'Who did?' Feeley asked.
'So you can go paint your basketball uniform, number twelve included, on my ancestor!'
'You're related to Jeff Davis?'
Feeley ran and dunked. The ball bounced off the backboard.
'I'm related to Vinny,' Ehrhart stated.
'As in Pooh?'
'Varina.'
'I thought that was a place or maybe something else we shouldn't allude to.'
'You are vulgarly rude, Mr. Feeler.'
'Feeley.'
'It disdains me that people from your generation respect not a thing that's gone before in the past. And the point is, it isn't gone even if it started before you in. I'm standing here, as evident.'
Feeley frowned. 'How 'bout ringing me up again. I think we have a bad connection.'
'I wouldn't,' she said flatly.
He cradled the ball under his arm. 'What did I do?'
'We know both what you did.'
He dribbled into a hook shot that swished below the net.
'Sorry,' Feeley said, 'but I didn't do a job on Mr. Davis's statue, although I must say that it was about time somebody put him in his place.'
'How dare can you!'
Feeley flashed his big smile. He dribbled back and forth from one hand to the other and hit his foot.
'Indicted for treason but never tried. First and last president of the Confederacy. Ha!' He missed another foul shot. 'Got to feel sorry for him, when you think about it. Inferior railroad, no navy, no powder mills or shipyard and forget arms and equipment.' A jump shot sailed over the backboard. 'Congress fighting like cats and dogs.' Feeley walked and hit his toe again. 'Lee surrenders without asking Davis if it's all right.' He trotted after the ball. 'Jeff Davis finds himself in leg irons and ends up an insurance salesman in Memphis.'
'Not truth.' Ehrhart was incensed.
'Sure as hell is, ma'am.'
'Where were you last night?' she demanded to know.
'Right here, practicing.' A last-second shot from half court hit the stands. 'I didn't go to the cemetery and have never been inside that cemetery.'
He trotted after the ball again and started spinning it on his middle finger.
Ehrhart misinterpreted. 'Are you giving to me an obscenity gesture?'
The ball wobbled off. Feeley tried again. He tossed it around his back and missed.
'Rats,' he said.
'I fine you most lacking in respect,' Ehrhart said loudly and with emotion. 'And you can alibi from then on and in the end, what comes and goes around!'
'Look, ma'am.' Feeley tucked the ball under his arm. 'I had nothing to do with the statue. But I sure do intend to go take a peek.'
Many people in the Richmond area had decided the same thing. Clay Kitchen had never seen such a solid line of cars without headlights on. He had never in his twenty-seven years of faithful service observed such unbecoming behavior.
People were cheerful. They had rolled windows down and were enjoying the premature spring weather. They were playing rock amp; roll, jazz and rap.
Kitchen and West zipped along in the truck, avoiding the flow of traffic by entering the crime scene from Lee Avenue. West looked out the window, rather amazed by the interest. When the statue came in view she almost lost her proper police decorum. She almost said fucking unbelievable.
'Stop right here,' she said to Kitchen. 'I don't want people seeing me getting out of your truck.'
Kitchen completely understood. West was here in plain clothes and would not tell him why, but he was quite a reader. He knew what was going on. Criminals often returned to the scene of the crime, especially if they were pyromaniacs or wanted to apologize or had forgotten to take a souvenir. Kitchen had talked to police when they patrolled the cemetery on slow days. Kitchen had heard the stories.
He remembered the man who stabbed his wife almost a thousand times and slept with her body for days, bringing her breakfast in bed, watching TV with her, talking about the good times. Of course, that really wasn't the same thing as returning to the scene since he'd never left it, Kitchen supposed. He did know for a fact that up north a few years back, a woman ground up her husband in a wood chipper and came back several days later to burn up his pieces in the backyard. A neighbor apparently got suspicious.
The crowd was pressing too close to the statue and threatened any moment to duck under or even break the crime-scene tape. West got on her radio and requested backups. There was a near riot situation at the cemetery, hundreds of people. Many of them had been drinking and probably still were.
'Three,' Communications Officer Patty Passman came back. 'Is this 10-18?'
West checked her annoyance. People pushed against her. Passman was always questioning West's calls, and now she had the nerve to ask if the situation was urgent. No, why don't you get around to it when you can, West felt like saying. After I've been stampeded.
'Three, 10-10. At the moment.'
Three, what's your exact 10-20?'
'I'm exactly at the statue,' West answered tersely.
'Hey! Who's the chick with the radio?' some man yelled.
'We got undercover cops here!'
'FBI.'
'CIA.'
'Yay!'
'You want my fingerprints, baby?'
The smell of alcohol was strong as bodies pressed closer and jeering people got in West's face. Her body space wasn't there. People were jostling her, touching her, laughing. She got back on the radio and suddenly noticed the small blue fish painted on the statue's base, just below Jefferson Davis's left Nike. A kid came up behind her and pretended to go for her gun. She lifted him off the ground by his belt and tossed him like a small bag of garbage. He laughed, running off.
'Three, 10-18!' West exclaimed over the air as she stared at the fish, her thoughts crashing into each other.
'Any unit in the area of Hollywood Cemetery, an officer needs assistance,' Passman broadcast calmly.
'Step back!' West shouted to the crowd. 'Step back now!'
She was against the crime-scene tape, the crowd getting frenzied and moving in.
West whipped out her red pepper spray and pointed it. People paused to reflect.
'What the hell's gotten into you?' West yelled. 'Step back now!'
The crowd inched back a little, faces twitching with indecision, fists balled, sweat rolling, the air throbbing with the heat of violence about to erupt.
'Someone want to tell me what this is all about!' West yelled again.
A youth wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and stocking cap, one relaxed-pants leg rolled up, one down, spoke for the group.
'Nobody wants us in here,' he explained. 'Maybe it gets to you, you know? And then one day something happens and you snap.'
'Well, there'll be no snapping here,' West told all sternly. 'What's your name?'
'Jerome.'
'Seems like these people listen to you, Jerome.'
'I don't know any of them, but I guess so.'
'I want you to help me keep them calm,' West said.
'Okay.'
Jerome turned around and faced the mob.
'CHILL!' he shouted. 'EVERYBODY FUCKING BACK OFF AND GIVE THIS LADY SOME FUCKING SPACE!'
Everybody did.
'Now listen up.' Jerome stepped into his new role and had no problem with it. 'The deal is you people don't know what it's like,' he told West.
'Tell it!' a woman yelled.
'You think anybody wants us in here?' he whipped up the crowd.
'Fuck no!' they screamed.
'You think anybody wants us dropping by?'
'Fuck no!' the crowd chanted.
'You-think-you-go-Hollywood-who's-gonna-let-you-they're-gonna-get-you-throw-your-ass-in-the-grass-cemetery-in-the-hood? "Jerome started rapping.
'Never!'
'The-mon-u-ment-like-the-mom-u-meant-is-cold-rm-told-how-many-times-I-gotta-tell-it.' Jerome was strutting before the crowd. 'What's-it-take-to-taste-and-smell-it-when-you-got-no-chance-to-sell-it-'cause-everything's-for-sale-except-for-me-and-you-no-matter-what-we-do-we're-the-boys-in-the-hood-ain't-no-fuck-in-Holly-wood.'