Passman finished the eclair.

'I need someone to 10-25 me ASAP,' Brazil answered back.

'Five-six-two. Can't do it, 11.'

Mikes began clicking as other cops on the air voiced their amusement and encouraged Rhoad and Brazil to keep it up.

'Units 562 and 11,' Passman snapped into her microphone. 'Ten-3.'

Passman's order to stop transmitting brought about complete silence, but only temporarily. 'Five-six-two.' Rhoad could not stop. He was addicted. 'Could you 10-9 that?' he said.

'Ten-3.' Passman ordered him for the last time, in the secret language of cops, to shut up.

'Eleven?' Rhoad could not.

There was no response.

'Eleven?' Rhoad repeated, talking faster, doing his best to outrun Communications Officer Passman, whose habit it was to cut him off and speak unkindly whenever she could. 'Everything 10-4?'

'No!' Passman blurted into her mike. 'Everything's not 10-4, unit 562! It's 10-10!' she exclaimed.

Her hands were shaking. She felt faint. Patty Passman was furious at a damn city that had no parking for loyal employees like her who worked eight-hour shifts in the windowless, dimly lit radio room, talking to lump-heads like Otis Rhoad. Her blood sugar spiked. Insulin dumped.

Her blood sugar went crashing lower than before. Her vision blacked out and she almost fainted when she jumped to her feet, turning over her coffee. Other dispatchers answered other calls as she ran out of the radio room.

Officer Budget had been waiting ten minutes for Communications Officer Passman to get back to him. Budget finally got another dispatcher to run a 10-27 and 10-28 on Bubba's red Jeep.

Budget was disappointed but not surprised to learn that Butner U. Fluck IV's driver's license was still valid through 2003 with no restrictions, and that the Jeep continued to be registered to the same party with an address on Clarence Street in the city.

'Shit,' Budget said.

He climbed out of his cruiser and approached the Jeep again, pleased to find Bubba seemed appropriately scared for once.

'I'm charging you with reckless driving,' Officer Budget said severely, doing his best to make the asshole feel even worse. 'But you're lucky it's not a lot worse. So Mr. Fluck, head…" 'Please,' Bubba interrupted, holding up an arm as if he were about to be struck.

'About time you showed some manners,' Budget said, returning Bubba's identification and registration.

Passman's stubby feet rang loudly on worn metal steps as she raced up to the street, her heart startled like a deer or a duck fired upon. Her chest heaved as she shoved through double glass doors.

Rhoad was parking his patrol car next to her 1989 white Fleetwood Cadillac. The toe of her left New Balance jogging shoe caught on a crack in the sidewalk. She stumbled but caught herself, flailing and out of alignment.

'Stop!' she yelled at Rhoad as he approached her car, ticket book in hand, pen out. 'No!' she screamed.

The digital reading clearly showed the time on the meter had expired.

'Sorry,' Rhoad told her.

'You're not sorry, you son of a bitch!' Passman jabbed her finger at him as she fought to catch her breath.

Rhoad was unflappable as he filled in the meter number, the vehicle make and license plate number, and the mode, which in this case was an A for automobile. Rhoad slipped the ticket inside its envelope. He tucked it under the wiper blade. Passman moved closer to him, glaring, panting, sweating, her blood roaring. She drilled small dark homicidal eyes into him.

'I would have gotten here sooner and moved my car if you could shut the fuck up on the air!' she bellowed. 'It's your goddamn fault! It's always your goddamn fault, you stupid, cow-brained loser, cross-eyed, dickless, son-of-a-mother-fucking-bitch-dumb-fuck!'

She marched to her Cadillac and snatched the summons off the windshield. She violently wadded it in his face and stuffed it down the front of his neatly pressed uniform shirt, knocking loose his clip-on tie.

'Now you've done it,' Rhoad told her indignantly.

She flipped him a double bird.

'You're under arrest!' he exclaimed.

Traffic slowed, people ready for a good fight on an otherwise meaningless Wednesday morning.

'Stuff it up your ass!' Passman screamed.

'Go, girlfriend!' a woman called out from her Acura.

Rhoad fumbled with the handcuffs on the back of his Sam Browne belt as Passman yelled more obscenities, her blood sugar dipping lower into its dark crevice of irrationality and violence as an audience gathered and encouraged her.

Rhoad grabbed Passman's wrists. She kicked him in both shins and spat. He sputtered, wrenching her left arm behind her back as her right fist knuckle-punched him in the neck. Rhoad had not handcuffed anyone in many years, and steel cracked against Passman's wrist bone as he snapped and missed. Passman howled in pain as he jerked and smacked and steel jaws finally locked around her wrist and bit hard.

'Do it! Do it!' someone yelled from a black Corvette.

Passman's free hand grabbed Rhoad between his legs and twisted.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ruby Sink's one-year-old grandniece, Loraine, was running a fever and had kept her mother awake all night.

'Poor baby,' Miss Sink said over the phone. 'Are you rocking her? Did you give her a baby aspirin?'

'Yes, yes,' Miss Sink's niece, Frances, said. 'I don't know what else to do. If I miss another day of work, well, there're plenty of people out there wanting my job.'

Miss Sink could hear Loraine squalling and imagined the child's bright red face. Day care was out of the question. Miss Sink simply would not allow the sick child to stay with strangers, nor did she want Loraine to pass on whatever she had to others.

'I'll be pleased as punch to keep her while you're at work,' Miss Sink said. 'And I bet you're frantically trying to get ready even as we speak.'

'Yes,' Frances said in despair. 'I haven't even showered yet.'

'I'm on my way right now,' Miss Sink said. 'I'll pick up Loraine and we'll have a grand day.'

'And if her fever doesn't break you'll call Dr. Samson? Just to make sure she's all right?'

'Of course, dear.'

'Oh, thank you, Aunt Ruby.'

'I was going to get out anyway at some point,' Miss Sink said. 'I've got only two dollars in my billfold and I owe the yard man and probably half of everybody else in this town.'

'You always say that, Aunt Ruby. The most broken record I ever heard. Mother said you were the richest poor person she ever knew.'

Miss Sink was saddened by the thought of her dead sister. Miss Sink had no one left except Frances and Loraine. Her spirit settled in that low place she could not tolerate.

'Why don't you have supper with me after work,' Miss Sink said. 'When you pick up our little angel child.'

'Depends on what you're cooking,' Frances said.

'I might just invite this lovely police officer I know,' Miss Sink said. 'The handsomest young man you ever saw, and so sweet. The one who writes editorial pieces for the paper. He rents my little place on Plum Street.'

'Him? Lord have mercy, I've seen his picture. He's too young for me, Aunt Ruby.'

'Why, that's nonsense,' Miss Sink said. 'Things aren't like they used to be.'

'He wouldn't be interested in me. He's so good-looking and all.'

'And you're pretty as a rosebud.'

'I'm older than him and have a child, Aunt Ruby.

Reality, you know?'

'I'm going to make my sesame-honey fried chicken. Cheese grits and fresh tomatoes with balsamic vinegar,' Miss Sink said.

'And just where are you going to get fresh tomatoes this time of year?'

'You forget I can them,' Miss Sink said. 'Now quit talking so I can be on my way.'

Smoke's girlfriend, Divinity, was the first to notice the red Jeep Cherokee abandoned in the Kmart parking lot, no more than a hundred feet from the First Union Bank.