"I vote for not happening at all," Rosario said. "Man, I get tired of seeing people scared and hurt and all I can do is write up a report or collect evidence so that if the perp ever does get caught we'll be able to add another line to his sheet."
"So where do I go?" I asked. "Where is the right place and when is the right time?"
"You want to know somewhere a crime is likely to happen?" Murphy said. "All right. You know that all-night convenience store down by the railroad track on South 15?"
I nodded. I had never been in the place, but I had seen it. I thought it was closed, out of business. If it had a name, I'd never heard it.
"You go down there. You won't have to wait long. Either someone will get mugged or someone will get shot or stabbed, or beat up or OD on something. It's the armpit of the county. We have to send a car out there three times a night some weekends."
"Why not just sit there and wait?" I asked.
"Because we can't stay there all day and all night. And as soon as we leave — the rats come out of their holes."
"Man, what do you want to tell her that for?" Bert asked. "That's no place for her."
"Why not, Bert?" I asked.
"I mean, look at you," Bert said. "There are some very nasty people around there. They'd be all over a pretty girl like you. You wouldn't last ten minutes."
"What did you tell him, Murphy?" I asked, puzzled.
"The truth. I don't think he believes me."
"You mean that BS about catching bullets and all? I'm a Cubano from Missouri, man."
I smiled at his joke. It was clear that Bert wanted to be shown and I was in a mood to show him. I looked at Neeka. We had a short, silent discussion.
I walked over to a signpost next to the parking lot entrance. It looked like it had been run over by a careless driver. The post was bent over and the badly scraped sign was touching the ground. It said, "No Parking 11pm-7am".
"Looks like someone damaged some county property, Bert," I said. "Why don't you fix it?"
Bert looked suspicious. The pole was a two-inch thick steel tube. We could tell because of the traces of rust showing where it had been hit. He kicked at the dirt at the base of the sign and we could see that it was sunk in a hole filled with concrete.
Bert tugged at the pole and said, "Couldn't move that sucker without a crane, man. Must have been hit by the garbage truck when they came for the dumpster. It's bent in that direction."
I admired his deductive reasoning. Maybe Bert would make a good detective some day. I stepped over to the pole and grabbed it with both hands just under the bottom of the metal sign. With one quick heave and an incredibly loud squeal of tortured metal I pulled it upright again.
Bert stared at the sign and then at me. He was looking for how the trick was done.
I stepped away from the sign and into the glare of the streetlight.
"Bert," I said, "meet The Dragon." And I gave him the fully animated version from two feet away.
He didn't flinch or jump, but all the color drained out of his face and he went as stiff as the lamppost behind him.
"Tha... that crap about you catching a bullet..." he stammered.
"Was the unvarnished truth. You've seen what happens to people who mess with me. They usually leave horizontally and bleeding. But I'm trying to get away from that. I'd like to save sending people to the emergency room for a last resort. It's emotionally satisfying, but by the time things come to that, the damage has already been done. I want to try to get ahead of the game. I want to meet and greet the folks most likely to commit the crimes. I want them to know that if they decide to hurt someone, then they will get a visit from The Dragon. Maybe the word will get around that crime is a poor choice of career in this town."
Bert had got some of his color back, but he was having a hard time keeping eye contact with me. I dropped the Dragon and went back to my regular face. His shoulders dropped and he went back to breathing normally again.
"Distracting, isn't it?" I asked.
"Unhunh. How do you..." he began.
"Sorry. No questions, remember?"
"Oh! Right. Sure. OK." It was obvious that Bert couldn't think of a single thing that wasn't a question.
"I'd appreciate some word-of-mouth. It will save time on introductions, if you know what I mean," I said. "If you get a chance to do some name-dropping — say while transporting some perp who you think may have friends in the same line of work — let them overhear you talk about the grisly things I did to some hard case they may have heard of. Make up something horrible. Heck, if you can't make something up, tell them what I did to Bubba Carstairs."
Murphy and Rosario got so quiet I could hear frogs croaking in the distance. Rosario looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth and Murphy looked like he was about to throw up.
"That was you?" Murphy asked in a quiet tone.
"Yeah."
"Jesus."
They were both silent for a while, then Murphy said, "During their escape they cut up a prison guard pretty bad. They must have had it in for him. So, when the bulletin came out on them, it was the closest thing to a shoot-on-sight order we'd ever had. Nobody thought they would let themselves be taken without a fight and everyone expected a bloodbath. When word went out that they'd been recaptured, everyone who'd been kept on from the earlier shift was released. Instead of taking off, we volunteered for guard duty at the hospital so we could get the story on how it went down."
Bert spoke up, "We stood watch on Carstairs and Brenneke while they were waiting to go into surgery. We took turns sitting in the room with them. Neither of us could stand it for very long. It turned our stomachs."
Murphy continued, "We've seen people busted up before. We've seen them stabbed, shot, cut, and beaten. I was with a rescue team who tried to free a construction worker who got partly buried in a ditch and drowned in his own blood before we could get him out. But I'd never seen anyone more scared than Brenneke and Carstairs. They weren't scared of dying. They were scared something was going to get them. They jumped at every sound. Every time the door opened they'd try to crawl off the gurney."
"The doctors gave them drugs to calm them down," Bert said. "But it didn't seem to do any good. The nurse couldn't get near them. They'd start screaming. I didn't understand that at the time. But she had short blonde hair like yours." He paused for a moment, then said, "I still hear them screaming in my dreams."
"Me too," Murphy said, shaking off the memory. "They really got to me. I kept wondering: here were two of the scariest bastards to walk on two legs — what was out there that could scare them that bad? Yeah, if you want a street rep, we'll talk about them. We won't need to make anything up."
"I thought I might have let them off light," I said. "Do you want to know what I did to them to scare them so bad?"
"No, ma'am" Murphy said, flatly.
"No, thank you," Bert echoed.
They were watching me you'd watch a coral snake that had just crawled across your foot — scared to move or speak, hoping to escape its notice. When Neeka cranked the motorcycle, I thought they were going to pee on themselves.
"Nice talking to you," I said as Neeka drove the bike around to pick me up. "I'll be in touch."
I swung up behind Neeka and she tore off up the street. The two deputies stood and watched us disappear into the night.
"So, what do you want to do now?" Neeka asked. The roar of the bike wasn't a problem when you didn't have to shout over it.
"We still have a couple of hours," I said. "Let's go fishing."
The secondhand clothing store was open late so people who worked shifts could shop there. Since my exotic suit would have attracted attention, I waited around back while Neeka went in to find me a disguise. She came back very quickly with a threadbare dress, a faded scarf, a cloth belt, a big plastic handbag, and a moth-eaten throw-pillow.
"Four dollars," she said. "I should shop here more often."
"We might," I said. "None of my clothes will do for this. And if it works, I may do it again. We'll see."