Psycho Save Us (16 page)

A sign of the
times
,
David thought. 
Crime isn’t for the locals anymore
.  
It’s gone
international
. 
We’re outsourcing the criminal work
.  He smiled
whenever he thought about how criminals were finding it difficult to find work
with other criminals, just like the law-abiding citizens in the standard
economy were finding it hard to find a job not taken by foreigners.  Hard to
believe, but criminal jobs were disappearing overseas, and many of the
important ones that remained here were going to the cousins of those
lieutenants in other countries.  These made up the proxy gangs. 

The rain got a
bit heavier.  Small puddles had started collecting just since Hulsey arrived. 
The big detective removed his rubber gloves and tucked them in his back
pocket.  “That’s weird,” he said.

“What is?” David
asked.

“Well, a Caucasian
car thief hauls ass across the South for more than forty-eight hours, maybe
longer, just to come here to Atlanta—the fucking Bluff of all places—and then
helps with the kidnapping of two black girls?”  Hulsey shook his head.  “Just
weird.”

“You think
they’re unconnected?”

“Yeah, I think
they’re unconnected.  But he still saw something at Dodson’s Store, and I wanna
know what, and why he ran off like that.  Maybe if I help ATTF find their man, their
man will help me find Kaley and Shannon Dupré.”

Beatrice, who
had been quiet throughout the conversation, spoke up.  “David here thinks it
was the
vory v zakone
.  Ain’t that what you said earlier?”

David stiffened
again.  He knew that Hulsey was one of those guys who didn’t like needless
speculation, especially from people who weren’t detectives.  Hulsey himself had
obeyed that rule when he was a beat cop; never second guessed a detective or
voiced his opinion in the presence of another detective, nor in front of David
himself when they worked out together.

Hulsey grimaced.
 He lifted a finger and pointed up the street.  “Here comes the tow truck.”

The big man
walked back to his car, folded the collar down from his long coat, and hopped
inside.  His sedan rocked hard and tilted to one side as he settled in.  He
started it up, and drove off with a lifted index finger as his only farewell.

David turned to
Beatrice, and said, “Please,
please
, if you were ever my friend and
wanted to help me make detective, don’t ever tell Leon Hulsey that you or I
have an opinion.”

Beatrice thought
about that for a second, and made a hissing sound.  “Oops.  Sorry, Dave.”

“Don’t worry
about it.”  David said it a little more sharply than he’d intended.  He wasn’t
really cognizant of it, but he was still upset over what the guy at Dodson’s
(“Mac” Abernathy) had called him earlier. 
Fake-ass nigga
.  He had
thought he could drop it, leave it behind like he had so many other times
before.  But he couldn’t.  Not tonight.

And
now Hurley, and Beatrice’s indiscretion…

David looked at
who was hopping out of the tow truck.  “C’mon,” he said.  “Looks like they sent
Saul.  He’s got that bad knee and moves slower than a snail in Jell-O.  We’re
gonna have to help him if we wanna get outta this weather.”

The clouds had
moved in from nowhere.  They were thin, spread out.  They didn’t look like
rainclouds at all.  David looked about the street, and saw that they still had
an audience.  In fact, it had grown.  Three woman in the skankiest clothes now
stood at the corner of the block, just staring at them.  They were staring at
the truck. 
They’re drawn to it
, he thought for half a second, then
walked over to greet Saul.

Yes.  A strange
night.

Leon Hulsey
drove a couple blocks away to Brandi’s Grill, where he sat for a moment,
thinking.  There were only two other cars parked near him, waiting for the
curbside service Brandi’s was known for.  When Theresa, one of the waitresses,
had approached his door, he’d waved her away.

The Tacoma and
its thief had him vexed.  “It’s not easy to know how to hotwire that many
cars,” he said out loud.  To think better, Leon liked to get away from people
and have a conversation with himself.  He knew that they would think him weird,
so he always sought seclusion and hammered it out.  “There’s no universal color-code
system for the wires underneath ignition covers.”  He thought for a moment.  “Only
an owner’s manual would have that much information, let you know which wires
are which, but a car thief in a hurry like this guy couldn’t stop to consult
every single owner’s manual in every single car he targeted.  It would take too
long.”  He nodded to himself.  “Yep.  Besides, not all of the cars would have
the owner’s manuals inside.”

He glanced
outside.  Theresa had walked up to him again to check on him.  Leon waved her
away again, watching her sashay her ass in those tight blue jeans.  Half the
reason he came to Brandi’s Grill right there, because the hot dogs and burgers
were shit for sure.

The rain had
slackened to a light drizzle again.  Rivulets ran down his windshield, and Leon
watched them merge and form temporary rivers before separating again.

“But a pro would
know that the red pair is
usually
the set that provides power to the
car,” Leon went on, sussing it out.  “And the brown, which can be a single wire
or a pair of wires depending on the car, handles the starter.  A pro would know
that, too.  Sure.  Someone who had done this a lot.  No standard booster or
avid
Grand Theft Auto
video gamer.”  He shook his head and waved a
dismissive hand.  “No, not like that.  A lifer.  Done this since he was old
enough to look over the dashboard.  For sure.”

Leon considered
the kinds of cars that had been selected.  The thief, whoever he was, had
selected all models of cars that
didn’t
have the locking mechanism that
would require a key before unlocking the steering column.  Had the thief tried
it on, say, a Mercury, he would’ve been able to start it but wouldn’t have been
able to turn the steering wheel.  “A lifer.  For sure.  Knew which models to
look for.  Yeah.  For sure.”

Leon tapped his
teeth for a moment, ruminating, then reached over to the passenger’s seat and
lifted an issue of
The Dark Knight Returns
.  He hadn’t removed it from
its flimsy plastic wrapper yet, and savored removing it now, just as much as he
then savored flipping through the pages and sniffing the age.  This was an old
Frank Miller special, one of the greatest runs an artist or a writer ever had on
a comic series.  Leon hardly read comics anymore, but he enjoyed the artistry,
the pageantry and the mythology.  Miller’s gritty, film noir-style of art
particularly appealed to him.  The streets weren’t clean in Miller’s universe like
most cities appeared in comics or film.  The streets were filthy, grimy, all
the people had rought lines on their faces that showed how hard the world had
been on them, how it had abused them before moving on without them.

Like Atlanta
, Leon thought, glancing
up at the rough streets of the Bluff all around, and the juxtaposed skyscrapers
looming miles away.  He looked back down.  The comic provided a temporary
distraction, one that settled the growing black tumor of knowledge that he’d
been trying to avoid ever since he peeked inside the Tacoma.  There was no
denying it. 
It’s one of Pat’s guys
. 
For sure
.

Yes.  For sure. 
His grandpop had passed down this piece of advice: “If it looks like a duck, walks
like a duck, an’ quacks like a duck, then it’s a safe bet you don’t got an
orangutan’s smelly turd on yer hands.”  If it wasn’t one of Pat’s guys, then
Pat would know him.  Leon was willing to bet on that.

For a moment he
continued flipping through the pages of his comic.  He took in the rough
textures, ran his finger across the faces of the characters like he did as a
kid, almost expecting to feel them.  He considered where he’d be now if he had
opted for the art scholarship instead of following his father’s footsteps.

“Why are you
stalling, Leon?” he asked himself sternly.  “What else can it be?  Remember
what Grandpop said.”  He gave it another moment’s thought, then nodded his
certainty.  “So that’s it, then,” Leon said, closing the comic book and putting
it back in its plastic wrapper.  “Pat’s Auto.”  He still doubted it had
anything to do with the kidnapping—nothing else about it lined up—but it was
worth a shot to see what Pat, or one of Pat’s drivers, might know.

Leon cranked up
his sedan, backed out of Brandi’s with a final wave to Theresa, and then headed
for Terrell Street.  It had been a peculiar thing, trying to find reasons
not
to go to his brother-in-law’s chop shop, but no one ever said being a cop was
easy.

5

Pat
pulled out a Caran D’Ache lighter, and lit the cigarette pressed between his
lips.  He obviously did it without thought to show off, but to Spencer the black
Chinese lacquer finish on the lighter was a sign of just how high Pat had
risen.  He offered a cig to Spencer, who declined.  Some people thought beer
and cigarettes went hand in hand, but Spencer had a different philosophy.  He’d
smoked Marlboros earlier in lieu of a beer, but he had a good buzz going on now
so to hell with the nicotine.

There was a loud
clanging outside, and someone shouted.  Pat huffed and went to do the door.  He
stepped outside and started hollering at Eddie and the other grease monkeys. 
Spencer remained in his seat, leaning back and staring up at the spackled
ceiling and listening to the light tinkling of rain on the roof, thinking about
all the nights spent in the joint with little else to do but listen to the rain,
or talk to Martin Horowitz.

When Pat plopped
back down his squeaky chair, he did so with a sigh and a rueful shake of the
head.  It was interesting to see him behave in such a way, like a man with
actual responsibilities.  “And so,” he said, taking a toke of his cigarette (it
was a brand with a name Spencer couldn’t pronounce).  “When last we left our
hero, his stupid ass was locked up inside Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. 
An’ now fo’ our excitin’ conclusion, folks.  How
will
Spencer Adam
Pelletier escape the evil clutches of the Man an’ keep his asshole virginity
intact?  Stay tuned.”

Spencer took a
sip of his Bud.  There was only a quarter of the bottle left, and he held it up
to the light and sloshed it around for a moment.  “I already told you,” he
said.  “They opened the door for me and I walked out.”

“Uh huh.  The
full story, if ya please, sir?  Pray tell.”

He sloshed a bit
of the beer around again, considering how much he ought to tell.  He shrugged,
and figured,
Why not everything
.  “I was transferred from CRC, Coyote
Ridge Corrections, which is a state prison in Washington.”

Pat nodded.  “I
know the place.  Remember Enrique Lopez?  Gay-ass Puerto Rican with a lisp? 
His brother locked up in that joint.”

Spencer
continued.  “They were initially going to send me to a level-three
maximum-security prison, one down in Tennessee, but then a few inmates at CRC
lied on me, said that I’d been givin’ them all these threats of violence.  I
did
get in a fight with one o’ them—this one fella who stepped to me, he was a
member of the Aryan Brotherhood, an’ the AB don’t forget.  Since I was about to
be moved out soon, and would be away from the reach o’ their vengeance, they
concocted a story that had me attacking a whole bunch of ’em during the six
short weeks I was there.  They claimed to all be scared of me.  They did this
and presented the one AB guy whose ass I’d beaten in the shower room as evidence. 
It was a last ditch and pathetic effort.  One that worked.

“They sent me to
Leavenworth after a reevaluation of my conduct and misbehaviors.  A prison
shrink named Armand suggested at one point that I might be a psychopath.  I
never paid that label much mind, but as it would turn out, I guess he was
right.  I’d done a good job blending in at CRC.  I carried myself like a lifer,
an’ everyone seemed to regard me as someone who’d been around prison for a long
time, even if it wasn’t
that
prison.  But the AB’s lie ended up helping
to expose me for what I really am.”

“What’choo
really are?” Pat said, blowing out his smoke with a quizzical face.

“A psychopath,”
Spencer said, shrugging.  “At least, that’s what they tell me.”

“They actually
diagnose
muthafuckas with that?  I thought that was just a word.”

“They gave me
the PCL-R.  The Psychopath Checklist-Revised.  It’s a forty-point personality
test.  The test isn’t given to everyone, only some people.  Doctors actually
have to pay
royalties
to this guy named Dr. Hare, the guy who invented
it, like the way radio stations have to pay Prince a little bit o’ money every
time they play one o’ his songs.”  He took a sip and shrugged again.  “So, they
don’t use it very often, and Dr. Hare even suggested that it not be used too liberally,
only when a clinician is highly confident that a subject warrants testing.”