The Mentor (6 page)

In my book,
there’s nothing wrong with walking.  As I said, I had no car and liked it
just fine that way.  Now, you might think my waistline would reflect my
car-lessness, but a steady diet of grain beverages keeps those trendy toned
muscles and six-pack abs at bay.

In my city,
without a car and no ride, the only real choice was to walk. That's because the
mass transit system in the Atlanta area is about as useful as a rainbow fright
wig at a Klan rally.  

It seems
the only place you can really get to is, strange enough, the bus depot.
 All lines lead to the bus depot but, as far as I can tell, nowhere else
you'd care to go.  I’m pretty convinced the only people that ride the bus
are transit employees going to work.

Luckily, my
walk was short because the Cobb County sheriff building is just a couple blocks
off the Marietta Square.  Even though I’ve never been busted for anything,
at least not in Georgia, it felt strange walking into the cops’ hive.  

After a few
minutes inside, I noticed everyone just waits in line for the lady behind the
glass, just like at the post office.  And just like the post office, some
of these folks are armed.

The desk
sergeant wasn’t happy to see me.  Her mood did not improve once I began to
tell her my story.  Once I got to the part about waking up in the
submerged van she held her hand up.

“Okay,
enough.”

“There’s
more,” I said, leaning my forehead against the glass.

“Yeah, I
don’t want to hear it,” she said and motioned over to the wall where blue,
plastic seats were linked together like huge, discarded ice cube trays.
 Three chairs were occupied.  “A detective will be out in a while and
call your name.”

“He’ll be
able to help me?”

She looked
me up and down and said, “He’s a cop, not a barber.”  

Next to
her, an officer built like a fire hydrant with a gray military-style buzz cut
laughed, looked up from the accordion file he was sifting through, and shook
his head.

I asked
him, “Is she always this nice?”

“Why’d you
think she’s doing this job up here?”  The seated woman punched him lightly
on the hip.  He plucked out a single sheet of paper and began walking to
an open door at the rear.  “We’re too scared to have her back there.”

Two of the
people sitting near me were filing complaints about their neighbor’s dog, as it
was a bit of a night owl.  These guys lived on either side of Ol’ Yeller
and, they told me at length, had been down here twice before.  Third time,
the dog’s owner gets a fine.  Nice neighbors.  If I’d had a dog next
door it would have gone ape-shit when the black ninja came to visit me; seems a
fair trade to give up a few sleepless nights to not end up in a cargo van at
the bottom of a lake.  These guys had no idea how good they had it.

The third
person, an older woman, said something about Jay Leno having a wicked mind and
blue sense of humor, and she wanted to see about getting Johnny Carson back on
television.  She thought maybe the proper authorities could help that
along.  After explaining to her I was pretty sure Johnny was dead, she
said that would still be an improvement over Leno.  Couldn’t really argue
with that.

After about
twenty minutes, I heard my name.  Looking up, I saw Detective Firehydrant,
again.  Strangely, this time he’d come from the opposite end of the
building… and since there was glass on both sides of the waiting room—one side
looking out to the parking lot, the other to a small garden atrium— I had no
idea how he’d gotten over there.  Cop voodoo.

The two
anti-doggites had been called but the Leno woman was still there as I walked
away.  I wished her luck but had a feeling she’d be waiting for a while.
 Too bad because I was pulling for her.

Detective
Clower told me he was a CAPers detective, Crime Against Persons, as he wound me
around through clusters of cubicles. I was surprised, for some reason, to see
cops have knickknacks and pictures at their desks like everyone else.  A
glass-encased memorial laden with metals and a badge was on the far wall, a
modest shrine for a cop who’d worked there.  This being Marietta, though,
he probably went down in some squabble over baked goods or off-day water usage.

I’d gone
over the previous evening in my head a couple times, yet as I told Clower my
story, halfway through he stopped taking notes.  That made me a little
nervous, so after about a minute I skipped some of the dramatic detail and got
to the end as quickly as I could.  Looking back now, I think this was
probably what he’d hoped to accomplish anyhow when he’d put his pen down.
 Cop voodoo.

“Dexter,
what’s your last name?”

I eyed him
and crossed my arms.  “Why?”

“For the
police report, you can’t fill out a report without your name, man.”  It
was odd to hear a cop say ‘man.’  “What’s your last name?”

“Daisy.”

He started
tapping away on his keyboard then stopped.  Leaning back in his chair, he
put the edge of his thumb to the corner of his eye and gave it a good rubbing
while he seemed to mull over that one.

“Dexter.”

“Yeah.”

“Dexter
Daisy.”

“Detective,
trust me when I say if I had the money, I’d have changed it a long time ago.”

Stone-faced,
he said, “That one might be worth picking up a paper route.”  

Leaning
forward, he banged away, hard, on the keyboard.  He obviously had learned
to type on an old manual typewriter or maybe got typing lessons from a family
of masons.  Guy must go through a keyboard a week.

“They found
the van, by the way,” he finally said.  “Dredged it up.”

“How’d
they…” I started, and then said:  “Oh.  The homeless guy I talked to
must’ve said something.”

Clower
didn’t look at me.  “He wasn’t homeless.  Neighborhood watch.”

“He was
drinking out of a bag, detective.”

“If you did
neighborhood watch in downtown Atlanta, you'd be drinking out of a bag, too.”

He had a
point.

Spinning
the computer screen toward me, he pointed to a digital photo of a white cargo
van.  The cement around it was darkened by quarry water, and the wheels
were mucked with black, oily silt.  Chains dangled from its grill like a
dog’s broken muzzle.

“That the
van?”

I studied
the picture.  “I don’t know.  I was just inside.”

“With the
pen.”

“Yes, with
the pen.”

For a
moment, the only things that moved on his doughy face were his eyelids.  Then,
he said: "Can I see the pen?"

Shit
.

"Uh,
you don't have one of your own?  Doesn't each day only start after you've
been handed a pen and your bullet?"

He spun the
screen back toward himself and resumed punishing the defenseless keyboard.
 

"No
pen."

"I was,
you know, swimming up and up and--"

"No
pen."

"Dropped
it."

For the
next few minutes, he worked the computer.  Occasionally, he’d stop to read the
screen for a moment, and I wondered if he was going over what’d he just typed
or checking the Braves’ box scores.  Atlanta was playing an afternoon game
against Philly, the only team ahead of them in the division.

I couldn’t
watch the games without a tube at home, but I’d rather listen to it on the radio
any day.  If you close your eyes, you feel like you’re actually there…
except the price is better and there's far less drunks.

Another
detective came over, handed a file to Clower and said something which,
amazingly, I couldn’t hear.  I was three feet from the guy and couldn’t
catch it.  Must be some cop language they teach them at the academy.
 Or— Cop.  Voo.  Doo.

The other
detective flashed a blank smile at me as he left, and I noticed his teeth were
the color of the water third-graders rinse paintbrushes in.  Either too much
coffee or not enough milk.

“Your
visitor, this African-American male--”

“Black
guy,” I interrupted.  “Dunno if he was from Africa.”

The cop slowly
blinked and when his eyes came open, they were looking at me in a way that
affected my heart rate.  I decided to just listen for a while.

“Can you
describe him in any way?  Tattoos?”

“No.”

“Piercings?”

“We never
got that friendly.”

Clower
sucked in a breath and blew it at the computer screen.  “You know, for a
guy who says he was a breast stroke away from death, you’re taking it pretty
good, Mr. Daisy.”

Mr.
Daisy.  Thanks for that.

“Sorry.  I
joke when I'm nervous.”

“Well, I'll
have to keep an eye out for that.”

I looked at
him and couldn’t help but smile because he kinda nailed me.  Eventually,
he returned the smile and the mood lightened.

The
detective continued: “You recognize him, this guy you say knocked you out?”

“Nope,
never seen him around.”

“Is there anybody
you know that would do something like this?  It's kind of…
elaborate."

"No."

"Made
any enemies recently?”

I crushed
my shoulder blades together trying to get my back to crack because it was
really killing me sitting in the metal chair.  “Detective, I don’t have
the first clue who he was or what
any
of that was about.”

“Were you
drinking last night, Mr. Daisy?”

“Okay,
enough with the Mr. Daisy stuff, Matlock,” I said and he put his hands up,
surrendering.  “Yeah, of course, I’d been drinking but I wasn’t outta my
mind.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

Clower
opened the file Sgt. PaintwaterTeeth gave him, glanced at it, and then punched
at the keys for a couple minutes more.

“Is there a
reason why you didn’t call us right away from where the reported incident took
place?  You called your friend for a ride but didn't call us.”  

He looked
at me as if he’d just asked the name of my three previous employers, but I knew
this was the point that bothered him most.  The truth was I didn’t know
why, other than I'd nearly died and at the time wanted nothing more than to go
home and just forget it happened.    

I'd built a
life that delivered no surprises.  When that one came, I'd been out of
practice, ill-equipped to deal.  

Detective
Clower watched me for a moment, and I was suddenly hit with the irrational fear
that he was about to leap over the desk, slap on the cuffs, then lock me up.

Suddenly, I
was anxious to just leave. 

I said, “I
don’t know if there are prints or fibers or DNA or anything in the van but
maybe you guys could be checking that?”

“What for?”

“To get the
name of the guy,” I said, shifting in my chair.  “This scared the hell out
of me, and he's still out there.  The guy just about killed me!”

“I
understand how you’d be afraid.”

“Afraid?
 Man, I was… I was terrified.  In my own home, I was terrified.”

I stood up
because the chair was killing me and I needed to stretch.  Then, I walked to
the window next to his desk and leaned against it, stretching my arms upward.
 

“I don’t
cause any problems.  You checked me out, for sure, and there’s nothing
there.  I’ve settled into a nice everyday routine: I pay my bills, I don’t
litter, sometimes I give the bum in the square quarters, and I’m usually on
time for work.”

“Dexter—“

“Then, last
night I come home, and I’ve got
Ninja Alex Trebek
who drugs me, puts me
in a van and sinks me in a quarry,” I said, pulling away from the window.  My
hands were shaking.  “And he knows things about me, my past, and I don’t,
for the life of me, have any idea how or why.”  I flopped back into the
chair and leaned forward.  “I don’t bother anybody.  I don’t need
anybody bothering me.”

“Okay, I
hear ya,” Clower said and nodded.

Suddenly, I
was struck with an idea.  “Hey, maybe you can run the plate or the VIN
number or something and see if it’s registered to this guy?  I mean, if we
can’t get prints or anything off—“

“Yeah, we
did that.”

“Okay,
cool.  Well that’s a start.”

“Yeah,
sorta.”

“Can you
tell me the guy’s name?  Maybe I’ve heard it around, recognize it.”
 Truth was I wanted the prick’s name because I had an idea of how best to
use it.  Not the sort of thing Detective Clower would like hearing about,
however.

"Sure."

Again, he
spun the computer monitor my direction.  I recognized the face on the
screen instantly, but it didn’t seem possible.

“We ran the
plate,” he said.  “Says here the owner is you, Mr. Daisy.”