Crystal Meth Cowboys (8 page)

A light dust of rain blew across the windshield. Wes turned his back to the open window to protect his paperwork. Bell studied the dark serpentine outline of Highway 9. The moth beat its wings against the crookneck lamp.

"You best be glad she didn't seize up," said Bell over the cacophony of chirping. "Cause if you had to give her mouth-to-mouth you'd've been in line for some serious F-B-B."

Wes continued filling out his MS card. He was not currently interested in deciphering another of Bell's obscure acronyms. Bell turned to Wes and jabbed his upper arm with a forefinger, "That's Fat Broad Blowback."

Wes tried a smile that came out a grimace. Like a tongue to a jagged tooth his mind kept going back to the problem. He finished the MS card and handed it to Bell.

"Am I going to get fired out of this?"

Bell sat up and and placed his hand on the ignition switch. He was locked onto a pair of far off headlights speeding up the highway. Wes watched the headlights stab through the swirling mist and star the pinpricks of rain on the windshield. Bell took his hand off the car keys and slumped back down.

"It's a Ford," he groused. "God, I hate Fords. I hate Fords worse than anything." Bell drummed the dashboard in a marching cadence. "Except the French."

They watched a Ford Galaxie shush down Playa Road, throwing spray out its wheel wells. The Academy taught that persistence was the key to a successful interrogation so Wes rephrased his original question as precisely as he could. "Sir, in your opinion, am I going to be terminated as a result of my being involved in an officer involved shooting in my first week of probation?"

Bell scanned the black world beyond the windshield. Wes felt the misty rain seeping through his shirt sleeve. He cranked up his window halfway. The reading lamp shone down on the transmission hump, throwing spectral shadows on Bell's profile, making him look like Ichabod Crane.

"Naw. Prolly not," said Bell. "I mean Shitamoko would've loved it if you'd rolled on me. But he didn't really expect you to."

Bell swept another glance through the windshield as a pickup truck with one tail light sailed down Highway 9. Bell shook his head and cranked the starter. "He's not comin' tonight," he said.

The tires spun on the moist mud, then bit, and the Crown Victoria scuttled down the ag road. "I think you're safe for now," said Bell, his eyes on the road. "Besides, good rookies are hard to find." The LTD crawled up and over the shoulder, swung left on Playa Road and headed east.

The rain splashed down suddenly, fat drops smacking the windshield. Bell twisted the stem control and sent the wiper blades clacking. Rain drummed the acres of plastic sheets incubating the strawberry fields on both sides of the road. A Peterbilt hauling two empty hoppers rattled by, washing water through the top of the driver's side window. Bell winced and growled and reached under the seat to grab his road rag. He patted his left breast pocket carefully though it was scarcely wet.

"Frank 12 - Control."

"This is Frank 12."

"We have an ADW, with a knife, 6-4-9-3 T-Tom Street."

"Copy."

The LTD plowed eastbound down Playa Road, code 3. Renaldo popped up on the chat frequency. "Surf's up, dude," he said.

------

It looked like a neighborhood where cars lived. The dimly-lit residential street presented nothing to the public but garage doors and cement driveways. No trees, no picture windows, postage stamp lawns. The roofs of the one-story homes were pitched low, some fringed with pieces of orange plastic molded to look like tile. Bell gunned the unit down the block, splashing through puddles from the brief squall. He flicked the siren switch from the cruising-down-the-highway cadence of 'hi-lo' to the closing-in-on-the-prey-and-about-to-pounce rhythm of
'yelp'. Another unit sat parked in front of a house a short distance ahead, its headlights wig wagging back and forth.

"It's Reese, that claim jumper," said Bell. He pulled up to Reese's unit, which was parked sideways in front of a garage door taped with half a dozen heart-shaped mylar ballons. He and Lyedecker jumped out. Cyril Reese was inspecting a clump of oleander with his Kel light.

"You know anything?" said Bell.

Reese holstered the Kel light in his sap pocket. "No more than you do."

"Then let's went," said Bell and led the officers to the left of the dwelling on flagstone steps.

The front door was actually a side door that was open except for the screen door. Wes could see an animated group of Latinos clustered around one man in the kitchen. There was a Latin strain in the Mediterranean culture or a Mediterranean strain in the Latin culture, thought Wes, because all the men in their short-sleeved dress shirts would have fit right in with the crowd at
Pizzeria Regina
in Boston's North End.

"Police officers," called Bell through the screen door. The men in the kitchen quieted quickly. "Que paso?"

Wes turned to the far wall of the living room.
Feliz Aniversario Miguel y Lupe
was blue magic markered across the top of a piece of posterboard. A black and white wedding portrait was glued to the middle of the posterboard and "15!" was red magic markered along the bottom.

The man in the middle of the circle crossed to the screen door and opened it. Wes guessed he was the man in the wedding photo, though he had put on a lot of weight. His ruffled white shirt was rent down the middle, the top three buttons gone. A long, ripe flesh wound sliced through his left cheek. "There has been an estabbing," said the man.

The cops shuffled inside. Bell looked at the man's wound, then down at a fresh pool of blood coagulating on the entry tile. "Yeah, no shit," he said.

The flecks of mica in the pink decorative gravel gleamed wetly in the halo of two Kel beams. Bell and Lyedecker crunched their way down the side of the house toward the back yard. Wes saw female silhouettes moving behind the drawn curtains of a back window.

"It musta been one of the women that called it in," said Bell. "Your
vatos
generally like to settle these matters between themselves."

Wes squeezed past a thirty gallon Rubbermaid garbage can. His flashlight picked up nothing of interest in the ten yards of gravel and stunted bushes ahead. The man with the slashed cheek had said a very excitable party crasher downed a bottle of Mescal and attacked him with a knife. When Bell asked 'You stab him back?' the man had looked offended. Wes took this for a no until the man said, 'Of course.'

"Will Reese be OK in there?" asked Wes.

Bell stopped and crossed behind Lyedecker. "Reese is code four." He pried the lid off the Rubbermaid can and shined his light inside. "Mexican's are scared of niggers."

Bell replaced the lid and resumed tromping down the gravel. Wes followed, thinking of the open gash on the man's face. It looked like he could poke his tongue right through it.

"And what are niggers scared of, you might ask," said Bell, rotating the Kel beam like a locomotive's headlamp. No furtive figures were crouched in the prickly lantana bushes along the fence. "Dogs. Dogs, shit. Mice, parakeets, goldfish! They fuckin' hate animals."

When they reached the corner of the yard Wes stood up and stretched his back. He decided to challenge Bell on these odious sterotypes. "And what are white people afraid
of?" he demanded. "And don't say 'nothing', that's not an answer."

"No, no. White people are the most scared of all."

A low landscape light at the edge of the house threw pointed shadows over Bell's ears, making him look like a very tall cat. Wes understood that he was going to have to repeat the question if he wanted the answer.

"And what are white people so scared of?"

Bell's slowly-emerging Chesire grin made Wes fear he'd delivered another straight line.

"The truth," said Bell and stepped into the back yard.

A man lay curled up on the ground not twenty feet away. Wes lurched forward but Bell poled out an arm and stopped him. Bell raised his Kel light beam above his shoulder with his left hand and unsnapped the leather strap on his service weapon with his right. The curled-up figure remained curled up. Wes saw the reason for Bell's caution. The subject was essentially in a crouch, the single most dangerous stance according to Tactical Jack, enabling the subject to explode up and out with a concealed weapon.

Bell said "Police officers! Show me your hands, show me your hands, let me see your hands.
Manos arriba
!"

The man did not comply. Wes edged right, behind the man. Bell, his shoulders hunched to pounce, circled around in front, saying, "Show me your hands, let me see your hands…"

The man was definitely alive. He was squeezing sharp mewling sounds through his windpipe and his body vibrated as if plugged to a wall socket. Wes hoped to God Bell wasn't going to shoot him. There was no indication that the party crasher had had a gun, though he could have a knife under there. If and when Bell's kel beam glinted off the blade he might start pumping rounds at the sight of the fabled 'shiny object in the suspect's hand'.

Wes stopped ten feet behind the subject. He considered leaping forward, rolling the man over, disarming him if
necessary, and shielding the man from Bell's bullets. But he stayed put.

The curled-up man convulsed twice, kicking out his legs and snapping them back. Bell must have seen something he liked because he unbunched his shoulders and stood up, approaching the curled-up man with his font-of-all-wisdom grin. Wes moved up from behind. Bell dropped to one knee and yanked the man's hands from between his legs. No knife. Bell dragged his Kel beam across the man's blood-soaked yellow short-sleeved shirt and up past his chattering teeth to a fringe of brown hair that fell across a large forehead. "Well well well well
well
now," said Bell from very close. "Esteban No Middle Name Rodriguez. A-lone at last."

Wes stood behind the man and peered down at him on tiptoe. He recognized the Hispanic Male Adult from Playa Road, the one with the twisting feet. Bell stood up. "Tell dispatch we need an ambulance. She's got the address."

Wes grabbed up his talking brick and did as he was told. Esteban Rodriguez clutched his hemorrhaging abdomen and chattered his teeth. Bell stood astride Rodriguez, his kel beam raking the clammy face like a 50,000 watt spot beam from a whirlypig. The dispatcher said the paramedics were on the way.

Wes watched Bell watching Rodriguez and said, "Shouldn't we do something? Like first aid or something?"

Rodriguez' mouth opened and closed like a just-caught fish. "We are doing something," said Bell. "We're watching this little scumsucker die."

-----

"It was a waste of a perfectly good Kotex," said Bell, pulling off a calf-high black boot in the PD locker room. They were lace-up boots that unzipped on the side. Lyedecker sat next to him on the bench and twirled his
combination lock for the third time. Officers Hansey and Alarcon, at the opposite end of the corridor of lockers, laughed. Bell referred to the feminine hygiene pad Wes had retrieved from the first aid kit in the trunk of the unit. Wes had been surprised to find it inside the blue and white box, though it had worked remarkably well in stanching the blood that pumped from the abdomen of Esteban Rodriguez.

Jake Hansey repeated Bell's line to himself as he stood in a white t-shirt and a pair of blue boxer shorts big as a dirndl skirt. His skin was so pale it was hard to tell where he left off and the t-shirt began. Renaldo fastened a cordovan belt around his navy slacks.
Once Upon a Time
by the Moody Blues replaced Kenny Loggins on the Muzak speaker. "Isn't Rodriguez the guy who beat his mother half to death?"

"Che was maddoggin' heem, mang," Bell protested, his arms flying. "Che was gibing heem the evil eye, mang, the
ojo malo! Comprendo
?"

"Si, si, senor," sang out Hansey in his Okie accent, his adam's apple bobbing like a fishing float.

Wes tried his lock for a fourth time. He was sure the third number was somewhere between 20 and 25. He tried 24 and the tumblers clicked. Wes opened the locker, then bent down and eased a stiff black oxford off his foot. He was going to have to find time to get a better pair of shoes.

"What's the wire on the assailant?" said Renaldo.

"Reese is downstairs sweating him right now," said Bell, his back to Wes as he dropped his pants. He wasn't wearing any underwear. "But so far I've glommed that he and Mama were having an anniversary bash when Esteban slips in, downs a bottle of Mescal, comes on to the wife, then whips out a shiv and slashes our suspect in the face when he had the bad taste to object!" Bell folded his uniform pants along the crease and slid them onto a hangar. "Anyway, that's what he says. And he's got about 58 friendly witnesses."

"Was Rodriguez tweakin'?" asked Renaldo.

"He was tweakin' out of his cretinous little cranial cavity and I am shittin' you negative," replied Bell.

"Lotta that going around," said Renaldo, combing his hair back on the sides. "Just yesterday we had a buncha crankheads get into it over at the Full Moon. Pool cues and barstools. About wrecked the place."

"N-H-I," said Bell sadly.

Renaldo nodded. "N-H-I."

Jake Hansey laughed.

Great, thought Wes, another acronym. Bell said, "We coudda been rid of that turdball forever if it weren't for Nurse Nancy over here."

Wes looked up from the bench. All three cops were staring down at him. Wes met their looks. He tried to think of a rejoinder that didn't make him sound like a boy scout. The stares turned as Sgt. James Harrick entered the locker room.

Harrick had a large squared-off head, brushed-back black hair going to silver on the sides, deep set gray eyes and a chin that thrust out like a bulldozer blade. His forearms were the size of lamb shanks. "I'm going to take a leak, Bell," called Harrick over his shoulder as he strode bow-legged to the urinals. "You want to hold it for me?"

Wes snapped his combination lock closed. The other cops, suddenly busy with their dressing and undressing, waited for the reply. Bell squared his shoulders and clicked his heels. "With both hands, sir," he said.