IT STARTED EARLY in the shift, the pop of firecrackers, random and sporadic at first, like the beginning of an insurrection crackling through the district, then more of them, faster, quick stuttering bursts of ten or twelve, of twenty, overlapping, too many to count.
Hanson tasted burnt powder in the air as he drove past dying elm trees in Woodlawn Park.
“We give them parks, ladies and gentlemen,” Hanson said, “verdant refuge from summer’s heat, where neighborhood children dream in the dappled shade of mighty elms.”
It looked more like a landfill than a park since it had been erased from the city budget, the black bags of garbage torn open by dogs, abandoned sofas and TVs and shopping carts, winos passed out in the weeds like ambush victims.
“What are those little gangsters up to?” Dana said.
They were gathered around something in the middle of the street, beneath the stone arch at the entrance to the park, first or second graders, some younger, wearing shorts or cut-off pants and oversize high-top tennis shoes.
“Probably torturing a cat,” Hanson said, taking his foot off the gas, the kids keeping track of the patrol car over their shoulders. “Torture is just a form of curiosity here in the, uh-ruh, black community.”
“That’s our man Russell the Muscle in the tigerstripe shirt,” Dana said.
Hanson smiled. “‘Call me Russell the Muscle, po-lice,’” he said, imitating the little boy’s rap. He tapped the brakes. “Come on, guys.”
They huddled closer, heads down, eyes quick as sparrows. The smaller kids danced from toe to toe, pushing into the circle as the patrol car rolled closer.
Dana picked up the mike and spoke over the PA system. “We’re sorry to bother you young men, but …”
They bolted, tripping over each other as they broke and ran shrieking past the patrol car, their eyes bright with fear and excitement.
Watching them in the rearview mirror, Hanson pulled to the stop sign just as the fuse flared into the trash-covered pack of Black Cat torpedos beneath the patrol car. The kids watched from the far side of a garbage-filled fishpond, poised to run again, as the first string of firecrackers cooked off in erratic yellow bursts, twitching and writhing in a cloud of shredded paper.
Five Six Two
“Five Sixty Two,” Dana said, rolling the window up against the noise. The kids leaped in their tennis shoes, slapping high-fives as they turned in the air. They cakewalked the edge of the pond, bowlegged, their shoulders back as the explosions rang off the muffler and gas tank.
Check for an ambulance. Somewhere in the three hundred block of Monroe Street. Unknown problem.
“We’re close,” Dana said, the explosions sputtering out. “You got a better address?”
Both hands on the steering wheel, Hanson stared through the dirty windshield, blinking at each sporadic pang. In the parking lot down the street, a black transvestite with the legs of a running back leaned down to the driver’s window of a blue ’69 Mercury, exposing garter belt straps and the tops of his mesh stockings. He pouted into the window, smoothing the leather miniskirt over his hips.
That’s the best we could do before she hung up.
“‘Screaming in the background,’” Hanson said, speaking in the dispatcher’s monotone as he turned right, angling back toward Monroe. “‘Machine guns possibly involved.’”
An M-80 boomed like a mortar round in a dumpster behind them.
“A bit tense, are we?” Dana said.
Hanson turned left through a yellow light, dodging a shopping cart in the street.
“A little nervous today?”
Hanson clenched his teeth and looked at Dana. “Nerwous?” he said, not moving his lips. “Whutaya mean?” He said, bugging his eyes out. “Whut makesyew say that?”
“Police training.”
Hanson laughed. “I got nervous in the service.”
• • •
“… hold my hand, make me understand, I wake up, uh-uh-uh uh, inacold sweat.”
They heard the radios two blocks away, James Brown gasping for air across the back yards and garbage-choked alleys of the district.
“Mister James Brown,” Hanson said, rapping like Wardell the DJ, “the hardest working man in show business.”
The band slowed, faltered, only drums and one saxophone keeping the beat. Hanson slowed for a stoplight, flipped the overhead lights on and drove into the sobbing that filled the air.
“I can see him,” Hanson said, turning down Mason Street, “on stage. Slumped over the microphone in exhaustion, sweat dripping from his nose. Is he through? Can he go on?”
Five Eighty. Check for an unwanted son with a gun. Sixteen fourteen Killingsworth. Cover …?
Uh, we’re familiar with the problem. We don’t need a cover car.
“But listen,” Hanson said, cupping his ear as the band picked up the beat again. “More saxophones. James Brown begins to move with the music, raises his head, kind of remembers where he is …”
“… need a little help now, Y’all Huh! Yeow!”
“… and explodes into the spotlights, spraying sweat as he throws back his hair and bares those white teeth. Yes,” Hanson said, shouting now, the music just up the block, “he snatches the mike, strutting to the sound of a thousand trumpets. He’s okay, ladies and gentlemen. He’s got the power again.”
“This must be the place,” Dana said.
It was a Fourth of July party, people crowded around barbeque grills, filling their paper plates from platters of ribs and chicken and hamburgers on card tables in the tiny front yard. Radios on the front steps, on the card tables, on top of the old Ford farm truck parked in front of the house, all tuned to the same station.
“… I just wanta, huh! tell ya bout your dos an’ don’ts”
“Mister James Brown, ladies and gentlemen,” Hanson said, pulling to the curb behind the farm truck and putting the car in PARK. “A living legend in his own time live from the Apollo Theatre. James Brown!” Hanson said as he turned off the ignition. He and Dana got out of the car, their eyes on the crowd.
‘Yeow! Huuh! Ow!”
“He’s a lover. A preacher. A gangster and a prophet. A gunfighter … and a man of peace,” Hanson said, pulling his nightstick from the holder inside the door, doing a little dance step as he dropped it through the ring on his pistol belt.
“The man we call,” he said, slamming the door, “the Godfather of soul.”
“… when you miss me, ho-oh-old me tight…”
The men in the yard held quarts of Colt .45 and Black Cat Ale by the neck, like weapons. They kept their eyes on the cops, watching them over the bottles as they drank, each swallow a challenge.
The women turned away, hips cocked, watching the cops over their shoulders, taking long, angry drags on their cigarettes. Dana pulled out his pack set. “Five Six Two.”
Go ahead Five Six Two.
“We might want another car down here at three-twenty Monroe. We’ll let you know.”
Hanson glanced at Dana and walked up to a three-hundred pounder with long ratty hair, Delbert Mack, “the ugliest nigger in the west.” The biggest man in the yard, he wore bib overalls, one broken strap peeled away from a huge hairy chest. His left eyebrow pulled from old suture scars over a blind eye. The end of his nose had been bitten off in a fight over a doe-eyed Jamaican boy, and the prison doctor had reattached it without anesthetic while Delbert fought the restraints on an oak slant board.
“Delbert. What it is?” Hanson said, talking loud over the music. “What’s the problem?”
He looked down at him with his good eye. Blinked. “I’m looking at the problem.”
Hanson laughed. “Hey,” he said, smiling as he stepped a little closer. “I hear you been carrying a sawed-off shotgun.”
Delbert worked his tongue up into his cheek, then jammed his finger back there and probed. One of the radios went silent.
“Under the seat of that old farm truck of yours.”
Delbert pulled his finger out and looked at it.
“Is that true?”
Another radio went silent.
“You stepped in what?” Delbert said.
“I hope it’s not there when I pull you over for those expired plates.”
Hanson turned toward the sound of crying, then back to Delbert. “Don’t forget now. If you ever decide to sell that truck, let me know. I need a farm truck.”
“Your money as good as anybody’s. But the way things are, you understand, you might have to pay a premium.”
“You see how it’s done, then,” Hanson told Dana as they walked away. “I drive a hard bargain with these people.”
Dana was still laughing when they worked their way through the crowd toward the crying and were confronted by a wiry woman with light brown skin and red hair, wearing high-waisted satin pants and a halter top. Her arms were crossed under her breasts, a cigarette smoking between the long red fingernails of one hand. Behind her, a little boy writhed in the dirt and dogshit and knobs of dead grass, screaming in his two-year-old voice, one of his feet caked with bloody dirt. Dee Brazzle squatted drunkenly next to him. When he reached out to him, the little boy slapped his hand away.
The woman watched Hanson, smoke curling from her nostrils, as Dana called for an ambulance on his packset.
“What happened?” Hanson asked the woman.
“Step on a cherry bomb,” she said. She had full lips, wearing lipstick the color of primer paint. Purple birth-marks splotched her cheek and neck like clouds. Her eyes on Hanson, she brought the cigarette to her mouth and took a long drag, filling her lungs, her breasts lifting.
“They’re trying to break loose an ambulance,” Dana said. “All the emergency rooms in town are swamped. Good Sam’s setting up cots in the lobby.”
“Holiday casualties,” Hanson said, still making eye contact with the woman.
“I’ll get the first aid kit,” Dana said.
“Excuse me,” Hanson said.
“We didn’t call the motherfuckin’ po-lice,” the woman said, as Hanson squeezed past, inhaling her smoke and perfume. “Why they always send the police when black folks need a ambulance?”
Dee was wearing pea green bell-bottom pants and no shirt, a dark puckered scar just above his hip, where his girlfriend had shot him two years before.
“What’s his name?” Hanson said, kneeling next to Dee, wondering if it was the little boy or Dee who had shit his pants.
“I told you, get your ass …” Dee looked at him, the whites of his eyes creamy yellow and bloodshot, too drunk to recognize him. “I’m this baby’s uncle,” he said, loosing his balance, falling on his butt.
“Where’s this baby’s momma?” Dee shouted, to no one in particular, trying not to look drunk. “Where’s his whore momma?”
“Come on, kid,” Hanson said, half-standing, reaching for him. Suddenly, the little boy threw both arms around his neck, and Hanson fought to keep his balance, struggling to his feet. The kid tightened his grip, screaming again and kicking Hanson with the bloody foot. It was the kid who had shit his pants.
“Why me?” Hanson asked him, looking down at him. “Why not Uncle Dee?”
“Hey, buddy. Hey, my man,” he said, his lips close to the crying boy’s ear. “Look at me.
“Up here,” he said, taking the kid’s head in both hands, turning it until they were face to face.
His lips and chin were shiny with tears and dried snot, his eyes dull, retarded. Hanson wasn’t surprised by that, he realized, he’d expected it.
Dumb as dogshit, he thought, looking down at him. Not a chance in the world. They should just kill him now and get it over with.
“If it was a white baby, if that baby was white, don’t you know, ambulance would of been here and on the way to the hospital,” a man yelled. He sported a little goatee and wore his hair in cornrows. It was too hot for the long-sleeved, white turtleneck, and Hanson guessed that he wore it to cover needle marks.
“That’s right,” he said, looking at Hanson through tinted aviator glasses. “I’m talking to you.”
“What’s his name?” Hanson asked the woman with the birthmark.
She cupped her left breast and adjusted the strap on her halter top. Parting her lips, burnished lipstick showing like blood on her white teeth, she took a drag on her cigarette. “His name Ali.”
A cherry bomb boomed. Hanson crouched and spun toward the noise, poised to run, the screaming child hanging from his neck like a voodoo curse. Dee staggered, laughing, through the cloud of white smoke drifting across the yard. “Just a little bitty cherry bomb,” he shouted.
“Hey. Ali.” Hanson said, gripping his shoulder. “Ali. Look at me,” he said, looking into his wet eyes, unfocused with pain. It was like trying to see through muddy water. “Look at me. Right in here,” Hanson said, pointing at his own eye.
“But they take their time if it’s black folks,” the guy with the goatee went on. “Am I lying? Huh-uh. I ain’t telling no lie. Little black baby, they takes their time.”
“Come on, partner,” Hanson said to the kid. “Little Ali. Right here. Yeah. Now you see me,” he said, rubbing Ali’s muscular little back as he sobbed soundlessly for air.
“Can’t talk to that, can you, ’cause you know it’s true.”
“Give me the pain,” Hanson told Ali. “Look right here, in my eye, and give it to me. That’s it. Come on. Good. I got it. I got it. It’s mine now,” he crooned as the kid’s breathing slowed.
“Gimme my baby.”
Hanson smelled sour sweat and semen when she came up from behind, slurring her words in his ear, her arms coming around him–a zombie embrace–reaching for the little boy, her breath rank with decay and Night Train tokay. The filthy gauze dressings on her slashed wrists were frayed and unraveling, the wounds puckered with infection, tearing loose from the emergency room sutures. Pressing into him, reaching, the emaciated arms burned, scarred, marbled purple and black with abscessed needle tracks weeping pus.
“Gimme my baby.”
Ali began screaming again, tightening his grip around Hanson’s neck, strong as a boa constrictor, choking him.
“Ma’am,” Hanson said, “ma’am,” turning to face her with open arms, proof that he wasn’t trying to keep Ali from her, the little boy holding on by himself. “He’s all yours. Just wait a second.” But she was pulling at Ali’s arms, and when that didn’t work, she took a handful of his hair.
“That’s his momma,” the woman with the birthmark yelled.
“Don’t you hurt that little baby.”
“Ma’am. Look at me,” Hanson shouted, his arms still open, while she pulled the little boy’s hair.
“Look,” Hanson grunted, stepping back, finally grabbing her bleeding wrist. It felt like a piece of wood, dead as a mummy’s arm from too many injections of heroin, black market methadone, stolen Ritalin and Demerol, codeine, sometimes even Midol or aspirin, powdered and cooked in a bent spoon, or plain water, when she couldn’t find anybody who’d fuck her in exchange for dope.
“You gonna let the police torture that little boy,” the guy with the goatee yelled. “Tryin’ to kill that little baby …”
Ali screamed in pain when his mother stumbled backwards, tearing a tuft of his hair out, and fell backwards into the crowd.
“… an’ his momma. What’s wrong with you people? Get ’em. Be proud. Kill the po-lice motherfuckers!”
Hanson saw Dana trying to get through the crowd, but they blocked his way, pushing him back Hanson knew the shoves would quickly turn into punches and worse unless one of them could get a packset out, hope it worked, and call a code-zero, but it might already be too late for that.
Ali’s mother pushed up off the ground, alive now, strong with pure, mindless rage. She took one of Ali’s ankles in both hands like a baseball bat, yanking Hanson toward her, off balance with the weight of the little boy around his neck, teetering on the tips of his toes. He lurched back to stay on his feet, and a fist hit him in the back of the head.
Someone pulled at his holstered pistol and he knocked the hand away. In a few more seconds, he knew, he’d have to start shooting people, or let them take his gun.
Then he heard Delbert Mack, three hundred pounds of the ugliest nigger in the west, louder than all the curses and screams, “Get outta my way. God damn, you better move, nigger.” Heard the huge hands slapping heads, thumps and grunts as Delbert straight-armed them out of his way, parting the crowd, coming closer. “Move. I said, move. I’ll tear your nappy damn head off, boy.”
He pushed past Hanson, the crowd backing away, to Ali’s mother, and peeled her hands off the boy’s ankle.
“Somebody take care of this woman,” he boomed, and they took her. Then Delbert Mack turned and nodded at the little boy still hanging from Hanson’s neck.
“You bet,” Hanson said, up on his toes, chest out, his arms and head back as if he was offering himself to God. “Take him.”
Ali released his grip and stopped crying the moment he felt Delbert’s enormous hands around him.
“Come on, poor little baby. Delbert’s got you now.”
He pointed at the guy with the goatee. “Come here,” he said.
“Clarence,” he told him, “I’m gonna kick your ass one of these times.”
“Kick my ass? All I did was …”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just sayin’ …”
“What’d I say?”
“But …”
“I’m not telling you again.”
Clarence nodded and looked away.
“What ‘all you did’ was almost get some people shot, and I ain’t talkin’ about no police getting shot. They the ones gonna do the shooting. That mouth of yours …” Delbert said. “Get outta here.”
Hanson watched the ambulance drive away, taking Ali and his weeping, gibbering, junkie mother.
“Thank you, Delbert,” he said.
Delbert Mack looked at him, shook his head, and walked away.
Hanson pulled away from the curb and drove down the street, watching the dispersing crowd in the rearview mirror.
“Wow,” he said, “that perked me right up,” his eyes on the road, “but those near-death angry-mob deals always do that.”
“Delbert was right,” Dana said. “I thought I was gonna have to shoot some people back there.”
“He can keep the sawed-off shotgun,” Hanson said, “as far as I’m concerned.”
“And we’ve only just started our day,” Dana said.
“We need to freshen up a little,” Hanson said, looking down at his shit-stained shirt.
He picked up the mike, cleared, and asked permission to return to the precinct.
Negative at this time, Five Sixty Two. Five Forty’s requesting a cover car at Union and Dekum, and you’re all I’ve got right now.
“Okee doke …” Hanson said.
Dana turned on the overhead lights.
“… we’re on our way.”
Five Fifty’s close to that location. We can take the cover.
Five Fifty’s got the cover. Five Sixty Two’s clear and headed back to North.
“Thank you, Five Fifty,” Dana said into the mike.
“Jesus,” Hanson said, looking at himself in the rearview mirror. “I’m gonna take a shower.”
He turned onto Failing Street, past the Black Muslim temple on the corner where four Muslims stood shoulder to shoulder, military style, in front of the red brick building. Their hair was close-cropped, and they wore dark suits, white shirts and black bow ties. Tall and slim, unsmiling, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, they seemed to be looking through the buildings across the street into some spartan and fundamental truth.
When Hanson turned to stare into their sunglasses, a long-haired mongrel dog came howling out of nowhere, a string of ladyfingers wired to his tail. Hanson hit the brakes as the dog ran in front of the patrol car, past the temple, into Haight Street. The little firecrackers snarled and snapped, blinking tiny orange flames, trailing a cloud of shredded paper as the dog ran in circles, trying to bite the copper wire braided into his tail. When that didn’t work, he tried to get away from the firecrackers by squeezing beneath a car parked across the street on four flat tires.
The Muslims turned their heads slightly when Five Fifty, the cover car, came over the hill up Haight Street, running code-two with overhead lights. One of them smiled when the dog bolted from beneath the parked car, into the path of the speeding patrol car.
The dog made a metallic bang against the bumper and was sucked under the car where it bucked and twisted its way from the radiator to the transmission to the muffler and into the frame, hung up between the gas tank and the rear axle, its broken legs kicking sideways until it bounced into the wheel well and was thrown free, pursuing the police car in bloody cartwheels until a pothole threw it, twisting in midair, over the curb into a blue mailbox.
That wouldn’t have happened, Hanson thought, the boom of the mailbox echoing up the street, if I hadn’t had to change my shirt. If the kid hadn’t grabbed my neck. If Dee fucking Brazzle hadn’t been throwing cherry bombs around.
He put the car in reverse and backed up to the Muslims who looked over the roof of the patrol car, arms folded, as if the police were too insignificant to consider.
“Fourth of July,” Hanson said to them. “Some fun, huh?”
The afternoon sun glinted off their mirrored glasses as they seemed to listen to a distant, angry voice.
“Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it.”
A firecracker popped in the next block. Another.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” Hanson said, pointing up the street at the mailbox, a bloody starburst dripping down the side. “Don’t jump in front of police cars.”
“What was that all about?” Dana said after they’d driven a few blocks.
“Fuck those guys and their we be bad act. If they’re so fucking bad, then come on, let’s …”
“You’re the guy who likes the Muslims. ‘They’re disciplined. They take care of their own. They don’t beg.’”
Five Fifty
Go ahead Five Fifty
Uh, yeah, after we clear could we get a meet with somebody for a CDK at Haight and Failing? We just nailed our fourth dog of the season on the way to cover Five Forty.
Five Eighty can do it. Give us a call on channel three when you’re ready for the meet.
“How about driving the rest of the shift,” Hanson said. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Five Sixty Two, clear,” Hanson said into the radio, the Burgerville USA sign groaning above them as they pulled out of the parking lot. “Headed back to the district.”
“God,” he said, hanging up the mike and settling into the passenger seat. “Ugh. The shit I eat on this job. Grease. Grease runs through my veins. I may look good on the outside. I may appear to be a handsome young officer, but inside? I’m a walking grease trap. I feel like drinking Dran-O. You know that commercial where they have the transparent sink drain full of grease and … hair? Hair! There’s probably cow hair in those burgers. Dran-o. Officer Dran-o. When I eat shit like that, you know what I think?”
“I wouldn’t want to guess,” Dana said.
“I think, ‘Please God, don’t let me get shot in the stomach until I’ve digested this stuff.’ I’ve gotta start bringing my lunch. Lettuce and whole grain bread. Sprouts. Healthy fruits and berries.
“Hey,” Hanson said, “how about lending me ten bucks?”
“First you want me to drive, and now it’s ten bucks?”
“I got a date with that Sara after work tonight, and I forgot to bring any money.”
“Helen told me you were going out with her. She says you two don’t seem compatible.”
Hanson laughed. “No one is what they seem. How about that ten bucks? I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”
“I’m not worried about it,” Dana said. “Here’s twenty. I don’t have a ten.”
“Maybe you should be worried,” Hanson said, snatching the bill from his fingers. “Fuckin’ possession,” he said, taking out his wallet, “is nine tenths of the law.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“I’m tucking it into my secret, big-money compartment here, just in case I need it,” Hanson said. “Thanks.”
It was almost dark when they got back to the district. The city’s big fireworks display, up in the hills, would begin soon. As they drove past Jefferson Junior High, a preliminary pair of aerial bombs lit the sky, throwing shadows through the chain-link fence surrounding the school, flickering in the bundles of razor wire coiling along the top. The dull explosions rolled through the district, echos following like aftershocks as the last light faded.
Five Eighty
“Five Eighty, go …”
Uh, Five Eighty, check on a drunk and disorderly customer at the Artistic Hair Haven …
“Five Eighty, copy.”
There weren’t many street lights in the district, and half of them had been shot out or smashed with rocks. There was no moon. Only a few stars glowed through the haze–supernovas, violent suns exploding toward them from some distant past or future, feeding on time itself, centuries, light years, burning history into black holes.
The patrol car parted clouds of acrid smoke as it rolled deeper into the district, lurching over broken pavement, through children running the streets waving silver sparklers, illuminating their cheekbones and hollowing their eyes as they swung them in roaring circles.
“Po-lice. Po-lice,” they screamed, running alongside the car, shrieking with excitement and terror and, in their world of neighborhood shootings and jail time, dead fathers, bad drugs, and the drone of TV sets left on day and night, something like joy. The screams Hanson remembered from monster movies on Saturday afternoon, when the beast’s claw thrusts out of the dark toward the hero’s throat. And misses. “Everything looks okay to me,” the hero says, lighting a cigarette, his back to the shadows. “Just some old superstition.”
Hanson had learned that terror and rage grew from the same source, and it occurred to him now that perhaps joy came from there too. Maybe even love, he thought, watching parked cars, doorways, fire escapes and open windows, glancing at the rearview mirror.
The sparklers burned a red afterglow in the backs of his eyes, bundles of loops and arcs like ribbed tunnels fading into another dimension.
Five Seventy, a car stop at Mississippi and Grant. A red, uh, red over white Pontiac Adam Mary King, seven three seven. No cover needed.
Copy the car stop Five Seventy.
Roman candles coughed and threw balls of light over junked cars, over broken curbs where cardboard tubes spewed fountains of sparks. Batteries of bottle rockets whistled into the haze, and flaming propellers exploded out of vacant lots, hovered, then corkscrewed away.
Two-hundred-pound women floated through the smoke and strobing light. Young girls laughed, their eyes glittering, as they danced away in a kind of fast-slow motion, and children on bicycles looked as if they might pedal into the sky.
Hanson smiled and the big fireworks display in the hills began in earnest. Double and triple star-clusters blossomed, the stuttering reports booming through the neighborhood seconds later.
A silver sun flashed over the hills, swelling to a fragile sphere, flickering points of light. Just as it seemed about to vanish, everyone silent now, watching from the street, back yards and porches, a red star cluster flared inside it, opened like a heart, and a collective sigh swept through the district.
Five Sixty Two
“Five Six Two,” Hanson said, “out here in the smoke and fire.”
Okay, Five Sixty Two. Since you’re out there, check on a possible mental. We’ve gotten some complaints down around Mississippi and Fremont on a white male creating a disturbance.
“What’s he doing?”
Walking through back yards. Yelling racial slurs.
“Okay,” Hanson said, “we’ll go speak to him.”
They drove slowly through the blocks, wide-eyed kids darting across the streets, lighting firecrackers then running, heads down and arms pumping, paying no attention to traffic.
“Racial slurs?” Dana said. “Is that a felony?”
“Not yet. It’s very naughty though, and I’m deeply offended.”
Five Six Two, we got another call on this guy. He exposed himself to some children. Uh, for what it’s worth, one of the complainants said he looked like ‘a mummy.’
“A mummy? Like … Curse of the Mummy?”
That’s what the man said.
“Okee-doke. Five Six Two meets the mummy.”
Up in the hills, huge star-clusters burst silver and green, majestic as they opened, arcing up, fanning out into thousands of tiny stars that swarmed toward the district like a plague, gaining speed, then, one by one, blinking out.
“I’m the one that called,” he said as they pulled to the curb. “Some kind of child molester running around. He was gone by the time they told me about it.”
He was a big guy in black Can’t-Bust-Em jeans and a blue work shirt. A little boy and girl, nicely dressed, stood next to him on the sidewalk.
When they got out of the patrol car, the two children hid behind the man.
“Now get on back here,” he said, taking them by the arm. “It’s the police. You tell ’em what you told me.”
They stood on either side of the man, looking up at the cops.
“Hi,” Hanson said, kneeling down. “Was he a white guy?”
“Tell him what the man said to you.”
Another aerial bomb flashed, and they grabbed their father’s leg. The little girl started to cry.
“Go on back into the house then,” the man said. “Go on.”
“A crazy white guy?” Hanson said, as they ran to the house.
“If he’d of touched her, I wouldn’t have called you. Look there,” the man said, pointing at the sidewalk.
Dana shined his flashlight on the cracked concrete.
“There.”
The flashlight reflected off a puddle of urine, the smell suddenly strong.
“Stood right there and pissed in front of my little girl. She said he ‘talked bad’ to her.”
“Let me get your daughter’s name and date of birth,” Hanson said, pulling a notebook from his hip pocket, “and I’ll get you to sign a complaint.”
“I’ve signed complaints before. Never did a bit of good. If he comes around here again, I’ll take care of it myself.”
“You don’t want to do something that might put you in jail,” Hanson said. “If I can just get your name …”
“I called you once,” he said.
Hanson watched him walk back to his house, wrote “comp. uncoop.” in his notebook and put it back in his pocket. When he turned to walk back to the patrol car, he stepped in the urine.
“Went right through my back yard,” an old man in overalls told them. “Yelling ‘nigger’ this and that.” His face was shiny black, eyes yellow with age. “I got, got something for him if I see him again,” he said, trembling with anger as he fumbled in the deep pocket of his overalls. “I’ll be on him like white on rice,” he said, looking back at his house as he pulled a big pocketknife. He opened it and held it down by his leg.
“Sir,” Hanson said, stepping back. “Sir. Put the knife away.”
He continued to look at his house as if the cops weren’t there, bringing the knife up, the blade ground to a hawkbill point.
“Sir,” Hanson said.
The sound of Hanson’s nightstick sliding from the ring on his belt turned the old man around, and for a moment Hanson was afraid he might have to break his hand, or worse.
“Levi! What’s wrong with you?” A gray-haired woman shouted from the porch. “Come on back in the house.”
The old man’s eyes seemed to focus, and he looked at the knife as if he’d forgotten it was there.
“Levi!”
He closed it, dropped it in his pocket and smiled at Hanson. “That’s the boss,” he said. “I better get back inside. One of our programs is on the TV.”
He took a few steps toward the house, then turned and looked back at them. “Thank you, officers. We sure do thank you. God bless you,” he said, bowing slightly as he spoke, his eyes on Hanson’s knees. The woman watched from beneath the porch light, her eyes hard as iron.
They hadn’t gone more than a block when a woman and two teenaged boys waved them down. “We the ones that called,” the woman said. “About that crazy man.”
“Look like a motherfuckin’ mummy,” one of the boys said, blue curlers in his hair.
“Watch your mouth,” his mother said, slapping him on the back of the head, knocking a curler off.
“Duck tape wrap all around up here. Leg in a cast,” the other boy said, laughing at his brother. “He be laughin’ and talking like this.” He held one arm against his chest and limped down the sidewalk, looking up at the sky. “He go, ‘I know it would be beautiful.’”
“He got any weapons?” Dana said, leaning across the seat of the car.
“Naw.”
“He don’t have shit.”
“I told you,” his mother said. He dodged her slap this time and pointed up the street.
As they drove through the smoke and hard-edged silver shadows of the fireworks, more people called to them and flagged them down. People in the neighborhood were arming themselves with baseball bats and rakes.
A pair of blue star-clusters with purple centers burst over the hills and swarmed toward the district.
“That way,” a woman with a hatchet yelled at them. “I saw him lookin’ in my window.”
“You don’t need that hatchet, ma’am,” Hanson said, “he’s not gonna hurt anybody.”
“Not as long as I got my hatchet,” she said.
“Jesus,” Hanson said to Dana as they rolled on, “they’re gonna kill the guy if we don’t find him first.” He laughed.
Five Sixty Two, would you check on a possible burglary. The complainant sounds a little flaky.
“Right,” Dana said, when radio gave them the address.
“Ira Foreskin,” Hanson said. “My favorite white puke.”
Complainant’s name is Ira Foresman
Ira was a burglar and crank addict they’d arrested in a Safeway that was closed for Thanksgiving the year before. He was standing in the doorway when they drove up, waiting for them in a tank top and bell-bottom jeans that bunched up at his ankles and completely covered his feet. He tensed up when he recognized them, as if he might run, then seemed to remember that he was the complainant this time.
“How you guys doin’?” he said, smoking a cigarette and chewing gun. He was a little drunk.
“Doin’ okay, Ira. What’s the problem?” Dana said.
“I’ll tell you, man,” he said, flicking his cigarette away, then smoothing back his long red hair with both hands.
“Somebody’s been fucking with my shit, man.”
Hanson absently thumbed his flashlight on and off several times, doing what he called the “dildo light.” Dana bit his lip to keep from smiling.
“How’s that?” Dana said.
“Come on in, man. I’ll show you.”
The house smelled like spoiled food and cigarette smoke, stuffy and humid. The windows were all nailed and painted shut.
“Check it out, man,” he said, nodding through the open door of the bedroom. The sheets on the unmade bed had turned gray, and the floor was littered with beer cans, fast food boxes and piles of clothes. A big black puppy crawled out from under the bed, frightened of the cops, looking for a way out of the room.
“Some fucking watch dog you are,” Ira snarled. The dog hunched down and squirted piss on the floor, then ran for the door. Ira kicked at him as he went past, and almost fell down.
“So what’s the problem?” Dana asked.
“Check it out, man,” he said. “Look at that closet. And here,” he said, walking to a dresser with a cracked mirror. The drawers of the dresser were open, and Ira scooped up a handful of socks and T-shirts.
“Somebody’s been fucking with my shit, man, and I’ve got a good idea who it was.”
“And who would that be?” Dana said.
“My fucking ex-old lady. I want her fuckin’ put in jail. This isn’t the first time she’s tried to rip me off, man.”
“What’s she after?”
“What do you think?” Ira said, slamming the drawer. He looked at them in the cracked mirror. “Uh, money, you know. She might think I had some drugs, but I don’t fuck with that shit anymore, man. Hey, let’s go in the other room. I want to show you something else,” he said, walking toward the door as Dana opened another drawer and looked into it with distaste.
“Out here, man,” Ira said.
“What about this?” Dana said, holding up a box of .45 shells.
“I don’t know where those came from. Uh, I used to have a gun, but I got rid of it. I’m an ex-con, and that means no guns. I’m scared of guns, man. Look at this,” he said, walking down the hall.
“I don’t need the arrest bad enough to go through those drawers,” Dana told Hanson.
“Hey,” Ira said, “I want to tell you. Excellent response time. I got home. Called nine one one. And you were here, man. Excellent.”
“Maybe you could write a commendation letter to our captain,” Hanson said.
“Sure, man,” Ira said. “Excuse the kitchen,” he said as he turned and hit his head on the edge of an opened cabinet door.
“God damn,” he yelled, slamming the door. The puppy raced out of the kitchen.
He pulled open a curtain to a little room off the kitchen. “Check it out, man.”
A soundless TV threw shadows across the room. The drawers of a small chest had all been dumped, and clothing spilled out of a partly open closet door. Hanson felt the dog brush the back of his leg.
“Hey, puppy. Come on, Spade. Come on, now,” Ira called in a high voice, squatting down and duckwalking toward the dog.
“C’mere,” he said, grabbing the dog’s collar.
“I really love this dog,” Ira said, the dog’s nails scraping the floor as Ira pulled him. “He doesn’t judge you, you know what I mean? No matter what you do, he still loves you, man.”
Ira twisted the dog’s collar and pulled him closer. “Isn’t that right, Spade?”
“You mind taking this one for me?” Hanson asked Dana. “I’ll go back to the car and work on the report on that kid. Then I owe you one.”
Dana nodded. “Ira,” he said, “you want me to take a crime report on this, or what? What’s missing?”
“Yeah. A crime report. We need to check for fingerprints too, man.”
When Hanson walked out the door, a green and silver rocket burst in the sky behind him, the reflection sliding over the trunk and roof of the patrol car. A firecracker flashed up the street as he got in the car. He pulled the little hooded lamp on the dashboard down and turned it on, filling the patrol car with dim red light.
Five Fifty will be jackpot with one adult male.
Copy Five Fifty jackpot.
A blue starburst lit the sky for a moment, then faded as the clustered points of light blossomed, their reflection flickering on the patrol car windshield, reminding Hanson of the last time he’d gotten a concussion. He clamped a Miscellaneous Report Form onto his clipboard.
He blinked when a cherry bomb went off up the street, pulling the notebook out of his hip pocket. It was damp with sweat, warped to the curve of his hip. Some of the entries in black ink were smeared, and the stitching was unraveling. He’d start a new notebook next week.
A firecracker popped just behind Ira’s house, then another, as Hanson thumbed through the notebook, a diary of his days, past the names of victims and suspects, heights, weights, dates of birth, license plate numbers, statements, threats, complaints, phone numbers, addresses, dates and arrival times, drawings of intersections and crime scenes, mug shots, folded arrest warrants.
A kid pedaled his bicycle past the patrol car, holding clusters of hissing sparklers above his head in both hands.
Five Eighty Two. Traffic stop at eighth and Killingsworth. White T-bird. California plate David Edward Young, Four Three Two. No cover needed.
Copy Five Eighty Two. Other car calling?
He looked down at a quote from a man they’d arrested earlier in the month. He’d been sitting on the sidewalk eating ants. “We dead stand undefended everywhere,” he’d told them.
The smoke from the kid’s sparklers drifted through the car, and Hanson looked out the window as if he was trying to remember something.
Other car calling?
Hanson thumbed to the last entry and began filling in the report form. His fingers threw shadows in the red light, and he moved them like finger puppets in front of the form. He looked at the house again and reached for the mike just as another radio broke the rushing static, someone keying their microphone without speaking.
Car calling?
Hanson tapped his pen on the report form.
Go ahead with your transmission.
A strange gurgling noise answered the dispatcher, reminding Hanson of something he’d heard before, something unpleasant. He tried to wave the memory away, submerge it, lose it again before it had time to take shape. It was a trick he was getting better at, turning away from the memory, looking off at something else and pretending not to hear as it groaned or shrieked or called his name, until it gave up and went away. He watched a pair of rockets in the rearview mirror as they sank below the hills and the sound came over the radio again. He held his hands under the red light, palms up, the fingers curved, turning them in, then out, throwing symmetrical shadows like Rorschach blots, insect heads, on the report form.
The memory wasn’t giving up this time. To keep ignoring it would be like ignoring a screaming wino following you down the street. After a block or so you have to turn around and say, “Okay, goddammit. What is it?” Hanson looked up and let the memory into his eyes.
The Viet Cong in black pajamas was on his knees, his elbows lashed so tightly behind him that his scrawny chest stuck out, his shoulders almost dislocated. The Vietnamese lieutenant smiled at Hanson and gave him a “thumbs up.” He spoke to his men and they pushed the prisoner backwards to the ground. One of them grabbed his throat and squeezed, yelling into his face until he opened his mouth. Another soldier stuffed a towel into his mouth and began pouring canteen cups of muddy water down the towel, slowly drowning him, laughing as he gagged and bucked.
Hanson had walked away, trying not to listen. It wasn’t his prisoner. There was absolutely nothing he could have done.
He closed the notebook and looked down the street. He tapped the notebook. Then he was out the door, gun in hand, running for Ira’s house.
The TV was still on, throwing shadows into the open closet door where Ira lay on his back, his hands over his stomach.
“Ambulance,” he said, looking at the ceiling. When he vomited through his mouth and nose, he didn’t even turn his head, trying not to move. But he gagged on it, choked, and vomited again.
Car calling?
Hanson looked toward the sound of the radio. Dana had left a thick swath of blood across the floor dragging himself to to the wall where he could sit up and elevate the wound. He sat in a puddle of blood, legs straight out, holding the packset in his lap.
“Five Sixty Two, emergency,” Hanson said into his packset. “I need a code-three ambulance at this location. We have a citizen and a police officer badly wounded.” His voice came from Dana’s packset like an echo, whining with feedback. He put his own back on his belt, while Dana’s continued to transmit.
Copy Five Six Two. All units stay off this frequency. Keep this channel open.
Dana’s eyes were wide, his face freckled with blood that pulsed through the fingers of the hand he had cupped over his throat. His uniform shirt looked slimy black in the blue light from the TV. It was full of blood, ballooning out over his belt like a beer belly.
Five Seventy’s on the way.
Five Eighty’s going.
Hanson picked up a T-shirt from a chair and kneeled in front of Dana, the blood warm as it soaked through the knees of his pants. He pulled Dana’s hand away and pressed the T-shirt over the ragged hole where cartilage and tendons quivered, could feel them working against his palm as the blood soaked through the T-shirt and down his arm. With his other hand he turned off Dana’s hissing packset, his fingers slipping on the little chrome knob, greasy with blood.
“You can still make it,” Hanson said. Dana stared over his shoulder at the TV as if he hadn’t heard, his eyes absolutely calm.
Five Six Two?
“Just hang on,” Hanson said.
Dana nodded, his eyelids flickering like he was fighting sleep, then he closed his eyes and slumped forward, the blood-filled shirt pulling loose and spilling onto his lap.
Hanson stood up, slipping in the blood, and looked down at Ira. “Who did it?”
Ira didn’t move, his hands tight on his stomach.
“Can’t talk,” Ira whined.
Five Six Two
Hanson turned down his packset and kicked Ira in the thigh.
“Who did it?”
Ira choked, turned his head and retched.
“I’ll kick you to death,” Hanson said, drawing his foot back.
“Crazy guy.” He gagged, tightened his lips, fought it back down. The smell of shit rose from him and filled the room.
“The guy who burglarized the place? Hiding in the closet?”
“Yuh.”
Hanson looked over his shoulder at Dana slumped in his own blood like some monster stillborn fetus.
“He did this with your gun, didn’t he? That he stole out of the bedroom. Didn’t he?”
“Yuh.”
“What kind of gun?”
“Four five.”
The planes of Ira’s pale face shifted as the light from the TV dimmed and brightened. His pasty skin was covered with a fine down of blond hair around his mouth and nose. Angry pimples studded his chin, and his teeth were bad. He looked up at Hanson, his eyes filling with tears.
“How many rounds in it?”
“Seben.”
“Please,” he sobbed, snot bubbling out of his nose and over his lips. He held his stomach, grunting with pain, and the shit smell got stronger. “Help me.”
Hanson turned and walked from the room, leaving bloody footprints down the hall and out the door as sirens warbled in the distance.
He was easy to follow. People in the neighborhood pointed the way, looking at Hanson as if he was a monster.
“You all right, man?” one of them asked. “You look like you been in a wreck or something.”
His pants and the front of his shirt had stiffened as the blood dried. His face, reflected in the window of a parked car, looked like it was mottled with dark birthmarks. The volume of his packset was turned so low that the radio traffic was an urgent murmuring, like voices around the bed of a dying man, calling Hanson as they deployed around Ira’s house. Hanson ignored them. This wasn’t about the law, and the rules didn’t apply. Maybe he’d been wrong about that all along, thinking that the badge and the laws written down in a book made it possible to understand and judge the world, that it was okay, even honorable to carry a gun and risk his life because he was helping people. Doc was right to have laughed at that, Hanson thought, as a kid on a bike pointed down the street.
“You after him, huh? Knew somebody be after him, but didn’t know it was the po-lice.”
When he ran beneath an unbroken street light, a woman in her yard looked at the blood-soaked cop and snatched her little boy up, holding him as Hanson ran back into the dark.
He hadn’t gone three blocks when he saw Dakota running across the street, toward the lights of a laundromat and a corner grocery store. Ignoring the boom and flash of star-clusters, people washed their clothes, smoking and watching the tumbling dryers as if they were TV sets. They were framed in the plateglass window that fronted the building, behind the words, BETTY’S WASH HOUSE, and an amateurish painting of a smiling black woman wearing a red turban.
Dakota looked up as another rocket burst in the hills and loomed over the district, his face bluish-white in the light, as if lit from inside. The silver duct tape banding his chest gleamed like scales, then flickered with the dying starburst and faded to a dull gray. He stopped in front of the laundromat window, pointed a pistol at his head, and shouted, “I’m laughing inside. Laughing.”
A few of the the customers noticed him, then, one by one, the others turned to look.
“All angels are pure spirits. Good or wicked,” Dakota shouted. “The answer is true.”
By now everyone in the laundromat was looking out the window, not quite sure what was going on, as Dakota turned the pistol and fired. The window shuddered, and Betty’s right eye opened as if she’d just been startled out of a long sleep. He fired yellow flame again and another hole appeared just below her nose.
The people inside froze, crouched, trying to sort it out, as cracks appeared around the bullet holes and spiderwebbed across the window. When the window collapsed, they dove onto the floor or ran for the doors behind the falling curtain of green-edged glass.
Dakota walked up the sidewalk holding the gun loosely at his side, as if he’d forgotten it was there. He stopped, looked over his shoulder at Hanson, then turned down an alley past dull silver garbage cans and out of sight.
Hanson unsnapped his safety strap and pulled the pistol free from the grip of the front-break holster. He thumbed the safety off and ran across the street, glass grinding beneath his boots, people in the laundromat screaming, into the mouth of the alley that smelled of rotten vegetables, grease, and the hot exhaust of clothes dryers. He dodged garbage cans and a dumpster the size of an APC, then slipped on a half-eaten cheeseburger, his head catching the edge of a fire escape.
Black stars and smoke exploded in his eyes, but he glared past them and kept moving, tasting the pain in his nose. He ran through an open gate into someone’s back yard as the stars faded and flickered out and the smoke drifted away. He crouched next to an overturned shopping cart, the packset whispering at his belt. He turned off the packset. Something was rustling bushes in the shadows of the house just ahead.
Hanson stared into the dark, above the sound, then past it, wide-eyed and dreamy as a blind man, trying to pick up a shadow or flutter of movement. He stepped closer, his eyes unfocused, passive. He stopped. Listened. Opened his mouth and inhaled, tasting the air. Sirens wailed in the distance.
A light went on in a window where a man walked to the refrigerator, took out a quart of beer, then walked back out of sight. The light went off, but it had been on long enough for Hanson to see the shrubbery on the far side of the house where the noise had come from. He started across the yard, then froze when the light came on again. The man looked up at the ceiling, then carefully opened a cabinet, lifted out a fifth of vodka and took a sip. Another. He started to screw the top back on the bottle, then took one more sip before he slid the bottle back and closed the cabinet. The light went out.
A step at a time, stopping to smell the air, listen, cocking his head to look out of the corner of his eyes and use his night vision, Hanson worked his way to the other side of the house and edged along a chain-link fence. He was sweating now, his underarms and stomach and crotch sticky where sweat moistened the dry blood on his uniform, its sweet metallic stink hanging on him like death.
Aaron Allen’s Cadillac cruised down the street in front of the house, pumping out a bass line from its radio, and Hanson used the noise to cover his own footsteps. When the car passed, he stopped to listen. A faint scent of honeysuckle rode the air.
Hanson heard the snarl an instant before the fence hit him. The dog hooked a tooth in his shirt, then lunged and got a better bite through the fence as Hanson fought to keep his balance. The dog’s breath was hot against the small of Hanson’s back as he was jerked back into the fence. Hanson rode the shuddering fence, holding his gun arm across his chest, stumbling as he tried to line up a shot at the dog and not hit himself.
Dakota, just a shadow, stepped around the corner of the house, the gun glinting, and Hanson instinctively threw his left hand up to shield himself. Dakota appeared, vanished, strobed in and out of the dark, his head like a jack o’lantern, like magic, in the yellow muzzle flash of a single shot. Hanson felt the heat of the muzzle blast on his hand, heard the slug snap past, just as the dog yelped behind him and his shirt tore free. Dakota appeared again and Hanson stumbled forward, hitting his head on a window box before falling on a lawn-mower, his ribs flaring with pain, losing his pistol.
“Six shots,” he thought, grunting as he rolled off the lawn mower, the wounded dog whining and thrashing somewhere behind him. He pulled himself to his knees, then his feet. His head roared, turning the world red as he tried not to throw up and hurt the ribs even more. He walked to the corner of the house very slowly, breathing shallowly, his vision coming back, pulse by pulse, risking a look around the house.
“He’s got one more,” he thought, watching Dakota hop and stagger across the street, chunks of plaster breaking off the cast. He tripped on the curb, screaming with pain and rage as he fell.
Hanson fumbled the little keychain flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on in one-second bursts, looking for his gun. Across the street Dakota talked to himself, the words garbled, hurrying through long sentences that stopped in mid-phrase, the rhythm of an auctioneer.
Hanson found the pistol, looped the flashlight around his left wrist, and got to his feet.
“Good,” Dakota yelled to no one in particular. “Hit me,” as he ran on, lurching and screaming each time his bad leg hit the ground, vanishing between two houses.
Hanson went after him, grunting, the cracked ribs sawing against each other. He tried to ignore the pain, leave it behind, but it wouldn’t go away. He stopped in the middle of the street, breathing, getting ready, then took the pain and made it his, sucking it up and using it to get him across the street, walking, then jogging, screaming out each breath as he began to run. Thorns snagged his shirt and pants, slapped his face as he stumbled and fell through blackberry vines as thick as bullwhips into another back yard.
Dakota half-turned, still running, and swung the gun around. A clothesline caught him in the throat, slamming him down, the gun throwing yellow flame past Hanson’s ear, blinding him for a moment.
Click. Click.
Dakota sat with his back against the clothesline pole, pointing the gun at Hanson’s face. It clicked and snapped, slide locked open, like a broken machine as he continued to pull the trigger. Hanson shone the little flashlight on him and he grinned, showing thorazine-rotted teeth, one side of his face swollen, lopsided as a rotten pumpkin, an earring driven like a fishhook beneath the closed eye, the little blue unicorn dangling like a spider. He dropped the gun and held out his good arm. “Put on. The cuffs.”
Hanson smelled him. His burnt popcorn psychotic sweat almost overpowering the gunpowder and honeysuckle.
“Too late,” Hanson said, “for that.”
“I surrender,” Dakota said.
Hanson fired twice, knocking Dakota back into the clothesline pole, punching two holes in the duct tape around his chest.
“… your prisoner.”
Hanson fired again into the tape. Again. Gunsmoke burned his eyes and his ears rang.
“You’re in. Big. Trouble now,” Dakota said, looking up in the weakening yellow flashlight. “Eeeeee. Eeeeee,” he keened, grinning, his rotten teeth black and pink now with blood.
He choked on a laugh, grunted, snorted, waggling his tongue. “Eeeee. Eeeeee.”
He leaned back against the clothesline pole and closed his eye, his breathing wet and ragged. When Hanson bent down for a closer look, the eye opened, meeting Hanson’s.
“I know something …”
The sirens much closer now, blue and red lights fanning the yards, the blue unicorn crawling on his face.
“… you want to know.”
Hanson leaned closer, poised to jump back, the pistol close to his side. “What?” he whispered.
Dakota smiled, the eye drawing Hanson closer. He pursed his lips as if he were going to kiss Hanson, the eye shining, and spit hot blood in his eyes and mouth.
“Some night,” Dakota croaked, breathing through his mouth, “in the dark …”
Hanson blinked blood out of his eyes, and shot him through his open mouth, the high-velocity, hollow-point slug blowing out the back of his skull, shrieking into the dark.
Dakota’s shaved head gonged off the clothesline pole, vomiting blood. His bad leg twitched, kicked, danced heel-and-toe, then he toppled over the army .45 with swastika grips.