Текст книги "The Disposables"

Автор книги: David Putnam

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I pulled her away, reached back for the switch on the wall.

“No, please, leave it off.”

I stopped just as my hand found it. “Then why are we here like this?”

When she hesitated, I knew it was going to be the truth. “The cops, they kicked in my door, threw me to da ground, and found my stash, what little there was. They said dey wouldn’t take me to jail if I cooperated and told them what I saw outside my window. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go in on another possession. I’m on probation already. I’m lookin’ at five years. I saw that asshole Wicks come up. So I told the cop I wanted to talk to Wicks and then I told Wicks I’d only talk to you. You gotta help me, Bruno, I can’t do another day in the joint.”

“That’s not going to happen. I promise.”

“Thanks, Bruno.” She clung a little tighter. “You think you could spot me a twenty?”

“You know better than that. I’ll buy you some food, but I won’t give you money for any rock.”

“I know. I had to try. I thought maybe, after all these years, you know, after you went inside, maybe you’d’ve changed.”

Robby knocked on the door. “You two about finished with the reunion and with your little slap and tickle?” He chuckled, a lewd one I would jump him about later, maybe knock a few of his teeth down his throat. “Back off, Robby.”

I moved Chocolate farther from the door so he couldn’t hear with his ear up against the thin wood. Her back bumped against the sink, my hips bumped against hers in the perfect dark. My mind, all on its own, flashed back to the image from the past, the “African goddess.” I became aroused. She nuzzled closer, “You’re a good man, Bruno Johnson. Thank you for that. Thank you.”

“I’ll tell Robby something to get him off your back. But when you get a chance, you’re going to have to go to ground. Hide out for a while until things cool off.”

“I got no money. And … and from what you saw, no means to make any. No one wants what I’ve turned into.”

I wanted to ask her what she’d been doing to survive and, instead, reached into my pocket. She knew what I was going to do. “You’re a good man. You’re a good man.”

I peeled off five one hundred dollar bills, enough money for a slave to the pipe to kill herself. “I have to trust you.” I put the money in her hand. “I know you’re going to use some of it for rock, but use the rest for food and a place to lay your head. I’m not kidding, Chocolate. I’m trusting you.”

“Sure, Bruno, thank you, thank you.”

“Go someplace where you don’t usually go. Go up north instead of south. Up Atlantic into South Gate, lay low over at the Grover Hotel. You know the place.”

“Really, thanks a lot. I promise I won’t buy any rock. A hundred bucks won’t go far on rock, but it’ll buy food and a place at the Grover.”

In pitch blackness, she thought the bills I’d handed over were five twenties. I held her a little longer, then pulled away. Her body like an oven, I instantly missed the warmth, the comfort. It made me think of Marie. I decided life was too short. FBI or no FBI, I was going to see her.

“Chocolate,” I whispered, “I need a favor.”

“Anything you want.”

Robby knocked on the door, “Come on. We haven’t got all night.”

I moved back over, moved my lips close to her ear. “You know about me going to prison, right?”

She hesitated, nodded. “It wasn’t right. Ask anyone, it jus’ wasn’t right. Anyone would have done what you did. Swear to gawd, Bruno, anyone.”

“Just listen. I’m in a real jam. A bad one. They’re trying to send me back. I need your help.”

She nodded again.

“If you get caught, it’s going to go down real bad for you.”

This time she didn’t speak or nod.

I took out the last five hundred in my pocket.

“No,” she said, “you helped me enough.”

I took her hand and forced the money into it. “Go to Killer King tonight before midnight, find a woman in the emergency room named Marie Santiago and tell her, code red, south side rumba. You got that?”

“Code red, south side rumba.”

“Right. Tell her two o’clock, okay? That’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“Code red, south side rumba, two o’clock in the morning. How am I going to get out of here? They’re watching the motel.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“You sure? I’m gonna owe ya big this time.”

“Stay in here. Then wait five minutes after we’re gone and go through the fence out back. I’ll make sure all the cops are pulled off. Just make sure to go out the back, through the fence and south to Platt Avenue. You understand?”

“I know the way. You don’t have to tell me.”

I squeezed her shoulder, turned, and went to the door. “Remember, five minutes and then hustle over to Killer King. I’m counting on you.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

I opened the door, then shut it again, asked, “Hey, you know where I can find Jumbo?”

“Ah, Bruno, don’t go messin’ with that trash. He’s the devil. You’re crazy to even think about gettin’ hooked up with him.”

“Chocolate?”

She took a deep breath, “He’s got hisself a big pad over in Downey. Looks like an apartment building right in the middle of a neighborhood. It’s on two or three lots. It’s huge. North of Rosecrans, four or five blocks from the river. You can’t miss it.”

I opened the door again, the light made me squint.

Behind me Chocolate yelped, said, “My God, Bruno, these aren’t twent—” I closed the door. Her words drowned out behind the wood.

“Well?” Robby said, “Was it as good as it used to be?”

I stepped over and gave him a left jab to the jaw then an uppercut to the gut. He was soft, too many years as a supervisor. He went to his knees.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

He pulled his gun, something he never did lightly. He stopped short of aiming it at me. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” His words came out in a groan, his face a shade paler.

“You, man. What’s the matter with you? You were never like this before, crude and crass, uncaring about the other person. What the hell happened to you?”

“Life, asshole. It’s what happens to everyone. Did the bitch tell you or not?”

I wanted to sock him again. I turned and went down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the cool of the evening, the entire time thinking how to turn the thing around. At the car I waited. Robby didn’t follow right behind. I waited. He didn’t show. Did he go back and bat Chocolate around? I took a step toward the entrance just when he came out. He banged the door shut, his arm holding his stomach, his shoulders slightly hunched. He went around to the passenger side where I stood. I thought about backing up a step beyond his wrath.

“I lost my lunch. Thanks a lot.”

I didn’t feel sorry, not after the way he talked around Chocolate.

“What did she tell you?”

“She said the dude who threw the gas and lit the guy up was wearing purple.”

“That’s it? Purple? That’s all she’s got? We put her up, fed her, and that’s all she’s got? Purple?” He put his arm on the car, leaned over until his forehead touched the cold metal of the hood, and let out another long, sad groan.

The man was chasing me, making my life miserable, and I still felt sorry for him. And at the same time guilt for what I was about to do.

I was facing the motel, Robby facing me. A figure, concealed in shadows came out into the light. Chocolate. She held her hand up to her ear, index and thumb extended, the sign for a phone. Then she pointed at Robby. She melted back into the dark, back into the street. She was trying to warn me. She’d seen Robby on the cell phone after he left her and in between the time he came back to the car. He hadn’t lost his lunch, it was a crummy little alibi for a crummy little man. What had happened to the great Robby Wicks?

Why would he have to make a call without me hearing? Especially, before I told him what Chocolate had told me?

I held out my hand for the keys. “Hey, man, if you’re sick, let me drive.”

He kept his head on his arm and didn’t look up. “Drive where, asshole? That was our last lead. We’re through until he does it again. When he does, hope he makes a mistake and leaves us something this time.”

“He?” I asked.

Robby froze. Slowly he looked up.

I said, “I never said he. I did, but didn’t mean it that way. It’s they.”

For a moment he looked scared. It didn’t match the reaction he should’ve had. Fear flashed for a microsecond. Again, had I not known him so well, I might’ve missed it. He recovered. “They? What the hell you talking about, they? There’s more than one suspect?”

“I told you purple. That’s Grape Street. She said Grape Street Crips had a new initiation.” This was all the lie I needed. He took it from there. His eyes grew big. “You’re shit-tin’ me, right? We got all of Operation Safe Streets and the Gang Enforcement Team, working on this, and they couldn’t come up with that kind of intel. Some street ho—”

“Careful.” I pointed a finger at him, at the same time felt a surge of guilt for what I just put into motion, the pain, the carnage. Grape Street was a notoriously violent street gang that needed a little extra attention. Justification for my sins.

He took his cell phone out of his suit coat pocket, then handed me the keys. “Here, you drive. And don’t you dare crash. I’d never be able to explain it.” We got into the car. I reached under the seat to let the seat back for my long legs and felt a crumpled paper bag with a pint bottle.

He dialed his phone. “This is Wicks. Put it out to everyone and I mean everyone. I want every swingin’ dick in Nickerson Gardens, who’s wearing purple, brought in. Now. I mean right now. Call in whoever you have to, to get it done. Call Century Station and tell them they’re about to be inundated with assholes. I’ll call the chief and get it cleared.” He snapped his phone shut, put it inside one breast pocket, and reached into the other side where he pulled out a silver flask. Robby never drank on the job. Things sure had changed in the three and half years I was gone; a year and a half to fight the case and two years of a four-year sentence in the joint.

He unscrewed the cap, tilted it back, and took a long slug. I didn’t know why I hadn’t smelled it on him until now. My partner, my friend had turned into a juicer. He pulled the flask down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. In the day, we drank quite a bit off duty, mostly beer to celebrate great accomplishments—crooks no longer prowling streets, put away for long stretches, bank robbers, murderers, some put down hard—but we never drank the hard stuff. The day be fore I surrendered for my stint, I got stinking-assed drunk on twelve-year-old bourbon and felt the shame of it the next day. Dad drilled it into me not to drink at all.

Robby looked over at me with genuine elation. As far as he knew, the key to his difficult case was on the table. All he had to do was reach out and touch it. I just didn’t know what it had to do with me or why I was being followed. Not for real, not that I wanted to give credence to anyway.

I felt worse.

Then I thought about what Ramon, the owner of Lucy’s, had said, that Robby was asking about me with the FBI standing right there beside him. That meant federal time. And that, I didn’t really want to think about. The Feebs, one of the crimes they investigated was kidnapping. Not that I looked at what I was doing as a crime; saving these kids wasn’t kidnapping, not morally it wasn’t. Other people would see it differently, especially since some of the kids were white. No, the guilt didn’t last very long.

Robby’s wide smile filled his entire face. He might make captain out of this. Hell, if he took me down, recovered the kids, and the murder suspect, he could make deputy chief. He handed me the flask. I sat entranced with his eyes. Would he turn on a friend? Especially the kind of friends we’d been. All that had obviously changed. I just couldn’t get my mind around it. I would never have turned on him, not for any enticement. Yet, in a way, I just had. My stomach rumbled. Soon I’d have his ulcer.

I didn’t smile back, couldn’t, but I could take the flask and drink from it to deaden some of the pain brought on by the loss of a friend. I tilted it back, not knowing what to expect. Vodka. The odorless drink of a drunk.

Two and a half years without a drop. The liquor burnt all the way down, warming my stomach, and seconds later my blood and lungs, rekindling that hint of shame. To drink right now dulled the senses. Not a smart move when so many people depended upon me. I breathed fire, took a breath, and another long slug, finishing the flask.

“Hey, hey, buddy, don’t Bogart the whole thing.” Robby took the flask, tipped it back empty in his mouth. “Not to worry.” He reached into the glove box and pulled out another one, then turned on the unit radio to channel 22. It immediately lit up with chatter.

“Jesus, listen to all that. We have unleashed a shit storm like those punks have never seen.”

I backed out. I drove under the speed limit. He probably thought it cautious. I needed the time to think.

“Pick it up, man, pick it up. Once our thugs hit the street, and the Crips figure out what’s going down, they’ll all go to ground, and we’ll have to dig ’em out with shovels. I wanna catch one or two ourselves, you know, like the old days. Here, take a right on Imperial. Come on, you haven’t been gone that long. You know the way.”

Some of his excitement came my way, contagious, infectious excitement I so dearly missed. The way it felt when we rode together and were close to uncovering someone’s hidey-hole.

At Alameda Avenue, not far from the Imperial Courts housing project, a couple of miles from Nickerson Gardens, a male black on a bike rode like hell right at us. He wore a white football jersey dyed purple with the name Montana on the back. The Grape Street Crips never ventured this far east. At least not alone. Something had spooked him. It was Gang Enforcement Team and Operation Safe Streets hitting Nickerson hard.

“There. There.” Robby pointed, as if I hadn’t spotted him. “Get over there and cut his ass off.”

I went across the lanes of traffic, the bike rider still looking back, not watching where he was going. I braked, thinking he would look up in time. He crashed into the side of Robby’s county ride and flipped over on his back onto the hood. His black bowler hat snugged down on his head stayed that way.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Robby jumped, dragged him off, put him facedown in a wrist-lock, and was taking out the cuffs before I got around the nose of the car to help. The crook gasped for air. I looked down the road toward Nickerson. It wouldn’t be long before Operation Safe Street interrogated a few and figured out my game. I didn’t have much time.

Robby picked the guy up. He was an OG, an Original Gangster, someone older than twenty-one, still alive, and not in prison. He tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t come, the air still had not returned to his lungs. I got a closer look. “I know you. You’re Jesse Cole’s nephew. I thought you moved to Rialto?”

“What’d I do?” The first words he could utter.

Robby laughed, “Well, obviously you’re driving that bike on the street without a light because you crashed right into the side of my hooptie.”

“Man, that ain’t right and you know it.”

“Why you ridin’ like that, lookin’ over your shoulder?”

“You know why. The sheriff’s in the hood ridin’ deep. Jackin’ all the homeboys for nuthin’. Nuthin’, man.”

Robby reached up and took a joint from behind the guy’s ear and put it behind his own. “Now we’re going to add a Primo to the charge.”

“Dey ain’t any rock in dere, it’s pure weed.”

“We’ll just send it to the lab and find out. Until then we’re going to put you on ice. Unless you want to make a deal.”

Even if the game was correct and Grape Street was at the bottom of it, Robby was moving too fast. Under normal circumstances, we’d have taken him in and put him in a cell, let him fester while we grabbed a cup of joe. Robby wanted this too badly.

“I ain’t got nuthin’.”

Someone on the radio said, “Ten-thirty-three.” The code for emergency traffic.

Robby yanked on the dude’s arm, “Come on, get him in the car.”

A panicked voice on the radio said, “My partner’s in foot pursuit, Nickerson Gardens, east side, south of 115th.” Deputies from all over came up on the air advising they were en route.

Robby yelled, “Come on, come on. Get his ass in the car we gotta get over there.”

We shoved the Crip in the back. I got in and put the pedal to the floor, burning rubber, leaving the Crip’s bike back in the street. He didn’t seem to care.

The deputy came back up on the air screaming, “Shots fired. Shots fired.”

Robby spun in the seat. “This is going to be better than I thought. We just kicked over a hornet’s nest.”

“Man, let me out.” The Crip in the back said, “Doan take me in dere inta that.”

He knew in situations where deputies get in over their heads, the responding units don’t differentiate the good and bad and beat down anything that moves.

Robby reached over with his foot and slammed it down on top of mine holding it to the floor after I’d eased off a little. The car leapt out, grabbing asphalt faster and faster.

“It’s going to be crazy when we get there,” Robby said. “Here, take this.” He handed me his sheriff’s gold star on a chain and I put it around my neck. It felt strange, warm to the touch as if a religious medallion. I didn’t want it, not at all. There had been a time when I worshipped the fraternity. He was right though, without it I became fair game.

Ten years ago we would’ve just driven over the curb and into the projects. Nickerson was now surrounded by ten-foot wrought iron and could now only be accessed by a few streets.

I took a couple of fast corners, the tires squealing, the passengers inside getting batted around. It didn’t stop Robby, “Tell me who’s throwing gas and lightin’ up the people for initiation.”

“Man, what the fuck are you talkin’ about? Is this what all this shit’s about? You’re crazy. Swear to gawd, you’re off your rock.”

“Gimme something good and I’ll let you go. We know it’s Grape Street doin’ it.”

“Someone’s playin’ you a fool. You got it all wrong.”

Robby leaned over and punched the Crip right in the chest. The thump sounded hollow and followed by a long groan. The Crip lay across the backseat.

We were in the Nickerson driving west on 115th.

“There. There.” Robby yelled and pointed to a throng of blacks moving toward two deputies with their guns out, a suspect down at their feet. They stood back to back right in the center of a quad area. I went over the curb and headed right toward them, fishtailing, kicking up grass clods. Robby reached under his dash, down by my right leg, and hit the siren to disperse the crowd and to keep the deputies from misinterpreting who we were and opening up on us. A half-empty forty-ounce beer bottle bounced off our car. Yellow foam rolled down across the windshield.

Robby said, “This is going to get real shitty before it’s over.”

The crowd moved out of the way for us. The deputies held their guns at the ready. They would shoot into the crowd if it got any worse. I recognized Carter Bingham, a good old white boy transplanted from Tennessee who’d finally made it off of patrol and into the Gang Enforcement Team. They called him Pig Farmer because of his faint accent. He wouldn’t let the mob overrun them, not without taking a few with them.

The guy on the ground was shot in the back. He was dressed in denim pants and a Raiders jacket with a purple rag tied to his belt. He didn’t look too hurt the way he thrashed around in the handcuffs, screaming bloody murder how he was shot in the back and that he was going to sue.

Robby popped the trunk button, jumped out, pulled a riot gun from the back, and racked it. The loud, metallic noise made everyone in the crowd moving toward us freeze. “Get his ass in the car. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Half a red brick hit the windshield and shattered it. Red grit mixed with yellow beer foam and clung to the spiderweb damage. The Gang Enforcement Team deputies didn’t have to be told twice. They each grabbed an arm of their victim, drag-carried him over to the car, and threw him in on top of the other guy. Then Robby got in standing on the running board with his door open. The deputies followed suit in the back doors. I gunned it, spinning a brodie. The crowd took their cue. Rocks and bottles rained down. As we bounced back onto the street in our headlong flight, LAPD rolled in six cars deep. Behind them came all of Century Station Patrol, their heads large in the windshields from riot helmets. All of them braked, pulled U-turns, and exited. We met up in the shopping center parking lot on Wilmington where the ambulance came to tend to the wounded Crip gang member bleeding in the backseat. They put him on a gurney and rolled him out.

I stood by the car watching the other crook while Robby met with some of the Operation Safe Streets guys wearing jeans and green raid jackets. I was close enough to see the LAPD guys staring at Robby as he talked animatedly with his hands. I cringed at what they might be telling him and confirmed it when his hands froze in mid-explanation. He slowly turned to look over at me. OSS was a tough, well-organized group. They had their informants. They gleaned the intel fast, told Robby his info was bad. Robby figured it out, how I had stabbed him in the back, made him a horse’s ass in front of everyone. Mobilized half the department, got a gang member shot, and almost started a full-blown riot. I held his gaze until he broke and gave his men additional instructions. He would try to bolster his position, bully his way out of the embarrassing situation, insist he wasn’t wrong.

Other LAPD officers joined the group staring at Robby. Some pointed at him.

OSS and GET started to break up and head for their cars when a string of unmarked cars slid into the parking area. Unmarked with tinted windows. The way they rolled in told it all, the elite Violent Crimes Team. They pulled up in adjoining parking slots and stopped in unison, one after the other as if they had choreographed the maneuver. The men were the same from the other night at Mr. Cho’s. Mack, in Levi’s, t-shirt, his shoulder holster with a large-framed automatic, got out and swaggered over, not with the rest, but over to Robby who stood alone, not taking his eyes off of me, waiting. When he came in range, Robby made a quick-step over to Mack and with one hand grabbed him behind the neck and escorted him away from the others, away from their ears. Mack hunched his thick shoulders and knew better than to resist, even though Robby was no match for him. Mack, if he put his mind to it, could break off Robby’s arms one at a time and beat him senseless.

The throng of LAPD officers watched with an unusual intensity.

Mack finally had enough and shrugged Robby off. They were far enough away. Their words, though loud, were still indiscernible.

The urge to hop in Robby’s unmarked car with the Crip still in the back was almost too strong to suppress.

Robby pulled back to strike Mack. Mack brought his arm up to block. Robby stopped himself before he let the genie out of the bottle, one he could never put back. Not with all the LAPD witnesses. Robby and Mack both took some deep breaths and calmed down. More words were exchanged, Mack doing most of the listening. Then they turned, looked at me, and smiled.

Time to go. I turned to get in Robby’s car, make a wild dash for it, but had waited too long. My attention had been focused on Robby while the other members of the Violent Crimes Team casually, instinctively, deployed in easy striking range. They crowded all around, their arms folded across their chests, leaning up against both sides of the car where I stood.

Robby shook Mack’s hand. They both walked over, their path right by the LAPD officers who had just started to disband now that all the action was over. They stopped to take a close look at Robby. After Robby passed, they moved on, talking in low whispers, shaking their heads.

Robby stopped in front of me, his eyes angry. He didn’t take them off of me as Mack came around and took the crook out of the backseat, took the cuffs off, and let him go. The other members without prompting went back to their cars, got in, and left.

Robby and I were alone in the vacant parking lot. He continued to stare.

“What?” I said.

“This what you learn in the joint? How to fuck over your friend? A friend who has gone out of his way to help you?”

His words hurt. I wanted to throw my ace, the fact that his real motivation was to find the kids I had stashed, that he was working with the FBI, and if successful, he’d put me away for the rest of my life. Tell him to kiss my black ass. Instead, I stood and gave back his stare.

He shook his head. “The bitch didn’t know a thing, did she? You fed me a woof cookie that I gobbled up and went off half-cocked, without covering her because I trusted the information.”

I said nothing.

“You let her get away.”

I walked from the car, leaving him, waiting for him to draw a blackjack or a gun. Come up on me fast, jack me in the head, take me in. Give me the BMF treatment, get me to talk, tell him what he really wanted to know, where the kids were. But that was the point of this whole charade. I knew where they were, and they didn’t, and nothing they could do to me could make me tell him. Robby, more than anyone else, knew that. I didn’t know how they had gotten on to me, but somehow they had.

I’d made a slip somewhere along the way and I think I knew where. When they ran all the information in the computer, my name came up. Along with what I had done to my grandson’s father, the crime that put me on the criminal path was also the last piece to the puzzle. The crime that put me in prison was the key. A blind man could’ve figured it out. They were only guessing, that’s why they surveilled the market where I worked. All the countersurveillance I had done, the codes, and cutouts I’d put in play that Marie thought was pure paranoia had been exactly what had kept her and me and Dad out of the can. But, most important, it kept the kids safe a little longer.

Robby didn’t come after me as I walked across the parking lot. He had simply put me back into play. He’d given the Violent Crimes Team a head start to get set up, ready to follow me. He had also forgiven Mack for his little transgression, coming over to Chantal’s apartment. Worst of all, Robby had just unchained Mack. For a brief second I wondered if the whole thing wasn’t all a setup. I looked up in the air, trying to see the cherry-red light of a helicopter and heard the careful footfalls as Robby slowly followed. He said, “I sent the team out to find her, told ’em do whatcha gotta do.” Another BMF idiom that meant they were free to do what was necessary in order to make the streets safe, which included deadly force with impunity.

I stopped, wanting to turn, walk back, and beat his face in. Instead, I couldn’t look at him. I said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”

He said, “That it’s on?”

“That’s right.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. You forget, I taught you everything you know.”

I turned, the reflection in his eyes a strange yellow in the sodium vapor light of the parking lot. “Did you teach me to put contraband cigarettes filled with rock cocaine behind my ear and act like an out-of-control madman in front of an allied agency that will surely call Internal Affairs to report a dope-smoking lieutenant? When IA calls you in for the interview, give them my name, I’ll give them a statement and character reference.”

His hand jerked up to his ear as his eyes went wide with shock. He’d forgotten about it.

I walked away.