PIKE (18 page)

“You and I have different ideas of what it means to be a good cop, I think.”

“Drug wars don’t happen where I am. Kids don’t get shot.”

“Unless you shoot them. You’re a thug, Kreiger. And you’re corrupt.”

“Hell, at least the people I get, they’ve done something worth being got for. That little nigger I shot with his six-year-old sister in the hospital. Thirteen hours of surgery. That shit doesn’t happen, not on my watch.”

“It’s an obsession with you?”

“The rest we can compromise on. You can have a say in how cop work is done in Over-the-Rhine.”

“So we are dealing?”

“You won’t ever get this kind of deal again.”

“But only on your say-so, Derrick. Am I right? You reserve the right to pass judgment as you see fit?”

“Just with that one thing. That kind ends up dead every time. I don’t compromise on that.”

The reverend looks Derrick over. “Lord, what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on your therapist’s wall.”

“We got a deal?”

“Perhaps.” The reverend nods to himself, thinking. “What exactly am I supposed to gain from the arrangement?”

“I done told you. You get a say in how the neighborhood’s policed.”

“A say?”

“A say. I’m a damn sight better than the helicopters and the SWAT teams. That’s what’s next, an occupation.”

“I’m not sure you’re better.”

“You know I am. I live in Over-the-Rhine. It matters to me. Your alternative is mass arrests and submachine guns. The kind of shitthat’s starting in L.A. and New York. I’m corrupt, you say, but I’m a hell of a lot better than what’s clean.”

The reverend stares out the window. “I obviously can’t support you. Not publicly.”

“You don’t have to. You don’t even have to quit condemning me, not immediately. You just have to let the chief know you’re thinking about finding other shit to focus on, and find something.”

“There can’t be any way of it blowing back on me. You can’t be crooked, Kreiger. Not in any way that matters.”

“There won’t be no loose ends, not when I’m done.” Derrick sticks his hand out. “Shake it.”

The reverend shakes his hand. And laughs. First in a long slow rumble, then in a full guffaw. Then he wipes his eyes. “I’m dealing with the devil.”

Derrick shifts the car into drive. “You won’t get a better deal anywhere else.”

T
he sun sets with a final bath of light that runs like warm water down the Nanticote street, rinsing the row of houses in shadow and resting on the last, a two story Colonial. Inside the four of them eat beneath a huge and dusty chandelier. Pike finishes first and crosses his knife and fork on his plate and looks around the table. It’s a hell of a meal. Venison roast and venison strips and fried liver and onions, all of which he and Iris spent the better part of the day preparing.

He watches Wendy. She chews delicately, her left hand folded demurely in her lap. She’s wearing the first dress Pike has ever seen her in. She got it from the thrift store. It’s black and high-necked and patched all over, but it fits her. Perfectly. She’s only been a couple months in Nanticonte but it looks like years on her. She’s shedding her girlishness, her pretty white face leaning out, her thin hands losing the awkwardness she carried from Cincinnati.

Then there’s Rory. Slumped back in his chair, hunched to one side like his body’s been thrown off kilter and he can’t muster the strength to regain his equilibrium. Picking at his food like an automaton, his effortless grace having fled him, left him a lumbering shell of his former self. He needs out of here. Somewhere he can flex and move, where the locals can’t keep you pinned down with their shitty little renditions of you. There are places you can still be what you are.

After dinner, Pike stands outside the back door, smoking and watching the kitchen light spill out the windows, burnishing the snow banks a fluttering bronze. Listening to Wendy and Rory bicker over the cleanup.

The door opens and Iris steps out. “Sorry to make you smoke outside.”

“It’s your house.”

“Jack wouldn’t let me smoke inside.” She pulls a Marlboro Light out of her flannel shirt pocket and lights it with a match, her hands shaking in the cold. “Even in my own house I keep on coming out in the cold. Stupid, ain’t it?”

“I don’t mind.”

She draws on her cigarette and folds her arms across her breast. Then shudders as if suddenly struck by the chill air.

“How are you holding up?”

“You know. I’m lonesome. But I’ve been lonesome for a long time.”

“It ain’t none of my business. But he wants you to come back.”

“You’re right, it ain’t none of your business. And it wouldn’t matter if I went back or not.” Iris shakes her head, smoke spilling out of her mouth like water from a shaken glass. “He’s not sheriff because he needs the job. He’s got plenty of money from the real estate. He’s sheriff for the lousiest reason I can think of. His grandfather was sheriff before his father, and he thinks he’d be betraying his father’s memory if he was anything else. It’s nothing but second-rate family history. Makes me mad enough to twist his little prick off"

“I never expected it would be any other way.”

“Yeah. Well. Jack never wanted to be a cop, and I never wanted to be married to a cop. Cops turn strange. They end up spending most of their energy hammering their personalities into cop molds. Jack used to have plans for his life.”

“Most of us did,” Pike says. “Before we became what we are.”

“Well. There you go, then. It’s a fucking tragedy all over, ain’t it?”

B
lack snow and exhaust fumes. A gang of lanky-haired children picking like magpies through the oily rocks for anything that shines. Derrick strolls from his car to the first fire pit under the train bridge. He doesn’t bother to zip up his leather jacket, letting his Colt .45 hang out. He’s spent the whole day running down pimps and dealers, wising them up to his ability to be in all places at once. He doesn’t want anyone thinking he’s out of touch. Sooner or later somebody will be asking questions. He ain’t planning on leaving a single motherfucker in town who doesn’t understand the consequences if they answer. And he’s almost done. Dana’s the last name on his list.

Two men just under the bridge. One a scruffy black junky with red eyes and a shoulder length Jheri curl, the other a wiry white kid with sandy blonde hair. Derrick gets within two paces of them and pulls his .45 and holds it at his side.

“There really ain’t no need for you to pull your piece.” The junky’s voice is even and chastising, like he’s hipping Derrick to some piece of etiquette he might not have known about.

“I’m looking for a hooker named Dana,” Derrick says. “Point me at whatever nigger she’s under.”

“Whatever nigger?” The junky’s eyes fire black with hatred. “I don’t know any niggers.”

Derrick reaches in his back pocket, flips out his shield, lets them ogle it. “Get smart with me again and I’ll put two in your nigger ass.”

“I know you.” A flush shades the corners of the blonde kid’s raw-boned face, excited with himself at the thought of knowing anything.

“How the fuck do you know me, boy?”

“I seen your picture. Seen you in the papers.” He slaps out his hand. “Name’s Bogie.”

“Put your fucking hand away, boy, before I stuff it down your throat.”

Bogie shrugs like that’s happened before and doesn’t scare him in the least. “Dana ain’t been here in days. You was right, though. The last time anyone saw her she got dragged out from under a nigger. Want to know what happened to him?”

“Boy, you are testing my patience.”

“Shot.” Bogie nods his head at one of the campfires staggered around the shantytown. “Right there. Real big gun too. Blew a hole in his chest I could have stuck my head in.”

“You saw it?”

“Fuck no. I got here late. His body was still there, though. Ass naked from the waist down. These ratty motherfuckers had already stoled his pants. Underwear too, if he was wearing any.”

“Who shot him?”

“That’s a negotiating question. You got to throw an offer out with

it.”

The .45 roars in Derrick’s hand, the slug ripping past Bogie’s ear, clanging off an iron beam five foot behind his head. Bogie doesn’t even look at the gun. “You got a cigarette on you?”

Derrick can’t help but grin. He drops the muzzle of the .45 and fingers a Marlboro red out of his shirt pocket and tosses it to Bogie. “You’re a cool little fucker.”

Bogie cups a hand around the cigarette and lights it with a grimy book of matches. “Ain’t cool at all. I just seen too much of your horse-shit lately for it to bother me much.”

Derrick palms a five out of his billfold, drops it fluttering at the kid’s feet. “That’s it for negotiations.”

“That’ll do.” Bogie crouches to pick up the bill. “He was a big briar. Called himself Pike. Had a boy wonder with him that went by Rory.”

Derrick’s head swarms with blood, a thick heart pump surging like a swollen river over a low dam. “Why?”

Bogie clears his throat meaningfully, his eyes flit down to the bill in his hand.

Derrick lifts the .45, one-handed. Puts the front sight on Bogie’s forehead. “Don’t make me tell you again. We’re done negotiating.”

“They was looking for Dana. Like you.”

“Where is she?” Derrick’s voice sounds like ashes being scraped out of a metal bucket.

“Don’t know. But if you’re still in a negotiating mood, I bet I can find out.”

Derrick pulls the trigger back. Just a little, to the point where it catches before breaking.

“I’ll bet they damn near scared her clean. And I know where she goes when she wants to get clean.” Bogie grins a loose grin. “I’m a regular motherfucking gumshoe, though. I earn twenty-five dollars a day. And expenses.”

R
ory stands in his doorway, toweling sweat off his shaved neck.

“It’s a beautiful morning, Pike. What the hell’re you doing

in it?”

Pike hands him a Styrofoam cup. “Brought coffee.” Rory watches him take a seat at the writing table and pull his gloves off in a soft Vicodin blur. Pike gestures at the bed. “Take a seat.”

Rory obeys, dabbing at his shoulders with the towel.

“You high?” Pike asks.

Rory tosses the towel on the floor and takes a slug off the coffee, scalding his tongue. But he barely notices. “My hand was hurting.”

Pike nods, slowly. The snow is melting of the roof, the water tip-tip-tip-tapping on the ground outside. Rory can see the drops falling through his window. The sun is pouring into the cabin in a easy wave. “I owe you an apology,” Pike says. He uses his middle finger to adjust his glasses on his nose. “I came here to give it.”

“What for?”

“For taking you with me to Cincinnati.”

Rory leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees. “I’d do it again.”

“I know it.”

Rory folds his hands in front of his face, tries a chuckle. It comes out weak. “It won’t be a trip I’ll forget anytime soon.”

Pike sets his coffee cup on the floor. “Say anything you need to say. I’ll listen.”

“Will it help?”

“No.”

“Should I even ask why it don’t seem to bother you none?”

“I know some things you don’t.”

“Like?”

“If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad?”

Rory throws his towel at Pike, who catches it. “Don’t quote at me.”

Pike looks at him steadily. “What we did had to be done. We didn’t have any choice about it. Compared to some of the things that get done that don’t have to be done, we come up pretty light on the scale.”

Rory’s thoughts catch and stall like an overloaded engine. “We had to kill him? That black guy with the hooker?”

“Yep.”

“You don’t know as he would’ve got me with that knife.”

“Sure I do. As soon as we turned around if nothing else. He was morally yellow. He was exactly what it looked like he was. Like Derrick.”

“You can spot them?”

“I wouldn’t have shot him if I couldn’t.”

“You’re a scary motherfucker.”

“No,” Pike says. “I just know what scary looks like. You could work on it yourself.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to be you.”

“I ain’t telling you to be. I’m telling you that you’re all over the place, and you need to get your shit together. Part of that is learning how to see. Right now, you’re the kind of kid that’d show up at a knife fight bare-fisted.”

Rory covers his face with his hands. “Jesus,” he says again. “I never have any fucking idea what to say when I’m talking to you.”

“That’s my point,” Pike says. “Owning your own words is a good place to start. What you do and say, that’s what you are.”

Rory’s face is still in his hands.

“Take all the time off you need. I’ll pay you. If you need anything else, let me know. I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Why did you come back?” Rory drops his hands and looks at Pike. “Here. To Kentucky. And where the hell did you go when you left? You could tell me that. Telling me something about yourself that made any kind of sense might make me feel a whole hell of a lot better.”

“I went all over, but I ended up in Mexico,” Pike says, with nohesitation. “I worked for a coyote named Joaquin. He managed a tunnel from Juarez into the basement of an El Paso safehouse. I was one of his drivers. It was my job to pick up the illegals and get them to their jobsites in the back of my truck.”

“So why’d you came back? You wised up and got sick of it?”

“Not hardly. Joaquin was scared shitless the illegals would rip him off, use the tunnel for free. So he had it built with locks on the tunnel door and a basement like a bomb shelter into the El Paso house. When he got a load in there, he’d lock them up and call one of us. It was our job to get there quick, before the air ran out.” Pike lights a cigarette and stares into his smoke. “One day he called to tell me he’d let a group through the day before and hadn’t been able to call anyone. He told me to check on them, but at this point I could probably take my time. There was a girl in the group named Guillermina. I knew her.”