click of the latch shattered his happiness like a pistol shot in the head. He suppressed overwhelming rage. Who, what could disturb his ‘visit’?
First the glass doors slid open a couple inches, then the screen door. The soft voices were like shouts.
“Smells like a fucking dog run in here. How long’s it been since anyone used this place?” The voice wasn’t unusual, neither deep nor high pitched; ordinary in tone, not ordinary in context.
“A couple months. Belongs to my uncle, he used to keep one of his bimbos here. I scanned it this morning. Nothing, no foreign insects.” The second voice was deep and harsh, a smoker’s voice.
The first man chuckled harshly. “You better be right, Mr. Policeman.”
“I’m right, Cotton. Look, let’s get this done, I can’t stay long.”
“You stay as long as I say, Mr. Policeman,” Cotton was completely in command. “I’ve got six hundred million in product sitting in a warehouse not ten miles from here. You called me. You tell me one of my people is DEA. One I can take care of in time, but how do I know he’s the only one?”
The policeman coughed and lit a strong smelling cigar. In the corner of the balcony, Vincent’s nose crinkled uncontrollably. He suppressed a desire to sneeze.
“You should quit smoking those things, Mr. Policeman. Like so many things in life, they’re bad for your health.” The menace in Cotton’s voice filled the space and leaked onto the balcony.
“Don’t do that shit, Cotton. I know what kind of trouble I’m in. I did my best, and I didn’t say you had a DEA guy in your organization. I said it was a rumor, it ain’t the same thing.”
“It’s the same to me! You’re slow, man, too slow. You don’t get it, and that worries me. Either way, I can’t move until I know.”
“Okay, okay, I understand.”
A helical string of cigar smoke drifted through the screen door. In the corner Vincent’s face twisted with fury.
“Stinder, the head of the local DEA, is the problem. He’s a close-mouthed, righteous son of a bitch: a Baptist with an attitude. I can’t get anything on him and he can’t be bought, it’s been tried.”
A long uneasy silence put Vincent on edge. Cotton broke it first.
“Nice looking family over there.” Cotton could not have imagined how close he came to violent death. He was a man who recognized and used terror all his life, but within easy reach was terror of a kind he could not imagine.
“The little girl must be very intelligent, playing word games, and winning. Does Stinder have a family?”
Out of context, Cotton’s question was ordinary. In the stale stillness of an empty apartment, talking with a bad cop, it reeked of evil.
The other man hesitated. “Yeah, he does. A wife, two or three small children. Lives over in Burbank, near the DeBell Golf Course.”
“Nice area. We’ll shake that tree, see what falls out. Stay close to him, Mr. Policeman, I’ve got two weeks, then I have to move the goods. The wholesalers wait, and the people I work for aren’t patient”
“I hear you, Cotton.”
The screen door slid shut followed by the sliding glass doors. In the corner Vincent’s fists were clenched. He cursed once beneath his breath.
“Bastards.”
Across the alley the Wister’s put away the scrabble board. Vincent’s visit was ruined. His life revolved around the cycle of visits. Now he would never feel comfortable with the Wisters again.
That he had been listening to two criminals meant nothing. A half hour later Vincent slipped over the balcony, down the wall; agile, silent, strange.
Chapter 3
Teresa moved through her messages, tapped the play button with one hand, took her equipment belt off with the other. She tossed it on the couch where it joined a jogging suit, a wrinkled uniform shirt, an old Sunday Times and assorted female paraphernalia.
Her father bought the condo for her when she passed her bar exam on the first try. It was her second degree. Her first had been in police science. When he found out she didn’t intend to practice but would stay with the police he threatened to take it back.
She tried to make a joke. “Sorry, Daddy, I don’t want to be no steenking lawyer, I want to be Chief of Police.” It fell flatter than an orange on the freeway.
She skipped over three messages from her mother, two from her brothers and one from her father. Since she moved out, and became a police officer, they were more concerned about her free time than when she lived at home.
They invited her to endless lunches, dinners, shopping trips, and weekends at the beach in Ventura. When she decided to become a police officer they sensed, rightly, she would be different, separate, lost to them.
She looked around the apartment, frowned and decided it was too early in the week to do anything about the mess. Friday, maybe. Neatness wasn’t her strong suit.
The walls were covered with an assortment of prints and original oils. Every shelf and flat surface had pictures of family, trophies from high school and college, mementos of an active social, academic, and athletic life.
As she continued the messages she quickly peeled off her clothing until she was down to a surprisingly feminine pair of panties and lacy bra. She drew the line at jockey shorts, and bras designed to make her look like a man.
It made her laugh to think how surprised the guys in the squad room would be if they saw her without her uniform.
Only once did she describe the violent world she lived in to her family. It was at a weekly sit down dinner. She cheerfully described an arrest where she’d thrown a two hundred pound drug-crazed pimp through the window of a Pacoima pool room. Seeing their looks of fear, disgust and bewildered disbelief defined once and for all the extent of the gap between her life and theirs.
Alone in her apartment, she talked to herself, and worried about becoming eccentric. Jaime’s comment after the bust at Chango’s Cafe ran around in her head like an unwanted jingle. She made a rule early on in the police force never to get involved with another officer, and stuck to it.
“When was the last time I rolled around in the sheets,” she muttered, “sure, like hundreds of men are pounding on my door. Christ, who needs them: Wimps, freaks, and groupies.”
She rummaged in the fridge, took out a Stauffer’s frozen dinner and put it in the microwave. One of the calls had been from an Assistant District Attorney. She thought of him as the ‘horny barrister’. She decided she wasn’t that desperate, even if he did take her to nice places and tell her all the local law enforcement gossip.
After taking a shower she studied an hour for the detective exam, drank two glasses of Sutter Home Cabernet and went to bed. She banged the pillow, hard. “I am in a rut. I’ve got do something about it.”
Chapter
