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Authors: Loren D. Estleman
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of the barricade.
“Could be she’s incognito. You know, dark glasses and the Monday mink. One of us could go back and check. You’re on duty, so why don’t I volunteer.”
Someone took another whack at the guitar. A flock of seagulls took off from one of the loading docks, creaking like hinges.
The sergeant stirred, drew three yards of blue bandanna handkerchief from a slash pocket, and blew his nose with enthusiasm. The honk would have sounded loud if it hadn’t followed the guitar lick. It might have been some kind of signal. His partner tossed his cigarette, turned his back on me, and walked down
toward the river. He had that swagger you just can’t help with the Sharper Image for Cops winter catalogue swinging from your belt.
The wind buzzed around a brick cornice. Otherwise the sergeant and I stood up to our hips in silence.
“Getting ready to snow,” I said.
He smoked and said nothing. His eyes followed a white panel truck clattering a loose lifter up Jefferson.
I tried again. “I know, because my rib’s giving me hell. I broke it on a bullet a lot of years ago.”
“My right knee,” he said after a moment. “Throbs like a bitch. Thirteen-year-old puke with a zip gun cracked the cap. Department offered me a disability, but what’s that. So I roll an Ace bandage around it when it rains or snows.”
“I thought zip guns went out with mumblety-peg.”
“He was the last of his breed. The very last.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s why I’m not a lieutenant.”
The conversation ended there. A minute later the other cop came back into view. He stopped to light a cigarette, turning his back to the wind and cupping the match with both hands, then resumed; taking his time while I felt the cold.
“Okay,” he said.
He didn’t move the barricade. There was a steep curb on either side, and I was making up my mind to climb one when the sergeant with the kneecap lifted the sawhorse and pivoted it to make a space twelve inches wide. I sidled through.
“Who’re you, Sir Radar O’Reilly?” asked his partner.
“You ever been shot?”
“Shit. No.” The partner rapped a gloved knuckle against the wooden crosspiece.
“Then shut the hell up.”
Cops. They start out all different shapes and sizes and personality types, and at the end of five years’ erosion you can’t tell them apart.
The street led between a row of brick piles with concrete loading docks and a long frame hangarlike affair that had sheltered
everything from kitchen stoves to bootleg hooch to Cabbage Patch Kids in crates, going back to when Cadillac was a pup; in a couple of years some sheep-faced woman in a green suede vest would be raking up plastic chips on the site. Over on the Canadian side of the slate-colored river the electric sign of the Hiram Walker distillery blazed against a bank of dirty-looking clouds. I’m told I’m related, away on the wrong side of the sheet.
There were lights on the American side as well, hot ones bouncing off silver reflectors on the same dock where the rumrunners used to tie up while the grandfathers of the two officers on the barricade did pretty much what their grandsons were doing now. A couple of dozen people dressed adrogynously in navy peacoats and Thinsulate milled around, adjusting lights, hoisting shouldercams, swinging microphones on aluminum poles, tormenting Stratocasters, and drinking from steaming Styrofoam cups. There was a pulsing rumble going on underneath it all; I felt it first in the soles of my feet and as I got closer I heard it, growling inside the insulated shell of a generator the size of a refrigerator truck, parked on the broken pavement near the dock, with tentacles of cable leading from it out to where the action was.
“Who the hell picked this spot?” someone said. “We could’ve gone to Moscow, seen the Kremlin.”
The speaker was the man with the guitar, a Popsicle stick in Goth black with a crysanthemum head of bright yellow hair. I’d seen him backing up
“Could be she’s incognito. You know, dark glasses and the Monday mink. One of us could go back and check. You’re on duty, so why don’t I volunteer.”
Someone took another whack at the guitar. A flock of seagulls took off from one of the loading docks, creaking like hinges.
The sergeant stirred, drew three yards of blue bandanna handkerchief from a slash pocket, and blew his nose with enthusiasm. The honk would have sounded loud if it hadn’t followed the guitar lick. It might have been some kind of signal. His partner tossed his cigarette, turned his back on me, and walked down
toward the river. He had that swagger you just can’t help with the Sharper Image for Cops winter catalogue swinging from your belt.
The wind buzzed around a brick cornice. Otherwise the sergeant and I stood up to our hips in silence.
“Getting ready to snow,” I said.
He smoked and said nothing. His eyes followed a white panel truck clattering a loose lifter up Jefferson.
I tried again. “I know, because my rib’s giving me hell. I broke it on a bullet a lot of years ago.”
“My right knee,” he said after a moment. “Throbs like a bitch. Thirteen-year-old puke with a zip gun cracked the cap. Department offered me a disability, but what’s that. So I roll an Ace bandage around it when it rains or snows.”
“I thought zip guns went out with mumblety-peg.”
“He was the last of his breed. The very last.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s why I’m not a lieutenant.”
The conversation ended there. A minute later the other cop came back into view. He stopped to light a cigarette, turning his back to the wind and cupping the match with both hands, then resumed; taking his time while I felt the cold.
“Okay,” he said.
He didn’t move the barricade. There was a steep curb on either side, and I was making up my mind to climb one when the sergeant with the kneecap lifted the sawhorse and pivoted it to make a space twelve inches wide. I sidled through.
“Who’re you, Sir Radar O’Reilly?” asked his partner.
“You ever been shot?”
“Shit. No.” The partner rapped a gloved knuckle against the wooden crosspiece.
“Then shut the hell up.”
Cops. They start out all different shapes and sizes and personality types, and at the end of five years’ erosion you can’t tell them apart.
The street led between a row of brick piles with concrete loading docks and a long frame hangarlike affair that had sheltered
everything from kitchen stoves to bootleg hooch to Cabbage Patch Kids in crates, going back to when Cadillac was a pup; in a couple of years some sheep-faced woman in a green suede vest would be raking up plastic chips on the site. Over on the Canadian side of the slate-colored river the electric sign of the Hiram Walker distillery blazed against a bank of dirty-looking clouds. I’m told I’m related, away on the wrong side of the sheet.
There were lights on the American side as well, hot ones bouncing off silver reflectors on the same dock where the rumrunners used to tie up while the grandfathers of the two officers on the barricade did pretty much what their grandsons were doing now. A couple of dozen people dressed adrogynously in navy peacoats and Thinsulate milled around, adjusting lights, hoisting shouldercams, swinging microphones on aluminum poles, tormenting Stratocasters, and drinking from steaming Styrofoam cups. There was a pulsing rumble going on underneath it all; I felt it first in the soles of my feet and as I got closer I heard it, growling inside the insulated shell of a generator the size of a refrigerator truck, parked on the broken pavement near the dock, with tentacles of cable leading from it out to where the action was.
“Who the hell picked this spot?” someone said. “We could’ve gone to Moscow, seen the Kremlin.”
The speaker was the man with the guitar, a Popsicle stick in Goth black with a crysanthemum head of bright yellow hair. I’d seen him backing up
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