Read Online Futile Efforts by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online Page B

The cop moved to meet Vin, already looking pissed off.   He was hardly older than the jocks in the bar last night.   He said, "Who the hell are you?"
    Putting him in his place right from the start.   Keeping him in the box even though he hadn't so much as taken a step out of it.   That's how they all did it to you.   It wore down the skin of your soul until you were nothing but exposed nerve.
    "It wasn't the German Shepherd's fault," Vin said.
    The officer pulled a face.   "I asked who you were."
    "I was in that strip joint earlier tonight."
    "Were you a witness to the attack?"
    Which one?   The kids on the old man, or the dog on the kids?   "No, but I saw those boys getting out of hand.   They were giving the blind guy trouble.   The German Shepherd–"
    "It killed one of them, did you know that?   Another lost his hand.   He's undergoing major surgery over at St. Mary's.   He might die."
    "Look, the seeing eye dog was trying to protect its master.   You didn't hurt it yet, did you?"
    The cop gave him an expression of disdain, staring at Vin with his lips curling and his chin pulling back like there was a bad smell.   Vin wasn't sure anybody had ever given him such a look of disgust before.   Not even trying to understand, not listening at all.   Talking about the kids, but not saying a word about the old blind man.   How was he?   Was he still alive?
    The pregnant kennel worker remained silent but seething.   She walked around Vin and went to the door, opened it so the cop could push Vin back outside.
    It was as if they had rehearsed this many times before, like they'd been waiting for him, tonight and perhaps for all his life.
    The officer laid a hand on Vin's shoulder, gripped him hard, and tried to turn him around.   Getting up too close.   Shoving.
    "Quit pushing me, kid," Vin said.
    "What did you just call me?"
    One of them had been dying to get rough–maybe they were both spoiling for a match–and now the cop reached for his night stick.   Were they all just burning to beat the shit out of somebody?   Was that the only choice anybody had left anymore?   Or had it been that way from the beginning, but he hadn't noticed?
    He'd never answered the waitress when she'd asked him if he was a boxer.   He'd never stepped inside a professional ring, but as a teenager he'd spent a lot of hours with Johnny Tormino and Jojo Lebowski , training, thinking about putting his skills to the test.   He'd thought about it and thought about it, and by the time he decided to give it a shot his chance had come and gone.
    The cop held the night stick out straight and pressed it against the center of Vin's chest, forcing him back.   "Am I going to have trouble with you?   I can smell whiskey on your breath."
    "That was hours ago.   I told you I was in the bar."
    "Why don't you go sleep it off, buddy, before I have to run you in."
    Run him in, like he was a second-story man.   A purse snatcher.   There were mobsters living all over the neighborhood, but no, this one here was going to run Vin in.
    "I haven't done anything.   I just wanted to–to say that I was there–that I saw what was going on.   It wasn't the dog's fault."
    "Are you crazy, mister?"
    Laying it out on the line like that, asking the big question.   Vin actually thought about it for a moment, wondering, is this insane what I'm doing here?   Am I being that irrational?   Is that what happens when you want a young fashion designer to like you?
    Again with the night stick in Vin's chest, harder this time.   He let out a grunt and backed a step away.   The woman held the door open even wider.
    An abrupt rage swelled within him, igniting.   The cop tried the move again, crowding him, driving the stick forward.   Vin grabbed hold of it and smacked it aside.
    That was all it took.   The pregnant lady let out a little screech, and the dogs in back began to howl, and the cop's eyes got wide and he sneered like a maniac and started to go for his