They Thirst (22 page)

When he was fourteen years old, his Uncle Milo had gotten him an afternoon job sweeping up at his neighborhood police precinct station. He'd been fascinated with the cops-and-robbers shows he'd seen on the television in the window of the Abrahms Brothers Appliance store
a
block from the apartment, and he was thrilled to imagine himself as part of that world with its blue-uniformed policemen, sleek cars, and crackling, urgent radios. The officers liked his interest, and they went out of their way to explain the details of their jobs to him. For several years he was the willing recipient of every chase and shoot-'em-up story the cops could dish out, and those ran into the hundreds. Only it was years later, when he himself wore one of those crisp, blue uniforms, that he realized the world was not quite as black and white as the TV shows had depicted. He'd been walking his beat along Fountain Avenue when a fat, red-faced man in a white apron had started shouting about a robbery in his grocery store. Palatazin had seen the suspect—a thin black man in
a
long, tattered coat—running in the opposite direction with hands clamped around a couple of loaves of bread and
a
Polish sausage. He'd given pursuit—he'd been much thinner in those days and fast on his feet—and had caught up with the guy easily, grabbing his flagging coat from behind and yanking him to the ground. The food had scattered into the street and was smashed into pulp by the next passing car. Palatazin had wrenched the arms back, snapped cuffs on the wrists, and turned the man over.

It wasn't a man; it was a woman, terribly thin, her stomach swelling in the sixth month of pregnancy. "Please," she'd begun sobbing, "please don't make me go to jail again. Please don't make me . . ." Palatazin was stunned and ashamed; the red-faced man, who had as much beef in his belly as on his racks, came up and started shouting about "this whore, this filthy whore" who had come in and stolen right off his shelves in broad daylight and what were the cops going to do about it? Palatazin couldn't answer; the cuff key in his hand burned like a white-hot flame. But before he could say or do anything, a police car came cruising up to the curb, and the shouting man turned his attention to the arriving officers. As they put the woman into the car, her sobbing had stopped, and her eyes looked like the empty windows of a long-abandoned building. One of the officers clapped Palatazin on the shoulder and said, "Good job, this broad's been hitting stores all up and down Fountain for the past two weeks." As the car pulled away, Palatazin stared at the paste of bread and sausage in the street. The red-faced man was bragging to a group of onlookers about how nobody could rob him and get away with it,
"nobody!"

Now a world away from Fountain Avenue, Palatazin felt a wave of regret pass over him. He took his coat from the back of a chair and wearily shrugged into it. Why hadn't things worked out as he'd planned so many years before? His dream had been to take his wife and son up to a little town north of San Francisco where the climate was cooler and head a small police station where the most serious crime was kids stealing from a pumpkin patch. He wouldn't even need a car, and he would know and be liked by everyone in town. Jo could open that florist shop she was always thinking about, and his son would be quarterback on the high school football team. He buttoned his coat and let the dreams drift away, like so much shimmering dust. After the second stillbirth Jo's doctor had told her it would be dangerous for her, both physically and emotionally, to try again. He suggested adoption and left it at that. And Palatazin had been caught, as everyone is, in the huge whirlpool of events that takes you down once, twice, a third and final time. He knew he would probably remain in this city until he died, though sometimes late at night he thought he could close his eyes and see that little town, full of white picket fences and clean streets and chimneys that puffed white plumes of cherrywood smoke in the long winters.

Time to go home,
he thought.

And something rustled very softly behind him.

Palatazin, startled, whirled toward the door.

His mother was standing there as substantial as any flesh he'd ever seen. She was wearing the pale blue gown she'd worn the night she died, her skin wrinkled and white over frail, sharply jutting bones. Her eyes were fixed upon his face, terribly intense. One arm was thrust out, as skinny as a pole, the finger pointing toward the window.

Palatazin, the blood drained out of his face by the shock, took a step backward and collided with the sharp edge of his desk. His pipe rack toppled over, as did the framed photograph of Jo. File folders drifted to the floor.

His mother opened her mouth, showing almost toothless gums, and seemed to be trying to say something. Her finger was trembling, her face contorted with effort.

And then Palatazin saw the outline of the door through her, saw the gleaming doorknob as if in a haze of grayish smoke. Her figure rippled like gossamer caught in a high wind. And was gone.

The breath exploded from Palatazin's lungs. He was trembling uncontrollably, his hands gripping at the desk behind him. For a long time he stared at the spot on the floor where his mother had stood, and when he finally waved a shaking hand over that spot, the air felt a few degrees cooler than the rest of the room.

He opened the door and thrust his head out so violently that Officer Zeitvogel, who was at the nearest desk promptly spilled a cup of hot coffee into his lap. Zeitvogel cursed and leaped to his feet, drawing the attention of the other officers to Palatazin's pale, wide-eyed face. Instantly Palatazin retreated into his office but left the door open; he felt sick and light-headed, as if he'd just snapped out of a brain-burning fever. He stood staring dumbly at the folders on the floor, then bent and started picking them up.

"Captain?" It was Zeitvogel at the door, mopping his pants legs with a couple of paper towels. "You okay, sir?"

"I'm fine," he said, but kept his head away from the man so he wouldn't betray the fear that was still making one corner of his mouth twitch.

Zeitvogel looked down at his lap.
Christ!
he thought.
Wonder if I can make the department foot the cleaning bill? Fat chance! The captain has all those folders in his arms now, why won't he stand up?
"For a minute there you looked like you'd seen a ghost, sir."

"Did I?" Palatazin rose and dumped the folders onto his desk. He righted Jo's picture and the spilled row of pipes. Fishing for the keys in his pocket, he stepped out of his office quickly and locked the door. "Don't you have work to do?" he said tersely, and then he was moving past Zeitvogel and out of the squad room, his shoes clicking on the tiled floor.

Weird,
Zeitvogel thought. He shrugged at the other men, swabbed at the worst of the stain, and sat down at his desk again. Before he returned to work, he wondered 
whether what he'd been reading in some of the papers and hearing whispered around the building was true, that the captain was being squeezed over this Roach thing, and the pressure was starting to crack him. He continued typing his report on a young man found shot to death in bed that morning and thought,
Better him than me.

Night had filled up the barrio like black rainwater filling a bomb crater, and what stirred in its depths was unnameable. Chill, tortured winds gnawed at the corners of silently crumbling buildings; in the narrow alleys rats scuttled in search of food, their eyes catching red pinpoints of light. And three Chicano boys clad in tight black leather vests and black headbands crouched behind a spill of dusty bricks and watched a dilapidated, graffiti-smeared building less than a hundred yards away. In the distance the tenement buildings seemed to be standing at odd angles, like crooked rows of gray tombstones.

"Ain't nothin' moved in there for over an hour> Maven," the boy on the left, as thin and dark as whipcord, whispered huskily. "Ain't nobody in there."

"I say they are." The one in the center was the largest of the three, his biceps and forearms bulging with muscles. On the left bicep there was a tattoo of an eagle clawing at a snake and beneath it the name MAVEN. Jet black hair spilled over his headband, and his eyes— set in a square, large-jawed face—were tight slits of animal cunning. "Oh yeah," he whispered, "the
enemigo
is in there and tonight they gonna pay."

"They musta moved their headquarters," the thin one said. "The scouts musta been wrong."

"They're hidin'," Maven said, "because they're scared shitless of what we're gonna do to them." He gazed up at the surrounding rooftops; a few more Homicides were up there, keeping watch on the Viper headquarters. But Maven couldn't see them; they were hidden too well. He looked back to the building and shifted because the .45 in his waistband was beginning to cut into his stomach.

The other two, Chico Mapazan and Johnny Pascal, were equally armed: Chico carried a nine-inch blade and a pair of nail-studded brass knuckles; Johnny clutched a baseball bat with four-inch nails driven through it. "Who wouldn't be scared shitless," Maven said softly, "knowing the Homicides were huntin' for 'em?"

"Gonna clean those fuckers out," Johnny whispered, fingers clenching and unclenching around the bat. "Gonna make 'em pay."

"I get the first shot," Maven told him. "I get my revenge for what they done to Anita. Bastards probably raped her dead and dragged her body off to the garbage dump." A muscle in his jaw flexed. "They want to play rough, we'll show 'em what rough means."

"When do we go?" Chico asked, his gaze flaring with impatient fire.

"When I say so. Right now we wait."

In about fifteen minutes the building's front door opened. Maven tensed like a strip of barbed wire. Two boys—one in an Army surplus jacket and the other bare-chested, came out and sat on the front steps. They seemed to be talking, and in a swirl of wind Maven could hear their raucous laughter. "Bastards," he breathed. "Gonna make you pay." They sat there for a long time, then they both rose at the same moment and disappeared back into the building.

Almost immediately a small figure came scrambling across the lot, ducking low and keeping close to the thicker patches of shadow. It was Luis Santos. He hit the ground and crouched next to Chico. "Everybody's ready, Maven," he said. "Zorro's got some troops around at the back door."

"Good. He carryin' his momma?"

"Yeah." Zorro's momma was a sawed-off shotgun, stolen from a gun shop less than a month ago but already put to good use.

"He may need it when those bastards run out the back door." Maven took a breath and then said, "Okay. We go." He lifted his head, put two fingers in his mouth, and let out a couple of short whistles. "You goin' with me, little soldier," he said to Luis. "Make 'em pay for trashin' your sister, man." He handed Luis a carved ebony switchblade that could pass for a butcher knife. Maven whistled again, long and low, ending in an ascending note. Instantly shadows filled the lot and began to move. Maven and the others got up quickly and began to run through the darkness, crouched low and ready to dive for cover.

Nothing moved, no one fired a shot, as they approached the building.

"Gonna catch 'em sleepin'," Maven whispered. "Gonna wipe 'em out." He reached the building first with Luis right behind him. Maven took one of his two black market grenades from his belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it through the nearest window. Then he dove against the building's side, flattening himself, and saw Luis do the same.

When the grenade exploded with a hollow
whuuump!,
blazing white fragments of metal came whining through the window like hornets. In the next instant Maven was charging up the steps, followed by a horde of Homicides. He kicked in the door and leaped through, firing .45 slugs in a red-hot arc. Luis clicked open the blade, feeling it thrum up his wrist. He felt like the Ice Cream Soldier to Maven's Sergeant Rock; his blood was boiling, his brain crystal clear. He leaped through the open doorway, followed by Johnny and Chico and the rest of the Homicide troops. Inside Maven was crouched on the floor in a blue haze of gunsmoke. He could see the holes in the hallway wall where his bullets had hit. But the entrance hall and the dim corridor leading back through the building were empty. He heard nothing but the clatter of Homicide boots, the fierce breathing of his soldiers.

"Ain't nobody here!" Chico wailed.

"SHUT UP!" Maven shouted and rose to his feet, his finger twitching on the trigger. "They got to be here! Where are you, fuckers?" He saw the outlines of more open doorways further back along the corridor. "Bastards are scared shitless!" he shouted. "Come on out! We're gonna have a little party!" He fired into the corridor and heard a rain of plaster. "Chico, you and Salvatore and about six more go on up them stairs and check out the second floor. Don't let 'em jump you. GO ON, WHAT'RE YOU WAITIN' FOR? Everybody else stick to me!" He started along the corridor, crouching like a panther, peering into one empty room after another. "Hey man," somebody said behind him, "I don't like this . . ."

"Shut your mouth and follow me!" Maven said, but now there was uncertainty in his voice, and a couple of his men faltered. But Luis stuck close beside his Sergeant Rock. At the rear of the corridor, there was a padlocked door. Maven snarled a curse and stepped into the nearest room; he fired twice into a closed closet and then wrenched it open, expecting a couple of bleeding bodies to tumble out. But there was nothing but a clothes hanger dangling from a rod. Luis bumped into him, and Maven said, "Get back, kid!" He could hear the noise of boots overhead—his troops checking out the upper floor.