10

“All these damn cops,” Hogg grunted. “It’s like a fuckin’ pig pen!” The muscles in his jaw clamped again. I think the director had made him nervous. “Let’s just hope they’re all here for Denny.”

One policeman passed under the street lamp on the other side of the lot. As we reached Hogg’s vanless truck, the cop swung around and came toward us. It was Whitey.

The breeze carried the dockside smells across the bushes and through the wire fence strung up behind us. Among the old automobiles, half a dozen pickup trucks were parked on the grass-veined tarmac. Near three police cars, one junked-out and windowless wreck sat on its axles by the brick wall. Talking, a dozen cops lounged together over by the lamp pole. Outside the fence, under another lamp, another clutch of police broke up into pairs and triplets, to saunter off, down and up the street.

“Shit.” Hogg’s hand worked on my shoulder. The last step, his bare foot landed against my sneaker. I felt his foot move through the damp cloth. “Fuckin’ Denny sure has caused a passel of trouble.” As Hogg reached for the cab door, the policeman came around the bumper of an old green Chrysler twenty feet away, flashing ice-chip eyes.

Hogg pulled on the door handle, which made door-handle opening noises. “You get on up in there, cocksucker.”

I climbed past Hogg into the cab.

And something grabbed my leg—

I looked down: the thin acned face, dirty and stained, hair mussed and clotted, looked up. Crouching down under the dashboard, his eyes wide and blinking (like Honey-Pie’s, I thought), he pressed one grubby-knuckled, nail-gnawed finger up across his mouth to Shhhhh me.

The door slammed. The face went out.

I looked up again, out the window.

Outside, Hogg let go of the handle, turned around and said, “Hello, Officer.”

I could feel each finger separate and hard on my shin. His arm must have been shaking a little. I could feel that too.

“Evenin’.” Whitey’s luminous glance flicked up at me, dropped back to Hogg.

Hogg’s hand slid up the door to the open window. The wide, dirt-ringed wrecks of his nails, the thick, dirt-grooved knuckles slid across the crack with glass glinting down between the felt strips. Thick fingers hooked and hung. “Guess you fellas have been havin’ a pretty rough day of it, huh?”

“Shit,” Whitey said. “I don’t want to ever see another one like this!” He slid his short, wide hands under his cartridge belt. His cap was still tilted pretty far to the side, but I guess that’s the way he wore it. “Where you takin’ the kid?” He nodded toward me.

Hogg’s knuckles shifted an inch along the sill. “Back where he belongs.” Hogg’s voice shifted, too.