People on the sidewalk moved cautiously out of the way. They didn’t know what I was about, but assumed it couldn’t be anything good.
There was a breakfast joint on a corner a few blocks away that served heart-choking mounds of colorful local cuisine and fat doughy hard rolls with bottomless cups of charred coffee. Antoine loved the place because it was owned by his late mother’s best friend, a woman named Eclair, the appropriateness of which nobody had the courage to point out when she was within earshot.
“Hey, CB,” yelled Walter, seeing me come in, “you ain’t dead.”
Antoine looked genuinely glad about it. The others were perplexed.
“Eclair, get this man a coffee,” said Antoine. “Can’t live without the shit. If you please, ma’am,” he added when she shot him a baleful look over the Formica counter.
I sat in the booth, squeezing a wiry little speedball named Franklin Leghorn into the corner, and lit a Camel.
“You might’ve checked my pulse,” I said to Antoine.
“Sorry, man. The way Darrin was goin’ at you with the butt of that gun, I figured you for white meat tartar.”
“Who’s Darrin?” I gripped my midsection as a jolt of pain streaked across my ribs. “What happened back there?”
“You’re messin’ with me.”
“No. I can’t remember. Not quite,” I said, after thanking Eclair for the chewable coffee, which she’d learned to give me as a double in a tall Styrofoam cup.
“Fuck, man,” said Antoine. “Darrin got aberrant with this evil little shotgun. I don’t know what set him off.”
“You fed him enough crack to get all’a Bridgeport high, then tole him his bitch been fuckin’ some Chinaman sellin’ fruit outta the back of his Expedition,” said Walter.
“I did? That was inauspicious.”
“CB save our ass,” said Walter to Antoine.
Antoine looked embarrassed.
“I sincerely thought you was dead,” he said to me. “Darrin come out with this sawed-off, lookin’ like he’s plannin’ to ventilate the room. Then you’re in his face, screamin’ shit, grabbin’ at the barrel of that gun. We’s all tryin’ to find cover in Darrin’s fucked-up little crib, while you and my boy’re beatin’ on each other like psycho versus psycho. Old Darrin was givin’ me the look of hate when he wasn’t workin’ on shootin’ your ass. You really don’t remember this shit?”
In truth, some of it was coming back. I’d actually had most of the outline when I woke up, but I thought it was a dream. Or some execrable phantasm courtesy of all the bourbon I’d been drinking.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I think I remember. I shouldn’t be drinking so much. Degrades the mental acuity.”
Everybody smiled at that.
“If that’s the case, CB, your acuity be turnin’ into some sorry shit,” said Franklin, earnestly.
“So who shot Darrin?” I asked the table. The smiles disappeared and everybody but Antoine started looking around the room.
“Not entirely certain about that, CB,” he said. “With all the screamin’ and commotion, you tryin’ to get the gun from Darrin and him beatin’ on you and swingin’ around that ugly little barrel, it just went off.”
“Went off?”
Walter sighed a loud sigh.
“Here’s the way it went down,” he said, waiting quietly to get full command of the floor. “Darrin come bustin’ in yellin’ he gonna smoke Antoine, throwin’ in some derogatory nonsense we don’t have to dwell on here.”
“That’s right,” said Antoine.
“That’s when CB does the kamikaze thing with the screamin’ and grabbin’ at the sawed-off. The point is, Darrin can’t get the muzzle pointin’ where he wants to, so he’s smackin’ CB with the barrel like this,” he demonstrated a vigorous two-handed thrust that caused Jared, the guy next to him, to lean out of the way.
“Damn, Walter, not so realistic.”
“And then jammin’ the butt of the gun in CB’s guts like this,” said Walter, pantomiming the action.
“He’d’a shot you dead if it weren’t for us jumpin’ on the barrel of that gun,” said Franklin to me. “Darrin had some kind of supernatural strength in him, that’s for certain.”
Walter shot a withering look at Franklin, who raised his hands, then did the zipper-my-mouth move across his lips. Walter sighed again and pressed on.
“Like the man said, we all jump in on things, but then Darrin got clear of everybody for a moment, and had that piece leveled at my chest, which I personally assumed was the moment of truth for yours truly, but for some reason he decide to use that golden opportunity to jam the butt end one more time straight into CB’s face, which I agree with Antoine should’ve been the curtain call for your ass. CB goes flyin’, and Franklin here, wriggly little fucker that he is, gets back in Darrin’s face before he can swing the sawed-off back into the game.”
“See, Antoine. I tole you that,” said Franklin. “You gotta start believin’ me when I tell you shit.”
Antoine looked conciliatory.
“Sorry, man. You’re right about that,” said Antoine.
“So, basically,” said Walter to me, “you was out cold when that gun went off. So cold we figure you was dead or about to be. I’m not sure why you ain’t dead, like you oughta be, but that’s a question for modern science, which ain’t at our immediate disposal.”
“We shot the motherfucker, is what he’s sayin’,” said Jared.
“Shot him with his own piece,” Franklin added.
“And was gonna say it was you that done it, since you was dead anyway and past the point of arguing,” said Walter. “And before you get all indignant about it, you gotta admit, it was a natural decision.”
“Or tell the truth. Simple self-defense,” I said.
They all looked at me piteously.
“We all gonna pretend that’s sheer naivety on your part,” said Antoine.
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry. Being dead, even temporarily, slows your mental faculties.”
“You got that right,” said Franklin.
“What’s the difference between faculties and acuities?” asked Jared.
“Only one of ‘em got tenure,” said Antoine, grinning at me, the only one in the room likely to get the joke.
“Where’s the shotgun?” I asked, eliciting more patient, knowing looks.
“Where nobody ever gonna see it again. Maybe in a million years when some archeologists be excavating Bridgeport,” said Antoine.
“Not much reason to be doin’ that,” said Walter, “‘less they studyin’ lifestyles of the beaten down and fucked up.”
“So nobody called the cops,” I said.
“We was still debatin’ the options,” said Antoine. “And now you throw a wrench in the only plan we all liked.”
I had to admit I wasn’t going to be much strategic help. I was a little preoccupied trying to separate the alcohol poisoning from the broken ribs, smashed-in mouth and emerging headache. It wasn’t getting any easier to breathe, and the possibility of internal injuries was haunting the fringes of my ground-up consciousness. I might have considered driving to a hospital if I still had my car, the slick import I was getting around to returning to the company when it disappeared at some time from some place, neither of which I could quite remember. Instead, I grappled with the decision of what to have for breakfast, checking out the half-eaten meals around the table for inspiration.
I’d picked well, judging from the first half of the meal, though the ultimate outcome was undecided after a small army of Bridgeport city cops arrived.
——
The criminal justice system seems to operate in several different dimensions at once. There’s the one we all want to believe in, the one described by officials invited to address a sixth grade civics class. There are the various versions seen on television and at the movies. There’s the cynic’s dimension, where criminal justice is all venality
