Street Rules (15 page)

“Sometimes.”

“Are you on it now?”

Below, the bus farted thick black smoke. The city was switching to electric soon. That would be good.

“I feel like I’m on the curb.”

Tic, tic, tic.

“What does the road look like from there?”

A delivery truck idled at the light. Frank thought of her father, how dark his hair had been. It was thick and curly on his arms and had tickled her face when he held her. Sometimes she’d give anything to feel that arm around her again. She closed her eyes against the window, grateful for its coolness against her forehead.

“Looks like where I’ve been.”

Clay let her sit with that before asking what was the best thing that happened to her that week.

She tweaked her mouth into a deprecating line.

“Had dinner with a nice lady.”

Clay’s smile was warm and he urged, “Tell me about that.”

Feeling silly, she briefly described dinner with Gail, adding, “It was nice. She’s easy to talk to. Smart. And funny. Pretty, too.”

Remembering her conversation in the car with Gail, she added, “She keeps it real. I don’t see much of that.”

“Are you going to see her again?”

Frank almost said sure, but she’d learned there were no guarantees in life.

“Probably. We run into each other in a professional capacity.”

“I meant in a personal capacity, like having dinner again.”

“Hadn’t thought about it,” Frank admitted.

“Well, consider it,” Clay advised, ending their session.

As always, he left Frank with something to chew on. And as always, she was glad to be out of his office and back on the street where she knew the rules.

Frank cheerfully presented Claudia with another box of donuts. Sleepy and rumple-haired, she pulled a cheap robe around herself and let Frank in. The baby began crying and Gloria screamed from her bedroom. Something
about jodida
cops and harassment. Claudia started to make coffee, but Frank took the pot from her hand.

“No, no,” she said, exaggeratedly solicitous. “Let me. You sit down. Have a donut.”

Half asleep, Alicia stepped into the kitchen, coming to when she saw the pink box on the table. She was the only one who liked Frank’s early morning visits. She sat at the table, mooning over the unopened box. Alicia’s eyes gleamed when Frank lifted the lid. The little girl examined the donuts, and maybe because she was getting more comfortable with Frank, she asked, “Why you don’t bring syrup ones like the other
policia!”

Claudia hissed at her grandchild to be quiet and jerked her from the chair. Swatting her bottom, she gave the girl a push into the living room. A moment later the television blared. Her grandmother yelled at her to turn it down.

“What other
policia,
Claudia?”

“El negro,”
she said quickly. “He brung donuts the other day.”

Frank poured them both coffee, putting milk on the table for Claudia. Waiting until Claudia was adding the milk to her cup, she said, “Tell me about the heroin.”

Claudia dripped milk on the table, glancing up into Frank’s attentive blue eyes. She grabbed a sponge out of the sink and swiped angrily at the spill, then picked up her cup and stood with her back to the counter. Frank watched her like a snake tracking a mouse.

“Tell me about the heroin,” she repeated.

“What heroin?”

Frank laughed, “Damn, Claudia, you think the police are so stupid they don’t know you’re serving out of here? What I want to know is if you’re chippin’ again.”

Claudia looked disgusted. “I give that up a long time ago.”

“What about the kids?”

“They don’t mess with that stuff. That’s the devil’s candy. I kill ‘em myself before I let them shoot up.”

“But you let them sell it.”

Claudia held Frank’s gaze. “Sometimes,” she admitted.

Frank considered a curious paradox of ghetto morality. You could do shit to strangers, other gangs, even your friends, but never to your gang or your family. They were blood. But it was perfectly okay to fuck up everybody else. Frank had seen the rationale time and time again, that if someone was stupid enough to use it, why shouldn’t someone else be smart enough to hustle it? Claudia admitted none of them used smack and she didn’t want it near her, yet she felt no compunction about dealing it and addicting other people. This blind eye to suffering was a common survival technique in communities with few resources and intense competition.

“Who do you sell to?”

“Gente.
Whoever’s looking,” she said, flipping her tangled hair behind her shoulders.

“You sell to Fifty-first Street Playboy’s?”

Claudia shook her head, “I don’t know who that is.”

“You have a steady clientele?”

Frank realized she didn’t understand, and amended, “You have regular customers.”

“Sometimes,” she shrugged.

“I want their names. I want to know where they live.”

“Mierda,”
Claudia snorted.
“No se eso.”

Frank went along with a cool smile.

“You’re telling me you deal to strangers?”

“No son stranjeros, pues, pero no sabemos sus nombres propios o dirreciones.”

“In English.”

Claudia started chewing on the flesh around her nail. Claudia denied much involvement in dealing, saying it was infrequent. When Frank asked how she supported three children and two grandkids, Claudia cited child aid and welfare.

Alicia sidled back to the kitchen table and Frank pushed the donuts toward her. She grabbed one and ran off with it. The child looked healthy and well fed. The shelves behind Frank were well-stocked and she’d noticed when she took the milk out, that the refrigerator was full. You didn’t see that too often in government aid homes.

Claudia’s nails were ragged from chewing, but her hands were smooth. She thought about the junk food wrappers and pizza boxes scattered perpetually in the living room around toys and piles of CDs and Nintendo cartridges. Frank knew there was more then welfare coming into this house. She stared at Claudia, deliberately making her uncomfortable as she gauged her best angle of attack. At length, as Claudia ate away more skin around her nails, Frank asked, “How many more, eh? How many more have to die because you’re afraid to tell me the truth?”

“I got nothin’ to do with it,” Claudia defended herself.

Disgusted, Frank shook her head.

“How can you say that? People are
dying,
Claudia. Your blood, your
family.
For Christ’s sake, someone killed your daughter and you know who and you won’t let me help, so don’t tell me it’s got nothing to do with you.
Christ”
Frank swore again. “If you know who’s doin’ this and you ain’t done nothin’ to stop it’s like you’ve pulled the trigger on your own daughter! You killed your own flesh and blood Claudia, now you’re just sittin’ around drinkin’ coffee while you’re waitin’ to see who gets it next.”

Quivering, Claudia hissed, “So I should die, too? Eh? Who’s gonna look after my babies? Who’s gonna look after Alicia and the gran’babies if I’m not here, eh? You tell me that! You cops come in tryin’ to run everybody’s lives like you know what’s goin’ on, and you don’t know
nothin’,”
she spat. “All you fuckin’
jura,
all you want is it your own way — what’s good for you. And you come in here tryin’ to tell me what I need to do. How to protect my family.
Fuck
that. You don’t know. Where are you at three-thirty in the morning when he comes knockin’ on my door? Eh? How much do you care then? You don’ know nuttin’ about what I need to do. You don’t know nuttin’ about keepin’ my chil’ren safe. Don’t you be tellin’ me what I need to do. I’m
doin’
what I need to do!”

“Who comes knockin’ on your door at three-thirty, Claudia?”

“Fuck
you. All you fuckin’ cops.”

Claudia’s eyes were lit with rage, the old fire had finally been stoked back to life.

“Who’s at your door at three-thirty?” Frank tried again, knowing as Claudia coldly recomposed herself that she’d lost her. She’d had her for a sec then played her wrong. Frank slowly drained her cup, then stood, scraping her chair against the floor.

“Thanks for the coffee. I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow.”

When it was Frank’s weekend on call she usually didn’t get to the Alibi until the drinking was well under way. She found a space on the street and pulled in just as Gail was getting out of her car. The ME hadn’t seen her and Frank caught up, following quietly a few steps behind.

“Hey.”

“Oh, Christ! Thanks, Frank. I hadn’t had my daily coronary yet.”

“Got to be more careful out here. I watched you get out of your car and then I followed you. You didn’t even see me.”

“I wasn’t expecting to get mugged.”

“Nobody ever is. That’s what the bad guys count on.”

“Yes, Officer Friendly.”

“Just be more careful. Look at what’s on the street before you get out of your car.”

“My God, you sound like a public service announcement. Are you always this didactic?” Gail asked reaching for the bar door. The noise assaulted them and Frank raised her voice, “Be a shame to see you laid out on one of your own gurneys!”

“Ha, ha.”

The Nine-three was holding down two tables and as Frank threaded toward them, nodding here and there, she recognized Hunt, Dimmler, and a couple other uniforms around the tables. Johnnie was arm-wrestling Munoz, and actually winning for a change. Frank offered Gail the only empty seat and scavenged another one, putting it next to the doc. Bobby and Diego welcomed Gail, but Frank overheard Hunt mutter to Dimmler, “Somebody must’ve left the door open at the pound. All the bitches are loose.”

Frank was surprised Hunt was smart enough to make up a joke and wondered if he’d stolen the line. She glanced at Gail who didn’t seem to have heard.

“This place is mobbed,” she semi-shouted to Frank. “What’s the occasion?”

Frank replied quickly, “They all heard you were coming.”

Picking Nance out among the harried waitresses and noting Ike cruising a knot of females from the DA’s office, Frank asked Diego, “Noah come by?”

“He’s in the can.”

Frank leaned close to Gail and asked, “Gin and tonic?”

When Gail nodded, she said, “Be right back.”

Frank went to the bar and yelled her order at Mac.

“Comin’ up,” he yelled back, slamming bottles and pouring with both hands. While Frank waited, Noah came out of the bathroom, saw her, grinned.

“What up, dudess?”

He flipped his palm up and she greased it. Mac slid the dripping drinks over and Frank carried them carefully, wondering how Nancy flew around with them on a tray.

“Move over,” Noah said, wedging a chair between Diego’s and Frank’s. Gail clanked her glass against Frank’s.

“To Fridays.”

“Here, here.”

As Dimmler vied for Gail’s attention, Noah said close to Frank’s ear, “I see Dim and Dimmer have joined us. Dimmler’s all right,” he conceded, “but Hunt’s a freak. He’d rather be out knockin’ heads than working.”

Bobby and Diego cheered as Munoz’ arm went down, then Frank looked down the table, asking Bobby how his talk with Itsy had gone. She’d come back home last night and her detectives had paged Frank so she could be in on the interview, but she hadn’t been able to break away. She’d told them to throw another girl in Itsy’s face but not to mention who it was.

“She was pretty strung out, wasn’t in much better shape than when Nook talked to her the last time. We rattled her cage about a girlfriend and she took it pretty hard. She was asking us who it was, begging us to tell her. She’s a mess. She couldn’t even tell us where she was when Placa got shot. Thinks she was hanging around with a guy named Droopy. They were both trying to score.”

“You find him?”

“We’re looking. I got a CI might know who he is. He used to be a King until he got jumped out for using.”

“So you don’t think she knew about Lydia?”

“I doubt it. About all she thinks of anymore is where to get her next hit.”

“Does she have wheels?”

“No. She went to El Monte with her mother. She’s got an old Riviera. We asked about Ocho, if anything was going down with him and Placa. She said she didn’t know. She’s been out of the set for a while and most of the Queens just diss her now.”

Frank watched the bubbles pop in her club soda, mulling this over. Putting her head close to Frank’s, Gail asked, “Are you narrowing in on anybody?”

“Well, at first we had a good possible suspect, then we had two more, but they seem to be slipping through our fingers. At this point, I have to say no.”

Bobby and Nook had checked out the other Playboys Lydia said were at the party, but had gotten nothing of substance. When pressed, they all admitted being there with Ocho, but were vague about the party’s timeline. Ruiz could have slipped away anytime.

Dimmler vied for Gail’s attention as a cop in civvies bumped Frank’s chair. Kneeling behind her he said hello to the ME.

“Hello,” Gail replied, obviously annoyed.

“I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.”

“I already have one.”

“Well, when you finish that one.”

“I’m only having one.”

“Hey, pal. She’s
at our
table,” Dimmler growled.

“Whatever,” the cop in civvies said, then snickered, “Arnold.”

Coming out of his chair, Dimmler said, “You want to make something outta this?”

“No, man, just relax.”

When the cop stood, he was taller than Dimmler but not nearly as buff.

“Maybe later, doc. See you around.”

“I hope not,” she said to Frank.

“Sorry about that,” Dimmler said. Gail took him aback when she said, “What are
you
apologizing for?”

Hunt grinned nastily while Dimmler stammered, “Well, for his behavior.”

“Like yours is so much better? Honestly, you guys are like wolves fighting over meat scraps.”

Her tone got the attention of the rest of the table. Noah started to say something but Hunt interrupted.