Crime

Tianna. They can’t see him watching them.

— Okay!? With you playing Miami Vice? Who the fuck do you think you are? Trudi hisses in loathing. — You stay out all night, getting up to fuck knows what—

— People are in trouble. That might not mean anything to you, but I don’t work for the fuckin lecky board, he roars, keeping his eyes on the girl. Was she going to get in the car with those guys? Surely not!

— That’s right! Demean me and what I do! You self-important, pompous prick! All I wanted was to kick back and plan our wedding. I apologise for that, Ray. Sarcasm whips down the phone line. — I’m genuinely sorry. Sorry that I wanted a holiday with my fiance. Sorry to be upset that he stayed out partying all night with some woman I don’t know and now has her child in tow. Sorry to be such a big fucking weirdo!

Tianna flirting, provocatively leaning back on the car bonnet like a model, as she flicks her hair. The older boy, stiff-faced: feet slow-dancing on the spot. The younger one: staring at her in open-mouthed awe. — Look Trudi, I—

In the hotel room, Trudi slams the phone down. Then she panics and wants to call him right back. Dials the desk to ask for the ring-back number.

Lennox smashes the receiver on to its hook and walks quickly across the forecourt. The youths take note, alarmed at the speed at which he advances towards them. — Guess what, Tianna? A dry rasp distorts his voice into a growl. — It was two–one for Hearts. At Tynecastle. Didnae get the scorers. But ah telt you that. Did I tell youse? Dinnae think so, he says, now right in the boys’ faces. — Ah didnae tell yis cause ah dinnae ken who the fuck youse are. Gaunny tell me?

— We was just talking, sir, the younger boy says, now just a nice kid. The senior one is harder; flinty eyes look sullenly at Lennox, gaining a sly confidence as an older couple approach. The man, he assumes it’s the boys’ father, is a brawny guy in a short-sleeved shirt and green khaki shorts. A growth on his face hints at a rough night. The mother is clad in a tight dress that shows a pregnant stomach. Her arms are big and flabby. — What’s goin on here? the man asks.

— Ask your boys, Lennox says. He sees dirt under the man’s fingernails. Feels something ring inside his brain.

— We was just talking, the nice kid repeats.

— Is that right?

— Don’t know what you’re getting all high and mighty about, mister. The man looks at Tianna. — You let your daughter dress like that? What age is she? Know what I think? I think you’d better haul your ass outta here before I call a cop. They put sons of bitches like you behind bars, ya know that?

— What—

Tianna blushes in embarrassment. — They were, I mean, we was all jus talking, like he said, and she nods to the young boy.

Lennox looks at the man, then at Tianna. He notices for the first time that she’s wearing make-up: eye stuff and lipstick. She doesn’t look like a ten-year-old. She must have put it on in the restroom. Outrage punctured, he takes a mental step back. — No harm in talking, eh? C’mon, honey, he looks to Tianna, — we can’t keep Uncle Chet waiting.

The couple regard him suspiciously as they walk back to the car. Lennox trembles inside every step of the way. They’ll probably call the police and I’ll get done. I can’t be so stupid. Not with Dearing connected. He thinks about the Edinburgh man, Kenny Richey, kept now for twenty years on death row in an Ohio prison, for a crime even the state acknowledge he couldn’t possibly have committed. The legal system is as medieval here as anywhere, if you didn’t have money and connections and you fell foul of the power brokers. It had a colour, and that colour was green. There was Rodney King justice and O. J. Simpson justice.

Oblivious to the sad, lonely ringing of the payphone, they get back into the car and Lennox hits the gas pedal, watching the outraged family recede in the rear-view mirror. They drive through residential blocks, broken up by parking lots and strip malls with low-yielding enterprises like cheap insurance brokerage, electrical repairs and pet supplies stores.

Taking a wrong turn north on 27th Avenue, they pass through a district full of black youths glowering in brooding menace from street corners, or the porches of fading homes. By instinct he understands their terrible anger; under economic and social quarantine in the ghetto, beset by this need to kick holes in a world so confining and unyielding.

— Try not to stop at no lights, Tianna urges, — I think this is Liberty City.

Complying as far as is possible, Lennox drives west, then south, then west again, as he asks Tianna, — Do you always dress like that?

Sour defiance tints her expression. — I suppose.

— Do the other girls at your school dress like that?

— Sure they do.

Lennox feels himself make a doubtful moue as the network of slip roads begins to fall away, the city thinning out. Tianna pulls something from her bag. They are cards: baseball cards. As she looks through them, he turns the radio back on.

A tinny, wiffling disco groove hisses out from the car speakers. He deft-tunes it, till the sound comes in stronger. The music infiltrates him, sparking his nerve-jangled body like the useless excitement of the cocaine rush. The beat sticking him between his ribs like a blade. Lennox feels like he is doing something illegal, and wonders whether or not he is. He struggles to control a sudden spasm on one side of his face. Craves the blunting edge of his pills. Wants to fast-forward to when the hangover will be gone and he’ll open up like a flower to suck in the world’s goodness.

Tianna knows she’s annoyed him, talking to those kids. The older one, she knew what he wanted. But no way he could’ve made me, or tricked me or nothin. He was just a kid. And the Scotsman, this Bobby Ray, it was like he was jealous of him. Maybe if a girl could be a woman, then a man could be a boy. She winds down the window, tossing back her hair in the breeze, resting the crook of her arm on its edge, wishing she had a cool pair of shades.

After a bit they pull into the parking lot of a large mall. — Why are we stopping here? Tianna asks.

— We get some new clothes for you.

— Awesome!

— I get to pick them, Lennox says, opening the door car, — or at least veto. You’re travelling with me, he says firmly, in response to her disgruntled pout.

Tianna gets out and slams the door shut. She looks at him from across the vehicle, squinting in the sun. The model pose again. — What do I get?

Her pitch is teasing in a way that makes him feel queasy as she moves towards him. — You get a milkshake. He points over at one of the franchises, an ice-cream parlour. — It says they do the best shake in Florida.

Tianna gyrates, sticking out and shaking her backside, proclaiming, — I do the best shake in Florida!

Lennox wants to laugh because the kid is funny. But she isn’t a pole dancer and it’s wrong for her to behave that way. He converts the nervous impulse to giggle into a frown.

She catches his evident distress. — Jeez, lighten up.

He goes to speak but can think of nothing to say. He is just a Scottish cop with a mental health problem and an uptight, controlling fiancee who needs his weakness so that she can play Mother Teresa once in a while. It doesn’t equip him for this. — I’d just like it if you covered yourself up a bit, that’s all.

— Why?

— Well, when people see lots of skin exposed, they react to that. You’re a bright girl, but people don’t see that. They just see skin. They don’t take you seriously, they don’t see you as a person… He hears the most extreme feminisms meet with the Taliban in his tone.

Tianna feels something punch her hard inside her chest. Skin. That was it with Vince and Clemson, all of them. Skin. She contemplates this simple mystery, eyes adroit and pained. — But you