On second thought, I really didn’t owe him, not after he shot me, though independent of his argument, I did feel the tug of morality, to do what was right.

The signal turned green. We sat at the light. Cars behind us honked. He waited.

I looked at his haggard face, his bloodshot eyes. He looked a thousand years old. Maybe I did owe him for all the times he did what was right to shut down a violent offender in the ghetto. And beyond that, he had done what was right when he went alone in the back door of the house and saved the kid from Johnny Wayne Bascombe. I hadn’t known he’d been the one. Why wouldn’t it be him? He had always championed the underdog, walked the line, often venturing into the gray area of the law to throw assholes in jail. He’d taught me to do the same. For that and nothing else I knew I was going to help him. Before I could form the words, he said her name before I could stop him. “I’m calling in your marker, pal, for the little girl twenty years ago. You owe me for Jenny.”

Chapter Fifteen

That night, I had been assigned code-three to a traffic accident, car vs. pedestrian. I beat the paramedics and other patrol cars. Jenny was down in the street, knocked right out of the crosswalk, knocked right out of her shiny black patent leather shoes.

The night was hot. Groups of people clustered on the sidewalk, quiet, pointing, as if I wouldn’t see Jenny.

At first I thought Jenny was some little girl’s doll tossed haphazardly from a passing car.

No first aid or medical attention was going to help her.

Half her face was mashed, the other half was perfect, angelic in the scant aura of the streetlight.

There was very little blood.

Mercifully, she died on impact.

Her blue gingham dress masked the horror underneath.

Sweaty Marty said later he came up and spoke to me but I was “zoned out,” that “I had the blood spore with my nose to the ground.”

From the debris field, the bits of headlight glass and aluminum trim knocked off the car on impact, I knew the car was old and large. Then I noticed the asshole had hit poor Jenny hard enough that her little body ruptured the radiator. I started following the water trail in the street, a trail that would be gone in minutes, evaporated into the hot summer night. The swath started out large and wide and narrowed as the murderer picked up speed as the coward fled.

I ran.

The water narrowed further and then turned to sporadic blotches.

Then, to droplets.

At an intersection, I lost it entirely. He’d caught the green, only I didn’t know which way he went. I ran in a big arc, cars skidded to a stop to avoid the tall, black uniformed deputy who’d lost his head and ran in a circle in the middle of a busy intersection.

My flashlight dimmed as it started to fail.

I thought I picked up the trail headed north that meant a left turn. I got down on one knee and still wasn’t sure. I got down, in a prone position, and sniffed. I then got up and ran in a full sprint, fighting the heat that now helped the suspect to escape, drying up the evidence.

The foot race worked.

At the next intersection the murderer caught the red and left behind a puddle. He continued on through, went two blocks, and turned on Spring Street. He’d been close to home, a mile and half away when he ran Jenny down.

The water turned rusty and led up a concrete drive to a garage door closed and padlocked. I took a minute to catch my breath and tried to shove back the lion that wanted to get even, to make things right.

In the academy they called it “your professional face.” No matter what happened, you had to put aside your personal feelings and be professional.

I went up to the door, sweat stinging my eyes, my uniform wet under the arms. I wiped my eyes clear on my short sleeve that left a sweat smudge.

I knocked.

The door opened immediately. The room on the inside was dark, the screen door between us. I couldn’t see him and didn’t know if this man, who without conscience, ran down a defenseless little girl in the crosswalk, had a weapon.

His rich and deep timbre voice said, “Can I help you, Officer?”

“Yes, I would like you to come out here and open your garage door.”

Silence for a long moment. “Heh, heh, I don’t think so, Officer. You don’t have a search warrant.”

I carefully, with as little movement as possible, reached up and tried the screen door.

Locked.

He started to close the inside door.

“Wait.”

“Yes, is there something else, Uncle Tom? Something you want to do for your whitie, the people you serve?” He didn’t try to mask the anger and hate in his tone. He was safe and he knew it, swaddled, nice and comfortable, in the shroud of the law.

The next second I sniffed it.

Alcohol.

A drunk driver.

The scent of metabolized alcohol set something off inside me, snapping the last straw. The professional face came off.

I roared.

With both hands I clawed through the screen, reached in and took hold of the enigma, a large, black man wearing a white Stetson hat. I pulled him through the screen door and out onto the ground.

“I caught that last signal,” Robby said. “You remember? By the time I turned on Spring and found the house you had that old man down in his front yard and was putting the boot to him.”

Robby had pulled me off. He had to slug me in the stomach to bring me out of the blind rage. That wasn’t how he’d saved my bacon, though. As a supervisor, he had witnessed a crime I’d perpetrated when I took the cowboy into custody with excessive force. Robby was obligated to stop me. Then turn me in for felony prosecution.

No, the way he’d really saved me came after he got everything calmed down with med aid responding for the suspect. He told me I’d done a hell of a job tracking the car, that he’d never seen anything like it, the tenacity, the perseverance. Then he helped with the story, the way it would be written, the way the courts would accept it, and at the same time save my career. Get at least some token of justice for Jenny. Six months later, Robby was transferred to run the newly formed Violent Crimes Task Force and specifically asked for me to be on his team. So started the genesis of the BMFs.

I owed him.

The name Jenny brought it all flooding back, the hot night, the sweat, the odors, the images of shiny patent leather and blue gingham.

“Yes, I’ll help you, but only for a week. One week.”

Chapter Sixteen

Robby smiled as he wheeled into Stops and parked among the derelict vehicles belonging to other customers. Stops had been at the corner of Wilmington and Imperial Highway forever. Right across the street was Nickerson Gardens, a city housing project that the city had finally fenced in with ten-foot-high wrought iron. Most places turned the curved pointed tops outward to keep the riffraff from entering. With the Nickerson, the wrought iron points were turned inward to keep the animals from escaping the zoo. Stops served hot link sausages on a bun smothered in barbeque sauce and chili fries so thick with grease they’d lie in your stomach for days. Cleevon Tuttle, a rotund black man in white apron with red barbeque sauce smeared in splotches all down the front, set a tray down on the counter with two hot links and chili fries. “Good to see ya, Bruno.”

Robby, his money clip out, peeled off some bills. Cleevon lost his smile, “Man, don’t you dare insult me.”

Robby put his money away and took up the tray.

Cleevon looked back at me. I’d had a great deal of respect for this man, that’s why I hadn’t come around. I broke eye contact and lowered my head.

“Don’t you be that way, Bruno. We was all pullin’ for ya. And if Johnny Cocoran hadn’t gone and died, you woulda got off just like O.J.” He leaned over the counter and took hold of my hand. “You stop that now. Listen to me, you been out a while, come around when you get hungry, anytime. It’s on me. You hear? You got nothin’ to be ashamed of. That sombitch had it comin’. He needed killin’. Everyone knows it.”