She sat down beside him and took a sip. Wonder stood directly in front of them, staring.
“What’s he waiting for?” Wills asked.
“We have a routine every night and he’s confused.”
Wills took a sip of his drink. “Are you?”
“Just a little lost.”
Wills took her drink from her hand and put his on the ground. He dipped his index finger into the whiskey and leaned his tired face close to hers. He traced her lower lip with his finger, wet with the whiskey, and when she closed her eyes instead of smelling blood, sheep, dogs, and a hard time, she was reminded of murky green ponds, cool nights, and wood smoke.
Moving closer, he said quietly, “My granddaddy used to say the bourbon he drank was for medicinal purposes.”
“I think I’m on the mend,” she responded, her voice like a long-overdue sigh.
The only sheep to survive gave out a lonely call, then another, and another, until Wonder gave a commanding woof in the direction of the paddock. The dog stood and stuck his snout between her and Wills. Salt looked down at the dog and said, “Go to place, Wonder.” The dog looked up at her to see if she meant it. “Go to place,” she said gently. He trotted off to the back steps and lay down.
35.
TAKING LIL D TO BIG D
They were glowing, jerseys shiny under the streetlights. Orange, green, blue, red, all with white numbers: 37, 28, 54. New dealers, new gang members. Man had recruited quickly. They sparked like aberrant fires in a dead forest and junkies flitted around them, drab moths to deadly flames, hoping to catch some artificial light. Steamy heat snakes squirmed up off the pavement.
Salt was back again, watching the action on the corner, seeing clear-eyed. She lowered the binoculars, pushed back from a squat, and rested her butt on a cinder block in the smelly hidey-hole apartment. A light gold bruise the shape of a shrunken Texas was fading on the underside of her forearm, reminding her of the patches of new paint on the walls at home, places where the guys hadn’t quite blended the new with the old.
“Damn, this place stinks,” Blessing called from the outside doorway.
The new members were center stage. Little kids with big eyes and round open mouths tugged their mothers’ arms as they walked past in obvious fascination for the colorful allure of the gang. Sneakers so white they seemed to float over the asphalt. No color in The Homes was so brilliant as those jerseys. No energy existed in The Homes to match theirs. This gang, these brothers that brought color, like nothing on TV.
She watched as Pepper rolled through the lot. Like air let out of birthday party balloons, the crowd shrank away. Stone, Lil D, and Man were nowhere around.
“Okay, I’m done here,” she announced to Blessing, but when she turned he was right behind her. “Damn, you scared me. I thought you were still waiting outside.”
“You a lot of trouble.”
The shift wouldn’t let her alone, not until Stone was caught. Calls backed up, paperwork turned in late. They raised her on the radio. “3320 raise 3306.” “3303 raise 3306.” It was all night. It was comic, annoying, and welcome.
The doctor had cleared her fit for duty after a week at home. If command had plans to transfer her, they’d not made it known; punishing a cop who’d been assaulted would be an affront to every cop in the department. Instead of seeing ghosts she’d spent time appreciating the repairs the shift had done, each patched place reminding her of their care.
As she and Blessing climbed the hill back toward their cars, she was conscious of stretching out the last of the soreness from the fall. “You’re off duty now.” She gave Blessing a friendly pat.
“Trouble,” he mumbled with exaggeration, shaking and hanging his head.
* * *
• • •
In the patrol car going down Shaw Street, the wide alley rarely used except by the few residents with functional cars, she found Man walking alone. When she was close he stopped, gave a sharp exhale, and tossed a cigarette to the gutter. There was an odor of something burning in the air, something layering over the smoke from his cigarette. His white T-shirt was wet around the neck. A drop of sweat hung on his left earlobe just below a simple diamond stud earring.
She pulled alongside of him. “Where’s your ride?”
He stopped and closed his eyes in exasperation, as if he could blink and she’d be gone.
“I’m still here. Where are your boys?”
People on the stoops stayed on the stoop. They watched Man, some lifting a hand in tentative greeting, but when he didn’t acknowledge any of them, they leaned back into the shadows of the overhangs. The sounds of TVs turned to warring stations added to the pollution of the burned smell in the air. He turned and faced her through the window of the patrol car. Salt had her nine in her lap, hand on the butt of the gun. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“You got your gun ready to shoot me.”
“I don’t want anyone killed,” she said.
“Well, looks like we agree on somethin’,” Man said. He held his arms from his body and pointed to a pocket in his jeans. “I’m reaching for my phone.” He punched at the phone and put it away.
In the yards tired children fought and called each other names. “Fat Nose.” “Flap Mouth.” “Ugly Ass.” “No, you ugly.”
“Smells like somebody burned dinner,” she said.
Man sniffed. “I don’t smell it. Somebody always burnin’ something.”
He turned and started walking again. Salt put the cruiser in gear and rolled along beside him. Old cars, beaters, lined the narrow street on both sides, narrowing the gap between the cruiser and Man.
“You missed your place,” Salt said as they passed by Man’s girlfriend’s apartment.
“You don’t know my place.”
“You and I, Man, are both part of The Homes. Actually all of this is our place.”
“You just work here. Just like me. It’s business.” He stopped and patted the pocket with the phone.
Salt braked to a stop and put the car in park. “It’s not just business for me. I want to know who killed Shannell and I won’t let it go. That’s why your new recruits won’t last. I’ll bring heat on them, like Bootie, your brother, and all the rest. Your new boys will be out of work, too. Pretty soon either your business will go to Englewood or somebody will move in on your corner.” Her words spit themselves out. Being careful wasn’t keeping her safe anyway.
“Why you got to keep at this? Don’t you have something better to do? Don’t you have a place?” he sneered. “Don’t you have a life, a man?”
Salt felt a buzzing pressure behind her eyes and started to come out of the car, then realized she was still holding the gun and that her grip had tightened reflexively. “You send someone else after me and every cop—city, state, and federal—will be in your business.”
“Send someone after you? You crazy. I’m not stupid. I’m not risking business to get a cop killed.” He stopped still in the road but continued to face forward, not looking at her.
“Well, maybe Stone is trying to take over. Somebody sent Q-Ball after me. Q was too stupid to think of something like that himself. Did Stone brag about hurting my dog and shooting up my house, killing my sheep?”
Man still wasn’t facing her. She holstered and snapped in her nine. “So which is it, Man? Did you send Stone and Q? Or are you losing control of your boys?”
As she got out of the car she felt the molecules move around her, heard the springs of the car seat uncoil, smelled the engine oil, noticed the slip of sweat on Man’s cheek, felt a tightening of stomach muscle under her gun belt.
Man hadn’t moved. She stepped around directly in front of him and watched his face until he focused his eyes on hers.
“Stone not gonna do nothin’ I don’t tell him,” he said, sweat and a flush along the light beige of his neck betraying
his discomfort.
“I think you don’t realize how terrible Stone is. He’s a problem, a curse. He sees you stressed because I’m pushing, and he pulls, whether you want him to or not. I don’t think you’ve ever really had control of him. This is also my place, Man, here, here in The Homes. Give me who killed Shannell. Tell me where I can find Lil D or Stone.”
“You want Lil D. I don’t care. He at Latonya’s.” He plucked at the wet neck of his shirt.
“Lil D, Stone, Bootie, Q. They’re all just business for you. Right, Man? You just turn them loose and then don’t care if you lose them.”
“Business,” he said, turned, and walked away from her, his expensive work boots crunching pebbles on the asphalt. She got in her car, put it in gear, and watched Man recede in the rearview mirror. A tiny reflection of streetlight, either off the diamond in his ear or off another drop of sweat, sparkled, ready to fall. She headed for Latonya’s.
* * *
• • •
Latonya was a beautiful seventeen-year-old Salt had known since she was a little jump-roping champ. Her skin was as light as fresh dinner rolls and her hair a cinnamon swirl. But there was no other word that described her better than skinny. She was at least five feet nine and couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Her baby, however, was fat, a coffee-and-cream color with only thin fuzz for hair, and enormous eyes. Latonya now had her own apartment in The Homes, right next to her mother’s on Thirkeld. Lil D was sitting on the small six-inch-high concrete stoop. The door was open to the apartment behind him. He watched, squinting in the darkening evening, as Salt got out of the patrol car. The towel he used to cover his birthmark was limp and damp. Salt tried not to hope for too much but tried to still hope. Just as she got to within speaking range of him Latonya came out of the apartment with the baby.
“What’s wrong, D? You goin’ to jail?” She didn’t sound like a girl or a champ anymore.
Salt told her, “I’m not here to take him to jail.”
The baby started to cry. “Give him to me,” Lil D said, and reached out for the baby.
“I need some Pampers,” Latonya said.
“I just gave you money.” Lil D sounded annoyed, old, and he seemed thinner every time Salt saw him.
“I had to use that money for his milk,” Latonya said.
Lil D turned to Salt. “Just ’cause you after Stone don’t mean you can just come here expecting anything from me.” He didn’t mention his—her—day in court and neither did she. Lil D tried bouncing the baby, who was watching his father’s face. As Lil D became more agitated, so did the baby. His mother went inside, slamming the door behind her. The baby opened his mouth to cry again.
“What’s his name?” she asked Lil D as she walked closer. The baby, maybe a year old, turned with fat tears on his cheeks and stopped crying. His eyes focused on her shiny badge. Before Lil D could stop him, the baby leaned out and latched on to the shield with one tight little fist. Lil D was holding him with one arm and Salt reached out as he leaned toward her. She and Lil D each had an arm under the baby.
“Dantavious,” said Lil D. “He bad.” But Lil D was smiling as he said it, trying to gently pry his son’s fingers from Salt’s silver badge without touching her.
“No,” Salt said. “He’s perfect. He’s perfect.” She let go of the baby.
Lil D ran his right pointer finger gently along the baby’s creamy neck and put his lips to Dantavious’s fingers.
“I’ve been looking for you, D.”
“Why? I ain’t done nothin’.” His face began tightening again and Dantavious started looking back and forth between her badge and Lil D’s face.
“I want you to talk to Big D.”
“Now he ain’t around to talk to, is he? Nobody seen Big D since he kill.”
“He didn’t kill her.”
Dantavious started to reach again and Lil D jerked him back. This time the tears dropped out of the baby’s eyes and he began a serious cry. Latonya came out of the door and snatched the baby from Lil D, who didn’t seem to have any fight left.
He sat down on the stoop. “Why you callin’ me ‘D’? And how you know he didn’t kill her?” He pulled the towel from his neck and twisted it.
“I’m callin’ you ‘D’ because you got your own Lil D now. Remember when Shannell stabbed Big D that night I found him bleeding and you came up with the knife?”
“Yeah. What that got to do with anything. They fightin’ all the time. Just more proof he killed her.”
“No, remember what she said to me that night?”
“You took her to jail over that bullshit.” He spat out the last word, blaming her all over again.
Salt had to get at it quickly. “She said Big D loved her cooda potpie.”
“That’s just the way she talk.” He lowered his head and turned it to one side.
“I know, I know. What she was saying was that Big D loved her, period. And you and I both know that if ever he was going to kill her it would have been that night. But he walked away, almost dying. And she risked jail to get me to find him so he wouldn’t bleed to death.”
Lil D wouldn’t or couldn’t lift his face. She waited. He swallowed hard several times. Finally she said quietly, “Do this with me for Shannell, for your mama. I know where Big D is. Come with me.”
Lil D swallowed hard again and when he answered he sounded like he was fourteen again and his voice changing. “Where he at?”
“He took himself away from The Homes so neither of you would hurt each other. Just like he took himself away from Shannell that night.”
“So how I’m gonna talk to him if he ain’t around?”
“I’ll take you to him.”
“I ain’t getting in no cop car. I been tricked like that before.”
They both heard Dantavious’s sudden cry from inside the apartment and just as suddenly he stopped.
“D, you’ve heard a lot of things about me since I’ve been in The Homes but you’ve never heard anyone say I’ve ever lied to anyone.”
He looked straight at her before he said, “No, they all say you tell the truth but one time you lied to me.”
“So you remember?” She didn’t turn away or feel worse.
“Yeah, you said you’d get me out.”
“Yes, I did. But I didn’t lie. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it alone and I couldn’t find anyone to help.”
Lil D clicked his mouth with disgust and hung his head. Salt noticed a pulsing vein beneath the wine mark. He looked back up as if he was ready for whatever was next, his face as suddenly changed as Dantavious’s.
“Front seat.” Salt opened the front passenger-side door and moved her gear to the back. He got in, sweating, smelling of baby pee, the white towel pulled close around his neck.
“This stupid,” he said.
“3306 raise 3396. Permission to make a courtesy run to the Haven House shelter.”
“Af-firm,” Sarge growled.
Thank God, she thought, for once they weren’t slammed on calls or Sarge would never have given permission to leave the zone.
A light mist began just as they pulled away from Latonya’s. Lil D’s eyes took in the console that spit radio jargon, the switch box for the emergency lights and siren. He found the AM/FM radio and tuned it to a gospel station.
They passed the Moury Street alley where scores of athletic shoes swung from telephone and power lines. A slanted pickup, loaded with scrap metal, was parked on the corner.
Lil D’s fingers tapped his knees on the two and four beats.
“You go to church?” Salt asked.
The dirty laundromat on the corner spilled foamy water into the street.
“Naw, Latonya take Dantavious sometime.”
“But you like gospel music?” She nodded at the console.
“My m
om had it on all the time ’cause she still believe in Jesus.”
A whiff of fried fish made its way into the car from the Muslim take-out. “You hungry?” She glanced at Lil D and turned on the wipers to the slowest speed. Gray rain trickled down the sides of the front windshield.
“I cooked some spaghetti just before you came.”
“You cook?”
Lil D patted his stomach. “Been cooking since I was little. I sometimes make up recipes.”
“Will the circle be unbroken.” The song ended as the cruiser bounced over the tracks at the three-way crossing. Warehouses of corrugated metal stood empty and rusting along the weed-hidden rails.
Near the sports stadium, closer to downtown, fans ran for their cars in the light rain.
When they got to the shelter Reverend Black was in the same spot out front, banging away on his Bible. Rain soaked the shoulders of his suit coat. He didn’t seem interested in saving the occupants of the cop car and hardly looked their way.
Lil D stared out at the soaked street preacher, the dingy men hovering under the shallow overhang, and the broken grocery carts. “I used to think Jesus would save me.” His chest and shoulders rose. He drew the towel from his neck, folded it, and laid it on the floor by his feet. As they crossed the street Lil D lifted his chin like he was trying to keep his head above water.
Reverend Gray was at his post in the entryway, smoking and checking the ledger book. He looked up as they approached. “I’ve seen you before,” he said, tapping his temple.
“I was here some months ago. I helped you with a blond guy in DTs?”
“Oh, yeah. You were looking for somebody. Yeah, the man in the back. Have you brought me a new resident?” He nodded at Lil D.
“I ain’t no bum to stay in no dump like this,” Lil D snapped.
Pressure flared behind Salt’s eyes. “They’re not bums. This is where men on crack end up before they die. This is where sick men come who have no family left. The bums are the ones selling the crack.”
Lil D turned. “You cops nuts.” He started to go back out.
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