Unknown - The Watch Dog

«Two? Well, no wonder Lucy hangs around with this long-hair! He's really somethin' special!»

«No, stupid. The other cock's attached to one J. Marlowe.»

«The big clothing manufacturer who was in Newsweek a while back? He's the one with factories all over the world … wherever there's cheap labor.»

«Honestly, Turner, you surprise me. I didn't know you read anything heavier than comic books.»

The black officer laughed and took a pack of cigarettes from the glove compartment, not offering his partner one because Manners was a non- smoker. «Not all us niggers is dumb, boss man,» he said with a thick plantation accent.

«Yeah? Then if you're so smart, figure out the rest of the story yourself.» They were turning into the country club driveway for a sweep through the parking lot, always a good spot for catching a couple of late-neckers with their pants down.

«No, you tell me … it's getting more interesting all the time.»

«Actually, there's not much more to tell. At least, not until I get the latest rumors from Flaherty. It seems that young Lucy was sort of attached to her father, maybe more than is natural for a girl her age, and she doesn't like the idea of Daddy's widow with a new boyfriend … Jerry Marlowe in the flesh.»

«Aha, the ol' Electra complex rears its ugly head!»

«Jeez, Turner, you're a pretty smart fellow! How come you're a cop?» Just then their number came across on the radio: disorderly conduct at an all-night service station. «Probably a fist-fight … better get ready for a little action!» He down-shifted the powerful Mercury and it belched with a throaty roar as they left Valley Farms in a cloud of taxpayers' rubber. The doughnuts would have to wait.

«Lucy, don't just walk past me like I'm not standing here! Come in here . .. I want to talk to you!» Kate Barrett had changed into a dress and stockings; she was always an early riser, and this morning it would just be a bit earlier than usual. She had never really intended to go back to sleep anyway, but she needed some excuse to get away from those adolescent police officers. Another minute of the way they were ogling Lucy and she'd have lost her cool completely!

«Sorry, Mother,» the younger woman said politely, her lips pressed together in what passed as a smile. «I didn't see you. What do you want? I have classes in just over three hours.»

«Never mind your classes. What's the idea of parading around this house like some kind of … some kind of whore!» Her teeth clenched as she spat out the word; it left her lips like some bit of bad food.

«Parading where? I've just been walking around my house. Oh, excuse me, your house. I wasn't aware that doing so made me some kind of fallen woman.» Lucy stood barely an inch shorter than her mother, and she showed no signs of backing down. Arguing like this had become something of a nightly ritual since John Barrett's death, and both women had plenty of practice by now.

«You know damn well what I mean! You and that see-thru outfit with those pimply-faced cops peering at your bosom. Honestly, what do you take me for? I'm not blind!»

Lucy laughed weakly. «I'll tell you what I take you for … if anybody's the whore, it's you! Those men were nearly thirty, young enough for me maybe, but not old enough for you! I think you're just jealous because I got all the attention! That's what's eating you, you're jealous! Why don't you call up your friend with the lavender cologne? He might pay some attention to you!»

«Lucy Barrett, I won't listen to that kind of talk! Maybe I was a little hasty, but you've got no right to talk that way about Mr. Marlowe. He's a good friend of the family and he's been a real help these last few months!»

«Yeah, I'll bet … help at what? Or should I guess. I'm not blind either, you know. I've seen you two kissing and grabbing at each other like a couple of …»

Kate's palm flashed upward and stung across her daughter's cheek with a loud smack. Lucy scarcely moved, but her face bore the mark of four red fingers like a stenciled hand on her cheek. «Lucy … I'm sorry … Lucy?»

Lucille Edgecombe Barrett turned on her bare feet and walked away silently to her room, closed the door behind her, and locked it carefully. Not until she was in bed with her head beneath her pillow did she let herself go. A half hour later she had cried herself to sleep, and she did not awaken until the alarm rang at quarter past seven.

Kate Barrett's room was closed when she passed it on the way down to fix herself a quick breakfast. The Barrett domestic, Clara had arrived and was cleaning up the broken glass by the back door when Lucy came in. «Trouble, Miss Lucy? You look like you haven't slept a wink. That is, unless you got them red eyes from drinking.»

Lucy gave the elderly black woman a warm hug. «No, Clara, just the same old thing. Mother and I had another of our fights. This one was a real lulu.»

«Which one of you broke the door?»

«Neither one. We had a break-in here last night. Or rather almost had one. I guess the lights must have scared him away.»

«A break-in? Did you call the police?»

Lucy was pawing through the cupboard in search of a snack-sized box of cereal. «Oh, yeah, police and guns and everything. And then Mother accused me of being a whore and slapped me.»

«What? Why, Miss Lucy, that don't sound right to me. Are you sure it happened just like that?»

The long-haired blonde girl sat down at the kitchen breakfast table and stared into the empty coffee cup that Clara had provided for her. «No, Clara, I don't know how it happened. It was just like all the other nights. She said something or I said something and we were off and running. Only this time she hit me … hard.» She was trying not to look at Clara, for the gray-haired Negro woman had practically raised her and it was impossible to keep anything from Clara. She could lie to Kate, even once in a while to Daddy when he was alive, but never to Clara. She was too sharp.

«Listen honey, you forget all about that school this morning. They'll understand you missing a couple of classes. I'm gonna fix you a nice hot breakfast just like I used to do when you was a baby. And then you can tell ol' Clara all about it, 'ya hear?» She did not receive an answer, but when the elderly woman turned from her dishes, Lucy had her face buried in her hands and it was plain to see she was crying.

You could always hear David coming long before you saw him; his late- fifties MG had not seen a muffler without holes in more years than anyone could remember. How he managed to keep the thing on the streets was a puzzlement to everyone who knew him or the car. David had the sort of looks that usually draw small-town cops like sugar draws ants: long hair, a Mexican-bandito mustache. And always the latest in freaky clothes. But somehow he managed to elude them, for his racing green MG was almost an institution on the streets between Valley Farms and Alexandria. He never drove his car into the city; because of thieves, he said, but most people suspected it was because the D.C. cops would be less likely to put up with that awful brraaappp!

Lucy Barrett remembered the exact day she first met David; the exact day, the hour, the minute, all of it. It was the night Kate first brought Jerry home with her. Oh, sure, she knew they had been seeing each other. Everyone in Valley Farms knew by that time. But at least until then she had had the decency to keep him out of their home. Her father's home!

And Kate Barrett brought that sawed-off shrimp of a man with his awful pot belly into the study where she was doing her homework and introduced him, just like that. What was she supposed to do, curtsy and pretend she was glad to meet him? That man in her father's house? Well, she didn't, and she was not sorry in the least now as she waited outside the school for David to pick her up. No, not in the least. That was the night she first went to Scottie's, a late-night drive-in hangout not far from Valley Farms, but definitely on the shadier side of the tracks. Lucy had never even felt the urge to go to that awful place, though some of the bolder girls from Valley Farms went over in groups of four or five just for laughs sometimes. Much in the manner that the Park Avenue swells used to go down to the Apollo in Harlem before the blacks declared them non-grata. Lucy went there that night for one reason – to get drunk on beer. She ordered a plate of French fries and a half-quart of beer, just like she had heard the kids did it here; and when it came, she gulped half of it down without a breath. Lucy was no drinker, at least not then, but she had sampled a few different drinks over the years, including a fair share of beer at debutante-season parties and by the pool at the country club. That night, though, she had only wanted to get drunk as quickly and painlessly as possible, and being under legal age, beer was the safest way. She had finished the first and ordered a second when David poked his head in her passenger-side window. Perhaps if she had not downed that large can of beer so quickly, she would have switched on the power window and told him to get lost. Perhaps.