A Fistful of Empty Read online

  Then it came upon us. A combination snore and whistle, chased by a shudder. Arnie and I grinned and tiptoed back to the front bedroom. Had to be the “Warthog” dreaming of a romp on the veldt.

  I stood behind Arnie, squatting with his hand on the knob. I had my flashlight ready and tapped him on the head with my gun hand. At the silent count of three, he opened the door. Flash and move and we were in.

  There, on a mattress on the floor, was Harold Snipes. Face down, his blubbery lips flapped with each snore. One huge arm hung off the mattress onto the floor. Fortunately, he was fully dressed. All we had to do was wake him up and wrap him to go.

  I scanned the room. The closet was open. Arnie kept his gun on Snipes. I backed out and went to check the other bedroom. It was empty. When I returned, Arnie took a position at Snipes’s feet. I stood by his outstretched arm. That way there wouldn’t be any chance of an accidental crossfire if Snipes did something suicidal. I shone the light in his eyes as Arnie kicked him in the leg.

  Snipes threw his arm up in front of his eyes and rolled onto his side. “What the fuck?” he snarled.

  He put his arm down and stopped blinking. His eyes jumped back and forth between our guns. “Oh shit. Who are you guys? What do you want?”

  “Shut up, lardass,” I snapped, and asked Arnie, “Is he the one?”

  “I don’t know. He sure looks like him, though. What’s your name, Fats?”

  Snipes was silent.

  Arnie shook his head. “You’re pissing me off, Fats. I don’t get paid if I kill the wrong guy, but I might just do you for the practice.”

  Snipes squinted at us. He was cataloguing his sins, trying to figure out which ones were worth killing him for.

  “You the Jews?”

  “Shit.” Arnie chuckled. “Do we look like the fucking Jews?”

  Snipes pondered that for a second, then he smiled. “Harold Snipes, that’s my name.”

  “Gotcha, scumbag. We’re from the Ace Bonding Company,” Arnie said.

  “Oh shit,” Snipes whined and started to get up.

  Arnie centered his gun on the swastika on Harold’s forehead and said, “Face down, Snipes. Put your arms out, palms up. Turn your head away and no talking.”

  “Shit, Harold, what were you expecting, guys with horns on their heads?” I asked.

  Snipes did as he was told. Arnie holstered his gun, took his handcuffs out of his pocket, and flipped them open. He locked one around Snipes’s left wrist, twisted the arm, and bent it back like a chicken wing. He reached over and grabbed the right wrist and pulled it back toward the open cuff. It wouldn’t reach.

  “Jesus Christ, Snipes, what did you do, eat the Fourth Reich?” he asked, then stepped away from him. “Roll up to a sit, Snipes. Cross your legs underneath you. Raise your hands overhead.”

  I watched Snipes follow the commands. When he sat up, his chest sank and flattened against the uppermost terrace of his belly. Three more folds bulged against his T-shirt. The lower deck covered half of his thighs. I wasn’t worried about handcuffing him anymore. If he went limp on us, we’d need a winch to get him into the car.

  Arnie snapped the cuffs around Snipes’s right wrist. “Keep your arms up,” he said.

  Arnie stepped around in front of him. “All right, put your hands in front of you. Lean forward, putting your weight on your hands. Uncross your legs. Now get up, one leg at a time.”

  Snipes moved ponderously, dutifully executing each command. Together they looked like a circus act: Arnie Kendall and his trunkless elephant, Harold. Once he was on his feet, Arnie guided him toward the wall. Two or three feet away he grabbed Harold’s belt.

  “Keep your hands down,” he barked. Slowly Arnie leaned him forward until his forehead touched the wall. He kicked his legs apart so that Harold was precariously balanced and then frisked him. He was clean.

  “All right, Harold, let’s go.” Arnie straightened him up and pointed him at the door. I flipped off the light.

  On the stairs, I snuck a look at my watch. We’d been inside for twenty-two minutes. Not bad, not bad at all. Another twenty minutes to the station house, five maybe ten to dump Harold, another twenty back to my car, and I could call it a night.

  Arnie guided Harold around the bottom of the stairs toward the front door. My gun was still in the middle of his back. A slice of light crossed the floor toward us. I followed it back to its source.

  Arnie’s head snapped right and he reached for his gun as a shape tore itself loose from the wall. The gun waving wildly under his nose convinced him to stop. “Don’t move!” she shouted.

  “Awright,” Snipes cheered huskily.

  I rammed my gun into his back and grabbed his waistband. “Hold it, Harold.”

  Even though the girl held the gun with both hands, the pistol was bouncing like a seismograph. I stepped away from behind Arnie, keeping my gun in Harold’s back.

  “Let him go!” she yelled.

  “No,” Arnie said, flat and cold.

  “You’d better, or I’ll blow your fucking head off,” she snapped. Ah, true love.

  “So? My partner kills Harold right here. In fact, where he’s standing now, his .45 goes straight through Harold and blows you away, too. That purse gun you’re holding isn’t going to kill anyone. You know that. When you bought it, you told the guy you just wanted something to scare people with, right?”

  In the darkness, I couldn’t see her eyes. No way to read how she was going to play it. Arnie adjusted his stance a bit and I saw him move his arm slightly away from his side.

  “Maybe so, but I can’t miss from here.”

  “Sure you can. Look at your hands. You’re all over the place. You’ve never fired this piece, you don’t know what the recoil is like. You’re probably going to shoot Harold there.”

  This whole thing was going to hell. I knew Arnie. There was no way this little girl and her peashooter were going to back him off of Snipes’s carcass.

  The girl and Arnie were locked in a staredown. She might have the gun, but he was the cat and she was the mouse. Arnie would be watching the barrel bouncing around, settling into a rhythm, not even seeing her at all, just the gun. Getting loose, then focused, then ready.

  Four sets of eyes on that damned gun. What was she going to do? My chest felt like I was breathing cement.

  She flicked her eyes away from Arnie. “Harold?”

  Arnie’s arm flew up and his hand clamped over the cylinder. She pulled the trigger but the cylinder wouldn’t rotate. Arnie twisted the gun away from his body and butted her right in the face.

  The girl let out a groan and crumpled with her hand to her face. Arnie stepped to the side, twisted her arm until her fingers opened up, and pulled the gun out of her grasp. He stepped over her and walked to the back of the house.

  I looked down. She was curled up on her side, crying, with both hands held to her face.

  “Your girlfriend, Harold?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted.

  “What made you come back?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that.”

  “Fuck that, she had the drop on him,” Harold complained.

  “Hell, Harold, is that your idea of comfort?”

  Arnie came back. He bent over and handed a towel to the girl. “Keep that on your face. It’s full of ice. It’ll keep the swelling down. You’ve still got to work.”

  Snipes and I followed Arnie out of the house. Behind me I heard the girl mutter, “Fuck you.”

  3

  We hustled Harold out to the car. I swear he grew and the car shrank, the closer we got. Arnie pulled open the back door and Harold laughed at him.

  “You can’t put me in there. There ain’t enough room.”

  I shook my head. We might as well try to put a walrus in a change purse.

  Arnie looked into the car and then back at Harold. He pressed his lips together, then shook his head.

  “You’ll fit. It won’t be fun, b
ut you’ll fit.”

  “Arnie, are you sure? This isn’t origami, you know. No matter how you fold him, he’s still 317 pounds of shit.”

  “He’ll fit.”

  “Fuck this, I ain’t movin’.”

  Arnie spun and slipped him the old two-finger comealong. Ram your fingers two knuckles deep in a man’s nose and threaten to make a fist. He’ll follow you anywhere.

  Arnie led him to the door. “Let’s go, Harold, put your ass on the seat. Now your left leg in. Tuck your head down, further.”

  “I can’t. I can’t breathe,” he rasped.

  Arnie reached in and jammed Harold’s head past the door-frame. He popped up inside like a righted buoy. I heard something rip. It was the seam on his jeans.

  “Now your right leg. Attaboy.”

  Harold was in, seated in the center of the back seat with his legs splayed to support his belly and his hands in front of him. Arnie unrolled a chain attached to the door frame, looped it between Harold’s cuffed fists, pulled it tight to the other side of the car, and padlocked it.

  We got in the front and Arnie spoke to Harold as he turned on the ignition.

  “Be good, Harold. If you make a ruckus and we have an accident, there’s no way you’ll get out ahead of a fire. Understand?”

  “Fuck you.”

  We let the pleasantry pass and headed over to district headquarters.

  With a couple of uneventful minutes under my belt I began to relax. Slowly each muscle group stood down from red alert. I took a deep breath and tried to expel my fear.

  We sped along in the dark and I rolled down the window to feel the night breeze on my face. I tried to sort out why I had put myself in such jeopardy. Like a pinball game, my mind caromed off a number of answers, each one lighting up briefly, then sending me on to another. Each answer I found was plausible. None was compelling.

  I’d given Arnie my word. We were friends. I hated my job. I still wanted to be on the streets. I wasn’t that old. I couldn’t stand to just take it from Charlie Babcock. I had to do something to somebody. And on and on. They all seemed so important until I got to the part where that wild-eyed girl was waving a gun in my face. Then they all winked out and I had no answer at all. Just dumb luck to get me through. That and Arnie’s reflexes.

  “You ever pull that stunt before?” I asked.

  “Not live, no. But I practice it all the time.”

  “And how often do you make it?”

  “Two out of ten, I’d say.”

  “Two out of ten. Did I hear that right, two out of ten?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jesus, Arnie, what made you try it?”

  “She looked like one of the two.”

  “Uh-huh, right, that’s it? She just looked ripe for the old one-handed snake-in-the-dark cylinder jam.”

  “It worked. I must have been right.”

  “I guess. I guess.” I closed my eyes and shook my head in disbelief. A tremor passed through me, a sickening Shockwave of recognition. I’d just bent down to kiss the ground beneath my feet and found only a high wire there. I clutched the door handle reflexively until my vertigo passed, and then felt foolish.

  Snipes belched as a preamble, then said, “Look, guys, can’t we cut a deal here?”

  When he got no reply, he went on, “I mean, if you ain’t the Jews, then this is just business, right? What am I worth to you guys, twenty grand?”

  “Forty-five,” Arnie said. “The Jews put twenty-five on you themselves.”

  “Fuckers. Hell, it doesn’t matter. I can turn you onto something worth a lot more. A whole lot more.”

  “Right, Harold. All of a sudden you’re a Donald Trump.”

  “No, it’s true. Let me go and I’ll show you something worth a fortune.”

  I found Harold’s face in the rear-view mirror. “Harold, don’t take this personally, but I haven’t seen you on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’ You’ll have to tell us a little something more about this treasure you’ve got.”

  “All right, I can dig it. Okay?”

  I turned to face Harold. He was positively glowing, irradiated with hope.

  “It’s drugs, man. Big time. Millions maybe. That’s what I got. What do you say we cut a deal?”

  “Sounds interesting, Harold. Tell us more.”

  “No way. We cut a deal. Then I talk.”

  Arnie and I looked at each other. I factored in Harold’s situation, his track record on all the major virtues, and the consequences of getting all slimy with him. He got no in stereo.

  “Well, fuck you, you Jew-loving, nigger-fucking …”

  Arnie turned the wheel hard to the right and slammed on the brakes. Slowly he turned around in his seat.

  “Harold, I get paid for bringing you in. It doesn’t say in one piece, or even in good condition. Just alive. It seems to me that you’re in no position to piss me off. Now put a lid on it or you’ll get a chance to meet some of them Jews you’re so fond of. You understand me?”

  For the rest of the ride, Harold was a good boy.

  At the station house, Arnie and I unwrapped our prizewinner. He unlocked the chain and fed it between Harold’s fists onto the floor of the back seat.

  I told Harold to lay down on his side, roll over onto his stomach, and wriggle feet first out of the car. He moved like a python with a hernia.

  I got back in the car and watched Arnie march him up the front steps. I just wanted to go home and go to bed. Modest goals, I thought.

  4

  At home, I quietly unlocked the door and tiptoed inside. The house was dark and still. Feeling my way along the walls, I went back to the bedroom. I stopped outside the door and listened for Sam’s breathing but heard nothing. I gripped the knob and slowly turned it. It wouldn’t move. I tried again. Locked. I stepped back, puzzled. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw something on the door. I reached up and grabbed it. Paper. I pulled it off the door and went back to the kitchen where I flipped on the light over the sink. It was a note to me. I leaned back against the counter and read it.

  Leo—

  If I had anyplace else to go, I’d be there. But I don’t, so please don’t try to get in. I don’t want to be close to you, and I’m too upset even to fight. I don’t seem to be able to reach you anymore. Maybe this will.

  My first thought was whether to honor the note. Maybe it was a test and I should kick the door in to prove something. Even as tired and muddled as I was, that seemed clearly stupid. Sam had never been one for sleight-of-heart tricks. The geometry of her desires was all straight lines. Then again, I could always kick the door in because this was just so much bullshit.

  Instead I paced aimlessly through the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and poked through things, grazing without hunger. I walked out to the living room, sat down, and kicked off my shoes. Getting undressed seemed way too complicated. I moved over into my easy chair, leaned back, and began to spin in a slow circle. My chair finally stopped, facing the utter blackness of the house. Denied action, I did the only other thing I’m any good at—I brooded. But every question I delivered was stillborn.

  Sometime before dawn I fell asleep. When I awoke it seemed only an instant had passed. I sat up staring at my hands, certain that I had dropped something, that it had slipped right through my fingers. I shook off the feeling and walked back to the bedroom. Samantha was gone. This time there was no note.

  5

  Sam was gone all day. I know because I called home every hour, left a message for her to call me, and retrieved them all, unplayed, at five o’clock.

  I went to work but should have gone to the moon instead. I doodled and called, then doodled and called again. I went out for lunch and ate nothing. I came back, read case files, and remembered nothing. Kelly, my secretary, came in to tell me that I looked like hell and should go home so she could stop worrying about me and get some of her work done. It was almost the least that I could do and so I managed it.

  Sam was in the kitchen whe
n I got home. There was no smile, no hello when I came in. I thought better of trying to kiss her and settled for a beer. She moved like a zombie, making dinner by rote. Her face was a mask with eyes as soft as marbles.

  “How long are we going to do this?” I asked, eager for a fight, for anything.

  “Do what?” she said, slashing me with her indifference.

  “Oh, cut the shit, Sam, you know what I mean. There’s a dead moose right here between us and it stinks to hell. When are we going to do something about it?”

  She put down the knife she was cutting the tomatoes with and picked at a stray piece on the counter.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, take a guess. We’ve got nothing on tap.”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Well, that doesn’t cut it. So I went out with Arnie and didn’t come running when you called. What’s the big fucking deal? What is it that couldn’t wait? I’m right here.”

  “Forget it. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, and you don’t want to sleep with me, either. What do you want, anyway?” Move over Sigmund and everybody else.

  “I told you a long time ago. It’s no mystery.”

  God, I hate pop quizzes. I flipped through the operations manual on Samantha Clayton.

  “What? You’re not number one in my life?”

  “That’ll do for starters.”

  “Jesus Christ, Sam, what do you want? To be joined at the hip? I told you why I did it. I’m not going to jump every time you say boo.”

  “I didn’t say boo. I told you that it was important and that I needed you then. That just didn’t make it. So, fine, I know where I stand.”

  Yeah, all day in the sun without a hat, that’s where. “Sam, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Nothing’s changed that I can see.”

  “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, Leo, everything has changed.”