by Lee Lamothe
They wound up in the aftermath, in the blue-grey gauze of pre-dawn, on a hillock in Soldier’s Park, where the medical command post had broken down. There was the detritus of triage and urgent care: streamers of bloody bandages, ripped-off clothing, water bottles, eyeglasses, a wooden leg, a set of false teeth (uppers), a riot cop’s helmet smeared with blood, a combat boot, wrappers from medi-packs.
But the air was sweet. It was sweet air up there, and on the softest breeze it came from the far-off lake to the north, carrying a morning smell and gulls silently scraping their backs against the bottom of the sky.
Ray Tate led his ragged little band to the top of the hillock. They were wooden, stiff. They stripped off their gear, tossed it away onto the ground as if it didn’t have anything to do with them, and sat in a row like war survivors to look down at the smoke rising from the battlefield of Stonetown. The red and blue lights of emergency vehicles flashed in the low dawn in little flares. Lights from media cameras popped up white.
Djuna Brown sat staring at her hands. “Ray? Ray, what did I do?” She was weeping and constantly blinking and shivering in shock. “I want to go home.” She had snot running down her nose. He thought she meant back up to Indian country, but she added, “I want to see my dad.”
“Put it away for now, Djun’.”
“Where, Ray? Tell me where to put it and I will.”
Brian Comartin was staring at his hands, at the blood on his sleeves. “I’m no fucking poet.”
Martinique Frost put her arm across his shoulder and said nothing.
Ray Tate had nothing to say. It was what it was. He spotted a bloody package of Marlboros, got up and, hoping against hope, bent stiffly to pick it up. Six crushed and broken cigarettes and a stupidly bright disposable yellow lighter inside. Straightening out some long butts, he lit up and handed the pack around. Djuna Brown lit up with him but didn’t speak. Marty Frost and Brian Comartin had wandered off and stood with their backs to the smoky city, talking quietly.
Blowing a long plume of cigarette smoke down at Stonetown, Ray Tate said to no one at all, “This used to be a pretty okay town.”
They smoked or rested, and when they were done they picked up their gear and went down the hill into Stonetown, because there was nothing else they could imagine doing.
By morning’s thin light, cars smouldered on the roads, the pavement was sparkled with long glass shards, and wreckers were righting flipped vehicles and dragging them away. Every business had been violated by rage or fire or both. There were four death sites, each bounded by yellow crime-stage tape. Cops were drinking bottled water, listlessly leaning on walls and sitting on cars, staring around in awe, looking at one another and going, “Fuuuuuck.” Prisoner transport vans were prowling the intersections, stopping to pick up youths sprawled face down, their hands twist-tied behind their backs, their ankles secured. They were taken hair-and-heels and tossed into the vans with audible thumps. It was business-like work, with no pleasure or sense of fun or freedom of anarchy.
Ray Tate and his band wandered through the streets until they found the command post. They got at the back of the line, handed back their gear, and went looking for transport to the Jank to check on the results of the overnight raids on the Volunteers.
Chapter 17
There were no cars to take them to the Jank. A transport wagon was loading up and the driver said there was room with the cargo and they could make a stop. They climbed in. The cargo was four teenagers chain-cuffed together on a bench in the back. Ray Tate and his crew sat opposite them. They’d all suffered some kind of damage and they slumped, exhausted. All wore party clothes that smelled of tear gas and were soiled and ripped.
A blonde girl with luminous eyes, a split lip, one high-heeled shoe, and a tuft of hair missing from the side of her head asked if they were cops. They didn’t answer because they weren’t sure any more.
“We were just celebrating my birthday. We didn’t do anything. When the windows started breaking we ran out and they boxed us in and put those twist things on us all night in the gutter. We don’t even live down here.” She was overcome with anxiety and began crying. “We didn’t do anything.” She looked at Ray Tate. “I’m seventeen. It was my birthday party. Please.”
He had to say something. “Calm down. You’ll be all right.”
The slot to the driver’s compartment slid open. “All aboarrrrrdddd … for the night train …” The shotgun did a fair imitation of James Brown, “Atlanta, Joe-Jah, Mia-mee, Flo-Dahhh … and don’t fo’get New Aw-leens, home a da bloose … Yeaaaaaah …”
Djuna Brown wouldn’t look at the girl. She said softly, “Ray?”
Ray Tate called out, “Where are they processing this bunch?”
“Sector Four’s fully booked. We’re going to Six. Home of the other blues. We can drop you guys first at Jank.”
“I got to go to the Six. Drop my guys at Jank, I’ll ride on up with you.”
The girl said, “Can you help us?”
Ray Tate didn’t answer. He stared at Djuna Brown’s little fists balled up between her knees and down at her huge leather pounders with the double bow knots at the end of rolled up blue jeans. He took her little embroidered slippers from his pocket and handed them to her.
At the Jank, when she climbed out silently with Marty Frost and Brian Comartin, she left the slippers on the floor of the transport wagon and he stared at them all the way to Sector Six. It was a bumpy ride with angular sharp turns and the slippers moved silently around in their own sparkly, airless dance.
After the teenagers were led out, he picked the slippers up, folded them, and put them into his pocket.
Intake was swamped. Chinese kids, anarchists, ’bangers, and collateral passerby pick-ups were sitting in a line inside the back of the garage. All were sitting bound in the front with twist-ties, most had their backs against the cement-block wall. Some were sleeping with their heads on their knees. The chargers were having no fun with this. This was a day-after with the adrenaline rinsed out. This was hangover. They were almost gentle as they moved up and down the line in their black leather gloves, cupping the backs of heads while pouring swallows of bottled water into open parched mouths. The four teenagers from the transport van were seated closest to the garage doors.
The Road behind the beast, Road 667, was off to the side listening to a young, tough-looking black charger with muscles bulging out from under his uniform shirt. The charger’s shaven head was infused with dark veins of anger and his neck was swollen with cords.
“This is fucked, Road. I didn’t fight my way out of Hauser Projects to go downtown and beat down kids. It was fucking bedlam. My neighbour’s fucking daughter had her front teeth clubbed out. She was heading home after shift at the Tower Mall. How do I fucking look him in the fucking eye over the back fence? Where was the supervision? Where the fuck were you, Road? Who’s gonna answer for this?”
“I know, Carney.” He was sympathetic around the unlit stogie stub in his teeth. “It was bad. It’s been bad before. It’ll sort.”
“Sort? Road, are you fucking kidding me? Look at this, this bunch here. What, a concentration camp? That kid there’s got to be twelve, thirteen.” The charger shoved the Road in the chest with two hands, pushing him back against the wall. The stogie flew out of the Road’s mouth. “They’ve fucking got piss and shit in their pants, you fucker.”
Ray Tate took him down hard from behind, smothering his gun side, sliding the guy’s baton out of the ring and getting it up under his Adam’s apple, riding his back. It was like riding a bronco. The charger shifted his head to relieve the pressure on his throat and rose with slow ease. The Road knew there were no muscles for nose and shin, and he pulled his own stick and with mercy swung a low fluid lateral at the bottom of the charger’s shin. The charger went back down, rolling and balling up. Ray Tate got up and stepped back.
“Fuck, Ray. I haven’t had a cop go after me in twenty years.” The Road stared at him, stunned, shocked, and sudden
ly old and afraid. This was a glimpse of the iron blue wall peeling like cheap wallpaper. “Twenty years, and that was because I banged his girlfriend. Not for work. Not in uniform.”
“He’s not wrong, Road.” He thought of Djuna Brown, a brutal warrior, and the swaggering fat Traffic man going into an alley, and wondered where that came from out of them. That rage. That anger. That naked freedom. But this, too, rocked him. Since he’d joined the cops he’d had a vague idea, a hope, that whoever his father was, it was a fearless Road that gave him the blue genes. If not this one, then another. He felt shaken. He’d never seen a Road in fear. “This is fucked, all of it.”
“I know.” The Road bent over the charger. “Carney. Carney, you’re right, man. But you don’t shove the blue in public. You know that. You okay, kid?”
The charger sat, then got up using his hands and the wall. He hopped around on his good leg. The Road kept his baton down his leg, ready.
“I’m okay, Road. I’m okay.” He tentatively put his hand on the Road’s shoulder, finding balance. “Yeah.” Shaking his head slowly, he limped past the prisoners and into the Sector.
It was enough for the Road. He tried to get back on game. “So, Ray, what brings you up here? I heard you were out and about in all this. You shot into a cop’s vest? The fuck?”
“Just three times, Road, to calm him down.” Keeping it light. Ray Tate nodded at the four prisoners he’d come up with in the transport van. “Those four, at the end? Can you do a discretionary diversion? They were in a club having a birthday party when the windows came in on them, so they ran out and right into it. Got caught up.”
“Done. Get ’em gone.” He didn’t look as old anymore, but he didn’t have the joviality of his command, either. He might not ever really get back on his game, but he tried. “Fuck, Ray, you want them all? I can do you a wholesale package price, kid. Why pay retail?”
“Thanks, Road. Tell the booking guy to skate them now, okay?”
“Done, Ray.”
He went to the vehicle compound and told the civilian clerk he needed a car for the Jank.
“You got the requisition? Signed twice?”
“Chief’s squad special.” He was too tired to fuck around with the guy. “Anything’ll do.”
“Signed req, two sigs.”
“I’m commandeering.”
“You living in a Hollywood movie, or what?” But he put a set of keys on the counter and, turning away, said, “These might fit that blue Mercury up on the left. I didn’t see nothing. I’m taking a piss when you come in.”
Ray Tate cruised in a circular route to his apartment, avoiding both Stonetown and Chinatown. His clothes were rancid with smoke and gas and sweat. His hair was stuck to his neck. His beard smelled like his bad breath. There was blood on his fingers where there should’ve been dried paint. He felt like he hadn’t seen his home in days and thought about heading to the Whistler, seeing if Djuna Brown had headed back there instead of the Jank, was curled up in the triangular bathtub instead of bailing out of the city and heading back to Indian country where life was just as hard but not as complicated. She might be gone, he knew. Maybe down to the capital to see her dad. But he didn’t feel like arming a key off Whistler security and anyway he needed clean clothes, needed to stand in his own room full of canvas and charcoal sketches. It was his anchor, that apartment. His daughter’s photographs from Asia on the wall, the Calzettas in their brightness, his small collection of art books in the bookshelf, his old uniform hanging in plastic in the closet.
He thought about the night in a detached kind of way. In the night he’d gone through two dozen twist- ties; he hadn’t been particularly gentle, but he hadn’t left anyone in the road with bone injuries and swelling blue hands. Dreamily, he felt the gun in his hand when he fired into the cop’s vest. He made a small smile at the windshield. It had been genius and it would add to the oral history. The Road was right: it would sort, all of it. But maybe sorting wasn’t enough. Maybe he needed to be sorted. He was sick of his gun, of his handcuffs, of living the life of someone he might no longer be. Brian Comartin, appearing at the river, had called him Picasso. Yo, Picasso. You got a reason to be here, Pablo? And: I, ah, I write, ah, poetry? Ray Tate smiled but was a little sad at the rapid change the love-struck traffic cop had undergone. Are we only that far from the worst of our natures? He wasn’t worried about Marty. Marty was twice the cop of any cop. If she wasn’t female and black she’d be a day away from being a Road. She’d see Comartin right even if it took the promised beat down. It looked like the dead ladies case might be down, down by suicide, but down, and Marty would be okay, she could go back to Youth Services or move to Barcelona and sharpen Comartin’s pencils. There was that, anyway, the ladies might have their justice. You could retire with a good heart on that.
There were few people in the streets around him and most went without masks, or wore them around their throats. With the night the city had endured, the plague suddenly wasn’t a plague. It was a bad cold. It was invisible, but the black coroner’s catering trucks doing remains removal, the scorched buildings, the impromptu memorials, the clusters of cops on the corners, they weren’t invisible. They were a new reality. The entire night would have been worth it if it meant the old was torn down and the city could start afresh, from scratch. But it would never be the same.
At his building he parked in the back lot, went in the service door, and strode up the steps three at a time with anticipation. Home. Upstairs in his apartment, without pause he kicked off his boots in the entryway, stripped his jacket and sweatshirt off in the pass-through kitchen, hopped out of his pants crossing the living room, and went through the bathroom door. He took off his ankle holster and threw it into the sink and stepped into the shower, where he punched the cold on full and finally let himself feel free.
He didn’t dress. Naked and dripping, he called Marty Frost on her cellphone.
“Hey, hey, Ray. Where you at?”
“Home. I need an hour. Jesus, I need a year.”
“Take a couple of hours. They’re still processing stuff from the house. You know how they are, Hambone’s guys. They’re thinking this might be Mister Beatdown, did in our victims.” She could be light, she could be dispassionate, she could be distant to it all. She’d done what she wanted to do, put justice out there for her ladies, the ladies who were now simply part of the unfortunate subspecies: victims.
“Where’s Djuna and Brian? They with you?”
“They’re around. Brian had a really hard time of it. He can’t stop talking about it. We shouldn’t’ve taken him out. Not a lot of rhyming couplets in Stonetown last night. That was no place for a poet.”
“Well, now he knows. Djuna, where’s she at?”
“She’s okay. A guy from down in Missouri filed that his daughter living up here hasn’t checked in for a week and he’s worried. From what he said by description, Djuna thinks it might be the Jane Doe from the riverbank. He’s driving up, should be here in the morning.”
He gave her his home phone in case Djuna Brown had forgotten it. “Tell her to call me, okay?”
“You knew her before, hey, Ray? Before she came down for this?”
“Last year. We did a drug task force last year.”
“How was she, then? Stable?”
“Well, she was weird with the slipper thing going on. She had white bleached hair. She had to take a guy out at the end of it. Weird, not crazy.”
There was silence on the line. “Well, Ray, I’d be real careful until you get it straightened out. Not my business, I know, but she might be on the line of crazy right now.”
He went to the acrylics and canvas. The charcoal sticks would snap under the tension of his fingers. He forgot to dress. When the north light of the room grew dim he turned on the light above his easel but couldn’t remember doing it. He smoked some stale cigarettes he didn’t remember finding or lighting and drank a couple bottles of beer he didn’t know he had. The late afternoon air was warm and soft
through the window and it dried him, left his hair in knots and his beard a bushy, damp mess.
It was almost full dark when the phone buzzed. He was so into what he was doing that he didn’t connect the buzz and the device and the physical action it demanded. The painting was a mess of chaos, like an orchestra tuning up. The painting had started as a disciplined homage of red and yellow bars to Mark Rothko, an exercise to calm himself down, find focus. He’d seen an exhibit of Rothko paintings in Chicago and had worked through that style for a month or two. But today, as his mind wandered and he strove for Rothko, his hand went free into anger and shame, he dissolved into a maniac Pollock. The insane obscuring the disciplined. Which one, he wondered, was honest to him?
The phone buzzed and he located it. His mouth was dry in spite of the beer. With a rasp in his voice he answered the phone.
She said, “I lost you.”
“I had to go up to Sector Six. When I headed for the Jank, the car just came here.”
“Those kids. That girl. What happened to them?”
“They got kicked. They’re okay.” He listened to her breathe. “I got your slippers.”
“Like Cinderella. I’m at the Whistler. Why don’t you come by and see if they fit, if you’re my Prince Charming?” She was trying to play light, to be seductive and gay. She was silent a moment. As he listened to the emptiness, he stared at the painting, seeing something there now, something original and of his own. He wondered: Which was she? Disciplined as Rothko or mad like Pollock? And what did the painting say about him?
He heard her inhale shakily. She choked and spoke all at once in a wet, blubbering stream: “Ray why don’t you come here be with me I not me that the noise he shot me I saw it the bullet Ray and it just went sideways Ray I couldn’t die in front of you that’s not me I am —” She stopped and said, “I’m tired,” and the line went dead.