“That’s funny,” Wade said. “What are these right here?”
As the cashier leaned over the counter to look, Wade dropped a Mentos into the open bottle of Diet Coke, which burst into a foam geyser that blasted into the man’s face.
In the same instant, Wade whirled around and drew his gun, aiming it at the storeroom door. “Do you want you want to die tonight?”
“No, fuck, no,” someone said behind the door.
“Drop your weapon and step out with your hands behind your head.” Wade took a step back so he could keep his eye on the drenched cashier at the same time. “You too, hands up.”
Wade heard something metallic hit the floor in the storeroom and then the door opened. A man came out. He was thin and jittery and sweating from every pore, his hands on his head.
Charlotte rushed in now, her gun drawn and pointed at the Diet Coke?doused man behind the counter. “Don’t move, stay right where you are.”
“Is there anyone else with you?” Wade asked.
“No, it’s just us,” the man behind the counter said.
She covered the two men while Wade, his gun still drawn just in case, went to the storeroom and slowly pushed open the door the rest of the way with the toe of his shoe. Inside, he saw an old man sitting on the floor, his mouth sealed with duct tape, his hands bound behind his back, a gun on the floor at his feet.
Wade kicked the gun aside and carefully removed the tape from the man’s mouth.
“Was it just them?” Wade asked.
The man nodded.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “I’m used to it. Those two assholes came in, pointed a gun at my face, and said they’d let me keep my brains if I didn’t make trouble. I didn’t get this old being stupid. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t get robbed by somebody.”
“Those days are over. I owe you $2.99 for a liter of Diet Coke and a buck for a roll of Mentos. Don’t let me forget.” Wade turned back to Charlotte. “Cuff ’em and read ’em their rights.”
She did.
They took a report from the shopkeeper, then drove the two robbers back to the station and locked them up while Charlotte filled out the necessary paperwork.
Wade used the time to start patching some of the holes in the walls left from the shelves, the posters, the firebombing, and the drive?by shooting.
At daybreak, he went upstairs for a quick, two?hour nap, showered and shaved, and put on a pair of jeans, a T?shirt, and a Windbreaker. He came back down to the station to find a sour?faced Billy waiting for him at Charlotte’s desk.
“I am definitely switching to nights next week,” Billy said. “I haven’t had to draw my gun once yet, and she’s got to three times.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that trick with the Mentos,” Charlotte said. “It wasn’t something we were taught at the academy. Where did you learn it?”
“ America’s Funniest Home Videos,” Wade said.
“I can’t picture you watching that show,” she said.
“My daughter did,” Wade said. “In fact, this is my day with her. So here’s what’s going to happen while I’m gone.”
Wade told Charlotte to transport the two robbers to the lockup downtown and to take the patrol car home with her. He showed Billy where the patching and painting materials were and told him to stick around the station and work on the walls.
“What does that have to do with being a cop?” Billy asked.
“It’s about showing your pride for your profession, among other things. It’s why firefighters keep their trucks as shiny as jewels.”
“But I don’t know how to paint,” Billy said.
“It can’t look any worse than it does now,” Wade said. “The important thing is, I don’t want you going anywhere while I’m gone.”
“I went on patrol before, remember?”
“That was before the drive?by,” Wade said. “I don’t want you out there alone right now.”
“What if an emergency call comes in?”
“It’ll be a trap,” Wade said. “Nobody calls the police down here. Not yet, anyway.”
Wade told Billy to call him if anything came up and then headed out in his rented Explorer for the suburbs of New King City.
As he drove across the Chewelah River on the King’s Crossing Bridge, passing the familiar landmarks of what was once his daily commute, he felt as if he were awakening from a bad dream. The closer he got to Clayton, the suburb where he’d lived, the farther away and less real Darwin Gardens became.
By the time he pulled into the driveway of his house, he could almost believe none of it had ever happened- the corruption of the MCU, the trial, his divorce-and that it had just been one miserably long drive home.
He got out of his car and stood in the driveway for a moment, looking down the street of tract homes. Everything seemed cleaner and more colorful, as if the sun somehow shined brighter here. The air was tinged with the fragrance of flowers and freshly mowed grass instead of exhaust fumes, puke, and dried pools of urine. The asphalt was black and smooth instead of gray and riddled with potholes. There were no bars on the windows, no graffiti on the walls, no used condoms and syringes in the gutters.
Paradise.
Being back in New King City again, he could understand the temptation to haul away any transients who showed up here, to do whatever was necessary to prevent this place from becoming the one he’d just left. It would be a crime to let this become Darwin Gardens, especially while his family still lived here.
But intellectually, he knew that the rot that crept into the once prosperous south side, eventually turning it into Darwin Gardens, wasn’t carried like a plague by the wandering homeless. It was far more complicated and insidious than that.
The future of these suburbs, the safety, beauty, and cleanliness that made them so desirable, had more to do with the continued economic survival of the New King City tech companies than anything else. All it would take was a few of those employers shutting down and outsourcing their business to India or China, putting thousands of the heavily mortgaged owners of these tract homes out of work, and New King City could quickly become Old King City.
He turned toward the house and saw Alison standing on the front walk, studying him.
“You’re looking at the street like you’ve never seen it before,” she said.
“Maybe I haven’t,” he said. “At least not the way that I do now.”
Alison looked beautiful, and he felt a sudden, and painful, longing to hold her. And with that longing, he felt guilty for having been with another woman. The guilt made no sense, of course, since they were divorced. But ending the marriage wasn’t his idea. He’d gone along with it because it was what she wanted. If she changed her mind now, he’d come back to her with no hard feelings, as if the divorce had never happened.
She tipped her head toward the Explorer. “What happened to your car?”
“It’s in the shop, having some body work done. I had a little accident.”
“Are you OK?”
“Just fine,” he said.
“You don’t look it.”
I suppose I should look terrific after losing my family, my home, and my career and starting over as a beat cop in the worst corner of King City. That’s what he thought, but it wasn’t what he said.
“I’m not getting enough sleep lately.”
“Brooke tells me you’re back on the force,” she said.
He nodded. “It’s not the same job, but it’s the same pay, rank, and benefits.”
“That’s good,” Alison said, putting her hands on her hips, letting Wade know that trouble was coming his way, “but I would have appreciated hearing about the job from you rather than my daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t plan it that way. Things were hectic and Brooke caught me off guard.”
