Soulless Part XIII (Yes, It's Back!) (738 hits)
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Submitted by Anthony Locascio (View user info) at 2008-01-29 23:07:56 EST
Soulless is back in a big way. My New Year's resolution is to finish one of these novels this year, either this one or Dragonstone. Also in the works is The Unreal Part II and a continuation of "Steel and Amperes", which I wrote over two years ago. Hope you guys enjoy, there will be plenty more where this came from.
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Installment I http://www.ubersite.com/m/62497
Installment II http://www.ubersite.com/m/62652
Installment III http://www.ubersite.com/m/63199
Installment IV http://www.ubersite.com/m/63469
Installment V http://www.ubersite.com/m/63641
Installment VI http://www.ubersite.com/m/63848
Installment VII http://www.ubersite.com/m/64005
Installment VIII http://www.ubersite.com/m/67123
Installment IX http://www.ubersite.com/m/67559
Installment X http://www.ubersite.com/m/68528
Installment XI http://www.ubersite.com/m/70029
Installment XII http://www.ubersite.com/m/78565
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The two detectives crammed themselves back into the Crown Vic. The air conditioning was barely adequate, enough to vaporize the sweat beading on noses and forearms and nothing more. The general routine would be that John would lose his temper, scream at the motor pool mechanic until he was hoarse (who all the while would protest that the thing was "blowin' cold"), and then give up in frustration. He felt another of those peaks coming on as he began to sweat through his shirt again while they drove.
"Listen, I've been thinking, and we gotta talk." Luis was driving. His voice was trepid, as though he were testing unexplored waters. John didn't respond, only reached into his jacket to pull out a cigarette. Rules and regulations about smoking in city vehicles were very clear, but nobody had ever bothered (or dared) to make an issue about it to him, and even if they ever did, he would hand the clueless asshole a map and direct him to the bustling town of 'get fucked'.
There was no continuation of the conversation, only the drift of smoke and the hum of traffic. Several minutes later, Luis broached the silence yet again.
"I'm out, John," he said quickly, as though spitting the words out as fast as possible might make things easier. There was still no response. John took another drag, deep, breathing smoke out of his nostrils. The silence was tense, and he felt urged to say more when they got stuck at a red light at the next intersection.
"Listen, you don't need to worry. I you can burn me as easy as I could you, there's no way we wouldn't go down together. You've got my word I'll never say a thing about anything. Sooner or later we're going to get caught, it's just a question of when. If it was just me, it might be different, but I got a family I gotta think about. I have Maria, the baby, and it ain't just me."
John didn't reply, just dragged on the cigarette yet again. The cabin was filling with smoke, and Luis squinted as the bright sun filtered through it unevenly, stinging his eyes. The pregnant silence lasted again for nearly a minute before he could stand it no longer. "So I just want you to know that. I'm out. You ain't gotta..."
"Don't have to worry 'bout a thing, right?" John said evenly. He crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray, another behavior that was frowned upon with city-owned vehicles. Where John was concerned, they were lucky he didn't just butt them out right on the dash. "You'd never do a thing to hurt me. Need to worry about the wife, the kid, right? You'd never say this, never do that, bullshit bullshit bullshit. I get it. But there's got to be other reasons, right?"
"I told you..."
"No, no, no. You didn't just suddenly decide you were out, my Latin friend. You've been thinking of this for weeks. Maybe months. When you were counting the money from your take, when you laid down a few dollars for dinner for you and the wifey that you wouldn't otherwise have had, you were thinking about this. When you bought that kid of yours, what's her name?"
"Rosa."
"Right. When you hit Buster Brown in the mall some weekend and bought her the best pair of shoes they had, paid cash, you were thinking about it. You were thinking about all the reasons why it was wrong, even as you benefited from it. So I know you got reasons, Luis. You wanted to talk, you want out, fine. But you spent a lot of nights up until now thinking about why you want out. So you might as well go ahead and tell me."
"There's a lot of reasons, John, but..."
"But nothing, my man. You got reasons, let's hear them. Otherwise you just wasted your time thinking of them. Or unless you're afraid they're not good enough to hold up under any kind of scrutiny."
John paused to light another cigarette. They traffic was moving painfully slow. He could have hit the cherries if he'd wanted, but he hardly wanted to revisit this conversation later.
"I told you, it's not just me anymore, man. I have ...."
"Yeah, yeah yeah, family, I got it already, just tell me the fucking real reason, for crissake!"
"I got into this job because I wanted to be one of the good guys. You know where I come from, you know what I've seen. I ran with the Latin Kings when I was ten, twelve years old, looking out for guys boosting cars. Maybe I didn't think too much about it because we didn't have nothing, not a dollar extra. They people we stole from, they could afford to lose, maybe. But we couldn't afford not to. If it was just grocery money, maybe I'd still be doing it. But pretty soon it wasn't just grocery money. It was guns, and gold chains, and drugs. And pretty soon, the guys that stole just because they said they needed money for food suddenly needed money for drugs. Some of those guys killed people, and some of those guys got killed. And I knew this was all a joke, that these were the bad guys and I was one of them. That's why I became a cop, so I could draw a line between my family and guys like that. And I thought that line was still there for awhile while we've been doing what we been doing, because they were the bad guys and we were the good guys, only I got to thinking that maybe it's the same way it was before. I'm one of the bad guys too, just not as far down the road as some of the bad guys.
John was nodding, flicking ashes from his cigarette. "And you're thinking that you need to reestablish yourself as one of the, quote unquote, 'good guys', mainly by ceasing what we've been doing. We shake down drug dealers. We play guys off against one another. Sometimes, like today, they kill people. Usually those people are every bit as bad as they are, but we don't know that, do we? For all we know, there could be more than a few innocent people getting dead, and we'd be part of the machine benefiting from that, right?"
Luis looked sideways at him, trying to determine if he was serious or mocking. "That's right."
"And so not only do you want to not contribute to such degradation, but you need to purge yourself of being a part of it, right? Because you're one of the good guys?"
"Look, man, I don't appreciate this, this ain't no fucking joke..."
"I know it's not a joke, Lou, I know. And you want to know how I know? You think I haven't given myself this little talk a few hundred times? I've been doing this for a bit longer than you have, let me tell you. If you think I haven't sat down with a bourbon and wondered why I get out of bed for an eight hour shift of being the biggest hypocrite in the Bay Area, you better think again. I know everything you've been thinking. Every reason that you have, you can bet that I've gone over it. No, I don't have family, nothing but an ex-wife that hates me so much she doesn't even want alimony. But I do have a badge. I got up and said that I would serve, protect, whatever. I made a commitment. I didn't have to make it, and I can quit it any time I want. Hell, I could go be one of the 'bad guys' if that's what I decide. So why not? Why keep up with this charade a minute longer than I have to? I'll tell you why." John took another deep drag on his cigarette, crushed it out, and began rooting for another. When he found the pack empty, he snorted in disgust, cracked the window, and chucked it.
"How many police officers were killed in the line of duty last year, Lou?" he continued. Luis shrugged.
"No idea."
"There you go. I don't know either. And almost nobody outside of a few statisticians and a handful of politicians knows or even cares. We're the good guys, huh? If we were, we wouldn't be forgotten the moment the crack of the twenty-first gun faded away. The minute the check for your insurance is written, you're gone. Poof. Vanished. A phantom. A vapor. Gone. That's how it is. That's how it is to be one of the good guys. Now you take a look at who you call the bad guys. Remember how they mooned over John Gotti? You know how much fan mail Richard Ramirez gets? A serial killer who cut out people's eyes? And everyone remembers those people. The cops, the guys that died trying to keep the chaos out of the street, they're forgotten. But the ones that did the most damage, people remember them,"
"That ain't enough of a reason to do what we do, John," Luis said quietly. John nodded.
"True, true enough. Not good enough. Not good enough. But I tell you what is reason enough - the fact that I will be forgotten, that you would be forgotten, means we owe allegiance to ourselves before any and everything. For me, it's really simple. I'm just a warm body. If I catch a bullet someday, they'll replace my cold body with another warm one, and that's it. Don't tell me it's any different. It isn't. It's what's done in practice, every day. Pick any city, any state in the glorious fifty, it's business as usual. That's fine, I accepted that the day I put on the badge. But don't think for one second I'll ever forget who my loyalty lies with - me. I. ME. The guy that they will forget before the dirt hits the top of the coffin. If I can take enough money out of the scumbags they pay me to collar before I'm dead to retire to a condo on the beach, I'll have beaten them.
"But you, you my friend have an even greater reason than I ever could. You've got that kid, and that wife. You think you have an obligation to get out because of them? I say you have a greater obligation to stay in, and for the same reason. You can't take the risk? You've taken it every day you put on a badge. What the fuck was the bullet proof vest they issued you for? Warmth? Believe me when I tell you, Lou, you catch a bullet in the face, they'll forget that kid and that wife of yours faster than they forget you. You can play it safe and lose. That's a life of public school for your kid, scrimping and saving on the breadcrumbs they dole out every two weeks. Or you can put it all on the line like you're doing already. There's a way to win in Vegas, my friend, same as here. You just play till you hit it big and walk away before you lose it all."
Luis pulled into the parking lot for the second time that day, a buzzing cacophony of yellow police tape and flashing ambulance lights. There was blood on the pavement. The vultures of the urban setting crowded around as close as the blues would let them, shouting questions and setting off flash bulbs from oversized cameras. A few meters further, the antenna from a news van jutted into the air. Luis shifted into park. John put his hand over the seat, resting lightly on his shoulder.
"You want out, my friend, you've got it. You'll never need to convince me you won't talk. But you just ask yourself - where will that kid and wife of yours be if you died tomorrow? Because I guarantee you, no one else is asking that question. Not even the 'good guys'. Because there are no real good guys, Lou, and no real bad guys either. Only winners and losers. And having risked it all and lost is far better than just choosing to be a loser. Think about that."
User Reviews
Submitted by rorrim (user info) at 2008-03-05 14:43:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice work, mr locascio.
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2008-01-31 17:54:33 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Who the fuck are you, Moses bringing down the Ten Commandments?
Submitted by domenad (user info) at 2008-01-31 11:46:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by BlazinBull (user info) at 2008-01-31 11:32:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is like crack. Question : What happened with the John-Adam thing? Hope you keep posting these...
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Bull,
I changed the name of the main character slightly into the story. It's fixed in my Word copy, but I couldn't fix the posts. The character's name is John Glaim.
Submitted by FuQ (user info) at 2008-01-31 11:38:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Keep going
Submitted by BlazinBull (user info) at 2008-01-31 11:32:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is like crack. Question : What happened with the John-Adam thing? Hope you keep posting these...
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2008-01-30 21:25:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ConorJS (user info) at 2008-01-30 11:23:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What are you doing using proper syntax and grammar on this website? And don't even get me started on your believable dialogue...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-01-30 06:22:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
HAR HAR serius writer! I bet you pwn a thisarus even!
Thanks man. I've got at least two 'half-dones' on uber I'm thinking of giving a complete overhaul and trying to sell (which of course merits another HAR HAR). Hang in there and keep writing.
Submitted by Linus (user info) at 2008-01-30 00:38:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
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