From a Buick 8(83)

'Want to close your mouth, Brian?' George asked. 'You'll catch a fly.' He took his handcuffs off his belt.

Brian Lippy saw them and started to lose the grin again. 'What you think you gonna do with those?'

'If you don't hand me your operating papers right now, I'm going to put them on you, Brian. And if you resist, I can guarantee you two things: a broken nose and eighteen months in Castlemora for resisting arrest. Could be more, depending on which judge you draw. Now what do you think?'

Brian took his wallet out of his back pocket. It was a greasy old thing with the logo of some rock group ? Judas Priest, I think ? inexpertly burned into it. Probably with the tip of a soldering iron. He started thumbing through the various compartments.

'Brian,' I said.

He looked up.

'The name is Jacubois, Brian. Nice French name. And I haven't been fat for quite awhile now.'

'You'll gain it back,' he said, 'fat boys always do.'

I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. He sounded like some halfbaked guest on a talkshow. He glowered at me, but there was something uncertain in it. He'd lost the advantage and he knew it.

'Little secret,' I said. 'High school's over, my friend. This is your actual, real life. I know that's hard for you to believe, but you better get used to it. It's not just detention anymore. This actually counts.'

What I got was a kind of stupid gape. He wasn't getting it. They so rarely do.

'Brian, I want to see your paperwork with no more delay,' George said. 'You put it right in my hand.' And he held his hand out, palm up. Not very wise, you might say, but George Morgan had been a State Trooper for a long time, and in his judgment, this situation was now going in the right direction. Right enough, anyway, for him to decide he didn't need to put the cuffs on my old friend Brian just to show him who was in charge.

I went over to the truck, glancing at my watch as I did. It was just about one-thirty in the afternoon. Hot. Crickets singing dry songs in the roadside grass. The occasional car passing by, the drivers slowing down for a good look. It's always nice when the cops have someone pulled over and it's not you. That's a real daymaker.

The woman in the truck was sitting with her left knee pressed against the chrome post of Brian's Hurst shifter. Guys like Brian put them in just so they can stick a Hurst decal in the window, that's what I think. Next to the ones saying Fram and Pennzoil. She looked about twenty years old with long ironed brownette hair, not particularly clean, hanging to her shoulders. Jeans and a white tank top. No bra. Fat red pimples on her shoulders. A tat on one arm that said AC/DC and one on the other saying BRIAN MY LUV. Nails painted candycane pink but all bitten down and ragged. And yes, there was blood. Blood and snot hanging out of her nose. More blood spattered up her cheeks like little birthmarks. Still more on her split lips and chin and tank top. Head down so the wings of her hair hid some of her face. Cigarette going up and down, tick-tock, either a Marlboro or a Winston, in those days before the prices went up and all the fringe people went to the cheap brands, you could count on it. And if it's Marlboro, it's always the hard pack. I have seen so many of them. Sometimes there's a baby and it straightens the guy up but usually it's just bad luck for the baby.

'Here,' she said, and lifted her right thigh a little. Under it was a slip of paper, canary yellow. 'The registration. I tell him to keep his ticket in his wallet or the glove compartment, but it's always floppin around in here someplace with the Mickey Dee wrappers and the rest of the trash.'

She didn't sound stoned and there were no beer cans or liquor bottles floating around in the cab of the truck. That didn't make her sober, of course, but it was a step in the right direction. She also didn't seem like she was going to turn abusive, but of course that can change. In a hurry.

'What's your name, ma'am?'

'Sandra?'

'Sandra what?'

'McCracken?'

'Do you have any ID, Ms McCracken?'

'Yeah.'

'Show me, please.'

There was a little leatherette clutch purse on the seat beside her. She opened it and started pawing through it. She worked slowly, and with her head bent over her purse, her

face disappeared completely. You could still see the blood on her tank top but not on her face; you couldn't see the swollen lips that turned her mouth into a cut plum, or the old mouse fading around one eye.

And from behind me: 'Fuck no, I ain't getting in there. What makes you think you got a right to put me in there?'

I looked around. George was holding the back door of the cruiser open. A limo driver couldn't have done it more courteously. Except the back seat of a limo doesn't have doors you can't open and windows you can't unroll from the inside, or mesh between the front and the back. Plus, of course, that faint smell of puke. I've never driven a cruiser ? well, except for a 'week or so after we got the new Caprices ? that didn't have that smell.

'What makes me think I have the right is you're busted, Brian. Did you just hear me read you your rights?'

'The f**k for, man? I wasn't speedin!'

'That's true, you were too busy tuning up on your girlfriend to really get the pedal to the metal, but you were driving recklessly, driving to endanger. Plus assault. Let's not forget that. So get in.'