A Bad Night's Sleep Read Free

uniform.
    “Shit,” said the woman cop in the front seat.
    At the corner a concession truck advertised donuts, bagels, and hot coffee. No one was buying. Even the guy in the truck was leaning toward the crowd listening for details about blood and death. I could have told him the details were nothing he wanted to hear but he wouldn’t have paid attention to me. The unmarked car we were in swung past him onto 17th Street. A block to the west a hundred police cruisers stood in a parking lot, empty, engines cold, like the city knew nothing but peace. Before we reached them the unmarked car turned into a driveway that led to a side door into the station.
    *   *   *
    INSIDE, A ROW OF chairs was bolted to the floor and wall. The woman cop told me to sit and one of the men unlocked my handcuffs, then relocked my left wrist to a metal bar. The woman cop said, “Make yourself comfortable,” and the three of them went through a glass office door. The hallway smelled like sweat and ammonia. Guys who’d sat in the chairs before me had scratched gang graffiti into the plastic. I wanted to scratch Help! but figured anyone who ended up on these chairs couldn’t do me much good.
    I fished my phone from my pocket and dialed Larry Weiss’s home number. He worked late and then played cards most nights, usually arriving at his law office between ten and eleven A.M. He would schedule meetings at midnight and had bailed me out more than once at two in the morning without complaining, but he considered calls at dawn an insult.
    His wife answered the phone and handed it to Larry.
    “What?” he said.
    “Hey,” I said, “it’s Joe.”
    “I’m not a fucking banker,” he said. “Call me later.” He hung up.
    I dialed again.
    The phone rang twice and he picked up. “What?” He stretched the word, made it sound like the phone was hurting him.
    I gave him a short version of the night.
    When I finished, he said, “Holy shit, Joe.” The words of a professional.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Don’t say anything to anyone,” he said. “Not till I’m sitting by your side.” He paused. “But you know that already.”
    “Yeah, I do.”
    “They can hold you for twenty-four hours. Forty-eight, tops.”
    “They should be shaking my hand and pinning ribbons on my shirt. I ended the situation before anyone else got hurt.”
    “Yeah, but you shot a cop.”
    “A thief.”
    “A thief in a uniform.”
    “Yeah,” I admitted. “How soon can you be here?”
    “I’m stepping into the shower right now. Give me an hour.”
    “Thanks, Larry. I’m counting on you.”
    He let that sit for a moment, said, “Joe?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You might want a real lawyer on this.”
    “You’re real enough for me.”
    “I mean someone good.”
    “You’ve always done the job right,” I said.
    “I’m just saying. Dead cops and all. Someone’s gotta fall. I don’t want it to be you.”
    “I appreciate that, Larry.”
    “Keep your head together.”
    “It’s never been together,” I said. “Why should it be now?”
    We hung up.
    Voices came from behind the door where the woman cop and her partners had disappeared.
    I cupped the phone in my palm.
    The voices faded.
    I dialed my ex-wife Corrine at the landscaping business she ran from a storefront on the Northside. She was there most mornings before the sun rose.
    She had caller ID and she answered, frightened, “What the hell is happening?”
    Two years after the divorce we were working at getting back together. But every time we got close I screwed up and blew us apart. Still, I loved her and she said she loved me. I figured there was love in her fright.
    “You watching the morning news?” I said.
    “They’ve got pictures of you. They’re saying you shot a policeman.”
    “No—well, yeah, but not really.”
    “Where are you?”
    “They’ve got me at the First District Station. Not in lockup. Yet.”
    “Joe, what’s going on?”
    “I’ll need to explain later. It’s a mess.