Free Form Jazz. Lee Lamothe
the room, his hand out. “Fuck me. Ray Tate. They told me I was getting a first-rate guy, but … well, holy fuck. A real cop, for a change.” He shook his head as he pumped Ray Tate’s hand with one hand and hustled his holstered sidearm with the other. “Gordie Weeks. Welcome to the Crank Squad. Let’s get coffee.”
* * *
The Chemical Squad was housed on the ninth floor in a commercial building. The upper floors had a long, clear view to Lake Michigan. Visitors who stumbled onto the ninth floor were greeted with a bland, long corridor with light green doors down either side. Each door had a number pad. Each door, if someone knocked on it, was found to be steel instead of the flimsy hollow cores of the other doors in the building. Video surveillance cameras peeked out of the ceiling tiles. When someone stepped off the elevator a red-headed receptionist instantly appeared, as though coincidentally, from the first door on the right-hand side. She wore a small automatic pistol under her secretarial garb and a panic button disguised as a funky bracelet on her left wrist.
When the skipper and Ray Tate came out of the tactical room the redhead was whispering into a headset and keeping an eye on the hall monitors.
“Gloria, we’re going for some caffeine. Half hour, okay? I’m on the cell.”
She nodded and made a note. She stared at Tate.
“This is Ray Tate. The last real cop. He’s going to be with us so don’t get all tactical when he comes in, okay? He’s one of the good guys.” He winked at her and said to Tate, “Watch out for Gloria. She’s got two forty-fives. She’s also got a gun.”
The red-headed woman stared at the skipper without expression. The skipper was shrugging into his suit coat at the elevator when the doors opened. A tiny black woman in a smudged, stained pantsuit was leaning bonelessly against the back wall, looking as though she’d just jolted awake from nine floors of deep sleep. She had almost white bleached hair that exploded from her head. The butt of a holstered compact automatic pistol hiked her ghastly jacket above her hip. Her face was thin and the colour of scummy, forgotten coffee. Her eyes had an Asian, catlike slant. She’d made herself up by stabbing a tube of lipstick at her face, giving her mouth an arterial aspect. With effort she detached herself from the wall and stared dully at the skipper until he moved out of her way. She passed them and shuffled ghostly past the receptionist. She wore tiny embroidered slippers.
When the elevator doors closed the skipper hit the ground floor button and shook his head. “Dyke. A Statie.”
Tate noticed he was gnawing his lip and blinking rapidly at the crack of elevator door.
Across the street they made their way through the breakfast crowd and sat at the farthest booth. The skipper held two fingers up to the counterman. When coffee was delivered the skipper poured an inch of sugar into his cup. “You know anything about us? About our satellite? That’s okay. Nobody does. The Feds put in the infrastructure, the radios, the prosecutors, and the brainiacs who do the chemistry work. The Staties put in a few bodies and some cars. We put in the workers. Essentially, we handcuff pills. The Feds pick the target, we chase down the pills. We grab mutts if we have to, some labs, sometimes some dough. But what we want is pills, great fucking mounds of them. There’s not much overtime and mostly, I got to say, we’re Sleepy Hollow. We mostly work on ecstasy since some club kids croaked on it, but I haven’t sweated in months. We’ve been getting a lot of crank lately.”
“But sometimes we get to beat people up, right, lieutenant? Real police work?”
The skipper held up his palm. “Fuck that lieutenant stuff. Skipper’s okay in front of the troops, Gordie if we’re off campus. We get a lot of white trash guys. Some Chinamen come down from Canada with barrels of precursor chemicals or shipments. A few bikers. The main guy we’re looking for is Captain Cook, if he even exists.”
He held his cup up and the cook came down with a carafe and refilled it. The skipper poured in another inch of sugar. “I got to tell you also, there’s some dead meat in the squad. Feds use us for training their young guys. They’re okay, just stupid. Our guys dumped some slobs in. The Staties managed to dump one of their zombies in. That’s the black broad in the elevator. You heard of her? Brown?”
“Don’t think so. But I’ve been with the dogs in the weeds for a while.”
“Dyke. Psycho. Nobody’ll work with her. Djuna Fucking Brown. She’s sleepwalking but we can’t get rid of her. She’s a triple threat: black, a dyke, and a broad. The commissioners can’t sleep at night, the thought of her filing a suit. The mayor’s fucked now that she’s with us and if she goes off, having a black dyke broad screaming he’s a sexist, racist fuckpig to the media won’t look good. She’s his entire constituency, for Christ sakes. Even got some Chinaman in the eyes, you notice?”
“Yeah.” Tate made a nasty laugh. “Yeah, sure, I heard of her. She’s the one from up in the boondocks, took out her partner, right? Beat his gums in with a baton.”
“Yeah. Her. Fucking horror story, that mess was. He said some redskins off the Reserve grabbed him on the roadside and tuned him up. But word got out and nobody’d partner with her after. They shifted her around but guys took sick days, wives complained she was hitting on their hubbies. Fuck, as if. Anyway, when the Feds set up the Chemical Squad they asked out for bodies and the Staties must’ve thought they were in heaven. Two days later she’s seconded down here.”
“Tough chick, if she took out her partner.”
The skipper looked into the distance over Tate’s shoulder. His face took on a fearful fascination and in its nakedness Ray Tate saw the marks of the mean, feral boozer, of the paranoid, the frightened guy who could tell you how many minutes were left until he could hit happy hour. Two inches of sugar in ten minutes told the tale. The skipper blinked a couple of times. “How the fuck? I mean, you saw her. Weighs about fifty pounds. Beats a big strong cop so bad he cringes whenever a bird flies over his head?” He shook his head. “Fucked if I know. I’d ’a aced the bitch. Put her in the ground.”
Ray Tate warmed up the bullshit. “So, except for us, you and me, skip, how many real cops on board?”
“Not a lot, Ray. Not a lot. Mostly I got slobs waiting to die or get their papers.”
“But we’re doing real work, here, right? Chain up the bodies?”
“Oh, yeah, once in a while. Bodies and pills. Pills make a great press conference. Everybody’s happy. Somehow we manage to meet our projections. We’re doing okay. We haven’t got anything into our main target, this Captain Cook guy yet, if he even exists, but we’re doing okay.” He looked around. “Look, I gotta be straight with you, Ray, they want me to get the stuff on the dyke, put her to sleep once and for all. I know you’ve got troubles. That’s okay. You came by them honest, doing the job. No real cop’s gonna fuck you up for carrying the water. You’re safe here with us. I stand by my guys, especially my city guys.”
Ray Tate nodded and drained his coffee cup. He kept his face neutral. “I ’preciate that, skip. All I want is to get back in my blue suit and stripes and drive around the town, harassing citizens.”
They stood up. The skipper bounced some quarters on the table. “If that’s what you want, Ray, you’re on your way. First step, though, is we spike the dootchbag in the ground. I’m gonna partner you guys. You up for it?”
“Sure. That’ll let me see a close-up, see what I’m after here.”
“Good. I’ll memo her. I gotta keep an eye on her. She’s here then she’s gone. Working a source she says, but I think she’s got some real bad habits. Be nice to find them.”
* * *
Ray Tate was assigned a desk in the empty tactical room. He looked around for Djuna Brown but she was absent. He was staring at the duty roster on the wall, memorizing the names and emergency contact numbers, when the skipper came out of his office and said he had three guys off with on-duty injuries, two were out someplace doing something, and the others were sitting on a chemistry set in the east end. “The dyke said she’s out