You ever think about dying? I try not to. It’s on its way, one way or another, so why waste time worrying? If you’ve got ten, twenty, thirty years, then that’s how long you’ve got. Wondering what comes next, if this is all there is—I guess it’s some people’s kick, but since there’s no way of really knowing short of that one big step, I know I’d just give myself the anxiety, trying to figure out what there’s no way of figuring.
There are plenty of other mysteries, ones I can solve. I work on those instead. I’m a detective.
Of course, when you are dying, thinking about the Great Hereafter doesn’t seem so solipsistic. It feels more like planning for retirement. Or maybe like launching an appeal when you’re on Death Row. All the thinking in the world won’t give you that new lease on life you’ve been wanting, but I’m no yogi. I can’t stop thinking about the electric chair when I’ve got a date with it.
Electric chair, hell. What I wouldn’t give for that to be my problem. I could call in enough favors for a fighting chance if that were what ails me. Instead, what’s ailing me is an ailment. My own body is my death sentence.
On Monday I woke up with the mother of all hangovers. I’d tied one on the night before, sure—but Christ Almighty, that didn’t account for feeling like a kid who’d drained his dad’s liquor cabinet.
I went into work still, and it was the most miserable experience of my life. I don’t think I got one thing done that couldn’t have been handled by a rookie on his first day, and in half the time. I’m not the most patriotic fellow, but I still felt like I’d shortchanged the taxpayer. And being one of the guys who paid for lugs like me to keep the peace, that made me mad.
I went to bed pissed off and woke up feeling even worse. Not like a hangover now. This was more like I was drunk, and on the worst absinthe ever brewed. I called in sick and spent the morning bedbound before I got it through my thick skull that I was as likely to die in bed as I was to get better.
I picked myself up, splashed enough water into my face to cut the smell, dressed, and dragged myself to the hospital. Thinking halfway through the cable-car ride that pride be damned, I should’ve given the doc a ring. If this wasn’t a house call situation…
But I managed to trudge myself into the doctor’s office and after a long wait while everyone who needed a Band-Aid and a lollypop got one, they saw to me. I got my temperature taken, my blood drawn, a urine sample—so much taken out of me that it started to feel like they planned on taking me apart and putting me back together, minus one bug. Like that would be the easiest way to get me better. And I can’t say I wouldn’t have agreed to it.
On Wednesday I woke up on those starched sheets. Or maybe it was Thursday. I suppose I’d checked into the hospital instead of just paying a visit. And I suppose I’ll lay off there because this is just how people die in the modern age and you’ll find out for yourself, ‘less you’re lucky enough or unlucky enough to have a piano fall on you.
I could tell you about it—the hoping, the despairing, the tests, the waiting, the brave faces and what’s underneath them. No. No. Death is easy. Dying’s hard. And by Friday, it got through to me that I was dying. That all anyone was doing anymore was running the race, hoping the guy in front tripped on his shoelaces. And I had either a few more days of this or…
Well, you get to thinking what your life’s added up to, now that there’s no more ‘getting around’ to climbing Mount Everest or starting a family or anything you’ve got penciled in for next year’s calendar.
I wasn’t too shabby, I didn’t think. Served my country, earned a gold shield, put away killers and thieves and rapists. But really, I’d only done what most any joe would do in my place. I’d gotten a little lucky, paid a little attention… nothing really worth a statue in a park. And sure, most people don’t get those, but at least they get a full life.
What’d I had? A childhood of being poor, been overseas fighting and killing when I should’ve been Joe College, and when other people had been building a family, I’d been walking a beat. It seemed unfair; what wouldn’t seem unfair, wearing paper clothes in a hospital bed?
The world had never made a lot of sense to me. It didn’t seem inclined to start now. But it really didn’t make sense for me to be dead and Dominic Parente to still be alive.
After that occurred to me, well, what was the point in waiting? I had a Colt .45 for a service weapon and an M-1 Garand I’d taken home from the war. I checked myself out of the hospital, chockful of drugs that had me feeling like a bowling pin that’d managed to stay up instead of the ones that needed a pin boy.
At home, I showered, put on my best clothes that weren’t dress blues, and did the dishes. No point to it, of course, except that the Army had left me with an ascetic streak that bachelor living hadn’t entirely managed to shred. I didn’t feel like leaving a mess for the next guy, or the landlady.
Hell, she’d never taken it too personal when I’d been short on rent. Maybe she’d just liked having someone living nearby who could flash a badge at a masher and send him to another zip code. Or maybe she liked me—I hadn’t been too bad to look at before that guy in the mirror had used a sick ward as a beauty salon.
Now I had sunken cheeks, baggy eyes, hair you wouldn’t stuff a pillow with… doctors didn’t even know what was wrong with me, only that I wasn’t getting better. Like it would matter much if I knew the name of the germ that had gotten me.
The dashboard radio played Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart as I drove out of town. I let it. I’d have plenty of peace and quiet soon enough.
Parente was a racketman in Peace Valley. The racketman. Every card game, every pony race, every cash register emptied or marijuana cigarette smoked… all of it paid a tax to Parente. He pulled the strings, he moved the money around, he was responsible for seeing to it that the gunsels got bullets and the hopheads got H and the shyster lawyers got paid when they kept crooks on the streets instead of behind the bars.
I couldn’t prove any of it. No one in the department could. But we knew he was rich, we knew he was crooked, and I knew that filling a grave with him was a better use of my time than writing out my memoir.
An old sting operation—one more failed attempt to pin Parente—had taught me where to go. I drove off-road, into the cover of a copse of pine trees, and I left my car there. Checked my .45 in its shoulder holster, then got the M-1 from the trunk.
I put some magazines into the pockets of my trenchcoat. Parente owned plenty of punks. I didn’t know how many. Didn’t know if I had enough bullets for all of them. Didn’t even know if I could shoot straight. I started walking.
It was a nice night out. Warm but not muggy. The breeze flitting through my coat and cooling me down. It was a brisk walk, but I sweated enough to feel my shirt squishing under my arms. I wasn’t afraid of death now. Just failure. Dying to take out a few of Parente’s bodyguards wouldn’t be any kind of legacy.
The moon was high. I looked at it and barely recognized it, clouds squirreling over it and past it like a magician’s trick. When was the last time I’d looked at the moon? When was the last time I’d looked at the stars?
Plenty of them out here, far from the city lights. Peace Valley was a small town, green and rich. You either saved up to get in or you were born rich. I wondered how many of the people who lived here, with all this room, had gotten rich off of Parente or a thug like him.
I walked by my last pine, doing a little inward calculus. I didn’t have to worry anymore about stumbling into one of the trees of this forest. But I didn’t have anything to catch me now either. There was nothing between me and Parente’s mansion.