CRIME FICTION

The Beat We Walk

Chapter 5: Can two men on the opposite ends walk the same road in peace?

His name was Desmond Miles and he was a junkie. I had my first run across Desmond smoking meth in an alley behind an overflowing dumpster. I had been able to get within a yard of him before he saw me. One of the many benefits of patrolling on foot.

I had watched him, crouched low on a piece of grease-stained cardboard as he lit the glass bowl of his meth pipe. He breathed in deep, his eyelids fluttering slightly as the drugs entered his lungs. It was a private moment, an intimate moment between an addict and a drug.

I felt almost voyeuristic watching as the man lost himself in the pleasure of a substance that would almost surely kill him.

“Having a good night there, bud?”

The junkie’s eyes went wide and he choked on the white smoke. He looked up at me and for the briefest moment, I could see the wheels of panicked thought spinning behind those bloodshot eyes.

Desmond thought of trying to run. His eyes flitted to the alley, towards freedom. These were his streets, the streets he had grown up in. Dark alleys that he knew as well as the track marks on his arms. All he needed was a moment, a single opportunity to get the upper hand and he would be gone. His eyes locked back to mine, his legs tensed, ready to run.

I caught him up by the collar and spun his face-first into the wall. He gasped out in pain as I twisted his arm behind his back and pinned him against the rough cinder block. I keyed the Mic on my radio.

“Control, Three-Baker-Five” I spoke, my voice calm almost to the point of sounding bored “One in custody.”

“Mother fucker.” He croaked, as I snapped the cuffs on his too-thin wrists. “Not yet, but if you want to give her number I could swing by after shift.” “Fuck you!”, he spat. “She will.”

Most officers avoided foot patrol. Especially during the summers, where even at night the temperature smoldered in the high nineties. Las Vegas was a city of extremes. The winters were freezing cold and the summers searing hot.

The heat never really bothered me though. Not after those long days and nights spent overseas. The way I looked at it, the city could be as cold or hot as she likes. As long as it wasn’t Iraq. As long as it was still home.

You could become part of the streets on foot. Part of the shadows. You could see the city for what it truly was; your perspective not skewed by the bright reds and blues of flashing lights.

The patrol car may have been comfortable, but the whole neighborhood seemed to shrink in when they saw the black and white.

Sometimes the best way to find out what goes bump in the night is to lurk in the shadows.

Desmond was what you would expect him to look like. A little too tall. A little too thin. His curled black hair, dusted with dirt from the alley he slept in. Track marks ran up his arms and lips blistered from the heat of the meth pipe he had pressed to his lips.

“I found that, Officer.” He said, nodding to the Meth pipe I had placed on the wall in front of him, “It aint mine.”

“Oh, shut the fuckup. I literally just saw you smoking meth, dummy,” I said, as I began to search Desmond’s pockets, “This aint my first day!”

And it wasn’t. It was my third. Six months of field training and a year of probation and I was finally a full-fledged police officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan police department. I was still the rookie on my squad and still hadn’t learned all the streets in my whole three-block beat, But Desmond didn’t need to know that.

As far as Desmond knew, I was the goddamn Sheriff.

“Ok, Ok, Officer. You right.” Desmond said, nodding vigorously as I continued to search his pockets. “I bought it from the smoke shop off James. Bought it with my own money. Is that a crime now?”

“No, But smoking meth is,” I said, “I did find that though. The meth, I found it in the street.”

“You're really trying that same lie?” I said, raising an eyebrow as I marched my handcuffed meth head back to where I had parked my patrol car at the end of the alley.

“No, bro I am telling the truth!” “I aint your bro, bro,” I said, fighting to keep the smile off my face. “I am sorry, Officer… What's your name?” “Moore.” I said, “My name is Officer Moore.” “Oh, well I am Desmond!” “I know.” I said, “I have your ID.”

“Oh, yeah,” Desmond said, nodding his head with the same vigor as before. “But as I was saying, I didn’t like, buy the meth. I found it. In the street.”

“Doesn’t matter. Still a crime. Meth is meth. Possession is Possession” I muttered, placing him in front of the car. “And wait a minute, you're telling me there are just random baggies of meth sprinkled throughout the street? Like some junkie Easter bunny hiding eggs?”

Desmond furrowed his brows as he thought hard about his response. I waited as I placed the rest of his belongings on the hood of the car. A bag of potato chips, His ID card, a rolled-up comic book, and a small baggie of supposed Easter bunny meth.

“Yes.” “What?” “Yes. I think someone is sprinkling meth in the street.” “You're seriously sticking with that story?” “Yes,” Desmond said with his jaw set.

I let out a sigh as I ran a hand through my messy black hair. I formed a knife with my hand and pointed it in his direction as I had with so many of the Marines who walked into my clinic complaining of foot pain. I wanted the kid to hear me. To understand what I was saying.

“You are sure you want to stick to Easter bunny meth dealer? Knowing full and well it does not change a single thing and this still being a crime?” I spoke slowly, “I don’t really care. You are going to jail regardless. I am just wondering if you really want me to put Junkie easter bunny in my report?”

I could see Desmond deflate as I told him he was going to jail. Desmond wasn’t a bad guy. A little slow, maybe. A drug addict definitely, But a bad guy, no. Yet what he had done was a felony. Desmond looked up again, his blistered mouth working for a while before he finally answered.

“Yes.” “We are going with crackhead Easter bunny? All in. Not a single other explanation.” “It’s the truth.”

I stared at Desmond, watching as he nodded his head in that way that made him look like one of those toy birds perched on a glass of water. I wondered what exactly went wrong in his life to lead him to this point.

What monster had found a kid like him and gave him his first taste? Who had been his maker? Was it the neighborhood dealer? Maybe, but I doubted it. Some stranger on the street? Not likely.

No, if I had to guess it was probably a family friend. Someone whom Desmond had trusted. Someone whom he loved even. A monster he couldn’t see, blinded to the danger he posed. This person gave Desmond a taste of a drug so powerful that it corrupted his very being. A drug that was so strong that it stunted him both physically and mentally. All during the time where a boy is supposed to grow from a child to a man.

The price of the drug had taken its toll before the boy was even eighteen. He was too thin for his height, his body forever caught in that awkward stage when a boy is no longer a child and not yet a man. His mind was warped, slowed by burned-out brain cells and remapped neurons, that sought the pleasure of drugs above anything else.

He would forever be at the age he was when the drug took hold, rooting him in place as life rushed past him. A grown man with nothing in his pockets but snacks, a comic book, and drugs.

And yet his eyes were hard spheres of black coal that had seen too much, trapped in a face that seemed too young.

I took all these in as he stood defeated in front of my patrol car, knowing that he was going to jail. He was a junkie and I was a cop. Criminal and Officer. Two sides of the same coin. Yet we walked the same streets.

We both dealt with the good and the bad of a world that existed to nothing more than these three city blocks. We both walked in the shadows. One of hunting and the other being hunted. I looked down at the glass pipe in my hand and the white crystal that tumbled inside.

“How long have you lived here, Des?” I asked, twisting the pipe between my fingers. “My whole life, Officer Moore.” Desmond, his head lowered in defeat. “I am new here. I am still trying to get my bearings.” I said, looking up from the pipe and meeting Desmond’s eyes. “How would you like to give me a hand?”

I talked to Desmond for a long while, learning the in and outs of the three city blocks we would soon both call home. Desmond taught me many things that night. About the Drug dealer off Brawny and Michael, who liked his girls a little too young. He told me about Eddie, the neighborhood meathead, who served as a lookout, alerting the neighborhood whenever the police rolled through.

We talked for nearly an hour, leaning against the bumper of my car. Eventually, I took him out of cuffs and even offered him half of my sandwich. He ate it greedily and nearly consumed the whole thing in under two bites. God knows when was the last time he ate.

Before I left, the pipe accidentally slipped from my fingers, rolling under my boot where it was ground into the dust until it was little more than pulverized glass. The wind took the meth before I could test it. I cut Desmond the break that he had so rarely been given in life.

I would see Desmond a lot after that. I would give him a burger or a snack and he would tell me what was new in the neighborhood. Sometimes a comic book too if I could find it.

He wasn’t a snitch, not in the traditional sense. He never set anyone up or told me where a deal was going down.

All he did was tell what was going on in the world around him. In the world that had become my beat to walk. My Beat to protect.

Desmond would never truly be my friend. He was a junkie and I was a cop. But he wasn’t my enemy either.

No, Desmond was more than Junkie. He was a victim. A kid swallowed up by his environment. A kid who no one had been there when he needed him the most.

And though we walked on different sides of the law, we still walked the same Beat.

More exciting reads —

Next Chapter 6: Slow Nights on Watch II

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For the next crime fiction: When the “King” Returns

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Merlin Troy writes fiction inspired based on his time as a police officer, paramedic, and veteran. He is working on his first novel which will be available for readers when published on Kindle. Expected release: July 2021 Subscribe to receive his stories and updates.