Southern Cross (21 page)

“Two presidents and five governors are restful there,” she preached. “Not to forget, also, Brigadier Generals Armistead, Gracie, Gregg, Morgan, Paxton, Stafford and Hill.”

“Hill was a
major
general,” Lieutenant Governor Miller blandly remarked. “And all the generals you just mentioned were interred in Hollywood only for a time. Aren’t still there, in other words.”

Ehrhart had found the seven names in the back of a booklet listing Confederate States of America generals, and had not noticed nor comprehended the parenthetical phrase
interred for a time.
Indeed, it wasn’t until this moment she realized her husband’s alleged ancestor, General Bull Paxton, was among the seven war heroes whose remains she was now being told had been moved out of the cemetery. Ehrhart refused to stand corrected.

“I believe I’m in the right.” She smiled coolly at the lieutenant governor.

“You’re not,” he matter-of-factly replied in a voice that rarely rose or showed strain. “There are twenty-five
generals in Hollywood, but not those seven. You might want to go back and check your booklet.”

“What booklet?”

“The one you didn’t read very carefully,” he said.

B
UBBA
, S
MUDGE
, H
ALF
Shell and Tree Buster had spent the night in the woods. This was not by choice. When Bubba had blasted the rubber rattlesnake and Smudge had taken a flying leap, Smudge had ended up with a bump on his head.

Smudge was confused and disoriented and bleeding a little. This left navigation entirely in Bubba’s hands. It meant he alone had to restrain two dogs on leashes to make sure that one or both of them didn’t go after a coon.

“Watch the root there,” Bubba said to Smudge as they trudged through brush and trees so thick they could have been in a rain forest for all Bubba knew.

“How far?” Smudge slurred.

“Can’t be much farther.” Bubba said what he had been saying for the past eight hours.

Smudge wasn’t going to be able to walk much longer. It was a good thing Bubba had brought food, although it was a shame he had stuffed half of his Cheez Whiz sandwich in a knothole. Boy, what he wouldn’t give for that now. At least water wasn’t a problem. The fucking stuff was everywhere, and each time they happened upon it, Half Shell would dig in her feet and bark, and Bubba would have to
carry her over another creek, some of which were very swift and deep. The only thing that kept Bubba going was anger.

“I still can’t get over what a rotten thing that was to do,” he said to Smudge yet once again.

Smudge was too exhausted and disoriented to answer.

“I could’ve had a heart attack. You’re just lucky I’m a nice guy.”

They reached another creek, this one a trickle, but Half Shell didn’t care.

“I’ve had it,” Bubba said to the dogs. “I can’t drag your asses another step.” He unhooked their leashes. “You’re on your own.”

Tree Buster shot off like a rubber band, crashing through brush and barking three times for a strike that no one gave a goddamn about. Half Shell went off to the left. She kept looking back at Bubba every couple of steps, her eyes intense and caring.

“What is it?” Bubba asked her.

Half Shell ran ahead ten feet and looked back again.

“We supposed to follow you?” Bubba asked his dog.

Half Shell barked. Bubba and Smudge followed her for another forty-five minutes while Tree Buster treed coons and wondered why nobody showed up. Mist was rising, the world silent, sunlight breaking through the canopy of trees. It seemed a miracle when suddenly they were in a clearing, Smudge’s truck straight ahead on the muddy road.

It was important that Pigeon venture out at dawn to avoid the thunder of rush hour, and more important, to forage before Dumpsters were emptied behind restaurants that would not open for hours.

Often he discovered unexpected treasures such as money, jewelry and doggie bags that drunk people dropped on their way back to their cars. Once he found a Rolex watch and got enough money from the pawn shop to keep him happy for months. He had found a number of
portable phones, calculators and pagers, and an occasional gun.

“You can stay here if you want,” Pigeon said to Weed.

Weed was sitting on the blanket and didn’t know what to do. In daylight, his predicament seemed even worse, maybe because it was harder to hide when the sun was looking him in the eye.

“There’s got to be places the devil won’t go,” Pigeon said.

Weed gave it some thought.

“I guess he wouldn’t go back to the cement-tary,” Weed decided.

Pigeon got an idea.

“People ever leave good stuff on the graves? Like the dead person’s favorite food, whiskey, wine, cigars, sort of like they used to do in the Pyramids?”

“It was dark when I was in there,” Weed told him. “I didn’t see nothing ’cept those little flags you see everywhere. But it’s a big place.”

The world was no longer big enough to accommodate traffic, and this was fortunate for Officer Otis Rhoad. It was almost seven-thirty and rush hour was out of the gate.

Soon there would be thousands of personal cars driven by solitary commuters indifferent to the wear and tear of the ozone and jealous of their right to come and go when and how they pleased in whatever they could afford to drive, using their own flight plans.

He steered his cruiser with a bony knee as he lit a Carlton Menthol, one eye in the rearview mirror, the other on a traffic light that was about to turn red and the guy in the Camaro next to him who thought he was going to make it. He did. Rhoad was disappointed.

Rhoad was tall, skinny, slightly cross-eyed and close to sixty. When he had been growing up south of the river, he had dreamed of being a radio disc jockey or perhaps a singer.

This had gone nowhere, and after high school he signed
on with the Richmond Police Department. His first week in the academy he learned the assigned radio frequencies and areas, the proper operation of the radio, the correct procedures for relaying confidential information, the disposition of codes, the phonetic alphabet and, most important, ten signals.

When he was finally let loose on city streets, he was relentless, fluent, precise and omnipresent on the mike. He rode radio waves like the DJ he had never become, and cops, dispatchers and 911 operators dreaded his unit number and resonating voice.

They resented and loathed his habit of running his colleagues off the airways and into one another, and hogging the communication system in general. He was “Rhoad Hog.” He was “Talk in a Box,” and all wished the brass would transfer him out of traffic, into the silence of the property room, information desk, maintenance division or tow lot.

But the chiefs preceding Hammer were zealous about quotas, and Rhoad was a relentless one-person posse pursuing citizens who exceeded the speed limit, went the wrong way, ran red lights and stop signs, made U turns where not allowed, drag raced, drove drunk and ignored Rhoad’s lights and siren.

As time passed and maturity waved Otis Rhoad through new intersections of his life, he realized that more important than his war against moving violations was an insidious disease that clearly was becoming the epidemic of modern times. The world was running out of parking spaces.

He began punishing those who left their cars at expired meters, in handicap spaces or in more selfish and ruder appropriations such as lawns, shoulders, driveways that did not belong to them, businesses or churches they did not visit, and bicycle paths. He started carrying his ticket book off duty, especially after the city changed to twenty-four-hour meters.

Rhoad tapped an ash and gripped the mike. In exactly six minutes and forty seconds it would be eight-forty
A
.
M
.,
and Communications Officer Patty Passman’s meter would expire.

It was possible that Smudge had a slight concussion, but he refused to be taken to the hospital, and Bubba refused to let Smudge drive. Bubba had to admit that he’d never driven a truck quite as nice as Smudge’s and he felt the bitterness once again, a resentment that had pickled a part of Bubba since the beginning of time. In his own way, Smudge was no different from all who had mocked and wounded Bubba throughout his life.

“Some good buddy you are,” Bubba muttered because Smudge seemed asleep. “Sell me that piece-of-shit Jeep. Sabotage Bay 8 so you can win the competition every month. Get your free packs of cigarettes and sell ’em to me.”

“You say something?” Smudge mumbled as Bubba turned into Smudge’s driveway, where Bubba had left his crappy Jeep last night.

“I guess you owe me a thousand dollars,” Bubba told him.

Smudge suddenly became alert. He sat up straight in his seat and blinked several times, taking in his surroundings.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“In your driveway,” said Bubba. “Don’t be changing the subject on me, Smudge. I won.”

He started to say
fair and square
but saw his manufactured coon eyes glowing in trees.

“Won?” Smudge acted drugged. “Won what?”

“Our bet, Smudge.”

“What bet?”

“You know what bet!”

“Huh?” Smudge slurred. “Think I have amnesia. Don’t even know where we are. Don’t recognize a thing. Where are we?”

“Your expensive house in Brandermill!” Bubba wanted to give Smudge a more serious concussion. “The one with the swimming pool and the brand-new Range Rover in front. Because you don’t give a shit about buying
American or being loyal to Philip Morris who doesn’t pay you enough to live like this! So you’re cheating, lying, stealing all over the world!”

Smudge grappled with the door handle and almost fell getting out of the truck. Bubba got Half Shell out and she jumped into the back of his Jeep. Smudge’s wife boiled out the front door to assist Smudge. She threw Bubba a menacing look as he backed out of the driveway. He didn’t care. He didn’t stop to explain. He sped through Smudge’s rich neighborhood with its big homes and wooded lots. He darted out on Midlothian Turnpike and passed everyone.

Bubba was having a hard time staying awake, but this didn’t stop him from driving aggressively. He wouldn’t let anyone into his lane. If someone got too close to his rear bumper, he slowed down more abruptly than he usually did.

He turned off his CB because there was no good buddy to talk to anymore. He didn’t raise Honey on the two-way because he would be seeing her soon enough. He unplugged his phone so it wouldn’t ring.

At Cloverleaf Mall, misfortune, or perhaps bad karma, began to swarm in. It started with a tattooed woman on a Harley-Davidson. She thundered around Bubba, flying between two lanes, dyed blond hair streaming out from her bright red helmet.

“Hey!” Bubba yelled as if anyone could hear. “What the fuck you think you’re doing?”

The woman rode on. Bubba sped up. He wove through traffic and floor-boarded it after her, squealing off on Oak Glen after she did and backtracking to Carnation and Hioaks, past the Virginia Department of Corrections Headquarters, and down Wyck Street and over to Everglades Drive.

Bubba was too exhausted, his mood too foul, to realize the woman was having a good time with him. When she shot back onto Midlothian Turnpike, Bubba took the turn too wide and didn’t bother checking for cars. Horns blared. People cursed. An old woman in a Toyota Corolla pointed her finger at him like a gun and fired.

A city police cruiser darted in behind Bubba, blue-and-red lights flashing in Bubba’s rearview mirror. This time Officer Budget yelped his siren as he pulled Bubba into the same Kmart where they had met before.

C
OMMUNICATIONS
O
FFICER
P
ATTY
Passman was overweight, with prematurely gray hair and bad skin. She was single, antisocial, and suffered from hypoglycemia, but she was no fool. She, too, knew that her parking meter on 10th Street was about to expire.

If she didn’t get to her car before Otis Rhoad, he would anchor yet one more ticket beneath her wiper blade. What was it now? An average of two a week at sixteen dollars each? Of course she would be better off parking in the nice new safe parking deck one street over, but there were no spaces left today. Whenever this happened she was forced out on the street, where Rhoad was always chalking tires and stalking expired meters.

Officer Budget recognized the red Jeep Cherokee immediately and couldn’t believe he was pulling it again in the same damn parking lot. What was wrong with this guy? Was he doing it on purpose? Did he have some kind of dysfunction like those people who were always getting sick so they could go to the doctor?

The Jeep pulled into the Kmart parking lot, in front of First Union Bank, same as last time. Budget got out and
approached the driver’s door. Bubba was wearing camouflage. He was glassy-eyed and filthy. A dog was in a pen in the back. Budget rapped on the glass with his portable radio. Bubba rolled down his window.

“Step out of the car,” Budget said.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll just give you my license and registration like last time, Officer Budget. I’ve been up all night lost in the woods coon hunting.”

The racial slur was astonishing.

“Not a good time to say something like that, Mr. Fluck,” Budget said in an icy voice. “How many you catch, huh? You hang ’em from trees or shoot ’em?”

“We get ’em in trees if we can,” Bubba said. “It’s not legal to shoot ’em right now.”

Budget jerked open the door and looked down at Bubba. He wanted to beat him up. It occurred to him that he might be able to get away with it since this was Rodney King in reverse. But they weren’t in California.

“Once we get ’em up in the trees,” Bubba was talking too much because his nerves were frayed, “we shine a light in their eyes. Course, it’s the dogs that get them first, really. The dogs track ’em down.”

Budget looked back at Half Shell. The dog seemed docile enough.

“And just what kind of dog? Pit bulls? Dobermans?” Budget hatefully said.

“No, no. Coon dogs.”

“That’s a
coon dog
in the back?”

“One of the best.”

Budget continued to stare at Half Shell. She stared back. She started barking and tried to break out of her pen.

“You sit right here and don’t you move.” Budget backed away from the Jeep. “And that dog gets out, you’re in a lot of trouble.”

Passman was about to dash out to her car when 218 sounded in her headphones.

“Unit 218. Traffic stop,” Budget let her know.

“Go ahead, Unit 218.” Passman was stressed as she looked up at the clock.

“Sixty-eight hundred block Midlothian Turnpike with Boy-Union-Boy-hyphen-Adam-Henry.”

“Ten-4, 218 at 0748 hours,” Passman said, getting desperate.

Bubba punched in the cigarette lighter and noticed the tip of his .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda protruding from underneath his seat. Fear seized him. He broke into a cold sweat. He had a concealed weapon and no permit for such.

He kicked at the revolver, trying to shove it out of sight. It resisted his efforts, stainless steel glinting in plain view. Bubba slowly sneaked his right hand down to the floor, but his arm wasn’t long enough to reach the gun unless he bent over or got on the floor. He knew it would not be a good idea to give the impression he was hiding something or had hidden something under his seat.

Bubba shoved some more and realized that his monster revolver was hung up on something. He envisioned the release lever or a bolt or maybe an exposed spring pushing against the trigger. He imagined rotted fabric caught in the hammer. With the slightest motion the gun would go off.

Brazil had gotten off to a miserable start. He was hot. Gnats had begun to pay attention to him. His urge to use the bathroom overrode decorum and he’d finally relieved himself behind azalea bushes near a plot of realistic tree-shaped markers that had something to do with the Wood-men of the World.

Brazil was tired of waiting for Weed to show up. Brazil couldn’t bear to admit that West had been right. Worse, he had to tell the radio room he needed a ride. The thought was awful.

All cops on the air and people with scanners would know Brazil was alone on foot in Hollywood Cemetery. He could hear the jokes. He could imagine the sniggers.
The pretty boy’s been reassigned to the dead beat.

“Unit 11,” Brazil got on the air.

“Go ahead, 11,” Patty Passman quickly came back.

“At Hollywood Cemetery. Need a unit to 10-25 me here.”

“Ten-4, 11, 0749 hours. 562.”

“Unit 562,” Rhoad came back.

Brazil recognized Talk in a Box’s unit number and cringed.
Oh please don’t ask him to pick me up.

“Five-six-two. Need you to 10-25 a party at Hollywood Cemetery ASAP.” Passman’s voice was strained as it came back.

Passman had fabricated calls in the past to divert Rhoad from her illegally parked car, and he wasn’t about to fall for it this time.

“What’s your 10-20?” Passman asked Rhoad over the air.

“Unit 562. Broad and Fourteenth,” he answered.

“Ten-4, 562, 0750 hours.”

“Unit 562,” he got back to her.

“Five-six-two.”

“Unit 562,” he said. “Got to make one stop first. Can 10-30 11 with an estimated 10-26 of 0830 hours.”

“Eleven,” Brazil shoved his way on the air. “Radio, can you send another unit? Need to get out of here long before then.”

Passman was in a panic as she glanced up at the clock. She frantically stuffed the other half of a chocolate eclair into her mouth.

“Eleven, that’s 10-10,” she informed Brazil. “All other units are 10-6.”

“Can you 10-9 that?”

“All other units are 10-6,” she repeated.

It was a lie. Everyone on the air knew radio traffic had been light so far, with no indication whatsoever that all other units, or even half of them, were tied up.

“Ten-12.” She told Brazil to stand by.

“Eleven.” Brazil’s voice was getting irritated. “Ten-5 562 and ask his 10-20.”

“Five-six-two.” Rhoad didn’t wait for the message to be relayed, since he clearly heard what unit 11 asked and was capable of being direct. “Ten-20’s Broad and Ninth.”

“Well, can you 10-25 me now or not?”

“Ten-10. Got to make a stop first.”

“Radio, can you please get me another ride?” Brazil asked again.

“Ten-10, 11. Five-six-two’s en route.”

“Five-six-two. No I’m not. I got to make a stop first.”

Passman finished the eclair.

“I need someone to 10-25 me ASAP,” Brazil answered back.

“Five-six-two. Can’t do it, 11.”

Mikes began clicking as other cops on the air voiced their amusement and encouraged Rhoad and Brazil to keep it up.

“Units 562 and 11,” Passman snapped into her microphone. “Ten-3.”

Passman’s order to
stop transmitting
brought about complete silence, but only temporarily.

“Five-six-two.” Rhoad could not stop. He was addicted. “Could you 10-9 that?” he said.

“Ten-3.” Passman ordered him for the last time, in the secret language of cops, to shut up.

“Eleven?” Rhoad could not.

There was no response.

“Eleven?” Rhoad repeated, talking faster, doing his best to outrun Communications Officer Passman, whose habit it was to cut him off and speak unkindly whenever she could. “Everything 10-4?”

“No!” Passman blurted into her mike. “Everything’s not 10-4, unit 562! It’s
10-10!”
she exclaimed.

Her hands were shaking. She felt faint. Patty Passman was furious at a damn city that had no parking for loyal employees like her who worked eight-hour shifts in the windowless, dimly lit radio room, talking to lump-heads like Otis Rhoad. Her blood sugar spiked. Insulin dumped.

Her blood sugar went crashing lower than before. Her vision blacked out and she almost fainted when she jumped to her feet, turning over her coffee. Other dispatchers answered other calls as she ran out of the radio room.

Officer Budget had been waiting ten minutes for Communications Officer Passman to get back to him. Budget finally got another dispatcher to run a 10-27 and 10-28 on Bubba’s red Jeep.

Budget was disappointed but not surprised to learn that Butner U. Fluck IV’s driver’s license was still valid through 2003 with no restrictions, and that the Jeep continued to be registered to the same party with an address on Clarence Street in the city.

“Shit,” Budget said.

He climbed out of his cruiser and approached the Jeep again, pleased to find Bubba seemed appropriately scared for once.

“I’m charging you with reckless driving,” Officer Budget said severely, doing his best to make the asshole feel even worse. “But you’re lucky it’s not a lot worse. So Mr. Fluck, head . . .”

“Please,” Bubba interrupted, holding up an arm as if he were about to be struck.

“About time you showed some manners,” Budget said, returning Bubba’s identification and registration.

Passman’s stubby feet rang loudly on worn metal steps as she raced up to the street, her heart startled like a deer or a duck fired upon. Her chest heaved as she shoved through double glass doors.

Rhoad was parking his patrol car next to her 1989 white Fleetwood Cadillac. The toe of her left New Balance jogging shoe caught on a crack in the sidewalk. She stumbled but caught herself, flailing and out of alignment.

“Stop!” she yelled at Rhoad as he approached her car, ticket book in hand, pen out. “
No!”
she screamed.

The digital reading clearly showed the time on the meter had expired.

“Sorry,” Rhoad told her.

“You’re not sorry, you son of a bitch!” Passman jabbed her finger at him as she fought to catch her breath.

Rhoad was unflappable as he filled in the meter number, the vehicle make and license plate number, and the mode, which in this case was an
A
for automobile. Rhoad slipped the ticket inside its envelope. He tucked it under the wiper blade. Passman moved closer to him, glaring, panting, sweating, her blood roaring. She drilled small dark homicidal eyes into him.

“I would have gotten here sooner and moved my car if you could shut the fuck up on the air!” she bellowed. “It’s your goddamn fault! It’s always your goddamn fault, you stupid, cow-brained loser, cross-eyed, dickless, son-of-a-mother-fucking-bitch-dumb-fuck!”

She marched to her Cadillac and snatched the summons off the windshield. She violently wadded it in his face and stuffed it down the front of his neatly pressed uniform shirt, knocking loose his clip-on tie.

“Now you’ve done it,” Rhoad indignantly told her.

She flipped him a double bird.

“You’re under arrest!” he exclaimed.

Traffic slowed, people ready for a good fight on an otherwise meaningless Wednesday morning.

“Stuff it up your ass!” Passman screamed.

“Go, girlfriend!” a woman called out from her Acura.

Rhoad fumbled with the handcuffs on the back of his Sam Browne belt as Passman yelled more obscenities, her blood sugar dipping lower into its dark crevice of irrationality and violence as an audience gathered and encouraged her.

Rhoad grabbed Passman’s wrists. She kicked him in both shins and spat. He sputtered, wrenching her left arm behind her back as her right fist knuckle-punched him in the neck. Rhoad had not handcuffed anyone in many years, and steel cracked against Passman’s wrist bone as he
snapped and missed. Passman howled in pain as he jerked and smacked and steel jaws finally locked around her wrist and bit hard.

“Do it! Do it!” someone yelled from a black Corvette.

Passman’s free hand grabbed Rhoad between his legs and twisted.