Hornet`s Nest

Chapter Eleven

Andy Brazil had heard about the incident at the bus station when it crackled over his scanner while he was working on a substantial story about the long-term consequences of violence on victims and the relatives left behind. By the time he ran down the escalator, got into his car and raced to the six hundred block of West Trade, the drama apparently had ended in an arrest.

He was trotting past the Presto Grill when West and Hammer were walking out of it. Startled, Brazil stopped, and stared at both of them. In the first place, he didn't understand why two of the most prominent people in the city would eat in such a dive. Nor could he fathom how they could continue with lunch when lives were in danger not fifty yards away, and they had to have known. West was carrying her police radio.

"Andy." Hammer nodded her greeting to him.

West shot him a glance that dared him to ask questions. He noted that both were in handsome business suits, and that the chief's black leather handbag included a secret compartment for her pistol. He supposed her badge was somewhere in there, too, and he liked the way her calves knotted as she briskly walked off. He wondered what West's legs looked like as he hurried on to the bus station. Cops were busy taking statements, and this was no small chore. Brazil counted forty-three passengers, not including the driver, who proved to be a pretty great interview.

Antony B. Burgess had been a professional bus driver for twenty-two years and had seen it all. He had been mugged, robbed, hijacked, and stabbed. He'd been shot at the Twilight Motel in Shreveport when he picked up a she who was a him (shim) by mistake. He told all this to Brazil, and more, because the blond dude was nice as hell, and discerning enough to recognize a raconteur when he met one.

"Had no idea they was cops," Burgess said again, scratching under his cap.

"That one never would have entered my mind. They come on board all in black, and red and blue, like Batman and Robin. And next thing Batman's kicked the fool out of the little bastard and's about to blow his fucking brains all over my bus while Robin cuffs 'im. Holy smoke."

He shook his head, as if he'd seen a vision.

"And that's the police chief. That's what I heard. Can you believe it?"

By five p. m. " the story was in the bag and destined for 1-A above the fold. Brazil had already seen the headline in the composing room:

West got a preview a little later when Brazil, in uniform, hopped in her car for another night out on the town. He was full of himself, and thought this story was his best yet. He was thrilled over what Hammer and West had pulled off, almost wanted their autographs, or a poster of the two of them to hang in his room.

"Jesus fucking Christ," West exclaimed again as they sped along South Boulevard, not going anywhere in particular.

"You didn't have to put in the Batman shit."

"Yes I did," Brazil insisted, his mood sinking like the sun, as his world got dark and stormy.

"It was a quote. It's not like I made it up."

"Fuck." West would be the laughingstock of the entire department tomorrow.

"Goddam son-of-a-bitch." She lit a cigarette, imagining Goode laughing.

"This is an ego thing." Brazil didn't like his work criticized and could take but just so much of it.

"You're just pissed because you don't like being a sidekick, Robin instead of Batman, because it reminds you of your real situation. You aren't Batman. She is."

West gave him a look that was heat-seeking, like a missile. He would not survive this night, and probably should have remained silent. "

"I'm just being honest," he added.

"That's all."

"Oh yeah?" She launched another look.

"Well let me tell you honest for a minute. I don't give a flying fuck what someone quotes to you, okay?

You know what quotes like that are called in the real world? They're called bullshit. They're called perjury, hearsay, impeaching a witness, slander, disfucking-respect. "

"How do you spell that last one? I guess it's hyphenated?" Brazil was trying not to laugh, and pretending to take notes as West gestured with her cigarette and got increasingly ridiculous.

"Point is, just because someone says something, Sherlock, doesn't mean it's gospel, worth repeating, worth printing. Got it?"

He nodded with mock seriousness.

"And I don't wear high heels and don't want anybody thinking I do," she added.

"How come?" he asked.

"How come what?"

"You don't want people thinking it?" he said.

"I don't want people thinking about me, period."

"How come you don't ever wear high heels. Or skirts?" He wasn't going to let her duck him.

"Not any of your goddamn business." She tossed the cigarette butt out her window.

The police radio took charge, broadcasting an address on Wilkinson Boulevard that anyone who knew anything would recognize as the Paper Doll Lounge. The striptease joint had been in Charlotte longer than sex, staffed by women with nothing on but a g-string, and tormenting men with jeans full of dollar bills. This night, derelicts were swigging from quart bottles of beer brilliantly disguised by brown paper bags. Not far away, a damaged young man joyfully rooted around inside a Dumpster.

"She wasn't much older than me," Brazil was telling West about the young hooker he'd noticed the other night.

"Most of her front teeth gone, long dirty hair, tattoos. But I bet she was pretty once. I wish I could talk to her, and find out what happened to turn her into something like that."

"People repeat their histories, find other people to abuse them," West said, strangely impatient with his interest in a hooker who might have been pretty once.

They got out of the car. West approached a drunk in a Chick-Fil-A cap.

He was swaying, clutching his bottle of Colt. 45.

"We're having a lot of fun tonight," West said to him.

The man was staggering, but jolly.

"Cap'n," he slurred.

"You're lookin' mighty fine. Who dat wid ya?"

"You can pour it out or go to jail," West said.

"Yes, ma'am. That's an easy 'cision! No questi'n 'bout it!"

He emptied beer on the parking lot, almost falling headlong into it, and splashing Brazil's uniform trousers and impeccable boots. Brazil was a good sport. He jumped back a little late, wondering where the nearest men's room was and certain West would take him there straight away. She scattered the drunks, emptying their lives on pavement while they watched and counted their change in their minds, calculating how quickly they could get back to Ray's Cash amp; Carry, the Texaco Food Mart, or Snookies'.

Brazil followed West back to their car. They climbed in and fastened their seatbelts. Brazil was embarrassed by the sour smell seeping up from his lower legs. This part of the job he could do without. Drunks disturbed him in a deep way, and he felt anger as he watched the men through his window. They were staggering off and would be drinking something else before West and Brazil were even a mile down the road. That was the way people like that were, addicted, wasted, no good on this earth and hurting everyone.

"How can anybody sink that low?" he muttered, staring out and ready to leave.

"Any of us could," West said.

"That's what's scary. One beer at a time. Any one of us."

There had been times in her life when she had found herself on that same road, night after night, drinking herself to sleep, not remembering the last thing she thought or read, and sometimes waking up with lights still on. The impaired young man was joyfully ambling over to their car, and West wondered what trick in reality placed some people where she was sitting, and consigned others to parking lots and Dumpsters. It wasn't always a choice. It hadn't been for this one, who was known by the police, and was a permanent resident of the street.

"His mother tried to abort him and didn't quite pull it off," West quietly told Brazil.

"Or that's the story." She hummed open Brazil's window.

"He's been out here forever." She leaned across the front seat, and called out, "How goes it?"

He couldn't speak any language that Brazil might recognize. He was gesturing wildly, making strange sounds that shot fear through Brazil.

Brazil wished West would drive off quickly and get them out of here before this creature breathed or drooled on him. God, the guy smelled like dirty beer bottles and garbage, and Brazil pulled back from the window, leaning against West's shoulder.

"You stink," West said to him under her breath as she smiled at their visitor.

"It's not me," Brazil said.

"Yes it is." To their visitor, she added, "What you doing out here?"

He gestured, getting more excited as he told the nice police lady everything he'd been up to, while she smiled and clearly enjoyed hearing about it. Her partner needed to lighten up a little.

Boy, as he had always been called, knew when cops were brand new. Boy could tell by how tense they got, by the look on their faces, and this always invited Boy to have a little fun with them. He stared at Brazil, and gave him his gummy, gaping grin, as if he were some exotic creature new to the planet. When Boy poked the rookie, the rookie flinched. This excited Boy more than ever, and he got louder, dancing around, poking the rookie again. West laughed, winking at her ride-along.

"Uh oh," she said.

"I think he's sweet on you."

She finally rolled up the window, and by now Brazil felt completely soiled. He had beer on his uniform and had been mauled by someone with no teeth who spent his life inside Dumpsters. Brazil thought he might throw up. He was indignant and hurt as West laughed and drove off, lighting a cigarette. Not only had she not prevented his degradation, she had made it happen and was savoring it. He fumed in silence as West headed out on West Boulevard, toward the airport.

She cut over on the Billy Graham Parkway, wondering what it would be like to have a major highway named after her. She wasn't sure she would appreciate cars and trucks rolling over her day and night, leaving ratty recaps and skid marks, while drivers made obscene comments to other drivers, and gave them the finger, and pulled out guns. There was nothing Christian about a road, the more West thought about it, unless it was used in Biblical analogies, such as the road to hell and what it was paved with. The more she contemplated all this as she drove, the sorrier she felt for the Reverend Billy Graham, who had been born in Charlotte, in a house that against his will had been appropriated by a nearby religious theme park.

Brazil had no idea where they were going, except it was not where the action was, and it was apparent West had no intention of taking him someplace where he could clean up. He was riveted to the scanner, and things were popping in Charlie Two on Central Avenue. So why were they heading in the opposite direction on this parkway? He remembered his mother watching Billy Graham on TV all the time, no matter what else was on or what Brazil might want to see. He wondered how hard it might be to get a quote from the famous evangelist, maybe inquire about the Reverend Graham's views on crime, one of these days.

"Where are we going?" Brazil asked as they turned off on Boyer toward Wilkinson Boulevard again.

This was definitely the sinful strip, but West did not stay on it long. She sped past Greenbriar Industrial Park and turned left on Alleghany Street, heading into Westerly Hills, a nothing neighborhood near Harding High School. Brazil's mood got worse. He suspected West was up to her old tricks, and it not only reminded him that she really did not want to be out here with him, but hinted rather strongly that he had no business on police calls and would not be on many, if she had her way about it.

"Any unit in the area of the twenty-five hundred block of Westerly Hills Drive," the scanner shattered West's peace of mind.

"Suspicious subjects in the church parking lot."

"Shit," West said, speeding up.

What lousy luck. They were in Westerly Hills on Westerly Hills Drive, The Jesus Christ Is Lord Glorious United Church of the Living God right in front of them. The small white frame church was Pentecostal, and deserted this night, not one car in the parking lot when West turned in. But there definitely were subjects loitering, half a dozen young males with their mother, who was full of herself and feisty in a wheelchair. All stared hatefully at the cop car. Not real sure what to make of the situation, West ordered Brazil to stay put, as both their doors opened and both climbed out.

"We got a call of…" West started to say to Mama.

"Just passing through," her oldest son, Rudof, volunteered.

Mama gave Rudof a killing look, holding his eyes.

"You don't got to answer to no one!" she snapped at him.

"You hear me? Not to no one!"

Rudof looked down, his pants about to fall off, and red boxer shorts showing. He was tired of being dissed by his mama and hassled by the police. What had he done? Nothing. Just walking home from the E-Z mart because she needed cigarettes, all of them going with her, taking a nice walk and cutting through the church parking lot. What was so wrong with that?

"We didn't do nothing," Rudof folded his arms and said to the cops.

Brazil knew a fight was coming, just like he could smell a storm before the front moved in. His body tensed as he scanned the small, violent crowd standing restlessly in the dark. Mama wheeled closer to West. Mama had something on her mind she'd been wanting to deliver for a long time, and now was as good an opportunity as any. All her children would hear, and these two police didn't look like they would hurt anybody unnecessarily.

"We just got here," Mama said to West.

"We were just coming home, walking like anybody else. I'm tired of you people prosecuting us."

"Nobody is…" West tried again.

"Oh yes. Oh yes, uh huh, you are." Mama got louder and angrier.

"This is a free country! We was white, you think anybody would've called the police?"

"You have a good point," West reasonably replied.

Mama was amazed. Her children were baffled. For a white lady cop to admit such a thing was unheard of and miraculous.

"So you're agreeing that you were called because we're black," Mama wanted to make sure.

"That would be my guess, and it absolutely isn't fair. But I didn't know you were black when the call came over the radio," West went on in the same calm but sure tone.

"We didn't respond because we thought you were black, white, Asian, or anything. We responded because it's our job, and we wanted to make sure everything was all right."

Mama tried to be hateful as she wheeled on her way, her brood in her wake. But she was wavering. She felt like she might cry and didn't know why. The police got back in their shiny new car and drove away.

"Rudof, pull up your pants, son," Mama complained.

"You gonna trip and break your neck. Same with you, Joshua. I swear." She wheeled ahead in the night, in the direction of their poor apartment.

Brazil and West were quiet as they got back on Wilkinson Boulevard. He was thinking about what she'd said to that family. West had said we several times, when most people would have said /, as if Brazil wasn't there. It felt really good when she included him, and he was touched by her gentleness with that wounded, hateful family. Brazil wanted to say something to West, to let her know, to somehow show his appreciation. But he was oddly tongue-tied again, just as he had been with Hammer.

West headed back into the city, thinking, and wondering why her ride-along was so quiet. Maybe he was angry with her for avoiding calls, or trying to avoid them, at any rate. She felt bad. How would she like it were the roles reversed? It wasn't very kind, and he had every right to resent her for it. West was totally ashamed of herself.

She turned up the scanner, and picked up the mike.

'700," she said.

'700," the dispatcher came back.

"I'm ten-eight."

Brazil couldn't believe it. West had just told the radio that she was in service, meaning she wanted to take calls like everyone else on the street. The two of them would actually be assigned situations. They were available for trouble. This wasn't long in coming. Their first call was to Our Lady of Consolation Catholic Church.

"Check for loud music coming from the club in the shopping center across the street," came the instruction over the air.

The dispatcher's nickname was Radar, and there were reasons for this. First, Radar had started his career with the North Carolina Highway Patrol, where he was famous for clocking cars, abutments, buildings, trucks, signs, pedestrians, low-flying planes, helium balloons, and trees, and nailing all for exceeding the speed limit. He simply loved the radar gun. He deeply loved being a Smoky out on life's highways and pulling the unaware outlaws as they hurried to important places or away from them. Radar retired. He bought a RV and began a new career as a dispatcher to pay for it. It was believed by the 911 operators that Radar could sense trouble before it hit. This call at the church, for example, he had a feeling about, a real bad one.

Thus he had assigned it to Deputy Chief West, because it was Radar's personal conviction that no woman should be in a uniform unless she was naked beneath it and on the cover of those detective magazines he also loved. In addition to an intuition that bordered on the psychic, Radar knew that the respondent in this case. Fat Man's Lounge, was run by a bunch of thugs who held his same beliefs about a woman's place.

Colt, the bouncer, who Radar personally knew, would not respond well when West with all her brass, ass, and big tits rolled up.

West knew none of this as she lit a cigarette and made a U-turn on Statesville Avenue. She nodded at the MDT.

"It took me forty minutes to learn how to use this thing," she said to Brazil.

"You got ten."

Our Lady of Consolation Catholic Church was having a special night of music, and the parking lot was packed with cars. Listings for Catholic places of worship were brief in the Charlotte Yellow Pages. Choices were far more abundant for churches that were Baptist, Advent Christian, Presbyterian, Apostolic, Assembly of God, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Non-Pentecostal, Gospel, Full Gospel, Foursquare Gospel, to name but a few. These outnumbered the Catholics about twenty-eight to one.

Indeed, Catholic places of worship were sandwiched between the one Buddhist church in the city and the charismatics who spoke in tongues. So it was, that Catholics did not take their church for granted, never knowing when it might be burned by men in disguises, or criticized in editorials.

The congregation of Our Lady of Consolation was rocking the block this night, its stained glass windows glowing in the dark, Jesus bright and colorful in many poses, and sheep.

"You sure it isn't the bar complaining about the church?" Brazil wondered out loud.

West was finding the situation rather odd, too. How the hell could anyone inside that church hear a thing beyond their own choir, which was belting out some hymn, and accompanied by guitars, the organ, drums, and possibly a violin or two. She turned into the shopping center directly across the street and cut through the parking lot. Fat Man's Lounge wasn't doing nearly the business the church was. A couple of shifty-looking dudes were hanging out in front, drinking beer, smoking, and glaring.

Brazil did not hear any noise, not one sound drifting out of the Lounge. He suspected someone in the church had complained just to hassle Fat Man's, which clearly was a den of iniquity. Members of Our Lady would, without a doubt, have preferred another establishment across the street from them, something wholesome and family-oriented, like a Shoney's, a Blockbuster Video store, or maybe another sports bar. The dudes out front followed the cop car with hostile eyes as West parked. She and Brazil 'got out, and approached their welcoming committee.

"Where's all the noise?" West asked.

"We got a com plaint."

"Only noise is that over there," a dude said, jutting his chin at the church. He boldly took a swig of beer, drunk and mean.

"Word's the noise is coming from here." West held her ground.

She started walking toward the lounge, Brazil with her, the dudes moving out of their way. Fat Man's was a depressing, dark den, smoke hanging in the air, and music playing, but not too loudly. Men were drinking at wooden tables, watching a woman on stage, in g-string and tassels, as she twirled heavy, sagging breasts. Brazil didn't want to stare too hard, but he was pretty sure that the left one was tattooed with the planet Saturn, bright yellow, with rings orbiting fast. In big circles. These were, without a doubt, the biggest breasts he had ever seen in person.

The stripper, whose stage name was Minx, needed another Valium. She was thirsty, had to have a cigarette, and damn it all, the fucking cops were here. What this time? She started twirling the other way, then did two different directions at once. This usually got the men going, but tonight's stingy crowd was about as excitable as a cemetery. Minx smiled. The boy cop couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Never seen tits before?" she asked him as he went by.

Brazil was indifferent. West shot Minx a cool look, and thought the stripper's fried egg tattoo on her left breast was rather clever, not to mention apropos. Lord, this one even had stretch marks, cellulite, her clients not interested in anything that wasn't in a glass. Colt, the bouncer, was the exception. He was heading at the cops like a freight train on a mission. He was big and scary in a shiny black suit, thick gold chains, and a red leather tie. He looked like he might hurt them, starting with Brazil.

"We got a complaint of loud music," West said to Colt.

"You hear it?" Colt lifted his heavy jaw, veins like ropes in his powerful neck.

He was full of hate toward these white cops, especially the bitch. Who did she think she was, anyway, strutting into Fat Man's, in her fancy uniform with all its shiny shit meant to hurt hardworking people like him? He glanced at Minx, making sure she wasn't letting up. It seemed not a night went by when he didn't have to smack a little more energy into her, give her pain some place where it wouldn't show, encouraging her to do her job. She was slinging away. Nobody cared. Nobody tipped. Two of the regulars were getting up and leaving, the night still young. Colt knew the cops were to blame.

Colt jerked open the side door leading out into an alleyway. He grabbed Brazil by the front of his uniform shirt with such force, it ripped.

"Heyyyy!" Brazil yelled.

Colt lifted the punk off his feet and threw him outside in the trash, where he belonged. Garbage cans clattered against pavement, bottles clanging. It was just a good thing Brazil was dirty, anyway. He got to his feet in time to see West whipping out her handcuffs. Colt had her by her uniform shirt, intending to pitch her, too, as the little shit yelled "Mayday! Mayday!" into his police radio.

Colt gagged, and for a blinding shard of insight thought someone had shoved a pool cue into the hollow of his massive neck. It seeped into his fading consciousness that the bitch was drilling her index finger into that soft hollow over his windpipe. He couldn't breathe. His tongue protruded as she drilled and he gagged, gasping for air, his eyes bugging as he dropped to his knees, a gun barrel now staring at his nose. Colt's ears were ringing, blood roaring as the bitch screamed like she was going to eat him tartare.

"You move I'll blow your brains out motherfucker' Minx gyrated.

Patrons drank. Backup cops burst through the front door, far away across the dark, smoky room. West had a knee on Colt's beefy back, and was busy snapping cuffs on his wrists, tight behind him. Brazil looked on in awe. Cops hauled Colt and the drunk dudes to jail. Minx saw her chance and walked off her runway, plucking lousy folded dollar bills out of her garter, wrapping up in a sweatshirt, and lighting a cigarette, out of here for good this time.

"Why did I let you get me into this?" West was saying as she unlocked their car.

"I don't do this any more for a reason."

She climbed in, yanking the seatbelt across her chest, cranking the engine.

Both of them were excited and trying not to show it. Brazil held together his ruined uniform shirt, which was missing half its buttons.

West noted that he had a very well-developed chest to go with those shoulders and arms and legs. She instantly stopped transmitting any and all signals,

such as body language or glances or words or heat.

Where was all this coming from, anyway? Outer space. Not from her. No sir. She opened the glove box, and rummaged until she found the tiny stapler she was sure was in there somewhere.

"Hold still," she said to him, as if it were an order.

She leaned close because there was no other way to correct the situation, and gathered his shirt together, and began stapling.

Brazil's heart picked up speed. He could smell her hair, his own seeming to stand on end. He did not move. He was terrified to even breathe as her fingers brushed against him. He knew she could tell what he was feeling, and if he as much as twitched and inadvertently touched her somewhere, she would never believe it was an accident.

She'd think he was just one more prick out there who couldn't keep it in his pants. She'd never see him as a person, as a sensitive human being. He'd be reduced to this thing, this guy-thing. If she leaned half an inch closer to the right, he would die right there, on her front seat.

"When was the last time you had to do something like that?" he managed to ask.

West covered her repair job with his clip-on tie. The more she tried not to connect with his person, the clumsier her fingers got, fumbling, and touching. She nervously tried to put the stapler away, and dropped it.

"I use it for reports." She groped under the seat.

"Don't think I've ever used it on someone's shirt." She slammed shut the glove box on the third try.

"No," Brazil said, clearing his throat again.

"I mean, what you did in there. That guy must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, and you decked him. All by yourself."

West shoved the car in gear.

"You could," she said.

"All you need is training."

"Maybe you…?"

She held up a hand as if halting traffic.

"No! I'm not a goddam one-person police academy!" She tapped the MDT.

"Clear us outa here, partner."

Brazil was tentative as he placed his fingers on the keyboard. He started typing. The system beeped as if it liked him.

"God, this is so cool," he said.

"Small minds," West commented.

"Unit 700," Radar, the dispatcher, said.

"Missing person at five-fifty-six Midland."

"Shit. Not again." West grabbed the mike, and tossed it to her partner.

"Let's see what they're teaching volunteers these days."

'700," he said on the air for all to hear.

"We're ten- eighteen five-fifty-six Midland."