I

Patrolman Mike spotted the turban-covered head and his mind flew into a hot rage.

He exited his patrol car and set course for the turbaned head, thinking: What's that goddamn Ay-rab doing in this fine American suburb? I oughta beat his brown brains out...

Hell, he thought, that Ay-rab is standing in front of a van... he must be thinking of breaking into it, or the house. Or there's something in the van. Open-and-shut case!

The swarthy, tall, middle-aged turbaned man was standing on the driveway of a two-story house, scratching his bearded chin. At his feet stood an open toolbox.

"Hey!" Mike said, crossing the lawn to reach the man. "What're you doing?"

The man turned his way and frowned: "Pardon?"

"You heard me, Abdul. What in the hell you think you're doing?"

The man did not seem intimidated by the patrolman's uniform and question... and it infuriated Mike even more.

"I'm fixing my van. What does it look like I'm doing?"

Mike's freckled face turned a lighter shade of red, and he thrust out his palm under the man's chin. "Show me ID."

The man's frown deepened. "I live here. It says 'Bhagat Singh' on my mailbox."

Patrolman Mike snapped. Bhagat was taller and looked stronger, so Mike took no risks: he pulled his can of mace and sprayed the man's eyes. Immediately, Bhagat screamed with pain and covered his face. Blinded, he could not evade a simple nightstick blow to the back of his knees.

Once the man had dropped to the asphalt, Mike straddled his back and struggled to handcuff him. The man kept screaming and resisting, and the front door of the house opened.

Mike saw a family of two children and a woman rush out on the driveway - all Ay-rabs, he thought. They begged and shouted, but the rush of blood pumping through his ears made him deaf. Their voices receded to a muted murmur.

He was in a state of tunnel vision: all he could focus on was the bigger man's writhing body beneath him, trying to get free. It made Mike aroused.

He screamed obscenities at the man, and beat him over the shoulders and back with the nightstick. Finally, the man calmed down and Mike could lock the handcuffs with sweaty, trembling fingers.

"You're under arrest for aggravated battery, Ay-rab! Try that again and I'll kill you! Come here!" Mike pulled the man to his feet by his turban, and the cloth came untangled. The man protested loudly, something about his religious customs, but Mike struck him again and screamed at him to shut up.

When Mike had finally gotten the man into the backseat of his patrol car and locked it, he leaned against the hood and caught his breath. Man, he thought, that felt good.

"I sure showed that Ay-rab his place," he told himself. His stomach rumbled. "Where the hell is Eugene?"

His colleague and senior, patrolman Eugene Blinck, returned with the paper bag of fresh food and coffee.

"Who's the perp?" Eugene asked, nodding to the backseat where Bhagat sat, staring ahead of him, his turban disheveled, his long hair spilling over his face.

Mike wolfed down half his burger and said, munching, "Jus' some Ay-rab who tried to... give me attitude when I asked for his ID. Violent resisting of arrest. That'll teach him a lesson."

Eugene leaned over and peered into the backseat window. He turned livid and glared back at Mike. "You ****ing stupid rookie. First day in my neighborhood and you **** up one of the Sikhs. I leave you alone for five ****ing minutes and you do this."

Mike felt his neck flush, and recognized the first stirrings of an embarrassing insight: he was in trouble, and knew he had to cover his ass.

"The Ay-rab, he threatened me. Self-defense, man. Look how big he is."

Eugene moved his face very close to Mike's and said tersely: "He's not an A-rab, you stupid ****. He's a doctor, from India. And a U.S. citizen. Been living in this neighborhood for years."

"Is that a fact." Mike glanced at Bhagat, then back to Eugene. "You'll cover for me, right? I'm new here, you weren't here to tell me this! We're supposed to look for terror suspects, right?"

Eugene Blinck drew a deep breath; for a moment Mike expected Blinck was going lunge at him. "Okay. We can't let the media blow this up in our faces. My report will say I saw him threaten you... while I was on my way back... and he'll get away with a light battery charge and bail. You let me talk to the judge, okay? No need for you to **** up my job more, you worthless rookie ****."

They drove back to the precinct station in brooding silence. Mike looked into the rearview mirror and saw the Sikh's eyes look back at him: expressionless, radiating silent contempt, refusing to show fear.

Mike trembled with a terror he could not place, and averted his eyes from the mirror. That terror mingled with an unreasoning rage seeking something to squash and dominate... but this wasn't the time and place. Mike tried to think of someone, somewhere he could bully and get away with it. Not the ex. She had moved to another state.

"Just so you know it, Mike..."

"Yeah?"

"Off the record, the captain will know what really went down, and I'll beg him to have you transferred to the worst dead-end precinct he can think of. So at least I won't have to work with you again."

"Is that a fact."

"Yep."

Mike felt strangely calm. I can start over, he thought. I'm home free. He stuck a hand into his pockets and counted the tablets there. Two ones left, he thought. Enough to last me the rest of the day.



II

Sergeant Bolland regarded Mike's dossier with probing fingers, as if he were judging the paper quality rather than the text.

He looked up. "Okay, Mike. Since this is your first day on the 20th, I have an easy assignment for you. I'm busy this week, so you will drive lieutenant detective Garris around Ratboro. He's looking for people who might have something on a local suspect named Ngolo."

Mike sipped his coffee, taken from one of the station's communal pots. It tasted great. "Ratboro, that a black neighborhood? Lotsa Muslims?"

Bolland gave him a flat stare and paused. "It's mixed," he said finally. "Has the usual problems: dealers, pimps, slumlords. But no gangs."

"No gangs? Are you sure? What keeps them away?"

"Some of the residents there are... oddballs. Frankly, I don't know where all of them come from, but they've got their green cards or their citizenships. We don't hassle them, they don't hassle us. Ngolo is a relative newcomer in the neighborhood, and a prime suspect in a missing-person case. But you don't have to worry about him. Just don't embarrass the lieutenant. Keep a low profile."

"Right."

"And you address him 'sir.'"

"Right." Mick received the keys to the patrol car, gave Bolland a casual salute, and sauntered out to the parking lot.

From outside, the building seemed worn out and dirty - as did the rest of the precinct. This part of the city had no industry, hardly any youth. Even the cars looked old. It was as if the streets or the ground itself sucked vitality out of the buildings, cars and people.

Mike thought: Now I get what they said about the 20th: the place where careers go to die.

He found the vehicle matching the number on the car key, tested the motor, started the small computer terminal and the camcorder on the dashboard. Then he waited outside, leaning on the driver's door. The morning air was cold, and he yawned. Soon time for my little pill, he thought. Gotta have that edge.

"Good morning," Garris said as he came out of the station. "Did the sergeant brief you?

"Yes... Yes, sir."

Garris made a wry smile, and opened the other car door. "Let's go."

***

The detective did not speak as Mike cruised north; he watched the streets and buildings with a tense expression.

After five minutes Garris looked ahead, pointed to the sidewalk and said: "Park over there." Mike did, and Garris made to leave.

"I'll be away for an hour or so. Why don't you take a walk around the blocks and acquaint yourself... I'm sure you'll have lots of questions later. Call me if there's any trouble... anything."

"Right, sir."

"Just take it easy."

They both stepped out. Mike and Garris walked in separate directions. Only a minute later, Mike was getting spooked by the place. The old brick apartment houses that lined the street appeared to lean at very slight, odd angles... or maybe he needed to have his eyes checked.

One of the locals passed him by: a large, very dark-skinned African woman carrying two full plastic bags, followed by two boys playing with garish water-pistols.

One kid shot a jet of water that sprinkled the cracked pavement at Mike's feet - and Mike immediately snapped.

"Hey you!" he barked. "Put that away, punk, or I'll put you away."

The boy lowered his water-pistol and walked away faster. Gonna put the fear of God into the natives, Mike thought. There's a new sheriff in town!

He came to a crowded part of the sidewalk where street vendors had placed their vegetable stands and karts. Some of the fruits on sale he did not recognize. Blue oranges? And they gave off a weird odor, like chemicals.

A very pale, gaunt man stopped to buy vegetables and one of the blue oranges. He wore sunglasses, a brown overcoat, baggy pants - and a white turban.

Mike felt the familiar hot rage rise in his throat. That man's gone native, he thought. Betrayed his race and became one of them - like, a white Ay-rab! Goddamn traitor.

Mike dug in his pocket and took a pill from the plastic bag. He chewed down one, and his heart beat faster. Just to give me that little edge over the lowlifes, he thought. He had just bought the pills on his way to work, and the packed bag held twenty.

Unthinkingly, guided by the light of his rage, Mike focused on the gaunt stranger and followed him. He forgot that he had never been in this part of the city before, forgot what he had heard.

He was too excited to remember anything but how good he felt wielding power over strangers, and the irresistible urge to feel that rush again. That wannabe Ay-rab had to be up to something bad with that weird fruit. Open-and-shut case.

The pale stranger entered a dank, shadowed alley between two old buildings, so narrow that one could reach out and touch walls on both sides. Incredibly enough, a few doorways existed in those walls. Didn't they have building codes in Precinct 20? Could the damn foreigners get away with anything in his city?

A trio of children ran past him - skinny children wearing sunglasses in various shapes, and sweaters with hoods covering their heads. Mike caught a glimpse of their pale thin hands and thought: They look starved. Ahead of him, the turbaned stranger walked across a narrow vacant site, covered by rusted junk. The stranger passed behind the rusted-out husk of a car - and vanished.

Mike ran over the site, skipped over jagged metal debris, and saw a shadow move into a low, partly obscured wall breach. Reaching the hole, he hunched down to climb inside.

"Hey you!" he shouted into the dark space, and skidded down a slope of trash and bricks. The air here was oddly dry and cold; somewhere in the distance, a motor like an air compressor burred incessantly. "Come back here!"

With his flashlight, Mike searched the space and found a concrete stairwell, leading steeply down. He heard faint sounds from below, and ran downstairs. He pulled the gun and its weight comforted him.

The stairs ended in an unlit, dry, chilly corridor. The motor burr sounded stronger here. Damn, he thought, this is weird. What kinds of freaks live in dark cold basement? Maybe I ought to go back. He tried his radio but could not get a clear signal. He tried his cell phone, and it failed too.

But then he smelled those blue oranges, and the rage flared up again. He couldn't let that wannabe Ay-rab get away with bringing toxic foreign fruit into America. He had to make this precinct safe from the trash that tried to poison his country!

Following the odor, he ran quickly down the long corridor. Footprints in the dust ended in front of a closed metal door. He tried the handle. The door was locked. He pounded on it with his nightstick. "Open up! Police!"

Did he hear a humming noise from the other side? A few moments passed. He flicked the safety on his gun, aimed at the lock and fired a shot. Then he braced himself and kicked in the door.

It swung open. Mike dashed inside, gun and flashlight drawn. "Freeze! Police!"

The cone of his flashlight moved across a low basement, at least a hundred feet long and half as wide. Old light fixtures lined the ceiling - all of them cracked.

The floor seemed to be covered with wide sheets of canvas from one end to the other, apart from a strip of floor down the middle. The air was so cold it hurt his teeth.

Strong burring noise filled the room. With his flashlight, he traced the noise to a big metal cabinet with ducts coming out of it. Someone was artificially cooling the basement, turning it into a giant freezer.

Shuddering with cold, Mike tried to shout for the stranger but his voice faltered. He strode across the floor and something crunched beneath his foot. Mike bent down and shone the flashlight cone on a dark puddle that seeped out where he had stepped on the canvas.

He tried to summon more rage to fight back the cold, tried to imagine more foreign conspiracies amassing against him in this hidden storage room, but none of Mike's mental stereotypes - swarthy terrorist, black criminal, parasite Latino, effete European - could be made to fit this site.

"Come out, you turbaned bastard!" he shouted. "I know you're here! Come out or I'll stomp on your precious stash! I'll burn it down and chase you out of my country! You don't scare me!"

He breathed in icy air too fast and had a coughing fit. An involuntary shudder made him drop the gun and it fell on the dark canvas. Mike crouched down and searched with shivering, numb hands for the weapon.

The burring noise deafened him. Mike did not hear the turbaned stranger come until he stood right beside him. The stranger reached down with an impossibly elongated arm and pulled an object out from under the canvas sheet.

He held out the object in one bony hand, and the dark stuff dripped from it. It resembled a flattened ceramic sphere, about the size of a cantaloupe, and it had cracked open.

In a high-pitched voice, the stranger cried over the motor noise: "Bad egg! Bad egg!"

Mike groped feverishly in his pockets and produced the can of mace. He sprayed the man straight in the face.

And the stranger just sneezed.

The other bony hand shot out, clasping tightly over Mike's mouth like a suction cup, and smothered his scream for help.



III

Garris found Mike lying unconscious in an alley, his face bloodless and pasty, foaming at the mouth; he checked the patrolman's eye pupils and they were unnaturally dilated.

Immediately, he called for an ambulance. While he waited for it to arrive, he gave Mike chest massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and checked his pockets for information. Mike's wallets contained no information card - nothing to indicate he had heart problems, diabetes or epilepsy.

In one of Mike's pockets, Garris found an emptied plastic bag; a thin residue of powdered crystals had settled on the bottom.

He showed the evidence to the paramedics, who quickly gave Mike oxygen and an injection to get his heart going. Then they carried him into the ambulance and tried electric shocks. On the first attempt, the paramedic could sense Mike's heartbeats.

"He's alive, barely," he told Garris. "We'll take him downtown right away. You probably saved his life, but he might've suffered brain damage."

They handed Garris a calling card and drove away. He walked back to the parked patrol car, got into the driver's seat and called the precinct on his cell phone.

"Bolland... got some bad news. I lost track of Mike and he didn't answer my call. Found him passed out, looks like he O.D.'ed while I was gone. And I found a big empty dope bag in his jacket. The paramedics took him away, but I don't know if he'll make it. If he lives... it's touch and go... the captain should put him on probation for drug use." He let out a heavy sigh.

After a pause, the sergeant said: "What a shame. Poor guy didn't last through the first day." Another pause, and he asked: "You think he's a junkie, sir?"

"Tell the captain, please. I need to take a break."

Garris took the car for a drive south, stopped by Sanford Bay and went to look at the boats.

This is all my fault, he thought. Should have watched his back... letting a complete rookie walk the beat in Ratboro alone, what was I thinking? I never even knew him. Was he a good person, a bad person, or just flawed? I meet so many people, and most of them never get to be more than faces in the crowd.

But, Garris thought, maybe it's easier to like people I never got to know. I can tell myself that despite his drug problem he was a good person.

Only now he noticed what a warm, sunny spring day it was.





"Bad Egg" (c)A.R.Yngve 2007. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without permission.