A Round of Shots Part IV

...To Remain Silent

Abramson knew Theo Cuslett heard him, but he didn’t hear him, hear him.

Cuslett came from the Second Precinct in Sunningdale.

Put in for Gang Squad and didn’t make it. If you put in for Gang Squad you’re either a combat veteran who can’t let the adrenaline go, or you think you’re one tricep flex from someone making a graphic novel about you.

Cuslett wasn’t a combat vet, just an Academy guy with a bad complexion who probably jerked himself off for not crying at scary movies.

Shawland Heights transfer was his consolation prize for not making Gang Squad.

Abramson didn’t want to tell Cuslett verbatim not to haul in McGrath, he just wanted to remind Cuslett that neighborhoods like Shawland had glue guys.

Glue guys held neighborhoods together in ways cops never could.

Cuslett shrugged McGrath off as “hood famous,” but it was more than that. If Cuslett brought McGrath in, especially under suspicion of the Asian woman’s murder…Abramson was trying to remember her name, nice lady…in fifteen minutes people out here, Fenkell to Schaefer, Lawton Parkway to the Freeway, would know that Cuslett was an outsider.

Gas and Snakks had unknown white male on video, buying smokes with a pistol grip showing from the pocket of a Raiders hoodie, one little pillhead on the Adelaide Avenue boner patrol put the guy near the dry cleaner.

Weak.

Break McGrath was just unknown white male to Cuslett. Abramson understood that part.

Abramson was doing Cuslett a favor, not McGrath.

Yo, Theo, that dude ain’t a guy shooting old ladies, Abramson had told his colleague. ‘Specially a business owner. He’s got phat juice around here. Name’s Leonard McGrath. Break. You can run him, he’s gonna print hot as hell. Even a 750. But…”

Abramson shouldn’t have brought up the 750, assaulting an officer, and when he saw the scowl on Cuslett’s face he tried another approach.

“You know the Schaefer thing, right?

Every cop in the city knew what the Schaefer Ave Standoff was. The force lost two guys that night,and Sgt. Randolph Ellery was paralyzed from the neck down.

All you had to do was say Schaefer.

Cuslett’s eyes had slitted, angry. Of course he did. Even a rhetorical question about it was insulting.

“You know the CL song about Schaefer?” Abramson asked.

Cuslett had allowed himself a smile. “Of course I’m aware of it. I’m more of a Stanley Clarke guy, what about it?”

The guy you’re looking at is mentioned in the song. He’s got Juice. Chest deep juice in The Shite. If you scoop him, CL’s people or the Shamrock Mafia will have him out before commissary can send the bologna sandwiches.

Cuslett had pursed his lips then, Adam’s Apple dancing, speaking through his teeth.

“Did my Caucasian colleague just tell me not to scoop a guy because he’s mentioned in a hip hop song?”

Abramson had crammed his left hand underneath his belt, underneath his uniform pants and scratched his sweaty ass.

“Schaefer was in progress, I mean ballistic on ballistic, live, Whitman will be happy to tell you this, and the gentleman in front of you crawled out…crazy fucker crawled out and tourniquet’ed the leg of the perp they called Sea World. He had a femoral.”

Cuslett had reached for his handcuffs, bored of Abramson’s history lesson.

“Then, with all the TDS guys on the second floor of 3810 emptying ARs at every LEO in the fucking county, he crawled over and gave Ellery CPR. Saved Ellery’s fucking life. Not much of a life on the goddamn respirator and not being able to feel your dick, but yeah, that’s the guy.”

Abramson thought that would do it.

But then he let slip three more words. “Let him alone.”

It came out like a command.

And Abramson knew immediately, right in Cuslett’s pupils, that Cuslett was gonna haul Break McGrath.

McGrath wasn’t robbing the car accident woman. Cuslett knew that. But he was freshly on Shawland soil and gonna make an impression.

Behind Abramson, the bystander in the Grand Prix seemed to add fifty decibels to the bass response in his trunk.

Abramson was gonna tell him to turn it down, but he wasn’t even threatening a noise ticket on Fenkell Avenue in the daylight hours.

He could feel more than hear Cuslett start mumbling Miranda at Break McGrath.

***

Joyce Permoy refused transport.

The EMTs were packing up.

The cop was in the process of patting down Break McGrath.

Joyce was confused, and she knew it wasn’t the scratch on her head.

She opened her mouth to yell at the cop again.

***

Break could wiggle the snubbie down his sweats as the cop was doing the pat. Good chance this nerd will miss.

Maybe Abramson would intervene, save him from a trip downtown, maybe a felony weapon. If he wound up in the cruiser he was confident that he could lose the gun in the ride, but that wouldn’t be ideal.

Crucialisque Lex was booming from the Grand Prix.

The cop finished Miranda, and was starting to say something else.

His mouth was open.

Then Break was half blind and wet.

He went rigid. The snub hadn’t moved.

Joyce was holding his left hand.

There was a pile of cop at his feet.

Break couldn’t talk. He was thinking, he was flashing back, he was trying to piece together a puzzle he didn’t remember starting.

Something was different, and it wasn’t just blood and bone fragments on his face.

Joyce was rubbing his face with the kid’s red shirt.

Break’s first words were “It ain’t mine, it ain’t mine,” trying to calm Joyce down.

The EMTs were running toward the cop lump, crouched behind their gurney.

There wasn’t a second gunshot, not that Break remembered hearing the first.

Abramson was on his fat gut next to the tow truck, calling in an all-unit.

The music had stopped.

The Grand Prix was gone.

Break took the t-shirt from Joyce’s hand and wiped more blood from his eyes making triple sure he wasn’t the one bleeding.

He wasn’t.

On the red t-shirt was a quarter sized chunk of brown, acne-scarred skin.

Break fell backward on his ass, Joyce clutching to him and falling herself.

The only rap Break heard was the EMTs giving instructions to each other, kneeling over a dead cop.

***

TO BE CONTINUED

***

{Photo by the author, Central Southwest Detroit}

A Round of Shots (Part I):