The Good Boy (4 page)

Ja’Kobe gets out, hands up; he is taller and better built than Pete remembers, though last he saw of the kid was in a news clip, where he got himself featured because of Felan.

“Slowly,
man,
” Majette says as he moves up to meet him. He motions Bellwether to the other side of the van: “Get the driver.”

It’s clear Ja’Kobe is under the influence, but he’s still able to manage a steady glare at Pete. “This here’s some bullshit, isn’t it, Officer Murphy? You doing dirt for the judge?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Majette says, but now
he’s
looking at Pete, too.

“I know my rights,” Ja’Kobe says, “I ain’t got to remain silent about this.”

“Turn around,” Majette says, holstering his weapon.

As Majette frisks Ja’Kobe another band of lightning is a live wire overhead and Butch gets up on his feet, nose pricked, nervous.

“Sitzen,”
Pete commands; Butch keeps his attention on Jetty and Ja’Kobe while he turns a circle and tries to sit down. He doesn’t; he can’t. He’s picked up a scent.

“What is it, Butch?” Pete asks.
“Rauschgift?”

Butch sits down and barks once: affirmative.

“Fuss,”
Pete commands, and
“Nein,”
because he must be mistaken; they’re ten paces back from the men and the van, so either he’s stressing about the storm or the tension in Pete’s voice or both.

Pete moves Butch up along the chain-link fence behind Jetty, a better vantage point as Bellwether rounds the front of the van and takes position facing the windshield, hand on his holstered sidearm. “You two,” he says to Edwards and Cedric, “I’m sure you saw we got a big fucking dog out here. Get your hands up and out the window.”

Cedric extends his hands and an uneaten slider out the passenger window. “What you want with us?”

“I told you,” Ja’Kobe says as Jetty checks his basketball shorts, “they want me. This copper’s the one raw-dogging that bitch Crawford.”

“No shit?” Cedric slides his forearms out the window, looks back at Pete. “That you, with the judge?”

“Eat your burger.” Majette takes Ja’Kobe’s wallet from the front pocket of his shorts and gets a look at his ID. “Ja’Kobe White,” he says, and again looks back at Pete. He knows.

“Look just like my brother,” Ja’Kobe says over his shoulder, “in’t that right, Officer Murphy?”

Pete doesn’t answer, because he knows whatever he says will sound like an argument, which will sound too much like denial.

“Who’s his brother?” Bellwether asks, the dumbass.

Cedric says, “How you ain’t heard of Felan?”

Majette puts Ja’Kobe’s wallet back in his pants. “Stay,” he says, like he’s the one handling a dog, and moves over to the passenger window to point his finger at Cedric’s face. “I think I told you to finish your lunch, you mouthy motherfucker. This is not a conversation.”

Then Jetty turns to Pete, same finger, and he’s about to say something, probably pointing out that this is some coincidence, stopping the twin brother of the kid who got killed and thereby killed Pete’s whole career trajectory, but before he does, Cedric drops his burger, the square bun an instant wet sponge on the sidewalk.

Majette looks down at the slider, up at the heavens. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Are you
trying
to get arrested?”

“Lost my appetite is all.” Cedric folds his arms on the window ledge, rests his chin there. “Maybe your dog wants it.”

From the driver’s seat, Edwards says, “Careful, they gonna say we’re trying to bribe them.” He’s holding up his phone. He’s taking video. How long has he been taking video?

“What is this,” Majette wants to know, “a fucking reality show now? Turn that off.”

Cedric asks, “There some law against it?”

“Listen to you,” Majette says, “like you give a shit about the law.”

Edwards turns the camera on him. “How come you stopped us, anyway?”

And then Ja’Kobe says, “Smile, Officer Murphy—smile and tell ’em how come you stopped
me.
”

Majette steps between Pete and the van, blocking Edwards’s view. “I said turn that
off.
Bellwether, will you—” He swats a hand in Edwards’s direction, some goddamned fly, and then Bellwether is on his way back around to the driver’s side to try to handle the cameraman.

Thunder comes once more and Butch gets up and starts barking, the leash taut, a yo-yo, and Pete’s thinking,
This is fucked,
because what he’s doing—all the barking—is no alert.

But it could be.

And maybe it
has
to be. Because what else can Pete do here? The stop was a mistake, not a conspiracy. And what came before, with Kitty Crawford? Well, it doesn’t matter. These guys are still the gangbangers. And Pete is still the police. He deserves some respect.

“Butch:
fuss,
” he commands, taking his leash by the traffic handle to get him in heel. Then he says, “Jetty, we’ve got it.”

“Magic!” Majette says, mugging for the camera. “Let’s get on with the show.” He steps up next to Ja’Kobe, who hangs there, fingers hooked overhead in the door’s rubber seal, to say, “Mr. Edwards, the dog indicates that there are narcotics here, in your vehicle. If you or your passengers are in possession of any controlled substances, you should turn them over, because we are going to search the vehicle now, and the simpler you make it for us, the simpler it will be for you.” He opens the passenger door and tells Cedric, “Let’s go.”

Bellwether taps on Edwards’s window: “Step out, sir.”

Pete figures he should reward Butch—if only for show—so he reaches into his pocket for the KONG, but then Ja’Kobe stands up and says, “Fucking cops—” and lets go of the door and Pete says, “Hey!” to alert Jetty as Ja’Kobe is reaching into his shorts, inside the waistband, and Butch is there—fast, faster than a reaction—the leash through Pete’s hands as he’s yelling—

“Stop!”

The command must sink in just before Butch’s teeth do, because he releases immediately and comes away with a piece of Ja’Kobe’s shorts, and maybe some skin.

“Oh my god!” Ja’Kobe howls, falling, ass and elbows. Some blood.

“What?” from both Majette and Cedric. They didn’t see.

And Bellwether, from the driver’s side: “What happened?”

“The dog attacked him!” Edwards says, camera still rolling.

“Fuck!” Ja’Kobe wails, bunching his shorts into a compress.

Pete gets Butch by the scruff and drags him back toward the fence and he feels the rain starting again and he hears Majette saying, “Murphy, take your dog, Murphy, get him out of here—”

And so he keeps going, he takes Butch back to the squad, and he opens the door to put him in his cage, but then Butch sits, he sits down in the rain and he barks once more, his eye on Pete’s pocket. He thinks he’s done his job. He expects the KONG.

“Butch,” Pete starts to say, to correct him.

Even as the rain comes harder now, thunder cracking, the dog closes his eyes and winces, like he’s about to get cracked himself, but he stays. Stays right there.

“Schlechte hund,”
Pete says as Butch trembles, waits. He doesn’t understand; he shouldn’t. He is not a bad dog. Butch did his job. He recognized threat. He defended his handler. And lately, it seems like he’s the only one who will.

“Box,” Pete says anyway, and loads the dog into the back, no reward. Then he stands there in the rain and he knows there’s a lot more about to come down on him, the whole thing on film. And all this story needs is one frame: one with Pete, and Butch, and White.

Pete gets in the squad and wipes the rain from his face and he feels like he should explain. He tries to see Butch in the rearview but sees himself first and then he realizes.

Says, “Looks like we are going to have to put on a show.”

2

“Skinner,” Joel Murphy radios his partner again, “what’s your twenty?” He’s staked out on the lid of a chain-locked Dumpster in the alley behind Pauline’s diner—the best breakfast place in Chicago, if you want to know an eleven-year-old’s opinion.

“Skinner,” he says again, “are you giving me the slip?” He’s been waiting out here long enough to memorize the entire Morse code from the sticker on the front of his walkie-talkie. What could be taking her forever?

He’s got one hunch. After school today, on the bus ride home, Molly promised she’d meet him right here, three thirty. But she said so at the same time she was rereading a note from Lisa Lipinski, an eighth-grade girl whose swollen, back-slanted lettering gushed all over the page about
u-kno-who.
There were a lot of question marks; apparently
u-kno-who
wouldn’t admit he
luvs
her back.

It wasn’t the note that bothered Joel; he knows from snooping through his sister’s backpack that what girls write to one another is as loopy as their handwriting. What bothered him was that as Molly folded up the note, he noticed her gloppy candy-pink-painted thumbnails. He also knows from his sister that girls lose interest in him when they start wearing nail polish.

He shifts, testing his knees; he skinned them up pretty good trying for second base Tuesday night. The scabs dried up already but they itch, a constant reminder of what Coach Ryan said when Joel got back to the dugout:
see what hesitation will get you?
Band-Aids and a bench seat, the rest of that game.

A cook in a once-white apron comes out Pauline’s kitchen door and props it open with a metal can. If he sees Joel, he pretends he doesn’t. He probably doesn’t.

After the cook ducks back inside, the smell of browned butter and thick toast gets on the breeze, tying Joel’s empty stomach in a knot. He is so hungry. All the time.

He unwraps a stick of sour-melon gum and waits for the taste,
blam,
back of the gums. He’s on his fifth piece; the flavor runs out pretty fast. When he got off the bus, he wanted to stop home for an actual snack, and also to see if Butchie could come out and play, but he was pretty sure Mrs. Hinkle called home and he didn’t want to wind up in custody, his mom playing detective. He probably won’t see the after-school light of day for a while once the news about Bob Schnapper breaks.

He tries the radio again. “Skinner?”

“I’m here. Headed south on Hermitage.”

“What’s the holdup?”

“I had to finish my homework.”

“You mean paperwork?”

“Sure, Murph. Paperwork.”

“Serious, Skinner? That couldn’t wait? Raja Kahn is at it again.”

“Is Butchie with you?”

“No. He’s on another case.”

“Oh.”
The radio static doubles for disappointment.

“Kahn has a dirty bomb,” Joel offers. He knows she likes it better when Butchie plays.

“I think I’m going to take this other call instead,”
she says, “
A well-being check.
”

Joel stands up, the plastic Dumpster cover bending, unsure. “I thought we were fighting the war on terror.” He figured Kahn would be at the top of her Most Wanted List, her dad being an army man and all.

“How are we going to find a bomb without Butchie?”

“I don’t know, but it could mean the lives of millions, Skinner. Shouldn’t we try?”

“Maybe after.”

He doubts she’ll be able to stay out long enough to close both cases, but arguing about it is only going to take time off the clock. Joel slides off the Dumpster. “What’s the address?”

“I don’t know, exactly. It’s on Summerdale around the corner from Ravenswood, my side of the tracks. The one with the white fence.”

“Oh,” he says and he’s the one disappointed this time, because the house she’s talking about is Lisa Lipinski’s, and now the afternoon is looking less like a game of pretend than it is Molly pretending she’s best friends with some eighth-grader.

“Murphy,”
Molly radios,
“are you coming with me?”

“I’m en—” he quits saying to skip out of the way when a red Toyota Celica backs out of the alley garage in front of him, tires curling left, late brake lights: a near miss. “Route,” he finishes, without depressing the transmitter.

The car’s driver wears fat black-rimmed glasses and he probably should get new ones because he shifts into gear and never notices Joel standing there, barely two feet from his window, close enough to knock.

“Murphy?”

Joel wonders, as the car zips up the alley, if the driver knows the reason red cars are involved in so many accidents is because they’re hard to see.

Then Joel wonders if
he’s
hard to see. Because this sort of thing happens a lot.

“Murphy, come on!”

“Come in.”

“I’m here!”

“Where? At Lisa’s?”

“I’m asking where you are!”

“Sorry. I mean roger. I mean, I’m en route to Hawkeye.” Hawkeye is the rooftop watch post Joel goes to when he’d rather do surveillance—that is, be on his own—which is a guarantee, since Molly is afraid to climb up there. It puts the whole world under his feet, unlike Lisa’s, where he imagines he’d be more of a doormat.

“Why aren’t you coming with me?”

The walkie-talkies were Molly’s birthday present this year, and she’s never once asked him to give his back—not even after he got her in trouble for going up on the train tracks—but just because they’re hers doesn’t mean she should get her way all the time. He’s not going to Lisa’s. “I’m a police officer. I don’t make social calls.”

“Come on, Joel. This is a
real
crisis.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about some girl’s well-being.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t come.”

And, like every other girl he knows, Molly manages to turn things around enough so that once they’re right-side up again, they’re set to make him feel like a dope.

“I’ll be there,” he says. “Give me a few minutes.” Joel belts the radio and crosses Rascher Avenue to the next alley. He spits his gum into a black plastic city can that’s overstuffed with early-fallen leaves and late-summer trash. A bright yellow swimming-pool float—a giraffe—hangs limp, its long neck deflated, eyes cast down on the potholes cracked open by last week’s cold snap.