'Gang paraphernalia!' He was weak with laughter.
'Oh great,' West said. 'Now she'll call us. Way to go, Andy. Every time you get with her on the fucking phone, this happens. Then she calls the chief or me. Thanks a hell of a lot.'
'We have things to discuss,' Hammer announced, coming inside the office. 'We'll leave Lelia for later. She takes up far too much of our time as is.'
'Why can't you say something to Governor Feuer?' Brazil said as he took a deep breath and wiped his eyes.
'I will if he asks me,' Hammer replied. 'We need a very simple user's manual for COMSTAT. We've got to get this computer business straight. We're what? Three months into this? A fourth of our year is up. And they still can't use the computer? Both of you see how bad that is?'
'Yes.' Brazil got serious. 'I do. If we don't leave that much with them, I guess we've failed.'
'I'm sorry to heap more on you.' Hammer began pacing. 'But we need the manual ASAP.'
'How soon is as soon as possible?' West asked suspiciously.
Two weeks from today, at the outside.'
'Jeez.' West sat down on the small couch. 'I'm already working days and riding with patrol, detectives, inspectors, you name it.'
'Me, too,' Brazil said. 'Plus I've got this website stuff.'
'I know, I know.' Hammer stopped to look out the window at the downtown skyline. 'I have my computer at home. I'll add my thoughts, too. We're all in this together. I think the thing to do is give each of us our own responsibility. Andy, you're more into programming, commands and all that. You can handle the how-to technical part of it, and Virginia, you can help put it in very basic, black-and-white terms, nuts and bolts, that the cops will be able to follow.'
West wasn't sure if she'd been insulted or not.
'I'll try to add the concepts, philosophies, put it all in context,' Hammer said. 'Then - Andy, you're the writer - you can compile the whole thing.'
'I agree this has to be done,' West said, 'but if you ask me, the only thing that's going to really turn the guys on to COMSTAT is if they see it works.'
'They aren't going to see if it works if they can't work it,' Hammer replied logically.
Hammer walked out of the office. Brazil and West looked at each other.
'Shit,' West said. 'Look what you've gotten us into.'
'Me!' Brazil exclaimed.
'Yes, you.'
'She suggested the user's manual, not me.'
'She wouldn't have suggested one if you weren't a writer.' West saw the holes in her logic but would not back down.
'Oh, I see. So now everything's my fault just because I know how to do something in general that I've been told to do specifically and that you've been asked to help with, sort of West had to unravel this for a moment.
'What do you mean, sort of?' she asked. 'It sounds to me like my involvement is more than a sort of Brazil's phone rang.
'Brazil. Oh, hi.' His voice softened and he paused as the other person talked. 'You're so thoughtful,' Brazil said, listening again. 'The usual place is fine,' he said as the voice chattered on. 'I'll look forward to it,' Brazil said. 'I've got to go.
'Sorry,' he said to West.
'Do you have any idea how much I'm going to hate writing computer instructions?' she asked in an uneven, strained voice as she imagined Brazil's wealthy, beautiful landlady. 'And you're not supposed to make personal calls at work!'
'I didn't make it. She called me. And you're not the one who has to do the writing. I am,' Brazil replied.
'Well, writing, after all is said and done, is the easy part.'
Brazil's anger mounted.
'You don't have any right to say it's easy,' he said.
'I can say anything I want,' she replied.
'No you can't.'
'Yes I can,' she asserted.
'Then you write it.'
Tuck no,' she answered. 'I've got enough to do.'
'Excuse me,' a voice behind them spoke up.
Fling was holding his schedule book, standing outside the door, afraid to walk in. West and Brazil stopped their bickering and stared at him.
'I'm out of here.' West left.
'Officer Brazil,' Fling said, 'I just wanted to remind you of your 1:56 appointment at Godwin High School. I believe you're speaking in the auditorium to all the students?'
'Dammit,' Brazil muttered as he checked the time. 'Do you know how to get there from here?'
'No,' Fling said. 'I didn't go there.'
'Huh?' Brazil's mind was racing.
'I went to Hermitage,' Fling said.
'Wait.' Brazil popped up from his desk. 'Virginia, come back here!'
'On Hungary Springs Road.' Fling was warmed by the memories. 'You know, Godwin isn't the only good school around.'
West walked back into the office, defiant in a khaki suit that complemented the darkness of her eyes and deep red of her hair. Her body was far finer than she deserved for as little as she did to help it along.
'What?' she asked impatiently.
'You ought to go out to Hermitage, too. Talk with the students there, you know,' Fling was going on and on. 'That's the thing about doing one school. What about the others?'
'In case you've forgotten,' Brazil said to West as he tightened the laces of his Rocky boots, 'you're supposed to go with me to Godwin.'
'Shit,' she said.
Chapter Five
Muskrat's Auto Rescue was Bubba's home away from home, and today especially, he was grateful. It didn't matter that Officer Budget had let Bubba go with only a warning. Bubba was traumatized. The cop had called Bubba names. The cop had brought back old injuries and humiliations and then had been so unfair and ugly as to accuse Bubba of being the one with prejudices.
Muskrat's shop was behind his brick rancher on several junk-scattered acres off Clopton Street, between Midlothian and Hull. The fence bordering Muskrat's garage and its outbuildings was built of old railroad ties piled like Lincoln Logs. Transmissions littered the hard-packed dirt tail housings covered with plastic quart oil bottles to keep out the rain. Cars, vans, pickups, a tractor trailer and an old fire truck used each year in the Azalea Parade were parked wherever Muskrat had left them last. Bubba pulled up to the shop's open bay door, cut the engine and climbed out.
He was momentarily cheered by Muskrat's automotive kingdom, which could very well have passed for a chop shop were most of the parts not rusty and from an earlier stage of vehicle evolution. Bubba stepped around an ancient air jack and a bearing press. He made his way through miscellaneous flowerpots, coils of garden hoses, fenders, headlights, hoods, bumpers, car seats, stacks of split firewood and fifty-five-gallon drums overflowing with junk parts.
Bubba was convinced, although he spoke of it rarely, that there was a Bermuda Triangle for vehicles. He believed cars and trucks swept up in floods and tornadoes, or perhaps gone and believed stolen, ended up in places like Muskrat's shop, where they would be cared for and used to help humans continue their journeys through this life. Bubba intended to write this insight to Click and Clack's Car Talk on the Internet or perhaps to his favorite, Miss Lonely Parts, a syndicated columnist who was really a man.
'Hey Scrat!' Bubba called out.
He walked inside the garage, where an old furnace burned a mixture of dirty motor oil and firewood.
'Scrat? Where the hell are ya?' Bubba tried again.
Muskrat wasn't always easy to locate within the jumbles of heater cores, batteries, oil pans, grease guns, chains, tow ropes, bungee straps, gas lines, vacuum hoses, homemade jumper cables, stands made of old Ford wheels, clutches. Pressure plates were stacked like doughnuts on sections of exhaust pipes. There were grinders, a chain horse to lift out engines, and hundreds of American and metric wrenches, ratchets, pliers, chisels, awls, vises, presses, springs, drill bits, spark plugs, dead blow mallets and brass hammers.
'How come you got the heat on, Scrat?'
'To keep my joints from aching. What'dya try to fix this time?' Muskrat's voice was muffled under a jacked-up 1996 Mercury Cougar.