Kind of weird he's drinking chardonfucking-nay.
West was so angry she wanted to flip over the table, cowboy style. She wanted to jump on top of Raines, flex-cuff his ankles and feet and just leave his sorry ass in the middle of Jack Straw's on a hot Thursday night. She halfway believed the only person Mungo was undercover for was Goode. Maybe Goode had gotten to him, and promised him favors if he would set up West, and destroy her credibility, her good relationship with Hammer. Oh God. When they had been sitting at that polished table and the video had flickered on, at first West was certain some mistake had been made. Brazil, big as life, was walking along to the sound of traffic, making notes, for Chrissake! How many serial killers or drug kingpins walk around in the middle of the day making notes?
As for Brazil's physical description, Mungothe-Woolly- Mammoth had missed that by about forty pounds and six inches, although West had to admit she'd never seen Brazil in clothes that tight. She didn't know what to make of it. Those black jeans were so tight she could see the muscles in the back of his thighs flex as he walked, the red polo shirt fitting like paint, muscles lean and well-defined, and he' had veins. Maybe he was trying to blend out there. That would make sense.
"Tell me what she did," Raines choked, wiping his eyes.
West motioned to the waitress for another round.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Oh come on, Virginia. Tell me, tell me. You got to." He straightened up a bit.
"Tell me what Hammer did when she saw the tape."
"No," West said.
Hammer hadn't done much, in truth. She'd sat in her usual spot at the head of the table, staring without comment at the twenty-four-inch Mitsubishi. She'd watched the entire tape, all forty-two minutes of it, every bit of Brazil's long promenade and indistinct conversations with the city's unsavory downtown folks. West and Hammer had watched Brazil point, shrug, jot, scan, and squat to tie shoelaces twice, before finally returning to the All Right to retrieve his BMW. After a pregnant silence, Chief Hammer had taken off her glasses and voiced her opinion.
"What was this?" she had said to her deputy chief in charge of investigations.
"I don't know what to tell you," West had said, feeling dark hate for Mungo.
"And this all began the day we had lunch at the Presto and you saw a man with a banana in his pocket." Hammer had wanted to make sure she was clear on the facts of the case.
"I really don't think it's fair to link the two."
Hammer had gotten up, but West knew not to move.
"Of course it's fair," Hammer had said, hands in her pockets again.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming you, Virginia." She'd begun pacing.
"How could Mungo not recognize Andy Brazil? He's out there morning, noon and night, either for the Observer or us."
"Mungo is deep cover," West had explained.
"He generally avoids any place police or the press might be. I don't think he reads much, either."
Hammer had nodded. She could understand this, actually, and she was raw. Hammer was not ready or willing to react violently to the embarrassments and honest mis takes of others, whether it was Horgess, Mungo, or even West, who really had made no error, except perhaps in her choice of Mungo to do anything in life.
"Do you want me to destroy it?" West had asked as Hammer popped the tape out of the VCR.
"I mean, I'd prefer not to. Some of that footage includes known prostitutes. Sugar, Double Fries, Butterfinger, Shooter, Lickety Split, Lemon Drop, Poison."
"All of them were in there?" Hammer was perplexed as she had opened the conference room door.
"They blend in. You have to know where to look."
"We'll hang on to it," Hammer had decided. Raines was laughing so hard. West was furious with herself for telling him the rest of the story. He had his head on the table, hands covering his face. She wiped her forehead with a napkin, perspiring and flushed, as if she were in the tropics. The band would be cranking up soon, and Jack Straw's was getting crowded.
She noticed Tommy Axel walk in, recognizing him from his picture in the paper. He had another guy with him, both dressed a lot like Raines, showing off. Why was it most of the gay guys were so good-looking? West didn't think it was fair. Not only were they guys in a guy's world, with all the benefits, but their DNA had somehow managed to appropriate the good stuff women had, too, like gracefulness and beauty.
Of course, gay guys got some of the bad stuff, too. Sneakiness, game playing, compulsive grooming, vanity, and shopping. Maybe it had nothing to do with gender, after all. West considered. Maybe there was no such thing as gender. Maybe biologically people were just vehicles, like cars. She'd heard that overseas the steering wheels were on one side, while here they were on the other. Different genders? Maybe not. Maybe just different cars, the behavior of all determined by the spirit in the driver's seat.
"I've had enough," West hissed at Raines.
She drained her Sierra Nevada and started on another one. She might just tie one on tonight. Raines was driving.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He took another deep breath and was spent.
"You look like you don't feel too good," he said with one of his concerned expressions.
"It is a little hot in here."
West mopped her face again, her clothes getting damp, but not in the way Raines might have hoped. She was feeling the heaviness in her lower nature, the goddess of fertility reminding West with more volatility every month that time was running out. West's gynecologist had warned her gravely and repeatedly that troubles would begin about her age. She, Dr. Alice Bourgeois, spoke of punishment when there were no children and none on the way. Never underestimate biology, Dr. Bourgeois always said.
West and Raines placed an order for cheeseburgers, fries, and another round of drinks. She wiped her face again and was getting cold. She wasn't sure she could eat anything else, not another fried pickle. She watched the band setting up, her attention wandering to people at other tables. She was quiet for a long time, overhearing a couple not so far away speaking a foreign language, maybe German. West was getting maudlin.
"You seem preoccupied," said Raines the intuitive.
"Remember when those German tourists got whacked in Miami? What it did to the tourist industry?" she said.
Raines, as a man, took this personally. He had seen the bodies in the Black Widow slayings, or at least several of them. It was unthinkable to have a gun shoved against your head, your brains blown out. There was no telling what indignities those guys had been subjected to before the fact, and how did anyone really know that their pants hadn't been pulled down first, that maybe they hadn't been raped and then spray-painted? If the killer had been wearing a condom, who was going to know? West had said just the right thing to put Raines in a mood. Now he was totally pissed, too.
"So this is about the tourist industry," he said, leaning across the table and gesturing.
"Forget guys being jerked out of their cars, brains blown all over, balls spray-painted with graffiti!"
West wiped her face again and dug Advil out of her butt pack.
"It's not graffiti. It's a symbol."
Raines crossed his legs, feeling endangered. The waitress set down their dinner. He grabbed the ketchup bottle as he folded a french fry between his lips.
"It makes me sick," he said.
"It should make everybody sick." West could not look at food.
"Who do you think's doing it?" He dipped a bouquet of french fries into a red puddle.
"Maybe a shim." She was soaked in cold sweat. Her hair was wet around her face and neck, as if she'd just been in a foot pursuit.
"Huh?" Raines glanced up at her, biting into his dripping burger.
"She-him. Woman one night, man the next, depending on the mood," she said.
"Oh. Like you." He reached for the dish of mayonnaise.
"Goddamn it." West shoved her plate away.
"I must be about to start."
Raines stopped chewing, rolling his eyes. He knew what that meant. The first twangs on electric guitars shattered the din, and sticks beat-beat and beat-beat-beat. Cymbals crashed and crashed as Axel snaked his foot around Jon's ankle and thought about Brazil for the millionth time this day.
W Packer was thinking about Brazil, too, as the editor earned Dufus out the back door, like a small, squirming football, headed for the same Japanese maple. Dufus had to go in the same place, get used to it, and be able to find his smells. It didn't matter that the tree was in the hinterlands and that it had started to rain. Packer dropped his wife's wall-eyed dog in the same bald spot next to the same gnarled root. Packer was out of breath, watching Dufus curtsey to the Queen.