sandwiches with no cheese or mayonnaise were about all he lived on these days, and he
was losing weight. He secretly wondered if he were getting anorexic.
He sat at the counter, stirring black SD coffee, waiting for Spike to stop cracking eggs
with one hand over a bowl. Brazil wanted to chat.
The Michelob Dry clock on the wall over Spike’s head read ten-forty-five. There was so
much to do, and Brazil had to get it done by four p. m. ” when his beat for the
newspaper formally began. As much as Packer loved Brazil’s scoops, the regular news of
burglaries, robberies, rapes, suicides, fistfights in sports bars, white-collar bank crimes,
drug busts, domestic problems, dog bites, and other human interest stories needed to be
covered. Most of those reports Webb stole long before anyone else could see them. In
fact, the situation was so acute, that the rest of the media now referred to the Charlotte
Police Department’s press basket as The Webb Site.
W> West, having recalled Brazil’s early complaint about this, had finally done her bit by calling Channel 3 and complaining to the general manager. This had solved nothing. Nor
was Goode receptive when West had brought it up to her, not realizing that Goode, in
fact, regularly logged into The Webb Site. These days she and Brent Webb parked all
over the city in her Miata. This was not due to a problem with their going to her
apartment, where she lived alone. The risk of exposure was a huge turn-on to the couple.
It was not unusual for them to park within blocks of his house, where his wife waited
dinner for him, and picked up his dirty clothes, and sorted his socks.
The task force West had assembled to investigate drug deals going down at the Presto Grill also had much dirt to find, sort through, and hopefully match with other crime
trends in the city. Mungo was an undercover detective, and he was eating grilled chicken
tips and gravy in the grill, while Brazil, whom Mungo did not know, sipped black coffee.
Mungo had gotten his street name for obvious reasons. He was a mountain in jeans and
Panthers T-shirt, his wallet chained to his belt, long bushy hair tied back, and a bandana
around a sloping forehead. He wore an earring. Mungo was smoking, one eye squinting
as he watched the blond guy quiz Spike at the grill.
“No, man.” Spike was flipping a burger and chopping hash browns.
“See, none’s from around here, know what I mean?” He spoke with a heavy Portuguese
accent.
“Where they come from doesn’t matter,” Brazil said.
“It’s what happens once they get here. Look, the source of the bad shit going down is
right where we are.” He was talking the language, drumming his index finger on the
counter.
“Local. I’m sure of it. What do you think?”
Spike wasn’t going to explore this further, and Muneo’s radar was locked in. That blond pretty-boy looked familiar. It seemed Mungo had seen him somewhere, and that made
him only more convinced that he was going to develop Blondie as a suspect. But first
things first. Mungo needed to sit here a little longer, see what else was going down, and
he hadn’t finished his breakfast.
“I need more toast,” he said to Spike as Blondie left.
“Who’s he?”
Mungo jerked his head in the direction of the shutting front door.
Spike shrugged, having learned long ago not to answer questions, and Mungo was a cop.
Everybody knew it. Spike started filling a toothpick holder while Brazil made his next
stop. Adjoining the Presto was the Traveler’s Hotel, where one could get a room for as
little as fifty dollars per week, depending on how well one negotiated with Bink Lydle at
the desk. Brazil asked his questions to Lydle and got the same information he’d been
handed next door.
Lydle was not especially hospitable, his arms folded across his narrow chest as he sat
behind the scarred reception desk, with its bell and one-line telephone. He informed this
white boy that Lydle knew nothing about these businessmen being whacked around here,
and couldn’t imagine that the ‘source of this bad shit going down’ was local.