Me & Mr. Rafferty

ME I never hurt women or children. I look for the people Mr. Rafferty can’t reach. And not hapless, low-level street pimps or escort bookers, either: I set my sights a little higher. Not too high, though: for that way lies frustration. Neither Mr. Rafferty nor I can get to the real movers and shakers. But there is a wide layer of smug, culpable people between the two extremes. That is where I hunt. For two reasons: I can feel a glow of public service, and, more importantly, such careful selection puts Mr. Rafferty in a most delicious bind. He wins by losing. He loses by winning. The longer he fails to find me, the more the city is relieved of bad people. The reporters he deals with understand, although they don’t say so out loud. Everyone—me, Mr. Rafferty, citizens, inhabitants—benefits from perfect equilibrium.

Long may it continue.

Now I have to decide whether to roll right or left. It has to be one or the other. It’s the only way I can get up off the floor. I am not young. I am no longer agile. I decide to roll left. I stretch my left arm high so that my shoulder goes small and I push with my right. I roll onto my back. A significant victory. Now I am well on the way to rising. I know that Mr. Rafferty is getting up, too, ready to start his day. Soon he will get the call: another one! Hung upside down, as I recall, zip-tied to a chain-link fence that surrounds a long-abandoned construction zone, gagged, abused, eventually nicked in a hundred places, veins, arteries, throat. I don’t recall specifically, but I imagine I finished with the femoral artery, where it runs close to the surface in the groin. It’s a wide vessel, and, given adequate pressure from a thumping heart, it spurts high in a wonderful ruby arc. I imagine the man jerked his chin to his chest to look up in horror; I imagine I asked him how he was enjoying his BMW now, asshole , and his big house and his Caribbean vacations and his freebies with the poor Romanian girls he imports with all kinds of false promises about jobs with Saks Fifth Avenue before turning them loose to perform disgusting acts for six hundred dollars an hour, most of which he keeps, until the girls grow too addicted and haggard to earn anything anymore.

Not that I care about either Romania or the girls. I have no enthusiasm for any part of Eastern Europe, and prostitution has always been with us. Although I know the man I tied to the fence also runs Brazilian girls, and I care for them to some slight extent. Sweet, dark, shy creatures. I partake regularly, in fact, in that arena, which is what led me to the man himself. A girl I rented, less than half my age, recited on request the menu of services she offered, some of which were truly exotic, and I asked her if she really liked doing those things. Like all good whores she faked great enthusiasm at first, but I was relentlessly skeptical: You enjoy sticking your tongue deep into a stranger’s anus? Eventually she confessed she was obliged to, at risk of getting beaten. At that moment the man’s fate was sealed, and I imagine I used a stick before I used the knife. I care about justice, you see, and the whole what-goes-around-comes-around thing.

But mostly I care about the equilibrium, and the partnership, and keeping Mr. Rafferty in work. He is a veteran homicide cop, my age exactly, and I like to think we understand each other, and that he needs me.

It is time to sit up. And because written narrative has its conventions, let me again be clear: A long time has passed. My thoughts, however presented on the page, have been halting and disconnected and have taken a long time to form. We are not talking about a burst of decisive energy here. This process is slow. I walk my hands back above my waist, I raise my head, I twist and lever, I sit up.

Then I rest.

And I confess: It is about more than just equilibrium and partnership. It is about the contest. Me and Mr. Rafferty. Him against me. Who will win? Perhaps neither of us, ever. We seem to be perfectly matched. Perhaps equilibrium is a result, not a goal. Perhaps we both enjoy the journey, and perhaps we both fear the destination.

Perhaps we can make this last forever.

I scan ahead through my morning tasks. The ultimate objective, as for so many, is to get to work on time. My day job, I suppose I should call it. Punctuality is expected. So less than an hour after sitting up I gather my feet under me and rise, hands out to steady myself against the walls, two staggering steps to establish balance, a lurch in the general direction of the living room, and the prize is mine: my morning smoke. I pull a second cigarette from the pack and close the lid so as not to see two busted teeth; gaze around, trusting in the eternal truth that wherever cigarettes may be, there will be a lighter close by. I find a yellow Bic a yard away and thumb its tiny wheel; I light the smoke and inhale deeply, gratefully, and then I cough and blink, and the day finally accelerates.

The shower is soothing: I use disinfectant soap, a carbolic product similar to medical issue. Not that I carry trace evidence; I am not new to this game. But I like cleanliness. I check myself in the mirror very carefully. The carpet burn on my cheek is noticeable, but generalized, like a normal Irish flush; it is entirely appropriate. I part my hair and comb it flat. I unwrap a shirt and put it on. I select a suit: It is not new and not clean, made from a heavy gabardine that smells faintly of sweat and smoke and the thousand other odors a city dweller absorbs. I tie my tie, I slip on my shoes, I collect the items a man in my position carries.

I head outside. My employer provides a car; I start it up and drive. It is still early. Traffic is light. There is nothing untoward on the radio. The abandoned construction zone is as yet unvisited by dog walkers.

I arrive. I park. I head inside. Like everywhere, my place of employment has a receptionist. Not a model-pretty young woman like some places I have seen; instead, a burly man in a sergeant’s uniform.

He says, “Good morning, Mr. Rafferty.”

I return his greeting and head onward, to the squad room.