Authors: DC Noir
George Pelecanos (25 page)
Chuck
Ross might balk at publishing the shakedown scenario from three unnamed
sources. But a police charging document was golden.
Phil
caught the drift. "I'll write it in haiku if you want." He broke into a wide
grin. "What?"
"I
just realized--this is my first coyote hunt."
Cort
stood on Mount Pleasant Street across from Don Juan's fifteen minutes before
7:00, thinking, Uh-oh
A
dozen young men were trashing and torching a fried chicken joint a block south
of the restaurant. Another angry horde was milling about nearby, itching for
action.
Most
of the young men wore bandanas across their mouths. Some were swigging from
beer bottles. A TV cameraman on the sidewalk zeroed in on the burning chicken
joint.
Tension
from the previous night's riot had been percolating all day, and now it was
boiling over. Cort had assumed the cops would lock down the neighborhood with a
massive show of force. Three other Tribune reporters and a photographer were
roaming around the area. Cort figured the scene was covered and he'd be free to
shadow Phil.
Cort
figured wrong. On the way over, he had listened to a radio interview with the
new mayor. She said that showing too much force might be provocative.
A
block south, a Metro bus paused at a stop sign on its way across Mount Pleasant
Street. A dozen men rushed the bus, pelting it with bricks and bottles. Someone
yelled, "Fuck the police!"
Cort
reached into his satchel for his cell phone as his pager went off; Alonzo
Reed's number came up. Alonzo was the City editor. Cort punched the digits.
"Where
are you?"
"Mount Pleasant Street, about a block from the fried chicken place."
"It's
on TV. What's happening now?"
A
block south of the besieged bus, eighty cops in gas masks and full riot gear
materialized. The mob gravitated toward the cops. Some of the rioters wielded
long metal rods like spears: yanked-out street signs.
"A
mob's forming.
There's cops
in riot gear out here now.
Looks like they're about to square off."
"Stay
with the mob."
"What?"
"No
matter what, stay with the mob until it's over."
Cort
couldn't argue.
"Will do."
He
clicked off, and started to punch in Phil's pager number. Maybe they could
devise an alternate plan. He'd hit three digits when a riot cop with a bullhorn
announced, "You are unlawfully assembled. Disperse now."
From
behind, Cort heard a handful of voices chanting, gently, "Paz, queremos
paz
." Peace, we want peace. Cort turned. Father Dave was
leading a half dozen church people on a march into the bedlam. They were
holding hands, with the priest at one end.
Cort
slipped the phone into his bag and hustled over. Ten cops loaded their tear-gas
shotguns. In his mind's eye, he flashed on a mug shot of Ruben Salazar. Salazar
had been a prominent Los Angeles Times columnist in the 1960s. He was shot dead
by a sheriff's tear-gas projectile after covering an antiwar march. Tear-gas
projectiles were basically ten-inch bullets.
"Father,
they're about to fire tear gas. Maybe you all should veer off."
Without
breaking stride, Father Dave braced Cort on the shoulder. "I appreciate your
concern, Cortez. Sometimes, you just gotta have faith."
Cort
turned in time to see the riot cops level their shotguns at the mob. To his
left, he spotted a short brick wall on the side of a corner apartment. He
thought about Ruben Salazar. He sprinted and dove behind the wall as the cops
fired.
Chaos:
The rioters and Father Dave and his group turned and hightailed it away from
the thick, dark smoke.
Cort
was on his knees, the tear gas burning his eyes, his lungs. He couldn't
breathe. He stumbled to his feet. Choking, gagging, he weaved his way one block
west, to 16th Street. He paused and bent at the waist. He wiped his eyes and
jogged north for one block on 16th, then hooked a left back onto Mount Pleasant
Street.
Had to stick with the mob.
Half
the mob had scattered, the rest were now in the street. Someone lit a Molotov
cocktail. Someone else tossed a brick through the front windshield of a Toyota
sedan. The Molotov flew into the sedan; the interior went up in flames. A TV
cameraman backpedaled on the sidewalk.
Cort
was reaching into his satchel for his notebook when he noticed a muscular
Latino wielding a metal spear over his right shoulder in the middle of the
street, thirty feet away. The man had a blue bandana over his mouth. He wore
jeans and a black tank top. His hair was slicked back and he had a tattoo on
his left bicep: a big dollar sign.
Gato
Cort
scanned the street, looking for Phil, for a random uniformed cop. No Phil, no
uniforms, just turmoil.
The
sunlight dimmed. Twilight was descending.
Word
would get around the neighborhood that a cop was looking for Gato. He might
even know already. Gato would be in the wind the next day, on his way to El
Salvador.
"Goddamnit."
This
half-assed, adrenaline-drenched, crazy idea popped into Cort's head: Maybe he
could get a quote from Gato.
A pro forma denial.
Maybe
delay him. What's the worst that could happen?
Cort
yelled, "Gato!"
Gato
turned, looked at him.
"Gato!"
Cort held up his hand.
Gato
cocked his head to the side, studying Cort now. Three seconds later, he looked
away, turned his attention back to the street.
Something
inside Cort snapped: "Hey, Gato.
Asesino."
Assassin.
Gato's
head snapped toward Cort like an agitated cobra. His face went dark. He started
sprinting toward Cort, clutching the metal rod like a lance, rage in his eyes.
Cort's
heart skipped a beat, maybe two.
Gato
was closing fast. He got within twenty feet, fifteen, en...
Cort
quickly slipped his satchel off his shoulder--maybe if he timed it just right he
could sidestep the rod and slam Gato in the head, knock him off balance.
Maybe.
Gato
closed in. Cort locked in on the sharp tip of the rod--it was aimed at his
chest, there would be no chance to even take a swing at Gato...
He
half-closed his eyes, started to throw up a truncated Hail Mary.
He
saw a flash of movement on the right. He heard a thump, then another. He braced
for the tip of the spear. It never came. He opened his eyes.
Gato
was sprawled facedown on the street, the rod clanging on the sidewalk at Cort's
feet.
Phil
Harrick stood over Gato, clutching his leather-over-metal sap in his right
hand. Phil put his knee into the small of Gato's back. Smoothly, quickly, he
slipped the sap into the back of his waistband, brought out the cuffs, and snapped
them on.
Cort
said, "Where'd you come from?"
Phil
stood up. "I was tracking Gato in the crowd, waiting for my chance. Then you
called him out. Good thing I had the angle.
Ballsy move."
Cort
was about to say, "Stupid move." Instead, he said, "Sometimes, you just gotta
have faith."
I
should've listened to
Pop
. He warned me off Jeanette
right away, said she was nothing but trouble, but I was too far gone from the
first time I saw her to ever listen. "Jackie, she's a snake pit," Pop said,
like she was the bottom of evil.
Last
fall, Pop and I painted the office where Jeanette worked. That's when we met.
Her boss, a guy named Olivet, operated a chop shop in the far Northeast corner
of the city, in Deanwood. Olivet kept two steps ahead of the law and two steps
behind Jeanette. Before I knew her a week, she told me she hated him, hated his
hands always trying to touch her, hated his eyes undressing her.
"Quit,"
I told her, like I knew what to do.
"And
do what?" she fired back.
I
couldn't say.
She
called herself a secretary, but I never saw her type one word. Olivet spent his
days yakking on the phone, and watching Jeanette's ass. He leaned his chair
back, propped his feet on his cluttered desk, plastered the phone to his ear,
and followed every move her hips made with reptile eyes. If Jeanette bent over
at the file cabinets, he moved, but only for a better view. Her body made your
mouth water.
The
first day on the job, Pop dropped a daub of paint on the corner of Olivet's
desk, and the slob let him have all hell. Jeanette slid between me and Olivet,
before I acted stupid, and held her finger to her lips, for my eyes only. She
strolled across the room to the files, opened the bottom drawer, bent at the
waist, and swelled inside her skirt. And Olivet gasped. Jeanette swayed her
hips to the music piped in through speakers mounted in the ceiling. And Olivet
forgot all about Pop. I thanked her when she brushed past me. She blew me a
kiss.
"Call
me," she whispered.
Pop
stared at me the whole ride home.
"She
wants more than you got," he said in the alley behind our house on 12th Street.
He'd already had too many beers. After my mother ran off, he soured on all
women.
"You
don't know her," I said.
"A
slut's a slut, it don't matter what you feel below your belly."
Nothing
he said could change her lips blowing that kiss.
Nothing.
Jeanette
started bringing me fresh coffee every morning when we got to the job.
"Jesus
Christ, he can't work when you do that," Olivet said.
"I
take care of those that take care of me," she replied, glancing at me to make
sure I heard.
After
a few dates and a Christmas ring, she started in about Olivet.
"He
don't
deserve all that money," she said, "his boys in
the garage do all the work. He just counts it, the fat prick." She laid her
open hand on my inside thigh.
By
Valentine's Day, she was talking about Olivet's money like it should be ours.
"Think
about us with that money, Jackie," she said. "We could get away, baby, far
away." It didn't take her hand long to convince me
"We
can't live without that money, Jackie."
"I
don't know how to get it."
"Find
somebody who can."
I
turned away from her.
"Or
I will," she said, and drew her hand away.
A
couple of days later, I told her I knew a guy could take that money, you know,
trying to impress her, like I was connected to more than a lousy paint brush. I
dropped Michael Fannon's name, a guy from my brother's old gang.
"Call
him," she said.
I
didn't contact him right away, Michael wouldn't remember me. I tried to ignore
her. But she stayed after me. Call him. Call him. Call him.
When
I did, he didn't know me, but then I mentioned Richie, and he pretended to
remember me. I told him about Olivet, the chop shop, the money, and Jeanette.
He got interested, fast.
"Ripping
off
criminals
works best," he said. "Less chance
getting
caught,
and they deal in cash. I'll get back
to you." He hung up without a goodbye.
He
called me back a month or so later, on Friday night, my twenty-first birthday,
April 5, the day after some cracker killed King in Memphis and the blacks set
fire to the city.
"Now's
the time," he told me, "
the
cops got their hands
full."
Jeanette
and I had big plans for my birthday, but they went to hell like everything else
when King got shot.
"Come
by anyway," she told me on the phone, "we'll do something." She didn't need to
ask me twice.
"Keep
out of downtown," Pop said when I left the house. He glued himself to the TV
and muttered about the welfare sons-of-bitches burning his old stomping
grounds.
I
drove Pop's van to Jeanette's apartment around 10:00. Her straight black hair
shimmered in the hall light when she opened her apartment door. She wore a
skirt the size of a hand towel. All her leg showed. Pink fuzz stood out from
her sweater like she was electrified, and when she knew I was staring, she
pulled the sweater down so tight I had to look away. A half-assed picnic dinner
sat on her counter top, and she said we should go to McMillen Reservoir, park
on Hobart, in front of Pop's old place, and celebrate my birthday.
"Forget
about everything but us," she said, and she got close to me and reached her
hand around my ass.
Pop
was right, you can't think below your belt.