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“You trying to burn the neighborhood down, Speed? What’s the matter with you? You lost the sense you were born with?”
“What the fuck is the big deal? So I burned some garbage! So what the fuck?”
At this point in similar situations, it was normally Officer Bailey’s practice to first hurt the trash a little, either with a slap in the face or by jabbing them in the abdomen with his stick to get their attention. To further get their attention, he would then put handcuffs about their wrists and search them for weapons and illegal substances. Very often he encountered the latter, if only a few specks of spilled marijuana in their pockets.
Then he would explain in some detail what crimes they had committed, with special emphasis on the punishments provided by law. If he had found illegal substances on their persons, so much the better.
By then, the malefactor would be contrite. He did not want to go through the inconvenience he knew would be associated with an arrest: detention in the Thirty-ninth District, followed by transportation way the hell downtown to Central Lockup. And then several hours in Central Lockup before being arraigned before a magistrate.
The malefactors knew that the magistrate would probably release them on their own recognizance, and that if they actually got to trial they would walk, but it was a fucking pain in the ass to go through all that bullshit.
Officer Bailey would at some point shortly thereafter inform the trash there was a way to avoid all the inconvenience. They could make their backyard so clean they could eat off it. Get rid of all the garbage, right down to where there once had been grass. Get it all in plastic bags or something, and put it out on the street so the garbageman could take it off.
And keep it that way from now on, or Officer Bailey, who was going to check, would come down on their trashy asses like a ton of bricks, they could believe that.
Far more often than not, the malefactors would agree to this alternate solution of the problem at hand.
Mr. Leslie had, indeed, heard stories about the old black cop who had a hair up his ass about burning garbage, and had heard stories that if he caught you, he’d make you clean up the whole goddamned place or throw your ass in jail.
He was debating—Jesus Christ, I’m tired—whether it would be better to let the cop lock him up, or clean up the yard. It would take fucking forever to get all this shit out of here.
Mr. Leslie was not given the opportunity to make a choice.
Officer Bailey just spun him around and, guiding him with one hand on his arm and the other on his shoulder, led him to the cop car. He opened the door and guided Mr. Leslie to a seat in the rear.
Then he returned to the backyard, and the pile of garbage. He took a mechanical pencil from his pocket, squatted beside the garbage, and began to shove things aside. The first item he uncovered was a wedding picture.
He looked at it carefully.
“Lord almighty!” he said wonderingly.
He stirred the garbage a bit more. He was looking for the frame it was logical to assume would be with a photograph of what was supposed to be the happiest moment of a man’s life. He could not find one.
He stopped stirring, and, still squatting, was motionless in thought for about thirty seconds.
Then he stood up and walked to Leslie’s house. He rapped on the door with his nightstick until the brown-trash Puerto Rican woman appeared.
She stared at him with contempt.
“Teléfono?” Officer Bailey inquired.
The brown-trash woman just looked at him.
He looked over her shoulder, saw a telephone sitting on top of the refrigerator, pointed to it and repeated, “Teléfono.”
Her expression didn’t change, but she shrugged, which Officer Bailey decided could be interpreted to mean that she had given him permission to enter her home.
And now the phone won’t work. They won’t have paid that bill either.
There was a dial tone.
“Homicide, Detective Kramer.”
“Detective, this is Officer Woodrow W. Bailey, of the Thirty-ninth District.”
“What can I do for you, Bailey?”
“I’d like to talk to somebody working the job of that police officer, Kellog, who was murdered.”
