by Mike Sager
10
Metropolitan Police Officer Perdue Hatfield emerged from the alley carrying a brown paper sack. He moved quickly on the balls of his feet, practicing the stealth tactics he’d learned at the academy, keeping to the shadows, taking cover behind a Dumpster. His target was ten meters east, in a puddle of light beneath the streetlamp. He cupped a hand beside his mouth: “Pssssst.”
Spooked, Salem spun around. “What the—”
Realizing his folly, Hatfield stepped out of the darkness. “Easy now,” he said, palm out, a tone he might have used back home, trying to calm a skittish colt in his uncle’s barn. “It’s just me.”
“You! Motherfuck! Don’t you never sneak up on me like that again!”
“I didn’t mean … I mean … shoot. I was just tryin to be friendly is all.”
Shrill: “What I need to be friendly wit you fo?”
“Because we’re linked by our common humanity?”
She let out a little snort. “Some of us is humans and some of us is cops.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
She stretched a pink strand of bubble gum out from her teeth, wrapped it around her index finger. “What you want? Ain’t no law against standin here, is they?”
“Actually, there is. It’s called loitering. And there’s a law against walking up to cars and offering sex. It’s called solicitation.”
“Dude lost!” she said, indignant. She ate the strands of gum off her fingertip. “He axe for directions.”
“I didn’t realize you’d opened a franchise of triple A.”
Hugging herself for warmth, she looked up and then down the street. No sign of the burgundy Lincoln.
“Don’t you have any family?” Hatfield asked. He took a step closer. “There must be someplace else you could go. Maybe I could put you in touch with—”
“Whatta you—Officer Save-a-Ho?”
Caught off guard by her humor—not the usual weapon of choice among the streetwalkers he knew—he stared at her for a few seconds, trying to size her up. When he’d first seen her on the Strip, he could tell right away that there was something different about this one, though not necessarily a bad kind of different—just unexpected, like when you fingertip a few grains of something white from the kitchen table and lick it, expecting salt, and get sugar instead. Back in Capon Springs, his family lived in a large depression on the down side of a mountain slope, known in geologic terms as a hollow, pronounced holler by the locals. A sort of backwoods cul-de-sac, it was home to an eclectic collection of buildings and ruins, all of them occupied by Hatfields—a ramshackle barn; an A-frame house; a log cabin; a tarpaper shack, smoke curling from its crooked chimney; a suburban-grade ranch with whitewashed siding, a green sofa out front beneath an oak tree. Until she turned twelve, Hatfield and his sister, Maybell, had shared a room. At night, by the glow of the hall light—she was afraid of the dark—Perdue could see her collection of dolls, dozens of pairs of eyes staring out dumbly from their shelves. Now, standing in the cold on the northwest corner of Fourteenth Street and Thomas Circle, Hatfield had an overwhelming urge to cradle this tall, pale-as-plastic creature in his arms, to tip her backward, to see if her lids would shut.
“You want some hot chocolate?” He opened the brown paper sack, removed a cup.
Waving him off: “No free pussy tonight, officer. It too cold. You ain’t even have no car.”
“Go on, take it.” He took a step closer, offered the cup. “It has marshmallows. The little ones you like.”
“How you know what I like?”
“I seen you get it that way at 7-Eleven.”
She checked up and down the street again. Like a squirrel taking a nut, she snatched the cup from his hand.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Could we move outta the fuckin light?”
He gestured with mock formality, imitating a maître d’. “May I suggest that shadowy spot over there?”
They moved closer to a brick wall. It was defaced with colorful graffiti, an urban sort of veterans’ memorial, carrying the tags of many from the neighborhood who were no longer living. Hatfield ripped open the drinking tab of his cup lid. He could feel the warm liquid sluicing through his anatomy. “Say what you want about 7-Eleven, they have great hot chocolate.”
Salem ripped the tab off her cup and let it fall; it propellered slowly to the ground like a seedpod from a sycamore. Hatfield almost said something about littering but he caught himself. She took a sip. He took a sip and smiled, looked at her thoughtfully. She studied the skuffed toe of her black leather pump.
“I like your name,” he said at last. “It’s unusual—menthol fresh. Is it your real name or just a street name?”
“My real name is Jennifer,” she recited. “I was molested by my uncle when I was seven … Is that what you want to know?”
“Well, I—”
“When I was ten I was sent to an orphanage. The nun would call me into her office every night before bed. She’d make me kneel between her legs and recite my Hail Marys.”
Horrified: “Is that true?”
She winked at him lasciviously. “It is if you want it to be, baby.”
Hatfield’s face fell. He’d never been very good with women. Or at least he hadn’t had much chance to get good, which pretty much explained the sorry state of his social life. Growing up, he’d attended church with his family three times a week; some of the congregants spoke in tongues. His parents wouldn’t allow him to go to dances or to movies; he’d taken his cousin to the prom. He finally lost his virginity in Singapore, but only after the guys in his squad had shamed him into a whorehouse. He told the girl he’d pay her but she didn’t have to do it. Amused, she insisted. Even as he was being trained by the U.S. government to kill people for a living, Hatfield had a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong—premarital sex was one of the wrongs. He felt like sex should be something special, done with someone you love. As he saw it, in life there is a line in the sand: on one side is Right; on the other side is Wrong. This is the way he tried to live. Sometimes it proved to be difficult.
Salem was a little bit moved by his vulnerability. He reminded her of someone. She couldn’t put her finger on it. She imagined him as a child, a beefy boy with a cowlick, playing cops and robbers. Maybe he isn’t such a dick after all. He was kind of cute in a rube-ish sort of way. But he was obviously after something—what cop wasn’t? She looked up soberly into his large moon face. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. I’ll get in trouble.”
It occurred to Hatfield that Salem had momentarily dropped her ghetto accent—a small bit of peripheral information left unprocessed for now. “You mean get in trouble with Jamal?” he asked. “No way. Me and him go way back.”
“Ain’t you the one locked him up?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I don’t think he likes you very much.”
“I’ve always been fair to him.”
“I don’t think he see it like dat.”
“Say what you want,” Hatfield said, turning cold. “I just happen to believe that a piece of shit like him, if you pardon my French, shouldn’t be exploiting vulnerable young women like yourself.”
Salem’s lazuline baby doll eyes flared with anger. “You ain’t know shit,” she said.
“I know that it’s not safe for you to be out here. And I know that a smart young woman like yourself should be doing something more dignified, if you don’t mind me sayin so.”
“You don’t know nothing about me, bitch.” She walked over to the Dumpster and made a little ceremony of pouring out his hot chocolate.
Then she turned on her four-inch heels and headed off in a northerly direction, hips working overtime.
11
Two cops in plain clothes barged past the steel-reinforced door of the Church of Realized Fantasies, knocking Louie the albino against the wall, oooff, dislodging his rabbit fur hat.
The one with the nose wore a trench coat. His bl
ue-black hair was combed up into a thick, oily pompadour. His partner wore a suede jacket, displayed a gold badge. “Internal Affairs,” he announced.
“Howdy, honey, howdy!” trilled the Pope. He was sitting behind his government surplus desk, wearing his papal miter. He raised his hands to shoulder height and rubbed little circles in the air—the official papal greeting. “We’re so pleased you could come,” he gushed. “Would you like your shoes shined?” He clapped his hands. “Bring the polish at once!”
The cops exchanged glances. The Pope’s reputation had, of course, preceded him.
Waylon stood beside his beloved client and pontiff, coolly adjusting the knot of his silk tie. His résumé listed Exeter, Princeton, Harvard Law, a clerkship with a federal judge, a coveted spot in the DC city attorney’s office—until he’d discovered the horses, his life had been very different. Though gambling is legal, in one form or another, in just about every state of the Union, it is a powerful drug, easily available, hard to kick. In Waylon’s case, the horses were the gateway, discovered innocently enough on an outing with some colleagues to Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course. Within a year Waylon was wagering on anything, just to get that high. Prep school basketball, women’s college field hockey, curling. How many times a judge would call recess on the morning after attending a Mexican-theme charity ball. Whether or not the city attorney’s hot paralegal would be wearing a bra to court. Who could get the most phone numbers on a Friday night at Rumors, the popular Nineteenth Street disco that catered to the legal set.
“What can we do for you, gentlemen?” Waylon asked, motioning to the several stackable plastic chairs that were lined up in front of the Pope’s desk. Like any reformed addict, he still had the urge. He fought it every single day. His higher power was the Pope.
The pompadour sat down first. His name was Massimo Bandini. “As I understand it,” he said, addressing Waylon, “Mr. Rubin here wanted to lodge a complaint.”
“That is correct,” said the Pope. “I wish to report a theft.”
The other cop took a seat by his partner. His name was John O’Rourke, known as Jack. He removed a notepad from the inside pocket of his mustard-colored suede jacket, licked the tip of his pencil. “What was the date of this theft?”
“It was the night the church was raided,” the Pope said. “What date was that, Waylon?”
“Last Wednesday.”
“December ninth?” asked O’Rourke.
“Stipulated,” Waylon said.
Bandini: “What specifically was taken?”
“The sacrament,” said the Pope.
“You mean, like, wafers?” asked O’Rourke.
“The pot. The herb. The weed,” the Pope said. “The merry-gee-wanna.”
O’Rourke: “Can you describe the suspects?”
“They were wearing blue uniforms,” the Pope said.
“What sort of uniforms?”
“Police uniforms, toots. DC police uniforms.”
Bandini leaned forward in his chair. “You’re saying that officers from the Metropolitan Police Department stole marijuana from you?”
“What, specifically, are your allegations?” asked O’Rourke, his pencil poised above his pad.
“Wednesday night, after the church was raided by the police, John J. Hill said that a search of my premises had yielded seven pounds of pot,” the Pope explained. “But I was only charged with possession of four pounds.”
“John Hill?”
“John J. Hill. He’s one of your assistant chiefs.”
“Chief Hill?”
“The very same.”
“And he said there were seven pounds? When did he say this? In a conversation you had with him?”
Exasperated: “He said it at the news conference. The one they held in front of the church. After the bust. Where all those members of the press just happened to be assembled—at 5:30 P.M. on a weekday evening, just in time to go live on the local TV newscasts. The Lord works in mysterious ways, detective. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord helps those who help themselves. I believe we have Chief Hill’s statement on video. Beta Max, bring us the tape.”
Beta Max crossed the room toward a shelf full of books, videotapes, and sale items—marijuana-leaf lapel pins, roach-clip key chains, poker chips with the Pope’s likeness embossed in gold on one side.
“So you’re admitting at this time that you were in possession of seven pounds of marijuana,” Bandini reiterated.
“We’re admitting nothing,” Waylon said. “What we’re doing is lodging a formal complaint.”
“It was seven pounds,” the Pope said, sick to death of all the bullshit mumbo jumbo—why do you think he’d founded his own church? He accepted the videotape from Beta Max and placed it on his desktop, within reach of the two detectives. “I have a pretty good idea of our supply. It’s my sacrament, after all. I’m a member of the clergy. I have tax exempt status. I have souls in my charge, troubled people, people who depend upon myself and my minions to keep this town running, to keep this nation running—if you must know the truth. I could give you names. We’re talking international figures. I could tell you things, believe you me. I’m the Pope, you see. I am on a mission to divert the world onto a more sane path.”
O’Rourke drummed on his pad with the eraser of his pencil. “Was anything else taken?”
“I wasn’t going to mention it, but since you’ve asked, there was a watch taken,” the Pope said. “A gold Hamilton watch given to me by my sister. She teaches third grade. She throws beautiful clay pots. I don’t know what relevance that watch has to the case or why the police would need to take it. And also there was a kitchen knife, a brand-new kitchen knife that I bought recently at the restaurant supply store down the street.”
“Was the knife for cooking or was the knife for chopping marijuana?”
The Pope removed his Coke-bottle glasses, proceeded to clean the lenses with his shirttail. The whites of his eyes were an unhealthy shade of yellow. “You don’t chop pot, detective. You take it and you crumble it. You do it with your fingers, or sometimes you use scissors. Or you can use a strainer if it’s real seedy, but we don’t like seeds, that’s the headache weed, we use only the finest seedless strains of scientifically engineered sacrament in our ceremonies, green and sparkling with resin, buds as fat as your thumb. Only the best, detective. Producing a high high: clear and happy, penetrating and original. As opposed to the sleepy, lethargic head of the—”
“Anything else?” interrupted Bandini.
The Pope of Pot returned his glasses to the bridge of his nose. He struck a conciliatory tone. “You know, detective, I don’t have any problem with cops smoking pot. The good Lord gave us the sacrament to use as we see fit. When I lived in Amsterdam, some of my best customers were police—and, I must add, they received a generous professional discount, which I am prepared to offer you as well. But what I do have a problem with is cops stealing pot. The knife, the watch, the sacrament … I see a disturbing trend here. This drug war of yours: it’s Frankenstein’s monster. A police officer cannot go around picking up things that are nice and putting them in his pockets just because he likes them. This is not Nazi Germany. This is not Soviet Russia. A warrant to search is not a warrant to steal.”
As the Pope was speaking, Bandini rose from his seat, made a show of stretching his back, rotating his neck, de-kinking himself. He began to wander about the room in a casual manner, idly picking up a pamphlet here, a coffee cup there, peering into the trash can …
“Don’t get me wrong,” the Pope continued, “I’m not antipolice. I just want to see justice done.” He placed his elbows upon the desk, leaned his face across the expanse of gunmetal gray toward O’Rourke. “The police stole my sacrament, detective. If you’re not going to charge me with those other three pounds, I want them back.” He issued a beatific smile. “If the cops want pot, they can darn well pay for it like everyone else.”
By now, Detective Bandini’s casual stroll aroun
d the room had taken him to the bookshelf on the back wall, near the refrigerator, behind which was concealed the trap door and the ladder. Bandini idled there for a moment before the shiny industrial shelving, which stretched from floor to high tin ceiling, inspecting the Pope’s collection of videocassettes. He picked up Bikini Houseboys, studied the cover, replaced it. He picked up Reefer Madness and did the same.
And then, suddenly, his florid face twisted itself into an antic expression of surprise and amazement. “What have we here?” he asked rhetorically. “Right in plain sight?”
Bandini reached into the shelf and appeared to retrieve a small, clear plastic bag. Turning around to face the assembled—his partner, O’Rourke; the Pope and Waylon; Beta Max, Louie the albino, and the rest of the messengers seated in the plastic chairs—Bandini held the bag up in the air before him and let it unfurl, revealing a substantial quantity of white crystalline powder. He opened the ziplock seal, dipped a finger, took a little taste.
Now O’Rourke issued a beatific smile of his own. “Everyone down on the floor,” he ordered.
12
Jonathan Seede and Jim Freeman marched eastward on Corcoran Street, hoping to link up with the main element of the whore patrol. Side by side on the narrow cobblestone path, they shared an easy closeness, Freeman slew-footing in his calf-high, lace-up construction boots and fluorescent orange vest, Seede wearing his navy surplus peacoat, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head for warmth and anonymity.
“I can’t wait till you see the bumper stickers,” Freeman enthused.
“Bumper stickers?”
“We’re putting them on the back of every car that makes the turn onto Thirteenth Street. They’re faaaaaabulous. Black and white, high contrast—a silhouette of a hooker leaning against a lamppost. It says: THIS CAR HAS BEEN PROWLING THE STRIP.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in that garage,” Seede said. The thought brought a smile to his face, his first of the evening.
