Curly snapped his swollen brown fingers. “Shoot, thanks for reminding me, Larsen! I really need to call that little woman sometime.” As he reached up to scratch his head, waves of processed hair parted with the movement. The greasy strands were remarkably resilient, snapping back into tight curls just as soon as he broke contact. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve talked to that girl in about two weeks now.”
I tilted my soda can a mock salute. “So that’s the secret to a happy marriage, huh? Never go home?” Curly Wilds was just one of a handful of CPD old-timers who essentially had no life outside of the department. Those crusty skeletons just cycled back and forth between their regular shifts and off-duty security jobs, working every waking hour to make ends meet. After wrapping up his dayshift beat, Curly would usually head straight to the Harris Teeter supermarket where he took cash under the table in exchange for running off all the underage college kids who were looking to swipe cases of Pabst beer. Then, after putting in his second eight-hour shift of the day, Curly could almost always be found holding down the front desk at one of the ritzy downtown hotels. Those graveyard shift jobs were some pretty sweet gigs, since a cop could generally just kick up his feet and catch a nap on a lobby sofa after all the late night arrivals had stopped trickling in. Some of the nicer places might even sweeten the deal by throwing in a free breakfast, so the twenty-four hour men like Curly would still have another hour or so left over to shave and shower before heading into roll call to do it all over again. On the weekends, Curly’s days were filled by directing all the cruise ship traffic down at the port, and by that I mean he sat in his truck and waved out the window in order to guide all those passengers toward the customs terminal.
Curly chuckled at my observation. “You know me too well, Larsen. Man, you got me dead to rights! All I gotta do is keep all them checks rolling in nice and steady, and that old lady is sworn to stick by me. Been that way for twenny-five years, and I don’t see no damned reason to try and go changin’ the arrangement now.” He looked me square in the eye. “I tell you what, back in the day when they told me I was comin’ to foot patrol, I nearly shit a brick! Man! I must’ve sent off applications to damn near every po-lice department in the state, at least until I realized what a gold mine I done stumbled across. But now? Shee-it. They’d have to drag me offa this gravy train. Man, I can’t even afford to retire, I’d lose so much money!”
Every cop who’d worked at CPD for over a month had heard the story of how Curly Wilds had gotten himself transferred down to our elite foot patrol team. The whole situation had become something of a teaching example; a way of showing rookie cops what not to do when they were working special assignments. Maybe fifteen years back, Curly had been one of a dozen or so cops assigned to stake out bank branches during a rash of robberies. The fact that a single dude was able to keep hitting all these banks was really giving the department a black eye, so the command staff was under pressure to do something fast. Their best idea was to have all these undercover cops show up to the West Ashley banks every morning at nine o’clock wearing business suits and pretending to be employees, so that if and when a robbery happened a cop would be right there to catch the crook in the act. It was actually a pretty neat plan if you could overlook the thousands of dollars in overtime pay which was being burnt through each day. Our idiot commanders had to cancel regular days off for patrol officers in order to cover all those banks for three weeks straight.
Just like with any other plan, though, it only takes one dumbass to ruin the whole show. In this case, the dumbass was none other than Curly Wilds. His post was the National Bank of South Carolina’s branch on Sam Rittenburg Boulevard, the one right there next to the Bojangle’s fried chicken stand. Even though the branch manager had set Curly up in a spare office with a clear view of all the customers waiting in line, that jerk started to get lazy after just his first couple minutes on duty. Once he’d worked his way through all the copies of Sports Illustrated in the lobby, and after he’d realized that wandering across the strip mall to pick up a bucket of chicken for lunch was only good for wasting two or three hours of his shift, Curly started using the assignment as an opportunity to catch up on some much needed shut-eye. See, back then Curly was just starting to discover the lucrative world of off-duty assignments, so his body hadn’t quite adjusted to getting by on three hours of sleep each night. As a result, he spent most of his undercover shift with his face down on the desk.
But as luck would have it, the serial bank robber actually chose the NBSC as his next target. Curly was in his usual position, of course, head down on a stack of invoices and drooling over a check register. The suspect passed a note to the cashier which demanded a large withdrawal in small, unmarked bills, no dye packs please. The robbery itself was quick and quiet, so Curly just kept right on sawing logs. By the time a clerk could finally run in and wake him, the thief had fled out the door and was making a hasty getaway on foot. Curly might have still had a shot at the guy, but unfortunately there was actually another team of plainclothes detectives eating lunch at the Pizza Hut across the street. Those guys heard Curly’s distress call over the radio, so of course they used that as their excuse to race out of the restaurant without paying. The cops piled into an unmarked patrol car and burned rubber out onto Sam Rittenburg Boulevard, hoping to get in on the action. I guess they were just victims of bad timing, since Curly had waddled out of his bank in time to see a late model Ford Crown Victoria smoking past. He caught the tag number, called it in to dispatch and not ten seconds later a half-dozen patrol cars had pulled up to block in the one unmarked car. It ended up being a picture-perfect felony traffic stop, with all the plainclothes cops held at gunpoint until some poor supervisor could get there and sort out the mess. And as for the actual robber? Well, both he and the bag of money vanished into the woods behind the Village Square apartments. The suspect was never ID’d so I’m assuming the case is technically still open, but oddly enough all those robberies came to a sudden halt.
Chief Greene called Curly’s behavior “dereliction of duty”, and the caper earned him a one-way ticket down to foot patrol. It was an embarrassing incident, sure, but certainly not the most shocking act of negligence in the storied history of CPD. No, it actually took Curly another three months to solidify his reputation with a lifetime sentence to Team Seven. See, Curly’d been desperately looking to get back into the Chief’s good graces, and his strategy was to seem like a hard worker by becoming a one-man citation machine. Illegally parked cars, open containers of alcohol, even elderly jaywalkers found themselves on the receiving end of his wrath. Curly kept himself busy if not really productive, at least until that one day when he wrote up two fourth graders on South Battery for running their lemonade stand without a business license. The Internet wasn’t a thing back then so it took nearly a week for the story to make national news, but the blowback from being featured on 60 Minutes was all it took to convince Curly that he should never again trouble himself with actually enforcing the law.
At that point, any other cop would have probably cursed their luck, thrown in the towel and sent their resume out to all the private security companies. Not Curly Wilds, though, the man who couldn’t afford to make a career change. Between his high-living wife, the six kids he knew of and his perpetually overdue car note, moving on to another job would have most likely involved filing for bankruptcy. But as it turned out, Curly simply had no sense of self-pride. In the end discovered contentment by staying quiet, keeping his head down and focusing on his life’s true calling: making money hand over fist.
I polished off the last swig of my Coke and chucked the can over the edge of the garage, flashing Curly what I hoped was one of my more charismatic smiles. “So, tell me again, bro: How did you manage to make it down here to foot patrol, anyway?”
He shot me an evil glare. “Haw! Get stuffed, Larsen! You of all people should know that no cop ever lands this assignment without pulling off a major-lea
gue boner. Yeah, I might have drifted away for a couple minutes at the worst possible time, but your stunt last fall took the cake! But hey kid, I just gotta know– how did you manage to miss the department’s annual inspection, anyway? I mean, damn! Damn! I know if I was the one getting the Officer of the Year award, and having it presented to me by ol’ Chief Greene his’self, I’d at least make some kind of effort to set my alarm clock the night before!” Curly leaned back in his beach chair and roared with laughter. The move caused his beer gut to shake in a violent fashion, stretching the leather stitches on his duty belt dangerously close to their breaking point.
My cheeks warmed as the blood rushed to my face. It was true, I might have accidentally slept through the previous year’s annual inspection ceremony, but I swear it wasn’t my fault! I actually had set my alarm clock before going to bed the night before, but the electricity had cut off sometime during the night before on account of some little misunderstanding over an unpaid bill. And wouldn’t you know it, Chief Greene didn’t even bother listening to my side of the story! I think that guy must get some kind of private kick out of holding those dress inspections, when all the cops have to get gussied up in our Sunday best just to stand in formation for three straight hours. The Chief isn’t normally what you’d call a kind man, and he’s definitely not accustomed to being stood up. What’s more, and I’ll be the first to admit this, my oversleeping excuse was really a little weak since the awards presentation had been scheduled for four o’clock in the afternoon. Really, I had no one but myself to blame for sticking my neck out, but who could’ve known that my first arrest in five years would bring down a serial arsonist? Yeah, all things considered I’d probably gotten off pretty easy with only a transfer. Surprisingly enough, the Chief hadn’t even tried to take away my one stripe over this latest snafu. I think he must’ve known the devastating effect that a pay cut would’ve had and decided against hitting me with a fourth demotion. Good thing, too, because I think that would have been a CPD record. It was common knowledge to all us cops that the Chief was going senile in his old age, but it seemed as if he might be getting a little soft too.
Curly noticed the sour look on my face, and for some reason he took it as a signal to keep jawing away. “Well, just use this assignment as a life lesson, kid: Hard work never gets you nowhere. You went out there and busted your ass to take down a nutjob who’d been torching houses for how long? Five, six years? And look where you ended up.” He swept his fat black arm out in front of him, drawing my eye towards all the low rooftops laid out before us. “Sitting on top of a fuckin’ parking garage and waiting for it to get dark, all so’s you can chase bums around in circles and run them poor boys from one streetcorner to the next. You know, the only reason we’re even posted down here at all is to make sure the city’s precious tourists don’t get harassed.” He spat with disgust, launching a bubbly loogie out over the edge of the parking deck. “Oh, Lawd! God forbid something happens to one o’ dem bee-yoo-ti-full tourists!”
I gave him another smile, a genuine one this time. “We’re on top of the world, Curly. Top of the world! What else could a man ask for?”
His belly shook again as he laughed at our shared predicament. Finally, after he’d caught his breath, Curly let out a long sigh and began the process of twisting and churning his way up out of the folding chair. His movements were slow in the making, and it was obviously a significant effort for him to bring his body back upright. Curly’s never been much of a fitness nut but in all fairness, the dude had only been carrying about seventy or eighty extra pounds before he picked up that case of the gout. Ever since his sick leave ran out, it almost seemed like his metabolism had simply ground to a halt. Without the benefit of any kind of diet or exercise regimen, Curly’s body had taken on the consistency of soggy toilet paper. “That’s the spirit, kid” he said. “Me, I’m outta here. I got the evening shift at the Teeter in thirty minutes.” Curly pointed towards a combination bike lock that was coiled around the stairwell railing. “And hey, don’t forget to lock up my beach chair whenever you head home tonight. Any of them damned bums would just love to get their grubby mitts on it. The combination’s the same as my phone number: 9-1-1.”
I rolled my eyes as I slid down into his chair, the seat still nice and warm. I kicked my feet up on his cooler, hoping he’d forget to load that into his truck bed. “I got your back, Curly. Be safe out there, and keep a close eye on the produce aisle. There’s enough fruits and nuts running around this city already.”
Curly ambled over to his truck, yanked the door open and somehow managed to pull his thick frame up into the cab. “You got it, Loosey Goosey! The Market’s all yours for the night, my man. Try to hold things down for me, huh?”
I gave him a nod of assurance as I leaned back further, closing my eyes in relaxation as I listened to that big V-8 engine firing up. The engine purred with a mean growl that echoed in the air long after Curly had sped down the garage ramp, racing his way towards the exit. After a long, blissful moment of solitude, I kicked my feet off the cooler and fished around in the icy water in search of another Coke. There were half a dozen cans of diet mixed in among the ice cubes, but I chose to leave those for Curly to enjoy the next day. After all, that guy needed to lose weight way more than I did. After another long, refreshing swig of syrupy goodness, I reached for my radio and clicked it on. “714 to Control” I called in, trying to keep my voice smooth and mellow, doing my best to start my shift off right by getting in good with the dispatcher.
“714?” she answered in the form of a question. Her voice was thick, black, and husky, and it was a safe bet that her body probably looked the same way. “Go ahead sir?”
“Check me 08 the shift, please. I’ll be in the Market ‘till zero-two-hundred.”
There was a long pause before she finally answered up again. “714, I copy. Be advised, you’re on the wrong channel. Go to channel one, please.”
My face went hot and I could almost hear all those patrol jerks across the river in James Island and West Ashley having a real good laugh at my expense. Without bothering to answer her I flicked the radio knob over to channel one, repeated my message and then cranked the volume down low so I wouldn’t have to hear the response. Yeah, so much for starting the shift off right, I thought.
Boredom quickly set in after that. Even though I made a sincere effort to glance through the rumpled News and Courier that Curly had left behind, it only took a few minutes for all those tiny lines of newsprint to start blurring together. My head began to throb and the only remedy I could think of was to kick the beach chair all the way back into a full recline. My body was aching and crying out for a rest, so I obligingly eased my eyelids down in an attempt to satisfy it.
2.
“Control to 714!”
My eyes popped open instantly, a result of the swift reflexes I’d developed from years of law enforcement training and experience. Dusk was already settling in over the city and down below, the streetlights were coming on one by one. I stood up, walked over to the edge of the garage and gave my head a quick shake to clear the cobwebs. Beneath me, pedestrians were strolling along Church Street in small groups, all of them sharply dressed and heading for the bars along North Market Street.
My radio squealed with a single high-pitched wail, our emergency alert tone. The noise was so irritating that it left me with no choice but to give the speaker my full and undivided attention. “Control to 714! Calling 714, Officer Larsen!”
I knew the dispatchers must have been trying to raise me for some time since that alert tone is generally reserved for actual emergencies like a violent crime in progress. Hands fumbling, I rushed to shake my walkie-talkie free from my duty belt. Once I found it and raised it to my lips, I took one last second to compose myself before mashing the talk button. “This is 714, Control. Send it.”
There was a long pause on the other end before my arch nemesis finally came back across the airwaves
. I could tell from her shaking voice that she was absolutely furious at my delayed response. Yeah, deep down inside her somewhere my dispatcher was probably at least a little relieved to know that I wasn’t laying face-down in a ditch, but none of that compassion seemed to carry over into her voice. The only emotion I picked up on was the icy undertone of her thinly suppressed rage. “714. I copy, you’re 04. What is your 20, sir?”
I glanced back over the edge of the garage as I searched for the nearest street sign. “Corner of Cumberland and Church. Whattya got, Control?”
There was another long pause as she sucked in a deep, calming breath. I got the impression that the old hen might have been much more accustomed to bossing officers around than to being questioned by a lowly patrolman. “714… respond to Scarlett O’Hara’s, 98 South Market Street, in reference to a 29 that occurred within the past two hours. Complainant is Mister Duke Regan. He’ll meet you in front of that location.”
I let out a groan of disgust at the prospect of having to do some actual investigative work during my shift. I couldn’t possibly imagine what kind of crap might have been stolen from the biggest tourist trap in the entire City Market but whatever it was, there was no way a little break-in would be worth the time it took to write a report. Scarlett O’Hara’s was nothing more than a cut-rate souvenir shop, the kind of place that sells ceramic ashtrays and overpriced local-flavor cookbooks that people give as gifts but never read. To make matters worse, the thought of having to deal with Duke Regan in person was almost more than I could bear. Even though Regan was kind of a big deal around Charleston, I saw him as just another snotty rich guy who never passed up an opportunity to remind you of just how important he was. He’d made his first couple millions in the real estate game, and since then he’d gone on to become one of the biggest land speculators in the state. The way I’d heard it, most of Regan’s loot came from a bunch of shady deals that ended up displacing a lot of black people from their tribal homes in the ghetto. After he’d snatched up those dirt-cheap houses and invested in some quick renovation work using teams of illegal Mexicans, Regan would turn around and flip those same tenement houses for a huge profit. All these new money white folks coming down from up north always seem to be searching for a vacation home in the downtown peninsula, so Regan was happy to overcharge them for a hideaway with no backyard in an “up-and-coming” neighborhood. It was gentrification at its finest, made possible through the magic of American capitalism.
On The Beat (Goosey Larsen Book 3) Page 2