The Retirement Plan

Chapter 31

Reggie glanced around the interview room while the Guardia Civil read him his rights in a bored monotone. "Got the same color scheme as the hospital ward," Reggie said, looking at the cream wall. "Y'all use the same decorators?"

The middle-aged Guardia, with the five o'clock shadow, issued him a blank look. "Can you describe the events that led to your wounding on the twenty-eight of last month?"

"Man, I already done told you what happened, when y'all interrupted my convalescence. I get out the theater after being shot, and you both standing either side of my bed, questioning me, like I'm the guilty party."

"We understand it was a difficult moment for you," the other detective said. An attractive young woman in her early thirties with chestnut highlights and a wispy fringe. Hair curling around her shoulders, obscuring all but a fraction of her epaulets.

Reggie smirked at her sympathetic pose. In this room, she hit you with her femininity. On the street, he could imagine her giving you a full blast of that Beretta 92 she carried in her hip holster. "Pretty difficult for you too—all that morphine the doctors gave me, rendering any statement I made inadmissible."

Her smile remained fixed in place.

The older Guardia, not possessing his partner's tact, repeated the original question in a harsh, gravelly tone, biceps testing the strength of his green uniform shirt.

"It's like I said," Reggie began the story that he and Ricky had rehearsed a hundred times in the back of the car on their way to the hospital forty hours ago. "Me and my man, Ricky, are stretching our legs. Shooting the shit, how the Celtics had no chance in the play-offs. We so bad, even the Knicks winning more games than us this year. Our offense is—"

"If I want to know about American basketball," the Guardia said, hostility crackling in his tone. "I can watch the ESPN. Could you state the name of place where you were walking?"

"It was a field, didn't have no name."

"What is the name of area?"

"I told y'all this last time."

"Please," the female officer said. "If you can repeat for the benefit of the recording device."

"Sure, sugar," Reggie said before reeling off the name.

The hard-assed cop, unimpressed. "And for why are you choosing to walk in a field?"

"Get the blood pumping." Reggie eyed the pretty officer, saying with a smooth grin: "Not my preferred activity to get the pulse racing. But I'm single at the minute, so you gotta make do." The lady smiling at him, now, acting as though she was interested. A variation of the good cop/bad cop routine.

"We are not concerned with your personal affairs," the bad cop said. "What we are interested in is apprehending the person who inflicted this injury on your person." The cop's eyes motioned toward the spot on Reggie's blue button-down shirt bulging from the padding underneath.

"You think I knew who did this," Reggie said. "I wouldn't tell you. One minute I'm moseying along, talking shit about Moses Brown. Next thing I know, my shoulders exploded and I'm praying to Jesus Christ."

"You expect we will believe this?" the cop's voice rising a couple of octaves. "Bullet, it come from nowhere, hit you like this?" He threw an arm in the air.

"It's hunting season. Some myopic motherfucker musta mistaken me for Bugs Bunny."

"I no think anyone mistake you for rabbit. For something else maybe, but rabbit, no." Followed up with a smug smile.