Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(44)

“Mr. Olamon,” Poole said, “how do we convince you that we’re on the level?”

Cheese let go of my neck. “You don’t. Y’all step back, maybe let things cool down a bit, let folks work shit out amongst themselves.” He wagged his thick finger at Poole. “Maybe then, everybody get happy.”

Poole extended his arms, palms up. “We can’t do that, Mr. Olamon. You must know that.”

“Okay, okay.” Cheese nodded hurriedly. “Maybe someone needs to offer a certain righteous motherfucker some kind of reduction of sentence for his help in facilitating a certain transaction. What you think about that?”

“That would mean bringing in the District Attorney,” Poole said.

“So?”

“Maybe you missed the part where we said we want to keep this quiet,” Broussard said. “Get the girl back, go on our merry way.”

“Well, then, your hypothetical man, he take that sort of deal, he’s a chump. Motherfucking hypothetical dumb-ass, and that’s for damn sure.”

“We just want Amanda McCready,” Broussard said. He placed his palm on the back of his neck, kneaded the flesh. “Alive.”

Cheese leaned back on the table, tilted his head to the sun, sucked in the air through nostrils so wide they could vacuum rolls of quarters off a rug.

Poole stepped back from the table, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.

“Used to keep a bitch in my stable name of McCready,” Cheese said eventually. “Occasional trade, not regular. Didn’t look like much, but you gave her the right party favor, that girl could go. Know what I’m saying?”

“Stable?” Broussard stepped over to the table. “Are you telling us you exploited Helene McCready for the purposes of prostitution, Cheese Whiz?”

Cheese leaned forward and laughed. “P-p-p-purposes of p-p-p-prostitution. Dang, that’s got a nice ring to it, don’t it now? Form myself a band, call it Purposes of Prostitution, pack the clubs like a motherfucker.”

Broussard flicked his wrist and hit Cheese Olamon in the center of the nose with the back of his hand. It wasn’t a love tap, either. Cheese got his hands up to his nose and blood immediately seeped through the fingers, and Broussard stepped between the big man’s open legs and grabbed his right ear in his hand, squeezed until I heard cartilage rattle.

“Listen to me, mutt. You listening?”

Cheese made a noise that sounded like an affirmative.

“I don’t give a fuck about Helene McCready and whether you turned her out on Easter Sunday to a roomful of priests. I don’t care about your bullshit scag deals and the street you’re still running from behind these walls. I care about Amanda McCready.” He leaned into the ear, twisted his vise-grip hold. “You hear that name? Amanda McCready. And if you don’t tell me where she is, you Richard Roundtree-wannabe piece of shit, I’m going to get the names of the four biggest black-buck cons who hate your dumb ass and make sure they spend a night with you in solitary with nothing but their dicks and a Zippo. You following this or should I hit you again?”

He let go of Cheese’s ear and stepped back.

Sweat had darkened Cheese’s hair, and the thick rattle he made behind his cupped hands was the same one he’d made as a kid between coughing attacks, often just before he vomited.

Broussard flourished a hand in Cheese’s direction and looked over at me. “Judgment,” he said, and wiped the hand on his pants.

Cheese dropped his hands from his nose and leaned back on the picnic bench as blood trickled over his upper lip and into his mouth. He took several deep breaths, his eyes never leaving Broussard.

The guards in the towers looked off into the sky. The two guards manning the gates studied their shoes as if they’d each received a new pair that morning.

I could hear a distant clank of steel as someone worked out with weights inside the prison walls. A tiny bird swooped across the visitors’ yard. It was so small and moved so fast, I couldn’t even tell what color it was before it shot up the wall and over the cyclone wire, disappeared from view.

Broussard stood back from the bench, his feet spread, staring at Cheese, his gaze so devoid of emotion or life he could have been studying tree bark. This was another Broussard, one I hadn’t met before.

As fellow investigators, Angie and I had been treated by Broussard with professional respect and even a bit of charm. I’m sure that’s the Broussard most people knew—the handsome, articulate detective with flawless grooming and a movie star’s smile. But in Concord Prison, I was seeing the street cop, the alley brawler, the interrogation-by-nightstick Broussard. As he leveled his dark gaze at Cheese, I saw the righteous, win-at-all-costs menace of a guerrilla fighter, a jungle warrior.

Cheese spit a thick mix of phlegm and blood onto the grass.

“Yo, Mark Fuhrman,” he said, “kiss my black ass.”

Broussard lunged for him, and Poole caught the back of his partner’s jacket as Cheese scrambled backward and swung his huge body off the picnic table.

“These are some sorry-ass crackers you hanging with, Patrick.”

“Hey, mutt!” Broussard shouted. “You remember me that night in solitary! You got it?”

“Got a picture of your wife doing it with a pile of dwarfs in my cell,” Cheese said. “That’s what I got. Want to come look?”