“But sometimes we get to beat people up, right, lieutenant? Real police work?”
The skipper held up his palm. “Fuck that lieutenant stuff. Skipper’s okay in front of the troops, Gordie if we’re off campus. We get a lot of white trash guys. Some Chinamen come down from Canada with barrels of precursor chemicals or shipments. A few bikers. The main guy we’re looking for is Captain Cook, if he even exists.”
He held his cup up and the cook came down with a carafe and refilled it. The skipper poured in another inch of sugar. “I got to tell you also, there’s some dead meat in the squad. Feds use us for training their young guys. They’re okay, just stupid. Our guys dumped some slobs in. The Staties managed to dump one of their zombies in. That’s the black broad in the elevator. You heard of her? Brown?”
“Don’t think so. But I’ve been with the dogs in the weeds for a while.”
“Dyke. Psycho. Nobody’ll work with her. Djuna Fucking Brown. She’s sleepwalking but we can’t get rid of her. She’s a triple threat: black, a dyke, and a broad. The commissioners can’t sleep at night, the thought of her filing a suit. The mayor’s fucked now that she’s with us and if she goes off, having a black dyke broad screaming he’s a sexist, racist fuckpig to the media won’t look good. She’s his entire constituency, for Christ sakes. Even got some Chinaman in the eyes, you notice?”
“Yeah.” Tate made a nasty laugh. “Yeah, sure, I heard of her. She’s the one from up in the boondocks, took out her partner, right? Beat his gums in with a baton.”
“Yeah. Her. Fucking horror story, that mess was. He said some redskins off the Reserve grabbed him on the roadside and tuned him up. But word got out and nobody’d partner with her after. They shifted her around but guys took sick days, wives complained she was hitting on their hubbies. Fuck, as if. Anyway, when the Feds set up the Chemical Squad they asked out for bodies and the Staties must’ve thought they were in heaven. Two days later she’s seconded down here.”
“Tough chick, if she took out her partner.”
The skipper looked into the distance over Tate’s shoulder. His face took on a fearful fascination and in its nakedness Ray Tate saw the marks of the mean, feral boozer, of the paranoid, the frightened guy who could tell you how many minutes were left until he could hit happy hour. Two inches of sugar in ten minutes told the tale. The skipper blinked a couple of times. “How the fuck? I mean, you saw her. Weighs about fifty pounds. Beats a big strong cop so bad he cringes whenever a bird flies over his head?” He shook his head. “Fucked if I know. I’d ’a aced the bitch. Put her in the ground.”
Ray Tate warmed up the bullshit. “So, except for us, you and me, skip, how many real cops on board?”
“Not a lot, Ray. Not a lot. Mostly I got slobs waiting to die or get their papers.”
“But we’re doing real work, here, right? Chain up the bodies?”
“Oh, yeah, once in a while. Bodies and pills. Pills make a great press conference. Everybody’s happy. Somehow we manage to meet our projections. We’re doing okay. We haven’t got anything into our main target, this Captain Cook guy yet, if he even exists, but we’re doing okay.” He looked around. “Look, I gotta be straight with you, Ray, they want me to get the stuff on the dyke, put her to sleep once and for all. I know you’ve got troubles. That’s okay. You came by them honest, doing the job. No real cop’s gonna fuck you up for carrying the water. You’re safe here with us. I stand by my guys, especially my city guys.”
Ray Tate nodded and drained his coffee cup. He kept his face neutral. “I ’preciate that, skip. All I want is to get back in my blue suit and stripes and drive around the town, harassing citizens.”
They stood up. The skipper bounced some quarters on the table. “If that’s what you want, Ray, you’re on your way. First step, though, is we spike the dootchbag in the ground. I’m gonna partner you guys. You up for it?”
“Sure. That’ll let me see a close-up, see what I’m after here.”
“Good. I’ll memo her. I gotta keep an eye on her. She’s here then she’s gone. Working a source she says, but I think she’s got some real bad habits. Be nice to find them.”
* * *
Ray Tate was assigned a desk in the empty tactical room. He looked around for Djuna Brown but she was absent. He was staring at the duty roster on the wall, memorizing the names and emergency contact numbers, when the skipper came out of his office and said he had three guys off with on-duty injuries, two were out someplace doing something, and the others were sitting on a chemistry set in the east end. “The dyke said she’s out working, but she’s probably just licking something.” Tate saw he was gnawing his lip again.
“Who’s this Captain Cook guy?”
“Don’t know. That’s his product, the interlocking Cs. We grabbed up a bunch of them on some dealers, but no one’s copped where they came from.” The skipper pointed to the photograph of the pile of pink pills. “That’s the logo. One of the mutts said it stood for Captain Cook.”
“Could be Cook County, over Chicago way.”
“Naw, the Captain Cook thing has come up a couple of times since we first heard about it.”
“We got any intell on the guy?”
The skipper shook his head. “We don’t got dick. People are talking about him, though. The hydroponics guys took down a farm out in the badlands and somebody said it was Captain Cook’s. A crank lab in the hills, same thing: Captain Cook’s. Could just be a nickname, you know? Like he’s a cooker, so they call him Cook.” The skipper stared at the photograph of the pile of pink pills. “Fuck it, Ray. Take the day. Come in in the morning, at eight or nine, unless we give you a call out.”
“No problem, skip. But sign my notebook out, okay? I know you’re not going to put the hat on me, but if they come looking to rub admin shit on my head, I don’t want you caught in the middle, things go for a shit at the Swamp.”
“Good thinking, I appreciate that. We got to look out for each other,” the skipper said. “Leave your coordinates with Gloria at the desk.”
Chapter 3
Agatha Burns thought the people at Chanel might be a problem. “They already got the interlocked C’s,” she told Cornelius Cook, frowning with officious concern. “You use that stamp, Connie, they’re gonna come after you.”
Cornelius Cook used a flat razor to make a little nick in the flesh on her wrist. The skin was thin and pale. Her blond hair was dying by shades. Not a grey, exactly, but a leaching absence of colour. He licked the droplet of blood and put his finger tightly over the hole, feeling her pulse. It was slowing: she was coming down.
Agatha Burns said, “Six, that’s six, Connie. You filled your daily diet.”
Her wrist was a red blizzard of tiny nicks in various stages of repair. He thought her blood was starting to taste a little different, sour, less sweet. “I think if there’s a knock at the door, Ag, it won’t be the guys from trademark infringement. It’ll be a whole bunch of cops with dogs and shotguns, wearing white bunny suits and gas masks.”
“Still …” Agatha Burns took her wrist back. “Enough, Connie.”
He made his face sad. “I’ll worry about the finer things of commerce, you worry about those chicklets, okay? Harv’s coming by later and I want them bagged and counted. Harv’s making me a snowbank.”
Agatha Burns looked at the hundreds of bottles of cold pills scattered around the living room of her apartment. She hated dumping them out and separating and counting the chicklets.