“I’m not telling you nothing!” The kid was heaving, sweat shining on his face and dripping off his chin.

Brazil looked around, wondering, listening. He didn’t see anyone else. There was no burglar alarm hammering anywhere, the road dark, the night silent.

“Weed,” he suddenly remembered. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“No it ain’t,” Weed said.

“Yeah, it is. I’m sure of it. I’m Andy Brazil.”

“You’re that cop who came to school,” Weed accused him.

“Something wrong with that?” Brazil asked.

“So how come you’re out here in a BMW?” Weed demanded to know.

“A better question is how come you’re drunk and running like a maniac?”

Weed looked up to where the moon would be, were it not covered in clouds.

“I’m taking you home,” Brazil said.

“You can’t make me,” Weed defied him, his words slurring and knocking one another down.

“Sure I can.” Brazil laughed. “You’re drunk in public. You’re a juvenile. You can either come downtown or I’m taking you to your house, and if I were you, I’d choose the latter and take some aspirin and go to bed.”

Weed was thinking. A U-Haul truck rumbled past, then a station wagon. Weed was still thinking, wiping his face on his sleeve. A VW Rabbit buzzed by, then a Jeep that reminded Brazil of CABBAGES. Brazil shrugged and walked over to his car. He opened his door.

“I’ll call a unit to come take you downtown,” he said. “I’m not hauling prisoners in my personal car.”

“You said you’d drive me home in it,” Weed countered. “Now you saying you ain’t.”

“I said I’m not hauling your butt downtown.”

Brazil shut his door.

Weed yanked open the passenger’s door and slid onto the leather seat. He fastened his shoulder harness and didn’t say a word. Brazil pulled back onto West Cary.

“What’s your real name?” Brazil asked him.

“Weed.”

“How’d you end up with a name like that, huh?”

“I dunno.” Weed stared down at his untied hightops.

“Sure you do.”

“My daddy works for the city.”

“And?” Brazil encouraged him.

“Cuttin’ grass and stuff. Pullin’ weeds. Called me Weed ’cause he said I’d grow like one.”

Instantly he was humiliated and alarmed. It was obvious he had never grown like a weed, and he had told the cop way too much. He watched the cop write down Weed on a little notepad. Shit! If the cop figured out Weed was a Pike, Weed would die. Smoke would see to that.

“What’s your last name?” Brazil then asked.

“Jones,” Weed lied.

Brazil wrote this down, too.

“What’s the five for?”

“Huh?”

“The five tattooed on your finger.”

Fear turned to panic. Weed’s mind went blank.

“I don’t got no tattoo,” he stupidly said.

“Yeah? Then what am I looking at?”

Weed examined one hand, then the other as if he had never taken a good look at himself before this moment. He stared at the 5 and rubbed it with his thumb.

“It don’t mean nothing,” he said. “I just did it, you know?”