Thrown-away Child

Tyler because you listen around at places like Shug’s?”
    “I listen anyplace there’s talking.”
    “Listen to this. Clete Tyler got it bad. Got his head just about sliced off at the shoulders, and got his stomach branded.”
    “What call you got to come here telling me about some jailbird comes to a gruesome end?”
    “Supposing you saw the word moms spelled out in capital letters. What’s that mean to you?”
    “Moms? Like in mother?”
    “Could be. That’s what they branded on Cletus Tyler’s fresh-burned belly— moms.”
    Hippo wiped his lips with a sleeve. He wore the labored expression of a drunk in deep thought. “Who’s your commander to this here case, Booger?“
    “I’m not exactly assigned.”
    “Why’s this Cletus Tyler any concern of yours?“
    “Can’t even answer that myself. I’m like you—looking for little scraps.”
    “You come up here in your damn uniform to pester me when you ain’t even been told to snoop?“
    “Consider the valuable advice you’ve given me.”
    “I got some very supreme advice to impart right now. Don’t be po-licing ’round where you ain’t been assigned. Hear?” Hippo said this with a calming anger of his own. Then he stood and retrieved his suitcoat from where it was hanging over the arm of his oak and velvet chair.
    “Time to call it a day, sir?”
    “Oh my, yes.” Alderman Giradoux slipped on his coat and waddled toward the archway. Claude Bougart followed. “I’d say it’s quitting time for both of us.”
    “Nice talking with you, sir.”
    Hippo stopped, turning to face Bougart. He thought for a moment, then spoke carefully.
    “I like you, Booger. Truly I do. I want you to enjoy a long and rewarding po-lice career, and I surely would not want to hear about your doing some fool thing that’d imperil your pension. So far you been
    doing real good, that’s what they tell me. But now you come here like this and I can’t help but feel trouble’s coming for you.”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    “Let’s just say it’ll pay you in the long run to wisely remember about fences.”
    “Fences?”
    “Jump over the wrong fence, Booger, and soon you’ll be the sorriest kind of cop there is.”
    “How’s that, sir?”
    “You’re liable to wind up like a country dog in the city. Run, and all them other dogs going bite your ass. Hold still, they going to fuck you.”
     

SEVENTEEN

     
    Their faces were rubber, not skin.
    I dropped to the ground, rolling and twisting on my belly through weeds and glass shards as bullets slammed around me and ripped open the top of Perry’s shed. And this is what ran through my mind, like a cartoon nightmare: rubber masks... children’s rubber masks.
    Serpentine, you motherfucking morons! This, too, ran through my mind: the bad dream of a U.S. Army drill instructor at Fort Dix in the summer of ’65, barking at us draftees slithering down a clay field in Jersey- Serpentine! Good old basic training.
    I rounded the protective corner of the caged building, my elbows and knees on fire. A bullet pounded into the dirt somewhere behind me. I heard another one slash into steel. Then the sound of the Jeep, fading as it drove away...
    …and away.
    I scrambled to my feet for a look at the retreating Jeep, which was kicking up dust and moving fast. No license plate on the back bumper either.
    “Perry... !”
    I called his name as I ran toward the shed.
    “Stay back, man—stay the gott-damn hell back!”
    I froze. He was right. I was the target, not Perry. Who knew he was hiding in the shed besides Mama and me?
    “You’re okay?” I called.
    “I ain’t hit. Ain’t that lucky?” Perry laughed, but there was nothing funny about it. A flap of thin steel was sticking up where bullets had struck the shed. “How about you shut up now? Maybe somebody still watching. Maybe listening, too.”
    He was right again.
    I wiped dirt off my clothes and rubbed my limbs where they hurt. My chinos had kept my knees from bleeding, but one of my elbows had not fared well. I picked a broad leaf off a clump of unfamiliar weeds, hoping it was not poison ivy or something like it, and sopped blood off my arm.
    I spotted my Yankees cap a few feet from the shed. I went over to pick it up and noticed where two bullets had plowed into the ground nearby. After taking a full-circle look around for the sight of any Jeeps, of which there were none, I picked up a stick from a pile of rubbish. This was the handle from an old