Inheritance: A Novel Part 30

"Too far right and short," Paul said.

Mike loaded the slingshot again and let his second shot fly. It went straight, but too long. It hit the side of the building behind the police cars and made a loud cracking sound that ripped through the quiet night air like a shotgun blast.

Collins snickered and said, "Oh s.h.i.+t. That was loud."

"Do it again," Wes said. The small gap between his round eyes was creased with laugh lines. "One more time."

But they didn't get the chance. Before any of them could get back into position, they were interrupted by Barris' panicked voice on the radio.

"44-50," he said, and didn't wait for the dispatcher to respond. "I got shots fired. Shots fired! Eighteen hundred block of Court Street. Unknown direction."

Collins and Mike looked at each other, then back at Mike. Mike just stood there, his mouth hanging open.

"Oh that f.u.c.king idiot," Mike said. "I can't believe he did-"

The dispatcher set off a city-wide emergency tone that drowned out the rest of Mike's sentence. Then her calm, businesslike voice came over the radio. "I have 44-50 out with shots fired in the eighteen hundred block of Court. Cover is Code Three. 44-60, 44-70, 44-40, start that way."

Before any of them could answer, Garwin got on the radio. He sounded strangely calm. "44-100, I'm ten-six with 44-50."

They all looked at Mike, who was staring at the two police cars below them and shaking his head.

"Mike?" Wes said.

Mike said, "One of you get on the radio and tell them that-"

But he was cut off by a second emergency tone. Their dispatcher came on the radio again and said, "9217 Lincoln for a robbery of an individual. 9217 Lincoln in 44-70's district, clearing all but East." There was a pause as the dispatcher switched from the all-route citywide channel to the dedicated East Patrol channel. When she spoke again, her voice was as calm as ever, almost bored. "44-80, I know you're on break but you're all I've got. Start that way, Code Three. I'll get you some cover as soon as I can."

"10-4," said a rather irritated-sounding officer. "Coming from a long ways off."

Paul looked at Mike for guidance. Lincoln ran right through their little heroin town off of F.M. 78. Lots of dope, lots of guns, lots of messy calls.

"Mike?" he said.

Mike turned away from Seles, Barris, and Garwin's cars. To Wes, he said, "Tell them a bunch of kids did it. The robbery's in our square. Paul and I will take that."

Wes looked doubtful, but he cleared his throat and keyed up his radio anyway.

"44-60," he said.

Looking at Mike with an okay, here it goes expression, he said, "44-60, tell 44-50 and 44-100 no shots fired. Repeat, no shots fired. It's just some kids with a water balloon shooter. I saw them running east of Court towards Mittman."

The pause that followed seemed to go on forever. Finally, the dispatcher spoke. "44-100, do you copy that, sir?"

"10-4," Garwin answered.

Another long uncomfortable silence followed.

"44-70," Mike said.

"Go ahead, 44-70," the dispatcher said.

"44-70, if that's gonna be a bogus call, we'll be on the way to 9217 Lincoln for that robbery of an individual."

"10-4," the dispatcher said. "44-100, do you copy?"

"I copy, 44-100," said Garwin. "Have 44-70 divert. And ask 44-60 if they've still got those kids in sight."

Wes looked at Mike. Mike shook his head.

"Uh, negative, 44-60," Wes said. "We lost them."

"Okay," Mike said. "We're outta here. Paul, get in the car. I'm driving."

Paul didn't argue. He got in the pa.s.senger seat and a moment later he was holding onto the dashboard for dear life as Mike gunned the Crown Victoria down the steep slope of the drive and out onto the street.

Over the howling of the Ford's engine, Paul heard Garwin's voice on the radio.

"44-100, have 44-60 make my location."

"s.h.i.+t," Mike said.

"10-4," the dispatcher said. "44-60?"

There was a long pause before Wes answered. "44-60, 10-4. Can you ask 44-100 for his twenty, ma'am?"

"44-100?"

Garwin said, "44-100, tell him to get down here now! He doesn't need my twenty because he knows exactly where I'm at."

"Oh s.h.i.+t," Mike said.

"44-60, you copy?" the dispatcher asked.

"10-4," Wes answered, and when he spoke again he sounded like a condemned man being led to the gallows. "We're on the way."

Two hours later, the four of them were together again, sitting at an open-air picnic table behind an all-night grease pit called The Cave. It served burgers, fries, and fried chicken, and, according to Mike at least, was just about the only place in the whole 44 section where they could go to eat and be reasonably sure the cooks weren't doing something obscene to their food before they served it.

But, like everything else on the east side, the Cave was an eyesore. Gra.s.s grew up through cracks in the concrete. Graffiti was scrawled all over the fence that circled the lot. Burglar bars sealed every window and door in sight. And he was pretty sure he'd seen rats or mice running around behind the Dumpster not twenty feet from them.

Paul looked around the table. Wes was smiling that creepy smile of his at him. Collins was p.i.s.sed off, as usual, and pus.h.i.+ng his French fries around in a puddle of ketchup. Mike was eating a hamburger that oozed mustard and wilted lettuce and seemed as happy doing it as a goat munching clover.

Paul watched them, listened to them, and he thought about Collins. Mike he was beginning to understand. Wes, too, in a way. But not Collins. He was a contradiction in so many ways. He loved being a policeman, but he obviously felt like he deserved something better. He thought policemen were the only members of the human species worth bearing the name human, and yet he hated most of the cops he worked with-like Barris and Seles and Garwin. He was constantly complaining about how bad the Department sucked, and yet his b.i.t.c.hing and moaning provided an outlet for the others and in the process, and ironically, Paul realized, raised everybody's morale.

"44-70," said the dispatcher.

Mike was holding some fries in one hand, his radio on the table in front of him. "Go ahead, 44-70," he said.

"44-70, make 1212 Formund Street for a s.e.xual a.s.sault report." There was a slight pause, and Paul could have sworn he heard laughter behind the dispatcher's ordinarily gla.s.sy voice. "Your complainant states his girlfriend has done something to his p.e.n.i.s. Unknown what."

Mike put down his fries when he heard the part about the guy's p.e.n.i.s. "Why do they do this to me," he said, sounding thoroughly hara.s.sed. "10-4," he said into his radio. "We're on the way, ma'am."

The house they responded to was about the size and shape of a school bus. It had once been white, and there were still traces of a canary yellow trim around the roofline and around the front door, but years of neglect had turned large patches of the outside to gray, and the front porch had a rotted sag to one side that reminded Paul of the brim of an old hat. The lawn was a weed patch. There was what looked like a broken down and thoroughly rusted Trans Am up on blocks in the front lawn. In the driveway was an old Chevy pickup with metal racks in the bed that held paint-splattered buckets and a few ladders.

They parked in the street, but almost as soon as they got out, a tall, gaunt-looking white guy in loose fitting blue jeans and nothing else came running out of the house. His chest was covered with tattoos. He had long, stringy blond hair that hadn't seen shampoo since the first Bush was in office. Paul guessed he was six-two or six-three, but he was so skinny he couldn't have weighed more than a hundred-thirty pounds. Ropey veins showed through the skin up and down his arms.

As he stumbled into the street, waving his arms in the air above his head and screaming nonsense, Paul realized the man had the wild, bloodshot eyes of a meth head.

"Jesus," Paul said. "I've seen goats cough up stuff that looks better than that guy."

Mike chuckled.

"That f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!" the man screamed at them. "She done tore my p.e.c.k.e.r to pieces!"

Paul glanced at Mike, hoping to clue off his reaction, but didn't see what he expected. Mike was strolling casually toward the man with an almost bored expression on his face.

"She's inside," the man said, pointing to the house. Tears were welling up in his eyes. "That f.u.c.king wh.o.r.e. She done tore me up."

"And how did she do that?" Mike asked.

"f.u.c.k if I know. I think she put sand in her p.u.s.s.y," the man said. "When I was f.u.c.king her, I got all tore up. It was like she was rubbing me with sandpaper down there."

The man was squeezing his c.o.c.k through his jeans, and now he was crying.

Without even the barest trace of a smile, Mike said, "So if it was hurting so bad, how come you didn't stop f.u.c.king her?"

The man looked at Mike like he was speaking another language.

Mike said, "That never occurred to you?"

The man was confused now. "Look at what she done to me," he said. He unzipped his pants and let them fall to his feet, his junk hanging out for the whole street to see.

Paul groaned and turned away, but Mike never even blinked. "Pull your pants up," Mike said.

"Look at this," the man said. "Look at it. It's all tore up. I'm bleeding."

"You got more problems than sand," Mike said. "There's a free clinic over on Carlton. Tell your girl to go to it. The doctor can give her a shot and then put her on some pills that'll clear that up."

The man stood there, staring dumbly at the two of them, his pants around his feet.

"You ain't gonna arrest her?" he asked incredulously.

"For what?" Mike asked. "It ain't a crime to get an STD."

"What about my p.e.c.k.e.r?" The man grabbed it with one hand and pointed at it with the other. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Give it a rest for a few days," Mike said. "Maybe both of you need to get that shot. Just between us guys, you might be having some real problems later...I mean, you know, with the whole fidelity thing."

"Huh?" the man said.

Mike turned to Paul and motioned for him to get back in the car. As they drove away, steering around the almost completely naked man in the middle of the street, Paul felt so thoroughly confused that he couldn't even laugh.

They were headed down Hickman Street now, the hot night air blowing in through the open windows, carrying the scent of magnolia and dust. Outside, the slum houses of Heroin Town rolled by. They were quiet now, and dark. Even the hardest of the hardcore junkies had fled indoors or crawled back under their rocks and there seemed very little to do but wait for the coming daylight to spread across the horizon and mark the end of their tour of duty.

Paul was feeling good. It had been a fairly busy night, and a fun one, and as the events of the evening played out again in his head, he had the feeling that he was becoming a part of something really good with Mike and Wes and Collins. He almost forgot the mess that was his real family and his life outside of the Department. Paul still had the image of his dead father elbow-deep in that kid's guts, but it seemed like a bad dream now. Something that was too distant and too horrible to be real.

Certainly Rachel had thought so. She had dismissed it outright, not in so many words, or in any words at all in fact, but through her silence. For her, it was a non-occurrence, a hole that could be smoothed over by ignoring it. He told her everything, and she rejected it. Her silence was painful and confusing, but it was muted now by this new thing, this camaraderie, this feeling of belonging to something good. Football had never made him feel this way. His home life with his father was certainly never this good. The only thing that had ever made him feel better was loving Rachel, and the fact that he could equate the two in his heart both scared and thrilled him.

But it wasn't to last. Something big was waiting for him, and like so many big things in life, it started as something small.

"44-70."

Paul answered the radio this time. "Go ahead, 44-70."

"44-70, make 642 Utley Street, 642 Utley for a disturbance. Complainant states her neighbor is fighting with her."

Utley, Paul thought. On the fringes of heroin town, closer to the eastern edge of their district, over by the Morgan Rollins Iron Works.

"44-70, 10-4. We're on the way."

Mike turned left on Crowder, one of the four major surface streets that ran north to south through their district, and headed south. They turned left again onto Banks and headed east to Utley.

Paul had figured the location almost exactly, he realized. They were close to the Morgan Rollins Iron Works. He could see the tops of its smokestacks peeking out above the trees behind Utley.

As they drove, Mike told him about houses in the area to watch out for. The family at 756 Utley sold heroin. The s.h.e.m.a.l.e prost.i.tute at 714 was HIV positive. The kid at 651 was a car burglar and known to deal in stolen guns. There were a handful of vacant houses scattered up and down the street, all of them known shooting galleries.

Mike was in the middle of telling him a story about the schizophrenic woman that lived at 634 when he suddenly broke off mid-sentence. His eyes grew wide and he said, "Oh s.h.i.+t!"

Paul followed Mike's gaze to the houses on the driver's side of the car. A dark-haired Hispanic woman in her late forties was running right for them. She was waving her arms and screaming and she was covered from head to foot in what looked like blood.

Paul and Mike jumped from the car at the same time, both of them with their guns drawn.

Mike was faster. He got to the front of the car and yelled at the woman to stop. Paul took a few steps that way, following Mike's lead. He had no idea if the blood-covered woman was running to them for help, or running at them because she had just done something horrible and was still in a frenzy. From the way her eyes were rolling wildly from the houses behind her to the cops in front of her, Paul thought it was equal odds either way.

"Stop!" Mike yelled. His voice split the night with absolute authority. He had his pistol in the low ready stance, not pointed at the woman, but only a flick of the wrist away from being in position to put her down if he needed to. "Stop right there," he said.

The woman skidded on her heels in the street. As she did, the wild look in her eyes cleared a little, and anger took its place.

"She did this to me," the woman said. Her voice was a mix of rage and self-pity and contempt. Blood dripped from her matted hair. "Look at me," she said. "Look at what she did to me."

"Are you hurt?" Mike asked, lowering his weapon.