A police station is a lousy place to primp for a night on the town, Big Rob thought. It’s loud and the lighting’s bad (all fluorescents) and the mirrors are cracked and warped and marred with capillaries of water damage. Big Rob was a good-looking fat man, according to just over a dozen women in the last twenty years. Looking at himself in a mirror, not this one, a good one, Rob wistfully imagined what he’d look like if he were thin. He had dense, dark hair and his chin, the top one, was strong and square. His teeth were white and original. Although he carried excess weight in his face and around his belly, he was six and a half feet tall and his frame was proportionately large. God had given him the fat, he joked, because he was strong enough to carry it.
The squad room of the Brixton police station was small and communal. The chief had a cluttered and claustrophobic office, but the half dozen other employees and officers shared desks and made do. There were big windows on three walls, and the spaces between them were painted yellow – very different from the enclosed, whitewashed workrooms Big Rob was used to from his days with the Chicago PD. The break room was clean and the refrigerator, which seemed to hold little besides condiments and freshly packed lunches for that day’s shift, didn’t smell.
Civilians needed little more from this place than advice or a Samaritan’s hand. The Brixton cops helped people get keys out of parked cars and collared loose pets. Occasionally they took congenial statements from opposite sides of a fender bender, and Brixton had its share of drunk-and-disorderlies, as well as vandalism and domestic squabbles. Working out of the Brixton police station seemed to Big Rob like working in an ad agency or a bank.
“You all set?” Crippen’s delighted grin appeared in the mirror. Biggie gave him a thumbs-up. “This is exciting shit,” Crippen said. “Be careful, and don’t push it too far. Just try to get her loosened up with the margaritas and then let her talk.”
Big Rob nodded. “You know how you get to be a success with the ladies, even with a body like mine?” He tugged on an earlobe. “Be a good listener.”
At a bar called Hounds, Biggie easily found Peg at a square table with four friends. Peg had secured a fifth chair from another part of the bar and made camp on a corner that, due to a pair of lost screws underneath, tilted awkwardly toward her. In the center of the table, downed drinks left their fingerprints in thin pink films on the insides of the glasses, which were grouped together like the small woods that separated property lines in suburban subdivisions. It had been so long since a waitress had cleared the table that the ladies had only its perilous, slanting fringe on which to place their current beverages, although in the waitress’s defense, the women were emptying the glasses so quickly their drinking could have been mistaken for sleight of hand.
The bar was decorated with a half-assed British theme. Store-bought posters of green countryside, ruined castles, and ocean cliffs hung on the walls at angles in cheap black frames. A few kitschy Sherlock Holmes items – ceramics, toys, books – were scattered about on shelves. A reproduction movie poster was tacked next to the door. Displayed randomly were some Irish and Scottish items, as well. They poured Guinness at the tap, which made Big Rob hopeful for a pint of Tennent’s, but he should have known better. He backed away from the bar with his Harp and casually maneuvered through the crowd until his giant torso was only a few feet from their table, like a cruise ship anchored off a port of call. All five women turned.
“Good evening, ladies,” Big Rob said. “Do you mind if I buy the next round?”