Nina, the Bandit Queen (9 page)

The cop banged on D.S. and Nina’s door. Nothing happened, and he was just about to bang again when he heard somebody on the other side. It was Nina. When she opened it, he started to say something but stopped and simply looked at her. He got right to the verge of talking a couple of more times, but he kept stopping. It was as if the sight of her had whacked him on the head and all he could do was stand there, staring.

Plainclothes cops were a long way from being an everyday sight in SuEz, but then, if you asked most people, so were cops of any kind. Maybe it was like Nina said, and they were scared of that part of town and avoided it if they possibly could. Or it could be they figured that anybody disgusting enough to live there deserved whatever happened to them, and anybody who wanted something done about it could do it themselves. It definitely would have been strange if anybody ever called them, at least before Fabreece started doing it, but by then nearly everybody in her family had decided Fabreece was strange. The only reason a normal person might call was if they got nervous about the gangsters shooting everything in sight at three in the morning, but if you did, it meant your nerves had deleted every cell in your brain, because if the gangsters found out who it was, that person could forget living in SuEz any more, or anywhere else for that matter. In Fabreece’s case, she now called the cops on Merlina and Lady whenever they pissed her off after they got her lost when they tried to street-proof her.

As Merlina explained it, teaching a little girl to find her way home in her own neighbourhood made extremely good sense. She also explained that anybody who thought about it carefully would think it was weird that somebody hadn’t street-proofed Fabreece already. So she and Lady took her for a long walk one afternoon without telling her what the plan was, although Merlina told Lady that this was because when you really do get lost, you don’t get a chance to plan for it. Then they snuck away when she wasn’t looking and headed for home.

After she realized she didn’t know where her sisters were or where she was, she pulled out D.S.’s mobile phone. It came as a complete surprise to Merlina and Lady that Fabreece had the phone, but it turned out she always carried it in case of emergency after she’d ended up getting taken into a car by a strange man that time. She called 911, but after she talked to them for awhile, 911 hung up. Apparently they decided it was just a little girl dinking around, and if they sent the cops racing out every time some little girl decided to see what would happen if she called 911, they wouldn’t have time to deal with any of the real emergencies that came along. Meanwhile Merlina and Lady couldn’t find their way to their house, and it wasn’t until the next morning that somebody from their street saw them and asked what they were doing in that part of town and drove them back.

The minute they saw Nina, Merlina started telling her it was because they had street-proofed themselves that they knew to hang around near an all-night gas station in case rescuers came searching for them. Then she said she and Lady were sorry about Fabreece and hoped somebody would find her alive somewhere, too.

“Fabreece got home before dark,” Nina said.

This amazed Merlina and Lady, but after 911 kept hanging up on her, Fabreece phoned Ed Oataway, who came and picked her up. “Thank God,” Merlina said. “Our training did her some good after all.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nina said. “Well, I’m really pissed off, and you two will be good and sorry when I find out what the fuck is going on here.”

“Mom,” Lady said, “Merly never even mentioned street-proofing until yesterday. Her whole idea was to get Fabreece lost forever so there would be peace and quiet for the rest of us or something.”

“You are so fuckin’ lying, Lady,” Merlina said.

Lady said Merlina’s original idea had been to do it to Guinevere, but she couldn’t get her to come for a walk with them.

When Nina finally stopped yelling “I don’t fuckin’ believe this!” and things cooled down a bit, Merlina reminded Lady how Lady had kind of neglected to mention to Nina that when Merlina first told her about the plan, Lady hadn’t exactly objected. She pointed out that if they ever did something else that involved Fabreece, and Ed didn’t happen to have his phone turned on, and she could only call 911, they wouldn’t have to worry because the cops would never come.

Even though a yellow linen sports jacket and a pink polo shirt — there was a black silk square in the breast pocket of the jacket — might have fooled some people, Nina knew right away that the man on her porch was a cop. That was why she didn’t say anything either, not even “Yeah?” when he just stood and stared at her. The silence felt as if it could go one for a week or two, but then the cop shot a glance up the street.

“What’s that?” From his tone, he didn’t like it, whatever it was.

She still didn’t say anything.

“That noise?” he said, and looked at his watch as if he wanted to make sure it really wasn’t seven in the morning yet.

“Noise?” Nina said. She’d been hearing it for twenty minutes.

“Jesus Christ!” He edged down a couple of steps, taking care where he set his feet. He wasn’t built like he spent a lot of time in the gym. He also looked kind of old for a cop. He stared in the direction of the towers. When at last he said, “It’s an ice cream truck,” Nina thought he sounded like somebody who had never seen one before in his whole life.

“Oh.” Most of her experience with cops had involved steering clear of them, but when she couldn’t, she opted for the non-committal.

“What’s it doing at this time of day?” His forehead creased as if somewhere behind it he was running down a list of laws, looking for one that had to do with when it was legal for ice cream trucks to operate. He checked his watch again. “On a school day?”

“Selling ice cream?” She thought about saying this. It was fairly non-committal, but sensitive individuals might catch a whiff of smartass. Then she considered “I don’t know,” but rejected it, too. Just how stupid would she have to be not to know, and by coming out and saying it, she risked making the cop think she thought
he
must be stupid. Even more than he doesn’t like somebody who’s a smartass, a cop really and truly doesn’t like it when anybody hints that he himself might be stupid. And it doesn’t matter if the hint is so subtle, it’s outside the range of normal human hearing.

Nina’s daughters pushed into the doorway. She stuck her elbows out, and they were on the verge of whining about how they couldn’t get past when they saw the man on the steps and shut up. Not even people who’d grown up there could say how everybody down to the littlest kids knew a cop when they saw one. Could be it was a sixth sense they’d inherited from all those ancestors who had lived in a part of town where everybody from outside took for granted that they were guilty of something. They had to be. Look at them. Nobody went around acting that suspiciously without a good reason.

The technical term in law enforcement for people who behave like this is assholes. Some people can earn the description, but folks in SuEz were born to it, and that’s mainly why cops had no interest in the place. Imagine how crazy it made them, driving around and seeing nothing but natural-born assholes everywhere, and knowing they could get them off the street in one second flat if they could only find out what law it was the assholes had just broken. Cruising through SuEz probably caused more cops to think maybe they didn’t have what it took to do the job than anything else they encountered in their careers.

A police officer with feelings of inadequacy could be dangerous, but that’s not why the one on Nina’s porch was. He turned back to the door and found the woman surrounded by four kids, not one of whom paid the slightest attention to him. They were trying to squeeze past their mother to see the ice cream truck. That was the only thing she seemed to care about too, but nevertheless he puckered his lips in a way that showed he was about to get down to business. Then the first amplified words he could clearly make out stopped him again.

“What’s the matter with you, Terence?” the truck said, and the cop’s forehead got really wrinkled.

Especially since right after “What’s the matter with you, Terence?” it said. “This is a disgrace. For the last three days you haven’t bought the Eskimo Blasters we made with you in mind. We stay up late every night making them just for you, Terence. And we bring one to you every morning, fresh and delicious. Do you know we throw the old ones out? The ones you don’t buy. They’re no good any more. They’re garbage. How do you feel about that, Terence? Forcing us to throw them away when we’ve gone to the trouble of making them for you, and you alone. So get over here with your money, Terence! You’re starting to make us angry.”

And: “Shelagh — we like you, Shelagh. You’re not like Gironelle and Tara, who we don’t like any more. They don’t come down here and buy their Glacier Gloopsters and Frozeberry Flyers. We like you because you always buy your Frosty-Totsies. You were able to buy one yesterday because you went in the jar above the stove where your mother hides her change and you found enough to pay for it. Shelagh — don’t worry! After you’ve spent all your mother’s change, she’ll have something you can sell to get enough. A ring maybe, or a necklace. Right now, though, all we hope is you’ve got enough money for today. Because if you don’t, we’re going to stop liking you, too.”

Until: “Look boys and girls!” It was in front of Nina’s house. “This is where Guinevere and Merlina and Lady and Fabreece live!” The cop whipped his head around. “Their mother is an ugly fat pig and is mean to them. Somebody should call the welfare department and ask if they know she abuses them. It could be they’re covered with bruises. Notice how they never come down where we can see them? But you stay away from them, you hear. They smell and they’re full of lice.”

The cop was down the steps and around to the driver’s window before the girls and Nina even noticed he’d moved. He was bellowing. He was waving his arms around. He was flashing his badge. He was saying, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? If what you’re doing isn’t against the law, I don’t give a fuck. It’s as against the law as I need. And if,” he was saying, “you come back on this street ever again I’ll impound the goddamn truck and hold it in custody until every fuckin’ thing inside it melts. Including,” and here he shoved his head right in the window, “
you
, you shit on a stick.”

The truck sped off, leaving him in the middle of the street with his chin stuck out. His face was bright red except for the white spots around his eyes. It was still those colours when he came back up the steps, still half shouting, “I never heard any such fffff-f-f —” To calm down he almost had to strangle himself. “I never heard of any such … a
thing
in my life.” He was worked up.

“Yes, sir,” Nina said, her voice no different than before.

“Anyway, they won’t try that again.” With his fingertips he tugged his sports jacket closed across his stomach and tucked in his pocket square. “Now if you kids will excuse us, I want to speak to Mrs.…” His voice trailed off. As the girls headed into the house, they glared at him as if he’d taken a dump on their front steps. It was the last thing he expected.

“ … to Mrs. Dolgoy …” And again he went silent. This wasn’t the way he was used to working. He didn’t bully people. He intimidated them by being so completely sure about everything he did. This time, though, something was wrong. Not wrong, disturbing. Not disturbing, peculiar. Not peculiar — yeah, peculiar.

He
recognized
this woman.

It’s as if he
knew
her.

Where
did he know her from?

He had no idea.

To a man who’d built his career on never getting tripped up by the unexpected, if this wasn’t peculiar it was … too fuckin’ peculiar.

Nina waited. She could wait a long time before doing anything to help a conversation with a cop get off the ground.

He took a couple of breaths to pull himself together. “Mrs. Dolgoy, I’m very sorry, but I understand you’re related to Frank Carson. His sister? I wonder if you could come downtown and possibly identify a body?”

“When?”

He’d never heard anything like it. No reaction. Just “When?” Like if he’d told her he was from the works department and they were going to shut off her water for fifteen minutes. It was so unlike anything he’d ever encountered that he had to struggle to keep his voice level.

“Now?” he said.

“Who’ll take care of my kids?”

Okay. A good, practical question. He knew he was thinking too much and not simply reacting in the professional way that produced fear and co-operation in people he was interviewing, but he was damned if he could figure out what was making him do it. And if he’d had kids, he wouldn’t have wanted them anywhere near this street to begin with, much less getting babysat by any of the assholes who lived on it. But what the hell.

“Isn’t there a neigh —”

“They’re all busy.”

“Wait!” He looked at his watch again, tapping the glass. “The kids’ll be at school in —”

“They’ll be off sick today.”

“Really? They looked fine to —”

“They’re going to be off sick.”

“But —”

“Because they’re ashamed of what the truck said.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake. He supposed he could pack them all into his car. He had his own car today. A Toyota Solara, electric blue. A two-door convertible. He looked good in it with the top down, his silver hair streaming. His hair lapped over his temples, over the tops of his ears, fluffed around the back of his neck — perfect for streaming. But these were dirty little kids. Not dirty on account of missing their baths last night. There was no “on account of” about it. They hadn’t had baths last night. Or any night. Or ever. They never had baths. They were born dirty, and they’d been getting dirtier every day since. They breathed dirty air, they ate dirty food with their dirty fingers, they played in the dirt. If the dirt got washed off them, there would be more dirt under it. Anything they touched would get dirty. It would get dirty and it would stay dirty. It would never, ever be clean again. And if there was one thing Detective Sergeant Robbie Toole stood for, it was this: he would defend the law as far as it was useful to him to do so, but he would defend to the death his right to fit the stereotype of a gay man who was vain about his leather upholstery. To his death, to your death, to anybody’s death, it didn’t matter. Sand yellow — that was the colour of the upholstery. With the electric blue exterior, it was lethal.