Crystal Meth Cowboys (9 page)

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Wes keyed open the door, flicked on the light and entered his apartment in the Lei Lani Village. The squinting nakedness of white walls assailed him. He made a mental note to buy some pictures. He crossed to the kitchen. The LED on the answering machine blinked red. He
opened the rerigerator and studied the contents. The shiny aluminum shelves held a six pack of V-8, a liter of Evian, a loaf of 7-grain wheat bread, a jar of mayonnaise, a jar of dark brown mustard, and an Oscar Mayer luncheon meat Variety Pak. Though he was very hungry the multitude of assembled ingredients looked too formidable to be disturbed. He grabbed the liter of Evian, then glanced again at the phone machine. Had to be his mother. He had called her after the SRB hearing but said only that his partner had been cleared of using excessive force during an arrest. His mother's long pause said she suspected that there was more to the story but she hadn't pressed. She hated his chosen profession.

Wes crossed to the living room and flopped down on the nubbly new couch. The polyester fibers itched his arm. He surfed through his three channels and stopped at the young anchorwoman on the eleven o'clock news out of Santa Maria. Wes felt he almost knew her now. His name, in fact, had passed her lips not two weeks ago in a report on a 'Night of Death at the Coach House'. Wes wondered if he should call her with news of his heroic life-saving rescue of Esteban Rodriguez. Maybe
she'd
give him an attaboy, a pat on the head, some positive reinforcement for reaching into the bloody guts of a known drug user and saving a life.

Wes untied his shoes and took a swig of Evian. He remembered two things Bell had said earlier in the evening. The Chief of Police didn't expect Wes to 'roll over' on Bell. The clear implication was that Bell recognized that he had stepped over the line in room #12 and expected his partner to cover his ass and expected the Chief to expect it too. How could you roll over on someone unless there was something to roll over about? Maybe that's why Bell had as much as said he was 'a good rookie' a short time later. 'Good rookies are hard to find' were his exact words. Whatever the reason, it was music to Wes Lyedecker's ears.

Wes sprang from the couch and crossed to the phone machine, ready to face his mother. He punched playback.

"Oh yoo hoo, Nurse Nancy, are you there?" simpered Bell. "Pick up the phone you big stud hoss." There was a pause. Wes could hear a female voice in the backround. "We're calling to invite you to dinner. Eight o'clock tomorrow…" The female voice said something that Wes couldn't make out. "Oh, yeah," Bell said, his fey voice growing husky, "We got you a
date
." Bell concluded the message with a prolonged kiss.

Chapter 9

Wes Lyedecker's mother always told him it was rude to arrive on time to a social occasion at someone's home, that inevitably you would walk in on a barefoot host and a hostess clipping on earrings. So Wes pulled his Mazda RX-7 to the curb at 1887 Warren at 8:02 PM and sat and waited till 8:15. Bell's house was located in the southeast corner of town, in the stark new housing development that they had cruised through on Wes' first day on the job. A collection of cubes without a sphere. Bell had opted for burnt umber.

Wes pried himself out of the two-seater, clutching a Santa Ynez chardonnay in a brown paper bag. He walked up the wide cement driveway and faced a two-car garage door. That was all you saw out here, garage doors. You'd think someone would have told them about front porches by now. A clump of geraniums in a clay pot looked sallow under the yellow light above the front door. Wes banged the tiny brass door knocker.
Ticktickticktick
. He wondered if they could hear it inside.

He waited a proper interval, then pressed the door bell. No response. He placed his hands against the door and pressed his ear to the wood just as Bell yanked open the door and bellowed, "Jesus H. Holy Hannah fuckin-a Kee-rist, I hear ya!"

Wes windmilled his arms as he tilted forward like a toppling tree. Bell grabbed his shoulders and stopped his fall. "Are you drunk?" he asked with some concern, then shouted over his shoulder, "Honey, the kid's shitfaced."

Wes got his feet underneath him and shrugged off Bell's support. "Actually, I'm not," he said.

Bell led Wes down the narrow entrance hall. A vaulted-ceiling living room lay to the left. White floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves stood against the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, cookbooks and novels on the left, airplane books on the right. "Come in and meet the missus," said Bell. This was news to Wes. Bell had never once mentioned a wife.

They entered the recording studio, looking sultry in muted track lighting, its components winking electric reds and blues. Wes looked to his left. A woman with shoulder-length chestnut hair dryed her hands on a dish towel at the kitchen sink. "Tweets, meet the rookie," said Bell as he grabbed the bag from Lyedecker and inspected the wine. The woman shook hands across the counter.

"Hi, I'm Sherri," she said with a crooked smile that produced a dimple in her left cheek. With her high cheek bones and sun dark skin she reminded Wes of an Indian maiden in one of those idyllic 19th Century paintings of the Golden West.

"Wes Lyedecker. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Qupe, not bad," said Bell, reading the label.

"I've heard so much about you," said Sherri. Her two front teeth were very large and very white. Wes caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see the German Shepherd and the blonde Lab looking longingly through the sliding glass door. Bell moved into the kitchen and picked up a meat cleaver.

"Well, don't believe everything you hear," said Wes. "I must say I'm surprised at the invitation. I thought I was on the shit list for sure."

Bell hacked apart a purple onion on a cutting board. He pushed the chunks to one side and started in on a green apple. "Hey, you're a rookie," he said. He swigged a Foster's beer and belched. "You're supposed to fuck up."

Wes smiled. He hadn't fucked up, he'd done the right thing with Esteban. But he wasn't going to argue about it now. He darted his eyes through the kitchen and out to the dining room. A table was set with china and goblets and
linen napkins rolled through crystal napkin rings. Four table settings. Wes hoped she was cute. He hadn't seen many attractive women in Wislow.

Bell scraped the onion and apple slices into a pyrex dish containing six boneless center-cut pork chops. He added several sprigs of rosemary, three bay leaves and an entire quart of sour cream. Sherri eyed the pork chops wallowing in this mucilage as Bell shred a stick of butter over the dish with a cheese grater. "You cook like you fuck, Bell," she said. "Too much of everything."

Bell stepped into the studio and grabbed a cassette. He popped it into a Nakamichi deck and punched play. The Glenn Miller Orchestra performed
In the Mood
.

Great, thought Wes. Pork chops and big band music. If he had used this approach in Boston he'd still be a virgin. All eyes turned to the back yard as the dogs began to bark. They bounded across the yard and disappeared down each side of the house.

Bell rolled down the monitor and strode manfully toward the front door. Wes followed. Since there were no windows facing the street Bell stopped at the door and cocked an ear at the minstrel cadence of black street slang. "Prolly some homies going down to the river to huff and get brain dead," said Bell. "But what the fuck are they doing out here?"

Wes knew what Bell meant. He'd wound through an endless maze of residential streets to reach Bell's house on the edge of the development. Warren Street was not a thoroughfare.

Bell threw open the door and stepped forward, almost knocking Florence Jillison down. She wore a magenta V-neck blouse with tapered sleeves and flounces around the neck, black crepe slacks that hugged her thighs and flared to modified bell bottoms at the ankle and an antique white gold braid necklace. Wes wondered what she was doing there.

"Oh!" cried Florence, her hand to her breast.

"Jeeze, Florence, I'm sorry," said Bell, peering over her shoulder toward a group of teenagers strutting down the block. "You OK?"

"Fine, I'm fine," she said, though even in the yellow light she looked flushed.

The jive-talking kids, herkin' and jerkin' like a rap video, passed under the bell of a street lamp. Wes saw that they were all well-scrubbed white boys. Florence turned to see what the men were staring at. It was then Wes noticed that she held a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag. His mind reeled.

Bell shook his head slowly as he watched the boys walk on, two of them shooting defiant over-the-shoulder glances. He sighed. "Ain't that just the saddest thing you ever saw."

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"I hear you did a very courageous thing," said Florence Jillison to Wes Lyedecker. She was seated to his left at the circular dinner table. Bell sat to his right. Sherri popped up from across the table and ducked into the kitchen. They heard the oven door klunk open. Wes said, "I did?"

Florence turned to Bell for help. "The young man, the one with the knife wound, ummm…"

"Esteban No Middle Name Rodriguez," said Bell.

"Yes, Esteban Rodriguez. Yes. I hear you saved his life."

Wes felt his earlobes redden. From the kitchen came the
scritch scritch scritch
of a knife scraping toast. "That's what they tell me," said Wes.

"Well that's
great
," she said, patting Wes' arm.

Bell leaned forward on his elbows. "Esteban's the gentleman who raped the retarded girl behind the Mini-mart," he said, knowing this would hit home with the
founder of the Rape Crisis Hotline and a rape victim herself.

Florence sat back in her chair. She looked at Wes as if he had just tried to stick his tongue down her throat. "Oh."

Sherri bustled in from the kitchen trailing butter and garlic vapor from a covered bread basket. "Why aren't you
eating
?"

The diners bent to their glutinous pork chops. Sherri uncovered the garlic bread and passed it around. Tex Beneke sang
I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo
.

"I used to think that assholes secretly knew they were assholes," said Bell, impatient with the silence, his mouth full of pork. "No matter how much they strutted and shot their mouths off during the day I figured that deep down, alone in their lonely beds late at night, they
knew
." Bell took a pause to swallow. "But ol' Boss Hogg, well, he don't have a clue. Does he Florence?"

Florence plucked at a slice of piping hot garlic bread. "Well, not really. No."

"Eh heh," said Bell. "So how do we make sure he doesn't get re-elected?"

The question caught Florence in mid-bite. She chewed quickly and wiped her lips, leaving a scarlet stain on the napkin. "Well, I'd like to think he's already done that by ignoring the needs of the general public for the last twelve years."

"Of course you'd
like
to think that," said Bell. Seeing his wife's baleful look he added, "I hope you're right."

Wes picked up a plate of chilled snapbeans and passed it to his left in hopes that Florence would touch him. She did, escorting his hand all the way back down to the table with fingers soft as Vaseline. "Tom tells me you're interested in community based policing," she said.

"Yes, very much," said Wes, though it took him a moment to realize who Tom was. The name didn't seem to fit Bell somehow. Florence looked at Wes expectantly. In the unforgiving light of the kitchen Wes had thought Florence looked somewhat brittle and overdone. But here in the candlelight she looked dazzling, her hazel eyes throwing back sparks.

"To me it's all about context. I mean, to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail, right? I mean, if you have only one tool you try to use it to fix every problem. I think we, police officers, need to have more tools in our tool belt than just, uh, you know, hammers."

"That's
just
the way I feel about city government," said Florence.

Sherri mockingly mirrored Bell's look of squinty disapproval. "And what do you think darling?"

Bell leaned forward and splayed out his fingers. "Here's what I see coming from this 'community based policing'." Bell repealed his lips from the words as if spitting out cactus. "You're assigned to the Market Basket parking lot, kissing babies and helping old Mrs. Noosbaum load groceries into the trunk of her Mercury Zephyr, which leaves Paco, Cleophus and the boys free to rob banks, geeze speed, rake innocent bystanders with automatic weapons fire, torch public buildings and butt rape pre-schoolers."

There was a pronounced silence at the table. Wes chewed a slice of pork chop tender as a newborn. "Maybe we should jump in the hot tub after dinner," said Sherri.

This seemed to relax the tension and everyone smiled and agreed that this was a great idea. Under the tablecloth Wes Lyedecker's right knee pounded up and down like a jackhammer.

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"Fuck me, kill me, fuck me, kill me," shouted Wilhemina Fredericks.

Bell, insistent on offering some after dinner entertainment in the studio, was playing a mini-cassette connected with plug adaptors to the mixing board. Wilhemina's voice sounded muffled, as if she were screaming through muslin. Or wool. Bell hadn't told Wes that he carried a pocket recorder.

"Fuck me kill me fuck me kill me…"

Wes was mortified. Doubtless Florence had been expecting a string quartet. Bell had definitely crossed the line this time.

"Wilhemina Fredericks," beamed Bell to no one in particular. "Entertaining the neighbors."

Sherri stormed out of the kitchen. "Tom, for God's sake…"

"Wait, wait," pleaded Bell as Sherri backed him up against the board and grabbed for the mixing board volume control. "Wait just one more second."

Sherri stopped and studied Bell sternly. "And turn it up an ant's ass," he said. Sherri, muttering to herself, nudged the knob to the right just in time to hear Bell say "Either this woman is dead or my watch has stopped."

Bell cackled so gleefully at himself that both women joined in. Florence in particular laughed till hot tears ran her mascara. Wes didn't get it. What was this power Bell had to reduce even the most enlightened mind to imbecility?