Kiwasee was silent. He watched the trees of Clamden sail past the window.
"They call you Skids, right? That's your street name, Skids. What's that mean?"
"Means I run so fast, when I turn a corner I skids."
McNeil studied his prisoner in the mirror to see if he was being mocked.
"I know your street name," Kiwasee said. "I heard about you. "
"I don't have a street name."
"Sure you do, everybody do."
"My name's McNeil."
"That ain't what the bros calls you."
"What do they call me?"
Kiwasee allowed a slow grin to steal over his face. "They call you the fat-ass jack-jawin' motherfuckin' cop from Clamden."
"Oooh, dat what dey call me, Tyrone?"
"No, that's too long. They just call you Pussy, 'cause you loves pussy."
McNeil laughed. "You're funny, Skids. I like that in a felon. What else they say about me?"
"We don' talk about you a whole lot, you unnerstan'. Ain't nobody studying on you 'cause you ain't that important. Jus' once in a while when your white-ass preppies come to the Port to buy a ho or some snort.
They tell us about you."
"What they say?"
"They say you go to Clamden, don' get caught by ol' Pussy McNeil 'cause he one mean-ass racist sonofabitchunless you a ho. Now if you a ho and McNeil catch you, then he really going' to fuck you. You be better off if he just beat you with his nightstick. If you an underage ho, that the worst of all. Then ol' Pussy McNeil gon' make you suck on his little dick for years."
McNeil pulled the car to the side of the road and turned to face Kiwasee through the mesh.
"You're real talkative all of a sudden, Skids. And here I thought I was going to have to kick shit out of you to make you talk, but I guess I was wrong, wasn't I?"
"You wrong about me in a lot of ways," said Kiwasee. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"That- mean don' try your nightstick shit with me, Pussy. I know about you and I ain't afraid to tell."
"Tell what? What are you going to tell?"
"I ain't going' tell nothing you treat me right. You mess with me, I'll tell the world."
"Tell what, Tyrone? What you got to tell?"
"I seen you."
"Seen me what?"
"Seen you come out of a window, pulling your pants on. "
"Bullshit."
"I was there. Three, four in the morning? A week ago? You 'remember that. I was doing a job, I hear a noise, look out the window, who do I see coming out the window with his dick in his hand? 01' Pussy, looking guilty. Well, no, you wasn't looking guilty, neither. You was looking happy, grinning and all."
"You saw me grinning at three in the morning, Tyrone? You got real good eyes."
"There was light coming out the girl's window. Guess her old man was coming to see who was making the noise. Must have been you making the noise, Pussy. You couldn't work no ho up to that."
"You're bullshitting me, Tyrone."
"We done pass the house not two minutes ago."
McNeil wheeled the cruiser into a U-turn. "You show me where, you hear?"
"You know where," said Tyrone. "Or you been jumping out of windows all over town?"
"Must have been my brother."
"Your brother drive off in a police car too?"
"That's right, Skids. I got an evil twin."
"See, that's what's wrong with you people right there. You think getting a little pussy he's evil. I ain't saying there's nothing wrong with what you up to, McNeil. You be saying that."
"Show me the house, Tyrone, or I'm going to beat you for giving false information to a police officer."
"You ain't gon' touch me, Pussy. This ain't L.A… There the house, right there."
McNeil slowed the car and they crept past a large, white Cape Cod with green shutters and trim.
"You know they been robbed a week ago, I know you got a report on that."
"That was you, was it?"
"And there's where I seen you, coming out the window right there. "
"You didn't see me, Tyrone. First of all, I wasn't there, second, you can't even see this house from the other one."
"You can from the second floor, you look right down there and here come of' Pussy, tugging on his pants and laughing. I figure, shit, I don' have to worry about the police tonight. They ain't coming back here."
McNeil made another three-point turn and headed away from the site of Tyrone's story.
"You made out a living will, Tyrone?"
"Say what?"
"A living will. It's the latest thing. It's in case somebody shoots you in the spine and you can't walk, you can't move, you can't feed yourself, you're paralyzed, live your life in a chair. You can't jerk off because your dick don't get hard anymore. Well, actually, you can jerk off with a soft dick, you know that, Tyrone? So, maybe you can sit there and jerk off the rest of your life, but you'll never have another woman because it just won't get hard. You can't even control your bladder or your bowels, spend your life shitting yourself, Tyrone. A living will allows you to say, I don't want any more of this, let me die … You got one of those, Tyrone? In case somebody shoots you in the spine? That last house you burgled? Man there's got a gun, got it just cause of you, now he's waiting there for you to come back. Think I should take you to see him? Want to make a visit?"
"Just jackin' your jaw, ain't you, Pussy. Must be hard, driving around all day, nothing to do but look at trees, guess you got to talk to yourself." McNeil drove past the town dump and recycling station, heading for a section where the houses were smaller, older. In a small enclave off a private road that turned from asphalt to rutted gravel and finally to hard-packed dirt, sheltered from the eyes of the more affluent residents of Clamden, sat a series of houses that looked as if they belonged in another place, another era. Five cars, three of them on blocks, occupied the yard of one of them. Another sported a small boat that had not been seaworthy in years. McNeil drove to the end of the hard-packed road and into a dirt driveway that rose and twisted itself up the hill and away from the other houses. Sheltered among the trees, invisible even from the beginning of the driveway, sat McNeil's house, a squat one-story building, one side of which was covered in a huge blue plastic tarpaulin, evidence of a renovation effort that seemed never to finish. A sawhorse sat in the yard surrounded by bits of scrap lumber and a bucket of rusting nails.
"It's not what you're used to, Tyrone. I know you like to burgle the bigger houses, I know you like to sneak along those terra-cotta hallways and leave your muddy footprints on shiny oak floors, but they, it's all I can afford, and a man's home is his castle, you know?"
McNeil drove the police car into the garage and stepped out, leaving the engine running.
"Besides, I got such an awful lot of privacy here. Nobody ever comes around here except some deer. You like deer, Tyrone? You ever even seen a deer?"
"What we doing here?"
McNeil closed the garage door, plunging them into sudden darkness.
"What you playing at?" Tyrone tried the doors of the car without success.
"You afraid of the dark? Don't worry, your eyes will get used to it."
"Let me out of this car, man."
"You a prisoner, Tyrone Abdul Skids Kiwasee. You ain't getting out until I let you out. Go ahead and kick that mesh, beat on the windows.
What do you think this car is designed for? You couldn't break those windows with a sledgehammer. There's no way out."
McNeil reached into the front seat, tapped a button, and one of the rear windows moved down an inch.
"There you go, a little ventilation."
"What you playing at, McNeil?"
"See, that's the first thing you have to learn, Tyrone." McNeil thrust his face close to the window. "I ain't playing! "
Stepping away from the car, McNeil pulled a roll of aged carpeting away from a wall of the garage and kicked it out against the door, pressing it against the crack where the door met the concrete slab.