Waist Deep

17

The cabbie that picked me up jawed continuously on his HAM radio, pausing only long enough to ask my destination before resuming his chatter.

I stared out the window and tried to ignore his boisterous comments and loud chuckles.I was surprised when he threw out a few curses.I’d always thought that the FCC had strict rules about that.

I took stock of what I’d learned up at Fillmore High School. It wasn’t much, as far as I could tell. Most of Kris’s teachers were aware of her, but didn’t have any specific insight. Some had seemed harried, some bored. Only Marie Byrnes exuded any true warmth.

And then there was LeMond.He was tough to comprehend.I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something off. I tried to reach inside for that sense I used to have, years ago.It was a talent all cops have.All good cops, anyway. And I used to have it in spades.But I discovered that even if it was partially an innate ability, it was also a perishable skill.

I wanted badly to sniff LeMond out. What was his deal? I just didn’t know.

The cabbie took Ray Street down from the South Hill.I watched the houses flit by and I shifted in the seat as he went through the S curves near the bottom.I knew he was planning to take the freeway back downtown.It was the quickest way and that was his job, after all, but I didn’t feel like being there just now.Something about the sterile flow of cars at seventy miles per hour made my head hurt.

“Pull in here,” I said, motioning toward the 7-Eleven at 5^th and Thor.

The cabbie shot me a prickly look.“You said Browne’s Addition.”

“I know.I need to make a phone call, though.”

The cabbie slowed and pulled into the parking lot.“You can’t make it at home?” he muttered, not necessarily to me.

I ignored him.

He put the car into park and rattled off the fare.I’d been prepared to give him a decent tip, since I’d cut the trip short.But his attitude sucked, so when he gave me a look that asked if I wanted change, I nodded my head and took every cent.

“Asshole,” he muttered as I slid out of the back seat.

I closed the back door and he pulled away, his tires chirping.

I headed towards a bank of three public phones that stood outside the glass front doors of the 7-Eleven.

The neighborhood used to be one of the worst in town, one that I wouldn’t want to walk around at night without a gun and a lot of luck.The East Central community was heavily black, which in River City terms meant maybe forty percent.When I was in high school, one of my friends called it Little Harlem.Another guy I knew used terms that were a lot worse.

When I was a cop, I found a lot of action in East Central, but no more than in the East Sprague corridor or downtown or the lower South Hill.There were plenty of idiots and jerks to deal with that year in East Central and some of them were black, but I never got the impression that any of them were jerks because they were black, any more than the white jerks were doomed to be jerks and idiots due to their color.

But human nature is divisive and unless there is a bigger threat from without, men and women will begin to divide from within.So some blacks hate whites for things that their great-grandfathers endured and some whites hate blacks for the same reason.

I should know.The scars on the front and back of my left shoulder, on my left arm and my left knee all came courtesy of a black gangbanger named Isaiah Morris.He’d hated me, though if it was because I was white or because I was a cop or both, I couldn’t say.One warm night in August eleven years ago, he’d ambushed me along with one of his flunkies right as I stumbled upon a robbery in progress at a Circle K convenience store.

My knee throbbed slightly as if disturbed by my recollection.

“The Shoot-out at the Circle K,” they called it later, as if in some strange homage to the OK Corral.But I was no Wyatt Earp.I managed to shoot and wound the robber as he exited the store, but Morris and his crony shot me up from behind at almost the same time.I’d fired back as Morris walked up to finish me off.Then Officer Thomas Chisolm arrived.He cuffed a dying Morris and took off after the robber.I heard later that the robber had fought with Chisolm and Chisolm had broken his neck.

If anyone was like Wyatt Earp, it was Thomas Chisolm.

The memory caused a bittersweet pang to well up in my chest.I forced it down, patting my pockets for change.

After the shooting, for a brief time, I was the darling of the department.A young cop with stones.Proven by fire.I had the respect of those who’d been through it before and the admiration of those who hadn’t yet.

Within the year, that was all gone.

I ground my teeth, telling myself it was because I didn’t have any change and not because I was thinking about things better left alone.

The bell dinged as I stepped through the glass doors.Warm air and the slight odor of refrigeration washed over me.A white guy in his forties stood behind the counter in his green uniform shirt, eyeing me with a mixture of boredom and suspicion.

I laid a dollar on the counter.“Get some change for the phone?”

He glanced at the crumpled bill and back up at me.“You gotta buy something,” he said simply.

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head no.“Store policy.”

I looked at his stringy hair and two day’s growth of beard on his cheeks.His eyes were still suspicious, but no longer bored.I tried to imagine his work days for a moment, filled with people buying beer and cigarettes, harried travelers stepping off of eastbound I-90, kids coming in for candy, the constant threat of shoplifters and gas drive-offs.

And don’t forget armed robbers, I thought with a touch of both irony and sarcasm.

A name tag hung sloppily above his left shirt pocket.His name was Don.And Don was not going make any exceptions for me.

I went to the cooler and pulled a plastic bottle of 7-UP from the shelf.“7-UP from the 7-Eleven,” I hummed to myself, wandering into another aisle and wondering why some ad guys hadn’t come up with it before.

I thought about getting a Snickers bar, but grabbed a packet of two aspirin instead.Don’s eyes had lost their suspicion and were just bored again by the time I set the bottle of soda and the aspirin packet on the counter.He rang up both items, announced the total and I handed him a pair of dollar bills.He returned my change.

“It’s a nice racket,” I told him.

“What’s that?”

“The whole not giving change policy.”I held up the drink and the aspirin.“You made a whole dollar-sixty-one for the company.”

Don’s eyes narrowed a little.“You some kind of smart ass?”

I shrugged.“I’m just sayin’.”

Don regarded me for another moment or two, his dull eyes simmering with anger.“It’s not my policy, all right?It’s store policy.And I’m on video, all shift long.Okay?”

I held my hands up.“Mea culpa,” I told him.When he didn’t respond right away, I added, “My fault.”

The anger in his eyes softened back into boredom.“Yeah,” was all he said.

I walked outside, the door dinging behind me.The pop bottle hissed when I cracked it open.I threw the two aspirin to the back of my throat and washed them down with a long draft of 7-UP.I leaned against the telephone bank and sat the bottle on the shelf.

With my eyes closed, I breathed deep through my nose.The odor of spilled motor oil and beer rose from the parking lot, but the even stronger smell of watery trash came from the dumpster that I knew was around the corner of the building.I suppressed a cough.

Inside my chest, my heart pounded harder and harder.A flash of white-hot shame shot through me and melted into anger a moment later.I pushed it away.I couldn’t be mad and I couldn’t be sad.Not if I was going to call her.

The receiver sat in its cradle.I could see my shadowy, dull reflection in the hard black plastic.The silver face of the payphone warped my features like a funhouse mirror.

I picked up the phone and dropped in my coins.I didn’t know her direct extension.She’d been promoted a few years ago.It’d been four or five years since I’d called her and that had been at her home.The next time I dialed her number, it was disconnected.I wasn’t surprised.

I dialed the front desk of the investigations unit.Glenda picked up the phone on the second ring, her cheery voice almost singing, “Investigations, Glenda.”

“Detective McLeod, please.”I tried to keep my voice as flat as possible.I doubted she would, or could, recognize my voice, but with Glenda, you never know.

“One moment.I’ll transfer you.”

“Thanks.Uh, what’s her direct line?” I asked.

She gave it to me immediately from memory and I repeated it in my head while the line clicked once and then rang.My heart pounded faster and despite the cold, a small trickle of sweat ran down my left armpit.I clamped my elbow down on it.

It connected on the fourth ring.I felt a brief moment of panic and a small catch in my throat at the sound of her voice before I realized it was her voice mail.

“Hello.You’ve reached Detective Katie McLeod of the River City Police Department.I’m unable to take your call right now, but please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.If this is in reference to an active case, please include your case number.Thanks for calling.”

Her voice sounded professional and detached until the end when it lilted almost girlishly during the words “thanks for calling.”

There was a tone and I knew I had four minutes of digital space to leave my message.

“Hi, Katie,” I began.“It’s, uh, it’s Stef.”

I paused, wondering what to say next.

Hey, I know I screwed up as a cop and I know I messed up with us more than once, but hey! I need a favor.

I tried to swallow but my throat was dry. I wished I’d taken a another swig of the soda.No time now. I pressed on before I lost my nerve.“I’m trying to help an old friend find his runaway daughter as a favor.I was wondering…I was wondering if you might be able to help me out a little.With some information.”

I imagined her face while she listened to this message.The image hurt.

No stopping now, I thought.I rattled off Kris Sinderling’s name and birthdate, as well as Matt’s.On a whim, I threw in Gary LeMond’s, too.All she could do was say no.

“Anyway, if you can, that’s great.If not, I understand.You can call me back at-“ I looked for the number on the payphone.In the place of a number was a bold message that read, “No Incoming Calls.”

Years ago, pay phones in high drug traffic areas were used to make drug deals so often that the police department and the communities asked the phone company to turn off the function for incoming calls.A few years later, cell phones became so prominent and inexpensive that the practice tapered off, but some phones still had that limitation.

I glanced quickly at the other two phones and saw the same bold message.

“Damn,” I said out loud.When I realized that I said it directly into the phone I almost repeated the word.

“This phone doesn’t take incoming calls.Listen, uh, I’m going to walk over to Polly’s Cafe.I’ll stay through lunch.If you can make it, you can.If not, like I said, I understand.Maybe I’ll try you back tomorrow or something.”

I paused again, words sticking in my throat, just like they always did when it came to her.Finally, I said a hurried “thanks” and hung up.