But it wasn't a bad job. Man could work there blind or forever. Go in floatin’ on pills and wine at eight a.m., drink a couple beers, hit that morning break and him and Eddie Lawson and Slater and ole Joe Bob would go kill a pint between them and come back and coast. You could hold a job at McCullough's if you could crawl. Stand there on the big line—concrete as far as you could see—noisy ole machines a-goin'. Not that computerized shit. Hands on. You did it all, two-fisted. Had a Hammond when he quit. Couldn't remember what them other two had been. Sixteen fucking years. Him and Eddie had quit the same day; Eddie got himself a job driving for United Parcel, and Jesse started pouring the shit. Fucking concrete. His entire life had been fucked over by concrete and he hated the stuff.
He should have stayed at McCullough's. You never worried ‘bout shit. Never took nothin’ home with you at the end of the day. You could stand there and smoke even. Mellow out while you ran your press. If the bosses came you'd see ‘em a mile away and nobody could smell shit in there so everybody knew it was cool and they smoked pot and parried and hell's bells it wasn't like it was a damn death sentence or anything except that it killed your feet standing there like that.
He thought maybe he'd come back tomorrow night about an hour before they closed ‘er down and see if Caroline would like to go out and turkey-trot a little with this ole cowboy and he was moving across the hated concrete when the thing wrapped around him and sort of pulled his head like you'd wrap a string around a yo-yo or a top and as the string or in the case of this particular moment in the life and death of Jesse Keys the chain is pulled, the top is spun, and Jesse went a-spinning out in a violent centrifugation his head seeing a blur of lights in this spinning, blinding whirlwind that cracked out and spun him into a parked truck. It was the last thing he saw, the flashing lights of the spinning horizon, right before the intense pain and the sudden death.
You know how it is when you get hit real hard with a chain? Well, what happens is—nothing. See you don't feel anything right away but the impact of the blow just numbs you out. It's later, that second or two or ten seconds later when the feeling starts coming back that you start screaming and holding yourself and shitting all over your new $375 cowboy boots from the intensity and blinding shock of the unendurable agony because as you well know there is nothing quite like being hit by 21/[2] feet of taped tractor chain. It will flat out put your raggedy country-and-western ass in the big hurt locker. It was a good thing he died real soon thereafter as it spared him a lot of terrible pain.
Shows you there's a good side to almost everything.
It just ain't reasonable to expect you can two-step through life without kickin’ a little cow flop from time to time. It ain't nothin’ personal, it's just the way of the world. Once in a while you're gonna get them size 11 Justin Full Quill Ostrich jobs (regularly $495, special at Hubbard Western Wear only $375!), in the doo-doo. Life is not blue skies all the time. You got to be a philosopher about the thing. Into every life a little chain must fall.
BUCKHEAD
“A. C. Wiegrath, please,” the voice tells the woman over the telephone.
“May I tell him who's calling, please?"
“SAC Krug at the Bureau."
“Oh—yes, sir—just a moment, please.” The line goes click and there is a momentary pause and he hears the familiar voice answer.
“'Morning, Howard."
“Arthur."
“You get a chance to go to school on my memo?"
“Yeah, I did. I pretty much think we need to push on with this. I see what you're saying but we're getting boxed in with the investigation if we don't move."
“Well"—the man's raised eyebrows and shrug could be heard over the telephone in his tone and the sigh—"you know the sit-chee-ashun as well as I do. You're on eggshells. Something like this. I think you have to do what you think best. Buck stops with you."
“Yeah. Well, we got only three possibilities. First Mr. Fields hisself, which doesn't make much sense—guy can buy anything he wants now—Christ, djew look at his financial statement?"
“No, I didn't. He's got a few?"
“Yeah, you could say that.” They chuckled. “For a rainy day. You can say the boy Monroe put it in a cigar box and buried it. I guess we can't dismiss it."
“What'd the poly do?"
“Shit,” he said contemptuously.
“I figured."
“We took about forty man-hours combined with that damn videotape. He looks awful good for it. He's in there in a shot one minute, he's outta the shot the next minute."
“Christ almighty, I think...” He trailed off.
“Arthur, if there was ANYbody else looked ripe for it I wouldn't press it. I mean the girl. Shit there's no way. Just no opportunity. The video narrows it down by eliminating everybody else including the two uniform guys. I think we're lookin’ at Fields, John Monroe, and the investigating officer in charge. That's it."
“Detective Sergeant James Lee out of Buckhead Station."
“Yeah.” Long pause.
“I think we got to get a court order and the whole shootin’ match."
“Lee's telephone. Fields’ telephone. What else?"
“All the usual. For now. Then we'll just wait and see what drops out of the trees, I guess."
“Jesus. You know, for a measly damn twelve, insured at that, you know what I'd like to do with this one."
“Hey, really. Amen to that. It just don't work that way."
“I know, I know. Okay. I'll put it in the works."
“Thanks, Arthur."
“No problem. Get back to you after a while."
“Right,” Special Agent-in-Charge Krug said, hanging up the phone.
The man sitting on the other side of the desk from him anticipated what Krug was about to say and said, “I can appreciate how he feels. We don't like it much either."
“Right."
“But we both know we got a dirty cop here."
“Looks that way, I'll admit."
“Yep."
STOBAUGH COUNTY
He had always counted on his surprising quickness and it had never failed him. He was amazingly surefooted until he grew tired, and his unexpected speed and agility had surprised more than one adversary to death. Daniel had always been careful about revealing his secret quickness of movement, even in combat, and he regarded it as a special, delicious treasure quite rightfully.
But while he could sprint fifty, sixty, seventy-five feet with dazzling speed for his obvious corpulence he was then dead in the water. Running more than a few city blocks, even at a slow jog, was impossible and to him unthinkable. What would be the point? Stamina has its limits.
He knew himself the way you know a reliable machine, every tolerance, every interrelated movement within the system, and his capacities and limitations were known, calculated, and trusted. First his wind would give out, then if he kept going—his ankle would pain him—and soon he'd be moving like a wounded hippo, favoring the bad ankle and moving in a kind of half-lurching half-waddling plunge forward, almost out of control, and uncharacteristically vulnerable as he gulped in mighty lungfuls of air. It was worse than if he'd remained in place and fought, or hid, or whatever. So of course he never ran.