Good-Doer

                                                          Good-Doer          



         I was on the skylines of Boston when I realized that it was my birthday.

         Well, the skyline wasn’t exactly a skyline. Truthfully I was standing on a line of corporate business buildings only about three or four stories tall.

         And…okay, I wasn’t in Boston, I was in downtown Salem, Oregon, my face spattered with evening drizzle. The drizzle was a constant reminder that I was in Oregon.

         But it was my birthday. I’m not lying on that one.

         It was night, and I was on my beat.

         Well, it’s not quite a beat as you can understand it. I’m not quite a cop and not quite a detective. Just a guy with a gun and a knack for justice…

         …though the law is kind of hard to keep on top of a roof – a cold roof.

         That little gem of wisdom was real clear when I was trying to take a shot at a pursesnatcher from fifty or so feet away.

         I missed, of course. Hell, it’s what can be expected from fifty feet away and three stories high.

         But I think I startled him with my brazen marksmanship, especially seeing as he was currently in the process of disentangling himself from his victim, the owner of the purse he was snatching.

         Unfortunately, I startled the victim as well, and the perpetrator was able to yank his prize away and take off down the empty street.

         And, wouldn’t you know it, there wasn’t a single cop, citizen, or passerby to stop him.  I think I could faintly hear the rattle of a tumbleweed nearby. I mournfully watched him skirt the corner and dash away, the clatter of his footsteps getting softer.

         “What were you thinking?” the woman squealed. Her arm hung limply at her side.  You could have easily fit that purse between her cotton tweed dress and that arm.

         I tried to pass my hand through my hair, but it only met stubble and patches of naked skin.

         Oh, to meet a shrew and not even have the standby of a good habit.

         “Why don’t you even listen to me?” wailed the shrew. She swayed on her feet. “Why me and why now?”

         “Guess that purse meant a lot to you, huh?” I called down.

         The shrew glared at me. “Why were you shooting? Who are you?”

         I tipped an imaginary hat with the nose of my nondescript drab black gun. “Just a law enforcing citizen, ma’am.”

         “Why thank you, officer,” screamed the shrew, “for firing from a roof while someone makes off with my purse!”

         I meant what I said, but I wasn’t about to disillusion her of my officer status.

         “Don’t worry, ma’am,” I said gently. “That corner he ran down is a dead end, and a long one at that. We can spare this chat – pretty convenient, eh?”

         She stopped. “That’s great news.”

         “Yeah,” I said enthusiastically. “Now you can go catch him.”

         “What?” The shrew looked as if I’d hit her over the head with a brick. “Why me? What about you?”

         I laughed. “Surely you must be joking ma’am. I’ve done enough and I’ll be on my-”

         “Why?” she said.

         “’Cause then he could get me, stupid,” I said.

         “Stupid?” the shrew said. “Who are you to call me stupid, trench coat man.”

         “Geez lady,” I said. “I’ll track him from up here. And don’t criticize fashion, huh? That why your husband left you?”

         For some weird reason the shrew chose that moment to break down into hysterics and a good sob.

         I took off to the building to the left and made the short leap to the furniture depot, skittered across the top of the sky bridge to the roof of the mall, and peered behind me to see that the shrew was waiting for me.

         It put breath in my lungs to find that the woman could at least wait a few minutes.

         I stared ahead to the dead end and found my target, whose attention was occupied by the solid brick wall in front of him.

         I could hear the buzzing of his beady little eye sockets from my roof, his bony fingers were spidering across the mortar.

         “The hell?” I heard him muttering to himself. “This wasn’t here a week ago.”

         I smiled. I’d been around for the week. I’d staked it out since the city’d laid the first brick.

         “Hey screwball,” I shouted to my Carl Cutthroat, “I’m taking you in.”

         Carl whirled around and shuffled a few feet, his neck cranking left and right.

         “Up here screwball,” I said.

         Carl’s eyes found me. ‘The hell?” he said. “It’s some square in a trench coat.”

         Some people just do not get fashion.

         “I suggest you come with me, screwball,” I said.

         Carl considered this, then shook his head.

         I brandished my gun. “Sure, screwball?”

         Carl snarled, the glint of gold fillings catching the streetlight. “Death Row here or Death Row there. It’s all the same. Go ahead and shoot.”

         A ball of wet saliva began to form in my throat. Did he know…? I had to try.

         It didn’t matter. I aimed and ratcheted out the last three bullets I had.

         The bullets sparked off the brick wall with a grating impact. Carl flinched despite his words.

         But when the smoke cleared….

         Carl’s eyelids opened like creaking winches, probably because his pint-sized brain was trying to figure out if all its cylinders were still firing.

         I could almost taste his thoughts, like burning oil on my tongue. The hell? he was thinking. Am I still alive?

         Regrettably, I had to admit he was.

         Carl figured that out pretty quickly and took inventory of all his working parts – which were all working – and gave me a snaggle-toothed sneer.

         He whipped back to the wall, his hands poised like claws, and slowly, achingly, he began to climb the wall.

         Every grip he found made my heart sink a little more. My birthday was bolting out the front door – or, more accurately, up a wall.

         I swept around frantically, and then I saw it…

         …a ladder to the street, where that convict would be waiting for me.

         It was an old service ladder. The hinges had probably rusted through with old Oregon rain, the bolts connecting the hinges were probably in even worse shape. One step on those supports would probably see me to a serious injury, an early retirement, or both.

         But that wasn’t why I didn’t go down that ladder, and wouldn’t in a hundred years. Probably once I got there I could have yanked him down and smashed his spine against the pavement.

         Halfway up, Carl called to me, “Hey, square! You got guts or does your courage run out after just three bullets?’

         Courage. That was an uncharacteristic statement coming from a guy whose greatest poignancy was, “The hell?” Maybe those words were sent by God to let me know when to give up.

         After all, criminals are much harder to catch if you can’t get off the roof; if every bullet comes from fifty feet away.

         So I let him go and went home, to my apartment on Turner.



         I fell down exhausted on my bed, only bothering myself to turn on a single, small brass lamp. It had taken an hour moving from building to building to reach my apartment. I was out of breath…and being out of breath reminded me that I was once forty-nine years old and now fifty.

         I took a worn copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel from my bedside table and flipped to the first page, more ragged than the others. There was writing underneath the reprinted title, handwritten: TO MIKE—HAPPY 10th.

         I quickly closed the book and slammed it down on a bedside stand. Tears were a sign that your guts had run out.

         I took off my trench coat and went to hang it up in the closet.

         The closet opened and I stopped as I saw that glowing line of immaculately pressed dress shirts, ties, and slacks.

         Tomorrow would be another tedious day of numbers and mathematics and sums and accounting. Funny how I accounted for everyone else’s dreams but not my own.

         Seeing that trench coat next to that line of glowing shirts I was only reminded that this birthday, like all the others, was a failure.

         The dream would have to wait. Work tomorrow.