Taking Richie Gold Down, a short story by Earl Staggs, Web Mystery Magazine, Spring 2005

Taking Richie Gold Down

That old saying about wallowing with pigs.

That’s what was on my mind as I waited for Richie Gold to come in.

My first year on the force, an old sergeant told me it happens to some of us. You wallow with pigs, they say, and you come up as dirty as they are. With cops, you put in enough years working the streets with scum and you start thinking like they do, doing things the way they do. You do it for all the right reasons, you tell yourself, but the line between the good guys and the bad guys gets gray and thin as the years go by. Maybe it was on my mind because I was in my twentieth year as a cop. Or maybe it was because of what I was planning to do.

Whatever, I pushed it out of my mind when Richie burst through the precinct door and stomped straight toward my office.

In his teens, Richard Allan Goldman boxed as an amateur. In his twenties, he worked as an enforcer and runner. By thirty, he had a half dozen convictions for car theft, assault and dealing drugs. Finally, at thirty-six, he had made it to the top. Drug king of the South Side.

I pulled the file folder out of my desk drawer and pretended to read it.

“Okay, Johnny Law, I’m here,” he bellowed after stopping dead in my doorway. “Word on the street is you wanted to see me. What’s this about?”

Putting the word out on the street is as reliable as the Internet and nearly as fast. I took my time closing the file before I looked up. “Yeah, Richie, I wanted to see you. Come in. Sit down.”

He didn’t come in. He stood there, stiff and scowling, giving me badass attitude. But I knew he was curious. Why did I want to see him now, two months after the trial? Two months after he walked away from murder one.

“Trust me, Richie,” I said. “I don’t like this any more than you do. Sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.”

He took one cautious step into my office, then another, and finally slouched into the chair across from me. He was a big dark-haired muscular kid from a decent Jewish family who decided early in life that brawn would take him further than brains.

Richie always dressed in black and gold. Black pants, black shirt, black shoes, three gold rings on the thick fingers of one hand, two on the other hand, a collection of gold chains around his neck. On the street, they called him Richie Gold. They call me Johnny Law. My real name is John Lawler.

He held the badass attitude and added a sneer. “All right, I’m here, I’m sitting down. You got something to tell me, tell me and get it over with. I didn’t have to come in here, you know.”

I sneered back. “But you came, didn’t you?”

He raised his shoulders in a so-what shrug. His badass show was over. Now he was going to give me smartass. “What can I say?” he said, enjoying his own humor. “I’m a law abiding citizen. Johnny Law wants to see me, okay, here I am.”

Fine. I gave him smartass right back. “Bullshit. You came in because you knew if you didn’t I’d come out to you. You don’t want me coming to your office, now do you, Richie?”

I won that round. His office was any street corner where he could sell drugs to schoolkids or one of the crack houses he and his crew ran for the ones who’d graduated.

He backed off to disgusted impatience. “Cut the shit, man. I got things to do.”

“I know you’re busy, Richie. So am I. But I have to do my job, even for scum like you.”

“Hey, man,” he said. “I don’t want to hear about your job. You and your job tried to put me away for killing them two kids.”

We traded stares. He had beaten a seventeen-year-old boy to death while the boy’s girlfriend watched and screamed in horror. Then he shot the girl in the head to shut her up. I had him cold. Two eye witnesses. Two of Richie’s own crew I’d persuaded to roll over. At the last minute, one of them vanished without a trace. The other one suffered a memory loss and changed his testimony.

But I didn’t want to get into that. I waved a hand to brush it away. “That’s history, Richie. This is something different.”

“Damn straight it’s history. You can’t hassle me on that charge no more. I got that double jeopardy thing. So let’s get to it. Why’d you want to see me?”

“Do you know a man named —” I picked up the file from my desk and read the name written on the flap — “Henry Lee Wilcox?”

He shook his head. “No. Never heard of him. Why should I?”

“That’s strange,” I said. “He was at your trial every day, sitting in the back row. Look at this.” I pulled a snapshot from the file and held it up. “He look familiar?”

Richie leaned forward and took a good look. “No. Never saw him before. What about him? Why was he at my trial?”

“Very strange,” I said as I returned the picture to the file folder. “He was an uncle of the boy you were accused of murdering.”

He shrugged again. “So?”

“So, we got word from an informant that he bought a gun, that he’s been following you around.”

I had his attention now. His face went slack. “What’re you trying to say?”

“What I’m trying to say is that this man’s been saying he’s going to kill you. Apparently, he took his nephew’s death very hard.”

Richie leaned back in his chair. A crinkled smile slowly worked its way up one side of his face. “Well, well, Johnny Law, I never thought I’d see this day. Here’s you and here’s me, sitting here in your office, and you’re worried some guy is out to kill me. That’s funny, man. That’s really funny. You protecting me.” He lowered his head and chuckled like he’d just heard a good joke. Then he looked up at me with a grin that made my gut tighten. “So what’re you going to do? You going to lock this guy up?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not going to lock him up.”

Richie’s grin faded. “Whattya you mean you’re not going to lock him up? You just said he was out to kill me. You’re always talking about your job. It’s your job to get this guy off my back.”

My turn to chuckle. “Get real, Richie. If we locked up everybody who threatened somebody else, we’d have to build a hundred more jails. Until he actually does something, there’s nothing we can do.”

“So, what you’re saying is, this guy’s following me around, wanting to kill me, and you’re not doing anything about it.”

“I’m doing everything I can. I’ve started a file on him.” I patted the folder on my desk. “And I put out tracers to the other precincts. If anything comes back on him, like he’s wanted for something, then I can haul him in.”

I looked at my watch. “As a matter of fact, I should have some answers by now. Wait here a minute. I’ll go check.”

Richie grunted and I left my office. I went to the men’s room. On the way back, I stuck my head in Sam Turner’s office and asked how his mother was doing. She’d had a stroke but was coming along fine, he said. Then I went back to my office. Richie was right where I’d left him but the file folder had been moved. I’d left it perfectly centered on the desk. It was now three inches to the right. Richie had gone through it while I was gone.

So far so good.

“Well,” he demanded as soon as I sat down, “you got something on that guy?”

“Nothing,” I said. “He’s clean. Not even a traffic ticket.”

He was sitting tall and straight in the chair now, tense and tight, drumming his fingers on the arm. “So I’m on my own.”

“Looks that way, Richie. All I can do is warn you. My advice? Leave town for awhile, drop out of sight. Maybe he’ll do something we can nail him for or maybe he’ll forget all about it.”

Richie leapt to his feet, sending his chair scooting backwards. “This ain’t right, man,” he shouted. He leaned over the desk toward me. “I can’t leave town. I got business to take care of.” He jabbed a finger at me. “You’ve got to do something.”

I stood up and met him over the desk. We were almost nose to nose. “Don’t tell me what I got to do, man. Like I said, all I can do is warn you. Now get your finger out of my face and get your ass out of my office”

He glared at me like he wanted to hop over the desk and have me for lunch. For a second, I hoped he’d try it.

I sat down. “Go on, Richie. Get out of here. I’ve wasted enough time on you.”

He gave me the glare for another second, then turned and left in a hurry. I watched him go. He’d lost the cocky swagger he’d had when he walked out of the courtroom two months ago. He walked like a man on a mission, like a man with something he had to do.

* * * * *

Suburbs like Walkerville grow on the perimeter of a city like middle age spread on a man. You don’t really notice until one day you look and it’s there. It’s where people raise kids in neat houses with shaded lawns and clean sidewalks and paint the woodwork every five years. They cook on a grill in the back yard, grow azalea bushes in the front, and set out their trash on Monday morning. Michelle and I talked about living in a suburb, having kids. We even looked at a few places. After she died, I lost interest. Hell, with my job, when would I have time to rake leaves and mow grass.

It was after nine and dark and I’d been sitting in my car in Walkerville for three hours, thinking and trying not to think, when Richie’s car turned the corner and rolled toward me. I leaned across the seat out of sight until he went past. When I looked up, he’d stopped and pulled to the curb three houses farther down. He’d found 1922 Lansing Street, the address he’d gotten from the file on my desk. He looked around in all directions but didn’t get out of his car.

I saw why. Two teenaged boys had come out of a house on my side of the street. They playfully bumped against each other as they crossed the lawn to the sidewalk, gesturing with their hands, laughing, talking. About what, I wondered. Sports? Girls? Video games? How would I know? They lived in a different world. When they turned the corner at the end of the street and disappeared, I wondered what they’d have done if they’d known how many killers were on their quiet little street that night.

A few seconds later, Richie got out of his car and started up the walk toward the front porch of 1922. He pulled a ski mask out of a pocket and wrestled it over his head. I waited until he knocked on the door before I got out of my car.

The door of the house opened and a familiar figure appeared in the rectangle of yellow light from inside. When Richie’s hand went to the man’s throat and he dragged the man out onto the porch, I started walking across the street.

Richie’s first shot went into the man’s forehead at point blank range. The silencer on the gun muffled the blast to practically nothing. The man dropped like a dead weight. I knew he was dead before he landed. That didn’t stop Richie from leaning over him and putting another round into his heart. By then I was halfway up the walk.

Richie turned and took two steps off the porch before he saw me and stopped cold. He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. We stared into each other’s eyes from twenty feet apart, squared off, our right hands holding weapons at our sides.

I broke the silence. “That’s it, Richie. You’re under arrest.”

His left hand yanked off the ski mask and threw it down. His mouth made rubbery movements before any words came out. “What the hell is this, Johnny Law? What’re you doing here?”

“What this is, Richie Gold, is you’re going down for first degree murder. And this time, there’s an eyewitness who won’t disappear or lose his memory. Me.”

His head wagged from side to side, slowly at first, then fast. “No! This ain’t right. This is the man who was gunning for me. This is that Wilcox you said was out to kill me. I got him first, that’s all. This is self defense, man. Self defense.”

“No, Richie,” I said, “there is no Henry Wilcox and no one was out to kill you. The file I had was a phony. I made it up just for you. That man’s name is Robert Blanchard. I’m surprised you didn’t know him though. You two would have gotten along just fine.”

His left hand came up and wiped across his mouth. His right, the one holding the gun, didn’t move. “What’re you talking about?”

“Two years ago, Robert Blanchard raped and killed a thirteen-year old girl. But he was smart like you. He had the money for a good lawyer and he managed to invent a good alibi. He walked away a free man just like you did.”

I saw it in his face then. His eyes narrowed and his mouth pulled tight. He was finally getting it. “Hey, Johnny Law, no way. You set me up. You can’t do that. When I tell them how you set me up, they’ll see it was self defense.”

“Really, Richie? Tell me. Who do you think they’ll believe, you or me? I’ll tell them I had you under surveillance and got here just after you shot this man. You think they’ll buy my story or yours?”

His mouth tightened even more. “You can’t lie, man. You’re a cop.”

“You’re right, Richie, I’m a cop and cops are supposed to play by the rules. But you know what? After twenty years of dealing with trash like you, I decided something. I decided rules are for people like those two kids you killed. And for the little girl Robert Blanchard killed. Rules don’t apply to people like you and me. You want to know if I’d lie? You bet your ass I’d lie to put you where you belong.”

He didn’t know what to say. I did.

“So that’s it, Richie. You’re going down for good this time. Now drop that gun very carefully and put your hands behind your head. You know the drill.”

He stayed frozen, his big fist clenching the gun at his side.

“Or maybe,” I said, “you’re thinking about using that gun again. Maybe you’re thinking you could drop me and drive away. No one will know you were even here. They’ll find me and Blanchard and figure we shot each other.”

Neither of us moved for what seemed like a long time. I knew Richie so well I could almost hear his thoughts. Give it up or go for it. Hell, I already knew what his decision would be, what it had to be for someone like him, and I was ready. His gun finally jerked upward. He dropped from my first shot. There was no need for another one.

I walked over to him and looked down. Then I looked on the porch where Robert Blanchard’s body lay.

As I stood over the two men I’d killed, I thought about what the old cop said about wallowing with pigs. I suddenly felt like I’d just showered in muddy water.

Then I remembered something else he told me the day he retired.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you don’t think about what happened. You think about what didn’t happen.”

Richie Gold and Robert Blanchard didn’t kill any more innocent kids. On bad days now, when I have trouble seeing that thin gray line between them and me, I have to remind myself of that.

Earl Staggs' stories have appeared in numerous magazines. One of them captured a Derringer Award for Best Short Mystery Story. This short story was originally published in (the now sadly defunct) Blue Murder Magazine, January 2001. His novel, Memory of a Murder is due from Quiet Storm Publishing in 2005: the first chapter will appear in the Summer 2005 issue of *Web Mystery Magazine*. (See Archives.) Born in Kentucky and raised in Maryland, Earl Staggs spent some years in Florida before he and his wife Carol retired in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Visit his website. Direct correspondence to Earl Staggs or Editor.