Cop Town (17 page)

Gail slowly released the pressure. She was patient. She waited for the screaming to die down. She stroked the whore’s back again. Her voice was still gentle when she asked, “You listenin’ to me?” Her hand went to the break, fingers a few inches from skin. “You listenin’?”

“Yes!” Violet yelled. “Yes!”

Gail’s hand rested on the girl’s hip. “There’s some whores working the Five in the early hours, right? Some older girls on Whitehall?”

She hesitated, but only for a second. “Yeah.”

“Who’s runnin’ them?”

The whore said nothing.

Gail asked, “Do you think I wanna hurt you?”

“He’ll kill me. He’ll fuckin’ kill me.”

“Sweetheart, you oughta be more worried about me right now than anybody else.” Gail’s hand traced down the girl’s leg again, hovering over the break. Violet’s skin mirrored her name. Bruises covered her body. From the johns. From the needles. From cutting herself out of boredom or spite.

Gail’s hand went flat to the leg. “One more time?”

“She,” the girl whispered.

“What’s that?”

“Sir She.”

Kate’s head snapped around.

Gail asked, “Where’s this Sir She operating out of?”

“Huff Road,” the whore said. “West Side.”

“Good girl.” Gail stood up. She wiped her hands on the front of her shirt. “You want me to call anybody for you?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.” Gail started back up the alley. She was still barefooted. Her soles left bloody prints until the red clay stanched the cuts. Her hand reached into her purse. She shook out a cigarette.

Maggie’s brain struggled with the memory of how to make her legs move. She walked slowly so she wouldn’t catch up with Gail. Kate followed, the loose leg of her pants making a sweeping sound with every step.

“What was that?” Kate whispered, the words slurring together worse than Gail’s. “Whawashat?”

“Just let it go.”

“She beat that girl. She—”

“Let it go.” Maggie adjusted the mic on her shoulder, shifted her utility belt back in place. She tried not to think about the spray of blood when Gail’s transmitter hit the girl’s head. The howl of pain. The black
and red blister on the whore’s arm where a needle had broken off and caused an infection.

Kate reached the cruiser first. Instead of getting in, she threw her hat onto the hood. She pressed her palms to the metal. She leaned over. Her head dropped.

Maggie said, “If you’re going to throw up, go inside the restaurant.”

“I’m not going to throw up,” Kate answered, but then she heaved. There wasn’t much. A single stream of bile came out of her mouth. Maggie watched it travel down the front of the car, past the grill, then drip onto the asphalt.

“Go inside the restaurant.”

“I’m not—” Kate heaved again. She must have had a light breakfast. Her stomach worked like a cat bringing up a hairball.

Maggie walked toward Kate’s missing shoe, which was about ten feet from the cruiser. She bent down to retrieve it. She glanced inside the restaurant. Gail was talking on the pay phone. The dining room was empty.

Kate gave one last heave. She looked up at the sky. She took a deep breath. Finally, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What time is it?”

Maggie resisted the lecture; officers were always supposed to wear a watch. “It’s a little after two.”

Kate laughed so loudly that the sound hurt Maggie’s eardrums.

“I’ve only been doing this for six hours?” Kate kept laughing. “How can it only be six hours?”

“Cheer up.” Maggie placed Kate’s shoe by her hat. “Only two and a half more to go.”

Kate’s hand went to her stomach, but she didn’t heave again. She turned and sat on the hood of the car. There was some vomit in her hair. A red line slashed straight across her forehead where the rim of her hat was supposed to be. A matching line cut across the bridge of her nose, probably from hitting the wall.

Maggie said, “You know you’re going to have to clean that off my car, right?”

“It would be rude not to.”

“That was speed.” Maggie explained, “The whore. She must’ve been shooting up when Gail knocked on the door. It winds them up and that’s how they spin down.”

“Lovely.” Kate stifled a yawn. “I could just go to sleep. I’m serious. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

“Adrenaline crash.” Maggie felt like she was teaching a class. “It’s great when you first feel it. You breathe faster. Run harder. And then your head starts to swim. You get tunnel vision. You forget to look around, see what’s coming up.”

“My hat was—” Kate didn’t bother to finish the sentence. She reached for her shoe. She didn’t have to untie the laces to slip it on.

Maggie checked the restaurant. Gail was off the phone now. She was sitting at the bar. “Let the equipment hit you.”

“What?”

“Your belt.” That was why Kate had kept her arms straight. “You can’t stop your equipment from hitting you. Just let it happen.”

Kate put her head in her hands. “Of course. That makes perfect sense.”

“It’s not always this bad.”

“Oh, good. I was worried.”

“Gail was close to Don.” Maggie withheld the details. You didn’t say anything to one cop that you didn’t want every single other cop on earth to know. “She respected him. We all did.”

Kate kept her head in her hands. “How can I be so hot and so cold at the same time?”

“Shock.”

“Shock. Yes. Of course.” She finally looked up. Her color was coming back. Her lips were a lighter shade of blue.

Maggie asked, “You want a drink?”

“I want about twenty.”

Maggie was debating whether to go inside the restaurant or drive to a liquor store when she heard the wail of an oncoming siren. She saw the
bright white blur of an Atlanta police cruiser darting down the road. Then another one. Then another.

“Where are they off to?” Maggie mumbled.

There was a long, low tone that sounded like a telephone button being pressed.

Kate said, “That’s the emergency signal.”

Maggie was already turning the dial on her transmitter to the emergency channel. There was a burst of static. Then a man screamed for help.

Maggie’s heart stopped. There was something familiar about the man’s voice.

Kate whispered, “Who was that?”

Maggie turned up the volume. Static chopped the man’s voice into unintelligible pieces. The transmitter wasn’t receiving. She couldn’t tune in the channel.

“Ten—” Static. “Twelfth and—” More static, then a garbled “Lawson. Repeat—” Static.

Kate said, “I think he said Lawson.”

Maggie jogged toward the road. She furiously scanned the dial on her transmitter, trying to get better reception. Another cruiser whirred past. She tried to flag it down as she ran into the street.

“Shit-shit-shit,” she cursed, holding up the transmitter as high as she could. She spun around, searching for a sweet spot.

And then she found it.

“Dispatch?” Terry’s voice was filled with panic. “Dispatch? All cars. Repeat, all cars. Jimmy’s been shot.”

13

Maggie ran through the Grady Hospital emergency room. She had to shove people out of the way. There were at least two hundred cops here, and none of them seemed to be doing anything but keeping Maggie from her brother. She despised herself for wanting her uncle Terry. He’d sweep all of these assholes out of her way with a wave of his hand.

“Maggie?” Rick Anderson caught her arm. “He’s all right.”

“Where—”

“This way.” Rick took hold of her hand as he led her through the crowd. His palm was clammy. It was the same as this morning: people parted for him. They nodded their heads. They stared at Maggie. Rick kept glancing back over his shoulder to make sure she was okay. Maggie knew he was being nice, but his calm deliberativeness set her on edge.

Finally, they reached the back corridor. Rick pushed open the door. The wing had been closed down after a chemical spill. Most of the lights were off. Yellow tape still crisscrossed the locked door where the accident had happened.

Rick led her down the hallway. “They put him back here because it’s quieter.”

“What happened?”

“He took a bullet in his arm. Went straight through. No big deal. Doctor says he’s gonna be fine.”

Maggie slipped her hand from Rick’s. She wrapped her arms around her waist, pretending to be cold. “Where did it happen?”

“Ashby Street over in CT.”

She knew the area. That was two blocks from the address Violet had given them for Sir She. “He was alone? You can’t go into that area alone.”

“Jimmy’s a big boy,” Rick said. “He was talking to a snitch. Some old woman went nuts. Thought Jimmy was gonna arrest her son. So she shot him.”

They stopped in front of the nurses’ station. Two women in white caps were sitting behind the counter. One of them saw the uniforms and said, “He’s in the last room on the right.”

Maggie told Rick, “Thanks. I’ve got it from here.”

He seemed reluctant to let her go, but mercifully, Rick wasn’t rude enough to stay where he wasn’t wanted. He crossed behind the nurses’ station, going through the doorway that led back into the main emergency department.

Maggie slowly walked down the dark corridor. Suddenly, she wasn’t in such a hurry to reach her brother. She stared at the light pouring from his room. Chemical smells swirled through the air. She ignored the biohazard signs and dirty buckets. The soles of her shoes snicked against the sticky floor.

Out of nowhere, Maggie remembered the first time she’d visited her father at the mental hospital. She was ten or eleven. She was terrified. Her legs were shaking. Her heart beat like her blood was running dry. Hank was in the lockdown ward. People were yelling at the top of their lungs. Maggie had felt like she was going through a fun house at the carnival. Each room she passed had an open door and beyond that doorway was some new horror: a crying man restrained in his bed, another man sitting in a feces-covered wheelchair, yet another man standing in
the middle of the room, his gown wide open, a wet, degenerate look on his excited face.

All the while, she was terrified that there would be some sort of mix-up and they’d lock Maggie on the wrong side of the cage door.

She put her hand to the wall. She steadied herself. Now wasn’t the time to be emotional. She wasn’t at the mental hospital. She wasn’t going to be locked up. Jimmy was fine. He’d been shot, but by a frightened old woman, not a cold-blooded assassin.

Maggie tried to make her expression passive as she rounded the door into Jimmy’s room. She found him sitting up in bed. His shirt was off, and maybe the rest of his clothes because he tugged up the sheet when he saw his sister standing there.

“Jimmy,” was all she could manage. A large bandage was wrapped around his upper left arm. Rick had said the bullet went straight through. That meant no damage to the bone. No surgery needed. Yet, still, Maggie’s heart felt like somebody was straining it through a sieve.

“Jesus.” Jimmy winced as he sat up. His good hand kept the sheet firmly around his waist. “You call Mom?”

Maggie shook her head. She’d forgotten about everybody until this moment.

He said, “I’ll get Uncle Terry to call her.”

“What happened?” Maggie wanted confirmation. There had been too many lies lately. “Tell me the truth.”

He stared at her, his face unreadable. Jimmy’s waters didn’t run deep. He was strong, and on a good day he was silent, but Maggie had always been able to tell what was on his mind. Jimmy made sure of it—whether he was angry or annoyed or all right, which was basically the extent of his emotions—everybody had to know.

But now, she had no idea how her brother felt.

She repeated, “What happened?”

Jimmy finally relented. “I got a snitch runs guns over on Ashby. I figured whoever killed Don wouldn’t throw away the gun. Money is money, right? If we’re lucky, we find the gun, maybe it’s got prints, and
if it’s got prints—” He shrugged. His face contorted in pain as the muscles in his arm twitched. “Christ, that hurts.”

“What happened?”

“You gonna keep asking me the same question over and over again?”

She figured the answer was obvious.

He absently scratched his jaw. “I might’ve gotten a little aggressive with the snitch. His mother, she’s old, blind as a bat. I knew she was in the next room. I didn’t know she had a howitzer stuck down her girdle.”

“She pulled a .375 and all it did was nick you?”

“A .44,” he told her. “And who told you I was nicked? Near about ripped my arm off.”

Maggie didn’t know why she was surprised Rick had lied to her. “You should’ve taken backup.”

Jimmy scratched the top of his head. Then the side of his face. Pain medications always made him itch. Whatever drug they had given him was clearly taking effect. He had a sleepy look on his face. His eyelids were half-closed.

She said, “I’ll go call Mom. Terry won’t tell her the truth about anything.”

“Don’t go.”

Maggie waited. And waited. “What is it, Jim? I need to call Mom.”

Jimmy took his time collecting his thoughts. He absently scratched his neck, then his head again. She was about to leave, but he stopped her with a question. “Remember when you were little and Mom used to make me take you to the pool?”

Maggie felt sucker-punched by the memory. She’d loved going to the pool with Jimmy. Lilly wasn’t born yet. Maggie was still his baby sister. She had glowed under his watchful eye.

He said, “You used to like bugs. Do you remember that?”

She nodded. Jimmy liked them, so Maggie did, too.

“Remember how I used to tell you I’d caught a bug, only when you came over to see it, I’d squirt water in your face?”

She laughed before he could. “Yeah, I was pretty retarded. Not much has changed, right?”

Jimmy wasn’t laughing. “I shouldn’t’ve scared you like that. I’m sorry.”

Maggie stared at him. She wondered if they had given him too many pills. This wasn’t her brother. “You feeling all right, Jimmy?”

“I should’ve protected you, Maggie.”

She shrugged it off. “It was just water.”

“Not then.”

She didn’t have to ask him when. Maggie looked down at the sheets on the bed. They were wrinkled. She smoothed them out, tucking in the side.