Cop Town (7 page)

Jimmy Lawson was one of the best marksmen in their division. In five or six seconds, he could easily kill a man.

Maggie turned the corner and almost ran into another cop. He had coffee-colored skin and was wearing a too-tight uniform that made him look like a first-day recruit. His hands went up immediately, another sign that he was new.

She told him, “Take the next left. Headquarters is on the left, halfway up.”

He tipped his hat. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Maggie continued up the sidewalk. The man jogged across the street and preceded her along the other side. She’d forgotten the academy had spit out a class of new graduates. There could not have been a worse day for new recruits to start. On top of dealing with the fallout from Don Wesley’s murder, they’d have to step over a bunch of flailing newbies who, if past was prologue, would wash out before the middle of the week.

Instead of taking a left on Central Avenue, Maggie kept going straight for two more blocks. The Do Right Diner specialized in bland
food and weak coffee, but its location ensured a loyal clientele. The place was empty but for two customers in the back. No one ate here unless they were on the clock, and roll call wouldn’t start for another forty minutes.

“Jimmy all right?” the waitress asked.

“He’s great, thanks.”

Maggie kept walking toward the back. Two women in various states of undress were lounging across a circular banquette. Torn stockings, micro-minis, heavy makeup, and blonde wigs—these were all perks that came with being a PCO, or plainclothes officer. The women were part of the new John task force, which, as far as anyone could tell, was a moneymaking scheme that kept rich white bankers out of jail.

Gail Patterson winked at Maggie around the smoke from her cigarette. Her deep South Georgia twang played perfectly with her undercover getup. “Lookin’ for some action, mama?”

Maggie laughed, hoping her face didn’t look as red as it felt. Her first year on the job had been spent in a cruiser with Gail. The senior officer was gruff and ornery and undoubtedly the best teacher Maggie had ever had.

“I need to bounce.” The other woman downed a glass of orange juice with a loud gulp. Her name was Mary Petersen. Maggie only knew her by reputation. She was a divorcée who had a thing for cops. Of course, that’s what they said about all the women on the force, that they joined because they had a thing for cops, so Maggie didn’t really know.

Mary’s vinyl skirt squeaked as she slid out of the booth. “Jimmy all right?”

“He’s fine.”

“Good. You tell him we’re here for him.” She patted Maggie on the shoulder as she left.

Gail waved at the vacated spot. “Rest your dogs, chickie.”

“Thanks.” Maggie unclipped the transmitter from the back of her belt and sat down. The seat was still warm. She leaned into the soft foam. Suddenly, her eyes wanted to close. Her body started to relax.
Maggie had been tense from the moment she’d entered her mother’s kitchen.

Gail took off her wig and dropped it on the table. “You look as tired as I feel.”

“Guilty,” Maggie admitted. “You look good.”

Gail laughed out some smoke. “Fuckin’ liar.”

Maggie
was
lying. Gail looked like an old whore, which was only partly due to the way she had to dress for work. She was forty-two years old. Her skin was showing wrinkles. Her hair was too black to be natural. There was a heaviness to her cheeks and eyelids. She had a deep cleft between her eyebrows that came from always scrutinizing everything around her.

God forbid if Gail didn’t like what she saw. Everybody was afraid of her nasty temper. She had come up when there were no federal grants paving the way for women on the force. She’d fought tooth and nail to get her PCO rank. She was part of the old guard, Terry’s group, and like everybody else, she was terrified of losing her status.

Gail asked, “How’s Jimmy really doing?”

Maggie told the truth. “I have no idea. He never talks to me.”

“Sounds about right.” She kept her cigarette in one hand as she used her fork to cut into a stack of pancakes. “You ask out that neighbor of yours yet?”

Maggie hadn’t come to the diner to talk about her miserable dating prospects. “What’ve you heard about the shooting?”

“I heard the killer’s not gonna be takin’ no walk like Edward Spivey.”

“Besides that.”

Gail studied her. She chewed, then took a smoke, then chewed some more. Finally, she asked, “Did you know Don?”

“Not really. He was Jimmy’s friend.”

Gail exhaled slowly. “I knew him.”

Maggie waited for more.

“He had a sweet side.” Gail stared off into the distance. “That’s the ones you always have to worry about, the assholes who aren’t assholes all the time.”

“An asshole is always an asshole.”

“That’s your youth talking.” She put down her fork. “This job changes you, baby doll, whether you like it or not. You bust balls long enough, you don’t wanna come home to a man who rolls over when you tell him to.” She winked. “You wanna be the one rolling over.”

The only thing Maggie wanted to come home to these days was a quiet house and clean laundry.

“It’s when they’re gentle that you start to lose yourself.” Gail was suddenly wistful. “They’re all strong and silent, then one day—hell, not even a day, maybe a second, two seconds if you’re lucky—this sweet side comes out and—” She snapped her fingers. “You’re a goner.”

Maggie felt slow on the uptake. “You
knew
Don.”

She shrugged. “He wasn’t so bad when you got him alone.”

Maggie picked at a dried glob of syrup glued to the table. She had always looked up to Gail. She was good at her job. She had a husband who loved her. She was Maggie’s idea of what being a successful policewoman was all about.

“Oh, kid, don’t be disappointed in me.”

“I’m not,” Maggie lied.

“You know I love Trouble.”

Maggie smiled at the old joke. Her husband’s nickname was Trouble.

Gail sighed out a flume of smoke. “I never see him, and when I do, all we do is fight about money and which bill is gonna get paid first and what are we gonna do about my sister’s deadbeat husband and how long can we put off before his mother has to come live with us.” She gave a halfhearted shrug. “Sometimes, it’s a relief to be with somebody who only wants you for one thing.”

“It’s your business. You don’t have to explain it to me.”

“Damn right I don’t.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a flask. All the upper ranks carried booze on them. Maggie watched Gail take a large mouthful. Then another. “Jesus, I hate it when the good ones die. Fought that fuckin’ war and came back here so another American could shoot him in an alley.”

Maggie wondered how many breakfast tables she was going to have
to sit around before she got a straight answer out of somebody. She repeated, “What have you heard about that shooting?”

Gail glanced at the waitress before responding. “That hippie-dippie girlfriend of his. What’s her name, Pocahontas? She made a scene at the hospital.”

Maggie had met the woman once. She had brown skin and jet-black hair that she wore in a long braid down her back. “How’d she find out?”

“Heard it on the scanner. Don had one at his apartment.”

“I didn’t know they were living together.”

She laughed. “Neither did he.”

Maggie laughed, too, but only so the moment wouldn’t turn more awkward. She echoed Terry’s words. “They’ll get him, anyway. Whoever did this. Five dead cops. You can only run for so long.”

“They’ll get somebody.”

Maggie didn’t ask for clarification. There had been questions about exactly how Terry had come up with the tossed gun and bloody shirt that tied Edward Spivey to Duke Abbott’s murder. The shitty part was that the case had been strong without the evidence. Unfortunately, most of the jurors came from Atlanta’s ghettos. They had seen too many cops plant too many pieces of evidence to believe this might be the one time that everything had been done by the book.

“Anyway.” Gail tipped her flask into her coffee cup. “They got all zones called in. Everybody’s on overtime. Nobody goes home until it’s over.”

“Everybody?” Maggie couldn’t begin to imagine how much that would cost. “They didn’t even do that with Duke.”

“Duke was different.”

“They were both cops.”

“Don’t play coy, gal. You know it ain’t the same. Duke was in a bad place at a bad time. This is Terry Lawson’s nephew out on the job, almost taking two in the head.”

“Two?”

“That’s the word at the station.” She pointed to the side of her head. “Don had one here.” She moved her finger to her cheek. “And one here.”

Maggie could tell they were both thinking the same thing. “Those are hard shots to make.”

“Just one of ’em’s hard. Two of ’em—that far from the target, cheap throwaway gun—that’s Paladin territory.”

“It’s different from the Shooter,” Maggie said. “The other four got it once each in the forehead. Point-blank range. Execution-style.”

Gail eyed her carefully. “You’re thinking it’s the Atlanta Shooter?”

“Aren’t you?”

“The Shooter’s still out there. We went balls to the walls the last two times and came up with fucking zero. And the murder this morning, the boys were in an alley when Don was shot, same as the other four victims.” Gail shrugged. “What do I know? Could all just be a crazy coincidence.”

“Sure.” One of the first lessons Gail had taught Maggie was that there was no such thing as a coincidence.

Gail asked, “You hear about the tires?”

“They were slashed.”

Gail tipped her lighter end over end, making a tapping sound against the table. “I know a gal in dispatch says he didn’t call it in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jimmy didn’t call a sixty-three.” Officer down. The call was standard procedure when a cop was injured. Gail said, “Dispatch didn’t even know that Don was hurt until they got a call from one of the docs at Grady saying he was dead.”

Maggie looked down. The transmitter for her radio was by her leg. Everybody on the force carried a radio. PCOs, like Gail, kept them in their purses. Patrol wore them clipped to the back of their belts. They were ungainly, thicker than a paperback, heavy as a can of Crisco, and covered in a plastic shell with knife-sharp edges. You either took it off when you sat down or you sat on the edge of your seat to keep from puncturing your spine.

Maggie said, “They could’ve been in a dead pocket.” There were pockets all over the city where the radios didn’t work. “They were in Five Points off Whitehall. Reception can be patchy over there.”

Gail’s eyebrow went up. She worked in the area. She knew the dead spots.

What she didn’t know was something Maggie had just realized: Jimmy’s transmitter had been missing from his belt this morning. She could see it clearly in her mind’s eye. Keys, nightstick, handcuffs, revolver.

But no transmitter.

“Hey, kid?” Gail tapped the table with her lighter. “You in there?”

Maggie looked at her watch. She thought about her earlier experiment. Five seconds. That was a long time. Even longer if Don was shot twice. Jimmy had maybe seven or eight seconds to respond. Or not, as the case might’ve been.

Gail knocked on the table again. “Am I talking to myself here?”

Maggie looked up. “Where’d you work last night?”

“Not at the Five, if that’s what you’re asking. I was off. This is for today.” Gail indicated her skimpy outfit. “I’m bait for the johns. Zones Two and Three are lending their umbrella cars to round up the pimps. They’re hoping to shut down business.”

“That should bring out the snitches.”

“Yeah, but when?” She took one last hit before stubbing out her cigarette. “All it’s gonna do is waste time. Same with the reward money. We already got a million leads from the last two shootings. Bunch of women turning in their husbands and boyfriends, trying to get that five thousand bucks.”

Maggie had run down enough false leads to know the truth behind her statement. “How is shutting down the streets wasting time? It worked with Edward Spivey.”

“Did it?”

Maggie shrugged. Terry had gotten Spivey’s name off a snitch by using the same tactics. There had to be some worth in that.

“Lemme lay it out for you,” Gail said. “We’re looking for some working gal who saw something in the Five last night, right? We’re hoping maybe she’ll give us a name?”

Maggie nodded.

“So, this is how day one goes down: Our boys are gonna throw every
pimp they can find into the slammer. Lock up the pimps, then the girls spend all day getting high and sleeping.”

Maggie nodded again. That was exactly what had happened the last time.

“Day two rolls around: The pimps bail out, they beat up the girls for being lazy, the girls rush into the street to make up for lost revenue.” She lit a fresh cigarette. “Which brings us to day three: Our boys come in and lock up the whores.” She spun her lighter on the table. “It’s a revolving door, in and out, in and out—day four, day five, however long it takes, they’re gonna keep up this giant pissing contest until finally, somebody turns snitch so that everybody can get back to work.”

“That’s what we want, though. We need somebody to talk.”

“Yeah, but does that seem like the smart way to do it?” She leaned across the table. “What did I get up to, five, six days? Meanwhile, whoever killed Don Wesley’s already melting the murder weapon in a vat of acid and getting the hell outta town. Or worse, hiring some fancy lawyer from up north who thinks he’s gonna take a walk.”

Edward Spivey again. Everything they did today would be cast in the man’s shadow. Maggie asked, “What’s the faster option?”

“We find out the name of the pimp who’s running girls where the murder went down, then we get the pimp to set up a meet with his girls so we can talk to them. You know how it is. Them whores won’t take a shit ’less their pimp tells ’em to. And most times, he charges some freak to watch it.”

Maggie almost laughed. “It’s that easy? Just go to the pimp and he’ll let us talk to his girls?”

“It’s easy if we do it. If the boys do it, then we’re looking at our very own Tet Offensive.” She shrugged, like it was a foregone conclusion. “Chicks are better at de-escalating the situation. You know that.”