Officer Down

By Michael A Wexler

Detective Frank Stanton wanted to retire. His live-in lover, Paige Mallory, demanded it - a quiet exclamation point on a brilliant career. Nothing stood

in his way except a broken road of unfinished business between him, his dead partner, Internal Affairs, two million in missing mob money, and the unforgiving and vengeful spirit of an exec

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indignor House, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781953278418

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

DETECTIVE FRANK STANTON knew where he stood.

He was on the balcony of the Renel Theater. He recognized the textured walls with glowering cherubs mute as desert sand. A proscenium arch and bare stage lit by slivers of moonlight falling through high, stained-glass windows. The orchestra pit stretched out like an open wound toward empty rows of red velvet seats. A majestic theater once, years ago. The Renel that Frank remembered was bankrupt, just a shut and shuttered relic lost to the shifting fortunes of time and taste.

Frank knew where he stood – but not how he got there, why, or when.

The impossible contradictions buckled his knees. Sickening waves of nausea forced him to lean against the gilded railing – reality floating dimly and distant beyond his reach. A nightmare Frank wished would end.

Crack!

A bullet exploded out of the blackness, a peeling thunder shattering the hellish silence, whistling past his ear. Frank reached for his gun, but his hands fumbled, shaking. Young hands Frank knew should be old and spotted, far older than the impossibly resurrected theater around him.

But he rallied. With a defiant cry, Frank steadied and answered the unseen shooter. He shot a 9mm slug into the shadows, aimed by gut and guess and finding nothing. In its wake, a cold, hollow laugh floated out of the empty air, wrapping Frank in an impending sense of horror.

Where’s the money, Frank?

The voice taunted him as bare knuckles launched from out of the darkness, crunching his jaw. His head snapped back, and Frank tumbled over the balcony rail.

The carpeted aisle rushed at him, a sea of red breaking his fall. He landed with a dismal thud, pain shrouding his judgment. His back stiffened and his twisted ankle ached. A foot in either direction and iron seatbacks would have broken his neck. But for now, he grabbed onto them, clawing for cover, fearful of the next move from his unseen assailant.

His head throbbed. Not with physical pain, but with an old, tormented ache that Frank believed had long since been buried and forgotten.

Where’s the money, Frank?

His breath fell in hot, rhythmic gasps that flooded the theater with scalding steam. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt dry. His lungs burned. He settled for cursing the silent cherubs now mocking his plight.

That taunting, invisible laughter had returned. A palpable evil that dropped out of the ether with an iciness that drove the heat aside and caused Frank’s teeth to chatter. His watering eyes swept the empty auditorium – empty as his memory. But someone had fired that damn shot and cold-cocked him over the railing. And some one, or some thing, had asked that fucking question.

Where’s the money, Frank?

Struggling with a cold sweat and a perverse dread, Frank battled an ill-advised urge to run. He growled as his ankle throbbed. Whatever else he had forgotten, Frank remembered his years of police training that hardened a man’s instincts, turning him into someone who no one took for granted.

With a growing, misplaced defiance, Frank hobbled up the aisle, making himself a willing target and challenging the resolve of the unseen shooter. He was daring his hidden adversary to expose himself. Frank watched, gun in hand, for the glint of a barrel, a hint of movement, anything that would betray the body attached to that rocking fist, a finger on a trigger.

Crack!

The thunder broke again and a bullet launched.

Instinct or nerve, Frank wasn’t sure but he didn’t flinch. He stood fixed like the watching cherubs as the bullet burrowed into the padded seat by his leg. No audience, no applause. His eyes locked on the afterglow of the blast. Smiling, Frank’s finger closed on the trigger.

Shooting a dead man, Frank?

His finger froze, arm shortening in an involuntary jerk of surprise, head racing to catalog that voice. A nasal whine thick with a south-end twang that Frank knew but couldn’t place. A fresh round of uncertainty punched at his gut, sending renewed ripples up his already aching spine.

The coldness suffusing Frank expanded, filling the distance from the floor to the ceiling. A shadowy form flickered into existence at the balcony rail. Multiplying folds of darkness held a figure in torn jeans, a black vest, T-shirt, and biker-style boots. A wiry frame and sinister face accented by greasy, black hair, sallow cheeks, and a pasty, acne-pocked complexion. Above a too-thin nose and thinner lips, fiery, red eyes glowed like a stoked furnace on a cold winter’s night.

What’s the matter, Detective? Don’t remember me?

Powers? Jimmy Powers!

The incredulous recognition brought the frozen Beretta roaring back to life. Four quick blasts spanned the space from floor to balcony in a lethal instant. Frank could only watch, horrified, as the tenuous figure shimmered, faded, and reformed as a puff of smoke through which the racing bullets plowed, harmless as wind across a sail.

Frank didn’t know about dead men but wondered whether he could kill a nightmare.

Confused, Frank? It’s actually quite simple. I’m dead. Dead to everyone but you. You see, I’ve come back, Frank. Back to find the fucking money!

Frank wanted to scream. Wanted but couldn’t.

Look around the theater, Frank. I hope you appreciate the symbolism. The curtain is about to go up on a shit-load of forgotten ugliness. Wherever you go, whatever you do, these dead eyes will be there to watch … to learn. When you stumble, I’ll hold you up. When you beg me to leave you alone, I’ll laugh. I am that last drag on your cigarette burning your fingers. We’re going to find the truth, Frank. The truth, no matter who gets hurt.

Cop-killer Jimmy Powers, dead and buried but as impossibly resurrected as the no longer padlocked and boarded theater, melted into the shadows. He slowly faded until nothing remained but a dark and ominous voice rattling in Frank’s head like nails tossed in a tin drum.

Ain’t it something, Frank? The things you can do when you’re already dead.

CHAPTER TWO

FRANK HATED PIGEONS.

Impudent, disrespectful flying rats that crapped on his windshield and cooed at his window. Frank wished they would stick to soiling park statues and begging for peanuts.

Frank slid naked out of bed and stepped up to the open window. Summer stirred and the raised glass created a daily game in which the birds held the upper hand. He made his customary swatting motion at their bobbing heads and cursed as they flew away unscathed. He knew they laughed at him, though Frank never understood the joke.

Christ, he muttered. Why do they always come to my fucking window?

Frank’s apartment occupied a small corner of a much bigger world. A fourth-floor walk-up in a line of brownstones notched like rifle sights. He peered over a cheerless alley that strangers passed but never entered. Save for that yapping mongrel begging at the backdoor of Chan’s Chinese.

It was the ugly backside of the city, but for Frank, a place where things seemed to fit. His little nook carved into a man-made cranny. Of late, his world was now filling with things that didn’t fit. Expensive things. Like an antique brass bed, doily-covered nightstands, floral wallpaper, and three framed commendations retrieved from a shoebox Frank had stuffed under the bed.

Touches, she called them.

Feminine intrusions that Frank accepted, but like the laughing pigeons, he didn’t get. Paige Mallory nursed an abiding hope that someday he would.

The object of Frank’s musings shifted in her sleep, exposing a dimpled butt that Frank admired with an amused grin. He noted the modest swell of her breasts and her rounded hips flowing to a tad too much belly, but attractive to a man of his advancing years.

Growing old has either lowered my standards or heightened my perceptions.

Frank moved from the bedroom to the living room, which was as colorless as an empty beer bottle. One saggy, gray couch and a dilapidated rocker pointing toward a pricey, black television. An inherited extravagance that was all Frank had left of the late Tommy Doyle, his partner, his friend, his occasional rival, and the constant hole eating his gut.

On the glass coffee table, adrift in a sea of half-done crosswords and half-eaten cartons from Chan’s, Paige had placed a silver-framed photo of the partners. They stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling, accepting one of those resurrected medals Paige had retrieved and hung above Frank’s head. A snapshot in blue from his long career in law enforcement and her lone managing touch.

If Frank minimized Paige in the living room, she maximized in the kitchen. Once a study in vintage Salvation Army, it now sparkled with Paige’s touch. Feminine improvements like the cane kitchenette with frill pads and the pearl white refrigerator plastered with multi-colored magnets. Sunlight now slanted through a curtained window that fell upon freshly rolled linoleum. For the first time in years, the sink ringed with young cacti, devoid of the dirty dishes Frank never quite got around to washing.

Frank loved Paige. She knew it though Frank could have told her more. Why else would he have caved and allowed all these damn touches? His mind flashed to when the changes had started, how he’d objected too often and too loud. Frank remembered that night, coming home from his shift to find Paige sitting cross-legged and angry on the couch, her weather-beaten, brown, travel bag parked beside her.

It was a tough night at the end of a rough patch in their relationship, but they had worked things out. Things seemed to fit again. Paige put the bag away. It was the last time Frank ever saw it, but its symbolism lingered.

To Frank’s right sat the half bathroom preserved in all its original glory. His yin against her yang. Taking the throne, Frank thumbed through a Playboy. He tossed it to the floor and glared at the gray tiles that were last grouted during the Eisenhower Administration.

Someday, he mumbled, I’ll have to let Paige touch up this shithole.

The pigeons had returned. Cooing just out of reach, they assembled on the fire escapes where the neighbors aired their dirty laundry. Frank paused long enough to moon the feathery flock before slipping back into bed. Cuddling close to Paige, he felt a warmth from the sunshine that hugged her shoulders. He glanced at the clock radio.

8:00 … we got hours yet.

He dropped a hand across her exposed shoulder, cupping a breast. Feeling the stiffness of her nipple, he gave it a playful tweak.

You’re not asleep, Frank admonished. At least your tits aren’t. What were you dreaming about?

Paige mouthed an unintelligible reprimand into her pillow. Frank nudged her again by bumping her butt with his hips. Paige rolled over and pushed Frank flat onto the bed, clambering spread eagle over his tingling manhood.

I was dreaming of you, big boy!

Her green eyes caught the morning light, flashing out from a tussle of auburn hair that tumbled to her shoulders. Frank breathed her in, savoring the lingering scent of last night’s caress.

I knew it, he said with a lewd grin, reaching for both breasts. I may be retiring, but I’m still a detective.

Some detective, Paige complained as she slapped away his hands. When are you gonna learn that a girl likes it when you ask?

Frank rubbed her nose. Married ones.

The faint lines of a reoccurring sadness touched Paige’s eyes. Is that a proposal?

Easy, sweetheart, easy. We’ve been over this a hundred times.

So, help me, Frank Stanton … – Paige scolded – … you tell me cops are snake-bit one more time, and I’ll punch your lights out. Paige made a menacing fist.

Try it. Frank challenged with arching hips.

Oh no, you don’t! Paige’s girlish laughter always seemed to fuel Frank’s fire. Today is your big day, mister, and you’ll be neither late nor tired.

She bounced from the bed with a spirit that Frank envied, chirping a cheery good morning to the sunning pigeons that had flocked back to the sill. The sunlight embraced her naked skin, and Frank thought, that’s why they come to my fucking window.

Paige whirled. The happiness in her eyes clouded with anxiety. Frank saw it, knew it, and stiffened for what came next.

What if they start asking questions about the money? About Tommy?

Let it go, babe, Frank said, forcing a smile. It’s been ten years since Tommy died and –

Internal Affairs hasn’t quit for even one day.

Fuck them, Paige. Whatever shit IA wants to keep dragging up about Tommy and that missing money cuts no ice with me, not after today. By tonight, I’m a civilian. Private citizen Frank Stanton … private with a pension.

Frank grinned and it was real.

Paige looked at him as if understanding. Her natural sparkle had returned. She started to hum, dancing toward the remodeled master bath.

Frank placed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. You’re nuts, Frank Stanton. Wasn’t one failed marriage enough for you?

Paige was singing now. Frank tried to name the tune but gave up as the melody drowned inside the apartment’s ancient plumbing.

Shower’s ready, Paige called. Better hurry. We have a long day ahead.

Frank started. He thought he heard another voice. But no, that was impossible. It must have come from outside, a neighbor. With a surge of déjà vu and a sharp hiss, Frank clambered out of bed. He drew up short, stretching, for his back had stiffened. His ankle ached. He couldn’t remember how he’d injured it. Yet somehow, he connected it with the faint voice he’d heard or thought he’d heard.

Damn, Frank mumbled. When did I get this fucking senile?

But Paige was calling and sounding impatient. His mood relaxed. Humming to a tune of his own and grinning in anticipation, Frank stepped through the open door and entered the shower.

CHAPTER THREE

IT COULDN’T HAVE been Jimmy Powers.

Aching head to foot, Frank shivered from the cold, his injury, and the haunting imagery that was cast from the balcony. Had a dead man just battered and bruised him? Threatened him? Had time somehow moved backward or was Frank dead, having fallen into hell?

Alone in the darkened cinema, scraps of memory floated, sluggish as a pool of crude oil. Random images crowded together into the unfinished road he and Tommy had traveled. A journey to take down the two biggest mobsters in the city. A war that killed Tommy and left Frank alone during his final years of service, fighting a different war of suspicion and innuendo, battling Internal Affairs for honor and legacy – Tommy’s legacy.

How could he forget?

Two stone-cold killers matched in a deadly game that had climaxed in this same Renel Theater, filled with panicked patrons running from volleying gunfire. Alfredo Guzzi, the son of south side don Anthony Guzzi and his rival, the Blackjack Mustafa Mohammed, the top dog of the north side rackets.

IA had been here. Those bastards from IA were sniffing around uninvited. But why IA? What did they have to do with anything? Frank’s eyes flashed to the balcony. And Powers, he was here too. The shooter, of course, the shooter! Powers … he killed Tommy.

The exclamation was involuntary, the echo intrusive as recognition tinged with fear shook Frank. He turned away from the invisible presence that only he could feel, denial overwhelming. Behind his struggling memories lay a haunting truth that, for the moment, was nothing more than a terrifying emptiness.

Frank wanted to run, but pain coursed down his back and into his leg and throbbing ankle, biting deep. He experienced hesitation born out of indecision. Though he racked his brain for answers, Frank had nowhere to go.

He stood stiff-legged and rooted, his eyes distant and dark. Images formed and a scene developed. He was in court – yes – that was it. He recognized the sculptured wood and leather-upholstered chairs. He was on the witness stand, and words tumbled from his mouth as easily as autumn leaves from a tree. The image wired Frank and connected him to a past that was electric and alive, just as it had been when the state brought Powers to justice.

The vision fell away. The Renel was reasserting its impossible presence and uncertainty appeared in Frank’s eyes. He cast those doubting eyes to the balcony, and a vague piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

But there, progress faltered, the recollections shutting down like a union shop at the closing whistle.

CHAPTER FOUR

THIRTY YEARS AND nothing’s changed.

To Frank, the squad room looked the same today as when he’d started. The same way it’d looked ten years ago when Tommy died in the line of duty.

The same way it’ll look tomorrow when some rookie walks in to replace me.

The day sergeant sulked behind the receiving desk, which was little more than a pile of brown wood nestled under a No Smoking sign obscured by a gray haze of cigars and cigarettes. A balky ceiling fan rattled but relieved little.

Frank stood inside this well-worn entrance and observed the parade of police, perps, and prostitutes. He noted the late shift had hauled in Charlene again. Pushing fifty and poured into red leather spandex with three-inch heels, she looked weathered and used. Frank had busted Charlene – more than once. He had also used her – more than once.

Hombres filled the upstairs holding cells, a local Latino gang decked out in oversized, plaid shirts buttoned at the neck, and red bandanas knotted at the forehead.

Excuse me! A harried, little man with a large nose and larger briefcase pushed by, moving up the stairs and waving to the hollering hoodlums as if attending a family reunion.

A bum for the scum, Frank mumbled.

A young officer, the sole body within earshot of Frank’s caustic remark, looked up from his cluttered desk and smiled. Hey, that’s good. Can I quote you?

Why? Frank asked. Writing a book?

Matter of fact, I am.

Billy Ray Childress, the man many had pegged to wear Frank’s shoes, abandoned his paper-pushing and stepped to Frank’s side. He was a big kid, blonde and handsome, full of youthful promise.

Like me, Frank mused. Years ago, when I kept a shine on my shoes.

What’s that? Childress asked with a little trace of the southern drawl as his name suggested.

Nothing, I’m mumbling. Frank surprised himself with the bitterness of his thoughts. Was it age or ego that made him so irritable, or was it somehow a retirement smacked of quitting? A painful notion Frank rejected. He nodded toward the stairs. I was thinking somebody has to protect the right of a punk to be a punk.

Damn, you’re full of pithy, little sayings today, Childress cracked. But I get it. Imagine seven years of schooling at the cost of three hundred grand so a jerk like that can pull punks out as fast as we put them in. Guess it wasn’t that way in your day.

Frank overlooked the inference. Screw it, he thought. Childress was right. You get older and start comparing everything to back in the day. Frank felt talkative, drawn to the youthful enthusiasm of the kid, feeling a need to share something, making him feel needed or at least … remembered.

When I was coming up through the ranks –

You busted their heads? Childress asked.

Frank chuckled. If it came to that, yeah, I guess we did. But it got a cop respect.

The lawyer shot down the stairs and out the door.

Off to see a judge, Childress suggested.

Ever wonder … – Frank commented – … how certain types can get their asses in a sling ten times over, yet walk away? But let a cop screw up once, even the suggestion of a screwup, and watch what happens.

Childress shook his head. Guys around here never bought the shit they laid on you and Tommy, least of all the captain. He says you busted Guzzi and Mustafa outright. You toed the line and did your job. You deserved those fucking medals, and he isn’t letting anyone say otherwise.

Frank studied the intensity of the young officer’s face. The thought that they had reached a fork in the road from opposite points in time pleased him. Thanks for the consideration, Billy Ray. IA will never share the captain’s perspective. They think I have the money.

Childress snickered. Sure. And worked another ten years with two million in untraceable cash sitting under your bed? Idiots. Excuse my French … but fuck them.

I agree.

Frank sighed. He scanned the squad room with a tired but earned affection. Hell, it wasn’t like this, Billy Ray. Lawyers, politicians, and the people on the streets, good and bad, had a healthy regard for a gold shield on a blue shirt. They respected the badge.

Childress laughed. You mean feared. I read about prohibition.

Hey! Frank howled in mock dismay, allowing Childress’ jab to break the unwanted dejection that dropped over his thoughts. I ain’t that goddamn old.

They both laughed.

Speaking of prohibition … – Childress pressed – … how about you and I get together for a drink later? I’m serious about that book. I did a lot of writing in school. I majored in journalism until I got the calling, so to speak.

You serious?

Damn serious.

Hell, I guess you wouldn’t be the first cop who tried to be an author. So, what am I? Good or bad?

Childress laughed. I won’t know until we talk. I’d like to avoid stereotypes. What about it? Your preaching is making my typing finger itch.

My preaching? Frank’s look of chagrin slipped into a passive smile. Okay. Guilty as charged, I guess.

You’ll help me?

What’s in it for me?

A cameo in the movie? Childress flashed a mouth of white teeth. There may be a few bucks if I ever get published. Childress lowered his voice, his tone no longer playful. His eyes glinted with a long-held proposition. And a little payback? Things break the right way for me, and I could help set things right for you and Tommy.

Frank nodded. Nice thought. I mean it. But look around. Too many ghosts are walking these halls. For better or worse, some things need to stay buried.

Childress refused to look crestfallen. "Fine … then think about it. No rush. You got time. Retiring doesn’t mean you have