King City (11 page)

There were more people out on the streets here than Wade had seen so far in the rest of Darwin Gardens. They sat on couches on their front porches, hung up laundry on the line, and worked on their cars. Children played in their yards while teenagers huddled on the sidewalks in groups, their smiles turning to sullen glowers as the squad car passed.

Wade turned into one of the alleys, which was strewn with trash, broken grocery carts, soiled mattresses, stripped cars, rusted pipes, and cardboard boxes. The sides of the alley were lined with cyclone or wrought iron fences and graffiti‐covered cinder block walls topped with razor wire. It made the backyards of the homes resemble prison yards.

Except for one yard, where a lush garden flourished behind the wrought iron fence. The centerpiece of the garden was a burbling fountain that spilled down a stack of rocks into a tiny pond that was surrounded by colorful flowers.

There was a man in filthy clothes standing on a crate outside the fence and pissing through the bars into the pond.

“Son of a bitch,” Wade said.

He gave a short burst of the siren, the loud noise startling the man so much that he tumbled off the crate, pissing into the air as he fell.

Billy laughed. “I wish I had that on tape.”

Wade got out and marched over to the man, who was scrambling to stuff himself back into his pants and zip up his fly. The man was in his thirties, with an enormous head of matted hair that looked like the end of a dirty mop. The skin on his arms was covered with dry scabs and fresh sores.

“What the hell did you do that for?” the man asked, sitting up. His gums had receded so far Wade could almost see the roots of his teeth. The man was obviously a crack addict.

“You were pissing on that nice garden,” Wade said. He glanced over his shoulder and was pleased to see Billy standing behind his open passenger door, backing him up as if they were handling a traffic stop.

“There’s no law against pissing,” the man said.

“Actually, there is,” Wade said. “Urinating in public is illegal. So is indecent exposure and vandalism.”

“I was just pissing,” the man said. “There was no place else to go.”

“You had the whole alley to piss on, but you dragged over a crate, stood on top of it, and aimed at the fountain.”

“I got to aim at something.”

Someone started clapping. Wade turned to see an elderly woman in a shapeless, flowered housedress and slippers applauding as she walked across the garden to the fence. Her face was blotched with age spots and she wore glasses that magnified the size of her eyes to horrific proportions. But Wade could see the adorable, bespectacled young woman that she’d once been. That woman was still there under the wrinkles, the gray hair, and the sagging body. It was how he saw his mother, right up until the end.

“Thank you so much, Officer,” she said. “You have no idea how many of my flowers he’s killed.”

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Dorothy Copeland,” she said.

“I’m Tom Wade, the sergeant at your local police station. The officer behind me is Billy Hagen.”

“We have a police station?” she asked.

“You do now.” He looked back at the man, who was in a sitting position on the ground. “What have you got against Mrs. Copeland’s garden?”

“She’s a crazy old bitch,” the man said. “Always yelling at people.”

“He makes a huge mess in the alley,” she said. “Look what I swept up this morning.”

She opened the lid of a garbage can. Wade glanced inside and saw syringes, beer bottles, fast‐food wrappers, and used condoms on top of her neatly bagged trash.

“He left all of that?” Wade asked.

“He and his drug‐addict friends come at night while I’m watching my programs,” she replied. “I try so hard to keep things clean, but the mess never ends.”

Wade regarded the man again. “What’s your name?”

“Terrill Curtis,” he said, scratching at his arm.

“You’re under arrest, Mr. Curtis, for public urination and vandalism.”

“You’re shitting me,” Terrill said.

“Stand up, put your hands on your head, and lean facedown over the hood of car,” Wade said.

Terrill did as he was told. Wade read him his rights as he patted him down, discovering a switchblade, a crack pipe, and a tiny square of aluminum foil, which he unfolded to reveal a pebble of crack cocaine.

“We’re charging you with possession of illegal narcotics on top of everything else,” Wade said.

Terrill glared threateningly at the woman.

Wade handcuffed Terrill and spun him so they were face‐to‐face.

“Mrs. Copeland and her garden are under my protection, Mr. Curtis. Whatever happens to her, or her flowers, will happen to you, whether you are the one responsible for it or not.”

“What if somebody else pisses on them?”

“Then I will piss on you,” Wade said.

“That’s not fair,” he whined.

“I got to aim at something,” Wade said and led Terrill over to Billy. “Put him in the car.”

While Billy got Terrill into the backseat, Wade went to the trunk, opened it, and took out a bullhorn, which he carried over to Mrs. Copeland.

“I’ll be back in the next day or two to check on you. In the meantime, Mrs. Copeland, I want you to have this.” He gave her the bullhorn. “You see anybody making a mess in the alley, just press the red trigger and yell at them with this. If that doesn’t work, you give me a call, any time of the day or night.”

He wrote his number down on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

“I can’t believe you’re doing all this for me,” she said.

“It’s my job, Mrs. Copeland.”

“This used to be such a nice neighborhood,” she said. “You should have seen it.”

“I still can.” Wade motioned to her garden. “Right here.”

“It smells like piss in this car,” Terrill whined from the backseat as they continued their patrol.

“Then you should feel right at home,” Billy said and then looked at Wade. “Why did we bother arresting him? He’s not exactly a major felon.”

“He is to Mrs. Copeland,” Wade said.

And he was sure that she was already talking about the arrest to all of her friends. Word would spread quickly, especially after she started using the bullhorn to yell at the junkies and hookers in the alley.

The news wouldn’t irritate guys like Fallon and Timo much, but Wade hoped it might give the law‐abiding residents some comfort.

“What Terrill said was true,” Billy said.

“Which was what?”

“Nobody pees on the dirt. We always have to pee against a tree or a bush or a rock.”

“It’s instinct,” Wade said.

“You think it’s about marking territory.”

“I think it’s about aiming,” Wade said.

“So we’re using our dicks like guns,” Billy said.

“Dicks came before guns,” Wade said.

“So we’re using our guns like dicks.”

“Most of the time,” Wade said.

The blocks that followed were a mix of small homes and boxy, two‐story apartment buildings built over open carports. On the retail boulevards, the liquor stores were as ubiquitous as the Starbucks coffeehouses were in New King City. There seemed to be a liquor store on every corner, second only in number to the nail salons.

He wondered if the women here were really passionate about decorating their nails or if they just enjoyed getting high on the fumes.

He kept heading east until he reached the freeway, the massive concrete interchange looming over the warren of small warehouses, repair shops, and storage units on the street and casting them in constant shadow.

One of the warehouses had a line of street people leaning against the wall out front, waiting to get inside. “Mission Possible” was painted in big letters on the windowless white cinder block. Wade wondered what the building was before it was a mission.

There was a man in a short‐sleeve black shirt with a clerical collar and blue jeans walking down the line passing out water bottles from a shoulder bag. He appeared to Wade to be in his late twenties, with a shading of a beard that looked like it had been applied with a black marker to give his chin definition.

Wade pulled up to the curb and got out, meeting the priest on the sidewalk beside the police car.

The priest looked past Wade to Terrill Curtis in the backseat. “It’s a little early for you to be dropping people off here, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Wade said. “Is it?”

“At least you had the courtesy to stop your car before kicking him out.”

“This isn’t his destination. He’s on his way to jail. I just stopped by to introduce myself and to let you know we’re here if you ever need us. I’m Sergeant Tom Wade and this is Officer Billy Hagen.” Billy nodded from his seat in the car. “We’re working out of the new substation across from the Pancake Galaxy.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” the man said, offering his hand. “I’m Ted Fryer, but everyone calls me Friar Ted—you know, like Friar Tuck.”

“Cute,” Wade said, shaking the man’s hand.

“But I’m not actually a friar, or an ordained priest,” Friar Ted said.

“Then why are you wearing a collar?” Billy asked through the open window.

“To show my faith. I used to be one of them,” Friar Ted said, gesturing to the row of transients. “Until I was saved two years ago.”

“By Jesus,” Billy said.

“By a 2003 GMC Yukon,” Friar Ted said. “I was high, staggered into the street, and got run over. I broke every bone in my body. It’s hard to score any crack when you’re in traction.”

“Bet I could do it,” Terrill said.

“I was also a captive audience for the bored hospital pastor. He read aloud to me from the Bible for hours every day. It led me to God.”

“It would have led me to drugs,” Billy said.

Ted looked back at the line. “I tried to lead them to him, but some just can’t be saved. But I know he loves them anyway.”

Wade nodded toward Terrill. “Does the guy in the backseat live here? Is that why you thought we were bringing him back?”

Friar Ted glanced at Terrill. “I’ve seen him around. He’s come inside a few times for a hot meal, but he doesn’t live here. I saw the police car and a drug addict in the backseat and jumped to the wrong conclusion. I apologize.”

“You must have had a good reason,” Wade said.

“The only time I see the police is at night as they are speeding away.”

“Away from what?” Wade asked.

“The vagrants and junkies that they’ve removed from another neighborhood and dumped like trash on our doorstep,” Friar Ted said. “That’s how I got here.”

“The police dropped you off?”

“The hospital did,” Friar Ted said.

Wade took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “How often does this happen?”

“Pick a night,” Friar Ted said.

“I will,” Wade said.

____

They took Terrill back to the station. Wade filled out the necessary paperwork while Billy photographed and fingerprinted Terrill. Billy asked the drug addict if he wanted to make a call, but he didn’t, so he was placed in one of the holding cells.

“What now?” Billy asked, sitting down in a chair beside Wade’s desk.

“We call the dispatcher and request that a unit pick up Terrill and transport him to jail to await arraignment.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know,” Wade said. “It will be interesting to find out.”

“You’re easily interested,” Billy said.

Wade radioed the dispatcher. He spent the next few hours patching all the holes in the wall with the exception of the one left by the fire. That hole would take more than Spackle to fill, and he didn’t feel like cutting lumber yet.

Billy killed the time by searching every nook and cranny in the station for forgotten porn DVDs. Much to Wade’s surprise, and Billy’s delight, he found one. Billy was as giddy as kid after an Easter egg hunt.

By 6:00 p.m., it was getting dark and the car for Terrill still hadn’t come. Wade doubted that it ever would.

“Tell you what, Billy. Why don’t you take one of the squad cars, drop off Mr. Curtis at the jail, see him through processing, and go on home.”

“What about my car?”

“You can leave it here overnight,” he said.

“In this neighborhood?”

“It’s parked at a police station,” Wade said. “How much safer could it be?”

There was only one correct answer to that question and Billy knew it. And if he didn’t, Wade’s glare told him so.

“Right, of course,” Billy said, gathering up his DVD and posters. “We’re the King City Police. What was I thinking?”

He might have put up a stronger argument if he’d known what had happened to Wade’s Mustang. But he didn’t. And Wade wasn’t about to tell him.

“It was a good first day, Billy.”

“It sure was,” Billy said with a grin. “I got shot and I’m leaving with free porn. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

There wasn’t the slightest trace of bitterness or sarcasm in the remark. When Wade looked at Billy’s face, what he saw was genuine delight.

At least someone was happy to be in Darwin Gardens—or was too clueless to realize how much danger he was in.

____

Wade had two hours before his next twelve‐hour shift, so he headed to Pancake Galaxy for an early dinner and plenty of caffeine.