‘You’re under arrest!’ he exclaimed.
Traffic slowed, people ready for a good fight on an otherwise meaningless Wednesday morning.
‘Stuff it up your ass!’ Passman screamed.
‘Go, girlfriend!’ a woman called out from her Acura.
Rhoad fumbled with the handcuffs on the back of his Sam Browne belt as Passman yelled more obscenities, her blood sugar dipping lower into its dark crevice of irrationality and violence as an audience gathered and encouraged her.
Rhoad grabbed Passman’s wrists. She kicked him in both shins and spat. He sputtered, wrenching her left arm behind her back as her right fist knuckle-punched him in the neck. Rhoad had not handcuffed anyone in many years, and steel cracked against Passman’s wrist bone as he snapped and missed. Passman howled in pain as he jerked and smacked and steel jaws finally locked around her wrist and bit hard.
‘Do it! Do it!’ someone yelled from a black Corvette.
Passman’s free hand grabbed Rhoad between his legs and twisted.
CHAPTER twenty-five
Ruby Sink’s one-year-old grandniece, Loraine, was running a fever and had kept her mother awake all night.
‘Poor baby,’ Miss Sink said over the phone. ‘Are you rocking her? Did you give her a baby aspirin?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Miss Sink’s niece, Frances, said. ‘I don’t know what else to do. If I miss another day of work, well, there’re plenty of people out there wanting my job.’
Miss Sink could hear Loraine squalling and imagined the child’s bright red face. Day care was out of the question. Miss Sink simply would not allow the sick child to stay with strangers, nor did she want Loraine to pass on whatever she had to others.
‘I’ll be pleased as punch to keep her while you’re at work,’ Miss Sink said. ‘And I bet you’re frantically trying to get ready even as we speak.’
‘Yes,’ Frances said in despair. ‘I haven’t even showered yet.’
‘I’m on my way right now,’ Miss Sink said. ‘I’ll pick up Loraine and we’ll have a grand day.’
‘And if her fever doesn’t break you’ll call Dr. Samson? Just to make sure she’s all right?’
‘Of course, dear.’
‘Oh, thank you, Aunt Ruby.’
‘I was going to get out anyway at some point,’ Miss Sink said. ‘I’ve got only two dollars in my billfold and I owe the yard man and probably half of everybody else in this town.’
‘You always say that, Aunt Ruby. The most broken record I ever heard. Mother said you were the richest poor person she ever knew.’
Miss Sink was saddened by the thought of her dead sister. Miss Sink had no one left except Frances and Loraine. Her spirit settled in that low place she could not tolerate.
‘Why don’t you have supper with me after work,’ Miss Sink said. ‘When you pick up our little angel child.’
‘Depends on what you’re cooking,’ Frances said.
‘I might just invite this lovely police officer I know,’ Miss Sink said. ‘The handsomest young man you ever saw, and so sweet. The one who writes editorial pieces for the paper. He rents my little place on Plum Street.’
‘Him? Lord have mercy, I’ve seen his picture. He’s too young for me, Aunt Ruby.’
‘Why, that’s nonsense,’ Miss Sink said. ‘Things aren’t like they used to be.’
‘He wouldn’t be interested in me. He’s so good-looking and all.’
‘And you’re pretty as a rosebud.’
‘I’m older than him and have a child, Aunt Ruby.
Reality, you know?’
‘I’m going to make my sesame-honey fried chicken. Cheese grits and fresh tomatoes with balsamic vinegar,’ Miss Sink said.
‘And just where are you going to get fresh tomatoes this time of year?’
‘You forget I can them,’ Miss Sink said. ‘Now quit talking so I can be on my way.’
Smoke’s girlfriend, Divinity, was the first to notice the red Jeep Cherokee abandoned in the Kmart parking lot, no more than a hundred feet from the First Union Bank.
‘Well, look at that,’ Divinity said to Smoke. ‘That Jeep, just sitting there, nobody in it and engine running, waiting for us, baby.’
‘No it’s not ’cause we don’t want it,’ Smoke told her.
Smoke’s mind was going through its routine, his concentration focused. He had turned off Puff Daddy when he’d picked up Divinity at the McDonald’s on West Broad Street, where she’d let him know by pager that she was waiting for him. She had her hand on his thigh, but at the moment, he was aroused by other things as he watched an ancient Chevy Celebrity driven by an old woman park in front of the twenty-four-hour money stop.