He nodded. “I’m on my way to the hospital,” and made the phone sign with his fingers for her to call him as he walked away.
“Your boyfriend?” the witness said as soon as he was gone.
“Let’s talk about you.” Salt pulled up to the keyboard and began getting the woman’s information, typing her statement and asking questions for clarification as “Theresa” gave her version of the gun battle at The Manor. She’d seen what she believed to be the first gun drawn before she ducked into a doorway. In between giving details, she asked Salt about Wills and the chaplain. She seemed to be getting more and more comfortable in the Homicide office, in spite of having on only the Jesus shirt. Salt printed the statement and asked her to sign at the bottom. Theresa took her time reading and rereading the two pages. “Is my testimony good?” she asked.
“The truth is always good.”
“But I mean will it help you? Also, I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but I was watching your fingers typing. You should get some nail extensions. You’ve got long, pretty fingers.” She took the pen Salt was holding out to her. “I used to do nails. I could do yours sometime if you had some acrylics.”
“Thanks, Theresa. Did you work in a salon?” Salt stood up to take her to the waiting room.
“I worked in a couple of places.” She dropped the chaplain’s jacket over the arm of the chair and tugged the hem of her shirt.
The chaplain had been watching from the door to the break room and was back at Salt’s desk when she returned. “They can’t teach that, you know,” he said.
“What?”
He held a child’s pink sippy cup, minus its lid. “It’s all that was left to drink from.” He lifted the cup in a toast and took a sip. “Tell me about this coat.” He pointed at Salt’s trench coat, picked up his jacket, and sat down in the chair vacated by Theresa.
She took the coat off the hook and folded it.
“It’s a nice coat, old-fashioned but new,” he said.
“Hey, Chap, back off.” She swiveled her chair around so her back was to him, but then felt hemmed in by the small cubicle space.
After an awkward minute, he said, “That’s a great-looking pooch.”
He pointed to the small framed photo of Wonder, the photo she used to carry in her uniform cap where other cops carried their family pics. She looked down at the coat in her lap and smoothed its folds. “It was his coat, my father’s. Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.”
“It’s all right. I brought you the books but I also wanted you to know that my office is moving next week, not that you’ve ever come there, but, you know.” He shrugged. “We have a history.”
“Thanks, Chap. I appreciate you more than it seems. And by the way, Theresa, who was just here? She might be ready to do something better with her life. Here’s her address.” Salt wrote Theresa’s information and handed it to him on an orange sticky note. “She’s likable but she does live in the Razor Wire—The Manor.”
“It’s always a challenge and a pleasure, Salt.” He stood, and again lifted the pink plastic cup to her and set it on her desk. One tuft of his hair was visible floating above the dividers as he made his way to the lobby.
Salt relocated the coat hook to a corner of her workspace, holding one of the sleeves, the lyrics to the old hymn came back again. “Breathe on me, breath of—” She hummed the last word, remembering back then she’d change it from “breath of God” to “breath of dog.”
ANN
The café was on a corner of the intersection of Wylie and Krog, streets that ran alongside the rail yards above and that connected two historical neighborhoods, Cabbagetown, dominated by a huge former mill, and Reynoldstown, founded by freed slaves in the 1800s. “Who or what is ‘Krog’ anyway?” Ann asked.
They were having their first lunch, just the two of them. “I’ve read about these neighborhoods and driven through the underpass so many times and always wanted to explore them.” Ann looked out the wide storefront window beside their booth.
“I have no idea about Krog,” Salt said. “As tunnels go it’s not much lengthwise, but they pack enough graffiti onto it for a small city.” The window had a view of the south end of the underpass. “The railroads shaped how our city developed. I’m sure the mill site was chosen because of proximity to the rail lines.”
“Do you know about the neighborhoods?” Ann asked. “Since I’m not from Atlanta and we do a fifth-grade module on Atlanta history, I’ve done some reading. I’m always surprised when I find out I know more than the natives, not that there are many of those.” Ann’s black hair was smoothed back into a tight French bun, not a hair out of place. Her skin always had a fresh shimmer.
“What’s up, Ann? You took the day off from school. It must be important.” Salt recognized a change when she saw it.
Ann sat back against the booth seat. “I can’t take a half day from work to have lunch and go shopping?”
Their waitress, a dwarf, appeared at the table. “You want something besides water to drink?” She handed their menus up.
“What’s a Krog?” Ann asked, grabbing a menu.
“Just your average, white robber-baron railroad-capitalist motherfucker,” replied the girl, who hadn’t an inch of visible skin that wasn’t tattooed. “I’ll be right back with your water.”
Ann rubbed her eyebrows and propped her face between her hands. “Well, that was special.”
“Pepper’s new assignment still getting to you?” Salt asked.
“Okay, you got me. I guess they made you detective for a reason. It’s not just the narc thing, although the competition to see who can get most in character for the street is bringing out the juvenile in all of them. They’re like a bunch of ten-year-olds playing dress-up with beards and dirty shirts. The real problem for me is that he’s kept the extra jobs and I’m sick of it. Sick of his working all the time and not spending time with the boys, me. I thought when he got this promotion and the little pay raise that he could drop some of the other work.”
“You ready to order?” A thin guy with earlobe plugs held a pen to an order pad.
“What happened to our waitress?”
“A little dispute. She quit. You guys know what you want?”
“Bean burger,” said Salt.
“I’ll have the chicken. I hope we weren’t the cause of her quitting. How long had she been working here?”
“Second day. Things are a bit transitional. I’ll be right back with your order.”
“Transitional.” They shrugged at each other after he left.
“The EJ problem is as old as the job, Ann.”
“It’s gotten very old for me. How come you don’t work them?”
“Lots of reasons. Maybe I’d feel different if I had kids.” Most cops couldn’t afford to live in the city’s safe neighborhoods with the good schools. And most couldn’t afford the private schools. So they lived in the burbs and that meant cars and commute time, gas expenses on top of a mortgage.
“All the more reason you could work the jobs. You don’t have kids. I’m really most upset with Pepper because he’s rarely with the boys. About the only time he spends with them these days is when they work out at your place.”
“What does he say when you talk to him about it?”
“He says he’s afraid if he quits the EJs now he won’t be able to get them back, not the good ones.”
“Can you afford to lose the money?”
“With my salary and watching our pennies we could make it. But since he’s gone a lot he tries to make it up by buying the boys stuff. He bought me a new car. All of which just keeps him having to work the jobs. I’m also really scared that he’s wearing himself out, and being in Narcotics he needs to be on his toes. I’m not one of those worrywart wives. I knew what I was getting into when he, make that we, decided that he’d join the PD. I’m also not fooling myself. I
know how dangerous the drug world can be. He needs to be rested.”
A third waiter brought their sandwiches.
“I feel bad now that you guys worked a whole day on my fence.”
“No, no, Salt. That’s one of the best days we’ve had in a long time—working together, all of us out—the boys love your place. It’s a huge treat for them, a big deal. What’s not for boys to like—dogs, sheep, trees to climb, running, and then there was Mr. Gooden and his tractor.”
Across the street an old man wearing what looked like a monkey suit began setting up paints and a ladder in front of the sidewall to the tunnel where there was already a plethora of slogans and paintings. A large mandala in purples and greens dominated the wall.
“This place isn’t bad. Actually the food is good once you get it ordered. The neighborhoods are quirky, charming.” Ann was watching the monkey man.
“Actually there was another mill that burned prior to the cotton mill, a mill that refurbished the track rails and for a while also made cannons. We used to get calls where somebody would find old munitions of some sort and we’d have to get the bomb guys to recover them,” Salt told her.
“I read several theories about the name ‘Cabbagetown’: that it was from hillbillies who came down from Appalachia and grew cabbage, the smell of cooking cabbage coming from their kitchens, and there was an overturned cabbage truck story,” Ann added.
“On the other side, Reynoldstown was one of the first communities founded by freed slaves. They rebuilt the rail lines, some hired to do it and some arrested on trumped-up charges and conscripted into forced labor in the mills and on the railroads.”
“We’ve got some history—this city—selling souls for pieces of silver,” Salt said.
“Which brings me back to my husband. I also worry that Pepper’s allegiance could become compromised with the EJs. It seems at times like he feels more loyalty to whoever has the jobs than to the city or the laws he’s sworn to uphold. Maybe that worries me most—it can be a slippery slope, trying to serve two masters.” Ann stared out to the raised tracks.
“You’ve hit the nail on the head as the main reason I don’t work the extra jobs. I don’t like feeling I owe anyone a break when it comes to the law. Everyone should be treated the same, nobody should be able to buy extra consideration from cops.”
“I tell Pepper that. The EJ traffic cops give preferential treatment to drivers leaving or coming to the corporations, drivers who might otherwise vote to fund better public transportation if it was harder to get to and from their jobs. We have some energetic discussions at our house sometimes.” Ann laughed, then sobered and looked out at the intersection again. The monkey man had outlined lettering across the top of the wall just below a notice in blue about an upcoming “Blues and Bluegrass” event. “Bluegrass and blues side by side, beside the railroad,” said Ann.
“Back then I think they just called them both ‘country.’ Black and white both listened to the same radio stations. Big Mama Thornton wrote ‘Hound Dog,’ the Elvis tune. What EJs is Pepper working?”
“One traffic a couple of mornings a week and one after-hours at the Gold String.”
“Does Sandy Madison run that one?”
“Yeah. Why? It’s the one I really hate, and not just because it’s a titty club. I just wonder how much Pepper has to look the other way there.”
“The lines are sometimes fine. I think it can get confusing, especially if people feel they need the money. The jobs begin to stake their claim,” Salt said.
“If the city paid right, cops could afford to live in the city, protect the neighborhoods they live in 24/7. If the citizens insisted that all the schools be excellent, and funded that excellence, cops would stay in town and help improve neighborhoods. Now you’ve got me going.” Ann pushed back from the table and stood up.
“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir,” said Salt.
They went to the register to pay, then walked out to the parking lot. The mill towers loomed over the neighborhood, the red brickwork in strong contrast with the cloudless blue sky.
Salt hugged Ann, finishing their conversation. “You guys could come live at my place.” She grinned at the fantasy.
“On the Plantation?” Ann laughed.
“Yeah, that’d be some karma, right?”
“Bye, Scarlett.” Ann made a mock curtsy.
BACK TO STONE
Salt needed names, the men to whom Tall John pimped Stone, street names, other victims, descriptions, anything. She came prepared, wearing her coat for the chill inside the prison walls. Behind the pockmarked, scratched, and dirty Plexiglas partition of the entrance station, the corrections officers went about answering phones and filling out paperwork with seemingly practiced indifference to the people, including Salt, who appeared on the other side of the barrier. She put her weapon in the retractable receiving tray and pushed it through, then waited for someone to acknowledge her. An officer finally came over, asked for her ID, and tossed the chit for her weapon into the tray. A second officer said something to him, cutting his eyes at her, before coming to the intercom to tell her someone would escort her back. Their uniforms, light gray shirts over dark gray pants, blended with the walls and office furniture. On the other side of the station opposite Salt, inmates stood or sat waiting to be processed.
As always, there was a continuous cacophony of banging steel and iron, clasping, clicking and clanking, hollow hard noises from throughout the jail. Over the metallic din another clank sounded as a female officer with an upswept hairdo that looked glued into place activated the door down the hall, called Salt’s name, and motioned for her. As Salt went through the door, propped open by the officer’s significant hip, the woman offered no response to her greeting, no nod of the head, nothing, maintaining a look of annoyance, eyes narrowed, mouth squeezed to one side. Salt followed in the draft of the guard’s rolling ass cheeks as they made their way through the prison labyrinth.
While they waited for an elevator, Salt tried again—asked if the corrections personnel had been given better working conditions since a federal overseer had been ordered by the court because of a class action suit. “No.” The woman looked up at the ceiling without elaboration. The elevator arrived and they stepped in without further conversation. In the elevator the officer kept her eyes on the floor numbers scrolling above the doors. They got off on the same floor as the last time Salt had been to see Stone, but this time the officer led her to the right instead of the left. Down another long hall they stopped at a door marked “Private.” “Wait here,” said the officer as she went in and closed the door behind her.
The door was marked “OFFICE” but was secured with a high-tech lock and had no window. When it opened, the woman who’d brought her was gone and another officer was there with Stone, having made their entrance from an interior door opposite the one Salt now entered. Stone was again in the red jumpsuit that was issued to inmates with mental illness. The room was bare, no tables or chairs. Before Salt realized what was happening, the officer accompanying Stone had gone back out the entrance he’d come from and closed the door, the locking mechanism making a resounding thunk as it took hold, leaving her alone with Stone. He was without either ankle restraints or handcuffs.
Stone leaned his back against the wall and looked down at his fingernails. He curved his long fingers inward and brought them up to his face. “They screwed up.” He looked up from his nails and seemed to be trying to smile while keeping his ruined mouth shut. “We ain’t supposed to be alone and me with no bracelets.” He held up his arms as if they were bound together, the cuffs of his prison uniform slipping back to reveal his bare wrists. “Are you scared?” he said.
“I don’t think it was a mistake. I think someone hopes the worst for both of us.” She considered her options and drew in a breath. There was something different in him this time. His face seemed flat, his eyes dull, more stoned tha
n Stone.
“You the reason I’m in here to begin with.” He raised himself off the wall, jangling his arms at his sides. “You don’t have good sense.”
“Are the meds working, Stone? You feel any different?” She tested the knob on the door behind her to the outer hall. It was, as she guessed it would be, locked. She moved over to the inner door, finding it to be locked as well. As Stone moved to the center of the room, she knocked, knowing there’d be no response. She faced Stone ten feet away. Of course he could kill her. It was like a cage. “They let you work out here? Lift weights, run?” she asked him.
He moved a few feet toward her, smacking his lips over his broken teeth, then went over to the wall opposite her and leaned against it as his eyes briefly rolled back in his head. “What difference it make to you if they give me drugs or I work out?” He slumped and seemed to lose consciousness still on his feet.
She debated trying to get the attention of some passing guard by banging on one of the doors, but at the risk of rousing Stone. His eyes opened but were hooded, his face remaining dull and expressionless. He blinked and slowly swiveled his head as if trying to stretch out some kink. “What?” His eyes clouded again.
She went to the inner door and kicked it hard. Stone straightened against the wall. She crossed the room quickly to the other door, knocked, and called, “Officer!” She turned and faced Stone, who was now back in the middle of the room. “How are they treating you? Any problems with anyone? The guards? Other inmates?”
He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Man got my back, even in here. You arrest Tall John? Man always got my back.”
“Stone, I need names, more information, anything you can remember.” But she realized that now, under whatever medications they were feeding him here, it was unlikely he’d ever remember much.
“Didn’t nobody tell me no names.” He slid down the wall to a squat, his arms at his sides, head hanging between his bent knees.
Out of the Blues Page 19
