“And Officer Alt”—the solicitor’s voice had tightened ever so slightly—“did you have reason to arrest the defendant?”
Salt looked again at Lil D, who didn’t know the script, was unaware of the misplaced lines. Like a lamb to slaughter, he stood there testifying without saying a word.
Salt missed several more beats. “Officer Alt?” the solicitor prompted her again. He’d now put down the other paperwork and was looking at her with the same cocked head as the defense attorney.
“Yes, yes,” Salt answered. The solicitor moved toward her, making eye contact. “On what grounds did you arrest the defendant?” His words were clipped, precise, and impatient.
“He didn’t have a driver’s license or proof of insurance,” she answered. The words sounded tired, even to her.
The solicitor’s mouth had fallen open. He turned to the judge. “Your Honor, if I may take a minute to confer with my witness?”
The judge snapped forward in his chair. “This is a preliminary hearing. You should have talked with Officer Alt before she began her testimony. Proceed.” He leaned forward toward the computer, his whole face now a light shade of blue. He smiled at the screen.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” the solicitor replied automatically, thanking him for nothing. He knew his lines.
“Officer Alt, in the process of arresting the defendant did you witness the recovery of any contraband from the defendant’s vehicle?”
“It wasn’t his vehicle,” she answered.
The solicitor’s lips stayed parted over his very white teeth, speechless. She was choosing another way of looking at things, the way it should go, giving Lil D’s attorney a gift, the facts for a defense for Lil D. She wasn’t lying. She was telling the truth. But it was out of order, not according to the script, and definitely not for the state.
Beyond the lights of the front of the courtroom, the odd congregation, which included her fellow cops, had grown unusually quiet. Even the uninitiated sensed the cops’ attention to her testimony. Salt felt the grains of her reputation shifting.
The leg irons around his ankles clinked on the hardwood floor as Lil D shifted his feet. He looked frail under the courtroom lighting. She rubbed her hand across her eyes. It was as though every move she or Lil D made was spotlighted.
“Officer Alt, please answer the question.” Now the solicitor sounded mystified, annoyed, both. “Were drugs recovered from the vehicle the defendant was driving?” His mouth stayed open again, staring at her over the top of his glasses.
“Yes,” Salt answered without elaboration, which sent the solicitor into a quick spin on his heels. Turning to the judge, he recited, “Your Honor, I have the results of the crime lab analysis. The analysis found that the drugs recovered from the car the defendant was driving were positive for crack cocaine.” He waved the report at his side.
The chains on Lil D’s ankles clattered.
“Duly noted for the record. Continue with your case, Mr. Solicitor,” urged the judge.
The solicitor turned, stared straight back at Salt to get the answer that was required. “Were the drugs in the possession of the defendant?”
Salt’s next line was supposed to be Yes, they were found under his seat, within his wingspan. She drew a large breath and exhaled. “No.”
Lil D lifted his head.
“Officer Alt”—the solicitor flapped his arms twice against his suit—“what was your probable cause to charge the defendant with possession?”
“They were found—they were found within his wingspan.” Her voice was limp, without conviction.
“No further questions, Your Honor,” said the solicitor. Then he whispered to Salt, “I’m unhappy,” although they all knew probable cause was established, enough to bind Lil D over for trial.
Except now the public defender, who usually wore an air of resignation, walked upstage and in a loud voice asked, “Officer Alt, were the drugs found within the wingspan of Curtis Stone also?”
“Yes, they were.” Blowing her lines, she answered, not bothering to disguise the satisfaction she felt in telling the whole truth, nothing but.
The solicitor had turned his back to her, looking out at the audience, playing to the cops. Lil D’s eyes were squinched like he was trying to see something he didn’t understand. For a brief second he raised his head and looked around wide-eyed with what might pass for hope on his face.
The public defender, quite aware now of Salt’s cooperation, quickly asked, “Was there any indication that Curtis Stone might have been in possession of the drugs?”
He had gotten the question just right.
“Yes, I don’t think Lil, Mr. Mobley, would have come toward the roadblock if he knew the drugs were under his seat,” Salt answered.
The defense attorney did not ask what she had seen to lead her to say yes. He had the good sense to quit right then. “Move to dismiss, Your Honor.”
The solicitor threw up his hands while still looking at the other cops. “No objection, Your Honor,” he said with disgust. And in a bit of melodrama he let the charge ticket for Lil D fall to the floor.
“Charges dismissed. Next case,” said the judge, monotone, pushing up the sleeve to his robe and leaning closer to the light from his computer.
Lil D turned to scan the courtroom, the first time during the hearing that he showed an emotion, his eyes wide, white around the edges. Salt followed his glance, ignoring all that he ignored, focusing on what was his focus, watching until he was led out of the courtroom, to the back door and freedom.
The city attorney turned to Salt and watched her walk past through the swinging gate that led from the front of the courtroom to the aisle. She could still feel him watching as she walked past her fellow cops, who, for now, were silent and also watching her. She stared straight ahead, eyes on the red exit sign above the courtroom door.
* * *
• • •
All through the shift, the calls, she thought about the restraints being removed from Lil D, his release, and wondered if she had given him a dangerous chance.
30.
ANSWERING TO PEPPER
From a clothes-tearing skirmish between a teenager and her mother to a box-cutter duel, two fender benders, backing up Blessing on a chase involving an eighteen-wheeler, a break-in at a cathole shanty, and a community meeting at the church, the rest of Salt’s Friday was, well, Friday. The air murky with heat and humidity, she could smell herself, the funk that steamed between the Kevlar vest and her damp undershirt, .38 rusting under her left arm.
Back now at the empty church, she slid her spotlight over the old stones of the building. The African Methodist Episcopal congregation kept the door a freshly painted shiny fire-engine red. At night the door took on a darker, blood-red hue. Turning the spotlight handle, Salt illuminated the stained-glass windows, each of which depicted one of Jesus’s disciples: Judas leading lambs to slaughter, Peter’s window shattered by bullet holes, his fishing boat patched with cardboard. Navigating the driveway that circled the church, steering with one hand, she swung the spot up and down, side to side with her other hand.
This was Sister Connelly’s church, where the funeral for Q-Ball had been held, where the funerals for other drug boys were held. Salt had been to many community meetings in the sanctuary and felt more at home here in some ways than in the rural church she had attended growing up. The choir here was better, more enthusiastic, louder, and with stirring rhythms. When the calls allowed, on some Wednesday nights she parked to hear them practice, just outside the window of John, the beloved disciple, shown with his hands over his heart.
Gardenias that grew beside the stone façade were dropping the last cream-to-brown petals, the intensity of their scent not too far off the too-sweet odor of decomposing flesh. Other than echoing gunshots, the Homes’ equivalent of wolves howling, the church grounds were silent. Radio wasn’
t reporting the shots fired. Nobody bothered calling them in.
The only lights around the church were two dim streetlights, too high up on their poles, and the portable electric sign at the drive entrance. It announced next Sunday’s sermon: “Feed My Sheep.” Except for the white noise of the expressway in the distance, there were no sounds at all after the distant gunfire ceased.
She swept the side of the church before checking around the corner and back wall under the window of Simon the Zealot speaking to a crowd. The church groundskeeper’s name was also Simon. He worked on Saturdays keeping the outside of the church pristine. There wasn’t a scrap of trash anywhere except under the window of Matthew the Tax Collector, bronze now from the flash of her light, where the back basement stairs were littered with crack bags and used condoms from Saturday night. She checked the stairs.
The third window on the back belonged to James the Martyr, his head falling under a sword. With the engine idling, small night noises emerged, tree frogs, crickets, and the odd night bird calling in the dark.
“3307, radio, raise 3306.” Pepper’s voice over the mic was empty of its usual smile.
“3306.” She sounded formal even to herself.
“3307, name a location.”
Salt hesitated, knowing he’d heard about court today; the tone in his voice confirmed it.
“3307 to 3306, location?” he demanded again.
“3306, Meldon and Lansing,” she said into the shoulder mic.
“Meldon and Lansing,” he replied.
The window disciples were silent dim shadows, set back into the stone walls, and of no help as she tried to find the words to make sense of this for Pepper. We meet to talk about what just happened, what we did or didn’t do and why. We try to make sense of the sorriness, the hilarity, the stuff we witness, by telling stories, trying to find some moral or meaning, something that will save us next time.
A dim glow from one streetlight fell at an angle, illuminating the passenger side of her cruiser. Her uniform hat sat on top of her gear bag. She picked it up and turned it over. Their hats had plastic liners in the center of which was a clear pocket intended for a name card. Most of the cops kept photos there of their mates and children. Salt had a close-up of Wonder smiling, his small, strong front teeth in a bit of an overbite. She pulled out the picture of her dog. Behind it was another photo, a girl, herself as a ten-year-old, the focus a little blurry, the camera too close, her skinny legs stiff and straight, locked in an awkward pose, red shorts stretched in the legs, making her look even thinner. But it was the eyes that hijacked the photo. Some quirk of light had given her blue eyes an odd cast, like a version of red-eye, only whitish. She looked like a haunting child, glowy-eyed, like she had some superpower or X-ray vision. Salt felt an unreasonable affection for the photo, remembering her father aiming, clicking three times, to be sure one would be good.
Pepper’s headlights caught her off guard. She hadn’t thought he’d be so close by. As he pulled into the lot she put the photos in her left shirt pocket. He stopped driver to driver beside her and pushed the gear arm to park. Then he just sat there staring straight ahead, not looking at her. Then finally: “What are you doing?” He turned, his dark face shiny with sweat from the hot busy night.
“Nothing,” she said, lowering her hand from the itchy scar. Insects flew furiously in the widening beams from the cars’ headlights. She blinked and the lot came alive with jumping and flickering cicadas and moths.
“What was that about in court today with Lil D?”
She cut the engine and pushed the light knob to off. “What did you hear, Pepper? I just told the truth and the case was dismissed.”
“I heard you threw the case.” His voice came out too loud.
“You know Stone set Lil D up.” Her voice right on top of his.
“What I know is Lil D sells dope in Man’s gang. Whether Stone had his hands on that dope first is irrelevant. Lil D sells it.”
“It’s not irrelevant to me.”
“You’ve let this get personal. Stone, Man, Lil D. They’ve gotten to you. Who are you trying to save?” A cloud passed over the moon, further dusting the church and saints with darkness. “Stone set Lil D up. Lil D knows it. Now Lil D is out. How do you think that’s going to play in the street? So if it’s Lil D you wanted to save, he’s directly in the vulture’s sight now. You’re not thinking clear.”
“I’ll go to Man.” She snuck a rub at her scalp, her fingers finding the ribbon of bunched skin.
“Stop it, Salt,” he barked, and banged on the steering wheel. “Goddamnit and quit clawing at your head. You’re going to rub it raw. Stay out of the gang’s business, let Homicide work Shannell’s murder.”
“But they don’t know The Homes like I do.” Her scalp was now furious with itching but she kept her hand down.
“Nobody knows The Homes like you do. Nobody should. You’re too close. We’re supposed to have each other’s back. You are my friend, my partner, but you’ve been keeping things to yourself.”
She could still feel the touch of Pepper’s fingers parting her hair along the bloody wound. “I’ve been given this beat, this . . . assignment.” She’d wanted to call it her “mission.” She turned on the ignition, felt the gears. At first Pepper didn’t move, just sat there watching her. Slowly she began to back the car with her head out the window, trying to readjust her vision. The light from the pole did a double halo and she was distracted just for the second it took to drive her cruiser an inch too close to his car. The side-view mirrors on both cars cracked.
“Damn,” she said, backing up and pulling up again. A sliver of pain, like a tiny glass shard, pinched in her head. “How many years of bad luck have I brought us?”
Pepper’s mirror fell and hung by the wires. “How many years have you been in The Homes?” He reached for the dangling mirror and tried to pull it free of the wires. He finally just let it hang and drove on out of the lot.
Salt pulled past the funnel of light from the pole and glanced in the cracked side-view mirror. There were three crack lines in the glass and she couldn’t recognize anything reflected there. She touched her pocket with her right hand but thought of Lil D’s face right before he left the courtroom.
31.
ESTABLISHING DIRTY RED
Goddamn, I hate this,” Salt announced again to Thomas. ATF had called someone in the department to get her a temporary assignment to Wills’s guy, Agent Thomas, so they could find Red.
“Come on. You know the rules. Information from an unreliable source cannot be used as probable cause for a search warrant,” Thomas argued.
“I know. I do know. But Red has to live here after you’re gone.”
“What do you care? She’s a crackhead whore.”
They were sitting in his Taurus, the federal car, all shiny, without a speck of dust. A cloying air freshener polluting the new-car smell, making her nauseated. Unlike her patrol car, there were no bullet holes, no lingering body odors.
“Nice car,” she said flatly. “Couldn’t you get it washed though?” She ran a finger over the spotless dash.
The light changed and Thomas, at her direction, turned off Lakewood onto Jonesboro.
Thomas was wearing a white knit shirt and tan khakis, like he had just come from the golf course. His scalp was pink under a buzz cut. She was wearing her best jeans but her herding boots were mucky from the night before.
They passed the drunks at the liquor store, the dope holes, the whores, and just folks trying to get by. Agent Thomas looked out at the people on the street and the crumbling architecture, cut his eyes, and gave his mouth a twist, a sneer that looked practiced rather than earned. Salt liked the idea of Red as an informant less and less.
The bleak eyes of the people shifted as the Taurus drove by.
“Turn right at the next street,” she instructed.
On
Red’s sister’s narrow avenue an older-model Buick slowly passed them, farting exhaust over the clean Taurus that screamed, Cops.
Big Red was in the yard cooking something on a homemade ten-gallon drum grill.
“Stop here.”
Big looked down through a cloud of smoke coming off the grill.
Thomas sensed Salt’s hesitation. “What?” he asked.
“Just so we’re clear, neither of us is fooling anybody around here,” she said, then opened the door. He got out and followed her up the steps to the yard.
“Hi, Big,” she said, lifting her hand and walking over to the grill. “This is Officer Thomas.”
“Agent Thomas,” he corrected.
“Agent,” said Big. “What you an agent of? Double O? I know you ain’t no secret agent.” Big was wearing the same shapeless dress she had had on when Salt was there before, and she was sweating rivers down her chest and arms.
Thomas looked around at the yard like a tourist from another planet.
“What he doin’ with you and why you comin’ back to my house in that car?”
“Sorry, Big. I’m looking for Red again.”
“You gone get that girl killed coming here in that car with Mr. Double O.”
“Uh, ma’am—” started Thomas.
Big snapped, “Don’t you talk to me while I’m cooking.” She pointed a long grilling fork at Thomas, who took a step back, his elbow against the butt of his gun. But Big had turned back to the grill and started stabbing at some chicken wings. About two dozen wings were beginning to brown.
Salt stepped closer to the grill and Big Red. “We don’t want to mess up your dinner. Man, that smells good.” She leaned over, inhaling deeply.
Big Red busied herself swabbing sauce and turning wings.
“I need Red’s help,” Salt told her. “I need her help quick. It’s already dangerous for her.”
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