Chapter 4 - Stitches and Scars

Hand Covers Bruise by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Dr. Robin Lefaivre and I first met each other during an earlier trip to the ER eight months ago. That time, I’d been in a car accident and she’d looked over the lacerations on my body from broken glass and the slam from the seatbelt, commenting on the amount of pre-existing scars and bruises in various stages of healing. I shrugged it off and told her that she couldn’t even see my biggest scars. The athletic and commanding Doctor had taken a shine to my hospital bed side manner of self-deprecating jokes and asked procedural questions about the overall deteriorated state of my frame. A week later I returned to the hospital and asked her out. She’d said yes and we went on a very romantic spring date to the botanical gardens and then I had made dinner at her chichi West End loft. I was caught up in her fierce intelligence and ability to process many of the intense intricacies of the world. I liked that she was a woman in power who ran a team of her own people with commanding authority and human warmth. She was beautiful and managed to ride a line of style that maintained perfect adult fashionability while retaining a structured functionality. I loved the way she looked in a lab coat, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her thick black framed glasses either on her face, perched in her hair, or dangling from a lanyard around her neck. She looked taller than she was as her presence commanded respect. We didn’t get to see each other as much as either of us would have liked, her being an ER Doctor and me being a Man of Action, but that didn’t matter to me. It worked out better that way most of the time. I always had a case. She was always on call. The sex was great. Our conversations were rapid-fire; full of humor and intensity as we discussed the morbid details of our jobs. She didn’t know it, or I guess in retrospect she must have, but she helped me take the edge off. Helped me feel like there could be someone there for me at the end of at least some days.

“Are you just looking for new ways to see me?” said Robin, as she drew the suture through my forearm, tying the sliced skin back together. I snorted at the dull pain and weird tugging feeling as the needle ran through flesh numbed by a local anesthetic.

It was my second trip to the hospital that week. On Wednesday, I’d been hit in the face with a set of brass knuckles while tied to a chair receiving a split eyebrow that had needed stitches. This time I’d been defending myself from a knife-wielding suspect and took a slash to the forearm before subduing him. This too needed stitches and it was once again Dr. Robin Lefaivre who administered them.

“Whatever works right?” I said smirking even though it made the bruised and lacerated side of my face crackle with pain.

“It’s that or you like getting hurt.”

“Are you accusing me of being a masochist?” I said in a half laugh through grit teeth.

She paused for a second and looked up from my arm to the wound to my face, her expression collapsing with a wave of sadness. “What else would you call this Tom? Every week something new? You eat injuries for breakfast.”

“It’s all part of the job babe,” I responded, immediately regretting my cavalier tone.

“Yeah? Well, what about Karen and Don? When was the last time you saw them getting their head busted open for the job? Why do you always go through that door first?”

“Oh, what you’re saying they’re not brave enough?” I snapped my head around and scowled.

“No of course not. It’s you, Tom. You just can’t wait to go kick the shit out of someone and you don’t care how bad you have to take it to do that. What changed in you? From the sounds of things you used to be a detective and a team player.”

“This is what fucking get for inviting you to the office mixer. What did Karen say to you? You know what never mind. So what do you think I am now?” I said sitting up and sneering at her.

“To be honest you’re just another thug. Another man throwing his weight around in the street and acting like your shit doesn’t stink and you can do whatever you want.”

“That’s what you think of me?”

“Show me something to prove the contrary, Tom. You go out there and you chase down bad guys every day but what are you really doing? You’re just reinforcing this idea of the macho violent male, solving his problems with his fists or at gunpoint.”

“I don’t like guns.”

“Well you sure think with the one between your legs,” she lets go of the suture which clatters into the stainless steel tray beneath my arm and stands back her gloved hands crossed over her chest.

I want to protest. I want to scramble to explain to her all the ways that I have to be for my survival. How thoroughly traumatized I am that the sound of ambulances and police sirens give me comfort. How the baseline adrenaline spike of engaging in violence or life threatening actions is the only way I feel normal. I’ve never been able to find a baseline resting state without putting myself through some sort of meat grinder. I know people can’t understand it, so I don’t even try explaining it. I want to tell her all about how the things I do and the way I am are the only way for me to preserve myself from everything awful that bombards me every single day and feel safe. Instead, I say something stupid.

“Robin, I…I just go out there every day and I fight for the people. I do the things that no one else can do.”

“Maybe they could if you gave other people a chance instead of always going it alone into the melee. ”

“Hey, I take the hits that other people don’t want.”

“So what, you want a fuckin’ medal? Do you want them to name a street after you? Would a statue be good enough for you Tom? Maybe no one needs to take the hits at all? Maybe you’re just being an adrenaline junkie with an endlessly bruised ego and a death wish?”

“That’s pretty savage don’t you think?”

“Oh, I get it. When I don’t praise you for being stupid that’s savage? What, you can’t take it, tough guy?” She picks up the needle and roughly finishes lashing my skin together in a way that’s more like a butcher and less like a surgeon. It looks like a nice new scar in the process.

I let it stay silent.

I look up at her and my head feels heavy. Normally, I’m exploding with so much energy I can feel it radiating off my skin, but right now I feel tired. I feel subdued and ashamed.

“Robin, I’m sorry,” I say in a slow, thoughtful voice. “I’m, I’m kinda damaged.”

“No shit.”

“You’ve been, you’ve been good for me. I’m changing. You’ve helped me—”

“That’s nice and all Tom but we’re just lovers. I get that you’re used to strong women supporting you in your life, but I’m not going to do that. Why should I give you any more of my affection when you clearly are so mad at yourself for something, I don’t care what that is, that you’re willing to put yourself through a wood chipper every week until you can absolve yourself of whatever guilt you’re carrying. I am not going to keep patching you up every time you destroy yourself. Don’t ask me to hold your hand, carry your emotions, and your heart, and then brutalize yourself over and over again. I want nothing to do with that. I know you’re normally traumatized, just like most men, but I thought you were going to be someone who was better. I saw that potential in you. Someone better than all the scum that he has to deal with. Someone who rose above it all for the greater good, like all your bullshit PR says. But now I can see you’re just another selfish boy. So angry about what you don’t have or what you lost that you’ll never be able to reconcile what you are and move forward to be better than that. And you’ll keep hating yourself for that. You’ll keep dragging people into your vortex of crazy, expecting that they’re gonna help you change. Save you from your self-punishment? Maybe I inspired you, maybe I got you to push yourself. But I’m not your muse, don’t put that on me. It’s played out. I do care about you, but I refuse to care anymore until you can learn to care more about the world and people around you than you do about wallowing in your own juvenile ego and shameless desire for self-destruction. You are going to have to learn how to be a better man and don’t do it for me.”

She stepped away from the table while I hung my head.

“It’s over Tom. Please don’t call.”

*****

I wake up swinging side to side in my hammock as the summer sunlight cuts through the filthy window of the storage room and a Summer breeze pours down the wall under my suspended back. It’s dark and cool in here, my body trussed by parachute material and wrapped in a sleeping bag. I stretch out and flex my muscles, ratcheting the aches of former injuries back into place. Sleeping in a hammock long term is a lot more comfortable than you’d expect, still, it is day five hundred and something of this shit. Every day, waking up in a dark room next to large metal shelves towering over me, holding all my meager worldly belongings. The other shelves are lined with fatigued green boxes of office supplies and anything else not dangerous enough that we’ve gotta lock it up. There are a few brooms, and stacks of paper, but it’s a nothing room, it’s my limbo. I grunt and turn sideways, my feet swinging to the ground, the concrete floor cold underfoot. I’m in my underwear and grab the same pair of black shorts as yesterday—still loaded with my daily carry: keys, wallet, phone, a fine leather case hitched to my belt with a flashlight, pen and multitool—and then a tank top off a pile of clean laundry on one of the shelves. I slip into a pair of black ankle socks and my black and yellow Vans, synching the high-top ninja boots tight. Then I’m up and out of the room and into the cloistered fourth floor of Wolfmen Investigations. To my right, there is a set of spiraling concrete stairs adorned with finely polished masonry that reflects the sunlight cutting through the glass ceiling at the top of the spire another two floors above. Across the open cylindrical space, down to the lobby, are the locker rooms and showers. I go brush my teeth and let nature do its thing before I go down a floor to the Gym, kitchen, and common area of the building.

I hit the weights for a bit. Then I work a speed bag and jump some rope. I take a break, drink some water, and stretch it out. I ride the bike for fifteen minutes. I do push-ups till I can’t anymore followed by the same with some elevated sit-ups, then do a thirty-minute yoga routine before washing my face and going back into the common room. I flick on the TV and turn up the sound before backpedaling into the kitchen. I try to enjoy my vape, fuckin’ piss mist, and go to work making myself a smoothie. While slurping a mixture of protein powder, blueberries, yogurt, orange juice, and coconut water. I dice some shallots before frying them with cubed zucchini and crumbled bits of merguez sausage.

Gang warfare? Or Random homicide? We’re here at 1769 South Grandfille where this morning at 7:00 a.m. multiple residents called the police after being awoken by large amounts of automatic gunfire that has resulted in the gunshot murder of Tysen Zipchin. This is the fifth gunshot-related death in the South Granfille neighborhood this year and has prompted residents to wonder: just who is living next door?

I crack three eggs into a bowl and lacerate them with a fork before adding more butter to the pan followed by the eggs and a sprinkle of salt. A Police media liaison hits the screen. “As we’ve said before, we can’t comment on the nature of the crime as of yet. We aren’t ruling out a possibility that this is connected to the other recent reports of gunfire across the city but we simply don’t have the ability to say that these cases are connected at this time.”

South Grandfille is almost as bougie as it gets for residential zip codes here, so the idea that it’s being overrun by gun violence sounds strange, even for this City.

I use a soft rubber spatula to keep the eggs moving in the non-stick pan, peeling down the edges until the whole thing becomes semi-solid. I take it off the burner and turn back to the TV.

Police advise the public to call 911 if they see or hear anything suspicious but have stated that residents of the South Grandfille neighborhood should feel completely secure.

I grab a handful of shredded Monterey Jack out of the fridge and drop it into the mass of eggs glistening with butter. If citizens have anything to report please contact our anti-gang task force through our non-emergency lines. I snort and shake my head while picking up the frying pan, using the spatula to roll the eggs, now a perfect baby-ass smooth omelet, onto my plate and take it and my smoothie over to the high island built into the middle of the common room, sitting down on a stool to eat my breakfast.

In every city you’ll find the same thing: parliament getting down with criminals for capital. Crime is a vicious cycle of rotten hands feeding rotten mouths. Crime pays, drugs pay, racketeering and smuggling pays, and yeah stealing pays. The thing about crime paying comes back to the question of what you do once you’ve got enough money to be able to live like a boss? How do you get your money off the street? A criminal who’s got that much money probably knows some other rich people, and if he doesn’t that’s ok, he can afford to go meet them. Those other rich people; business people, art dealers, and real estate moguls, they create avenues for criminals to invest their money. Long and short of it, money laundering isn’t about cleaning up bills these days so much as it is about being able to put your money into something that’s going to have more value than money. This standard wisdom prevails and where money goes, politicians flow - and sooner or later you’ve got politicians who are in the pocket of criminals, whether they know it or not. Maybe those people get elected or re-elected and then guess who they owe some favors to? You don’t need a political science degree to know that that’s how the game is played and that this is how it’s always been. And so, I’ve got nothing better to do with my days and time than to battle with those new strains of prevailing villainy that ride roughshod across this, now terrifyingly small, planet.

Breakfast goes down fast. I fire the dishes into the washer and then head back upstairs to one of the storage rooms adjacent to mine. I kick up dust digging through the poorly organized room of hard plastic boxes filled with athletic equipment and winter clothing. I almost get tangled up in the skis, snowboards, and a volleyball net, that was a fun staff party, while reaching to open the window at the back of the room. I find what I’m looking for in a spare heavy bag, my skateboard stuff. I drag the duffle full of gear through the mess and sling it over my shoulder. I take the stairs past the office floor and lobby and into the downstairs basement that makes up our engineering bay and garage.

Once out of the stairwell, I turn left and walk over to a long stainless steel workbench with a variety of built-in tool drawers. I turn up a bank of high-powered overhead LED light arrays and drop the duffel of gear next to a vice grip bolted to the tabletop. This is just one of four workbenches, each with a custom range of tools, designed to perform open heart surgery on a variety of machines and electronics. I brush the remaining dust off the top of the bag and open it up. First I pull out my deck, a 9.75x30 flat-nosed, wide-tailed Powell & Peralta with black and red stripes and the classic Ripper skeleton logo. The trucks are a matte black double kingpin assembly by Gullwing, enabling sharper turning without compromising the speed. I grab a bubble gum-colored skate tool out of the box before putting it aside for a second. I take off the wheels, a set of black semi-soft wheels called G-slides, from Powell & Peralta, that enable smooth riding on rough surfaces but are constructed to allow slides or even full drifts given the right skills. I pop the old bearings out of the wheels and chuck them in the metal waste bin behind me. I dig around in the box for a set of fresh bearings; Bones Swiss Ceramics, the fastest skateboard bearing in the world. I slam them into the wheels and give each one a small coat of Phil Wood Grease, an anti-rust and corrosion lubricant mostly used by motorcycle mechanics. I tighten the nuts just enough so the wheels don’t slide back and forth before on the axles then I hear the garage doors open up behind me. I’m not expecting Don or Karen, but there’s only one person other than me who’d be coming down in this dark garage on what looks like the start of a gorgeous day. I put the skateboard aside and wipe the grease off my hands with a rag before walking around the corner and across the bank of custom vehicles that Royce has built over the years. Sunlight pours in from the street as the ramp and street-level access garage doors hit the ground and I hear the sounds of boots coming down the metal gangplank. Then the hydraulic lifters on the ramp ascend, the doors close and we’re sealed back into the cool darkness of the garage. Royce, a six-foot three lanky kid with a mop of hair tucked under a Langston Lasers baseball cap strolls towards me wearing blue jeans, black Daytons with the steel toe starting to show, Ray-ban gold-rimmed aviators on his face and the immense frame of a young man who likes to hit the bench, stretching out a white t-shirt. The fingers of one of his lean but calloused hands snapping away while he whistles into his domain.

Royce is our mechanic. We’d met him over two summers ago when he was just sixteen. He’d been building drag engines out of his very English father’s garage, the results of his work outpowering the competition by a few seconds every quarter mile. I’d been in the process of commissioning his pops, former Formula 1 Driver and mechanical genius, Mackintosh Bruce to help build Wolfmen Investigation’s first supercar. I’d been running through factory standard vehicles at an alarming rate and I had decided that I needed a mode of transport that was more well suited to my often explosive needs. Mackintosh and I had never sealed the deal. He’d died test-driving one of his own vehicles on a closed track the same day Don and I had come out to speak with him. In the chaos of the tragedy that didn’t sit right Don and I caught wind of sinister intentions behind Mack’s demise and soon we were involved in a car duel that inevitably ended with us bringing the murderer, a petroleum mogul from Istanbul and former race rival of Bruce’s, to justice.

It wasn’t long after that day that Royce had appeared at Wolfmen Investigations asking if we needed any help. We’d driven him home and had a long conversation with his mother. She knew who we were and wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of her teenage son hanging around with a pair of grown men who lived their lives with the same type of speed and danger that had killed her ex-husband. She didn’t say no though, so at Royce’s insistence, we’d offered him a position as our mechanic. Our Benefactor had then paid to have the basement floor of Wolfmen Investigations expanded to include two full garage bays, metal fabrication equipment, space for fourteen vehicles, and the sealing telescoping driveway to street level. Royce had built the Wolf Mark 1 out of a rare standard transmission 1974 Plymouth Duster. He’d followed our list of specifications to a tee, adding five-point harnesses, chassis reinforcement, and a turbo. He’d re-forged particular body plates to protect crucial components from gunfire and installed bullet-resistant windshields. He even performed the miracle of installing power steering without breaking our pocketbook in half. The Mark 1 was a great car, cool looking, fun to drive, and had a helluva get up and go with its V8, but ultimately it bit the dust after I drove it through a brick wall to get at a bomb, set to kill hundreds of animals, and a few people, during the Kensington Heights Dog Show. Since I couldn’t defuse the bomb, I had to throw it in the trunk of the car before running the poor thing off the pier and into the West Bay. The Cutlass I’d been driving at the climax of the Qui case was the Mark 14, so maybe Hector had a point. Royce is 18 now, having just graduated from high school he’s since taken up a full-time position with us.

“What you get laid or something?” I say, catching the young man off guard as he jumps at the sound of my voice.

Royce realizes it’s me and stops to compose himself before speaking in the deep echoing timber of a much older man. “What’s it to you? You a cop or you writing a book?”

I laugh and smile at him. “Fair enough kid. What are you here for?”

He takes the sunglasses off and hangs them on the neckline of his shirt. “What was it Karen said? Since Mr. Hard-on has been taken down a few inches, you should have ample time to give the Mark 14 a tune-up.”

“Sounds like her.” I shake my head. “So she told you then?”

“Yeah, sorry they took your wheels, boss.”

We’re walking past the banks of vehicles towards the workbench.

“It’s ok, they didn’t take all my wheels.”

“What do you mean?

“I didn’t always have the luxury of a car, you know?”

“Yeah well, you used to drink a lot more too, didn’t you?”

I stop walking in front of the Mark 5, a black Chrysler Imperial Crown and shoot him an eye roll before I continue walking. “Anyway, what made me so good at all this detecting? It wasn’t just driving around the hood in a boss lookin’ whip flippin mugs Royce. Back in the day, I didn’t have anything other than my mitts and my wits. Getting around? During the winter I’d pound the pavement in a leather jacket, take the trains, but in the summer?,” we come upon the workbench, “I’d skateboard. I wasn’t about hanging around skate spots though, I was usually sprinting from one end of the city to the other.” I pick up the skateboard off the table and turn to face Royce. “You know why a skateboard is better than a bike?”

“I feel like you’re gonna tell me,” he snorts.

I throw the skateboard towards him so it remains vertical and he easily grabs it before it hits him.

“You can pick it up and take it with you. Stairs don’t stop you and you’ll always have somewhere to sit. Better yet if you’re in a tight spot it gives you something to hit someone with.”

Royce starts laughing at me. “Holy shit, that’s some classic Tom Wolfe stuff there boss. Only you’d be thinking about something like that.”

I smile and shake my head at him, “Fine but you wait and see. You hang with us long enough eventually you’ll get in enough scrapes that you might start looking at everything as a weapon too.”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen some trouble with y’all.”

Despite our best efforts to keep Royce out of harm's way, there were many times when he was staring down the same gun barrels as us. Those were the times when the kid proved he was more than just a mechanical genius, he’s a man of action like us. He had a knack for last-minute arrivals, usually piloting some super machine with features appropriately suited to our predicaments. Not to mention he’s got a hell of a right hook.

“Yeah well, trouble doesn’t have to be your game Royce, if I were you I’d stick to the cars,” I say turning away from the workbenches and crossing over to an equipment lockup room, using my FOB to bleep-bloop the key panel.

“Yeah well, if I were you I’d try and stay out of trouble this weekend.”

“What makes you think I’m going to get into trouble?” I say grinning and stepping into the equipment lockup.

In front of me, there are shelves with an array of specialized equipment we’ve purchased or designed and built. Micro cans of WD-40. Marble-sized smoke bombs. Brass knuckles. The works. You name it we got it. I pull one of the custom utility belts, fitted with all sorts of mounts and pockets, off the wall and strap it around my waist fastening the seat-belt style clip just over my right pocket. I load five smoke bombs into a pouch and fasten it to the belt. I take one of the cans of WD-40 and lock its spray mechanism before I slap a velcro adhesive patch on the side and press it into its counterpart near the small of my back. We’d developed a flat, curved folding hinge crowbar that locks into the belt and I take one off the wall and affix it to my belt line. I take a USB battery pack and a multi-tool with pliers, wire cutters, a saw, and a knife. This is of course overtop of my regular everyday carry already locked on my regular belt. Royce watched me gather my gear, biting his tongue.

“I’m pretty sure that Karen and Don were hoping you’d lay low this weekend dude. Go to the beach or a baseball game or something.”

“What, you guys have a conference call?” I snort while digging in my pocket for my vaporizer.

“What, you didn’t get the memo?” He laughs at me.

“Look Royce, Karen, and Don can make sunshine wishes that I’ll suddenly drop a friggin’ nut or lose a gear, but the fact of the matter is that no one is gonna slow me down. I know there’s more trouble out there and I’m gonna go sniff it out so’s I can get my teeth into it.”

“Are you just looking for something to fight?”

I pull a set of brass knuckles, molded to my fist, and slip my fingers into it, gripping the metal pommel hard and looking my young friend in the eye. “Only thing I’m fighting right now is the street, bub.”