The Ten-Mile Trials (11 page)

‘You should hear my guys,' Kevin chortled, ‘holding forth about “white cotton bloomers, embroidered ecru collar . . .”'

‘We memorized the whole damn thing,' Gary said, ‘right down to the buttons on the little leather shoes. And this afternoon, in the Reddi-Kash pawnshop out south of the Beltline, Wally's pretty sure he spotted the other two dolls.'

‘Wally's my other Krogstad,' Kevin said.

‘That's right, we do have two, don't we? You're brothers?'

‘Twins,' Gary said. He looks even younger when he smiles.

‘Awesome. Well, hey, guys, well done!'

‘We been eyeballing that shop for a while,' Gary said, ‘because one of the guys on patrol down there noticed that lately it seems to be unusually busy. So we got the sergeant to put it into BOLOs and leave it there a while.' Be On The Lookout lists get read out by the duty sergeant at the start of every shift. ‘Tell everybody, whenever you're down on the south side for any reason, drive by and watch it for a couple of minutes. We've seen some very nice merchandise passing through there. Gold jewelry, a lot of coins, high-end cameras.'

‘It's an old shop in a run-down building,' Kevin said, ‘always been a pretty sleepy place.'

‘I remember the Reddi-Kash,' I said. ‘Down on Southeast Twenty-First Street? It was there when I first started – I worked the graveyard in that section for one whole year. It was on the edge of town then, nothing beyond it but cornfields.'

‘Rutherford grew around it since,' Gary said.

‘For sure. Used to be run by an old guy named Ike. Wore sandals and walked like his feet hurt.'

‘Still is,' Gary said, ‘last I knew.'

‘Slow nights in the winter,' I said, ‘I used to stop in and shoot the shit with him. He'd give me whatever new skinny he had on the neighborhood, which in those days was kind of iffy. Seems to me there were a few beat-up rental houses, a bar, and a very messy machine shop . . . a roadhouse a little farther out.'

‘That area's cleaned up considerably now,' Gary said. ‘Got a C-Store, Chinese take-out place, beauty shop.'

‘OK, enough memory lane,' Kevin said. ‘What we need now is somebody to front some merch for us.'

‘Oh, please,' I said, ‘not another sting. Haven't we been stung enough for one year?'

‘This isn't like the one you did before,' Gary said. ‘Kevin told me about that. We don't need a team effort, just somebody to sell a few coins for us. And hang around the store for a while, watch what comes in.'

‘Why can't you do that yourself?'

‘I worked patrol on that beat till three months ago. Most of the people in the neighborhood know me.'

‘I don't know. We already all have more than we can handle. I don't like the idea of taking on some offbeat—'

‘We were thinking about Winnie,' Kevin said. ‘She'd be perfect.'

‘Winnie's just getting started in People Crimes. It's not a good time for her to—' Kevin had begun to wear a small self-satisfied smile. He sat and watched me, waiting for me to get it, and in spite of myself I began to see exactly what he had in mind.

Her name is Amy Nguyen. but everybody on the RPD calls her Winnie because when she started ‘Win' was about as close as the chief could come to pronouncing her Vietnamese name, Nguyen. She is small and pretty and looks fragile as a porcelain cup. Actually she's descended from boat people and is almost as tough as the redoubtable grandmother who got her to Minnesota. No question, she'd be the perfect person to walk into the pawnshop with ostensible family treasures in her bag.

I said, ‘We really don't have time for this kind of fooling around any more.'

‘I'm only asking for one day.'

‘Yeah, well . . . ask Ray.'

‘I did. He said if you OK'd it, he'd let her go for one day.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘If she's willing, one day.'

‘But you don't have to do it,' I told her, an hour later. ‘If you don't feel comfortable about it, say so.' Kevin and Gary had told her the story of the superfast break-ins and the dolls in the pawnshop. Pumped up and pleased with themselves, they brought her into my office to seal the deal.

She wasn't red-hot for it the way Rosie would be, but she didn't seem apprehensive either. After you get used to how small she is, the next thing you notice about Winnie is her poise – in the interplay of egos that is the Rutherford Police Department, she often seems like the only greyhound in a yard full of Pit Bulls. She listened as they described the missing goods, and asked thoughtfully, ‘You want me to stay under the radar or make sure I get noticed?'

Gary said, ‘Get noticed how?'

‘Go funky? Hair down my back and striped tights with hi-tops?'

Kevin's eyes lit up with joy – at last, a detective who shared his eye for street theater! When she helped us with the mugger last winter, he'd known Winnie as the marathon runner and martial-arts instructor who taught Rosie how to dodge. And she had been the decoy on the other team, the one we'd all hoped the mugger would pick, so that Winnie would get a chance to kick him behind the ear. That didn't work out, but the two women on the caper formed an unlikely friendship, and before long Rosie had persuaded Winnie to test for the detective division. She scored so high they made her take a couple of the tests over, and was ready and waiting to replace Darrell Betts when he went into the K-9 corps.

Now here she stood, showing Kevin that besides being strong and fast and decibels quieter than Rosie, she had a flair for undercover. I watched as he began to wonder how to get her switched to Property Crimes.

They took her into Kevin's office for a few minutes to get her ready for the assignment. Gary gave her a crash course in bisque dolls and described the long, dusty shelves and creaky wood floors of the Reddi-Kash pawnshop. Kevin got very involved in planning her outfit. He longed to see her in a brocade sheath and tight chignon, a sort of cut-rate Madame Chiang with a cigarette holder and strappy sandals. Winnie led him back to her original concept by telling him she had red satin hot pants to go with the hi-tops.

I answered a slew of emails and went back to the phone messages, trying not to get involved in any long-winded conversations. Now that I was Ben's ride home, I was antsy about my need to get out of there promptly at five. It made the last hour of work tense and tiring. I was beginning to understand the tightrope that is parenthood in our time.

At two minutes to five, holding the keys to my pickup, I was reaching to turn out the lights when Rosie Doyle appeared in my doorway and said, ‘I'm going to kill Bo Dooley.'

‘You'll have to do that on your own time, Rosie,' I said. ‘We're too busy for unscheduled executions during office hours and we're strictly forbidden to clock any overtime.' I flipped off the lights and stepped into the hall.

‘I'm serious,' Rosie said.

‘I see that.' I turned the key in my door and heard the deadbolt slide into the strike plate. ‘You seriously want to off the man you always knew was right for you but whom you never laid a glove on till his divorce was final?' I was quoting her directly, hoping to embarrass her out of continuing her present rant. ‘That Bo Dooley?'

‘Yeah. That one.'

‘What's he done?'

‘Screwed me up royally in court, while I was trying to do what you asked me to do for that Funk woman.'

‘You want to walk out with me, tell me about it?'

‘No,' she said, ‘I want to stand right here and tell you about it.' She watched me take two steps toward the stairs before she turned and trotted after me. ‘Jake? What's the matter, you mad at me?'

‘No. But I have to go get my kid and try to get him home before he gets hungry and starts doing his siren imitation.'

‘Oh, that's right, Trudy went back to work today, didn't she?'

‘Yes.' I paused at the top of the stairs. ‘You have to leave too. You got the memo I sent everybody, didn't you? The one about no more overtime?'

‘Yes. I'm already clocked out, Jake, I'm just following you around the building because I feel I should warn you that I'm going to roast my fiancé over a slow fire. You know what he did? I can't believe this! You know what he did?'

‘No. I thought you were going to tell me, but you're having too much fun yelling down the stairs. And I have to go.'

I took two steps down. She caught up with me and followed close by my side the rest of the way down, telling me the straight story, very fast, ‘He came into court today after Milo and I had the deal all set up. We'd told Judge Tollefson Gloria had no priors, she was the victim of domestic violence. Explained that she was willing to cooperate on a guilty plea and testify for the prosecution. We said, “She's desperate to quit using and get her child back, Your Honor.” The judge was buying it because he just wants to get his docket clear, what the hell? And her boyfriend was inadvertently helping our case, sitting there looking like a tattooed alligator . . .'

‘Six minutes after five,' I said, pushing open the tall glass doors, stepping out into smells of hot asphalt and barbeque. ‘Cut to the chase.'

‘OK, OK – we had all the groundwork laid and we were asking for a suspended sentence on the dope and pleading the meth down to possession – she could be out in a few months, clean and sober. Then Bo walked in and took the stand to testify that he'd rescued her from the house with bleeding facial injuries. He was good, all quiet and businesslike, till we started talking about the plea deal and the process for getting custody back, and then – oh, God, Jake, he just went apeshit. He said, “Don't you people understand that this woman is a meth addict? You have any idea how close to impossible it is to break that addiction?” Sneering . . . he as good as called the judge a fool and told the rest of us we were completely irresponsible if we even thought about entrusting a helpless child to a tweaker.'

We were in the parking lot now, standing next to my red pickup. I put my key in the driver's-side door and said, ‘What do you want from me, Rosie?'

‘Talk to him. Make him understand he's not a narc any more and he can't go swimming upstream like that.'

‘I already did that.'

‘You did?' She stared at me, round-eyed. ‘When? How did you know he . . .'

‘He phoned this morning to tell me he thought we were wrong to be helping Gloria plead down her sentence. I told him he better talk to his supervisor because I thought he must have misread his job description. Look, Rosie,' I slid into the seat, ‘why wouldn't Bo be dubious about this woman? His wife broke every promise she ever made to him.'

‘I know. But he can't keep fighting the system like this, it won't work.' Distractedly, she began pushing combs back into her springy hair. ‘God, when I think how good he was at the job he had. Come right down to it, I haven't done him any favors either, have I?'

I wasn't going to get into that swamp. ‘Just talk to him, Rosie.' I started the motor, so she may not have heard the last thing I said. ‘Try to get over being mad first.'

She was still standing in the parking lot, looking dissatisfied, when I pulled out. I drove to Maxine's house a tad faster than the law allowed. OK, ten miles over the absolute outside limit. I thought I could probably beat a speeding ticket if I had to, but I knew I couldn't head off Ben's penetrating wail of hunger if I didn't get him home in time for his six o'clock bottle.

Listening to Ben cry was still my personal equivalent of hanging by my thumbs from rusty barbed wire. Trudy kept telling me to get over it. ‘Or if you can't stand the noise, give him that pacifier I left at Maxine's house.'

‘Come on,' I said. ‘And let him look like a retarded dork with that thing hanging out of his face? I'm not going to do that to my own son.'

‘Then get used to it. It's just what he has to do to get what he needs,' she said. ‘What would you do if you lost the power of speech?'

‘Kick open a door, probably,' I said. ‘I understand what you're saying, but it still feels like I'm being punished.'

‘Poor pitiful Papa.' Goose pimples rose on her arms, though, and she shivered, rubbing them. ‘Come here and kiss me, will you?'

I kept my arms around her after. ‘What, are the pills giving you chills?'

‘No, it's . . . that word, I guess.'

‘What, “punished”?'

‘Yes. I've always hated it, and now that I have Ben' – she touched the edge of the kitchen cradle where he was sleeping – ‘it makes me think of your story about Big Bad Red.'

‘Don't,' I said. ‘It was stupid of me to tell you about her. Just wipe her right out of your mind.'

I only told her the story because we were having such a good time, one Friday night last summer, drinking wine after dinner. To watch a beautiful sunset, we carried an extra glass outside and sat under the big trees. I told some silly jokes for the pleasure of watching her giggle, and then something she said reminded me of the second foster mother I had after Maxine.

A large ugly woman with no warmth and no luck, she had a deadbeat husband, who was mostly absent, and two children of her own just entering their teens and beginning to give her grief. Probably my reputation as a bad boy had preceded me. I was still very angry about losing Maxine, and she had plenty of long-standing grudges from a lifetime of drudgery. For those reasons and who knows what others, I hadn't been in her house ten minutes before we had each begun to circle the wagons.

I can't remember her name because I never spoke it. In my mind, I called her Big Bad Red. She said she was going to teach me some manners. I showed her by my sneering silence that I didn't believe she had anything to teach anybody. I should have given a little more thought to how uneven the contest was. I was a pretty healthy kid but I was only ten, and she was a big woman. Before long, knocking me around had become one of her few pleasures. I wasn't going to beg, and she wasn't going to put up with my attitude.