IT WAS ALMOST ten o’clock when they managed to break into the heavy radio traffic to clear from the forgery call, and radio sent them to see a complainant about a “suspicious noise.” The report was a couple of hours old, radio said, they’d been backed up with more urgent calls.
“How about some supper after that?” Hanson said.
You’re next on the list, Five Six Two, radio said.
“Okee doke. Thank you very much.”
At … nine forty three.
“About time God cut me a little slack on these fucking calls tonight,” he told Dana.
“Luck of the draw,” Dana said. “I might be a nice guy and write up that second burglary for you. If you promise to treat me with more respect around the other officers.”
Hanson laughed. “We’ll kiss this one off, then it’s code-three to dinner. ‘And how suspicious were these noises, ma’am. Would you say they were very suspicious, or only somewhat suspicious?’”
They alternated calls during the shift, and so far Dana had gotten a woman who was drunk and angry at her ex-boyfriend, telling them that he was a dope dealer, a family fight where the husband agreed to leave for the night, and a man with a gun call that turned out to be a loud music complaint. The complainant had mentioned a gun so the cops would get there in a hurry. They were all calls that could be written up in a few lines on a miscellaneous report form.
Hanson had gotten two burglaries and then a prostitute trying to pass a forged check for her pimp at a Safeway. Just that one call had involved a crime report, an arrest report, statements from employees at the Safeway, a property report for the check, and a complicated form called a “Worthless Document Report.” They had to take the prostitute to jail and the check to the property room. They’d been going from call to call since the beginning of the shift.
Hanson rang the bell at the address on Mississippi Street. Light showed through the peephole in the heavy front door that looked as if it had been recently installed. He shifted his weight from foot to foot on the porch, playing a nervous rhythm on a squeaking board. Suddenly, he stopped.
“Shit,” he said, “it’s too late to slip over on Five Fifty’s district for Chinese. Where do you want to eat?”
“French’s closes the kitchen at ten. That’s about it. After that, it’s McDonalds or spaghetti at the Town Square.”
Hanson rapped on the door with his flashlight. “Come on,” he said.
The peephole dimmed and someone began working through a combination of locks, sliding and snapping them open with mechanical efficiency. A heavyset black woman, wearing only a slip and a waist-length red wig, opened the door a few inches.
“Hi,” Hanson said. “What’s the problem?”
The woman cocked her head to the left, then cut her eyes that way, as theatrical as a Kabuki dancer. She looked back at Hanson, and when he didn’t respond, she did it again, the Dynel wig parting over her shoulder.
“You’re gonna have to tell me, ma’am. I’m not allowed to take non-verbal reports.”
She opened the door and leaned out, the red hair framing her face and breasts. “It was over in the garage,” she whispered, liquor on her breath. “But it stopped.”
“Honey?” a man called from another room. “Who is it?”
“It stopped now,” she whispered to Hanson.
“Some people at the wrong address,” she shouted, closing the door.
Hanson shined his flashlight on the sagging garage next to a fire-gutted house one lot over, as the woman reset the series of locks and deadbolts and night chains.
“Dogs,” Hanson said. “Probably night dogs. Let’s eat.”
He stopped halfway to the car. “I’d better take a look, just so I can say I did in the report. We’ve still got time.” He thumbed his cast-aluminum flashlight on and swung it over his shoulder like a bat, sweeping the ground ahead. When it dimmed, he smacked it into the palm of his hand, and it brightened.
He dragged one of the double doors part way open and worked the flashlight beam through the garage, across the charred and water-stained sofas and mattresses piled against one wall, over blistered table tops, piles of scorched clothes, liquor boxes heaped with dishes and shoes and books.
“Fucking for-shit Korean flashlight batteries they give us,” Hanson whispered.
“You want me to lend you a couple of dollars so you can buy your own?”
Hanson snorted. “I think the city should ‘buy American.’ Why’d they send me over there to kill all those gooks if they aren’t gonna buy American?”
Dana laughed.
“That’s right,” Hanson said.
Soot hung in the air, drifting through the beam of light as it picked out a birdcage, a melted coffee maker, and flared back at Hanson from a smoky TV screen. Something moaned and Hanson slashed the light through the black fog, striking at the sound until he saw her through the broken furniture, the bloody face and matted blond hair, her eyes. She looked up at him from her hands and knees, her breasts and bare shoulders and arching naked back a pasty gray.
“Five Six Two,” Dana spoke into his packset. “Five Six Two.” He banged it with the heel of his hand. “Five Six Two. Shit. I’ll use the car radio. Get us a code-three and a couple of cover cars. The guy might still be in the area.”
As Hanson worked his way through the junk, she stood up and began to scream, sucking air in and screaming it out.
A bedspring caught Hanson’s pants and he kept walking, holding her in the light, dragging the springs until they wedged to a stop. Her cheeks and chin were slashed to pearly bone, her upper lip split from the nose down. One ear hung from a strip of skin, a blue glass earring dangling from it. A unicorn, turning one direction, then the other, blinking in the faint light. An electrical cord, knotted around her neck, ran down between her breasts to a shattered ceramic lamp hanging against her pale belly.
He kicked back at the springs. “It’s okay,” he shouted, slamming his hip into the springs. Something cut into his thigh. “It’s okay,” he said. He’d need a tetanus shot.
“It’s okay.”
For a moment her swollen, bloody face looked familiar. He lunged toward her, ripping his pants free, kicking a chair out of his way. She threw her arms up to shield her face, and Hanson saw the crude tattoo, Billy, on her left breast.
It was Brandy, Marcus Johnson’s whore. When he needed money, Marcus sent her out on the street to turn tricks. The last time he’d seen her was on the third floor of the Sunset Hotel, after he’d told three Mexicans to pay the rent or get out. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, the door open as Hanson walked past it to the stairs.
Marcus, black and muscular, was naked, standing with his legs apart, his hands braced on the wall above the toilet where Brandy knelt, holding his black cock as he pissed, the jailhouse tattoo peeking above her halter top.
Faraway, their eyes dreamy with heroin, they had looked at Hanson in his uniform and leather and pistol, the packset chirping on his belt, looked at him as if he was some frightened white bureaucrat’s foolish idea of “justice,” too insignificant to deserve even their contempt.
He’d turned away and walked down the stairs.
“It’s okay, Brandy,” he said, slipping the flashlight under his arm. “You’re safe now,” he said, cupping the broken bloody lamp, trying to pull the cord loose.
“Is this what he hit you with?” he said, knowing he was covering the lamp with his own bloody fingerprints.
She screamed and jerked away, the lamp gashing the tender ball of Hanson’s thumb as the cord pulled free.
“God damn,” he yelled at her, smashing the lamp on the floor. “You’re safe now.”
She began coughing, choking on her own blood. She lowered her head, looking up at Hanson as the blood spooled from her split lips. The other earring had been torn from her earlobe.
“Brandy, can you tell me who did it?”
“Duk tabe.”
When she tried to speak he saw, in the yellow light, that her teeth had been broken off in clusters of two or three, hanging from her gums like chunks of stew meat.
“Was he black or white?”
“Duc tape.”
She sounded like she was talking while she was eating, with a mouthful of food.
“Duk tabe.”
“Black or white?”
Catching her breath, she began screaming again.
“White or black?” he yelled.
The call was two hours old. Why had he gotten it?
“White or black? How fucking hard is that?”
He took both her wrists in one hand and pulled her arms down, shining the flashlight in his own face.
“Look at me, goddammit,” he said. “Look. You know me.”
The light was hot on his face, blinding him. He closed his eyes and it glowed red through his eyelids.
She stopped screaming.
“Hahn. Hahnthun,” she said, and he took the light from his face. Hanson knew the sound of his own name.
She came to him out of the dark and his arms opened against his will, like a gesture in a nightmare, pulling her to him. Her blood tickled his cheek and he tried to remember if he had cut himself shaving. Syphilis, gonorrhea, hepatitis. Who knew what else she might have. He could go back to the precinct as soon as the ambulance came and take a long shower, flush the blood away, but he’d never get the blood out of his uniform. A hundred and eighty five dollars to replace it.
Her broken jaw grated as she sobbed in his ear, stinking of urine and feces and charred wood. He stroked her hair. It was oily beneath his hand and smelled like sardines.
“It’s okay, Brandy,” he said. Hating her for being the kind of irresponsible–didn’t she know that life has consequences–nigger-fucking white trash she was. For forcing him to deal with all this pain. Her pain, not his. Who said that was part of the job?
“I’ve got you now. It’s okay.”
What did he have to do with her fucked up life that was only going to get worse but she didn’t know it yet and he did and what the fuck was he supposed to do? Too late to change anything now except maybe shoot her and put her out of her worthless, useless, miserable fucking life, goddammit, and end it now and save her from all the years ahead.
“You’re okay now, Brandy,” he said, hating himself, hating her for making him lie and tell her it was okay.
That she was safe.