“Oh, you got big plans, Billy?” Garcia said. “Late to the fucking opera maybe?”
The cop turned away.
Garcia grumbled. “I don’t want to wait either,” he said. He was tired of hollering through Decker’s window and he was also pissed off. He had driven all the way out here as a favor, and regretted it. He hated trailer parks; trailer parks were the reason God invented tornadoes. Garcia could have sent only the green-and-whites, but Decker was a friend and this was serious business. Garcia wanted to hear his side of it, because what the Louisiana people had told him so far was simply not believable.
“You want me to disable his vehicle?” asked the uniformed cop named Billy.
“What are you talking about?”
“Flatten the tires, so he can’t get away.”
Garcia shook his head. “No, that won’t be necessary.” The standards at the police academy had gone to hell, that much was obvious. Anybody with an eighteen-inch neck could get a badge these days.
“He said he’d be here, right?” the other cop asked.
“Yeah,” Garcia mumbled, “that’s what he said.”
So where was he? Why hadn’t he taken his own car? Garcia was more miffed than curious.
The cop named Billy said, “Suppose the jalousies on the back door suddenly fell out? Suppose we could crawl right in?”
“Suppose you go sit under that palm tree and play with yourself,” Garcia said.
Christ, what a day. It began when the Hialeah grave robbers struck again, swiping seven human skulls in a predawn raid on a city cemetery. At first Garcia had refused to answer the call on the grounds that it wasn’t really a murder, since the victims of the crime were already dead. One of them in particular had been dead since before Al Garcia was born, so he didn’t think it was practical, or fair, that he should have to reinvestigate. Everybody in the office had agreed that technically it wasn’t a homicide; more likely petty larceny. What could a crumbly old skull be worth on the street? they had asked. Fifteen, twenty bucks, tops. Unfortunately, it developed that one of the rudely mutilated cadavers belonged to the uncle of a Miami city commissioner, so the case had hastily been elevated to a priority status and all detectives were admonished to keep their sick senses of humor to themselves.
About noon Garcia had to drop the head case when a real murder happened. A Bahamian crack freak had carved up his male roommate, skinned him out like a mackerel, and tried to sell the fillets to a wholesale seafood market on Bird Road. It was one of those cases so bent as to be threatened by the sheer weight of law-enforcement bureaucracy—the crime scene had been crawling not just with policemen, but with deputy coroners, assistant prosecutors, immigration officers, even an inspector from the USDA. By the time the mess was cleaned up, Garcia’s bum shoulder was throbbing angrily. Pure, hundred-percent stress.
He had spotted the express packet from New Orleans when he got back to the office. A perfectly shitty ending to a shitty day. Now R. J. Decker had made like a rabbit and Garcia was stuck in a crackerbox trailer park trying to decide if he should leave these moron patrolmen to wait with the warrant. He was reasonably sure that, left unsupervised, they would gladly shoot Decker or at least beat the hell out of him, just to make up for all the aggravation.
“Screw it,” Garcia said finally, “let’s go get some coffee and try again later.”
“He’ll be back,” Decker said when he heard the police cars pull away.
Skink had let go of his neck. They were still in the darkroom, where Skink’s fluorescent rainsuit shone almost white in the wash of the red bulb. Skink appeared more haggard and rumpled than Decker remembered; twigs and small pieces of leaf hung like confetti in his long gray braid. His hair stuck out in clumps from under the shower cap.
“Where have you been?” Decker asked. His neck was torturing him, like someone had pounded a railroad spike into the crown of his spine.
“The girl,” Skink said. “I should have known.”