Flopping down on an old brocade sofa, Dirty Red said, “Ain’t nothing the poleese ain’t seen before. ’Sides it’s too hot.”
Salt felt her sweat-soaked undershirt plastering itself under the bulletproof vest and felt a familiar admiration. In her, like Shannell, there would be no pretension, which was always a relief. She pulled at her vest to let some air get to her skin.
“Why you say ‘Shannell’ when you come in?” asked Dirty Red, flinging her limbs around an arm of the sofa, swinging her legs open and closed. Salt was used to this lack of modesty, having searched so many whores after they were arrested; the male cops were always calling female cops for the close body searches of female arrestees. The whores, most of the time without even being asked, pulled their pants down and their shirts up, displaying breasts and “showing pink” without the least bit of inhibition. I never even saw my own mother naked, Salt realized.
“You and Shannell hung together,” answered Salt, feeling the weight of all the gear on her belt.
The streets forged strange intimacies. She, who’d never argued with her parents, now had this job, which sometimes involved close combat. Salt had lain on top of Man when she and other officers struggled to get him handcuffed. Just after the cuffs were on, Man asked in a friendly manner for a quarter for his jail phone call, like nothing unusual had happened, no hard feelings, both of them doing what they do. This conversation with a naked Dirty Red, who wasn’t literally dirty or red, seemed not out of the ordinary.
“Yeah, sometimes. But I hang with lots of folks. Shannell did, too.”
“I need your help.” Salt shifted her utility belt, adjusting gun, nightstick, gas holder, and radio, then sat down in a chair close by.
“I can’t even help my own damn self. I’m down and dirty.” She grinned and grimaced, her nerve endings so shot that she could no longer hold even a simple smile.
“Shannell was pretty far down herself.”
Red looked away. “Nobody know that better than Shannell. Nobody know better than us how low we gone. We the first to tell you.”
Salt pictured funky Shannell and her “cooda potpie” booty shake.
Without the drug tics Red actually looked very like her sister, freckled and light-skinned, but much, much thinner. Crack gave her grin an unnatural width. “You don’t remember me, do you?” Red asked.
There was something, another dim memory. “I’m sure I’ve seen you on the street a couple of times.” Salt stood and moved over to the mantel, on which was a photo with curling edges of a school class, one girl circled with a pencil. It was hard to tell which sister it might have been. There was also a ceramic cat meant for a plant but holding a crack pipe.
“No, I mean a long time ago, when I was a kid.”
Salt turned back, a vague memory forming. “Your sister looks familiar, like a girl I interviewed once.”
“That was me. We looked alike before I got hooked.”
With the memory sharper now, she looked at Red, past the dry broken hair, past the contortions, the tics, the ashy skin, to the child in the penciled circle.
“I was raped,” said Red, still smiling.
“You’re Stone’s sister. You and he lived with your auntie on Shaw.”
“I was ten.”
“Your uncle and his.”
“His daddy. You gave me a teddy bear.”
“I remember,” Salt said, as if words would shatter something already broken.
“I still have that bear. But I’ve forgotten where.”
Salt had more bears in the trunk of her car. “I guess by now he’s seen better days.”
“Hell, I ain’t,” said Red. She swung her feet to the floor and leaned toward Salt. “I ain’t. Shannell dead. She ain’t hurtin’ no more but I’m still here.”
“Whoever killed Shannell needs to get caught. I heard your brother beat you up a little while back.”
“You know what? He dead before he dead,” said Red. She flung her herky-jerky body to the far side of the room. For a moment Salt thought she might be searching for the bear, but Red grabbed a pack of Kool cigarettes off the mantel.
“Are you staying here because your sister can protect you?”
“Yeah, Stone won’t mess with my sister ’cause she really his mama.”
“You mean your sister is your brother’s mother?”
“You a smart poleese.”
Salt’s head was beginning to hurt. It had started again last night and now the wavy lines in her vision were back. She wanted to do right for Shannell, but at the same time wanted to be away from the images of little girls who had to make do with nothing for a childhood and who ended up easy to get killed. “Who might have wanted Shannell dead?”
“Shannell like me. One wrong turn and we liable to get a bad surprise. We at the bottom, like nothin’. But I still got Big till she don’t have no mo money. Then I got the street again. I ain’t quite at the real bottom. Shannell ruin what she have with Big D. She was on the last step. Anybody coulda kilt her.”
“Was she doing something different, something that would have put her next to a killer?”
“Now, Officer, you been ’round these streets. Every next person might be ready to kill. Say a person don’t get their piece of the chicken, don’t get a decent night sleep, get disrespected by the boys on the corner. Don’t take much more and they just kill. Question for me is, ‘When they ready?’”
“Did Stone or Man or any of the gang have regular contact with Shannell?”
“I ain’t answerin’ on the grounds that it might intimidate me. I know my rights.” She swung her legs again, open, closed, like a child, a twenty-four-year-old crack child, on short time.
The white shimmers in Salt’s sight danced faster. She gave it another shot. “I’m not trying to intimidate you. You’re not under investigation.” She tugged again at the ear missing its silver.
Red lit the Kool and blew smoke up toward the ceiling. “I know when to shut up. I learnt that a long time ago. I never had no protection. I had that bear for a while. I always did what I was told, till that bear. I told that bear what I wanted. Then he got lost.”
Salt had found the right house and now she wanted out. She stood suddenly and turned toward the dim hall. Red said, “You find you own way out.”
At the threshold of the living room she half-turned. “It’s my job. To find who killed Shannell. Just like if you were killed. I’d keep on until I caught them. Little girls don’t get too much say around here and they damn sure don’t say much once they’re grown and dead.” Salt’s muscles tightened. Her boots hit hard on the old floor, heading into the shaft of light from the damaged door. Behind her she thought she heard Red say, “Bears ain’t no protection.”
Outside, as Salt hurried to the privacy of the cop car, the hot wind continued to pull and lift the blue tarp covering the Red sisters’ house.
18.
ON THE WAY HOME
Wednesday night was brutal. Nothing major, but radio had been relentless. Call after call, dispatch constantly asking units to clear, advising that there were numerous high priority calls pending. There had been no time to needle the gang. It worried her that she had not caught sight of Lil D. Salt had gulped a power drink on the run and had to milk a call to take a bathroom break and to refill her water bottle. By the time the shift ended her vest was soaked. Her gear bag felt like it carried a ton of Homes bricks when she hauled it from the patrol car to her Honda.
None of the guys were joking, hardly even talking. They were all exhausted, too exhausted to complain about manpower shortages in the PD or the dearth of patrol cars, or the politics that at times played hell with the police budget, as they had in the most recent years. Mostly it was just the muffled sounds of trunks closing. Uniform shirts came off, then the vests. White undershirts appeared disembodied in the dark parking lot. Salt stowed her
gear, vest, and bag. Her T-shirt began to dry. Her skin breathed again.
Pepper stumbled to his minivan parked next to Salt and sat with the door open, his head on the steering wheel. “I’m so tired I don’t think I can get the key in the ignition.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to make the drive home. Thank God it’s Friday,” she mumbled.
“It’s Wednesday,” Pepper said.
“Well, it’s our Friday and I’m going home,” she said, eager for the pecan trees, the sheep, and her black dog.
“Good night, partner.”
Salt steered out of the drive and cut through a few short streets to get to the expressway. Stopped at the last light on Love Street, before the expressway entrance ramp, her hand moved to cover the butt of her 9mm and she realized that, distracted by fatigue, she had left the gun on her belt in the trunk. But she was so close to open air, close to being away from the city. She headed onto the expressway, her mind gone to thoughts of the coming days off, her dog, and home.
Half an hour later, waiting for the light at the top of the off-ramp exit to her country town, she was jolted out of her reverie by the heavy thump, thump of a loud car speaker, its vibration shaking the frame of her Honda. With the windows rolled up, air conditioner on full blast, no words came through, just the jolting bass beats. In the rearview mirror, behind the car directly behind her, she could see the top of a yellow truck, shaking with the blaring sound. When the light changed she made the right turn onto the rural two-lane that led directly home. The decked-out Chevy truck turned behind her, sped up, and filled her rearview mirror. It was familiar, from the corner, from the chicken place. A gang car.
The windows of the truck were dark tinted so it was impossible to tell how many people were in the cab. She maintained her normal speed but her heart began to race. There were five miles of unlit blacktop before her winding dirt driveway, but no way would she lead them to her home. The truck began to accelerate around her. In a split second Salt considered her options. There were only old farmhouses between the expressway and home. If the truck pulled alongside her she would be an easy target. If she slowed to turn back, same possibility. She would not put some old farm family in danger by turning into their drive. That left one option. She floored it.
The Honda seemed to gulp a second before responding to the infusion of fuel. The six-year-old sedan was not built for speed, but Salt felt she had one advantage. She had been driving this road since she was sixteen and it was a sticky blacktop. She knew every turn, how they were banked. She’d slipped off its shoulders enough times to know where the ditches were deep and where they were shallow. If she could make it, ten miles out there was a small-town speed trap where the local sheriff filled the town coffers with fines levied on unsuspecting out-of-towners. The truck rammed her from the rear. Salt’s chest hit the steering wheel as the car jolted toward the right ditch. How to make the ten miles? The first of the curves appeared and she knew exactly how far into the curve she could keep up speed. She anticipated the apex and maximized acceleration coming out of the bend. Salt watched in the mirror as the truck decelerated too soon and for a brief moment she lost sight of it as she hit the gas coming back on the straightaway.
But it was a mile to the next real bend in the road and the headlights were shining closer again in the mirror, hurting her eyes and messing with her night vision. She downshifted to get more grip for the car, risking the transmission, turned the AC off to get more power, and left the windows up to minimize air resistance. Sweat poured from her face and neck. She couldn’t think of any way to get more advantage for her small car. The truck rammed her again and knocked the rear-right wheel off the edge of the road. She fought to hold the car straight before angling back onto the road surface.
No longer tired, her body flooded with adrenalized instinct, the earlier longing for the soothing silk of dog fur and home now replaced by primitive determination. For an irrational second, she considered the sheep and that their hooves needed to be treated for rot.
This time when the truck slammed into the car she felt the jerk and then a tug from the bumper biting into her left-rear tire. The next curve appeared and she remembered one more accessory to eliminate. She flipped off her lights coming out of the curve, hoping that she was far enough ahead that the truck occupants would, at least briefly, lose sight of her, that there was enough moonlight to see by, that her eyes would adjust quickly enough, that the tire wouldn’t go flat, and that the Honda would hold up for a few minutes more.
She knew that another curve would come almost as soon as this one ended, and she quickly accelerated, decelerated, downshifted, and tore out of the apex, following moonbeams on the white lines of pavement.
Sighting down the bridge over the recently dry Billy’s Creek, crossing the bridge, she slammed on the brakes, cut the Honda sharply to the right just as the bridge railing ended, and fishtailed down the bank to the rocky creek bed. She dared not lose momentum on the sharp dry rocks, keeping the car grinding and bumping for traction back up the incline, timing it for just after the truck passed over the bridge. Now she was following them, her lights still off, as the truck poured on speed, searching for her ahead. The sharpest curve on the stretch loomed unannounced because the SHARP CURVE AHEAD sign had not been replaced after the last accident victim took it down coming out of the curve from the other direction.
Even with her windows up the impact was loud, and seconds later the explosion vibrated to her car. The glow became visible as she drove slowly, car limping with the flattening rear tire. Then around the bend, the night lit up by the truck burning against the base of a large pine tree. Salt stopped on the shoulder at a safe distance. The truck had struck the tree sideways on the passenger side, just behind the cab. The doors had crumpled inward but the windows had somehow stayed unshattered. Fully engulfed, fire filled the cab. It was impossible to see if it was one person moving behind the tinted windows or two people being consumed by the flames. She got out and went to the trunk for her phone in a side pocket of her gear bag. She held the phone in her palm, popping sounds from the burning car murder on her ears, fire shooting up the trunk of the tall pine. Needles caught like white sparklers, spraying the ground. She pocketed the phone, closed the bag, pushed aside the gear belt with the 9mm, and grabbed for the spare tire. Using the light from the fire, she worked as fast as she could with the rusty jack. She pounded the lugs loose with the wrench, changed the tire, and then sped down the road to home.
* * *
• • •
In the hall the first lavender light of day was showing, coming from between the top of the living room curtains and the sills. She sat at the kitchen table in the faint light, a half glass of red wine, a black gun-cleaning kit, and the chrome 9mm laid out in still-life. Salt took a sip of wine and released the clip from the gun. She separated the slide from the frame and drained the glass. Her nostrils filled with the smells of gun oil and fermented fruit as the first rays of sun crept down the hallway. The light played attractively on the chrome. With the weapon still in pieces she put her head on the table and fell into a sleep without dreams.
* * *
• • •
There was a large turnout, seventy-five or more, for the funeral of Q-Ball. Salt kept out of sight, on a street crest overlooking the attendees, above the stone church where a good number of dope boys had been eulogized in the past. Two columns of young men in colors filed into the church. A floral spray in the same blue was carried behind them, the number 13 outlined in white carnations.
Blessing had mentioned that he’d heard Q-Ball was killed in a wreck. “Highway 14, isn’t that out where you live?” Pepper noticed the pulled-out dent in the bumper of her Honda. “How’d you get that?” Nobody that she knew of put it all together, though. The county sheriff didn’t come asking. There was no record. She had not made the call. Nothing to tie her to Q-Ball and the chase on the road to her house. Salt would n
ot risk being seen as not able to handle her beat. She would not risk being taken out of The Homes. There were still supervisors who felt protective of the women cops and would see this kind of incident as too much of a threat. She would deal with it.
No one in the city cared where Q-Ball had crashed and died, just another dead ganger. No one, except maybe Man, and Salt.
19.
SISTER CONNELLY
In the dark heat Salt slowly trailed along Marcy Street, windows down in the black-and-white. A hot misty rain had fallen during the day and now a heavy fog hung over the night. The streetlights had halos, and the white noise of the city was muffled. The tires crunched on bits of gravel and glass. An ethereal cloud cloaked the street. There hadn’t been much radio traffic, the mic on her shoulder mostly silent. From where Salt parked down the street, low visibility made her view of Sister Connelly, in a red choir robe, all the more startling as Sister approached from the apartment side of the street, moving toward her house. The colors of the houses, the street, a close-by mimosa were hazy and muted to shades of dark and gray, all except the bloodred of Sister’s robe and the cracked red of Shannell’s windows across the street.
Salt used the outside car mic to announce herself: “Hello.” Her greeting floated, disconnected. Sister stopped in front of her gate and waited as Salt drew up, her robe redder the closer Salt got, the pleats folding and unfolding as she moved. “You’re out late tonight. Coming from church?” Even her unamplified voice seemed to expand.
“Prayer meeting and choir practice. You don’t think I wear this just to wander around in, do you?” Her words were also magnified in the muted night. “You making fun of something with that microphone?”
Salt turned off the ignition and got out, her hands on her gear belt to keep things from jangling. She shut the car door quietly, only the click of the latch audible, and moved closer to Sister, who seemed in this light both younger and more ancient. “You didn’t really answer my questions about Shannell when I came by last week.”
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