Hornet's Nest (15 page)

T
he Presto Grill was an acronym for Peppy Rapid Efficient Service Tops Overall and was not in a good part of town. Every cop in the greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg area knew that Hammer and West ate breakfast at the Presto every Friday morning. This was monitored far more closely than the cops supposed either woman knew, for there wasn’t an officer interested in survival who would take even the slimmest chance that something bad might happen to the chief or deputy chief on his beat.

The small grill looked as it had in the forties, when it was built. It was on West Trade Street and surrounded by eroded parking lots, just down from the Mount Moriah Primitive Baptist Church. Hammer preferred walking from headquarters when the weather was nice, as it was this day. West never walked when she could ride, but it was not her call.

“Nice suit,” Hammer said to West, who had opted to give her uniform a day off and was dressed in a red blouse and a bright blue pants suit. “Why do you never wear skirts?” Hammer asked her.

It was not a criticism, just curiosity. West had a very nice figure and slender legs.

“I hate skirts,” West said, breathing hard, for Hammer did not walk at a normal pace. “I think hose and high heels
are a male conspiracy. Like binding feet. To cripple us. Slow us down.” She breathed.

“Interesting,” Hammer considered.

David One Officer Troy Saunders spotted them first and was instantly palsied by indecision as he quickly turned off on Cedar Street, out of sight. Did he alert his buddies out here? He was reliving the nightmare of Hammer’s surprise appearance at roll call, and her severe warning about cops following people and harassing, spying, tailing no matter the motive. Wouldn’t it be harassment in the chief’s eyes if he, Saunders, instigated her and West being spied upon, or tailed, during lunch? Christ. Saunders came to a dead halt in an All Right parking lot, his heart out of control.

He checked his mirrors and scanned parked cars, deliberating. It wasn’t worth the risk, he decided. Especially since he had been right there and had heard every word Hammer had said to Goode. The chief sure as hell could check roll call and know for a fact that Saunders had been sitting three chairs away from her. She’d be all over his ass for insubordination, for disobeying a direct order. He was certain that her eyes had burned through him when she’d said,
Next time, it will cost you
. Saunders raised no one on his radio. He parked in the farthest corner of the pay lot and smoked.

By twenty minutes past noon, the regulars had found their favorite stools lining the Formica counter inside the grill. Gin Rummy was the last to sit, the usual banana in his back pocket that he planned to save for later on in the day when he got hungry again while driving his red-and-white Ole Dixie taxicab.

“You can fix me a hamburger?” Gin Rummy asked Spike at the grill.

“Yeah, we can fix you a hamburger,” Spike said, pushing the bacon press.

“Know it’s early.”

“Man, it’s not early.” Spike scraped clean an area of the
grill, and slapped down a frozen hamburger patty. “When’s the last time you looked at a clock, Rummy?”

His friends called him that for short. Rummy smiled, shaking his head sheepishly. He usually came in for breakfast but was running a little late today. Seems like those two white ladies usually came in for breakfast, too. Maybe that was the problem. Everything was confusing. He shook his head again, grinned, and adjusted his banana so he didn’t bruise any part of it.

“Why you carry your banana like that?” asked his neighbor, Jefferson Davis, who operated a yellow Caterpillar and still bragged that he had helped build USBank. “Put it in your shirt pocket.” He tapped the pocket on Rummy’s red-checked shirt. “Then you don’t sit on it.”

Other men at the counter, and there were eight of them, got into a deep discussion about Rummy’s banana and Davis’s suggestion. Some were eating beef tips and gravy, others sticking with the fried livermush, collard greens, and cheese grits.

“I put it in my shirt pocket and I see it the whole time I’m driving.” Rummy was trying to explain his philosophy. “Then I eat it sooner. See? It never makes it till three or four o’clock.”

“Then stick it in the glove box.”

“No room in there.”

“What about the passenger’s seat up front? All your fares ride in back, right?” Spike set down the burger, all the way, thousand island instead of mayo, double American cheese, and fried onions on the side.

“Won’t work. Sometimes bags go up front.” Rummy neatly cut his lunch in half. “Or I pick up four fares at the bus station, and one of ’em gotta go up there. They see a banana on the seat, think I eat on the job.”

“Well, you do, man.”

“That’s so.”

“The truth.”

“Tell it, brother.”

“Not with no one in with me, I don’t.” Rummy shook
his head, chewing, the banana remaining in his back pocket where it belonged.

Hammer did not recall the Presto being this loud. She eyed the men at the counter, halfway expecting them to get into a fight any minute. Seems one told another to stick something somewhere and others were agreeing. She hadn’t been in a good fight in a while, if she didn’t count arguments with Seth. Of course, she was no fool. She knew there were at least twenty patrol cars cruising the area, watching every bit of Cobb salad she speared with her fork. It was annoying, but she didn’t blame her troops and in fact appreciated their attention and care. She found it touching, even though she knew the motive was their butts and not her well-being, really.

“I probably should have confronted her in private,” Hammer was saying.

West wished Hammer had reprimanded Goode in front of the entire police department, all sixteen hundred of them, or at a televised city council meeting.

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” West diplomatically said, as she finished her Reuben and fries.

“I swear, the food here really is the best,” said Hammer. “Look at those hash browns. Everything from scratch.”

West watched Spike cooking, flinging, slamming away, as men on their stools continued arguing about where to hide stolen goods, or maybe drugs. The glove box. Under the seat. On their persons. West couldn’t believe how brazen criminals were these days. While it was true that she and her chief were both in plain clothes, everyone knew who they were, and West’s portable radio was upright on the table, chattering away. Did these dudes care; were they even remotely intimidated by the law?

“Tell you what,” one of them railed on, jabbing a finger at the man in the red-checked shirt. “You want to know what to do with it? I’m here to tell you. Eat it. Quick before anybody sees. Then what’s anybody gonna say ’bout it? Huh?”

“Can’t say nothing.”

“Not one thing.”

“You got that right.”

“Sitting on it ain’t the answer, Rummy,” Spike spoke his mind. “Besides, it’s not like you can’t get the same thing here. High quality, imported, good price. Fresh every morning.” He folded a ham and cheese omelet. “But oh no. Every stinking day you come in with the same damn thing stuffed in your pocket. Like what? Maybe you think you’re impressing the women or something? Make ’em think you’re happy to see ’em?”

Everyone laughed, except West, head of investigations for the city. She was going to get some of her guys on this right away and bust this ring wide open, trace it back to Colombia, get the DEA or ATF in on it, if need be.

“Drugs,” she mouthed to her boss.

Hammer was preoccupied and still so angry at Goode that Hammer’s blood felt hot as it raced around her body. How dare that lamebrain overpromoted bitch jeopardize the reputation of the entire police department and of women everywhere. Hammer could not remember the last time she was this furious. West was enraged, too, Hammer could tell, and found this somewhat soothing. Not many people understood what it was like to have the chief’s responsibility and stress, and West had integrity, damn it. She knew how wrong it was to abuse power.

“Can you believe it?” West asked her, angrily crumpling her napkin as she glared at the drug dealer in his red-checked shirt, with a banana in his back pocket. “Can you believe people?”

Hammer shook her head, about to boil over. “No,” she said. “I never cease to be amazed. . . .”

Both of them got quiet as the call came over the radio.

“Any unit in the area, six hundred block West Trade. Robbery in progress, armed white male on a bus, robbing passengers . . .”

Hammer and West were on their feet and running out the door to the Greyhound bus terminal next door. David One units were responding, but it seemed not one car was within blocks. This baffled Hammer as she ran with some difficulty in high-heeled Ferragamos. West was slightly behind her. They sped around the station to a lane on the side where a
forty-seven-passenger bus filled to capacity was idling, with doors open wide.

“We’ll get on pretending to be passengers,” West whispered as they slowed their pace.

Hammer nodded, knowing exactly how this would go down. “I’ll go first,” she said.

This was not quite what West had in mind, but the last thing she intended to do now or ever was imply that Hammer had forgotten how to be a cop. Hammer’s black pumps were loud on metal steps as she smiled, climbing aboard, oblivious and on her way somewhere. People were terrorized in their seats as the sinister young white male made his way down the aisle, collecting wallets, cash, jewelry, and dropping them in a plastic trash bag.

“Excuse me,” Hammer politely said to anyone listening.

Magic the Man whipped around and fixed on the fine lady in her fine black suit as she spotted his gun. Her smile faded and she froze, as did another lady right behind her. This was getting better. These bitches looked rich.

“Is this the bus for Kannapolis?” the older bitch in black stammered.

“This is the bus for you giving me your money.” Magic jabbed the .22 pistol her way.

“Yes sir. I don’t want a problem,” the lady in black said.

Magic thought she seemed confused, as if she might pass out or pee in her pants. She shakily moved closer to him, as she rooted around in her big black leather pocketbook. Magic might just take that too, for his mama. Maybe those bad black shoes, too. Wonder what size they were? He found out as much as he would ever need to know about those shoes when the bitch suddenly kicked him so hard in the shin with a knife-pointed toe that he bit his tongue. She suddenly had a big pistol out and was poking it against his head as his gun instantly vanished from behind, and then he was facedown in the aisle, and the other bitch was jerking his wrists together and wrapping them tight with a flex cuff.

“Man, oh man. That’s too tight,” Magic said as his shin throbbed. “I think my leg’s broke.”

Innocent passengers on the bus stared slack-jawed, in
speechless wonder as the two well-dressed ladies led that son-of-a-bitch murderer off into the bright afternoon. Police cars were suddenly roaring up, blue and red lights whirling, and all on the bus knew the ladies somehow had made that happen, too.

“Thank you Jesus,” someone thought to say.

“Lord be praised.”

“It’s a miracle.”

“Batman and Robin.”

“Hand that bag over here so I can get my gold chain back.”

“I want my ring.”

“Everybody, remain where you are and don’t touch anything,” said a cop as he boarded.

Officer Saunders hoped the chief wouldn’t notice him as he climbed out of his cruiser.

“Where were you?” she asked him as she briskly walked past. She then commented to West, “Don’t you find that a little odd? Usually they’re all over the place when we’re around.”

West didn’t understand it, either, but she did have more respect for the chief’s skirts and pumps. Not only had they not slowed her up enough to matter, but the shoes, at least, had come in handy. She was proud of her boss as they walked back inside the Presto to pay their bill. The men at the counter were smoking now, still arguing, and oblivious to what had just gone down next door at the Greyhound station. Not that a bunch of drug dealers cared about innocent people getting robbed, West thought. She threw them another menacing look as her boss drank one last swallow of her unsweetened iced tea and glanced at her watch.

“Well, I guess we’d better be getting back,” Hammer suggested.

Andy Brazil had heard about the incident at the bus station when it crackled over his scanner while he was working on a substantial story about the long-term consequences of violence on victims and the relatives left behind. By the time
he ran down the escalator, got into his car, and raced to the six hundred block of West Trade, the drama apparently had ended in an arrest.

He was trotting past the Presto Grill when West and Hammer were walking out of it. Startled, Brazil stopped and stared at both of them. In the first place, he didn’t understand why two of the most prominent people in the city would eat in such a dive. Nor could he fathom how they could continue with lunch when lives were in danger not fifty yards away, and they had to have known. West was carrying her police radio.

“Andy.” Hammer nodded her greeting to him.

West shot him a glance that dared him to ask questions. He noted that both were in handsome business suits and that the chief’s black leather handbag included a secret compartment for her pistol. He supposed her badge was somewhere in there, too, and he liked the way her calves knotted as she briskly walked off. He wondered what West’s legs looked like as he hurried on to the bus station. Cops were busy taking statements, and this was no small chore. Brazil counted forty-three passengers, not including the driver, who proved to be a pretty great interview.