Lizardskin by Carsten Stroud Page A

Karpo turns to watch and I maced him.”
    “
Maced
him? Why the hell? Mace is for wimps.”
    “Left my gun in the car, Eustace. Somebody’s always pulling it outta my holster in Twilly’s, and then I gotta kick ass to get it back. Lately I just leave it in the cruiser—all they ever wanna do is brawl. No harm in them.”
    “How’d Karpo take to the mace?”
    “He didn’t like it.”
    “What’d you do then—hit him with a chair?”
    “Nah, a bottle. Word of advice there, LT. Never hit a man with one of them foreign Scotch bottles. The ones with the dented sides? They don’t break.”
    “What happened to the Munch—to Patrolman Benitez?”
    “He got the cuffs on Brenda. Finally. Guy’s so dumb, he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. That’s not the point. We got a lot of stupid troopers.That’s what traffic duty is for. Point is, he’s too short. He’s only on the job because he’s Hispanic.”
    “Well, at least you didn’t say spic.”
    “Don’t get on me about that shit, Eustace. You brought this up. I’m no racist. No sexist either. I think that Sonnette broad has the makings in her. And Myron out there, he’s one of the best we got. Today’s Friday, right? After six? That’s sabbath for Myron. You ever think of
that
when you’re setting up the duty rosters around here? You notice, he’s using the only manual typewriter we have so he can stay in line with the sabbath restrictions. He ever bitch to you about it?”
    “Can’t say he does.”
    “Can’t say? I know you can’t. Now Myron could pull some of that racial religious equal opportunity shit on you, say he’ll go to the union or the civil liberties people. But he doesn’t, because he’s a cop first and something else afterward. That’s all I’m saying.”
    “Christ, Beau. You get up on the wrong side of your cage?”
    Beau leaned back in the chair and let out a long slow sigh. “Not my best day, Eustace.”
    The lieutenant thought it over for a second.
    “Oh, hell. You’re not even supposed to
be
here, are you? You’re supposed to be taking Bobby Lee over to Lizardskin for a party! Why’nt you
say
something?”
    “Oh yeah—excuse me from the firefight, LT, I gotta take my kid to a party. That’d get me a citation for sure!”
    “That why you were hiding out up at the Elbow?”
    “Two hours left in the shift-well, there y’go.”
    “You wanna go now? We can do this tomorrow when things are slower. I’ll call Vanessa, tell her some story.”
    Beau tried to keep his smile in place, but inside he could feel that old blackness rising up. “No point now. Maureen pulled the plug.”
    “She did? How’d Bobby Lee take it?”
    “I don’t know. I never got the chance to ask her. I ended up saying something stupid, and Maureen hung up on me.”
    “What’d you say?”
    “She was quoting Hogeland at me. Guy’s all over me likea bad suit. I said
fuck
Dwight Hogeland—and she said thanks, Beau, maybe I will.”
    “Dwight’s getting real tangled up in this, isn’t he?”
    “I think so. I think he and Maureen—hell … it couldn’t be worse, Eustace.”
    “Ethically, if he’s involved with her—you know—then he oughta get someone else in the firm to handle her file.”
    “Ethics are something Dwight doesn’t seem to have inherited from his father. Doc Hogeland—man, I can’t see how Doc can stand his own kid. Anyway, I screwed it up good with her.”
    “This before or after you whacked Joe Bell?”
    “After. That was when you came in on me, in Bell’s office. I sorta lost it and flipped his desk.”
    “That I had noticed.”
    “I
still
say there’s something rocky in his bedroll, LT.”
    “That more of your cowboy shit? Don’t tell me. What’d you get from the witnesses?”
    Beau ran it down for the lieutenant: the time of the call, their attendance at the scene, being fired upon by Bell, receiving hostile fire from the area by the propane tank.
    Meagher