In the Belly of the Beast

31

In the four months since his death, the ache still threatened to overwhelm her sometimes. She blinked back the tears that were going to spill over her lower lids.

Mecham continued to ramble as he drove aimlessly down one street after another.

"Where are we, Rich?"

"In the center of Southside," he said, "right smack dab in the belly of the beast."

A few minutes later, their headlights fell upon two men fighting in the street.

"Well, what do we have here?" Mecham said as he slammed the car into park.

Abby and Mecham hit the pavement with the headlights from their car and their flashlights shining. The two drunks, momentarily blinded by the light, ceased fighting. They stood quietly, breathing heavily like enraged bulls. Mecham had the angrier of the two and was forced to wrestle him to the ground after heated words between the drunks started up again.

After establishing order, the officers immediately began to try and find the cause of the argument.

Both men sat mutely in the middle of the dark street separated by Abby, Mecham, and ten feet of asphalt.

"What's the problem?" Abby asked the nearest one.

"Stole mah Ro...Roze," he finally said, but it was so garbled and slurred that Abby could not understand him.

"What?" she asked.

"Tha's a fu'k'n lie! Bas' tole me ah could hab sum."

"It's a brand of cheap wine, Fontaine," Mecham explained. "Apparently, our friend here took more than a sip. Ain't that right, sir?"

Mecham flashed his light into the first man's face. He squinted in the glare.

"Is that right?" Mecham asked louder.

"Dah'm raht," he said.

They spent the next ten minutes hearing the differing stories and letting the talk, and the time that passed, calm the two down.

"Now look," Mecham said gruffly, "I got more important things to do than to haul your asses in for drunk and disorderly. There's a shelter two blocks over. My advice to you is get yourselves down there and get out of this cold. Get some food into you. You'll feel better. If you stay out here, you're going to be Popsicles by morning. No joke. Understand? You'll freeze to death if you stay out here. Get to the shelter and get off this street. You got that?"

"Yeah," the first guy said.

"Hurumph," the second grunted a little less soberly than the first.

"You two promise me you're gonna' play nice, and we'll forego the free taxi ride down to the station," Mecham continued.

The first man had risen unsteadily to his feet. He smiled broadly showing a less-than-full set of yellow and brown teeth. He'd apparently found humor in Mecham's play-nice routine.

Abby and Mecham lifted the second man to his feet by his armpits. He swaggered from side to side but remained upright.

"Move on, both of you," Mecham said. "And I'm warning you, I catch either of you so much as looking sideways at each other, I'm taking you both in. Understand me?"

Both nodded.

"Get in the car, Fontaine."

He cranked it and turned off the heat.

"Shouldn't we have busted them, or a least taken them to the shelter? It's only two blocks away, Rich. It would take us two minutes to drop them off. How will they ever find it in this blackness?"

"Definitely not, and I don't care if they find the shelter, either. You saw them. Two homeless roaches. Lowlifes. They'd be pissing and puking for two solid blocks. We'd have to have the car fumigated, and even then, I don't know if I could ever get the stench out. Roll your window down, Fontaine. I need some air."

"But it's freezing."

"I don't care. I need some fresh air, I mean it. That stale piss and sweat-shit smell's in my nose, and it's gonna take half the night to get rid of it. Drunks. Damn it," he said huffing and breathing hard to clear the smell, "I hate 'em."

She opened a jar of vapor rub that she kept in her pocket. Swiping an index finger into the jar, she smeared the glob beneath her nostril.

"This will help," she said and offered him the jar.

"No thanks," he replied. "I'll have to let my mustache filter it for me."