"Twelve piece, white meat." Wheatie's voice didn't sound quite so tough now that he was at the counter. He was shaking all over and terrified that the fat black lady in a hairnet knew all about his plan.

"What sides you want?" she asked.

Shit. Slim didn't tell him that part. Oh shit. He got it wrong and they'd kill him. His furtive, hard eyes cast about, not seeing the Tracker anywhere.

"Baked beans. Slaw. Biscuits," he did the best he could.

She rang it up, and took his twenty. He left the change on the counter, fearful that tucking it in his pocket might draw attention to the gun. When the big bag of chicken and side orders were gripped under a frail arm, Wheatie drew the gun, not real smoothly, but he got it out and pointed it at the fat lady's startled face.

"Give me all your money, motherfucker!" he commanded in his crudest voice as

the gun shook in his small hands.

Wyona managed this Hardee's and was working the counter because two of her people were out sick tonight. She'd been robbed three times in her life and this little piece of motherfucking white meat wasn't going to make it four. She put her hands on her hips, glaring at him.

"What you gonna do, cockadoodledo? Shoot me?" she sang.

Wheatie had not anticipated this. He clicked back the hammer, hands shaking harder. He wet his lips, eyes jumping. It was decision time.

No way he could let this fat chicken lady dis him. Shit man. He walked out of here without the money and that was the end of his career. He wasn't even sure he'd gotten the sides right. Oh shit, he was in trouble. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The explosion was incredible and the revolver jumped in his hands. The bullet smashed through large fries $1. 99 on the lit-up sign over Wyona's head. She grabbed the big. 357 magnum away from him, and he ran like hell.

V9 Wyona was a firm believer in community intervention. She chased Wheatie out the door. She thundered after him through the parking lot, across the way to the Payless, and behind it where a red Tracker was parked, filled with teenagers smoking weed. They locked the doors.

Wheatie tugged a handle to no avail, yelling, as the huge woman grabbed the back of his pants, yanking them down to his leather Adidas. He fell to the pavement in a tangle of red denim as she pointed the revolver through glass, at the driver's head.

wy Slim knew a determined look when he saw it. This bitch was going to shoot him if he so much as blinked. He slowly lifted his hands from the steering wheel, and held them up.

"Don't shoot," he begged.

"Oh please don't shoot."

"Get on your car phone and call 911 right now," Wyona screamed.

He did.

"Tell them where you are and what you done and that if they don't get here in exactly two minutes, I'm blowing your motherfucking head off!"

she screamed, her foot firmly planted on Wheatie, who was supine and shaking on the pavement, face down, hands covering his head.

"We just robbed Hardee's and are behind the Payless on Central Avenue!" Slim yelled into the phone.

"Please get here quick!"

vy Selma, the 911 operator who got the call, wasn't certain what this was about. But she gave it a priority one because her instinct prodded her in a tragedy-about-to- occur direction. Radar, meanwhile, had not finished with West this night. He passed the emergency along to her.

"Goddamit," West said as she drove past Piedmont Open Middle School. She was trying to avoid other problems, and did not wish to hear her unit number one more time, ever.

Brazil couldn't grab the mike fast enough. '700," he said.

"Unknown trouble, four thousand block of Central Avenue," Radar said with a smile.

West floored it, flying down Tenth Street, cutting over to the one thousand block of Central, flying past the Veterans Park and Saigon Square. Other units backed her up, for by now it had occurred to every cop on the street that their deputy chief was handling a lot of dangerous calls unassisted by anyone. When she rolled into the Payless, six cars with lights flashing were behind her. This was uncommon, but West didn't question it and was grateful. She and Brazil got out. Wyona lowered the gun, now that help was here.

"They tried to rob me," she said to Brazil.

"Who did?" West asked.

"The piece of white shit under my foot," she said to Brazil.

West noted the fade haircut, the bad skin, the Hornets cap and shirt.

The boy's pants were knotted around his basketball shoes, and he had on yellow boxer shorts. Next to him was a big bag of chicken and side orders.

"He come in, ordered twelve piece all white meat, then pulled out this thing." Wyona handed the gun to Brazil because he was the man and Wyona had never dealt with woman police and wasn't about to start now.

"I chased him out here to where these sons of bitches are." She gestured furiously at Slim, Fright, and Tote as they cowered inside the Tracker.

West took the gun from Brazil. She looked back at the six other officers standing nearby and observing.

"Let's lock 'em up," she said to the troops. To Wyona, she added.

Thanks. "

The boys were rounded up and cuffed. Now that they were official felons again and not about to be killed, their bravery returned. They stared hatefully at the police and spat. In the car. West gave Brazil a pointed look. He typed on the MDT, clearing them from the scene.

"Why do they hate us so much?" he said.

"People tend to treat others the way they've been treated," she answered.

"Take cops. A lot of them are the same way."

They rode in silence for a while, passing other poor landscapes, the aspiring sparkling city around them.

"What about you?" Brazil asked.

"How come you don't hate?"

T had a good childhood. "

This made him angry.

"Well I didn't, and I don't hate everyone," he said.

"So don't ask me to feel sorry for them."

"What can I tell you?" She got out a cigarette.

"It goes back to Eden, the Civil War, the Cold War, Bosnia. The six days it took God to make all this."

"You got to quit smoking," he said, and he remembered her fingers touching him as she fixed his shirt.