Southern Cross (32 page)

“No you don’t ’cause I fired you first!” Weed called out as Cheddar grabbed her falling-apart briefcase, papers spilling, and rushed out of the courtroom.

“Your Honor,” Brazil spoke up. “The truth is, we really need our COMSTAT telecommunications system up and running again.” He was out of line, but didn’t care. “The network’s down all over the world because of the fish thing.”

“Officer Brazil, that is irrelevant to this case.”

“Of course,” Brazil mumbled a deliberate challenge to Weed, “he probably couldn’t fix it anyway.”

“Can too,” Weed said.

“Oh yeah?” Brazil taunted. “Then how?”

“Just take out the program I did when I punted and messed up the HTML interpreter in AOL.”

Judge Davis couldn’t help herself because like all else in the world, she used AOL and lived in fear of color bombs, IM bombs, HTML Freeze/Lag, HTMO errors, a combination of the above, or possibly the less innocuous but more annoying Blank IM bombs.

“What’s
punting?”
she asked Weed.

“The bug’s in autowrap in the text handler,” he informed her as if his explanation was as obvious as colors. “See, if you use VBMSG subclassing, you know? To hold the window open and do some other things I told it to do, you know? ’Cause, see, like I said, there’s this bug. So I told it to put my map on there and hold it. And the Anti-Punt program won’t work, either, because I made my program hit Reply on the IM.”

Amazement stilled the room. Brazil was writing everything down. The C.A.’s mouth was open in disbelief.

“But I never meant for my fish screen to go everywhere,” Weed added. “Someone must’ve stuck all these addresses together, and it ain’t me who did.”

“Does anybody understand what he just said?” the judge asked.

“I sort of do,” Brazil said. “And he’s right about the addresses.”

“It won’t take me but a minute to show him how to fix it, then you can lock me up,” Weed said. “And I can do the parade and get locked up again.”

He looked up at her, fear shining in his eyes. He could tell Judge Davis understood something bad would happen if she let him go home. He turned around and looked at his mother.

“It’s okay, Mama,” he said. “It ain’t got nothing to do with you.”

Tears filled her eyes, and his got a little swimmy, too.

The C.A., whose job it was to punish to the fullest extent of the law, finally argued the case.

“The release of him is an unreasonable danger to the property of others.” He quoted the code. “I think there is clear and convincing evidence
not
to release him.”

The judge leaned forward and looked at Weed. She had made up her mind. Weed’s heart jumped.

“I find there is probable cause for the state,” the judge let everybody know, “and an adjudicatory hearing will be held twenty-one days from today. The state may summon witnesses, and the juvenile will remain in detention. But I
order that the juvenile be released into the custody of Officer Brazil this Saturday.” She looked at Weed. “What time is the parade?”

“Ten-thirty,” Weed said. “But I gotta be there earlier than that.”

“When does it end?”

“Eleven-thirty,” Weed said. “But I gotta stay longer than that.”

“Nine
A
.
M
. to one
P
.
M
.,” the judge said to Brazil. “Then back in detention pending the court date.”

T
HE MORNING OF
the Azalea Parade Weed’s soul was as light as light itself. He wished he could paint the way he felt and the way the morning looked as Officer Brazil drove him to George Wythe High School, where the Godwin marching band was waiting and warming up.

Weed was proud and sweating in his polyester and wool blend red-and-white uniform with its many silver buttons and its stripes down the legs. His rolled-heel black shoes looked like new, the Sabian cymbals polished and safely in their black case in the back seat.

“Too bad you haven’t had more time to practice,” Brazil said.

Weed knew that out of the 152 members of the band, he was probably the only one who had missed a week of practice. He hadn’t had a chance to look at his drill charts or work on forward march, pull mark time, pull halt, high mark, backward march, his favorite freeze-spin and especially the crab step, which was unique to the percussion section of Godwin’s finely tuned precision marching band.

“I’ll be all right,” Weed said, staring out the window, his heart thrilled.

Already crowds were gathering. It was predicted this
might be the biggest turnout in the history of the parade. The weather was perfect, in the seventies, a light breeze, not a cloud. People were spreading out blankets, setting up lawn chairs, parking strollers and wheelchairs, and those who lived along the parade route had decided it was a good day for a yard sale. Cops were everywhere in reflective vests and Weed had never seen so many traffic cones.

Brazil was worried. Thousands of people were gathering and those participating in the parade filled the George Wythe High School parking lot. If Smoke had a plan, Brazil didn’t see how it was possible to pluck one teenager out of such congestion, especially if no one, except Weed, seemed to know what Smoke really looked like.

“Weed, I want you to make a promise, okay?” Brazil said as Weed collected his cymbal case from the car. “You’d recognize Smoke or any of his gang.”

“So.”

Weed was in a hurry, anxiously staring off at his marching band, which from this vantage was a patch of bright red and white somewhat lost in a swarm of colorful uniforms and flashing instruments and swords and twinkling batons and twirling flags. Floats hovered restlessly in an endless line. Masons were dressed like clowns. Mounted police were letting kids pet the horses. Antique cars rattled.

“We’re better than that,” Weed said, watching the Navy League Cadet Corps practice marching. “Look at that bus! That band came all the way from Chicago! And there’s one from New York!”

“Weed, did you hear what I said?” Brazil asked out his open window.

Sergeant Santa worked the crowd. One of the Florettes lost track of her baton and it bounced several times on the road. People dressed for the Old West were showing off miniature horses that had azalea blossoms in their manes. The Independence Wheelchair Athletic Association was ready to go. Weed was dazzled.

“Weed!” Brazil was about to get out of the car.

“Don’t you worry, Officer Brazil,” Weed said. “I’ll let you know.”

“How?” Brazil wasn’t going to take any bullshit.

“I’ll do a real long crash and flash my cymbals good when I’m not supposed to,” Weed said.

“No way, Weed. How am I going to notice that with everything else going on?” Brazil countered.

Weed thought. His face got tense, his shoulders slumped and he looked heart-broken when he said, “Then I’ll cut one loose. You can’t miss that. Course you’ll have to explain later why I did or I won’t be playing cymbals in the band no more.”

“Cut one loose?” Brazil was lost.

“Let go of the strap. You ever seen an eighteen-inch cymbal roll down the road?”

“No,” Brazil confessed.

“Well, you see one,” Weed told him, “then you know I’m telling you trouble’s about to start.”

Lelia Ehrhart was already having trouble. She was closely inspecting the Blue Ribbon Crime Commission’s red Cadillac convertible, with its streamers of blue ribbons that would float and flutter beautifully once the car was rolling along the parade route. She realized with horror that there wasn’t a single azalea blossom, not even one.

“We must carry on to the theme and message of the parade,” she told Commissioner Ed Blackstone.

“I thought the blue ribbons did that,” replied Blackstone, who was eighty-two but maintained that age didn’t matter. “I thought it was called the Azalea Parade because of azaleas, which are everywhere, and it wasn’t expected that we fill the car with them, especially since we don’t have many seats anyway.”

Ehrhart could not be persuaded, and she directed that the white leather front passenger’s side and most of the back were to be lush and dense with pink and white azalea bushes. This reduced the number of waving and smiling commissioners from three to one.

“I guess I’ll have to ride alone by myself,” Ehrhart said.

“Well, I’m going to tell you something, Lelia,” said Blackstone as he leaned against his walker, straining to see through the huge glasses he’d been wearing since his last cataract surgery. “You’re going to have bees. That many blossoms, and bees will show up, mark my words. And don’t say I didn’t warn you about making those streamers so long. Twenty feet.” Blackstone was severe on this point. “Anybody gets close to your rear with all those streamers of blue ribbons endlessly flying, something’s going to get tangled up.”

“Where’s Jed?” Ehrhart frowned.

“Over there.” Blackstone pointed at a tree.

Ehrhart searched the masses and spotted Jed hanging around an antique fire truck, talking to Muskrat, who had fixed her car a time or two. She didn’t like to be reminded that Governor Feuer had declined to participate in the parade, even after Ehrhart had offered to ride with him. At least he had volunteered Jed to drive the commission’s car, which was on loan from one of Bull Ehrhart’s patients.

“Tell to him it’s times to come now,” Lelia Ehrhart ordered Blackstone.

Blackstone motioned at the tree to hurry along.

Neither Brazil nor West liked crowds, but Chief Hammer refused to bask in the limelight alone, especially since she hated parades and other public celebrations more than West and Brazil did.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” West complained from the backseat of the dark blue Sebring. “You got this psycho kid out there waiting to make himself a legend by doing something really, really bad, and what do you decide?” She slid into the driver’s seat and began adjusting mirrors. “You decide to ride in an open convertible.”

“I don’t like it, either,” said Brazil as he climbed in back, next to Hammer. “You sure you don’t want me to drive?” he asked West.

“Forget it,” she replied.

Brazil got out paperwork.

“We need to find the Mustang Club,” he said, “because
we’re in front of them. And”—he traced his finger down a list—“right behind Miss Richmond.”

“Yuck,” West said.

Pigeon and a fat man were within two feet of each other at Westover Hills and Bassett, across from Brentwood South.

The fat man seemed ready for action as he clandestinely searched the crowd through a pair of Leica binoculars. Pigeon was rooting for half a hot dog with mustard and relish that a little kid had just tossed into a trash can, as if hot dogs grew on trees.

Pigeon never missed the Azalea Parade. People were so wasteful. Not one kid this day and age knew the value of a dollar, not even those folks on food stamps. He fished out an almost entire bag of potato chips that some little brat couldn’t toss without violently squeezing, crushing and pulverizing first.

“What we need is another good war,” he said to the fat man, although they were not acquainted.

“I’ve been saying that for years.” The fat man couldn’t have agreed more. “No one understands what it’s like.”

“How could they?” Pigeon said, peering inside the bag, unable to find a chip bigger than a dime.

“My name’s Bubba,” Bubba said as he continued his sweep with the binoculars.

“I’m Pigeon.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Pigeon homed in on another kid who dropped his bubble gum on the sidewalk after three chews, when there was still plenty of flavor left. A woman in jogging clothes stepped on it.

“Thanks a lot!” she called out to the kid as he popped open a can of Orange Crush and walked off.

She lifted her foot and stared at strings of pink gum leading to a blob fixed to the tread of her right Saucony running shoe.

“I hate you!” she screamed at the kid as people walked around her, looking for a spot with a decent view. “I hate all children! I hate people!”

“That would piss me off, too,” Pigeon said. “Nobody cares anymore.”

Bubba focused on Smudge and his wife opening lawn chairs in a yard no more than fifty feet to Bubba’s right.

“He probably doesn’t even know those people,” Bubba mumbled with fresh fury. “Just helps himself like he does with everything in life.”

“All the world’s like that now,” Pigeon said.

“He knows I’m here, too,” Bubba said. “The son of a bitch knows he owes me a thousand dollars. Says he has amnesia, doesn’t remember the bet, so it doesn’t count.”

“I don’t know what happened to honesty,” Pigeon said.

Bubba watched Smudge open a checkered tablecloth and spread it out in the grass. He set down a blue ice chest, opened the lid and rummaged.

Pigeon searched in vain for a cigarette butt. He could tell the price had shot way up. People were smoking closer to the filter, leaving nothing for him.

He was shocked yesterday morning when he was picking his way along Main Street, downtown, and observed on the Dow Jones electronic message board outside Scott & Stringfellow brokers that the price per pack had increased another two dollars and eleven cents. If only Pigeon had bought more when he had the money from the pawn shop. He could have done some quick trading. He’d probably be rich.

Even as Pigeon was thinking that, Bubba reached into his shirt pocket for a pack. He shook out a cigarette without lowering the binoculars.

“Those Merit Ultimas any good?” Pigeon asked as Bubba lit up. “That’s one I haven’t tried yet.”

“Oh yeah,” Bubba said. “Anything Philip Morris makes is the best.”

“I’ve always thought so. How are those different from regular Merits?” Pigeon slyly asked.

“Want to try one?”

“That would be nice,” Pigeon said as Bubba passed him the pack. “Why, thank you very much.”

Wailing police sirens and the thunder of cops on motorcycles sounded in the distance, signaling that the parade was starting. Weed was so excited his knees were shaking.

He was positioned to the right of Lou Jameson on the snare drum, who was wearing sunglasses like all the drummers did. He had never been very friendly to Weed and more than once had commented that anybody could play cymbals and he’d seen girls doing it in other bands.

Western Guilford High School in white and black was directly in front of Godwin. Lakeview Junior High in gold and green was to the rear. Bright, brave uniforms of all colors and designs must have stretched for a mile, Weed calculated. The parade was starting to move. The lead band out of New Jersey exploded into “God Bless America,” which wasn’t very original and the trumpets were a little off.

Weed stood tall and proud. He did a few toe lifts to loosen up.

“Left foot out and point flex and point flex and really stretch it,” he recited.

Jameson looked at him with disdain.

“Left heel two inches off ground while ball and toe remain touching the ground.” Weed practiced a
low mark time
with a quick, snappy motion. “Ankle touches knee on end of each beat, toe pointed straight down the leg, feet flat.” He executed a perfect
high mark.
“Push down on beat on left foot, then
mark time.”

“Hey, cut it out,” Jameson said.

“No,” Weed retorted.

He used to be intimidated by Jameson. But after being arrested, getting locked up in detention, mouthing off to a defense attorney and striking a deal with a judge, Weed wasn’t scared of anyone.

“Three, four, halt. To left, right, foot crosses over, mark
time hut, and one, two, three, four, weight on toes.” His crab step was flawless.

“I told you to fucking cut it out,” Jameson whispered.

“Make me.”

“I’ll beat your ass.”

“Hope you beat it better than you do that drum,” Weed said.

“TO THE READY!” the drum major shouted from the front.

Weed came to attention. One thing about his cymbals, they sure got heavy.

“BAND, TEN-HUT!”

He strained to see what the color guard was doing way ahead. When the woodwinds started forward marching, he knew he was next.

There was nothing random about Smoke’s decision to steal the black nylon Stanley tool belt when he broke into Bubba’s workshop. Its extra deep pockets were perfect and he had known it at the time, because Smoke had been planning for a while.