The Last Laugh
Justin Cawthorne
Copyright 2011 Justin Cawthorne
for my lovely wife – whose mortal fear of clowns probably inspired me to write this
and with thanks to my namesake, Justin Zajac, whose awesome art adorns the cover
The Last Laugh
by Justin Cawthorne
It was a dark and stormy night.
It was the kind of night where the last thing you wanted to do was sit in a drafty canvas room with a big, dumb grin on your face, but somewhere out there people were doing exactly that. I had no bones about how people decided to waste their lives, but the law was the law and if people didn’t stand by that it was my job to stick it to them.
The Chevy skidded on the slick tarmac, I didn’t even skip a beat. The city was going to hell anyway: what did it matter if I ended up face down in the gutter, or with some joker’s bullet in my gut? That’s why I was good at my job: I didn’t care either way.
The rest of the boys were as jittery as lawyers on moonshine. Tonight's job had come straight from DA Mellinsky and everyone wanted their extra inch of the greasy pole. Story went that some beat cop had found greasepaint down on 57th, now Chief MacLane wanted to make out that Mellinsky’s personal business was the district’s personal business too. Whichever cop brought in this bunch of clowns was going to get his future handed to him on a silver plate.
Next to me Rudi was having some trouble sitting still; if he didn't get the hang of it soon he was going to have to introduce his nose to my fist. I didn’t want it to come to that, it would mess up the car. More than that it would get me on Higgin’s bad side – not that I wasn't already on his bad side but I figured there was still plenty of room further down. I didn’t mind sitting at the bottom of everyone’s list, but the nights were getting to me: I wasn’t even sure if the sun came out anymore. If I didn’t score some bonus points with MacLane soon I’d have to visit the library to remind myself what daylight looked like.
And I hated the library.
“Rudi”, I said, busting in on his runaway train of thought. “You don’t start taking it easy in the next sixty seconds they’re gonna to have to shoot you twice.”
“Yeah? Twice? That’s a good thing right?” he stammered breathlessly. “Maybe 'cos they miss me the first time, huh?”
I clenched my teeth. “Not when it’s me who’s holding the gun.”
Rudi nodded eagerly, his head bobbing slower and slower as he caught up with the look in my eyes. Finally he was still.
But unfortunately not silent.
“Think we’re gonna get this guy?”
“Hell if I know,” I answered, staring out the window.
“Jesus I hope we do!” Rudi exploded, the words pouring from his mouth like guts from a hood. “The 23rd’s the toughest district in the city. Now we can really show Melly what we can - ”
Rudi broke off as I turned back from the window. “You call the DA 'Melly' to his face?” I asked.
“N-no.”
“Then how about you don’t say it to mine.”
Rudi shook his head, if you could call it that, it was more like it quivered from left to right. “No, sure...” he agreed, and clammed up.
And then ruined it by opening his mouth again: “Hey, do you ever wonder why Mel- why the DA’s got it in for these clowns?”
“No.”
“Don’t you think - ”
“No.”
“But, what if - ?”
“I don’t care - and neither of us are paid enough to think.”
Rudi shut up, but I could tell from the silence that he hadn’t finished. I decided to beat him to it. “We've been given a job to do, that's all it is, and that’s what we’re going to do, ok, Rudi?”
“Well sure, but.... I dunno.”
I was ready to smack him a good one about now. “You wanna know why the DA’s got us doing what we’re doing, right?”
“Kinda.”
"Believe me, kid, you're better off not using the 'why' word."
It was a good thing the kid didn't want to come out and say it straight. There were people out there who'd asked the DA certain questions and most of them weren’t doing so hot right now.
“You can’t do the job you’ve been asked to do if you need to ask why,” I reminded him. Mellinksy himself had said that during one of his infamous speeches – infamous because they made you want to peel your own skin off inch by inch just so you had something more interesting to do. This was another jewel: “If you're not out there helping to make our city great then you're already on the wrong side.”
So this hack called Rupert Scully had written a column called ‘The Laughter The DA Stopped’ (I figured it was a clever word thing, but it didn’t make much sense to me). Perhaps he’d just been trying to explain where the DA was coming from, but someone out there must have thought there was a bit more to it than that: a few weeks later Scully had been fingered in an inner city corruption stitch-up. Everyone knew it was a fix but, like I said, the questions started drying up real quick. Now we've got one more hack rotting away up State and no one much fancies being the next Rupert Scully.
“We’re here,” Rudi butted in. Our Chevy had pulled up outside a warehouse. In the car ahead Chief MacLane was already eyeing up the doors and windows. Me, I’d have gone right in, not even given them a chance to breathe before they found themselves eye to eye with the barrel of my gun. Unfortunately this was a by-the-book job.
MacLane got out the car and waved us over.
“Ok boys, we’re gonna go in quiet. You see any rednoses you take them down – DA’s orders. Anyone in there still wearing their own hair, just cuff’em. Clear?”.
The boys nodded and the chief turned to me. “Nickel? You’re here to keep your eyes open and your hands clean, nothing more – the boys are here to do the real work. Let us do our job and you get on with yours.”
I nodded. No point arguing with the man.
Two uniforms went to the door, sliding it open just far enough for the rest of us to squeeze through. We knew we were on the money as soon as we got inside.
In the centre of the room a dozen chairs were cooling off, all facing the same empty space. The garbage that'd been left behind told us the rest of the story – a bucket, some plastic flowers, a bunch of tied up string balloons that looked like they might have once pretended to be a bicycle, an oversized suit jacket - it was as if these people wanted a Get Into Jail Free card.
Rudi was a bit too keen to put the finger on the place already. He stepped forward, heading for the jacket. Someone called out to him, but it was way too late. His left foot hit the banana skin that the rest of us had seen and his legs skidded out from under him. Next thing Rudi was flat on his back in the sawdust.
There was an icy silence. Then one of the boys at the back started chuckling. MacLane sighed, and nodded to one of the other uniforms to take him away. Laughing boy was bundled out of the door. I didn’t expect to see him again anytime soon.
MacLane glared at Rudi as he climbed back to his feet. “That’s your first and only slip-up of the night.” He looked around the room. “That goes for everyone. Let’s not turn this into more of a circus than it already is.”
Then it was back to business. MacLane gestured for me and one of the uniforms to check the rooms at the back of the warehouse. Everyone else got busy exploring the offices and cleaning up the mess.
“Think there’s any of them still here?” the uniform asked.
The uniform was just a kid, but after Rudi’s screw-up I had no time for any more wet-ears. “Just keep your eyes open, and your mouth shut,” I grunted.
The kid did as he was told. I liked that
.
We walked through two empty rooms. In the third we found a filing cabinet and a closed door. It wasn’t much, but the cloth and the tub of greasepaint sitting on top of the cabinet made it something. I pulled out my gun, using it to tell the kid to stand fast while I checked out the last room. He nodded and went to bone up on whatever secrets he could find hidden in the filing cabinet.
The door on the other side of the room wasn’t locked. I eased it open and stepped through, barrel first. There wasn’t much inside except the darkness. A rusty boiler sat at the far end, its pipes clamped down over the brickwork. On the side wall there was an opened window, letting the night in. A tuft of green cotton sticking to one edge told me how some of these goons had escaped. I heaved myself up to the opening and found myself staring down an alley leading straight out to an open car park. Not much chance of rounding anyone up tonight I figured.
Then the kid yelled out.
I jumped down and darted back into the other room. The kid was sprawled on the floor with blood leaking from his ear. The figure standing over