Cutler sniffed, her lower teeth bared.
“I didn’t interview her.”
Cutler, the night editor, didn’t believe this. She refused to believe it. Her eyes glittered as she gave him a penetrating stare.
“What the hell do you mean, you didn’t interview her, Brazil!”
She lifted her voice that all might hear.
“You were at the scene!”
“They had her in a patrol car,” he said, flipping pages.
“So you knock on the window,” Cutler loudly berated him.
“You open her door, do whatever you have to!”
Brazil stopped typing and looked up at a woman who truly depressed him. He didn’t care if she knew it.
“Maybe that’s what you would do,” he said.
When the paper thudded on his front porch at six o’clock the next morning, Brazil was already up. He had already run five miles at the track. He had showered and put on his police uniform. He opened the door, snatched the paper off the stoop, and rolled off the rubber band, eager to see his work. His angry steps carried him through the sad living room and into the cramped dingy kitchen where his mother sat at a plastic-covered table, drinking coffee held in trembling hands. She was smoking and momentarily present. Brazil tossed the paper down on the table. The front page, above the fold headline, screamed POLICE CRASH KILLS FAMILY OF FIVE. There were large color photographs of broken glass, twisted metal, and Officer Michelle Johnson weeping in the cruiser.
“I can’t believe it!” Brazil exclaimed.
“Look! The damn headline makes it sound like it was the cop’s fault when we don’t even know who caused the wreck!”
His mother wasn’t interested. She got up, moving slowly toward the screen door that led out to the side porch. Her son watched with dread as she swayed, and snatched keys from a hook on the wall.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“The store.” She dug inside her big, old pocketbook.
“I just went yesterday,” he said.
“I need cigarettes.” She opened her billfold and scowled.
“I bought you a carton. Mom.” Brazil stared at her.
He knew where his mother was really going and felt the same old defeat. He sighed angrily as his mother clutched her pocketbook and counted dollar bills.
“You got a ten-spot?” she asked him.
“I’m not buying your booze,” he stated.
She paused at the door, regarding an only child she had never known how to love.
“Where are you going?” she said with a cruel expression that made her face ugly and unfamiliar.
“A costume party?”
“A parade,” Brazil answered.
“I’m directing traffic.”
“Parade charade.” She sneered.
“You’re not police, never will be. Why do you want to be going out there to get killed?” She got sad just as quickly as she had turned mean.
“So I can end up all alone?” She yanked the door open.
The morning got no better. Brazil drove fifteen minutes through the police department deck, and finally left his BMW in a press space, even though he really wasn’t on official press business. The day was lovely, but he took the tunnel from the deck to the first level of police headquarters because he was feeling especially antisocial.
Whenever he had encounters with his mother, he got very quiet inside.
He wanted to be alone. He did not want to talk to anyone.
At the Property Control window, he checked out a radio and was handed keys for the unmarked vehicle he would be driving in the Charlie Two response area between Tryon and Independence Boulevard for the annual Freedom Parade. It was a modest celebration sponsored by local Shriners in their tasseled hats and on their scooters, and Brazil could not have been assigned a worse car. The Ford Crown Victoria was dull, scratched black, and had been driven hard for a hundred and sixteen thousand miles. The transmission was going to drop out any moment, providing the damn thing started, which it didn’t seem inclined to do.
Brazil flipped the key in the ignition again, pumping the accelerator as the old engine tried to turn over. The battery supplied enough juice to wake up the scanner and radio, but forget about going anywhere, as the car whined, and Brazil’s frustration soared.