Shots in the Dark

by Gary Clifton

“Okay, guys, listen up.” Lieutenant Wilski, fortyish, bald, gestured for help in holding the crude map on the short hood of the Dodge van. The fade-monster had nearly totally consumed the “Jiffy Plumbing” logo painted on the vehicle’s front doors.

Six plainclothes cops dummied up and squeezed closer in the humid evening swelter.

“Danny ‘Rat’ Cooper says he’ll deliver the scag under the lights in front of the restrooms at eleven. Washington and Sergeant Runnels will make the buy. Your posts are marked on this map. Cooper is a shooter and crazy as hell. No doubt: if he shows, he’ll be strapped. Don’t forget, he shot his mother over a chocolate ice cream cone.”

In cop-speak, Detective Leo Alvarez — big and easy-going — was a good officer. Single, twice divorced and very capable, he had not advanced in the Department as much as his early evaluations had predicted.

A usual progression was varying years in harness, move to Vice for a year or three, then to the Narcotics branch before hoping to pass the sergeant’s exam or reach a coveted assignment to Homicide.

Alvarez had found a home as a dope cop, never trying to move onward and upward as the saying goes. He enjoyed the casual dress, the inattention to regular working hours, the indifferent contact with the street by the dopers clinging to the edge of society.

Tonight’s buy was, in his journeyman’s eyes, routine. The undercovers would make the buy, Alvarez and crew would bag the seller, and the monthly quota machine was fed for another month. In seventeen years, he had drawn his pistol many times, but had never fired a shot.

Alvarez’s life and been uprooted when his second wife had split the blanket over his life in the dope world. Not uncommon in cop culture was the “honey-do smell test.” Spouses sometimes grew uneasy when their mate failed to return home smelling exactly as they did when they left. But Narcotics cops brushed against a cornucopia of characters and situations, which tossed gear-stopping sand into the smell-test gears. Hence, Alvarez was single.

Wilski continued. “Awright, it’s dark in the park, and the light is crappy. That means the use of your weapon is judgment only, like don’t. Understand?”

A rumble of assent reverberated.

“Okay, get set up. This van, parked a block down, is home plate.”

Alvarez and Detective Bobbie Valento found their post off the main trail in clear view of the restrooms thirty feet away.

* * *

The undercovers were waiting on a bench. Valento nudged Alvarez frantically. A man was approaching them from behind with a pistol in hand!

“Rip-off!” Alvarez crashed out of cover. “Cooper’s got a gun!”

Cooper fired a round toward Alvarez. The heat of a bullet grazed Alvarez’s face as Cooper ducked back into the brush.

The undercovers, scrambling, were in the line of fire. Alvarez yelled, “Bobbie, cut through the trees and head that sucker off! “

Valento disappeared into the park. Alvarez charged down the sidewalk, pistol in hand. Ahead, Sergeant Linda Runnels was pursuing Cooper into the underbrush.

Cooper, wiry in dark clothes, crashed out of the thicket behind Alvarez near where Valento had entered. He fired two wild shots at Alvarez, then plunged back out of sight. Ten feet farther, the small figure again emerged, and fired two shots. Alvarez, realizing the shooter was within feet of Valento, fired twice. The shooter went down.

Almost immediately, a millisecond explosion of gunfire reverberated from beyond the shooter on the sidewalk. “Shooter’s down!” called out a cop’s voice.

Alvarez froze. A cop’s worst nightmare was upon him. Knees weak, he vomited. Great God, he’d shot another cop!

Runnels looked up at his flashlight, glassy-eyed, too traumatized to speak. “Linda, my God, Linda.” Responding cops found Alvarez slumped on the sidewalk, holding Runnels’ hand, lost in tears.

* * *

County General overflowed with cops. Alvarez leaned against an emergency room wall, not responding to a rush of both sympathetic and hostile comments.

A tall, slender, bespectacled man leading a sleepy-eyed little girl, rushed from the crowd and attacked him. “You murdered my wife... my baby’s mama!” he shrieked.

Alvarez didn’t respond. Later, Wilski drove Alvarez to the station. Alvarez said, “I’m gonna pack it in. Just friggin’ quit.”

“Leo, that’s wrong as hell. Don’t compound the tragedy with another. IAD will be all up your ass, but it was an accident, dude.”

“Save it, boss. The media, the brass. Crucifixion times three.”

* * *

Follow-up support officers heard through the door that he was fine, that he was going to drive to the house of his first wife and two kids in the suburbs.

Shrinks and Internal Administration dialed his cellular and knocked on his door repeatedly, receiving no answer.

* * *

The crowd at St. Elizabeth’s was heavy with somber cops. The police chief, in full uniform, stood on the sidewalk, talking with Wilski.

The man who had attacked Alvarez, still leading the little girl approached them. “I trust the department has gotten rid of Alvarez and has plans to charge him with murder. Civilized society can’t harbor fools like that as police officers.”

The chief smiled sardonically.

“My wife was a fine person and a great cop,” the man screamed.

“Absolutely correct, sir. But consider Leo Alvarez. Seventeen years of spotless service. Shot a close friend, a screwup beyond imagination. We hear his ex-wife refused to let him visit his kids. That’s a door-slamming for you.”

“Murdered my wife!!”

“Does he deserve to be terminated, you say... to be prosecuted... to die?” Well, sir, you’re in luck. You were rid of him this morning. Now we’ve lost two fine troops in a war we’re not winning. and we have little chance of finding someone to fill the void.”

“Hah! Now, execution would be good!”

“As I said, you’re in luck. We found him in his pickup. Swallowed his pistol. Suicide. Further prosecution would be tricky. Now, sir, I have a funeral to attend and another to plan. Please get outa my face.”