Free Details at Ten by Ardella Garland Page B

you want me to have one of the officers drive your car?”
    “I can drive, I’m okay,” I said, reaching for the door.
    Then I noticed …
    … I noticed it was still in my hand.
    I turned around, took Doug’s hand, and placed the cloth in his palm. “Butter’s dress,” I said, and closed his fingers around the cloth.

N I N E
     
    N o … No … No!” I paused as I scanned Doug’s personal scrapbook of mug shots of the gangbangers in his district. “Gang-banging must be the only occupation with no age discrimination.”
    “Yep. These guys range in age from fourteen to thirty-five. And most of them look like regular guys waiting for the el train.”
    “Yeah, I guess I was like the average naive citizen thinking they’d look like the wolfman with a fade or a black Hannibal Lecter substituting pintos for fava beans.”
    “Georgia, they’re regular-looking but freak-a-zoid acting. I can tell you some wild stories.”
    “That’s quite all right. That’s more info than I need. None of these men look remotely familiar at all. But ah …” I flipped back two pages and stared at a corner photo.
    “Got something?”
    “No, I just thought he had a really scary look to him—but I don’t think that’s the guy—he’s just a little more menacing than the others. There’s something funky about him.”
    Doug pulled out a folder with a Polaroid stapled to the top left-hand corner. He purposely held it close to his stomach to block out the address and other critical info. “Here’s a better picture. That’s Little Cap. The shooter in the drive-by.”
    Little Cap’s eyes were oval platters of hazel; without the anger and defiance, they could be sweet love windows for a woman to gaze into. He had ruddy lacquered skin, an awning of black eyebrows, evenly spaced features, and a long, hard chin. A scar could be seen turning the corner on the left side of that chin, ending at a round, flat mole. It looked like someone had cut an exclamation point in his face.
    “Little Cap has priors dating back to the age of fourteen. He’s twenty-three years old now. He’s fairly high in the Rockies organization,” Doug explained. “He’s often called on to do the dirty work.”
    “Yeah, he looks like he could do some damage.”
    Suddenly the door opened. Doug put the folder down on the desk and had a mini-conference with another detective at the door. Doug’s back was to me, and I couldn’t see the face of the detective he was talking to, just hear the smothered whispers of their voices.
    Finally Doug shut the door, turned around, and came back over to me. “We’ve been rattling every sewer top on the South Side looking for this snake. Little Cap is in hiding, waiting for the heat to go down on the drive-by.”
    “I hope he’s stupid enough to get homesick and turn up in the wrong place. Then maybe some snitch will turn his raggedy butt in,” I snorted.
    “Not likely. He’s always been a vagabond, not many friends or very trusting, even within the gang. Little Cap always bounces around here and there for just a minute—his family claims they haven’t seen him in a year. Naw, Little Cap wouldn’t be under the el trying to put the squeeze on you. He wouldn’t take a chance like that. If anything, he’d send one of the other bangers out. I just wanted you to see him though, get a good look at what we’re dealing with.”
    “What time is it?” My sleep jones was coming down hard on me.
    “Early,” Doug said as he turned the page for me. Then he stood up, backpedaled to the door, opened it, and called out, “Ray, get us two black coffees huh?”
    “Three sugars,” I said.
    “Heavy sugar,” Doug ordered. “Georgia, you get back to those books. It’s important.”
    I looked up at Doug. “You don’t have to sell me; I know.”
    His eyebrows raised.
    “Nope,” I answered the question only his eyes asked. “I wasn’t the victim of a crime. But I did witness one when I was a kid. Some nut grabbed my friend