Street Speak

by Gary Clifton

Maggs swayed across the squad room, far too leggy and beautiful for a Homicide cop. All male eyes present assessed her backside and her lovely bronze skin. All knew they’d get no farther. Maggs Williams was one tough customer.

She stuck her head in the glass man-cage of Captain Tom Wafer, Homicide commander. “Boss, gonna drive down and have a little chat with Fatso Six, my dimwitted snitch.”

“Seein’ any daylight in that hooker murder... Whuts’r name?”

“Flower... uh, Daphne Mae Jones, sir. I think I got a handle on it.”

“Need cover?”

“Naw.”

She herded the old Dodge to the domicile of Fatso Six, a swindler who peddled dope and ran ugly whores from a joint on South 87th. His real name was Clevis Jones, Jr. but, in that neighborhood, nearly every soul was known by a street name.

He was called Six because Fatso was a very crowded name in the neighborhood. Four and Five had both been murdered and, technically, Fatso Six was now number four, but the system had no provision for reassessing seniority. Six stayed Six.

* * *

Fatso was asleep on a battered sofa in the back room. The nude female snuggled on the narrow expanse with him recognized Maggs and sprang to her feet, screaming like she’d just laid a large egg. With a face like an infected toe, and weighing a good 190, she barrelled past Maggs into the front office and then out the door, naked and hysterical, into the heavy foot traffic.

“Miss Maggs?” Fatso stammered, clawing on britches.

“Fatso, you lied to me about that pimp Crowbar murderin’ Flower. another lyin’ screwup equals parole revocation, and you’re back at South Down II as some alpha con’s ol’ lady.”

Fatso was an “asset” as the cop movies say, a snitch with the loyalty of a garden slug. He’d spent more than half his adult life in the joint.

“Miss Maggs, I ain’t actually said I seen Crowbar let the hammer down on that chick Flower. Heard a gunshot, ran out back, and Flower was deader than good music, but I ain’t seen no piece or no Crowbar.”

“You lyin’ clown, it’s all over the street. You been blabbin’ around you saw Crowbar shoot Flower.”

“Miss Maggs, that jackwagon Crowbar is one stone killer. He even suspects I fingered his ass, I’m dead as Flower.”

“Oh well,” Maggs sighed. “Life is its and buts. Even your ol’ mama won’t miss you.”

* * *

She found Crowbar’s last known address in a three-story walkup off Central. Crowbar brushed by her in the doorway and run-waddled down the steps.

She slid her shirttail up, showing her Glock .40. “Crowbar, you run from me, you just go to jail tired... or with a bullet hole in your fat ass.”

Crowbar jerked to a halt. “Jail,” he blinked. “Ain’t did crap, Miss Maggs.”

“Then why run?”

“I always run from the damned PO-lice.”

She motioned him back. “Need to visit about a hooker murder.”

Crowbar slowly remounted the stairs. “Murder? Hooker? Ain’t did squat. Didn’t even know Flower.”

“Then how the hell you know the girl’s name?”

“Jes’ heard ’roun... You know.”

“I know, dimwit? Hold that thought. Crowbar, we found the gun that killed Flower in a dumpster. I either get a DNA swab right here or it’s the jailhouse. The lab also wants a pubic hair sample.”

“Pubic hair? Did somebody shoot Flower over a piece a’tail?”

“Sample, genius. I’ll ask the questions.”

She swabbed Crowbar’s mouth. Then, he unzipped and dropped three pubic hairs into a baggie.

Maggs drove by the lab and left the two samples. Instinct told her that as dumb as Crowbar was and as suspicious as he appeared, he might not be guilty — at least of offing Flower.

* * *

Maggs was watching the eleven o’clock news when her cellular buzzed.

Captain Wafer growled, “Somebody let the air outa your snitch, Fatso number what-the-hell-ever.”

Maggs arrived at Fatso’s place of business just as the M. E. was loading a lifeless carcass into a morgue van. An hour’s canvass, with Maggs distributing death threats generously, fleshed out a picture.

Inquiry to Crowbar’s apartment disclosed neither he, nor his old Buick, were on the premises. A young patrol officer approached and handed her an evidenced bagged .32 revolver he’d found in a dumpster across the street.

At dark thirty the next morning, she was waiting at the lab door with the .32. In an hour, tentative mitochondrial DNA results from the .32 told a story. She immediately put out an All Points for Crowbar. By lunch, patrol officers had him in jail.

Maggs sat across a metal table. “Well, Crowbar, I’m nominating you for dumbass of the century.”

“I ain’t kilt Flower, Miss Maggs.”

“No, dammit,” she tossed the DNA charts on the table. “Fatso Six did. His DNA is on Flower’s murder weapon and yours isn’t. But last night, in another dumpster, just pissin’ distance from your front door, we found the .32 you used to murder Fatso. It’s got your DNA all over it. Ballistics fit. Why in seven kinds of hell didn’t you toss the murder weapon in Bayou Boudreau?”

“I was gonna, Miss Maggs, but the damned Po-lice come along, and I hadda throw it in that dumpster. That punk Fatso been tellin’ I did Flower. He come ’roun’ snoopin’. You gotta know I hadda cap his ass.”

“I gotta know? You’re right. Repeat, Crowbar. Nomination for the idiot of the century award. You did not have to shoot Fatso.”

“I sure as hell did need to. If I get that award you talkin’ ’bout, Miss Maggs, that mean I don’t hafta go back to the joint? Fatso needed killin’.”

Maggs shook her head. “Can’t argue with you ’bout that, Crowbar. But, dude, you’re still lookin’ at the three-needle cocktail; this is your third fall. ’Course you could always cop a plea for life without parole.” She waved handcuffs.

Crowbar slumped to the floor. “Everthin’ allays happens to me,” he wailed.