Anyway, the two letters that preceded the numbers on the plate had told him everything he needed to know. Bagley and Tracy must have known it, too. They had put him onto this, he reasoned, as some kind of test. He wasn’t angry. It was just a job.
The letters on the plate read GT. Plainclothes, undercover, whatever you wanted to call it. The abusive john was a cop.
chapter 5
HOLD on a second, Derek,” said Karen Bagley. “I’m going to conference you in with Sue.”
Strange held the phone away from his ear and sat back in the chair behind his desk. He watched Lamar Williams climb a stepladder to feather-dust Strange’s blinds.
“You coming with me to practice tonight, Lamar?”
“You want me to, I will.”
“I was just wonderin’ on if you could make it. If you had to sit your baby sister again, I mean.”
“Nah, uh-uh.”
“’Cause I saw you outside the Black Hole Friday night.”
Lamar lowered the duster. “Yeah, I was there. After I did what I told you I had to do.”
“Kind of a rough place, isn’t it?”
“It’s a place in the neighborhood I can listen to some go-go, maybe talk to a girl. I don’t eye-contact no one I shouldn’t; I ain’t lookin’ to step
“Just tellin’ you I saw you, is all.”
Strange heard voices on the phone. He put the receiver back to his ear.
“Okay,” said Strange.
“We all here?” said Bagley.
“I can hear you,” said Tracy. “Derek?”
“I got what you needed,” said Strange. “It’s all on videotape.”
“That was quick,” said Bagley.
“Did it Friday night. I thought I’d let the weekend pass, didn’t want to disturb your-all’s beauty sleeps.”
“What’d you get?” said Tracy.
“Your bad john is a cop. Unmarked. But you two knew that, I expect. The flag went up for me when you said he was talkin’ about ‘I don’t have to pay.’ Question is, why didn’t you just tell me what you suspected?”
“We wanted to find out if we could trust you,” said Tracy.
Direct, thought Strange. That was cool.
“I’m going to give the tape and the information to a lieutenant friend of mine in the MPD. I been knowin’ him my whole life. He’ll turn it over to Internal and they’ll take care of it.”
“You’ve got a videotape of his car,” said Bagley, “right? Did you get his face?”
“No, not really. But it’s his car and it’s a clear solicitation. He might say he was gathering information or some bullshit like that, but it’s enough to throw a shadow over him. The IAD people will talk to him, and I suspect it’ll scare him. He won’t be botherin’ that girl again. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Bagley. “Good work.”
“Good? It was half good, I’d say. You two ever see that movie
Bagley and Tracy took a moment before uttering a “yes” and an “uh-huh.” Strange figured they were wondering where he was going with this.
“One of my favorites,” said Strange. “There’s that scene where Coburn, he plays the knife-carryin’ Texican, pistol-shoots this cat off a horse from, like, I don’t know, a couple hundred yards away. And this hero-worship kid, German actor or something, but they got him playin’ a Mexican, he says something like, ‘That was the greatest shot I ever saw.’ And Coburn says, ‘It was the worst. I was aiming for his horse.’”
“And your point is what?” said Bagley.
“I wish I could’ve delivered more to you. More evidence, I mean. But what I did get, it might just be enough. Anyway, hopefully y’all will
“Like I said,” said Tracy, “there’s no such thing as an ex-cop. Cops are usually hesitant to turn in one of their own.”
“There’s two professions,” said Strange, “teaching and policing, that do the most good for the least pay and recognition. But you want to be a teacher or a cop, you accept that goin’ in. Most cops and most teachers are better than good. But there’s always gonna be the teacher likes to play with a kid’s privates, and there’s always gonna be a cop out there, uses his power and position in the wrong way. In both cases, to me, it’s the worst kind of betrayal. So I got no problem with turnin’ a cat like that in. Only . . .”
“What?” said Tracy.
“Don’t keep nothin’ from me again, hear? Okay, you did it once, but you don’t get to do it again. It happens, it’ll be the last time we work together.”
“We were wrong,” said Bagley. “Can you forget it?”
“Forget what?”
