Hustle (25 page)

Dustin swung
around, the woman still clutched with his left arm, and shot the man in the face. The sirens blared on Larkin Street and the noise of the gunshot was lost among them. A red mist flew up from the back of the man’s head before he disappeared, dropping out of Bear and Gabriel’s view like a dirty puppet.

Dustin returned the gun barrel to the woman’s cheek and said, “You see? You see what you made happen? You’re the ones. Now fuck off. I have the tape, I have the house. It’s all mine. I earned it, every last bit of it. I deserve it. You get nothing, you old fuck,
nothing
.”

“Shoot him,” said Gabriel.

Bear expelled his breath and squeezed the trigger. The shot went high.

Dustin fired into the woman’s cheek, just as he had the notary
, Miranda, back in Marin. The shot tore through her skull in the same fashion. She was instantly dead. He dropped her lifeless body and pointed the pistol at Bear and Gabriel.

“You fucks, you shits,
goddamn you, I’ll kill you both.” He began firing.

One, two, three shots.
Bear heard them ricochet all over the alley, off cement, off brick, off cars. Bear dropped to one knee and emptied his gun into Dustin. This time, with Dustin’s gun pointing straight at him, Bear did not miss. Not one shot. Dustin’s body danced backward as he contorted to the impact of the bullets. When he finally fell, it was backward over the homeless couple’s up-turned cart.

Gabriel ran to Dustin, flipping open the satchel that hung from his neck. He searched it and squeezed it, and found no tape.
Gabriel squeezed his jacket and there, smashed by the bullets, was the VHS tape. Gabriel quickly pulled the tape out. It looked like it had been run over. It was smashed and shattered and utterly destroyed. He then lifted the edge of the dumpster and threw in what remained of the tape.

Bear stood watching. He’d alre
ady gone too far; he wasn’t tampering with evidence, too. As soon as Gabriel let the lid of the dumpster fall back down with its deep metallic slam, police cars began to fill up the alleyway, both ends. The sirens were deafening now. Bear dropped his pistol to the ground, put his hands behind his head, and dropped onto his tired knees.

When Donny had heard the first siren, he stuck that Camel in is mouth and lit it. As the sirens increased, both in number and in volume, he knew somehow they were on the way for his friends. He looked at the phone in his hand and waited for it to ring. When he’d finished his smoke and the phone still hadn’t rung, he stood up, dug his fingernail into the plastic cover on the back, popped it open and took out the battery. He walked down the steps of City Hall toward the trashcan on the corner of McAllister and Van Ness and tossed the phone and battery in. Then he kept on walking.

Chapter 24

True to his word, Gabriel got Bear the best representation he could find. Just as good, in fact, as the attorney he retained for himself. Eli Schnabel arrived with a smile on his face and an outstretched hand. He reassured the biker over and over that this was going to work out in time. Patience and prudence were his key phrases.

Bear was relieved not to have
to waste his one phone call on a lawyer and used it to call Sheila instead. She told him she loved him, that she couldn’t wait to see him. It wouldn’t be long, she told him. It made Bear feel like he was going to get out of there; he
was
going to see her soon. It gave him some hope. It turned out Sheila and the lawyer were both right. Bear was held for seventy-two hours at the Hall of Justice. Much of that time he spent being interrogated by an endless stream of detectives.

The investigators
didn’t seem to have much of the story yet, so Bear offered up as few details as possible. They didn’t ask about any VHS tape. They didn’t have any idea about it. Because all the guns were recovered, nobody bothered to look in the dumpster for evidence. To the cops, it was more cut and dry. A case of self-defense—in the alleyway, at least. Dustin wasn’t alive to complicate matters with his version of the events. As for the details from Terrence’s house in Marin, there was clear evidence that Gabriel was held and tortured by the madman. In fact, with Gabriel and Bear being the only available witnesses to the carnage there, it played more like Dustin had held them all hostage: Gabriel, Terrence, Raphael, and Miranda the Notary. They were all victims of a speed freak’s psychopathic rage. There were plenty of bullet holes and spent casings to back up the story. Dustin had used Terrence’s gun to kill the woman and Terrence himself. The same gun as Rich was killed with. It was the same pistol Terrence shot Raphael with while aiming at Bear. Then Dustin brought that same gun into the city and used it to kill both the homeless people before unloading bullets all over the alleyway.

As much as the cops hated Gabriel, he was still a respected member of the community. He knew how to lay his story out in a manner that would be believable. He was a master at manipulating the flow of information. The press viewed Dustin as a mass murderer. There were headlines like,
Meth-Fueled Mayhem In Marin
, and
Crystal Killer Had Killed Before
. They called him the
Speed Slayer
, and the
Meth Murderer
. Gabriel was made out to be a victim, an attorney whose tireless efforts on behalf of his client came back to bite him. Dustin’s known criminal history only underscored the story. Little was known about the hero, the man who came to save Gabriel from the clutches of Derek “Dustin” Walczak. All involved worked hard to keep it that way.

***

Donny spent the first twenty-four hours holed up in his hotel room. He sat watching the door, expecting a phalanx of police to come bursting in at any moment. He pounded old cottons and rinsed dirty spoons to stay well. There were enough scrapings in his drawer for him to get by—barely. After he’d exhausted those, he decided to call Gabriel’s office. He wanted to know if Gabriel was going to keep his word about helping him off the streets.

He ventured out in
to the daylight and realized as soon as he hit the sidewalk how sick he really was. The sun was bright and the streets were warm, but Donny shivered all the way to the only payphone he knew had a phonebook attached. He found Gabriel’s office number and popped in two quarters.

A friendly, familiar voice answered the phone. “Thaxton, Spreckle, and White.”

“Bean, I mean
, Beatrice? Is that you?”

She knew instantly who it was; she’d been expecting his call. “Donny? How are you? Are you
alright? Where are you calling from?”

Donny told her he was at the BART station at Market and Powell and reassured her that he’d not spoken to any police. He told her he was sick, but couldn’t go back to what he was doing for money. He needed help and wondered if Gabriel was there.

“No, I’m afraid that both he and Mr. Mayfield are still being held at the Hall of Justice.”

“Mr. Mayfield?”

She corrected herself. “Bear, honey, that’s his name.”

“Oh, well …” Donny’s voice trailed off.

Bean listened to the background noise a moment, the trains, the people, and over it all she heard a quiet sob.

“Donny, Mr
. Thaxton has left me with a set of instructions in case you were to call.” There was silence. “Donny, are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“He asked me to write out a personal check for you to take to the methadone clinic. The check is to be made out to the clinic, though. You understand? He wants you to begin a detox. He also wanted to make sure that your rent was paid for the duration of your treatment. At the end of the treatment, he wanted to give you the opportunity to go back home.”

Donny listened.

“Do you have a place to go, Donny? A place that is out of the city?”

Donny thought about his home, his family. There was no going back there. He lied and said, “Yes.”

“Okay, good. All you need to do is come down here to the office and we’ll get you squared away.”

There was more silence on the phone. Bean listened close to see if she could hear anymore sobbing. Finally she heard Donny say something that sounded like a yes and then the line went dead.

On the bus over to
Thaxton, Spreckle, and White, Donny discovered a discarded newspaper on the one free seat he found toward the back of the bus. The headline caught his eye
. No Charges For Gabriel Thaxton.
Donny picked it up and started reading. It told some of the tale, not much though. It said that, although he was still being held, it was unlikely that the famous lawyer would be charged with any wrongdoing, even though he’d failed to notify police of the murders in Marin before tracking the killer back to the city. Likewise, his mysterious companion—the one who’d actually shot Derek “Dustin” Walczak—would probably not be charged. It praised the man known as Darrel Mayfield as a hero. He scanned the rest of the article. There was no mention of him anywhere. The closest thing he saw to any information about Big Rich was a one-line description of his friend as “another victim found at the gruesome scene.”

A victim, thought Donny, a
nameless victim. That’s an understatement. He watched the city go by as he rocked back and forth in his bus seat. He was downtown now, in the financial district. It was a place where Donny had never spent much time. It was lunchtime now and the sidewalks were crowded. The people looked different, sounded different. It seemed like they all had somewhere to go, somewhere to be. Donny envied them. They had lives to attend to.

It would be
a long time before Donny stopped feeling like a victim himself.

Author Bio

Tom Pitts received his education firsthand on the streets of San Francisco. He remains there, writing, working, and trying to survive. His shorts have been published in the usual spots by the usual suspects. His novella, Piggyback, is also available from
Snubnose Press. Tom is also co-editor at Out of the Gutter.

Find out more at TomPittsAuthor.com

All characters in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, is purely coincidental.

HUSTLE

Copyright © 2014

Tom Pitts

Published by
Snubnose Press

Cover design by Eric
Beetner

Artwork by
Brian Stannard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.