Hornet's Nest

  Brazil was vulnerable and trying not to be. He told himself that what this hammer-wielding deputy chief thought didn't matter in the least.

  West stood in the rain, the two of them looking at each other as Niles watched from his favorite window, tail twitching.

  "I know about your father," West went on.

  "I know exactly what happened. Is that why you run around playing cop morning, noon and night?"

  Brazil was struggling with emotions he didn't want anyone to know about. West couldn't tell if he was angry or close to tears as she chipped away at him with her own investigation into his past.

  "He's plainclothes," she said, 'decides to pull a stolen vehicle.

  Number one violation. You don't do that in an unmarked car. And the asshole turns out to be a felon on the run, who points his gun close range. Last thing your father said was, "Please God no," but the fucker does it anyway. Blows a hole in your daddy's heart, dead before he hits the pavement. Your favorite newspaper made sure Detective Drew Brazil looked bad in the end. Screwed him. And now his son's out here doing the same thing. "

  Brazil sat on the swampy lawn, staring hard at her.

  "No, I'm not.

  That's not the point. And you're cruel. "

  West didn't often have such a powerful effect on guys. Raines never got this intense, not even when she broke it off with him, which she had done five times now. Usually, he got mad and stormed off, then ignored her as his phone didn't ring until he couldn't stand it anymore. Brazil she did not comprehend, but then she had never known a writer or any artist, really. She sat next to him, both of them in a grassy puddle and drenched. She tossed the hammer and it splashed when it landed, its violence spent for the day. She sighed as this young volunteer-cop-reporter stared at drops streaking past, his body rigid with rage and resentment.

  "Tell me why," she said.

  He wouldn't look at her. He would never speak to her again.

  "I want to know," she persisted.

  "You could be a cop. You could be a reporter. But oh no. You got to be both? Huh?" She playfully punched his shoulder, and got no response.

  "You still live with your mother, I got a feeling. How come? Nice-looking guy like you? No girlfriend, you don't date, I got that feeling, too. You gay? I got no problem with that, okay?"

  Brazil got up.

  "Live and let live, I always say," West went on from her puddle.

  He gave her a piercing look, stalking off.

  "I'm not the one they call gay," he said in the rain.

  This did not threaten West. She had heard it before. Women who went into policing, the military, professional sports, coaching, construction, or physical education were oriented toward same-sex relationships. Those who succeeded in any of these professions, or owned businesses, or became doctors, lawyers, or bankers, and did not paint their nails or play round-robin tennis in a league during office hours, were also lesbians. It did not matter if one were married with children. It mattered not if one were dating a man. These were simply facades, a means of faking out family and friends.

  The only absolute proof of heterosexuality was to do nothing quite as well as a man and be proud of it. West had been a known lesbian ever since she was promoted to sergeant. Certainly, the department was not without its gay women, but they were closeted and full of lies about boyfriends no one ever met. West could understand why people might assume she was living the same myth. Similar rumors even circulated about Hammer. All of it was pathetic, and West wished people would let their rivers flow as they would and get on with life.

  She had decided long ago that many moral issues were really about threats. For example, when she had been growing up on the farm, people talked about the unmarried women missionaries who kept busy at Shelby Presbyterian Church, not far from Cleveland Feeds and the regional hospital. A number of these fine ladies had served together in exotic places, including the Congo, Brazil, Korea, and Bolivia. They came home on furlough or to retire, and lived together in the same dwelling. It never occurred to anyone West knew that these faithful ladies of the church had any interest beyond prayer and saving the poor.

  The threat in West's formative years was to grow up a spinster, an old maid. West heard this more than once when she was better than the boys in most things and learned how to drive a tractor. Statistically, she would prove to be an old maid. Her parents still worried, and this was compounded by the nineties fear that she might be an old maid who was also inclined elsewhere. In all fairness, it wasn't that West couldn't understand women wanting each other. What she could not imagine was fighting with a woman.

  It was bad enough with men, who slammed things around and didn't communicate. Women cried and screamed and were touchy about everything, especially when their hormones were a little wide and to the right. She could not imagine two lovers having PMS at the same time. Domestic violence would be inevitable, possibly escalating to homicide, especially if both were cops with guns.

  After a light, solitary dinner of leftover spicy chicken pizza. West sat in her recliner chair in front of the TV, watching the Atlanta Braves clobber the Florida Marlins. Niles was in her lap because it was his wish. His owner was at ease in police sweats, drinking a Miller Genuine Draft in the bottle, and reading Brazil's article about herself because it really wasn't right to be so hard on the guy without taking a good look at what he had done. She laughed out loud again, paper rattling as she turned a page. Where the hell did he get all this stuff?

  She was so caught up, she had forgotten to pet Niles for fourteen minutes, eleven seconds, and counting. He wasn't asleep, but merely pretending, biding his time to see how long this might go on that he might add to her list of infractions. When she ran out of indulgences, there was that porcelain figurine on top of the bookcase. If she thought Niles couldn't jump up there, she had another think coming.

  Niles could trace his lineage back to Egypt, to pharaohs and pyramids, his skills ancient and largely untested. Someone hit a home run and West didn't notice as she laughed again and reached for the phone.

  Brazil didn't hear it ring at first because he was in front of his computer, typing, possessed by whatever he was writing as Annie Lennox sang loudly from the boom box. His mother was in the kitchen, fixing herself a peanut-butter sandwich on Sunbeam white bread. She slurped another mouthful of cheap vodka from a plastic glass as the phone rang from the wall. She swayed, grabbing for the counter to steady herself, and got a drawer handle as two blue phones on the wall rang and rang.

  Silverware crashed to the floor, and Brazil jumped up from his chair as his mother managed to grab at her double-vision of the phone and bump it out of its cradle. It banged against the wall, dangling from a snarled cord. She lunged for it again, almost falling.

  "What?" she slurred into the receiver.

  "I was trying to reach Andy Brazil," West said over the line, after an uncertain pause.

  "In his room going." Mrs. Brazil made drunken typing motions.

  "You know. Usual! Thinks he'll amount to Hemingway, something."

  Mrs. Brazil did not notice her son in the doorway, stricken as she talked on in fractured, bleary words that could not possibly make sense to anyone. It was a house rule that she did not answer the phone. Either her son got it or the answering machine did. He watched in despair, helpless as she humiliated him yet again in life.

  "Ginia West," Mrs. Brazil repeated as she finally noticed two of her sons coming toward her. He took the phone out of her hand.

  West's intention had been merely to confess to Brazil that his story was rather wonderful and she appreciated it, and didn't deserve it.

  She had not expected this impaired woman to answer, and now West knew it all. She didn't tell Brazil a thing other than that she was on her way. This was an order. West had dealt with all types in her years of police work, and was undaunted by Mrs. Brazil, no matter how vile, how hateful and hostile the woman was when her son and West put her in bed and made her drink a lot of water. Mrs. Bra
zil passed out about five minutes after West helped her into the bathroom to pee.

  West and Brazil went for a walk in darkness broken by an occasional lighted window from old southern homes along Main Street. Rain was gentle like mist. He had nothing to say as they drew closer to the Davidson campus, which was quiet this time of year, even when various camps were in session. A security guard in his Cushman watched the couple pass, pleased that Andy Brazil might finally have a girlfriend.

  She was a lot older than him, but still worth looking at, and if any one needed a mother figure, that boy did.

  The guard's name was Clyde Briddlewood, and he had headed the modest Davidson College security force since days when the only problem in the world was pranks and drunkenness. Then the school had let women in. It was a bad idea, and he had told everyone he could. Briddlewood had done his best to warn the preoccupied professors as they were hurrying to class, and he had alerted Sam Spencer, the president back then. No one listened. Now Briddlewood had a security force of eight people and three Cushmans. They had radios, guns, and drank coffee with local cops.

  Briddlewood dipped Copenhagen snuff, spitting in a Styrofoam cup as Brazil and his girlfriend followed the brick walk toward the Presbyterian church. Briddlewood had always liked that boy and was sorry as heck he had to grow up. He remembered Brazil as a kid, always in a hurry somewhere with his Western Auto tennis racket and plastic bag of bald, dead tennis balls that he'd fished out of the trash or begged off the tennis, coach. Brazil used to share his chewing gum and candy with Briddlewood, and this touched the security guard right down to his boots. The boy didn't have much and lived with a bad situation. True, Muriel Brazil wasn't hitting the sauce back then as bad as she did now, but her son had a lousy deal and everyone at Davidson knew it.

  What Brazil didn't know was that a number of people who lived in the college community had plotted behind the scenes for years, and had raised money from wealthy alumni, even dipping into their own wallets to make certain that when Brazil was college age, he was offered an opportunity to rise above his situation. Briddlewood, himself, had put a few bucks in the pot, when he didn't have much to spare, and lived in a small house far enough away from Lake Norman that he couldn't see the water but could at least watch the endless parade of trucks hauling boats along his dirt road. He spat again, silently rolling the Cushman closer to the church, keeping his eye on the couple, to make sure they were safe out here in the dark.

  "What am I going to do with you?" West was saying to Brazil.

  He had his pride and was in a humorless mood.

  "For the record, I don't need you to do a thing for me."

  "Yeah you do. You got serious problems."

  "And you don't," he said.

  "All you got in your life is an eccentric cat."

  This surprised West. What else had he dug up about her?

  "How'd you know about Niles?" she wanted to know.

  West was aware they were being stalked by some security guard in a Cushman. He was hanging back in shadows, certain West and Brazil couldn't see him creeping in the cover of boxwoods and magnolia trees. West couldn't imagine how boring that job must be.

  "I have a lot in my life," she added.

  "What a fantasy," Brazil said.

  "You know what? You're a total waste of my time." She meant it.

  They walked on, moving away from the campus and cutting through narrow roads where faculty lived in restored homes with cherished lawns and old trees. Brazil used to wander these lanes as a boy, fantasizing about people inside expensive homes, imagining important professors and their nice husbands and wives. Light filled their windows and seemed so warm back then, and sometimes draperies were open and he could see people moving inside, walking across the living room with a drink, sitting in a chair reading, or at a desk working

  Brazil's loneliness was buried out of reach and unnamed. He did not know what to call the hollow hurt that started somewhere in his chest and pressed against his heart like two cold hands. He never cried when the hands pressed, but would tremble violently like a distressed flame when he thought he might lose his tennis match or when he didn't get an A. Brazil could not watch sad movies, and now and then beauty overwhelmed him, especially live music played by symphonies and string quartets.

  West could feel rage building in Brazil as they walked. The mounting silence became oppressive as they passed lighted homes and dark thick trees armored in ivy and kudzu. She did not understand him and was beginning to suspect she'd made a big mistake thinking she could. So what if she'd worked hostage negotiation, homicides, and was experienced in talking people out of killing themselves or someone else? This didn't mean she was even remotely capable of helping a strange guy like Andy Brazil. In fact, she didn't have time.

  "I want this killer," Brazil started in, talking louder than was necessary or wise.

  "Okay? I want him caught."

  He was obsessed, as if what this killer was doing was personal. West had no intention of getting into his space on this. They walked on.

  Brazil suddenly kicked a rock with a fancy black and purple Nike leather tennis shoe that looked like something Agassi would endorse.

  "What he does." Brazil kicked more rocks.

  "What do you think it must be like?" His voice got louder.

  "Driving somewhere in a strange city, tired, away from home, a lot on your mind. Getting lost, stopping to ask directions." Another rock skittered across blacktop.

  "Next thing, you're being led to some Godforsaken place, behind an abandoned building. A warehouse. A vacant lot."

  West stopped walking. She was staring at him as he furiously stomped ahead, wheeled around.

  "Hard cold steel against your head as you beg not to die!" he yelled as if the crime had happened to him.

  "As he blows your brains out anyway!"

  West was frozen as she watched something she had never seen before this moment. Porch lights of nearby houses flipped on.

  "He pulls your pants down and spray-paints this symbol! How would you like to die that wayf More lights came on. Dogs barked. West went into her police mode without a conscious thought. She walked over to Brazil and firmly took his arm.

  "Andy, you're disturbing the entire neighborhood." She spoke with quiet calm.

  "Let's go home."

  Brazil stared defiantly at her.

  "I want to make a difference."

  She nervously scanned their surroundings.

  "Believe me. You are."

  More lights turned on, and someone had come out on his porch to see what crazy person had wandered into his quiet neighborhood.

  Briddlewood had fled in his Cushman minutes earlier.

  "Which is why we need to go," West added, pulling Brazil along as they started walking back.

  "You want to help. Okay. Tell me what you have to contribute besides tantrums and words."

  "Maybe we could plant something in one of my stories to trick him." He had an idea.

  "I wish it were that simple," she said, and she meant it.

  "And you're assuming he reads the paper."

  "I bet he does." Brazil wished she would have an open mind, as he flew through possibilities of what subliminal propaganda he might plant to ensnare this monster.

  "The answer's no. We don't plant stories."

  Brazil hopped ahead again, excited.

  "Together we could get him! I know it."

  "What's this together stuff?" West said.

  "You're just a reporter. Hate to remind you of that fact."

  "I'm a volunteer cop," he corrected her.

  "Uh huh. The gun less wonder."

  "You could give me shooting lessons," he then said.

  "My dad used to take me out to a dump in the county ..."

  "He should have left you there," she said.

  "We'd shoot cans with his .38."

  "How old were you?" West asked when they were in Brazil's driveway.

  "Starting when I was seven, I think." H
e had his hands in his pockets, and was looking down as he walked, a streetlight lighting up his hair.

  "Seems like I was in the second grade."

  "I mean, when he died," she gently said.

  "Ten," he said.

  "I had just turned ten." He stopped, and did not want West to leave. He didn't want to go in and face the way he lived.

  "I don't have a gun," he told her.

  "Thank you, Jesus," she said.

  Chapter Seven.

  Days went by. West had no intention of furthering the cause of Andy Brazil. His problems were his own, and it was time he grew up. When the following Sunday rolled around and Raines was interested in brunch, she called Brazil because she was a certified firearms instructor. If he needed help, it was only fair that she offer. He said he could be ready in ten minutes. She told him that unless she flew the Concorde to Davidson, she would not be picking him up for at least an hour.