Authors: David Putnam
The front entry of the house was always the one side. The house is numbered clockwise from there.
Mack nodded to himself as he alone heard Fong's reply then started up the stairs. Stairs always gave me the heebie-jeebies, the most dangerous part of a building search. Someone above you had total advantage and could snipe you at will,
reach a hand over the stairwell without looking, and gun whoever was dumb enough to expose themselves in that manner. Had Mack been the asshole I'd first perceived him to be, he would've made me go first, bait. He'd moved up a couple of notches in my book.
The old wooden stairs with carpet worn away swayed in the middle from decades of use. The steps didn't comply with city code, and too narrow for the footfall, our heels hung over. Mack ascended, his big .45 extended straight up at arm's length, covering as best he could. I reached up and put my hand on his back for balance, to let him know where I was and to stay close. He didn't flinch. He kept going to the second floor that smelled of mothballs and urine. We automatically deployed on the first door on the right, the way Thin Man described it. I took the left side, the hinge side, Mack the right, the knob side. Sweat ran down his forehead, his blue eyes a fraction wider than normal. Adrenaline did that to you.
His hand went carefully to the knob, gripped, and gently turned. Unlocked, it turned freely in his hand. He pulled his intent gaze off the wood to look to me, as if saying, on three. He pushed. The door only moved half an inch, then caught. On the inside the occupant had installed a hasp. Mack was ready for the obstruction, took it head-on as it happened, stepped back, and booted the door. Mack rebounded from his kick. Instinct propelled me in first. I buttoned-hooked right. The floor was a sea of litter, trash, ratty blankets, cans. Over by the closed window, Ruben the Cuban stood, soaked in sweat, clad in a dirty wifebeater t-shirt, his every muscle wound tight, ready to spring. He did. He jumped right through the closed window. The abrupt maneuver left his shoes on the floor in the same position. Glass shattered. Mack yelled. I ran to the window, kicking trash.
Outside, down on the ground, Ruben rolled several times and disappeared into the gloom.
Mack yelled on his handie-talkie. “He's out. He's out on the one-two side. You got him, Mike? You got him?”
“Negative. Negative.”
I didn't wait.
I leapt out the window.
Freezing wind blew in my eyes and caught in my lungs for a fraction of a second before my feet jarred into the ground. I let my knees give and shoulder-rolled, as the chains clattered.
Mack yelled from above. “Stop. Johnson. Stop, you son of a bitch.”
I got to my feet and went after the sound. Ruben plowed through the bushes. The window Ruben came out of had been covered. Now the light lit up a portion of the yard. Mack's gun banged loud.
Then again.
And again.
The third time cherry-hot iron slashed the top edge of my shoulder. I hit the sidewalk. Down half a block, Ruben ran full tilt, the devil chasing. “Picking 'em up and putting 'em down,” as Robby would've said. I went after him. At any moment, I expected Mike Fong to step out onto the sidewalk behind me, line up for an easy shot, and put one between my shoulder blades.
Ruben cut between some houses. He knew the neighborhood. But so did I. I gained on him. No bullet caught up to me. I made the turn and was okay. I tossed the heavy chains that were slowing me down.
I lost sight of Ruben and stopped to listen for him, tried to
still my rapid breath. Ruben was no fool. He quit running and now walked, hood rat silent running. The odds of catching him just diminished greatly if he no longer panicked. I went on down between the houses and into the weed-infested dirt easement that ran parallel to the street, and fought the urge to run in any direction just to be doing something. Ruben, the little weasel, jeopardized any chance I had for a deal. I waited and listened. Nothing. Fifty-fifty chance, I went right, heading south. Prey will always run downhill. This wasn't San Fran with the hills. It was South Central Los Angeles, flat as a floodplain all the way to the ocean. But maybe Ruben's survival instinct dragged him south. I walked faster and faster until I broke into a jog. Ruben could've ducked back into any one of the yards on either side of the easement, just like I had when I'd crawled in with Manny and Moe.
On the other side of the houses, a car raced, the engine winding out, tires skidding. Mack picked up Fong and was trying to set up a makeshift perimeter, a useless deployment with only one man on the perimeter especially with no bird in the air. Mack couldn't call for air support, not for an escaped inmate that he'd helped escape.
I came to the first perpendicular street, walked over to an ancient maple, stood in the shadow back by an overgrown hibiscus that smelled honey sweet and reminded me of my Marie. The thought left a hollow feeling in my chest.
Mack drove up the street, turned, and squealed around the corner. Nothing moved, not even the ghetto wolves that prowled at night in packs, looking for smaller dogs or inexperienced cats. The denizens somehow smelled danger afoot and crawled under their rocks.
I gave in to the fact we'd screwed it up and lost Ruben. It happened that way sometimes. Had we deployed an entire
Violent Crimes Team around Shawntay's house, this wouldn't have happened. You went with what you had. A crackhead wasn't hard to track down. We'd just missed him.
Headlights came north again from two streets down. I recognized the sound of the engine and stepped out into the street with my hands up, waving him down. Mack skidded to a stop. He jumped out, his hands balled in tight fists. He didn't slow as he came on. I stood up straight, closed my eyes waiting for the blow to mash my mouth, shatter my teeth.
He came right up into my face, “You lost him? What the hell's the matter with you? You were right on his ass.”
I opened my eyes, his baby blues inches from mine. My mouth all on its own dropped open.
“Get your dumbass back in the car, skillet.” He turned and went back to the driver's side, got in, and slammed the door. I walked stiffly to the passenger side, thinking about the bullet graze and how my knees started to complain about the second-story leap and how Mack was one difficult person to read.
I got in. He put the car in gear and chirped the tires. Two blocks over, he pulled to the side. Fong came out of the shadows from his position of ambush, got in, and closed the door. He slapped the back of my head. “How'd you lose him?”
If it wasn't happening to me, it might've been comical. I said, “Hit me again, asshole.” I pointed a finger at him. When he didn't move, I said, “I heard Mack tell you to take the one-two side, the side Ruben bailed on.”
Mack answered for him, “There was a cedar plank fence. He was trying to get around. It was my fault. I should've waited until he was in position before taking the door.”
“Right,” I said, “And cappin' my ass was just for fun?” I stuck my hand under my shirt and gently probed my shoulder. There was a narrow furrow no wider than a pencil, sticky with
coagulated blood. “It wasn't anyone's fault. When you chase a crackhead, you never know what's going to happen.”
Mack snickered, “Those were just warning shots to try and get Ruben to hit the dirt so you could grab him.”
“My achin' ass, warning shots.”
“You took us to him once, you can do it again. Where to?”
I sat back in the seat, let the adrenaline of the chase start to bleed off, and there it was, clear as day. The answer bubbled up like I'd wanted the name Kendrick to. It was hell getting old. The Thin Man's name was Alan Cole. “Alan Cole.”
“What?”
“Go on down here and turn on Willowbrook.”
“Who's Alan Cole?”
“The kid in front of Shawntay's. The alley I caught him in was behind Huggies off of Willowbrook. It's closed down now. A bar Ruben and Cole used to frequent. Cole had an old beat-up Bulldog .44. After I got it back to the station and got a good look at it, I didn't think it would even fire. He took his ass whuppin' without a peep.”
Mack turned down Willowbrook. Huggies, two stories on the right, boarded up with weather-warped sheets of plywood painted over and over with gang graffiti stood dark against a brighter skyline.
“So your thinkin',” Fong said, “that this Cole might've been at the pad visiting Ruben?”
“Not necessarily. Cole just kick-started my memory. It's worth a check.”
Mack spun the car around. “This is close, but I don't think he'd have time to get here yet. I'm going to set up down the street and code five. You give us the layout of the inside.”
“You walk in the front there's a long narrow bar, real long because that's all there is. The bar goes clear back to the rear
door of the place. There's one row of tables against the wall on the left with very little elbow room in between. The entire place is probably twenty, twenty-five-feet wide. Toward the back there's like this loft with stairs, but it was private, an office maybe. No one ever went up there.”
“Windows?” Mack asked.
“As I remember, only on the front. The back's got a solid steel door.”
Fong leaned forward. “The windows in the front are boarded up, so if he's using the place as a hidey-hole, it has to be from the back. It'll be real easy to check to see if there's any access. We could be wasting our time.”
I closed my eyes and conjured up an image of the alley from all the times I prowled it at night with headlights off. “There's a steel ladder to the roof.”
Willowbrook, a wide boulevard with the metro rail running down the center, hardly twitched, the asphalt void of all but a few vehicles. Trees on both sides, ancient majestic peppers, had stood guard for the last century. A shadow darted from the peppers across the first street. All of us saw it at the same time and tensed. We simultaneously eased our doors open. The inside dome light had been deactivated as in all the Violent Crimes vehicles. Nobody closed their doors all the way. Mack whispered, “Let him get inside. We'll have him cornered. Fong and I will take the back. Skillet, you take the front.”
This time they played it smart. The front was boarded up with little chance of any action there. We moved directly across the street to the sidewalk and tried to stay in the shadows. I brought up the rear. Up close, I could see the plywood bolted into the cinder block with heavy lag bolts and fat washers so that the night people could not penetrate without a bulldozer against it. No need for me to stay at the front. Mack and Fong went around the side. I followed. They knew, understood the dynamic, and didn't say anything. We now moved and acted like a team.
Moonlight reflected off the white paint on the walls. Chipped, peeling paint surrounding a long faded ad for Jeri Curl lit up the side of the building in an eerie, lunar glow. We moved silently to the area where the shadowy figure disappeared.
The shadow could've been anyone. We came to an indentation in the wall, a door I didn't known about. The only door not boarded up. Mack and Fong pulled their guns. Mack held up his and pointed to me and then at the side of the door. I nodded. They moved off. I took up my position hyperaware of my empty-handed vulnerability. Against the white painted wall, I looked like a fly in milk.
The space between Huggies and the nail salon maybe spanned seven feet, cluttered with trash bags and discarded rotting cardboard boxes that at one time held large appliances. Mack and Fong brought their guns up to point shoulder to cover their approach to the rear of Huggies. They hesitated at the end. Fong, to the rear, nodded and tapped Mack on the shoulder. They both moved at the same time and disappeared around the corner. The night turned empty and quiet. I listened hard. Nothing moved, no sound, no wind. I held my breath.
Then I smelled it. Gasoline.
I looked around for the source. Calmed down. I took a long breath and stuck my nose in the air, moving it from one direction to the next. The reek settled all around me.
Mack, by himself, came back around the corner at the end of the building a hundred feet down. He put his gun back in his holster. I waved at him to stop. He slowed down by a washing machine carton twenty feet away but came on, too intent on his mission. “The back's secure. He must've gone in this side door and locked it from the inside. Mike's on the rooâ”
The low, squat, washing machine carton shuddered then jerked to one side. Mack flinched. Gas filled the air. It landed on his face and chest. His hands went to his eyes. He screamed, windmilled, and flailed, scared to death that at any second Ruben might light him up.
Ruben stood up, laughing a psychotic, maniacal laugh. In
his hand he held a Bic lighter with a small orange flame. Mack went for his gun.
Ruben screeched, “Don't you do it. I'll torch your ass.”
I moved toward Ruben who had his back to me, twenty-five or thirty feet away.
Mack froze. “Don't. I'm a cop. You burn me, and I guarantee deputies will hunt you down and make you wish you hadn't.” Mack, strong, fearless, but I heard the crack in his voice.
The laugh again. Ruben was going to do it. He stalled only to savor the moment. Gasoline fumes burned before the actual liquid. Ruben just had to move the flame close to ignite the fumes, to touch it off. Mack was in a bad way. If Ruben lit him, there was no way to put him out in time. Immolation, the worst, most painful way to die.
Mack knew I was there, but couldn't see me moving because Ruben stood between us. Ruben, already too close to Mack, moved closer, inches at a time. His laugh tightened. His hand moved higher.
Ruben abruptly stopped laughing and said, “Gaily be knight, a gallant knight. In darkness and in shadow. Traveled along singing a song in search ofâ” His hand moved down in a slow arc.
Mack yelped. He brought his hands up.