Bad Men

Dupree tossed the log back at him.

“Apparently he’s mad as a coot. I’ll go have a talk with him today. Last thing we need is Doug taking potshots at Girl Scouts selling cookies. Anything else on your mind?”

Berman looked troubled.

“I think Nancy Tooker, down at the diner, may have a thing for me. She gave me extra bacon yesterday. For free.”

“There’s a shortage of eligible men on the island. She’s a desperate woman.”

“She’s a big woman.”

“I’m sure she’d be gentle with you. At the start.”

“Don’t say that. That woman could break me in two.”

“She’s also kind of old for you.”

“She’s seriously old. You think it would make a difference if I told her I was married?”

“You’re not married.”

“I know, but I could get married. It would be worth it to keep her away.”

“My advice is, don’t take anything else from her for free. Tell her it’s against department policy. Otherwise, you’re going to end up paying for that bacon in kind.”

Berman looked as if he was about to upchuck his breakfast.

“Stop, don’t even say things like that.”

It struck him that Dupree was in surprisingly good humor this morning. Berman guessed that it might not be unconnected to Dupree’s slow courtship of the Elliot woman but he decided not to comment upon it, partly out of sensitivity for the big cop’s feelings and partly out of concern for his own personal safety.

“I think you’d make a nice couple,” said Dupree. “I can just see the two of you together. Well, I could see Nancy, anyway. You’d be kind of lost somewhere underneath…”

Berman unclipped his holster.

“Don’t make me shoot you,” he said.

“Save the last bullet for yourself,” said Dupree as he headed out. “It may be your only hope of escape.”

Far to the south, close to the town of Great Bridge, Virginia, a man named Braun walked back to his car carrying two cups of coffee on a cardboard tray, packets of sugar poking out of his breast pocket. He crossed the street, slipped into the passenger seat, and handed one of the coffee cups to his companion, whose name was Dexter. Dexter was black, and kind of ugly. Braun was redheaded, but handsome despite it. He had heard all the redhead jokes. In fact, he’d heard most of them from Dexter.

“Careful,” he said, “it’s hot.”

Dexter looked at the plain white cup in distaste.

“You couldn’t find a Starbucks?”

“They don’t have a Starbucks here.”

“You’re kidding me. There’s a Starbucks everywhere.”

“Not here.”

“Shit.”

Dexter sipped the coffee.

“It’s not bad, but it’s no Starbucks.”

“It’s better than Starbucks, you ask me. Least it tastes like coffee.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing about Starbucks. It’s coffee, but it doesn’t taste like coffee. It’s not supposed to taste like coffee. It’s supposed to taste like Starbucks.”

“But not coffee?”

“No, not coffee. Coffee you can get anywhere. Starbucks you can get only in Starbucks.”

Braun’s cell phone buzzed. He picked it up and hit the green button.

“Yeah,” he said. He listened for a time, said, “Okay,” then hung up.

“We’re all set,” he told Dexter, but Dexter wasn’t paying attention to him.

“Look at that,” said Dexter, indicating with his chin.

Braun followed the direction of the other man’s gaze. On a corner, a small black kid who might have been in his early teens but looked younger had just exchanged a dime spot with an older kid.

“He looks young,” said Braun.

“You get up close to him, see his eyes, he won’t seem so young. Street’s already worn him down. It’s eating him up from the inside.”

Braun nodded, but said nothing.

“That could have been me,” said Dexter. “Maybe.”

“You sell that shit?”

“Something like it.”

“How’d you get out?”

Dexter shook his head, his eyes losing their glare just momentarily. He saw himself in his brand-new Levi’s-Levi’s then, not those saggy-ass, no-rep jeans that the younger kids wore now, all straps and white stitching-walking across the basketball court, glass crunching beneath the soles of his sneakers. Ex was sitting on a bench, alone, his feet on the seat, his back against the wire of the court, a newspaper in his hands.

“Hey, little man.”

Ex, short for Exorcist, because he loved that movie. Twenty-one, and so secure in himself that he could sit alone on a fall day, reading a newspaper as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“What you want?”

He was smiling, pretending that he was Dexter’s best buddy, that he hadn’t crippled a twelve-year-old the week before for coming up short, the kid wailing and crying as Ex knelt on his chest and put the gun barrel against the kid’s ankle, that same smile on his face as he pulled the trigger.

The kid’s street name was Blade, on account of his father being called Gillette. It was a good name. Dexter liked it, liked Blade too. They used to look out for each other. Now there was nobody to look out for Dexter, but he would continue to look out for Blade, as best he could.

Ex’s smile was still in place, but any residual warmth it might once have contained had begun to die from the eyes down.

“I said, ‘Hey, little man.’ You got nothing to say back to me?”