Excerpt from my first novel CHICKENHAWK

CHAPTER FORTY

Juan Gutierrez, also commonly known on the street as Ratman, scurried along the trash-strewn streets and alleyways of East Harlem.  Cautious of open spaces, he kept close to the graffiti-scarred buildings and walls.

Ratman knew that the police were looking for him, so his movements were even more furtive than usual.  He dashed across 116^th Street and ducked into a shadowed courtyard before being chased off by the resident crackhead.

Ratman slid into a nearby alley and quickly settled himself between two overflowing trash cans and an old mattress stained with urine.  It'd been several days now since he'd pushed officer Tommy down the escalator, and the word was that officer Tommy's fellows in the department wanted very much to "talk" to him.

"They want what I have up here," Ratman said aloud, tapping his dirty forehead with an even dirtier finger.  "I saw that dude, yeah, I saw him.  I saw the killer-guy and his car.  Sure, sure.  I got his license plate number too.  Yes, yes.  I really do."  This time he patted his shirt pocket and winced, but that wasn't what hurt.  The tumor he still hid under a dirty blue towel had grown considerably larger over the last few days, forcing him to keep his head at an uncomfortable angle, and the itch had become a constant throbbing pain.

Ratman dug into his pants pocket and pulled out the four remaining children's aspirin from the bottle he'd shoplifted earlier in the day.  He tossed them all into his mouth and chewed glumly.  He knew from recent experience that the pain wasn't going to go away, that in fact it was getting worse.

Ratman sighed heavily.  He was cold, hungry, tired all things he'd been many times before.  But now there was a difference.  Death had never felt so close before, so--real.  Ratman admitted that he was scared, more frightened in fact than he'd ever been in his life.  He'd tried to work up the courage to call officer Tommy a few times since the incident at the bus station, but he'd never been able to go through with it.

"Just wanted to say sorry," Ratman explained to the unfeeling trash cans and mattress.  "Yeah, sure--say I'm sorry and give him this too"

Ratman reached into his shirt and pulled out a dirty scrap of paper.  On it was written the license plate number of the killer every cop in the city was looking for.  Ratman stared at the number he'd neatly written in pencil.

"Yeah, I saw him," he said softly.  "I told officer Tommy that.  Yeah, I saw him.  I did.  I did."  Ratman balled the paper up in his fist and stuck it into his pants pocket.

"Now it's too late.  Officer Tommy hates me and I'm sick, man; real sick"  Tears scrubbed twin lines of relatively cleaner skin from his eyes to his sunken cheeks.  Pain from the tumor seemed to intensify, pulsating in time with his heartbeat.

"Shit," Ratman said dejectedly.  He looked up at the ash-colored sky, "My life wasn't fucked up enough?  Now I have to deal with this.  Shit.  Too?"  Ratman punctuated the last three words with awkward punches to the offending growth.  "It's different when I'm hungry, man," he continued.  "When I'm hungry I can beg or steal something"  He shuddered as an errant breeze swept the alleyway.  "If it gets too cold I can go to a shelter or into the subway, but what the fuck can I do about this?  What?"

Ratman lowered his chin to his chest and sobbed.  There was nothing he could do now, no where he could go.  Officer Tommy hated him now--but the way he saw it, Officer Tommy; the cops, were still his only hope.

Ratman wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand.  "The cops," he mumbled.  "The fuckin' cops."

'Fuck it,' Ratman thought as he got to his feet.  'I don't need officer Tommy.  I'll just talk to the regular cops.  If they want to arrest me, so what, they still need to make a deal with me.  I'll let them arrest me, 'cause once they see what I got'

Ratman patted his pants pocket confidently as he walked out of the alley.  He was proud of himself for reaching such a serious decision.  "Once they see what I got, they gonna want to deal," Ratman said with new determination and hope.  "Shit, I might even be a hero!"

With dreamy visions of award ceremonies, parades, dinners at Gracie Mansion, and a successful surgery dancing through his mind, Ratman practically skipped down the street.

Several blocks later, he still hadn't been able to find a single working public telephone with which to call the police with his good news.  Many of the telephones had either been vandalized or removed by the city more than a decade earlier in a bid to thwart the notorious dealers in crack from making their drug deals.  But instead of anger or frustration, Ratman felt euphoric.  Everything was going to be alright, he felt it in his bones--in his heart of hearts.  The cops had to help him, that was their job--'Shit, they was always helping somebody when they wasn't beating them down'

Ratman turned a corner and, despite his current feeling of well-being, nearly ran at the sight of a patrol car parked a short distance away.  Heart pounding, he flattened himself against the coarse brick of a nearby building.  The cops were in a heated dispute with two other men in front of the next building, they were trying to keep the two men separated.  The men proved uncooperative however, and insisted on trying to beat each other brainless.

Ratman licked his lips nervously.  The cops were having a hard time and he could see that they were getting angrier and angrier.

'I can fix this,' thought Ratman as he fingered the balled up slip of paper in his pocket.  'Once I give them this paper and tell them what it's about, we all gonna be heroes and then they have no choice but to pay for my surgery.'

Ratman hesitated, caution weighed him down like a lead apron.  He watched the two uniformed officers finally succeed in separating the two men and then immediately thereafter have them "assume the position" and submit to a search.

'Now,' Ratman thought.  'I should make my move now.'

The throbbing pain emanating from the tumor in his neck told him he indeed had no choice.  He stepped away from the wall and started walking as quickly as he could toward the two cops.

By now the officers had handcuffed the two men and were leading them to the patrol car.  Afraid he was going to miss his opportunity, Ratman called out to the officers in a bid to keep them from entering their cars and driving away.  Ratty wasn't completely sure he'd have the courage to approach any other police that day, so it had to be these two.  Now.  Or maybe never.

"Hey!"  Ratman called out from less than twenty feet away.  "Wait"

The two officers turned at the same time, still holding onto their prisoners.

"Wait!"  Ratman called out again as he reached into his pants pocket for the scrap of paper.  "I got something!"

The older cop, standing in front of his partner, saw Ratman's hand reach into his pocket and instinctively shoved his prisoner to the ground.  "Ah shit," he said tightly.  "Don't move!  Don't move!"  He yelled at both his prisoner and the homeless-looking man stumbling towards him with his hand in his pocket.

Ratman didn't stop.  He couldn't stop.  His legs, shaky with fear and hope, propelled him forward.  It was as if they knew that this was his last chance at staying alive.

The other cop, the younger one, was having more trouble with his prisoner.  His prisoner kept up a litany of expletives and foul-mouthed threats that were punctuated by constant yanks and tugs as the prisoner sought to break away from his arrest.

"Don't move!  Don't move!"  The younger cop heard his partner yell.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his partner reach for his weapon.  At the same time, he saw the homeless man coming at them, reaching for something in his pocket.

Panic and fear seized his heart and clawed at his throat.  In his eighteen months as a New York City police officer he'd never been shot at and had never had occasion to pull his gun from its holster.  Fumbling, he switched custody of the prisoner to his left hand while going for his gun with his right.  The prisoner tried to yank free again and pulled the young officer off-balance, forcing him to take his eyes from the approaching homeless man.

The young cop clutched at his prisoner blindly, turning back in time to see Ratman pull something from his pocket.  'Oh my God,' he thought.  'Was that a flash of silver?'

"Gun!"  He yelled exactly as he'd been taught at the academy.  "Gun!  He repeated as he finally yanked his own weapon from its holster, pointed it at Ratman, and pulled the trigger.

The older cop heard the shouts of, "Gun!"  "Gun!", and the loud reports from his partner's 9mm before rapidly squeezing off two shots of his own.  He barely took notice of the younger cop's prisoner running away, hands still cuffed behind his back.

The first shot stopped Ratman cold and he fell to one knee still holding the scrap of paper in his hand.  Of the ensuing fusillade, eight more bullets struck his body, knocking him onto his back.  The piece of paper on which he'd written the killer's license plate number drifted away and mingled uselessly with the street litter.

Even as his young partner kept firing, emptying his weapon's entire clip, the veteran cop felt dread inflate in his belly like a balloon filling with ice water.  As soon as the shooting ended, he ran recklessly to where the homeless man lay sprawled lifelessly on the cold sidewalk and searched the immediate area.

"Where's the gun?"  He yelled, dread turning into horror.  "Where's the fucking gun?"  The cop searched the area fruitlessly while his prisoner cowered behind the patrol car and his stunned partner blinked stupidly from behind a haze of gun smoke.