Isle of Dogs

Twenty

Cruz Morales evaded state troopers by cutting through a series of alleyways and parked by a Dumpster behind Freckles, just off Patterson Avenue. He sat in the dark, breathing hard, listening, his eyes nervously jumping everywhere. Country music and the murmur of voices sounded from inside Freckles, which Cruz took to be a small local bar. Suddenly he wanted a beer more than anything else. His nerves were fried, and he was as scared as he had ever been in his life. He was certain all those huge helicopters flying low with searchlights probing were in pursuit of him. He had no idea what he had done to cause such a manhunt, unless it was that package in the tire well. But how did the authorities know about it? When those white dudes at the automotive shop had taken him in back and given him the package in exchange for another package, Cruz knew he was participating in an event that might get him into trouble, but the dudes certainly wouldn't have snitched on him. What would be the point? And no one saw the transaction, and as best he could recall, it seemed the helicopters were already out before he even pulled into the automotive shop parking lot. So were the authorities looking for him before he did anything? How could that be?

He climbed out of his car, opened the trunk, and retrieved the package from the tire well, which really wasn't much of a hiding spot since there was neither a spare tire nor carpet, and the first place a cop would check for illegal items was under the very conspicuous tire-well door. Cruz was about to heave the package into the Dumpster when the back door of the bar swung open, spilling light and loud voices into the dirt alleyway.

Major Trader was drunk and feeling macho and decided to pee outside, even though Freckles had perfectly adequate restrooms. But relieving himself in the great outdoors returned him to his roots, and pirates and watermen were quite skilled at adapting to inconvenience. Bateaus, for example, did not have heads, and when Trader was coming along, his family had had an outhouse, which he rarely used, unless he had more serious business than peeing to manage. Trader staggered a bit as he struggled with his fly, and stubborn zipper teeth bit into the cloth of his ill-fitting pants and held on for dear life.

"Shit!" Trader swore like a pirate, yanking hard. "Damnation seize my soul!"

The harder he tugged, the deeper the zipper sunk in its teeth. Now he was in a bind, all right, because the zipper was stuck exactly midway, and the more he fought with the zipper, the more his bladder wanted to surrender. He clamped a hand between his legs while he danced and stumbled about, cursing the zipper and trying to rip its metal teeth apart.

Cruz lurked in deep shadows behind the Dumpster, peering out and watching all this in amazement. He had never seen such a display, and what the hell was the language flying out of that fat man's mouth, and why was he hopping on one foot and then the other and holding his privates? In the incomplete light it seemed he was yanking himself up by the crotch, as if trying to break free of gravity and take flight. Now he was panting and cursing like a pirate, and his hopping and jumping were getting more vigorous, and propelling him around the Dumpster in Cruz's direction.

Cruz set the package on the ground and stepped around to the front of the Dumpster just as the wild man hopped around to the back of it. Then Cruz made a run for it. He jumped into his car, cranked the engine, and sped off as Trader grabbed himself and hopped, his urgency becoming unbearable. The zipper had gone from being stubborn to having lockjaw. Those metal teeth weren't going to let go and were clamped with such violence that the zipper felt hot to the touch.

Trader yanked on the zipper and moaned in excruciating discomfort, feeling as if someone had attached a bicycle pump to his bladder and was seeing how many pounds of pressure could be squeezed in before it blew up and went flat with relief and shame. Pirates did not pee on themselves, not even as infants. It was one thing to pee on property and others, but you did not soil yourself, not even if you were in the middle of raiding a ship or torching a crab plantation. Trader was out of breath and exhausted from hopping when he happened to notice a package on the ground and sat on it with his legs tightly crossed.

"Goddamn it," he muttered repeatedly as the back door of Freckles opened, casting Trader in a stripe of light and making him squint.

Hooter Shook had just ended her shift at the toll-booth and had dropped by Freckles for a little male company and refreshment. She had been having such a good time with that big Trooper Macovich that her head had begun to spin, and then, unfortunately, they had gotten into a disagreement.

"Don't believe in getting married," Macovich told her as he threw back his fourth beer." 'Cause I don't want no bunch of kids jumping on me the minute I walk in the door and then all my money going out the window. I been saving for a Corvette."

"Whaaaat?" Hooter was a bit looped herself, and beer and her basic disposition weren't a good mix. "You just like all the rest," she accused him as she clacked her amazingly long acrylic nails on the Formica tabletop. "Uh huh. I work my ass off and come home to you and you just be out there polishing that 'Vette a yours while the babies are in the house squalling with dirty diapers and nothing to eat. Then you expect sex from me while you drinking beer and you don't even ask me about my day!"

"Wooo! You skipping to the end of the movie, babe. We ain't even held hands yet and already we's married with babies. Why don't we just drink beer and chill, you know?"

She clacked her nails so loudly and erratically that they sounded like ice skates in a hockey game.

"I never did understand why you women got to have these nails three inches long," he confessed. "How you even pick up a penny or a postage stamp?"

"I don't pick up no pennies without gloves," she said indignantly. "You know how I feel about dirt and things unsanitarian!"

This worried him considerably. If she felt that way about money, what kind of exchanges could he ever hope to have with her? For all he knew, she wore a biological hazard suit to bed and those nails of hers could cause him damage in tender places. Woooo, he thought. What if she dug them nails into his horsie? Why did she wear a perfume called Poison, too? He ought to know better than to pick up somebody at the tollbooth. Last time he picked up a woman he knew nothing about, the situation had been similar. Letitia Sweet worked in the Shell Quik Mart not far from headquarters, and Macovich was minding his own business one afternoon when he popped in for a coffee and popcorn. Letitia was built like an old Cadillac and probably had just as many miles and layers of paint, but Macovich was in a mood because of that pool shark Crimm girl.

"What you got on?" he asked Letitia when he stepped up to the counter and impressed her by pulling out a twenty-dollar bill.

"What you mean, what I got on?" She gave him a smirk as she bent over the cash drawer in a way that exposed her bulletlike headlights.

He had to give her credit: That woman was a handful no matter which way he grabbed her, even though their first date was their last.

"Who you think you are?" Letitia yelled at him in the car. "What you think you're doing grabbing at me like that? You think I ain't got no nerves beneath all that flesh? How you like it if I grabbed and twist you like a rag I'm wringing out when I clean up the nacho bin at the end of the day?"

She demonstrated, and Macovich had to admit that he didn't like it a bit. So why did he go from her to Hooter? He was lost in the space of his own dysfunction and bad experiences, and decided it was best not to protest when Hooter said she needed air and if he was lucky, would talk to him briefly next time he came through her Exact Change lane. Typically, she ended the date in a forsaken place and had no ride home, and she was feeling a little sorry for herself when she emerged in the alleyway and spied a fat white man sitting on a package by the Dumpster. For a minute, she forgot her own problems.

"Why honey, you look like you ain't feeling too good," Hooter said, making her way to him on her wobbly heels. "What'chu doing out here in this cold alleyway? Want me to call the ambu-lance?"

"My zipper's stoppered shut," Trader told her, squeezing himself and yanking the slide to no avail. "Damnation!"

"I have that happen sometimes," Hooter sympathized with him, coming closer and getting a good look at him to make sure he wasn't some crazy person. "I tell you, it's a whole lot worse when it's in back." She indicated the back of an imaginary long evening gown. "I had that happen one time when I went to this fancy New Year's Eve Ball at the Holiday Inn, and I couldn't get my dress zipped up and was 'fraid if I yanked too hard, I'd rip that beautiful thing for sure."

She went on to explain in detail how she had finally waited out in the hallway of the motel until some nice Arab man had passed by and helped her unzip her dress so she could start all over again and zip it up without getting snagged on chiffon. But the Arab man hadn't wanted her to zip the dress back up and in fact had insisted that she take it off along with everything under it, so she had had no choice but to beat him up. Hooter lit a cigarette, caught up in the memory, as Trader held himself and begged the zipper to deliver him from captivity.

"Please lit me free. Please lit me free," he begged, near tears, in a dialect Hooter was unfamiliar with.

"Why sure, baby." She bent over and lit a cigarette for him. "You can have all the smokes you want and I won't charge you a cent 'cause I don't touch pennies anyhow. I think it's a sin to let someone bum a cigarette and then charge him for it, don't you? What's that you sitting on, baby?"

Trader was suddenly aware of the hard lumpy package he was perched on beside the Dumpster. He felt for it with his free hand and began to rip off the paper wrapping as he pitched the fresh cigarette in the dirt.

"Guns," he declared, and then he further realized that maybe he could use one to shoot off his stuck zipper, as long as he was careful.

"Oh my!" Hooter exclaimed. "What you be sitting on guns for? That's mighty dangerous, and why you have them to begin with all wrapped up in UPS paper?"

Trader snatched out a nine-millimeter pistol and dropped out the magazine, happy that it was fully loaded, even if he was unfamiliar with firearms, unless it was a flare gun. He tugged and played around with the slide until he figured it was possible a round might very well be chambered. He spread his knees wide and carefully fired.

"Godamighty!" he yelled when the bullet pinged off the brass zipper slide and ricocheted into the Dumpster with a loud thunk.

"You insane!" Hooter screamed, backing up a few steps and almost falling. "What'chu trying to shoot your privates for?"

Trader lined up the zipper slide in the sights again and squeezed the trigger, furious when the bullet ricocheted off the slide and whizzed straight up, knocking out the streetlight. The zipper was indestructible, clenching its teeth in a death grip while Trader fired again and again, ejected cartridge cases sailing and clinking in the dirt as Hooter ran through the alleyway screeching for the police and waving her arms at the big helicopters flying overhead.

"Help! Help!" she hollered up at the Black Hawks. "Get down here and stop this crazy man! He trying to shoot his privates off and keep missing! But soon enough, he gonna hit something! Help! Help!"

Andy was parking in front of Judy Hammer's house when the call came over the radio.

"Promiscuous shooting in the five thousand block of Patterson Avenue. Any officer in the area. Report of shots fired in the alleyway."

Hammer appeared on the front porch, wondering why Andy wasn't getting out of his car. She came down the steps to investigate.

"What are you doing?" Hammer asked as Andy rolled down his window.

"There's a shooting and nobody's responding," he said, getting excited. "I guess all the city units must be tied up on other shootings and looking for the Hispanic."

"Let's go," she said without hesitation, climbing in.

They roared off with the blue grill lights and siren going full tilt while the city police dispatcher continued trying to raise an officer to respond to Patterson Avenue.

"Three-thirty," Andy said over the radio, using his former unit number from his days with the Richmond police department.

"Three-thirty," the dispatcher came back and sounded slightly confused, because she remembered Andy's pleasant voice and knew he didn't work for the city any longer.

"Responding to Patterson Avenue," Andy said.

"Ten-four, former unit three-thirty."

"You know exactly where in the alleyway?" he asked into the mike.

"Ten-ten, three-thirty," which was the city's way of saying, "Negative, Officer Brazil or whoever is riding around pretending to be Officer Brazil."

Dispatcher Betty Freakley turned around to the 911 operators sitting behind her and shrugged.

"I thought he'd gone and signed up with the state police. What's he doing riding around in the city again?" she asked.

All the 911 operators were busy. Things were hopping in Richmond this night. An intoxicated white male had fallen down in the yard while taking his dog out. A black female was lying in the middle of the street near Eggleston's grocery store. An infant had eaten all the little beads inside a purple Beanie Baby Millennium Y2K bear. There were several car wrecks, and most officers were tied up looking for a Hispanic male suspect driving a Grand Prix with New York plates. But the urgent matter that caught Hammer's attention was the report of a male with a bag over his head who was trying to rob Popeye's Chicken amp; Biscuits on Chamberlayne Avenue.

"I wonder if that's the same man who tried to rob the tollbooth last year," Hammer said. "What's his name? He ran into the tollbooth because the holes he cut in the bag were in the wrong place and he couldn't see."

"Goes by the street name Stick," Andy said. "He's got an endless rap sheet and has tried the bag thing for years."

"You would think he'd figure out his M.O. is obvious and isn't working," Hammer replied, never failing to be amazed by the stupidity of most criminals.

"He hit Popeye's on Broad Street a couple months ago," Andy recalled, speeding through a yellow light on Gary Street. "Walked in with the bag over his head, tripped over the railing where people wait in line, and made off with an eight-piece chicken dinner, then walked into the glass door and broke his nose. We got his DNA off the blood on the paper bag."

"Does he use a gun?"

"That's the problem. He's never armed, and just walks in with the bag over his head, asking for whatever. So we can't get him on any charges that stick, which is why he never spends much time in jail. According to him, he asks for something and people give it to him without protest, so that really isn't a crime and there's nothing in the Virginia Code that says it's illegal to walk around with a bag over your head. So the judge always throws it out when Stick shows up for arraignment."

"Any officer in the area," the dispatcher came over the air. "Report of a white male with a bag over his head, down in the parking lot of Popeye's on Chamberlayne Avenue. An ambulance en route."

"I guess he tripped again," Andy said.

Stick wasn't the only one to trip that night. When Barbie Fogg got out of her minivan in the carport, she stepped on the Barbie doll of one of the twins. As usual, it had been left where the child had played with it last.

"Oh, my!" Barbie cried out as she picked herself up from the concrete floor and checked for injuries.

Barbie, who very much believed in signs from The Universe, interpreted what could have been a serious accident as a signal that she had misstepped and overlooked something important. Oh, of course! she thought as she remembered the very special thing that had happened before she'd stopped off to visit the nursing home where she made the rounds visiting infirm and forgetful old women she didn't know. Barbie believed The Universe had chosen her to be a healer, and at last, The Universe was about to reward her, which was why Hooter had given Barbie the special gift.

Minutes later, her neighbors, the Clot sisters, watched Barbie apply a rainbow bumper sticker to the back window of the Fogg family minivan. Uva Clot was shocked as she peered out from behind the kitchen blinds.

"Come here and look!" Uva yelled at her spinster sister, Ima, who was watching TV in the living room, the sound blasting. "Lord have mercy, she's falling down drunk and putting that thing on her car with chirren inside the house. What's gonna happen to those little chirren when all the world sees what they momma just put on that minivan a hers? I always wondered about her, didn't I tell you I always wondered about her, Ima? Get on in here and look right this minute!"

Ima shuffled in with her walker and squinted through the opening in the blinds. She stiffened at the sight of Barbie Fogg in her lit-up carport across the street. Ima couldn't quite make out what Barbie was doing, but it looked like she was walking around her minivan and kicking a doll across the concrete, and she kept smoothing something on the back window and admiring whatever it was. Ima barely made out a few bright colors.

"What she up to?" she asked her sister.

"Don't you see what she put on the window, Ima? She got her one of them rainbow stickers! 'Member all them rainbow flags and stickers when we was living in the French Quarter?"

Ima gasped with such a start that she lurched forward with her walker and fell into the blinds. She grabbed them to steady herself, and they crashed to the floor. Barbie Fogg peered at the Clot sisters peering at her through the suddenly transparent kitchen window and waved at them as they scurried out of view.

"Lennie," Barbie called out when she walked through the mudroom into the kitchen, where her husband was rooting around inside the refrigerator. "You'll never guess what happened tonight."

"You're probably right," Lennie testily replied as he popped open a Budweiser. "And I'm not going to guess."

"A figure of speech." She said what she always did.

"What took you so long? I thought you'd be home hours ago."

"Traffic and those poor people in the nursing home," she said. "Oh, Lennie, I made a new girlfriend tonight and have a rainbow on my minivan!"

"What'd you do, drive through a thunderstorm and now you're gonna find a pot of gold?" Lennie gulped the beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"Are the girls asleep?" Barbie inquired as she looked inside the refrigerator, too, deciding she would celebrate her rainbow with a Mike's Hard Lemonade. "Wouldn't a pot of gold be wonderful?"

"Yeah, yeah. Listen," Lennie said, "you know, one of my clients has got extra tickets for Saturday night's race, and as you know, I got to be in Charlotte at that real estate conference. So you want the tickets, or should I give them to someone else?"

"I'll get a sitter and maybe take a girlfriend," Barbie replied, failing to add that she wouldn't miss a race for the world and was delighted that her husband couldn't go.

Barbie had a secret passion for driver Ricky Rudd, who had the most flawless creamy skin and cute blond hair. Whenever she saw pictures of him wearing that big Texaco star on the front of his colorful racing suit or watched his number 28 bright red Monte Carlo roar around on TV, she felt tingles all over her body and would send him another letter. She had been writing to him for years, sending him weekly epistles when he lived in North Carolina and then trying to figure out how she might get his phone number after he moved back to his home state of Virginia. He never answered, of course, but she believed he would if she didn't use a pen name and fail to include a return address.

Along with Ricky, Barbie enjoyed an obsession with Bo Mann, whom she'd noticed when he was driving the Monte Carlo pace car at the 2000 Chevrolet Monte Carlo 400 last year. When Barbie made numerous inquiries in the pits and begged for her photograph to be taken with Bo, she was clever enough to trick him into giving her his address.

"If I send you the photo with a stamped return envelope, will you autograph it?" she had said to Bo as they posed together in front of the pace car, after the race.

"Sign the envelope or the picture?" he had asked, and oh how Barbie loved a man with a sense of humor.

"I heard a man got blowed up by the river tonight," Lennie was saying. "I guess that means there's another psycho on the loose. Let's go to bed and have sex."

The lemonade was mounting straight to Barbie's head.

"Oh, dear," she sighed. "I don't think I'm up for it tonight, Lennie. I've got rainbows on the brain and just want to relax a little and bask in it, if you don't mind."

Lenny did mind. Frustrated, he finished the beer and got out another one. He popped the top and eyed his wife's trim figure. She spent so much time taking care of herself, but then she didn't want him to snatch her clothes off and explore what she worked so hard to maintain. It didn't make sense. Why does a woman bother looking good if she doesn't want sex?

"I think I need to check on the girls and go to bed," Barbie announced. "Oh my! This lemonade's making me swoon."

"Glad something does," he muttered as he thought of how seldom he complained about his wife's shopping sprees or what she spent on cosmetic surgery and injections and God knows what all she did when she visited that doctor of hers once a month. Lennie was good about sending her flowers, too, even when there was no special occasion, and he never complained about babysitting the twins, Mandie and Missie, who were almost five. He just wanted his wife to let him touch her and at least pretend she liked it or didn't mind.

Lennie got her another lemonade and helped himself to another beer. Getting her drunk used to work, but now all it did was make her groggy and distant.

"I can't keep on living like this," he said. "I work my ass off selling real estate and half the time come home and babysit while you visit with invalids or your lady friends up and down the street. Then you're too damn tired for me, or maybe you're just tired of me."

"A girl needs her girlfriends, you know." Barbie was having a hard time enunciating. "I don't think men understand about our need for our girlfriends. How many extra tickets did you get?"

"Yeah, well, maybe I need a girlfriend, too," he said in a sharper tone.

Barbie began to cry. She simply could not endure his temper or ugliness, and she wilted in the heat of his fury. "I don't know," she sobbed. "I'm sorry, Lennie. I try so hard to please you, honey. But ever since I turned forty, I just haven't felt like it, you know, like doing it at all. It's not your fault. I'm sure it can't be your fault. Maybe I need to see someone and talk about it."

"Oh God." Lennie rolled his eyes. "Now I'm going to pay for a therapist, I guess! And what sense does that make? Here you are a volunteer counselor. Why can't you talk to yourself?"

She cried harder and he felt awful. Lennie hugged her and begged her to be happy.

"You need to talk to someone, sweetpea, you go right ahead," he softly assured her. "I got two tickets and could probably get a few more from that General Motors executive who just retired down here and bought that big house on the river."

Andy and Hammer turned into the alleyway behind Freckles and noticed that all the streetlights were out. Trader, covered in filth, was sitting on a package by a Dumpster that was spilling over with sour-smelling garbage. Trader was out of ammunition and still fighting with his zipper, near hysterics and desperate to pee.

"For God's sake," Hammer said to her least favorite government official. "What the hell are you doing sitting out here on a package and firing a gun? And why is your suit so dirty?"

"My zipper's stoppered shut!" Trader exploded in rage.

Hammer bent over to inspect the problem as Andy noticed a woman lurking in the shadows a safe distance away.

"That's because you've managed to zip your underwear in it," Hammer said. "How'd the little slide get all dented up?"

"I been trying to shit it off!"

"Now settle down," Hammer ordered. "Let me see what I can do."

She touched Trader's zipper slide, careful not to touch anything else. Within seconds, she had unsnagged Trader's underwear and the zipper smiled open. Trader darted behind the Dumpster and began to pee like a horse.

"Jesus Christ," Andy said in disgust.

He inspected the package and shook his head as he counted five high-powered pistols and several boxes of ammunition.

"Looks like he's got all kinds of little businesses on the side," Andy said.

"Huh," Hammer remarked angrily. "What a disgrace."

"Hey!" Andy called out to the woman hanging back in the shadows, unable to make out anything except a silhouette of dreadlocks and high heels. "Come here!"

Hooter wobbled through the dirt, a little nervous that she might be in trouble, too, but not sure for what.

"Oh, I recognize you two," Hooter said in surprise. "You that woman police chief, only you ain't the chief no more 'cause you took over the troopers. And you the nice trooper who tried to help me when that man with the bag on his head tried to stick me up at the tollbooth last year," she declared to Andy.

"What do you know about this?" Andy nodded in the direction of Trader, who was still relieving himself.

"I just know I come out the bar and he was hopping around in the alleyway and then sat hisself on a package. Oh my Lord, look at all them guns! Why he was out here sitting on guns by a Dumpster, I'll never know. I told him it was dangerous, but he wouldn't get off the package and was holding hisself. So I don't know nothing more than that 'cept all a sudden he started shooting all over the place and I ran for cover and yelled for help."

"What were you doing out here in the alleyway?" Andy asked.

"Getting a little air."

"If you were getting a little air, then you must have been inside some place that didn't have much air. So where were you before you walked out here?" Andy inquired.

"Having me a little drink." She nodded at Freckles. "It was mighty smoky in there, 'specially 'cause that big trooper never puts one out without lighting up another one."

Andy immediately thought of Macovich. So did Hammer.

"Check to see if he's still in there," Hammer said to Andy.

He trotted around to the front of the small old neighborhood bar, and scores of bleary eyes turned on him as he walked through the door. Macovich was sitting in a booth by himself, drunk and sucking on another cigarette. Andy slid into the seat across from him.

"We just picked up Major Trader in the alleyway," he said. "Didn't you hear all those gunshots?"

"Thought they was car backfires," Macovich slurred through a cloud of smoke. "And I'm off duty," he sullenly added. "I know Trader was in the area, though. 'Cause he was sitting up there at the bar for a long time, drinking beers all by himself. Now, I didn't speak to him or draw no attention to myself."

"Did you notice him interacting with anyone or talking on the cell phone? Anything that might give you reason to believe he was here to meet someone and maybe buy a package of guns?"

"Wooo! Ain't nothing but trouble these days," Macovich said, turning a beer bottle in little circles on the table. "Much as I don't like that man, I can't say I saw him up to nothing."

"Then we can't prove he had anything to do with those guns," Andy said, disappointed. "At least not at the moment. And it's really not our jurisdiction to charge him with promiscuous shooting. The city police will have to do that, if they are so inclined. Were you in here with Hooter?"

"Wooo, that was a mistake. She don't hold her beer worth a damn and got nasty. That's what I get for picking up a toll lady."

Macovich tried to act as if he didn't care at all for Hooter. She was beneath him-a lowly tollbooth operator. So what if she got ugly and stormed out? He could find women every minute of the day, and he sure didn't need a tollbooth operator, senior or not.

"Guess I'd better give her a ride home," Macovich said. "She don't have a car."

"I think a better solution is for me to call both of you a cab," Andy replied. "But she may have some explaining to do to the police."

Hammer was asking Hooter about the police even as Andy said this.

"Are you the one who called them?" Hammer inquired. "Because somebody must have."

"I yelled up at all them helichoppers." Hooter looked up at a Black Hawk thundering overhead. "So I reckon one of them radioed for help."

"It's not possible that people in a helicopter heard you yelling down here," Hammer pointed out as Trader continued to splash the alleyway behind the Dumpster.

"Well, all I know is I was yelling up at them and waving my arms, so it had to be the helichoppers who called the police 'cause I didn't call nobody. I never heard nobody pee that long before, either." She stared off in the direction of the noise. "That one strange man. I think you better check him out. Bet he done other things that ain't right, you ask me. Maybe he's a homosensual, too, 'cause he was trying to shoot his privates off like he hate his manhood. So that probably mean he got AIDS and lots of dirty money in his pockets. I wouldn't touch him without gloves, you want my advice. I got a pair in my purse, you want to borrow 'em," she offered Hammer. "I figure you gonna have to lock him up," she added as Andy emerged from the back of Freckles.

"Trader was inside drinking," Andy told Hammer. "Macovich saw him. Did you?" he asked Hooter.

"I didn't notice him, if he was in there," Hooter replied. "There was too much smoke hanging over the table."

"I'll call the city police and see what they want to do," Andy said to Hammer. "But I don't think this is our case at the moment. And we need to get you a taxi," he added to Hooter.

"Now you listen," she said indignantly. "I ain't drunk."

"I didn't say you were. But you don't have a car."

"He got a car and is the reason I got here." She jutted her chin in the direction of Freckles, obviously referring to Macovich.

"He's in no condition to drive," Andy said. "He's had way too many beers and is in a bad mood. I think his feelings are hurt."

"Huh," Hooter said as interest lit up her eyes. "He too insens'tive to get his feelings hurt."

"That's simply not true," Andy replied. "Sometimes the biggest, toughest men are overly sensitive and keep everything inside. Maybe you can drive him home in his car?"

"Then what do I do?" she exclaimed. "I ain't staying with no man who still live with his mama!"

Cruz Morales would have given anything for his mother as he sped around half the night. At 3:00 A.M., he glanced around furtively as he shut a pay phone booth door and pulled out the dingy paper napkin the tollbooth lady had given him. She seemed like a nice enough person, and Cruz needed help. He was never going to make it out of the city in his Pontiac with its New York plates-not with cops and helicopters everywhere. Now he at least understood what all of the commotion was about.

While speeding away from the bar where that wild man was hopping around the Dumpster, Cruz heard on the radio that someone had been burned up down by the river and everyone was looking for a Hispanic suspect from New York who might be the serial killer that had been committing hate crimes that could be traced all the way back to a shooting at Jamestown, which was unsolved because some lady police person wasn't doing a good job, according to the governor. Cruz had no idea what all of this was about, but he was Hispanic, and he was at a loss as to how he had suddenly become a fugitive for crimes he knew nothing about. So he pulled into a 7-Eleven to make an urgent phone call. Cruz squinted at the napkin and noticed there were two phone numbers written down-one on one side, one on the other. He could have sworn the tollbooth lady had written down only one number, so what was the other one and which one was the right one? Cruz dropped a quarter in the pay phone and dialed the first number. After three rings, it was picked up.

"Hello?" a male voice asked.

"I look for the toll lady," Cruz said, assuming the toll lady must have a boyfriend.

"Who is this?"

"I can't tell you, but I have to talk to her. She say for me to call," Cruz said.

Andy was sitting at his computer, working on the next Trooper Truth essay, and he had a feeling the toll lady in question was Hooter. But why was anybody looking for her at his house?

"She's not here at the moment," Andy said, which was misleading but true.

Hooter had taken Macovich home, and what happened after that was anybody's guess. Then Andy had called the city cops, who came and got the package of handguns but decided not to arrest Trader with so little evidence to go on, especially since he was an important government official.

"But if we trace these guns back to you," one of the cops had said to Trader, "then you're in a shitload of trouble. I don't care who you work for. So I recommend you go on home and don't try to leave town or anything unwise like that."

"Of course I wouldn't leave town," Trader had lied. Remarkably, wires had reconnected inside his head and he was talking normally again. "I will be at work with the governor tomorrow, as usual."

"Well, I guess you'd better ask the governor that," Andy had told Trader. "He's not too happy with you right now."

"Nonsense," Trader had retorted. "We have always been on good terms, and in fact, he considers me his closest friend."

"Maybe he won't if Regina's blood work turns out in an unfortunate way for you, Trader," Andy had replied. "I understand from the news she was rushed to the E.R. a little while ago with a severe gastrointestinal attack that you and I both know was precipitated by cookies you were witnessed to bring into the mansion kitchen and set down on a countertop. You were overheard to say that the cookies were for the governor only, but Regina got into them anyway when no one was looking."

"No one's ever gotten ill from my wife's cookies," Trader had said.

"When she get back?" the unidentified person with a heavy Spanish accent was asking over the line.

"I'm not sure, but is there something I can help you with?" Andy tried to get this evasive, suspicious-sounding caller to talk.

"It's just I'm concern, you know? They say this Hi'panic kill someone at the river, and I didn't kill no one and the po-lice, they be looking for me." Cruz was out with it as he huddled in the phone booth and noticed a black Land Cruiser parking at the gas pumps.

"What makes you think the police are looking for you?" the man on the line asked.

"Because they stop me at the tollbooth and chase me for no reason. I had to hide and afraid for my life! The toll lady give me her number and say she help me."

Andy strained to figure out why Hooter would have given out his home phone number to a possible fugitive, and then he recalled working the Bag Man case last year.

"Maybe we should meet and discuss this," Andy suggested as he absently clicked the mouse and changed a word in the essay he would post momentarily. "There's no point in running from the police, even if you're innocent, because all you're going to do is create more legal problems for yourself. Why don't I meet you in a secure, safe place and we'll talk about it? I have connections and may be able to help you out."

Cruz was tempted and possibly would have done the smart thing and met whoever he was talking to, but an unforeseen event began to unfold right before his very eyes. Through the expansive plate glass of the 7-Eleven, he saw a white woman walk into the convenience store and appear to be asking the clerk for help. Then a white man with dreadlocks staggered in looking stoned, and whipped a pistol out from the inside of his coat and pointed it at the clerk, who was away from the counter and the emergency button that all convenience stores have these days. Cruz couldn't hear what the white man was saying, but he looked very mean and violent as he mouthed abusive words at the terrified clerk in her orange-checked 7-Eleven jacket. She began to cry and beg as the white man cleaned out the cash drawer. Then, to Cruz's horror, the woman with long black hair calmly took the dude's gun, put it right against the clerk's head, and fired repeatedly. The explosions shook the phone booth and Cruz yelped.

"What was that?" Andy asked, startled by what sounded like gunfire.

"Ahhh! This white dude with dreadlocks! They just shot the clerk!" the Hispanic yelled over the line and hung up.

Smoke? Andy wondered as he recalled the description of Smoke that the prison guard, Pinn, had given after Smoke had escaped. According to Andy's caller ID, the Hispanic had called from a 7-Eleven off Hull Street, south of the river, and Andy called 911 while Cruz jumped into his car and sped off.

Cruz was horrified not a minute later to notice that the black Land Cruiser was right on his rear bumper. He had learned to drive in New York City and swung into several alleyways, gunned through a side street, then another, and roared across a median and threaded his car precariously through others until he ended up on Three Chopt Road in the parking lot of what looked like a huge mansion with tennis courts.

A zipper, for those of you who may never have given the subject much thought, is also called a slide fastener and is a simple device for binding the edges of an opening, such as a fly, the back of a dress, or a freezer bag, although the latter is actually sealed by a zip lock that is more like gums-rather than teeth-clamping shut. The zipper device of interest to us consists of two strips of cloth, each with a row of metal or plastic teeth that interlock rather much like a railroad track when one pulls up the sliding piece. This railroad track then separates when one pulls down the sliding piece-unless the zipper gets off track or stubborn, which is what happened to that poisonous, lying Major Trader last night.

The first slide fastener recorded in history was exhibited in 1893 by Whitcomb L. Judson, at the World's Fair in Chicago. Mr. Judson called his awkward arrangement of hooks and eyes a clasp locker. Within a few years, Gideon Sundback, a Swedish immigrant and electrical engineer, improved the device by substituting spring clips for the hooks and eyes, and in 1913 produced the Hookless #2, although it wasn't called a zipper until BF

Goodrich coined the name in 1923, when the company manufactured zip-up overshoes.

It goes without saying that if we happened upon a zipper in what we thought was a colonial grave at Jamestown, then we could at least conclude with some assurance that the human remains were post-1913. Just to linger with this scenario another moment, let's assume that while I was uncovering a grave at the archaeological site, I had indeed unearthed a zipper in the pelvic area of the skeletal remains. I would have immediately pointed this out to one of the archaeologists, preferably Dr. Bill Kelso, who is Jamestown's chief archaeologist and an expert on colonial artifacts, including buttons.

"Dr. Kelso," I probably would have said, "look, a green stain in the dirt that is shaped exactly like a zipper. It's my interpretation that the green indicates a brass zipper that has eroded with time."

The esteemed archaeologist most likely would agree with me and point out that as brass and copper shroud pins erode, they also leave a green stain, but a pin leaves a pin-shaped stain that is easily distinguishable from a zipper shape. He would go on to tell me that the medieval pin might be made of iron topped by a pewter head that was occasionally inlaid with glass or a semiprecious stone. But most pins found at historical sites are made of drawn brass wire with a conical head that is another piece of wire turned three to five times at the top of the shank and then flattened by a blow. This method of making pins continued until 1824, when Lemuel W. Wright patented a solid-headed pin that was stamped out in a single process.

If we found a pin that was at least five inches long, then we would suspect we had a hairpin on our hands, and the person in the grave most likely was a female. If we found a safety pin, then the grave was post-1857. If we found a shroud pin, then the person in the grave had been reverently wrapped in a winding cloth when he or she was buried. Should we find brass wire fasteners for cloaks, then the grave may very well be seventeenth century. As for needles, Dr. Kelso would probably mention, we hardly ever find them because they rust unless they are made of bone, in which case we might conclude the remains were those of a rugmaker.

"What about thimbles?" I might ask Dr. Kelso as I gently brush soil away from the zipper stain in my grave.

"It varies," he could very well reply. "Depending on their usage."

Thimbles of the 1500s and early 1600s were squat and heavy, as a rule, and rarely decorative. Should I uncover a very tall thimble, most likely the grave was mid-seventeenth century, and if a thimble had a hole punched in it, very possibly it had been traded to a Plains Indian who had hung it on a thong as a tinkler to spruce up clothing and pouches. The early Native Americans had a great sense of style and very much enjoyed wearing beads, bits of copper, household implements, and heads and body parts of wooden dolls.

Most doll parts available to the Native Americans were cast in pipe clay from a two-piece mold. Highly prized by colonial boys were toy guns and cannons cast in pewter or brass and with fully drilled barrels, suggesting the little boys could shoot up James Fort if they pleased, or if a Native American got hold of such a toy and wore it on a thong, he might accidentally shoot himself in the foot or worse.

Sadly, I did not find any toys or toy parts during my research with the Jamestown archaeologists, nor was it my good luck to find coins or even a button, although I did find a number of musket balls and an arrowhead and the skeletal remains of a woman who had been a chronic pipe smoker and hadn't cut her hair in four to seven years.

In keeping with being a truthful narrator, I will state for the record that I did not find a zipper while excavating at Jamestown. But if I had, I most certainly would have recognized it on the spot and gathered abundant information from it.

To return to that scoundrel Major Trader, he is at large and unremorseful. He was last seen shooting a pistol behind Freckles and quite likely is still in the city, going about his nefarious business as usual. If you click on the small jail icon in the upper right-hand corner, you can view a recent photograph of him with Governor Crimm, who is the gentleman on the left holding a magnifying glass. Please do not confuse the two. The governor is a law-abiding man and I would like to take this opportunity to say the following to him:

I know it is a delicate subject, sir, but you really must do something about your eyesight, and I'd like to suggest either a guide dog or a guide horse. I actually think the latter is the best way to go because the wait for a mini-horse is not as long, they live much longer than a dog, and you already have a dog who might take exception to another dog. I have taken the liberty to inquire as to how you might get a minihorse, and I've found that one is available this very minute. He is housebroken and at ease in sneakers so he doesn't slip on smooth surfaces. He enjoys traveling in the back of the car or van, likes other pets and children, and his name is Trip, because he loves to travel. I have taken the liberty of e-mailing the breeders to hold little Trip for you and call your office with the information, which they have promised to do immediately.

On another subject, sir, someone should look into your butler's situation with the Department of Corrections. It has been brought to my attention that there may be a computer error and it is past time for your butler to be released from the prison system and work for you as a civilian instead of an inmate. And if I were you, I would look into Moses Custer's condition, too, and make sure he is in protective custody so his assailants don't hurt him again or worse. It is possible these same violent offenders struck again early this morning when a convenience store clerk was murdered, and they may even be connected to the brutal slaying of Trish Thrash.

Governor Crimm, it is time for you to show Virginians that you personally care about them and have no agenda other than what is best for the Commonwealth.

Be careful out there!