Stoner knew that trouble was coming, but he wasn’t certain what to do. The money that was, in his mind, earmarked for his truck repairs kept going to Hawkins, for gasoline and beer. What was he going to do, not give his cousin gas money? He knew he should turn down the beer, make some noise about heading home when Hawkins started driving around aimlessly at night, make excuses when they pulled into their usual final stop, the bar down by the Ford plant in Wyandotte that never seemed to close. There had to be an easy way to get Hawkins to take him home after work. Stoner needed to separate himself — start drinking less, stop sleeping through all the daylight hours, fix his truck — without crushing his cousin’s spirit any further.
He just didn’t know how to do it.
A few nights later, the Grand Marquis Brougham was already idling at the bus stop when Stoner arrived, the patrol car sitting behind it, Red in the passenger seat this time. McSmith was behind the wheel, writing Hawkins a ticket.
Red watched Stoner walk toward the patrol car. “Hey, rookie.”
“We were gonna take care of that this weekend,” Stoner said, hoping this was about the mirrors.
“Know what I was gonna do this weekend?” McSmith asked, without looking up from his writing. “Titty-fuck Pamela Anderson.” Red laughed and shook his head. “Now I hear that Kid Rock gone and marry her.”
“We don’t see a lot of daylight during the week,” Stoner said, thinking of his dead truck. “You know how it is.”
McSmith didn’t look up. “Woulda, coulda, shoulda.”
“How about one break?”
Red shrugged. “He’s already writing, Stoner.”
“His money’s kind of tight, man.”
McSmith handed over the ticket. “Then pay it for him, rookie.”
“Just go slow,” Stoner said to Hawkins back in the car.
Hawkins pulled up to the light. His face and neck had turned bright red. He made the right onto Jefferson.
“It never fails. Give ’em a badge, they bust on a honky.” Hawkins tipped his beer.
The cops gave a short burst on their siren, a single whoop. Stoner looked back: The patrol car was right behind the Grand Marquis.
Hawkins spilled his beer down the front of his uniform. “Fuck!”
“Just be cool,” Stoner said.
Hawkins pulled to the curb. McSmith appeared at Hawkins’s window.
“I don’t know about Brownstown,” he said, with a certain theatrical relish, “but here in Detroit? We frown on open intoxicants.”
Stoner’s door opened. “Come out here, Stoner,” Red said.
Stoner climbed out of the car and followed Red to the middle of the sidewalk. They turned and watched Hawkins hand the rumpled grocery bag filled with beer out his window.
“Your buddy on the job?” Red asked.
“No.”
Red shrugged. “Army buddy?”
“Kid I grew up with,” Stoner said.
“Well,” Red said. His voice had become gentle. He nodded back in Hawkins’s direction, inviting Stoner to follow his gaze and contemplate the battered car and the sullen young fat man in the soiled uniform. “You’re all grown up now. Right?”
He’s my cousin, Stoner wanted to say.
He knew it was too late.
For a cop, Red didn’t seem like a bad guy, and being black, he might have understood about family; and he seemed to be making Stoner some kind of offer — square your shoulders, join the club.
Stoner had blown him off, though, and dissed his cousin in the bargain. It was too late to take any of it back.
“They’re just fuckers, all of them,” Hawkins said, back behind the wheel. “I hope they choke on that beer.”
“I thought you wanted to be a cop,” Stoner said.
“What? ”
“Didn’t you want to be a cop? I thought I remember you say—”
“When?”
“I don’t know — high school?”
“Oh hell, that’s possible.”
They drove in silence.
“No, wait. Kill a cop. I said I wanted to kill a cop,” Hawkins said, deadpan, then laughed at his own joke.
Stoner didn’t join him.
The laughter broke into a cough. Hawkins cleared his throat. “Bunch of short-sighted motherfuckers. This is what I keep running into. I’m looking for a partner — not even a real partner. You’re my real partner. I need a cop to liaison with the cops. I need a cop like a car dealership needs a washed-up Lions receiver. These idiots would rather take their pissant pensions and drink themselves to death in the La-Z-Boy. They’d rather play their little games, take their penny-ante scores. Like there’s anything special in pushing people around with your uniform. You wanna see how special it makes you feel? We could get out at the next intersection.”
Stoner had a bad feeling: He knew exactly what Hawkins was getting at.
“I’m serious. You look like a cop to me.”
“That’s just the uniforms, in the dark.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Hawkins dragged on his smoke. “I think we oughta take a little walk around, see what we can do.”
“Man, what are you talking about?”
“We wouldn’t have to be good cops, dude,” he said, grinning now. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Hawkins had turned the wrong way leaving downtown. He looked lost, but seemed too angry to care. Stoner was looking for the freeway, any freeway, spotting a section of one now and then, like a man in a desert might see water. The on-ramp was nowhere in sight.
They were driving west on Rosa Parks Boulevard, a two-lane artery through some bleak residential neighborhoods. Hawkins looked left and right, and spotted a boarded-up corner party store up ahead, covered in tags. It was the only thing they’d seen that passed for a landmark. Hawkins turned up the street, pulled to the curb, and killed the headlights. “Come on,” he said, shutting off the engine and taking the key out of the ignition. He picked his uniform cap off the dashboard, stepped out of the car, and closed the door.
Stoner got out of the car. Standing up, he felt shaky, and realized how crazy the scene with Red and McSmith had made him feel; sitting in the car since then had only made it worse.
Hawkins was pulling on rain gear: a poncho, a bonnet for his cap, both gray. The gear covered up the security company insignia on the uniform, and left his holster and badge to the imagination.
Stoner was amazed: At that moment, Hawkins looked just like a cop.
He followed him up the center of the dark street.
“Just keep talking,” Hawkins said. “Normal voice. Have a conversation, like you’re not afraid of anything, and you won’t be.”
Stoner looked in the broken front window of the first house on his right as they walked past. Moonlight shone right through from a window in the rear. He told himself they were all empty — it was a carnival attraction, the haunted street — and that he was calm and ready.
It wasn’t working.
Hawkins asked him how the Tigers had done the night before, knowing Stoner read the sports section during his lunch break.
Stoner laughed. The fact that Hawkins cared nothing about sports made his prompt to start talking seem even more ridiculous. But he launched into what he could remember of the newspaper account of Jeremy Bonderman’s fourth-inning meltdown on the mound, and Hawkins feigned interest, and soon Stoner noticed his pulse had stopped racing.