Smoke watched Pinn Head, as he called the show, every week to make sure there were no leads on his disappearance or any suspicion that he was the leader of a pack of road dogs. In a way, it disappointed him that Pinn had never so much as alluded to him except to mention that being trayed had traumatized Pinn and no one can relate to what it’s like to be smacked in the head with meat loaf and instant potatoes until they have had it happen at least once.
Pinn’s show had gotten under way and Smoke and his road dogs were gathered in their stolen Winnebago, which was parked behind pine trees on a vacant lot in the north side of the city. Smoke pointed the remote control and turned up the sound as Pinn smiled into the camera and talked with Reverend Pontius Justice about the Neighborhood Watch program the reverend had just kicked off in Shockhoe Bottom, near the Farmers’ Market.
“Look at that motherfucker, ” Smoke said as he gulped down an Old Milwaukee. “He thinks he’s something. ”
Pinn was dressed in a double-breasted shiny black suit, a black shirt and black tie and obviously had bleached his big teeth. When Smoke had known Pinn in the pen, the guard had worn thick tinted glasses. Now he must have contact lenses that caused him to squint a lot.
“What does he think this is? The Academy Awards? I can still see the knot on his head from where I hit him with the tray. ” Smoke pointed.
“He always had that bump on the back of his head, ” said Cat, the most senior road dog. “See, he didn’t use to shave his head and put wax on it like he does now. So the bump shows up. Man, he got one shiny head. Need to wear sunglasses to even look at it. ” Cat squinted through cigarette smoke and tapped an ash into a beer can.
“What kinda wax you think he use?” asked another road dog named Possum, who was puny and unhealthy-looking and tended to stay in his room during the day, watching TV with the lights out. “Bee wax, you think? Hey, maybe he use Bed Head. ‘Member that dude I bought the gun from? I ask him how he got his head so shiny and he say he use Bed Head that he got in New York in one of them Cosmetic Centers, and it cost like twenty bucks. It’s in a little stick you gotta push up from the bottom and then rub it on your hand like dod’rant… ”
“That fucker putting dod’rant on his head?” said a third road dog, Cuda, which was short for Barracuda. He stared blearily at Pinn’s polished scalp.
“Shut up!” Smoke turned up the volume again.
He was getting excited because Pinn was warming up to the very subject Smoke had been waiting to hear about.
“… In your book Betrayed, ” Reverend Justice was saying from his overstuffed chair next to a plyboard wall painted to look like a bookcase next to a cheery fireplace, “you went on at great length about how neighbors got to be neighbors instead of just living in the neighborhood. I believe I’m quoting correctly. ”
“Uh huh, I said that. ”
“So if we love our brothers and sisters and keep an eye on them coming and going, the neighborhood will change. ”
“Uh huh. Yeah, I might have said that. ”
“Did you have this philosophy before you got banged in the head?”
“I don’t recall. Might have. ” Pinn sat straighter in his chair and stared into the camera as he fondled the satin tie he had bought at S&K for nine-ninety-five. “I do know I was being neighborly when I checked on that dead inmate, and next thing I know, I’m unconscience on that hard cement floor. He took my uniform and everything in it. ” Pinn was getting riled by the memory and it was becoming difficult for him to look serene and wise. “You ‘magine that? How would you”–he pointed his finger at his TV audience–“like it someone smack you aside the head and left you naked, implying to the prison population and other guards that maybe you had a male honey who done something to you, ’cause you was found face down with nothing on!”