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  “I give you that, but that was a double-team job. You being up in there talking to my peeps without backup, and you lily-white, that’s not smart, Hap. We go into a place where it’s all cracker motherfuckers, I like you with me, so you could have waited a while.”

  “I concede your point.”

  “Do you now?”

  “I do. But they’re not your peeps, Leonard. Except for me and Brett and your reflection in the mirror, you pretty much don’t have peeps. And I don’t think you would wait on me if you got a wild hair up your ass, cracker motherfuckers or not.”

  “True. Up in there, though, them projects, you can get your ass killed. Them ain’t good people.”

  “They’re not all bad people.”

  “Yeah, but there’s bad enough ones there to get you killed while the good ones watch. You’d think someone would clean that place up, way it is.”

  “Easy to say from the outside,” I said.

  “Shit, man, you drove by a white-trash fucker’s house and seen it falling down, a washing machine and a stack of tires on the lawn, you’d just think he was lazy-ass trash. You see black folk living like pigs, then you start handing out your liberal bullshit about how they are downtrodden.”

  “They are. You should know that.”

  “I know black folk been run over by a lot of shit, but a lot of what runs them over is their own self-pity. I was taught to work.”

  “They need a job so they can work,” I said.

  “Need to get off their ass and go look for one, same as them white-trash motherfuckers, who I bet you ain’t so sentimental about. Way I see it, color ain’t got nothing to do with that lame-ass shit. You go to work or you don’t. Opportunities ain’t always been there for black folks, but there sure ain’t any when you’re nested up in some shit hole living on a government check with a crack den next door.”

  “Wow. That is stereotypical, Leonard. You really got to stop watching Fox News and listening to white-boy talk radio and using the word nigger so much.”

  “It ain’t got a damn thing to do with black and white,” he said.

  I knew there was no way we were even going to meet in the middle on this, so I told him what Louise Elton had told me.

  “So she says cops killed her son, and this fellow you were talking to seen it, but he don’t want to talk to you in the projects?”

  “Pretty much it, yeah.”

  “He wants free beer, Hap. You take him out, buy him a beer, and he’ll tell you he saw an alien eating green cheese out of a dead dog’s ass on the fucking landing outside his window.”

  “You have very little faith in mankind,” I said. “Of course, I don’t have much either. But I’m going to hope on an individual. Hell, he went in and told the police for Louise. They didn’t believe him, or didn’t want to. Also, the backstory is a little more complex.”

  “Whose backstory?”

  “Louise’s. She gave me some background on things.”

  “Let me get a cookie…Wait, what the hell, man? Those are my cookies. Why are they on the desk?”

  “Louise was company. I thought we should share.”

  “Fuck Louise. Them cookies were hid.”

  “You are a lousy hider.”

  “Damn near the whole bag is gone.”

  “She liked to dip them in coffee.”

  “I bet she wasn’t the only one.”

  He snatched at the bag, pushed the fedora back on his head, and started eating what was left. That wouldn’t take long.

  While he ate, vengefully, I told him all Louise had told me.

  5

  Louise has a young teenage daughter and, according to her, a fine-looking one. And one night, driving home, she gets pulled over by the police. They tell her she’s drunk, but she doesn’t drink.”

  “That may not mean much, a mother telling you her young daughter don’t drink,” Leonard said. “I bet, to hear Mama tell it, she don’t fuck or wear white after Labor Day neither. You know how that is.”

  “Agreed. But she’s pulled over, and the cop, a white cop, he says, ‘Tell me your birthday,’ et cetera, and then ‘Say your ABCs,’ and she does this, doing the singsong way of saying the ABCs, and Louise said her daughter, Charm, didn’t miss a lick.”

  “Her name is Charm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the fuck happened to Alice, Mary, Karen, and such?”

  “Leonard. I didn’t name her. So Charm does this, and then the cop says, ‘Tell me your driver’s license number.’ And she does. Can you do that?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Louise said Charm did, but the cop, he has her follow him to the station. He takes her in, puts her in an interrogation room, but—get this—handcuffs her. It’s just him and her in there and probably no camera. That’s my guess. Anyway, Charm says this officer, Officer Coldpoint, he checks her for weapons, but mostly he just rubs his hands over her tits and ass, presses his cock up against her backside.”

  “This is Charm’s story now? Right?”

  “Right. So when Coldpoint gets through, he kind of tugs her pants down a little in back, and then he takes her out and cuffs her to a radiator in the back hallway where they bring in baddies. She says she was standing there all night, handcuffed. She asked to take a Breathalyzer right away, but Coldpoint didn’t do it. Said he didn’t need to, had her dead to rights. She asked for a phone call, asked for a lawyer. Nothing. All night she’s handcuffed there and they’re bringing in druggies and all manner of assholes, and they see her as they go by, and one of them wets his finger and dips it down her pants into her ass crack, and she’s got to hear all the usual smartass remarks jerks make about a good-looking woman, ’cause that kind of talk works so well for lining up dates. Dumbasses with brains a lot smaller than their balls.”

  “You think things like that,” Leonard said. “And sometimes you say them to me, about women.”

  “I don’t manhandle or mistreat women,” I said.

  “True. But you notice what you think is a good female ass. I don’t know exactly what that is, liking men and all. I do know you don’t have a good ass.”

  “Uh-huh. Next morning, this lady cop, Manuela Martinez, she sees Charm there, asks her what’s going on. Charm tells her, and Martinez lets her out of the cuffs, lets her go. No questions. No explanations. She’s one moment handcuffed, next moment out on the bricks.”

  “I’d have had me about two lawyers buried up their asses then, and one little back-up lawyer just so I’d have someone to argue with them in the hallway. I’d go hire me that fucking four-hundred-year-old vampire midget at the projects. She could just be there to give them folks shit.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “But Charm didn’t do anything at that point. Was just glad it was over. Or thought it was. Next thing she knows this cop is following her around. She drives to the store to get a quart of milk and a box of tampons, there he is. She goes to bed at night, looks out the window, he’s parked there, shining a laser pointer at her, that kind of shit. She calls the police station to lodge a complaint, and no one seems able to take it. She even goes to the police station. They’re not having it. This other cop, this Manuela, she’s fired. Charm doesn’t know why, but Manuela has been given her pink slip. So she can’t even talk to her about it, least not in an official capacity.

  “This harassment shit goes on for months, this cop following her, pulling her over for a broke taillight that wasn’t broke before but got broke in the night.”

  Leonard leaned back in his chair and looked into the emptiness of his cookie bag. “That’s some serious shit, man. You believe this Louise lady?”

  “I believe it’s what she believes. But I haven’t gotten to the good part yet. So Charm’s brother, Jamar—”

  “What is up with these made-up names?”

  “All names are made up, Leonard. So the brother, he’s pissed, and he’s in the car a couple times when this cop is following Charm around. He goes in to see the cops, and the next thing, he�
��s arrested. They said for starting a fight with Officer Coldpoint. He claimed he only spoke to him, said he was mad, all right, but didn’t shove, hit, or bother anyone the way they said it happened.”

  “This is what he told his mother?”

  “That’s right. He gets out of jail pretty quick, ’cause they decide to let him go. Next thing Jamar does is he starts filming the cops outside his house—”

  “Wait. You said cops, but I thought it was just Coldpoint.”

  “And his partner. I have his name in my notes somewhere. Maybe some of the others’ too. I think other cops were drafted into the cause, at least now and then.”

  “Hell. Wait a minute. I remember Coldpoint. You remember? He worked at the LaBorde cops for a while.”

  “I don’t remember, but I’ll take your word for it. Anyway, Jamar is videoing them with his phone, taking notes, keeping track of when they show up and what they do, and next thing Louise knows there’s word Jamar got in a fight and got killed at the projects.”

  “That’s the place for it,” Leonard said.

  “You’re going to stay on that, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Except why was he there? Didn’t have any reason to be there, Louise said.”

  “Louise may be more deluded than Lois Lane about Superman’s identity. I mean, really, Clark is wearing a pair of glasses and has his cowlick pushed back. That’s a disguise?”

  “Is this going to lead to can Captain Marvel beat up Superman? Are who runs the fastest, Superman or the Flash?”

  “Well, the comics always cheated on that part about who could run fastest. I think it should have been the Flash. I mean, that’s his power. He’s fast, and now Superman, he can do that too, he can tie him? I don’t buy it. He’s got all them other powers, and they have to have him fast as the Flash? That ain’t right, man.”

  “Back to business. Jamar had never been in trouble, nothing. Straight-A student in high school, same as his first year at college.”

  “But still he was found dead in the projects, and probably went there in the middle of the night?”

  “That’s the speculation.”

  “You know why folks go to the projects in the middle of the night, right?”

  “To score drugs, mostly. Maybe take in the beautiful sights.”

  “Bad things do go on there, and as you saw earlier, bad things can happen to strangers who show up there.”

  “The bad things I saw there were you punching people in the head. The homeys had bad things happen to them, not the strangers.”

  “True.”

  “Okay, Jamar, he could have gone there for a nice little bag of something in powder or pill form, what have you, and he didn’t have the money, or the would-be seller didn’t care he had it or not, could have decided to keep his wares, take Jamar’s money, and mash his head. It could be that and nothing more.”

  “It happens,” Leonard said. “Tweakers selling to tweakers, folks get crazy easy.”

  “Yep, but we don’t really know why he was there, and that doesn’t mean he needed to die. And then there’s one other thing. This man I’m going to see tonight at the Joint. He says he saw cops kill Jamar.”

  “Yeah. That’s some bad business, buddy.”

  “East Texas hasn’t exactly been the land of opportunity for black people.”

  “Not that much opportunity for anyone here. Not unless you’re a doctor, a lawyer, or a drug dealer. But being black and poor doesn’t mean I’m going to live in the projects and be tormented by some fucking thug in a shower cap. I live where I want.”

  “No. You live where you can afford to live. And you’re right. That is fucked up about Superman tying the Flash. I’m not buying it.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  We bumped fists.

  6

  We drove to Camp Rapture that night in Leonard’s truck to meet up with my secretive snitch.

  “You kept the red shower cap, didn’t you?” I said as Leonard tooled us along, head thrown back, fedora dipped in front, one hand on the wheel.

  “Did not.”

  “You had it on and were fucking with me.”

  “That was it. I was fucking with you.”

  “So I’ll never see the shower cap again.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t think so?”

  “Don’t pressure me, Hap.”

  “You do look cool in that fedora.”

  “Like I value your opinion.”

  “But you do.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do.”

  “So you like it?” he said.

  “Stylish, brother. You found something that works for you. I know how hard that must be for you.”

  “You’re still searching, though,” Leonard said. “Your daughter doing okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s working out?”

  “Except she and Brett have the colds from hell. I think it might be flu. Brett actually asked that I stay at the office tonight. They are seriously infectious. And I don’t want that shit they got.”

  “But you don’t mind sharing their germs with me?”

  “I don’t have a single symptom,” I said. “And I’m keeping it that way. I’m actually kind of enjoying being on my own at the office. Well, there’s Buffy. It’s nice for a change of pace. Me and Buffy can play checkers until late at night. She hasn’t quite got chess down yet.”

  “You can stay at my place, asshole.”

  “I’m fine at the office. John and you might get back together, and I’d rather not hear you fucking behind the wall. I can’t enjoy that. I keep thinking something is in the wrong hole.”

  “Long as I’ve known you, you are still bothered by it?”

  “Not the gay, just the act. I don’t want to hear it going on.”

  “That’s the same.”

  “How do you feel about heterosexuality?”

  “Nothing against it, but it makes me kind of go eeew.”

  “Now you get it.”

  “I’m going to tell Brett you referred to her equipment as a hole.”

  “I was just speaking in a general way.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Please don’t,” I said.

  “I’ll consider on it,” he said.

  We pulled up at the Joint. There was a scattering of cars in the lot, most of which looked to be on their last set of rims and happily ready for the car crusher. As we walked toward the entrance we could hear hip-hop popping on a jukebox. When we got to the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside, the place was mostly dark except for neon word twists and beer signs that gleamed with colored light. There was the pulsing glow of an old-time jukebox to the right, and to the left mostly empty tables, except for two guys in a booth against the wall. I didn’t see Timpson Weed.

  The air smelled of beer and barbecue, a faint aroma of fried hamburgers and onions. There was a little kitchen at the back, to the side of the bar. There was a lit window there and a shelf where the orders could be picked up. There was a sharp-looking black woman with a kerchief over her hair. She was tucked into a pair of shorts so brief the back of them was disappearing into the crack of her ass. She had a tray with beers and food on it and was carrying it toward the rear. She turned her head and gave Leonard a look. Hell. What was I, smashed peanuts? He ain’t even batting for your team, gal.

  She went on by, and Leonard swaggered over to the bar and sat down on a stool in front of it. I sat beside him. A bartender glided up like a wraith. His face was dark and the blue and red neon lights along the back of the bar made his longish, wild hair shine oddly. His teeth caught the neon when he turned toward us, and the lights gave them a colorful sheen. They looked small in his enormous head.

  “You gentlemen might be in the wrong place,” he said.

  “No, this is it,” Leonard said.

  “Well, I was thinking your friend here might have taken a wrong turn at Sears. Last time a white man in here proba
bly about 1700 and he was scalped by Indians.”

  “You’re a real historian,” Leonard said.

  “I’ve been told.”

  “You ain’t no Indian.”

  “Oh, I got some Cherokee in me.”

  “When that Indian did the scalping was up in here, did he order a beer? I know I’m going to. Hap here, he’ll have a Diet Coke or some such, and if you got Dr Pepper, I’ll have that for a chaser.”

  “You are some tough drinker,” the bartender said to me. “Diet Coke?”

  “Put it in a dirty glass,” I said. “Though from the looks of things, that might be standard.”

  The bartender smiled broadly. There were bubbles of spit on his teeth, and the teeth and bubbles shimmered with neon light. The bartender had a way of holding his mouth open when the smile was gone, like a whale cruising for plankton.

  “It’s just that my clientele don’t enjoy me having white folks for customers,” he said.

  Leonard looked around. Besides the waitress, dropping off orders, in the back, two black men at a booth lingered there with all the excitement of a poetry reading. They didn’t even look at the waitress, which might suggest blindness. At a couple of tables nearby, some lonely drunks sat staring into their beer bottles, hoping for genies to come out of them and offer them their youth back, along with a fresh beer.

  “Looks to me your clientele doesn’t know work sweat from bottle sweat,” Leonard said. “You give this man a Diet Coke if you got it, and if you don’t, you give him one anyway. As for that white stuff, what the fuck you think this is, 1960? You hear of integration, motherfucker?”

  “You better put a wheel lock on that mouth of yours,” said the bartender. “Integration worked the other way around.”

  “Actually it works both ways,” I said.

  The bartender looked at me. Leonard looked at me.

  “Don’t get your fingers in my jam jar, Hap. I’m kind of on a roll here.”

  “Only roll you gonna be on is rolling out that door with my foot up your ass,” said the bartender.

  “Now how can I roll with a foot up my ass?” Leonard said. “That don’t make sense.”