Leslie Glass - Burning Time

He wore sunglasses but no helmet. He liked the feeling of the wind whipping at his face. He didn’t want to go all the way to Santa Monica or Malibu, so he got off the highway at Torrey Pines. He rode around Del Mar and Miramar for a while, then headed to the better bike shop. It was on a different planet from Stephen’s Motorcycle Salvage where he and Willy used to go. This was the kind of place with ads that said you meet the nicest people on a Honda.

There wasn’t another Harley like his either on the street or in the window of the shop. The only bikes he saw here were Hondas, Kawasakis—Yuppie Jap bikes with the guts all covered up. Riding a bike like that was like fucking a girl with all her clothes on.

He parked in front of the diner across the street. One of his voices told him he was hungry, so he went inside. Bikers were scattered around at a few tables drinking beer. Troland sat at a table in the front by the window, where he could see his bike prominently parked by the door.

A short, tired-looking blonde in a white bikini top and denim shorts came over with an order pad.

“Hi, I’m Jean. What can I get for you?” she said pleasantly.

“I’ll have a pitcher of draft, double cheeseburger, and fries.”

“Sure thing.”

He looked at her retreating back. The round ass, jiggling under the short shorts, held no interest for him. He couldn’t concentrate on wanting to hurt her. It made him feel cursed. He couldn’t even think about taking her out on the desert where no one could see or hear anything and sticking her dry little cunt. He didn’t think of this one screaming, trying to kick him with sandy bare feet, and missing. Breaking her arm. It usually made him feel good to think about it.

The little blonde put the foaming beer down. “Anything else I can get you?”

“No,” he said flatly. He had been sitting very still, staring straight ahead since he came in.

She hesitated for a second, “You okay?” she asked.

“You got a problem?”

“No.” She turned away quickly.

He didn’t turn to look after her this time. He knew he’d been brought real low if he had no interest in sex. It was like they all got together and did something to his balls so his dick wouldn’t work anymore.

The girl returned with the plate and put it down gently in front of him. She moved the ketchup bottle closer and took off without a word. Troland looked down at the plate, then drank some beer.

A kid with a cross dangling from one earlobe, stringy hair, and bare feet in holey sneakers approached the table cautiously.

“Nice scooter, man. Looks low.”

Troland nodded without looking at him. “It’s been stretched and lowered.”

“No shit.”

Troland picked up the cheeseburger and took a huge bite. He chewed and swallowed before answering.

“It’s for sale,” he said flatly. “Wanna buy it?”

“You’re kidding.”

“I don’t kid.”

“But it looks brand-new,” the kid protested. “It’s just last year’s. It’s not even a year old.” He sat down without being invited.

“It’s two years old, but I spent a year customizing it. Yeah, I guess it is brand-new.” Troland poured half a bottle of ketchup on his plate.

“Stretched and lowered, huh.” The kid watched him, eyes narrowed.

Troland’s plate became a sea of red.

“Hey, you really like that stuff.”

“Yeah.” Troland dipped his hand into it and licked his fingers. “Tastes better than blood.”

The boy laughed.

“The bike’s for sale,” Troland said flatly. He could tell by the way the kid walked he had money, probably even went to college. Poor kids didn’t look like that. “Want it?”

“Well, sure I want it. Who wouldn’t?”

Troland lifted the plate and stuck his tongue in the ketchup.

The kid watched him uncomfortably. “Uh, how much do you want for it?”

“You can’t afford it, out of your range.”

“I got enough out of my dad to buy a Fat Bob,” the kid said indignantly.

Troland nodded. That meant he had eleven grand. “This is better than a Fat Bob.”

The kid didn’t even pause. “Let’s have a look,” he said.

A few minutes later he was squatting in front of it, looking the Harley over, touching it here and there, smelling it even.

Troland answered all his questions in a dead voice. Yeah it was a real nice bike. He handed over the keys and let the long-haired freak go for a ride.

“You okay?” the kid asked when he came back fifteen minutes later.

Troland’s face was frozen behind his sunglasses. He had hardly moved during the whole process.

“You got a problem?”

“Uh, no,” the kid said nervously. “You just seem kinda—I don’t know.” He paused. “Ah, is it hot?” he asked finally.

Troland reached in his pocket for the registration and the receipt from the bike shop in San Diego where he had bought it. Two and a half hours later he was on a bus, heading back to Pacific Beach with the kid’s check in his wallet. Now he had plenty of money. All the way home, and deep into the night, Willy’s voice told him he did good.

15

“Yes, New York is still waiting,” April said as patiently as she could.

In San Diego they couldn’t say Woo. When April said, “This is Detective Woo from New York,” they said “Who?” She refused to play games.

“Never mind. Just tell Sergeant Coconut Grove it’s the detective from NYPD.”

Next to her Sergeant Sanchez laughed.

April lowered her eyes. Now he was not only staring at her, he was listening to her conversations, too.

Sanchez sat at the desk in front of hers. To stare at her properly, he had to sit sideways with his back to the window. If she sat facing the front of her desk and looked up just a tiny bit, she looked right at the middle section of his body. If she tilted her head just a tiny bit to the right she saw the upper part of him, his chest and shoulders and head.

His phone, like hers, was often plugged into his ear, but he sat leaning back in his chair, with his feet on one of the open drawers, looking at her. This was very disturbing for many reasons. One was that everybody knew it. And when people in a precinct knew things, they teased.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” people said when Sanchez was out in the field, and someone was looking for him.

It drove her crazy.

Just now the room was full of people. There was a black guy carrying on in the pen. They’d just brought him in. There wasn’t a mark on him; his shirt was tucked in. No one was even near him, and already he was complaining loudly about police brutality. Must be twenty-five people in the room, and no one was paying any attention to him. They always said that.

It was hard to concentrate with so many things going on. She was trying to talk to San Diego, and something had happened in Central Park so the room was filling up. She hadn’t been called in on it, so she didn’t even know what it was. And right in the middle of it, while she was waiting for her contact in the San Diego Police Department to get on the phone, Sanchez was looking at her so that anybody looking at him would know exactly what he was thinking.

She wished she could handle these things the way Sergeant Joyce did. Sergeant Joyce had already passed her test for Lieutenant and was waiting for her number to come up to get the promotion. She was only thirty-six, Irish, with wanna-be yellow hair cut like April’s. But she was tougher and had a sharp tongue. She could swing her hips and not look stupid, make a joke back when someone flirted with her. She was decisive and powerful. Sergeant Joyce would never get stuck lowering her eyes like some caricature of the demure Oriental.

April tapped her finger on the desk and switched her thoughts to Jimmy Wong, with whom she had worked on a case once, and got to know when she was in the 5th. That was two years ago. Jimmy Wong would never let anybody know he was interested in her. Never in a million years, not for a ten-million-dollar lottery. He just wouldn’t. He was on Night Watch in Brooklyn now, which meant he went out on whatever calls came in from the whole borough from eleven o’clock at night on.