Micks Goodbye Pt 01

--Auth note: I am writing from the perspective of a character from "Found Rage", my first published story. It wasn't written with the idea of ever touching it again, it was a one-off. But somebody said something that got me thinking, and I decided to play with it a little. Three VERY important things here. 1, I'm not a Marine and I have zero real-world experience with "contractors" 2, I liked the character from "Found Rage" not having a name, so I didn't give him one here either. That's the point of the character, he could be anyone, like Batman. 3) I'm not a cop, either This is all just pop culture and procedural co-op shows, don't get hung up on the specifics---

"Hey Mick" the words were spoken by a frie- no, that's not a good word for him. Pal? Buddy? No and double no. Associate has some terrifying connotations, do let's skip that as well. Acquaintance was a little too aloof. Anyway, I digress. This guy I knew.

Orc. Like Tolkien. Orc got his name in prison from some overly clever lifer that thought the wide-eyed stare and crazy half-smile-half-grimace permanently plastered across his face made him look like an orc, like in Lord of the Rings.

"Had some time. Thought I'd say hello. Been awhile." Orc always talked like that. Short, choppy sentences. Strange guy, he is.

So there's Orc, standing in the dark under my carport while I'm throwing my trash out. The man about gave me a stroke.

"You're not the fuckin' type to fuckin' swing by and say hello, Orc. And the doorbell is right next to the front fuckin' door if you did want to. Why, in the name of unholy fuck are you giving me a fuckin' jump scare by the fuckin' trash can?" I panted, a little out of breath from sheer blind panic and then my expostulation, not to mention missing a lobe or two of lung.

"You got problems. Don't want me walkin' up in the light. Don't want nobody knowing I'm here." Orc twitched as he finished speaking.

"What do you mean I don't fuckin' want you walking up to my door in the light? I don't want you sneaking up on me in the fuckin' dark, either! And the only problem I have right now is my blood pressure, and you to fuckin' thank for it."

"Sorry, Mick. Ain't so. You need this." He gave me a manila envelope. "I know you watched out for me. Inside. You fought for me in court. Felt like I oughta keep an eye out for you. For what you did for me. After..."

I knew what he meant.

Let me tell you about Orc. Not "the orc," like a title, Orc, capital "o", like it's his name. So you see, I arrested him once, a few years back. The poor bastard had just gotten himself together after a long hard road and walked in to see his wife getting the business from some scrawny kid. Orc lost it, and in the 7 minutes it took a unit to respond he never stopped swinging. The kid had a shattered knee, dislocated right shoulder, broken jaw, missing teeth, broken orbit, a ruptured testicle, his ribs look like somebody played them like a xylophone using a sledgehammer, and the word I heard describing his wrist was "disassembled". I don't know what you have to do to make a doctor use the word "disassembled" to describe an injury- but Orc does.

See, Orc was Army. I am a Marine. We talk trash to each other, sure, but when the chips are down, we take care of our brothers, even if they aren't as hard-charging as us and aren't ready to be Marines yet.

After he got out of prison, I put him in touch with some gentleman adventurer acquaintances of mine, or "contractors", if you will. He disappeared, a few bad guys stopped breathing, and I went about my life. Apparently Orc was grateful for my intervention, and has kept an eye out for me. Which brings me to the manila folder. I looked up to ask Orc about it and the guy was gone. Disappeared. Strange guy, that Orc.

"Shoulda named him fuckin' Ghost or Spirit..." my voice trailed off when the pictures fell into my hand. Pictures of my wife. And a man. A man that wasn't me. Again.

Me? Oh I'm Mick. I am, or rather was, a cop. I got a medical retirement at the peak of my career by catching a couple of bullets. One of them rearranged my internal geography enough that the panel of doctors that evaluated my return to service gasped in horror and said "hell no" in High Doctor-ese. That wasn't a joke, by the way. "Gasped in horror"- the chick doctor did, like, audibly. I always thought it was just an expression. Strange creatures, doctors are.

Ellie, my Eloise, was my wife of thirteen years. We had a dark patch, about seven years ago. I had made detective, started seeing some truly heinous things and then had to wade through crime scene photos and statements from witnesses and costume and visit the morgue- it was a lot, and I didn't cope with it well. I started drinking, stopped sleeping, and sex... Well, I couldn't stop seeing all those images in my head. Hard to fuck through that kinda pain.

Ellie and I, we had a "trial separation". That's what she called it. I called it "Diet Divorce". All the pain, none of the paperwork. I moved out for a while, but I could come and grab things whenever I needed to, so I did, and when I walked in I heard something bad. Yeah, we were separated. Yeah, she was free to do what she wanted. Still.

I went for my gun, but my partner Jimi, I'll tell you about her later, grabbed my hand and pushed me into the wall. I snapped out of it. All the way out. Saw, in that moment in all of their eyes what I'd become over the last year.

I found a good witch doctor, I mean psychiatrist. Found a friendly pastor. Between religion and counseling I got right, and tried to stay that way.

Ellie and I, we patched up. Sure sure, she broke her vows, but they were on life support anyway. Up until that, we had been headed for divorce. She wasn't 'cheating' on me, she was trying to move on.

Circumstances changed, we healed together and got our lives back on track. Strange things, circumstances.

Now I stood in the fuckin' rundown car port of my fuckin' rundown house, run down by a fuckin' rundown man named fuckin' Orc holding a rundown envelope with mystery juice from a forgotten fuckin' trash bag draining into my rundown slippers looking at a picture of my wife getting a fuckin' rundown by a man named Downe. Shit. I knew him.

--

"What's doin's, mate? You're looking a little... I dunno, rundown." These words were spoken by a slick, sharp looking man named John in a fancy suit in an office that had 4 names on the door over the descriptive phrase "Attorneys at Law/ •Tax •Injury •Divorce". Strange creatures, those lawyers.

One of the names on that door had the same last name I did.

"John, wish I was here with better news" I said, and flipped the envelope onto his desk.

He didn't even look at it, he knew what it was.

"Oh hell, Mick. I really thought you guys were gonna make it after that last scrape. I'm sorry." The avaricious lawyer schtick slipped, and I could see genuine sorrow. Not everyone would have caught that look, but I was a good detective. Well, maybe it was because he was my little brother and I knew he felt for me. After all, if I was that good of a detective, I wouldn't have been blind sided by my wife stepping out on me.

"Nuclear?" He asked with his eyebrow raised. Strange thing, how siblings can communicate without so many words.

"And how, little brother." With a very Orc-like grimace, I left the office.

See, with the world gone soft, and laws written to appease the weak, limp wristed simps of feminists and feminists themselves, the cold fact is that a criminal has a better outlook than a divorced man.

He gets 3 hot meals, a place to sleep, free healthcare and even a sex change if he wants one, whereas a divorced man has to scrape by with whatever the lawyers, the ex, and the gub-mint doesn't take. His share of his paycheck won't cover a down payment on a cup of coffee.

All that added up to me knowing I was gonna get raked over the coals in a divorce.

But me? Look, some guys are smart. Some are good. Some are bad. Some are great big men. I'm not. I'm mean. Small and mean and petty.

Time to get Downe with my bad self.

--

Didn't forget about Downe, did you?

I didn't. All day the look on his face in those pictures was burning itself into my brain.

Nathan Downe and I hadn't liked each other since grade school. We weren't that different, but just enough alike to hate the distorted reflection of ourselves. I played baseball, he played football. I went Marine, he went Air Force. I went PD, he went FD. I made love to my wife, he fucked her.

See? A series of near misses. In another life, we might have been friends. In this life, however, I was late to lunch.

Lunch is a rushed affair here in the States, but in Europe it tends to be a large, relaxed affair, 2-3 hours in the early afternoon. In a lot of places, it's the big meal of the day, even a short nap after. I liked the custom when I was there, and since my medical retirement I had no reason not to indulge in it.

Today, I had some guests for lunch. I ate before they got there, because what I was about to do would certainly ruin the relaxed ambiance, and the cafe really did have a great Reuben.

My guests this afternoon were curious as to why they were my guests, but Sarah Downe, wife of Nathan Downe, firefighter, and Chief Porter, the supervisor of Nathan Downe were about to find out.

I apologized to Mrs. Downe as I set the 8"x10" glossy photograph of her husband balls deep in my wife's ass in front of her. I didn't apologize to the chief.

She now had all the ammunition to hurt him badly in a divorce, and the chief now had the problem of dealing with one of his men violating the sanctity of a cop's marriage.

See, that whole red v. blue uniform thing had a life of its own. And if it got out that he stood by and let this happen, to a cop that not even a year ago was lauded as a hero cop, with all the fanfare and mayoral congratulations thereof - he was going to have professional issues getting cops and firefighters to maintain their fragile truce and work together. That could get dangerous, even get people hurt. He knew what I wanted, and he was gonna have to give it to me. Heh. That felt good twice over, getting a point against Downe and firefighters as a whole.

It was a turnover on Downe.

--

It had been a long day by the time I finally made it home. Meeting after contrived meeting, but I was as ready as I could be.

All monies had been shuffled around, a thorough change of accounts and cards.

Lawyers, wives, fire department heads, bankers, all had been queued up.

Now it was time to tip the domino that would bring the whole thing, Downe.

"Hi, babe!" I said cheerily as my bedraggled wife struggled in the front door.

"What the FUCK??" She, my wife Ellie, screeched. "I've been trying to call you for an hour!! My car was stolen, my cell phone said I don't have service, and I couldn't even get an Uber because my card declined. I had to borrow cash for a bus ride home and walk the last 5 blocks in the rain!!"

"From who?" I asked, in a tone of surprised innocence

"That's what you say?? 'From who?' that's it, that's what you took from everything I just said, THAT'S what you got hung up on?? 'From WHO??"

"Well, yeah, it's the only answer I don't have, so it's the right question to ask. What aren't you getting?" My smug demeanor tipped her, and she knew something was wrong.

"What do you mean it's the only answer you don't have? What's going on?" Her voice rose at the end, a note of panic setting in behind her rage.

I ticked off my fingers as I made each statement "Your car wasn't stolen, it was recovered by its legal owner and is now sitting safely in their driveway. Your phone isn't broken, I cancelled my phone plan because I don't need more than one. I cancelled all my credit cards and changed banks, and your cards were all in my name. I knew the bus line ended 5 blocks away, and I saw that the forecast called for rain. So who did you borrow the money from?"

She stood, somewhere between apoplectic rage and stunned silence, with her brain trying to connect all the dots while I sat in my best approximation of wide eyed naive innocence.

Remember that scene in Boondock Saints where the Italian guy gets all excited and just screams "fuck" a bunch of times while the brothers kinda laugh at him? Yeah, this next scene was a lot like that when her brain finished its reboot.

When she finally took a breath (it really was impressive to see how long she went) I calmly slid the photo across to her.

The breath she just managed to catch escaped her in a long low moan.

"You see dear, we went at this once before. I truly understood, and I truly did forgive you, and I had no idea this was all happening until I got tipped off by a fairytale creature-"

She started at that, and looked like she wanted to ask a question, but I waved her off

"-doesn't matter- What you didn't know about that night is that Jimi saved all our lives. She saw I was about to pull my gun and kill you both, and probably myself. Jimi made me promise to get my head right, and get help. So I did. I got all the help. Religious, psychological, financial, medical. Then when I got shot to pieces I went through it all again. We thought you were pregnant then, and John wanted to make sure that if the worst happened, you would be taken care of. So I signed some papers, and he rigged up my finances in a trust. Don't ask me what or how, I don't speak High Legalese, just the pidgin doggerel they teach us lower servants, but the short story is: I don't own anything and my retirement pays into a trust that reimburses my living expenses.

"The really funny part, though, is that I'm filing under adultery.

"I've sent copies to your dad's lawyer, who is your attorney of record, but I just couldn't find the address, so I mailed it care of your parents." I didn't look at that hard, either. "I sent your boss a notice that you might need some time off to deal with the problems that your adultery has caused in our marriage and led to our divorce.

"I'm sure by now that Downe has arrived home from your tryst to see his wife's new car- and she says thank you, by the way, for selling to her for so far below blue-book- and the shiny new divorce papers she got for him. He's also just found out that he's being suspended pending transfer because his boss doesn't want to deal with the fallout of one of his guys screwing a cop's wife.

" To top it all off, my brother John raised his fees, so it took all the I got for selling Mrs. Downe my spare car, formerly yours, for me to retain his firm to represent me. Didn't even give me a discount! I have no idea what you're gonna use to pay your lawyer. Maybe your ass, I dunno, Downe looks like he-"

I didn't get to finish. 'Apoplectic' is a good word for her reaction, but I used that one already, and 'apocalyptic' is fun to say.

I had her, cold. She had no wiggle room. Nowhere to go, no spin to the tale told, no lies to hide behind, nothing. So she did what most animals do in a trap- lose their shit and start screaming while it all sinks in.

She sank into the dining chair opposite me, looking small and lost. Yeah, well, so did the scorpion when the frog picked it up, and I'm not that magnanimous.

"What now?" She said.

"Dunno, but it looks like you're fuckin' Downe and out."