Start Shooting (22 page)

Across Halsted, the dim blue neon W
OLFE
C
ITY
R. S. arches above a warehouse doorway. One hand stays on my pistol, the other pulls my guitar out of the trunk. Lose
today
, Bobby. Be
tonight
. Play the blues for as long as Ed Cherney will let you. My eyes close tight and I squeeze the guitar case.
Be the blues
. You’re a musician; this is the Crossroads, baby; highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Eyes open—Cop Killa’s still watching me. Still can’t see his hands.

The W
OLFE
C
ITY
R. S. neon dims then brightens. The Chess Records benefit session is on; the studio’s in use, sucking power into the hands of my heroes. I’ll be a part, no matter what the papers say tomorrow, no matter what my own brother believes. My playing will be on this record forever. My fingers tingle to my wrists.

Out front, three limos are double-parked, the drivers all leaning against the center limo’s fender, their backs to Halsted and me, and Cop Killa a hundred and fifty feet south. Tonight’s no biggie to the drivers, but this might be what you’d call my Big Chance, that single moment when your entire world changes, where bad things shift just enough to crumble under their own weight, where the miracles happen. I close my trunk and pull the Airweight. Maybe when tonight’s over, after I’ve played for Ed Cherney, Kenny, Rab, and the Memphis Horns, maybe I won’t have to kill Danny Vacco, or his pit bull Cop Killa, or wear a wire on Buff Anderson and sell out my gang-team family. Maybe Ruben changes his mind and says he’s sorry.

Arleen’s image materializes … Neverland, that’s the answer. Arleen and I get out of the Four Corners after all—just like the bluesmen in the Delta. I start to grin; the door to Wolfe City opens; two men exit: one white, one black. The tallest of the limo drivers jumps to attention and grins at the Memphis Horns, Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love. Holy shit, star time for forty years. Wayne, the white one, possibly the best trumpet player alive, waves off the driver; he and Andrew walk north. Bad night for that.

I go instant hall-of-fame, blues-royalty fan and yell from my car, “Wayne?”

Both men turn. I put the Airweight on my leg so Cop Killa can see it but the Memphis Horns can’t, and jog across Halsted with my guitar case in the other hand. Slipping through the parked limos, I say: “Hi,
ah, not that good a neighborhood; kind of a Latin gang war under way. Don’t think you guys should be walking out here.”

Both men search Halsted for threat they missed. I holster the pistol and point behind me over my shoulder. “Those T-shirts are La Raza lookouts.” Neither man twitches like crack cocaine is part of his lifestyle. “Honest.” I tip the guitar case and show him my gun and the badge clipped next to it. “I’m a gang cop.” Smile. “When I’m not playing in the studio.”

Andrew Love smiles his famous wide smile. “You’re on the Chess record?”

“Supposed to play behind you.” I push my hand out. “Bobby Vargas.”

Both shake it; Andrew’s has a tremor. Wayne says, “We’d like to walk off a bit. Any idea where—”

“Sure.” I pull my cell and speed-dial Jason.

Jason answers, “Man … Bobby?”

“Do me a favor, okay? Get a car by Wolfe City. Two guys I’m playing with need an escort. They want to walk a few blocks, thirty minutes or so.”

Jason says, “Just heard that’s where you were.”

I smile at two all-stars, telling Jason, “Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love, the Memphis Horns. Can you can believe that?”

Bad tone. “I’d believe anything.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll get your friends a car, but you already got some coming.”

I see the lights before I realize the sirens have been amping. Uniform cars come in from two directions; four uniforms exit and circle us on the sidewalk, same way you’d do a street stop. I recognize all four cops. One says, “Bobby, you have to go in.” One of the other three cops pulls my guitar out of my hands, another steps into my face while the third snatches my gun and badge while I’m wrestling for my guitar.

“Hey.” I grab for my gun and miss. “No. I’m going in Wolfe City, got a gig with these guys.” I nod at Wayne and Andrew moving away. “I’m playing on the Chess Records benefit.”

“Sorry, man, but you gotta come in.” He has handcuffs out. “Have to, sorry.”

“Fuck you. What are you talking about?”

Two of the uniforms re-crowd me. One pulls my arms behind my back. I twist, step left and shove him away. “No.
Understand?
I’m playing on a record.
Me
. A big record. And I get one chance. Whatever you think you have to do, we can do four hours from now.”

They clamp me hard and twist me into the wall. My cheekbone scrapes on the bricks. I hear one of the uniforms say, “Sorry, man. Guess fucking the second little girl was one too many.”

Handcuffed to a bench. Rocking back and forth. Be stone, Bobby, block of stone.

My guitar and case are twenty feet across the room, along with my badge and gun.
Evidence
. Officer Bobby Vargas is in lockup, and not just any lockup but the twenty-five-by-twenty-five basement I see every day. This is District 12’s TAC/Gang Team lockup; it’s in our office,
my
office. I’m handcuffed to an anchored pipe that runs along the bench’s back.
The rack
, we call it, for the felons and gangsters. In the room’s center, five communal desks are topped with wire baskets for our paperwork and computers too old to sell for salvage. For seventeen of my nineteen years I’ve sat at one of those desks. Was the good guy, the guy you called when you needed help. And I came; every single time.

Third watch is still on the street, doing what I used to do. The only people in the basement are our secretary Shannon, one of the four arresting uniforms, and me—felony arrest, rape, sodomy of a child. At the end of my bench, Shannon peeks out of her tiny office next to Buff’s, stares till I look, and says, “What the
fuck
, Bobby?”

I can’t answer; I’m busy rocking back and forth. How do you tell people you know that you’re
not
a child molester? That they could leave their kids around you and not worry?

You don’t; you sit on this bench in silence. Like the criminals do. When we’re done processing your paperwork, you’ll sit here, waiting for the bus to county jail. At county, you’ll wait for an arraignment and try not to be raped, beaten, or stabbed. If you’re a child molester or a cop, county will take special precautions, both in your transport
and your housing. If you’re a known gang member they will sort you by affiliation. What they
won’t
do is guarantee your safety. Jail world has many levels, all bad, all the time.

Shannon retreats behind her open door but her voice doesn’t. “Better not be true.”

Buff Anderson walks in and nods the uniform out. The uniform shakes his head. Buff stares and the uniform leaves. Buff cuts to Shannon and says, “Smoke break.”

Shannon doesn’t smoke. She leaves without looking at me.

Buff stares, hard and angry. “True or not? Any fuckin’ part of it.”

If I could stand, I’d hit him.

“Answer me.”

“You believe it, huh? After five days a week for seventeen years?”

Buff sets his jaw. “You tell me.”

“Yeah, me and your kids, too.”

His fist lands before I can jerk out of the way. I blink through stars and flashes; shake out the blur. His eyes and teeth are most of his face. “Say my kids again.” Buff un-holsters his pistol. “Go ahead.”

I blink until I can glare, and shut up.

Buff shakes his head, no. “Answer. True or not?”

“
What the fuck do you think?
It’s
me
, asshole.
Me!
”

Buff hits me again. And again. “Gotta have an answer, Bobby. We all do.”

Blood drips into my eye and mouth. I focus on the concrete floor, not pride, not friendship, not trust. “No. I did not rape Coleen Brennan.”

“Little Paul? The girl in your building?”

“No.” Dry swallow. “I’m not a child molester. The first time I had sex with anyone but my hand I was twenty.”

“Look at me.”

“Fuck you.”

Buff slaps me upright, slams a boot into my chest, and pins me to the wall. “I want you to swear on your mother and father, on your guitar-hero future, on all of us who’ve stood with you since you put on the uniform.
Our uniform
, motherfucker. Swear to God you did none.”

I stare.

“Swear it, Bobby, or I shoot you where you sit.” Buff stands back and aims his pistol at my head. Blink.

“You honestly think—”

“Swear it!” echoes off the walls of what used to be my home away from home, off the yellowed cartoons and fight gouges, the gallows humor and shared lifetimes. Buff has three little girls and tears in his eyes. He thinks I’m capable of child rape.

“I did none of it. None.”

Buff breathes in the words but doesn’t lower the gun. His skin is red against the white hair, eyebrows, and mustache. He doesn’t get this angry at work. I think I might kill him if I could.

“Somebody’s framing me—Danny V for sure, maybe others—you said so yourself. I don’t know why, or what they want, but I’m innocent. They can bring in five more little kids and I’m still innocent.”

“I said it
smelled
bigger than Danny Vacco.”

“Too much weight on me. From too many directions, and all at the same time.”

“That’s how you
know
?”

“Tania Hahn.”

Buff’s pistol slowly lowers. “What about her?”

“She braced me an hour ago. Wants me to wear a wire, maybe shoot a few people. If I do, and her and I live through it, she solves all my problems.”

“Nah.” Buff shakes his head.

I yell, “What the fuck do you care?” My hand jerks at the cuffs. “You think I’m guilty.”

“We got three kids saying the same thing.
Three
, asshole.
Children.
”

“I didn’t do it! If I had, there’s no way Hahn could beat that. She says Robbie Steffen and maybe his father have something she wants, that her and Lopez wanted.” Buff starts to interrupt and I out yell him. “Hahn’s CIA. So was Lopez. Lopez was Hahn’s girlfriend.”

The south door opens; Jason comes in talking to his phone but stops dead when he sees me, then Buff with his pistol out. “
Shit
, Jesus. We … okay in here? Somebody … know something I don’t?”

Buff points Jason out of the room.

Jason balks, blinks, adds horror possibilities, implications …

“Bobby, don’t tell me—don’t.”

“Out.” Buff jams his empty hand at the door. “Now.”

Jason stumbles on his heels, then pinches his face like he might puke, doesn’t want to leave, but does.

Buff continues. “The
CIA
wants Robbie Steffen?”

I nod.

“What’s Robbie got that the CIA wants?”

“Don’t know.”

Frown. “Who else?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I do. We all do. Robbie ain’t part of Gang Team 1269. Wear a wire on who?”

We watch each other until I say, “You.”

Buff blinks once. The door opens again, this time it’s a uniform escorting a good-looking white woman in fitted black pants, coral blouse, and expensive jacket. She hands Buff papers, then makes a tight smile for me. “Cindy Olson Bourland. I’m your lawyer.”

Buff hasn’t looked at the papers. “And who the fuck is Cindy Olson Bourland?”

She taps the papers. “That’s a release order signed by a federal judge. Judges appointed by the president of the United States rarely work late on a Saturday.”

Buff reads the papers, looks at her, then reads again.

“I’m Mr. Vargas’s attorney. The document in your hands instructs you to release him to me forthwith. I’d be pleased if you’d do that now.”

“You would, huh?” Buff stares at my new lawyer. “Where’s Mr. Vargas going?”

“None of your concern, Sergeant.”

Buff stares at me, then wags the pages. “The paper has to check out. Have a seat.”

Ms. Bourland smiles without warmth. “We won’t be here that long.”

Just pull the trigger. That’s the answer, the only answer.

Sweat beads on my forehead. Dry grass crunches underfoot. Do it, Arleen,
here
, now. Dark presses inward from every direction; soundless, starless, cemetery dark. In twelve hours I’ll be on the Shubert stage. Arleen the Innocent should be wrapped in beauty sleep, not creeping through a walled, tomb city at midnight, planning what I’m planning.

I’m not running a scam against Furukawa or murdering more Koreans. I’m not risking being shot by Japanese women and I’m not dying here.

Ruben Vargas is.

Ahead in the dark is Holy Sepulchre Cemetery’s only light. Atop the shadowy knoll, a cluster of twisted oak trees rises out of an ethereal haze. Dim footlights serpentine down a pathway toward me. Long segments of the path die into the darkness. I squint for threat that prickles my skin. It was me who chose this spot, but Ruben could have beaten me to the pathway.
Slow, silent exhale
. I’m afraid of the dark—not nighttime—the
real
dark. Very bad things like Ruben Vargas live and hunt in the real dark, but that’s where our confrontation has to happen. Ruben will feel at home where the grotesques can look and act like what they are. He will believe he has the upper hand.