Mitchell Smith (33 page)

“Go ahead, then,” she said. “Do it-because I’m doing … the same thing.”

“Oh, I love you,” Sergeant Tucker said, and poured himself more ginger ale. “Oh … you sweet thing …

oh, that feels nice. - . . ” He finished his sandwich, and reached for the plate of pie. He leaned to the bedside table for the fork, and said, “Jesus … Oh, that feels so fine. . . .”

“Oh, Eddie … oh, my Eddie .

“Damn, ” Sergeant Tucker said, ‘-T got jissom all over me!” He took a bite of the banana cream. It was very good-little chunks of fresh banana in it-but it wasn’t quite as good as the coconut cream had been.

“Did you come, baby … ? Did my sweetheart get her pretty gun?”

“You are a bad man,” his wife said, out of breath. -And never mind if I did. Oh, I do love you, Eddie.”

“We have a mutual admiration society.

“Yes, we do.”

“You have to be tired, darling’-with Kameesha and all. You go on to sleep, now.”

“O.K. You go to sleep, too.”

“I’m going to have to take a shower-you got slick all over me, you pretty thing.”

“Eddie … stop talking that trash!”

“You love it.”

“It’s the damn hotel operator that loves it!-You go on to sleep, now.”

ght.

“Talk to you tomorrow ni

“Tomorrow night. Call earlier-call by nine, and I’ll keep the girls up.”

“O.K. And no-“

“Drain in her ear. O.K.?”

‘:Good night, sweetheart.”

“Good night.”

Sergeant Tucker hung up the phone, said, “Love and the ladies . . .”

and sighed. He ate the last of the banana cream pie, recalling the bearing grunts of the skinny legged little whore as she took his weight-took all his tool, too, up into that small box. -Black hair on that, black as the hair on her head. Not a bad-looking girl, maybe nineteen, eighteen … bad acne scars. Little tits.

But she looked 0 - K…. very nice over there spread for it with her dress pulled up to her armpits … looking this way and that way to see if somebody was coming. -That skin they had-even the least of them, the trashiest.

Creamy pearly white stuff, like an angel’s skin. You see some black pussy hair on that whiteness, you know you’re seeing something … Blond pussy hair, too. More than once, with officers absent, he and Briscoe had watched while filming Gaither and the other white whores at their -q pow-, work. With officers absent … It had made the Colonel and his then lieutenant-Canfield-uncomfortable to have Tucker sitting watching the white women at their exercise. Briscoe, a New York cop, hadn’t given a damn.

Gaither had been memorable; it had saddened Tucker to hear of her death.

That little woman had had skin white as a peeled apple. -It was the kind of thought that made him feel sorry. Talking that shit to Jacklyn…

Was there anything wrong with her soft brown skin…

his babies’ skins? Anything wrong with their pretty, soft brown skins

… brown as toast?

“Fallible man,” he said aloud to the dresser opposite, -and suffering woman. Le coq a ses raisons, que la coeur the connalt pas.”

Tucker got up off the bed, and walked to the bathroom, his left ankle (injured parachuting long before) clicking softly the first f&w steps.

The green carpet felt good under his bare feet-the whole hotel room was a pleasure, it was such a private public place, so cut off from other things, other people, by nothing except brief curtains of time …

checkins, checkouts. Tucker had always liked motels and hotels better than houses.-They seemed less artificial to him than the pretended, false permanence of homes.

He dropped his robe, took off his glasses and put them on the top of the toilet tank, then stepped into the shower-turning it on to fairly hot-and, revolving slowly under the steaming fall, reviewed the morning, its difficulties, their resolutions.

The Colonel had seemed calmer today. Resigned. Must have gotten his pale ass reamed over that telephone line to Washington. Only sign of upset was the setups. -The Colonel had been drinking for two, and early in the afternoon. “Right as rain on the Hispanic, Sergeant,” he’d said, looking good, tie tied right. He’d had his jacket on, watching TV when Tucker came in to report.

Tucker, alone as requested (likely for the convenience of later denial), with Budreau ordering lunch at the bar downstairs, Mason up in his room taking a shower-had shorthanded for the Colonel their staking of the methadone clinic on West Ninety-seventh Street (Tucker suitably attired in dirty jeans, blue running shoes, and a dirty gray sweatshirt)-his conversation with two black men out on the sidewalk, followed by a more productive one with a junkie named Jess, who agreed, after considerable persuasion, to go uptown with Tucker to check out a small package of shit there-with the possibility, then, of getting up enough bread with friends to buy it.

“I’m no fuckin’ thief, man,” Tucker had said. “-An’ if I was, I sure as shit wouldn’t be hanging’ round this fuckin’ hole, talkin’ to dudes ain’t got their shit together for a dime bag. I ain’t fuckin’ with you, man. -You check it out, you get the bread, that’s fine. I ain’t fuckin’

with you, man. -You can’t, then fuck you.”

Reassured, Jesds had walked with Tucker-on promises to bring him right back downtown to the clinic around the corner to the car. Seeing Mason and Budreau.

in it, the Puerto Rican had tried to part company, but Tucker had his arm, now claimed to be a cop—opened the right rear door, and shoved Jesds into Budreau’s arms.

“Took him up to the Bronx, into an empty building up there—shot him through the lower right side with Budreau’s weapon into a brick wall, Retrieved the slug, put a rough bandage on, took him up to the roof, and threw him off. We left the TV from the police officer’s apartment up there as well, with Budreau’s prints on it, to match.”

“All right,” the Colonel had said. ‘-O.K.” He had nodded faster and faster during the recital, as if there were less and less he wanted to hear. “All right. -That’s done,” he said. “Poor guy’s probably no loss. —Can’t they tell he wasn’t shot last night?”

“Probably not,” Tucker had said, “-after a day in the sun.”

To be told, Tucker thought then-no matter how accurately-is to be lied to.

The Colonel had, in receiving the report, avoided hearing the terrified clickity-clack Puerto Rican Spanish-an ugly Spanish at best-that Jesfis began to chatter as they hauled him across the lot and up into the wrecked building that had seemed, and proved, ideal as they drove past it heading uptown.

Several people watched from a distance as they buckoed

“I spot DAYDREAAfS

him along-he not struggling, but hanging back, dragging, complaining, begging for explanations in Spanish, then English, then Spanish again.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Budreau had said to him.

“Why don’t you just relax … ?”

This had been seen by two or three people, at a distance of a block or two, gazing down long streets, or over the countless small bunkers of rubble. None of these people, experts in non-witness, had seemed inclined to interfere-not even to linger in the bright morning sunlight to see more. -They had paused, stood, stared, then moved along, Jesfis noticed none of them. Sagging between Mason and Budreau, depending from them, leaning against first one and then the other over the uneven ground, the busted bricks, chunks of concrete, shallow drifts of sun bleached garbage, this short, soft-bellied man kept up a constant conversation of questions, as if a single’answer might free him. Tucker had competent Spanish; so did Mason.-Budreau, though a two-year veteran of Central, none but the limited requirements for ordering beer or sugar-cane rum, or asking the short-time price of a brown Indian twelve-year-old with legs like bruised sticks and eyes bruised darker (but merry enough a dancer when drunk). Jesfis’ questions were directed to each of them in turn, as if he expected one of them, at least, to produce a reason-and all this as they hustled him hard toward the ruined building, satisfactorily deserted, its toasted windows bashed out or in, its door, boarded and plywooded over more than once, kicked wide open, split planks left swinging, plywood sheets torn like tar-paper.

They hustled him in over a wide, cracked concrete sill, swung right together as if familiar with the premises, trotted, dragged him to the stairs, and lifted him up by his armpits while he kept talking, requiring explanation.

On the second floor, Mason said, in Spanish, “We’re going to kill your ass, man, ” and Jesfis appeared relieved to hear it, to be able to continue his line’ ‘of questions on a new track. “Why, why, why, why, why? iPorqu, porqW, porqW porqu6 porquV On the second floor, and down a long hall, they found an empty, shattered room, the plaster ripped out of the walls as if by searches for treasure, the floor planking gouged and splintered. The window wall was bare brick, contused-and Tucker motioned his men to put the Puerto Rican up against it, stepped in to accept the short-barreled Ruger .38 that Budreau, one arm free, handed over, then stood well back as they spread-eagled the man, who was still calling questions.

It seemed unfair to Tucker that a person so accidentally involved should die in ignorance-if there were any kind of an afterlife, that would be the most restless sort of spirit. . . .

“We are killing you, ” he said in fairly good Spanish and Jes(is, not struggling, seemed appreciatively silent, listening at last to his answer. “-We are killing you to confuse the police in the matter of the murder of one of their own. It is all an accident, for you.

“An accident. . .”

“Correct. -Now, Jes(is-be a man.”

However, Jesids, having his answer, didn’t care for it, and far from acting like a man, began to act like a baby-weeping, struggling weakly between Mason and Budreau, calling on a brother of his, apparently a dangerous man, to come and save him, and finally bending forward, is arms still held, to vomit a brea C t of what appeared to have been Cuban sweet rolls and lots of coffee.

When, trembling, weak, silent at last, he slowly straightened up from this purging, Tucker shot him through his lower right side, carefully clear of any bones or major arteries-the two men let him go-and he fell forward, and lay stretched out on the floor.

“I am killed?” he said, hugging his injured side, which, though struck a terrible blow, felt numb, as after a dentist’s injection.

“Not yet.” Tucker said, handing Budreau’s weapon back to him, “-but soon.” He took a long, folded strip of dirty cotton from his jeans, knelt, and bandaged the man’s soft belly as Mason and Budreau turned him to accommodate. The wound’s entrance and exit were only slightly different-the entrance puckered in, bleeding sluggishly, the exit wound more lively, colorful, slightly larger.

“Switch to silver tips from here on out,” Tucker said to Budreau while bandaging, observing this not too impressive injury- “‘You’re getting zip for expansion with that Teflon shit. , “O.K.,” Budreau said, and rolled a softly protesting Jesfis off his sore belly and onto his sore back-the dentist’s shot wearing off-as Tucker wrapped his long bandage round.

“Am I not killed . . . ?” the Puerto Rican said, dreamy with shock.

“In a minute,” Tucker told him, trying to get the bandage ends tied.

That accomplished, he motioned his men to pick the man up-and Mason and Budreau, now familiar with that sagging burden, hoisted it easily while it protested, held it up while Tucker pulled his Swiss Army knife from his jeans, went to the wall, located the bullet’s entry almost between two bricks, dug the round free, folded the blade of his knife, and put both into the same pants pocket. -Then his men dragged their burden after him as he walked from the room, strode back down the hall to the stairs, and led on the four-story climb to the roof.

It was a hard climb on a warm morning, with such a plaintively murmuring load slung between them, and Mason and Budreau were panting when they reached the roof-where, in happier and still recent times, some celebration must have occurred, broken beer bottles, a torn pair of turquoise woman’s slacks, and a stained Kotex testifying to it.

When they were up, and had him near the low brick arapet overlooking the building’s back lot, Tucker, care21 of staining his sweatshirt, came and gathered Jesds in his arms, cradling him pretty gently, and said-head bent, speaking Spanish to a sweaty big-eyed face, “Now is your time, Sefior. -Vaya con Dios…… Swung him back in his arms just once, as a man might a child he was to toss into a children’s pool, then swung him out over the parapet and loosed him into the air.

After a long, short time and one slow somersault, Jes(is landed on his back in the rubble below with a heavy thump, dust flying up around him.

“That’s a good greaser, now,” Mason said.

“Mason,” Tucker said, “-you take off your T-shirt and your Fruit of the Looms, go back down to that room, and I want you to mop up every bit of that sad turkey’s vomit. -And I mean every little bit.”

“Why?” Mason said, surprised, and failed to get his hands up in time when Tucker stepped in and hit him once, very hard, in the belly.

Then Mason bowed slowly, his too-late hands stroking and playing at his middle, as if to coax in a little air.

“Budreau,” Tucker said, “-go down to the car, get that TV out of the trunk, bring it here, and put it in the end room on the first-floor corridor. -You can leave prints on it, give them a match with some we left in the apartment.”

“Yes, sir,” Budreau said.

… Yes, Sergeant’ will do.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Budreau. said, and went.

“Mason,” Tucker said, looking out from the roof as he spoke, looking over the ruins around them for signs of any particular activity, any interested witnesses-listening for any hint of sirens, of police response to a citizen’s report of shots fired, “-It would certainly oppress my spirits, if I thought you thought that little demonstration you gave last night in the police officer’s apartment had gone unnoticed. -That would certainly oppress my spirits.”

Mason, still slightly bent, catching his breath, had nothing to say.

“I have been waiting all morning-all morning for an attempted explanation. You have offered me none.”