The Winner: Part Sixteen

I was in a state of shock. I wandered around the city in a state of pure shock. I couldn’t think, I could only walk. I was so out of it, I almost got creamed by a bus crossing the street. I just kept walking. The angry shouts of the bus driver and his passengers nothing but an afterthought.

After going around like that for a few hours, I finally sat down on a bench in the park and sat down. I don’t know how long I was sitting there when two annoyingly cheery dudes in yellow shirts came up to me. According to their T-shirts, they were part of some Christian homeless outreach program. They handed me a pamphlet, a bologna sandwich, and a bag of potato chips.

“We’re just goin’ around today letting you that Jesus loves you and is looking out for you bro. Tomorrow is a new day!”

I don’t say a thing, I just stare at them and they move along to find the next bum they can try and save their souls with. If it wasn’t the empty, angry look in my eyes that prompted them to move on, then surely they must have caught a whiff of the load of shit drying in my pants. After they are gone, I decide to try and eat the bologna sandwich. I get down maybe four bites before I puke it all back up onto the sidewalk in front of the bench. Some of the vomit dribbles off my chin and down the front of my shirt. I no longer only smelled like shit, I was also covered in vomit. How much lower could I go?

That’s when I was able to actually compose my first thought since I left the garage. While it wasn’t all that profound, it hit me with the power of a religious revelation: my only way out of this situation is to slide off the radar completely. Don’t go home, don’t find an ATM and withdraw more cash or use your credit card. Through a freak turn of fate, you won a lottery and briefly tasted money and power. But this is what I really am, sitting on a graffiti scrawled park bench, smelling like shit and caked in vomit. Now, the only way to survive is to embrace what I really am. Go off the radar completely and never return to the life I’ve been living. Begin again at zero.

I entertain the idea of doing that long enough for it to be pleasant. Then reality slowly chipped away at it. For one, there was no way Van Hertzwelder would let me live. Even if I didn’t know about their conspiracy, he was still pissed enough about his date rapist son that he’d spare no expense trying to get me. And if I was cut off from all my resources, there would be no way I could hide from him for long.

Besides that, running right now would pretty much condemn Apple, her babies, and my mother to death. Burke is right about me; I am a piece of shit, but I’m not so horrible as to let everyone around me fucking die to just to save my own ass.

So, I was back to square one on how the hell I was gonna get out of this mess. I sigh. It was too much to think about and I’m exhausted, so I lay down on that filthy bench and take a nap. The only dreams I’ve been having lately are bad ones, but the one I had on bench was the kind of dream you want to live in forever. It wasn’t much. I was in some sort of normal house, which looked vaguely like my mother’s house, but without the grime and religious nick-nacks and it also seemed to have a basement. I had some good, not-too-important but still respectable job. What it was, I don’t know, but that’s the incomplete nature of dream logic.

Apple was there, but she was different. She didn’t have that white trash, gutter gawkiness about her. She was cleaned up. She looked beautiful and more than that, she looked happy, almost luminous. She was in the kitchen, making some sort of casserole and her babies were there, only they were about six years older than they are now. They run around the kitchen and Apple playfully tells them to finish their homework before dinner. I sit at the table while they work on math problems, reading the newspaper. There is a tie loosened around my neck.

Even in the dream, I knew this world was nothing but merry suburban complacency; the supposed American Dream. But dammit, I’d give anything to have it now, that dull but happy existence.

This self-awareness only starts around the same time I’m aware of someone firmly jostling my shoulder.

“Wake up sir. You need to wake up.”

They’re shining a flashlight in my eyes. It’s some fucking cops. I mumble something groggily, then slowly sit up on the bench. It’s the dead of night now. How long did I sleep?

“Sir, do you have some identification?” the cop who was jostling me says. He strips off the rubber glove he used to touch me with a snap.

I reach for my wallet, but all I feel is the wet seat of my pants where the shit soaked through. Fuck, someone must have stolen it while I was sleeping. “I don’t have any,” I say to the officer. “Why do you need it? Are you arresting me?”

“No,” he says. “But it’s illegal to sleep in the park after dark. We’re giving you a ticket for that and for public intoxication.”

“I’m not drunk. I’m just tired,” I say.

“Tell it to the judge. Can we have you name and social security number?”

“Poopy Patrick Peanutz,” I say. Having just woken up, it takes me a moment to recall my social security number, but I rattle that off too.

The second officer with the flashlight keys his radio and says, “Unit six-niner requesting a warrant check on a Poopy Patrick Peanutz with this SS number…”

“You know,” the cop says while scribbling something into his ticket book, “If you’re tired, there’s a shelter on 29^th St. They accept people up until ten as long as you’re sober, like you say you are.”

“I’m not homeless,” I grumble. “Just give me the ticket so I can go home.”

“Just trying to help,” he says, continuing to write on the ticket. “But you should definitely go somewhere and take a shower. Whatever it is you’ve been rolling in, it can’t be hygienic.”

I don’t say anything else, I just want him to hurry up and finish writing out the ticket, which seems to be taking forever. It looks like he’s nearly done when the other officer’s radio squawks back. “Unit six-niner, be advised, name and social provided for warrant check is positive for an APB on a witness in a possible two-oh-seven. Detain and bring to second district headquarters. There are some defs here prepping to interview him.”

What the fuck?

“Sir, please stand up,” the cop says. I notice his partner back up a couple paces and subtly undo the clasp on his holster. “We need you to come with us.”

“What’s going on? What’s this about?”

“We’ve been ordered to bring you in for questioning. That’s all we know.”

“Am I under arrest?”

The cop shrugs, “If that’s the way you want to do it. The only thing I do know is that one way or the other you’re coming with us. The brass don’t fuck around when it comes to a two-oh-seven.”

Oh well, what choice do I have here? I stand up and the cop puts a hand on my shoulder, leading me insistently to their car stationed at the edge of the park. They don’t bother to put cuffs on me. What the hell is going on here? I wonder if they are even real cops or if this is all just another thing Van Hertzwelder is doing to mindfuck me into going along with his scheme.

Anyway, I get into the back, caged part of the police cruiser and try to make myself comfortable. I can hear the two cops gag as they hop into the front seats. Fuck them. I know I smell like shit, they don’t have to make such a show of it. After rolling down their windows, they peel out and flash their lights and run a red light, anything to minimize the amount of time they have to spend with me in an enclosed space.

“Am I in trouble here?” I ask the cops.

“I have no idea. You can’t be in too much trouble though if you don’t have a warrant. But if the defs want to talk to you, I can’t very well let you just walk off.”

“What the fuck is a def? Hell, what the fuck is a two-oh-seven since that’s what I’m being questioned about.”

“Def is FBI. You know…’feds’ spelled backwards. Kinda an inside joke in our department…”

Hardee-har-har. These guys will have their own sitcom in no time. If the FBI wants to talk to me though, it can’t be good.

“A two-oh-seven is radio code for a kidnapping, so you must know something pretty important if the feds are here waiting to question you. You know anything about a kidnapping, Stinky?”

Both of the cops start chuckling. I don’t say anything, I just stew. My bad situation just gets worse and worse.