Hornet`s Nest

Chapter Seven

Days went by. West had no intention of furthering the cause of Andy Brazil. His problems were his own, and it was time he grew up. When the following Sunday rolled around and Raines was interested in brunch, she called Brazil because she was a certified firearms instructor. If he needed help, it was only fair that she offer. He said he could be ready in ten minutes. She told him that unless she flew the Concorde to Davidson, she would not be picking him up for at least an hour.

She drove her personal car for this, a Ford Explorer with dual air bags. It was a white sports utility vehicle with four-wheel drive that ate snow for a snack. She roared into his driveway at three p. m. " and he was out the door before she could open hers. The obvious range would have been the one at the police academy, but this she could not do because volunteers were not allowed, nor were guests. West chose The Firing Line on Wilkinson Boulevard, just past Bob's Pawn Shop, and a number of trailer parks, the Oakden Motel, Country City USA, and Coyote Joe's.

Had they continued another block or two, West realized, they would have ended up in the parking lot of the Paper Doll Lounge. She had been in there before on fights. It was disgusting. Topless women were on the same block as gun and pawn shops, as if breasts and g-strings somehow belonged in the same category as used merchandise and weapons.

West wondered if Brazil had ever visited a topless lounge and sat stiffly in a chair, his hands in a white-knuckle grip on armrests, as a naked woman rubbed against his inner legs, and got in his face.

Probably not, West decided. She had a feeling he was a foreigner who didn't speak the language, hadn't tried the food or seen the sights.

How could this have happened? He didn't have girls after him in high school, in college? Or boys? She did not understand Andy Brazil as he foraged through shelves of ammunition inside the firing range shop, picking out Winchester 95 grain full metal jacket. 380, Luger'll5 grain ball nine-millimeter cartridges, and contemplated. 45 automatic 230 grain, Federal Hi-Power, Hydra-Shok hollowpoints, and Super X 50 Centerfire that were too expensive for practice. He was going nuts.

This was a candy shop, and West was buying.

Gunshots sounded like a war going on inside this range, where NRA rednecks worshiped their pistols, and drug dealers with cash and leather hightops got better at killing. West and Brazil were loaded down with hearing protectors, safety glasses, and boxes of ammunition.

She was a woman in jeans, carrying two pistol hard cases.

Dangerous-looking men gave her hostile glances, not happy about girls invading their club. Brazil was picking up danger signals as he surveyed his surroundings.

The men didn't seem to like him, either. He was suddenly conscious of being in Davidson tennis sweats and having tied a bandana around his head to keep his hair out of his eyes. These guys all had guts and big shoulders, as if they worked out with forklifts and cases of beer. He had seen their trucks in the parking lot, some of them with six wheels, as if there were mountains and streams to climb and cross along 1-74 and 1-40. Brazil did not understand the tribe of Male he had grown up around in North Carolina.

It was beyond biology, genitals, hormones, or testosterone. Some of these guys had naked pinups on the mud flaps of their tractor trailers, and Brazil was frankly horrified. A guy saw a foxy woman with a body, and he wanted her protecting his radials from gravel? Not Brazil. He wanted her at the movies, the drive-through, and in candlelight.

He was using the staple gun, fastening another target to cardboard and attaching it to the frame in his lane. West, the instructor, was examining her pupil's latest target. The silhouette she held up had a tight spread of bullet holes in the center of the chest. She was amazed. She watched Brazil push cartridges into the magazine of a stainless steel Sig-Sauer. 380 pistol.

"You're dangerous," she let him know.

He gripped the small gun with both hands, in the position and stance his father had taught him in a life he scarcely recalled. Brazil's form wasn't bad, but it could be improved, and he fired one round after another. He dropped out the empty magazine and smacked in a new one. He fired nonstop, as if he couldn't shoot fast enough and would kill anybody else in life who hurt him. This would not do. West knew the reality of the street.

She reached for a button in his booth and held it in. The paper target suddenly came to life and screeched along the lane toward Brazil, as if it were going to attack him.

Startled, Brazil shot wildly. BARNI BARNI BARNI Bullets slammed into the target's metal frame, into the back rubber wall, and then he was out of ammo. The target screeched to a stop, rocking from its cable in his face.

"Hey! What are you doing?" He turned to West, indignant and bewildered.

She did not answer at first as she pushed cartridges into black metal magazines. She smacked one into her big bad black. 40 caliber Smith amp; Wesson semiautomatic, then looked at her student.

"You shoot too fast." She racked back the slide and it snapped forward. She aimed at her own target in her own lane.

"You're out of ammo." She fired. BAM BAM

"And out of luck." BAM BAM

She paused, and fired twice again. She set down her pistol and moved close to Brazil, taking the. 380 from him, and opening the slide to make sure the gun was unloaded and safe. She pointed it down the lane, hands and arms locked, knees slightly bent, in the proper position and stance.

"Tap-tap and stop," she told him as she demonstrated.

"Tap-tap and stop. You see what the other person's doing and adjust." She returned the. 380 to him, butt first.

"And don't slap the trigger. Take it home tonight and practice."

That night, Brazil stayed in his room and dry-fired West's. 380 until he had a significant blister on his index finger. He aimed it at himself in the mirror, that he might get used to seeing a gun pointed at him. He did this with music playing and fantasies spinning, the deadly tiny black eye staring at his head, his heart, as he thought of his father, who had not drawn his gun. His father had not had time even to key his radio. Brazil's arms were beginning to tremble, and he had not eaten supper.

It was a few minutes past nine, and his mother had refused to eat earlier when he had offered to fix her a hamburger patty and a salad of fresh tomatoes and Vidalia onions, with oil and vinegar. More alert than usual, she was watching a sitcom, and in the same faded blue flannel robe and slippers she wore most of the time. He could not grasp how she could live the way she did, and had given up thinking he could change her or the life she hated. In high school, he, her only child, had been the expert detective, rooting through the house and her Cadillac, seeking her hidden stashes of pills and liquor. Her resourcefulness was amazing. Once she had gone so far as to bury whisky in the yard beneath the rose bushes she used to prune when she still cared.

Muriel Brazil's greatest fear was to be present. She did not want to be here, and the nightmare of rehabilitation and AA meetings darkened her memory like the shadow of a monstrous bird flying over her and splaying its claws, ready to snatch her up and eat her alive. She did not want to feel. She would not sit in groups of people who had only first names and talked about the drunks they once were, and binges they used to go on, and how wonderful it was to be sober. All spoke with the sincerity of contrite sinners after a religious experience.

Their new god was sobriety, and this god allowed plenty of cigarettes and black decaffeinated coffee. Exercise drinking copious amounts of water and talking regularly to one's sponsor was critical, and the god expected the recovering one to contact all he had ever offended and apologize. In other words, Mrs. Brazil was supposed to tell her son and those she worked around at Davidson that she was an alcoholic. She had tried this once on several of the students she supervised at the ARA Slater food service that catered the cafeteria in the new Commons building.

"I've been away a month at a treatment center," Mrs. Brazil told a junior named Heather, from Connecticut.

"I'm an alcoholic."

Mrs. Brazil tried the same line on Ron, a freshman from Ashland, Virginia. The expected catharsis was not there. Students did not respond well and avoided her after that. They regarded her fearfully as rumors floated around campus. Some of what was said got back to Brazil, heightening a sense of shame that drove him deeper into his isolation. He knew he could never have friends because if anyone got close, the truth would be known. Even West had been confronted the first time she had called his house. Brazil was still perplexed, if not stunned, that this had not seemed to affect the deputy chief's opinion of him.

"Mom, how about I cook us up some eggs?" Brazil paused in the doorway.

Light from the television flickered in the dark living room.

"I'm not hungry," she said, staring at the screen.

"What have you eaten? Probably nothing, right? You know how bad that is for you.

Mom. "

Pointing the remote control, she changed to another channel, where people were laughing and exchanging bad lines.

"How 'bout a grilled cheese?" her son tried again.

"Well, maybe." She changed channels again. It was hard for her to be still when her son was nearby. It was hard to look at his face and meet his eyes. The nicer he was to her, the more abusive she felt, and she had never figured out why. She would not make it without him. He bought food and kept the house going. Her social security checks and a small pension from the police department supplied her liquids. It didn't take as much to get drunk these days, and she knew what this said about her liver. She wished she would go on and die, and she worked at it every day. Her eyes filled with tears and her throat closed as her son rattled around in the kitchen.

Alcohol had been the enemy the first time she'd ever touched it, when she was sixteen and Micky Latham took her to Lake Norman at night and got her drunk on apricot brandy. She vaguely remembered lying in the grass, watching stars reconfigure and blur as he breathed hard and clumsily worked on her blouse as if buttons had just been invented. He was nineteen and worked in Bud's Garage, and his hands were calloused and felt like claws on breasts that had never been touched before this intoxicated moment.

That was the night sweet Muriel lost her virginity, and it had nothing to do with Micky Latham, and everything to do with the bottle in its ABC store brown paper bag. When she drank, her brain lifted as if it might sing. She was happy, brave, playful, and witty. She was driving her father's Cadillac the afternoon Officer Drew Brazil pulled her over for speeding. Muriel was seventeen and the most beautiful, worldly woman he'd ever met. If he thought he smelled alcohol on her breath that afternoon, he was too mesmerized to put it in perspective.

He was rather glorious in his uniform, and the ticket never got written. Instead, they went to Big Daddy's fish camp after he got off duty. They married that Thanksgiving when she had missed her period two months in a row.

Muriel Brazil's son reappeared with grilled cheese on wheat bread, cooked just right and cut diagonally, the way she liked it. He'd put a dollop of ketchup on the side so she could dip, and he brought her water that she had no intention of drinking. He looked so much like his father, it was more than she could bear.

"I know how much you hate water, Mom," he said, setting the plate and napkin in her lap.

"But you got to drink it, okay? Sure you don't want salad?"

She shook her head and wished she could thank him. She was impatient because he was blocking her view of the TV.

"I'll be in my room," he said.

//l/i "w He dry-fired until his finger bled. He was remarkably steady because years of tennis had strengthened the muscles of his hands and forearms. His grip was crushing. The next morning, he woke up excited.

The sun was shining, and West had promised to take him to the range again late afternoon to work with him further. It was Monday, and he had the day off. He didn't know what he would do between now and then, or how he would make hours pass. Brazil could not endure free time, and usually gave it away to some project.

The grass was heavy with dew when he slipped out of the house at half past seven. Carrying tennis rackets and a hopper of balls, he walked first to the track, where he ran six miles and did push-ups, sit-ups, and crunches, to get his fix of endorphin. By now, the grass was warm and dry, and he lay in it long enough for his blood to stop pounding.

He listened to the buzzing of insects in clover, and smelled bittersweet green vegetation and wild onions. His gym shorts and tank top were saturated as he trotted downhill to the outdoor tennis courts.

Ladies were playing doubles, and he politely trotted behind them on their court, going to the other end, so he could be as far away from anyone as possible. He didn't want to disturb people with the hundreds of balls he intended to kill. Brazil served in deuce court and ad court, on one side, then the other, picking up after himself with the bright yellow hopper. He was slightly annoyed. Tennis was unforgiving if he didn't practice. His usual precision wasn't there, and he knew what this boded. If he didn't start playing again, he was going to lose one of the few things he'd ever been good at. Damn. The ladies on court one noticed a marked deterioration in their own games as they continued to watch with envy the young man on court four hit balls so hard they sounded like baseballs cracking against bats.

Chief Hammer's concentration was in and out, too.

She was presiding over an executive staff meeting in her private conference room, in her sizeable corner of the third floor. Windows overlooked Davidson and Trade, and she could see the mighty US Bank Corporate Center topped by its silly aluminum headdress, which oddly brought to mind a wild man with a bone in his nose, perhaps from some Little Rascals episode from long years past. At exactly eight this morning as Hammer was carrying her first cup of coffee to her desk, the CEO of that sixty-story erection had called her.

Solomon Cahoon was Jewish, and the Old Testament factored into his mother's choice of names for her firstborn male child. Her son would be a king who would make wise decisions, such as the one this Friday, when he had informed his police chief that she would hold a press conference to let citizens know that the serial killings in Charlotte were homosexual and of no threat to normal men visiting the Queen City on business. Northside Baptist Church would be holding a prayer vigil for victims' families and the souls of those killed. Police were following very good leads.

"Just a reassurance thing," Cahoon had relayed to the chief over the phone.

Hammer, and her six deputy chiefs, along with people from strategic planning and crime analysis, were discussing this latest commandment delivered on high. Wren Dozier, deputy chief of administration, was especially incensed. He was forty with delicate features and a soft mouth. Unmarried, he lived in a section of Fourth Ward where Tommy Axel and others had condominiums with dusky rose doors. Dozier had known he would never be promoted beyond captain. Then Hammer had come to town, a woman who rewarded people for good work. Dozier would take a bullet for her.

"What a bunch of shit," Dozier said as he slowly and angrily twirled his coffee mug on the table.

"So what about the other side of this, huh?" He met eyes all around.

"What about the wives and kids back home? They're supposed to think the last thing Pop did was pay for a homosexual encounter out on some city street somewhere?"

"There's no evidence to support such a thing," West said, and she was unhappy, too.

"You can't say something like this." She stared at Hammer.

The chief and Cahoon could agree on nothing, and she knew he was going to have her fired. It was all a matter of time, and would not be a first, either. At her level, it was all politics. The city got a new mayor, who brought along his own chief, which was what had happened to her in Atlanta, and would have in Chicago, had she not left. She really could not afford to get reshuffled again.

Each city would get only smaller, until one fine day she ended up right where she'd started, in the economically languishing one-horse town of Little Rock.

"Of course I will not get up in front of reporters and spread such crap," the chief said.

"I won't."

"Well, it can't hurt to remind the public that we are following leads and are on the case," said the public information officer.

"What leads?" said West, who headed investigations, and should be privy to such things.

"If we get any, we'll follow them," said Hammer.

"That's the point."

"You can't say that, either," worried the PIO.

"We have to leave out the;/ we get any part of…"

Hammer impatiently cut her off.

"Of course, of course. That goes without saying. I didn't mean literally. Enough of this. Let's move on. Here's what we're going to do. A press release." She regarded the PIO over reading glasses.

"I want it on my desk by ten-thirty and out to the press by midafternoon so they can meet their deadlines. And I will see if I can get up with Cahoon, talk him down from this."

This was very much like securing an audience with the Pope. Hammer's secretary and another assistant traded phone calls with Gaboon's people for most of the day. Finally, the meeting was barely arranged for late that afternoon, sometime between four-fifteen and five, depending when a gap appeared in the CEO's impossible schedule. Hammer had no choice but to show up at the early end of this interval and hope for the best.

At four she left her police department and walked through downtown on a lovely afternoon that, before this moment, she had not noticed. She followed Trade to Tryon to the corporate center, with its eternal torch and sculptures. Inside a huge lobby of polished stone, she walked briskly, her heels clicking over marble as she passed rich wood paneling and famous fresco paintings depicting the Shingon philosophy of chaos, creativity, making, and building. She nodded at one of the guards, who nodded back and tipped his cap. He liked that lady chief, and had always thought she walked like she knew how, and she was nice and didn't disrespect anyone, whether they were a real cop or not.

Hammer boarded a crowded elevator and was the last to get off at the top of the crown, which at this dizzying level, really was aluminum pipes. Hammer had visited Cahoon before. Rarely a month went by that he didn't summon her to his suite of mahogany and glass overlooking his city. As was true of Hampton Court Palace, visitors were required to pass through many outer layers and courts to get to the king.

Should a crazed gunman decide to carry out his mission, by the time he reached the throne, many secretaries and assistants might be dead, but Cahoon, quite likely, would not have heard the noise.

Several outer offices later, Hammer entered the-one occupied by the executive secretary, Mrs. MullisMundi, also known as M amp;M by those who did not like her, which was virtually all. She was candy-coated, but with nuts. She would melt in the mouth and break teeth. Hammer, frankly, had no use for this perky young thing who had gotten married and kept her name while appropriating that of her husband, Joe Mundi.

Mrs. Mullis-Mundi was bulimic, and had breast implants and long dyed blond hair. She wore size four Anne Klein. Her cologne was Escada. She worked out daily in Gold's Gym. She did not wear slacks, and was simply biding time before she sued for sexual harassment.

"Judy, great to see you." The executive secretary stood and offered her hand with the same lilting style that Hammer had observed in devout bowlers.

"Let me see how he's doing."

A half hour later. Hammer remained seated on a buttery-soft ivory leather couch. She was reviewing statistics memos, and attending to the armies marching restlessly inside her briefcase. Mrs. Mullis-Mundi never got off the phone or grew tired of it. She took one earring off, then the other, then rotated the phone again to a hand less tired, as if to emphasize the painful demands of her career. Often she looked at her large scratch-proof Rado watch, and sighed, flipping her hair. She was about to die to smoke one of her skinny menthol cigarettes that had flowers around the filter.

Cahoon was able, at last, to fit the chief in at precisely thirteen minutes past the hour. As usual, his day had been long, with far too much in it, and all insisting that they could speak to no one but him.

In truth, he had never been in a hurry to let Hammer into his office, regardless of the minor fact that it was he, versus her, who had demanded a meeting. She was ornery and opinionated, and had treated him like a bad dog the first time they'd met. As a result, he was one without fail and consistently, when dealing with her. One of these days, he would send her down the road and bring in a progressive man, the sort who snapped open a briefcase with the Wall Street Journal and a Browning Hi-Power inside. Now, that was Gaboon's idea of a chief, someone who knew the market, would shoot to kill, and showed a little respect to leaders of the community.

Hammer's first thought whenever she was face to face with the ruler of the city was that he had made his fortune on a chicken farm and had attributed his history to someone else by another name. Frank Purdue, she almost believed, was an alias. Holly Farms was a front. Solomon Cahoon had made his millions off plump breasts and thighs. He had gotten rich off fryers and fat roasters and their little thermometers that popped up at precisely the right time when things were heating up. Clearly, Cahoon had dovetailed these experiences and resources into banking. He had been wise enough to realize that his past might pose a credibility problem for one securing a mortgage through US Bank if this person happened to see the CEO smiling on chicken parts at Harris-Teeter.

Hammer couldn't blame him for coming up with an alias or two, if this was what he had in fact done.

His desk was hurled maple, not old but magnificent, and much more expansive than the ninety-six inches of wood veneer, including a return, that the city furnished her. Cahoon was creaking in an apple green English leather chair with brass studs and the same hurled armrests, talking on the phone, looking out spotless glass, and beyond aluminum pipes. She sat across from him, and was on hold again. It really didn't bother her all that much anymore, for Hammer could transport herself just about anywhere. She could solve problems, make decisions, come up with lists of matters to be investigated, and deliberate what would be good for dinner and who should cook it.

To her, Cahoon always looked naked from the neck up. His hair was a bristly silver fringe he wore like a crown. Cropped short, it stood up straight in different lengths, and was shaped like a crescent moon in back. He was perpetually tan and wrinkled from his passion for sailboats, and he was vital and distinguished in a black suit, crisp white shirt, and Fendi silk tie filled with gold and deep red clocks.

"Sol," she politely greeted him, when he eventually hung up the phone.

"Judy, thanks so much for fitting me in," he said in his soft southern voice.

"So what are we going to do about these gay bashings, these queer kinin's? These fag-fisher-queens trolling in our city? You understand the false impression all of it is giving to other corporations and companies thinking of relocating here? Not to mention what it does to business in town as usual."

"Fag-fisher-queens," Hammer slowly, thoughtfully repeated

"Trolling."

"Yes, ma'am." He nodded.

"You want some Perrier or something?"

She shook her head, and measured her words.

"Gay bashings. Queer killings. This came from where?" She was not on his same planet, and that was her choice.

"Oh come on." He leaned forward, propping elbows on his rich desk.

"We all know what this is about. Men come to our city. They cut loose, give in to their perversion, think no one will be the wiser. Well, the angel of death for these sickos is swooping in." He nodded deeply.

"Truth, justice, and the American way. God putting his foot down."

"Synonymous," she said.

"Huh?" He frowned in confusion.

"All are synonymous?" she said.

"Truth. Justice. American way. God putting his foot down."

"You bet, honey." He smiled.

"Sol, don't call me that." She jabbed her finger the same way she did when making points while West was driving her around the city.

"Don't.

Not ever. "

He settled back in his leather chair and laughed, entertained by this lady. What a trip. Thank God she had a husband to set her straight and put her where she belonged. Cahoon was willing to bet that Hammer's man called her honey and she waited for it, apron tied in back, like Heidi, Gaboon's first and only wife. Saturday mornings, Heidi served him breakfast in bed, providing he was in town. She continued this even now, after so many faithful years, although the effect wasn't quite the same. What happened to the female body after it turned thirty? Men were ready and willing until death. They sat tall in the saddle, and were unaffected by gravity, and this was why it wasn't out of the question for the male to seek out younger females, eventually.

"You understand the definition of honey?" Hammer started in on this again.

"A food for larvae. To be flattering or obsequious. Cajolery.

What you say to get your socks darned and buttons sewn on. Christ, why did I come to this city? " She shook her head, not kidding.

"Atlanta wasn't much better," he reminded her.

"Certainly not Chicago, or it wouldn't have been for long."

"True, true."

"What about your press conference?" He moved on to more important matters.

"I passed along a very appropriate suggestion. And what?" He shrugged thin shoulders.

"Where's my press conference? Was it so much for me to ask? This building is a beacon bringing business to Charlotte-Mecklenburg. We need to disseminate positive information, such as our hundred and five percent clearance rate for all violent crimes last year…"

She interrupted him, because she couldn't let this pass.

"Sol, this is not financial smoke and mirrors. You cannot manipulate the bottom line on paper and in computers and get everyone to accept it. We're talking tangibles. Rapes, robberies, BEs, homicides, with real flesh and blood victims. You're asking me to convince citizens that we cleared more cases than we had last year?"

"Old cases were solved, that's why the numbers…" he started to repeat what he had been told.

Hammer was shaking her head, and Gaboon's infamous impatience was heating up. This lady was the only one who dared talk to him in this fashion, if he didn't include his wife and children.

"What old cases?" Hammer said.

"And going back how far? You know what this is like? It's like some one asking me how much I make as chief of police and I say a million dollars because I'm going back ten years."

"Apples and oranges."

"No, no, Sol." She was shaking her head more vigorously.

"No apples and oranges here. Oh no. This is fertilizer."

"Judy." He pointed a bent finger at her.

"What about the conventions that decide not to come here because of this…?"

"Oh for God's sake." She waved him off and stood.

"Conventions don't decide anything, people do, and I can't hear anymore of this. Just let me handle things, you mind? That's what I'm paid to do. And I'm not going to spread a lot of crap. You'll have to get someone else to do it." She started walking out of his office with its view.

"A hundred and five percent." She raised her hands in exasperation.

"And I'd watch out for your secretary, by the way."

"What does she have to do with this?" Cahoon was most confused, which was fairly normal after a visit with Hammer.

"I know the type," Hammer warned.

"How much does she want?"

"For what?" He was baffled.

"Trust me. She'll let you know," said Hammer, shaking her head.

"I wouldn't be alone with her or trust her. I'd get rid of her."

Mrs. Mullis-Mundi knew the meeting could not have gone well. Cahoon had not sent for water, coffee, tea, or cocktails. He had not summoned her on the intercom and asked her to show the chief out. Mrs. MullisMundi was conjuring up herself in her Chanel compact, checking her smile in the mirror, when Hammer suddenly was there. This was not a woman who bleached her teeth or waxed her legs. The chief tossed some sort of report in a file folder on the executive secretary's enameled Chinese desk.

"These are my stats, the real ones," Hammer said as she left.

"See to it he gets them when he's feeling open-minded."

School kids were getting the grand tour through the marble lobby when the chief's rapidly clicking heels carried her out. She glanced at her Breitling watch without really noting the time. Tonight was her twenty- sixth anniversary of being married to Seth. They were supposed to have a quiet evening at the Beef amp; Bottle, the rare steak, male hang-out that he loved and she tolerated. It was on South Boulevard, and it had been her experience whenever she had dined there that she generally represented her gender alone as she picked at her meat.

She began, as always, with baby frog legs sauteed in wine and garlic, and a Caesar salad. The din grew louder around them in this darkly paneled room, where city fathers and planners had met for decades, on their way to heart attacks. Seth, her husband, loved food better than life, and was fully engaged with shrimp cocktail, hearts of lettuce with famous blue cheese dressing, bread, butter, and a porterhouse for two that he typically did not share. Once upon a time Seth had been an enlightened and handsome assistant to the Little Rock city manager, and he had run into Sergeant Judy Hammer, on the capitol grounds.

There had never been any question about who was the engine driving the train in this relationship, and this was part of the attraction. Seth liked her power. She liked his liking it. They were married and began a family that quickly became his responsibility as the wife soared and was called out at night, and they moved. That Hammer was her name and not his made sense for those who knew them and gave the matter a thought. He was soft, with a weak chin that called to mind the watery-eyed knights and bishops of Washington portrait galleries.

"We should pick up some of this cheese spread for the house," Seth said, laying it on thick in candlelight.

"Seth, I worry about what you're doing to yourself," Hammer said, reaching for her pi not noir.

"I guess it's port wine, but it doesn't look like it," he went on.

"It might have horseradish in it. Maybe cayenne pepper."

His hobby was studying law and the stock market. His most significant setback in life was that he had inherited money from his family, and was not obligated to work, was gentle, and tended to be mild, nonviolent, and tired much of the time. At this stage in life, he was so much like a spineless, spiteful woman that his wife wondered how it was possible she should have ended up in a lesbian relationship with a man. Lord, when Seth slipped into one of his snits, as he was in this very minute, she understood domestic violence and felt there were cases when it was justified.

"Seth, it's our anniversary," she reminded him in a low voice.

"You haven't talked to me all evening. You've eaten everything in this goddamn restaurant, and won't look at me. You want to give me a clue as to what's wrong, for once? So I don't have to guess or read your mind or go to a psychic?"

Her stomach was balled up like a threatened opossum. Seth was the best diet she'd ever been on, and could throw her into anorexia quicker than anything. In rare, quiet moments, when Hammer walked alone on a beach or in the mountains, she knew she had not been in love with Seth for most of their marriage. But he was her weight-bearing wall. Were he knocked out, half her world would crash. That was his power over her, and he knew it like any good wife. The children, for example, might take his side. This was not possible, but Judy Hammer feared it.

"I'm not talking because I have nothing to say," Seth reasonably replied.

"Fine." She folded her cloth napkin, and dropped it on the table as she began searching for the waitress.

Wft Miles away, on Wilkinson Boulevard, past Bob's Pawn Shop, trailer parks, Coyote Joe's and the topless Paper Doll Lounge, The Firing Line was conducting a war of its own. Brazil was slaughtering silhouettes screeching down the lane at him. Ejected cartridge cases sailed through the air, clinking to the floor. West's pupil was improving like nothing she'd ever seen. She was proud.

"Tap-tap, you're out!" she rudely yelled, as if he were the village idiot.

"Safety on. Dump the magazine, reload, rack it! Ready position, safety off! Tap-tap! Stop!"

This had been going on for more than an hour, and good ole boys were peering out from their booths, wondering what the hell was going on down there.

Who was that babe shouting like a drill sergeant at that faggy-looking guy? Bubba, who was begot by a Bubba and probably related to a long line of them, was leaning against a cinder-block wall, an Exxon cap low over his eyes. He was big and bad in fatigues and a camouflage vest, as he watched the target screeching closer and closer to the blond guy.

Bubba was aware of the dense, tight spread, recognizing this guy's skill at head shots. Bubba drooled snuff in a bottle, and glanced back at his own lane to make certain no one thought about touching his Glock 20 ten-millimeter combat-type handgun or his Remington XP-100 with Leupold scope and standard load of 50-grain Sierra PSP bullets and 17 grains of IMR 4198 powder. This was a handgun that rested very nicely over sandbags. His Calico model' ll0 auto pistol, with its 100-shot magazine and flash suppressor, wasn't half bad, either, nor was the Browning Hi-Power HP-Practical pistol, complete with Pachmayr rubber grips, round-style serrated hammer, and removable front sight.

There was little Bubba liked better than to machine-gun a couple of targets, brass flying like shrapnel, as drug dealers walked behind him, not the least bit interested in messing with the man. Bubba watched the bitch down range unfasten a target from its metal frame.

She held it up and looked at her dead-eye, sweet boyfriend.

"Who pissed you off?" she asked him.

Bubba's manly stride carried him their way as more rounds exploded like strings of firecrackers.

"What is this? Some kind of school going on here?" Bubba asked, as if he owned the place.

The woman gave him her attention, and he didn't like what he saw in her eyes. This one didn't know fear. Clearly, she didn't have sense enough to appreciate what she was looking at, and Bubba went over to her lane and helped himself to her Smith amp; Wesson.

"Pretty big piece for a little gal like you." Bubba grinned in his cruel way, dribbling more snuff in his jar.

"Please put it down," West calmly told him.

Brazil was intrigued and appropriately nervous about where this was going. The big-bellied pig dressed like Ruby Ridge or Oklahoma City looked like he had hurt people in the past and was proud of it. He did not put West's gun down, but was now dropping out the magazine, checking the slide, and ejecting the cartridge from the chamber. It occurred to Brazil that West was disarmed, and he could not help her, because the. 380 was out of ammunition, too.

"Put it down. Now." West was most unfriendly.

"It's city property, and I am a city police officer."

"How 'bout that?" Bubba was beginning to enjoy himself immensely.

"Little woman here's a cop. Well, golly gee."

West knew better than to announce her rank, which would make matters only that much worse. She stepped so close to him, the toes of their shoes were about to touch. Her chest would have pressed against his belly had she not decided against it.

"This is the last time I ask you to put my gun right back where you found it," she said, staring up into his homely, whisky-flushed face.

Bubba fixed his sights on Brazil, deciding this pretty boy might be in for a life lesson. Bubba strode over to West's lane, set down her gun, walked up to Brazil, tried to grab the. 380 for inspection. Brazil slugged Bubba and broke his nose. Bubba bled over camouflage, and dripped on assault weaponry as he hastily packed his duffel bag.

It was Bubba's Last Stand when he cried out from the steps that the lady and her boyfriend had not heard the last from Bubba.

"Sorry," Brazil said right off when he and West were alone again.

"Jesus Christ. You can't just hit people like that." She was mostly embarrassed that she hadn't resolved the conflict herself.

He was loading magazines, and realizing he had never struck anybody in his life. He wasn't sure what he felt about it as he lovingly studied West's. 380 pistol.

"What does one of these cost?" he asked with the reverence of the poor.

"You can't afford it," she said.

"What if I sold your story to Parade magazine. My editor thinks they'd go for it. I could make some money. Maybe enough…"

This was just what West wanted, another story.

"How about I make a deal with you," she said.

"No Parade magazine.

Borrow the Sig until you can afford one of your own. I'll work with you a little more, maybe on an outdoor range. We'll set up some combat situations. The way you piss people off, it's a good idea. Rule of etiquette. Pick up your brass. "

Hundreds of shiny cartridge cases were scattered in their area. Brazil got down and began plucking them up, clinking them into a metal can while West gathered her belongings. She had an unpleasant thought, and looked at him.

"What about your mother?" she asked.

He kept working, glancing up, a shadow passing behind his eyes.

"What about her?"

"I'm just wondering about a gun being in the house."

"I got good at hiding things a long time ago." He loudly clanged brass into the can, making his point.

Bubba was waiting in the parking lot, inconspicuous inside his spotless chrome and black King Cab pickup truck with gun rack. Confederate flag mud flaps, roll bar, KC fog lights, Oilie North bumper sticker, PVC pipes for holding fishing poles on the front grille, and neon lights around the license plate. He held a wadded-up undershirt to his bleeding nose, watching as the lady cop and her asshole boyfriend emerged from the firing range, walking through the gathering dusk. Bubba waited long enough to see her get out keys and head for an impeccable white Ford Explorer in a corner of the unpaved lot. Her personal wheels, Bubba supposed, and this was even better. He climbed down from his cab, a tire jack in a meaty fist, ready for a little payback.

West was expecting him. She was practiced in the modus operandi of Bubbas, for whom revenge was a reflex, like getting up for a beer during commercials. She had already dipped into her tote bag for what looked like a black golf club handle.

"Get in the car," she quietly ordered Brazil.

"No way," he said, standing his ground as Bubba strode toward them, a menacing sneer on his gory face.

Bubba didn't get within six feet of her car before West was walking to meet him. He was surprised, not expecting kick-ass aggression from this little lady cop. He tapped the tire iron against a meaty thigh as a warning, then raised it, eyeing the Ford's spotless front windshield.

"Hey!" Weasel, the manager, yelled from the range's entrance.

"Bubba, what d'ya think you're doing, man!"

The retractable steel baton snapped out like a whip,

suddenly three feet long with a hard knobby tip that West pointed at Bubba. She drew slow circles in the air, like a fencer.

"Put it down and leave," she commanded Bubba in her police tone.

"Fuck you!" Bubba was really losing his temper now because he was losing his nerve. He had seen weapons like hers at gun shows and knew they could be mean.

"Bubba! You quit right now!" screamed Weasel, who ran a clean business.

Brazil noticed that the manager was most upset but did not get one step closer to the trouble. Brazil was casting about, wanting to help.

He knew better than to get in her way. If only the. 380 was loaded. He could shoot out this goon's tires or something, perhaps cause a diversion. West caused her own. Bubba raised the tire iron again, this time completely dedicated to connecting it with her car, because he had committed himself. It no longer mattered what he felt. He had to do it, especially now that Weasel and a gathering crowd were watching.

If Bubba didn't carry out his threat and avenge his injured nose, everyone in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region would know.

West smacked the bony part of Bubba's wrist with the baton, and he howled in pain as the tire iron clanked to the parking lot. That was the end of it.

W "Why didn't you arrest him?" Brazil wanted to know a little later, as they drove past Latta Park in Dilworth, close to where she lived.

"Wasn't worth it," she replied, smoking.

"He didn't damage my car or me."

"What if he takes out warrants on us, for assault?" The thought was weirdly appealing to Brazil.

She laughed as if her ride-along hadn't lived much.

"Don't think so."

She turned into her driveway.

"Last thing he wants is the world knowing he got beat up by a woman and a kid."

"I'm not a kid," he said.

Her house was as he remembered it, and the fence was no further along.

Brazil asked no questions, but followed her through the backyard to her small workshop, where there was a table saw and a vast collection of tools neatly organized on pegboards. West built bird houses, cabinets, even furniture, it appeared to him. He had done enough odd jobs around his house during his life to have a healthy respect for her obvious ability. He found it a strain to even assemble K-Mart bookcases.

"Wow," he said, looking around.

"Wow what?" She shut the door behind them and turned on a radio.

"What made you decide to do all this?"

"Survival," she said, squatting to open a small refrigerator. Bottles rattled as she brought out two long-neck Southpaw Lights.

Brazil did not like beer, in truth, even though he drank it from time to time. It tasted rotten and made him silly and sleepy. He would die before he let her find this out.

"Thanks," he said, screwing off the cap, and tossing it in the trash.

"When I was getting started, I couldn't afford to hire people to help me out around here. So I learned on my own." She opened hard cases and got out guns.

"Plus, as you know, I grew up on a farm. I learned whatever I could from my dad, and the hired hands."

"What about from your mom?"

West was disassembling the pistols as if she could do it in her sleep.

"Like what?" She glanced across the table at him.

"You know, domestic stuff. Cooking, cleaning, raising kids."

She smiled, opening a tackle box stocked with gun- cleaning paraphernalia.

"Do I cook and clean for myself? You see a wife anywhere?" She handed him a cleaning rod and a stack of patches.

He took a big swig of beer and swallowed it as fast as he could, trying not to taste it, as usual. He was feeling braver, and trying not to notice how good she looked in her gray T-shirt and jeans.

"I've done shit like that all my life, and I'm not a wife," he said.

"What do you know?" she asked as she dipped her rod into a small brown bottle of solvent.

"Nothing." He said this as a sulking challenge.

"Don't give me your moods, okay?" West replied, refusing to play games, because, frankly, she was too old for them.

Brazil threaded a patch through his rod, and dipped it in Hoppes. He loved the smell, and had no intention of confessing anything else to her. But the beer had a tongue of its own.

"Let's talk about this wife-shit again," she pushed him.

"What do you want me to say?" Brazil, the man, replied.

"You tell me what it means." She really wanted to know.

"In theory," - he began to clean the barrel of the. 380 - "I'm not entirely sure. Maybe something to do with roles, a caste system, a pecking order, a hierarchy, the ecosystem."

"The ecosystem?" She frowned, blasting her barrel and other parts with Gunk Off.

"Point is," he explained, 'that being a wife has nothing to do with what you do, but with what someone thinks you are. Just like I'm doing something you want me to do right now, but that doesn't make me a slave. "

"Don't you have the roles a little reversed here? Who was giving who firearms instruction?" She scrubbed the inside of the barrel with a toothbrush.

"You're doing what you want to do. I'm doing what you want me to do. For nothing, for the record. And who's the slave?" She sprayed again and handed him the can.

He reached for his beer. It was his limited experience that the warmer beer got, the worse it got.

"So let's say you grow up and get married someday," she went on.

"What are you going to expect of your wife?"

"A partner." He tossed his bottle into the trash.

"I don't want a wife. I don't need anybody to take care of me, clean for me, cook for me." He got out two more beers, popped them open and set one within her reach.

"Saying I'm too busy to do all that shit for myself someday? I'll hire a housekeeper. But I'm not going to marry one," he said as if this were the most ridiculous notion society had ever devised.

"Uh huh."

She reached for the barrel of the. 380, checking his work. Man talk, she thought. The difference was, this one could put words together better than most. She didn't believe a thing he said.

"It should look like a mirror inside." She slid the barrel in front of him.

"Scrub hard. You can't hurt it."

He picked up the barrel, then his beer.

"See, people should get married, live together, whatever, and do things just like this," he went on as he dipped a brush in solvent and resumed scrubbing. There shouldn't be roles. There should be practicalities, people helping out each other like friends. One weak where the other's strong, people using their gifts, cooking together, playing tennis, fishing. Walking on the beach. Staying up late talking. Being unselfish and caring. "

"Sounds like you've thought about this a lot," she said.

"A good script."

He looked puzzled.

"What script?"

She drank.

"Heard it all before. Seen that rerun."

% So had Bubba's wife, Mrs. Rickman, whose first name had ceased to be important when she had gotten married twenty-six years ago in the Tabernacle Baptist Church. This had been down the road in Mount Mourne where she worked every day at the B amp;B, known for the best breakfast in town. The B amp;B's hot dogs and burgers were popular, too, especially with Davidson students, and, of course, with other Bubbas on their way for a day of fishing at Lake Norman.

When gun cleaning was completed, and Brazil suggested to West that they stop for a bite to eat, neither of them had a way to know that the overweight, tired woman waiting on them was Bubba's wretched wife.

"Hi, Mrs. Rickman," Brazil said to the waitress.

He gave her his bright, irresistible smile and felt sorry for her, as he always did when he came to the B amp;B. Brazil knew how hard food service was, and it depressed him to think of what it had been like for his mother all those years when she could still get out and go anywhere. Mrs. Rickman was happy to see him. He was always so sweet.

"How's my baby?" she chirped, setting plastic laminated menus in front of them. She eyed West.

"Who's your pretty lady friend?"

"Deputy Chief Virginia West with the Charlotte police," Brazil made the mistake of saying.

So it was that Bubba would learn the identities of his attackers.

tw "My, my." Mrs. Rickman was mighty impressed as she got an eyeful of this important woman sitting in a B amp;B booth.

"A deputy chief. Didn't know they had women that high up. What'll be? The pork barbecue's extra good tonight. I'd get it minced."

"Cheeseburger all the way, fries. Miller in the bottle," West said.

"Extra mayonnaise and ketchup. Can you put a little butter on the bun and throw it on the grill?"

"Sure can, honey." Mrs. Rickman nodded. She didn't write down anything as she beamed at Brazil.

"The usual." He winked at her.

She walked off, her hip killing her worse than yesterday.

"What's the usual?" West wanted to know.

"Tuna on wheat, lettuce, tomato, no mayo. Slaw, limeade. I want to ride patrol with you. In uniform," he said.

"In the first place, I don't ride patrol. In the second place, in case you haven't noticed, I have a real job, nothing important. Just the entire investigative division. Homicide. Burglary. Rape. Arson. Fraud.

Auto theft. Check theft," she said.

"White collar, computer, organized crime, vice. Juvenile. Cold case squad. Of course, there's a serial killer on the loose, and it's my detectives on the case, getting all the heat."

She lit a cigarette, and intercepted her beer before Mrs. Rickman could set it down.

"I would prefer not to work twenty-four hours a day, if it's all the same to you. You know how my cat gets?

Won't touch me, won't sleep with me? Not to mention, I haven't gone out to a movie, to dinner, in weeks. " She drank.

"I haven't finished my fence. When was the last time I cleaned my house?"

"Is that a no?"

Brazil said.