It was clear to Smoke's father, a hardworking banker, that his son was unusually bright and misunderstood. Smoke's mother was devoted to Smoke and always took his side. She never believed he was guilty. Both parents believed their son had been set up because the police were corrupt, didn't like Smoke and needed to clear cases. Both parents wrote scathing letters to the district attorney, the mayor, the attorney general, the governor and a U.S. senator when Smoke was finally locked up in C. A. Dillon Training School in Butner.
Of course, Smoke didn't stay there long because when he turned sixteen, he was no longer a minor according to North Carolina law and was released. His juvenile record was expunged. His fingerprints and mug shots were destroyed. He had no past. His parents thought it wise to relocate to a city where the police, whose memories were not expunged, would not know Smoke or harass him any more. So it was that Smoke moved to Richmond, Virginia, where this morning he was feeling especially mean-spirited and in a mood to cause trouble.
'We got Twenty minutes,' he said to Divinity.
She was leaning against him as he drove the Ford Escort his father had bought him when Smoke had gotten his Virginia driver's license. Divinity started kissing Smoke's jaw and rubbing her hand between his legs to see if anybody was home.
'We got all the time you want, baby,' she breathed in his ear. Tuck school. Fuck that little kid you pick up.'
'We got a plan, remember?' Smoke said.
He was in running shoes, loose-fitting sweats, a bandanna around his head, tinted glasses on. He wound his way through streets within a block of the Crestar Bank on Patterson Avenue, in the city's West End, and spotted a small brick house on Kensington where there was no car or newspaper - no one home, it seemed. He pulled into the driveway.
'Anybody answers, we're trying to find Community High School,' Smoke reminded her.
'Lost in space, baby,' Divinity said, getting out.
She rang the doorbell twice and was met with silence. Smoke got into the passenger's seat and Divinity drove him back to Crestar Bank. The sky was pale and clear, and traffic was picking up as people began a new work week and realized they needed cash for parking and lunch. The bank's ATM wasn't doing any business at the moment, and that was good. Smoke climbed out of the car.
'You know what to do,' he said to Divinity.
He walked toward the bank as she drove off. He went around to the drive-thru where he could not be seen. It wasn't long before a young man in a Honda Civic hatchback parked in front of the ATM. Smoke came out from behind the bank, taking his time. The young man was busy making his transaction and didn't notice Smoke's angled approach out of range of the camera.
Smoke was so swift his victims were always too shocked to move. He slapped duct tape over the camera lens and the man's eyes. Smoke jabbed the barrel of his Glock pistol into the small of the man's back.
'Don't move,' Smoke said quietly.
The man didn't.
'Hand the money behind you real slow.'
The man did. Smoke looked around. Another car was pulling off Patterson, heading to the ATM. Smoke snatched the duct tape off the camera lens and ran behind the bank. He started jogging, turning on Libbie Avenue, then Kensington. He slowed to a walk in the driveway of the small brick house where Divinity was waiting in the Escort.
'How much you get, baby?' she asked as Smoke casually climbed in.
'Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred,' he counted. 'Let's get the fuck outta here.'
Judy Hammer couldn't believe it. This had to be one of the most bizarre things that had ever happened to her. Two white supremacists named Bubba and Smudge were going to murder a black woman named Loraine. She lived near some sort of old pumps where the killers would park and wait with engines and headlights off. Money was involved, perhaps several hundred dollars. Hammer paced, Popeye anxiously at her heels. The phone rang. 'Chief Hammer?' It was West.
'Virginia. What the hell was that?' Hammer asked. 'Any way we can trace it?'
'No,' West's voice returned. 'I don't see how.'
'I'm assuming we both heard the same thing.'
I'm still on a cell phone,' West warned. 'Don't think I should go into it. But it sounds like something we'd better take very seriously.'
'I completely agree. We'll talk about it after the presentation. Thanks, Virginia.' Hammer was about to hang up.
'Chief? What were you calling me about when I was on the track?' West quickly reminded her.
'Oh. That's right.'
Hammer searched her thoughts, trying to bring up what she was calling West about when the rednecks broke into their conversation. She paced, Popeye with her every step.
'Oh, I remember. We're already getting responses to our new website,' Hammer said, pleased. 'Since Andy's op-ed piece.'
'That worries me,' West replied. 'I think we should have done a little troubleshooting, Chief.'
'It will all be fine.'
'What are they saying?'
'Complaining,' Hammer replied.
'I'm shocked.'
'Don't be cynical, Virginia.'
'Any reaction to what he said about escalating juvenile crime? And Richmond's gang mentality about not having gangs, or however he put it? About the country's desperate need for radical juvenile justice reform?'
It was not lost on Hammer that whenever West talked about Brazil, West's attitude was sharp to bump up against. Hammer knew when West was hurt. Hammer recognized a sadness in Brazil as well, a light not quite so bright in his eyes, a sluggishness in the creative energy that so profoundly singled him out. Hammer wished the two of them would get along again.
'The phones started ringing off the hook about that the minute the newspapers hit the driveways,' Hammer replied. 'We're shaking people up. And that's exactly what we're here to do.'
Hammer got off the phone. She retrieved Brazil's op-ed piece from the coffee table and glanced through it again. … This past week our city's children committed at least seventeen cold-blooded felonies, including rape, armed robbery and malicious wounding. In eleven of these violent, seemingly random acts, the child hadn't even turned fifteen yet. Where do children learn to hate and harm? Not just from the movies and video games, but from each other. We do have a gang problem, and let's face it, kids who commit adult crimes aren't kids anymore…
'I expect my popularity just took another dip,' Hammer said to Popeye. 'You need a bath. A little of that good cream rinse?'
Popeye's black-and-white coat was handsomely reminiscent of a tuxedo, but her fur was very short, her freckled, pink skin very sensitive and prone to get dry and irritated.
Popeye loved it when every few weeks her owner would put her in a sink of warm water and lather her up with Nusalt antiseborrheic therapeutic shampoo, followed by the Relief antipruritic oatmeal and pramoxine cream rinse that her owner kneaded into Popeye's fur for exactly seven minutes, as the directions prescribed. Popeye loved her owner. Popeye stood on her hind legs and nuzzled her owner's knee.
'But a bath will have to wait, I guess, or I'll be late.' Her owner sighed and got down to Popeye's level. 'I shouldn't even have brought it up, should I?'
Popeye licked her owner's face and felt pity. Popeye knew, her owner was denying the grief and the guilt she felt about her late husband's sudden death. Not that Popeye had known Seth, but she had overheard conversations about him and had seen photographs. Popeye could not imagine her owner being married to a lazy, independently wealthy, fat, whiny slob who did nothing but eat, work in his garden and watch television.