Head Wounds by Chris Knopf

tell a joke to save my life.”
    “Nothing cracks me up,” I said. “Must be a deficiency of character.”
    “Humor isn’t what you say. It’s what you leave out.”
    “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
    “And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes
,” said Ross, using his cigarette to punctuate the emphasis on each syllable, a flourish of his own.
    “Didn’t know they had Shakespeare at the police academy.”
    “Master’s in lit crit. Cornell. Don’t ask me to explain.”
    “I’m not asking you to do anything, Ross. Except lay off this thing with Robbie Milhouser,” I told him.
    “The one you called an asshole.”
    “I might call you an asshole. Doesn’t mean I’d kill you. I don’t kill people. Even for a good laugh.”
    Ross’s face ignited into another of his oversized, ersatz grins.
    “We both know that’s not true. The killing part. Not the ha-ha part.”
    He reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of photographs. One was a mug shot of a young black man, the other a color portrait of a middle-aged white guy.
    “Darrin Eavanston and Robert Sobol. Remember them?”
    I leaned over to look, then sat back again.
    “I remember they were both shot to death. At different times. Both ruled accidental.”
    “There’s a difference between a ruling and the truth.”
    “Not to me,” I said.
    “There is to me. If you killed them.”
    I didn’t see much point in responding to that. Even without the advice of counsel.
    “Should I be seeing if Jackie’s free for the morning?” I asked.
    “Not as long as we’re just talking here.”
    “If that’s what we’re still doing.”
    Ross lit another cigarette off the stub of the one he’d half-smoked. Then he nodded.
    “That’s all we’re doing,” said Ross. “Shouldn’t make you nervous. An innocent man has nothing to be nervous about.”
    “Lots of things make me nervous. Loud noises, lousy drivers, good intentions. The world’s loaded with hazards, even when you have nerves of steel.”
    “Did you know I did ten years in Homicide in the City?” he asked me, genuinely curious.
    “I didn’t. I thought you put in your whole time in Southampton.”
    “While you were living large in Connecticut, rollin’ in corporate perks, I was swimming in a proverbial sewer of depravity and despair.”
    “I’m glad I missed that proverb,” I told him.
    “Didn’t like it. Not one little bit. Scared all the time. Every day dead bodies and nasty killers. They’re a type, you know. A sub species.”
    “Really.”
    “Yeah. That’s what I decided. Wired different.”
    “Head full of twisted pairs,” I said.
    He liked that.
    “See, that’s the kind of joke I like. I wish I could do that.”
    “So you did some genetic research. Identified this subspecies.”
    “Nothing clinical,” said Ross. “Just observation. And a little reading.” He poked his cigarette at my face. “They tell you it’s in the eyes. And the attitude. Confident. But a little paranoid. And a hair-trigger temper that goes off over nothing. All calm and normal and then, bam, in your face.”
    “Maybe you should’ve taken abnormal psych. Probably had that at Cornell, too.”
    “Or maybe mechanical engineering. Like you had at MIT. Pretty fancy training for a carpenter.”
    “Lot of the same principles. Not as much of a paycheck.”
    He seemed to like that, too. It began to feel like I was only there to provide entertainment. Some diversion from his daily routine. It occurred to me that he was bored. That his brain was itching for a little engagement, something to put a load on the circuitry.
    “Look, Ross,” I said, “you’re the only one here making any money with all this talk. I can only make it on the job. Soyou need to either tell me what sort of dance we’re dancing, or let me get back to work.”
    He sat way back and gripped the arms of his chair as if to stop them from wrapping around his chest.
    “Sure, Sam. Go,” he said, magnanimously. “Sorry to