Chapter Thirty-Five

The morning of the Azalea Parade Weed's soul was as light as light itself. He wished he could paint the way he felt and the way the morning looked as Officer Brazil drove him to George Wythe High School, where the Godwin marching band was waiting and warming up.

Weed was proud and sweating in his polyester and wool blend red-and-white uniform with its many silver buttons and its stripes down the legs. His rolled-heel black shoes looked like new, the Sabian cymbals polished and safely in their black case in the back seat.

Too bad you haven't had more time to practice,' Brazil said.

Weed knew that out of the 152 members of the band, he was probably the only one who had missed a week of practice. He hadn't had a chance to look at his drill charts or work on forward march, pull mark time, pull halt, high mark, backward march, his favorite freeze-spin and especially the crab step, which was unique to the percussion section of Godwin's finely tuned precision marching band.

'I'll be all right,' Weed said, staring out the window, his heart thrilled.

Already crowds were gathering. It was predicted this might be the biggest turnout in the history of the parade. The weather was perfect, in the seventies, a light breeze, not a cloud. People were spreading out blankets, setting up lawn chairs, parking strollers and wheelchairs, and those who lived along the parade route had decided it was a good day for a yard sale. Cops were everywhere in reflective vests and Weed had never seen so many traffic cones.

Brazil was worried. Thousands of people were gathering and those participating in the parade filled the George Wythe High School parking lot. If Smoke had a plan, Brazil didn't see how it was possible to pluck one teenager out of such congestion, especially if no one, except Weed, seemed to know what Smoke really looked like.

'Weed, I want you to make a promise, okay?' Brazil said as Weed collected his cymbal case from the car. 'You'd recognize Smoke or any of his gang.'

'So.'

Weed was in a hurry, anxiously staring off at his marching band, which from this vantage was a patch of bright red and white somewhat lost in a swarm of colorful uniforms and flashing instruments and swords and twinkling batons and twirling flags. Floats hovered restlessly in an endless line. Masons were dressed like clowns. Mounted police were letting kids pet the horses. Antique cars rattled.

'We're better than that,' Weed said, watching the Navy League Cadet Corps practice marching. 'Look at that bus! That band came all the way from Chicago! And there's one from New York!'

'Weed, did you hear what I said?' Brazil asked out his open window.

Sergeant Santa worked the crowd. One of the Florettes lost track of her baton and it bounced several times on the road. People dressed for the Old West were showing off miniature horses that had azalea blossoms in their manes. The Independence Wheelchair Athletic Association was ready to go. Weed was dazzled.

'Weed!' Brazil was about to get out of the car.

'Don't you worry, Officer Brazil,' Weed said. 'I'll let you know.'

'How?' Brazil wasn't going to take any bullshit.

'I'll do a real long crash and flash my cymbals good when I'm not supposed to,' Weed said.

'No way, Weed. How am I going to notice that with everything else going on?' Brazil countered.

Weed thought. His face got tense, his shoulders slumped and he looked heart-broken when he said, Then I'll cut one loose. You can't miss that. Course you'll have to explain later why I did or I won't be playing cymbals in the band no more.'

'Cut one loose?' Brazil was lost.

'Let go of the strap. You ever seen an eighteen-inch cymbal roll down the road?'

'No,' Brazil confessed.

'Well, you see one,' Weed told him, 'then you know I'm telling you trouble's about to start.'

Lelia Ehrhart was already having trouble. She was closely inspecting the Blue Ribbon Crime Commission's red Cadillac convertible, with its streamers of blue ribbons that would float and flutter beautifully once the car was rolling along the parade route. She realized with horror that there wasn't a single azalea blossom, not even one.

'We must carry on to the theme and message of the parade,' she told Commissioner Ed Blackstone.

'I thought the blue ribbons did that,' replied Blackstone, who was eighty-two but maintained that age didn't matter. 'I thought it was called the Azalea Parade because of azaleas, which are everywhere, and it wasn't expected that we fill the car with them, especially since we don't have many seats anyway.'

Ehrhart could not be persuaded, and she directed that the white leather front passenger's side and most of the back were to be lush and dense with pink and white azalea bushes. This reduced the number of waving and smiling commissioners from three to one.

'I guess I'll have to ride alone by myself,' Ehrhart said. 'Well, I'm going to tell you something, Lelia,' said Blackstone as he leaned against his walker, straining to see through the huge glasses he'd been wearing since his last cataract surgery. 'You're going to have bees. That many blossoms, and bees will show up, mark my words. And don't say I didn't warn you about making those streamers so long. Twenty feet.' Blackstone was severe on this point. 'Anybody gets close to your rear with all those streamers of blue ribbons endlessly flying, something's going to get tangled up.'

'Where's Jed?' Ehrhart frowned.

'Over there.' Blackstone pointed at a tree.

Ehrhart searched the masses and spotted Jed hanging around an antique fire truck, talking to Muskrat, who had fixed her car a time or two. She didn't like to be reminded that Governor Feuer had declined to participate in the parade, even after Ehrhart had offered to ride with him. At least he had volunteered Jed to drive the commission's car, which was on loan from one of Bull Ehrhart's patients.

Tell to him it's times to come now,' Lelia Ehrhart ordered Blackstone.

Blackstone motioned at the tree to hurry along.

Neither Brazil nor West liked crowds, but Chief Hammer refused to bask in the limelight alone, especially since she hated parades and other public celebrations more than West and Brazil did.

'I can't believe you're doing this,' West complained from the back seat of the dark blue Sebring. 'You got this psycho kid out there waiting to make himself a legend by doing something really, really bad, and what do you decide?' She slid into the driver's seat and began adjusting mirrors. 'You decide to ride in an open convertible.'

'I don't like it, either,' said Brazil as he climbed in back, next to Hammer. 'You sure you don't want me to drive?' he asked West.

'Forget it,' she replied.

Brazil got out paperwork.

'We need to find the Mustang Club,' he said, 'because we're in front of them. And' - he traced his finger down a list - 'right behind Miss Richmond.' 'Yuck,' West said.

Pigeon and a fat man were within two feet of each other at Westover Hills and Bassett, across from Brentwood South.

The fat man seemed ready for action as he clandestinely searched the crowd through a pair of Leica binoculars. Pigeon was rooting for half a hot dog with mustard and relish that a little kid had just tossed into a trash can, as if hot dogs grew on trees.

Pigeon never missed the Azalea Parade. People were so wasteful. Not one kid this day and age knew the value of a dollar, not even those folks on food stamps. He fished out an almost entire bag of potato chips that some little brat couldn't toss without violently squeezing, crushing and pulverizing first.

'What we need is another good war,' he said to the fat man, although they were not acquainted.

'I've been saying that for years.' The fat man couldn't have agreed more. 'No one understands what it's like.'