by Joe McKinney
In the passenger seat of the patrol car, the window open and the dry and dusty and sour garbage smell of San Antonio’s east side drifting into his nose, Paul watched the landscape slip by and was surprised to realize that he had a pretty good idea of where they were.
It was nearly two in the morning now, and they had spent much of that night drifting through the southern part of their district—an area Mike lovingly referred to as Heroin Town—looking for junkies to shake down for information about the Morgan Rollins killings. But now they were headed north along Lee Hall Boulevard, leaving their district. A few minutes earlier they had received a message from Wes and Collins on their MDT that read simply: Ready. And Mike had turned the car north and sped away.
Paul didn’t ask questions. He read the message, looked at Mike, who had a wicked smile on his face, and waited to be told what was up.
He was still waiting when they entered the warehouse-lined streets in the middle of Barris and Seles’ district. Paul watched the buildings slip by. Their corrugated metal roofs and tubular construction reminded him of airplane hangers. The street was quiet and dark. Large oak trees filled up the spaces between the warehouses. A black dog trotted into the street and watched them as they drove around it.
“What are we doing here?” Paul finally said.
Mike’s smile got bigger, but he didn’t speak. He slowed the car to a crawl, blacked out the lights, and turned into a driveway that led up a steep incline and then curved around the back of one of the warehouses.
Wes and Collins were already there. Their car was blacked out and idling smoothly beneath the eaves of a large Spanish oak.
Mike parked the car a short distance from Wes and Collins and opened his door. But before he could get out, Paul stopped him. They usually parked driver’s side window to driver’s side window, 69ing, as it was commonly called.
“What are we doing here?” Paul asked.
“Just get out. There’s some things you need to know in order to become a well-rounded policeman.”
“A well-rounded policeman?”
“Just get out,” Mike said.
***
Mike popped the trunk, reached inside, and came up with a handful of rubber surgical tubing. He handed it to Paul and said, “Hold this.”
Paul looked at it. “What’s this for?”
Mike kept digging through the trunk. Without looking up he said, “Show him, Collins.”
Collins laughed. He gave Paul a good-natured slap on the shoulder and said, “Come on.”
They crossed the parking lot to the back edge. Wes was already standing there, waiting for them.
From where they stood, they could see over a sea of oak trees. The metal roofs of the surrounding warehouses looked like rafts floating in the midst of a gently undulating green sea.
“What am I looking at?” Paul asked.
Collins pointed at a parking lot some two hundred feet away. “There they are—right there,” he said. “See ’em?”
It was dark, and the cars were blacked out, but once Paul knew what he was looking at, he could see plainly enough two SAPD patrol cars parked next to a three story building made entirely of corrugated tin.
“I see ’em,” Paul said. “Who is that?”
Collins laughed. But it sounded like a mean laugh. “Barris and Seles. The other car is their daddy, Garwin.”
Oh no, Paul thought.
“You almost ready, Mike?” Wes said.
“Got it,” Mike said.
Paul turned back to him and saw Mike holding a blue plastic cup with a handle on each side and a faded picture of SpongeBob Squarepants on the front. In his other hand, he had a small Igloo cooler.
“Is that a baby cup?” Paul asked.
“That depends on how it’s used,” Mike answered.
He took the surgical tubing from Paul and cut it into two equal pieces with his pocket knife. As Paul watched, recognition gradually sinking in, Mike tied off one piece of tubing to each handle. Then he opened the cooler, revealing a dozen or so baseball-sized water balloons, and Paul’s suspicions were confirmed.
As a freshman member of the UTSA football squad, and before he had met Rachel, he went to Corpus Christi with a busload of guys from the team for spring break. They stayed in a weathered little three bedroom house about a block from the beach. The house was surrounded on three sides by high rise hotels, and the balconies were crammed with college students all shouting out at each other, everybody ready to party. Some of the guys took a homemade water balloon launcher a lot like the one Mike had just made and shot balloons at the people on the hotel balconies.
At the time, Paul had had no idea that water balloon slingshots were so popular. But within moments, the people on the balconies began to shoot back with their own water balloon slingshots, and because the house was in such a poor tactical position, it only took a few minutes for nearly every window in the house to get broken out by flying balloons. It was Paul’s first practical lesson on the tactical virtues of the high ground.
Paul said, “That’s a slingshot.”
“Well what do you know?” Mike said. “It can learn.”
“Nice to know he’s got more than muscles,” Wes said.
Collins gave his partner a dirty look. “Dude, shut up. You really gross me out with that gay shit, you know that?”
Wes rolled his eyes.
But then Paul’s smile wavered as a stray thought crossed his mind. “But Garwin’s down there,” he said.
“Your daddy will be just fine,” Collins said.
Mike led the others to the edge of the lot. Paul looked across the tops of the trees and had a perfect view of their targets. The planning that went into this was impressive, he realized. A lot of pieces had to fall into place to make it work.
He stood off to one side as Wes and Collins each grabbed an end of one of the tubes. Mike stood between them, the cup in his hands. He pulled it back so that the ropes were taut and the slingshot ready to fire.
“Hand me a balloon,” he said to Paul.
“We’re not gonna get in trouble for this, are we?” Paul asked.
“Just hand me a balloon, Paul.”
Paul handed him a yellow one.
“Now stand over there,” Mike said, pointing to the left of Wes with his chin. “You’re gonna be the spotter. Tell me where it lands.”
Mike let the slingshot go, and the balloon went into a high arc over the trees. It landed somewhere off in the trees to the right of the target.
“Too far right and short,” Paul said.
Mike loaded the slingshot again and let his second shot fly. It went straight, but too long. It hit the side of the building behind the police cars and made a loud cracking sound that ripped through the quiet night air like a shotgun blast.
Collins snickered and said, “Oh shit. That was loud.”
“Do it again,” Wes said. The small gap between his round eyes was creased with laugh lines. “One more time.”
But they didn’t get the chance. Before any of them could get back into position, they were interrupted by Barris’ panicked voice on the radio.
“44-50,” he said, and didn’t wait for the dispatcher to respond. “I got shots fired. Shots fired! Eighteen hundred block of Court Street. Unknown direction.”
Collins and Mike looked at each other, then back at Mike. Mike just stood there, his mouth hanging open.
“Oh that fucking idiot,” Mike said. “I can’t believe he did—”
The dispatcher set off a city-wide emergency tone that drowned out the rest of Mike’s sentence. Then her calm, businesslike voice came over the radio. “I have 44-50 out with shots fired in the eighteen hundred block of Court. Cover is Code Three. 44-60, 44-70, 44-40, start that way.”
Before any of them could answer, Garwin got on the radio. He sounded strangely calm. “44-100, I’m ten-six with 44-50.”
They all looked at Mike, who was staring at the two police cars below them and shaking his head.
Mike said, “One of you get on the radio and tell them that—”
But he was cut off by a second emergency tone. Their dispatcher came on the radio again and said, “9217 Lincoln for a robbery of an individual. 9217 Lincoln in 44-70’s district, clearing all but East.” There was a pause as the dispatcher switched from the all-route citywide channel to the dedicated East Patrol channel. When she spoke again, her voice was as calm as ever, almost bored. “44-80, I know you’re on break but you’re all I’ve got. Start that way, Code Three. I’ll get you some cover as soon as I can.”
“10-4,” said a rather irritated-sounding officer. “Coming from a long ways off.”
Paul looked at Mike for guidance. Lincoln ran right through their little heroin town off of F.M. 78. Lots of dope, lots of guns, lots of messy calls.
“Mike?” he said.
Mike turned away from Seles, Barris, and Garwin’s cars. To Wes, he said, “Tell them a bunch of kids did it. The robbery’s in our square. Paul and I will take that.”
Wes looked doubtful, but he cleared his throat and keyed up his radio anyway.
“44-60,” he said.
Looking at Mike with an okay, here it goes expression, he said, “44-60, tell 44-50 and 44-100 no shots fired. Repeat, no shots fired. It’s just some kids with a water balloon shooter. I saw them running east of Court towards Mittman.”
The pause that followed seemed to go on forever. Finally, the dispatcher spoke. “44-100, do you copy that, sir?”
“10-4,” Garwin answered.
Another long uncomfortable silence followed.
“44-70,” Mike said.
“Go ahead, 44-70,” the dispatcher said.
“44-70, if that’s gonna be a bogus call, we’ll be on the way to 9217 Lincoln for that robbery of an individual.”
“10-4,” the dispatcher said. “44-100, do you copy?”
“I copy, 44-100,” said Garwin. “Have 44-70 divert. And ask 44-60 if they’ve still got those kids in sight.”
Wes looked at Mike. Mike shook his head.
“Uh, negative, 44-60,” Wes said. “We lost them.”
“Okay,” Mike said. “We’re outta here. Paul, get in the car. I’m driving.”
Paul didn’t argue. He got in the passenger seat and a moment later he was holding onto the dashboard for dear life as Mike gunned the Crown Victoria down the steep slope of the drive and out onto the street.
Over the howling of the Ford’s engine, Paul heard Garwin’s voice on the radio.
“44-100, have 44-60 make my location.”
“Shit,” Mike said.
“10-4,” the dispatcher said. “44-60?”
There was a long pause before Wes answered. “44-60, 10-4. Can you ask 44-100 for his twenty, ma’am?”
“44-100?”
Garwin said, “44-100, tell him to get down here now! He doesn’t need my twenty because he knows exactly where I’m at.”
“Oh shit,” Mike said.
“44-60, you copy?” the dispatcher asked.
“10-4,” Wes answered, and when he spoke again he sounded like a condemned man being led to the gallows. “We’re on the way.”
***
Two hours later, the four of them were together again, sitting at an open-air picnic table behind an all-night grease pit called The Cave. It served burgers, fries, and fried chicken, and, according to Mike at least, was just about the only place in the whole 44 section where they could go to eat and be reasonably sure the cooks weren’t doing something obscene to their food before they served it.
But, like everything else on the east side, the Cave was an eyesore. Grass grew up through cracks in the concrete. Graffiti was scrawled all over the fence that circled the lot. Burglar bars sealed every window and door in sight. And he was pretty sure he’d seen rats or mice running around behind the Dumpster not twenty feet from them.
Paul looked around the table. Wes was smiling that creepy smile of his at him. Collins was pissed off, as usual, and pushing his French fries around in a puddle of ketchup. Mike was eating a hamburger that oozed mustard and wilted lettuce and seemed as happy doing it as a goat munching clover.
Paul watched them, listened to them, and he thought about Collins. Mike he was beginning to understand. Wes, too, in a way. But not Collins. He was a contradiction in so many ways. He loved being a policeman, but he obviously felt like he deserved something better. He thought policemen were the only members of the human species worth bearing the name human, and yet he hated most of the cops he worked with—like Barris and Seles and Garwin. He was constantly complaining about how bad the Department sucked, and yet his bitching and moaning provided an outlet for the others and in the process, and ironically, Paul realized, raised everybody’s morale.
“44-70,” said the dispatcher.
Mike was holding some fries in one hand, his radio on the table in front of him. “Go ahead, 44-70,” he said.
“44-70, make 1212 Formund Street for a sexual assault report.” There was a slight pause, and Paul could have sworn he heard laughter behind the dispatcher’s ordinarily glassy voice. “Your complainant states his girlfriend has done something to his penis. Unknown what.”
Mike put down his fries when he heard the part about the guy’s penis. “Why do they do this to me,” he said, sounding thoroughly harassed. “10-4,” he said into his radio. “We’re on the way, ma’am.”
***
The house they responded to was about the size and shape of a school bus. It had once been white, and there were still traces of a canary yellow trim around the roofline and around the front door, but years of neglect had turned large patches of the outside to gray, and the front porch had a rotted sag to one side that reminded Paul of the brim of an old hat. The lawn was a weed patch. There was what looked like a broken down and thoroughly rusted Trans Am up on blocks in the front lawn. In the driveway was an old Chevy pickup with metal racks in the bed that held paint-splattered buckets and a few ladders.
They parked in the street, but almost as soon as they got out, a tall, gaunt-looking white guy in loose fitting blue jeans and nothing else came running out of the house. His chest was covered with tattoos. He had long, stringy blond hair that hadn’t seen shampoo since the first Bush was in office. Paul guessed he was six-two or six-three, but he was so skinny he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred-thirty pounds. Ropey veins showed through the skin up and down his arms.
As he stumbled into the street, waving his arms in the air above his head and screaming nonsense, Paul realized the man had the wild, bloodshot eyes of a meth head.
“Jesus,” Paul said. “I’ve seen goats cough up stuff that looks better than that guy.”
Mike chuckled.
“That fucking bitch!” the man screamed at them. “She done tore my pecker to pieces!”
Paul glanced at Mike, hoping to clue off his reaction, but didn’t see what he expected. Mike was strolling casually toward the man with an almost bored expression on his face.
“She’s inside,” the man said, pointing to the house. Tears were welling up in his eyes. “That fucking whore. She done tore me up.”
“And how did she do that?” Mike asked.
“Fuck if I know. I think she put sand in her pussy,” the man said. “When I was fucking her, I got all tore up. It was like she was rubbing me with sandpaper down there.”
The man was squeezing his cock through his jeans, and now he was crying.
Without even the barest trace of a smile, Mike said, “So if it was hurting so bad, how come you didn’t stop fucking her?”
The man looked at Mike like he was speaking another language.
Mike said, “That never occurred to you?”
The man was confused now. “Look at what she done to me,” he said. He unzipped his pants and let them fall to his feet, his junk hanging out for the whole street to see.
Paul groaned and turned away, but Mike never even blinked. “Pull your pa
nts up,” Mike said.
“Look at this,” the man said. “Look at it. It’s all tore up. I’m bleeding.”
“You got more problems than sand,” Mike said. “There’s a free clinic over on Carlton. Tell your girl to go to it. The doctor can give her a shot and then put her on some pills that’ll clear that up.”
The man stood there, staring dumbly at the two of them, his pants around his feet.
“You ain’t gonna arrest her?” he asked incredulously.
“For what?” Mike asked. “It ain’t a crime to get an STD.”
“What about my pecker?” The man grabbed it with one hand and pointed at it with the other. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Give it a rest for a few days,” Mike said. “Maybe both of you need to get that shot. Just between us guys, you might be having some real problems later...I mean, you know, with the whole fidelity thing.”
“Huh?” the man said.
Mike turned to Paul and motioned for him to get back in the car. As they drove away, steering around the almost completely naked man in the middle of the street, Paul felt so thoroughly confused that he couldn’t even laugh.
***
They were headed down Hickman Street now, the hot night air blowing in through the open windows, carrying the scent of magnolia and dust. Outside, the slum houses of Heroin Town rolled by. They were quiet now, and dark. Even the hardest of the hardcore junkies had fled indoors or crawled back under their rocks and there seemed very little to do but wait for the coming daylight to spread across the horizon and mark the end of their tour of duty.
Paul was feeling good. It had been a fairly busy night, and a fun one, and as the events of the evening played out again in his head, he had the feeling that he was becoming a part of something really good with Mike and Wes and Collins. He almost forgot the mess that was his real family and his life outside of the Department. Paul still had the image of his dead father elbow-deep in that kid’s guts, but it seemed like a bad dream now. Something that was too distant and too horrible to be real.
