Rush

by Wozencraft, Kim

  I must have been staring right at them for the better part of five minutes before I realized that Jim and Rob were standing near the front door of the club, talking to Gaines. Jim had his hands tucked in his pockets and was nodding his head while Gaines threw his huge arms around, obviously upset about something.

  I felt betrayed. I didn’t know why he’d decided to do it without me, and I didn’t care. He’d cut me out, replaced me with Rob, even after his tirade about Rob running, Rob being a topwater floater. I thought about walking over. I had my hand on the door handle and was ready to go, but if Jim was actually making the deal and I walked up and blew it, there would be no peace. I tapped the horn and, when Walker looked up, motioned him over.

  “I had another deal,” he said. “Some blow.”

  “Forget that for now,” I said. “We have something to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like move some furniture.”

  “Now? It’s damn near one o’clock.”

  I handed him a Quay and the Dr. Pepper.

  “It’ll be fun,” I said.

  * * *

  Jim shook me awake the next morning, saying something about hurry up and get dressed. I staggered into the shower and gradually managed to get my eyes open.

  He handed me coffee as soon as I hit the kitchen.

  “Who did this?” he asked, sweeping his arm around the room, “and when? I got home last night and my fucking crib was cleaned out.”

  “Walker and I did,” I mumbled. “You said you wanted to move, didn’t you? I sure didn’t have anything else going on. Being as my partner didn’t seem to need me around last night.”

  “I was working.”

  “I saw.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was at the Yellow Rose. Walker set up a deal, I went to buy some Quays. I saw you talking to Gaines.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well I had to try. He’s not coming up for it. Rob flashed a shitload of cash at him and he looked at it like it was horse dung.”

  “When did we decide to bring the State in on this? Nettle changed his mind?”

  “I didn’t ask.” He poured some coffee and sat down. “Look,” he said, “I was trying to get the thing done. I’m running out of options here. I’m trying to save my ass. And yours.”

  I sat listening to the pulse of one magnificent Quaalude hangover throb between my ears. He was trying to dig his way out of the hole I had made for both of us. It didn’t matter that I’d told him I was with him. He didn’t want me to so much as hand him a shovel.

  “We’re meeting with Nettle today,” he said. “And I’m going to tell him we can’t make Gaines.”

  “He’ll freak.”

  “Fuck it. We’re not getting killed over a goddamn dope deal.” He stood and stepped into the kitchen, a few feet away. “Rob should be here anytime.”

  I couldn’t wake up. The clink and clatter of dishes as Jim unloaded the dishwasher came to me through a fog.

  “I flat out hit on him last night,” he said. “Like I told you that night at Drillers, the dude thinks we’re the heat.”

  “You know he’s got it though.”

  “Yeah, well, he ain’t coming up for selling any to me. He was doing a tenth-gear backpedal.”

  I sat at the table and heard distinct metal clinking as Jim tossed dinner knives into the kitchen drawer. It occurred to me that he was being noisy on purpose, having fun with my hangover.

  Rob handed me a bottle of Visine on the way to the meeting.

  “Save me a little,” he said.

  Nettle was standing next to his car in the alley behind Kroger’s grocery when we got there. He had on new shoes, black suede slip-ons with white patent tops.

  “Pretty slick skids, Chief,” Jim said.

  Nettle saw what Jim was looking at and bobbed his head.

  “Thank you,” he said, “thank you.” He looked at Rob. “Good to see you again. How’ve you been?”

  “Fine, just fine,” Rob said. The Visine hadn’t helped much. He was high and he looked it.

  “Listen, Boss,” Jim said, “I won’t waste your time. Gaines ain’t dealing. At least not to us. I been trying to get next to him, hell, Rob was with me last night, and the dude ain’t gonna come with anything. Nothing. Won’t even talk about it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Nettle stammered. “Will Gaines is a dope dealer. It’s in our intelligence files.”

  “I’m telling you,” Jim said, “he’s staying clean. No way we can get a dope case on him.”

  Rob backed Jim up with a nod. Nettle turned to me.

  “And you?”

  “I wasn’t there,” I said. “I was out buying Ludes.”

  “This is crap,” he said. “I know he’s dealing.”

  “How’s that?” Jim asked.

  “We have our sources,” Nettle said. “It’s in our files.” He looked at me, a brief head-to-toe glance. “I’ll bet he’d give you anything you asked for.”

  Maybe it was my hangover. Maybe I wasn’t hearing him right. But I was. Nettle’s pale gray eyes were looking me up and down and he wasn’t seeing cop.

  “Chief,” I said, “you can get someone else to screw him, if that’s what you’re asking me to do. My job description says nothing about being a hooker.”

  He took a step back and leaned against his car, looking for all the world as though he might yawn.

  “I didn’t mean to imply,” he said.

  “Look,” Jim said, “what would you say if I stood right here in front of you, like I’m doing right now, and told you Will Gaines is not dealing dope?”

  Nettle looked around, checking out the alley.

  “I would ask,” he whispered, “When are you going to make the big case?”

  Jim was silent. Nettle stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and flexed his knees.

  “By the way,” he said, “how’s that arm of yours doing?”

  In the car on the way home, no one said anything for a long time. Rob turned on the radio, punching buttons so rapidly that we heard only disjointed scraps of music and voices.

  “The man’s telling you to stash,” he finally said.

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “And he made it pretty goddamn plain what will happen if we don’t.” He put his arm across the seatback and rested his hand on my shoulder. “Shit, baby,” he moaned, “here we could have a case on the dude in no time, if only you’d cooperate with El Jefe’s plan.”

  I dug an elbow into his ribs and he faked falling over the steering wheel, nearly landing us in a ditch.

  * * *

  Toward the end of it, I began giving clues to the defendants. It took them only a few days to find the new apartment, to get the phone number. As the investigation was winding down, I started to feel like an animal with one leg clamped in a trap. The options? Stay and get skinned, or chew off a foot and drag yourself into the forest, hope you don’t bleed to death.

  All we needed was Gaines. Nettle had his magic number. Close to two hundred cases on a hundred defendants. And counting.

  When the defendants came over, I put music on for them. Sometimes I played “Everything That You Do Will Come Back to You.” I had a favorite, by Steely Dan, “Don’t Take Me Alive.”

  Some hours and God knows how much tequila later I was one of them, thinking fuck it all, we’re here together and that is what matters. We didn’t get killed in a jungle, we don’t have to worry about the stock market, we have no need for haute couture. I will not spend my life writing speeding tickets. I cross lines, but even I have a few shredded scruples left, hanging inside my chest like torn rags, and I will not fuck Will Gaines for the sake of a case. That’s what Nettle wants, that’s what he expects of me, all in the sweet line of duty. I refuse. I could, I wouldn’t die from it, and yes, I thought about it when he mentioned the possibilities, and I should have pistol-whipped him right then and there. Caught him off-guard and felt the wondrous crack of stainless steel against his brainless skull. That would have bee
n nice. It would have been nice to see his hair messed up. I can see him, El Jefe, standing outside with his megaphone, demanding surrender. The defendants and I are sitting in this room, together, still breathing and warm with Cuervo. I understand now, after living in their world, why they hate cops. I know how cops think, or don’t think, about the laws they have sworn to enforce. Cops don’t have time to ask questions; they’re too busy trying to stay alive. They respect authority because they have been selected to uphold the status quo. The power is on their side, the power wants them out there on the front lines, separating the haves from the have-nots.

  I despise the defendants, but I pity them too, playing in the dime-store league instead of on Wall Street. Late at night, when they have gone, Jim and I will sit on the couch and talk about which ones we will try to flip.

  But for now, light the candles, roll a joint, pass the bottle. Here we all are. One sunny tomorrow I will betray you in the name of the law. But for the moment, let’s get high and listen to music.

  * * *

  The report, scrawled in Jim’s skinny, straight-line script said:

  At approximately eleven forty-two on Wednesday, April 26, 1978, Agent Jim Raynor of the Beaumont Police department purchased EXHIBIT 1, a plastic baggie containing a white powder substance believed to be COCAINE, from defendant, GAINES, WILLIAM ROBERT, W/M 3/16/42, in the alley behind the Drillers Club, a bar located in the city limits of Beaumont, Texas. Agent Kristen Cates witnessed the delivery.

  We didn’t so much as say hello to the man that night.

  When Walker trotted in the front door and said there was a guy dealing ounces out of a room at the Best Western on IH10, Jim called Dodd and said the deal with Gaines was set, we needed buy money. We met Dodd and picked up the cash and then Walker and I drove over and scored an ounce from the FNU LNU in Room 144.

  When we got back, Jim was pacing the living room, smoking one cigarette while another burned in the ashtray on the coffee table. I dumped the whole ounce onto a plastic cafeteria tray that came from somewhere and cut out some grams for Walker.

  “Have fun,” I said to him, “things will get tight real soon now.”

  “And start thinking about where you’re going,” Jim said.

  “Going?” Walker said. “I ain’t going nowhere. This town is my home. I’m staying right here.”

  “You’re crazier than I thought, boy,” Jim said.

  Walker stuffed the vials into his jeans pocket and went out the door smiling.

  “So,” Jim said. “Probably ought to step on this stuff. No sense wasting good dope.”

  I cut out eight more grams and we mixed them with twenty of mannitol. When we finished, we sat for awhile, staring at the bag of evidence. I played with a line on the mirror, shaping it into an S, then straightening it, then curving it again.

  “It’ll be weak,” I said.

  “Long as it’s dope.” He used the butt of his cigarette to light a fresh one. “Listen to me, girl,” he said. “Listen carefully. If we do this, somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

  I leaned over and snuffed up a line. Come on, man, come right ahead on and give me a little courage here.

  “It’ll be him, or it’ll be us,” Jim said. “But somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

  I heard him. I tried to absorb his words. I guess at that point we wanted to end the thing, no matter what it took. Wanted out. And believed Gaines needed to go, whether righteously or not. I thought I had achieved, at last, the larger perspective.

  Jim sat back in his chair, stretched his legs straight out before him.

  I nodded at his arm. “What about that?”

  He stared at the track. “Not sure yet.” He rolled his sleeves down. “He’ll probably make bail.”

  “I know.”

  “It’ll be get-down time in court, too.”

  “Jim,” I said. “I’m here. Okay?”

  “Rob’s faded heat for it plenty of times. And Denny, and every goddam narc I’ve ever known.”

  That was part of it, too. Still, after everything, I wanted to show him I was strong enough.

  “You know,” he said, “several years ago, I was in Houston, working with a state agent. Just hanging out with him one evening, really. He’d just bought an ounce of brown off a dude, and on the way back to the office we drove past this old house. There was a Mexican sitting on the front porch, just drinking a beer. So this agent looks out the window at him and says to me, ‘You know, I think that sorry-ass just sold me a half ounce of brown. Let me just jot down that address.’ It was wrong, man, just out-and-out wrong. I still don’t know why he did it.

  “Three months later I get a subpoena. That son of a bitch had put me in his report as a witness.”

  “You testify?”

  “Yeah. I testified. Made the shit up as I went along, he hadn’t even given me a copy of the report. Jury didn’t buy it. When the trial was over I followed him to the men’s room and beat the hell out of him.”

  “So you still think I shouldn’t have gone to Nettle.”

  “I’m not saying that. But I’ve got to know you’re with me.”

  “You do or you don’t,” I said. “I guess we could sit here all night staring at this stuff.”

  “Hell with it.”

  We used a felt marker to put our initials on the baggie, and I could hear Dodd’s yahoo blasting out of the telephone when Jim called to tell him we had the case.

  “Idiot actually thinks Gaines sold,” Jim said when he hung up. “He’s calling the Chief. They want the report and the evidence tonight. Special handling for this one. You want to ride over?”

  “To Dodd’s? No thanks. I’ll sit tight.”

  “I should call Rob,” he said, pointing to the pile of coke on the table. “He’d enjoy some of this.”

  After he left I lit a candle and set it on the coffee table, brought the mirror over and laid out some lines. I didn’t know what was going on inside me. It was as if the numbness in the back of my throat had spread throughout my entire body. I was perfectly, completely empty.

  When Rob tapped on the door with his two-three-two knock, it startled me.

  “Got the call from Jim,” he said. “Playing a little hardball now, huhm?”

  He tapped out some lines and did them quickly before standing up to walk around the living room, unable to contain his energy.

  “So,” he said, “welcome to the club.”

  15

  It took Walker a few minutes to climb down from the roof. His T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, stuck to his back in a solid sheet. He pulled his bandanna off and wrung it out, then unfolded it and began waving it slowly in the hot afternoon air. Construction workers were everywhere, banging and sawing and carrying around pieces of house.

  “What’s up?” he asked. His eyes had a flat look, as though he’d just been given bad news.

  “Let’s walk over to my car,” I said. “Too many ears around here.”

  “Don’t matter,” he said. “They’re all half deaf anyway.”

  We strolled out to the curb. Like the street, it had the look of brand-new concrete, almost white. The block was dotted with half-finished houses, some just past the framing stage.

  “We’ll be through with this baby in a few days,” Walker said.

  “Walker,” I said, “we’re busting out this afternoon.”

  The bandanna slipped from his hands and he grabbed after it as it fluttered to the sidewalk.

  “We could prearrange your bail and arrest you with the others. Make it look like you didn’t know.”

  “No way, man, you think I did all that just so I could go to jail? No fucking way. Not even for ten minutes.”

  “Then you better get out of here. Any relatives you could stay with?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I grew up here, I know these people.”

  “And they know you. And they know where to find you.”

  “Let them,” he said. “I ain’t running.”

 
“You’ve got no idea,” I said. “It’s going to get bad. And you’re not a cop, Walker. You got no shield. At least they’ll think twice before trying to take Jim or me out.”

  “This may sound weird,” he said, “but I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done. I mean, okay, I’m a dope dealer, in the sense that I take care of a few friends. That doesn’t mean I like burglars and thieves. You got a lot of them, and that’s fine by me. I’m not ashamed.”

  “Rob would set you up in Houston.”

  “I’m not a big-city man. I’m staying.”

  “What do I have to do? Threaten you? Tell you that if you stick around I’m gonna put a case on you and you’ll wind up in jail anyway?”

  He took a step back and looked at me hard, winding the bandanna around the knuckles of his right hand.

  “You wouldn’t,” he said. “I know you. I’m staying.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” I said. “Crazy.”

  “Just enough to get by. I can take care of myself.”

  “If there’s trouble you call the station and tell them that they are to find me immediately, no matter where I am or what’s going down.”

  “I said I can take care of myself.”

  “Well watch your back,” I said. “You can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day.”

  He slowly refolded his bandanna and tied it around his head.

  “That’s why I sleep next to a twelve-gauge. And I’ll fucking use it if I have to.”

  When I got home, Jim was sitting on the edge of the couch, bent over, holding a towel full of ice on his arm. His eyes were shut tight and he rocked slowly back and forth, moaning quietly, humming low tones in the ancient rhythm of pain.

  When I closed the door, he looked up and stood quickly, still bent at the waist.

  “I took care of it,” he said.

  A battered black and chrome clothes iron sat in the middle of the dining table, its cord trailing up to the electrical outlet next to the phone. I looked at him and looked at the iron and looked back at him, felt a wave of nausea wash through my body.