Authors: Bernard Schaffer
Superbia 3
WHAT IS SUPERBIA 3?
“Let them call me rebel, and welcome; I feel no concern from it. For I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.”
− Thomas Paine
"I
, for one, believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action."
− Malcolm X
"If they won't let you dream, do not let them sleep."
− Anonymous
Everyt
hing Has an End
Bernard Schaffer
Published by Apiary Society Publications
Edited by
Laurie Laliberte
Copyright 2013 Bernard Schaffer
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. No reference to any real person, living or dead, should be inferred.
Read That Part Again
r One
Frank crashed into the detective office, taking out a stack of files under the light switch, missing it, and fumbling his way across the rest of the room. He careened sideways toward his chair and collapsed, reaching out to clutch the arms to keep himself off the floor. He ducked his head under the desk and vomited, managing to grab the rim of the rubber trashcan in time to spit out the remaining mouthful of hot bile. He glanced up at the clock on the wall and blinked fat beads of sweat out of his eyes until he could read the numbers.
How much longer before shift change? How much longer before they find him?
Thump.
He stopped moving, ear cocked toward the ceiling above him. Something was moving up there. He hadn't heard any of the station's doors open.
Thump.
The sound of footsteps.
Maybe it was the heater,
he thought.
Or maybe the fat fuck managed to resuscitate.
Frank pushed up from the chair and raced for the door, desperate to get upstairs. If he could just get to Erinnyes first
, just get his hands on the bloated cocksucker's chest and pump it a few times he could at least say he'd tried to save him. That way, even if the bastard survived, nobody would know Frank had watched him code and ran for the door instead of calling for help.
He banged the walls of the tight corridor as he ran, kicking up dirty water from between the rotting floor tiles and tripping over the rubber mats stretched across them to keep people from slipping. He turned the corner at the bottom of the stairwell and froze, seeing a uniformed police officer standing at the top of the steps.
Frank swept his wet hair off his face and tried to swallow. "Hey," he managed. "What's up?"
The officer didn't speak. The lights above him were harsh and bright, cascading down on the murky hallway beneath, but Frank could see him back away from the top step and wave for Frank to come up.
"Okay," Frank said, playing it cool. Playing it off like,
what Chief who?
As Frank came up the steps, he realized he knew the cop but wasn't sure how. And it wasn't in a good way. This
happened most often at restaurants. He’d be out with Dawn and the girls, sitting down at a table, enjoying themselves. A regular family, just like all the others surrounding them, and then Frank would happen to look up at the kitchen’s swinging doors as waitresses hustled out to take orders and Mexican immigrant busboys slung heavy trays full of dirty dishes back to be scrubbed, and there, behind them all, the cook and Frank would lock eyes.
He'd immediately know
that he knew the guy from somewhere, knew it wasn’t in a good way, knew that this was not someone he wanted being responsible for the food safety of his family, and worst of all, by far, he knew that the guy recognized him. The guy saw Frank a mile off and knew how and where they’d met and in what way Frank had ruined his life.
To me, you were just another day at the office, buddy,
Frank thought.
It didn’t mean that much to me. Now please don’t poison my little girls.
Frank
followed the uniform down the hallway. On his right were the doors he'd spent his entire career trying to not go inside. The vacated Staff Sergeant's office and the very-much-occupied-by-a-recently-deceased-fat-bastard-of-a-Chief's-office. Frank expected the cop to stop at the Chief's door, thinking,
this is where they'll show me the body. This is where they'll take me into custody for leaving a man to die.
Instead, the cop walked past the doors and headed for the interview room. Hard light flared out from within and as Frank turned the corner, he squinted to make out the familiar
gray table and the old man sitting opposite of him. Sitting in Frank's spot. Sitting where the interrogator sat. "Sit down," the old man said.
Frank looked down at the hard bench that was bolted to the cement floor. "I never sat on this side before."
"It wasn't a request, Frank."
Frank
frowned at the old man and said, "I know you, don't I?"
"
That's not important right now. You're here to answer some questions we have."
There was a two-way mirror behind the old man. Dark shapes appeared in shadow form from the other side, watching him
the same way he'd watched a thousand skells giving a thousand bullshit stories. The old man watched Frank carefully, assessing his every sigh and what direction he looked in before he spoke, searching for body language cues and non-verbal communication proxemics. Frank instinctively coached himself on what to do. Don’t clasp your hands. Don’t fold your arms. Don’t be overly defensive. Don’t be passive if they accuse you of something heinous. Frank opened his hands and sat back, a physical gesture showing his intent to cooperate as he leaned back and said, "Now I know. How you been, Uncle Petey?"
Pete
r Lamia slammed his liver-spotted fist on the table, "Don’t call me that. That is not my name for you to call."
"It's how I know you. It's how Beth
described you to me."
"Well this isn't about me, Frank. It isn't about the things I did or didn't do.
I’ve been forgiven for that, you understand? I humbled myself and begged for salvation and accounted for my sins. What about you?"
"
What about me?"
"
What about your sins?"
"
You mean the times when I made a little girl put her mouth on my penis when I was supposed to be reading her bedtime stories? Oh wait, that’s right. That wasn't me. That was you."
"
Does that make you a good man, Frank?"
"
It makes me better than you."
"
Are you. A good man. Frank?"
"
Whatever I am is what you fuckers turned me into. But I'm still better than you."
Uncle Petey smiled slightly at that. He reached down on the bench beside him, under the table and came up with a case file stuffed with photographs and reports. He set the
folder down in front of himself, rested his elbows on it casually, and sighed. The shapes behind the two-way glass shifted and Frank felt the hair stand up on his arms, the flesh all suddenly goose-pimpled. "If you're a good man, can you explain to me what's in this file, Frank?"
"
What do I care what's in your file?"
"
Well, we’ll be bringing your wife, Dawn, in here next and going through it very carefully. Very, very carefully, I can assure you. I wonder if she’ll care what's in it?"
Frank
reached for the file but Uncle Petey moved with surprising speed and yanked it back. "How many times have you made an otherwise decent, God-fearing man stand in front of a courtroom full of his family and friends and admit to their darkest deeds, Frank? How many times have you used one singular transgression to discolor a man’s entire life? To reduce him to the lowest piece of human garbage with one sworn statement? How many times, Frank?"
"
A lot."
"
I was a good man, Frank. A good husband. I was kind and honest and generous to those in need, but you labeled me a child molester. Like I was some sort of sick predator luring children into vans with candy. After you arrested me, my wife took ill and I couldn’t properly care for her. I spent the last year watching her deteriorate, until finally she passed away. You stole her from me! You ruined our lives!"
Frank
shrugged, "I didn't tell you to go after that little girl. You did that all on your own."
"You weren’t there, Frank," Uncle Petey said. "You weren’t there to understand the intricacies of the situation and all that went up to it. To see how it evolved and became what it was. You just came in at the end and passed judgment."
Frank rolled his eyes and looked up at the two-way mirror, "Always with the excuses. You hear me out there? Every single fucking one of you pieces of shit can cry about what happened to you in the past that made you do what you did, but just because I sat here and nodded and pretended to understand, don’t think I did. Just because I was nice to you, don’t think I approved." He glared back at Petey, "You know something, it's a good thing we met when we did. I saved your ass from Vic that night because he was going to beat you half to death and I stopped him."
"That's right, and it was the only decent thing you've done," Petey said.
"But the funny thing is, I was wrong. Vic was right. He knew your family was going to protect you. He knew the court wouldn't put an eighty-year-old into the prison system. He knew that putting his hands on you would be the only real justice you'd ever face, and I stopped him, and I regret it. If that happened today it would be me climbing in the backseat with you, you son of a bitch and I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it."
Pete Lamia picked up the case file and leaned back, eyes twinkling with amusement. "So proud. So self-righteous." He tapped the file with his fingers, "Everybody's got excuses
for their crimes? I think you're right on that, detective. I think you are right on that."
Frank woke up snatching for the file, trying to rip it out of the old man's grip. His hands smacked into Dawn's back and she grunted in annoyance and muttered something. "Sorry,
hon," Frank whispered. He slid across the bed, closer to her, pressing himself against her back and dropping his arm across her chest. He cupped her breasts through her nightshirt and laid his face down behind her neck, listening to her breathe.
He la
y there like that for a long time, too agitated to sleep. He took a deep breath and rolled away from Dawn, searching the nightstand next to his bed for his phone. He held it down below the bed so the light didn't show and quickly punched in his four-digit code to unlock it.
He opened up his text messages and scrolled down to the most recent one, squinting in the screen's harsh glare as he typed
:
I can't do this anymore. I'm done.
Frank waited for the message to send, then he deleted the entire text thread. He scrolled through his phone's pictures and quickly deleted them. After that, he rolled back over and embraced Dawn again, kissing her on the shoulder and
whispered that he loved her. She muttered something reflexively in response.
It was enough.
The next morning, Frank woke up in time to roll over in bed and kiss both his girls as they left for school. In the flurry of quick, strawberry lip balm kisses, he saw Dawn standing behind them looking down at him. "If I knew you were just going to sleep in, I'd have asked you to drive them to school."
Frank reached for his phone to check the time. "I can't. I've got to meet everybody at the hospital this morning."
"Why?"
"They're pulling the plug. Jim asked us all to go and pay our final respects."
Dawn rolled her eyes, "Isn't it a little hypocritical? You all hated him.
He's lucky you even called 911 to save his fat ass. I'm surprised you didn't leave him laying there to die."
Frank
took a deep breath and said, "It's a thing Jim put together so we all can go as a group. That's something we've never done, and if he's trying to give us a new start, I'm going to help him."
"Okay." She hesitated before bending down to kiss him. "Will you be home afterwards? I'm off. I thought maybe we could go to the mall together before the girls got home."
She'd hesitated
, he thought.
But she did it anyway. That's why this is the right decision.
He covered her hand with his and stroked her knuckles with his thumb. "Absolutely."
Some of the guys showed up in uniform. Others looked like they'd just left working at a construction site, or worse, clothes shopping at the local
gun store.
Cops suck at dressing themselves,
Frank thought.
That's why they enjoy being told what to wear.
The officer in front of him, a tall, pot-bellied behemoth
, had shaved his head especially for the occasion.
Shaved most of it, anyway
. Brian Boxer left a small, circular growth of hair atop his head like the flowering vines of an eggplant, some kind of vestigial holdover from his days in the Marine Corps. "Nice haircut. You look like fat Bert. Like Bert after he ate Ernie," Frank whispered.