In the middle of court proceedings, he muttered.
Her attorney stopped and turned to him.
The judge looked up and said, “Excuse me?”
“Nolo…”, Nick repeated, without looking up.
His attorney whispered, “..Nick, what are you..”
The judge frowned, “Detective, this is not a criminal-”
“Whatever your honor. I’m sorry.” Nick sighed. “I just don’t want to fight this anymore…”
His attorney stood up. “Your Honor-”
“Nolo contendere, that’s it.” Nick placed a hand on his attorney’s shoulder and sat him down.
Her attorney asked, “And the conditions of the alimony-”
“Whatever she wants.”
“Nick.” his attorney pleaded.
“No.” Nick raised a palm and closed his eyes,”..no.”
The judge regarded Nick.
No one knew what to say and that was it.
***
Outside he heard her voice behind him.
“Why?”, she asked and he turned around.
Nick was ready to make a comment about the restraining order she placed on him but no one was there.
He stood there a moment and tried to remember something else about Elsa other than her voice and it hurt to do so. Nick lit a cigarette and took a deep breath. The day was breezy and warm and leaves rustled in the trees around the courthouse. It was a day for weddings, not divorces.
***
He walked out of the hearing a week ago and was standing in front of his captain. Nick’s badge and gun were on the captain’s desk. Nick couldn’t look at them.
“So..”, he said.
“Two weeks suspension.” The captain sighed and opened his desk drawer and placed first the gun, then the badge, and quietly shut it. “Think of going somewhere. The review board thought you were in the clear but the civilians felt you couldn’t just walk back on the street. You gotta remember they knew about the divorce, so that didn’t help ya any”. The captain looked at Nick. Nick seemed bored and his eyes were somewhere else. “What are ya thinking?”
Nick’s gaze fell on the captain. He replied, “I’m tired. I’m thinking that I’m tired.”
“Good”, the captain shuffled some papers around. “See you in two weeks..” He didn’t bother to stand or offer his hand.
***
2 am. Doorbell.
Nick got up, not turning on any of the lights. He picked up his Parabellum from the dresser and approached the door. Other times he awoke, couldn’t place where he was, knew he wasn’t home, he was someplace else, someplace foreign, but it would then come to him that he didn’t live at home anymore, he was living in some apartment in Rego Park. Now, however, he was fully aware of where he was from the moment he heard the doorbell.
By the door frame, gun up and hand on the knob, he asked who it was.
“NYPD..open the door”, a whisper on the other side.
Nick pushed closer to the frame, gun centered right on the door. “Prove it.”
He heard someone bend down and saw something slide from
underneath the door, black and leathery. Staying clear of the door, Nick brought what looked like a wallet towards him with his foot. Gun still on the door, he picked it up and opened it.
His badge. His ID.
He opened the door. In the hallway, a skinhead who suddenly had the barrel of Nick’s gun in his face.
“What?” the skinhead grimaced, then slowly reached in his jacket for his own ID. “Intelligence. That’s all you gonna get,” he held out the ID. “Notice? No name, just my mug, and a poor one to boot.”
Nick lowered his gun.
The skinhead came in, brushing past Nick, stopping halfway into the foyer. He turned to Nick, “Shut the door already, we got work to do.”
***
“First: forget you’re a cop. Never carry your badge or your ID or your license. They’ll get you another one. Always have a gun. If you don’t have one unregistered, they’ll get you one. If you get bagged, let it happen, but I doubt in two weeks anything will. Oh, that’s right: you’ll be underground for two weeks, the length of your suspension. After that, you can be Nick Pathos again, if you want. You got a choice. You go back again though, no one’ll know about your two weeks, even if you make a bust, which they want you for a big one, by the way. Think about it: you’ll be no one and no one will remember what you did. No clearances, no medal, no credit.” The skinhead was sitting on the couch across from the chair Nick was in. The skinhead fell quiet, eyes on Nick.
Nick put out his cigarette. “I’m in.”
***
Killshot lowered the gun.
***
Pathos was running up the staircase, two by two.
He had ten flights to go and already breathing hard.
***
Killshot, softly, “…you lied..”
She flicked her cigarette, uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Can you blame me?”
***
Pathos made the next to last flight, his chest burning, and pushed himself even harder, three by three.
***
It was as if she hadn’t said anything.
“..you lied about the child..”
“No”, she took a drag, “I was pregnant. I had an abortion.”
Killshot took a step closer. “..I killed for no reason..”
“No”, she shook her head, “you had a job to do.”
Gun up, at her, time enough just for the cigarette to slip out of her fingertips, trigger pulled three times, upward arc. One to the stomach and brakes her almost in half, into the couch, her hips lock, calves fly up, legs off the floor, bouncing off the back of the couch; second pins her chest, bursting it, straightening her entire spine then snapping it finally in half; the third slams her forehead just over the couch, onto the wall, the wet sound of it.
Silence.
Her feet still tremble for a few seconds afterward, both shoes far and away.
***
BAMBAMMBAMM-
Pathos stopped in the hallway. The breath went out of him. Quiet, something empty in him, filling the hallway, or matching it. What would he have done anyway? He wasn’t going in there to stop it, he was running to it, to see it, to be a part of it. Pathos wanted her dead as much as Killshot, and he didn’t even know her.
***
“…why?”, Killshot said and did not move. His face does not even as he breathes. “..curious..”, he adds.
Pathos starts to feel uncomfortable having the killer here unmoving. Killshot removes his sunglasses in a very slow manner and Pathos knows that he is the first person in a very long time to see those eyes. Despite the smooth face, the eyes were very red at the edges and very dark.
Just as Pathos is about to ask again the killer’s lips move.
“you were once a ‘Happy man'”, Killshot pauses, just his lips had been moving and now suddenly, nothing.
A plane flies overhead, drowning out all sound. The two men are across from one another.
“…imagine..” the killer continues, the eyes have not blinked, “..that you were not always happy…”, the killer pauses, “…details would be telling..”, he pauses again and then resumes, “..things happen…dominoes fall and you suddenly are a ‘Happy Man’…welcome to another life, forget that you are a scarred child…gifts beneath the christmas tree..”
The killer tilts his head slightly, “..you have never been asked, ‘Why?’.”
He stops. His eyes don’t blink.
Pathos slowly draws from his cigarette, thinking how much of this is bullshit and where’s it supposed to go. Elsa pops into his mind: the first time he had seen her, in that clothing store, smiling, years ago.
“you become unalone…”, Killshot’s eyes do not blink, “you’ve become something not what you once were, what you were from…. you are a ‘Happy man’…the sun never sets and the sun always does…everything happens pleasingly…,” the killer’s eyes glaze and seem to shine, “…you learn to smile like the child in your arms…”
Pathos remembers Elsa on her piano on the night of their engagement and they were both breathing hard, laughing, sweaty. She had said, then, her feet on the keys, ‘We make beautiful music’.
“..why..is for confessions.” the killer says and the eyes blink, becoming bone dry, “..and that would be telling…finish and others end and are put away rather quickly, hurried..you are no longer a ‘Happy Man’, no longer where you were from.. all wiped away…but the white sheets stained while you slept.”
Pathos remembers the night after he had killed Estevez. He had awakened and Elsa was sitting in the far corner of the hotel room, away from him, watching him, shaking with the phone in her hand, weeping.
Killshot puts his sunglasses back on. He stands smoothly but slowly, very tired. Pathos remembers the dead open eyes of Ricky Estevez on his couch, looking at the floor.
“I’m going to have to arrest you..”, he says, weak.
Killshot stands over Pathos. “..but I know you..”
Pathos looks at the killer, exhausted. “And?”
The killer tilts his head, whispers, “..that would be telling.”
Killshot turns away.
Pathos’ Browning, the same one that had killed Estevez, right there in front of him, on the coffee table, big black ugly metal. He remembers Estevez, the look on his face, Elba screaming, ‘good god–you jus-YOU-oh god–ARE YOU MAD??!!’.
Pathos hears the killer close the door behind him, gone.