"I can't believe it!" Brazil exclaimed.
"Look! The damn headline makes it sound like it was the cop's fault when we don't even know who caused the wreck!"
His mother wasn't interested. She got up, moving slowly toward the screen door that led out to the side porch. Her son watched with dread as she swayed, and snatched keys from a hook on the wall.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"The store." She dug inside her big, old pocketbook.
"I just went yesterday," he said.
"I need cigarettes." She opened her billfold and scowled.
"I bought you a carton. Mom." Brazil stared at her.
He knew where his mother was really going and felt the same old defeat. He sighed angrily as his mother clutched her pocketbook and counted dollar bills.
"You got a ten-spot?" she asked him.
"I'm not buying your booze," he stated.
She paused at the door, regarding an only child she had never known how to love.
"Where are you going?" she said with a cruel expression that made her face ugly and unfamiliar.
"A costume party?"
"A parade," Brazil answered.
"I'm directing traffic."
"Parade charade." She sneered.
"You're not police, never will be. Why do you want to be going out there to get killed?" She got sad just as quickly as she had turned mean.
"So I can end up all alone?" She yanked the door open.
The morning got no better. Brazil drove fifteen minutes through the police department deck, and finally left his BMW in a press space, even though he really wasn't on official press business. The day was lovely, but he took the tunnel from the deck to the first level of police headquarters because he was feeling especially antisocial.
Whenever he had encounters with his mother, he got very quiet inside.
He wanted to be alone. He did not want to talk to anyone.
At the Property Control window, he checked out a radio and was handed keys for the unmarked vehicle he would be driving in the Charlie Two response area between Tryon and Independence Boulevard for the annual Freedom Parade. It was a modest celebration sponsored by local Shriners in their tasseled hats and on their scooters, and Brazil could not have been assigned a worse car. The Ford Crown Victoria was dull, scratched black, and had been driven hard for a hundred and sixteen thousand miles. The transmission was going to drop out any moment, providing the damn thing started, which it didn't seem inclined to do.
Brazil flipped the key in the ignition again, pumping the accelerator as the old engine tried to turn over. The battery supplied enough juice to wake up the scanner and radio, but forget about going anywhere, as the car whined, and Brazil's frustration soared.
"Shit!" He pounded the steering wheel, accidentally blaring the horn.
Cops in the distance turned around, staring.
tw Chief Hammer was causing her own commotion not too far away inside the Carpe Diem restaurant on South Tryon, across the street from the Knight-Ridder building. Two of her deputy chiefs. West and Jeannie Goode, sat at a quiet corner table, eating lunch and discussing problems. Goode was West's age and jealous of any female who did anything in life, especially if she looked good.
"This is the craziest thing I've ever heard," Goode was saying as she poked at tarragon chicken salad.
"He shouldn't be out with us to begin with. Did you get a load of the headline this morning? Implying we caused the accident, that Johnson was pursuing the Mercedes?
Unbelievable. Not to mention, skid marks indicate it wasn't us who ran the red light. "
"Andy Brazil didn't write the headline," West said, turning to Hammer, her boss, who was working on cottage cheese and fresh fruit.
"All I'm asking is to ride routine patrol with him for maybe a week."
"You want to respond to calls?" Hammer reached for her iced tea.
"Absolutely," West said as Goode looked on with judgment.
Hammer put down her fork and studied West.
"Why can't he ride with regular patrol? Or for that matter, we've got fifty other volunteers.
He can't ride with them? "
West hesitated, motioning to a waiter for more coffee. She asked for extra mayonnaise and ketchup for her club sandwich and fries, and returned her attention to Hammer as if Goode was not at the table.
"No one wants to ride with him," West said.
"Because he's a reporter.
You know how the cops feel about the Observer. That won't go away overnight. And there's a lot of jealousy. " She looked pointedly at Goode.
"Not to mention, he's an arrogant smartass with an entitlement attitude," Goode chimed in.
"Entitlement?" West let the word linger like a vapor trail in the rarified air of Carpe Diem, where high feminine powers met regularly.
"So tell me, Jeannie, when was the last time you directed traffic?"
W It was an odious job. Citizens did not take traffic cops seriously.
Carbon monoxide levels got dangerously high, and the cardinal rule that one must never turn his back to traffic was irrelevant in four-way intersections. How could anyone face four directions simultaneously? Brazil had questioned this since the academy. Of course, it made no sense, and added to the mix was a basic disrespect problem. Already, he'd had half a dozen teenagers, women, and businessmen make fun or him or offer gestures that he was not allowed to reciprocate. What was it about America? Citizens were all too aware of law enforcement officers, such as himself, who wore no gun and seemed new at the job. They noticed. They commented.
"Hey Star Trek," a middle-aged woman yelled out her window.
"Get a phaser," she said as she gunned onto Enfield Road.
"Shooting blanks, are we, fairy queen?" screamed a dude in an Army-green Jeep with a basher bumper, sports rack, and safari doors.
Brazil directed the Jeep through with a hard stare and set jaw, halfway wishing the shithead would stop and demand a fight. Brazil was getting an itch. He wanted to deck someone, and sensed it was only a matter of time before he busted another nose.
Sometimes, Hammer got so sick of her diet. But she remembered turning thirty-nine and getting a partial hysterectomy because her uterus had pretty much quit doing anything useful. She had gained fifteen pounds in three months, moving up from a size four to an eight, and doctors told her this was because she ate too much.
Well, bullshit. Hormones were always to blame, and for good reason.
They were the weather of female life. Hormones moved over the face of the female planet and decided whether it was balmy or frigid or time for the storm cellar. Hormones made things wet or dried them. They made one want to walk hand-in-hand in balmy moonlight, or be alone.
"What does directing traffic have to do with anything?" Goode wanted to know.
"Point is, this guy works harder than most of your cops," West replied to Goode.
"And he's just a volunteer. Doesn't have to. Could have a real attitude problem, but doesn't."
Hammer wondered if salt would hurt her much. Lord, how nice it would be to taste something and not end up looking like her husband.
"I'm in charge of patrol. That's where he is right now," Goode said, turning over lettuce leaves with her fork to see if anything good was left. Maybe a crouton or a walnut.
W Brazil was sweating in his uniform and bright orange traffic vest.
His feet were on fire as he blocked off a side street. He was turning cars around left and right, routing them the other way, blowing his whistle, and making crisp traffic motions. Horns were honking, and another driver began yelling rudely out the window for directions.