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?”
Broussard made another lunge, and Poole wrapped his arms around his partner’s chest, lifted the bigger man off his feet, and pivoted away from the bench.
Cheese headed for the prisoners’ gate and I trotted to catch up.
“Cheese.”
He looked back over his shoulder, kept walking.
“Cheese, for Christ’s sake, she’s four years old.”
Cheese kept walking. “I’m real sorry about that. Tell the man he need to work on his social skills.”
The guard stopped me at the gate as Cheese passed through. The guard had mirrored sunglasses, and I could see my funhouse reflection in each eye as he pushed me back. Two little shimmering versions of me, the same goofy, dismayed look in each face.
“Come on, Cheese. Come on, man.”
Cheese turned back to the fence, put his fingers through the rungs, stared at me for a long time.
“I can’t help you, Patrick. Okay?”
I gestured over my shoulder at Poole and Broussard. “Their deal was real.”
Cheese shook his head slowly. “Shit, Patrick. Cops are like cons, man. Motherfuckers always got an angle.”
“They’ll come back with an army, Cheese. You know how this works. They’re working a red ball and they’re pissed.”
“And I don’t know shit.”
“Yes, you do.”
He smiled broadly, the blood beginning to clot and thicken on his upper lip. “Prove it,” he said, and turned away, walked along the pebbled path that led across a short lawn and back into the prison.
I walked back past Broussard and Poole on my way to the visitors’ gate.
“Nice judgment,” I said. “Picture-fucking-perfect.”
13
Broussard caught up with me as we made our way down the corridor toward the sign-in desk. His hand gripped my elbow from behind and turned me toward him.
“Problem with my method, Mr. Kenzie?”
“Fucking method?” I pulled my arm out of his grasp. “That what you call what you did back there?”
Poole and the guard reached us, and Poole said, “Not here, gentlemen. There are appearances to maintain.”
Poole steered us both down the corridor and through the metal detectors and the last remaining gate. Our weapons were returned to us by a sergeant with hair plugs springing from the top of his head in tiny, tightly wrapped bundles, and then we walked out into the parking lot.
Broussard started in as soon as our shoes hit gravel. “How much bullshit were you willing to swallow from that slug, Mr. Kenzie? Huh?”
“Whatever it took to—”
“Maybe you’d like to go back in, talk about dog suicides and—”
“—get a fucking deal, Detective Broussard! That’s what I—”
“—how much you’re down with your man Cheese.”
“Gentlemen.” Poole stepped in between us.
The echo of our voices was raw in that parking lot, and our faces were red from shouting. The tendons in Broussard’s neck bulged like lines of rope stretched taut, and I could feel adrenaline shake my blood.
“My methods were sound,” Broussard said.