“I hate skirts,” West said, breathing hard, for Hammer did not walk at a normal pace.
“I think hose and high heels are a male conspiracy.
Like binding feet. To cripple us. Slow us down. ” She breathed.
“Interesting,” Hammer considered.
“W David One Officer Troy Saunders spotted them first and was instantly palsied by indecision as he quickly turned off on Cedar Street, out of sight. Did he alert his buddies out here? He was reliving the nightmare of Hammer’s surprise appearance at roll call, and her severe warning about cops following people and harassing, spying, tailing, no matter the motive. Wouldn’t it be harassment, in the chiefs eyes, if he, Saunders, instigated her and West being spied upon, or tailed, during lunch? Christ. Saunders came to a dead halt in an All Right parking lot, his heart out of control.
He checked his mirrors, and scanned parked cars, deliberating. It wasn’t worth the risk, he decided. Especially since he had been right there, and had heard every word Hammer had said to Goode. The chief sure as hell could check roll call, and know for a fact that Saunders had been sitting three chairs away from her. She’d be all over his ass for insubordination, for disobeying a direct order. He was certain that her eyes had burned through him when she’d said. Next time, it will cost you. Saunders raised no one on his radio. He parked in the farthest corner of the pay lot and smoked.
“s9 By twenty minutes past noon, the regulars had found their favorite stools lining the Formica counter inside the grill. Gin Rummy was the last to sit, the usual banana in his back pocket that he planned to save for later on in the day when he got hungry again while driving his red and white Ole Dixie taxicab.
“You can fix me a hamburger?” Gin Rummy asked Spike at the grill.
“Yeah, we can fix you a hamburger,” Spike said, pushing the bacon press.
“Know it’s early.”
“Man, it’s not early.” Spike scraped clean an area of the grill, and slapped down a frozen hamburger patty.
“When’s the last time you looked at a clock, Rummy?”
His friends called him that for short. Rummy smiled, shaking his head sheepishly. He usually came in for breakfast but was running a little late today. Seems like those two white ladies usually came in for breakfast, too. Maybe that was the problem. Everything was confusing.
He shook his head again, grinned, and adjusted his banana so he didn’t bruise any part of it.
“Why you carry your banana like that?” asked his neighbor, Jefferson Davis, who operated a yellow Caterpillar and still bragged that he had helped build US Bank
“Put it in your shirt pocket.” He tapped the pocket on Rummy’s red-checked shirt.
“Then you don’t sit on it.”
Other men at the counter, and there were eight of them, got into a deep discussion about Rummy’s banana and Davis’s suggestion. Some were eating beef tips and gravy, others sticking with the fried liver mush collard greens, and cheese grits.
“I put it in my shirt pocket and I see it the whole time I’m driving,” Rummy was trying to explain his philosophy.
“Then I eat it sooner.
See? It never makes it till three or four o’clock. ”
“Then stick it in the glove box.”
“No room in there.”
“What about the passenger’s seat up front? All your fares ride in back, right?” Spike set down the burger, all the way, thousand island instead of mayo, double American cheese, and fried onions on the side.
“Won’t work. Sometimes bags go up front.” Rummy neatly cut his lunch in half.
“Or I pick up four fares at the bus station, and one of ’em gotta go up there. They see a banana on the seat, think I eat on the job.”
“Well, you do, man.”
“That’s so.”
“The truth.”
“Tell it, brother.”
“Not with no one in with me, I don’t.” Rummy shook his head, chewing, the banana remaining in his back pocket, where it belonged.
Hammer did not recall the Presto being this loud. She eyed the men at the counter, halfway expecting them to get into a fight any minute.