A Matter Of Respect Ch. 08

After I finished cleaning out the tub I settled in for a long hot bath. Every few minutes I could hear Ajax howling faintly in the distance. It must be one hell of a life to be hurt and out on your own. Now that I think about it, I know just how the old boy feels. There are times when I think I should try to go back home and embrace all the things that were once familiar to me. Grim reality is never far behind when I have thoughts like that. 

I have been in this profession for twenty years now. In my travels I have been to every continent, touched foreign souls countless thousands of miles from home. I went to Moscow twice and Crimea in the Ukraine once. People there have a very interesting way of reacting to Westerners. When you dress down in street clothes people are warm and open. Every face I saw was inviting and eager to talk. When I wore a business suit and tie it felt like I was in an entirely different country. Many people were still openly friendly, but there was an air of apprehension every where I went. Especially among the older folks. The men would watch me until they were almost out of sight. The old women with their thick shawls and scarves would look away and walk past me in a hurry.

I stopped in a few of the small marketplaces on the outskirts of Crimea to kill some time while I was there. At times it seemed like the vendors were willing to give me something just so I would leave. Having a reaction that strong to a man in a suit has to be the results of years of hurt and distrust. That made me think of Vetka. I seriously doubt Lockhart is an ethnic Russian name. I would guess she has a rich American husband. Maybe someone younger like Finch. That is a common scenario for women like her trying to make a better life for themselves here in the United States. They go through some international dating service and their picture is sent to dozens of well to do young hot shots who want a trophy bride they can train to their own wants. I would assume most of the marriages would be short lived. Maybe that was her case. I can't imagine any self respecting man tolerating someone slapping his wife, so I think maybe there is no Mr. Lockhart waiting for Vetka at home at the end of each day. Maybe that's why Finch thought he could get away with hitting her. And that's just it. He thought he did get away with it. If I find out it wasn't entirely accidental, I'm going to go rounds with that boy. 

I remember the day I realized this Job was my life's calling. I was a mayor's aid. I had been working for the city for almost six months. Our office building was in the dead center of downtown. We parked our cars in a lot behind city hall. The lot was surrounded by a chain link fence about ten feet tall. Break-ins and robberies were pretty common in that part of town. The fence was constantly being repaired and patched in places. I was still the new guy in the limited social circle of small time municipal government. 

One day around ten in the morning a secretary called me and asked me to come to her office. Her voice sounded frantic so I dashed down to the east wing where her office was. I was expecting her to be standing in her chair with a big bug or maybe a mouse bouncing around on the floor. Instead I found her looking out of her window into the parking lot. She pointed out to a man standing beside her car. 

"He's been walking from car to car out there. He keeps stopping at my car." She told me. 

He was a tall guy, maybe six three. He had stringy dirty silver hair that went down past the nape of his neck. He was wearing a long olive drab trench coat. The man had a tire iron in his hand. He looked around him, then smashed the passenger side window in and then leaned over inside her car. I bolted out of her office and headed for the door leading outside at the end of the hallway. Once I was outside I skirted around the side of the building to the parking lot. I expected him to be gone, but he was still rooting around in her car. I approached him from behind and stopped about five feet short.

"Hey!" I yelled at him. 

The man jerked out of the car and snapped around facing me. I wasn't anticipating him to react so quickly. He was a rough looking guy. I would guess he weighed around two-twenty. His face was covered with thick stubble. His eyes looked hard and dark. Under the trench coat he was wearing a thin old Lynrd Skynrd t shirt and green khaki pants. He was wearing square toed boots that look like they were older than I was. He didn't have the tire iron in his hand, but he did have something worse. In his right hand he had a long slender flathead screwdriver. He jumped forward and took a jab at me with the screwdriver. 

I panicked.

I know how to take care of myself in damn near any situation now, but back then I was just a kid. I knew the very basics of self defense. As he lunged at me I punched down on his outstretched arm and grabbed his fist wrapped around the screwdriver. I pushed down with one hand and pulled up with the other. I wanted to turn his wrist till he let go of the damned screwdriver, but it didn't work out that way. He jerked his arm up and tried to stab at me again so I punched him hard under the jaw. He doubled over and his arm went limp for a second. I reached around under his arm with my right hand and pulled his closed fist around to the side. I was trying to get his arm behind him so I could wrestle him to the ground and keep that damned screwdriver from ending up handle deep in my gut. As I tried to twist his arm around he stood bolt upright and pulled away from me as hard as he could. As he pulled away I was trying to maneuver his arm around behind him. 

He must have known I wasn't about to let him go so he pulled me close and reared back to head butt me. I yanked his arm up hard in a final attempt to take the screwdriver from him. The next thing I knew I was staring at an inch of the screwdriver poking out of the right side of his neck. 

The screwdriver punctured cleanly through his neck from one side to the other. Blood was jetting around both ends of the blade. It reminded me of the end scene of that movie Robocop. I stood there stunned for a second watching the guy claw at the screwdriver with blood covering both his shoulders. He started slapping at his trench coat, and I realized he was reaching for something. He closed his right hand around something in his pocket. I ran into him and we plowed into the car. The man was trying to pull something out of his pocket, and I'd be damned if I was going to let him shoot me. His left hand was slapping and punching at me frantically. A hysterical person can be hell to subdue. 

By this time I wasn't scared, I was just plain pissed. I honestly don't know if I realized at the time how enraged I had become. I took a step back then reached forward and grabbed both ends of the screwdriver. His eyes looked like a deer caught in a truck's headlights. I pushed around on the bloody screwdriver still planted firmly in his neck. He yelled a raspy coughing scream and turned around. I shoved him hard unto the car. I swatted his hand away and reached into the pocket he was trying so desperately to pull something out of. I felt something smooth and hard. I pulled it out. It was a fucking wine bottle. I reached around in front of him and popped him hard on the forehead with the wine bottle. The bottle broke in a spray of glass. 

Suddenly he shoved back and I was thrown away from him. I had the broken neck of the bottle in my right hand. He turned to face me, one shaky hand gripping the blood covered handle of the screwdriver. He took a staggering step forward. The handle bobbed up and down as his body moved. Blood was oozing out of his mouth. His chin was plastered with bright red. There was a growing bloom of red on the front of his Lynrd Skynrd t shirt.  

"I'm... gonna kick... your.. asss. " He hissed in a sickly gargling voice. 

He took another step toward me and I dove at him. I buried the broken bottle hard into his right side and plowed him into the car again. I twisted the neck of the bottle as I stabbed it into his side. His arms flew out beside him. I grabbed the screwdriver handle and pulled it out, then whipped around so he was facing my back, and I stabbed underhand behind me, up into his chest with the screwdriver. I sank it in to the hilt then let go. I stepped away from him then turned about face and watched him as he slid down the side of the car and fell face first onto the hot asphalt. 

It didn't occur to me then how quickly I was able to react, how I could cut him down with one smooth motion. Before then I would have never believed I was capable of doing something like that with such determination. I didn't know it then, but it didn't come to me at all. It just happened. If I had pictured myself in that situation before then, I would have bet on getting my ass whipped good. 

The man lie perfectly still. No exaggerated caricature of death, no last words or 'tell my ma I love her'. He seemed like he had been lying there since the glaciers were grinding their way across the surface of the earth a million years ago. He wasn't just dead, he was very dead. His bladder let go and his body seemed to relax and lie flat. The acidic stench of urine drifted up from the hot asphalt. I suddenly felt embarrassed for the man. 

I felt like I was helpless to move for a while. Soon there was a crowd of people gathered around me and the dead man. I felt like I should do something. I took my jacket off and draped it over him. Ten minutes later the parking lot was swarming with police. I ended up riding down town and being interrogated. No one was rough with me, which I was surprised by. It was pretty clinical to tell the truth. By the time I yelled at the man there were already five of the office girls watching out of their windows. Witnesses were stepping forward by the handful. 

I heard words like 'hero' and 'good Samaritan' thrown around. Let me tell you something, the last thing I felt like was a fucking hero. To this day that word makes me grit my teeth. If you want to pay me an honest complement, by all means lay it on me. But please, don't call me a hero. It's a label I can't live up to. It has too many grand aspirations attached to it. When you boil it all down, I do enjoy my Job. But the truth is I just want to go to work, put my thing down and pick it back up at the end of the day. I've got better than thirty certificates, commendations, a few medals and awards in an old foot locker. I am grateful for all of them. They do make my pride swell a bit, but they don't hold a shine to when somebody like Ms. Merch says 'thank you'. 

At the end of that day I was sporting a commendation from the mayor himself, although that didn't stop my hands from shaking for hours afterward. When I got home I sat down on my couch and cradled my hands in my head. My hands were still shaking uncontrollably. I kept seeing the man's eyes, kept hearing his last words. I could see the drops of blood spraying from his mouth as he spoke. And I could see myself killing him. I was waiting for the tears and regret to come. 

They never did. 

It's amazing, the moments we experience that change our lives so much. Three weeks later I was The Executive Assistant To The Mayor, and on the road to becoming the most highly sought after private security liason in a ten state radius. I still get random job offers from time to time. I have rules I work by. One is that I never work for someone who wants me as a status symbol or a figurehead. I do The Job because I believe The Job is worth doing. 

One thing I have discovered in this line of work, when you have a reputation for being dependable you get job offers from some piss poor excuses for human beings. I never work for people like that. I have worked on people like that before, but that is a different story altogether. 

By the time I finished my little jaunt down memory lane my bathwater was stone cold. I slowly rose out of the water, listening to my knees crack and pop. Christine was napping in the doorway. I toweled dry and slipped into my old silk boxers. I went to the kitchen and made a big mug of cocoa, then sat out on the porch and drank it slowly. The moon was hanging almost directly overhead. It was bright and alive in the clear night sky. Every now and then the shadow of a bat would dart across the face of the moon. It had been a while since I heard Ajax sound off, so I guessed he was holed up somewhere asleep. I had to find a way to keep him around for when the vet arrives. I also needed to buy a collar for him. I know, it's a pretty despicable thought, putting a collar on a wild animal. It just might be the only thing that keeps someone from taking another shot at him, though. I can live with that. Besides, that old dog doesn't know it yet, but I'm putting his ass to work soon. 

Christine came out and settled down on my feet. She purred softly as she dozed off to sleep. Her warmth was comforting. I hoped Ms. Merchenal was sleeping peacefully. I would never use her situation to my benefit, but I had plans to use it to make Finch a little more aware of people around him. 
Tomorrow is going to be day one of sensitivity training for Mr. Hot Shot, and you can bet your ass it's going to be a real scream. 

Fade To Black