“You're still taking classes?”
“I'm finishing up with my last evening course. The one I kept putting off.”
“Which is?”
“Street Courtesy, or as the cadets call it, Bull on the Boulevard. Most of it amounts to filling in garbage in a little workbook that has absolutely no bearing on the real world.”
“Hey, you do what you have to do.”
He slapped the dashboard with both hands, creating a rifle shot of noise, making her start. At the same time, he nearly shouted, “I hate the classroom nonsense. Pretending to believe the crap the instructors hand out, pretending to like and respect both instructor and subject, when in fact I know they're generally full of it.”
“So, you think you know more than they do?” She managed a laugh.
“Fortunately, I do.”
She stared across the gulf between them.
“I tell you, it's true. Most of 'em have had no more than a year on the street, but because they couldn't cut it there, they teach. Those who can't do, teach.”
'That's a nasty bit of bumper-sticker logic. God, Lucas, I can just see you seething in the classroom like some overheated radiator about to explode. I hate those types in my class sessions.”
“But lives depend on what these teachers feed these rookies, so… so somebody's got to set them straight.”
“Set who straight? The rookies or the teachers?”
“Both, if the situation warrants.”
“Then maybe you should put in to teach rookies yourself, if you believe you can do a better job of it. You've got a hell of a chip on your shoulder.
Not sure I'd want to see you in a class of mine.”
He thought about this even as he countered, saying, “I just bet you're holy hell to please as a teacher.” He saw an image of himself before his instructors, and he didn't like what he saw.
He must project to his instructors the image of a wiseass, did-it-yesterday, know-it-all hard case. But he went on defending himself to her for some unaccountable reason. “Occasionally, I have lost it while sitting straight-backed in one of those damnably uncomfortable desks.”
“It must be hard for you,” she patronized as the cityscape passed by their windows on either side.
“And I've often taken exception to something either written on the board, in the book, or spoken by an instructor.”
“Oh, Lord,” she muttered.
They were entering the zoo grounds, and this time she was too fast for him, paying the parking fee.
“For instance, there's no such thing as a polite shake down,” he continued lecturing as the car pulled through the gates.
“But there is such a thing as proper protocol.”
He ignored her, continuing on. “Nor can there be a friendly rapport with street lowlife at three in the morning when your mind's got to be focused every second on the possibility of some truly evil thing exploding in your face-maybe the kid you're making jokes with turns out to be on PCP. He might turn out to have an IQ of eleven and a half.”
“Yeah, I've heard all the jokes,” she replied sarcastically. “Luis has an AK-47 with a thirty-round clip.”
“If Luis misses four of every ten shots and fires sixteen times at each drive-by shooting-”
“How many drive-bys can be attempted before he has to reload,” she finished the tasteless but sadly poignant, all-too-familiar urban tale.
After they laughed together and turned off the ignition, she asked, “Is that what happened with Wallace Jackson?”
“Killer's street name was Red-X. Time we got near him, he'd colored his hair something approximating green.” Lucas painfully flashed anew on what had happened in Dallas when his partner, Jackson, had been interrogating a punk one second and suddenly hitting the pavement the next when the kid pulled a gun to open fire. The cretin had realized his own stupid ploy to step in as an eyewitness to the very crime he'd committed was going haywire under Jackson's scorching interrogation of him at the scene. Jackson was so good at what he did that even though the kid had worn a mask during the holdup, Wallace had actually gotten a voice identification on the creep even as he spoke.
Lucas found himself telling her every detail as he had never told the story before.
“The kid who pulled the job returned to mingle in the crowd and then stepped forward claiming to be a witness.
Jackson was immediately, instinctively suspicious.
He told the kid to hold still and that he'd get back to him, asked me to keep the kid company, to ask him a few questions. Which I did. Then Jackson goes to the store owner, his wife and son, and asks them to listen in when he returns to ask the punk more questions.”
“So, the kid's voice was recognized by the shop owner?” she asked, pulling the car into a vacant spot.
“Rule number one in crime: Crime makes you stupid,” Stonecoat summarized for her now as he had for all the rookies in his class the night before. The others had politely listened to his story before he realized his classroom etiquette error. He had then turned the floor back over to the instructor, Officer Pete Jenkins, who obviously lived by the book and was likely going to get some of these rookies killed by the book.
“So, the kid realizes it at the last minute and opens fire?”
“Fires warning shots over the heads of everyone.
We all hit the ground and he disappears down the street, brandishing his weapon.
Jackson and I hopped in our car and gave pursuit. The rest is history, or bad karma, as they say…”
During their stroll through the zoo and as they fed the animals, he confided in her that he still liked to think of himself as Detective First Class Lucas Stonecoat, even though he no longer enjoyed that rank. He'd held on to his shield, however-a keepsake from the old days with his buddy Wallace Layfette Jackson. “One crazy nigger teamed with a war-whooping Indian,” he said, and then burst into laughter over pleasant memories that rose up from deep within his soul.
She strolled alongside him in a leisurely manner, allowing him to continue. “Sometimes I'll flash my old shield-you know, like in a bar-when I think it'd do me or the situation some good… Criminy, I sound like one of those old men who've turned into living Buddhas who squat around and tell stories to people who aren't listening.”
“Oh, I'm listening to every word. I suppose you really flash that gold shield to impress the ladies, right?” This made him laugh again, and he had a wonderful, warm laugh. “Sometimes, sometimes maybe I do. You're pretty smart, Doctor… ahh, Meredyth.”
“For a white woman, you mean?”
He laughed again and tossed a handful of food pellets to monkeys roaming the other side of the fence. They didn't react, bored with their onlookers and their diet. The animals felt the heat, too. The mercury was already climbing through the nineties at eleven A.M., and Lucas felt the perspiration trickling even as he wondered how she managed to appear so cool.
“I bet you're the type that takes risks with that Dallas badge,” she said, having pegged him as a risk-taker.
“Risks?” he asked sheepishly. “Me?”
“Like most cops.”
He nodded. “Yeah, my own people… they say I'm more cop than I am Cherokee.”
“Do you like to take risks with other cops?”
He stopped to stare at her, finding her eyes inviting. “Whataya talking about?”
“Other cops… from other precincts, of course, where they don't know your face. Do you like to pretend around them that you're still a detective?”
“Of course.”
“Just to let them know that there're Dallas cops on the prowl here, too.”
He nodded appreciatively, adding, “Or simply to get past a door as a detective, just to look in on a crime scene, to get the adrenaline rush going again.”
“So, you've done that? Just for the rush?”
He only smiled.
“Here? As a civilian? Now, I'd say that's taking a big risk.”
The smile only widened.
“You are a bit…” She searched for the word. “Loco?”
“No! I wasn't going to say that!”