Half an hour after leaving the 7-Eleven, he’s making one last swing around Enterprise and Lottsford roads, past million-dollar houses and the estates behind the barriers of gated communities. He isn’t doing that well, but with his salary and the $25-an-hour part-time security work he performs, and Bunny’s recent raise, they are a $150,000 household and he lives fifteen minutes away. He doesn’t live in Heaven’s Gate, the community he’s just passed that has been written up in magazines and even the New York Times as symbolic of Black suburban progress. He lives in Paradise Glen, and Carson is just as happy in paradise as he figures he’d be in heaven. He knows police officers who drive Jaguars and Benzes, have high-six-figure salaries, and are in debt up to their ears, cops addicted to doing nothing but working and making money the way some are in the grip of booze and women.
Carson spots another squad car parked in the lot of Kings-ford Elementary School. When he pulls up beside the cruiser, he immediately sees that it’s Wyatt Jordan. The fluorescence of the parking lot lights glows on his massive shaved head. Carson parks beside Wyatt and gets out. He stretches his arms and shoulders as he walks around to the other side of his cruiser. Jordan’s thick, rumbling laughter is the only sound besides the occasional car cruising past on Enterprise Road. The conversation, which Carson hears through Jordan’s half-open window, has the sound of an easy, illicit dialogue, and he figures Jordan is having phone sex. There are all kinds of rumors about Jordan, that he’s hooked on Internet porn sites, and Carson knows he’s a player, has seen him in action. He’s been busted more than once for stopping by his girlfriend’s house for a quickie while on duty, and his wife waited for him to get off his shift one evening and jumped out of her Volkswagen and charged after him with a baseball bat.
“Drama Queen” is Carson’s nickname for Jordan. He’s got no respect for cops who let their lives become a public mess. He knows Jordan from a distance, and he’s fine with that. But hell, he can shoot the breeze for a minute. Jordan ends the call and snaps the cell phone shut.
“Am I interrupting something?” Carson asks, leaning on the side of the cruiser, letting a wide, wily grin spread over his face.
Jordan extends his beefy arm out the car window, a raucous laugh rumbling up from his chest. The two men slap palms and shake hands. “Come on, Blake, ease up — I know what you heard, and it’s all true.”
“All the hardheads must be working a new shift or stayed home instead of risking running into you,” Carson says.
“That’s what it looks like. Only real action I had tonight was a domestic disturbance call over near Bowie High School. By the time I got there, the dude didn’t wanna press charges.”
“Say what?” Carson laughs at the thought of where this story is headed.
“No joke.” Jordan opens the door of his cruiser and lifts his bulk out, leaning on the side of the car. He’s six-seven, two-seventy-five, and solid as a rock.
“You heard me. Dude was getting a Mike Tyson work-over by his girlfriend. He had a black eye. I did the counseling routine. When I got there and saw what was happening, I figured she kicked his ass over another woman. But she claimed he stole some of her money. In my man’s defense, though, she had about three inches on him. He was drunk and kept telling me he called 911 ’cause he didn’t wanna hit no woman.”
“So this was love and money?”
“Yeah, you know, half the calls are rooted in one or the other.”
“You going to the cabaret at the Chateau Saturday night?” Carson asks.
“I’ma get my ticket at the door,” Jordan says.
“I ain’t gonna tell you what I had to do to get Saturday night off — I owe Benson big-time,” Carson says sheepishly.
“Out with it, tell me …”
The two men stand gossiping, trading an easy banter that makes Carson ponder that this is the first time in a long while that he’s really talked to Wyatt Jordan. Jordan finally looks at his watch and says, “I better start heading back in. And I hope like hell I don’t run into anything on my way.”
Jordan pulls out of the lot and Carson sits in his squad car, savoring the silence, the night, and once again looks at that damned full moon. He has decided to follow Jordan in when a car with no lights speeds past on Enterprise Road. He should just let it go, let it slide. He’d been thinking about his warm bed in the moments before the car sped by. But he isn’t that kind of cop. He doesn’t let much slide. He didn’t become a police officer to let shit slide. There have been several carjackings in the area in the past month, and Carson wonders if the idiot speeding by with no lights is some teenage car thief who could cause a fatal accident or some psycho like the predator who waited outside the home of a doctor a mile away and shot him outside his house, stole his wallet, and used his credit cards an hour later, or maybe some kid from D.C., out joyriding in the county.
Carson pulls out of the parking lot and puts his lights on, radioing in to the dispatcher, “I’m behind this guy who’s speeding, no lights, and he’s not stopping.”
“Do you have backup?”
“No.”
Carson hears Jordan’s voice break into the calclass="underline" “I’ll head back over there.”
Carson’s all up in the ass of the car, glued to the vehicle, but the driver won’t stop. The black Nissan crosses the intersection and finally the driver abruptly pulls into the near-empty parking lot of a strip mall. By the time the car has stopped and he’s parked behind him, Carson’s skin is tingling and he’s tense, buoyed by the involuntary adrenaline rush that’s an invisible body armor, priming him for action.
“Get out of the car, sir!” Carson yells, approaching the vehicle, his Beretta pointed at the man behind the steering wheel with his hands in the air.
“Open the door slowly.”
The door opens and the driver steps out as Carson moves back. He’s twenty-five or twenty-six, Carson guesses, clean-cut, sober-looking, with a serious, proud, unflinching face. He’s wearing expensive jeans, a bulky sweater, a leather jacket, and Timberland boots. His hair is braided and he’s got a chiseled, tough/soft handsomeness that reminds Carson of the Black male models he’s seen on the pages of GQ, advertising Hugo Boss suits, or the actors on Bunny’s favorite soap opera, The Young and the Restless. He’s that smooth. And for all his disarming good looks, the man standing before him could be a robber, a murderer, or just an unlucky SOB caught speeding when he thought no cops were around.
“Turn around, face the trunk of the car,” Carson orders. “On your knees. Put your hands behind your head.” The man drops to the ground and faces the trunk of the car.
“What did I do? Why was I stopped?” he asks, his voice injured, surprised.
“What’d you do? You crazy, man? Fleeing an officer. Driving with no lights.”
“What? I wasn’t eluding you. I didn’t realize my lights weren’t on. I mean, I had an argument with my girlfriend and I’ve been f’d up all evening,” he says, turning to look at Carson to make his point.
“Where’s your license? Your registration?”
“In my wallet in my back pocket.”
Carson begins to approach the kneeling man when he sees him drop his left hand and reach inside his waistband.
The quick, small movement chills the night and freezes Carson’s blood.