The Sticking Place Read online

  Denny trotted up beside Shimmer. “Can I ax you a question?” he said.

  Shimmer grunted his assent.

  “Why do you go by your initials? Seems like a lot of you senior guys do it.”

  Shimmer’s voice thundered above the noise of an electric air gun. “Yellow sheets say I got to wear a name tag. They don’t say anything about using my full name. It’s all this Community Oriented Policing crap. Brings us closer to John Q. Citizen the brass says. Bullshit! Brings us closer to the hairballs and assholes if you ask me.”

  Shimmer lifted his equipment bag toward a Ford van fitted out as an ambulance. “Ambulances are stupid. They should be run out of the fire department.” He dropped his bag to the pavement, reached into his pocket, opened his nail clippers and slowly ran the file beneath dirty fingernails. “There’s two assholes on this squad who actually like this thing, but you and me get assigned instead. That’s how things work around here.”

  Denny gave a slight smile. “I kind of like the ambulance,” he said. “I was a corpsman in Nam before they made me a dental technician. The experience might help. Besides, I won’t have to write too many reports.” There it was—he laid it out up front. His report writing stunk.

  “Jesus H—a REMF.” Shimmer spit out REMF like he’d spit out a wasp that flew into his mouth. “Like I need this. Babysitting some Rear Echelon Motherfucker who stayed in Saigon humping the gooks while I dodged bullets.”

  Shimmer looked like he was fighting for his composure and it looked like a daily exercise. “Always do a thorough job inspecting the equipment,” he said. “It’s bullshit when we got to come back to the garage because some lazy bastard didn’t replenish our supplies.”

  Denny checked the splints, oxygen bottles, and plastic containers of saline solution, blankets and other first aid equipment while Shimmer settled into the driver’s seat and went to work on his nails again.

  “Hurry up and put us 10-8,” Shimmer said as he stuck his clippers back into his pocket.

  Denny hurried the inventory.

  “Sit your ass down and put us 10-8,” Shimmer insisted. “You can bet your REMF ass the dispatcher’s itching to give us a call.”

  Shimmer was right. The dispatcher assigned their first call immediately after Denny announced their availability. “Unit 4-Frank, 11-41 at the Monroe Hotel, six hundred block of 5th Avenue. The reporting party is the manager.”

  Two minutes later, the ambulance rounded the corner from Market Street onto Fifth Avenue and eased against the east curb, parking in the yellow loading zone. Shimmer pushed the gear shift into park and looked at Denny. “Where’s the call?”

  Denny hadn’t jotted the information down. “I don’t remember,” he said.

  “We might have a guy dying right now,” Shimmer said. “Waiting for us to save his ass and we’re sitting on our keisters inside this stupid ambulance. You don’t even know where we’re supposed to go, do you?”

  Denny didn’t think his FTO would be such an asshole.

  “Well, where are we supposed to go to save this guy’s life?”

  Denny gazed at his shoes.

  “Don’t ever acknowledge a radio call without knowing where we’re going and why,” Shimmer said. After issuing the order, he pushed his door open and stepped into the street.

  A stench as pungent as Limburger cheese permeated the hotel entryway. The walls hosted grimy hand prints and the once salmon-colored carpets lay littered with greasy McDonald’s wrappers and cigarette butts. A man with a scruffy salt-and-pepper beard limped toward them, offering Shimmer his hand and looking like a good candidate to borrow Shimmer’s nail clippers.

  “I’m the manager, officer.” He wheezed out his words while puffing his way up three narrow flights of stairs before stopping in front of a room and reaching for the keys on his belt. “I can smell him. I know he’s in here.” He spit his words out through teeth that clenched the butt of his cigarette. “Claims he’s some kind of college professor or something. All I know is he’s probably unconscious—again—and I’m tired of it. He’s been like this more times than I can count. Drinks himself into oblivion and pisses his pants. Shits all over himself and lays in it until I find him. He drinks enough to kill most folks, but he don’t have the decency to die.”

  “I can’t get the damn door open.” The manager turned the key and pushed against the door to prove his point. He leaned forward with his shoulder, put his weight onto his front knee and pushed hard. The smoking cigarette bounced against his thigh and fell to the floor as the door gave way.

  Denny saw the stain-spotted legs of khaki pants and bare feet inch toward the center of the room as the manager grunted and heaved against the door.

  Another two-officer unit with trainee and FTO arrived as Denny squeezed through the aperture. He squatted, dragged the man further into the room to allow the others in, and knelt, searching for and finding a slight pulse. Denny knuckled his fingers and grunted as he pressed into the sternum hard enough to lift himself from his haunches. The drunk didn’t respond.

  Pulling a Bic pen from his shirt pocket, Denny shoved it between the drunk’s fingers and squeezed so hard that the hand folded into itself and turned purple. Denny squeezed until he couldn’t stand the pain himself and the drunk still didn’t move or even grunt. This stuff hurt. Live people responded to this shit. Denny checked again for a pulse and whooshed out a surprised, “Damn,” when it verified that the drunk was still alive.

  Shimmer reached for the ammonia capsule beneath the leather flap covering his speed loaders and squatted beside Denny. Ammonia fumes filled the room as he snapped the capsule. Denny grunted in astonishment as Shimmer ground the capsule hard above the drunk’s upper lip without getting a reaction.

  “Shit,” Shimmer said. “This is one for the record books. There ain’t no telling how long he’s been like this neither.” Shimmer’s knee joint crackled as he stood and turned to face the manager. “His pants sure give out a clue though. That must be quite a package in there.”

  Glossy gun belts and shiny boot leather rasped and creaked as Denny and the other trainee stooped to pick the comatose drunk up from the floor and strap him to the gurney. Denny puffed his cheeks and sucked in his stomach as he cinched the clasp until he lost the battle to hold his breath and the rancid stench raced up his sinuses. “Daaaaamn, he smells like rotten human being leftovers,” he said.

  The two rookies lifted the gurney.

  The Monroe had no elevators.

  The second rookie set his end of the gurney on the landing as Denny hefted the drunk’s full weight above his head, agonizing to keep it from falling. They twisted the gurney onto the top step of the next level of stairs and started downward again, repeating the process at the next landing, leaving them slathered in sweat and sucking air.

  “The bitch is turning blue,” Shimmer rasped. The angle on the landing had set the drunk’s body to sliding downward, forcing the waist strap against his trachea. “He’s choking,” Shimmer hollered. “Give him mouth to mouth.”

  The collective order hovered in the air like a death sentence for one of the trainees.

  Denny stared at the other trainee for what seemed like forever, hoping he’d follow the order. Nobody spoke, but the body language was unmistakable. The other rookie had no intention of stepping up to the plate. Precious milliseconds passed as the trainees stood, bug-eyed and desperate for an alternative.

  Denny dropped his end and the hard rubber wheels bounced against the concrete landing. Squeezing his body between the gurney and the wall, he bolted down the stairs, ran along a concrete hallway and hurled his body against a metal fire door that flung outward, brushing the shirttail of an unsuspecting pedestrian on the sidewalk. “Sorry.” Denny panted, fumbling for his keys as he ran to the ambulance. He crawled inside, retrieved the oxygen dispenser and scuttled out.

  His lungs flamed and his chest ached as he balanced the oxygen equipment. The other officers huddled silently as he reappeared on the landing.
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  Denny hadn’t stuck around long enough to see that loosening the strap against the drunk’s throat had allowed him to breathe again. He slipped the oxygen mask over a splotched face and turned the knob.

  The other officers howled like kids in the front row of a clown show. Shimmer looked like the laughter might send him to his knees and the others held their sides, their faces turning various shades of purple, actual tears streaming down their faces.

  Denny gushed sweat onto the landing, his breathing coming rapid and wheezy.

  He leaned against the gurney and Shimmer stood upright from his doubled up position. “Tonight, you’ll be the first trainee in history to get a perfect mark in judgment,” Shimmer announced between jags of laughter. “The FTO office says to never, ever give out a perfect score but, son, that looked perfect to me.”

  7

  THE EMERGENCY ROOM HOUSED A BUNCH OF SOUR faces when the officers wheeled in their bundle of joy. Doctor Knupp, who was busy sewing facial sutures, lifted a beefy face covered with a beard the color of a russet potato. “Is that piece of work here again?” he said. “Take him up to University. Anywhere but here.”

  Shimmer showed his teeth in a mock grimace that he followed with a suppressed smile. “Sorry, Doc,” he said. “Department policy says to transport to the nearest hospital and Centre is it. Can you imagine the ruckus up at University if we sashayed in there and filled out the log listing the Monroe as our pickup spot?” Shimmer paused. “I’ll try to bring something nice next time.”

  Doctor Knupp told him to “eat shit” and turned back to his patient.

  “Sorry, Doc, but I got to do what I got to do.” The words trailed behind Shimmer into the emergency room as he stepped onto the electric door pad and the glass doors opened.

  Denny piled into the ambulance and reached for the microphone. “Unit 4-Frank, 10-8.” He hooked the microphone and turned toward Shimmer. “You notice I did that on my own?”

  “Yeah,” Shimmer said. “I did. And don’t do it again. I wanted to go to Denny’s for some key lime pie and a cup of coffee. There’s things can only be done when you’re out of service.”

  The next radio call came within seconds. “Unit 4-Frank, respond to an 11-8 female, north side of five hundred Market.”

  Shimmer leaned across the space between the bucket seats, training his eyes on Denny’s. “I want my pie and now I can’t have it, thanks to you.” He pulled the gear shift down and punched the accelerator.

  Somebody lay prostrate on the sidewalk all right, but it was not a female. “Hey Kimmy,” Shimmer said as he squatted next to a Vietnamese transvestite who had a line of sweat trailing down his cheek. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  “Some John shot me for my money.”

  “I got to know more that that, but don’t talk right now.” Shimmer barked an order to Denny. “Fetch the gurney and get him ready for transport.”

  Denny turned Kimmy on his side to find three bullet holes and blood oozing through a white silk blouse. He sliced the taffeta fringe, running the blunt side of a scissor blade against Kimmy’s side. Denny ripped the material away from the skin and poured a stream of saline solution over the wounds.

  Kimmy’s eyelids shuddered and his breathing got shallow. “Stop all the bullshit,” Shimmer snapped. “Plug the holes and let’s go.”

  Denny grabbed a fistful of gauze to force against the wounds and they lifted Kimmy onto the gurney. As the wheels snapped into place, Shimmer squatted to scoop up a wallet.

  Shimmer tossed the wallet onto the dash, pushed the overhead light switch, turned the siren knob to wail and pulled away from the curb.

  On the console rested two radio transmitters, the police radio connected to Station “A” and a second one connected to Station X, emergency medical services for the County of San Diego. Shimmer reached for the one on the right. “Station X,” he said. “Unit 4-Frank is making code three 11-41 for a male with multiple gunshot wounds. Subject’s unconscious and approximately twenty-one years old. Our ETA is three to four.”

  The Station X operator relayed the message to Centre City ER and patched them through for a direct conversation. “Centre City,” Shimmer said into the microphone, “this is unit 4-Frank. We’ll be 10-97 in less than one.”

  Shimmer shut the siren down as he skidded to a stop near the emergency room.

  Dr. Knupp ran out, his shouts jerking with an uneven staccato rhythm. “Shit, Kimmy, what happened to you this time?” He grabbed the gurney and raised it in one motion, with a glare in Shimmer’s direction. “This is what you call bringing me something nice?”

  “No time to clean the blood,” Knupp said as he jerked the curtain along its tracks. He cut Kimmy’s abdomen with a scalpel and inserted a tube to siphon the blood. A blonde lab tech hurried beside him, set the intravenous apparatus next to the gurney and re-circulated Kimmy’s blood into his body to keep him from bleeding to death.

  A second technician propped Kimmy up on his side long enough to snap the oblique X-rays before rushing him into the operating room and closing the doors.

  “Now’s a good time to catch up on the journal and write the report on the ambulance transport,” Shimmer told Denny.

  Denny started the simple reports as Shimmer grabbed the phone in the officer’s lounge and dialed. He tapped his fingers against the Formica counter, crooked the phone against his neck and started singing Blue Suede Shoes when someone had obviously put him on hold.

  Shimmer leaned over, stretched the cord under Denny’s nose, pulled a Styrofoam cup from the drawer under the coffee maker and started pouring coffee. “This could turn into a 187, boss,” he said when the Watch Commander came on the line. “We had to scoot without preserving anything. Can you send a unit to rope off the crime scene and one to secure where we picked him up?”

  If Kimmy died, a Homicide team would roll and 4-Frank’s work would be done except for a quick One-Five-Three report about their conversation with the victim and how they found the wallet. A mound of work waited if Kimmy lived.

  The officers sat stuck at the hospital. They couldn’t go back in service until Kimmy either died or was stabilized enough for a real interview. Shimmer placed a few calls: to his wife, to his girlfriend, and to his poker partners to say he’d miss the weekly game if Kimmy lived.

  Then he turned to Denny’s reports. “You won’t ever write easier reports than these two,” he said. “And you screwed them both up.”

  Denny screwed his lips up into an expression of contrition.

  “Holy fuck! I’m in for a long month!” Shimmer said as he suffered through the re-writes more than an hour later. He shook his head and glared at Denny as his head hinged back and forth, making sure Denny didn’t doubt his disappointment.

  “Fucking REMF,” Shimmer said.

  8

  ONE PROPERLY COMPLETED REPORT, and two hours later, the nurse with a phalanx of red Medusa hair poked her face around the corner. “Kimmy’s going to make it,” she told Shimmer. “But he’s lost a lot of blood.” Her face disappeared and her footfall started to sound distant. The footfall stopped, followed by the sound of shoes against the linoleum coming toward the lounge before the nurse stuck her head into the room again. “Oh, by the way, that alleged human being you brought us from the Monroe? He’ll make it too.”

  Denny marched into recovery behind Shimmer and listened from the foot of the bed. “Tell me what happened so I can get this bastard,” Shimmer said.

  “Will I have scars, J.R.?”

  “The guy who shot you, tell me about him.”

  “I picked him up at the Chee Chee Club. He was cute. I might’ve done him for free, but I asked for money first. ‘I’ll give you a blowjob for fifty bucks’ I told him and he said, ‘Okay’. He didn’t want a room, so we did it in the spot behind the Dumpster where you caught me last week?”

  Shimmer nodded.

  “He pushed his pants around his ankles and said, ‘Go on ahead,’ and started laughing. He thought he was funn
y. So, I took care of business.” Kimmy nodded to Denny, almost apologetically, “If you know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean,” Denny assured him.

  “I knew he had a wad of money,” Kimmy went on. “So I lifted his wallet while I was down there. He pulled out this little gun, which I thought was a toy and told me he wants my money. He’s going to rob me with a little gun and he don’t even know I have his wallet.”

  Shimmer exaggerated a whistle. “This is a bucket of worms. You got any idea how much work we just fell into? Tell me what we got here, what kind of crimes?”

  “A whore deal and an attempted robbery,” Denny said.

  Shimmer tisked several times. “It’s a lot more than that. First, let’s talk about Kimmy. We got a 647 (b) for soliciting prostitution in a public place, and then he did the deed. Meets either test for that section. We got a 56.19 because he’s in drag when he does it, then we got a 487.2, grand theft from a person, when he lifts the wallet. You with me so far?”

  Denny nodded.

  “On the trick’s side, we got the same 647 (b), then we got a 12025 and a 12031 for the concealed and loaded gun. We also got an attempt 211 and a 217 because he tried to rob him and he tried to kill him.”

  Shimmer waited, apparently wanting the impact to sink in.

  “Worst part is we got the other puke’s wallet out in the ambulance so we have to go arrest him.”

  “You think I’m a puke?” Kimmy asked.

  Shimmer rolled his eyes.

  9

  SHIMMER POUNDED ON THE SCREEN DOOR of an impeccably painted California cottage. “Mr. Mortensen, I’ve got your wallet,” Shimmer pronounced as the occupant stood from his fancy leather lounge chair and ambled toward the doorway. “Found it down on Market Street. Funny thing is there’s a lot of money in it. Hard to imagine nobody took your cash. Can I come inside and talk a minute?”