Free Form Jazz. Lee Lamothe
Tate’s in the weeds. Intelligence. He’s buried, looking for the Dog Man on the east side.”
“How deep is he buried, though, Pi? Those alleys lead to streets, and people, including black voters, walk those streets. If he digs himself out and walks the earth, we’re probably going to hear about it, and it’s going to sound an awful lot like rapid-fire and spades hitting the ground.”
“He’s hanging by his thumbs. No uniform, no company car, no partner. Sits in the trees, growing his hair, scratches himself raw, and watches for the guy feeding rat poison to dogs.”
“Not deep enough. He’s shot two guys — black guys — dead, for Christ’s sakes. I want you to put a stake through his heart.”
Pious Chan wagged his head. “Both his shootings were clean. Witnesses are strong. He’s a hero, especially after that last one. He went hand-to-hand with the guy. We dump him out and it looks like we’re admitting guilt for something. We’ll pay. He won’t go, anyway, without a fight. If we put him out we’re going to have trouble.”
Pious Man Chan stepped away when a police commissioner approached the mayor and shook his hand. She held it a long time. The mayor used his other hand to flip his locks. He made his boyish face blush a shy red and smoothed his school tie while sucking in his gut.
“And you, Mr. Chief.” She grabbed Pious Chan’s hand. “An ethnic police chief. We’re setting a new agenda, an agenda of inclusiveness.” She gave them both smiles and walked away, calling, “I hope to see some progressive females moving up there in the ranks, Pious.”
Pious Man Chan waited until she was out of earshot. “The joint chemical task force, sir. The Feds run it. We’ve dumped some dead meat in there. The Staties put in one of their loose cannons. Dykes, fags, losers. We could jam Ray Tate in there. There’s lots of loose cash floating around, lots of temptation, bikers, and white trash. Best case is we catch him taking some dough. Worst case is we get a bunch of white ecstasy cookers in handcuffs, sir, and if Tate shoots someone, hopefully it’ll be one of them.”
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Just before dawn cracked, a ghost car rounded the block. Then, a few minutes later, rounded again from the other direction, this time with the bright cone of a spotlight running like quicksilver through the margin of the park. The wheelman rolled to a stop, backed up, then ran his front wheels over the sidewalk and nudged the back of a park bench. The rack lights were activated. Two young chargers disembarked the ghoster, leaving the engine running and the doors open. The wheelman muttered to the shotgun and they sparked their flashlights, pushing jerky funnels of light to a man bundled in a smudge of an overcoat, sitting in the overgrown bushes rimming a flower garden.
The shotgun called, “Yo, you, man.”
The man recognized the casual authority of the voice and could hear a night-desk dispatcher’s honey voice reciting a hotshot: woman with a gun in Stonetown, sergeant on the way, tacticals rolling, duty lieutenant notified. He climbed to his feet painfully, his joints making audible popping sounds. It was soft autumn but cold had revealed itself with a hard vengeance in the night. Lake Michigan was miles away but its cooked scent hung over the city. The hot early afternoon had boiled up some simmering stew. He groaned a painful cloud of breath. He was careful to keep his hands away from his body, to brave the searing light and keep his paws away from his eyes; he kept them out from his torso in crucifixion. An urge came to say the hell with it and scratch ferociously at the tiny bites on his legs and a fresh group on the back of his neck. His left ribs throbbed from a week-old spider bite, the same kind of broad, angry bruise left on the flesh when a bullet was stopped by a Kevlar vest.
He looked at the heavens as he awaited instruction. The sky before him was in a reluctant black of the end of the night. He studied the new purples of pre-dawn as if in delirium. He wondered why art canvases were muslin off-white. He had several tubes of yellow paint but hadn’t opened them yet. They were still in the art shop bag in his barren apartment, but he’d gone through an awful lot of black and purple and the thickest blues. There was a faint rim of dawn on the very tips of the trees far to the east. He didn’t know what to do with bright colours, where they fit into anything. Silver stars winked and faded, imperceptibly dead. The dying moon was glittering somewhere out of his sight. The Maglites, now separated, gave him two shadows growing apart from each other and he wondered if this might mean something profound. Duality of man, maybe.
“I’m an armed detective, on duty,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Ankle holster, right leg. Intelligence. Four-niner-four-sixer. Tate, Ray.”
“Right, you’re on dog patrol,” the shotgun said, “and we’ve come to get you.”
“Sir,” the wheelman said, “we’ve come to get you, sir.”
The shotgun said, “No, Brian. You don’t sir a sergeant.” He called to the man, “Right? Am I right or am I right?”
Ray Tate said, “Yes, sir.”
The shotgun laughed easily. “You can pull in your wings. We know you won’t fly away from us.”
The wheelman said, “If you did, we wanted, we could take you down on the wing anyway.”
Ray Tate lowered his arms slowly and turned. They weren’t wearing their caps and they held their flashlights away from their torsos. Both had shaven heads in the strobing ghoster lights, an annual police rite to raise money for cancer kids in the state hospital. Ray Tate had been shaven six times in six years, but not lately. His hair hid his ears, curled at the nape of his neck.
The shotgun stepped into the cone of the wheelman’s light. “We’ve come to get you, sarge. Bring you home.” He looked around. “You got anything here you want to take?”
Ray Tate looked at his blanket and bindle bundle. He bent and sorted through the rubble and picked up his rover. The battery was long dead. Nobody ever had to reach out for an alley rat. There were two used tubes of After Bite and a small sketchpad he carried for moments of inspiration, of which there’d been none. He hefted the rover in his hand and put it into his billowing, filthy German surplus greatcoat. He kicked the sketchpad, the blanket, and the bindle down the hill into the ravine.
“Nothing, just the radio.” He fired mucus from his nose. He was suddenly cold and he wrapped himself deeply in the coat. His guts twisted audibly in hunger. “The rest is shit.”
* * *
Brian the wheelman took the car to the car wash and the shotgun delivered Ray Tate to the central desk sergeant. There were crossed flags behind the desk sergeant’s table and a list of officers’ family members who’d died in combat from the Civil War to Iraq. The police force had given a lot of sons and daughters to war and there were signed photographs of a half dozen former presidents. Obama was framed but still on the floor, leaning against the wall.
The desk sergeant welcomed Ray Tate and shook his hand: “You done good, Ray. Fuck what they say.” The shotgun went to get fresh coffee. The desk sergeant looked after him as he headed to the day room. “Good guys, those guys. About the only two I got. One gets a toothache and the other has to go to the dentist. Partners.”
“What’s it about, Bob? That they came out to the wilderness?”
The desk sergeant shrugged. “Fucked if. A beam from Planet Chan. You hear? They crossed the holy water on his forehead the other day. He’s blessed.” He twisted his mouth. “Cocksucker. Now there’s a real plague on the kingdom.”
The shotgun brought out coffees and gave one to Tate. He told the sergeant he was going to walk over to the car wash. “Brian fucks it up, sarge. Lets them get inside and they see all the blood on the backseat.” He shuffled and turned to Ray Tate. “I just wanna say you something, I’m not outta line.” But he didn’t say anything.
After a moment the desk sergeant said, “He knows, Larry.”
The shotgun shook Ray Tate’s hand. “Fuck ’em, right?” He didn’t mind the grime and refused to wipe