“You stink,” West said to him under her breath as she smiled at their visitor.
“It’s not me,” Brazil said.
“Yes it is.” To their visitor, she added, “What you doing out here?”
He gestured, getting more excited as he told the nice police lady everything he’d been up
to, while she smiled and clearly enjoyed hearing about it. Her partner needed to lighten
up a little.
Boy, as he had always been called, knew when cops were brand new. Boy could tell by
how tense they got, by the look on their faces, and this always invited Boy to have a little
fun with them. He stared at Brazil, and gave him his gummy, gaping grin, as if he were
some exotic creature new to the planet. When Boy poked the rookie, the rookie flinched.
This excited Boy more than ever, and he got louder, dancing around, poking the rookie
again. West laughed, winking at her ride-along.
“Uh oh,” she said.
“I think he’s sweet on you.”
She finally rolled up the window, and by now Brazil felt completely soiled. He had beer
on his uniform and had been mauled by someone with no teeth who spent his life inside
Dumpsters. Brazil thought he might throw up. He was indignant and hurt as West
laughed and drove off, lighting a cigarette. Not only had she not prevented his degradation, she had made it happen and was savoring it. He fumed in silence as West
headed out on West Boulevard, toward the airport.
She cut over on the Billy Graham Parkway, wondering what it would be like to have a
major highway named after her. She wasn’t sure she would appreciate cars and trucks
rolling over her day and night, leaving ratty recaps and skid marks, while drivers made
obscene comments to other drivers, and gave them the finger, and pulled out guns. There
was nothing Christian about a road, the more West thought about it, unless it was used in
Biblical analogies, such as the road to hell and what it was paved with. The more she
contemplated all this as she drove, the sorrier she felt for the Reverend Billy Graham,
who had been born in Charlotte, in a house that against his will had been appropriated by
a nearby religious theme park.
Brazil had no idea where they were going, except it was not where the action was, and it
was apparent West had no intention of taking him someplace where he could clean up.
He was riveted to the scanner, and things were popping in Charlie Two on Central
Avenue. So why were they heading in the opposite direction on this parkway? He
remembered his mother watching Billy Graham on TV all the time, no matter what else
was on or what Brazil might want to see. He wondered how hard it might be to get a
quote from the famous evangelist, maybe inquire about the Reverend Graham’s views on
crime, one of these days.
“Where are we going?” Brazil asked as they turned off on Boyer toward Wilkinson
Boulevard again.
This was definitely the sinful strip, but West did not stay on it long. She sped past
Greenbriar Industrial Park and turned left on Alleghany Street, heading into Westerly
Hills, a nothing neighborhood near Harding High School. Brazil’s mood got worse. He
suspected West was up to her old tricks, and it not only reminded him that she really did
not want to be out here with him, but hinted rather strongly that he had no business on
police calls and would not be on many, if she had her way about it.
“Any unit in the area of the twenty-five hundred block of Westerly Hills Drive,” the
scanner shattered West’s peace of mind.
“Suspicious subjects in the church parking lot.”
“Shit,” West said, speeding up.
What lousy luck. They were in Westerly Hills on Westerly Hills Drive, The Jesus Christ Is Lord Glorious United Church of the Living God right in front of them. The small
white frame church was Pentecostal, and deserted this night, not one car in the parking lot
when West turned in. But there definitely were subjects loitering, half a dozen young