LITMIR.BIZ

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Tate, who’d done a trifecta, although not all at one time, he was the only other gunman on the force who’d wiped three shadows off the wall.

      “Okay, Steve, okay. Noted.” The Chief of Ds looked around for raised hands. “Anybody else?”

      The ginger gunslinger remained standing and continued as if the Chief of Ds hadn’t said anything. “And I further observe, Chief, that you and that Chinaman police chief and that fucking mayor all showed up this morning on the TV looking pretty snappy, like you’d been at a restful spa for a week or two, napping flat out on your back like human beings, then getting all barbered up for the cameras. You tired, Chief? You get your beauty rest last fucking night when I was sitting in the Brickworks pissing in a paper cup? Observe me that one.”

      “Ah, ah, also noted.” The Chief of Ds licked his lips. He wasn’t going to tangle with a gunslinger with three notches on his gun butt. He looked around and focused on the tall masked black detective seconded from the duty desk. “Marcus, questions, obs?”

      The tall detective stood up and reluctantly slipped down his mask. “What are we supposed to do about OT? I got about a hundred overtime hours in and —”

      Someone yelled, “Sit down, you fucking ass meatball.”

      Someone called, “You do-dick motherfucker.”

      The tall detective turned, “Hey, I know it’s tough this girl’s in a coma, but, hey, I’m not, and my family’s gotta eat, right?”

      A woman’s voice from behind Ray Tate shouted, “Sit down, you fucking duty-desk hump-assed motherfucker.”

      There were hoots and hisses.

      Another woman charger yelled, “Yeah, have some fucking respect, you fucking double douche.”

      The black detective said to the Chief of Ds, “What the fuck was she doing, Chief, going out alone, down by the river? At night? How stupid was she?”

      “Yo,” a woman’s voice from the back of the room said. “Whoa the fuck up.”

      The tall black detective turned his head and looked into the rows behind him. “You think she’s bright, this one, Marty? The river? At night? She’s a dumb enough to be a kiddie cop.”

      A uniformed black woman from the Youth Services team launched herself through two rows of chairs, her shoulder taking him in the kidney, sacking him as if he were a daydreaming quarterback. Both went down. Chairs clattered and skittered across the tile floor. The Chief of Ds stepped away from the podium and pulled up his mask as though he didn’t want to be polluted by the scent of sudden cop violence.

      “Ten bucks on the chick, Picasso,” Comartin said to Ray Tate. “You think she likes iambic pentameter?”

      Ray Tate laughed. He watched the Chief of Ds and the task force leaders look at one another. The woman from Youth sat on the detective’s chest, her knees pinning his arms down, rocking it to him first-class with a measured metronome of thoughtful lefts and rights. It was bloody, there were teeth. It sounded like meat. “No bet.”

      Four buff heavies from the door squad casually stepped into it. It took three of them to move the youth officer off the duty-desk hump. She really didn’t want to leave the job unfinished. Ray Tate could tell the doormen just loved the black woman, they were talking softly to her, calling her Marty, patting her over to make sure she wasn’t injured. She was swearing and heaving. The fourth doorman slung the limp detective over his shoulder and headed for the door, whistling.

      The chairs were marshalled up; the room buzzed with laughter and comments. The Chief of Ds banged the side of his fist on the podium. “Not a fucking word of this gets out. I see any of this in the media, everybody in this fucking room is riding a pencil until you retire.” He shook his head. “Fuck sakes.”

      The chief hammer from Homicide whispered into the Chief of Ds’ ear. The hammer’s name was Bob Hogarth but he was called Hambone. A legend was that on his first murder, a hubby-on-wife bludgeoning with no weapon found and the husband bobbing and weaving pretty good, he’d tracked back a lengthy grocery list from two days previous and saw a frozen ham bought on sale. He got a warrant for the undisposed garbage and the contents of the house, detailing refrigerators, freezers, and other receptacles where frozen meat might be contained. After the search turned up the hambone in the garbage, he introduced himself to the husband. “Detective Robert Hogarth, of the … Hamicide Squad.” “Fuck,” the husband blurted, slumping.

      The Chief of Ds stepped back. Hambone Hogarth had a different kind of weight: his team was four for four on taking down cop killers dead. No one who’d ever killed a city cop on his watch was alive and doing time. He was smart and he knew cops: he had no mask, his suit was rumpled, he had bed-head, and he hadn’t shaved. He’d been seen in the streets, knocking doors, visiting victims’ families personally because he had a lot of manpower off sick. He lit off a whistle. “Okay, kids, the program’s over. Decision of the judges? Unanimous. Marty Frost gets the title, she goes to the welterweight finals.”

      Another round of applause and whistles and the task force began seating themselves.

      “Aw riiii,” Hogarth said, and the room quietened. “We’re getting some help. State’s sending us some bodies. We got some auxiliaries, some kids from the academy. There’ll be teams listed up on the board tomorrow. Everyone report here, seven a.m. We’ll have all the prints from the bottles back, and we’ll have a roster up, once we see how many bodies are getting borrowed to us. We’ll keep up Volunteers surveillance by day, catch them for anything, traffic, spitting on the sidewalk, public mopery. But we bring ’em in and sweat them for the murders.” He looked around. “If the girl wakes up and fingers the mayor as the guy, we can all go home, done the good job. Until then ...” He simpered, “We thuuuck it up.”

      There was scattered laughter. One charger in the back said, in a high-pitched voice and a lisp, “But what about the moneys ... The over-thime? ... I needs a Bra-thill-ian waxing, I gots ex-penthess.”

      Another said, “Keep the money, dude. Just pair me up with that cool chick over there behind Ray Tate. Where you from, honey?”

      And Djuna Brown said, “Paris, bongo. I be from beatnik life.”

      Ray Tate felt her light, fragrant hand on his shoulder and a soaring in his chest. But he made his face bland, twisted in his chair and looked at her deadpan.

      For a moment her heart dropped. He’d forgotten her, moved on.

      Then Comartin said, “Fuck, Picasso, that looks like the chick you sketched this morning.”

      Djuna Brown smiled.

      Chapter 8

      They stood with Brian Comartin and Martinique Frost in the parking lot. The youth officer used tissues and spit to get blood off her knuckles. She’d opened the skin pretty good. A broken bloody tooth fell from the cuff of her uniform tunic. They all looked down at it for a few moments.

      “Wow, that was ... Wow.” Comartin was in awe. “Ah, I’m Brian Comartin, half a traffic cop, maybe, but all poet. You, ah ... This is Ray Tate, and ...”

      Djuna Brown was a little in awe, too, of the stocky black cop. She’d seen violence but never delivered with such righteous determination. “Trooper Sergeant Brown? Djuna? Ah, with the State?” She spoke tentatively, as if she needed Marty Frost’s permission to be that.

      Marty Frost, blowing softly on her right-hand knuckles, shook hands all around, awkwardly using her left. “Pleased.” She looked pretty happy in the afterglow.

      Comartin said, “You, ah ... Wow.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her and kept glancing down at the bloody broken tooth.

      Ray Tate and Djuna Brown glanced at each other, amused. The fat policeman shuffled like a schoolboy. Marty Frost stared at him as though she’d never actually personally spoken to a stout white poet before. They were the about the same age and height, and about the same build, but Marty Frost had an

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