Because the Rain (7 page)

He always began his shift trying to slow down the Range Rovers. They turned fast and sharply so they’d go over on two wheels. His sergeant told him he’d seen three flip this past year. Mike stopped them with his white gloves and handed young millionaires hundred-dollar tickets. They condescended politeness and called the hundred dollars meter change. He was a city employee to them, some dumb guy who picked the gun over money.

After dinner break, Mike didn’t care about enforcing as much, and let the Range Rover guys have their ideas of themselves. The nights went better when he finally settled. He’d try spending the last hours looking for a directing rhythm that faded his memories about wanting to push a button and make Susan disappear when things first went bad between them. He never found the thoughtless rote. When the traffic signals became routine, his mind went racing. The tactical squad was formed in the break room when Mike Spence walked past the Coke machine. He’d gotten reassigned to gang crimes when the department decided he’d not killed his wife, and discovered he’d jumped into Panama with the 82d Airborne Division. Now, he was in civilian clothes, a gun and cuffs on his belt, ready to roll through neighborhoods and shake down teenagers selling grass too close to Starbucks. He was vaguely happy. This duty beat standing and remembering.

The tactical squad was chubby, thick-shouldered guys with the same bulletproof vests and pistols that cost an even grand. Nobody raised his eyes and gave Mike the new guy haze, the asshole grins, the gum chewed openmouthed. They leaned against the wall and held leather jackets and dozed chin to chest, or sat on the table with their feet on chairs and dipped Snickers bars into Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. He expected the paratroopers he served with fifteen years ago, the way Corporal Mickey McDowell eyed him cold and swore in Southy brogue that they better stick a fork in this cherry’s ass because he looked done. He’d stoned up his face, ready to take the tac squad’s eyes, but there were no whore winks or hard stares. They sat quietly while the rain hit the windows, a cold and blowing rain, thankful they never wrote traffic tickets during blizzards. Mike stood by the Coke machine and drank his coffee.

Sergeant Kenjuan Mills walked through the door but didn’t cross the room. He wore baggy jeans showing Calvin Klein boxers and his Air Jordans were white like he was carried over the puddles. The oldest guy in a ghetto club, Mike thought.

Mills glanced at his Rolex, a gold date timer. He smiled while the watch slid from his leather jacket sleeve.

“Who’s up today?” he said. “The whores or the pimps?”

The white guys sitting on the table said nothing. They glanced sidelong and bored while Mills looked at the watch.

“The pimps are always up,” one said.

Mills looked at the black and showed his diamond pinkie ring. He put the finger in the air, letting him see.

“You gain ten more pounds, dog, Shylonda won’t let you hit that shit.”

“All fat ass Tony Soprano does is look and they come.”

“You ain’t T.”

The black smiled and sneezed without covering himself. Mills’s nostrils flared before he looked away.

“Goddamn, Avery, cover yourself.”

“You see what Tony Soprano gets,” the black said.

“Yeah. Russian girls without a leg.”

Mills shook off his hands.

“The story today is Hector and James over the car hood,” he said. “They’ve been breaking into garages all over Lakeview. You guys cuff them and make the numbers. Then what happens, Hernandez?”

The Mexican sneered, then spat gum in the garbage can. The white guys looked at the ceiling.

“Your black ass hits the glory road,” Hernandez said.

“And what do I get for you?”

Hernandez didn’t see Mills, just the wall behind him.

“Plenty of court overtime,” he said. “I get lunch at the El Presidente on Twenty-sixth Street and eyefuls of Carmen with the big titties filling baskets with tortilla chips. I never drive the wagon and pick up bloated stiffs from apartments filled with cats and yellow newspapers.”

“New man here knows?” Mills said.

Mike drank black machine coffee while Mills eyed his hands. He was standing like a rottweiler.

“New man here wrote a book,” he said. “You all know that?”

The white guys didn’t look at Mike. They eyed their surplus combat boots and took a breath. The blacks drank the bottoms of their Mountain Dews and waited for the caffeine hit. Mills smiled and showed two gold teeth.

“I read it,” he said. “He thought the Jennifers should be standing in line to suck his dick because he watched his buddy get beaten in the army for no reason. And why should Brian pay twenty-five dollars for new man to call him a pussy?”

“He didn’t,” Mike said.

“I know that,” Mills said. “Now you come on the job to write another?”

“No. I just came on the job.”

“I’ll fix you up with a good war, new man. I’ll get you staring off a thousand yards.”

Mills smiled and studied Mike and his hands. His cell phones went off, the ringers set the same. He put down a big gulp Hawaiian Punch on the table and took out the phones. He raised one to his ear before the other and grinned wider after each ring. Mike walked over and looked out the window and watched Mills nodding in the glass.

*   *   *

Mike Spence drove through Lakeview in the unmarked Crown Victoria while Hernandez drank his fourth Coke. A landscape of new houses built in six weeks and clapboard wood frames bought last year for tear down and rehabbed gravestones turned condo with sale placards six months old in the rain-dirty windows. There were new streets and curbs and along them tightly parked Audis and Volvo wagons. He turned into the alley and hit the flooded potholes, making the empty bottles roll across the muddy floor mats.

Hernandez had an Indian face with long cheekbones. He’d urinated in a Coke bottle, but dropped it on the floor, and the cap popped off. He sopped the piss with torn pages from the
Sun-Times.
Mike rolled down the window and the rain slanted into his face. The reek wouldn’t shake.

“You know what today is?” Hernandez said.

“Yesterday with rain.”

Hernandez sat up and chewed gum. He tapped a meringue beat on the dashboard.

“The welfare checks hit Humboldt Park,” he said. “All the mommies got a bill in their purse. They’re at T.J.Maxx and Marshalls buying panties and bras. They let you watch. They hold it up to themselves and look right at you.”

Mike stared out the window, blinking long enough to see black.

“You’d do fine there,” Hernandez said. “A big white guy. Shit. They’d be holding up those purple bras and smiling at you.”

Mike drove and turned out the alley mouth and passed a fake Irish pub with six-dollar pints. The rain blew sideways over the graystone roofs and wetted the parking tickets on the parked Range Rovers and Saabs and Grand Cherokees. He watched Hernandez flip the visor down, then up.

“You don’t know about the mommies?” he said.

“I spent my probation downtown. Traffic control.”

“The ones with kids are the best. They got to work harder to keep you.”

Mike nodded while the rain slackened.

“Mills is there right now.”

“There’s next month,” Mike said.

Hernandez took out his Newports. He opened another Coke and lit a cigarette off a Zippo engraved with the Marine Corps bulldog.

“No. We’ll be out here guarding condos and SUVs.”

“Fine with me,” Mike said. “I went tac for the overtime.”

“Lifer.”

“I’ll do my twenty, but I’ll never go to my knees.”

Hernandez smoked and flipped the lighter top up and down.

Mike watched a blond woman push a stroller, walk a golden retriever with drool lines, and drink coffee.

“You remind me of this one white guy,” Hernandez said. “Tommy Thiel. He hit Mills. That’s why he’s got two gold teeth.”

“I bet Mills gave back.”

“Without a gun?” he said. “Mills just pulled rank.”

“Why’d he hit him?”

“Mills told Tommy he was too afraid to get out of the car and make the numbers.”

“Then he popped him?”

“Knocked Mills on his ass. He came back two days later with the gold teeth. Tommy’s out at O’Hare on 9/11 detail. He walks around with a radio and checks for unattended bags. Mills made the lieutenants list. Fuck up, move up.”

Mike said nothing. He looked at Hernandez and then looked out at the street. The wind blew maple leaves from the trees and they splayed on the wet windshield.

“You got to be careful,” Hernandez said.

“There’s white guys on the squad.”

“Konick and McCaffrey. They just bought two-flats in Jefferson Park. They eat his shit with a spoon.”

Mike turned into the alley while the rain bore into the plastic, rat-proof garbage cans. Hernandez watched a small TV he kept between his legs. It was a talk show, heavyset white women were pointing and shouting at a skinny guy who sat onstage with his arms crossed. He glanced over at Mike when the commercials started.

“Tomorrow I’ll bring my DVD player,” he said. “I’m in Blockbuster Rewards so I get two for one on Wednesdays.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe they’ll make a movie from your book,” he said. “I think those are the best movies. What’s yours about?”

“Paratroopers from Fort Bragg. We used to drive up to Chapel Hill and crash frat parties and start fights.”

“I was in the marines at Lejeune. We did the same thing. This guy Avila had a van with the globe and anchor painted on the sides. We went there and tore the place up.”

Mike nodded. The small TV screen glowed against the door. The guys home early from work were pulling black BMWs into their garages. Some walked from the El station at Sheffield, their umbrellas sturdy like their German cars. The autumn dark came fast.

“We used to sweat college boys,” Hernandez said.

“I saw you guys do it,” Mike said. “I had a girlfriend at UNC.”

“We were some shit.”

“You were that.”

Hernandez was still proud of himself after Mike had turned into the alley.

Past Racine Avenue, Mike saw a skinny black dangling from the cistern of a rehabbed wood frame. He flailed his legs and had lost a shoe. The window was broken and the wind pushed the blinds back into the room. Mike had looked over and there the kid was.

“Keep going,” Hernandez said.

Mike drove behind the next garage. He shut down the car and opened the door and stepped into a puddle over his boot toes.

“Call it in,” he said.

Mike took out his H&K Nine and walked between the garages. He kept the pistol along his leg. The glass from the window lay upon the patio with the kid’s lone high-top. He hung with cushy headphones over his ears and tried getting his footing on the ledge. The cistern pulled away from the roof and went slack and the kid lowered by fast inches. His feet were below the ledge and he flailed his legs and his plastic leg fell off and bounced three times on the wet concrete. His empty sweatpant leg inflated like a windsock. Then the cistern halved and he dropped straight down with a shower of rotten leaves. He hit and fell sideways, his mouth open, his teeth gaped and splayed.

“Motherfucker,” he yelled. “Oh, motherfucker.”

The kid lay on the ground with his good leg trapped inside his baggy sweats. It was bent back at the knee, his heel wedged against his backside. He strained to look behind him, then looked past Mike, the music still popping from his headphones.

Mike holstered his pistol. The kid slapped the pant leg with open fingers.

“You see my leg?” He talked loudly over the music.

“I don’t see your leg,” Hernandez said. He’d walked up between the garages and leaned against the fence and lit a cigarette in the rain. He had an easy way about himself, like time was reefer to smoke.

“Shit,” the kid said.

“Maybe you can steal a skateboard,” Hernandez said. “You could scoot your punk ass around on that.”

The kid was still trying to look behind himself. Mike started after the leg where it lay on the concrete and turned the rain. Hernandez looked at him and shook his head.

“Medicaid won’t buy you another.”

The kid cried badly, his face like breaking glass.

“You make bond tonight,” Hernandez said, “you steal a skateboard. Gloves, too. The concrete will fuck up your hands.”

A long horn blew from the alley. Hernandez walked past the kid and looked back at Mike.

“Take that,” he said.

Mike went off between the garages. The exhaust was thick in the darkness and the rain seemed to fall through it.

The guy stood outside his Range Rover in the rain. He reached through the open door and lay upon the horn. His hair had been gelled, feathered, and wavy until he stepped from the vehicle and into the drops. He was almost tall and very lean from spin classes. His nose came at you.

“You’re in front of my garage,” he said.

Mike checked his holster snap. Already the black SUVs were lined behind the Range Rover and their headlights showed the rain. These people liked riding up high. He even bet this guy’s name was Todd.

“Police business,” Mike said. “Back it up.”

“Show me how I can do that,” he said. “Just tell me how.”

Mike smiled and lifted up his hands.

NPR was loud on the Range Rover’s door speakers, some story about single mothers in Arkansas convincing Wal-Mart to open in-store day-care centers. I’m a better employee for it, a woman drawled.

“You can’t just block alleys,” the guy said.

“It’s a crime scene,” Mike said.

“Is my garage a crime scene?”

Mike saw people after the wipers passed the windshields, just the lone silhouettes of them, glowing green from the dash light. The guy was looking at him.

“I know a lot of city attorneys,” he said.

“How’d you get so important?”

The guy’s neck went stiff. His lips moved. He was talking himself into something.

“Fuck you,” the guy said.

Mike walked across the puddles, breaking the reflected light.

“Fuck you.” He smiled dry white teeth. He’d worked himself up to it and now he’d done it twice.

Mike grabbed the guy and bounced him off the door frame until his knees caved. He laid him over the hood and grabbed a handful of hair and slammed his face. One by one, the SUVs were backing down the alley, their tires loud on the pavement.