Shoot the Moon

Chapter Fourteen - The Cops Bust My Chops

I stood over the bleeding kid and asked him a few questions. He said something but all I could catch was pendejo, not a friendly term of address. He was enunciating even worse than he had with a lung full of toilet water. His face was out of alignment where I'd socked him with the dog food. He lay there in his blood, lips drawn back over his teeth.  

The cops who answered the call were the same two as before. The young eager beaver came charging down the pavement. I called out "Watch your step" but he slipped in the blood and the OJ and did the splits. I tried to stay out of the line of fire in case his pistol went off. By the time he got himself under control his partner had caught up. The rookie lifted his shoe out of the gore and said, "Jesus". 

They didn't get any more out of Junior by asking polite questions than I did by flushing the toilet on his head. And they spoke better Spanish. He just lay there with his teeth bared. He had some ID in his wallet this time, in the name of Perez.  

Finally the stretcher people arrived. One of them chewed me out for the tourniquet. I had loosened it once or twice, but he was bleeding so badly that finally I cinched it up tight and left it. You can lose a leg that way, they said. Pressure would have been better, they said. I was sitting on a car's fender. I smiled and said that if they thought I was going to sit there and hold this asshole's leg they were stupider than they looked or more dedicated to their job than was good for them. 

I identified the man as one of the assailants that had been the occasion of their last visit to my house. I told them that the machete was his and he'd cut himself. I said, yes, I was responsible for his fractured jaw. I'd hit him with a bag of dog food. They wrote all this down. I left out the part where I had flushed the toilet on the guy's head. 

The older cop looked at me and said, "Okay, you want to tell us what's really going down here?" 

I shrugged. "Ask him. Let me know how you make out." 

The cop stepped out of the way as the EMS team angled the stretcher past him and between two parked cars. Then he said, "I think you better come with us."  

"How 'bout tomorrow morning?" 

"How about now?"  

I pointed at his feet. "You're standing in the blood." He lifted his foot and said, "Jesus." Then he shook his foot and spattered the shrubs with red. It made a sound like the first drops of a downpour. 

We went to the Twentieth Precinct and had a nice talk. We solved exactly nothing, but it made them happy to inconvenience me.  

When I got home three hours later the blood was washed up: the pleasures of living in a well-maintained building. Echo was still a sleep, none the wiser.  

The next morning Echo was up bright and early to catch the flight back to her dance company. I woke up in the guest room and heard her on the phone chewing out the poor girl that works as the tour manager. When she hung up she came in and stood over me like a coroner viewing the body. 

"How come you never have a hangover, Echo?" 

"Nux vomica. Sovereign remedy for hangover. You didn't try anything funny last night, did you? Like John Cassavetes in Rosemary's Baby? When I was incapacitated?" 

I tried to think what the woman inside me would say. "You were so beautiful...and helpless. I was tempted. But it didn't seem right." 

The frown line on Echo's brow softened and she cocked her head and smiled. 

"See? I knew reading that book would have a good effect on you. However, I'm not sure I like it. You could've made a try at least." Is there a mixed message here? She bent over to kiss me good-bye and I pulled her down on top of me. We kissed and she sighed the little groaning sigh that meant good things were coming. Suddenly, she drew back and said, "Why do you smell like orange juice?" 

Before I knew it Echo was waiting for the elevator and I was standing in the hallway with a sheet wrapped around me waving good-bye. Just as the elevator door opened she said, "What are chocolates doing in the refrigerator?" 

Jesus. "You didn't eat any, did you?" 

"You know I never eat candy." 

Will of iron. Lucky me. 

I went down to the sub-basement to retrieve the pit bull. Ramon jumped to attention when he saw me and immediately began untying the dog. 

"Mr. Murphy, this dog stinks like nothing I ever smelt before in my life. Please. I can't stand it." 

I gave him another hundred to keep quiet, and went upstairs with my smelly canine charge to nurse a hangover.