Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

She was pudgy, with a blond bird’s nest of hair and angry close-set eyes, and was dressed only in a grungy oversize white T-shirt that fell far short of covering fleshy pink butt cheeks.

Letty watched in horror as the woman darted from the room, wielding a baseball bat, advancing on the two men struggling against the car.

The woman planted her feet apart and swung the bat up, poised inches above the back of the cop’s skull.

“Joe!” Letty screamed. “Watch out!”

He turned, startled. The bat came smashing down, missing his head by millimeters, landing with a vicious thud onto the hood of the Impala.

The woman, enraged, raised the bat to strike again, but this time, Joe grabbed her arms and knocked the bat to the ground. “Motherfucker!” she screeched, kicking and clawing at him. Letty hesitated, then ran toward the scuffle, launching herself onto the woman’s back. The woman tried to shake her off, slapped back at her, landing a dizzying blow to her assailant’s ear, but Letty hung on for dear life, her fear dissipating as the adrenaline rush took over. She yanked out a handful of hair and the woman yowled in pain, striking out, grabbing at Letty’s face and arms, raking her flesh with razor-sharp nails.

In response, Letty opened her mouth and sank her teeth into the woman’s fleshy arm, clamping down with her jaws. Her victim screeched and flailed with her left hand at Letty’s legs, which she’d wound around the woman’s thick waist.

Suddenly, without warning, the woman went limp and slumped forward. Letty slid to the ground, gasping for air.

Joe DeCurtis wrapped a plastic zip tie onto the woman’s wrists, fastened it tightly, then knelt on the crushed-shell pavement beside Letty.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I … I’m not sure,” she said. The side of her face throbbed where the woman had landed a blow, and she felt warm blood trickling from her arms and legs. He helped her to her feet. Her legs were shaking so badly she had to lean into his arm for support.

The blonde was on the ground, too, still moaning and writhing. “What happened?” Letty asked.

“I tased her,” he said, his expression grim. He looked around. “Where’d the boyfriend go?”

“I don’t know,” Letty admitted. “I was concentrating on her.”

Just then they heard an approaching siren. A police cruiser, blue lights flashing, sped into the parking lot. The uniformed officer, a powerfully built black woman, jumped out and approached, her hand resting lightly on the butt of her holstered service weapon.

“DeCurtis?” she said, her gaze taking in the blonde on the ground. “Everything okay here?”

“I’m good, but you’re late,” he said ruefully. “This one,” he said, pointing at the woman, “is under arrest for trespassing, resisting arrest, assault and battery, and assaulting a peace officer. And that’s just for starters.”

“I thought the dispatcher said two suspects, including a white male. Where’s the other one?”

“He must have booked it while we were tussling with his girlfriend,” Joe said, looking chagrined. “But I don’t think he’ll get too far, considering the dude is barefoot, mostly naked, and handcuffed.” He pointed at the Impala. “That’s their vehicle.”

The cop pointed at Letty. “Who’s this?”

“Officer Shauna Arthur, meet Letty, the newest employee of the Murmuring Surf, who just saved me from suffering a life-threatening blow with a baseball bat upside my cranium.”

Shauna Arthur shook Letty’s hand. “Good work, although with a head as hard as DeCurtis’s, it probably wouldn’t have done that much damage.”

“Nice to meet you,” Letty said, trying to steady the tremor in her voice.

“Hey Joe. Joe. Over here!” A man’s voice called in a loud stage whisper.

Oscar Jensen stood, wide-eyed, in the shady breezeway outside his unit, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He gestured wildly with his head, then jabbed his forefinger in the direction of the pair of five-foot-high ornamental concrete jardinieres that flanked the parking lot entrance. In there, he mimed. He’s in there.

DeCurtis nodded his understanding. He and the other cop approached the jardiniere. Officer Arthur jumped without hesitation onto the pedestal and peered down into the urn. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she called. She waited a moment, then took out her nightstick, banging it loudly against the side of the concrete urn. “Dude,” she said, her tone conversational. “You’re trapped. Call it a day, man.”

Slowly, the man’s head, then shoulders, then torso rose out of the urn. His face and chest were scraped and bloody, his expression meek. “Don’t shoot, okay?”

“Okay,” Shauna Arthur said. “You’re under arrest. Now haul your ass on out of there.” She looked over at Joe DeCurtis. “What’d you say his name is again?”

“Ben,” Joe said. “Mr. Ben Dover.”

Letty ran-walked back to the office. The phone was ringing but she ignored it. “Maya?” she called, poking her head into the storeroom. She tiptoed over to the large cardboard shipping carton and peeked inside. The child was asleep, head back, lightly snoring.

She went back to the front desk and collapsed into her chair. Her heart was still pounding in her chest. What had she been thinking getting mixed up in that crazy altercation? The blonde outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She could easily have gotten injured or killed. And then, what would become of Maya?

Letty clutched her throbbing head between both hands. She had to be more careful.

She heard the chimes on the office door. Joe walked past her and into the storeroom. She heard him close the bathroom door, heard water running. When he emerged, he was toweling off his damp face and hands.

“Hey,” he said, standing beside her. “Seriously, thanks for what you did out there. I mean, you shouldn’t have, but I guess, if you hadn’t, things could have gone south in a hurry.”

He gently touched the side of her face. “You’re gonna have a hell of a bruise here. You’re pretty scratched up too. There’s some antiseptic spray in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Better get yourself cleaned up before you get cat scratch fever or something.”

Letty found herself suddenly tongue-tied. “I can’t believe I jumped that chick,” she said, laughing nervously. “I’ve never done anything like that in my life.”

“We found Bonnie and Clyde’s ID when we searched the room,” Joe said. “They’re both bad news. Multiple arrests for possession and manufacture of meth, burglary, auto theft, you name it. She was released last week, from a women’s prison in Georgia, and there’re warrants out for his arrest in Alabama and South Carolina.”

“Wonder what they were doing here?” Letty said.

“His story is that they were headed to her mom’s house, in Clearwater, to visit her kids. The court took ’em away from her after her last arrest. And here’s the kicker—she’s his ex-stepmother.”

“Wait. The dude she was having sex with in the pool out there last night was her stepson? Eeeeewww. ”

“Ex-stepson. Wait. What? Sex in the pool? Who told you that?”

“Oh. Well, your mom did. They were out there partying pretty loud, disturbing the other guests. I even heard them. Ava told me this morning she went out to tell them to shut it down—and they were, naked and uh, in the act. That’s when she told them they needed to clear out first thing this morning.”

“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “She didn’t tell me any of that when she called. All she said was that they were supposed to be out by ten and if there was any trouble, you were supposed to reach out to me.”