Rush

by Wozencraft, Kim

  “What about old Jim?” said Cowboy. “Man, I fucking knew things wasn’t right. I fucking knew! I fucking told you I knew, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “But here we are. You got the rules all messed up.”

  “Maybe I do,” he said, “but your old man done turned me on a lot more times than I sold to him.”

  The jailer stared at me.

  “Let it ride, Cowboy, tell the D.A.”

  “Sure,” he said, “we know how that goes.”

  The holding cells were packed full. Each of the three four-man cells had twenty or thirty defendants in it. Standing room only. The first ones in had grabbed space on the double-decked bunks attached to the walls and now sat with their legs dangling over the edges. In the middle cell, only one bunk had fewer than six people on it. That one was occupied by Mr. Gaines, who lay propped up on one elbow, leaning against the wall, his feet hanging over the end of the bunk.

  “There’s that bitch!” someone screamed when I entered the hall leading to the cells, and the rest of the defendants quickly joined in, yelling loudly in voices full of rage. A few of them climbed onto the bars at the front of the cells and hung there like monkeys, screaming and spitting. Through it all Gaines just lay there, his eyes half closed, like the head gorilla at some zoo, bored with watching his spectators.

  In the first cell, a figure stood silently at the front, grasping the bars with white-knuckled hands. It was Monroe, the Charles Manson look-alike who had nearly killed me with those Blue Ringers—Carbatrol they turned out to be—and Coors.

  He stood silently, staring at me with such hatred that it made it seem as though the rest of the defendants were wishing me happy birthday.

  Around three, Dodd took Group 2 to an all-night Mexican restaurant. I sat surrounded by harness bulls eating platefuls of enchiladas and rice and beans. I went to the ladies’ room and bumped up, went back to the table and moved some food around on my plate.

  “Folks here take good care of the police,” Dodd said. “You’ll see, now that you’re out in the open and all. Shit. I’m just real proud of you two.”

  I looked at him, too tired to talk. Even the blow wasn’t helping.

  “We done kicked ass and took names,” he continued.

  “I’m kind of beat,” I finally said. “Think you can finish up without me?”

  “Hell yeah. Old Jim done turned in several hours ago. Chief told me he had some kind of weird reaction, just went into the lounge and laid down on the couch and started crying. God knows he’s been through a lot.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Either at the station or at his place. I’ll go call and find out.” Dodd was riding an adrenaline high, pumped up from kicking down doors and dragging people off to jail. It showed in his eyes, lots of white visible beneath his thick blond lashes.

  He grabbed a praline from the counter on his way back from the phone.

  “Dude’s crashed out on the couch in the Chief’s office.”

  “I could use some sleep myself,” I said. “Drop me off?”

  “The station?”

  “No,” I said. “My apartment.” I did not want to be around cops.

  He pulled right up to the front door. No need for secrecy anymore.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”

  I pulled my gun and watched the shrubbery on either side of the walk as I edged toward my apartment. Inside, I locked the door and shoved a chair under the knob, set up a pyramid of glass tumblers behind the curtain of the patio door. Light the candle, get the coke. I loaded five new rounds of double-aught buck into one of the hot shotguns we’d bought at some point during the investigation, I couldn’t remember when, and propped it against the wall. I set my pistol within arm’s reach on the couch, laid out some rails. It seemed as though that was what I had been doing since the day Dodd had sworn me in. That and filling out paperwork.

  I sank into the soft velour cushions. My bones felt hollow, like something had been inside them, chewing at the marrow.

  This was home now, no longer a dealer’s crib. It seemed oddly empty. The fictional debutant of the Beaumont Police Department had survived her coming out and had been laid in the grave all in one brief evening. Flo, my former self, existed now only on paper, on all those offense reports. I was Kristen once again. Officer Cates. At least that was the theory. Change your identity, jump into the slime and play at cleaning up the streets, then come out and take up right where you left off, supposedly as a decent human being. Only I didn’t feel so decent. And I damn sure didn’t feel like any cop.

  I tooted a couple of lines and picked up my pistol.

  It’s almost convenient, having a gun so close at hand. I thought about it that night, for a long time, sitting alone in the candlelit living room. Maybe it was the coke. Or maybe I was afraid of what Gaines would do when he made bail. Nettle had his big case now. Gaines was sitting downtown, locked in a cell. It’ll be us or him, Jim had said. I picked up my revolver and set its cool blue barrel against my forehead. Placed my thumb over the trigger. I would squeeze slowly, so slowly that I could feel the tension pulling the hammer back, back, feel it in the trigger. Slowly I slid the gun down my nose, pressed it against my lips. I rubbed my thumb, gently, on the trigger, felt the crisscross cut of the metal. I pulled the gun from my face, shut one eye. Stared down the barrel.

  When women finally reach the point of shooting themselves, most of them do it in the heart. The experts, people who study such things, say it’s because women are too vain, they don’t want to think of themselves lying in the casket with a plastic face.

  I don’t know how long I played. I remember wishing the thing would just go off while I was staring down the barrel, simply discharge without my having to pull the trigger. I don’t know why I didn’t do it. Maybe it was because I felt that things were out of my hands completely. Maybe I wanted to see who would come after us. Or maybe I just didn’t have the guts.

  I stuffed the pistol down into the cushions and sat back to wait, staring at the small gray crack of dawn between the edge of the curtain and the frame of the sliding glass door.

  16

  We walked past policemen and secretaries to the Vice office. They looked at us furtively as we passed, and a few offered formal hellos.

  Dodd was kicked back in his chair, his boots up on his desk, yakking on the phone.

  “Well, darlin’,” he drawled, “have you even read the papers? I couldn’t get away last night, things were kind of busy around here.”

  Jim rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette.

  “Yeah,” Dodd said, “I promise tonight. I’ll be by at nine.” He cradled the receiver and swung his feet down from the desk.

  “It’s four already? How the hell are you,” he boomed. His eyes were solid red.

  “Shit, boss,” Jim said, “you ought to split down with your partners here.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hell, town’s dried up, I’m smoking squares, and your eyes are the color of rare roast beef.”

  “Aw, no, man. It ain’t like that,” Dodd grinned. “I just ain’t been to bed yet. Look at all this shit.” He waved a hand across the swamp of paperwork on his desk. “Still got all this to log in. I’ll be here till Christmas.”

  “How many’d we wind up with?” Jim asked.

  “Eighty-nine in custody. Not bad for a night’s work.”

  “Gaines out yet?”

  “Fuck no,” Dodd said. “Judge set his bond at a smooth seven hundred and fifty thousand. His lawyer is appealing it this afternoon. But right now his ass is in the county jail. And look what we got.”

  He stood up and patted a stack of VCR tapes on top of a file cabinet behind his desk.

  “They found it in the trunk of his car after y’all popped him.” He looked at Jim. “You shouldn’t ought to have taken off so quick.”

  “I didn’t see much sense aggravating things. We nearly ha
d to kick his ass as it was.”

  “Yeah,” Dodd said, “I heard he was kind of pissed. Claiming you’d framed him.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said, “sure. Like he was a fucking Rembrandt.”

  “What’s with the tapes?” I asked.

  “We’ll have a look-see in a few minutes,” Dodd said. “Right now I got to show you something.” He dug in a drawer for a moment and came out with two sets of shiny brass keys, dangling them in the air for a moment before handing one to each of us. Then he leaned back and kicked one leg across the corner of his desk, rolling his head back and forth, stretching his neck.

  “The big one,” he said, “is the back door. The one with that funny hook on it opens the basement doors downstairs, into the booking area. And that third one . . .” He stood up. “Come on.”

  Directly across from the vice office was a huge, heavy wooden door. When we had passed it on the way in, I’d thought it was a broom closet.

  “Your key?” Dodd said, holding out his palm. I handed him mine.

  He worked the lock and led us inside, turning to pull the door shut behind us. The room was small and shelf-lined, packed full of bongs, water pipes, packages of syringes, ancient apothecary bottles, boxes and bags of pills and powders, bricks of pot.

  The streets might be dry, but the police department had the stuff stockpiled.

  “The evidence vault,” Dodd said.

  Nirvana. Jim picked up a brick of pot and examined the marking on the plastic cover.

  “This ain’t from our cases,” he said.

  “No,” Dodd said. “We took most of that straight to the lab. This is leftover from cases that got pleaded. It’s just waiting to be burned.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at the ceiling. “Yeah,” he sighed, “we’re just so damn busy, we ain’t got around to it yet. You know.”

  Jim looked at me with raised eyebrows. I shrugged. There was no way to know if it was a trap. But then, on the way out, Dodd kicked a box of pills on the floor and said, “Shit, y’all just make yourselves at home. It’s been done before.”

  El Jefe, Dodd said, was out to lunch, and an important one at that. Nettle’s desk was huge, easily eight feet across and four deep, and not a paper was out of place. In the center was a walnut nameplate/pen holder with donald nettle etched in a a brown wood-grain plastic insert. On the right side, stacked in-out trays held a couple of papers. To the left was an eight-by-ten of a beehived Mrs. Nettle, with four beaming children, three girls and a boy, all with their father’s even white teeth and tight-lipped smile. Behind the desk was a huge Beaumont P.D. shield flanked on the right by Old Glory and on the left by the red, white and blue of the Lone Star State.

  Dodd wheeled the VCR he’d borrowed from the booking room over to the Magnavox against the front wall of the office. The television, he said, was there so Nettle could keep up with the news.

  “That and Guiding Light,” Jim said.

  “Speaking of which, get them, will you?” Dodd said.

  Jim hit the switch and sat down on a leather couch that ran at a right angle to Nettle’s desk. I leaned next to him against the arm of the couch. A big silver X gyrated across the screen to the sounds of synthesized horns, then expanded into X-tra Special Video, then disappeared into a small white dot in the middle of black. Marching music began, and the dot grew into gold script letters. The Beat of a Different Drummer. The screen went black again, and then, an empty white room. A girl entered, moving mechanically, her head swiveling sharply, left, right, left, as she marched in step to the music. She had on a gold-plumed helmet and wore a short black skirt, gold bloomers shining beneath it, and a sleeveless black-fringed gold shirt. Her feet were in gold boots and she carried black-and-gold pom-poms.

  “Where’s the Chief?” I asked.

  “Meeting with the D.A.,” Dodd said, his bloodshot eyes never moving away from the television.

  The girl danced snappily, a drill-team routine, tossing pompoms skyward, bending to catch them inches from the floor, flashing her tight gold bloomers. Her face was layered with makeup, her lips painted deep maroon, almost black, around her yellowed teeth.

  “Oh, boy, here we go,” Dodd said.

  Three men marched in, wearing black-and-gold uniforms, pounding away on snare drums.

  “It’s Sousa,” I said.

  “A defendant?” Dodd peeled his eyes from the screen and turned to look at me. “Which one is he?”

  “The music,” I said. “John Philip Sousa.”

  “Who gives a fuck,” Dodd replied, turning back to the set.

  Harness bulls began creeping quietly into the office, edging along the walls and standing silently.

  “Heard you were looking at some evidence,” one of them whispered when Dodd looked around.

  “Gaines case,” Dodd said. “Ain’t you supposed to be on the street?”

  “Shift change. Just got off.”

  “Stick around, watch this shit, you’ll see what getting off is,” Dodd said.

  One of the patrolmen edged over and stood next to me. Jim sat, ignoring the television, his legs crossed, his left foot jiggling rapidly. He took out a pocket knife and began carving his fingernails.

  “Hey,” the patrolman whispered, “isn’t that girl wearing a Trojanette uniform?”

  “Damn right,” Dodd said.

  “Baytown?” Jim looked up from his manicure. “He was recruiting from the Baytown University Trojanettes?”

  “Maybe so.” Dodd stared open-mouthed at the screen. The Tronjanette, still with drill-team precision, yanked off her shirt and tossed it off-screen. The harness bulls around me hooted and clapped, and one of them took out his handcuffs and began twirling them on his finger. The dancer swooped up her pompoms and marched around the drummers, then raised one finger and invited them to follow her as she marched through a doorway toward another room.

  “I’ll be damned,” the patrolman said quietly.

  “What,” Dodd said, “she’s not that hot.”

  “No,” the bull said, “but I know her. She’s Willard Freemen’s daughter. Went off there to school just last year. I’ll be a son of a bitch.”

  “Who’s Willard Freeman?” I asked.

  “He owns about two-thirds of this town is all,” the patrolman said. “Calls the damn president of the United States Jimmy. His little girl better hope he doesn’t ever see this shit. He’d kill her for sure, and everyone else involved in it, too.”

  The lights came on.

  “Turn that thing off,” Nettle said from the doorway. “I want this office cleared. Immediately. Sergeant, I’ll see you when you’ve returned that equipment to its proper place.”

  * * *

  The grand jury room had a huge conference table in the middle and a coffee machine on a tiny metal stand in one corner, brought in especially for the marathon session. Around the table sat the twelve upstanding citizens who, with no small encouragement from the D.A., would determine whether to indict the defendants we had rounded up.

  “State your name for the record please.”

  Vincent Carthage, the assistant D.A., looked about my age, but very bookish, very court-clerkish. His brown hair curled over the collar of his suit and he wore heavy black spectacles.

  “Kristen Cates,” I answered. My voice sounded calm enough.

  “And how are you employed?”

  “As a police officer for the City of Beaumont.”

  In spite of the prep session by a whole herd of attorneys, I was apprehensive about how these people would receive my testimony. I shouldn’t have worried.

  Nettled had timed the bust-out to coincide with the empanelment of a brand-new grand jury for Judge Hammit, known as a tough, law-and-order kind of guy who would choose his jury commission carefully. The jury commission, in turn, selected the grand jurors, and the defendants that those grand jurors chose to indict would wind up in Judge Hammit’s court. It was one big circles of appointments, looping from Judge Hammit to his commissioners to the grand j
ury and back to the judge again. These twelve good citizens sitting around the table might want to know a thing or two about drugs or weapons, but they were team players. They would not dare question the facts of the cases.

  There were nine white males, two women, and a token Black. They were wearing their Sunday Best; one of the women even had on a woven straw hat with a bouquet of silk flowers pinned to the wide brim. Their qualifications were spelled out in the Code of Criminal Procedure. You had to be a citizen qualified to vote, you had to be of “good moral character,” you had to be able to read and write, you couldn’t have any felony convictions or be under indictment “or other legal accusation for theft or any felony.”

  It boiled down to a matter of speaking passable English and avoiding getting caught for a crime.

  Vince kept his questions simple, asking the same things about each case: What did you buy, where did you buy it, how much did you pay, how did you I.D. the defendant.

  Jim had already given four hours of testimony. It was my turn now, to talk about the cases I’d made alone and verify the facts on the cases I’d made with him. Sitting there in my court clothes, a conservative suit, skirt over the knee, sling-back pumps, wearing a shoulder holster for the first time in months, I answered quietly, with yes or no, as Vince went over the cases.

  I had a stack of case reports in front of me, but rarely looked at them. It was as though I were talking to a long lost friend about events that had gone on during her absence. But seeing it on paper, the times, dates, descriptions, faced with the clinical rendering of the events, I tried to draw a line down the middle of my emotions and convince myself that I had never been a friend to any of them. I had gone on the streets to make dope cases, and that’s all I had done. If some of the defendants were foolish enough to think I actually cared about a dope dealer, it was their own decision, not mine. I tried to maintain that attitude as I spoke to the God-fearing citizens at the table. Their faces—the pinched eyes, the drawn mouths—told me that they were terrified of what they were hearing. Their town had been invaded, and with the Lord’s help they were here to do something about it. It scared me. And even though I knew that I was supposed to be disinterested, the truth was that I had gotten close to some of the defendants, and so I played down their cases, tried to portray them as decent people who really didn’t deserve to go to prison. It didn’t seem to help.