Southern Cross

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Governor Feuer neatly folded the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today and the Richmond paper. He stacked them on the black carpet and stared out the tinted window at pedestrians staring at him.

Everyone knew that a black stretch limousine with 1 on the license plate was not Jimmy Dean or Ralph Sampson. It was not kids going to the prom.

'Sir?' Jed said over the intercom. 'I'll just shoot over on Tenth, cut across Broad to avoid all that traffic, then wind around the courthouse onto Leigh and get on Belvidere. From there it's pretty much a straight shot into the cemetery.'

'Ummmm.'

'If that suits, sir,' added Jed, who was obsessive-compulsive and needy.

'That's fine,' said the governor, who had worked his way up from attorney general to lieutenant governor to governor, and therefore had not navigated Richmond's streets alone for more than eight years, but rather had watched his travels throughout his beloved Commonwealth from a back seat through tinted glass, police escorts leading the way and protecting his rear.

'I've got the package,' Jed said loudly in his two-way, secure radio. 'Going to be turning on Tenth.'

'Gotcha covered,' the lead car came back.

The altercation between Patty Passman and Officer Rhoad had gone beyond a squabble or fit of pique that might have been reasonably resolved, forgiven or perhaps forgotten.

Cars were double-parked and parked on an angle and within fifteen feet of a fire hydrant and on the wrong side of the street and on the sidewalk along 10th. Drivers and pedestrians had gathered around a fight in progress as police cruisers with sirens screaming and lights flashing raced in from all directions.

Passman had Rhoad on hold. He was running around in circles, screaming 'MAYDAY' into his portable radio while she twisted and squeezed.

'God! God!' Rhoad shrieked as she doggedly followed his every move, on his heels, killing him. 'Let go! Please! Please! Ahhhhhhhhh! AHHHHHHHH!'

The crowd was frenzied.

'Go, girlfriend!'

'Yank it hard!'

'Get him!'

'In the nuts! Hooo-a hooo-a hooo-a!'

'Hey! Punch her! Man, fucking poke her eyes out!'

'Yeah! Knock her nose to the back of her head so she can smell her ass!'

'Pull that banana off the tree, girlfriend!'

'Shift him into neutral, baby!'

'Let go, fatso!'

'Untie his balloon!'

'Go, girl!'

The crowd cheered on as a gleaming black stretch limousine and two unmarked black Caprices with multiple antennas floated across Broad Street. The convoy pulled off to the side of 10th Street, making way for two cruisers with flashing lights and screaming sirens. Other police cars were screeching in from Marshall and Leigh. A fire truck wailed and rumbled along Clay.

Jed was desperate to jump out of the limousine and get involved. The cops must be after a fugitive, someone on the FBI's ten most wanted list, maybe a serial killer. Clearly, the fat lady was a psycho of some sort, and it was obvious that the uniformed officers could not restrain her.

'What's going on?' Governor Feuer inquired over the intercom.

'Some wacko woman, probably high on PCP or crack. Wow, look at her go, like a damn pit bull! She's got half a dozen cops playing Ring Around the Rosie and falling on their butts!'

The governor made his way to the other side of the black leather horseshoe-shaped seat that could comfortably accommodate six. He strained to see over the back of Jed's big head.

Governor Feuer was startled by the obese woman flying after a tall, rather elderly skinny cop. A pair of handcuffs dangled off one of her wrists and her free hand was shoved up the poor fellow's crotch. She was twisting and crushing, cursing, kicking. She was whirling and swinging the loose handcuff like a numchaku, scattering arriving troops.

'Wow!' Jed exclaimed.

'How awful,' said the governor. 'How perfectly awful.'

'We need to do something, sir!'

Governor Feuer agreed, his anger rising. There was nothing funny about this. There was nothing entertaining about violence. He jerked open his car door. Before Jed or EPU police could stop him, the governor popped the trunk and snatched out a fire extinguisher.

He ran into the melee and to the astonishment of all blasted Patty Passman with Halon 1301. Shocked, she released Rhoad. Cops tackled her to the ground. Four EPU police officers quickly escorted Governor Feuer back to his limousine.

'Way to go, sir!' Jed was very proud of his commander-in-chief.

The governor checked his black cashmere pinstripe suit for a Halon residue, but the miracle extinguisher left not a trace. He watched the cuffed, crazed woman as she was stuffed into the back of a patrol car. The poor officer was on his knees in the middle of the street, clutching himself and crying. The media was rolling in, advancing with television cameras and microphones like drawn swords. 'On to Hollywood,' Governor Feuer ordered. 'There's really not time, sir,' Jed suggested. 'There's never time,' the governor said, waving him on.

Weed decided he had stayed long enough in the big hole with broken clay pipes in the bottom of it. Water was leaking from somewhere. A Bob Cat was parked nearby and lots of shovels and hoes were scattered on the ground.

He had begun to worry that the hole was really a grave, even though it wasn't at all shaped like one. Maybe everybody was on an early lunch break or something. Maybe all of a sudden dirt would start falling in and Weed would be buried alive.

He peeked out and didn't see a sign of Brazil or anyone else. He listened hard. Only birds were talking. He climbed out of the hole and made a dash for the cemetery fence. He climbed to the top of it as the Lemans slowly cruised into view. Dog, Beeper and Sick were looking for him so Smoke could shoot Weed and dump him in the river. Weed dropped back inside the cemetery and ran with no particular destination in mind, zigzagging around graves and leaping over monuments.

Brazil too was running fast and could have continued his seven-minute-mile pace for hours, although boots would not have been his footwear of choice and his shins were beginning to hurt. The more frustrated he got, the faster he ran.

He cut over to Riverview, flying past memorials, monuments, plaques, sculptures, vases and tablets. Tiny Confederate flags waved him on. A groundskeeper with extra spools of nylon twine tied on his belt trimmed around stones, the weed-eater popping and buzzing as he maneuvered it with the skill of a surgeon.

'You seen a kid in Chicago Bulls stuff?' Brazil called out as he got close.

'Like the statue?'

'Only smaller,' Brazil said, running past.

'Nope,' the groundskeeper said as he trimmed.

Brazil wove between a marble lamb and a mausoleum, jumped over an English boxwood and to his amazement landed almost on top of Weed. Brazil grabbed him by the back of his jersey, kicked his feet out from under him and sat on him. He pinned Weed's arms to the ground.

'I changed my mind,' Weed yelled. 'You can lock me up.'

Bubba had lost control and it was obvious to all. He was humiliated and sick to his stomach when Officer Budget opened the back of the patrol car and exclaimed, 'Shit, man.' Bubba felt sure one more hideous nickname had just been added to the list.

'I'm sorry,' Bubba said. 'But I told you…' 'Man, oh man!' Budget cried.

He was beside himself, almost gagging as he unlocked Bubba's handcuffs while Chief Hammer and West looked on.

'And just who's going to clean this up! Man, oh man! I can't believe it!'

Bubba's shame could not have been deeper. He had been so certain it was his destiny for his path to cross with Hammer's. But not like this. Not half naked, dirty, fat and soiled. He could not look at her.

'Officer Budget,' Hammer said flatly, 'if you'll just leave me alone with him for a few minutes, please. Major West? I'll meet you behind the Kmart?'

'We'll let you know what the medical examiner says,' Budget told Hammer, 'in case you don't get there before he leaves.'

'She,' West corrected him.

Hammer turned her attention to Bubba. He was stunned that she did not seem to notice his unspeakable predicament.

'Chief Hammer?' he stammered. 'I, uh…' He swallowed hard. 'I didn't mean…'

She held up a hand to silence him.

'Don't worry about it,' she told him.

'How can I not!' he cried. 'And all I wanted to do was help!'

'Help who?'

She seemed interested and sincere. Bubba hadn't realized she was so attractive, not in a pretty way, but strong and striking in her pinstripe pants suit. He wondered if she had a gun. Maybe she carried one in her black handbag. His thoughts moiled crazily as the wind shifted to Hammer's disadvantage. She moved several feet to her right.

'Who is it you're trying to help?' she asked. 'The woman who just got murdered? Did you see something, Mr. Fluck?'

'Oh my God!' Bubba was shocked. 'A lady was just murdered, right here! When?'

'While you were parked here, Mr. Fluck.'

Bubba's bowels were irritably gathering again, like dark clouds about to release another lashing, violent storm. He thought of his sweaty tee shirt, covered with blood and on its way to the police labs.

'You sure you didn't see anything?' The chief continued to press.

'My Anaconda was hung,' he answered.

She just stared at him.

'I couldn't get it off,' he said.

Still, she said nothing.

'So I got down and started tugging on it, you know, manipulating it as best I could. See, I was afraid it might go off. Then I got a nosebleed.'

'This was when?' Hammer asked.

'I guess when the lady got killed. I swear. I was on the floor ever since Officer Budget left me. That's all I was doing until he was knocking on my window. I couldn't have seen anything, because I was on the floor, is what I'm saying, ma'am.'

He couldn't tell if she believed him. There was nothing cruel or disrespectful about her demeanor, but she was shrewd and very smart. Bubba was in awe of her. For a moment he forgot his plight until Channel 8's cameraman trotted toward them, heading straight for the chief, then getting a disgusted look on his face. He stared at Bubba's camouflage pants and changed course.

'It appears the victim was robbed right here at the money stop,' Hammer spoke to Bubba. 'I'm not telling you anything confidential. I'm sure you'll be hearing all about it on the news. You were parked less than fifty feet from the money stop, Mr. Fluck. Are you absolutely certain you didn't hear anything? Maybe voices, arguing, a car or cars?'

Bubba thought hard. Channel 6 headed toward them and quickly went the other way. Bubba would have done anything to help this brave woman, and it broke his heart that the one time he had a chance, he could do nothing but stink.

'Shit,' muttered a WRVA reporter as he stopped and backed up. 'Wouldn't go over there if I was you,' he said to a crew from Channel 12.

'What's going on?' Style Magazine called out to Richmond Magazine. 'A sewer line break?'

'Hell if I know. Shit, man.'

Bubba went on red alert.

'"Shit man" is right.' A Times-Dispatch reporter waved his hand in front of his face.

Bubba's blood heated up. He didn't hear a word Chief Hammer was saying to him. Bubba was completely focused on the knot of reporters, cameramen, photographers and technicians gathered by his Jeep. They were restless and angry, talking and bitching loudly amongst themselves and calling him Shit Man.

'Anybody seen what's going on back there behind the building?'

'They won't let anybody close.'

'You can forget it. The minute you get to the garden center, the cops push you back.'

'Yeah, one asshole put his hand over my lens.'

'Shit, man.'

Bubba's mind whited out the way it always did when he heard the voices and the laughter shrieking from dangerous, painful convolutions in his brain. He saw a legion of little faces distorted by taunts and cruel grins.

'My editor's gonna kill me. Shit, man!'

'Stop It!' Bubba screamed at the press.

His eyes suddenly focused. Hammer was staring at him, rather startled. The media wasn't interested.

'Maybe the body's decomposing,' one of them was saying.

'It's back behind the store.'

'Could've been here first. Maybe they moved it for some reason.'

'That wouldn't make sense.'

'Well, they wouldn't want to leave it here right in front of the bank.'

'No way it could have been here long enough to decompose without someone spotting it before this morning.'

'Oh, so now you're a medical examiner.'

'Maybe it was dumped. You know, the victim's been dead for a while, is getting ripe and the killer dumps her.'

'It's a her?" 'Maybe.'

'Dumps her here?'

'I'm just throwing things out.'

'Yeah, asshole, 'cause you want the rest of us to write them down and make fools out of ourselves.'

Then what stinks so bad?'

'Chief Hammer?' A reporter raised his voice without getting any closer. 'Can I get a statement?'

'Don't talk to them!' Bubba said to her in a panic. 'Don't let them do this to me! Please!" 'Truth is, I think our source is him,' a reporter broke the news. 'Look at his pants. Not all of that's camouflage.'

'Shit, man.'

'See!' Bubba hissed.

'How can she stand there like that? It's bad enough way back here.'

'I've heard she's tough.'

'I'm interested in your vanity plate,' Hammer said to Bubba.

Officer Horace Cutchins wasn't interested in anything except his pocket Game Boy Tetris Plus as he drove the detention wagon at a good clip along Leigh Street.

He'd been on duty only three hours and had already transported two subjects to lockup, both of them gypsies caught burglarizing a Tudor-style home in Windsor Farms. Cutchins didn't understand why people didn't learn.

Gypsies passed through the city twice a year on their migrations north and south. Everyone knew it. The press ran frequent stories and columns. Sergeant Rink of Crime Stoppers offered impassioned warnings and prevention and self-defense tips on all local television networks and radio stations. 'Gypsies Are Back' signs were prominently posted as usual.

Yet wealthy Windsor Farmers, as Cutchins jealously called them, still went out to get the newspaper or worked in their gardens and yards or sat by their pools or chatted with neighbors or frapped around the house with alarm systems off and doors unlocked. So what did they expect?

Cutchins was just turning into Engine Company #5's back parking lot, where he was looking forward to resuming his puzzle game, when the radio raised him.

'Ten-25 unit 112 on Tenth Street to 10-31 a prisoner,' the communications officer told him.

'Ten-4,' he answered. 'Fuck,' he said to himself.

He'd heard the mayday earlier and knew that Rhoad Hog was involved in an altercation with a disorderly female. But when it appeared that an arrest had been made, Cutchins just assumed the subject would be transported in a screen unit.

After all, it wasn't likely that a female could kick out the Plexiglas, and even if the partition didn't fit right because the numb nuts with General Services had taken one from a Caprice, for example, and retrofitted it for a Crown Vic, it didn't matter in this case. A female prisoner was not equipped to pee on the officer through gaps and spaces caused by improper installment.

Cutchins made a U turn. He shot back out on Leigh Street, stepping on it, wanting to get the call over with so he could take a break. He swung over to 10th and rolled up on the problem as Detective Gloria De Souza climbed out of her unmarked car.

Rhoad Hog and three other uniformed guys were waiting for Cutchins, their prisoner an ugly fat woman who looked vaguely familiar. She was sitting on the curb, wrists cuffed behind her back, hair wild. She was breathing hard and looked like she might do something unexpected any minute.

'Okay, Miss Passman, I'm going to have to search you,' said Detective De Souza. 'I need you to stand up.'

Miss Passman didn't budge.

'Cooperate, Patty,' one of the officers urged her.

She wouldn't.

'Ma'am, you're going to need to stand up. Now don't make this harder than it has to be.'

Passman wasn't trying to make things harder. She simply could not rise to the occasion on her own, not with her hands shackled behind her.

'Get up,' De Souza said sternly.

'I can't,' Passman replied.

'Then we'll have to help you, ma'am.'

'Go ahead,' Passman said.

De Souza and another officer got Passman under each arm and hoisted her up while Rhoad hung back at a safe distance. Cutchins hopped out of his white Dodge van and went around to the back to open the tailgate. De Souza bent over and briskly slid her hands up Passman's stout legs, over sagging pantyhose with runs, feeling her way up into areas where no woman, other than Passman's gynecologist, had ever gone before. Passman tried to kick De Souza and almost fell.

'Get the flex cuffs!' De Souza demanded as she held Passman's legs still. 'You do that again, ma'am, and I'm gonna hogtie you!'

De Souza held on as an officer looped the plastic flex cuff around Passman's ankles, jerking it tight as if she were a tall kitchen bag.

'Ouch!'

'Hold still!'

'That hurts!' Passman screamed.

'Good!' Rhoad cheered.

Detective De Souza resumed her search, running experienced hands over Passman's topography, into its crevices, through its canyons, between its foothills and under and over them while Passman cursed and yelled and called her a diesel dyke and cops helped Passman to her feet.

'Get your fucking hands off me, you queer!' Passman shouted. 'That's right! You sleep with the coach of your fucking queer softball team the Clit Hits and everybody in the entire police department and radio room knows it!'

Cutchins momentarily forgot his puzzle game. He'd always thought it a waste that a good-looking woman like De Souza was into same, not that he minded lesbians, and in fact watched them whenever he had access to pay TV.

He simply objected to discrimination. De Souza did not share herself with men, and Cutchins didn't think that was fair.

'Nothing on her but an attitude,' De Souza said.

Unfortunately, Cutchins had parked on the other side of 10th and it was shift change at the Medical College of Virginia hospital. Instantly, traffic was heavy, sidewalks and streets congested with nurses, dietitians, orderlies, custodians, security guards, administrators, resident doctors and chaplains, all of them worn out, underpaid and cranky. Cars stopped to let the tied-up lady and the cops cross to the awaiting wagon. Pedestrians slowed their impatient get-out-of-my-way steps as Passman hopped ahead awkwardly.

'Fuckheads! What are you staring at!' she yelled to all.

'Go jump!' a secretary yelled back.

'Jumpin' Jack Flash! Jumpin' Jack Flash! Jumpin' Jack Flash!' chanted a group of sleep-deprived residents.

'Hop-a-long!'

'Motherfuckers!' screamed Passman, whose blood sugar was as low as it had ever been while she was conscious.

'Jumpin' bean!' cried a records clerk.

Passman struggled, writhing like a python, hissing and baring her teeth at her detractors. Officers did their best to move her along while bystanders and drivers got more worked up and Rhoad tagged along out of range.

Pigeon had gotten bored with the cemetery and was rooting through a trash can, where so far he had salvaged part of a 7-Eleven breakfast burrito and a twenty-two-ounce cup of coffee that was half full.

He watched the heartless parade pass by, some woman hopping along as if she were in a sack race. He suddenly felt self-conscious of his stump and was angered by the crowd.

'Don't pay any attention to them,' he counseled the fat lady as she hopped past and he took a bite of the burrito. 'People are so rude these days.'

'Shut up, you crippled garbage-picker!' the woman yelled at him.

Pigeon was sorrowed by yet another rotten example of human nature. He continued his treasure hunting, always drawn by crowds that might throw things away.

De Souza gripped Passman's arm like a vise. 'He started it!' Passman twisted around to glare at Rhoad. 'Why don't you lock his ass up!'

Cops shoved her inside the wagon and slammed the tailgate shut.

It was Chief Hammer's NIJ mission to implement the New York City Crime Control Model in the Richmond Police Department, as she had in Charlotte and would do in other cities should health, energy and grant money allow. Understandably, this created a bit of a dilemma for her.

She was losing stamina and professionalism as she stood close to Bubba and listened to him talk. She wanted out but simply could not and would never pass the buck, look the other way, walk off and make this a problem for someone else. Hammer was here, and that was that. When a cop asks a suspect a question, the cop must listen to the answer, no matter how long and drawn-out it is.

Bubba was telling her about his vanity plate, recalling his trip to the DMV on Johnston Willis Drive, between Whitten Brothers Jeep and Dick Straus Ford, where he had waited in line at customer service for fifty-seven minutes only to learn that BUBBA was taken, as were BUBA, BUBBBA, BUUBBBA, BUBEH, BUBBEH, BUBBBEH, BG-BUBA, BHUBBA and BHUBA. Bubba had been crushed and exhausted. He could think of nothing else that didn't exceed seven letters. Despondent and emotionally drained, he had accepted that the vanity plate was not meant to be.

'Then,' he seemed momentarily energized by the tireless account, 'the lady at the counter said Bubah would work, and I asked if I could hyphenate it and she didn't care because a hyphen doesn't count as a letter and that was good because I thought it would be easier to pronounce Bubah with a hyphen.'

Hammer believed that Bubba had an accomplice named Smudge, and a graphic and believable scenario was materializing in her mind even as Bubba droned on and reporters continued to keep their distance. Bubba and Smudge somehow knew that Ruby Sink and Loraine were headed to the First Union money stop near the Kmart.

Possibly the men had been lying in wait for the wealthy Miss Sink, headlights and engines off, and when she left her residence, Smudge and Bubba tailed her, weaving in and out of traffic, keeping tabs on each other over cell phones and CBs.

It was at this point that Hammer's re-creation of the crime became less well defined. Frankly, she couldn't figure out what might have happened next and was not the sort to make things up. Yet she simply could not, would not walk away with no accountability and tell her troops the murder was their problem.

Somehow, Hammer had to get Bubba to answer the question of Smudge without Bubba thinking she had asked.