Hornet's Nest (33 page)

Goode was filled with confidence and self-importance, and she didn’t see any point in putting on her uniform or a suit that might have suggested respect and consideration for her troubled leader. Instead, Goode drove back downtown, dressed in the short khaki skirt and tee shirt she had been in all day, waiting for Webb, who was busy working in the yard, his wife keeping a close eye on him these days. Goode parked her Miata in her assigned spot and was more arrogant than usual to all she met as she took the elevator to the third floor, where her fine office was just around the corner from the suite that soon would be hers.

She shut her door and began her usual routine of dialing Webb’s number and hanging up if someone other than the handsome news reporter answered. Goode enjoyed a feature on her police line that scrambled signals and rendered Caller I.D. useless. She was hanging up on Webb’s wife when Goode’s door suddenly flew open. Chief Hammer walked in, about to live up to her name. Goode’s first reaction was how sharp her boss looked in gray. Goode’s second and final reaction was that Hammer did not seem to be in mourning as she strode to the desk and snatched up Goode’s brass nameplate.

“You’re fired,” Hammer said in a voice not to be
questioned. “I want your badge and gun. Your desk gets cleared out now. Let me help you start.”

Hammer threw the nameplate into the trash. She turned without another glance and walked out. Hammer was fury traveling down the corridors of her department, yet she was forthcoming in nods and salutations to troops she passed. Word was already out on the radio about her husband, and members of the Charlotte Police Department were overwhelmed with sorrow and newfound respect for their leader. Throughout it all, she was here, damn it, and she wasn’t going to let them down. When a sergeant saw Goode sneaking out to her car with her office crammed in bags and boxes, there was rejoicing throughout Adam, Baker, Charlie, and David response areas, and investigations and support. Cops high-fived and low-tenned in the parking deck and the roll call room. The duty captain lit a rum crook cigar in his nonsmoking office.

Brazil got the good word by pager as he was out in the parking lot changing the oil in his car. He went inside and dialed West’s home number.

“Bond won’t be bothering you anymore.” West tried to be cool, but she was intensely proud of herself. “Goode won’t be getting your stories from the little shit and leaking them to Webb.”

Brazil was shocked and ecstatic. “No way!”

“Oh yeah. It’s done. Hammer’s fired Goode and Bond is in a state of paralysis.”

“Bond was making those calls?” To Brazil, this seemed incongruous.

“Yup.”

He was oddly disappointed that it wasn’t someone more dynamic and attractive thinking such thoughts about him.

West sensed this and told him, “You aren’t looking at this the right way.”

“Looking at what?” He played dumb.

“Andy, I see this kind of thing all the time, doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or woman doing it, except that women
aren’t likely to expose themselves to you, so at least you can be grateful for that,” she explained. “This sort of thing is not about sex or being attracted to someone in the normal sense of things. It’s all about control and power, about degrading. A form of violence, really.”

“I know that,” he said.

He still wished his verbal assailant had been someone halfway pretty, and he couldn’t help but wonder what it was about him that prompted people like the creep at the car wash, and now Brenda Bond, to select him. Why? Did he send out signals that made them think they could take advantage of him? He bet that no one dared do such a thing to West or Hammer.

“Gotta go,” West said, leaving Brazil disappointed and irritable.

He got back to changing his oil, in a hurry to finish now. He had an idea.

West had one, too. She called Raines, and this definitely was unexpected and abnormal. West never called him or anyone, except Brazil, as all around her knew and accepted as fact. Raines had the night off and was looking forward to watching a just-released sports bloopers video he had acquired over the weekend. West was thinking about pizza. They decided they probably could collaborate on this quite nicely, and he headed over to her house in his rebuilt, fully loaded, black on black ’73 Corvette Stingray, with headers, tinted glass top, and window sticker. West usually could hear him coming.

Brazil thought he should come up with a way of showing his appreciation to West for resolving his life’s crisis. He also imagined the two of them celebrating, and why not? This was a big day for both of them. She had rid him of Bond and Webb, and she and the entire police department were free of Goode. Brazil sped to the nearest Hop-In and picked up the nicest bottle of wine he could find in the glass
cooler, a Dry Creek Vineyard 1992 Fume Blanc, for nine dollars and forty-nine cents.

She would be surprised and pleased, and maybe he could pet Niles for a while. Maybe Brazil could spend a little more time inside West’s house and learn something more about her. Maybe she would invite him to watch TV with her, or listen to music, the two of them sipping wine in her living room, talking and telling stories about their early years and dreams.

Brazil drove toward Dilworth, overflowing with happiness that his problems had cleared up and he had a friend like her. He thought about his mother, wondering how she was doing, and was pleased that she didn’t seem to get him down so much anymore. He didn’t seem to feel that her choices were because of what he did or did not do for her.

Lights were out, the TV on in West’s living room. She and Raines were on the couch, eating a Pizza Hut triple decker. Raines was perched on the edge of his cushion, drinking a Coors Light, and crazed over his new videotape. Without a doubt it was the best yet, and he wished West would let him watch it undistracted. She was all over him, kissing, nibbling, running her fingers through his thick, curly black hair. She was getting on his nerves, really, and acting out of character, in general.

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” he absently said.

He tried to look around her as he twirled her hair with the creative enthusiasm of Niles kneading the rug.

“Yes! Yes! What a dunk! Rip that backboard down! Oh shit! Ahhhh! Look at that! Christ!
Right into the pole.
Oh, man.” Raines sat back down.

The next five minutes was ice hockey. The goalie got a stick between his legs. A puck ricocheted off two face masks and hit a referee in the mouth. Raines was going wild. There was nothing he liked better than sports and injuries, especially if the two went together. With each tragedy, he imagined rushing in with his medical kit and stretcher, Raines to the rescue. West was unbuttoning her blouse. She threw
herself on top of him, devouring his mouth, and desperate. Raines put down his pizza.

“Hormones again?” He had never seen her this frustrated.

“I don’t know.” She worked on more buttons and hooks.

They seriously made out on the couch while Niles remained in his sanctuary above the sink. He was not a fan of Tire Man, as Niles called Raines after noticing some radial ad in the newspaper lining his litter box. Tire Man was offensively loud and never warm and appreciative of Niles. Several times, Tire Man had launched Niles off the couch, and this would have been one of those times should Niles have tested his luck, which he did not.

He looked adoringly at his distant, sad King.
I’ll help you. Fear not. My owner knows about laundry money. She is very powerful and will protect you and all Usbeeceeans.
Niles twitched an ear, detecting another engine sound, this one a pleasant, deep purring that he recognized. It was Piano Man, the nice one who played his fingers over Niles’s spine and ribs and right behind his ears until Niles fell over from sheer pleasure, rattling windowpanes. Niles got up and stretched, excited that Piano Man seemed to be slowing behind the house, where he had parked in the past, on the few times he had stopped by for one reason or another.

West and Raines were not in a good space when the doorbell rang. By now, Raines was completely focused on what he was doing and was within minutes, at most, of victory. It was quite inconvenient and inconsiderate for someone to dare and drop by unannounced. Raines experienced an intense wave of homicidal rage as he withdrew to his end of the couch, sweating and out of breath.

“Goddamn son of a bitch,” he furiously blurted.

“I’ll get it,” West said.

She got up, pulling, zipping, and buttoning, as she walked and combed her fingers through her hair. She was a mess, and as the bell rang again, she hoped it wasn’t Mrs. Grabman
from two doors down. Mrs. Grabman was a nice enough old woman, but she tended to drop by every weekend West was home, usually offering vegetables from her garden as an excuse to meddle and complain about someone suspicious in the neighborhood. West already had a long row of ripening tomatoes on the counter, and two drawers full of okra, green beans, squash, and zucchini in the refrigerator.

Safety-conscious West, who had never gotten around to installing a burglar alarm, yelled through the door, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Brazil said.

From the bottom of the steps, where he waited with wine, he was excited and clueless. He assumed the old black Corvette on the street belonged to a neighborhood kid. It had never occurred to him that Denny Raines might drive anything besides an ambulance. West opened the door, and Brazil lit up at the sight of her. He offered her the bottle of wine in its brown paper bag.

“I thought we should at least drink a toast . . .” he started to say.

West awkwardly took the wine from him, acutely conscious of his reaction to her tousled hair, to the red marks on her neck and her blouse buttoned crooked. Brazil’s smile faded as his eyes wandered around her crime scene. Raines appeared behind his woman and looked down the steps at Brazil.

“Hey, what’cha know, sport?” Raines grinned at him. “Like your stories . . .”

Brazil ran back to his car as if someone were chasing him.

“Andy!” West yelled after him. “Andy!”

She hurried down the steps as his BMW roared off into the setting sun. Raines followed her back into her living room as she buttoned her blouse properly and nervously smoothed her hair. She set the wine on a table, where she did not have to look at it, and be reminded of who had brought it.

“What the hell’s his problem?” Raines wanted to know.

“Temperamental writer,” she muttered.

Raines wasn’t interested. He and West had several downs
yet to go, and he tackled her from behind, grabbing, fondling, and working his tongue into her ear. The play was incomplete as she broke free, leaving him yards behind and taking the ball with her.

“I’m tired,” she snapped.

Raines rolled his eyes. He’d had enough of her poor sportsmanship and penalty flags.

“Fine,” he told her as he ejected his bloopers tape from the VCR. “Let me just ask you one thing, Virginia.” He furiously strutted to the door, pausing long enough to fix smoldering eyes on hers. “When you’re eating and the phone rings, what happens after you hang up? Do you go back to your meal, or do you forget that, too? Do you just
quit
because you had a tiny interruption?”

“Depends on what I’m eating,” West told him.

Brazil’s dinner was late and spent at Shark Finn’s, on Old Pineville Road, at Bourbon Street. After roaring away from West’s house, he had driven around, getting angrier by the moment. It had not been one of his wiser moves, perhaps, to stop by Tommy Axel’s Fourth Ward condominium with its blush rose front door. Brazil noticed a number of men noticing him during his approach from the parking lot. Brazil wasn’t especially friendly to them, or even to Axel.

What Axel considered a first date and Brazil considered revenge began in Shark Finn’s Jaws Raw Bar, where a mounted sailfish caught in a net protested with an open mouth and startled glass eyes. Wooden tables were uncovered, the plank floor unvarnished. There were faces carved on coconuts, and curled starfish and stained glass. Brazil nursed a Red Stripe beer and wondered if he might be going insane as he considered the senseless and impulsive behavior that had landed him here in this place at this moment.

Axel was burning holes in him, living a fantasy, and fearful the vision would vanish if he looked away for even a second. Brazil was certain that other people slipping down raw oysters and getting drunk had figured out Axel’s intentions and were miscalculating Brazil’s. This was unfortunate
since most of the men drove pickup trucks and believed it was their higher calling to get women pregnant, own guns, and kill queers.

“You come here a lot?” Brazil swirled beer in its dark brown bottle.

“Whenever. You hungry?” Axel grinned, displaying his very nice white teeth.

“Sort of,” Brazil said.

They got up and moved into the crab shack, which was no different than the raw bar, except there were captain’s chairs at the tables and the ceiling fans were working so hard they looked like they might take off. Jimmy Buffett was playing over intercoms. A candle and Tabasco sauce were on their table, which rocked, requiring Brazil to fix it with several packets of Sweet & Low. Axel started by ordering a Shark Attack with lots of Myers’s rum, and he convinced Brazil to try a Rum Runner, which had enough liquor in it to turn the lights out in half of Brazil’s brain.