Max Payne

Part I: The American Dream: THE MURDER

At last the blizzard waned, ceasing its howling fury against the city and giving way to the frigid sky above. New York stretched like a nightmare maze below me. The sirens flooded the scene, a host of banshees, a demonic chorus that had pursued me from the beginning. And rightly so.

They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. My frozen hand loosed its grip from the gun. 

It was over.

#

To make any kind of sense of it, I need to go back three years. Back to the night the pain started. I was still in the force, NYPD, Manhattan, Midtown North Precinct. 

Hell’s Kitchen. Another life. Another me, now unrecognizable. 

The precinct was a morgue. Most of the guys had already knocked off for the day. Some had gone on to happy hour down at Cuffs—a local dick dive I hadn’t spooked since making a desk—to drown the horrors. Others had gone home to their families and I had cast-iron plans to do likewise. 

I rose from my desk, scanning the stack of paperwork that seemed to continuously decorate the cheap wood. It would wait. Funny, but back then, I thought I was getting my priorities straight. I shut down my computer and reached for my coat. A voice surprised me from behind.

“Heading out early, huh?” It was Alex Balder. The DEA Special agent grinned behind his neatly trimmed beard, smooth scalp gleaming under the fluorescents. 

“You’re behind the times,” I said, slipping on my coat. “I’m regular now. Nine-to-fiver.”

“That right?” Alex said, incredulous. “Well, when you get bored riding stationery you come work for me, okay?” He laughed.

I fetched a Marlboro Light from my inside pocket. My last one. I’d been saving it for today. Around the cigarette I said, “You’d make me work undercover in some Hell hole. Sorry, Alex, Michelle and the baby come first.”

Alex reached forward and straightened my tie. “Since when?”

“Since now.” I took a long drag and killed the cigarette. “See? My last smoke. It’s bad for the baby.”

“Right,” Alex said, and slapped my shoulder. “That’s you, Max, a regular boy scout. Go on then, go home. Give Michelle a kiss from me, won’t you?”

“Sure, Alex, see ya.” I walked to the precinct’s wide double doors, the streets beyond the office a mass of homeward bound commuters. I went outside and breathed in the evening air.

“Hey, Max!” Alex called, catching the door before it closed. “We’re still on for Poker Thursday, right?”

I smiled without looking back. “Like taking candy from a baby.”

#

Life was good. The sun setting on a sweet summer’s day, the smell of freshly mowed lawns, the sounds of children playing. Our house sat across the river on the Jersey-side. A beautiful wife and a baby girl. The American dream come true. 

Alex had once said dreams have a nasty habit of going bad when you’re least expecting. At the time I hadn’t thought much of his prophecy.

I arrived home, anxious to be inside, to feel Michelle’s lips against my own, to hold little Rose in my arms. Outside the sun finished its act of setting with practiced bravado. Twilight crept across the sky giving it a sense of foreboding I’d not noticed before.