The Sticking Place Read online

  “I got just one more thing to say,” Francie insisted. “I had a life until I went on a ride-along. I bet everything on this job and tossed my career right before my wife tossed me and took the kids. This is everything now. Why else would I jerk off up here in the middle of the night? You got to find a way to live without anything else like I do.”

  “Are you saying imitating you’s better than jumping?” Henreid asked.

  Hartson lifted his palms toward Henreid in a gesture of supplication. “Don’t let this prick push you over the edge,” he said. “Let’s talk this out. I’ll deal with him later.” He jabbed his thumb toward Francie.

  Henreid sat on the edge, dangling his legs in the descending darkness. “I understand him.” He made a fake gun with his hand and pointed it at Francie. “He doesn’t piss me off,” Henreid said. “Hey, O’Brien, one of us should join the other. You want to come up here with me?”

  “I told you, it’s O’Malley,” Francie grunted. “Thanks for the invitation.”

  “Why would you want to kill yourself?” Hartson continued, ignoring the absurd antagonism between Francie and Henreid. “It sounds like you’ve got a great wife and kid.”

  “I can’t figure out what else to do,” Henreid said.

  Hartson pulled a pack of menthols from his jacket pocket. “Now we’re getting someplace,” he said. He lit a cigarette and drew a lung-full of smoke into his chest, taking the time to figure out what to say.

  “I don’t doubt that I have to die,” Henreid said. “I have to kill what’s controlling me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hartson demanded.

  “I’ve lost control,” Henreid answered. “I know you can’t understand it, but it’s like something’s crawled up inside me that makes me gamble. If I jump, I’ll take it with me.”

  “There’s other things you can do,” Hartson insisted. “There’s Gambler’s Anonymous, and there must be people who care about you who can help.”

  Henreid shook his head and his shoulders slumped. “I’ve driven everybody away. I’ve tried the twelve-step stuff already. All I’ve learned is that I’m too weak to control my life. But a swan dive from here puts me back in control.”

  “You won’t be in control, you’ll be dead, you jackass,” Francie said.

  Hartson agreed. “He’s right about that much. Jumping would be the ultimate victory for whatever it is that makes you gamble. I’m not too smart, but one thing I know for sure is that death is final. If you try getting your shit together again, you can always come back and jump later if it doesn’t work out.”

  Hartson shot a threatening glance at Francie. “Let me take you somewhere you can talk to somebody who knows more about this than me.”

  The sun peeked over the Presidio Tower as Hartson spoke and Henreid looked toward the sunrise. “I’ll come down if you’ll do one thing for me.”

  “Anything,” Hartson said.

  Henreid lifted his chin toward Francie. “Keep that O’Brien asshole away from me.”

  “It’s O’Malley, you jackass,” Francie said as he stomped toward his car and Henreid jumped down.

  “Department policy says I have to cuff you,” Hartson apologized.

  Henreid turned his back to Hartson and put his hands behind him. “I’m getting used to it,” he said.

  16

  “WATCH YOUR HEAD,” LUKE SAID AS HE GUIDED Henreid into the back seat for the second time in three days.

  “Okay then, let’s get this show on the road,” Hartson told Luke. “You might as well go ahead and drive while we’re at it.”

  The circular trip down the ramp represented the first time Luke had driven a police car away from the academy. Its “Grinder” was nothing more than a big parking lot peppered by dilapidated police cars and traffic cones haphazardly placed to simulate traffic and parked cars. Simulation could never emulate the real thing.

  “No driving with your head up your ass.” Hartson’s words competed with the noise of metal against concrete as the radio antenna thwacked against the ceiling.

  “The only thing worse than a trainee driving with his head up his ass is D-W-O,” Hartson said. He paused, giving Luke the chance to ask the obvious question.

  “DWO?”

  “Driving While Oriental,” Hartson said. “That ought to be a felony, but it’s not, so let’s concentrate on you and save the bigger problems for later.”

  Luke nodded.

  “Operating a police car’s more than steering and braking,” Hartson went on. “You’ll need new skills that can only come with experience.” Hartson tapped his pen against the dashboard, Lawrence Welk conducting his champagne orchestra in a police car. “Listening to the radio’s tough enough. Now you’ll have to do it while playing car commander. At intersections, concentrate on more than stopping at the limit line. You need to stay far enough away to allow room for squeezing through in an emergency.”

  Luke listened intently, but glanced in the rear view mirror, making eye contact with Henreid. He wondered about their prisoner’s response to Hartson’s flippant racial slurs, but decided to avoid the topic.

  “Mind if I ask you a question Mr. Henreid? Why’d you want to jump?”

  “It’s none of your business.” Henreid spoke his words into the window. “I’m fed up with you cops, and the last thing I need’s a grilling from a FNG.”

  “FNG?” Luke asked.

  “A fucking new guy,” Henreid said. “You’ve obviously never been in the military?”

  Henreid’s tone sounded a familiar note for Luke, oozing as it did with bitterness and anger designed to trumpet Luke’s insignificance. Luke kept his anger in check, understanding that Henreid was the true target of his own boomeranging hatred.

  “I don’t mean any disrespect,” Luke said. “I’m filling out the hospital admission paperwork and it’d help hearing your side of things. And to be honest, I’d like to hear more about what takes control over you?”

  “That’s a metaphor, you dip shit” Henreid said. “Ever heard of a metaphor?”

  Luke laughed. “I know all about metaphors. Real life’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “All I know is I can’t stop gambling and it feels like something’s pulling the strings and controlling me,” Henreid said. A long paused followed. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve done to get money for a bet.”

  “I’ve done some reading that says addiction stems from body chemistry,” Luke said. “I don’t claim to really know anything, but I did a paper on addictions and I’ve read Dostoevsky’s The Gambler. Between the two, I think I understand compulsions. The protagonist—the main guy in The Gambler I mean—lost everything playing roulette. No matter what good things happened to the guy throughout the book, they only put off the inevitable tragedy.”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Hartson blurted out. “You sound like a goddamn English teacher and I’m about to make you drive back to the Parkade so Henreid and me can both jump off.”

  Luke pressed his point. “There’s a scene in the book where the guy risks everything he owns on one spin of the roulette wheel and wins enough money to completely turn his life around if he’d only stop. But he kept on playing until he lost everything. What amazed me was the total lack of suspense. I never for a second wondered if he’d stop gambling.”

  “Jesus H, Luke,” Hartson interrupted again. “Leave the poor guy alone?”

  “It’s all right,” Henreid said. “I didn’t read his book, but I do know it’s about the gambler, not the reader. Every spin of the wheel, every bet, it’s all suspense to him. It’s what drives his life.”

  “I told you I don’t know anything,” Luke reminded him. “I’m learning that books only have so much to teach.”

  “That’s better,” Hartson said.

  “One thing to think about though,” Luke told Henreid, “is a quotation from Julius Caesar: ‘Of your philosophy you make no use, if you give place to accidental evils.’”

  Hartson shifted i
n his seat. “Every time I think you’re starting to get smart, you spout off again,” he told Luke.

  “All I know is, if you blame your problems on anything other than yourself, it’s giving your power away,” Luke said. “It’s a cop out.”

  Luke turned to look in Henreid’s eyes when he stopped at a red light. “The key to addictions is probably brain chemicals. Once you do whatever you’re addicted to, the action sets off a cascading chemical process. If you know the cause, you can develop a strategy to stop it.”

  “You’re way too naive to preach to me about anything,” Henreid said.

  Luke laughed, knowing no argument could win his point.

  “Maybe I can beat this thing,” Henreid said. “Just don’t go saying you know how to clean up people’s lives.”

  “The man’s got a point,” Hartson said. “You’re talking some pretty heady shit and folks are bound to think you’re an uppity son-of-a-bitch.”

  “I’m not preaching at anybody. I just think out loud sometimes,” Luke said.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you could figure it out better with your mouth shut,” Hartson said and his upper lip twitched a little as things finally got quiet. “I should’ve made Francie write a One-Five-Three since he was the first officer on the scene,” he said. “We might have some trouble with the admission.”

  “The report’s simple,” Luke said. “Mr. Henreid said he would’ve jumped if you didn’t talk him down. That proves he’s a danger to himself. What could be easier than that?”

  “I see your momma didn’t teach you anything about humility,” Hartson said. “If you’re so cock-sure, let’s make it interesting. No errors and no liquid paper. If your report isn’t totally perfect, you’ll watch me tear it up until you get it right and you’ll have to buy dinner. I’ll buy if it is perfect. Sound good?”

  “Seems fair enough,” Luke answered as he jerked to a stop behind the hospital. He popped the trunk and tossed his mace, gun and baton beside the equipment bag resting against the spare tire. “I think I could go for some free Greek food tonight,” he said.

  Hartson chuckled as he followed suit with his weapon and equipment before opening the back door for Henreid to step onto the pavement.

  Luke heard a raspy voice and sniffed ammonia as the trio stepped on to a once-brown vinyl floor that had faded to an ugly mustard color and was scarred with thick swaths of boot scuffs.

  “I forgive you.”

  The magnanimous proclamation came from a man with a toothless grin and a plastic baggy full of goodies; pebbles, paper wads, toothpicks, baseball cards, clothes pins and shirt buttons. “Father, forgive him too,” the man said as Luke filled out the intake form. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know any better.”

  “Don’t know any better than what?” Luke asked. But the man’s attention lay with his bag of goodies, making his comment about Luke’s nebulous culpability seem like a distant memory to him.

  Hartson sat on a bench next to Henreid while Luke leaned against the counter, writing the admission report that needed to pass muster on three fronts. It had to convince the psychiatrist to commit Henreid for a mandatory seventy-two-hour evaluation and pass Hartson’s initial scrutiny before he forwarded it to Sergeant Biletnikoff as the approving supervisor.

  The bustling hospital ward made Luke’s task next to impossible. Nurses and nurse’s aides scurried around with clipboards held high and self-important airs that mimicked a vaudeville show on a set specifically decorated to depict institutional drabness. The metal chair legs supported torn Naughahyde seats whose cushions split at odd angles to display the escaping stuffing. The psychiatrist’s office, behind a glass partition, allowed a universal view into the doctor’s interviews. Empty gurneys with dangling arm and leg restraints littered adjacent hallways.

  The little man with the bag of goodies stood up suddenly; sat under a gurney and curled up on the floor. He emptied the baggie’s contents to construct a scene on a mound of sand and pebbles that he pulled from his pockets. The mound supported three clothes pins that had been broken and intersected into three crosses. Poked holes in the top of the baseball cards allowed them to hang from the crosses and touch the apex of the mound.

  The intake nurse photocopied Luke’s report.

  She asked Hartson to take Henreid’s cuffs off. Then she escorted Henreid into the doctor’s office where the psychiatrist would decide if she agreed with the police assessment that Henreid’s suicidal episode met the criteria for section 5150 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code.

  “Listen, Luke,” Hartson said as Henreid and the psychiatrist took their seats in the glass-enclosed inner office. “We can’t leave until she’s done, so you go ahead and wait here while I pop over to the ER to make a quick phone call.”

  Hartson took Luke’s report with him, walked outside and sat in the front passenger seat. He lifted a blank report from the clipboard between the seats and filled out the blocks on the front. Once his bogus report resembled Luke’s completed one, he hid his trainee’s paper work beneath it on the clipboard.

  The psychiatrist announced her intention to admit Henreid.

  Luke walked to the toothless man who’d finished constructing his scene of Christ and the thieves on the crosses. The man squinted into the bright light above Luke’s head. “This is where I died,” he said.

  “It’s as good a place as any,” Luke answered. “But you’re not dead.”

  “I was before,” the man said. He lowered his gaze and squinted pointedly into Luke’s eyes.

  Luke shook his head and went outside. He grabbed his equipment from the trunk and saw Hartson still reading his report.

  “What’s taking so long?” Luke asked the question as he slid into the driver’s seat and turned toward the training officer who held the clipboard in front of his face. “It’s a simple enough report.”

  Hartson made a show of lifting the report from the clipboard and slowly ripping it in half. “I’m afraid you need to write this piece of shit over again,” he said.

  Luke sat flabbergasted. Sure he’d been distracted. Things got a little crazy inside the nut house, but he’d made himself focus. This was more than needing to re-write a simple report. It called into question everything he thought he knew about himself. He needed experience, sure. Sure he needed wisdom, but he knew how to write a simple narrative. He knew that much.

  17

  “VERY FUNNY,” LUKE TOLD HARTSON. “I thought I’d have a myocardial infarction for a second there.”

  “You see, that’s your problem,” Hartson said. “You can’t just say ‘heart attack’ like a normal human being. Why can’t you just say what you mean?”

  “I did,” Luke said. “I always do. My meaning just comes with a lot of syllables.”

  “You just talk like that to screw with people.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Jesus,” Hartson said. “I’d give anything for a snapshot of your sockets when I ripped that report up. I thought your eyeballs might pop right out of your face.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Luke enjoyed the developing camaraderie and nearly let loose with a few bon mots of his own about what an uncaring cretin his FTO was, before an all-units broadcast cut off his salvo. “A 245-shotgun in the Heights that could turn into a 187,” the dispatcher said. “Victim’s in front of the Welfare Office at Two-Five and Imperial Streets.”

  The call represented Hartson’s first chance to expose his trainee to a potential murder scene. “Fifty-one-Frank, my partner and I’ll respond to that one.” It was Hartson’s first reference to Luke as his partner.

  Normally, training officers made their charges look up their destinations in the map book, but the call’s urgency required an immediate response. Hartson called out the directions as Luke drove.

  An angry crowd festered in the intersection as they arrived. Several drunks congregated near the adjacent doorways of Alejandro’s Garage and Pepe’s Carniceria, bottles of fortified Night Train
wine bulging in their pockets.

  Hispanic gangsters strutted between the drunks, inciting the groups of mechanics, grocery clerks and construction workers huddled nearby. “You pigs’re gonna let this esse get away with it,” an angry voice yelled above the confusion. “You couldn’t care no less if somebody gets gunned down here in the barrio.”

  The pockets of people exploded into a mob and converged around the body. Hartson called for additional crowd control units and ordered Luke to check the victim’s vital signs.

  “Get those people away from him,” Hartson barked to a pair of arriving officers as Luke knelt beside the victim. “This is a crime scene, not a damn freak show.”

  “Better call a supervisor and get Homicide started,” Luke called, looking back over his shoulder at his training officer. “This guy’s 11-44.”

  Luke ordered the crowd back as he stood and waded forward, his arms spread. “You want this murder solved? Then don’t trample on the evidence,” he said.

  Luke saw Andee Bradford as more police cars arrived. He was already hearing what he knew were bogus rumors about her sleeping around to get ahead in the department. Being a trainee was tough enough for a man, but was obviously worse for somebody like her and he knew she’d almost certainly share his sense of feeling overwhelmed by the chaos of the murder scene. “Can you get me some crime scene tape?” he asked her.

  “Don’t have any,” she called back. “I’ll go check your trunk.” It was something she could do easily enough since patrol officers carried a universal key for every vehicle in the fleet.

  “We don’t have any either,” he called back. “The property room ran out. The clerk said an order got screwed up. Hey, anybody got any crime tape?” He yelled the question repeatedly to arriving officers before looking directly into the gray eyes of a pot-bellied veteran and asking again. “You got any crime scene tape?”

  The officer shrugged, the up and down motion making his belly heave.

  “I guess there’s never any crime scene tape around when you need it,” Bradford said, a wry smile playing on her lips.