"You got your cigarettes?" Brazil asked West. She looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
"Forget it.
"I want one."
"Yeah, right. You've never smoked in your life, and I'm not going to be the reason you start," she said, and she wanted one, too.
"You couldn't possibly know whether I've ever smoked a cigarette or pot or anything else," he said in the strange tone of intoxication.
"Ha! You think you know so much. You don't know shit. Cops. And their dark, narrow alleyways for minds."
"Really? I thought you were a cop. Or have you quit that, too?"
He stared miserably out his side window.
West felt sorry for him, mad as she was. She wished she knew what was wrong, exactly.
"What the hell's gotten into you?" She tried another tactic, poking Brazil, this time not playfully.
He did not respond.
"Trying to ruin your life? What if some other cop spotted you first?"
She was no-nonsense.
"Got any idea how much trouble you'd be in?"
"I don't care," he said, and his voice caught.
"Yes, you do, goddamn it! Look at me!"
Brazil stared out, his eyes swimming as he dully watched bleary images of people in and out of the truck stop, men and women whose lives were different from his, and who would not understand what it was like to be him. They would look at all that he was and despise him for being privileged and spoiled, because they could not comprehend his reality.
Bubba felt precisely this, and just so happened to be parking his King Cab at the pumps. He spotted the BMW first, then the cop car with the enemy in it. Bubba could not believe his good fortune. He went in for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Red Man, and picked up the latest Playboy.
Brazil was struggling to control himself, and West could be hard but so long. She cared about him in a way that fit no easy definition, and this was partly why he unsettled and confused her so much. She enjoyed him as a talented, precocious recruit, someone she could mentor and get a kick out of watching as he learned. She did not have a brother and would have liked one exactly like him, someone young, smart, sensitive and kind. He was a friend, although she did not give him much of a chance. He was a pretty incredible-looking guy and didn't seem to notice.
"Andy," she quietly said, 'please tell me what happened. "
"Somehow he got in my computer basket, my files. Everything over the news channels before the paper came out. Scooped." His voice trembled, and he did not want West to see him like this.
West was stunned.
"He?" she asked.
"Who's he?"
"Webb." He could barely bring himself to say that name.
"Same piece of shit screwing your deputy chief!"
"What?" Now West was truly lost.
"Goode," he said.
"Everybody knows."
"I didn't." West wondered how she could have missed intelligence like that.
Brazil's heart was broken forever. West wasn't quite sure what to do as she mopped her face again.
Bubba stealthily made his way back to his truck, his thick face with its misshapen nose averted and shadowed by an Exxon baseball cap.
Climbing up into his cab with his purchases, he sat watching the cop car out his windshield. For a while, he nipped through his magazine, pausing at the really big stories. There were many of them, and he tried not to think about his wife or make comparisons as he calculated the best method of attack.
He had packed light tonight, just a Colt. 380 caliber seven-shot pistol in an ankle holster, which would not have been his first choice had he known he might have a standoff with the cops. It was a good thing he had aback up between the seats, a Quality Parts Shorty E-2 Carbine,223 caliber, with thirty-shot magazine, adjustable sights, chrome-lined barrel finished in manganese phosphate that didn't shine at night. For all practical purposes, this was an M-16, and with it, Bubba could riddle West's car Bonnie and Clyde style. He turned a page, and massaged more big ideas as he enjoyed the dark.
Vy West had never really been called upon to comfort a member of the male gender. Rarely was such a thing needed or requested, and having no precedent to follow, she used common sense. Brazil was hiding his face in his hands. She felt terribly sorry for him. What an unfortunate state of affairs.
"It's not that bad, really," she kept saying.
"Okay?" She patted his shoulder.
"We'll find a way out of this. Okay?"
She patted him again, and when this did not make a dent, she finally broke down.
"Come here," she said.
West put an arm around him, and pulled him close. Suddenly, he was in her lap, his arms clamped around her, as he held her like a child, which he was not. West's hot flashes seemed worse as she thought fast and hormones spiked. He nuzzled her, holding tight, and her insides woke up, startling her. Brazil was suffering from a similar response, and moved up her body, to her neck, until he found her mouth. For moments, at least, they were completely out of control and out of orbit. Their traumatized brains went into shock, allowing other instincts to have their way, for Mother Nature worked in this fashion to trick couples into procreating.
West and Brazil had not gotten to the point of worrying about what sort of birth control was best suited to their anatomies, needs, tastes, belief systems, personal choices, fantasies, secret pleasures, or faith in consumer reports. This way of communicating with each other was new, so they took the time to linger in places they had always wondered about. Then reality asserted itself with alacrity, and West suddenly sat up and looked out the windows of her police car, remembering she was on duty with a man in her lap.
"Andy," she said.
He was busy.
"Andy," she tried again.
"Andy, get up. You're on my… gun."
She tried to move him, with no energy or enthusiasm, not wanting him to go anywhere ever again. Hell was here and she was finished.
"Sit up," she said, wiping her face again. Her life was ruined.
"This is incest, pedophilia," she muttered, taking a deep breath as he went on with what he was doing.
"You're right, you're right," he mumbled with absolutely no conviction, as he explored the wonders of her existence in a way that was unknown and overwhelming to her.
It was difficult to predict exactly where this might have gone had Bubba not intervened. There was a Holiday Inn Express not too far away on 1-77, and it had an indoor pool, 42-channel cable TV, and free local calls and newspaper, and complimentary continental breakfasts.
Possibly, West and Brazil would have made their way to one of those rooms before morning, and gotten into even more trouble at a bargain price. They possibly would have slept together, and that was where West always drew the line. Sex was one thing, but she did not sleep with someone she was not in love with, meaning she slept with no living soul except Niles.
Again, such contemplations are moot when there is a sharp rap on the window and one peers into the barrel of a carbine rifle reminiscent of Bosnia, or perhaps Miami. West did not have her glasses on, but the redneck with his assault rifle outside her police car looked familiar in a fuzzy sort of way.
"Sit up very slowly," she said to Brazil.
"What for?" He wasn't ready yet.
"Trust me," she told him.
vft It was just as well that condensation had formed on the glass.
Bubba could not see exactly what was going on inside the dark blue Ford Crown Victoria, but he had a pretty good idea. This heightened his excitement, making him more certain that he was going to waste these two after doing something really, really bad to them first. If there were two things Bubba could not endure in life, they were queers making out, and straights making out. When he saw queers flirting,
touching, Bubba wanted to beat the shit out them and then leave them dying in a ditch. When he saw what he thought he was looking at right now inside this police car, he felt pretty much the same impulse.
People with money, importance, or a good sex life, and especially all three, made Bubba insane with righteous outrage. It was his calling, he was sure, to smite them in the name of America.
West was not as frightened by the rifle with thirty rounds as most people would have been, and her brain was powering up.
It seemed this was the creep from the Firing Line who had gotten arrested for exposing himself in Latta Park. She had a pretty good idea why she had found Super Glue in her shrubs, and she wished like hell that Brazil hadn't busted the guy's nose. All the same. West was ready for violence. When anyone pointed a gun at her, there was a true cause and effect that rapidly clicked into gear. Unhooking the mike, she placed it next to her hip. She keyed it with her right hand, locking out all radio traffic in her response area. Dispatchers, cops, reporters, and criminals with scanners, could hear nothing but her.