Billy shook his head. “I was fine with everything but the screaming.”
So now Wade knew who’d shot Clay Touzee.
“It’s always difficult to see someone suffering,” Wade said. “But know this-you shot him because he was shooting at you. You didn’t cause his pain. He brought it on himself.”
“I’m glad he was hurting,” Billy said.
“You were?”
“The bastard had it coming,” Billy said.
“So it was just the noise that got on your nerves?”
“I shot to kill and I missed,” Billy said. “All that screaming meant that the son of a bitch still had plenty of gas in him to keep shooting at me, or you, or Charlotte.”
“But he didn’t,” Charlotte said.
“Only because he dropped his gun when he got hit and it landed out of reach,” Billy said. “If he hadn’t, things might have turned out differently. I let you both down.”
“No, you didn’t,” Wade said. “Neither of you did. I know you both have my back and I’m proud to have you as my partners.”
“If that’s true,” Charlotte said, “then you shouldn’t have gone to the towers alone.”
“It was the only way,” Wade said.
“You mean it was the only way for you,” she said.
“You just had to blow up Timo’s ride,” Billy said.
Wade shrugged. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“What do you have against cars?” Billy asked.
“Nothing,” Wade replied.
“C’mon, Sarge, you’ve been trashing them, shooting them, and blowing them up since you got here,” Billy said. “Did a car run over your dog or something when you were a kid?”
“I’ve only blown up one car,” Wade said.
“And you smashed your own with a tire iron,” Charlotte said.
“He did?” Billy said.
“Right out there on the street. Pete told me,” Charlotte said. “There’s definitely some psychological issue at work here.”
“It will give you something to think about at home,” Wade said and stood up. “Get out of here, both of you. We’re done.”
“Technically, my shift hasn’t started yet,” Charlotte said.
“And mine isn’t over,” Billy said.
“We’re taking the night off,” Wade said.
“What if something comes up?” Charlotte said.
“Nothing will,” he said.
“Duke Fallon could come gunning for you,” Billy said.
“He might,” Wade said. “But not tonight.”
He looked past them to see Mandy coming in the front door, holding a stack of three pie cartons.
“Dad and I thought you guys could use something sweet after what you’ve been through today,” Mandy said. “There’s a pie here for each of you.”
Wade wondered what the fascination was with pies in Darwin Gardens. They seemed to be a big part of the local culture. Between Duke, Mandy, Pete, and Mrs. Copeland, pie did heavy duty as a panacea, a metaphor, a token of affection, and even a currency of sorts.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said and took a carton off the top. “That’s very kind.”
She headed off and Billy stepped up, taking the next carton off Mandy’s hands.
“I’ve heard that your apple pie is an aphrodisiac,” he said.
“I wouldn’t know,” Mandy said. “I’ve never needed the assistance.”
“I’ll take every edge I can get,” Billy said, nodded his thanks to Mandy, and left.
That left Wade and Mandy alone with their pie. She held the carton out to him.
“What about you, big guy?” she asked. “Do you need some help in that department?”
Wade stepped past her, closed the door, and locked it. Then he came up behind her, cupped her breasts in his hands, and whispered his intentions in her ear, all the things he’d wanted to do to her the other morning. She dropped the carton on a desk and leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder.
“No,” she said, her voice husky in his ear. “You don’t need it.”
Tom Wade’s second week in Darwin Gardens was far less eventful than the first. He and his two officers made a few arrests for tagging, possession, and sale of narcotics, and for lewd, drunk, and disorderly conduct, but there were no robberies, drive?by shootings, rapes, murders, or other major felonies to deal with.
Wade figured it was because the people in Darwin Gardens were in a kind of shock, uncertain how to interpret everything that had happened, all that had changed, and what it meant for the future.
Although he knew that Timo was thrown off the building on Duke’s orders, Wade couldn’t prove that it wasn’t an accident or suicide.
But everyone knew the truth.
The widely held belief in Darwin Gardens-according to Mandy, anyway-was that the startling brutality of Timo’s execution was intended to terrorize the community, to remind everyone of Duke’s power and his wrath.
Duke also couldn’t risk a police invasion or for detectives to get their hands on someone who knew so much about his operation.
More important, Duke had to do something big to firmly assert his position and relevance in the new neighborhood order, one that now included Tom Wade, who had managed in a few short days to establish his own authority and even win a measure of respect.
The people knew what Wade had done for them. They knew it because they’d seen it. His actions told them the kind of man that he was, not just by how he enforced the law, but in the way that he lived.
It also didn’t hurt that he’d stood up to Duke Fallon and walked away alive.
The big, unanswered question now was if it was possible for Duke Fallon and Tom Wade to coexist in Darwin Gardens without forcing people to declare allegiance to one of them and sparking a street war.
Wade didn’t have the answer.
He could only do his job and hope that everything worked out.
So he took advantage of the relative quiet, putting Charlotte and Billy to work with him repairing and remodeling the station. The rookies groused about doing “home improvement” instead of policing, but Wade thought it was important labor. He wanted them to feel that the station belonged to them and he hoped that sense of belonging would extend to the street outside as well. While the interior of the station was improving, he still hadn’t been able to get a window company down to replace the glass, and he was losing his patience.
Between shifts, Wade got a lot of sleep, some of it beside Mandy, and always in his bed, not hers. He didn’t even know where she lived and hadn’t bothered to ask, not that Mandy seemed the slightest bit offended by his apparent lack of interest in her life. If anything, his simple acceptance of her as she was and for whatever she was willing to give only made him more attractive to her.
It was a good week, and it went by quickly. Before he knew it, Saturday had come along. He turned in his rented Explorer, picked up his Mustang, now minus all of the Bullitt crap, and headed out to New King City to spend the day with his daughter.
Chapter twenty eight
This time, he didn’t feel like he was leaving a bad dream, but rather, that he was living a double life, one in Darwin Gardens and another in New King City, and that King’s Crossing had become the physical and temporal bridge between the two.
It felt good to be back in his own car, so much so that he listened to his Neil Diamond CD without feeling any of the usual embarrassment. He liked Neil and he was going to own it. Fuck anybody who had a problem with that. He pulled into his driveway with the windows down and “Solitary Man” blaring from the speakers.
Wade got out of the car and strode up to the front door. Brooke opened it and came out dragging a rolling suitcase and holding a sleeping bag under one arm.
“Whoa,” Wade said. “What’s all this?”
“I’m spending the weekend with you,” she said. “I’m sure you need some help unpacking.”
“Slow down,” Wade said. “I told you I’d think about it. I haven’t decided yet.”
“I have,” she said.
“This is a discussion we need to have with Mom.”
“Not me, you,” she said and went right past him to the car. “I’ll be in the car.”