Free Form Jazz. Lee Lamothe
She looked at his bland face. “Not much left, then, to talk about.”
“Well,” he said, “we could talk about fucking up the skipper.”
She was interested but cautious. “And how’d we do that?”
“By doing our job.” He looked at her raised eyebrow and studied her face. She was actually quite attractive under the white frizz. She had long catlike eyes, high cheekbones, and a pointed little chin. Her teeth were small and even. Stress and maybe hatred had worked into her face, giving it a mean repose, making her lips halfway to a twist. Her hand, when it had been in his, was small but strong and firm, and he knew someone had taught her how to shake hands. Her body, when he’d given her the pat-down, had some long muscle.
He got up and went around the table. She shrank back from his hand. “I just want my smokes.” He dug in the jacket, found a pack of Marlboros and a lighter, and went back to his seat. He formally offered her one then lit them both.
She suddenly looked afraid. Politeness was antique to her. “I called Gay-Glo. Just so you know. People know I’m with you right now. If anything happens to me, it’s documented.”
“Gay-Glo.” He shook his head. “Whatever. Relax. I’m going to talk for a while, then if you want to talk you can, okay?”
She stared at him, silent.
“Okay. We’re both fucked. You’re never going to be a working cop again, I’m never going to be a working cop again. Our lives as we know them are over. The skipper wants me to bury your ass. Probably, he’s told you the same thing: bury my ass. I don’t know. If I sink you, he says, I’m on my way back to the streets, riding around, doing the job. I don’t know what, if he promised you anything, and I got to say I doubt it, I don’t know what he promised you.”
“Nothing. I don’t talk to the fucker.”
“Sure. It doesn’t matter, anyway. As long as we’re partners working in the office, there’s no real problem. We can both be careful around each other. That’s cool. But if we go outside and do stuff, well, there’s a lot of things that can happen and the only two people who’ll know what happened is the guy that did it and the guy that saw it. You want to think about that.”
She stared at his friendly, expectant eyes. “You think that’s why he partnered us? One of us is a rat, going to eat up the other?”
“Most people, they look at something and they say to themselves, what would I do in that situation? The skipper, being what he is, assumes he’s normal, so he looks at what he’d do and expects anyone else to do the same normal thing. I’d rat, he figures, so they will too.”
“So, he partnered us up because he thinks we’re going to spike each other?”
“I guess. I said if I work close with you that when you step on your dick or whatever, I’ll be there to tap two behind your ear, get you written out.”
“But you won’t, right?” Her lips went into full twist. “All this, all this could just be technique.”
“Could be, I guess.” He chain lit another cigarette. “Look, I don’t know you. I know your story, or some of your story, anyway. I talked to a State guy I know about what happened and he said there were weird doings in Indian country. The guy I talked to is a good guy. He said you beat the face off your partner, but he said you did some good work up there. He said he’s the first to say he doesn’t know it all, but you were a good cop.”
“For a black dyke.”
“He mentioned that, I gotta admit.” He drank some dark and looked at her. She had a smile, not a full smile, but an almost friendly twist to the edges of her lips. He could see chicks going for her, could see a meatheaded partner making a move after dark on a dirt road. He saw her shiver under his coat from the growing wind off Michigan. “But I don’t think he gives a shit. Mostly he was curious why they put a black dyke up there in Indian country, what you call it? The Spout?”
“The Spout. Where they drop you in and pour you out.”
“He said they must really fucking hate you when they do that. He said that tells him a lot.”
“Why?”
“Well, he said it means your problem wasn’t beating your partner. The problem was long before that, before you got there, that you fucked up someplace before, and they sent you up there because you were already fucked.”
“Smart guy, your pal.” She stared at him. “What did you mean, on the phone, when you asked if I ever wanted to be a cop?”
That was what he was waiting for. It was time. Up to now he’d just been bullshitting on the teeter-totter, finding equilibrium. He could chat all night. He’d learned from a Chicago Homicide detective that you solve more cases with the art of conversation than with a nightstick. There was a point in any interview when it was time to make a move. “Reveal who you are, then, when you get a feeling,” the Chicago dick had said, “if you’re an asshole that’s the time to say something, reveal yourself as an honest asshole. If you’re a good guy just doing a job, no personal offence, then you say something then. Don’t think about it. You’ll never be a detective, Ray, but you’ll be a hell of a duty sergeant some day. You like cops and you probably, for all I know, like people, you dumb bastard. So, that’s what you show. Find that point, where the balance between what you are and what your subject is, then ride it like a little kid standing in the middle of a teeter-totter.”
Ray Tate said: “Did you?”
“I did. I wanted to be a cop. I am a cop.” She was biting at her lip, trying to prevent herself from saying much of anything.
Her defences were her coat, not her skin. He saw that. He had an urge to put his hand on hers, on the table. But it wasn’t a pure enough urge, and his Homicide buddy had told him: “It’s got to be total. When you make the human — the physical — connection, you have to be dead certain sure. You have to be able to separate the certainty from the impulse. If you fuck that up, you’ll never unfuck it.”
“Okay.” Ray Tate put his elbows on the table and said her name for the first time. “Djuna, you can play the rest of this out anyway you want. We can drink another drink and talk about Harry fucking Potter, the little fag, or whatever. Tomorrow morning we’re going to be doing stuff. I don’t know what you’re going to be doing, but I’m going to be making a case, with you or without you. If I’m flying solo, that’s okay. It just means I have to keep an eye on my back with you around. I’ve been doing it for a long time, anyway. This,” he waved his hand over the table, “this is just me laying out the land for you.”
“What case are you going to make? There are no cases. It’s fill time.”
“I dunno. There’s that guy on the board, Commander Coke.”
“Captain Cook.”
“Him. If he exists.”
She stared at him for a few minutes. He felt he was being evaluated and took it, looking back with calm. She said: “He exists. Captain Cook is a master fucking bandit and an all round fuckhead.”
“You’ve seen him? You’re working him?”
“Working him, but I haven’t seen him. But I got someone who has. She’s seen him a lot and doesn’t want to, much, anymore.”
Chapter 7
Phil Harvey chewed slowly on a sinker, dipping it into his coffee, and watched the block through the window while the crazy Captain waited for service at the counter. There was a convention in town. He saw cars with Illinois plates, Minnesota plates, some Michigans, and some Ontario, Canada. Drones on their morning coffee break filled the Donut Hole and although there were seats at Harv’s table, no one availed themselves of his company. Three office girls carrying blue, rolled up yoga mats stood nearby, raving about the flavour of the chai and sneaking glances at him. Phil Harvey knew he was a thing of the