Just Cause

'You ever been in this part of your county, Cowart?' 'Sure, the reporter replied. 'Covering crimes?' That's right.'

You wouldn't come out here to cover stories about kids who get college scholarships or parents that work two jobs and raise their children right.' 'We'd come out for those stories.' 'But not often, I'll bet.' 'No, that's true.'

The policeman's eyes covered the community rapidly. 'You know, there are a hundred places like this in Florida. Maybe a thousand.' Like what?'

'Places that scratch at the edges both of poverty and stability. Not even lucky enough to be categorized as lower middle class. Black communities which haven't been allowed to flourish or fail, just allowed to exist.

All the houses are two-income, you know, only both incomes are pretty small. The guy who works in the county refuse center and his wife who's an in-home nurse. This is where they come to get started on the

American dream, you see. Home ownership. Local schools. They feel comfortable here. It's not like they're willing to blaze any trails. They just want to get along and go along and maybe make things a bit better. Got a black mayor. Got a black city council. Police chief's probably black and so's the dozen guys he's got working for him.'

'How do you know?'

'I get offers, you see. Career cop. Head of homicide for the Major Crimes Unit of a county force. In law inforcement in the state I may not be well known, but at least I'm known, if you follow. So I get around the state a bit. Especially to little places like Perrine.'

They continued to drive through the residential district for several blocks. Cowart thought the land seemed harsh and unfertile. Almost everything grows in South Florida. Leave a spot of ground untended and the next thing you know it's covered with vines and ferns and greenery. But not here. There was a dustiness to the earth that seemed to belong in some other location, Arizona or New Mexico or some place in the Southwest. Some place closer to the desert than the swamp. Brown steered the car onto a wide boulevard and eventually pulled the car to a stop. They were in front of a small strip shopping center. At one end was a huge warehouse food chain, and at the other a cavernous discount toy store. In between were two dozen smaller businesses, including a single restaurant.

'There we go,' the policeman said. 'At least the food'll be fresh and not cooked according to some formula devised in some corporate headquarters.'

'So, you've been here before?'

'No, I've just been in dozens of places like it. After a while, you get so you can recognize the type.' He smiled. 'That's what being a cop is all about, remember?'

Cowart stared down at the toy store at the end of the shopping mall.

'I was here once. A man kidnapped a woman and child coming out of the store. Just snatched them at random as they walked through the door. Drove them around for half the day, periodically stopping to molest the woman. A state trooper heading home after the day shift finally stopped the car when he thought something was suspicious. Saved her life. And the kid's. Shot the guy when he pulled a knife. One shot. Right through the heart. Lucky shot.'

Brown paused and followed Cowart's eyes toward the toy store.

'They were buying party favors for the kid's second birthday,' the reporter said. 'Red and blue balloons and little conical white hats with clowns on them. They still had the bag when they were rescued.'

He remembered seeing the bag clutched tightly in the woman's free hand. The other held her child, as they were gently deposited in the back of an ambulance. A blanket had been draped around them, though it had been May and the heat was oppressive. A crime like that has a frost all its own.

'Why'd the trooper stop them?' Brown asked.

'He said because the driver was acting suspiciously. Weaving. Trying to avoid being looked at.'

'What page did your story go on?'

Cowart hesitated, then replied, 'Front page. Below the fold.'

The detective nodded. 'I know why the trooper stopped the car.' He spoke quietly. 'White woman. Black man. Right?'

Cowart knew the answer, but was slow to say yes. I Why do you want to know?'

Come on, Cowart. You were once quick with the statistics to me, remember? Wanted to know if I knew the FBI stats on black-on-white crime. Well, I do know them. And I know how rare that sort of crime is. And I also know that's what gets your goddamn story on the front page instead of being cut to six paragraphs in the middle of the B-section roundup. Because if it had been black-on-black crime, that's where it would have landed, right?'

He wanted to disagree, but could not. 'Probably.'

The policeman snorted. ' "Probably" is a real safe answer, Cowart.' Brown gestured widely with his arm. "If you think the city editor would have sent one of the reporters from downtown all the way out here if he wasn't damn sure it was a front-page story? Nah, he'd have had some stringer or some suburban reporter file those paragraphs.' Brown turned toward the restaurant door, speaking he started to cross the parking lot. 'You want to know something, Cowart? You want to know why this is a tough place to live? It's because everyone knows how close they are to the ghetto. I don't mean in miles.'

What's Liberty City, maybe thirty, forty miles away from here, right? No, it's the closeness of fear. They know they don't get the same dollars, the same programs, the same schools, the same any damn thing. So they have to cling to that dream of lower-middle-class status just like it was some life preserver leaking air. They all know what it's like in the ghetto, it's like it sucks away at them, trying to pull them back all the time. All those get-up-early-and-be-on-time-every-morning jobs, all those paychecks that get cashed as soon as they get cut, those little hot houses, are all that keeps it away.'

'What about in North Florida? Pachoula?'

'Pretty much the same. Only up there, the fear is that the Old South – you know, the backwoods, no plumbing, tar paper shack poverty – will reach out and snag you once again.'

'Isn't that what Ferguson came from? From both?'

The detective nodded. 'But he rose up and made it out.'

'Like you.'

Brown stopped and turned toward Cowart. 'Like me,' he said with a low edge of anger in his voice. 'But I don't welcome that comparison, Mr. Cowart.'

The two entered the restaurant.

It was well past the lunch hour and before the evening rush, so they had the place to themselves. They sat in a booth alongside a window overlooking the parking lot. A waitress in a tight white outfit that exaggerated her ample bosom, and a gum-chewing scowl that indicated that any suggestive remarks would be greeted with little enthusiasm, took their order and passed it through a window to a solitary cook in the back. Within seconds they could hear the sizzle of hamburgers frying, and seconds later the scent hit them.

They ate in silence. When they'd finished, Brown ordered a slice of key lime pie with his coffee. He took one bite, then speared another, this time gesturing with the fork toward Cowart.

'Hey, homemade, Cowart. You ought to try a piece. Can't get this up in Pachoula. At least, not like this.'

The reporter shook his head.

'Hell, Cowart, I bet you're the type that likes to stop at salad bars for lunch. Keep that lean, ascetic look by munching on rabbit food.'

Cowart shrugged in admission.

'Probably drink that shitty bottled water from France, too.'

As the detective was speaking, Cowart watched as the waitress moved behind him, into another booth. She had a razor-scraper in her hand, and she bent over to remove something from the window. There was a momentary scratching sound as she cleaned tape from glass. Then she straightened up, putting a small poster under her arm. Cowart caught a glimpse of a young face. The waitress was about to turn away when, for no reason that he could immediately discern, he gestured for her.