Lelia Ehrhart removed his hands. She angrily grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her neck.
‘So what’s the next place where we go from here?’ she demanded as all her phobias and insecurities roared at her.
‘You haven’t done squats,’ he said.
CHAPTER twenty-nine
Governor Feuer neatly folded the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today and the Richmond paper. He stacked them on the black carpet and stared out the tinted window at pedestrians staring at him.
Everyone knew that a black stretch limousine with 1 on the license plate was not Jimmy Dean or Ralph Sampson. It was not kids going to the prom.
‘Sir?’ Jed said over the intercom. ‘I’ll just shoot over on Tenth, cut across Broad to avoid all that traffic, then wind around the courthouse onto Leigh and get on Belvidere. From there it’s pretty much a straight shot into the cemetery.’
‘Ummmm.’
‘If that suits, sir,’ added Jed, who was obsessive-compulsive and needy.
‘That’s fine,’ said the governor, who had worked his way up from attorney general to lieutenant governor to governor, and therefore had not navigated Richmond’s streets alone for more than eight years, but rather had watched his travels throughout his beloved Commonwealth from a back seat through tinted glass, police escorts leading the way and protecting his rear.
‘I’ve got the package,’ Jed said loudly in his two-way, secure radio. ‘Going to be turning on Tenth.’
‘Gotcha covered,’ the lead car came back.
The altercation between Patty Passman and Officer Rhoad had gone beyond a squabble or fit of pique that might have been reasonably resolved, forgiven or perhaps forgotten.
Cars were double-parked and parked on an angle and within fifteen feet of a fire hydrant and on the wrong side of the street and on the sidewalk along 10th. Drivers and pedestrians had gathered around a fight in progress as police cruisers with sirens screaming and lights flashing raced in from all directions.
Passman had Rhoad on hold. He was running around in circles, screaming ‘MAYDAY’ into his portable radio while she twisted and squeezed.
‘God! God!’ Rhoad shrieked as she doggedly followed his every move, on his heels, killing him. ‘Let go! Please! Please! Ahhhhhhhhh! AHHHHHHHH!’
The crowd was frenzied.
‘Go, girlfriend!’
‘Yank it hard!’
‘Get him!’
‘In the nuts! Hooo-a hooo-a hooo-a!’
‘Hey! Punch her! Man, fucking poke her eyes out!’
‘Yeah! Knock her nose to the back of her head so she can smell her ass!’
‘Pull that banana off the tree, girlfriend!’
‘Shift him into neutral, baby!’
‘Let go, fatso!’
‘Untie his balloon!’
‘Go, girl!’
The crowd cheered on as a gleaming black stretch limousine and two unmarked black Caprices with multiple antennas floated across Broad Street. The convoy pulled off to the side of 10th Street, making way for two cruisers with flashing lights and screaming sirens. Other police cars were screeching in from Marshall and Leigh. A fire truck wailed and rumbled along Clay.
Jed was desperate to jump out of the limousine and get involved. The cops must be after a fugitive, someone on the FBI’s ten most wanted list, maybe a serial killer. Clearly, the fat lady was a psycho of some sort, and it was obvious that the uniformed officers could not restrain her.
‘What’s going on?’ Governor Feuer inquired over the intercom.
‘Some wacko woman, probably high on PCP or crack. Wow, look at her go, like a damn pit bull! She’s got half a dozen cops playing Ring Around the Rosie and falling on their butts!’
The governor made his way to the other side of the black leather horseshoe-shaped seat that could comfortably accommodate six. He strained to see over the back of Jed’s big head.
Governor Feuer was startled by the obese woman flying after a tall, rather elderly skinny cop. A pair of handcuffs dangled off one of her wrists and her free hand was shoved up the poor fellow’s crotch. She was twisting and crushing, cursing, kicking. She was whirling and swinging the loose handcuff like a numchaku, scattering arriving troops.
‘Wow!’ Jed exclaimed.
‘How awful,’ said the governor. ‘How perfectly awful.’
‘We need to do something, sir!’
Governor Feuer agreed, his anger rising. There was nothing funny about this. There was nothing entertaining about violence. He jerked open his car door. Before Jed or EPU police could stop him, the governor popped the trunk and snatched out a fire extinguisher.