 |
Lieutenant Flanagan's Pound of FleshBy Michael DoddSUMMER 2005 EXCEPTIONAL VERY SHORT STORY CONTEST WINNER - THIRD PLACE |
|
The night had started off badly before he even arrived at work. It was Dec 19th, and Ryan was supposed to be at the unit Christmas party. The “unit”, being the Transit Police, District Five, of the NYPD. Everybody else in District Five, who wanted to be off, was granted the night off to attend the party. But Ryan had run afoul of one Lieutenant Flanagan. More likely, to put it better, Lieutenant Flanagan had likely imagined some transgression by Ryan. In any event, the Lieutenant did not like Officer Ryan Peterson. Flanagan would never come out and say why he really did not like Ryan. That was one of the many strange things about some NYPD bosses. They would just pick out a cop or two, and find a reason to dislike them, and make their lives miserable. As such, Ryan was going to be spending the night in the subway, at 63rd street and Lexington Avenue. The lieutenant made sure that his request to have the night off, or “The 28”, as the form is called, was denied. He arrived at his post at a little after midnight, a cup of coffee in hand. Ryan said hello to the token booth clerk, and headed to the break room to read his Daily News newspaper, and leisurely finish his coffee. However, it was not meant to be. The token booth clerk called him over. It figures, he thought. The bullshit was going to be starting early tonight. “There are two crack heads smoking down on the lower level platform,” the clerk told Ryan, as he pointed at the monitor. There are cameras on the platform, and the monitors hung above the token booth. The clerk was not lying. There was a man and a woman sharing a crack pipe on the lower level. Even on the black and white monitor, these two looked filthy. “Ok, I’ll take care of it,” said Ryan. Personally, Ryan did not care if those two idiots stayed there all night, but the clerk was complaining. Therefore, the problem had to be solved. He put his coffee and newspaper in the break room, and headed down to the lower platform. The 63rd street station was unusual in how deep it went underground. The station at 191st was the deepest underground, so they say, but this was deep too. The upper level was deep, but the lower level seemed like it was hundreds of feet underground. In addition, at this time of the night, the entire station was usually deserted. These thoughts all went through Ryan’s mind as he made his way down there. He was alone, and if things somehow went terribly wrong, help was going to be a long time in arriving. That is, assuming that his radio was going to transmit correctly, something one could never take for granted as a transit cop. The escalator was not working; he took the stairs. A stench hit his nose that he immediately identified as vomit. He looked down just in time to avoid stepping in it. “Perhaps someone coming from their company Christmas party,” he mused. Ryan was imagining some of his co-workers at the party that was now ongoing. He was wondering who was making an ass of themselves. It had to be somebody. He would hear about it tomorrow, for sure. Ryan had seventeen and a half years on the job; retirement was a little over 2 years away. Each annual Christmas party brought with it a few tales of drunken idiocy. Ryan stepped onto the lower level platform. The two crack heads were at the opposite end. They saw him coming. A train was pulling in, the doors opened. This was their chance to leave, if they desired. They stayed put, and no one got off the train. The “F” train slowly pulled out of the station, with that annoying metal on metal squeal. “Hey, what’s up?” said Ryan. Always a good, meaningless and unthreatening greeting, he thought. “Nuthin” said the male crack head. The female just stared at Ryan, saying nothing. They smelled terrible. Crack heads are not known for their frequent bathing habits. “You guys have any identification?” Ryan asked, knowing this was an asinine question. He figured he would write each of them a summons, for some sort of violation, loitering, smoking, etc. “Uh, no,” the male said. As Ryan was looking at the male, in his peripheral vision, to his right, he saw the woman reach under her jacket and into her waist. This is never a good thing for a cop to see. Ryan immediately reached for his pistol, a Smith and Wesson 9 millimeter. However, she had a head start on him. In her right hand, she was raising a small, black pistol, likely a .22 or .25 caliber. “Shit, shit, shit” thought Ryan. The bitch got the jump on me, he thought, as he unlocked his holster and began raising his gun. At the same moment he heard her gun go off, which was pointing at him. It had that high-pitched cracking sound that smaller caliber pistols have. He ducked and wildly began backing up, firing his Smith&Wesson 9 millimeter at the same time. The sound, echoing off the subway walls, was deafening. He had absolutely no chance to aim at all. Ryan just fired rapidly in her general direction. At the same moment, he felt a burning sensation in his throat, and a wetness that was warm, like sweat. He fell down, into a sitting position, against the wall. She turned and ran. Her partner had already taken off, jumping onto the tracks and fleeing through the tunnel. Ryan’s pistol was now empty; the upper slide part locked back exposing the top of the spent magazine. “Shit, I fired sixteen rounds already,” he said to himself in his head. Sixteen rounds fired and he did not hit a goddamned thing, except the walls, he thought, almost laughing to himself. He pressed the magazine release button; it slid out and landed on the platform. It should have made a noise, hitting the concrete, he thought. “I can’t hear,” he realized, as he slid a fresh magazine into the pistol, the slide ramming forward, chambering the first bullet. Ryan wondered if the token clerk had seen any of what just happened on the monitor, but doubted it. The clerk had seemed busy with other things in the booth. He attempted to get up, grabbing the wooden bench. Ryan fell back down. His left knee felt swollen. He looked down at it and saw the blood. Sitting back down on the floor, Ryan took stock of his situation. He had been shot twice, in the left knee and in his throat. The blood was oozing from his neck, down onto his chest. It made for a sticky sensation. Each breath he took, he could feel the blood going further down his chest, onto his stomach, stopping at his belt. “Time to get the cavalry here,” he thought. He raised his radio to his mouth, pressed the transmit button, and tried to speak. All that came out of his mouth was a hissing sound. At the same time, he realized that one of her bullets had hit his radio. “Excellent, excellent,” he thought. Ryan used that line often; it was from Mr. Smithers on The Simpsons. He could not speak, and the radio was dead anyway. Walking was going to be a problem. Ryan wondered if anyone had heard the gunfire; it had been deafening down here, at least. But as far as he knew, the token booth clerk was the only other person in the station. Those booths are thick and secure; he doubted that the sound made it all the way up there and into the booth. The pay phone. There is one on most platforms in the subway system. He looked up to his right, and there it was. He struggled to his feet; the pain from his knee was excruciating. Ryan picked up the phone and attempted to dial 911. The buttons on the phone would not move. It was not working, which was not a big surprise. “Figures,” he thought. Houston, we have a problem. That thought made him smile, for some strange reason. He always did have a weird sense of humor. Maybe that was why Lieutenant Flanagan did not like him. Hmm. A Sergeant had warned him that Flanagan had vowed to “get that Peterson guy”. No other explanation; just that vow. He began dragging himself towards the staircase, being all out of fresh ideas. As he reached the first step, he tried to stand up again. He hopped up the first few steps, and then needed rest. What made things so difficult was keeping one hand pressed to his throat to slow the bleeding. It was slow going; it seemed like about twenty minutes to reach the top of the stairs. He realized his hearing was slowly returning. The next train was pulling in downstairs. Maybe someone would get off and come walking up here, he thought. He heard the train pull away; silence. “Shit,” he thought. Ryan wanted to go to sleep, and he knew that was a very bad sign. He knew if he fell asleep now, he was not going to wake up, at least not in this world. His head kept bobbing as he fought the urge. He was hallucinating, thinking he was at the Christmas party. There was sweat dripping from his forehead, into his eyes, causing him to squint. He saw a sign on the wall. It read “Thank You for Riding the MTA”. Once again, he had to fight the urge to laugh. “No, thank you,” he tried to say aloud. Ryan figured it took another 20 minutes to reach the top of the second stairway. He could not go any further; he had lost too much blood. He lay at the top step, looking at the token booth. He pulled out his gun and fired once, down the stairs. The clerk looked up, stunned, and reached for the phone. Ryan passed out. Within two minutes, the station was swarming with cops. The first two that arrived approached Ryan, now unconscious, gun in hand. They looked down the stairs at the trail of blood. “Holy shit,” they both said, almost in unison, as they picked him up and dragged him upstairs to their radio car. At the hospital, one of the doctors eventually came up to the group of officers milling about, waiting for any word on his condition. “I’m sorry, but he just lost too much blood. If he had been brought in 10 minutes sooner, it might have been different,” the doctor said. One of the cops called the District, to inform the supervisor there that Peterson had died. It rang twice. “Lieutenant Flanagan, District Five,” the voice said. As the Lieutenant listened, he could not help but smile. |
|
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Dodd is a retired New York City police officer. | |