Free Call Of The Witch by Dana Donovan Page A

something incriminating:
drugs, weapons, anything that would give us a reason to haul him
in.
    “ Whaddya got scumbag?”
Carlos’ voice sounded short and breathless, as if spitting the
words through gritted teeth. He pulled a cell phone from Martinez’s
front pocket. “Is this yours?”
    Martinez remained his usual cordial self.
“Fuck you!”
    “ Yeah, I bet you’d like
that, wouldn’t you?”
    He tossed the phone to me. I flipped through
the contact numbers and determined it was not Kelly Brewbaker’s.
Carlos continued his pat down.
    Martinez said, “Why are you arresting
me?”
    “ We’re not,” he answered.
“Not yet anyway.”
    “ I didn’t do
anything.”
    “ You attempted to strike
an officer.”
    “ No I didn’t.”
    “ Yeah ya did. My partner
here will attest to that.”
    Martinez looked over his shoulder at me. I
gave him a friendly smile and a nod.
    “ You’re all the same, you
stinkin` cops.”
    “ What’s this?” said
Carlos. He removed what looked like a pair of lady’s underpants
from Martinez’s back pocket. He unfurled them and held them up for
me to see. They looked extremely small. “Get this, Tony. Girls’
panties. The pervert’s carrying around little girls’
underwear.”
    “ Whose are they?” I
asked.
    Carlos wadded them up, spun Martinez around
and shoved the panties in his face. “Yeah, scum. Whose are these?
You hitting on little girls?”
    Martinez seemed unapologetic. “Fuck you.
Ain’t no law against carrying women’s panties.”
    “ They’re not women’s.
They’re girls’.”
    “ So? Ain’t no crime in
carrying girls’ panties.”
    Carlos tossed the underwear to me. He grabbed
Raul at the collar and rammed his fist up under his chin, knocking
his head back into the fence. “It is if the girl who owns them has
been kidnapped.”
    “ Hey man, I don’t know
nothing `bout no kidnapping. So fuck off.”
    “ Then whose are
they?”
    “ I don’t know.”
    Carlos drove his fist further into Martinez’s
neck. Martinez gasped, but found no relief in his struggle. “Whose
are they?”
    “ I don’t know,” he
snarled. He was breathing through his nose, but even that was
difficult for him. “My mother’s a maid. She does laundry for some
rich white folks, the Brewbakers I think. Sometimes she takes it
home to wash so she can watch her soaps on TV.”
    “ So after she does the
wash, you go and steal the kid’s underwear?”
    He looked away then, unable to maintain eye
contact with Carlos. I could tell that Carlos did not yet get it. I
cleared my throat, and when he looked at me, I shook my head and
said, “He doesn’t take the clean ones.”
    Carlos seemed confused at first, then
surprised, and repulsed. “That’s sick!”
    Martinez said, “Might be sick, but it ain’t
illegal.”
    “ Technically it is,” I
said. “It’s stealing.”
    “ So sue me.”
    Carlos said, “We went to your house you know,
and we talked to your mother.”
    “ What, did she tell you I
steal girls’ panties?”
    “ No, she told us you steal
her money.”
    “ No she didn’t. She
wouldn’t do that.”
    “ Why wouldn’t
she?”
    “ Because she knows
I’d––”
    “ You’d what?” said Carlos.
He tightened his grip on Martinez’s collar and gave it a twist,
choking off the last bit of air he was able to squander.
    “ Carlos!” I reached over
and tugged on his sleeve. “Let him go. He’s not worth
it.”
    I could see that Carlos wanted to hurt the
man. Martinez’s face had begun to turn blue. I grabbed Carlos by
the wrist and tried pulling it away.
    “ Carlos, stop it! Let him
go!”
    In all the years I have known Carlos, I’ve
never known him to lose his cool with a suspect. Sure, he’s had to
get rough with a few, even had to shoot a man dead once. But he’s
never inflected police brutality on anyone, not like he was doing
then. I grabbed his hand with both of mine and yanked as hard as I
could.
    “ Carlos! LET. HIM.
GO!”
    I like to think I