Isle of Dogs

Eighteen

Paramedics did not try to resuscitate Caesar Fender, who remained unidentified as he smoldered and smoked near his smashed tackle box. The body was charred in a very odd pattern. Only the chest had burned, and there was no evidence of a fire in the local vicinity that might account for his appalling death.

"It's like his heart caught on fire," Detective Slipper said. "Or maybe his lungs. Could smoking do that?"

"You mean, if you was smoking and somehow your lungs caught on fire?" said Treata Bibb, who had been driving an ambulance for fifteen years and had never seen anything like this. "No," Bibb then answered her own question upon reflection. "Not hardly. I don't think smoking's got a thing to do with what killed this unlucky guy." She squatted to get a closer look. "It's like he's got a crater burned in him all the way through, from front to back. Look, you can see the pavement through this big hole. See here?" She touched charred flesh with a gloved finger. "Even the bones in the middle of his chest burned up. But the rest of him is fine." She was amazed and disturbed, wondering who had done this and how and why.

Cars were pulling off the road, and people lined the street as if waiting for a parade. Police were having a difficult time controlling the gathering crowd of sightseers and reporters as word spread that a fisherman had exploded into a ball of fire just off Canal Street, very near where Trish Thrash's mutilated body had been found on Belle Island.

"What's going on?" a housewife named Barbie Fogg asked through the open window of her minivan.

"You'll have to read about it in the paper." An officer motioned with his flashlight for her to move on.

"I don't get the paper."

She shielded her eyes from his waving flashlight and wondered why on earth all these big helicopters were flying around with searchlights probing the city and neighboring counties. "There must be some violent serial killer that broke out of jail or something," she decided with horror as a chill tickled up to the roots of her frosted hair. "Maybe the same one who murdered that poor woman the other day! And now I won't know enough to protect myself and my family because I don't get the paper and you won't tell me the smallest detail. And you wonder why people don't like police."

She sped off, and another car stopped, this one occupied by an old woman whose night vision wasn't what it used to be.

"Excuse me, I'm trying to find the Downtown Expressway," the old woman, whose name was Lamonia, said to the officer with the flashlight. "I'm late for choir practice. What's all that racket up there?"

Lamonia peered up at Black Hawk helicopters she couldn't see. But there was nothing wrong with her hearing.

"Sounds like a war going on," she declared.

"Just a little situation, but we're handling it, ma'am," the officer said. "The Downtown Expressway's over there." He pointed the flashlight. "Turn left on Eighth and it will run you right into it."

"I've run into it before," Lamonia said with a pained, humiliated catch in her voice. "Last year, I hit the guardrail. To tell you the truth, officer, I probably shouldn't be driving at night. I can't see at night. But if I keep missing choir practice, they'll kick me out, and it's really all I have left in my life. You know, my husband passed on two years ago, and then my cat died when I accidentally backed the car over him."

"Maybe you'd better pull over."

Lamonia stared blindly to her left and right and thought she detected a speck of light that reminded her of those eye tests that required her to center her face in a machine and push a clicker every time she saw a little light in her peripheral vision. Last week, she had hit the clicker randomly and often in hopes she could fool the eye doctor again.

"I know exactly what you're doing," the eye doctor had said as he put drops in Lamonia's pupils. "Don't think you're the first one who's tried," he added.

"What about laser surgery again?"

According to the eye doctor, there was no hope for Lamonia's bad night vision. She had been managing all alone only because she had a pretty good memory and knew how many steps led up to the porch and exactly where the furniture was. She could tell by feel which skirt or dress she was putting on in the dark, but driving at night was another matter. The city streets had not changed, but memory could not help Lamonia when cars switched lanes or stopped in front of her, or pedestrians decided to cross to the other side. She was explaining all this to the police officer, who was no longer there.

"So if you can just point your flashlight, I'll follow it and pull over," Lamonia said as another helicopter thundered into a low hover and its searchlight blazed on the crime scene.

She detected an illumination and headed toward it, bumping over a curb and then something that crunched under a tire.

"Now what was that?" she muttered as she hit a stretcher and sent it sailing into the river right before she rear-ended the ambulance.

"Stop! Stop!" Voices all around her Dodge Dart screamed.

Lamonia slammed on the brakes, even though she was already stopped. Confused and frightened, she shoved the car into reverse and backed up through a perimeter of crime-scene tape and felt another bump under her right rear tire.

"STOP!" The shouting voices were more urgent. "STOP!"

Hooter Shook sensed something urgent was going on when Trooper Macovich showed up with a trunk full of traffic cones and flares.

"Hey! What you doin' closing off all these lanes?" Hooter called out to him as he arranged the blaze orange cones that always reminded her of the Cap the Hat game she used to play as a child.

"Setting up a checkpoint," Macovich informed her as he dropped hissing, lit flares across 150 North, a busy four-lane interstate that led in and out of the city.

Hooter watched with interest and a little anxiety as Macovich barricaded every lane with a wall of blaze orange plastic and fire, leaving only her Exact Change lane open, forcing all northbound motorists by her window, where they would directly place money in her glove. She was a senior tollbooth operator for the city and remembered the days when she didn't have to wear surgical gloves that were always getting punctured by her artificial nails. In modern times, all the operators seemed to worry about was coming in contact with a driver's fingers, when in truth, cash and coins were far dirtier than some stranger's hands.

Money was touched by millions of people, Hooter knew. It was picked off the ground and rubbed up against other money inside dark wallets and little coin purses. Coins jingled against each other inside pockets that may not have been laundered in recent memory. Cash was porous paper that absorbed bacteria like a sponge, and in local topless bars, men stuffed dollar bills into skimpy clothing and the money came in direct contact with diseased body parts.

Hooter could talk for weeks about all the places money visited and how filthy it was. So she was happy to wear gloves when she finally realized the city didn't mind if she switched to cotton ones that her nails couldn't tear. But it did make her feel bad when she stuck a gloved hand out of her booth, as if the driver were Typhoid Mary. She hurt thousands of feelings every shift and never had time to explain to the driver that in her mind, the glove wasn't about him or her, but about the unsanitary condition of the economy.

"Germs," Macovich said as he smoked, waiting for the next car as he stood outside Hooter's booth and talked to her through the sliding window. "Everything's 'bout germs. Wooo. I 'member learning CPR on those life-size rubber dolls, and you was lucky if they wiped the rubber mouth off before you pinched the rubber nose shut and smacked your lips right over its rubber lips, blowing away. Now, you roll up on a scene and see someone unresponsive and bleeding bad, you got to double glove and drape the face with a sheet of plastic that's round with a hole in the middle, sort of like those 'sposable toilet seat covers you see in public restrooms. You just hope the person don't sneeze on you or puke or start moving around, and you pray they ain't got AIDS."

"Bet you could get AIDS off of money," Hooter said, nodding at her own convictions. "How you know some homosensual don't meet up with another homosensual and have sex in a park and then before washing his hands, he buys a sandwich and pay for it with a five-dollar bill. That same five-dollar bill is shut up inside a little cash drawer with hundreds of other unsanitarian bills, and then goes to the bank and is picked up when some other man dying of AIDS cashes a check. Next thing, that five-dollar bill is smacked down on a filthy bar and the waiter puts it in his unwashed pocket and decides to drive downtown and corner to my window."

"That will be next," Macovich thought out loud, and the conversation was making him uneasy and causing him to wonder if he would ever touch money again. "We'll have to wear gloves morning, noon, and night if we're gonna pay for things. Thank God we don't got to take money direct when we write tickets."

"Yeah, you mighty lucky in that department," Hooter said.

Macovich stepped out into the lane and held up his flashlight at the approaching Pontiac Grand Prix. It was an older model with dents, and his pulse quickened when he recognized New York plates and an expired inspection sticker. He walked over to the driver's door, his hand conveniently touching the snap release of his holster.

"License and registration," he said as the window cranked down, and he shone the flashlight on the frightened face of a Mexican boy who didn't look old enough to drive and was obviously an illegal alien. "You speak English, sir?"

"Si." The Mexican made no move to deliver either his driver's license or the registration.

"Why don't you ask him if he understands English," Hooter loudly suggested from her booth, which had nothing inside it except a stool, a fire extinguisher, and her Pleather pocketbook.

Macovich repeated Hooter's question while the Mexican averted his eyes from the blinding scrutiny of the flashlight.

"No," the Mexican said, getting more frightened by the second.

"No?" Macovich frowned. "Yeah? Well, if you don't understand English, how did you understand it enough to know I was asking if you understood it?"

"Creo que no."

"What he say?" Macovich turned around and looked at Hooter, who was hanging out of her booth now.

"Guess I may as well come on out since the lane's all blocked with you and that big Pontiac," she said to Macovich as she opened the door and stepped outside.

"He said that?" Macovich was baffled. "He said he's getting out of his car? 'Cause it don't look to me like he has any intention of getting out or cooperating in any way."

Hooter caught only fragments of what Macovich was saying as she buttoned her overcoat and slipped a lipstick out of a pocket. She pecked her way over the asphalt in six-inch high-heeled red Pleather boots. One thing about being a toll collector was that it involved a constant exposure to the public. Hooter was fastidious about fashion and fresh make-up and making sure every dreadlock was in place and interwoven with bright, colorful beads.

"It ain't good to not cooperate, honey," Hooter peered through the Mexican's open window. "Now you cooperate with this big trooper. Nobody wants no trouble, 'cause they be looking for a suspect right this very minute who could very well be you. So you best cooperate and not make things worse for yourself…"

"Hooter, don't tell him so much," Macovich whispered loudly in her ear, her perfume rushing up his nostrils and enveloping his brain. "What that you got on?"

"Poison." She was pleased he'd noticed. "I got it at Target."

"How'd you know we was looking for a suspect?" he whispered into her perfume again.

"Why else you be blocking off all the lanes except the Exact Change line, huh?" she replied. "You think I was born yesterday? Well, I been around, let me tell you, and I'm the senior operator at this toll plaza."

"Wooo, I wasn't putting you down or nothing, Senior Operator." Macovich teased her a little.

"Don't you be smart mouthin' me!"

"Wooo, I ain't smart mouthin' no one, least of all a pretty lady like yourself. How 'bout you and me having us a drink after our shifts?" He thought happily of the crisp hundred-dollar bill Cat had handed over after their quick helicopter lesson.

The Mexican was rigid in his seat, his eyes wide and shielded by a hand. He was shaking and gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were blanched.

"Por favor." He glanced up at both Macovich and Hooter. "No buena armonia."

Cruz Morales had a vague understanding of English and was accustomed to tossing out the simplest Spanish phrases that most New Yorkers caught immediately. But there was a sea of incomprehension between him and the cop and the tollbooth lady, and Cruz could not afford further investigation. He was twelve years old with a false ID and had driven to Richmond to pick up a package for his older brothers. Although he hadn't looked at whatever was inside the tightly wrapped bundle hidden in the tire well, he could tell by the weight of it that he was probably transporting handguns again.

"I think the child say he's poor and needs a favor," Hooter translated for Macovich. "He look too little and young to hurt nobody." Her maternal instincts wafted out on a cloud of perfume. "Maybe he need a soda or coffee. All them Mexicans start drinking coffee when they're little babies."

The tollbooth lady's gold front tooth seemed the only bright spot in Cruz Morales's existence this moment. He made eye contact with her and smiled a little, his teeth chattering.

"See," Hooter nudged Macovich with her elbow, bumping his pistol. "He's relating now. We getting through to him."

She glanced up at miles of parked cars in her lane. Why, it was an endless stream of impatient headlights, and it puffed her up to think they were all here to see her. She felt like a movie star for an instant, and was overwhelmed by sympathy for the little Mexican boy, who clearly was far from home and frightened. He was probably cold, tired, and hungry, too.

Hooter reached into her coat pocket, dug through tubes of lipstick, and produced a napkin that some nice-looking white trooper had given her last year when that man with the paper sack over his head had tried to rob the tollbooth and had run into it instead. Hooter fished out a pen, clicked it open, and wrote down her home phone number on the napkin, which she handed to the Mexican boy.

"Honey, you call me any time you need something," she magnanimously said. "I know 'zactly what it feels like to be a minority and have folks always thinking the worst when you ain't done nothing but collect their un-sanitarian money or drive somewhere and probably not knowing your 'spection ticket's espired."

"Get out of the car!" Macovich ordered the illegal alien. "Get out slowly and let me see your hands!"

Cruz Morales smashed the accelerator to the floor and squealed rubber, flying through the toll lane as lights flashed and alarms screamed because he didn't have time to toss three quarters into the bin.

"Shit!" Macovich exclaimed, patting around his duty belt, looking for his keys as he ran to his unmarked car and jumped in.

He flipped on his lights and sirens and flew down the interstate, reminding Hooter of a screaming, flashing Christmas tree. She returned to her custom-fabricated aluminum booth with its vandal-resistant stainless-steel coin basket and shut the Extend-A-Door. The endless river of headlights began to move sluggishly toward her and she hoped people wouldn't be grumpy after the delay.

"What the hell's going on?" the first driver asked from the high seat of his pickup truck. "If I sat here much longer, I was gonna turn into a skeleton."

"Then that pretty lady friend I'm sure you got waiting at home for you won't have as much of you to love," Hooter teased him with a flash of a smile. "I sure do like that rainbow bumper sticker." She nodded at his windshield. "You know, I been seeing more and more of 'em lately, like maybe people is looking for the bright side and feeling hope. I might just get me one of them rainbows and stick it on my tollbooth."

The driver leaned over and popped open his glove box. "Here." He handed her a stack of rainbow bumper stickers. "Be my guest, girlfriend."

"See," Hooter said to the next driver as the pickup truck with the rainbow sticker sped off, "if you nice to folks, it's contagious just like germs is, only being nice don't make you sick." She reached out a gloved hand and took a dollar bill from Barbie Fogg.

"I know why all these cars are stopped," Barbie said. "You heard about that man who got blown up over there by the river? It's all over the radio."

"Oh my!" Hooter returned a quarter to her and dropped seventy-five cents in the toll bin. "I don't got a radio in my booth 'cause they ain't no time for me to listen to it. What happened, baby?"

Cars began to honk, turning the interstate into an endless flock of migrating Canada geese.

"The police wouldn't say. But it will be in the paper in the morning," Barbie replied. "Problem is, I don't get the paper, so I'll never know what happened."

"You just drive through my booth tomorrow," Hooter said with importance. "I always read the paper before I go to work. I tell you all about it. What your name, baby?"

They exchanged names and Hooter handed her a rainbow bumper sticker.

"You put that on your minivan and it will bring smiles and hope to all you pass," Hooter promised.

"Why thank you!" Barbie was touched and delighted. "I'll do it the minute I get home."