The Policeman's Daughter

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “Could she have cut your wisteria without you knowing?”

  “No. Even if I didn’t see her. I know my garden. Nothing changes that I don’t notice. I’ve put in every plant. Every day I weed what doesn’t belong. I know every leaf, bloom, bug, and bird. I see the beginnings and endings, the causes of wilting and growing.”

  Salt sat in the dark, struggling to grab at fragments, trying to pull them together. “Mother’s Day,” she said to herself, then pressed her hand against the wig and wished she hadn’t. The touch made the itching worse.

  “What did you say?” Sister asked.

  “Oh.” She pressed the wig to her head. “My head itches where I got shot.” Her eyes wandered around the room and settled on a wall clock that was wrong, both its hands up, stopped on twelve. She didn’t have on her watch. Whores didn’t wear watches.

  “How long has it been?”

  “What been?”

  “Since you were shot?”

  “I was shot in April. The man I shot had guns in his car. He was transporting, he’d picked them up from somewhere around here.”

  Sister’s eyelids slowly closed, like someone who either does or doesn’t want to see a memory.

  “Sister?”

  The old woman took a long breath, opened her eyes, and touched the little flower spray.

  Salt glanced again at the clock, which was right twice a day. She felt like she was also stuck and only right occasionally. “I’ve gotta go, Sister. Thank you for the help.” She was anxious now to get to the car clock.

  “How did I help?”

  “I don’t have it all,” Salt told her. “I just have pieces.”

  “You talkin’ ’bout flowers has to do with what got her killed? You got pieces, huh?”

  “Every once in a while you and I are speaking the same language.”

  “But you not sure?”

  Salt got to the door, turned, and asked, “You said that Mrs. McCloud is your cousin? Please just answer me straight.”

  “Sometimes a crooked path leads you to where you need to go. She is. But we don’t talk. Though I can’t help but see her around.”

  “Crooked?” Salt, frustrated with the itching, pushed at the wig. “Is she good to Mary?”

  “Mary is looked after better than most.”

  “I saw that, but is she good to her?”

  “I think she uses the Bible against Mary, not for her. But she don’t know but a narrow way.”

  “Sister Connelly.” Now she was getting impatient. “I feel like I’m in Sunday school again, in the back row. I want to know if she is good to her.”

  “Truth is I don’t see much of that woman. Frances is her given name. She avoids me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We go different ways. She was too hard on Shannell. Now she’s got Mary.”

  “Hard? How?”

  “She put too much on Shannell too young, and she uses the Bible like a whip, like a curse.”

  Salt was at the door and looked out into the night. “I think so, too.”

  “She does what she thinks is right.” Sister sighed. Then she pointed her finger. “You know what might be out on the street there.” She slapped the Bible against her thigh.

  “But it steals the child,” Salt said, carefully placing her feet as she went wobbling slightly down the steps in her high heels.

  “You don’t seem like you walk too good in them shoes. They belong to you?”

  “They’re new, for the job. I wasn’t meant to be a high-heel kind of girl.”

  “Watch your step then,” Sister called.

  Salt headed to the car, its clock, and an evening on the Avenue.

  * * *

  • • •

  Back at the command post the last sweep of whores were being loaded into the paddy wagon. They were lined up at the rear doors, a slow procession, wrists bound behind them with plastic flex cuffs. “The brides of the Avenue,” the crew called them. A wagonful.

  Some of the girls recognized her in spite of the wig: “Salt.” “Salt, can I talk to you?” “Salt, you know me.” “Salt, help me out here. I can’t go to jail.” All asking for a break, a trade, for information.

  “Sorry, ladies,” Salt said to the group, “not unless you got something to tell me.”

  One of the women cops, dressed and ready to take it to the Avenue, handed each woman a copy of her jail ticket as, one by one, they stepped up into the wagon. Voices inside complained about being crowded, about body odors, the “poleese,” and life in general.

  “You look good, Salt.” Glenda stood at the end of the line with young Peaches. They were wearing matching outfits, red wigs, neon-blue stretch dresses that barely covered anything, and black heels and stockings.

  Salt walked over. “I’m sorry, Glenda.”

  “Oh, I know the deal, Salt. I’m gonna help Peaches here”—she held up Peaches’s hand—“through the jail and court.” The young girl had tear tracks in her heavy makeup.

  “I see you found Dirty Red,” said Glenda.

  “I’m still looking for her.”

  “Why? She in the wagon.” The interior of the van was dark. Streetlight bounced off bits of jewelry, and irritated voices, amplified by the metal sides, jangled from the paddy wagon.

  “Let me see what I can do, Glenda. I owe you twice now.” Breathless, she walked up to the cop handing out the tickets. “Hey, Stacie. Have you got one, last name Stone?”

  “I’ll look.” She sifted through the tickets. “Yep, here it is.”

  “I need to get her out. I need to talk to her.”

  Stacie handed over the green copy of Red’s arrest ticket.

  Salt looked in the wagon but didn’t see her. Then in the corner one very thin body was squeezed between two other women, her head turned to the wagon wall.

  “Red,” Salt called.

  Red turned, eyes wide, to see if Salt really meant her.

  “Red, come on out.”

  “Come on, bitch.” Another girl elbowed Red. “Get out so we can get going.”

  Red stood, bent at the waist, stumbling to the door of the wagon. She had on a long black wig that was tangled and had barrettes scattered in it for no apparent purpose.

  As Red stepped out, Salt took a step back, caught her heel on a broken spot in the asphalt, and fell sideways, breaking her fall with the palm of her hand. Someone inside the wagon sneezed or laughed. “Shut up,” said another voice.

  “Shit,” Salt muttered, pushing herself up. Her palm was abraded and little bits of dirt, glass, and asphalt were stuck in the scrapes.

  “You not too good in them shoes,” Red said, her rictus grin disappearing and reappearing.

  “I’m not a professional.” She picked a sliver of glass out of the pad of one finger. “Damn.”

  Red stood there with her hands cuffed, nose running, her body edgy and shaking. Salt could have passed her fifty times on the street and wouldn’t have recognized her. The black wig nearly covered her face and it was like all Red’s limbs had come out of joint and were just hanging by soft tissue. “Salt, you can see, can you please get them to let me slide on this bust? I can’t do ten days. I’m hurtin’ already. I stayed off the street as long as I could. I was too scared to work. But Big couldn’t keep supportin’ me forever. Help me.”

  “This bust is somebody else’s case. I have to have a reason to let you go on a summons.” Salt played it hard, way harder than she felt. She tried to brush some of the dirt from her palm.

  Red stepped forward, like she would touch Salt if her hands weren’t cuffed behind her back. “I know things, Salt.”

  “You know I don’t need just ‘things,’ Red.”

  Red walked farther away from the wagon. Salt followed at her back.

  “Okay, I know about Shannell.”

&
nbsp; Salt just barely heard her say it. She halted Red by grabbing the flex cuffs. “What about Shannell?”

  “I know about what Stone had her up to.”

  The light around Red’s wig went all fuzzy, the barrettes moving like moths in her hair. Salt started to raise her dirty hand to clear her eyes. Red seemed to recede, moving away without using her feet. “You didn’t tell me anything before, when I came to see you at Big’s.” Salt’s voice came out louder than she intended, like talking from a tunnel.

  “I was scared. I been workin’ for Stone. You gonna get them to cut me loose?”

  Salt’s feet felt mushy on the pavement. She shook her head. “If you give me good reason and you’re gonna have to make a written statement.”

  “Oh, no. That would make me dead. I thought you were gonna look out for me. You gonna leave me to get shot. I won’t testify.”

  “There’s a good chance you wouldn’t have to testify. If the feds can build a strong enough case, they wouldn’t need you. But I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you absolutely you won’t have to get on the stand.” It sounded like she was trying to convince them both.

  “Stone will kill me.”

  “I can’t get you out of this bust if I don’t have something written.”

  Even blurry, Salt could see that Red was in severe withdrawal, grinding her teeth on every word. She felt for Red, felt bad for using her pain.

  Red bent over from the waist. “Oh, God help me, I’ll write it.”

  Salt reached for the pen she normally kept in her uniform shirt pocket; forgetting her costume, her hand patted the red knit top.

  “Hold on. Let me get the arresting guy and get a statement form. Which detective busted you?”

  “That motherfucker,” she said, pointing at Gregory, one of the regular Vice guys.

  Salt passed Red to Stacie. “Can you hold on to her for a minute?” She went over to Gregory who was writing out more arrest tickets on the hood of a car. “Red give you any trouble, Greg?”

  “Red, last name Stone? Naw,” he said. “She’s a pro. How you doin’ Salt? I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  “I know. First the shooting and I’ve been busy with the beat.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “About healed,” she said, instantly feeling the headache spike. “Listen, would you be willing to cut Red loose on a summons? She’s giving me good info.”

  “Since it’s you asking, I can go with letting her appear on her own. You get her ticket, you change it.”

  “Thanks, Greg. I’ll owe you one, maybe two. You got a pen I can borrow? I already got the ticket from Stacie.”

  “A freebie.” He handed her a pen from his pocket.

  “Did you get Glenda and the young one, too?”

  “Nope. Those were Scrapler’s arrests. You know you can have Red as far as I’m concerned but the LT will stop that if it’s called to his attention by you trying to get three whores off. You’re bleeding, Salt, your wrist.”

  Salt looked down and saw that a trickle of blood had begun down her wrist from her palm. “Damn, it’s these shoes. I tripped on the pavement.”

  “I’ve got some hand wash in my gear bag.”

  “It’s just a scrape. Thanks, Greg.”

  “Yeah, but out here you never can tell. Some of these girls carry some bad infections.”

  “Really, I’m fine,” she said.

  Glenda and Peaches were the last on the wagon so they sat across from each other at the doors. They had been last on and so would be first off at the jail. Glenda nodded to Salt just before the driver closed the doors.

  Salt went back to Red, who was for the moment absorbed by the ends of her wig hair.

  “Who’s got the flex cutters?” Red, knowing the routine, asked as soon as Salt got back to her. “I can’t think with my hands behind me.”

  One of the men brought over snippers and cut the cuffs.

  “I have your ticket,” Salt said, leading Red to a car trunk, careful now of the puckered and split parking lot pavement. Red checked over her shoulder, rubbed her wet nose, shook her head like a dog, and took the pen and blue form Salt offered.

  “From the street nobody can see you.”

  Red bent over and tried to arrange her body to write. She swung her butt from side to side as she leaned on the car trunk, her shoulders twitching as she pressed the pen to the form. Her body was in constant motion, joints bent in unexpected directions, head rolling as she wrote. After torturous minutes, lips pulled into a hard grimace, she finished, stuck the pen in her mouth, jutted her hip till it looked like it hurt, and handed the blue statement to Salt.

  The handwriting was childlike, printed with capitals in wrong places, misspellings and no punctuation, but it read like sacred text to Salt. Her heart rate revved with each word.

  Me and cHanel bot guNs For stone

  Four she di CHanel keeP the Guns at her aptment

  Stone an som grill them

  We can by guns cus we don got no Felnee rocod

  At the gun places

  Stone give us 2 rocks and 25 dolars for 1 gun each

  After reading the statement Salt felt as jangly as Red looked but managed to write a series of questions and got Red to put an answer under each of the questions.

  Q: How many times did you buy guns?

  A: I don no. For 2 years, bout 10 times.

  Q: What about Shannell? Do you know how many times she bought?

  A: Mayb the same.

  Q: Do you know anybody else that bought guns for Stone?

  A: Thass not my bidnes. I don wan too no.

  Q: What happened to the guns Shannell and you were buying?

  A: Thass not my bidnes too.

  Q: Was there anybody else in with Stone on the gun buying?

  A: Les I no the bater I am.

  Q: Is there anything else you can tell me about Stone buying and selling guns?

  A: No.

  Salt felt she had as much information as Red could give. She asked her to sign the statement. At first Red started to write, dirt re—

  “Red, I need you to sign your real name.”

  She looked puzzled for a moment and then wrote, Rose Lady Stone, taking her time with loopy cursive on the signature line. She leaned back for a few seconds, looking at her name before handing the paper back.

  Salt looked at Red’s signature. “Your name is pretty.”

  “I didn’t hardly remember it.” Her voice was soft. “I like the ‘Rose Lady’ part better than ‘Dirty Red’ but I don’t like folks to remember that my last name is same as Stone. I don’t like that he’s my blood brother.” Then her twitches started. “Now can I go?”

  Salt stepped close enough to touch Red, whose body held the street funk odor of the Avenue. Red handed her the pen.

  Salt shook her head. “You keep it. Practice writing your real name.”

  Red’s elbows came up, she clicked the pen, rotated her hips, clicked her heels together, clicked the pen again, turned, and started her stroll back to the Avenue.

  * * *

  • • •

  Red’s feet hadn’t hit the sidewalk when Salt had Wills on the phone. “Hi, it’s Salt.”

  “I know.”

  “I found Red. She wrote and signed a statement about Shannell. Get this, buying guns.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Detail.”

  “Detail?”

  “Vice—whores and johns.”

  “Amazing.”

  “She’s a prostitute.”

  “I meant you on the Avenue. Damn. I’ll call you back. Oh, and Salt. How are you?”

  “I found Red.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Wills and the agent were waiting for her in a back booth of the Roadhouse. Ove
r diners’ voices and the sounds of dishes clacking, Jerry Lee Lewis screamed “Great Balls of Fire,” spiking shards of light into her vision. Salt held her hand up, shielding her eyes against the bright lights of the faux 1950s-style decor: chrome, neon, Wurlitzer jukebox swirling colors off the mirrors. Prisms surrounded the tables and booths in her path.

  Wills stood when he saw her. The blending images that at times obscured her sight and skewed her judgment were getting harder to ignore. Wills looked like he was too far away to be in the room. It seemed a long walk to where he was, especially in the trick shoes. Theater patrons, having after-show suppers, seemed to slowly turn, watching her walk. She hadn’t taken time to change from the work wig or prostitute clothes. She touched her chest, where the statement was folded beneath her concealed badge. The hostess followed closely as she made her way to the booth.

  Wills turned his head, scanning the room, watching the citizens and their attention to her progress toward him. Shannell, shiny and skinny. Red, naked and hurting. All she had to do was keep putting one red shoe in front of the other, each step closer to an arrest warrant.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you,” Wills said.

  The guy with Wills stayed seated, staring at her shoes and short skirt.

  The hostess said, “Miss, are you—?”

  “This is the man I’m looking for,” said Salt.

  “Sir, do you know this woman?”

  “I’m not sure,” joked Wills, smiling, winking at her.

  She felt huge, standing there shifting from one hurting foot to the other, aware of the stares from the tables nearby.

  “Yes, I know her, Miss. It’s okay.” Wills laughed and slid over to make room in the booth for Salt. They had the backseat so they could face the door. Wills must have won the cop version of musical chairs. Until she tucked her legs under the table the man across the booth kept his eyes on her shoes.

  The smell of the Avenue clinging to her clothes, she tried to stay close to the edge of the booth seat, as far from Wills as possible. But Wills was his usual relaxed self. Everything always seemed easy for him.