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Death of the Cowboy -- Michael Harris Cohen Murder. That's right. An innocent (as far as we know) life has been taken. No doubt other murders are currently transpiring as well. In fact, it would be safe to say that a person is being murdered, somewhere in the world, in about the same time that it takes you to read one line of this page (give or take a few lives for slower or faster readers). It's a big world and there are a lot of very pissed off and dangerous people in it. Perhaps you should slow down. Don't skim. I realize that's a tendency we all have when we start something in an anthology. It's like one of those chocolate boxes where you bite a little here, a little there, before you find the one you like. You can use that analogy if you prefer. In the time it takes for you to chew up your average piece of chocolate, another person is killed. So let's try and savor. Savor life. What was the folklore every child recited? A birth occurs every three seconds and a death every seven? What percentage of these deaths is by murder? Perhaps a rhythm could be structured; maybe some new type of time signature could be devised from birth, birth, birth, birth, birth, birth, death. This could be the rhythmic foundation for something called the "Symphony of the World" and, if the notes were right, it might move something primordial in us -- a kind of music of the spheres marching within us. A thumping of the timpani or a sharp cymbal crash could signify the murders. Anyway it's this murder that concerns us. A body has been discovered. It is most positively dead, though still somewhat warm. It has been shot through the head (the back of the head which rules out suicide, more or less) and we must hope, as compassionate individuals, that the death was quick and the deceased did not suffer unduly in those last moments of life. We could examine the face but I think it is no one you know. A man, possibly in his mid-forties, with an extra hole in his head. The entry of the bullet is surprisingly clean, like a finger stuck in and removed from wet clay. There is blood, naturally, but it could have been worse. All in all, it's a fairly innocuous murder. We've all witnessed worse on the evening news or at the local movie theater. We might feel almost grateful to the murderer that he/she spared us some creatively sadistic spectacle -- a decapitation, disembowelment or something really disgusting like severing the man's genitals and placing them in his mouth. Nothing overly nasty here. Thank goodness for that. Of course, feeling thankful regarding a murder seems inappropriate. We should be seeking the murderer with the vengeance of the Furies. Someone has taken a human life, an innocent (again, as far as we know) life, and that is inexcusable. That cannot go unpunished. The police photographer flashes pictures of the body from various angles: a close-up of the bullet hole, the angle of the dead man's hand, the corona of blood from the head wound. It's rather a strange job, don't you think? I'm sure the photographer would have some interesting things to say on the subject of murder. I wonder if he makes extra copies of the pictures to study at his leisure. He looks rather professional. Perhaps at one time he had aspirations of being an artist. Maybe Cartier-Bresson inspired him. I'd wager that he dreamed of being a famous photographer. But of course being an artist is difficult, Lord knows. Maybe he still considers himself an artist of sorts. There must be something of an art to photographing a dead body (or is it just a craft... and what is the difference anyway?). It seems easy, but how can we say that it's easier than snapping pictures of the living? At the same time something is about to happen in an airport. It's not even in the same city. The airport security guard yawns as he watches the X-ray machine reveal the inner secrets of people's luggage. Probably sounds interesting until you do it for awhile. Still, getting to see the insides of so many people's bags and briefcases, think of all you could learn about human nature. People must feel somewhat naked as the contents of their bags are X-rayed. All that radiation seeping in there just to see what's been thrown into carry-on bags. Maybe people remove potentially embarrassing items before traveling. Actually they probably don't give it much thought. After all, they only see the guard for a few minutes of their life so what do they really care? I suppose all of this seems less interesting for you than me, one of those things that a writer sees as interesting, a sort of poetic detail. Writers tend to enlarge everything anyway or try and find the "inner resonance of things." Kind of like X-ray machines. A gun has just passed through the machine. The guard was barely paying attention. It's close to the end of his shift when the graveyard guy comes on so he might have been thinking about getting a beer after work or what's on television tonight. But he saw the gun. How could he not? The gun is enormous. It's not a discreet pea-shooter but a full-size, long- barreled cannon. It's hard to determine the make of the weapon from the fuzzy silhouette, but it is most certainly a gun. The guard doesn't even think about what to do next. He slaps the alarm button. The sight of the gun is like a rubber hammer tapping his knee. He's never pushed the button in a "live" situation, only in drills. It is controlled chaos in the immediate moments after. Very tightly controlled, as an ear- shattering alarm blares and other guards run to the station with their guns drawn, pushing back the other curious passengers and slicing the air with their weapons. The owner of the bag is a smallish woman. She already looks harried. When the guard straightens his .38 Smith and Wesson (oddly, the woman's last name is Smith! Well, her maiden name anyway) at her forehead she is understandably shocked. A few paces behind the woman is her six year-old son. The gun in the bag belongs to him. It's an astonishingly realistic cap pistol his father brought back from Japan when he went there on business. The gun came with a genuine leather holster and a cowboy hat that the boy is wearing right now. The boy slipped the gun in his mother's bag when she wasn't looking, even after she pointedly told him he could not bring it with him on this trip. Children. Summing up, they were on their way to Miami, Florida and the woman was almost killed because of a cap gun. Frightening. Of course we're glad that airport security does its job and doesn't take chances even if sometimes they may overreact. So it appears that the airport incident has nothing whatsoever to do with the murder at hand. Probably. At this point nothing can be ruled out completely. Of course, a new problem arises: this incident is now part of the story and, thus, in an undeniable sense, related to the murder by context. Perhaps later, when we have (hopefully!) found an important clue pertaining to the murder, our minds will have time to dwell more upon the sudden look of shock on the airport security guard's face as he recognizes the gun on the screen. Or we will imagine the spanking the little boy must have gotten once the affair was finally over and done. Actually, no. Have no fear, I'm almost certain this entire airport section will be edited out before it reaches you. I apologize for the false lead, but we are still waiting on the detective. After all, I am not a detective and cannot be expected to always follow the right leads. Even a real detective (I'm speaking not of TV detectives like Colombo or Magnum PI but detectives in the REAL world) makes mistakes and, as I said, nothing can be ruled out until the detective arrives and decides what is significant and what things are red herrings and inconsequential details. The detective is a kind of life editor, trimming away the superfluous fat of mystery to get at the lean truth. So everything stays. You can't mess with a crime scene after all. Sorry. We need a few more of the facts -- a lot more, actually. It seems that we really don't know much of anything, does it? We don't even know the identity of the murder victim or why he was killed. So little has been created for you, and I accept full responsibility. I suppose if you stop and think, back up a bit, your image of the body is basically hovering in some sort of abstract void, with only the strobe of the photographer illuminating the setting. Strange, isn't it? You decided it was night even before I mentioned the photographer, didn't you? Or can you even remember? Now, it is so definitely night that it becomes impossible for you to conceive of this murder occurring during the day. Perhaps you have a predisposition to a certain type of setting. Do you picture the body in an alley, strewn with garbage and homeless cats languidly sniffing at overturned cans? What if I told you that the victim is slumped over the wheel of his car? You erase the alley and immediately begin thinking what kind of car it is. You saw a black one I bet, or red. Something expensive, a late model and not very fuel-efficient. Maybe a Lincoln or a Cadillac. You make this job so easy. I hardly have to write anything at all before you pick up the ball and run with it. Good work! Readers like you are so generous. You will allow the facts to accumulate slowly, that's perfectly all right with you. You might jump ahead of the writer from time to time, but you'll always come running back onto the writer's track, slightly sheepish, but willing to accept the actual version. Here it is: the body was stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car, a '72 Dodge Dart with a shabby olive green paint job. Here's a confession. Not from the murderer but from me. I don't know exactly where the body was discovered. I was just demonstrating a point. It's easy to get carried away knowing that whatever I write you will see. There is a pink handbag with a fake pearl clasp on the driver's seat. The clasp is open and the bag appears empty at first glance. Okay, I'm lying again but how can I resist? I'm stalling too. It's rather obvious by now I suppose. Where is that damn detective? Well perhaps it might be useful if you knew where I am. I'm in Sofia, Bulgaria which on February 18th, 1994 was the uncontested murder capital of Europe. There were thirty-seven murders in the first three weeks of that year in Sofia alone. That's a higher murder per capita rate than any city in America. These are facts though they have certainly changed by now. That was a pretty long time ago. Still, it may be an important fact to know that as an American in Bulgaria, murder was on my mind when I wrote this. Is it morning when you read this? People's analytical skills tend to be a bit more focused in the morning. You might be skimming this over breakfast or on the first coffee break at work. If not, you might want to put it away until morning, so you can be at your best when sifting through the various facts. More facts: the writer has written this after an extremely long night at a local club. His brain is running on about two hours sleep and he had ingested a fair amount of illicit drugs the prior night, the residue of which linger in his system. He's having trouble focusing on the page. There were several women at the club he would have liked to go home with last night. In the end, the writer talked to none of them and went home alone. Well yes, there are many more facts about the writer, but one must know when to stop, of course. The most important thing to glean from this is that the writer's general mental condition is one that lacks what would be thought of as a standard of lucidity. Still, the writer never forgets to bear in mind that there is a murderer at large and, therefore, every second is precious. The writer is fully aware of the gravity of the situation. He will not waste more time on these kinds of metafictional digressions or tangent further to question whether or not the novel is still a relevant form. These are things he would like to discuss with you but there is a time and a place. Thank God, the detective has finally arrived. He apologizes to the other people for the delay, but he is a busy man. In fact, there are numerous cases he could be working on and it is sheer luck that he has been called in on this one. Watch him. He seems to be a man who knows what he's doing, take my word for it. I have full confidence he will catch this killer. His manner with the corpse assures me of this. Like the photographer, I'm sure he has seen numerous dead bodies before. He hardly flinches, as no doubt most of us would, when handling a murder victim. He carefully examines the entry wound of the bullet into the dead man's skull. He cradles the head like an artist adjusting a model, tender but assured. It is a real treat to watch him work. Some things just cannot be taught, you know. Most likely, he did very well at the police academy and as a regular cop, but now he's in his element. He seems to have compassion for the dead intertwined somewhere in all that professionalism. It's possible that death even turns him on a little. I don't mean sexually but in a kind of primal way, it activates something inside him. I like to think that he considers himself a kind of urban hunter. He is a predator of predators, tracking the creatures that prey on innocents. What more can I say to explain this man? He's complicated. I hardly know him myself. He's not the kind of guy that I would talk to in a bar unless I happened to accidentally stumble into him, in which case I would apologize, and quickly, even if it was more his fault than mine. You might imagine him as the "hard- boiled" type. Is that what you see? Well yes, he does smoke and he does have a tendency to make use of certain unnecessary expletives. Yet as far as I know, he does not start the day with a shot of whiskey -- there isn't even an odor of it about him now. He's married (I did notice a wedding ring). He's not totally obsessed with his job. He takes it seriously, of course, but there is more to his life than just hunting criminals. There is hardness about him. Christ, how can there not be? He sees death everyday and deals with some of the most abhorrent elements of society. Who wouldn't be hardened? There is a telling detail in his appearance. He wears a hat. What kind of hat do you think it is? Raise your hand, how many of you see a classic fedora? A porkpie? It's neither. The detective wears a broad-brimmed cowboy hat. Yes! I suppose we all have to do some major modifications to our mental pictures now. The whole scene seems to slip down several hundred miles in latitude, doesn't it? Just because of that silly hat. There's no twang to his voice though. No, I don't think we are in the South, but I'm not sure... Wouldn't it be amazing if it turned out that this detective was actually the father of the boy in the airport? The cowboy hats seem a pretty good indicator that this might be the case. Things would begin to pull together then. Suddenly, that seemingly arbitrary airport "digression" wouldn't seem so arbitrary, would it now? Maybe the woman at the airport is his wife and they had a fight, etc. This is the writer's terrible dilemma. Anything is possible. If one ever has any doubts about free will, they should try to write a story. I mean can you really believe that everything is determined? That every word that follows was fated to be written? Suppose I was to write: "marinated ostrich poop" or "Newt Gingrich's School of Belly Dancing and Semiotics." Do you honestly believe that those words were fated to be written as some part of a Divine Plan? No way, right? So is the detective related to the woman in the airport? That's the million-dollar question. But there's more at stake then that. Writing is like walking through the woods. You can take any path you choose, then you take side paths -- nobly breaking trails -- and next thing you know, the path that seemed it would hook up with the main one does not. There you are in the forest, huddled on the ground, your knees pulled up to your chin. Rocking in the dark, whimpering. Lost. It makes murder seem easy in comparison. Murder represents a single action one must absolutely commit to. Once committed, the action is irrevocable. Wait. The ring is on the detective's right hand and not his left. My mistake. It's night after all, and a bit hard to see. Plus this guy is very animated, he moves constantly. The ring thing is an honest mistake. I'm sorry for the constant interruptions, but there is something I feel compelled to tell you. The writer left the story. I mean he's back here now, writing this. But he took a few days' break from the writing some paragraphs back. His life must continue, after all; it's not only about putting words on the page for you. He would have liked to finish the story in one sitting, but it just wasn't possible. He has said to others, when they discuss art and the nature of being a writer, that all he desires to do with his time is write. This is true, but writing is often difficult for him. In the past, he has compared it to drawing blood, but that is inaccurate. Drawing blood would be easier; it requires no thought. The writer is, honestly, a little concerned that there will be a lapse in the flow since he has stepped away from the story. Another writer he admires has called the act of writing the "sustainment of a lucid dream." But everyone knows the basic impossibility of returning to a dream once you have left it. Obviously, the ideal is to write everything in one sitting. In fact, Edgar Allan Poe believed this was the only way to write... no wait, actually he said that everything should be read in one sitting, I think. Unfortunately the writer has no time for research and must risk the occasional inaccuracy. Anyway, the latter advice might be useful for you. Linger a little longer, if you haven't already stepped away, and read the whole thing in one sitting (especially if it's in the morning). Feel free to research, exactly what Poe wrote in his essay later. That's fine, commendable even, but the polite thing would be to wait until you have finished the story. There is one more confession that must be made. Another fact. The writer is on opium right now. At this very moment, as he writes. I hope none of you are shocked. The writer is not a drug addict or anything despicable like that (not to imply that all drug addicts are despicable). No, no, the drug is being taken in the spirit of experimentation. He is still in Sofia, but his mind is elsewhere. The drug is making the very act of writing a challenge for him. That's part of the experiment. As you probably know, opium has a long history of connection with writers, from Coleridge to Cocteau. The writer wonders if maybe it will make his writing better too. You are part of the experiment now. It's funny how the writer can feel the strongest emotions known to man as he writes (that may be the opium talking -- it's got a gentle but emphatic voice) and the reader may feel nothing at all as he reads the same words. Conversely, the writer may feel nothing at all, working in a state of cool calculation to construct a scene that makes the reader cry. Probably, the best thing to do would be to enclose some sort of survey form with the story, so you could respond to questions about any sort of stylistic change you observed in the writing from the previous part to this one. Can you tell the difference? I hope you are not disappointed in the writer. That would be terrible. Try to remember that the writer is human, after all, and that many cultures view drugs as tools to achieving higher states of consciousness. Yes, try and step out of the limited and highly puritanical paradigm of America for a moment -- exercise a little cultural relativity. Wait. Something concrete has been discovered in connection with the murder. I told you earlier to be patient. The detective knows the man who was killed! I can overhear him talking to another one of the policemen there. He is telling the cop that the victim was a lawyer for the Mafia. He can also tell by the way the man was shot that this was a gangland execution. Now we're getting somewhere. He jokingly says to one of the other cops that it "saves him the trip." They laugh. All these men seem to genuinely like the detective. Even though he has risen through the ranks much faster then any of them can hope to, there doesn't seem to be any real jealousy, just a lot of good-hearted camaraderie. But wait... what does the detective's statement mean? Is he suggesting that the man who was murdered wasn't innocent? Surely anyone who has his or her life unwillingly snuffed out deserves our sympathy. Maybe not though, maybe the detective is on to something. Certain murders are considered justified in most of our minds; we don't even consider them murders. Like the execution of a serial killer for example. That kind of murder is carried through with the powers of the State behind it and therefore considered just, right? Well, I don't want to open up some sort of debate on the moral or immoral nature of capital punishment. All I'm saying is that in the mind of the detective, the murder may be justified in this case. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt for now. We waited long enough for him -- let's see what he's got up his sleeve. Frankly, the detective doesn't seem overly concerned about the death of the lawyer. Right now he's taking a cigarette from one of the other policemen and laughing at some unheard joke the man made. All I caught is that the joke had something to do with lawyers. The dead guy has basically has become a punchline corpse. I'll admit, I'm a bit disturbed by this. It's a bit like poking your nose where it doesn't really belong and seeing something shameful that you wish you hadn't. But who am I to judge? Perhaps the detective is more hardened toward death than even the writer could imagine. Maybe this whole thing is some kind of coping ritual for the policemen, as they stand around chattering and laughing while the body grows colder. Besides, it's a gangland hit. We know what that means. The lawyer was killed by a hitman, an assassin. It's nothing personal. The hitman (or hitperson, rather) does this for a living just like the writer writes and the detective detects. It's just a job that should be carried out professionally, like any other. If the security guard had shot the woman in the airport, he would have been doing his job, too. Of course there probably would have been an ugly scandal and he might have lost his job -- for doing it too well. He might have spent many sleepless nights thinking of that motherless child, but he could have felt "okay" about himself because he was doing his job. Fortunately, it didn't happen and this is all academic conjecture. The woman and her son managed to board their flight to Miami. They're in the air right now. She's laughing, telling the story to a fellow passenger, a stranger. It seems to make for a good story, and is a testament to her character that she could transmute so quickly a scary ordeal into a humorous anecdote. However, she is drinking one of those tiny bottles of Johnny Walker. I think it's something she doesn't usually do, since she grimaces slightly every time the scotch touches her throat. She's saying that it's a blessing, really, because the airlines gave her two complimentary vouchers to fly anywhere in the continental US. That's a great deal. It almost makes you want to put a cap gun in your bag next time you fly. The boy is sleeping. His hatless head presses against the thick glass of the window. His face is a little on the puffy side. I think he's been crying. I have to tell you something else. I had really hoped for more closure. However, the detective is driving home in his car now, and the murder seems to be the furthest thing from his mind. I suppose I could take a further peek inside his mind, but who am I to do that? It seems a bit of an ethical breach, doesn't it? Not to mention a breach in style. Forget it. It's not even necessary. Trust me, I can tell by looking at him that he couldn't care less about the murder. He's too busy yawning and fiddling with the radio. All he wants to do is go home and get into bed. Imagine... a man has been killed. Still, we can't entirely blame the detective. He probably had a long day of death before he even arrived at our murder site. He didn't have a choice either. I made him come and gave him nothing but minimal leads, with very little concrete detail to go on. Like the title. Is it a clue? Was the man killed some kind of cowboy, or did he have a nickname "The Cowboy"? Is it a metaphor? Is it just some trick to entice the reader with a sexy title or a ploy to fit within the thematic framework of some magazine? Enough. At this point I have little doubt this murder will go unsolved. Most do. I envy the detective. He sits in his car, warm and cozy. There is a full tank of gas. He could go anywhere he pleases. If he doesn't solve the murder it's really not that big a deal. There will be other murders. Plenty of them. But you and I, we are lost in the woods. Cold, bored, a little irritated with each other. Our journey was not much of a success and I guess it's up to me to take responsibility for that. Fine, I'm to blame. But nobody made you come, did they? It's not like I twisted your arm and made you finish this thing. I think I already established a pretty good case for free will. I'm sorry. We shouldn't fight. Let's preserve our energy. The sun is almost behind the trees and I can hear your belly growling. We need to work together, to cooperate. It's important that we keep our heads clear and concentrate on just how the hell we are going to find our way out of here. |