“Nose needs packing and some stitches for that gash. But otherwise he'll be back picking tomatoes soon as he's released. But he's too sozzled to even stand,” Troy said.
Bubba Johns came through the door to the locker room and wrinkled his nose. “Somebody going to have to clean that up,” he said, pointing to the bloodstains on the cell floor.
“You just coming on?” Troy said.
“Yep. Got to put in my hour working out in the back room. I see Calvin got himself his very own punching bag.” Bubba turned to walk down the corridor.
Troy stared after Bubba a moment. “Calvin, when you're done here, step into my office,” he said.
Troy sat behind his desk, pulled out a lower drawer, and turned to face the back window with one foot up, resting on the drawer. Out on the boat ramp a man and woman were launching a daysailor, sails still down. Early birds, Troy thought. At this hour there wasn't much wind, but what there was would be offshore and take them out the channel to the Gulf. In the afternoon the sea breeze would help bring them back to town. Powerboaters didn't usually pay attention to wind or current or even much to tides. Sailors had to. The woman held the dock lines while the man drove a car and trailer up and out of the ramp and over to the parking area.
Calvin came in and sat in a chair in front of Troy's desk. He looked out the window too. “That some kind of sailboat?” he asked. “Never saw the point of something so slow it takes forever to get anywhere.”
“It's a Com Pac,” Troy said. “Probably a sixteen. And a sailor has arrived at his destination the moment he leaves the dock.”
“What does that mean?”
Troy was looking out the window. “Motor boats are usually used for some purpose. Fishing, diving, getting to someplace. Nobody just fires up a gas-guzzling motorboat and runs it around in circles for fun. Not unless you're rich. But sailors just want to sail. And they're sailing the moment they leave the dock.”
“Seems an awfully slow way to get around,” Calvin said.
“Well, I guess you need to be a sailor to get it. Never mind.” Troy was watching the boat and the woman. “I understand the other officers call you âTicket Master' because you write so many traffic and parking tickets.”
“So? I'm good at my job.”
“Protecting and serving is not very much about tickets,” Troy said. “I checked. You, in fact, write as many as the rest of the department combined.”
“So? I'm making a lot of money for the town council. Give me a raise then.”
“Yesterday you gave a parking ticket to a man who had parked his car and boat trailer slightly over the lines in the parking lot out there.” Troy pointed out the window to the boat ramp.
Calvin nodded. “We only got so many spaces for those trailers. Man uses two of them, takes one away from someone else who needs it.”
“I know all about boat trailer parking at boat ramps, believe me,” Troy said. “And in the winter when the ramp is busy, I'd say you had a point. But it's July and we both know there won't be six trailers out there today and we have thirty spaces for them. Man could park crossways and not bother anyone else.”
“So, what would you have done?”
“I'd have written a stern note,” Troy said. “And put that on his windshield. Sometimes a little social pressure gets the job done better than a fine.”
Out on the ramp, the man had returned and he and the woman raised the mainsail on the sailboat. There seemed to be enough wind to gently push it off the dock and the man deftly flipped it end-for-end, letting the boom far out as they drifted downwind and toward the channel out to the islands. The woman went to the mast and hoisted the jib, then scampered back to trim the jib sheet.
Hank-on jib
, Troy thought, approvingly.
None of this modern roller-reefing for those two
.
“A week ago you ticketed a tourist for going thirty-two down Barron Road here in town,” he said to the window.
“Speed limit's thirty,” Calvin said. “Everywhere in town.”
“I know that.”
“Damn Canadian needed to be taught that we're serious about traffic laws here.”
“We are. And you taught him. You taught him that this town has assholes for cops and to stay the hell away from here when he comes to Florida on vacation next year.” Troy shifted in his chair to reach his wallet. “The town council doesn't need that man's hundred and fifty dollars as much as it needs his hotel, restaurant, shopping and whatever-else business he brings here. And he is busy right now, up in Toronto or wherever, telling everyone who will listen to him about the redneck Florida town that's a speed trap.”
“So am I supposed to just wave at him as he speeds past me?”
“You're supposed to use good judgment. Mangrove Bayou is a town without a single traffic light or parking meter and mostly wide tree-lined park-like streets with brick pavers on a lot of the streets, and some people would drive at about twenty-five, most thirty, a few thirty-five, if there were no posted speed limits at all. We need to respect human nature.”
Troy sighed. He sat up and turned to face Calvin across the desk. “New rule. Just for you, Officer Smith. You will not write a speeding ticket for anything less than forty miles per hour. You will not write parking tickets at all. If you see someone who really needs a parking ticket, call the other officer on duty and have him or her take a look and then write the ticket. Now, enough with tickets. You also have a long, long record of âsubduing' people you arrest, and you arrest a lot of people.”
“I can't help it, they resist. What am I supposed to do, play patty-cake with them? They resist, I deal with it.” Calvin giggled. “Mess with the bull, you get the horns.”
“That Mex farmhand back there resisted you? I couldn't get him to stand up.”
“He's got no business in town anyway. We don't cater to illegal fruit pickers. Better run them off when we do see 'em. Teach the rest to stay away.”
Troy frowned. “Couple things wrong with your philosophy, Officer Smith. First, those guys aren't here illegally. You saw their work papers.”
“Permits don't mean shit. They take jobs away from good Americans.”
“You ever pick oranges?” Troy asked. “Some of those trees have thorns. Ever pick strawberries? I mean all day, on your knees? I have, and it was miserable. Tomatoes? Lots of people are allergic to the juice and even the leaves, and your arms turn raw in a day's work. I'm not here to discuss farm-labor hiring practices with you but I don't see a lot of Americans lining up to do those jobs. I don't see you volunteering to do what those two men in back do all day, every day, and probably send most of their pitiful wages back to families in Mexico.”
“Well, I think⦔
“I don't care what you think, Calvin. I can't tell you not to subdue anyone else. That varies with the need. But I will look, hard, at every arrest you make and decide for myself if you used excessive force. And I don't want to see that. And if I see any more of it, you may need to get an orange-picking job instead of a police job. Am I clear on this, Officer Smith?”
“Isn't there some kind of police review? Who says you get to decide on your own?”
“The town council said. You can take it up with them and then they have to decide to back me up or fire me. If I were you I wouldn't bet on you. I'm not playing games here, Officer Smith. You shape up and start acting like an adult and an intelligent and understanding law enforcement officer or turn in your badge and gun and find some other line of work where it's actually OK to bully people and beat on people. Am I clear on this, Officer Smith?”
Calvin looked like he wanted to say more. He thought better of it as Troy leaned forward and stared him down. He looked down at his shoes. “Yeah. Whatever. Is that all? I'm off-duty now.”
“That's all. Have a nice day, Officer Smith.”
Smith left. Troy turned to check on the sailboat but it was already out of sight in the channel beyond the Sea Grape Inn. He wished he was out there on it. He sighed and got up, took four dollars out to the lobby and put those into June's Bad Words Jar under her counter. It was a few minutes before eight and June hadn't come in yet. He went to see Bubba in the exercise room.
“Bubba, first thing for you today, take that one guy with the bent nose to see Doc Vollmer,” he said. “Get him fixed up. Charge it to the town account.”
“Will do, Chief. Want me to kick 'em loose after that? Calvin gets carried away sometimes. I think the bushes around the microwave tower can survive a little pee.”
“Not yet. Calvin is right about one thing. We don't see a lot of pickers here in town. Find out how they got here. Maybe they have a truck someplace. We'll hold them until tonight, just in case anyone wants to phone in a burglary from last night. They need to sleep it off anyway.”
“You chew Calvin's ass?”
“That's a dollar,” Troy said. “And what happens between Calvin and me stays between Calvin and me.”
“Huh. Whatever, Chief. Me, I'd have chewed his ass. Make it two bucks.”
Chapter 16
Wednesday, July 24
Troy's staff tried to keep information on computer files and share that from a common server, but the nature of the police business meant printing out reams of reports and other things to be stored in file folders in actual filing cabinets. Troy preferred it. Angel Watson thought it was stupid. He suspected she was right.
He was looking at his file on the John Barrymore death and wondering if there was any point to it when his intercom buzzed. “Chief, got a visitor,” June said.
“Good. I'm bored back here. Send him in.”
“It's a her. She's our local journalist.”
“The hits just keep on coming,” Troy said. “Send her back.”
The woman was mid-fifties but still had a good figure with large breasts. She wore her long brown hair in a French braid. She was weathered, not just deeply tanned, but skin-aged from too much time spent sunbathing. She wore a tee-shirt with the text of the First Amendment printed on the front and American Society of Journalists and Authors
on the back. She sat down and pulled a reporter's notebook and a pen out of her purse. “I'm Cilla Dowling,” she said. “I run the
Bayou Breeze
web site. Our town online newspaper.”
“I read it each morning,” Troy said. “Faithfully. Mostly I like the comics and the crossword.”
“There aren't any comics. There's no crossword.”
“I knew that. Just checking to see if you did.”
She looked back at the office door and at his desk. “Director of Pubic Safety? And where's your name? I see you scraped off Bob Redmond's name but didn't add your own. You don't even have a nameplate for your desk.”
“Troy Adam. Police chief on probation.”
“I knew that.”
Troy spread his hands. “See?”
“And the door?”
“Didn't scrape off Redmond's name. Didn't even know he had his name up there. Someone must have done that before I showed up. So what's your full name? It can't be Cilla. Aren't those the little wavy things that make paramecium move around?”
“Those are
cilia
. And I think the plural is
paramecia
. My name is Priscilla. Call me that and I tear off your nose.”
“OK,
Cilla
, I must say I have always been a huge fan of the First Amendment. I've just never seen it soâ¦monumentally presented.”
“Thirty-four C in fact. I suspect that you would wear a Second Amendment shirt if any were available.”
“There are tons of them available. But you suspect wrong.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Between me and thee? Off the record or whatever you people say?”
“Well, I didn't come over here to get your take on the U.S. Constitution, but I suppose I'm curious. Off the record.”
“Guess this is as good a way as any to see if I can trust you,” Troy said. “So, off the record. The Second Amendment was a tragic error on the part of our founding fathers, who had no idea how it would be misconstrued today or what sort of weapons would be available to the average nutcase. Did you also want my opinion of the national debt? The Mideast?”
“Closer to home. Tell me all you know about John Barrymore. On the record.”
“Well, I'm pretty sure he's dead,” Troy said. He pulled out a bottom drawer and put a foot up on it, leaned back and folded his hands on this stomach. “We sent the body up to Naples for an autopsy.”
“An autopsy means you think he was murdered.”
“An autopsy means he didn't die in bed of old age or in a hospital of some disease. The medical examiner checks everything in-between. What's your background for this job?”
“Am I qualified to be a snoop reporter?” Dowling grinned. “Been a reporter on a big city newspaper. Worked wire service for ten years with Reuters. Last work was with their Miami-Caribbean Bureau. But I always wanted to retire and run a small-town newspaper. By the time I got around to it there weren't too many newspapers left. Small-town news web site is good, though.”