Suitcase City. Sterling Watson

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СКАЧАТЬ I take your word, I can arrest Tyrone for attempted robbery, take him away with me.”

      Teach tried not to let his eyes say what they preferred. Let this play itself out.

      Aimes continued, “Mr. McLuster here, he thinks maybe you overreacted, Mr. Teach, but mostly Mr. McLuster just wants to get out of here.” The detective glanced at the fading stains in McLuster’s crotch. McLuster nodded, sucking his lip to the side and biting it. “Soooo . . .” Aimes exhaled a long breath and looked at each of them in turn, his eyes stopping on Delbert. The two exchanged some tired message. “Soooo, I’m going to call this an altercation. An unfortunate encounter in a men’s room. Maybe some drinking went on here . . .” He looked at McLuster and Teach. “Maybe some words were passed that shouldn’t have been . . .” He looked at Tyrone who stared his rage at Teach. “I’m going to leave it there for now, with Detective Delbert’s concurrence, of course.” A firm nod from Delbert. “Now, what do you gentlemen think of that?”

      It’s over, Teach thought, at last over. He could get out of here. Not leave as the hero he’d thought he was (Did I ever tell you about the time I was attacked by this kid with a knife in a damn men’s room? And, buddy, I mean a small men’s room!), but leave with no more damage than the blood on his coat sleeve, a mean headache, and a lower opinion of his fellow man.

      But Tyrone Battles looked at Aimes, who was his uncle, and said, low and cold, “Fuck no, man, it ain’t all right with me.” The kid shoved back in his chair, away from the circle of reasonableness Aimes had drawn, and said it again: “Fuck no, man. It ain’t all right. Look what this white bitch did to my pretty face. I’m gonna get me a Polaroid and take some pictures of this face, man.” He pointed at Teach. “I’m gonna get you, man.” He stuck his forefinger under his cheekbone and pushed the split flesh up in a way that must have hurt. The boy shoved his face forward, bending at the waist, showing it to Aimes, and Aimes was on him. A big man moving fast, he caught the boy by the front of his shirt and sat him down.

      Remind me, Teach thought, not to mess with this man.

      Aimes stood over Tyrone, staring down into his face. “Don’t you ever call me man. You call me uncle when I’m eating at your mama’s table, and the rest of the time you call me De-tec-tive Aimes. Those are your two options, you understand me?” He sat down and looked around the table. “Now, like I said, I’m gonna call this an altercation. Detective Delbert and I, we’ll file the report. You three gentlemen think about it for a day or two, and then if anybody wants to put charges on anybody, why, we’ll take it on from there, see where it goes. Now, is that all right?”

      Teach tried to catch the man’s eye to say, one man to another, that it was a good plan. But the cop wouldn’t look at him. Teach didn’t push it. Maybe the boy had embarrassed his uncle. Maybe this family thing put the cop in a place where he wasn’t comfortable. Teach looked carefully at McLuster and said, “Sure. I guess so.” He glanced at his watch. “My daughter’s dancing in thirty minutes.”

      Delbert wrote something down. McLuster shook his head, disgusted. He examined his hands on the table, sighed. “Sure, it’s all right.” He looked around the bar and muttered, “Stop for a drink on a Friday afternoon and what the hell happens? Jesus.”

      Delbert wrote it. Aimes nodded at McLuster, then turned to Tyrone who was smoothing his silk shirt where his uncle’s fists had wrinkled it. The kid shook his head. “Fuck!” And his lean, lithe body was up and out the door.

      Aimes stood and Delbert imitated him. Aimes shook his head, then looked down at Teach and McLuster. “We’ve got your names and addresses. I take it you gentlemen will be leaving now?”

      Teach said, “Thank you, Detective Aimes.”

      Aimes looked back at him sharply. “Don’t thank me, Mr. Teach, not yet anyway.” He turned to his partner. “Just a minute . . .” He walked toward the men’s room. The fucking black hole of Calcutta, Teach thought, watching the detective go off to pee.

      When Aimes was gone, Teach rose and walked over to Delbert. He had to talk to the guy. Find out what he thought about this.

      As Teach approached, Delbert’s eyes hardened. Teach was about to rest a salesman’s hand on the cop’s shoulder but the eyes told him not to. Teach put his hands in his pockets and said, “Uh, look, Detective Delbert.” Nodding at the men’s room. “What’s he, uh, what’s he going to do about all this?”

      Delbert shrugged, pursed his lips, closed the pad, and put it into his coat pocket. “I don’t know what he’s going to do, but you better hope this thing stops right here.” Delbert pointed at the door Tyrone Battles had just exited. “That boy’s family’s a walking history of the civil rights movement in this state. Freedom rides, the St. Augustine Slave Market sit-ins, all of it.”

      For the third time in an hour, Teach’s knees liquefied, and his vision narrowed. “But what about him?” Nodding again at the men’s room door. “What’s he gonna do?”

      Delbert shrugged again. A cop’s response to a life lived in the vortex of Tampa’s troubles. The Big Shrug. Delbert said, “I don’t know what he’s gonna do. But I’ll tell you this: with Aimes it’s hard but it’s fair.”

      Aimes came out of the men’s room, and Teach watched the two cops leave. Then he turned to the bar for the bourbon he needed. For the mended view that would come with it. McLuster was already at the bar, getting a quick one for the road. Teach took a stool and said, “The same again, please.” Then to McLuster, “Christ, what a day. You walk into a bar and you—”

      Benny the bartender looked at Teach in a not very serving way. “Your money’s no good here, buddy. Why don’t you take your ass down the road. We got to make a living in this neighborhood.”

      Ah, Teach thought, ah yes. And his hand shook a little at the deferral of bourbon. Ah yes, indeed. So speaks this minion of the unseen Malone. Teach slid from the stool. Looked over at McLuster, who stared back at him from the bottom of the well of a fat man’s unhappiness.

      “Well . . .” Teach tapped his watch. The ballet recital, his daughter spinning in bright light, in impossibly unstable shoes, surrounded by a supporting cast of the young and eager, and sometimes the beautiful. His daughter a vision of gift and light and love. Teach said to McLuster, “Well . . . I’d like to stay for one more, but I’ve got to go.”

      The man’s chin trembled. “You ever,” McLuster said, his hand lifting a glass to his lips, spilling some of it, putting it down. “You ever tell anyone about this . . .”

      Teach raised his hands, let them fall, shook his head. Why would he? Who did he know that would . . . ? But now he could see himself telling the story. The pee stain a necessary piece of the bizarre puzzle of this afternoon.

      McLuster swiveled on the stool, his chin quivering, his eyes going moist. And then Teach felt for the man. He took a step forward, some notion of comfort gathering in his mind. A hand to rest on the man’s shoulder. A couple of pats.

      But McLuster leaned back, raised his hands, made fists. “Stay away from me, man. You got some serious aggression, you know that? You got some unresolved shit in there you need to work on. You need to see somebody.”

      McLuster tossed money on the bar and started toward the door. Teach watched him. This was not a day to let anyone get behind you. McLuster stopped at the door, his red face swollen, shaking. “You never were worth a damn in the СКАЧАТЬ