The Glitter Dome (3 page)

Al Mackey watched the cat and smiled malevolently. It was perfect. It suited the mood, this blatant display of haughty destruction.

“Maybe you want to go
with
me?” Al Mackey said to the cat, who looked up and arrogantly ripped deeper into the fabric. Tufts of cotton began to ball up and leak out. Al Mackey turned and staggered the few steps back into the kitchen. When he returned to the ruined living room he pointed the six-inch Smith & Wesson at the blazing yellow eye.

“Right between your frigging horns,” said Al Mackey.

The striped pearly tomcat narrowed the yellow eye and responded by insolently ripping the fabric yet deeper.

“You miserable prick!” Al Mackey said.

The cat
yawned
. That did it.

Al Mackey kicked the lawbooks from under the coffee table. The cat arched and screamed. The bottle of Tullamore Dew went flying. Al Mackey kicked the wrecked table again and the
cat
went flying.

Al Mackey watched the remnant of Irish whiskey dribble out on the matted filthy Oriental rug, which like everything else in the bachelor apartment belonged to the landlady. Al Mackey heard the cat snarling as it retreated to its bed in the corner of the bathroom.

Al Mackey was ready to show the world. He went straight to the closet. He pulled a sweat shirt and two pairs of jogging shoes onto the floor. He hadn't done any running in two years. He kicked the jogging shoes across the room. He felt the leather. He took it down from the shelf and lurched back into the kitchen, to the formica table.

This wasn't
anybody's
cock. He slid the two-inch Colt revolver from the black leather holster.

An “off-duty” gun. It was the first thing they all did twenty-two years ago, those slick-sleeved, scrubbed, and hard-muscled rookies with their big eyes and crewcuts and bags full of hope. They ran out and bought “off-duty” guns. Dodge City. The John Wayne syndrome. They wouldn't go to the grocery store without an off-duty gun in a pocket or strapped to the armpit or ankle or at least under the seat of the family car. Never know when they might stumble onto a pursesnatch in progress. Or a burglar climbing out a neighbor's window. Or (dare they hope?) a bandit holding up the teller in the local bank while they're in mufti at the next window, clutching their City of Los Angeles paycheck. Then, a shoot-out! (They win, of course.) The L.A.
Times
. A television interview. The Medal of Valor maybe? An accelerated transfer to plainclothes.
Glory
.

The syndrome passes. The off-duty gun is sold, or traded for a more useful revolver, or put away into closets with youthful fantasies.

Al Mackey was such a poor marksman he always shot the pistol range with his six-inch. And though it was unwieldy, he carried it through all the years of detective duty. Not that he still expected fantasy shoot-outs—it's just that he hated these pig-snouted, inaccurate, bullet-spraying off-duty guns, which in fact got so many Los Angeles cops into so much off-duty trouble in barrooms and bedrooms from Sunland to San Pedro.

Suddenly he pointed it at his face. This isn't
anybody's
cock. Don't try play-sucking on
this
baby. This one
wasn't
familiar. This one was a terrifying
machine
, which, if properly used, could take a three-inch shard of glistening skull and deposit it across the kitchen on the windowsill. Would that filthy cat drink his blood?

His hand began trembling. That's why the really serious ones chew on it. Eat it.
Chew
on it. Put it in your mouth because the hand's shaking too much to hold it at the eye or temple. But point it upward. He remembered so many failures: slugs lodged in the soft palate, in the jawbone, in the neck, in the ear. Every goddamn place but in the brain, where they were meant to go. Then: agony, paralysis, deterioration.
Consummate
failure.

He opened his mouth. He moved the two-inch closer. Chew on
this
baby. But the rounds are twenty-two years old. He'd never bothered to replace them. He'd never used the gun. It was dust-covered. The cylinder might be frozen. He'd wiped it off from time to time but he'd never fired it. The rounds were twenty-two years old! They probably wouldn't ignite. The firing pin would make a nice big gouge in a dud cartridge. They'd
never
fire. He was only playing a
game
.

Okay, test it.
Pull
. He was drenched. The sweat slid down his cheeks. Al Mackey was only forty-three years old, but his cheeks were gray and hollow and lined. The oily rivulets followed the premature creases in his face. His hand began to steady a bit. He thought about cocking it. No, do it double action just like on the firing line. It's only a few pounds of trigger pull. He used his thumb. These old rounds won't fire. Possibly.

Chew on it! Eat it! Mercy!

Then he felt it. The gun slid from his fist and clattered on the formica tabletop. A warm puddle under his ass. He jumped up in horror.

“I pissed my pants!” he wailed.

The cat hissed. The phone rang.

“I pissed my pants!” he cried, in shame, degradation,
disbelief
.

The phone rang and rang. Gradually he heard it. He lurched into the bathroom. The cat was in bed licking his balls. It caused Al Mackey to look down at his own dripping crotch.

He moved into the bedroom with the Frankenstein gait of a man who'd pissed his pants, in slow motion toward the incessant telephone.

“Sergeant Mackey!” the landlady screamed in his ear. “It's four o'clock in the morning!”

“Please, Mrs. Donatello.” He could only talk in an unrelenting monotone.

“I thought I could at least trust a policeman to respect my property!”

“Please, Mrs. Donatello.”

“It wouldn't be so bad if you was a lover boy or a queer or something, but you! You make all this noise and destroy my property when you're all alone! I never seen nothing like this before! You get in these terrible fights with your own self!”

“It wouldn't be so bad if you was a lover boy or a queer or something, but you! You make all this noise and destroy my property when you're all alone! I never seen nothing like this before! You get in these terrible fights with your own self!”

“Please, Mrs. Donatello.”

“I'm telling you, Sergeant Mackey. I felt sorry for you. I begged you to go to the A.A. meeting. They can help alcoholics.”

“I don't think I'm an alcoholic, Mrs. Donatello.”

“You're an alcoholic, Sergeant Mackey. You're the fourth detective I had as a tenant. Three of you was alcoholics. No more cops!”

“Yes, Mrs. Donatello.”

“What did you break this time?”

“I just broke the coffee table again.”

“That's something to be grateful for at least. Did you fall down again?”

“Yes, I fell down.”

“Do you want me to call a doctor?”

“No, an exorcist maybe.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I want you out, Sergeant Mackey. Your apartment is filthy. And I don't allow cats. You got too many fleas and roaches in your apartment.”

“How many fleas and roaches am I allowed, Mrs. Donatello.”

“What?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Donatello.”

“I'll give you thirty days to find another apartment. Thirty days is enough time.”

“All the time in the world, Mrs. Donatello. More time than
I'm
going to need, that's for sure.”

It grew into an enormous wet balloon of a sob. Then it exploded. He hung up the phone and began to heave. His narrow, rounded shoulders shuddered and lurched. He looked like an armless man trying to swim. He heaved desperately, unable to hold back the huge wet balloons. Each balloon burst. The tears scalded.

He stripped off his pants. The urine was already beginning to chafe and burn. He wasn't wearing underwear.

“Where's my underwear!” Al Mackey cried. “I left my shorts in Chinatown!” Sing
that
one, Tony Bennett! Oh God, for a man to
lose
his underwear!

The cat looked at him blankly. Much the same as Wing had looked at poor old Cal Greenberg, who couldn't make them understand that Glenn Miller made
music
. The pitiless cat licked his genitals contentedly and never again glanced up at the weeping man. Even when he cried so hard he vomited in his bath water.

2

The Altar Boy

The last sun shafts cut through the stained glass like venerable swords, but quickly retreated in the face of iniquitous coppery thunderclouds. The lingering smell of incense and charcoal made him nauseous. He actually felt faint, so acrid was the cloud of smoke from the censer during the procession. Father Dominic loved plenty of smoke. Easy on the wine you poured over his tapered fingernails into the chalice, heavy on the charcoal you put in the censer. The altar boy always got dizzy blowing on the coals to get them glowing hot for the pall of somber smoke. But worse than the procession down the narrow aisle was kneeling during the Forty Hours Devotion, in an empty church, cold and shadow-shrouded, during the twilight hours when the wounded, tortured saints and martyrs loomed like bloody phantoms in the gloom. No matter how much personal pain the altar boy endured from the hours on those wooden kneelers, he could of course never begin to appreciate the awful agony suffered by those enshrined forever in paint and plaster and leaded glass
.

And each time he sat for a few moments to relieve the muscle cramps, wouldn't Sister Helen or Father Dominic appear black-robed from the dusk and remind him of an altar boy's special obligation to endure that pain and to offer those tiny, insignificant moments of suffering as a special sacrifice to Our Lord and His Mother. Agony was a privilege, if endured without complaint and offered to Them
.

The tall priest, frail as a secretary bird, would point a bony finger toward those bleeding martyrs who had been consumed by fire, stripped of flesh, ripped asunder, blinded, mutilated, buried alive. Remember Mother Superior's tale of the candidate's corpse disinterred by the Vatican in search for Miraculous Signs? They found hairs in the hands of the skeleton! Proof that he'd been buried alive, and despairingly ripped his hair from his own head instead of dying serenely, six feet beneath that black earth, triumphantly awaiting his last breath of air with eternal salvation guaranteed. But they found hairs in the skeleton's hand. Not only would he never be canonized a saint, but Mother Superior feared for his very salvation, he of little faith
.

“
Agony is a privilege, Martin.” The priest's penetrating tenor echoed fearfully through the ever-darkening church. “You should be grateful, Martin. Do you understand, Martin? Well? Do you? Martin? Martin?
”

“Martin! Martin! Goddamnit, Martin!”

Al Mackey was loosening buckles and straps, straining at his partner's heavier body. “Marty, you goddamned idiot!”

Then Martin Welborn was lying on the floor of his bedroom, unable to raise his head for a moment. He was uncertain where he was. He was uncertain
who
he was. It might be a dream or it might not, this hovering specter who was pulling him into a sitting position.

At last Martin Welborn smiled. “Tell me, Al, am I a man dreaming I'm a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I'm a man?”

“You're a freaking idiot, Marty, is what you are! God damn!”

“It's remotely possible,” Martin Welborn answered.

“What the hell're you trying to do?”

“Help me up, Al.”

The skinny detective reached under the armpits of the naked man and hoisted him to his feet. Martin Welborn put his hands out to brace against the wall, misjudged the wall's location, staggered, and sat down on the bed.

“Marty, what
is
this thing?” Al Mackey demanded, pointing to the aluminum stanchions and crossbars and dangling straps standing like a gallows in Martin Welborn's tidy bedroom.

“It's a spine straightener. You know I have back problems.”

“Back problems. Marty, you have
head
problems. Worse than I guessed even.”

“Al, Al”—Martin Welborn smiled serenely, standing and slipping into underwear and pants that had been neatly placed on the bed—“this has been terrific for my lower back. I hang upside down twice a day, morning and night. I straighten out my spine and never have a moment's fear of back pain.”

“Marty, I was banging on your door for nearly
five
minutes. I could hear the shower going. I figured you'd fallen in the tub. Christ, I slipped the lock!” Al Mackey held up his laminated police ID card, the corners chewed by the door latch.

“At least those cards are good for something,” Martin Welborn said, taking a starched white shirt from the mahogany chest. His cotton shirts, professionally laundered, lay folded, stacked in exact rows.

The police identification cards couldn't even get a check cashed.
Sorry, sir, my boss says driver's licenses only
. But at least they could slip a lock better than most shims. Al Mackey's hands were trembling. He could hardly get his card back in the wallet. “Do you realize you were passed out? Your face looks like raw sirloin! If I hadn't come in …”

“You have a flair for hyperbole, Al, my lad.” Martin Welborn grinned.

It was always “my lad, my son, my boy,” though Martin Welborn was only two years older than Al Mackey. He removed his socks from the second drawer. The pairs of socks were stacked by color shades. It looked to Al Mackey as though Martin Welborn had segregated each stack with a micrometer. When did he start this shit? Marty was never this orderly.
Nobody
was this orderly. Eerie. It was all getting
eerie
.

And it was affecting Al Mackey profoundly. Now
he
was getting drunk and even chewing on his gunsights! Al Mackey got a chill and shivered noticeably.