Garbage by Stephen Dixon Page B

my mom and aunts. I’m a journalism major on my way home from school uptown and if it’s all right now I’d like to leave to study and eat.”
    A policeman says “We got their names and pad notes and it’s a shitty day besides, so why don’t we let the witnesses go?” and the other policemen agree and the three men leave.
    I give the police the names of several detectives at their precinct and say “Ask them about me and the man I hit who I described to them earlier from my fire. Also why not check those two men and even the kid and see if they work for Stovin’s Carting Company or just who they do work for and if it’s in any way connected to garbage collection or goon-type crime and if the kid really is a student and what school. He didn’t seem like a liar, but how do we know?”
    â€œThis isn ‘ t a police state,” a policeman says. “And if this incident ever goes to trial, your lawyer can handle all the who-works-for-who and so forth.”
    â€œIt’s going to trial all right, but by me dragging into court that phony the ambulance took away.”
    â€œGood. But now I’m sorry but we got to bring you in for assault and intent with a dangerous weapon,” and I say “My billy? Come on, your microscope guys will find it stayed in my pocket as protection with no blood or head marks on it except for maybe some drunk’s arm a year back if any blood got on it then and can last that long. But I want to tell you something before you take me in.”
    â€œIf he dies you’ll feel horrible—get in.”
    I get in back of the car and say to him in front “It’s true. I never killed anybody, even when I could’ve when I was in the service, but wouldn’t even do it overseas. Few times I fought I shot over the enemy’s heads.”
    â€œSo they could live to kill your buddies. Oh, guys like you I don’t understand and would’ve shot in the back in the army if I knew what you were doing. But that man you punched you might’ve been mistaken, you know. He could’ve just opened your envelope because he was making a call and his fingers out of nothing to do wandered under the shelf and fiddled around with the envelope you say was there but which we never found a speck of except for the tape you could’ve put there yourself, till he caught on what it might be.”
    â€œThen why’d he put my note from it into his wallet?”
    â€œWe don’t know he did yet. But if he did, then maybe as a joke.”
    â€œI don’t get it. To give to someone else?”
    â€œThat too. Maybe he wanted to play it on someone else. But what I was suggesting was maybe he kept the note to show someone how much a joke had been played on him in the booth.”
    â€œWith my spit all over it he’d put it in his wallet?”
    â€œThe spit would’ve been dried by then.”
    â€œBut he rubbed it off on the sidewalk.”
    â€œThat’s what you claim.”
    â€œBack and forth he rubbed, back and forth.”
    â€œSomeone else but you saw? Not those three duds.”
    â€œThen how do you also explain I recognized him as the note-leaving guy at my bar from the fire?”
    â€œYour word against his again.”
    â€œHell with it. Long as I know he’s involved, that’s enough for me.”
    â€œGood for you,” and he calls in that we’re coming, other man gets out to wipe the snow off the windshield and we drive to the stationhouse.
    I’m booked, they ask if I have a lawyer. I say “I never had much use for anyone who takes so much money for what with a little hard brainwork I can do myself, not that I ever even much trusted them either,” and they say they’ll have one appointed to me then as that’s the law.
    â€œThe law,” I say, “the law. Well just see if I don’t refuse your appointee,” and ask and they say okay for me to