Shockey didn’t seem to hear him. He was still looking at Amy.
“I’ll be back in a while,” Louis said to Joe. He took Shockey’s arm and steered him out the door.
They were the only two people in the hotel lounge. It was a sports bar, strung with NASCAR banners, UM pennants and Big Ten flags. A maize-and-blue football jersey was encased in plastic behind the bar: #48 — GERALD FORD, 1932-34.
Shockey hefted himself onto a bar stool and leaned on his elbows. Louis took the stool next to him, looking around for a bartender. The place was quiet except for the
“You don’t have to babysit me, Kincaid.”
“You look like you had a tough day.”
“Tough doesn’t begin to cover it,” Shockey muttered.
A woman emerged from the back room. Her eyes brightened when she saw them, apparently surprised to discover she had customers.
“You want something to eat, Jake?” Louis asked.
“Beefeaters, straight.”
“How about a coffee?”
“I said I didn’t need babysitting, peeper.”
Louis looked back at the bartender. “Club soda for me.”
The bartender set down both drinks. Shockey swallowed his shot of gin before the bartender had picked up Louis’s ten dollars. Shockey motioned for a second. Louis waited until Shockey downed it before speaking.
“So, what happened? Did you get your ass chewed at work?” Louis asked.
“I got my ass fired,” Shockey said.
Louis was quiet as he picked up his change off the bar. Shockey should have been fired, but Louis wasn’t about to offer that opinion. He was almost sorry now he’d asked the man down for a drink. He had been in this situation before — spending the evening with middle-aged cops who for one reason or another were washed up. Sometimes it was a screw-up and flat termination; most times it was burnout. But Jake Shockey looked like a man hanging on to the last knot in the rope.
“You can find another job,” Louis offered.
“At thirty-six?” Shockey asked. “Most departments only want guys under thirty. Or women. Or… hell, you know it better than me… minorities.”
Shockey was right. Things were different from ten, fifteen years ago. The rookies were younger and stronger, better trained and better educated. Being white and male was no longer the huge advantage it had been in the seventies and early eighties.
“There’s other kinds of jobs,” Louis offered.
“I could never be a peeper,” Shockey said.
“What about security?”
Shockey grunted and gestured for another shot of gin. He dug into his pants pocket for some money and came out with a twenty and a worn leather wallet. The kind a badge was kept in. He set the wallet next to his shot glass and pushed the twenty to the drink well.
“Look,” Louis said. “Life throws you a curve now and then. I don’t have to tell you that. I know a guy in Florida who tried to hang on to his job even though he was going blind. Almost killed a kid before he realized he couldn’t be a cop anymore.”
“How’s he doing now?”
Louis took a long drink of his club soda. “He’s fine,” he lied. “Still adjusting, but he’s getting there. But you’re not going blind, Jake. You’re not old, and you can do other things.”
Shockey picked up the leather badge holder and opened it. Sure enough, the depression carved for his shield was empty.
“I’ve had this fifteen years,” Shockey said. “Bought it with my first paycheck. It cost me nine dollars and eighty-six cents.”
Louis leaned on the bar and stared absently at the rows of liquor bottles, tempted to order himself a drink and swim the afternoon away in a bottle with Shockey.
“Funny thing,” Shockey said. “I didn’t come here intending to be a cop.”
Louis looked at him. “Here meaning Ann Arbor?” he asked. “Where you from, then?”
“Grew up in Howell,” Shockey said. “Not far from the substation where we were the other day. My old man was on disability, and we never had much, but I made all-state my senior year and managed to snag myself a football scholarship to Eastern.”
“What position?”
“Running back.”
“Did you graduate?” Louis asked.
“Nah,” Shockey said. “I blew out a knee my sophomore year and had to drop out. I’d always felt like I was some kind of hometown hero, getting the scholarship and all, and I was too embarrassed to go home, so I just stayed in Ypsi for a few months, working odd jobs. Then one day, I saw the Ann Arbor PD was hiring.”
Louis was quiet. It had been the same for him. He’d seen a similar ad, the summer after his senior year. He’d scored well on the LSAT and had a place waiting for him at the UM Law School. But an itch had set in that year, the need to get out from under Phillip Lawrence’s financial support, the need to see other places and meet interesting people. The need to make his own money, his own way in the world, and start living his life.
By his twenty-first birthday in November, he was in uniform, patrolling the same streets he used to walk to class on.
“You want another?” Shockey asked.
Louis shook his head as Shockey ordered two more shots for himself.
“Man,” Shockey said. “What am I going to do? This is all I know. And Jean… what about her? Who’s going to help her now?”
“I’m going to stay around for a while,” Louis said. “You can still help me. Off the record, you know.”
Shockey glanced at him and turned away. He finished one shot but suddenly seemed in no hurry to pick up the other one.
“Fuck, maybe I should just let that go, too,” he said. “Maybe she isn’t even dead. Maybe she just took off on me, too.”
“You don’t believe that,” Louis said. “And you’re making excuses.”
Shockey toyed with the empty glass, turning it slowly between his thumb and finger.
“I lied to you,” Shockey said softly. “And I lied to her.”
Louis sighed and rubbed his brow, his gaze drifting again to the Remy Martin bottle behind the bar. There was only one thing worse than listening to a drunk cry in his beer: having to do it sober.
Shockey finally downed the second shot and slammed the glass down on the bar. “I’m nothing!” he said. “Fucking nothing.”
“Calm down.”
“Fuck you, peeper, and fuck Brandt, too. Fuck all of ’em, the god damn sonofabitches.”
The bartender looked over. “Keep him quiet, would you?”
“Jake, come on,” Louis said. “Let me take you home.”
“Fuck you.”
Louis leaned down to Shockey’s ear. “The bartender’s going to call the cops,” he said. “Don’t make things worse by getting your ass arrested. Come on.”
Shockey pushed off the stool so hard it tipped. Louis caught it, and as he straightened it, he noticed the brown wallet still lying on the bar in a puddle of gin.
Louis picked it up, stuck it into his pocket, and followed Shockey out into the hotel lobby and to the front doors. Shockey stumbled as he pushed through them, digging again in his pockets to find his car keys.
Louis caught up with him outside. “I’ll drive you if you can remember your damn address.”
Shockey ignored him as he pulled his entire pocket inside out, dumping everything — keys, coins, bills, and slips of paper to the asphalt.
