There were no lights on in the van. The cruel streets let their soft lights invade our vehicle, and they bade that our faces glow as we spoke. I will never, nay, cannot ever forget the heavy weight that fear carries around with it. When you breathe quick and let fear enter into your body, it brings its suitcases along with. That dreaded unease that lived and breathed inside the van, also existed within me. I bathed in awful ignorance and mocking starlight, and yet the soft face of my new friend sought, perhaps unwillingly, to put my stresses at ease. His cool, blue eyes shot bullets of comfort straight through my chest, puncturing my alarm. It was these moments inside the van that, although they were wrapped in discomfort, I hold in the dearest fondness.
His name was Danny Manning, and his life breathed significance. Those nights in the van were long and uncomfortable, but they would become the cornerstone for my future. Some nights when we would wait for the light to come on behind the apartment window, or we would wait for the phone to ring inside of the office, we would pass the time by talking and reminiscing. Or rather, time passed us by.
We were both detectives, and each morning when I walked into the precinct, I always knew exactly where I was going. My fingers would feel delight as they pushed the “4” button on the elevator dial. I had worked so hard for so long just to see the contents of the fourth floor, and now that I had made it, it was blissful. Were the elevator not strictly directed, I believe I would continue rising straight into heaven. The fourth floor was the homicide division, and when the doors opened, the first thing I always noticed was Danny working hard at his desk. He always got started earlier then everyone else, although I can’t say how early, for I was never there to see him start. When I was just starting out there, Danny was already the leading force in the fourth floor division. The captain, our boss, decided to pair us together as partners, so as to let his expertise aid in diminishing my immaturity as an officer.
He was great. We hit it off immediately. I told him of my days preceding the police force, and he recounted to me the dear days of his youth. I liked him, and I learned a lot from his life. The majority of the information intake resided in the van. That’s why I’ll always view it as such a special place. One night, however, sought discomfort and unease from the possessor of the cool, blue eyes. His narrative filled me with inexplicable unease.
“Come on!” I yelled at him within the van. Although I was aware of what I was saying in response, I was unaware of the urgency in which I used to do it. “That’s one of the first things they teach you, man. Trust no one…”
Danny remained sitting tall, his torso complimented by his crimson tie and pinstripe vest. “This is all I’ve got! This is all that I’ve got, man…” The tension built with bricks inside of me, and at the absolute height of it all, the lights flickered on behind the proper window.
The man wasted no time. “That’s us,” Danny said, splitting the somber atmosphere. With guns in hand, we exited the van with new found alarm and bolted straight for the double doors of the sleazy hotel. Danny’s lanky and slender figure ran with intense rapidity towards the door, not losing a second. My vision shook as I struggled to make the proper haste along with him. He was quick, and we burst through the doors, the two of us slinging our guns and waving our badges. My eyes blinked rapidly as the stairs swam past our feet. Finally, the door that stood tall and intimidating was before us. In deep, breathy whispers, Danny looked me dead on, and counted to three with aid from his fingers. I bit down hard, and he kicked the door in. Then all I knew was white.
“Wait a second, what do ya mean a second level?” I asked him. The busy diner din spiraled around Danny as he began another narrative. He smiled his handsome smile at my ignorance.
“Well as soon as you walked out the back door and entered my backyard, you were on the first level. You with me?” He paused as if he were actually asking me. I simply smirked and nodded at him. “As you stood there,” he continued, using abundant hand gestures to compliment his story, “you were able to see this ground stretch out a long ways to your left and right. About ten feet in front of you, however, stood a tall rock wall, probably about ten feet high that stretched alongside the grassy first level. Now, and stay with me here, on the summit of the wall, there was a plateau, if you will, and steps leading up there. You got it?”
“Well, yeah sure,” I said, “but how ab –“
“Anyways,” he continued, cutting me off. “Hugging the wall near the stairs was this villainous monster of a rose bush. If the wall was ten feet tall, then this bush must have been thirteen, completely flush with roses. It is retrospectively beautiful, but when I was four years old and considerably smaller, it shook its fists at me like Goliath.”
“Uh-huh,” I affirmed.
“Well, one sunny afternoon, my older brother and I took to the backyard to exchange a paper airplane with each other. It was simple, and yet so seemingly captivating, it made me happy to do. Anyways. My brother, whom we called Moose, wa—
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” I jumped in. “Why did you call him Moose?”
He sighed. “That’s a completely different story; I get that question all the time. Moving on,” he said with rapidity. “My brother, whom we called Moose, blew an attempted throw towards me. The plane went haywire, and you’ll never guess where it landed.
“The rose bush,” I said, and he nodded, smirking.
“The rose bush. The plane landed on the summit of the beautiful menace that grew with malevolence in my yard. Myself, feeling much too heroic, volunteered to obtain the plane. You can see where this story is going. I climbed the stairs leading to the second level, endeavoring towards an object that looked to be within arm’s length. The thing about this bush though, is that it encompassed the edge of the wall. So while my young mind focused on the singular object, it disregarded the cliff.”
“Ah!” I said, touching my face with discomfort.
“Yup. I fell. I fell, and I kept falling for a thousand years. Now, if you know anything about roses, you know they have thorns, and a lot of them. So when my feet finally touched the ground and I emerged, it took a while for the pain to set in. The shock of falling took a long time to ware off, and it was immediately replaced with the knowledge of the hundreds of scratches about my body. Perhaps if I had not seen them, they wouldn’t have hurt so bad.” Here he paused in reflection, and I noticed I was clinching my hands.
“So then what did you do?”
“I was four and bleeding, what do you think I did? I cried for mom. She came bounding out of course, and made everything better, but wow… I don’t think I’ll ever forget that one.
“Yeah…” I agreed. “That’s unheard of…” My eyes rolled upward in thought, and I mumbled aside “Imagine falling through a rose bush.”
It was at this point that our check came, and we took our leave. Upon exiting the restaurant, we found the New York City air to be biting with sharp teeth at our skin. I started swearing, and Danny simply motioned me into the passenger seat of our car, where it was warmer.
He took off driving, and I asked him where we were going.
“In the mood for a stakeout?” he asked me with sarcastic eagerness. I couldn’t help but sneer. We’d spent long hours thus far on stakeout in the van.
“Another one, huh?”
“Oh, come on now, partner. We haven’t been on that many.
“Of past 96 hours, we’ve spent 34 of them cooped up like owls inside the van. Not to say that I don’t enjoy it, Danny, because I do. It’s just that…” I was afraid of telling him anything other than what he wanted to hear. “Well, you know, the captain… He’s been telling us to spread ourselves across more than one case. I mean, we don’t even have any real hot evidence for thi—“
“Yes we do, damnit!” he interrupted with mild violence, striking the wheel with his palm. “We’re close to this guy, man, I can feel it!” As he stared straight on down the road, a silence pervaded the car that breathed and existed. The silence inhaled deeply, and I felt it all around me. It felt awkward. “Sorry,” he said with a deep whisper. Obviously there was something more to this case than Danny let on.
Of the three months that I had been Danny’s partner, this case had almost completely encompassed our entire means of focus, despite our boss’s persistence that we move on. Danny took a deep and somber interest in this case, for reasons of which I knew not. So I asked him. “Why are you really so interested in this?” He shook his head once, sharply.
“Forget it. What’s say we get back to the office and finish our paper work, yeah? It was ridiculous to consider a stakeout right after lunch.”
“Tell ya what,” I told him. “Let’s finish our paper work today, maybe pedal around some other cases, and then tonight I’ll go back to the van with you.” There was a brief pause, followed by his hardened acceptance of my proposal. And then he thanked me.
The day passed with surprising quickness. I had a curious amount of work to do at my desk, but by the time the sun waved goody bye, and the moon clocked in, I was ready for a long night. I met Danny at the entrance to the work area, where he engaged me with tired eyes, and a grateful smile. I was myself surprised at the dominance of the lines beneath his eyes. He worked himself too hard.
“I’ve got good news!” he told me. He was all smiles.
“Alright, let’s hear it.”
“I’ve got a hot lead on this case.”
“Get outta here. Who from?”
“Don’t worry about. It’s a reliable source.” At this I paused to stare him down. Even as a rookie, I knew the dangers of trusting a reliable source. No one was trustworthy. My eyes shot darts, but he let me know he was unaffected, and still above me.
He simply said with quickness “Don’t. Just grab your pad and follow me. We’ll hit Carl’s Jr. on the way.” With irrelevant reluctance, I obeyed my mentor, and did as was instructed.
With that, we drove onward into the night that beckoned. I was nervous. The miles and miles that we drove were lost in the streetlight elasticity of the city, until we were leaving Manhattan. The van drove on with the gentle hum of an engine that sought monotonous motion, and it took us straight into starlight. I looked out the window at the numerous holes poked in the black fabric sky. Their pallor pervaded the darkness, and brought ease to my being. Starlight star bright, I thought to myself. May luck be with us tonight.
Their light shone into the van, painting a perfect scene of silence. The scene was glassy and beautiful, and dared not be broken. The silence, however, beautiful thought it was, fought against the ease of starlight. The silence weighed much more than their white pallor, so I took the necessary actions. In waving my finger at my anxiety, I spoke to shatter. “So where we goin’?” I asked Danny.
And he replied, “Long Island. My source tells me that’s where this dirt bag’s gonna be tonight.”
“Long Island, huh? Where in Long Island?”
“Got the address right here,” he said, motioning to his cranium. “Just sit back, and enjoy the ride.” He was a recluse. I complied, but with silent protest.
The night bore on, and we sat still as the road passed us by. Finally we reached our destination: a sleazy hotel that was crumbling and objectable. It made me feel dirty.
“This is it,” he said, slamming it into park. “Now we wait.”
“For?”
He abandoned his driver’s post, and bid me follow him into the back of the van: a dark and somber waiting room. He pointed a skinny finger out the side window up at the hotel. “For the light behind that window to come on.”
“What does that mean?” I asked him.
“It means that this rotten dealer is performing.” I bit my lips. I was scared, but the man took a seat, and as I followed suit he patted me on the knee with tensed enthusiasm. His pinstripe suit folded beneath him, and masked his nervous delirium with charm. As he removed his coat, leaving his vest with visibility, I felt the silence sneaking in.
“Tell me a story,” I told him. He just laughed.
“What do you wanna know?”
“Tell me a story about your brother.” At this, a portal opened and closed, and swallowed his gaze. His smile remained, and reminded me of a faded photograph. Although the vivacity faded, the significance hung about. And then he clicked back into reality.
“Well, there’s this,” he said bringing his pointer finger up to just above his right eye.
“What?”
“This is a scar I received when my loving brother pushed me into a pool table.”
“Really? A pool table?”
He nodded and smiled a closed-lip smile. “Yeah. We owned a pool table, which we kept in the back room of the house, along with our computers and stereo and the like. It was our game room. Anyways –“
I jumped in. “Now this is the same place with the two-level backyard?”
“No. This was my dad’s house. My parents were divorced, didn’t you know that?” I simply shook my head. “Yeah, when I was seven. Anyways, fast forward. When I was eleven, we were both of us participating in the expected behavior of boys, that is to say, we were playfully fighting. In the heat of the moment however we…” he paused to chuckle. “We disregarded the small area of our arena. Now, I myself stood between the table and he, which meant he stood facing it. It was around this point that we called a truce. However, my thick, young mind thought of nothing but playful victory. As he began his march away from me, I proceeded to give him one last forceful shove in the back.”
“Big mistake,” I contributed.
“Exactly. We all know that retaliation comes back tenfold. As soon as I achieved my victory, I puffed out my chest and walked the other way. And the rest is the story of gravity. He pushed, I fell, I bled.”
“Goodness… Stitches?”
He shook his head. “Thank God, no. I’ve never had stitches in my life. If you wanna know something interesting in regarding the story, though,” he continued with charm, “the table had rounded edges.”
“What?”
“Yeah. That’s how hard I fell. It was quite the anomaly, but in the end, the only conclusion I could obtain was massive gravity. It cut me wide open.”
This is what I lived for. We were both of us laughing heartily at the closer of this story. Spending time in the presence of this man made me breathe easier and see more clearly. I loved how he always used such dominant hand motions to validate his words. He spoke carefully, and with prevalence. I admired the hell out of him. “Isn’t there a story involving your brother where you don’t get hurt?” I asked him.
“Oh, of course!” said the man with obvious eagerness. “I can tell you about the best two days of my life. They were with Moose, and surprise surprise, no one was hurt.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“Well, when I was 17, we were the both of us madly in love with a particular rock band. Trophy Scars, they were called. We listened to them day and night for just over a year. I fell in love with the writing, and the music was original, and neither of us could get enough. So, when we heard they were coming to play in El Paso, a city close to where we lived, it was the peak of our whole summer. We listened and we waited with happy hearts. But when the day came, we drove all the way down to the city to find that they had cancelled.”
“Well, that doesn’t exactly sound like a lot of fun,” I interjected.
“It gets better,” he said. “So we passed the months with heavy hearts until mid-Winter rolled around. Finally, the band was to come back. Again, we listened and we waited with happy hearts, and again our hopes were dashed. Over a year and a half of anticipation had built into an intense craving that had to be satisfied. So we took to the road, man. We drove and drove and drove to see them. We missed school and work, and drove for eight hours to see them. Our journey through states was long, and when the destination was finally reached, it was reached in futility. We had missed them a third time.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s awful.”
“Well,” he continued. “We slept in the car, and as soon as daylight brought around consciousness, we drove even further. In the end, we did see them play, and were able to hang out with them. I suppose it’s your classic story of star-struck amazement, yes, but it is a tale filled with reckless and delightful spontaneity. We were young and dumb, my brother and I… They were the best days of my life…”
Following the moment, his gaze was once again swallowed, and he let out an audible sigh, as if breathing out all of the good times past. Like he knew the impossibility of keeping those moments in his body forever, and therefore breathed them out. It made me sad.
“My brother…” he said aloud, and somewhat aside. He was now looking with hazy and unblinking eyes that sought to grasp the past, and speaking in a voice that was always nostalgic. “He was the most amazing person I’ve ever known. When we were adolescences, he used to propose these incredible theories of life…” He laughed. “It came to a point where every time we spoke he uncovered some new revelation about the secret to living life.” Here he looked at me in the eyes. “Damnit, man. He knew how to live life. His philosophy that he ingrained into me was: Live your life to the fullest. Live your life. Live your life. Live your life… He knew what he was talking about.”
At this point, I was without words, and knew not how to proceed. I knew not whether to contribute my opinion, or continue listening. However, Danny advanced with momentum.
He repeated, “Live your life. Live your life… He had created a protocol for incredible living. While the mass majority of humanity stumbled around, looking for happiness and searching for an answer, my brother cracked the system at the age of twenty… Live your life…” He gazed on, slowly shaking his head.
“Have you been?” I asked.
Danny held his breath, and with mouth open, took on a kind of frown. His warm blue eyes turned to ice caps, and became troubled. “I tried, man,” he said. “I did my best.” He sat still looking deep into some invisible abyss of tortured longing. “Moose and I went to California. We took up a residence in L.A., man. We threw ropes around life, and bled holding onto them. I went to school while he went to work. While I was wearing an apron at my job, Moose was wearing a three-piece suit. We made money and had laughs… We laughed so hard.”
I could see small pools of ice water collecting on the rims of Danny’s eyes. Were he to blink, it would begin raining in the vehicle, but his lids stood stationary. I still chose to say nothing.
“It was late one night, walking back from the movies. We never drove in the California traffic; we simply walked with happy rapidity. The night was dark, and gave ease to a sky tortured by a Los Angeles sun. We walked towards our apartment, laughing and yelling and dancing the whole way. But when we reached 17th street, I counted eleven police cars go ripping past us. They were loud and valid, and pleading for help. So we ran, man. We ran as heroes and men, seeking adventure towards the sounds.”
I put my hands over my mouth involuntarily as a reaction. The speed and intensity of Danny’s voice was on a crescendo.
“We sprinted through back alleys towards the pops and bangs that rang out, looking for lives to save. When we finally got to the scene, it was no ordinary gang fight. I beheld white men popping off on each other, scrambling towards unmarked vans full of stolen goods. It was a vicious battle of cops and robbers.”
Oh God, I thought to myself. Big mistake! I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
“These weren’t any average, meathead criminals either. These were grade-A cop killers who knew what the hell they were doing. The entire scene washed against my body as I stood there, but I didn’t comprehend all that was occurring. All I knew was noise, noise, noise.”
Danny finally blinked, and tears rolled down his cheeks.
“The show concluded in a frenzy of screeching tires and screaming sirens. And we were left sitting there, in the smoke and haze of it all. We were stupid… God, we were stupid… When I looked around, I saw my brother lying down. I’ll never forget the fear that seized me as I beheld him. Razor-sharp butterflies fought against my insides. When I knelt down to him, I remember that I was all a mess. I was hysterical, trying, trying, trying to undo things. I was trying to regain time and make everything okay, but I couldn’t, and it wasn’t fair. I cried on him, and he bled and choked, and spoke little. I’ll never forget, I kept yelling at him ‘Get up, get up, get up! Live your life, Moose, life your life! Live your life!’ and he couldn’t… He just couldn’t.”
At this point, Danny was on the verge of complete breakdown. He wiped the tears away, and fought the second influx, taking deep, painful breaths.
“His last words to me are branded on my ears. I hear them every night, right before I fall asleep. With his back to the seedy L.A. streets, he clinched his hands, and cried and bled and spat and said, ‘I’m sorry, Danny… I love you so much.’”
There was a long pause that followed this. So much space had been absolutely ripped into the inside of the van, that there was nothing else to fill it except for silence. I sat there and licked around my mouth for want of the proper words, but I came up only thirsty.
Then he continued. “In the weeks that followed, the police told me of the thief. His name was unknown, and though they had pictures, he remained at large. As more cases came in, his importance fluctuated, and then dwindled, until it was no longer of any importance to the law. My desperation and insistence for them to continue the investigation was wasted. As weeks passed, results died. My entire being was completely overcome with one idea; an idea that encompassed and absorbed me, until I was unable to imagine anything else. It was justice. This event drove me to become a detective. I enrolled and trained in California, and I’ve been following this guy ever since.”
“Oh my God,” I said out loud, and put my head in my hands. I knew exactly where this was going.
“I learned his name is Jonathon Jones, and he’s a big-timer who’s stolen and gotten away, time and time again, killing anyone in his way. Much of the law views him as a white whale of the industry. He’s unattainable.”
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“I’ve been on his trail for years. I’m always one step behind him. I’ve followed him through New Mexico, Texas, Illinois, and Maryland. His last stop was in Manhattan. If you’ll remember the robbery I was telling you about a couple of months ago, this was the man behind it. I’ve never been able to find him, but tonight, he’s resting in Long Island, New York.”
I exhaled. There was the significance. It was no wonder that this was so important to him.
“I just hope the guy doesn’t recognize me,” Danny said. He said it as a joke, but I took in all seriousness, and asked him what we were waiting for.
“Well, my source,” he told me, “claims that there’s a trade deal happening in that apartment tonight.”
I interrupted him with urgency in my voice. “Wait, who’s your source, Danny?”
He sighed. “Look, it was an anonymous tip, alright? Still, I can’t afford to miss this opportunity.”
“Come on! That’s one of the first things they teach you, man. Trust no one. This whole thing could be a set up.” I didn’t realize I was yelling at him.
Danny interrupted me, and retaliated. “This is all I’ve got! This is all that I’ve got, man…” The tension built with bricks inside of me, and at the absolute height of it all, the lights flickered on behind the proper window.
The man wasted no time. “That’s us,” Danny said, splitting the somber atmosphere. With guns in hand, we exited the van with new found alarm and bolted straight for the double doors of the sleazy hotel. Danny’s lanky and slender figure ran with intense rapidity towards the door, not losing a second. My vision shook as I struggled to make the proper haste along with him. He was quick, and we burst through the doors, the two of us slinging our guns and waving our badges. My eyes blinked rapidly as the stairs swam past our feet. Finally, the door that stood tall and intimidating was before us. In deep, breathy whispers, Danny looked me dead on, and counted to three with aid from his fingers. I bit down hard, and he kicked the door in.
My eyes clouded over with shock from the blow. Moments passed before I comprehended the room. It was dirty and disoriented, with a composite of sheets and lights and wires scrambling the room. These facts came secondary into my mind, however, next in line to the loud shots that rang through the room. The absolute second we burst through that door, triggers had been pulled, and malevolence had filled the room. There were two gunmen waiting on either side of the door when we came in. It was a trap. They had been expecting us the whole time. All bullets evaded me, and I disabled the man to the left of the door. And then there was silence. That gut wrenching silence that asphyxiates and makes ghosts of men.
I was lying on my belly. My vision was unstable, and took in images with distortion. Danny, however, in his crimson tie and pinstripe suit, invaded my eyes with validity. He was barely breathing.
“Oh God!” I said out loud. “No, no, no!” I crawled over to him. His voice was cracking and cutting out between short gasps.
“I did it, man. I did it – I killed him. I got justice, man. I got justice.”
“Are you alright?” There was desperation in my voice.
“I’m goin’, man. I’m goin’.”
“What?! Where?”
His eyes filled with light, and stared toward heaven. “I’m goin’ to California, man. I’m goin’ to California.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about. “Danny! Danny, I don’t what to do – tell me what to do!”
His breaths became shorter and fainter, and life began to leave him. His ice water eyes grew bland and began to cloud over. As I laid there in the desperate silence of the room, between two malicious corpses and a man slowly dying, I began to shiver. I was cold. I was desperate, and as the charm left his cheeks, he mumbled three last words to me, that floated through the deafening silence of the room. As I was panicking, trying to discover what to do, he told me. Just before death, he told me what to do.
He said, “Live your life,” and then he was gone.
