaller version of Scar Guy but still formidable. A quick jab, a throat poke, and Lip Ring fell next to his friend. Harley opened his hand and threw the torn-out lip ring at the kid’s head. He swung around to Echarnito, expecting the fight to continue.
“Okay, stop it. Stop it right now!” He yelled at Echarnito before the gun came out of his belt. He extended his arms, palms facing his assailant. “I ain’t doing retail. End of story.”
Echarnito stepped over the writhing bodies of Scar Guy and Lip Ring, who were both sucking air, and walked toward Harley. He looked in his eyes, searching for the slightest twitch of deceit. He stared into Harley’s eyes for a full twenty seconds until he heard a cell phone vibrate loudly. Out of habit, Echarnito’s hand went to his hip and patted his three cellphones. None were vibrating. He looked at Harley, who was still breathing hard, and nodded, indicating that it must be his phone that’s buzzing. Harley felt his hip and took a quick glance at the screen. “Fucking bitch. Leave me alone,” he said to the phone. Looking at Echarnito, he said, “Old lady. She can wait. Been buggin’ me to go to work for her father. Can you fuckin’ believe that? Like I’m gonna work for that fat sonofabitch. I’ll punch his fucking clock, clean it while I’m at it.”
Echarnito laughed. “You know, V-Rod, I gotta hand it to you dawg, you the ballsiest sonofabitch I ever met. And you know what? I believes you. I know you ain’t gone retail. Okay, so dat’s done. Now, what you got fer me?”
It was over like that. One minute, Harley Vigotto, street name Harley V-Rod, whose real name was Steve Talbot, was looking at getting beaten, if not actually shot in the head, and the next minute he was lining up a buy that could get his ass off the street and back into a decent gig, maybe burglary or vice. Seeing that he had passed Echarnito’s little pop quiz, he could set this sucker up and nail his ass to the wall.
“I got three ounces of pure Colombian. Uncut, unfucked with. You can cut this sucker down to about nine ounces and still have your customers kiss your big black dick,” Harley said with a shit-eating grin. Shattering this euphoria, his cell phone vibrated again against his hip.
“Man, you got to control that bitch,” Echarnito laughed. “She on yo ass.”
Harley walked away a few steps and pulled the phone off his belt loop with enough force that he ripped off a belt loop in the process. Flipping it open, he yelled in a coarse whisper, “What!”
A long pause was followed by a soft whimper. She was crying. “Oh, come on, you gotta give me a break. What are you crying about?”
Two sharp inhales followed by a sob, “You’ve been gone for three days. The least you could do is to call me back.” His wife, Susan, the goddamn drama queen, was even more dramatic when she was talking on the phone than she was in person. It was like the anonymity of the sound waves made her a Tennessee Williams character.
“I’m working. Sometimes shit happens and I can’t call.” A quick glance over his shoulder and he saw Echarnito helping his wounded soldiers to their feet by kicking them each in the nuts.
“Teach you to take a beating from a skinny white boy.” He yelled as he kicked them again.
“You’re always working. We were supposed to go to Jamie and Pat’s for dinner. What am I supposed to tell them?” Susan whined.
A dinner at Jaime and Pat’s meant drinking wine till they puked and eating a pizza at eleven o’clock. “Tell’em I’m working. We can reschedule. Besides, I feel like shit.”
“You feel like shit, you should be where I am. Look, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. You’re never home and when you are, you’re always thinking about work. And the hair and the beard thing, I just hate it.” The sobbing made her hard to understand.
“For Chissake, look, I got a kick ass drug dealer about ten feet away who’s already tried to kill me today. Can we talk about this later?” As soon as he said “kill me,” he knew it was the WRONG thing to say.
A scream emitted from the cell phone loud enough for Echarnito and his compadres to hear. They looked over to him with that knowing look that something was up, and the fear that it might have something to do with them. To cover, he said, in a loud, clear voice, “Listen, you fucking bitch, when I want to come home I’ll fucking come home.” As he said it, he spun around and hurled the phone into the brick wall of the secondhand furniture store on the opposite side of the sidewalk. The phone shattered, spraying plastic fragments of modern technology across the sidewalk. “Man, I hate that fucking bitch!” he screamed and moved in a threatening manner toward Scar Guy. He got the flinch he wanted and backed off.
It was just at that moment that he had hurled again. Some of it landed on Lip Ring’s leg. Lip Ring went ballistic. Some tough guy he was.
Once Harley had wiped his mouth, he turned back to Echarnito. He wasn’t worried about being jumped at that point; scumbag drug dealers are just like anyone else when it comes to these things, no one wants to get hurled on.
“Look, dude, let’s get somewhere a bit more private and I can show you the shit. You’re gonna love it.”
Echarnito looked around and said, “Hop in, got a place right over der.”
Harley moved to the passenger side of the Impala, front seat. He threw a look at the two goons who got into the back seat without questioning the move.
“Don’t you puke in this car, you hear me? I’ll fuckin’ kill you for dat,” Echarnito said, and Harley did not doubt that it was true.
A few minutes later, they were in a deserted railroad car behind an old warehouse off Old Clinton Road. Harley pulled out the product, laid down a few lines, and was giving Echarnito a taste. “I got three ounces of this shit. It is primo.” He forced a giggle into his voice that, in turn, brought up a plaster of puke which flew from his mouth.
Echarnito jumped back and screamed, “For chisskae motherfucker. Watch that nasty shit. Man, I’m trying to do biddness here. Shit. You all jacked up that fo sure. You need some of dis?”
Harley stumbled away and threw up again. He wiped his mouth and caught his breath, “No, I’m okay. Just the shit, you know. How’s that shit I’m selling?”
Echarnito moved to the other side of the car, away from the vomit pools. A quick sniff and half of the taste was gone up Echarnito’s left nostril. A practiced flick and the other nostril got its share. “Not bad, dawg. Same deal as usual, right?”
Harley pulled the rest away and folded up its little paper parcel, “Actually, I got to redo the deal. You see, the overhead here is a little higher than usual, so I gotta go two hundred more … per ounce.”
Echarnito licked his fingers and ran them around each nostril, attempting to capture any stray grains that might have escaped his Hooveresque inhale, “What’s that, dawg?”
“I gotta go higher this time around. I gotta get two Cs more.” Harley knew, that Echarnito knew, that Harley knew how dangerous it was to fuck with Echarnito’s money. A guy going for a bust wouldn’t push it like this.
“Fuck you, same deal.”
“Can’t do it. Gotta go two Benjamins.”
Echarnito stepped closer to him, but Harley didn’t move. Encharnito’s big lower lip jutted out and his squinted eyes burned a hole in Harley’s forehead. Still, Harley didn’t move. Echarnito stepped closer, cocking his big, bald head and letting Harley get a good whiff of his body odor. Harley didn’t move.
They stood staring at each other for thirty seconds before Echarnito finally blinked. “Yo breath stink like shit. I can go one fifty tops. Dats da deal.”
Harley wanted to push back; he wanted to say one seventy-five, just to fuck with him, but he had him, and he wanted to lie down. “You fucking crook. Fine, One Fifty per. Fuck you.” They both laughed.
Harley drove home about an hour later. He took the usual long way around to be certain that he wasn’t tailed. It would be tough for him to explain how a lowlife like Harley V was living in a four-bedroom rancher in Northeast Little Rock, with a hot wife and two teenagers. It would be tough to explain the boat in the driveway, the green Saturn Vue, and the blue VW bug. Echarnito would have an issue with his lifestyle if he ever saw him for real. As he drove, he tried to remember what his ‘real life’ was.
His name was Steve Talbot. He was a 37-year-old guy of English/Irish background. He was a softball coach, a flag football player, and he loved to fish. He had a wife, Susan, two kids, Ronnie and Gail, and a dog named Billy Ray Smith. It was a world away from Echarnito, Scar Guy, and Lip Ring.
Harley began his law enforcement career at twenty-two. Fresh from the Marines, a big swinging dick. It was a natural progression. He applied, shot through the academy, and, six years later, was the youngest street detective in the state’s history. He thought it was just so damn easy. Gifted as an investigator, he soon grew weary of the grind; crime scene, something stolen, broken or destroyed; people hurt, wounded, lost; kids-wives mistreated, disfigured, abused; lives in ruins.
It was fucking futile. As hard as Harley worked, it never stopped. Assholes were like weeds; you pull one out by the roots, another pops up a few days later. There was always some asshole burning cigarette holes in his kid, rearranging his wife’s face with a hot iron, poisoning his neighbor’s dog, cat.
The opportunity to go undercover gave him a better chance to make a difference; it challenged him. He loved it. But he discovered that the weeds grew even thicker in this world. Seems that there are even more scumbag drug dealers and wanna-be’s than there are crooks.
Walking into the kitchen, through the garage, he hung his keys on the hook at the end of the cabinet. He took a cursory look at the mail sitting on the brown tile counter. When did it become brown tile? Last time he looked, it had been green Formica that he had installed himself when they moved in. Susan had long ago taken responsibility for paying the bills, so there was nothing of interest in the stack of envelopes and advertisements. He called out to see who was home. “Hey guys, you here? Ronnie, Gail? Dad’s home.” Silence.
He opened the fridge and popped open a beer. Six hours later, seven empties beside him along with a half-empty bottle of NyQuil, he woke on the couch and crawled to bed. Again, alone.
The sun hit him square in the face at nine-thirty the next morning. He rolled over and confronted the empty spot next to him. Guess she didn’t understand the code for “There is a drug-crazed killer next to me, I can’t talk now.”
“What the hell is going on?” He said out loud, his voice hoarse and scratchy. It seemed that everyone on the street was trying to kill him and everyone at home wanted him dead. Maybe he should just kill himself and make everyone happy. The department talks about it all the time. He must have sat through five different seminars in the last two years, all detailing the cop suicide rate, the cop divorce rate, and the connection between the two. He had always considered divorce to be the preferred option and laughed at the thought of wanting to eat his pistol. But at this moment, for the first time, it had some appeal.
He assumed that Susan had taken the kids to her friend Kaelan’s house. She always ran there whenever there was a problem between them. He never even worried about them anymore, knowing they were safe at Kaelan’s. But the drama of running off when she was mad had worn thin. She wants drama? Well, how dramatic would it be to drag her ass home and find his brains all over her new brown tile counters? Ya think blood would stain the tan grout? That would piss her off. How fucking dramatic would it be to leave a note that just said, “You happy now?”
He could never please her, not in a million years. Not unless he was a desk jockey, maybe run the evidence locker or the front. Fuck that. He was a cop, and he had skills; no way he’d waste them behind a desk covered in old Styrofoam coffee cups and stacks of triplicate forms. He’d eat the damn gun before he ever considered that?
Steve rolled over onto his stomach and hugged his pillow close to his chest. He faced the empty spot in the bed where Susan was supposed to be. She was the reason he was supposed to consider the desk job. Ronnie and Gail were the reasons he was supposed to consider the evidence locker. But did he ever consider a desk job? Not a chance. Hell, he’d been on the street for over fifteen years and he was fine. Never been shot, still able to handle himself; he was not anyone to fuck with.
But at the end of the day, how important was that? How many guys went through life without ever having to worry if they were someone to fuck with? How many guys made it home every night without their wife and kids heaving a sigh of relief? No one he knew, but his was a different world.
He heard the garage door open. She was home, time for the showdown at the Harley V. Corral. He got up and went to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. If he took a shower, he could keep her at bay for a few more minutes. This act was so old it had brown spots, but he knew it was time for the showdown.
Pulling a t-shirt over his wet hair, he walked down to the kitchen. Susan was unpacking groceries. She had a tight waist, long legs, and her shoulders were curved and toned. Her auburn hair reached the center of her back and flew from side to side as she moved. She hadn’t turned around or acknowledged his presence. After a few moments of silence, interrupted only by the opening and slamming of cupboard doors, he said, “Hi.”
The word did not affect her at all. She continued putting away groceries and ignoring him. He tried again, “So, I take it you’re mad,” he said.
A bag of noodles flew toward his head. He caught them by instinct and stared at her. He supposed he should have been grateful that it wasn’t a can of soup, but that really wasn’t the point.
“Hey, I told you I was working. I didn’t mean anything by it. I had to make it look good.”
“To who? Who do you have to impress so much that you call your wife a fucking bitch?” She screamed at him and threw a box of Top Ramen.
“I am done with this, Steve. I am done with the lying and the bullshit. You have a choice to make, me and the kids, or the job,” She stared at him without an ounce of humor in her soul. “You let us know what you decide. Until then, find another place to live.”
There it was, so simple, so direct, so honest. No options, no confusion, no convoluted possibilities, just a straightforward “yes” or “no” would solve this dilemma. It made it hard to negotiate.
“Look, I have to work and this is what I…” She cut him off like a price tag on a new shirt.
“Us or the job. Is that clear enough?” He was pushed out of the way so that she could get to the pantry and shelve the pasta.
He stood there for a few more moments, then turned and walked out of the kitchen into the family room. There was the TV and the framed pictures of their lives together. There was the ratty old chair, usually his place when they watched television. There was the stain on the carpet where he had gotten drunk and cut his hand. He always meant to replace this carpet, just never got around to it. There were the memories of the Christmas trees against the far wall, the presents stacked high, and the squeals of little kids ripping them open. All of these things were simple and clear; they were supposed to represent his life and the person he really was. His eyes started to water, and he knew what he had to do.
He walked into the kitchen and looked at Susan. She stopped her unpacking and looked back; her face scrunched with unyielding determination.
“Fuck it,” he said. He turned and went upstairs. He packed a bag, grabbed his laptop and a few personal items, and took the back stairs to the garage. Twenty minutes later, he was at the station house discussing tactics on how they were going to bust Echarnito Jones, feeling as though he had, at least, at long last, been honest with himself.
He’d arranged to meet up with Echarnito later that afternoon. They were in the same abandoned train terminal, only this time Harley carried a backpack with three ounces of pure cocaine. He waited while Echarnito’s boys went through the product to verify the quality. Every once in a while, the Lip Ring guy, now sporting a row of neatly placed stitches on his lower lip, would look over with hate in his eyes. Harley would stare back, daring him to make a move. Actually, hoping that he would..
“You one crazy, white-ass motherfucker, that’s for sure,” Echarnito said, “But I gotta tell ya, I likes ya.”
Harley looked at the large black man and said, “Well, I can fucking die happy now, can’t I?”
Echarnito laughed out loud. As his laughter died down, he slapped Harley hard on the shoulder, nearly knocking him off the crate he was sitting on. Harley adjusted his position and was about to respond when the amplified voice of Lt. John Jansen echoed through the room.
“This is Little Rock Police. Put your hands in the air and don’t move.”
From all four corners of the room, police officers ran into the terminal. Each was in full riot gear, weapons drawn, wearing Kevlar vests and helmets.
Harley immediately thrust his hands into the air. Lip Ring guy and Scar guy, who happened to be hunched over a bag of the product, both threw a quick glance at Echarnito. Echarnito’s hands went for the gun in the small of his back, and his two flunkies followed suit. They all came up firing.
Harley dove to his right and rolled, trying to distance himself from the three drug dealers. The station had been abandoned for many years, and there was literally nothing in the room to hide behind. After rolling a dozen yards from the others, he covered his head and curled up into a ball.
It didn’t last but ten seconds. The space went from audacious decibels to total silence. Harley could smell the burnt gunpowder from the dozens of rounds that had been fired. White smoke hung in the air like a foggy, spring morning. The sunlight shot through the windows, high above, and lit up the smoke, forming a divine accent for the death tableau it illuminated. Echarnito, Lip Ring, and Scar Guy were all lying flat, blood seeping out of the many bullet holes that peppered their bodies.
Harley waited for the ‘all clear,’ still curled up with his head tucked deep under his arms. He felt like a turtle, pulling his head into his shell for protection.
“All clear!” Yelled one of the officers. Harley stirred and began to rise. As he did, he pushed his jacket back and placed a hand on his hip.
“Well, it took you guys…”
A rookie officer, a guy that Harley had never met, a guy that had been on the force for a week, saw the gesture as Harley placed his hand on his hip. He screamed out, “Gun!” He turned and fired on Harley, stopping him in mid-sentence.
The bullets hit Harley square in the chest, lifting him off the broken tile floor and sending him flying backwards, his body twisting and twitching with each impact. As he was airborne, Harley’s last thought was, “Ain’t this a bitch?”
The burst of the rifle left little doubt about the outcome. As raw as this rookie was to the force, he had exceptional accuracy with his weapon. Harley was dead before he hit the floor.
At the funeral, Susan, Ronnie, and Gail sat together at the graveside. Susan sat with a stoic, confused look on her face, as though she had been cheated out of a final opportunity to tell him exactly what she thought of him. Steve’s death benefits had been cleared and the family would be taken care of. Susan found that to be some comfort for the pain and suffering of having to live with him. The two officers who stood by the casket folded the flag that had been draped over it. The Master-at-Arms took the flag, in full pomp and circumstance, to Susan and placed it on her lap. The twenty-one-gun salute rang out and the mourners filed by the grave, one by one.
Back at Steve’s house, the guests milled around a table full of food, talked about what a great guy Steve had been, and regularly offered their condolences to Susan and the kids. One by one, they spoke their final “I’m so sorry” and left for home, the station, or wherever cops went after a cop funeral. A few of the women stayed behind and helped clean up while Susan sat in front of a black television screen, staring into her future.
As the sun set on that first night, over Harley’s grave, the headstone read, “Steven Talbot, a police officer, a father, a man – nothing more.”