This is the third installment of Devils Walk Through Galveston, my first novel. The prologue and Chapter 1 (which introduced the crime and criminal) were posted earlier. This chapter introduces the police officers who hunt John Doddy. I hope you enjoy it and share.
2. Vincent driving Eli home, evening
Driving South in the white Crown
Vic; trim level P.O.S concealing a supercharged engine and armored gas tank. A pistol-grip shotgun in a rack hugging the
door. Pistol holster beneath each of
their seats holding a .45/.410.
Evening
in June in Houston. Seven o’clock and they
drank their breath. Sun cutting through
the haze of the East Side. Vincent and
Eli sat quietly passing over the Ship Channel. They both looked left as they passed over the crest
of the massive bridge. Passing tanker trucks inching up the steep grade. Watching the shadows cast by cat-crackers,
orange flames ripping out of flare towers, dirty smoke falling over the
Manchester neighborhood hugging the refinery fenceline. The ammonia stench hit them first. Then the butadiene, like burning tires. Vincent turning the air conditioner off,
closing the vents. Miles of refineries
and chemical plant pipes reaching up and rolling over like tendrils. The aluminum jacketed pipes a maze of shining
veins stretching low and reaching up to flare off steam and smoke and fire the
forty-five miles to Galveston on both sides of the narrow, muddy channel
emerging from the bayous of Houston.
Fully laden tankers creeping through the sluggish water, heading
straight toward each other. Their wakes
the only thing pushing the tankers apart to pass by with inches between the
hulls. Other tankers parked right next
to the refineries with six foot diameter hoses connecting the ships directly to
the refinery lines, through the maze of exchangers and vessels, then a hundred miles
of pipe later out to waiting tanker cars and pipelines diving underground. The ships rising slowly up out of the water
as millions of dollars of oil crept out.
Workers small as ants moving around in Nomex coveralls. Always a haze hanging in the air. Always motion, night or day.
Eli spoke first, as they descended: “I
have a question.”
“Yes, those pants make your ass look
fat.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“That’s the answer. You’ve been waiting to ask me that since you
bought ‘em”.
“I bought these two years ago. We met two weeks ago.”
“Your ass still looks fat in them, Eli.”
“I’ve been working out.”
“Still fat, but muscular. Maybe phat.
You’re working toward phat, I can tell.”
“Seriously Vincent.”
“What?”
“Seriously, I’m thinking of getting
a motorcycle.”
“Seriously, that’s not what you want
to ask me.”
“It’s not about the pants.”
“One, it’s always about the pants
nowadays. Get some new pants. Lose all the old pants she bought you or you
bought with her or she tolerated or she liked, or whatnot. Fuck all that. Get some new pants, some new shoes. Those shoes are atrocious.”
Quiet a minute. Then Vincent told him, “We’ll go this weekend. It’ll be awesome.”
“I don’t have money for that.”
“But you have money for a
motorcycle.”
“I was going to fix one up.”
“When did you learn how to fix a
motorcycle?”
“I’ll get a book, you know, the
internet. My grandfather used to work on
them when I was a kid.”
“Eli, what do you want to ask me?”
“Nothing.”
“Something. What do you want to ask me? I know what you want to ask.”
“Enough.”
“Eli,
just say it. I’m not going to say it for you.
Ask me about her. I spent enough
time on nice couches in crappy offices.
You have to say it.”
“Just drive Vincent.”
They followed the loop and got off
on Navigation. Drove by a park where kid’s
mothers watched over them absentmindedly, speaking softly of telenovelas,
children’s indiscretions, indiscretions the women dreamed of. Their men with other men drinking beer on
benches under trees. Dominos an excuse.
§§
Vincent pulled into the neighborhood
that Eli’s house was in. Not Eli’s
neighborhood. Not for the last six
months. He got the TV. She got the neighbors. They barely waved.
The house was red brick with a deep
porch and six-foot windows in the front.
Still-infant bushes Eli had staked with fertilizer twice a year. Fresh mulch the realtor had recommended. He opened the front door to quiet. Too much quiet. It stopped him cold each night. Eli put his badge and gun on the kitchen
counter. Looked into the kitchen and sat
hard at the table. Looked at the whiskey
cabinet and left it shut.
The
house had low ceilings and an attic fan, drop-down panels on the tops of the
doors. Built before air conditioning
when the fan was supposed to push hot air back out. In August it was like a hair dryer through
the house. In June, it gave a nice
breeze. The house a little too expensive
for the both of them. They planned to
grow into the house as the boy grew, as the trees grew and he built a jungle gym
in the backyard and the dog matured. It
was quiet now.
He used to tell her he needed quiet
after a long day. He used to sit outside
in the car for a minute before coming in, listening for shouting, barking,
music and the TV. Tightening up. He told her he needed peace after working in
chaos all day. But the boy had been four
and the dog one. At six-thirty she’d had
enough and needed the help. She didn’t need him sitting in the car.
§§
Her hair was
black and thick and long. It flowed down
to her low back. Her hair was what first
struck Eli as he saw her standing in line for ten-dollar-a-bottle Merlot in
six-dollar plastic cups at the Greek Festival at the University of St.
Thomas.
Eli
had come with some friends and was standing on the edge of the crowd, on the
grass of the esplanade that ran through campus.
He saw her from behind in a group of girls. She taller than the others, with long, black,
curly hair. He stared just long enough
for her to feel it and turn around to glance at him. Eli in jeans and boots and a white shirt with
the sleeves rolled up. A gyro at his
lips, dripping white sauce down his fingers onto the back of his hands. Eli’s eyes got wide and he looked away
slightly. Down at his food. Thinking where the napkins were. Knowing what he looked like. She turned to her friends and began talking
again, waiting for the line to move.
Waiting for him to move. Hoping
he’d clean up first.
Instead, he stood there and finished
his gyro. He couldn’t think of anything
to say that wasn’t trite – I like your hair?
I like your butt? Both were
true. Both were weak. He had no good lines. His friends saw him staring and waited
patiently to see what he’d do. He was
fearless on the streets. He was the
first man through the door in a raid or warrant serve. When
Eli was in uniform, he fought like he was already dead. Each morning he got on his knees at the foot
of his bed and prayed – asked for forgiveness for his sins and accepted that he
would not be home that night.
But
here, out of uniform and on the street in jeans looking at a woman with an
impossibly thin waist, he felt all his mortality. Felt all his weaknesses and faults. Felt his knees buckle slightly when she’d
looked at him. Felt like an ass with a
gyro dripping down his hands. So he did
nothing. Trying to think of something to
say. Some way to approach her. Thinking of excuses not to. His friends saw all this and let it go. They’d seen it before. Back then they thought he’d grow out of it in
high school. Had tried to set him up
with their cousins. But he’d stayed
quiet at the barbecues when the pretty girls with too much perfume hovered at
the edge of his conversations. So now
they told him to sit down on the curb.
It was too hot to be standing and moving much. Just settle in and watch the people walking
by. Drink the wine.
When she had her plastic glass of
wine, she turned around and walked past her friends, past the line, to the tall
man with broad shoulders in a too large shirt who, thankfully, had finished the
gyro and was sitting on the curb with his friends. It was the way he’d looked at her. Despite the gyro. Not trying to see through her clothes or
imagining her up against something. Not
dirty. And not just glancing. In
those few seconds, she had the feeling that he saw beauty in her. That he was finding the beauty in her and
couldn’t look away for long.
So,
she walked up to him and kept walking until she was standing over him. He tried to stand up from the curb but she
had put her hand out gently, telling him it was o.k. to stay sitting down. Gauging where his eyes rested - up to her
face or below.
As she walked over, he looked her up
and down. It wasn’t like the men at the
coffee shop or the men just now in line.
It was like the time she sat as a model for an art class at the school,
bare except for a thin sheet draping over her shoulder and breast, tucked just
below her thigh. Like the one student
who was trying to translate her beauty to the page in charcoal; the rest of the
guys staring at her nipples trying to control their erections.
So,
when she got to the edge of his feet and he stayed sitting on the curb with his
eyes rested directly on hers, she asked, “So, are you an artist?”
He was quiet, shy or matter of fact,
saying, “No, a police officer.”
“Why were you looking at me that
way?”
“What way?”
“Like an artist.”
“I have no idea what that would be.”
She paused, pursed her lips, asking,
“Ok, Mr. Police Officer, what did you see when you looked at me?”
Eli didn’t pause. “Your body is like a violin and your hair the
instrument neck.”
She turned and
walked away, back to her group of friends.
Eli’s friends turned their heads to
him, incredulous, “What the fuck was that - ‘your body is like a violin’? That’s the best you got? O.k. Eli, your dick is like a wet noodle.”
Another friend, another cop, “Your
game is like a fourth grader’s.”
And Eli, still taken aback but
kicking himself as his friends kicked him asked, “What would you have suggested?”
“Not ‘your body is like a
violin.’ What was next: ‘I want to strum
your thong? I want to play you like a
virtuoso? You will never get laid.”
“We’re taking up a collection. We’re going to have to rent you a girl. It’s simply time for a hooker. Pissing’s going to be painful, but it’ll be
worth it.”
Eli defensive, “She asked what I
saw. That’s what I saw.”
“You didn’t have to tell her exactly
what was going through your head.
Especially if that was it.”
“I wasn’t going to lie.”
“Number one, if there was a time to
lie, that was it. Number two, it’s not a
lie if it’s just bullshitting. We have
to work on your bullshit.”
“You’ve been saying that since ninth
grade.”
“And we’ve been trying, man. We’ve been trying since ninth grade. We
should have gotten you a hooker back then.
It might have forestalled lots of emotional pain for you.”
“Her body did look like a violin.”
“Yeah, maybe it did. But you could have said something else.”
“What? What would you have said?”
“I don’t know. Something about how nice her hair looked or
how pretty her shirt looked.”
“Why?”
“That would show that you noticed
something that she did. It would be
complimenting her efforts and skill as well as physical beauty. Try it next time.”
But that advice was wrong. He’d stunned her. She had not been stunned by a man in a long
time. Not stunned like that maybe
ever. When she got back to her two
friends, they wanted to know who the guy in the white shirt was.
She told them, “He was looking at
me.”
“So you walked over? You walk over to every guy who looks at you?”
“No.
Just the ones who look at me that way.”
“Way?”
“Way.”
They stared. One asked, doubtful, “That guy?”
“For real.”
“What way then?”
“The way where he was looking at me,
into me. It felt like I was being laid
bare in front of him. But it felt safe.”
From the one in a negligee top, “You
got that from a look from a guy eating a gyro on a curb?”
From the one in a tight t-shirt and
half-sleeve Koi tattoos, “Wow. I would
have walked over.”
“Thank you.”
“So, what did he say when you got
there?”
“He didn’t say anything until I did.”
“Quit fucking around. What did he
say?”
“I asked what he saw when he was
looking at me. He said my body was a
violin and my hair the instrument neck.
But he said it quiet. He said it
like it was the truth and he’d tell me anything I asked.”
“Did he say he wanted to play you?”
“No.
Shut up. You are not ruining this
for me.”
“That’s still kind of an odd thing
to say. Is he some kind of artist? Who says that?”
“Apparently cops says that.”
“That guy?”
“That’s what he said.”
“He doesn’t look like a cop.”
“No.
Not really. Maybe he was lying
about being a cop. He did seem shy about me and at the same time was self-assured
about everything else.”
“So that was it?”
“What was it?”
“The one line and you walked away?”
“I didn’t know what to say. What was I going to say, I always thought of
myself as more of a guitar? What?”
The tattooed girl, “I’d do him.”
“You’d do that thirteen year-old
over there.”
“That kid’s at least sixteen.”
“You’re dirty.”
“Why doesn’t he have your number?”
“I’m a romantic. If he wants it, he’ll come get it or come
find me.”
“I’m a realist.”
The girl in the black negligee top
walked over to Eli and his friends. She
wasn’t wearing a bra. It was unnecessary. She wanted everyone to know it. She looked Eli’s two friends over, decided
that they were worth the trouble and told Eli, “Hey, violin man, time to
play. I’m not going to give you her
number. But you should come over and
talk to her. Think up a better line on
the way. Maybe about a guitar this time.” She looked over the guys, said, “You can
bring your limp-dick friends.” She then
turned and went back.
Eli’s friends shrugged their
shoulders and clapped him on the back. Said,
“That sounded promising.” They got up
and looked down at him getting up. All
three walked over. Loose shirts and
long, slow strides. The boys angling
toward the negligee or tattooed girl, trying to choose before they got there
and were chosen.
He walked up to within a foot of
her. The band playing loud now. He leaned into her ear. Said, “My name’s Eli.”
She leaned in closer until her lips
were almost touching his earlobe. “I’m Danielle.”
“That’s pretty.”
“Thank you. Let’s walk a little.”
So they turned and walked. Their friends following, conjuring up lines
and flirtations. Hands in back pockets,
elbows rubbing the girls’ arms when they got close. Trying to decide if the girls’ breasts were
real or fake, not caring either way.
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