Cornwell, Patricia - Andy Brazil 03 - Isle Of Dogs.txt

by Isle Of Dogs (lit)

  Twenty

  Cruz Morales evaded state troopers by cutting through a series of alleyways and parked by a Dumpster behind Freckles, just off Patterson Avenue. He sat in the dark, breathing hard, listening, his eyes nervously jumping everywhere. Country music and the murmur of voices sounded from inside Freckles, which Cruz took to be a small local bar. Suddenly he wanted a beer more than anything else. His nerves were fried, and he was as scared as he had ever been in his life. He was certain all those huge helicopters flying low with searchlights probing were in pursuit of him. He had no idea what he had done to cause such a manhunt, unless it was that package in the tire well. But how did the authorities know about it? When those white dudes at the automotive shop had taken him in back and given him the package in exchange for another package, Cruz knew he was participating in an event that might get him into trouble, but the dudes certainly wouldn't have snitched on him. What would be the point? And no one saw the transaction, and as best he could recall, it seemed the helicopters were already out before he even pulled into the automotive shop parking lot. So were the authorities looking for him before he did anything? How could that be?

  He climbed out of his car, opened the trunk, and retrieved the package from the tire well, which really wasn't much of a hiding spot since there was neither a spare tire nor carpet, and the first place a cop would check for illegal items was under the very conspicuous tire-well door. Cruz was about to heave the package into the Dumpster when the back door of the bar swung open, spilling light and loud voices into the dirt alleyway.

  Major Trader was drunk and feeling macho and decided to pee outside, even though Freckles had perfectly adequate restrooms. But relieving himself in the great outdoors returned him to his roots, and pirates and watermen were quite skilled at adapting to inconvenience. Bateaus, for example, did not have heads, and when Trader was coming along, his family had had an outhouse, which he rarely used, unless he had more serious business than peeing to manage. Trader staggered a bit as he struggled with his fly, and stubborn zipper teeth bit into the cloth of his ill-fitting pants and held on for dear life.

  "Shit!" Trader swore like a pirate, yanking hard. "Damnation seize my soul!"

  The harder he tugged, the deeper the zipper sunk in its teeth. Now he was in a bind, all right, because the zipper was stuck exactly midway, and the more he fought with the zipper, the more his bladder wanted to surrender. He clamped a hand between his legs while he danced and stumbled about, cursing the zipper and trying to rip its metal teeth apart.

  Cruz lurked in deep shadows behind the Dumpster, peering out and watching all this in amazement. He had never seen such a display, and what the hell was the language flying out of that fat man's mouth, and why was he hopping on one foot and then the other and holding his privates? In the incomplete light it seemed he was yanking himself up by the crotch, as if trying to break free of gravity and take flight. Now he was panting and cursing like a pirate, and his hopping and jumping were getting more vigorous, and propelling him around the Dumpster in Cruz's direction.

  Cruz set the package on the ground and stepped around to the front of the Dumpster just as the wild man hopped around to the back of it. Then Cruz made a run for it. He jumped into his car, cranked the engine, and sped off as Trader grabbed himself and hopped, his urgency becoming unbearable. The zipper had gone from being stubborn to having lockjaw. Those metal teeth weren't going to let go and were clamped with such violence that the zipper felt hot to the touch.

  Trader yanked on the zipper and moaned in excruciating discomfort, feeling as if someone had attached a bicycle pump to his bladder and was seeing how many pounds of pressure could be squeezed in before it blew up and went flat with relief and shame. Pirates did not pee on themselves, not even as infants. It was one thing to pee on property and others, but you did not soil yourself, not even if you were in the middle of raiding a ship or torching a crab plantation. Trader was out of breath and exhausted from hopping when he happened to notice a package on the ground and sat on it with his legs tightly crossed.

  "Goddamn it," he muttered repeatedly as the back door of Freckles opened, casting Trader in a stripe of light and making him squint.

  Hooter Shook had just ended her shift at the toll-booth and had dropped by Freckles for a little male company and refreshment. She had been having such a good time with that big Trooper Macovich that her head had begun to spin, and then, unfortunately, they had gotten into a disagreement.

  "Don't believe in getting married," Macovich told her as he threw back his fourth beer." 'Cause I don't want no bunch of kids jumping on me the minute I walk in the door and then all my money going out the window. I been saving for a Corvette."

  "Whaaaat?" Hooter was a bit looped herself, and beer and her basic disposition weren't a good mix. "You just like all the rest," she accused him as she clacked her amazingly long acrylic nails on the Formica tabletop. "Uh huh. I work my ass off and come home to you and you just be out there polishing that 'Vette a yours while the babies are in the house squalling with dirty diapers and nothing to eat. Then you expect sex from me while you drinking beer and you don't even ask me about my day!"

  "Wooo! You skipping to the end of the movie, babe. We ain't even held hands yet and already we's married with babies. Why don't we just drink beer and chill, you know?"

  She clacked her nails so loudly and erratically that they sounded like ice skates in a hockey game.

  "I never did understand why you women got to have these nails three inches long," he confessed. "How you even pick up a penny or a postage stamp?"

  "I don't pick up no pennies without gloves," she said indignantly. "You know how I feel about dirt and things unsanitarian!"

  This worried him considerably. If she felt that way about money, what kind of exchanges could he ever hope to have with her? For all he knew, she wore a biological hazard suit to bed and those nails of hers could cause him damage in tender places. Woooo, he thought. What if she dug them nails into his horsie? Why did she wear a perfume called Poison, too? He ought to know better than to pick up somebody at the tollbooth. Last time he picked up a woman he knew nothing about, the situation had been similar. Letitia Sweet worked in the Shell Quik Mart not far from headquarters, and Macovich was minding his own business one afternoon when he popped in for a coffee and popcorn. Letitia was built like an old Cadillac and probably had just as many miles and layers of paint, but Macovich was in a mood because of that pool shark Crimm girl.

  "What you got on?" he asked Letitia when he stepped up to the counter and impressed her by pulling out a twenty-dollar bill.

  "What you mean, what I got on?" She gave him a smirk as she bent over the cash drawer in a way that exposed her bulletlike headlights.

  He had to give her credit: That woman was a handful no matter which way he grabbed her, even though their first date was their last.

  "Who you think you are?" Letitia yelled at him in the car. "What you think you're doing grabbing at me like that? You think I ain't got no nerves beneath all that flesh? How you like it if I grabbed and twist you like a rag I'm wringing out when I clean up the nacho bin at the end of the day?"

  She demonstrated, and Macovich had to admit that he didn't like it a bit. So why did he go from her to Hooter? He was lost in the space of his own dysfunction and bad experiences, and decided it was best not to protest when Hooter said she needed air and if he was lucky, would talk to him briefly next time he came through her Exact Change lane. Typically, she ended the date in a forsaken place and had no ride home, and she was feeling a little sorry for herself when she emerged in the alleyway and spied a fat white man sitting on a package by the Dumpster. For a minute, she forgot her own problems.

  "Why honey, you look like you ain't feeling too good," Hooter said, making her way to him on her wobbly heels. "What'chu doing out here in this cold alleyway? Want me to call the ambu-lance?"

  "My zipper's stoppered shut," Trader told her, squeezing himself and yanking the slide to no ava
il. "Damnation!"

  "I have that happen sometimes," Hooter sympathized with him, coming closer and getting a good look at him to make sure he wasn't some crazy person. "I tell you, it's a whole lot worse when it's in back." She indicated the back of an imaginary long evening gown. "I had that happen one time when I went to this fancy New Year's Eve Ball at the Holiday Inn, and I couldn't get my dress zipped up and was 'fraid if I yanked too hard, I'd rip that beautiful thing for sure."

  She went on to explain in detail how she had finally waited out in the hallway of the motel until some nice Arab man had passed by and helped her unzip her dress so she could start all over again and zip it up without getting snagged on chiffon. But the Arab man hadn't wanted her to zip the dress back up and in fact had insisted that she take it off along with everything under it, so she had had no choice but to beat him up. Hooter lit a cigarette, caught up in the memory, as Trader held himself and begged the zipper to deliver him from captivity.

  "Please lit me free. Please lit me free," he begged, near tears, in a dialect Hooter was unfamiliar with.

  "Why sure, baby." She bent over and lit a cigarette for him. "You can have all the smokes you want and I won't charge you a cent 'cause I don't touch pennies anyhow. I think it's a sin to let someone bum a cigarette and then charge him for it, don't you? What's that you sitting on, baby?"

  Trader was suddenly aware of the hard lumpy package he was perched on beside the Dumpster. He felt for it with his free hand and began to rip off the paper wrapping as he pitched the fresh cigarette in the dirt.

  "Guns," he declared, and then he further realized that maybe he could use one to shoot off his stuck zipper, as long as he was careful.

  "Oh my!" Hooter exclaimed. "What you be sitting on guns for? That's mighty dangerous, and why you have them to begin with all wrapped up in UPS paper?"

  Trader snatched out a nine-millimeter pistol and dropped out the magazine, happy that it was fully loaded, even if he was unfamiliar with firearms, unless it was a flare gun. He tugged and played around with the slide until he figured it was possible a round might very well be chambered. He spread his knees wide and carefully fired.

  "Godamighty!" he yelled when the bullet pinged off the brass zipper slide and ricocheted into the Dumpster with a loud thunk.

  "You insane!" Hooter screamed, backing up a few steps and almost falling. "What'chu trying to shoot your privates for?"

  Trader lined up the zipper slide in the sights again and squeezed the trigger, furious when the bullet ricocheted off the slide and whizzed straight up, knocking out the streetlight. The zipper was indestructible, clenching its teeth in a death grip while Trader fired again and again, ejected cartridge cases sailing and clinking in the dirt as Hooter ran through the alleyway screeching for the police and waving her arms at the big helicopters flying overhead.

  "Help! Help!" she hollered up at the Black Hawks. "Get down here and stop this crazy man! He trying to shoot his privates off and keep missing! But soon enough, he gonna hit something! Help! Help!"

  Andy was parking in front of Judy Hammer's house when the call came over the radio.

  "Promiscuous shooting in the five thousand block of Patterson Avenue. Any officer in the area. Report of shots fired in the alleyway."

  Hammer appeared on the front porch, wondering why Andy wasn't getting out of his car. She came down the steps to investigate.

  "What are you doing?" Hammer asked as Andy rolled down his window.

  "There's a shooting and nobody's responding," he said, getting excited. "I guess all the city units must be tied up on other shootings and looking for the Hispanic."

  "Let's go," she said without hesitation, climbing in.

  They roared off with the blue grill lights and siren going full tilt while the city police dispatcher continued trying to raise an officer to respond to Patterson Avenue.

  "Three-thirty," Andy said over the radio, using his former unit number from his days with the Richmond police department.

  "Three-thirty," the dispatcher came back and sounded slightly confused, because she remembered Andy's pleasant voice and knew he didn't work for the city any longer.

  "Responding to Patterson Avenue," Andy said.

  "Ten-four, former unit three-thirty."

  "You know exactly where in the alleyway?" he asked into the mike.

  "Ten-ten, three-thirty," which was the city's way of saying, "Negative, Officer Brazil or whoever is riding around pretending to be Officer Brazil."

  Dispatcher Betty Freakley turned around to the 911 operators sitting behind her and shrugged.

  "I thought he'd gone and signed up with the state police. What's he doing riding around in the city again?" she asked.

  All the 911 operators were busy. Things were hopping in Richmond this night. An intoxicated white male had fallen down in the yard while taking his dog out. A black female was lying in the middle of the street near Eggleston's grocery store. An infant had eaten all the little beads inside a purple Beanie Baby Millennium Y2K bear. There were several car wrecks, and most officers were tied up looking for a Hispanic male suspect driving a Grand Prix with New York plates. But the urgent matter that caught Hammer's attention was the report of a male with a bag over his head who was trying to rob Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits on Chamberlayne Avenue.

  "I wonder if that's the same man who tried to rob the tollbooth last year," Hammer said. "What's his name? He ran into the tollbooth because the holes he cut in the bag were in the wrong place and he couldn't see."

  "Goes by the street name Stick," Andy said. "He's got an endless rap sheet and has tried the bag thing for years."

  "You would think he'd figure out his M.O. is obvious and isn't working," Hammer replied, never failing to be amazed by the stupidity of most criminals.

  "He hit Popeye's on Broad Street a couple months ago," Andy recalled, speeding through a yellow light on Gary Street. "Walked in with the bag over his head, tripped over the railing where people wait in line, and made off with an eight-piece chicken dinner, then walked into the glass door and broke his nose. We got his DNA off the blood on the paper bag."

  "Does he use a gun?"

  "That's the problem. He's never armed, and just walks in with the bag over his head, asking for whatever. So we can't get him on any charges that stick, which is why he never spends much time in jail. According to him, he asks for something and people give it to him without protest, so that really isn't a crime and there's nothing in the Virginia Code that says it's illegal to walk around with a bag over your head. So the judge always throws it out when Stick shows up for arraignment."

  "Any officer in the area," the dispatcher came over the air. "Report of a white male with a bag over his head, down in the parking lot of Popeye's on Chamberlayne Avenue. An ambulance en route."

  "I guess he tripped again," Andy said.

  Stick wasn't the only one to trip that night. When Barbie Fogg got out of her minivan in the carport, she stepped on the Barbie doll of one of the twins. As usual, it had been left where the child had played with it last.

  "Oh, my!" Barbie cried out as she picked herself up from the concrete floor and checked for injuries.

  Barbie, who very much believed in signs from The Universe, interpreted what could have been a serious accident as a signal that she had misstepped and overlooked something important. Oh, of course! she thought as she remembered the very special thing that had happened before she'd stopped off to visit the nursing home where she made the rounds visiting infirm and forgetful old women she didn't know. Barbie believed The Universe had chosen her to be a healer, and at last, The Universe was about to reward her, which was why Hooter had given Barbie the special gift.

  Minutes later, her neighbors, the Clot sisters, watched Barbie apply a rainbow bumper sticker to the back window of the Fogg family minivan. Uva Clot was shocked as she peered out from behind the kitchen blinds.

  "Come here and look!" Uva yelled at her spinster sister, Ima, who was watching TV in the living
room, the sound blasting. "Lord have mercy, she's falling down drunk and putting that thing on her car with chirren inside the house. What's gonna happen to those little chirren when all the world sees what they momma just put on that minivan a hers? I always wondered about her, didn't I tell you I always wondered about her, Ima? Get on in here and look right this minute!"

  Ima shuffled in with her walker and squinted through the opening in the blinds. She stiffened at the sight of Barbie Fogg in her lit-up carport across the street. Ima couldn't quite make out what Barbie was doing, but it looked like she was walking around her minivan and kicking a doll across the concrete, and she kept smoothing something on the back window and admiring whatever it was. Ima barely made out a few bright colors.

  "What she up to?" she asked her sister.

  "Don't you see what she put on the window, Ima? She got her one of them rainbow stickers! 'Member all them rainbow flags and stickers when we was living in the French Quarter?"