Rough Trade

bunch of drag queens at The Baton.”
    “Wow,” exclaimed my roommate, obviously impressed. “The football players versus the transvestites. It’s a wonder he ended up in jail instead of in the hospital.”
     
    The Eighteenth District police station is a dismal box of a place erected in the architectural style once favored by urban-renewal advocates in the sixties. On Chicago Ave. just east of Dearborn, it sits just beyond the glittering prosperity of Michigan Avenue. Whether it is because real estate is still at a premium here or because its patrons usually arrive in the back of a blue and white, there is no parking lot at the station. Instead I found an illegal spot in the alley that ran behind the currency exchange next door.
    Apparently, it was a busy night. As we passed through doors of heavily scratched bullet-proof glass, we made our way past two hookers in matching patent leather halter tops, being released into the custody of their pimp; an old woman, obviously drunk, decked out in a grimy bathrobe, high heels, and a blond fright wig; and a muscle-bound tough with his hands cuffed behind his back, wearing an immaculately white tennis visor in the latest gangland fashion—turned upside down and backward as if he was hoping to collect rain. There were also a dozen or so theatrically sobbing drag queens nursing their wounds with their wigs askew, demanding either their lawyers or a trip to the ladies’ room in disconcertingly deep voices. I hadn’t seen so much running mascara since Tammy Faye Baker went off the air.
    We pushed through the scuffed and narrow lobby and ' made our way to the battered linoleum counter. I gave my card to one of the officers behind the desk, who took one look at it, offered up a conspiratorial grin, and ushered us behind a barrier marked POLICE ONLY. He led us down a dark and narrow hallway where the phones pealed, unanswered, while laconic plainclothesmen lounged against the walls and talked in groups, their handcuffs dangling from their belts. Claudia and I followed the sergeant to the second floor by way of a dark staircase that looked like a perfect place for a mugging.
    Apparently the cops had stashed Palmer in somebody’s office. When the sergeant opened the door, the first thing that hit me was the smell. It was like a mixture of sweat and the inside of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Jake Palmer lay inert on a torn vinyl couch, emitting whiskey fumes, while a half a dozen cops craned their necks to catch a glimpse of him over each other’s heads like gawkers at the scene of an accident.
    “I thought the idea was to try to keep this quiet,” I complained.
    “I don’t know, lady,” he replied. “A guy this size is pretty hard to miss. Plus, he wasn’t exactly this quiet when they brought him in.”
    Oh, great, I thought to myself. In my experience beauty shops and bingo parlors had nothing on police stations when it came to gossip. Nothing like a couple of hundred men, driving around in cars all day, talking to each other on radios for passing information around.
    “I tell you what,” I said, handing him another one of my cards. “I want you to get me the name of every officer who was on duty tonight, and I’ll make sure that the team takes care of them the next time the Monarchs play Chicago. I’m talking tickets, locker room passes, the VIP treatment— provided, of course, that in addition to no charges being brought, nobody talks to the press.”
    “Sure thing,” he said, palming my card with a grin. When the list came back, it would probably have a hundred names on it, but I figured that was Jeff Rendell’s problem. My problem was how to get a three-hundred-pound man out of the police station and into the backseat of my car. While I glumly contemplated the alternatives, Claudia elbowed her way in for a better look.
    Jake Palmer was simply enormous. His head, shaved bald, hung backward over the arm of the couch. His mouth hung open, exposing white teeth and a pink, orcalike tongue. His feet seemed roughly the same size as Claudia, who laid her tiny hand against the massive cylinder of corded muscle that supported his head, checking for a pulse.
    She turned to the cop standing closest to her. “When I wake him up, I want you to be ready to help him to his feet,” she instructed in the quiet manner of one who is used to giving orders and having them followed without question.
    “And how do you think you’re going to be able to do that, sweetie?”