The Captain had been sweating when he’d come out of the rooming house with his suit coat neatly over his arm. There were moons of wet under his armpits and he carried the branding iron on his shoulder like an ax.
“Where’s the guys?”
Harv said they’d taken off, they had other work.
“Cool. I guess they made out okay? They found some money around, right? Good guys, those guys. Didn’t say much but, wow, they could do the job. Place looks like a train wreck.” Cornelius Cook’s face was red and petulant. His translucent hair was damp and his pale flesh was filled with a blush. “Fuck, Harv, I don’t know how you guys do this shit, day after day. Me, I couldn’t. Once a week, maybe, but this? Too much weirdness.” He rubbed his crotch and babbled. “Fuck, I’m hard. I’d really like to go back down there and pack the chick. You sure you don’t know where Ag is? I could sure use her ass right now.”
“She run off on us, Cookie. Joined the circus.”
“I guess. Anyway, you’ll take care of the stuff at her place? Shut it down, clean it out?”
“I’ll head over now.”
The cops in the Intrepid seemed to laugh a lot. When a white girl in tight skirt and leather jacket stumbled from the fire door, the black woman behind the wheel made is if to get out, opening her door before sitting back and easing it shut. The girl in the skirt lit a joint beside the door and leaned back, her face to the sun. The same black player who’d loaded the Camaro hustled slowly up beside her and circled her, a beer bottle in his hand. The two shared a joint and the man ran his hand up the woman’s ass. She shoved him away and scooted back into the building.
Shut down, the black guy looked around to see who’d witnessed his humiliation and he spotted the black Camaro throbbing off the corner of the building.
“Yo, you, Yo fuck.” He grabbed his crotch with his free hand and drained the beer with the other. Winding up, he pitched the bottle at the Camaro. It landed short, but the two cops in the Intrepid looked to see where it went. The beatnik in the passenger seat stared at Harv and he peeled out of there.
Chapter 10
Djuna Brown sat the car off the fire door of Agatha Burns’s building. “She’s pretty fucked up, old Ginny Wallace or whatever her name is, you can’t miss her. Stringy thing, dresses like a slut in a music video. She comes out the door I’ll take her, chat her up a little, and get her in here. We make her sit here in plain sight until she talks and invites us in, she won’t want to get spotted by the guy. No warrant. We’re guests.”
Ray Tate didn’t care. It was cop work. He didn’t care what the actual work was, it was cop work, even if he had to look like some degenerate with his hair tickling his ears. He had a gun on his ankle, a badge in his pocket, and a partner beside him. The sweet voices of the dispatchers took him back to long, slow nights cruising the streets. Once his daughter, in a rare pique of curiosity, had asked him what his favourite recent memory was and he’d said sitting on the hood of his cruiser the previous night, out on the edge of the river, watching two bums hugging after fighting over a bottle of hooch. Two guys who loved each other, once they got the tough stuff out of the way. They’d cried and consoled each other when the bottle shattered, each of them taking fault: “I’m sorry buddy.” “No, buddy, I’m sorry.”
“People, Ax,” he said. “People will surprise you if you let them. You know what I do, right? I control people.”
“Granddad calls them dogs.”
“Mutts. Yeah, I do, too. Sometimes. But that’s just bad habits you let yourself pick up, make you feel like you’re better than them.” He’d had a moment of insight. “The danger is that you don’t be who you are or who you’re meant to be. Instead, you become part of the people around you, separate from everybody else. For better or worse.”
They’d been sitting on the freshly cut steps of his new deck. He let her sip at one of the beers he’d brought over from Canada. He inhaled the hot new wood smell of the deck.
With daring curiosity, she asked, “Do you ever worry about shooting someone?”
* * *
Djuna Brown started to get out of the car. “That might be her.”
Ray Tate saw a scrawny girl slip out the fire door.
“Nope.” Djuna Brown sat back. “Wrong one.”
“She’s got admirers though. Look at this dude. Mr. Smooth.”
They watched a tall, thin man glide in on the girl, weaving with a beer in his hand. The pair shared a joint. The man put a move on the girl and she shut him down, sliding back through the fire door. The man looked around, his mouth moving, and looked out past the Intrepid. He grabbed his crotch, wound up, and heaved the bottle.
Ray Tate followed the arc of the bottle and beyond it saw Phil Harvey jackrabbiting a black Camaro backwards out of the parking lot, sliding into the street in a Chicago bootleg. He went on the air and voiced out for Chem Squad workers. There was no response. He went over again and the radio burst static.
“Yeah, Chem Six.” The voice yawned. “Whaddayawant? Whofuckzat, anyway?”
“Chem Four. Tate and Brown. What’s your Twenty?”
“Me? What do you want to know that for? Tate? Ray Tate?”
“I be. I got a black Camaro spinning out of the Hauser projects. Male, white, long hair, burned-up face. He’s alone in the vehicle. You nearby?”
“Naw, no. Fuck, Ray Tate. This is Wally Brodski. I knew your father-in-law. How’s he doing?”
“Look, Wally, where you at?”
“Uh, south of you.”
“Can you haul over to River Street, count the traffic in case he comes through?”
“Sure. I guess. I dunno, I got to get gas.”
The skipper came over from the base station. “Brodski, this is Chem One. Get the fuck over there.”
“Fuck.” Ray Tate rolled his eyes at Djuna Brown. “Here we go.”
Brodski came back instantly. “Hey, whoa.” There was a pause. “This is Chem Six, I’m booking out, medical. My ulcer’s flaring. I’ll be off at Mercy, getting checked out.”
The skipper called out for him several times but there was no answer. “Ray, you’re on your own.”
“It was Phil Harvey. He’s gone, skip. We’re going to take the apartment.”
“You got no warrant. Don’t go in there.”
“Djuna’s concerned for Ginny Wallace’s well-being.” He put the microphone back behind the false CD player.
The black guy watched them approach for a moment then began sliding away from the fire door. Djuna Brown put her right hand out, patting the air. “Hey, hold up, brother, c’mon. I don’t shoot too good, but my partner, well, he’s a deadeye. Just hold up a sec.”
Ray Tate saw some little cellophane wraps on the ground near the black guy’s feet. “Hey, you drop something? Those yours?”
“Those what? What those?” The man seemed entranced by Djuna Brown’s hair. “Hey, cool ’do, sister. That’s good. I like that.”
Ray Tate stood a few feet away. Djuna Brown moved up close beside the guy. She was tiny next to him. Ray Tate watched his hands.
“What’s that about?” she asked him. “With the flying bottle? You know him, that guy?”
“What guy?”
“Scarface there, in the Camaro.” She waited. “You want a job? Cleaning up? There’s these baggies on the ground, there. We