Cop Town

by Karin Slaughter

  Kate’s visits to her parents were like clockwork. Fox guessed that made her a good girl, inasmuch as a filthy Jewess could ever be thought of as good. She always dressed up for her visits. She never wore pants. Most nights, she stayed over at their house, which made things more complicated but also gave Fox more options.

  Anybody who knew Fox knew he liked options almost as much as he liked routine.

  Option one: The thicket of shrubs near the basement window to Kate’s bedroom. The bed was a single, probably from her childhood. There were posters on the wall (the Beatles, which he could forgive her for; Paul Newman, which he could not). Soft pink sheets. Matching walls. A dark purple blanket she draped over the bed when it was cold. The bathroom door was always left ajar. A nightlight made it possible for Fox to track the rise and fall of her chest. He timed her breath using the second hand on his watch. If he was lucky, she got up in the night and he would see through the sliver of light Kate’s nightgown. White cotton. Almost transparent. When there was a full moon, Fox could see the darkness of her secret places through the thin material.

  Option two: The mudroom by the kitchen. They usually left the light on, which meant Fox could stand at the door and see inside the kitchen. Kate always carried the dinner plates to the sink. Sometimes she would stand there watching the water run. Other times, she would sit at the kitchen table and talk to her grandmother.

  Grandmother. At first, Fox had thought she was the mother and that the mother was an older sister. He’d finally had to knock on the door and pretend he was taking a survey for the phone company in order to ascertain the relationship.

  The mother had invited him in. The grandmother had joined the conversation shortly after. They had served him coffee and cookies and Fox had asked to use the restroom because just being that close to women who looked like Kate made him hard as a rock.

  Option three: The fallen tree in the front yard. Fox had sat behind it just that night and watched Kate walk up the curving sidewalk to the front door. She moved like a cat. “Languid” was the word. Sexy as hell. She was wearing high-heeled shoes that flexed her calves in such a way that a lesser man would’ve put his hands down his pants to relieve the pressure.

  Fox had walked away because he had fucked up too many things today to think that he could remain in control.

  Punishment number one: He didn’t get to watch her change for bed.

  Punishment number two: He didn’t get to watch her wrap the purple blanket around her shoulders and lie down.

  Punishment number three: He didn’t get to relieve the pressure in his pants as he watched the rhythmic movement of her chest.

  1638: Talked to doctor in hospital ER (P)

  1718: Cried in car parked outside police station (P)

  1901: Closed curtains at hotel (P)

  Pressure.

  This wasn’t the first time a Jew had caused him trouble.

  When Fox was nine years old, a Hebrew family bought the house three doors down. The Feldmans moved in one weekend, then by the next, everybody had a For Sale sign in their front yard. Two houses sold, then word got out and nobody could sell anything for a reasonable price.

  Senior told Fox he had seen this kind of thing before. One Jew moves in, then the property values plummet, then the rest of the Jews swoop down like vultures.

  Lesson six: Never trust a Jew.

  As with many of Senior’s predictions, this one hadn’t come to fruition. No one could afford to walk away from their mortgages. The Jews hadn’t swept in. There was just the Feldmans and the animosity that bubbled up and down the street.

  Still, Fox always thought of Hebrews as vultures. Not theoretically, but in a literal sense. They were all dark with black hair and dark eyes and beaked noses. Feldman’s wife was plump and shifty-looking and all the kids scattered when she went to the mailbox because everybody knew a Jew could curse you.

  The eldest daughter was a different story. Rebecca Feldman was dark, too, but she wasn’t plump. She was curvy. Her lips were a perfect red bow. She wore shapely skirts that showed her hips. And sweaters. Not a man on that street didn’t look forward to autumn, when Rebecca Feldman wore her tight sweaters. She did it on purpose. They all knew that. She teased them. She toyed with them. And they couldn’t do a damn thing about it without bringing down the law.

  Lesson seven: All Jewesses are promiscuous whores.

  The first time Fox got hard was when he saw Rebecca Feldman in one of those sweaters. He didn’t know what was happening. He ran home to his room. He hid under the covers. He sweated like a maniac because he thought the Jew had cursed him.

  And then his hands had worked to relieve the pressure, and all he could think about after that was what he wanted to do to her. Peel off that sweater. Slide down that skirt. Fox wasn’t sure what would come next, but he knew instinctively that the Jew had to pay for what she did to him. Because Fox was out of control. In those moments when he ran to his room and ducked under his sheets, the Pressure was in charge.

  And now the same thing was happening all over again, only this time, the Jew was Kate.

  17

  For the second time in as many days, Kate pushed her way through the thick throng of men in the squad room. She ignored the leers. She crossed her arms over her chest to keep the groping to a minimum. Unfortunately, she couldn’t cover her ears.

  “Baaah!” they bleated. “Baaaaah!”

  Of all the nicknames that had been trotted out yesterday, from Irish Spring to China Doll, why was this the one that was sticking?

  Someone tipped his hat to Kate. “Hello, lamb chop.”

  Her smile turned into a grimace.

  “Baaaah!”

  Finally, the door. Kate was careful not to open it too wide. From the frying pan into the fire. Wanda Clack was sitting on the bench loading up her utility belt. She saw Kate and let out a “Baaah!”

  Kate plastered on her smile, held up her hands in surrender. She didn’t know how much longer she could do this. She was dying inside.

  Wanda said, “Lookit you with your uniform. I’d have to think twice before I called you a man.”

  “Thank you very much.” Kate smoothed down the shirt, which was still blousy. She’d asked Mary Jane to leave more room than usual.

  “You get that Jew to do it?” Wanda laughed. “He didn’t poke you with his horns?”

  Kate knew better than to tell the truth about herself. The last thing she needed was another mark against her.

  The door opened. Maggie slid in. She raised her eyebrows, seemingly surprised that Kate was here.

  Kate felt her leg being slapped.

  “Lend me a hoof, Sheep.” Wanda held out her hand. Kate didn’t know what to do but to help leverage her up. Wanda gave a loud groan as she stood. The equipment around her belt creaked. “Well, I gotta say, after what happened yesterday, none of us thought you’d show up again.”

  Kate tried for jocularity. “Surprise!”

  “You said it.” Wanda winked at her before she edged like a crab out the door.

  Kate smiled at Maggie, but she was busy dialing the combination on her locker. “Good morning.”

  Maggie yanked open the lock. “How’d you get home last night?”

  “Spare key.”

  “Magnetic box under the wheel well?”

  “How did you know?”

  She tossed Kate her purse. “That’s what the victim usually tells me when I’m taking a stolen car report.”

  Kate held her purse to her chest. Could she leave? Would it be that easy? Could she just turn around and leave?

  Maggie asked, “You get a lock or do you need to use mine again?”

  At least Kate had done one thing right today. She held up the lock she’d taken from her father’s suitcase.

  Maggie studied the lock with great disapproval. Still, she opened a locker three down from her own. Number eight, right beside the curtain the colored girls had put up.

  “Thank you.” Kate didn’t really need an
ything from her purse, but she opened it anyway as she walked across the room. Everything was in there—makeup, gum, a few tampons, some change that she shouldn’t let float around. She unbuckled her wallet. She checked the cash compartment, but not for her money. Her wedding photo rested among the bills.

  Patrick was dressed in a dark blue suit and tie. His hair was neatly combed. Kate was wearing a white knee-length dress with a peplum that fluttered loosely around her hips. She remembered her pearls kept catching on the light shirring at the sweetheart neckline.

  They had been married at the courthouse by a judge and not by a priest at the Cathedral of Christ the King, which was why Patrick’s parents had not attended the ceremony. Kate had always assumed that she was agnostic like her parents; which fact still didn’t allow them entrance into the gentile country club. She’d gone to temple as a child because it made her Oma happy. She’d gone to bar mitzvahs for the camaraderie and cake. She enjoyed an occasional Shabbat and preferred Christmas to Hanukkah, but there was no way in hell she would dishonor what had happened to her family by getting married in a Catholic church.

  “Everything in there?” Maggie asked.

  Kate looked up.

  “I didn’t take your money.”

  “I didn’t think you had.” Kate closed the wallet and shoved it back into her purse.

  “You’re with me again today.” Maggie rested her hand on her revolver. “Is that a problem?”

  “I’m delighted.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “If you want lunch, take some cash with you. Lipstick is okay, but nothing dark. You got your notebook and pen?”

  Kate tapped her breast pocket.

  “Did you turn in your reports?”

  “First thing.”

  “Get your citation book. We’re skipping roll call today.” She slammed her locker closed. “Meet me on the back stairs in five minutes.”

  Kate gathered she was not supposed to ask for details. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Maggie slipped out the door. No one else came in. Kate had never been alone in the locker room before. She glanced at the area behind the curtain, wondering just what was back there. More lockers, she saw. There was a stack of Negro magazines at the end of their bench. A small table with a glass vase was tucked into the corner. There was only a single flower, a daisy, but it looked fresh.

  Something bumped against the door and Kate nearly jumped out of her skin. She didn’t know which would be worse—being here when the colored girls came or being late meeting Maggie on the stairs.

  She took some cash from her wallet and pocketed her lipstick, which was absolutely too dark but what was Maggie going to do, arrest her?

  Kate put the lipstick back in her purse.

  She quickly figured out why Maggie had disapproved of the suitcase lock. The shackle barely fit through the slot in the locker door. She had to force it closed. The tiny key could easily slip out of her pocket. Kate felt certain she’d feel it. Her hips were black and blue from the Kel-Lite and nightstick beating into her yesterday afternoon. She was shocked she’d managed to get to sleep last night.

  Of course, she had been shocked by a lot of things last night, none more so than the mind-blowing thirty seconds it had taken for her to finish what Philip Van Zandt had started. She’d never had a man touch her down there before. Patrick thought it was kinky that time they did it standing up in the foyer.

  “Dear Patrick,” she silently composed in her head. “Thank you for your last letter. I have been very busy myself. I met a colorful pimp yesterday morning. I watched a whore get tortured. I helped resolve a dispute over a sandwich. I let a near-stranger finger me in my mother’s kitchen. Hope you are not the same …”

  The door opened. Kate panicked. The colored girls were here. There were four of them. They glared at her. She put her head down and tried for a quick exit. They didn’t make it easy. They crowded together so that she had to push her way through.

  “Sorry … sorry …,” Kate apologized. They were worse than the men. Her hat was tipped. Her shoulders were bumped like she was traveling through a car wash. A foot came out to trip her. She barely managed to stumble into the outer room.

  “Baaah!” a fat cop screamed in her face.

  Kate’s good humor was spent for the morning. She had no idea where the back stairs were, but she assumed “back” meant to the rear of the room. There was an exit sign over a door. Kate made her way toward it. The going was easier. Most everyone was taking their seat for roll call. She wasn’t sure how this would work. If Kate wasn’t checked in by the duty officer, did that mean she wasn’t technically working?

  “What took so long?” Maggie stood at the bottom of a set of large marble stairs. She didn’t seem to expect an answer. “Come on.”

  There was nothing to do but follow her up the stairs. Kate concentrated on her feet as she climbed. Her shoes were still slipping even though she was wearing two pairs of her father’s socks. Her hat kept falling down over her eyes. She bumped it up. It slid back down. She bumped it up again.

  Maggie said, “You’re allowed to take off your hat.”

  Maggie’s hat was still on, so Kate left hers in place. “Is your brother all right?”

  “Look up.”

  “What?” Kate looked up. She was one step away from running straight into a towering black woman. There were two of them standing at the top of the stairs. They had identical uniforms and identical tightly shaved Afros. Their name badges read DELROY and WATSON. They stared openly at Kate.

  Delroy said, “She sure is white as a sheep.”

  “Uh-huh.” Watson nodded in agreement. “You’d think she’d’a learned after yesterday to look where she’s going.” She reached out with one hand and knocked the hat off Kate’s head.

  Maggie grabbed Kate’s arm to keep her from retrieving her hat.

  “Listen up, Sheep.” Delroy used a pointed finger to explain, “You look left, you look right, you look up, you look down.”

  Watson finished, “You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around.”

  They both clapped.

  “That’s what it’s all about.”

  They both laughed, but Watson kept her eyes zeroed in on Kate. “We ain’t jokin’ here, White Sheep. You gotta know everything around you all the time. That’s the only way you’re gonna stay alive. You feel me?”

  “I feel you,” Kate mumbled, sounding like the whitest Jew who had ever taken a wrong turn out of Buckhead.

  “She feels me,” Delroy told her partner. “You hear that?”

  Watson tried to imitate Kate’s accent. “I feel you, lovey.”

  Delroy went for a Thurston Howell. “Thank you, ma’dear. Might I feel you later after we share some cocktails at the club?”

  “We don’t have time for this.” Maggie nodded toward a closed door. She let Delroy and Watson go ahead of them. Then she nodded for Kate to retrieve her hat.

  Kate did as she was told, offering a cheerful “You’re full of nods this morning.”

  Maggie was already in the room, which was another storage closet. This one was actually used for storage. Metal shelves contained pens, folders, staples, notepads.

  Maggie nodded for Kate to shut the door. As usual, Kate did as she was told. She had to assume there was a reason Maggie had been so tight-lipped about meeting these women. The curtain in the dressing room wasn’t the only thing that separated the colored girls from the whites.

  Delroy asked, “We gonna do this in front of the Sheep?”

  “She won’t talk,” Maggie said, which Kate took as a compliment. “I need a favor.”

  Delroy twisted her lips to the side. “Go on.”

  “There’s a pimp I need to talk to. Name’s Sir She.”

  “Sir She,” Delroy repeated. “Tranny pimp works outta CT?”

  “You know him?”

  “Heard of him,” Delroy said. “We’ve dealt with a coupla his girls. Got the shit kicked outta ’em for not turning in their money.”

&n
bsp; Watson added, “He wears these white boots, got gold tips on ’em. Tore this one girl up so bad she won’t never pee straight again.”

  “Where’s he live?” Maggie asked.

  “He’s renting rooms in a boardinghouse off Huff.”

  Maggie nodded for the umpteenth time. “Good. That’s what we got off a witness yesterday.” Kate noticed that Maggie didn’t volunteer how they had gotten the information from Violet. “Anything else?”

  Delroy said, “Boardinghouse is run by a freaky Portuguese chick. Old as dirt, but I wouldn’t cross her.” She turned to her partner. “What’s the house number, eight-fifteen?”

  “Eight-nineteen.” Watson wrinkled her nose. “Damn old biddy looks like she got spiders in her hair.”

  Maggie asked, “Portuguese? What’s a white woman doing living in CT?”

  “You crackers gonna let some damn foreigner live in your backyard?”

  Delroy trotted out her snooty accent again. “She used to live up near the shopping mall, but the noise was atrocious!”

  “Better,” Kate admitted. She’d really nailed the intonations.

  Maggie held out her arm and physically pushed Kate out of the conversation. “Are any of them carrying?”

  “Sir She don’t carry. The one you gotta worry about is the big-ass mother works for him. Fat as a whale. Crazy as a loon. Matter-fact, both of ’em are tetched, from what I hear. But the big one is just flat-out-mothah-fuckin-crazy, knowhattamean?”

  Delroy gave Kate a meaningful look. “He’s got a thing about white women. Don’t like ’em. And that’s for real, Sheep.”

  Watson looked at Kate, too. “He likes ’em good enough when he’s cutting ’em up. Keeps a switchblade on him. Pulls it out like magic and the next thing you know, half your face is hanging off the bone.”

  Kate willed herself not to shudder.

  Maggie asked, “But no guns?”

  Watson shrugged. “I told you we ain’t never met the brothers. They’re new in town, been here maybe five, six months.”

  Delroy said, “No time to bring a welcome basket, you dig?”

  Watson said, “This is just shit we heard about him.”