CRIME FICTION

When The “King” Returns

Chapter 11: The world never changes, only those who live in it.

We sat on the bumper of my patrol car in the parking lot beneath the overpass. The rains had finally come to Vegas, sending flash flood warnings throughout the city and filling the wash that split Brawny and Michael from the rest of the city. Only a few weeks ago, I had been down in that very wash, facing off against a drug dealer who had nearly killed a sixteen-year-old girl. He had left her, lying in a pool of her blood at the front of his doorstep.

In return, I had done the same to him.

Even as I looked at the rushing water coursing its way through the cement valley, I could still see Malcolm. His right leg and arm were twisted at the wrong angles at the bottom of the wash. His spit was still fresh on my cheeks. The paramedics had to use a ladder truck to pull him out of the wash. He had spent a week in the hospital before finally going to jail.

As a police officer, I knew I should have felt bad for letting him fall. That’s what happened anyway, I told myself. He had tried to fight me, and I had simply let him go.

Part of me had even begun to believe it to be true.

“Where did you get these burgers, Officer Moore,” Desmond asked through a mouthful of meat, cheese, and lettuce. “They are amazing.”

I looked away from the surging trash-strewn water and at the tall skinny youth with messy hair and dirty clothes. Grease dripped from Desmond’s chin and fingers as he demolished what must have been his third or fourth cheeseburger. He didn’t look up as he spoke, his eyes fixed on the flooded wash, his thin fingers gripping almost defensively on the oil-stained wrapper of the burger.

“A food truck off of Bonanza and the boulevard,” I answered, grabbing a burger for myself from the grease-stained bag. “That’s a way out just for some burgers.” “Not too far. Not with the car, at least.”

In truth, the food truck was a bit out of the way, especially when Desmond would have been more than happy enough with some plain old drive-thru burgers. The drug addict was a lot of things, but picky was not one of them. Still, I felt the kid deserved a reward.

After all, my plan for catching Malcolm would never have worked without him. Desmond was not a snitch in the traditional sense. He never gave me times and places to find the people I arrested. He didn’t set up drug buys or give the names of those who committed what crime.

No, what Desmond gave me was more valuable. He taught me the in and out of the three city blocks I patrolled. Not just the streets and addresses of where drugs were sold and what territory the local gangs fought over.

Desmond showed me the alleys and paths they moved through unseen. Desmond had taught me to think like those I hunted. He had allowed me to move like he did, unseen and unnoticed. He allowed me the ability to hunt the real monsters. Monsters who sold drugs to children. Who stole cars from hard-working families. Who raped and killed and preyed upon others.

Desmond had made me into what I had become known as on the streets. A boogieman. A monster who hunted monsters.

“Hey, Moore, thanks for the food. I am grateful like, seriously.” Desmond said, “But you don’t have any comic books do you?”

I smiled at the man and nodded. I went back to the patrol car and pulled out a stack of comics. Desmond’s eyes lit up as he looked at the colorful pages. They were the eyes of a man who had his childhood stole away. Desmond was only nineteen years old, but he had already been through so much. He quickly thumbed through the stack of comics, all bearing the same title.

“Zero’s?” “Yeah, I got you the whole series. Every episode.” “Thanks, man.” Desmond started, “You read this, too?” “Not really. Comic books have never really been my thing.” I said with a shrug, “Honestly, I just like the cover art.” “What’s it about?”

“A bunch of people realizing they have superhuman abilities, the usual nonsense. The difference, though, is that the world gets destroyed before they even learn how to use their gifts. They are failures before they even had a chance to show what they could do.”

“Sounds shitty,” Desmond said, his greasy fingers staining the paper with every flip of the page. “Yeah,” I admitted, “But it would be cool to see what the good guys do after they have already lost everything worth fighting for.”

There was a silence after that. Desmond flipped through the pages of his comic book, and I watched the course of Las Vegas’s sometimes river. I pictured the blood-stained cement where Malcolm had lay broken at the bottom of the wash, how the last remains of him had been stripped away in the rushing water. I hoped the remains of his rule as the King of Brawny and Michael would be washed away just as easily.

“What’s the point of fighting when you already lost?”

I looked back at Desmond, his eyes still on the pages of the comic books. There was something left unsaid in the too young junkie’s bloodshot eyes — a struggle of which I could never fully understand. I looked over the water and to the three city blocks that made up my beat.

“There is always a reason to keep fighting,” I said, “Even if only for the hope that something will finally give, and things will get better.” “You think that?” Desmond asked. “You think fighting will change anything?” “Yeah,” I said, “I have to believe that we are fighting for something better. How else would I put on this badge every day?”

Desmond finally looked up from the pages of his comics. There was some semblance of understanding in that look — understanding of something I had never seen in the boy’s eyes before that day.

H-O-P-E.

We sat under the freeway, watching the water coursed through the wash and down the tunnels beneath the city. Desmond told me things I had already knew about my three-block beat. I listened and he talked. It had been our deal since the first night I had found him smoking meth in an alley. It was a deal I would maintain as long as it made sense to do so, even if he had no real intel to give.

Things had quieted down since Malcolm was arrested.

Drugs were still sold and bought on street corners. A cop pulled a gun from a gangster’s waistband at least once a week, but violent crime was low. With Malcolm gone, the dealers were running low on supply. Eddie was holding things down as best he could while Malcolm was gone, but everyone felt the squeeze.

Things were going well. We had fought, and for a moment, we had broken through. I could see it in the faces of the everyday people who lived in my three city blocks. Hope that things would get better. Desmond and I finished our food and went our separate ways. I got back in my patrol car, and Desmond left on foot.

I saw him for one last time, a broad smile covering his face as he looked down at the open first page of Zero’s episode#1.

And it would be the last time I ever saw Desmond alive.

Desmond’s body lay at the front of the dead-end road called Brawny. I don’t know how long they had tortured him before they had put a bullet in his head, but both his arms broken, his fingers bent and twisted. His eyes bruised and swollen shut, his nose broken, dried blood running down his face.

The coroner had said whoever killed him had drugged him, beaten and broken into the street. They had put him on display for all of the neighborhood to see. And then they put a gun to his head and blew his brains out.

No one had called it in. No one stepped forth as a witness. The message was clear.

The King had returned.

Malcolm’s bail had been less than fifty grand. The attempted murder charge dropped to a battery with a deadly weapon. He had been in jail for less than two months. Two months of what could almost pass for peace in my three city blocks. All brought to an end by the King I had allowed myself to believe defeated.

I stood over Desmond’s body, looking down the dead-end street where Desmond had called home.

A home that had stripped him of his childhood, of his dreams, and finally his very life. I looked toward the end of the street. Toward the second-story balcony where Eddie had stood watch for years. The giant of a man stood his watch even now. Next to him stood a man, his left arm in a sling and his right hand gripping the copper head of an ironwood cane.

Malcolm.

He smiled at me from the balcony and winked, forming a gun with his pointer finger and thumb. He took aim, his smile only growing bigger as he placed me in his sights. The gun jerked back, and Malcolm mouthed the word.

Bang.

I looked back at the grinning face of the man who had killed Desmond. At the man who made it in no uncertain terms, I was next on his list. He would issue the green light. A declaration of an open season on me and all other cops who patrolled his domain.

I looked into the killer’s eyes. I knew then there were only two ways this could play out.

I was going to have to kill Malcolm. Or he was going to kill me.

More exciting reads —

Next Chapter 12: Of Monsters and Healers

Previous Chapter 10: Slow Nights on Watch III

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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.