by Lee Hurwitz
“I see. Well, that certainly explains why you shot Sharon Scott.”
“Wendell Watson’s no St. Francis of Assisi. He’s not George Washington Carver either. But before he came around we were nothing. He gave us our dignity. Now a Black man is our mayor. A Black man is our chief of police. A Black man runs our school system.”
“A Black man shoots a Black woman in the head, and then two Black men kidnap a Black woman and have her tied up in Shithole, Georgia! That’s progress!”
“You’re not tied up. In fact, I just might tell you that you’re free to leave any time—except I think you might do it.” He let a slow smile play over his face.
Evelyn said nothing, but Hightower noticed her breathing slow.
“That’s one messed-up bed,” Hawkins said from the doorway, startling them both. “They’ll think I have insomnia. Can we eat the chicken now?”
“I’m taking a shower,” Evelyn announced. “I’m not hungry. I’m going to change into that hideous-looking thing you bought for me, and then go to sleep. I’m taking the bed furthest away from the window.”
When he heard the shower running he decided to explain his plan to Hawkins. “We’ll sleep in shifts today. Tomorrow we’ll begin to implement our plan. The first step will be to establish a rapport with Evelyn, win her trust. I think we’re doing that already.”
Hawkins looked up from his chicken, dubious. “We are, huh?”
“Look at that.” Hightower made a gesture to the door. “The woman is taking a shower even though we could burst in any minute.”
Hawkins brightened. “Yeah,” he said.
“And that’s why we must never, never, never make her uncomfortable. No stares, no crude jokes. Got it?”
“Of course, Hi. I would never…”
“Step two, at the appropriate moment, I’m gonna offer her a deal. If she agrees that she saw nothing in the District Building two weeks ago, we’ll plan our trip back to Washington.”
“The appropriate moment, huh?” Hawkins was finished with his chicken and was eyeing Hightower’s.
“That’s right. The appropriate moment.”
“When is the appropriate moment to offer her this deal, Hi?”
“Hawkins, I’m glad that you’re not a detective. Any idiot would know that this whole situation is fluid. Very, very fluid. The key is to move when we feel that the appropriate moment is here. We have something to offer her. We set her free and she resumes her life as if nothing happened. She has something to offer us. She saw nothing in the District Building two weeks ago. You just have to use your best instincts. We’ll know it when we see it.” Deliberately, Hightower took a breast from the sack and bit through the extra-crispy crust, hard.
“I just want to know how long I’m gonna…”
“Step three, once we get a deal with Evelyn, we call the Mayor and tell him about it…”
“I mean, I only took two weeks leave…”
“Step four, we go back to Washington and you and I and Evelyn confirm the deal with the Mayor. After that, we’re finished. Any questions? I mean, other than about your leave.”
“What if she refuses to cooperate with us?”
“Listen, she has to cooperate. She doesn’t have any alternative. We’re gonna gradually build up her sense of trust. Maybe it will take a day, maybe a week. But sooner or later, she’ll agree to cooperate with us.”
“I hope we can pull this off.”
“Listen Hawk. I’ve been in lots of difficult situations before.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Hawkins agreed, remembering.
“We can pull this off,” Hightower continued. “Just remember, leave everything to me and don’t let her out of your sight. You take the first shift. I’m gonna turn in now. Wake me up at noon.” Hightower stripped to his underwear and quickly slipped under the covers. “Now turn off the lights.”
Watching Hawkins, confused but willing, and listening to the angry hiss of water in the bathroom, Hightower found it necessary to say it over and over again, like a mantra or a lullaby. We can pull this off.
But soon he felt his muscles unravel, and a picture formed in his mind. He and Evelyn were on a glider, on the front porch of...somewhere. “We pulled this off, baby,” Hightower was saying. His arm was around her shoulders and she was leaning in to him, her head resting softly against him. “We pulled it off.” In the dream, Hightower was doing all the talking. They were looking at a front lawn, all green and blooming. It was summer. There was no traffic, and across the street were other houses like theirs—ranches and split-foyers. “We pulled it off, baby,” Hightower said again, and Evelyn gave him a little squeeze, and leaned in a little more intensely, and then...nothing, nothing at all.
For five minutes after the kidnappers drove away with Evelyn, Yvonne just sat in her Corvette, stunned, looking at the cars whizzing by on Route 95. Occasionally, someone would honk his horn at her disabled car.
She kept running the events of the evening like a movie. She takes her friend Evelyn to one of her favorite restaurants. They have dinner with two of her coolest friends, Theresa and Mariah. Then somehow Evelyn gets into a fight with somebody she claims is a Washington cop. And soon they’re both in Yvonne’s car, driving over eighty down the Freeway with these maniacs chasing them. And then she gets sideswiped! And the maniacs come out of the car! And now her car is stuck in this ditch! And Evelyn is gone!
And there’s a thousand dollars in the front seat, Yvonne.
Yvonne stared at the money. She wanted to take it, but she was trying to remember—if you take money from someone doesn’t that mean that you’ve somehow accepted whatever it was that they’ve done? That somehow to accept offered money meant that everything was at square one?
It’s evidence. Their fingerprints are all over it.
Yvonne gasped. How could she have forgotten? Quickly, she dumped out the contents of her purse. Wallet, lipstick, gum, tissues, two doobies, birth control pills, Certs breath mints. Except for the wallet, she didn’t need any of it right now. Carefully she closed the purse around the neat stack of hundreds, careful not to touch them, and when they were securely in the hold she snapped the purse closed. Before she straightened up she had a second thought, reached for the dope, and put it in her bra.
When she was upright she saw the police lights in her rear-view mirror. Someone who had passed her must have called it in.
Yvonne took a deep breath. She was surprised at how calm she felt, given all that had happened. Calm and sober. “Good evening, Officer,” she said to herself, practicing. “I’ve just been sideswiped and my friend has been kidnapped by two men. They just drove off. If we hurry, we can catch them.”
A cop rapped on her window with his flashlight, and then shined it into her eyes. She rolled down the window.
“Is there something wrong here, ma’am?” he asked.
“Good evening, Officer,” Yvonne said. “I’ve just been…”
Then she opened the door and threw up on the cop’s shoes.
Hightower, doing guard duty, woke Hawkins up at 3:30. “You watch over her,” he said. “I’m gonna get some supplies.”
When he was sure his grumbling partner was fully awake, he drove back to a Wal-Mart he had seen on the way in. He bought two of those insulating thermal bags they had been advertising on TV. $39.95, he wrote down in his notebook. He intended to account to the Mayor for every dollar spent.
Then he drove the twenty-five miles to Atlanta. He tried to find something good on the radio, but all he could get were country stations or religious programs, and when he got to the country Christian station he gave up.
He pulled into Atlanta and cruised the downtown area until he found what he needed—a women’s clothing shop where everything cost more than he made in a week. He hadn’t shopped for women’s clothes in years and certainly was not equipped to do so now. But when he explained to the saleswoman that he was shopping for something to surprise his girlfriend, she was more than happy
to pick out a glittering array of blouses, skirts and sleek pants-suits. Half an hour later and two thousand dollars lighter, he was back in the car with an armful of clothes.
Next, the liquor store. Hightower knew what he wanted and bought it immediately, despite its outrageous cost. He also bought a bag of Happy Ice and put it into one of the thermal bags, along with the champagne.
Dom Perignon, three bottles, $401.94 with tax, he wrote. Momentarily, he worried about how extravagant this all looked. The Mayor hadn’t contemplated any of this, he knew. But then again he didn’t imagine that the Mayor contemplated Hightower returning any of this money. He imagined the Mayor expected they’d keep the $50,000 as a just reward for a high-risk job well done.
He spotted a Surf-n-Turf restaurant. When he walked in he realized that it was a buffet place. Hightower asked for the buffet manager and explained what he wanted to do.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Moore. We don’t do that,” the manager said. “All food must be consumed on the premises. Otherwise, people could walk away with a hundred dollars worth of food for twelve bucks.”
“I understand,” Hightower said. He counted out five hundred-dollar bills. “What I want is three filet mignons and three cooked lobsters, each about a pound. Plus some bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, fruit, that sort of thing.” He held out the money. “Think this will do it?”
He was back in the Caddy ten minutes later. This was a three thousand dollar morning, he realized, soon to be topped off with a five hundred dollar breakfast. But it would be worth it, he thought. What a surprise this was going to be!
As it turned out, the surprise was on him.
G.R. Ford had heard enough wild stories in his twelve years as a Miami detective to be instinctively skeptical. In this case, his bullshit meter was off the scale.
“Two cops, huh. From Washington.”
“Well, to be specific, she said one was a police officer.” The kid’s name was Tommy Smith. He had pulled solo duty tonight. “She didn’t know about the other guy.”
“So, they pull her friend out of the car, and like what? Drag her away?”
“See, that’s the part I’m not sure about. Detective Maltby’s talking with her now.”
At the car, Bob Maltby had doubts of his own. He liked interviewing complaining witnesses. He was good at it. His Midwestern manners soothed them, and he usually managed to put a theory together in the space between his questions and their answers.
“So your friend, Miss Boone. How well do you know her?”
“Pretty well.” Yvonne thought for a minute. She had kept in touch with Evelyn during the ten years since they had graduated. However, a lot of things had changed since then. Yvonne barely recognized the nervous, depressed woman who had haunted the living room and bathroom of her apartment the last three days. “We were roommates in college,” she said.
“Uh-huh. What line of work is she in?”
“Um…something with computers.” Maltby stared at her. “I don’t know.”
“Right.” Maltby said nothing for a bit. “She married?”
“Married? No, not married.” Why were they asking her all these questions about Evelyn? What difference did it make? They could still catch these guys.
“Any boyfriends? She mention anything about man trouble?”
“No, she didn’t have a boyfriend. Look, officer—”
“Girlfriends?”
Damn! “No, Evelyn wasn’t dating. Listen, why are you bothering with all this? You should be putting out an all-points bulletin with a description of these guys!’
Maltby loved it when civilians told him how to do his job. “I’ll get to that, ma’am. But one of the things we have to establish at first is whether a crime has been committed at all.”
“That a crime has been—forcing me off the road? Kidnapping my friend? Isn’t that a crime?”
Maltby shifted his weight a little. “See, that’s one of the things that’s bothering me. You say she left on her own. That she got up, told you not to worry, and left with them.”
“She was intimidated. The guy was gonna fucking kill her.”
Maltby pretended to write in his notebook. Generally, his experience was that when a woman used profanity she was close to the edge. Unless she was a whore; whores used profanity all the time.
“Let’s go back to the The Fun Factory,” Maltby said. “You and your friends—what were their names again—were leaving the ladies’ room when this gentleman stopped you and asked you to dinner.”
This was becoming a nightmare for Yvonne, a worse nightmare than the one she had just left. “Theresa Ballou and Mariah Padrone,” she said. “I already told all this to the other officer. Do we have to go through this again?”
Leaning against the squad car, Ford was writing out his final report. It was something most of the other guys had to do on typewriters in the squad room. Ford hated sitting around and waiting for an available machine, though. So he had perfected his handwriting and now could spend his time post-investigation kibitzing with his buddies instead of doing paperwork.
“Detective?” Smith was obviously uncomfortable. “Do you mind if I leave this in your hands? My shift ends in half an hour, and with the new overtime restrictions….”
Ford didn’t look up. “We’ll be done in half an hour,” he said.
“Yeah, but with driving in, and getting out of the uniform, and filing my duty report….”
“Okay, kid, we’ll…” The radio crackled. Ford picked up his mic and said “Go ahead.” As he listened, a small smile slowly stole over his features. “You’re shittin’ me. How much?” When he was done Ford turned to the young officer. “Tell my partner to come over here, then get on your way. We’ll call it in.”
When Maltby arrived Ford put his arm around the other man’s shoulder and spoke softly. “It turns out that there was a fight at The Fun Factory. Southby turns up these two women, Theresa and Mariah, right? And it turns out they’ve got, like, a dime’s worth of blow. So their story is, this Evelyn, this supposed victim, she snorts up like a toot and a half, then she goes out on the floor and gets into it with this Aaron Moore guy, and the next thing they know here’s Jimmy Ray Mallory…”
After Maltby and Ford were done Maltby trudged back to Yvonne’s car. He didn’t consider himself a bigoted man. Not by a long shot. But he thought these young women had too much money and it wasn’t good for them. When he was a young man it was hard to make money and by the time you could earn a decent living you were too smart to waste it on drugs and flying across the country in fits of romantic rage.
“Triple-A will be here in a couple of hours. Do you want to wait with the car or would you like us to drive you back to your apartment?”
“Do I want…” Yvonne was flabbergasted. “Of course I’ll wait with the car,” she said. he wasn’t going to let some crane jockey pull her beautiful Corvette into his brother-in-law’s shop in Opa Locka. She’d make sure it went to her mechanic, who knew how to take care of it.
“Here’s my card.” Maltby pulled open his wallet and handed her a plain business card. Robert Maltby, Detective, it said. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”
“Your card? Is that it? Aren’t you going to issue an APB?”
Maltby sighed. Yesterday he and Ford had helped on a homicide where the charred body of the victim was found in the driver’s seat of an LTD. The victim was headless and handless and the arms were stuck into the steering wheel. Columbian drug gangs, Maltby thought. He concluded that the victim was about fifteen, judging from her development.
“We’ll file a report, ma’am.”
When Evelyn woke up the first thing she saw was Hawkins sitting on a chair at the end of the bed. He looked glum.
“Where’s the other one?” Evelyn cleared her throat. “Where’s Hightower?”
Evelyn remembered one of her lovers telling her there was nothing sexier than watching a woman wake up in the morning. She didn’t know why he thought that. She felt l
ike shit in the morning.
“He went to get some things,” Hawkins said.
“What kind of things can you get out here?”
“I think he went to Atlanta,” Hawkins replied. “Must’ve. He’s been gone more than half an hour.”
Evelyn was starting to get an idea. She remembered this one from the Marriott. He was kinda good-looking but not exactly a brain surgeon. “What’s your name?” she asked. “Your real name, I mean.”
“Hawkins.” He looked at the floor. “Ron Hawkins. You can call me Hawk. Everybody does.”
Evelyn looked at him for a little while. “You seem a little blue, Hawk,” she said.
Hawkins said nothing for a minute.
“You know Evelyn, I might just leave Washington and apply for a job with the Miami Police Department.”
“Why would you want to do that, Hawk?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Hawkins looked at the ceiling. “The pay is better. The life is better. The weather is better. I wouldn’t have to put up with this shit from the Mayor. I thought that this assignment with the Mayor’s security detail would lead to a promotion. But it’s turned to shit, total shit.”
Hawkins turned away from Evelyn and looked out the window.
Evelyn thought hard. She was sure she could handle this clown. The problem would be what came next. As far as she could tell, they were in the middle of Bugtussle. If there was no one at the front desk of this cruddy motel, she might have to take her chances hitchhiking.
And she might never get a better chance. She resolved to do it.
“Maybe things will get better when we’re back to DC,” she said softly.
“Sure, Evelyn. They can’t get much worse.”
“Well, maybe we can have a little fun until Hightower gets back.” She smiled broadly. “How long do you think he might be gone?”