“What do you mean: nothing?”
“Nothing means: nothing. Well, almost nothing. Several tiny spots on the floor, like dried blood, that's all.”
“But… The body?” I extinguish the half-finished cigarette.
“The body! There is no freaking body! Whatsoever.”
“Wait a sec, Tan. Did you read the SMS right?”
“Just repeat me the goddamn address.”
I repeat the address.
“Positively. I was at the right place.”
“And what place are you now?”
“In the Chinamerican-Three. I did a little loop, just to be sure. Then, got on my bike and went to give you a call. In the Patch-Five the phones don't work, as you may know.”
Oops! I have screwed up again. I imagine how the Homicide guys arrive to the address, just to have a good laughter. Kate Bowen! That legless Beat girl! Dead-bored with her papers, right? Well, here is free entertainment for you: call the real policemen to catch a ghost!
“Are you one hundred percent sure?” I ask. As if Tan suddenly laughs and says: oh, here it is! The body is behind the cupboard, I just didn't see it.
“One hundred and ten. Unless it's a wrong address.”
“What do I do? Call the Dispatch and cancel the Homicide Emergency Response?”
“Too bloody late, partner. They are on the way, for sure.”
“OK, fine. Sorry that I wasted your birthday. Will try Kim now.” I disconnect the call and turn to the trike driver, “Can you stop here, bro? It looks like I don't need a ride anymore.”
“Problems?” The first man throws me the tobacco box. At least, he has managed to roll himself a smoke.
“‘Problems’ is a bloody understatement. That's what I call the perfect Friday the thirteenth. Fire in the hole?” I click my macho lighter. “Thanks for the ride, boys.”
The men leave me at the road and depart on their trike. I dial Kim's phone. ‘You have dialed the Harris County Police number. Currently the phone is switched off or in the area with service temporary unavailable. For transfer to an operator, press one or hold the line. To leave a message, press two.’ Surely, Kim and Chen are already at the place in which the cell phone coverage is ‘temporary unavailable’. In the Houston slums, ‘temporary’ often means that nobody cares to fix it for months.
What if there has been no stubbing? An elaborate prank? But what for? Why would one pull a prank on the local Police? The Taiwamerican looked genuine enough: out of breath, scared, upset, shaken. Then, his adrenaline rush was over, and he looked deflated. To act like this, you got to be a movie star with few personal Oscars on the shelf. Well, we have no more Hollywood and no more Oscar, only the old movies from twenty-something years ago plus few remaining TV soap operas. But what about the gut-driver and the bloodied rag? By the way, what did they use in the real movies if they wanted to show blood? Tan insists it's pig blood, but I think it must be some food dye.
What do I do? Call the Dispatch and ask for the Operator One-Niner? I imagine how the Looney Tunes Granny, only with dark skin, says: ‘No worries, sweetie. I will make you a good excuse – right away. Everyone can make a little mistake, dear.’ Then she will disconnect my call, chuckle, and make some plausible coded diversion for the Station. Her little Afro grand-niece has screwed up and needs some help!
No, I will not ask to cancel. I must believe my eyes and my head. The gut-driver is real. The blood is real. The shaking hands are real. And if the old man is still alive, and somehow managed to get away or call for help, – hey, he still has his quarter-inch hole! If the quarter-inch hole is not an emergency, what is the emergency? Of course, for a stubbing without a dead body – the Homicide Unit is excessive. The standing orders are to call a case investigator from the Station. The investigating officer can ride a bike. Horses are not cars. Horses cannot go to every stupid little case. People can, but horses – cannot. I try to call Kim once more. ‘You have dialed the Harris County Police number. Currently the phone…’
But really. Why do I panic? So, I overreacted. The Homicide Unit had to harness a horse. Let's call it a practice run. The horse cart instead of the emergency response truck is a recent brilliant idea of our Station Chief. Diesel fuel is too expensive, he says. No more cars, except for some real emergency. As the result, the Station now has two nice horses, a source of endless jokes and horse shit. Unfortunately, very few Police officers know how to harness these fine animals to carts. Even if you served in the mounted police, they don't teach officers much about carts and wagons. OK, gentlemen, so shut up and practice. Myself, I can withstand a joke or two. My personal space engineer Scotty will jury-rig some Stale Joke Deflector or Who Gives a Damn Blaster.
They can't kick me out of the Police. I am not a Deputy, just a Records Clerk. My position is a low pay, low responsibility plug-that-hole-role. The Garret Road Slum vast area and dense population require at least three deputies, but the budget can only support two and a half officer's salaries. I came handy, so the Personnel conjured this: a half-time records clerk position for a Navy veteran girl, halved by the war. The fact that I am not a whole girl, but just a half, can be conveniently established by direct observation. Or you can check me with a measuring tape, if you prefer not to trust your eyes. The half-time multiplied by the half-person multiplied by the girl-factor equates less than one-fifth of the full deputy's salary. Think all the delightful budget savings!
Well, I am not necessary a black sheep (despite my skin color, no offense). At the Personnel, I was told: ‘This position is perfectly suitable for a disabled vet. You will do fine, no problems.’ No problems, aye-aye! All my life I have been doing exactly this: trying to do fine and have no problems under the most adverse circumstances. In my twenty-one years of age, I have achieved something many people can't do in a lifetime.
When I was ten, I decided to read all the books in our school library. They had quite a few – one hundred and forty-nine different titles. Half of the books were total crap, but I was lucky to discover the Sherlock Holmes stories – still my favorite after eleven years. Believe it or not, I read all the books! The library lady nearly went bananas. In Detroit, the ten-year-olds didn't read books. No, I wasn't a wonder-child. In the high school, my marks were all solid ‘C’. But strictly – no ‘D’! I struggled with my Math. I hated English Literature. Romeo and Juliet were OK, but for Prince Hamlet – this sadistic Shakespeare deserved a slow death through torture; what a shame they let him die on his own. The English teacher finally gave me my ‘C’ for ‘non-standard approach to classics’. I cheated my way around the History teacher. She had problems with her mental math and miscalculated the number of my test attempts. But, I have to repeat this proudly: I graduated from the high school! I was the only Afro at the grad ceremony, along with fifty (mostly white) boys. In Michigan, few Afro girls even bother to start the high school nowadays, and even white girls can be counted by fingers of one hand. And, you may call me a shameless liar, but it's true: through the entire school, I managed not to get pregnant (as all the other girls in my class did one-by-one, before leaving the school for good) and not to become a drug junkie (as my older brother did, with all the logical outcomes).
After the school, I firmly decided not to die of starvation along with many thousands of losers in Mitch. Instead of complaining at charity soup kitchens, I volunteered to the Navy – and served in a war zone for over two years. With my beloved machine gun, I killed many enemies of our Freedom-and-Democracy. I have no idea how many, but many – for sure. If you are on a river monitor and dispense nine hundred and fifty Freedom-and-Democracy servings every minute, it's difficult to count all the recipients. Well, the recipients got a bit mad at me. One direct hit by a laser-guided missile, my left leg went into the river together with the sinking Piranha, and I was sent to my free Cruise. On a floating hospital! One day later, my remaining leg became a fish food too, and two weeks later the upper part of me found itself nicely planted in warm asphalt of the welcoming Galveston harbor. I have no hard feelings about the Latino enemies of our Freedom-and-Democracy. War is just business, nothing personal.