Saving Room for Dessert (5 page)

“I got you. Yes sir, Chief Nowicki, sir.”

“Cut the bullshit, just get it on, c’mon, everybody’s waitin’ here. Boo, no shit, could your head be any harder? You get one
of the best fuckin’ vests money can buy, and whatta you say? It chafes me. Jesus Christ, Boo, I knew you wouldn’t spend your
own money, I knew if anybody in the department would take it outta their clothing allowance it would be you.”

“Aw c’mon, lotta guys took it outta that, you kiddin’?” Canoza said, taking his duty belt and shirt off, draping them over
the back of a chair, and getting his vest out of his gear bag and putting it on. “Two eighty-three’s a lotta money, man. We
ain’t all makin’ forty-five somethin’ a year like some people, right, guys?”

Rayford and Reseta threw up their hands, shook their heads, and started backing away from Canoza as though choreographed.

“Uh-uh, ain’t touchin’ that one,”

“Not a chance, Boo, not one chance in one and a half, man.”

“Oh right, like I’m s’posed to call you pussies for backup.”

“Well see there, there’s your problem right there, Boo.”

“What?”

“Where the fuck’s your Commander shirt? No wonder you’re chafin’, Jesus. What? Oh don’t tell me—you didn’t buy any of them?”

“What Commander shirt?”

“We told you—oh listen to him, what Commander shirt? I told you, you gotta have ’em, they’re what keeps you dry, no wonder
you’re chafin’. They let your sweat evaporate—c’mon, what the fuck, I got you guys a good deal on ’em, and look at you, that’s
just a regular cotton T-shirt, you fuckin’ jaboney. Where’s your Commander shirt—in a fuckin’ drawer I bet, right? What am
I gonna do with you?”

“You could sit on somebody else’s back for a while, Chief, sir.”

Nowicki threw up his hands. “Hey, Boo, what’re you doin’ here, huh? You lookin’ for a vacation, is that what you’re doin’
here? ’Cause no pay ain’t no vacation, my friend, and a suspension W-O-P ain’t no day at the beach either. My friend.”

Canoza shrugged into the vest, hooked up the Velcro, and held out his hands. “Look at this thing,” he said, looking down at
the vest and then at Nowicki. “It don’t cover nothin’ below my belly button, it don’t cover my intestines or my genitals,
it don’t cover my neck, it don’t cover my face or my head, you think the bad guys don’t know that? You think they’re nuts
enough to shoot me, they’re gonna aim for my heart? Or my lungs? That asshole that used to work for Nixon, how many times
did he say on the radio, hey, everybody, aim for their heads? You think that ain’t all over the Internet, huh? Every nutso
out there knows we wear these things and they know how high they go and how low they go, and I just think it’s … it’s just
givin’ us all a false sense of security when we put these on, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

“Oh. So it’s not about chafin’ anymore, huh? So now it’s a philosophical protest, is that what it is?”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s what it is.”

“Okay. Okay. Duly fuckin’ noted. Now that you got it on, Boo, here’s the keys to thirty-three. Reseta, you got thirty. Rayford,
uh, thirty-one. And since Rayford had so much fun with the United Nations, I figured why change the lineup, so, uh, same sectors
as yesterday. So go. Remember: nothin’ without backup.”

Reseta and Rayford left first, shaking their heads at each other over what they’d just witnessed. Rayford was shaking his
for another reason. The United Nations. Depending on his frame of mind, he also called it Belfast, though there were no Irish
there, or Palestine, though there were no Jews or Arabs there either, or Rwanda, though there were no Tutsis or Hutus there
either. It was in the Flats, down by the Conemaugh River, four houses at the end of one block, separated by what had once
been an alley now overgrown with stunted and mangled maple and walnut trees, grass, shrubbery of a dozen different varieties,
and in one backyard, a rusting truck camper. There were also six dogs, three in one house, two in another, one in another,
and none in the fourth. And no garages. Lots of tree branches, lots of leaves, lots of dog droppings, and only so many places
to park.

Yesterday, Rayford thought he was going to have to shoot somebody, a possibility that had never come up in his four years
in the air force or in his first five years and eleven months in this department.

Yesterday had started with the session in the marriage counselor’s office, and had ended with him dancing backwards and drawing
his nine, shouting at Nick Scavelli, “Stop where you are! You move again, I’m goin’ shoot you and your wife both!” Today had
begun with that phone call to Charmane. Normally Rayford did not put much stock in omens or portents or signs or predictions.
Normally he believed that every moment in this life was as different as every breath he took. You breathed from the time you
were born and you were dead when you stopped breathing, but in between, once you had breathed a breath, you were never going
to breathe that one again. So even though this was a different watch on a different day, and he was breathing different breaths,
he didn’t like the way today had begun because it was starting to look like how yesterday began. And he really did not like
the way yesterday almost ended.

Even worse, it was a beautiful afternoon, perfect summer weather, not April weather at all, the humidity was down, the temperature
was in the high 60s, no rain was predicted by the Weather Channel till the weekend, which meant the United Nations would be
out and about again, barbecuing, tending their seedlings, washing their dogs or their cars, doing something outside because
it was too nice to be inside.

What I need tonight, Rayford thought, is a good thunderstorm, one to rattle every got-damn window in the Flats, and I ain’t
goin’ get it. Shit.

Rayford hustled across the narrow drive and opened the passenger door of Rocksburg Mobile Unit 31, a black-and-white Ford
Crown Victoria, and set his gear bag on the floor and his briefcase on the seat. He wedged his flash and baton behind the
briefcase, closed the door, and went around the other side, in time to see Reseta disappear downward on the other side of
his MU. Then, just as quickly Reseta was back up. Rayford knew what he was doing: Reseta was going down on one knee, making
the sign of the cross, saying a quick prayer, and popping back up as though he’d dropped his keys. Rayford knew better. He’d
seen Reseta kneeling and crossing himself too many times now to think this time was any different.

What was different about it was that until right after last Christmas, Reseta had never done it at all before. Right after
Christmas, Reseta had changed, that was all anybody knew. And until last week, that was all Rayford knew. Then Reseta told
Rayford what had brought the change about. And now all Rayford seemed able to do was ask himself why he kept forgetting to
tell Mrs. Romanitsky about him. If anybody needed her prayers it was Reseta. A whole damn bunch more than me, Rayford thought.

Just then Canoza came down the steps from the station, across the parking lot, humming loudly, bellowing would be more like
it, in da-da-dit-dat fashion, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” interrupting his humming to mock-whisper at Rayford, “Remember,
you African-American asshole, nothin’ without backup.”

Rayford mock-whispered back, “I call for backup, you Italian-American asshole, you better have that vest on, that’s all I
know.”

“And the monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole, to see his asshole,” Canoza sang back at Rayford as he tossed his gear
into his MU and then squeezed himself in, interrupting his furious humming to howl, “What the hell’s so hard about pushin’
the seat back when you get out? Bastards never push the seat back.”

Oh Jesus, Buddha, Allah, who’s ever out there, please don’t make me need backup tonight, please. Not that those two dudes
ain’t the best backup a nigger could have, but please just let me keep my black ass in this motherfuckin’ vehicle all night.
Except when I need to pee.

Rayford started the Crown Victoria, hooked up his seat belt and pulled out onto Main, heading south for four blocks before
turning east on River Way and heading for the Flats.

And Momma, Rayford thought, if you see Junior, tell him I miss him so bad I could cry. Tell him just ’cause he never seen
me cry don’t mean I don’t want to. Tell him everything be cool, all he gotta do is listen to you. And I miss you too, Momma.
Wherever you are.

P
ATROLMAN
J
AMES
Reseta turned north on Main and eased into the curb lane and stayed there through three traffic lights until he got to the
intersection of Park Street. On the west side of Main, across the street from Rocksburg Middle School, were St. Malachy’s
Roman Catholic Church and Elementary School. All of St. Malachy’s buses, five full-size and six vans, were lined up on the
west side of Main from the church and back into the school playground. Reseta turned right on Park, waving and nodding at
the crossing guard working that corner. On the opposite corner, another guard was working the intersection of Park and Maple,
which ran parallel to Main. Rocksburg Middle School students who walked home used the doors on Main while all those who rode
the buses used the doors on Maple, where twelve buses were parked on the west side of that street and lined up around the
block and into the middle school’s parking lot.

Before Chief Nowicki convinced City Council to let crossing guards handle those two intersections, it had been the duty of
a patrolman to handle both corners because one patrolman was all that was available at the beginning of the second watch.
Whenever Reseta caught that detail, it made him nuts because there was no way one man could handle it. It was the kind of
situation guaranteed to piss everybody off, the school bus drivers most of all. They had to live with the pigheaded wrongness
of council’s not understanding the fact that one cop was needed on each corner. Fact was, while some Catholic buses were turning
left to go east on Park, some middle school buses were turning right to go west on Park at the same time normal traffic was
going north and south on both Main and Maple, Two schools, two intersections, twenty-one buses, hundreds of kids, and normal
traffic in good weather was mess enough; toss rain or snow into the pot and what you had was traffic stew.

So Reseta was more than happy just to cruise the one block of Park to make sure the ladies in the goofy white hats and orange
vests with their whistles and portable stop signs were on the job. What made him smile was how serious they were about their
job, so serious they wouldn’t even return his waves. The most they would do was give him a slight toss of their heads or a
raised brow. This made him smile because he knew they weren’t armed; if they had been he wouldn’t have been smiling. He believed
in his heart that people who took their jobs that seriously shouldn’t ever be armed with anything more than a citation book
and a pen.

He turned north on Maple, barely moving when he made the bend, 10 mph at most, but had to stomp the brake to keep from hitting
two kids who sprinted out from behind the first bus in line, one chasing the other. When they got to the other side of the
street, the second kid caught the first by the neck of his shirt, pulled him to the ground, grabbed his book bag and threw
it up onto the porch of a house. When the kid who’d been pulled down got up and tried to retrieve his bag, the first one stuck
out his foot, tripped him, and sent him sprawling face-first into the concrete steps of the porch.

Reseta jammed on the foot brake, put it in park, jumped out and sprinted to the fallen boy’s side, saying, “Don’t move, son,
stay right where you are. You!” he shouted at the tripper. “Get on your knees, put your hands behind your head, and don’t
move.”

Reseta bent over the fallen boy’s back and said, “Don’t move, you hear me? Stay right where you are, okay?”

“Why?” the boy mumbled, lifting his head and blinking up at Reseta. He was bleeding badly from the nose and less badly from
the right cheek. His nose looked broken, but Reseta couldn’t be sure because it might’ve looked that way before the dive into
the steps.

“Don’t move I said. Put your head down,” Reseta said, turning on the radio attached to his left epaulet. He called the station,
ID’d himself, and said, “Ten-forty-seven Maple Avenue by the middle school. Young male, Caucasian, facial injuries, possible
fractures, extensive bleeding, result of an assault.”

He got a 10-4 back while the tripper started to get up while whining, “Hey, I didn’t assault him, he tripped.”

“Shut up,” Reseta said. “I’ll get to you in a minute—I told you don’t move, who told you to stand up? Did I tell you stand
up? Get back on your knees or I’m gonna put a stick across one of ’em.” That’s when he remembered that he’d left his baton
and flash on the passenger seat. That’s how fast crap like this happens, he thought, and that’s how fast you forget even the
basics. He reached around in back on his duty belt faking a move he hoped would make this kid think he had a collapsible baton
back there. He didn’t. But the kid didn’t know that and the move worked. The kid knelt back down, but continued to whine that
he hadn’t done anything, the other kid was clumsy, couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time, was always tripping over himself,
fell down every day, twice before lunch.

“Didn’t I tell you shut up?”

“Yeah.”

“Then who’s makin’ that noise? Not me. Not him either, he’s not sayin’ a word, so it must be you, and I just told you shut
up. What, the connection between your ears and your brain, you unplug it or somethin’?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t talk, just nod your head if you understand me. Don’t say another word unless I ask you somethin’, you hear me?”

Tripper nodded, but Reseta could see he was bursting to whine and weasel his way out of what he’d done, so Reseta said, “I
saw you chase this boy across the street, saw you grab him by his collar, pull him down, take his bag, throw it up on that
porch, and I saw you trip him when he tried to get it, so if I were you, I’d shut my mouth and keep it shut.”