The Mars Room(54)

Doc takes out a cigarette. “This kind of thing isn’t fun for me, either.”

He offers one to the suspect, who eyes him warily and shakes his head, blinking back tears.

“You can put your hands down,” Doc says, exhaling smoke.

“I have your weapon, I know you’re not a threat. Just don’t do anything stupid. But relax. You’re making me nervous.”

The suspect looks at him. He keeps his hands raised.

“Relax, seriously. I’m going to let these other guys book you, the car that’s on its way. You know why? I hate sending people to jail. Now come on. I’m ordering you to put them down. I can tell you’re a good kid. I bet this was your first burglary, which is why you fucked it up so badly. Put your hands down and take a breather. In a moment these guys will cuff you, and the cuffs won’t feel good.”

The suspect’s eyes shine with fear. He begins to bring his arms down a little.

He wipes his wet face with the arm of his shirt.

Remember the era when everyone wore those rugby shirts with thick vertical brashly colored stripes and an offset collar? That’s what the suspect had on.

Doc hated those shirts.

The suspect puts his hands all the way down.

“That-a-boy,” Doc says. “Try not to worry. I know the officer on intake. I’ll ask him to go easy on you. You might even bond out tonight.”

The suspect brings his arms not just down, but toward his pockets.

At the moment when the suspect’s hands go into the pockets, Doc fires at his face. Twice, aiming upward.

Backup arrives a few seconds later. Enough long seconds to stash the pillowcase Doc has inherited.

Two officers from Central Division pull up.

“Jesus. What happened here?”

The suspect is slumped against the grille of his car. Behind him, a radius of blood speckles the car’s hood.

“I tell him hands up,” Doc says, “and he goes straight for his pockets. I wasn’t taking any chances.”



* * *



He didn’t know why he’d done it. The child rapist could burn in hell, but why did he kill that kid on Beverly?

If the kid had said to Doc, Why are you doing this? Doc might have stopped himself, because he did not know. The kid could not ask that, because Doc hadn’t given him time to.

He and his old partner José, it’s true they tortured a victim, a manager at a gentleman’s club under the 605 freeway, and when they were done they dumped the body near the 710 freeway. But the guy had raped José’s girlfriend, so what were they supposed to do? The press made a big deal of the torture, but Doc is no sicko, nor serial killer. He did it to make it look as if someone of that type did the killing.



* * *



It wasn’t all like that. Doc was a popular detective, someone you might have envied if you spotted him out riding with a handful of other off-duty officers along the cliffs above Malibu on a mild windless day. There was a group of them that went up the Pacific Coast Highway. Doc was usually on his ’78 Sportster, not some full-dress late-model fagmobile, as you often see parked outside Neptune’s Net on the PCH, the rider handling it like with butler’s gloves because the thing is leased. Doc hates faggots who lease Harleys and for the record owned two, paid cash for both, the Sportster and a Softail, the Softail equally stripped down but with cowhide saddlebags for trips up to his place in Three Rivers, where he owned outright a plot of land with a stream running through it, another enviable feature of Doc’s old life. Beautiful high country, fantastic trout fishing, clean air. A rustic log cabin where he injected meth and fucked women he brought up from South LA.

Three Rivers takes him to something intriguing: he sees hips and thighs splayed out. It’s what happens to a woman’s body when the clothing comes off, hips spreading against the spongy push-back of the lumpy mattress in his country place. He sees the cheap wood paneling. A hairy snatch, wet, relaxed-looking. He parts the lips with his fingers, uses the other hand to ready himself. This is working. He can’t see a face but he doesn’t need or want one. He sees the spread thighs and hears the squeak of that old bed frame as he shifts into position. Feels the heat of a still room on a summer day and this is working.

All the sex he ever had. All that remained were these moments you looped.

Hips, pushing, wood paneling, bed squeak. Hands on his backside (he’s a man, okay? It’s backside, not ass). He grabs hers. Grabs a handful of it. The way her hips spread out beneath him on that country mattress, that was what helped him get this going. He goes deep. The bed is squeaking like crazy; he’s at the finish and that noisy bed frame sounds like it’s being split apart with an axe.



* * *



But this one, which he sinks into, catching his breath, no. This bed is concrete. He lies back in the still heat of the cell, tries to sustain this feeling of the still heat of a summer day up in sequoia country.

Warm enough his Harley requires no choke, just starter to idle in a liquid transition.

On an afternoon like that he’d go to the biker bar in Three Rivers, leave the woman, whichever one, at the cabin, with confiscated drugs and satellite TV. He sits at the bar and drinks cold draft beer.

People snub Budweiser for these dumb brands no one’s heard of, but Budweiser is the king of beers for a reason: it’s good.