The Devil Next Door

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…