THE SIXTH PRECINCT station was on Nicholson, set to the left of Brightwood Elementary. The station structure, all brick fronted with columns, looked like a small schoolhouse itself. A goldfish pond was set beside the concrete drive that horseshoed the rear of the station. The boys approached it from the right side, grouped themselves beside a tall oak, and studied the building through a chain-link fence.
“There’s the cell block right there,” said Dominic, pointing to the right side of the building. “They ain’t got nothin’ but old spring cots for you to sleep on.”
“How do you know?” said Billy, challenging Martini but secretly impressed.
“Our old man told us,” said Angelo. Their father had slept off public drunks in the station a couple of times in the past year.
“Not just that,” said Dominic, annoyed. “I been in there myself.” He had never actually spent the night in the jail, though he had aspirations. Dominic had been written up for a field investigation, which was less dramatic than “a record,” for throwing a rock through a window of the elementary school.
Back behind the main structure was a garage housing several Harleys for the motorcycle cops. One of the precinct’s three squad cars, a high-horse Ford, was parked in the lot, beside a black unmarked, also a Ford. The boys of Brightwood recognized the squad car numbers, 61 to 63, printed on the sides of the vehicles. They knew the names of the desk sergeant and homicide cops and the beat police as well. Among them was an Irish cop whose status had been elevated to legend after he had taken a.45 slug in the gut. The Sixth also had one uniformed colored cop, William Davis, and the hated Officer Pappas, a Greek who was especially tough on kids. He had made it his mission to bust the fathers and sons, some of whom were fellow Greeks, who ran numbers and occasionally fenced out of their businesses up on the Avenue. Pappas had a pencil-thin mustache, which the boys thought of as a French look that bordered on feminine. They had nicknamed him Jacques. When he was on foot patrol, they taunted him from rooftops and alleys, calling out to him with high-pitched voices, “Jaaacques, oh, Jaaacques.”
Officer Davis came from the front of the building and walked to squad car number 62. Davis was tall and lean, his uniform perfectly pressed, his service revolver snapped into its holster. Derek wondered what you had to do to become a police. Must be something to it to make Davis walk the way he was walking. Chin up, close to a swagger. It seemed like the man had pride.
Dominic Martini picked up a rock. Derek grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t,” said Derek.
Derek’s action surprised both of them, so much so that Dominic didn’t resist. He dropped the rock, shook his hand free, and stared at Davis.
“Look at him,” said Martini with contempt. “He really thinks he’s somethin’.”
He is, thought Derek Strange, studying the police officer as he got into the Ford. That’s a man right there.
BUZZ STEWART FED gas into the tank of a ’57 DeSoto Fireflite, a two-tone red-and-white sedan fitted out with whitewalls and skirts. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he worked the pump. He wasn’t supposed to smoke anywhere near the tanks, but there wasn’t anyone at the station, including his boss, big enough to tell him not to. As he replaced the pump handle and took the money from the square behind the wheel, he thumb-flicked ash off his Marlboro and put the smoke back in his thin-lipped mouth.
“Hey, Buzz,” said Dominic Martini, walking by with a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand.
“Hey,” mumbled Stewart.
Stewart watched Martini, an Italian kid who worked weekend nights, join a group of younger boys at the edge of the Esso station lot. One of the boys was Martini’s no-balls brother. The other was some fattish kid, looked like another spaghetti-bender to him. The third kid was a nigger. Now, why would Martini want to run with a colored boy? He’d have to give Dom some shit about it the next time they talked.
Stewart walked across the lot, patting his Brylcreemed blond hair. He admired his veins, like root tendrils, standing up on the inside of his forearms and popping out on his biceps. He felt strong. He went six-three and one ninety, none of it waste. Some guys thought they could challenge him, all that harder-you-fall bullshit they had to tell themselves ’cause they were small. Stewart could back up his size and didn’t need to be pushed to prove it.
He went inside the station. The manager, built-guy once, fat-guy now, was sitting behind his desk, doing his usual heap of nothing. “Party Doll” was coming from the radio, Buddy Knox with his stutter-step vocals, then that nice guitar break with the walkin’ rhythm behind it coming in right after. Stewart liked that one. It wasn’t no Link, but it was nice.
“We talk?” said Stewart.
“Go ‘head,” said the manager, not meeting Stewart’s eyes.
“When am I gonna get a chance in them bays?”
“When you take the course.”
“I could take apart an engine and put it back together with my eyes closed.”
“Maybe they could use you at the circus,” said the manager. “But the sign out front says ‘Certified Mechanics.’ You wanna be one, parent company requires you to take the course.”
Fuck a course, thought Stewart. Last course I took was at Montgomery Blair, and that was when I was sixteen. I didn’t need no courses then and I sure as hell didn’t need no high school degree. You didn’t have to sit in no classroom to know how to work on cars.
“Maybe later,” said Stewart, jerking a thumb toward the clock on the wall. “I’m out.” He took the bill roll he kept in his pocket, undid the change belt he wore around his waist, and put both on the manager’s desk.
“Wait for me to count it out,” said the manager.
“If it’s wrong, you’ll let me know.”
“You in a hurry?”
“Yeah,” said Stewart. “I got places to go and people to meet, and none of ’em are here.”
Stewart walked out.
“Big maaan,” said the manager, but only after Stewart had left the office.
Buzz Stewart got into his bored-out ’50 Ford, outfitted with headers and dropped near to the ground. The paint job, a purple body over a blue interior, had been customized. He and his crowd named their cars and scripted the names on their right front fenders. His read “Lavender Blue,” because of the color scheme, and also for that Sammy Turner song. He was proud of the name. He had thought of it all by himself.
Stewart cranked the ignition and drove north out of D.C., toward his parents’ house in Silver Spring.
A little ways over the District line he drove under the B amp;O bridge and passed the Canada Dry plant on the left. He and his boys used to hit the plant on Saturdays, when there wasn’t but one security guard on duty, and steal as many cases of ginger ale as they could carry. In a nearby wooded area they dumped out the soda, then turned in the bottles to local merchants for pocket change. You could make a few bucks like that, but it had ended one day a few years back when a gray-haired guard happened upon him and his group. Luckily, Stewart’s best bud, Shorty Hess, was behind the guard and knocked him out with a crack to the skull from a length of pipe he kept slipped down his jeans. They were afraid at first he’d killed him, but it didn’t make the newspapers or nothin,’ so they guessed the old guy lived. Since then, he and his buddies had gone on to bigger things, like break-ins. For fun they liked to race cars, drink beer and hard liquor, run coloreds off the sidewalks, and fuck girls. They also liked to fight.