Hornet's Nest (29 page)

West wanted to kill Judge Bovine. It was outrageous making a chief and deputy chief sit through all this. West’s attention wandered back to Brazil about every other minute. She wondered if he had returned to the newspaper, and her ominous foreshadowing got denser and more chilling. If she didn’t get out of this courtroom soon, she might cause a scene. Her boss, oddly, had returned to the present and seemed fascinated by everything around her, as if Hammer could sit here all day and think those private thoughts that had made her who and what she was.

“Johnny Martino,” A.D.A. Pond struck again.

“I’m not going to hear that case now,” the judge snapped as she carefully got to her feet.

That would be the end of it for at least half an hour, West thought with fury. So she and Hammer would get to sit in the hallway and wait. Oh great. This would have been exactly right had Johnny Martino’s mother permitted it. Like West, Mrs. Martino had been pushed too far. Mrs. Martino knew exactly what was going on. She knew that those two ladies in front were Batman and Robin, and that the judge had to pee. Mrs. Martino rose before Her Honor could climb down from her throne.

“Now hold on one minute,” Mrs. Martino loudly said as she made her way over people and up to the bench, in her nice dress and loafers. “I been sitting here this whole time seeing exactly what’s going on.”

“Ma’am . . . !” the judge protested, by now standing and
in crisis, as a reporter for New Country WTDR radio slipped into the back of the courtroom.

“Don’t you ma’am me!” Mrs. Martino wagged her finger. “The boy who robbed all those innocent folks is my son. So I got a right to say whatever the hell I want. And I also know who these women are.” She gave them a deep nod. “Risking themselves to help all those poor folk when that rotten-ass boy of mine climbed on that bus with the gun he got from some drug dealer out there. Well, I tell you what.”

West, Hammer, A.D.A. Pond, and the courtroom listened to Mrs. Martino with keen interest. The judge deemed it best to reseat herself and hold tight. Mrs. Martino had been waiting all her life for her day in court, and she began to pace like an experienced trial lawyer. Radio reporter Tim Nicks was writing down everything, his blood singing and playing drums in his ears. This was too good to be true.

“Let me tell you something, judge,” Mrs. Martino went on. “I know a game when I see one. And every time you could let those poor busy ladies out of here, you pass on it, say move on, no way, not now, ummm ummm.” She shook her head, striding, swinging arms wide. “Now why you want to be doing that to people who help, to people trying to make a difference out there? It’s a disgrace, that’s
exactly
what it is.”

“Ma’am, please be seated . . .” Her Honor tried again.

Johnny Martino was in Mecklenburg orange and flip-flops when he was brought in from the jail. He raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth one more time in his life. Hammer was sitting up straight, filled with shining admiration for Mrs. Martino, who had no intention of being silenced and in fact now that her son had appeared, was only getting started. West was fascinated by how Judge Cow was going to get herself out of an udder disaster, ha! West stifled laughter, suddenly on the verge of hysteria and another hot flash. A.D.A. Pond smiled, and Reporter Nicks wrote furiously in his notepad.

“You want me to sit down, judge?” Mrs. Martino walked up closer to the bench and put her hands on her sturdy hips.
“Then I tell you what. You do the right thing. You hear Johnny’s case this minute, listen to his guilty lying stealing ass. Then let these fine crusading ladies be on their way out there saving more lives, helping more folks who can’t help themselves, delivering us from evil.”

“Ma’am, I am hearing the case,” Judge Bovine tried to explain. “That’s what we’re doing . . .”

But Mrs. Martino had her mind made up about the way things were. She turned around and gave Johnny the eye.

“Tell me now.” She swept her arms over the courtroom, touching all. “Anybody here who insists on stepping ahead of these Christian ladies?” She looked around, taking in the silence, not finding a raised hand to count. “Speak now,” she called out. “All right then! Do we want to set these ladies free?”

The courtroom cheered and roared, people doing high-fives for Batman and Robin, who could do nothing but watch, enchanted.

“Johnny Martino, how do you plead to ten counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon?” the A.D.A. called out.

Judge Bovine’s teeth were clamped and a sleeve of her robe flapped empty and useless as she held in her objections, her legs crossed.

“Guilty,” Johnny Martino mumbled.

“What says the state,” the judge whispered, in pain.

“Mr. Martino boarded a Greyhound bus on July eleventh at one-eleven
P
.
M
.,” A.D.A. Pond summarized. “He robbed ten passengers at gunpoint before being apprehended and restrained by Chief Judy Hammer and Deputy Chief Virginia West . . .”

“Yo Batman,” someone yelled.

“Robin!”

The cheering began again. Judge Bovine could endure no more. She might have called the sheriff for intervention, but she had more pressing concerns. She had been polite, well mannered, well bred, and had lost control of her courtroom. This was a first. Someone had to pay. It might as well be the son of a bitch who caused all this when he climbed on that damn bus.

“The state agrees to consolidate sentencing under ten counts,” the judge announced rapidly and with no attempt at drama. “Defendant is a prior record level two and will receive in each of the ten counts a sentence of seventy months minimum or ninety-three months maximum for a total of seven hundred months minimum and nine hundred and thirty months maximum. The court is recessed until one.” She gathered her robe in one hand and fled as Mr. Martino checked the judge’s math.

Reporter Nicks fled back to South McDowell Street, where
Today’s Hot New Country and Your All Time Favorites
could be heard on 96.9. It was rare his station got breaking news, scoops, tips, or leaks, as if to imply that a country music audience didn’t vote or care about crime or want crack dealers in jail. The point was, no city official or Deep Throat had ever bothered to think of Nicks when something went down. This was his day, and he was out of his ’67 Chevelle with such urgency that he had to run back twice to get his notepad and lock the doors.

T
he sensational courtroom drama of the caped crusaders sitting on the front row while the joker of the judge dissed them, bristled over the airwaves. It was bounced from radio tower to radio tower throughout the Carolinas. Don Imus picked it up, embellishing as only he could, and Paul Harvey told the rest of the story. Hammer was back and forth to SICU and aware of little else, and West drove Charlotte’s streets, looking for Brazil, who had not been seen since Thursday. It was Saturday morning now.

Packer was out with the dog again when West called. He got on the phone, irritable and perplexed. He had heard nothing from Brazil, either. In Davidson, Mrs. Brazil snored on the living-room couch, sleeping through Billy Graham’s televised service, as usual. The phone rang and rang, an overflowing ashtray and bottle of vodka on the coffee table. West was driving past the Knight-Ridder building, hanging up her portable phone in frustration.

“Goddamn it!” she blurted. “Andy! Don’t do this!”

Mrs. Brazil barely opened her eyes. She managed to sit up an inch, thinking she heard something. A choir in blue with gold stoles praised God. Maybe that was the noise. She
reached for her glass, and it shook violently as she finished what she had started the night before. Mrs. Brazil fell back into old sour couch cushions, the magic potion heating blood, carrying her away to that place nowhere special. She drank again, realizing she was low on fuel with nothing nearby but the Quick Mart. She could get beer or wine, she supposed. Where was Andy? Had he been in and out while she was resting?

Night came, and West stayed home and did not want to be with anyone. Her chest was tight and she could not sit long in any one spot or concentrate. Raines called several times, and when she heard his voice on the machine, she did not pick up. Brazil had vanished, it seemed. West could focus on little else. This was crazy. She knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid. But she was revisited by the horrors she had worked in her career.

She had seen the drug overdoses, the gunshot suicides not discovered until hunters returned to the woods. She conjured up images of cars covered by the clandestine waters of lakes and rivers until spring thaws or hard rains dislodged those who had chosen not to live.

Even Hammer, with all her problems and preoccupations, had contacted West several times, voicing concern about their young at-large volunteer. Hammer’s weekend, so far, had been spent at SICU, and she had sent for her sons as their father settled deeper into the valley of shadows. Seth’s eyes stared dully at his wife when she entered his room. He did not speak.

He did not think complete thoughts, but rather in shards of memories and feelings unexpressed that might have formed a meaningful composite had he been able to articulate them. But he was weak and sedated and intubated. During rare lucid flickers during days he could not measure, when he might have given Hammer enough to interpret his intentions, the pain pinned him to the bed. It always won. He would stare through tears at the only woman he had ever
loved. Seth was so tired. He was so sorry. He’d had time to think about it.

I’m sorry, Judy. I couldn’t help any of it ever since you’ve known me. Read my mind, Judy. I can’t tell you. I’m so worn out. They keep cutting on me and I don’t know what’s left. I punished you because I couldn’t reward you. I have figured that out too late. I wanted you to take care of me. Now look. Whose fault is it, after all? Not yours. I wish you would hold my hand
.

Hammer sat in the same chair and watched her husband of twenty-six years. His hands were tethered to his sides so he would not pull out the tube in his trachea. He was on his side, his color deceivingly good and not due to anything he was doing for himself but to oxygen, and she found this ironically typical. Seth had been drawn to her because of her strength and independence, then had hated her for the way she was. She wanted to take his hand, but he was so fragile and inflexible and trussed up by tubes and straps and dressings.

Hammer leaned close and rested her hand on his forearm as his dull eyes blinked and stared and looked sleepy and watery. She was certain that at a subconscious level he knew she was here. Beyond that, it was improbable much registered. Scalpels and bacteria had ravaged his buttocks and now were fileting and rotting his abdomen and thighs. The stench was awful, but Hammer did not really notice it anymore.

“Seth,” she said in her quiet, commanding voice. “I know you may not hear me, but on the off chance you can, I want to tell you things. Your sons are on their way here. They should arrive sometime late this afternoon and will come straight to the hospital. They are fine. I am hanging in there. All of us are sad and sick with worry about you.”

He blinked, staring. Seth did not move as he breathed oxygen and monitors registered his blood pressure and pulse.

“I have always cared about you,” she went on. “I have always loved you in my own way. But I realized long ago that you were attracted to me so you could change me. And I was drawn to you because I thought you’d stay the same.
Rather silly, now that I look at it.” She paused, a flutter around her heart as his eyes stared back at her. “There are things I could have done better and differently. I must forgive you, and I must forgive myself. You must forgive me and you must forgive yourself.”

He didn’t disagree with this and wished he could somehow indicate what he thought and felt. His body was like something unplugged, broken, out of batteries. He flipped switches in his brain and nothing happened. All this because he drank too much in bed while playing with a gun to punish her.

“We go on from here,” Chief Judy Hammer said, blinking back tears. “Okay, Seth? We put this behind us and learn from it. We move ahead.” It was hard to talk. “Why we got married isn’t so important anymore. We are friends, companions. We don’t exist to procreate or perpetuate endless sexual fantasies for each other. We’re here to help each other grow old and not feel alone. Friends.” Her hand gripped his arm.

Tears spilled from Seth’s eyes. It was the only sign he gave, and his wife dissolved. Hammer cried for half an hour as his vital signs weakened. Group A strep oozed toxins around his soul and did not give a damn about all those antibiotics and immunoglobulin and vitamins being pumped into its plump host. To his disease, he was a rump roast. He was carrion on life’s highway.

Randy and Jude entered their father’s SICU room at quarter of six and did not see him conscious. It was not likely Seth knew they were by his bed, but knowing they were coming had been enough.

West cruised past the Cadillac Grill, Jazzbone’s, and finally headed to Davidson, deciding that Brazil might be hiding out in his own house and not answering the phone. She pulled into the eroded driveway and was crushed that only the ugly Cadillac was home. West got out of her police car. Weeds grew between cracks in the brick walk she followed to the front door. She rang the bell several times and knocked.
Finally, she rapped hard and in frustration with her baton.

“Police!” she said loudly. “Open up!”

This went on for a while until the door opened and Mrs. Brazil blearily peered out. She steadied herself by holding on to the door frame.

“Where’s Andy?” West asked.

“Haven’t seen him.” Mrs. Brazil pressed her forehead with a hand, squinting, as if the world was bad for her health. “At work, I guess,” she muttered.

“No, he’s not and hasn’t been since Thursday,” West said. “You’re sure he hasn’t called or anything?”

“I’ve been sleeping.”

“What about the answering machine? Have you checked?” West asked.

“He keeps his room locked.” Mrs. Brazil wanted to return to her couch. “Can’t get in there.”

West, who did not have her tool belt with her, could still get into most things. She took the knob off his door and was inside Brazil’s room within minutes. Mrs. Brazil returned to the living room and settled her swollen, poisoned self on the couch. She did not want to go inside her son’s room. He didn’t want her there anyway, which was why she had been locked out for years, ever since he had accused her of taking money from the wallet he tucked under his socks. He had accused her of rummaging through his school papers. He had blamed her for knocking over his eighteen-and-under singles state championship tennis trophy, badly denting it and breaking off the little man.

The red light was flashing on the answering machine beside Brazil’s neatly made twin bed with its simple green spread. West hit the play button, looking around at shelves of brass and silver trophies, at scholastic and creative awards that Brazil had never bothered to frame but had thumbtacked to walls. A pair of leather Nike tennis shoes, worn out from toe-dragging, was abandoned under a chair, one upright, one on its side, and the sight of them pained West. For a moment, she felt distressed and upset. She imagined the way he looked at her with blue eyes that went on forever. She remembered his voice on the radio and the quirky way he tested coffee
with his tongue, which she had repeatedly told him wasn’t a smart way to determine whether something was too hot. The first three calls on his machine were hang-ups.

“Yo,” began the fourth one. “It’s Axel. Got tickets for Bruce Hornsby . . .”

West hit a button.

“Andy? It’s Packer. Call me.”

She hit the button again and heard her own voice looking for him. She skipped ahead, landing on two more hang-ups. West opened the closet door and her fear intensified when she found nothing inside. She, the cop, went into drawers and found them empty, as well. He had left his books and computer behind, and this only deepened her confusion and concern. These were what he loved the most. He would not abandon them unless he had embarked upon a self-destructive exodus, a fatalistic flight. West looked under the bed and lifted the mattress, exploring every inch of Brazil’s private space. She did not find the pistol he had borrowed from her.

West drove around the city much of the night, mopping her face, popping Motrin, and turning the air conditioner on and off as she vacillated between hot and cold. On South College, she slowly passed street people staring hard at each, as if she expected Brazil to have suddenly turned into one of them. She recognized Poison, the young hooker from Mungo’s videotape, undulating along the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette and enjoying being watched. Poison followed the dark blue cop car with haunted, glassy eyes, and West looked back. West thought of Brazil, of his sad curiosity about bad people and what had happened to make them that way.

They make choices.
West said that all the time, and it was true.

But she envied Brazil’s freshness, his innocent clarity of vision. In truth, he saw life with a wisdom equal to her own, but his was born of vulnerability and not of the experience that sometimes crowded West’s compassion and cloaked her feelings in many hard layers. Her condition had been coming on for a long time and most likely was irreversible. West accepted that when one is exposed to the worst elements of
life, there comes a point of no return. She had been beaten and shot, and she had killed. She had crossed a line. She was a missionary, and the tender, warm contours of life were for others.

On Tryon Street, she was stopped at a traffic light near Jake’s, another favorite spot for breakfast. Thelma could do anything with fried steak and biscuits, and the coffee was good. West stared ahead, several blocks away, just past First Union Bank with its giant painted hornet bursting out of one side of the building. She recognized the dark car’s boxy shape and conical taillights glowing red. She wasn’t close enough to see the tag yet and was going to do something about that.

The light turned green and West gunned the Ford’s powerful engine until she was on the old BMW’s bumper. Her heart thrilled as she recognized the plate number. She honked her horn and motioned, and Brazil kept going. West followed, honking again and longer, but clearly he had no intention of acknowledging her as she followed his shiny chrome bumper through downtown. Brazil knew she was there and didn’t give a damn as he threw back another gulp from the tallboy Budweiser he was holding between his legs. He broke the law right in front of Deputy Chief West and knew she saw it, and he didn’t give a shit.

“Goddamn son of a bitch,” West exclaimed as she flipped on flashing lights.

Brazil sped up. West couldn’t believe what was happening. How could he do anything this stupid?

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” She hit the siren.

Brazil had been in pursuits, but he had never been the lead car. Usually, he was back there sitting in the front seat with West. He drank another swallow of the beer he had bought at the 76 truck stop just off the Sunset East exit. He needed another one, and decided he might as well hit I-77 off Trade Street and cruise on back for a refill. He tossed his empty in the backseat, where several others clinked and rolled on the floor. His broken speedometer faithfully maintained its belief that the BMW was going thirty-two miles per hour.

In fact, he was going sixty-three when he turned onto the interstate. West doggedly pursued as her alarm and anger grew. Should she call for other cars, Brazil was ruined, his volunteer days ended, his real troubles only begun. Nor was there a guarantee that more cops would effect a stop. Brazil might decompensate further. He might feel desperate, and West knew how that might end. She had seen those final chapters before, all over the road, crumpled metal sharp like razors, glass, oil, blood, and black body bags on their way to the morgue.