Hornet's Nest (16 page)

Antony B. Burgess had been a professional bus driver for twenty-two years and had seen it all. He had been mugged, robbed, hijacked, and stabbed. He’d been shot at the Twilight Motel in Shreveport when he picked up a she who was a him (sh’im) by mistake. He told all this to Brazil and more, because the blond dude was nice as hell, and discerning enough to recognize a raconteur when he met one.

“Had no idea they was cops,” Burgess said again, scratching under his cap. “That one never would have entered my mind. They come on board all in black, and red and blue, like Batman and Robin. And next thing Batman’s kicked the fool out of the little bastard and’s about to blow his fucking brains all over my bus while Robin cuffs ’im. Ho-ly smoke.” He shook his head, as if he’d seen a vision. “And that’s the po-lice chief. That’s what I heard. Can you believe it?”

By five
P
.
M
., the story was in the bag and destined for 1-A
above the fold. Brazil had already seen the headline in the composing room:

POLICE CHIEF AND DEPUTY FOIL ABDUCTION OF BUS
BATMAN AND ROBIN IN HEELS?

West got a preview a little later when Brazil, in uniform, hopped in her car for another night out on the town. He was full of himself and thought this story was his best yet. He was thrilled over what Hammer and West had pulled off, almost wanted their autographs, or a poster of the two of them to hang in his room.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” West exclaimed again as they sped along South Boulevard not going anywhere in particular. “You didn’t have to put in the Batman shit.”

“Yes I did,” Brazil insisted, his mood sinking like the sun as his world got dark and stormy. “It was a quote. It’s not like I made it up.”

“Fuck.” West would be the laughingstock of the entire department tomorrow. “Goddamn son-of-a-bitch.” She lit a cigarette, imagining Goode laughing.

“This is an ego thing.” Brazil didn’t like his work criticized and could take but just so much of it. “You’re just pissed because you don’t like being a sidekick, Robin instead of Batman, because it reminds you of your real situation. You aren’t Batman. She is.”

West gave him a look that was heat-seeking, like a missile. He would not survive this night and probably should have remained silent.

“I’m just being honest,” he added. “That’s all.”

“Oh yeah?” She launched another look. “Well, let me tell you
honest
for a minute. I don’t give a flying fuck what someone quotes to you, okay? You know what quotes like that are called in the real world? They’re called bullshit. They’re called perjury, hearsay, impeaching a witness, slander, dis-fucking-respect.”

“How do you spell that last one? I guess it’s hyphenated?” Brazil was trying not to laugh and pretending
to take notes as West gestured with her cigarette and got increasingly ridiculous.

“Point is, just because someone says something, Sherlock, doesn’t mean it’s gospel, worth repeating, worth printing. Got it?”

He nodded with mock seriousness.

“And I don’t wear high heels and don’t want anybody thinking I do,” she added.

“How come?” he asked.

“How come what?”

“You don’t want people thinking it,” he said.

“I don’t want people thinking about me, period.”

“How come you don’t ever wear high heels. Or skirts?” He wasn’t going to let her duck him.

“Not any of your goddamn business.” She tossed the cigarette out her window.

The police radio took charge, broadcasting an address on Wilkinson Boulevard that anyone who knew anything would recognize as the Paper Doll Lounge. The striptease joint had been in Charlotte longer than sex, staffed by women with nothing on but a g-string, and tormenting men with jeans full of dollar bills. This night, derelicts were swigging from quart bottles of beer brilliantly disguised by brown paper bags. Not far away, a damaged young man joyfully rooted around inside a Dumpster.

“She wasn’t much older than me,” Brazil was telling West about the young hooker he’d noticed the other night. “Most of her front teeth gone, long dirty hair, tattoos. But I bet she was pretty once. I wish I could talk to her and find out what happened to turn her into something like that.”

“People repeat their histories, find other people to abuse them,” West said, strangely impatient with his interest in a hooker who might have been pretty once.

They got out of the car. West approached a drunk in a Chick-Fil-A cap. He was swaying, clutching his bottle of Colt 45.

“We’re having a lot of fun tonight,” West said to him.

The man was staggering, but jolly. “Cap’n,” he slurred. “You’re lookin’ mighty fine. Who dat wid ya?”

“You can pour it out or go to jail,” West said.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s an easy ’cision! No questi’n ’bout it!”

He emptied beer on the parking lot, almost falling headlong into it and splashing Brazil’s uniform trousers and impeccable boots. Brazil was a good sport. He jumped back a little late, wondering where the nearest men’s room was and certain West would take him there straight away. She scattered the drunks, emptying their lives on pavement while they watched and counted their change in their minds, calculating how quickly they could get back to Ray’s Cash & Carry, the Texaco Food Mart, or Snookies’.

Brazil followed West back to their car. They climbed in and fastened their seatbelts. Brazil was embarrassed by the sour smell seeping up from his lower legs. This part of the job he could do without. Drunks disturbed him in a deep way, and he felt anger as he watched the men through his window. They were staggering off and would be drinking something else before West and Brazil were even a mile down the road. That was the way people like that were, addicted, wasted, no good on this earth and hurting everyone.

“How can anybody sink that low?” he muttered, staring out and ready to leave.

“Any of us could,” West said. “That’s what’s scary. One beer at a time. Any one of us.”

There had been times in her life when she had found herself on that same road, night after night drinking herself to sleep, not remembering the last thing she thought or read, and sometimes waking up with lights still on. The impaired young man was joyfully ambling over to their car, and West wondered what trick in reality placed some people where she was sitting and consigned others to parking lots and Dumpsters. It wasn’t always a choice. It hadn’t been for this one, who was known by the police and was a permanent resident of the street.

“His mother tried to abort him and didn’t quite pull it off,” West quietly told Brazil. “Or that’s the story.” She hummed open Brazil’s window. “He’s been out here forever.” She
leaned across the front seat, and called out, “How goes it?”

He couldn’t speak any language that Brazil might recognize. He was gesturing wildly, making strange sounds that shot fear through Brazil. Brazil wished West would drive off quickly and get them out of here before this creature breathed or drooled on him. God, the guy smelled like dirty beer bottles and garbage, and Brazil pulled back from the window, leaning against West’s shoulder.

“You stink,” West said to him under her breath as she smiled at their visitor.

“It’s not me,” Brazil said.

“Yes it is.” To their visitor, she added, “What you doing out here?”

He gestured, getting more excited as he told the nice police lady everything he’d been up to, while she smiled and clearly enjoyed hearing about it. Her partner needed to lighten up a little.

Boy
, as he had always been called, knew when cops were brand-new. Boy could tell by how tense they got, by the look on their faces, and this always invited Boy to have a little fun with them. He stared at Brazil and gave him his gummy, gaping grin, as if he were some exotic creature new to the planet. When Boy poked the rookie, the rookie flinched. This excited Boy more than ever, and he got louder, dancing around, poking the rookie again. West laughed, winking at her ride-along.

“Uh oh,” she said. “I think he’s sweet on you.”

She finally rolled up the window, and by now Brazil felt completely soiled. He had beer on his uniform and had been mauled by someone with no teeth who spent his life inside Dumpsters. Brazil thought he might throw up. He was indignant and hurt as West laughed and drove off, lighting a cigarette. Not only had she not prevented his degradation, she had made it happen and was savoring it. He fumed in silence as she headed out on West Boulevard, toward the airport.

She cut over on the Billy Graham Parkway, wondering what it would be like to have a major highway named after
her. She wasn’t sure she would appreciate cars and trucks rolling over her day and night, leaving ratty recaps and skid marks, while drivers made obscene comments to other drivers and gave them the finger and pulled out guns. There was nothing Christian about a road, the more West thought about it, unless it was used in Biblical analogies, such as the road to hell and what it was paved with. The more she contemplated all this as she drove, the sorrier she felt for the Reverend Billy Graham, who had been born in Charlotte, in a house that against his will had been appropriated by a nearby religious theme park.

Brazil had no idea where they were going, except it was not where the action was, and it was apparent West had no intention of taking him someplace where he could clean up. He was riveted to the scanner, and things were popping in Charlie Two on Central Avenue. So why were they heading in the opposite direction on this parkway? He remembered his mother watching Billy Graham on TV all the time, no matter what else was on or what Brazil might want to see. He wondered how hard it might be to get a quote from the famous evangelist, maybe inquire about the Reverend Graham’s views on crime, one of these days.

“Where are we going?” Brazil asked as they turned off on Boyer toward Wilkinson Boulevard again.

This was definitely the sinful strip, but West did not stay on it long. She sped past Greenbriar Industrial Park and turned left on Alleghany Street, heading into Westerly Hills, a nothing neighborhood near Harding High School. Brazil’s mood got worse. He suspected West was up to her old tricks, and it not only reminded him that she really did not want to be out here with him but hinted rather strongly that he had no business on police calls and would not be on many, if she had her way about it.

“Any unit in the area of the twenty-five hundred block of Westerly Hills Drive.” The scanner shattered West’s peace of mind. “Suspicious subjects in the church parking lot.”

“Shit,” West said, speeding up.

What lousy luck. They were in Westerly Hills on Westerly
Hills Drive, The Jesus Christ Is Lord Glorious United Church of the Living God right in front of them. The small white frame church was Pentecostal, and deserted this night, not one car in the parking lot when West turned in. But there definitely were subjects loitering, half a dozen young males with their mother, who was full of herself and feisty in a wheelchair. All stared hatefully at the cop car. Not sure what to make of the situation, West ordered Brazil to stay put, as both their doors opened and both climbed out.

“We got a call of . . .” West started to say to Mama.

“Just passing through,” her oldest son, Rudof, volunteered.

Mama gave Rudof a killing look, holding his eyes. “You don’t got to answer to no one!” she snapped at him. “You hear me? Not to no one!”

Rudof looked down, his pants about to fall off and red boxer shorts showing. He was tired of being dissed by his mama and hassled by the police. What had he done? Nothing. Just walking home from the E-Z mart because she needed cigarettes, all of them going with her, taking a nice walk and cutting through the church parking lot. What was so wrong with that?

“We didn’t do nothing,” Rudof folded his arms and said to the cops.

Brazil knew a fight was coming, just like he could smell a storm before the front moved in. His body tensed. He scanned the small, violent crowd standing restlessly in the dark. Mama wheeled closer to West. Mama had something on her mind she’d been wanting to deliver for a long time, and now was as good an opportunity as any. All her children would hear, and these two police didn’t look like they would hurt anybody unnecessarily.

“We just got here,” Mama said to West. “We were just coming home, walking like anybody else. I’m tired of you people prosecuting us.”

“Nobody is . . .” West tried again.

“Oh yes. Oh yes, uh huh, you are.” Mama got louder and angrier. “This is a free country! We was white, you think anybody would’ve called the police?”

“You have a good point,” West reasonably replied.

Mama was amazed. Her children were baffled. For a white lady cop to admit such a thing was unheard of and miraculous.

“So you’re agreeing that you were called because we’re black.” Mama wanted to make sure.

“That would be my guess, and it absolutely isn’t fair. But I didn’t know you were black when the call came over the radio,” West went on in the same calm but sure tone. “We didn’t respond because we thought you were black, white, Asian, whatever. We responded because it’s our job, and we wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

Mama tried to be hateful as she wheeled on her way, her brood in her wake. But she was wavering. She felt like she might cry and didn’t know why. The police got back in their shiny new car and drove away.