Night As We Know It Read online

  As with all things, this union had to come to its end. Graduation approached, and good news filtered through the hallways of Franklin Charter. College acceptance letters came like Christmas cards full of cash, and like a good king Nick sat back and waited for his subjects to come offering their thanks, for without him it would have been highly unlikely any of them would have been accepted by the college of their choice.

  Johns was the most appreciative, receiving the thing he wanted most. An athletic scholarship to a west coast university, full ride, room and board. Nice weather, girls unlimited, and someplace far, far away from that tiny bedroom in South Philadelphia that screamed at him that he was nothing more than an ordinary punk.

  “Tell me a story,” Johns said to Nick, two days before graduation.

  They both knew commencement would be chaos. Too many people, pictures and celebrations, and they’d not get a chance to say a proper goodbye to each other. So they had lunch at a picnic table in lovely Hightower Park, in the heart of downtown Philadelphia.

  Nick looked down on their untouched lunches, his folded hands. He sighed quietly, then looked up into Johns’s eyes. He said softly, “We’ll see each other again.”

  Johns looked away, drummed his fingertips on the table. “I’m gonna miss you, buddy.”

  Nick only nodded.

  “Without you…”

  Nick waved him off.

  Johns cleared his throat. “I hear Jenny Richardson is joining you at Penn’s College up on the Main Line.”

  “So are Kenji Agata and Bear McGill.”

  Johns nodded. “Watch out for Bear. Don’t let him suck you into anything, he’s trouble.”

  “Duly noted,” Nick said, smiling. “And don’t you get so big that you don’t remember who your friends are. You’re gonna be a star.”

  Johns smiled. “I’ll remember that.”

  They sat in silence, looking at each other, feeling like brothers from another mother. A spring breeze rustled through the trees bringing a slight chill to the air. For a moment, it felt like the coming of autumn.

  “Yo, Johns, some guy’s on the phone. Wants to talk to you.”

  Officer Todd Greenleaf said this loud enough so that others could hear throughout the precinct.

  “Who?” Johns mouthed. He wanted to be unseen, unheard. He was stuck on desk duty. A punishment. He had another week to finish out. Pushing paper. Data input. Taking shit calls.

  “I’m not your secretary. How the fuck do I know.” This wasn’t true. Greenleaf would have gotten a name before putting the caller on hold. This was intentional, because everyone knew the score about Johns. Why he was stuck on desk duty. Kicking a man when he’s down was a favorite sport here. Hell, in the whole goddamned police department.

  “Pick up your phone, I’m putting him through. Says he went to high school with you.”

  Johns’s heart froze. No: jumped, then froze. He knew who it was before his phone rang. Knew who it was before he heard his voice. And at once he was happy, maybe exhilarated, maybe afraid. So much so he felt his stomach drop.

  “Hello,” Johns said into the phone. He huddled close to it, conspiratorially.

  “Johns,” Nick said in that way of his. He could just as easily have said, “Ah, Inspector, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Nick’s voice was deeper, but as always there was more to be read in his tone.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Johns whispered into the receiver. It was as if he were speaking with a lover.

  “Good to hear your voice,” Nick returned, slyly.

  “A blast from the past. I thought you forgot about me.”

  “Never,” Nick said, and the long silence that followed was almost intimate.

  “Tell me a story.”

  Nick chuckled lightly. “I wanted to touch base. Hadn’t heard from you in a while.”

  “Same ole, same ole, man. Working, working, working.”

  “We should get together. Catch up.”

  “Are you in town?” Johns asked, a little alarmed.

  “Not yet, but I was thinking of coming out west and I wanted to know if you were free.”

  There was a silence that followed, one that told Nick that Johns was buying time.

  “Look, I’m really busy this week. How about the week after next? Will you be in town?”

  “I can be there any time you say.”

  “Give me your number. Let me give you a buzz back.”

  After a moment, Johns asked, “What made you look me up?”

  “I wanted to see how my old buddy was doing.” But after a beat, Nick added, “And I have a favor to ask. A small one. And only my friend Johns Mayweather can help.”

  While the years between Nick and Johns had been long (they were older now, much older), the call had reset the clock on their relationship. It was as if time had passed, but hadn’t. Nick was counting on this in order to get what he needed from his old friend.

  “Are you kidding me?” Nick’s editor, Roberto asked.

  “No,” Nick said quietly.

  “No way, Jose.”

  “Why not?”

  Roberto was a Latino, salt and pepper hair, paunchy. They were behind closed doors, with the office light off, the sun lighting the room. Nick was slid down in his chair. His hair was long now, hanging to the back of his neck. He had a mustache and light beard too, and despite his weathered face and sharp eyes, he was what many a girlfriend had called ruggedly handsome.

  “Because I said so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I said so!” Roberto repeated.

  “I want to do this. I can do this. I know people. I have connections. I have sources.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “For starters, Jimmy Olsen—”

  “I’m not a cub reporter, I’m an investigative journalist—”

  “For starters…this is dangerous in more ways than one. It’s playing with fire.”

  “That’s cliché.”

  “Okay…let me be un-cliché for a moment. You’re smart. You know you’re smart. I know you’re smart. I also know that you’re ambitious. You’re looking to make a name for yourself and are just about willing to call Jesus from Heaven in order to prove that. Here’s the thing: fucking with the Fraternal Order of Police is not wise and always comes with consequences. What you’re proposing is ludicrous, and I would be reckless and an idiot to let you do it. So…no. You can’t do this. Find something else to investigate. Investigate the Red Cross. Investigate the Vatican. Go to Trump Tower in New York and tap every fucking phone in the building, but stay away from the police.”

  Nick twisted his mouth. His eyes were penetrating. The wheels in his head turning.

  “No,” he said. His voice was strong, sharp. “We’re a newspaper. A dying breed of media. Hell, we’re already dead, we just don’t know it. But we keep coming to work. You know why? Because it’s in our blood. To tell the world what’s going on. To keep them woke. It’s our job to protect this world, and we newspapers…especially…we’re dying one by one. Too many to count all across the world. Good papers with good people. One less paper spreading the gospel truth means more innocent people getting fucked in the ass by the powers that be. Powers that spread opinion as fact, and fake news as law.”

  “And you…Clark Kent…want to be Superman. You want to take on an entire police department. No—that’s unambitious. You want to take on a nation of police departments.” Roberto shook his head.

  “Don’t you want to put this little paper on the map? Or do you want to keep publishing stories about city council meetings where nothing ever really gets done? Or write about spray-painted park monuments, or walk-a-thons, or a hundred other things that you could find in a hundred other small newspapers, that do nothing but take up space?”

  “You’ve said something true. We are a small newspaper. A small newspa
per with a small staff and a small budget. We survive with small local ads and serve a small audience. That’s who we are. That’s what we do. You want 60 Minutes, you better go get a job at 60 Minutes. If you want to stay on here, you better do the job this paper pays you to do.”

  Nick looked at his editor with steady, piercing eyes.

  “I don’t want to hear anything else about this. In fact, I believe—and correct me here if I’m wrong—you have a cancer run to cover. I suggest you hop to it,” Roberto said.

  Nick continued to stare. He was trembling a little, determined to his core.

  “It’s not that you don’t want me to do this story, because deep down I can see that you think it’s a good story. Hell, you think it’s an amazing story. You’re just afraid.”

  “And the fact that you’re not shows me how green a journalist you still are.”

  “No,” Nick said after a moment. “I’m red hot.”

  That weekend, Nick covered Sunday’s Point Breeze County’s Cancer Run. Men’s Top 3, Women’s Top 3, Over 60 category leaders, how much money was raised, and the beautiful weather that accompanied the event.

  The next day he filed his story and put in for a two-week vacation. A holiday excursion to the dark and seedy side of Los Angeles. There, he would get the story of his life.

  “Lookit here, Nick Fullwood having a drink in a fancy bar in sunny California.”

  “Dude!” Nick was sitting in the Q Hotel’s El Paradiso Bar, down the street from the Grauman’s Chinese and El Capitan theaters. He stood up and hugged Johns. Johns hugged him back, tentatively at first, but then melted in Nick’s arms. Nick could not see his face, but sensed a hesitation from Johns. Not of him, but of his presence in Los Angeles.

  “Good to see you, my friend,” Johns said, stepping back.

  “Thanks for having me. Can’t remember the last time I was in La La Land. Sit, have a drink. Bartender, get this fine gentleman whatever he wants.”

  They sat side by side at the bar. Nick began toying with a box of matches, then pocketed them.

  “I’ll have a double shot of bourbon neat. What are you drinking?” Johns asked.

  “Apricot liqueur, double of rum, dark, over ice. None of that light shit. Gives me a fucking headache.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “L.A. Midnight. Bartender said I’d like it.”

  “Got to try it sometime,” Johns said.

  “I like your look. Got the beard thing going on, slimmed down, slicked back hair. Still handsome as shit,” Nick said, looking Johns over.

  “When you’re in L.A., you gotta look the part.”

  They laughed.

  “You like it out here?”

  “Except for the fucking fires and traffic, it’s not bad.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “What about you, Nick? You look good.”

  “I’m doing well, thanks.”

  The bartender brought Johns his drink.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Put it on my tab,” Nick told the bartender, before he walked away.

  Johns held up his drink.

  “To old friends.”

  “To new adventures.”

  They took a swallow of their drinks, but their eyes stayed on each other.

  “So what really brings you all the way out here to L.A.?”

  “Like I said…to catch up, see an old friend.”

  “You also mentioned a favor.”

  Nick held his glass up to his lips without tasting his drink. His eyes stayed on Johns.

  “Well...I was hoping you could show me around town.”

  “You thinking about moving out here?” Johns asked, a scowl on his face.

  “Nah. I just need your help with something. Kinda like when we first met. You needed something from me, now I need something from you.” Nick leaned over to Johns and sighed heavily. He rolled his drink around in his rocks glass, listening to the ice clink. “I think I’ve hit a ceiling at work. I need a home run, and I was kinda hoping you could help me out.”

  Johns blinked, then took a healthy gulp of his drink. “How?”

  “You know I’m a writer for a newspaper back home, right?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Well...I’ve been stuck on shit assignments. Stuff you’d give a kid reporter. Highway construction, suburban opioid crisis, middle school bullying, gays fucking in the park. But I want more.”

  “You always were the smartest guy in the room.”

  Nick raised his drink and smiled broadly. “I wish my fucking editor thought that.”

  Johns laughed.

  “So I came up with an idea, and I think it’s a good one.”

  “What’s the pitch?”

  “A human interest piece. Everybody’s been hearing a lot lately about cops across the country shooting Black dudes and killing them. I was thinking of telling another side of the story. Cops who do good work they never get noticed for. Giving shoes to a homeless man. Playing ball with a kid. Coming to some old person’s rescue. Cops who were once in the military. Good Samaritan stuff.”

  “That sounds good, but you couldn’t get that in Philly?”

  Nick sighed. “I came to my friend, because I thought he could help me out. Knows all the good stories. Knows whose toes not to step on. And he could share the spotlight when the article is published. I was thinking a series. Putting a good face back on the police department. It would raise my stock...and do you some good, too.”

  Johns sat back in his chair and smiled broadly. He took a swig of his drink. He nodded, and Nick saw something pass over his face, desperation maybe, salved by relief. “Consider me signed up.”

  “Here’s the thing. I’ve got about a week and a half before I have to get back.”

  “Then we should get started right away,” Johns said.

  Nick leaned forward and a smile spread across his mouth. “First we feast. Let me treat my old friend to a nice dinner. We can catch up.”

  Johns beamed. Yes, there was relief in his eyes. Also desperation, sadness, secrets.

  “Yes, let’s feast,” Johns said. He clinked his glass with Nick’s.

  “Bartender,” Nick called over his shoulder. “Close us out.”

  “One more, one more,” Johns said.

  “We haven’t even ordered dinner yet.”

  “C’mon,” Johns pleaded. Now that he was in Nick’s company, it was almost like old times. Nick saw in Johns’s body language that Johns needed something from him. Johns had become looser and friendlier with each drink. He smiled like the Cheshire Cat, his laugh throaty, infectious.

  “Fine,” Nick announced loudly, then laughed.

  Johns looked up to the pretty waitress. “This is my old high school buddy, and we haven’t seen each other in years. So…two more drinks.”

  Nick turned to the waitress. “He’s trying to get me toasted.”

  “I’m trying to show you a good time.”

  Nick sat back in his chair. He looked at Johns a moment. “Then let’s have a good time. But then food after. These airlines don’t feed you shit.”

  “Two drinks coming up,” the waitress said, smiling. “I’ll be back for your dinner order.”

  “Hot damn!” Johns said, tapping Nick’s hand lightly with his closed fist. “Nick Fullwood. I missed you, buddy.”

  Nick read Johns’s eyes, the sadness in his voice he was doing his best to hide.

  “How’s life been treating you?” Nick asked. Then with abroad smile he added, “And tell the truth.”

  They both laughed.

  Johns looked into his rocks glass, holding nothing more than melted ice cubes and the diluted remnants of a drink. He drank what was left and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. Nick watched him carefully.

  “So you know I came out here after high school and played football.�
��

  “Yeah…”

  “It was good for a while.”

  “I saw you on television.”

  “I got a lot of press, played good ball, fucked a lot. Married a girl, my future was looking bright. And then it all went to shit.” Johns put down his glass. “I got a knee injury. Three torn ligaments. A career ending injury that also ended my marriage. Wife, well now ex-wife, took me to the cleaners. I turn over half my paycheck to her.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  Johns looked ruefully into the empty glass he was holding. “I…dropped out of school. Took some odd jobs. Went back to school, community college, and finished up. The military didn’t want me, but the police academy took me in. Here I am all these years later, still a cop.”

  “You like it?”

  “Yeah,” Johns answered quietly.

  Nick scowled. “You’re not telling me something.”

  Johns shook his head. “Nope.”

  Drinks came and they ordered dinner. Steak and potatoes, salad, dessert. More drinks.

  “So tell me about yourself,” Johns said. “What’s been going on?”

  Nick took a deep breath. “Nothing much. As you know I got the full ride scholarship to Penn’s College. Came out, bounced around a bit at radio stations, blogs, did some freelance writing, whatever I could get. Went through more layoffs than I care to remember. I’m now at a small county newspaper in Point Breeze.”

  “You ever hook up with Jenny Richardson?”

  “Oh, my God. Here we go with that shit again,” Nick said smiling.

  “Puh-leeze. You’re so full of shit. Don’t tell me you never wanted to hit that.”

  Nick started to speak, then sighed resigned. “Yes…I did.”

  “I knew it!”

  “But it never happened.”

  “Why not? She was hot!”

  “She still is! But she was hooked up with someone else.” Nick shrugged. “She owns a café now.”

  “Really.”

  Nick nodded. “Yep. A place called The Speakeasy. Sells coffee, food, alcohol at night. Live bands come through, and they also have book signings. She took over a pizza joint and repurposed it.”

  “How’s her brother Axel?”