Night Squad Read Free Page A

specials. Sure as hell he was one in a thousand. You see, boy, he was an honest policeman.”

          “And I mean honest all the way. Too goddam honest for this crummy world, I guess. Something almost saintly about him, and just like they gave it to the saints they gave it to him. They played him for a sucker; they kicked him around and laughed at him. They mauled his body, slashed at his nerves, and hammered spikes into his spirit. They worked on him plenty, believe me.”

          “At the precinct station they had him on the receiving end of all them scummy underhanded deals that you never read about in the papers. Time after time he'd risk his neck to make the pinch, to put the cuffs on some hood caught red-handed, guilty in spades. But it's one thing to bring them in and it's another thing to see them walking out free as the breeze. So you know what he did?”

          “He went right on bringing them in. And what did it get him? Lemme tell you, boy, lemme tell you how it is down here in the Swamp. A policeman who works in the Swamp has one of two choices. He either goes along with the game and gets paid off to look the other way, or he gets the lumps and the bumps, the bleeding and the busted bones.”

          “I tell you there were so many mornings when he came home with a bandage around his head, other mornings it would be his arm in a sling, or both eyes swollen almost shut and just as purple as plums. Mornings when he staggered in, holding his belly, coughing up blood. 'Hit with a crowbar,' he'd say with a shrug. And then he smiled so I shouldn't get gloomy. But I tell you, boy, it was hard to take, them certain mornings when he came home all smashed up.”

          “And then one morning he didn't come home.”

          “It happened in an alley. He was trailing some thugs and others moved in with iron pipes and baseball bats. Before he had a chance to blow his whistle, they had him down and were doing him in. How it was explained to me, they left him there when they thought he was done. But the bloodspots showed he came out of it and tried to crawl. He didn't get far, and he was too weak to blow the whistle. He was spilling a lot of blood and finally he sat back against a fence post. The blood kept spilling and after a while the smell of it reached the rats.”

          “That's how it ended, boy. That's what finally happened to your father, the good one, the clean one, the honest policeman. The rats got to him and he was meat for their bellies. You understand now why I gotta have the wine?”

          “But I never shoulda told ya,” she said to the boy whose face was expressionless, who sat there in the bed in the semi-dark room where the wet blade gleamed red and the dead rat stained the floor. “Honest policeman,” the woman mumbled, the wine in her head causing her to stumble as she headed for a chair. “They say it pays, honesty pays,” she said louder. And then, still louder, “I'll tell you how it pays—I'm a goddam expert on that subject—” but she couldn't go on with it and fell into the chair. She tried to talk again, but then the wine hit her and she passed out.

          The boy leaned his head on the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. He couldn't sleep. He sat up and looked at the dead rat. He got off the bed and went to the sink and cleaned the blade. Then he tossed the rat out the window. In bed again, he heard the sounds in the alley and knew that other rats were swarming in to feed on the dead one. The sounds grew louder, they were fighting over the meat. And then the sounds were very loud and the six-year-old boy shut his eyes tightly in a painful grimace and let out a moan.

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    Now, years later, walking east on Addison and passing the alley intersection and quickening his steps to get away from the sounds, he felt a slight twinge very high on his thigh near his groin. He told himself he was remembering something but he wasn't at all