Crystal Meth Cowboys (2 page)

"Rodriguez looked like he was high," said Wes. "Should we have rousted him?"

Bell worked his teeth over his lower lip. "Naw. We'll wait till he really fucks up." A woman in a Dodge Polara slowed when she saw them bearing down. Bell whipped around her in the number two lane. "That's the great thing about being a small town cop."

Wes inhaled the familiar putrescence of marine air. "What is?"

Bell dropped his voice a notch as he searched the skies. "You always get another at bat."

-----

The massive, dark green C-141B transport plane thundered a thousand feet overhead, the heat of its great engines bonding air into nitric acid in its wake, so close that Wes could make out rivets in the undercarriage. It seemed to pass by forever.

Bell cocked his neck back and drank in the spectacle with shuddering glee. "Ohhh tu tu tu tu
tu
!" he said.

The LTD sat parked on a dirt ag road alongside a kale field, a mile from the beach and the tip of the frayed elbow of central California that jutted out into the sea, creating a wind break for the tranquil beaches of Santa Barbara. Wes leaned up against the squad car. He raised the volume level of the talking brick on his gun belt in hopes of a call, though the jetwash smothered all sound. The giant plane banked west, heading back to McClintock Air Base and Missile Test Center for another touch and go.

Lyedecker's pulse was slowly returning to normal after the adrenaline rush of his first code 3 response. Not sure who or what they were pursuing, Wes had snicked off the leather strap that locked the Smith and Wesson nine millimeter semi-automatic in his holster as they raced down Playa Road, the siren screaming. Then Bell brodied to a stop on an empty ag road to watch a plane pass overhead.

Wes took in the spring green hills dashed with the lambent yellow of flowering bristle brush. A scarp of limestone cut across the final seaward hill like a sash. The ocean air eddied behind his ears, cooling him. The C-141 banked across the setting sun for a instant. Bell said, "Ewwwwww-hoo!" Wes shaded his eyes. The plane was too big to be graceful but, hanging just above the misty blue line of the horizon, the sun burning through the cockpit, it had a stolid majesty.

"The amazing thing isn't that people rape, rob and kill each other. That homies shoot it out in hospitals, fathers fuck their own children," said Bell, locked on the plane like radar. "That shit's been goin' on since day one. The amazing thing is…" Bell gazed upon the C-141 with the blissful assurance of the saved. "…that something that big and complicated ever gets airborne."

Wes shivered slightly in his short-sleeved shirt and watched the plane sink slowly behind the darkening mountains to the south.

-------

"Shouldn't we be out patrolling?" asked Lyedecker, peering into the plum-colored twilight. Forty-five minutes had passed, the sun had set and Bell was adjusting the treble on
Little Red Riding Hood
as they sat by the kale field.

"We are patrolling," said Bell. Sam the Sham sang, "Who's dat I see walkin' in dese woods?"

"But we're just sitting here."

"I'm
patrolling
my eyeballs up and down Playa Road," said Bell. "We're laying for Farmer John. He's due any minute." Bell continued before Wes could ask. "He's a test pilot at McClintock. Drives a black Corvette.
Fur
in excess of the posted limit."

"Well, if you know who he is…"

"Of course I know who he is!" said Bell, squinting his cheeks into polyps. "I got close enough to make his plates once."

"Well, if you know his identity and you have observed him violating the speed limit, why don't you just mail him a ticket?"

Bell eyed the rookie as if he had just lowered his pants and said he was lonesome. "Where's the sport in
that
?"

Wes Lyedecker did not reply.

Bell searched the glimmering outline of the distant road. "I just know we're gonna get a call." He clicked on the bawl-out speaker atop the unit, grabbed the mike and lowered his voice to a window-rattling basso profundo. "
Here
kitty, kitty, kitty," rumbled out over the kale field. Bell turned to Lyedecker. "That's what a six hundred pound canary says."

Wes forced a grin. He scratched an ear that didn't itch. "Why do they call him Farmer John?"

"12 Frank - Control"

Bell seemed perversely pleased. "
What
did I just tell you?" He cranked the ignition and spun moist soil off the back tires. "Control - this is 12 Frank."

Wes found that he really wanted an answer to his question, but felt the moment had passed. Bell pointed the unit east on Playa Road.

Chapter 2

"These are the low-income housing projects LBJ stuck us with during
The Great Society
," said Bell, using a Boston broken-jaw accent as he and Lyedecker strode down the ground floor walkway of a two-story apartment building. They passed a flower-patterned bedsheet hung from a curtain rod. Wes wiped spider silk from his forehead. A middle-aged black woman smoked a cigarette as she watched them from the end of the walkway.

Wes was conscious of the creak of their leather gunbelts as they advanced. How did cops ever sneak up on a suspect in these get-ups? He stole a glimpse of himself in the wavy glass of an apartment window. The short sleeves of his uniform shirt were too long to show his 'ceps.

They stopped in front of apartment 26. A plastic Big Wheel lay on its side next to a rusted hibache. Bell tapped a knuckle on the door. "Oh, Let-ty," he singsonged. "It's me again, Occifer Belllll."

Wes eyed the carport behind the apartment building next door. Several tatooed young males lounged around the open hood of old car, tall boys of malt liquor in hand. They were staring at him. Wes shifted the polaroid camera to his left hand, leaving his gun hand free.

"Shouldn't we call for back up?" he asked. The Academy taught that, on a percentage basis, domestic disturbance calls were the most perilous to officer safety.

Bell stopped tapping. He ignored the watching woman with the cigarette and turned to Wes. "Don't worry. Shithead ain't home."

Wes assumed this was a reference to the husband. "How can you be sure?"

Bell tweaked an eyebrow toward the carport. "Because he's leaning on the fender of that '71 Duster."

The door opened a crack and a nappy-headed little boy peered out at them with one eye. "Hey there, Artis, is your mama home?" asked Bell in a jolly voice. The little boy turned and ran back into the apartment. Bell swung the door open and stepped inside.

A fragile West Indian woman with long shiny black hair sat on an orange couch holding a bloody paper towel to her forehead. The little boy took up a position at her feet and observed them from behind a heavy, carved-wood coffee table.

Bell crossed to Letty and bent to her wound. The Department required officers to wear surgical gloves in any contact with blood but Bell peeled away the paper towel barehanded, bobbing from side to side, checking the laceration from different angles. Letty didn't flinch when Bell inched back the ochre skin above the cut and said, "Well, it don't look terminal. You may want stitches to reduce the scarring."

Letty nodded. Her little boy pulled a barbecue-flavor Dorito from a bag between his legs and mashed it into his teeth. Bell signaled Wes to take some pictures.

"Did Jerome do this to you?" Wes moved in with his camera. "Look up for a second, dahlin'," said Bell.

Letty looked up. Wes sighted through the lens finder and flashed the camera two feet from her face. She didn't blink. Wes stepped back. The little boy mugged at him, posing for his picture. "How did he get in?" said Bell.

Letty nudged a shoulder toward the sliding window in the kitchen. The glass in one panel was busted out, the pale yellow curtains pushed aside. "Were you cut when he broke the window?"

"He could have come in," said Letty. "Because the lock in the window it don't work. He could have come in. He don't have to break it." She got up and went to the kitchen
for another paper towel. Lyedecker heard a knock at the door and wheeled, his hand on his holster. A melodic voice called out, "Florence Jillison."

Bell groaned, but the corners of his mouth turned up as Florence Jillison entered. She was a woman in her middle 30's with a pert freckled nose, bright hazel eyes and blonde highlights in her boyishly-cut hair. She was wearing stone-washed jeans, a white silk scarf loosely knotted around her neck and a teal rayon blouse that struck just the right balance between the dark blue and bright green of her designer warm-up jacket. Letty edged out of the kitchen to stare.

"Thomas J. Bell, good to see you!" sang Florence as she crossed the room. Letty, Bell and Lyedecker stood and watched her approach, transfixed. "And who's
this
good looking young man?" she asked, giving Wes a bright-eyed once over.

Bell recoiled. "This peckerneck? He's a first day rookie, you don't want him."

Letty took a tenative step forward. "Letty, this is Florence Jillison. She's with the…Who is it this time?" Florence addressed Letty directly. "I'm with the Battered Women's Shelter."

Wes observed all this from a distance. This striking blonde woman had called him 'good looking'. Though Wes looked at his reflection as often as possible, he was not vain about his appearance. In fact he had no idea what he was going to see in the mirror or shop window the next time he looked. This was why compliments were so important to him. They confirmed a fleeting impression he had had. But he decided that Florence Jillison had probably been kidding.

Florence fussed over Letty's laceration, careful not to touch it. "Did your husband do this?"

"Ex-husband," said Bell.

"No, we're married," said Letty.

Bell jumped his long arms like a marionette. "You're still
married
to that weasel?"

Letty looked away. "He wouldn't never sign nothing."

Florence held out a shielding arm and escorted Letty to the couch. Artis sat twelve inches from the TV screen and watched a cartoon character's jaw move up and down. Florence sandwiched Letty's small-boned brown hand between her own. "Letty," she said, "There is a way out of this cycle of violence. We can get a restraining order. He won't be able to come within a hundred yards of you!"

"But he lives right over there," said Letty, pointing to the apartment building across the way.

Florence didn't miss a beat. "Which is why you and your son need to come live with us at the Shelter for a little while. Till we can get thing's straightened out."

Bell lowered his eyelids to half mast. Letty cocked her head and sucked in her lips as if tasting something sour.

"If not for yourself, then for your little boy."

"He would never hurt Artis," said Letty softly. She spun her frail neck toward the broken window and its pale yellow curtains. She hugged herself with bare arms. "I jus' can't leave right now. I jus' got the place fixed up," she said, sneaking another peak at the window. "I got some new curtains. At Sears, they were on special." Letty dipped her chin with an embarassed smile. "They're linen."

-----

The black woman with the cigarette was waiting for them on the gangway. "I hope you ain't buyin' Letty's bullshit lying stories," she said. Wes stopped to listen. "Cuz Jerome was definitely at home wit
me
." Bell pulled Lyedecker along. When they reached the front of the building Wes stole a furtive over-the-shoulder at the hardboys in the carport.

"Jesus, Reese, we're gonna have to get you a cow bell or something," said Bell.

Wes turned to his right and stopped abruptly, eye to eye with a shining equine black face.

"Reese used to be a second story man," said Bell. "That's how come he's so quiet."

Officer Cyril Reese - 6'2", 210, 25 to 30 - sidestepped Lyedecker and faced Bell. Wes was reminded of Tyronn Lee, the star tailback on his high school football team who used to sit by his locker after practice and oil his sculpted body for hours.

"And Bell used to be in show biz," said Reese. "That's how come he's such an asshole."

Bell chuckled, tucking his chin girlishly.

Wes wanted to turn and glare at the carport. It was the way he felt on the sidelines before a game, watching the opposing team watching Tyronn Lee run warm-up sprints on the field. Hey, boys. Look who's on my team. But Wes kept his focus on his senior officers and waited to be introduced.

"We're code four," said Bell.

Reese nodded and stole away.

-----

"I had trouble following that one, sir," said Wes.

"Oh yeah?", said Bell, flagging out his arm to stop an oncoming car. He pulled away from the curb and wheeled the Ford westbound on Hill Street.

"I don't see how we ever determined who assaulted Letty, or, even if, you know, she was actually assaulted."

Bell stopped at a stop sign. A minivan waited for them to cross. Bell pointed his right index finger at the van. When he had the driver's attention, he moved his index finger to the left. "Well, I'll tell ya," said Bell. "That has
got
to be the tenth time I been out there on a 415 and
Letty ain't filed charges yet." The minivan crossed the intersection. "So it don't much matter what we determined."

They cruised past rows of closely-packed two-story projects, coming alive at night, old people leaning over balustrades to watch the young people cavort below. "Must be check day," said Bell.

Wes spread his legs and bumped his left knee on the shotgun. Florence Jillison had still been counseling Letty when the cops left. Wes suspected that she would succeed where they had failed.

"Yer typikel female domestic abuse victim is-a always per-tectin' somethin'. A kid, a boyfriend, a puppy, somethin'," said Bell, his eyes on the road, shaking his head. "But Letty's the first one I ever met who was willing to give it up for Sears curtains."

Wes pried open the 10x12 inch metal case on the seat between them and dug out a blank incident report. He filled in the particulars at the top of the page; time reported, time responded, penal code violation number, officer name, unit number, date. He paused when he reached the oblong box marked 'Summary'. He didn't begin to know how to condense their recent call into two concise sentences.