Pearce Hansen

Stagger Bay

© 2012 Pearce Hansen

This book is dedicated with respect to Mr. Dante Bonaduce

Chapter 1

The morning I went to hell I was passed out drunk.

One moment I was lost in the sodden oblivion last night’s twelve-packs had bought, the next a whole passel of cops was rat-packing all over me in my bed, slamming me onto my face to shackle my wrists behind me before I could fight back.

The feel of cold steel snapping shut around my wrists made me relax, despite them ratcheting down tight enough to cut off the blood flow completely and hurt. I’d worn such bracelets more than a few times when I was a kid and the familiarity cut right through my alcoholic haze, made me stop any resistance.

I was wrenched to my feet and propelled out the master bedroom and down the hall, all of the cops shouting: at me, at one another, at the world. As I was staggered toward the front door (or what was left of it, for now it was no more than a shattered pile of wood dangling to the side off the bottom hinge) my son Sam stood mute by the TV holding one of his injection-molded plastic action figures.

Sam’s eyes were bright blue and wide, looking as fake as those painted on the toy dangling limp from his hand. His thumb was rammed up to the root in his mouth even though he was ten and no longer a baby at all. The TV was tuned to one of the cartoons he liked, the volume turned high so the show’s atonal music and manic sound effects blared loud and cutesy-bouncy.

Our eyes met as I was bum-rushed along by the cops. My eyes were bleary; I was dull-witted as a steer headed for the slaughter chute. Sam’s eyes were blank dull stones reflecting the shock unseating his little-boy world.

As they stumbled me out the front door my wife Angela stood in the kitchen with her knuckle in her mouth, biting down on it hard enough to draw blood. Her thick black hair wasn’t brushed and combed into the long shining raven’s wing I so loved to run my hands through; it was tangled and bedraggled, and spilling over her face.

Angela was short and petite. Now she looked shrunken as an abandoned doll, surrounded by all the appliances and furniture we’d bought to shield us from our former lives, from before we’d escaped up here to Stagger Bay. Some kind of message burned from her eyes past her bedraggled locks, but I was too drunk to decipher it as I somehow tripped off the porch and onto my face on the front walkway.

One of the cops accidentally ground his knee into my back for a while, and then they hoisted me into the air by wrenching me up by my hands cuffed behind my back before letting my toes touch ground, almost dislocating my shoulders in the process.

It was Cop City out in front of my house. It looked like the entire Stagger Bay Police Department had shown up to make the arrest. There were so many rollers that just the squawk off their radios would’ve activated my radar back in the day, even inside the house and asleep.

But I was years from the Life, doing my best pretending to be a stone cold Citizen now, and my street instincts were stunted and atrophied. And of course, I was still so drunk from last night’s carouse with my big brother Karl, my brain might as well have been cottage cheese.

All our neighbors were out on their front lawns to gawk at my plight, cookie cutter dolls in a cloned diorama of row houses extending as far as the eye could see down the street. They looked like masquerading demons at about that point; I’ll assume I was imbuing them with about as much humanity in my mentations as they were presently according me.

As I sat in the back of the squad car my bleary gaze lit on my new Ram pickup truck in the driveway, the over-sized black beast I was working double shifts on the loading docks to pay off. I looked at the trim and ship-shape little bungalow Angela and I had somehow scraped up the down payment for, the first and only house either of us had ever owned. Angela watched me from the kitchen window, her face a pale blur as the roller surged away from the curb.

I squirmed my butt around on that hard plastic bench of a seat. It was a suck-ass kind of a homecoming to be sitting in the back of a squad car again after so many years.

“What’s your PC?” I asked the cop chauffeuring me to the Slams, my voice still slurred from the drinkage. He stared straight ahead, giving me nothing more than the close-cropped back of his head to relate to.

“Shut your cake hole, baby killer,” he said. That’s when I had a sneaking suspicion I was royally fucked.

Chapter 2

Maybe you grow up in the gutter with no one to lend you a hand. But that’s okay; nobody owes you nothing no how.

Maybe you meet your one true love, have a son, and leave the Life forever to become a Citizen. You pay your bills, obey the law, and think maybe you’ve paid your dues, earned your way into the consensus. You fool yourself into believing you’ve got something coming to you; you think the past is past, no more than a bad dream long gone.

You have a mortgage; you feel like you and your family are finally part of something, embedded within a community. You get to thinking you’re safe, that the people and the things you love are well protected.

But sometimes that’s all shown up as a load of crap. Sometimes reality slices through all your illusions and bites you right on your flabby pale ass.

Stagger Bay, my erstwhile home, was a smallish city or a largish town depending on who you asked, up on the Redwood Coast of Northern California. It was county seat for an extremely isolated mountain region a day’s drive from San Francisco, with only three highways in and out, landslides and wild-fires cutting us off from the rest of the world several times a year. Hell, we couldn’t even keep a railroad or a fiber optics line open; the closest we came to the outside world was satellite-fed TV, Internet, and syndicated talk radio – otherwise, we might as well have been on another planet from the rest of America.

For Angela and me, coming to Stagger Bay from Oakland had felt like jumping through a time warp back into the 1950s, or through a television screen into an episode of Leave It to Beaver.

It was a town originally built around the twin industries of logging and fishing, tiny as a toy model compared to the sprawling urbanization of the Bay Area. Stagger Bay was barbecues and truck parades, oyster festivals and free concerts, beautiful beaches and coastline, farmer’s markets and redwoods tall enough to tickle the sky.

Moving to Stagger Bay felt like winning, like coming home to a safe harbor the likes of us had never known. For Angela, my darling professional paranoid, Stagger Bay’s isolation was one of the clinchers.

She’d laugh and say that even if civilization collapsed outside our little community, even if some super-flu ravaged the world, our town would come through it smelling like roses and completely untouched. But I could tell she never really believed in its safety; I knew she was terrified of what she most needed to trust here.

As for me? I’d never really even pretended to rely on it but that was no matter. I figured Sam was less likely to get chopped in a drive-by up here; less likely to have a crack pipe jump into his hand.

‘Our Town,’ Angela always called it. Stagger Bay was intimate and neighborly even if tightly clannish and old fashioned. We’d settled down and done our best to fade into the background, nodding and grinning foolishly at all those who lived about us.

But now my neighbors were howling for my blood.

It seems a family, the Beardsleys, had been found butchered in their own home, right down to their baby girl and the family pets – and Stagger Bay’s finest had me pegged for it.

They treated me like a monster from the git go; like I was something other than human, a demon from the outer void none of them cared to contemplate at length.

Gratuitous cavity searches while a coed peanut gallery of COs make snide remarks and directorial suggestions? No big deal.

But I’ll tell you this much as well: I fell down a whole bunch of times at the station during all the interrogations, and I was equally clumsy every time the cops had any sort of one-on-one time with me.

Still, that was okay too. Sometimes pain is the only proof you have that you’re still alive and close to copasetic. Besides, the cops must have figured they had a real wackadoo on their hands; I could understand them being a bit perturbed.

At my arraignment the prosecutor made a big deal about how I’d spent my tender years in the California Youth Authority. I’ll be the first to admit I was atrociously violent back then. Between my juvenile rap sheet and coming up in the CYA’s gladiator schools for a goodly portion of my most testosterone-drenched years, my record seemed to have laid a taint on me in the eyes of society and the Man.

The prosecutor even pointed out that my dad had been executed for Murder One his own self, one of the last to experience the joys of the gas chamber. My dickless excuse for a lawyer roused himself for the first and only time in the trial over that comment, objecting to it as immaterial and having it stricken from the records. I guess my genealogy wasn’t seen as necessary to complete my damnation.

I wanted to speak my piece throughout but was never given the chance. My Public Pretender felt it wouldn’t help my case any, putting me on the stand and exposing me to cross.

The entire proceedings had an efficiency I found impressive, despite me being the main course as it were. It moved right along like a greased chute sliding me into the toilet to be flushed away neatly and swept from polite sight.

Throughout the trial they made a lot out of my supposed emotional numbness; my ‘flattening of affect’ and stoic lack of response to the whole sordid affair. Of course I wasn’t numb. But whenever the rage and pain threatened to overflow, I pushed it down into that black hole in my heart I’d used to dispose of unwelcome emotions as a kid on the streets of Oakland.

I was damned if I was going to give these fuckers any little show, even to save my life. East Bay Pride, right?

When they showed the crime scene photos, however; when I saw just what had been done to those poor people, and especially what was done to the baby… I had to look away, engulfed in a spasm of empathy for what their last moments must have been like.

“See,” the prosecutor said, stabbing his plump finger at me as I averted my gaze from the photos, my face screwed up in an effort at self control. “See. He can’t even look at what he did.”

When the semen they found inside Mrs. Beardsley and the baby matched my blood type, that was one nail in my coffin. But when they introduced my old Buck knife into evidence, with my fingerprints on it as well as all the victims’ blood, my heart sank deep and final.

It didn’t matter the knife had gone missing from my garage the week before; I knew that was all she wrote. Someone had laid a rock-solid frame on me.

When I went up for sentencing, sitting in the back of a cruiser with my hands shackled behind my back and leg irons hobbling my feet, wearing orange coveralls and a stud-heavy Mark-3/A bulletproof vest, I looked out at the passing streets of my adopted home town, I figured for the last time. The Stagger Bay skyline didn’t appear welcoming anymore.

Those Mayberry-style homes seemed to hint goblin smiles at my predicament. The American Dream they represented had proven unattainable to the likes of me and mine, more than apparently.

Outside the courthouse a big crowd awaited. I recognized a lot of the faces – men and women we’d had nodding acquaintance with over the years; guys I’d shot pool or played holdem against, or shared a beer with at my favorite watering hole the Sugar Shack. But my neighbors looked alien to me now; I was no longer one of them. I cringed away from dwelling on what all this must be doing to Sam and Angela.

A phalanx of cops surrounded me and bulled us through the crowd to the courthouse entrance as fast as I could shuffle along. The leg irons cramped my stride down to a hobble, rather than the enthusiastic River Dance I so desperately wanted to entertain the onlookers with.

One of the bystanders I recognized was Bill, my barber. I’d lost track of how many times I’d gotten my hair cut in his shop, looking at all the boar’s heads and antler racks mounted on his dark, nicotine-stained wood-panel walls.

His place was filled with old detective and girlie magazines, and I’d pet Bill’s shedding mangy old bird dog while waiting to get my ears lowered, listening to Bill talk about hunting and fishing; feeling like I was part of something traditional, even considering taking him up on his invitations to join him sometime. Since I’d never pointed a gun at anything with more than two legs before in my life, Bill’s style of survivalism would have definitely been a new experience for me.

As I made hopeful eye contact with Bill on my way into the courthouse, my one-time barber hawked up a loogie and sent it my way like a gift; the fluid dripped down my cheek as I looked away from him to face my front all exclusive-like. I tried hard not to hear the words the people shrieked, but enough more spittle and other substances got past the surrounding cops that I was quite the sight and smell by the time we got inside.

The bailiff watched me close as he let me go through the motions of cleaning up a bit in the bathroom. Like I was going to drown myself by sticking my head down the toilet bowl.

And then we were in the courtroom.

I was first on the docket – apparently a man convicted of home invasion, multiple murder, torture, and sex crimes against children and dumb animals deserved special attention, especially in a backwater town like Stagger Bay.

The judge looked down from on high, posing for the local reporters haunting the peanut gallery I figured. She cut quite a theatrical presence; I was in awe of her authority all right.

“Do you have anything to say before sentence is passed?” she asked.

I jangled my shackles. “Would it help if I said I’m innocent? The real killer is still out there, Your Honor. I don’t know why I was chosen for this, but Stagger Bay will be just as dangerous after you put me away.”

She was silent for a moment, perhaps even weighing my words. “A jury of your peers has convicted you of rape and murder, with multiple special circumstances. The prosecutor has asked for the death penalty.”

Mister Prosecutor stood there somberly as if he wasn’t gloating inside, as if he didn’t smell the kind of blood in the water here that would feed him to satiety if he ever made a run for DA.

“The evidence, though convincing, is still somewhat circumstantial,” the judge said, her tone making it sound like she’d just swallowed a stanky old bug. “Therefore, I am not imposing the death sentence.” She paused once more, as if waiting for me to thank her.

I raised my gaze to find her staring right back at me in loathing. “I believe you did do it, and that there isn’t a circle in hell low enough for the likes of you. Therefore, I am sentencing you to life without the possibility of parole. I hope you come to beg God’s forgiveness – but I’m unsure if I would even wish him to grant it.”

Then, with a haughty swish of robes, she was gone. I was flanked tight by a couple of deputies, but I managed to turn my head and look at the spectators as the packed courtroom gave out with a guttural growl of satisfaction.

Neither Angela nor Sam was there; I hadn’t seen nor heard from either of them since my arrest. The only love I got was seeing my big brother Karl sitting as close behind me as he could manage on those painful-to-the-ass hardwood benches, just as he’d sat through every day of my short trial.

Right then he looked pretty grim. But he pasted a smile on his face and raised his fist in solidarity, silently urging me to take it like a man.

My shackles prevented me from returning the salute as my entourage of cops reprised our shuffling course through the gauntlet of spittle, insults, and threats.

I was on my way to natural life in the Slams.

Chapter 3

Angela didn’t call or write – but Karl explained that, during his one and only visit to me while I awaited transfer to the penitentiary.

I was proud of Karl for mustering the nerve to see me in the hell hole they called the County SHU: Stagger Bay’s Secure Housing Unit. I knew that to visit me he had to run a gauntlet of searches and scanners and warrants checks, wending ever deeper into the constipated bowels of the beast with the only payoff at the end getting to stand in front of my handsome mug with a smeared scratched sheet of unbreakable plexiglas between us, both of us clutching our phones as cold substitute for a brotherly embrace.

Karl’s voice came tinny and inhuman from my ear piece; I wouldn’t even have recognized it if I hadn’t watched his lips synching to the words on the other side of the plexi. His words grating and hissing over the cheap phone line, he told me how Angela started using again as soon as I was popped, then ODed and checked out right after I got sentenced to natural life. Karl figured the OD probably wasn’t an accident.

I told him to shut the fuck up about that one. Neither of us had slugged the other in more than a few moons but Karl was fortunate the barrier was between us that day; he would have taken a cheap shot from me and I knew by heart all the spots that hurt him the most.

“And Sam?” I asked.

“They’re making noise like they’re gonna stick him in CPS, but I’ve got him covered, Markus. As long as I’m breathing and perpendicular, he’s with familia.”

I shut my eyes. “You’ll have to go all the way straight now.”

“If you did it, it’s got to be easy – he’s my blood too, baby brother. I’ll have my stuff sent up here from San Fran, find me and Sam a place. You know I can always glom the folding cash if it comes to that.”

A screw rolled up to lurk, meaning our visit was over. Quickly, knowing they’d just turn the phones off on us in mid-sentence if we dawdled, I said, “Don’t put money on my books. I’ll hustle up my own end. I’ll write to Sam, care of general delivery. And Karl…”

My brother waited, brows raised as the screw made an imperious beckoning gesture at him.

“You don’t have to come visit me again. I’ll do my own time.”

His face crawled with mingled relief and shame, and his eyes dropped. Then his shoulders squared and he gave up with a wink and a grin, just like he wasn’t saying goodbye forever.

I hold tight to that memory of my big brother Karl, walking tall away from me until he was out of my sight at least. It was the last time I ever saw him.

Chapter 4

I commenced my sentence knowing my aloneness for true now, my only comfort knowing Karl would care for my son as best he was able.

I wrote a few long rambling letters to Sam, trying to tell him something of who I was and where I’d come from, and a few of the things me and his mom had to overcome trying to give him a normal life. I told him to be strong and live proud. Oh yeah: and that I was innocent; that his dad wasn’t the kind of person that could or would have done the things they said I did.

He never wrote back and after a few years I stopped writing and focused my energies on doing my time.

Some things, the less said the better. Prison was like that – men dissolved here like oil slicks spreading across tainted water.

For years I dreamed about Angela and Sam almost every night. But after a while the dreams stopped coming, and Angela’s face grew harder and harder to see clearly in my mind’s eye.

Finally she subsided into a dim, almost archetypal presence: ‘The Abandoned Wife,’ sunk straight off the deep end to drown in the midst of a Lovecraftian submarine horror show.

All I had to do to remember Sam’s face, however, was study the nearest convenient reflective surface and mentally subtract thirty years. Seeing my mirror image showed me Sam as an adult man: A son who'd remember me only with bitterness and never speak my name; never have known me at all.

I’d leave no mark on the world other than the damage I’d done as a kid and whatever DNA Sam shared with me, my only legacy an anonymous prison grave when my carcass ran out of steam and followed my heart. After that realization my plummet took about as long to complete as it takes to describe, it was gradual as a roller coaster filled with screaming passengers soaring off the rails.

For a long while I drifted through a sort of waking trance. I spent months on end as this dimensionless drifting point surrounded by the infinite expanses of time and space that encompassed me. I guess technically I checked out of the human race all the way for a couple of years, just going about my business on auto-pilot as it were, one more sleepwalking robot.

Then by a total fluke I started reading, making up for dropping out of school in seventh grade: An old white-froed blood I crossed the color line to play occasional chess with turned me on to the Western Canon and my war dance with the Masters commenced.

Dostoevsky and Patricia Highsmith, Dickens and the Viking Sagas and Virginia Woolf. Sylvia Plath and Robinson Jeffers, Langston Hughes and Gracian and the Stoics. I lost track of how many pages I perused containing the brilliant thoughts of twisted geniuses, most long dust.

The Canon was great, if I’d ever been exposed to it in school I never would’ve dropped out. I figured my ‘teachers’ hadn’t gone out of their way to hide the classics from me, but they sure hadn’t gone out of their way to park them under my nose neither.

Please don’t think I was naïve enough to mistake any of these authors for friends. Please don’t think I ever humbled myself to them.

Never!

On the contrary: I knew these were dangerous people; I suspected and mistrusted them all. Reading the Canon was like chewing on broken glass, I felt the power thrumming through those books the first time I picked one up. Their scintillating words and arguments were too lovely to be anything but lies.

It was a tightrope walk to fend off their verbal assaults on my brain even as I did my best to glean what I could from the collective wisdom they’d constructed from nothingness and dust. I was as on guard with them as if facing an enemy – but I couldn’t put them down, couldn’t stop turning the page – and if these folk were reaching out from beyond the grave to infect me with the same ideas so many of them died for, then I’m guessing the damage was surely done.

I gravitated to some more than others of course. Herodotus chatted me up about the Spartans. Marcus Aurelius gave comfort despite letting it be known our lives were no more than blips in infinity, over almost before they began. Plutarch showed me that everyone had warts and all lives end, even the great ones – most of the guys he wrote about suffered travails making my current situation look like a leisurely dog walk in the park.

A false imprisonment like mine? Everyone had troubles. Much worse had happened many times before, and would occur many times again.

You had no rights, really. Does a man drowning in the middle of the ocean have a ‘right’ to keep on breathing? Does a man dying of thirst in the desert have a ‘right’ to water? Ask that question of the next desiccated corpse you stumble across in the Sahara – but you probably won’t get any answer from them.

The Canon was as much a curse as a blessing though: its light was a cold one, constituting one more layer of solitary confinement. But the old books’ diamond hardness helped me construct a center to cling to, sometimes the only thing that kept me from mentally fading away into the walls of my cell. Their most galling price tag was the humiliating knowledge of just how small I’d allowed myself to be.

Remember Bacon’s words? ‘We stand on the shoulders of giants.’ That phrase gave me chills the first time I ever read it.

But then the cosmic irony had bitch slapped me almost immediately: how insulting to the memory of those ‘giants’ that any ‘standing’ I’d do would be such a stunted version, given my current domestic arrangements.

Besides the mental sparring matches with my writer frienemies, I did pushups; I got up to a thousand a day on my fingertips. My shredded pecs got big enough I probably needed a bra.

Time passed in a crawl.

Chapter 4

Then one morning – seven years, three days and nineteen hours into my sentence – I had a visitor. I was shackled up, my manacles connected to my ankle cuffs by a dangling vertical chain, and escorted to a private visiting room. It was the first time I’d had to wear the bracelets in a while, as I’d been in general population for years without a court date or any need to interact with someone outside the penal system. The chains weighed heavy on me, but the novelty of entertaining a guest outshone any inconvenience.

“Hello, Markus,” my visitor said, extending her well-manicured hand.

I shook with her awkwardly, having to reach out with both manacled mitts. My chains jingled, and she made a face at the noise.

She had wavy blonde hair cut page-boy style, and wore high-end cologne I found myself sniffing greedily. A skinny little sparrow of a woman, with thin bird’s legs extending from beneath the skirt of her tailored charcoal-grey business suit. Her face was a little bony, and her nose a tiny beak. As she was the first woman I’d seen since coming to prison, her presence was quite invigorating.

“My name is Elaine Hubbard,” she chirped, “and I’m getting ready to have you released.”

My mind raced but I was suddenly numb as if I’d been immersed in ice. I couldn’t accept the reality of her words. “Say that again, please.”

“You’re going free, Markus,” she said, seeming to enjoy whatever was happening on my face.

I looked around the circumference of the room seeing the paint worn away at shoulder height from all the men that had paced its confines before me, imagining how much despair these specific sweaty greasy walls had witnessed; how many dashed hopes and betrayed trusts. I’d never had much luck with lawyers before, and was skeptical of her words to say the least.

“You’d best explain,” I said. “And I hope to God you’re not fucking with me.”

“Have you ever heard of DNA evidence?” she asked. “It’s a relatively new technology. They’ve been breaking cold cases with it for a while now. It’s solving a lot of crimes, putting a lot of perpetrators behind bars that thought they’d get away with it forever.”

I jangled my shackles, the noise almost sounding musical. “That’s quite reassuring. It soothes me; it’ll make me feel all safe in my warm comfy bed tonight.”

She chuckled. “It’s also freed a lot of innocent people, too. People like you, Markus.”

My heart was beating hard. She continued talking but I couldn’t understand a word she said.

‘Freedom,’ a voice whispered in the back of my brain – I shook my head at it. “So what made you take this on? What made you think I didn’t do it?”

“Your brother,” Elaine said, a wistful expression crossing her face. “Karl was a good man.”

“You said was. You’ll be rephrasing that, fast.” I was standing for some reason, and the screw on duty was suddenly in the room with us. I felt him hovering behind my shoulder ready to drop me hard and nasty.

Elaine waved him out as if she was dismissing a dog, but like any pro he waited until my butt was planted back in my seat before leaving.

“Was,” I repeated.

Elaine nodded. “Apparently Karl started dealing drugs, and he was killed in a shootout with a Stagger Bay police officer. They found a handgun and a large quantity of marijuana in his possession. The officer was cleared.”

“That makes me feel much better, it being deemed justified. But why are you still on it? Seems to me your debt would die with him, you don’t owe me a thing.”

“You’re his family, and I know he’d want me to,” she said as if by rote. “We’d already been working on our investigation for a while when he died, so I thought it best to finish it.

“And I have finished your part at least; you’ll be going free as soon as I’m done filing the paperwork.” She appeared pleased with herself.

I figured she just might have a right to be but ignored that, groping further – a ship-killing iceberg loomed beneath the placid surface of her words. “Karl was helping you on an investigation? Into what?”

“Well, it occurred to Karl that, since he knew you were innocent, the real killer had to still be out there. For the past seven years he’s been playing detective, putting in quite a lot of legwork on it I might add. I myself have only been involved for the past three years, since I moved to Stagger Bay and met Karl.

“Then I got a hold of this DNA thing and had an independent lab in the Bay Area run the tests,” Elaine continued. “Yours didn’t match the samples from the crime scene, and the rest is history.”

“What did Karl find out? About the real killer, I mean?”

“Nothing he ever shared with me,” she said hurriedly. “You know, you’re entitled to $100 a day for your false imprisonment. That comes to about a quarter of a million dollars.”

“Great,” I said, cracking a smile.

“Don’t count on it anytime soon,” Elaine said. “The check would come out of Stagger Bay’s general budget. That much money could break the county, and they’re fighting the payout.”

“I guess we can’t have it too easy, can we?”

Elaine stood, we reprised our awkward handshake around my cuffs; then she was gone. And as quick as that, with no formality at all, I was free.

Chapter 5

I was scared spitless of my homecoming, the entire long bus ride back to Stagger Bay. Angela was dead and now Karl as well. Sam’s lack of communication made it plain he wanted nothing to do with me, and last time I’d been here most of the town stood in line to show what they thought of me.

Wife gone, house gone, possessions gone, reputation gone. No job and no money in my pockets besides a puny handful of gate dollars. My prospects were glowing.

I’d done my time up in Del Norte County, so the bus brought me into Stagger Bay from the northern end. New housing crowded the outskirts of town that hadn’t been there when I went up: palatial McMansions looking like they’d be more at home in Beverly Hills, or in Silicon Valley housing the dot.com moguls. A lot of active construction sites, mainly right on the coast line.

It was just after dawn when the bus entered town, and I looked across the Bay at the Pulp Mill – it was the third largest such mill in the world, supplying jobs to a lot of people. The last time I’d been here, its twin stacks had vomited a foul effluvia 24/7 that could knock the nose right off your face if the wind was right.

Now both stacks were idle, no smoke coming from either of them. Squinting from my distant bus-borne vantage, I saw no sign of activity in the plant itself, and its huge multi-acre parking lot was empty.

The Greyhound swung down Fourth Street past a short row of chain fast food franchises and came up on what passed for a bus terminal in Stagger Bay: a one room building the size of a big city newsstand.

A short kid was leaning against a beat-up white ‘70s Lincoln Continental as the Greyhound chuffed into the terminal. Spiky red hair, bright blue eyes with a bony jutting chin, and wide shoulders with big meaty hands hanging at the end of long arms: the spitting image of his uncle – and of his father too I suppose.

I had no luggage to wait on, so I walked right up with my heart pounding.

“Sam?” I asked.

He nodded blank-faced and hip bumped erect off the car in one fluid motion. The way his shoulders rolled as he ape-shambled to the driver’s side door was like watching a home movie of me and Karl at that that age.

Sam climbed in without so much as looking at me. I got in my side with equal enthusiasm. The seats were chapped leather but still comfortable.

I snuck peeks at him as we drove, but he kept his eyes glued to the road. Despite that attentiveness he was a suck-ass driver, tail-gating and cutting off cars as he swerved from lane to lane in the big old Connie. I kept my opinion of his driving skills to myself as, to tell the truth, he drove exactly like his uncle.

“Look,” Sam said out the side of his mouth, sounding distracted, as if I didn’t even have his full attention in this oh-so-heartfelt moment. “We got to be clear from the git go. I got too much on my plate right now to be wasting my time holding your hand. Still, Uncle Karl wouldn’t have liked it if I turned my back all the way on you, so I’ll try to watch out for you a little bit while you get back on your feet. But know this: We’re not going to be friends.”

Sam continued. He’d obviously practiced this speech for a while, probably memorizing it daily in front of his bathroom mirror ever since he’d heard of my imminent return. “You can forget the whole father/son thing, it ain’t going to happen. We ain’t gonna be swapping spit here. First thing first, let’s get you in a motel.”

I gritted my teeth but kept my own puissant smile in place. “I don’t have enough for a room. I was hoping maybe I could shack up with you till I get on my feet.”

He shifted his face out of neutral long enough to snicker. It sounded just like my brother laughing at me. “Ain’t that a bitch?” Sam said. “I thought you got a butt-load of money for seven years of wrongful imprisonment. But that’s just like the rednecks in this hick town: always scratching, barely able to keep things afloat. Hell, the whole county’s about bankrupt.”

His face went blank again. “Anyways, I don’t have any room at my place.”

I scoped out the car’s interior. Heaps of dirty clothes were piled in the back, and toiletry articles were scattered on the floor. Sam was living out of his car.

“It’s all right, I’m sure I’ll have a place to lay my head by the end of the day,” I said. “So, how do you get by? What do you do?”

“This and that, as if it’s any of your business.”

“Oh,” I said. “I get it.” And I did: he was in whatever semblance of the Life this podunk town could support. If he was homeless I figured crime didn’t pay much in Stagger Bay. “I’d’ve hoped Karl would set you up a little better.”

“Fuck you, you old hypocrite,” Sam said in casual tones. “Know what I remember about you? You were either working, or sleeping so I had to tiptoe around the house, or drinking, or sleeping it off – in which case I had to tiptoe around some more. Then you were gone and Mom was dead, end of story.

“Far as I’m concerned, Karl’s my real dad – you was just a sperm donor. He was there, you wasn’t, remember? Uncle Karl taught me everything I know. He went straight and went clean when he took me under his wing, even if I don’t pretend to be. I won’t have you bad-mouthing how he raised me.”

“He went legit? Elaine told me he was dealing again, that’s how come he got shot.”

“You are an old fool,” Sam said, favoring me with a pitying look. “Karl was straight edge, he didn’t even smoke cigarettes. Listen to you, believing in a cop’s lies over your own brother.

“Uncle Karl always knew how jealous you was of him. You were the junior partner, Karl was the bad ass,” Sam said, glancing over at me to enjoy his harshness.

“But he’s dead and gone, ain’t he? And all I’ve got now is you?” Sam asked, his voice suddenly choked. “Then I’m truly out of luck. I’m on my own here all the way. You’re useless to me, what good are you to anyone?”

There were so many things I could try to say to that, but instead buttoned my lip. He wouldn’t trust anything that came out my mouth. If I wanted him to hear me in future I’d have to snarl in resonance with him, choose only the words I knew he’d hear rather than the ones I wanted to say – but I suspected there wasn’t going to be much opportunity for that.

“I’ll be getting out here,” I said.

Someone hit their horn and leaned on it as Sam swooped the Lincoln to the curb. As I got out an immaculate candy-apple red Cougar hotrod tore around us, narrowly missing Sam’s rear bumper.

I couldn’t get a good look at the big blond man driving the cherried-out Cougar as it roared past; the morning sun’s reflection obscured his features behind the window. But his face was pointed right at me through the glare, and I had a good idea what kind of expression was on it. I was surprised he didn’t give us the one-finger salute for punctuation.

As I stood on the curb I looked back at Sam, but he stared straight ahead as though near collisions didn’t even get his attention.

The situation didn’t seem to call for any heartfelt goodbyes. I started walking and Sam pulled back out, blended obnoxiously into the traffic flow, and was gone.

Chapter 7

I was on Fourth Street, the one-way thoroughfare running south through the heart of Stagger Bay, turning into Highway 101 above and below town limits. This was the neighborhood folks called Old Town.

Back when Stagger Bay was first founded, the second thing they did after massacring the local Indians was build Old Town, a rickety warren of wall-to-wall whore houses and bars conveniently adjacent the waterfront. By the time we’d moved up here from Oakland in the ‘90s, the original shacks and hovels of that frontier red-light district had mutated into it’s present day architecture, mainly brick multi-stories heavily retro-fitted to earthquake resistance.

We’d come up here because the cost of living was cheap, and I thought I could finagle a job in one of the lumber mills or on a boat. Unfortunately the logging and fishing industries were already withering on the vine by that point, and Stagger Bay was pretty depressed – I’d been lucky to get the job at the soda distributor.

Then, a few years before the Beardsleys were murdered, some bright boy decided to build the Mall on the south edge of town – half the local mom & pop businesses folded, unable to compete with those big box chain stores. That was a real stake through the heart for Stagger Bay.

Driving through Old Town in back then was like sightseeing in a ghost town, what with all the darkened storefronts and whitewashed windows. There’d been trash in the gutters and newspapers spinning in updrafts; it was pretty run down.

Old Town’s empty squats had been crowded with homeless transients, pan-handlers, drug addicts and other low-end would-be outlaws – up from the Bay Area chasing welfare checks. The Stagger Bay Police Department had a beat cop annex there but closed it down because there was ‘too much crime’ – that one had been laughed at on all the late night network talk shows.

Our hookers were an especially sorry bunch, mainly speed freaks missing a few teeth and dressed in thrift-store chic. Angela always felt sorry for those working girls; she wanted to stop and do an emergency makeover whenever we passed one by.

But Old Town had changed a lot since last time I’d seen it. Now it looked like someone had come through with a broom and swept all the wild life away. Walking down the street, all I saw was decent citizens, not a wannabe-an-outlaw in sight.

It was also booming with new construction and renovation: Toward the waterfront the Andersen Mansion loomed above the smaller interposing buildings, sporting a new paint job. A work crew was power washing the side of a building across the street from me. On the next block a guy telescoped up in the bucket of a cherry picker was doing some kind of work on a bronze art deco façade spanning the second story of the Emporium, our sole vintage department store. A designer coffee shop and a chain bookstore were doing brisk business on the block I currently walked down, and lots of quaint little boutiques and art galleries dotted the cross streets to either side; I didn’t recognize any of them from before.

Even though all this had nothing to do with me, it still didn’t feel too bad to see the old neighborhood on its feet again. After all, it wasn’t Stagger Bay per se that expelled me from my family so rudely; it was the featherless bipeds infesting her that did the dirty deed.

It was a little confusing, though. Like I said before, the fishing and logging jobs had pretty much dried up years ago, small business was still limping, and we had no industry – someone was doing some real fast talking to convince this much investment in a dead-end podunk town like Stagger Bay.

No one on the streets seemed to recognize me, which was fine. But I saw more than one person shopping or driving by that had been pretty bloodthirsty when I was on trial.

No complaints, I was lucky to be alive and free. A backwoods place like Stagger Bay, I reckon they would’ve saved the state a lot of money in the old days; maybe just strung me up from a tree, photographed themselves smiling around my stretch-necked corpse and sold copies of the snapshot as souvenir postcards.

Chapter 8

I turned east on E Street and cut across Fifth, the one-way main drag paralleling Fourth in the opposite direction. I was in the neighborhood Angela, Sam, and me had once called home.

When we first bought our house it was what realtors liked to call a ‘neighborhood in transition,’ meaning property values were low enough for a family starting out to leverage themselves a mortgage – as long as they didn’t mind drug dealers to one side of them, and nightly drunken brawls on the other. No biggie: I chastised the worst neighbors into minimally acceptable behavior after we finagled a mortgage out of my double shifts on the loading dock.

There’d been a reason for the neighborhood’s chaos, and for all the riffraff that used to infest Old Town. Round about the time we first came here, in a celebrated class-action lawsuit resulting from Stagger Bay’s refusal to pay General Relief to qualified professional transients, a federal judge forced the county to pay the highest disbursements in the state.

Welfare offices as far south as San Diego handed out flyers to their ‘customers,’ informing them of the windfall awaiting them up here. LA Cops passed out one-way bus tickets to Stagger Bay to the Southland’s homeless vagrants. The Big City, dumping it’s parasites in the lap of Small Town America: it was a historic mass movement of people; one that, curiously, was never discussed in the media.

The resulting influx of aid recipients was large enough Stagger Bay quickly had one of the highest per capita percentages of people on assistance in the nation. All those high payouts had almost bankrupted the city, and put its treasury into its current downward spiral.

Another side-effect of all those newcomers was a severe housing shortage. Rental owners capitalized on the tight market by subdividing existing homes into shoebox-sized apartments.

For a while it was a cottage industry for local landlords to buy one rundown Victorian after another, subdivide them, and pack them as full of Section 8 Housing Assistance recipients as topologically possible – slum-lording as a growth career. That income property boom led to severely inflated home prices; outside money had gobbled up a lot of houses too, ‘smart’ investors figuring Stagger Bay’s yokel tenants could pay their mortgages and property taxes for them.

Before we bought the house we’d gotten a lot of dirty looks from the old family locals – they assumed we were on AFDC, part of the invading unwashed horde of big city welfare barbarians that had crowded Stagger Bay to bursting.

I’d never been on the dole myself. When I was a kid me and Karl was all the way carnivores: we’d steal from you honest, to your face, like good thieves. But after I hooked up with Angela and had Sam, I’d always worked for a living – to my brother’s ridicule I might add.

Still, it had been an eternity since we bought our own little slice of the American Dream here, and there were few living-wage jobs in Stagger Bay anymore. Except, judging from what I’d seen on my bus ride in, for members of the construction industry.

I stood in front of the home that was ours once. The stucco exterior had been tan when we lived there. The new owners had painted it a bright chalk-yellow with light purple trim; it looked pretty nice, a stylish color scheme I wished I’d thought of when the decision had been mine to make. A Big-Wheel trike and other toys lay scattered around the well-tended front lawn.

A Ram pickup truck was parked in the driveway, twin to the one I’d once owned. The only difference? This truck was red and had a big shiny steel tool locker mounted directly behind the cab; my truck had been black, and I’d never been a toolbox kind of guy. Looking back, had to admit the Ram had just been a big boy’s toy; a status symbol to help me make believe I’d made the grade.

Studying my old house, I had the crazy notion for a second that all I had to do was step through the front door, and the past seven years would turn out to be a dream: Angela would be putzing around the kitchen, Sam would be watching TV or playing a video game, and both would smile at me as I entered, happy to see me.

I shook it off fast. I didn’t live here anymore, and never would again.

Chapter 9

I headed toward the Bay. Fourth and Fifth Streets doglegged inland here and came together to form Broadway, a fast four-lane drag sprinting south between the Mall and the cemetery past a small patch of nondescript light industrials encroaching the wetlands of the Bay, past both our car dealerships and out the bottom edge of town toward SF, which was a day’s drive away on winding mountain roads. Up ahead was the place I used to work: a soda distributor supplying the entire county.

This was the first and only straight job I’d ever worked, and I’d been surprised to find I loved it. I’d sweated those loading docks when I was a family man, spent most of my waking hours there: unloading stacks of soda cases from 48-foot big rig trailers out of the Bay Area, doing the basic split for all the delivery trucks, ensuring every little string town in a county the size of Connecticut got their daily allotment of name-brand carbonated sugar water.

Sixteen hours a day in exchange for my own house, food on my family’s table, and no life at all. Still, it looked mighty damn good from where I stood now.

I walked into the office and saw only two faces I knew from the old days: Bonnie, who was still a secretary after all these years; and Takeshi, a Japanese kid who’d been a route driver when I got busted.

Bonnie gasped when she saw me and busied herself with the paperwork on her desk. She’d put on some weight.

As for Takeshi? He hustled me out the office as soon as he recognized me. He offered a cigarette but I shook my head. He shrugged, sparked his own coffin nail, and looked across the parking lot at the shimmering tidal mudflats of the Harbor.

I was the one who’d gotten Takeshi his job here; Angela and Tak’s girlfriend Tiffany had been coffee buddies. Tak and Tiff had come over to our house more than once for potlucks or drinks, or for card games. We’d considered them friends.

Takeshi had put on a little weight his own self, but he still had that thick mop of black hair combed straight back Eddie Munster style. He’d grown himself a thin, scraggly little mustache and soul patch that were probably more trouble to shave around than they were worth. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a clip-on tie; he'd graduated to managing the distribution center.

Today Tak appeared old. But then, I was no spring chicken anymore myself. “How are you, Markus?” he asked, exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke out the side of his mouth.

“Well enough,” I said. “I’m just looking around the old place, seeing what’s what. How’s Tiffany?”

He smiled, looked at the coal on his cigarette. “She’s great. You know we got a bambino now? His name is Kobi; he just turned two last week.”

“Well hell, I’ll be sure to send something when I get on my feet.”

“I got you a job here, Markus – if you want it.”

That actually felt pretty damn good; I’d always had this dorky pride in how well I humped the docks when I worked here. “Well, that truck platform probably ain’t been run right for the last seven years. You know I was the best they had. I’ll bet it took three guys to do my job after I left.”

Tak’s face put on a pained expression. “It couldn’t be the loading dock, Markus – I’d have to keep you out of sight. Janitorial or something, I’ll figure it out.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “You know I was cleared, right Tak? I didn’t do it, I’m innocent.”

He took another drag off his cigarette, and I realized he hadn’t looked at me once since we’d come outside. He dropped his cigarette and ground it beneath his heel, then gave me a flat look. “It’s the best I can do for you, Markus. There’s people around here I got to listen to, to keep my job. I got my own family to think of.”

I turned away and headed toward Broadway. I heard the office door open and close behind me, probably Takeshi going back inside – but I didn’t bother looking.

Chapter 10

I crossed Broadway and walked uphill toward Stagger Bay Center, which had passed for a downtown shopping center back in the days of doo-wop and Petula Clark. Here were our two supermarkets, our hospital, our twin water towers, our bank, and our two elementary schools: one Catholic for the upper crusties, the other public.

Down the block our local burger drive-in was opening up, the smell of heating grease reminding me I hadn’t eaten in a while. Clumps of students of varying ages hurried down the sidewalks en route to school. That big old Cougar, the one that had a close encounter with Sam’s Lincoln, squatted in the drive-in parking lot aimed at me like a sleeping rocket; the big blond driver looked my way, waiting for whomever.

It was still the same all-American time warp here that Angela and I tried to submerge our family into. But now there was nothing for me in Stagger Bay, nothing to keep me.

I was an invisible man here at best; at worst, someone this town obviously wished would just go away. Well, I knew how to oblige when I was in the mood, even if it felt suspiciously like surrender.

Oakland looked better and better, even if I had no idea what I’d do down in my hometown once I got there. I’d come too far just to crime spree ‘til I got chopped, or drown myself in the bottle in a cardboard mansion. But I wouldn’t be in Stagger Bay anymore, which was the main thing – I wouldn’t see the reminders of my failure everyday.

It was time for me to swing back to the Greyhound station and disappear all the way.

Chapter 11

Up ahead was Sam’s old elementary school. Back before I went in, sometimes I was so beat when I got off at dawn after working a double shift that I’d be hallucinating from sleep deprivation as I walked Sam to school.

But I never missed walking him once, even though sometimes my tired legs had a hard time keeping up. The sun rising, strolling with my boy whilst knowing I’d survived everything life had thrown at us when so many of my homies hadn’t? It was magic, man.

And whenever we got to his school and stopped at the entrance, Sam always let me squat down and give him a hug and a kiss. Every day I’d dreaded the time my son would be too old to let his daddy kiss him in public. Every day I’d known he was getting older, every day needing me a little less. I can admit now that scared the hell out of me.

The day of my homecoming, that crisp early morning air was wasted on me. I had no appreciation for the morning sun spilling onto my face like liquid gold. Whatever magic I’d ever felt was gone, as I strolled along examining the exposed wreckage of my life.

I was walking past the main gate in the cyclone fence. The playground was empty, and the wind seemed to mock me as it moaned through the childless swings. From out of sight in the direction of Stagger Bay Center, I heard gunfire; multiple pistol shots that made me stop and stand in place, jolted by a rush of adrenaline as I tried to see where the unseen shooter was.

The gunfire didn’t end; instead the pistol was joined by other weapons. I could identify the spaced booms of a shotgun, and even the stutter of what had to be something fully automatic. I couldn’t tell you what went through my mind as I listened to that invisible fire fight, other than there was no sense of relief when the shooting finished up with some sort of drastic explosion.

I had to squint against the early morning sun when that battered blue step-van lurched around the corner a few blocks down in the direction of the shooting, its stereo system blasting out Spencer Davis Group’s ‘Gimme Some Lovin.’ The van slalomed a bit from side to side and then accelerated right toward me. I was disconcerted, both at how fast it was coming on, and at how many sirens I now heard, all closing rapidly.

A black and white skidded howling around the same corner, right on the van’s ass. The cop in the passenger seat leaned out his window and started shooting, the noise of his pistol fire slapping through the air like the cracking of a whip. The spang of rounds hitting metal proved that at least some of his shots were on target.

My jaw dropped open, hung and dangled that way as a grenade arced out the side door of the van and bounced a few times on the asphalt. It exploded as the cop car drove over it, shredding the front tire and lifting that corner of the roller on a loud BOOM-ball of fireworks.

The cop car’s rear end fishtailed as the front wheel landed and bounced, and its shattered front rim ground along the street, smoking tatters of rubber flapping as sparks and chunks of asphalt flew. One tire jounced up over the curb and that was all she wrote: the cop car flopped onto its side and slid to rest along the playground fence with a skirling clash, its siren still wailing like a grieving widow. The cop who’d been leaning out the passenger window was pretty much smeared in half beneath the car, but the driver commenced an aimless squirming as she hung suspended in her seat harness.

I’d scampered for cover and hit the deck on my belly when the grenade exploded. Old reflexes die hard; it took me right back to the streets of Oakland where we always took a noise like that personal and we always sought full prone when firefights blazed. I lay still as a statue in the tall grass by the schoolyard, watching the step-van lean forward on its shocks as it scuffed to a halt in the middle of the street.

Spencer Davis still blasted from their system, Steve Winwood singing ‘So glad we made it. So glad we made it.’ These boys had the bass turned up a little high for the mix – too much distortion.

A tall kid with big ears hopped out the van with a revolver in one hand and a grenade in the other. He trotted back to the overturned black-and-white, staring in a hungry fashion at the crushed pulp of cop extending rag-doll-like from beneath the car.

He aimed his pistol at the driver, who strained to free herself from her seat belt. The woman stopped struggling and looked at him as she became fully aware of her fate.

I saw her face clearly for eternal endless moments before Big Ears grinned and fired three times like it meant nothing, starring the safety glass into whiteness and obscuring her face forever from my sight. Her dimmed silhouette sagged all slow motion boneless in her harness as the gunman yanked the pin from the grenade with his teeth and dropped it in her open window.

Gild the lily why don’t you, motherfucker?

Big Ears was loping back to the van even as the grenade went off, shattering every window in the black-and-white with a roar. The roof of the car bulged as if the Hulk had tried to punch his way out, and a cloud of safety glass chunks expanded in all directions to shower the ground like a short lived hailstorm, or like the geyser of water splashing back down after a diver did a cannonball. The siren finally shut the fuck up.

Three other men stooped out the open van door, whooping and laughing as they leaned from the dark interior to admire their friend’s handiwork. They all had heavy weapons in their hands; they all appeared high as kites.

A good-looking black kid high-fived Big Ears as he clambered back inside. “Way to go, Slash. Next level, bro,” the kid said in a squeaky voice.

Rage filled me to trembling but I didn’t move other than the shaking. They’d shot her in the face and laughed. Laughed!

The patch of grass I lay in was too far away for me to have helped, and I know there wasn’t a thing I could have done for her anyway. But the shame still welled up.

Something died within my breast like a slug dissolving in salt as I just lay there like a coward in the tall grass and said and did nothing. I hid in weeping fury and waited for them to drive their van anywhere but here, out of my life.

The van’s engine got louder as the driver tried to take off and be gone, but the transmission only stuttered and clashed as he wrenched the gearshift into drive. Maybe the dead passenger cop’s rounds had hit something vital after all.

The van abruptly died with a prehistoric gargle, and the other sirens were much closer now. The van’s occupants had a short, loud, lively argument, and then they piled out to stand for a moment in the street. All four gunmen ran through the schoolyard gate and toward the nearest exit.

A man stepped out the door to confront them as they approached. One of the gunmen shot him without even breaking stride. The man went down and the gunmen went into the building.

Every hair on my body stood on end, like I was being pierced by a million porcupine quills. My mind was blank as I bounded to my feet, huffed to the schoolyard gate, and paused in a frenzy of indecision. I rocked back and forth, from side to side like an ADD case; my dangling empty hands kneaded the air like creatures separate from me.

They had uncontested access to the children and they were proven mad-dog killers who laughed as they did it. The cops were too far away.

Somebody had to do something. Somebody had to do something right now.

And I was the only one there.

I heard men’s voices inside, raised in anger, followed by another gunshot. Like I was fired from the same gun, I found myself trundling toward the school, faster than I’d moved in years.

As I approached I saw children’s faces pressed against the multi-paned windows, their silent mouths moving excitedly. A gaggle of office staff stood outside the double doors of the main entrance at the far end of the building, staring past me at what was left of the cop car.

My mind raced like a redlining hotrod engine as I ran, but the head gasket wouldn’t quite blow. The morning sun was bright but the cold blue sky stared down uncaring at the foolish, balding ex-convict scurrying across the playground, just one more nonentity in his cheap prison-issue release clothing. It seemed an eternity that I ran and planned (and prayed, I’ll confess to you and you only), but I finally reached the exit.

The man slumped against the wall wore a wrinkled white shirt and loosened tie, with the harried, haunted look of school principals everywhere. He held what little was left of his right bicep, trying to put direct pressure where the bullet had torn a fist-sized hunk of brachial artery out of him. His life’s blood was spewing down off his fingertips to pool on the ground next to where he sat splay-legged – he was gone and he knew it.

“Please,” he said to me, eyes aflutter.

His bloody hand gently stroked my trembling leg as I surveyed the closed door. The exit was at one end of the school’s long central hall, opening into an inset vestibule. This was as close to Thermopylae as I was ever going to get.

Inside, all the classrooms opened off the hallway – but each room also had its own separate exit to the outside. Through the door and from around the corners of the building, I heard a couple doors slam, some raised voices both childish and adult.

I sucked in a deep breath and bellowed at the top of my lungs, “Get the children outside right now. There are men with guns in the hall. Get the children outside right now. There are men with guns in the hall-”

I continued shouting the alarm even as, after a few seconds delay, pandemonium erupted within the building. More and more classroom doors slammed open around both corners of the building; the children’s yells become clear as more and more of them streamed out the side exits and into the open.

I heard angry shouts on the other side of the door, getting nearer. Someone kicked the door open from inside, hard, and I shut right up. I took an involuntary step back and froze as the door slammed against the vestibule wall, revealing two of the gunmen: Slash and the handsome black kid. Part of me took satisfaction in successfully making them divide their forces, but the pleasure was short lived: now I was unarmed at gun point with the two, and they did not look happy at all.

Slash was in front, brandishing his revolver. The black kid with the squeaky voice stood slightly behind him and to my left, holding the exit door open with his foot, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

Slash's face was flushed and his slitted eyes were dancing. Both of them were so high, their eyes was glazed over to the point I couldn’t even tell you what color they were.

I was paralyzed in place. I knew I should initiate and close the gap. But I’ll tell you what: When a murder weapon’s already smoking muzzle is parked inches away from your nose, that gaping train-tunnel-sized black hole is strangely fascinating.

I pretty much figured I was a dead man here, but I clenched my fists at my sides so they wouldn't see them shake – if she could be brave about it, so could I. I started to turn my head away even as Slash stuck his.38 snub-nose up to my head and squeezed the trigger.

That pistol shot crashed like thunder. The round blew through the edge of my face, spewing my left eye right out the socket.

My head snapped around as the round entered and exited, and I grunted at that sledgehammer impact. There was a roaring in my head as if a heavenly choir of warrior angels shouted all at once in a sustained bass howl of fury. The left half of my vision went black, throbbing and threaded with strands of agony.

I looked at the vestibule wall with my blurred teary mono-vision: red goo dripped down it. Little splinters of white bone were sticking out the stucco, and I thought: those are pieces of my skull. I wondered if the goo was my brains for just a second before immediately chiding myself: how could I even be thinking if such was the case?

Then the roaring passed and I swiveled my ruined head back around to regard my killers with my one remaining eye. They looked surprised as me that I was still alive. I have no idea what kind of expression was on my mug but they didn’t like it one bit: the color bleached instantly from their faces, and they both gasped and recoiled from me as though a pair of giant hands had grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and jerked them backward hard.

It occurred to me that I was a man who’d been doing a thousand pushups a day for the last several years, that these turds had put themselves within arm’s reach, and this was the only shot I’d ever get to avenge my own murder. I heard a whoop of rage come from somewhere and I had just enough time to realize I was the one making it as I dipped my shoulder and backhanded Slash in the side of his neck with all my strength.

I felt something crunch in his cervical vertebrae and he rocketed sideways to slam into the wall, his eyes twin stunned zeroes. I reached out one hand as he bounced back toward me, snagged his shirt, and reeled him in like a big fish.

The black kid was just waking up enough to release the door, and he leveled his sawed-off now to let go at me with both barrels. I dragged Slash in close and huddled behind him as the sawed-off bellowed its leaden message. I felt the impact of buckshot thudding into my human shield even as my free hand stripped the dying man's pistol.

I straightened and flung my burden toward the punk with the now-empty shotgun, then aimed my newly acquired.38 at him. The Squeaker staggered back into the hallway as his friend’s corpse crashed wetly against him and slid to the floor, where it propped the exit door open. The Squeaker looked down in disgust at the welter Slash left sliding down the front of his clothes.

Squeaker started to waggle his useless weapon, but then seemed to catch himself. “Don’t shoot me, man. I’ll put the gun down, okay? Only don’t shoot, please.”

Another gunman, a little guy with brown hair, stuck his head out a doorway farther down the hall and goggled in our direction with an unhappy expression on his weasel-ish face.

“Shit,” the little man said, and ducked back into the classroom.

I heard Karl’s voice right behind me, just like every time when we were kids and I was first through the mark’s door with him pulling drag: ‘Don’t blow it, Markus. Cut loose your wolf and show them some heart, brother.’

I slowly turned to look over my shoulder. There was no one there.

The vision in my remaining eye blurred as I faced back forward toward my doom, and there was a buzzing in whatever was left of my head. The pain from my wound was peeking through the initial shock in a ripple of agony, a coy hint of fun times to come.

I was fucked up here, how bad I didn’t know, didn’t want to know. My hand crept up to hover before my face in a rigid claw, and my eye screwed shut as my fingertips stroked the air. But I refused to touch the hole in my head, or explore its extent.

A shuddering rippled through me, as if I were in the throes of hypothermia. I grunted as the pain welled up like an overflowing toilet and the black kid continued babbling in terror; he yapped like a kicked lap dog as the pain rose to cloud my mind until I could take no more.

My eye opened with a snap and I aimed the pistol at the Squeaker’s face. He flinched back from me, still gabbling away, his whole face awrithe and twitching.

A wail of pain and fear was trying to rise from deep inside me. That wail wanted me to open my mouth wide and let the whole world hear it loud.

‘Best get moving, Markus,’ Karl said. ‘Times a wasting boy.’

“Shut up,” I screamed at my stupid big brother. “How can I ever think with you doing all the talking?”

The Squeaker went silent, like it was him I was yelling at. He’d seemed afraid before but now looked as though he could barely stand. He just sort of sagged as he stood there.

I stepped over Slash’s body through the door and dragged the Squeaker fully erect. I snatched his empty sawed-off and flung it back over my shoulder; it clashed and clattered miles away on the asphalt. I snickered as I reached out to clutch his shoulder.

“You’re my passport,” I said, my face stretched into a grin so tight it hurt, that same old war grin I’d always been powerless to turn off whenever the shit went down.

I spun my hostage around. One hand knotted between the shoulder of his shirt, the other hand jamming the pistol into his lower spine, I propelled the kid ahead of me toward the last two gunmen.

My vision was tinged with red; I wanted to go buck wild on them. But I was walking a tightrope here, and one misstep would spell disaster for the children.

The Squeaker finally awoke to the full extent of his current predicament, being the only barrier between his trigger-happy friends and psycho me. “Fellas,” he said, his squeaky voice gone even shriller. “Fellas. It’s me, Wayne. Don’t shoot, fellas.”

He got his reply at once: a grenade skittered out from that last classroom and banked off the wall to roll toward us spinning and clinking. Apparently his friends didn't like Wayne quite as much as he thought.

My heart skipped a beat and my eye bulged. I let go my hostage and leapt clumsily through an open doorway to my right.

Wayne remained behind, staring down in frozen fascination as the grenade bounced off his shoes. He childishly clapped both hands over his face.

In the split second before the grenade went off my gaze fell on the classroom’s other door, the one leading to the external world. It was open and I saw the empty playground out there, and the clear cloudless sky.

It seemed I had never seen a sky so lovely, or a shade of blue so beautiful. It drew me toward its cleanly expanse like a magnet, and a sigh escaped me as I raised a spread-fingered hand as though to touch that glorious blue: all I had to do was step out that door into the heavenly sunlight and I'd be out of this.

‘The hell with that,’ Karl said, and I began to turn my head back toward the hall doorway; toward the children.

The grenade exploded, rocking the floor under my feet and deafening me as a hot shockwave of air slapped my body. Simultaneously, the wall I leaned against rippled askew from its foundation, shoving me away to stagger several steps, almost tripping as I banged into the nearest row of desks.

I was back in the sagging doorway as soon as the blast was over, back on top of things again with my head squeaky straight. I looked all around at Wayne’s remains: the explosion had splashed parts of him against the walls, floor, and ceiling in a hellish Rorschach. The air fumed with the stink of compound B and shit. Bloody confetti fluttered to the floor – student artwork shredded off the walls’ bulletin boards and into meaninglessness.

I looked across the hall toward that last classroom as I braced my gun hand against the doorframe. The vision in my eye was foggy and I was feeling none too steady, but I had no trouble seeing the last two gunmen eagerly crowd the open doorway.

My first round smashed into the shoulder of the brown-haired little weasel carrying the.45 and the canvas bag. He whirled and lurched back into the classroom.

The other gunman was a bearded skinhead with a Biohazard patch embroidered on his denim vest. He pointed his M-16 at me and crooked back the trigger.

As I ducked back to cover inside the doorway, the skinhead's assault rifle rock-and-rolled on full auto, the small caliber rounds chewing up the doorframe and the hall with a riotous noise like a sewing machine on steroids. Chunks of paint and drywall peppered me as I cringed behind the load bearing doorframe joists, hunched over and hoping the rounds wouldn’t penetrate the 4-by-4s.

Then the chattering burst of fire stopped with the loud beautiful clack of the bolt holding open on an empty chamber: The skinhead had run out of bullets.

Too bad for him, I thought with glee, and swiveled around the corner in time to nail him in the back as he turned to run. He soared forward to face plant hard with the empty M-16 beneath him.

The only things existing now were the door to that classroom and the children’s sobs leaking from it. I was drenched in sweat as if I’d taken a shower with my clothes on, I was breathing like a bellows as I left the cover of the doorframe and started slowly across the wide open kill-zone of that hallway, stepping gingerly so as not to slip and fall on Wayne’s entrails, the.38 extended stiff-armed to my front.

The skinhead lay face down atop his M-16, kicking rapidly at the floor with both steel toe boots alternately like he was trying to scamper horizontally through the linoleum and away from this whole fiasco. The entrance wound in his back wasn’t spurting or welling with blood – instead a red splotch slowly, quietly spread on his denim vest.

That meant his heart had stopped, and his horizontal shit-kicking two-step was no more than his cortical ganglia firing reflexively in denial of his own end. He wasn’t a threat so I put him from my mind as irrelevant – ‘No time, no time,’ a voice in the back of my throat wanted to moan.

Through the door I saw the weasel leaning heavily against the teacher’s desk. His right arm hung down limp from his smashed and bloody shoulder. The canvas bag and his.45 lay on the desk but his other hand was out of sight. I kept my pistol pointed at him as I passed through the doorway and stepped over the skinhead’s spasming corpse.

The children were crowded against the wall, sitting or on their knees, many of them with their hands behind their heads like they were under arrest. They squirmed and cried; snot and tears streaked most of their faces.

The school janitor, a small man with wavy black hair, lay on the floor in front of them. His mop was still clutched in his outstretched hand as he sprawled there, shot dead trying to defend them with it.

The teacher gaped at my mauled remnant of a face, and several of the children whimpered even harder when they saw me. Hell, I looked worse than the Bad Guy here, with half my head a gory ruin. But at least I was becoming numb now.

I held up my left hand to shield the bloody crater in my face from the children’s horrified view. I wrenched my single-eyed gaze away from all those staring little faces and turned toward the Weasel. Behind me, the dead skinhead’s steel toes stopped drumming against the floor.

The Weasel was a barely contained bundle of nervous energy, bandy-muscled and intense; fully alive – as alive as me or any of these children. His previously hidden hand was now revealed, holding up a grenade rigidly akimbo. The pin was pulled – only the pressure of his hand kept the spoon from flying away and the fuse from igniting.

He glared wildly at me, the bridge of his nose wrinkled rock hard like a marble bust. "Think you're bad, motherfucker? You back off, right now, or all these kids get splashed." He appeared on the edge of hysteria.

Someone outside was barking something into a megaphone – the cops, of course. But they were out there. It was a whole different world in here.

I limped robotic and stiff-legged toward this last threat, aiming dead-on at Weasel.

"Stop. Stop right there or I’ll do it, man, I’ll do it,” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth as he clutched the grenade like some sort of talisman guarding him from the reality of consequence.

I did stop, the muzzle of the.38 about a foot from his sweating face. I was wobbling badly on my feet now, and I had to finish this before I fell down for good. Weasel would honor his threat and drop the grenade or throw it any second now.

Without turning I mumbled to Teacher. "Down, get them down." My croaking voice didn’t sound human, even to me.

At first she made no reply. Then realization must have dawned in her distracted mind: “Lie down children, lie down now,” she said.

I could barely hear her voice through the growing roar in my ears. I sensed rather than heard all the kids stirring as they obeyed her.

“What -?” Weasel began, staring at me in incomprehension as I carefully shot him, right between the eyes.

Blood and brains squirted out the back of his head, his eyeballs bulged onto his cheeks from over-pressure, and he dropped like the sack of shit he was. His grip loosened as he fell brain dead, and the spoon flew off his grenade with a tinkle.

I toppled forward atop him, fumbling for the grenade as if it were a loose inflated ovoid in some kind of team sport championship game. I grabbed it with my numb fingers and pulled it in tight to my stomach and landed heavily on my side, body curved to maybe shape the blast a little bit away from the children.

Time slowed way down as I lay there and waited forever. When I finally realized the main charge wasn’t going to detonate, an epiphany sputtered and fizzled through my sodden brain: This is what it comes down to, I thought – a freaking hang fire, that’s all it was.

I lay there for a moment on my side, stunned for the second time since the start of this whole thing by the mere fact of my continued survival. Then the last scraps of my strength gave way, and I lost my grip on the grenade and rolled onto my back.

The cops were coming into the building now, baying at each other like hounds as they cleared the rooms in turn and by the numbers. Outside, ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ finally ended and the DJ began spieling an excited monolog about the hostage situation at the school. This whole fracas had lasted less than three or four minutes from beginning to end.

Despite the growing cold seeping into my bones, I was mentally spry enough to wonder if they’d get an ambulance to me in time. To tell the truth I was getting pretty tuckered, and a dirt nap didn’t sound like that unpleasant of a prospect. I looked up at the darkening ceiling for a while and then I managed to peer around at the hysterical children, all of them unharmed as far as I could see.

My eye lit on the wall clock, and I tracked the second hand as it swept round the dial. I seemed to be riding an eternal present here. How strange to lie here counting each new ‘now’ as it came into existence with every second ticked off by that ratcheting clock hand, surprised each time that I was still there to see it.

I was still wondering what was going to happen next even as everything faded to black.

Chapter 12

I died on the way to the hospital but they weren’t willing to let me go, they insisted on bringing me back with their drugs and machines. I remember a dream wherein I bobbled balloon-like around the ceiling of the ambulance, looking down at my torn bloody body from outside as latex-gloved hands scuttling over me like crabs on a drowned corpse; hands doing hateful things to me. But the hallucination ended when I ectoplasmically burrowed back into that meat puppet shell.

I remember frantic voices and bright lights, and the acrid medicinal stench of the E.R. I knew so well from my misbegotten youth. They’d successfully jump-started me back into the land of the living but I was living in pulses by then, fading in and out until it all went completely black again as they wheeled me into the O.R.

I went away, for how long I couldn’t tell you. There was just enough consciousness flickering through me that I had a dim somatic self-awareness – but not enough to know my name or care about my situation.

My ego was on hold. ‘I’ no longer existed. ‘I’ was a plant, a vegetable enjoying my unconsciousness.

There was none of the pain of being a human, none of the burden of identity. Just sweet dreamless oblivion. It would have been nice to stay in that nirvana forever, but it wasn’t to be: my eye opened and I stared up at the plump pretty blonde nurse hovering over me.

She was adjusting some piece of equipment out of my field of vision. Wires and tubes were stuck all over me, their coordinated beeps chorusing throughout the room. Half my head was cocooned in bandages, and there was an agony where my left eye had been.

The nurse sensed me looking, and our gazes locked. She had beautiful hazel eyes that widened as she gasped; but she got her game face back on fast, gifting me with a smile.

“The children,” I groaned.

She shook her head, not understanding my gargling attempt at speech. I growled in frustration and heaved up off the bed. The nurse pressed my call button over and over and doctors, interns and RNs ran in like they had nothing better to do.

“Relax, Markus,” the oldest doctor said, pressing my shoulders back down. “You need to rest.”

I was too weak to fight the pin. And besides, the look he gave me wasn’t hostile. He was probably a pretty nice guy, a gray haired old veteran of the medical wars.

“The children,” I whispered, all energy fading fast.

He finally understood: “The children are all just fine, Markus. Not one has a scratch on them.”

“Okay then,” I muttered, and sank into blackness again.

Chapter 13

“It’s a miracle, really,” Doctor told me, shaking his distinguished gray head; residents and nurses flanked him as if adding moral support to his expertise by their numbers. “A few millimeters to the right and you’d be dead, or a vegetable.

“The bullet passed completely through the orbital bones of the left socket and out. The brain was physically untouched except for hydrostatic shock, but I’m afraid the eye is completely gone.”

I reached up to touch the bandages swathing the left side of my head and face. Even through the excellent dope they had me pumped up with, I could still feel throbbing pain in the hole where my eye had been.

“How’s about bringing me a mirror?” I said.

Dorcas, the same blonde nurse I’d first woken to, went and fetched one. I held it up to take a gander at myself. They’d done a good job; the bandages were wrapped pretty neatly.

The right side of my face looked completely normal. I plucked at the clean white gauze concealing the left half, lifting the bandages away.

Doctor raised a hand as if to stop me. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Markus.”

I looked at him, and his hand dropped. Even though I was a convalescent Cyclops, I was still twice as wide as him and fully conscious this time.

“Let’s just call it a self-diagnostic, Doc,” I said as I finished pulling the bandages off. “I’ll be my own second opinion.”

I raised the mirror and studied my reflection: the angry red pit where my left eye had been; the stitches radiating outward from the weeping hole like the cracks you’d see fanning out around a bullet hole in a windshield after someone got shot helpless and terrified in their car.

Slash had popped me at point-blank range so the muzzle gases had left a grayish stain surrounding the wound; the packing and un-ignited cordite had peppered into my skin. I’d be wearing that facial tattoo for the rest of my life as a sweet little additional embellishment.

The empty eye socket and the gunpowder stain looked fake somehow, like something out of a horror movie. It wasn’t me, couldn’t be.

But it was. My jaw clenched so tight the muscles thrummed a drum roll in my temples that wouldn’t stop; my teeth squeaked and ground together.

Someone fumbled at me, holding me down as a needle slid into my arm and everything started feeling right again. As I slipped back home into darkness I opened my eye and spoke to the faces surrounding me.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all good. I wasn’t much to look at before, so no harm done, eh?” I rolled my head on my pillow, closing my eye to shut them all out. After a short while I got to go to sleep again.

Chapter 14

When I came to the next time I was surrounded by cops; they filled my hospital room to overflowing. I cringed inside, flashing back to the day they took me from my family. I recognized a few of the veterans, seven years older now. But most of the cops in the room looked like rookies, their faces unfamiliar. There’d been a lot of turnover in the SBPD while I was away.

A lot of these Badges were smiling at me, which wasn’t reassuring at all. The only times I could remember members of law enforcement being happy around me had been when they were about to put me in a major hurt locker.

“Hello, Markus,” the cop with the most insignia said from a folding chair next to my bed.

He appeared extremely young to be chief; he also looked somehow familiar. He had a bear-like girth; he could probably use a little cardio work. He was wearing makeup, which was none of my business of course.

“I am Chief Jansen,” he said, palms together and fingers steepled. “How are we feeling today?”

His eyes roved my maimed face boldly, paying close attention to the bandages concealing my wounds. I looked away toward the corner of the hospital room where a lanky horse-faced woman perched on the edge of another folding chair, typing on a court recorder machine.

One cop aimed the mike of a tape recorder at me; another officer discretely clicked away with a digital camera, alternating his shots between me and the Chief. A third pointed a camcorder my way, making sure to include Chief Jansen in the frame as much as possible. I flashed then that Jansen was wearing the make-up so he wouldn’t appear as corpse-like as I was going to on the deposition video.

“We will have your statement,” the Chief said. “We have many questions. We are very interested in hearing what you have to say.”

“I want a lawyer,” I said.

Jansen pursed his meaty lips, and then smiled. “We can supply representation if that makes you feel more comfortable. But why do you even think you need a lawyer, Markus?”

My one remaining eye commenced with a nervous tic. Did he think I’d gotten a sudden case of amnesia? Did he think I’d forgotten that the last time I talked to the cops I’d done seven years for a crime I didn’t commit?

But keeping my mouth shut would’ve been chicken-shit and useless. I was in the fish bowl just like inside, I couldn’t make this a safe place just by playing possum.

“I’m ain’t copping to nothing, but obviously I was at the scene,” I said, as if grudgingly.

“Yes, you were. Forensics has put most of it together. That was an incredible fight you fought, a true work of art. We just need you to fill in a few of the blanks for us.”

“I’m not trying to play coy here, but let’s call a spade a spade: It was multiple homicide – not a ‘fight,’ as you put it. That’s a capital crime in most states, last time I looked.” I said.

Jansen’s mouth quirked. He looked around at the surrounding officers, gestured regally at the stenographer, the camcorder, and the camera.

“Your need to protect yourself is understandable,” he said. “For the record, we say the case will be closed as justifiable homicide.”

“I’d like to hear that from a higher authority than you,” I said.

Now the Chief appeared steamed. It was interesting to study the vein throbbing in the middle of his forehead, me keeping my face as stupid as I could while enjoying his discomfiture. He opened his mouth to say something I figured was going to be on the unfriendly side of things, to put me in my place as it were.

One of the cops approached the Chief, managing to catch Jansen’s attention even while simultaneously doing his best to be invisible. Jansen calmed down immediately, nodding to him as if doing a tag team handoff.

This new cop was tall and what most would call handsome, with broad shoulders, wavy black hair, and a uniform shirt tailored to accentuate his muscles. He seemed preoccupied with leather and cop paraphernalia; he was festooned with polished black straps and buckles, and had a lot more gear weighing him down than most of the other cops seemed to find necessary. He looked like a recruiting poster.

“Hi, Markus,” he said with a boyish, plastic smile. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine. “I’m Officer Rick Hoffman.”

He stuck out his paw and I touched it for a moment, then let go. He pulled out a cell phone and hit a speed dial number, waited.

“Hello, Mister Gallico?” he said. “It’s like we talked about, he needs to speak to you.” He held out the phone to me, and I put it to my un-bandaged ear.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“This is Tom Gallico, District Attorney. Do I need to prove it?”

“No,” I allowed. “I guess you’re who you say you are.” Gallico had never spoken the times he was present during my courtroom crucifixion seven years before, but I recognized his voice from campaign commercials. Hell, I’d even voted for him.

“Well, Officer Hoffman said I’d need to talk to you, and it looks as though he was right as he is so often. I just want to tell you, Markus, we have no plans to file charges against you in this matter. In fact, I’ll cut right to the chase: If you did violate any laws on that day, I’m prepared to offer you complete immunity. Put Chief Jansen on again, please.”

I handed the cellie to the Chief and he listened as Gallico’s declamation issued tinnily from the ear piece. He handed the phone back to Officer Hoffman and looked commandingly around again at the stenographer, the camcorder, and the camera.

“Formally entered into the record, the subject in question is hereby offered full and complete immunity from prosecution for any actions performed that day at the school, in return for his present cooperation with this inquest, said offer authorized by Stagger Bay District Attorney Tom Gallico.”

He turned back to me. “Now it is in evidence. Satisfied?”

“Fully and completely,” I said, and started talking.

I tried to keep in control of my game, but it was harder than I thought to revisit the events of that day. The deposition might have gotten away from me a little bit in some parts; in a couple of places the words may even have poured from my mouth like a runaway freight train of verbiage. But at least my war face didn’t slip all the way – I was damned if I was going to show punk in front of the Man.

When I’d caught my breath after finishing my tale, I asked the Chief, “You going to tell me what it was all about?”

He gazed into the distance. “Those suspects you took, they had just robbed the First National Bank at Stagger Bay Center. One of the tellers hit the silent alarm and was shot dead for it.

“Officer Jerry Pino in Car A-11 responded while the perps were still inside, but they blasted their way out. You saw firsthand the weaponry they had – Jerry was outgunned, they took him too. Three customers and another teller were caught in the cross fire; the teller may survive.

“We wanted them bad, Markus. They were not going to escape us, and you cannot outrun a radio after all. But then they wound up inside the school in a hostage situation, and you went and involved yourself.”

“Have you identified them yet?” I asked, wanting to know something of these men I’d murdered.

“One of them had just been released from Pelican Bay; one of your classmates. All of them had records as long as my arm – a bit like you, Markus, before you reformed and became a law abiding citizen.” Jansen chuckled at his own joke.

“Only one of them was local, the one blown up by the grenade. Wayne Something, where did he live again?” the Chief looked around at his junior officers with brows raised.

“In the Gardens,” one cop contributed from where he leaned against the wall in the corner.

He said it like it was a phrase he wouldn’t use in mixed company. He punctuated it by spitting a brown dip-loogie into the soda can he held.

He wore a battered non-regulation Stetson cowboy hat, pulled down to conceal the upper part of his face like he was trying to sleep. He had one leg pulled up so the heel was planted against the wall under his butt, as if ready to thrust himself into action at a moment’s notice. He had a Colt.357 Magnum in his holster rather than the 9mm-auto most departments favored for a service side-arm, and I didn’t figure his down-at-the-heel cowboy boots for any part of a regulation cop uniform neither.

The Chief nodded at the cowboy-cop’s input, and then returned his attention to me: “Why did you involve yourself, Markus?” Jansen asked, studying my face closely as he leaned forward. “You must have realized it was a hopeless situation. Why did you take them?”

“How did you see it panning out?” Chief Jansen asked slowly, smoothly, gently. “What was going through your head?”

“Here’s where I’ve got to balk, Chief,” I said. “I’m sharing the physicality of what happened as legally required; I’m giving you most of it. But my state of mind? That’s only supposed to be important during sentencing, and you said no charges were to be filed. What happened inside my head belongs to me.”

“Please relax, Markus,” Officer Hoffman said. “You’re among friends with us.”

I looked at him in disbelief. But then I took a good gander at the law enforcement crowding the room, many like they were bellying up to some kind of banquet and they were all famished. Most of these badges, most of these cop faces pointed at me, were beaming approval.

For the first time in my life I was surrounded by law dogs who weren’t projecting animosity at me. I might even be able to convince myself they liked me.

I felt like with one tweak of the dial I could be accepted. Like I had an opportunity to truly let go of my past forever, slip back into the American consensus without a ripple.

Then I noticed the cop in the corner, the one who had a poor opinion of the Gardens, didn’t seem to share his brother officers’ bonhomie: He looked daggers at me from under the brim of his Stetson as our gazes met. Several of the other veterans didn’t look like they really wanted to be drinking buddies either.

That kind of brought me right down off my fluffy cloud and back to familiarity. These weren’t my intimates and the badge would always separate me from them, even if they were all as human as I.

Should I tell them how I’d done my best to channel Sun Tzu and Musashi at the school? Or how comfortable it would be to pretend Gracian and Machiavelli were whispering advice in my ear at this very moment? No: that would be TMI.

“All right,” I said, deciding on what was the least amount of truth I could expose and make them feel satisfied enough they’d go away and leave me the fuck alone. “You wanted my take on how it would all pan out? You want what went on in my brain? Cool. You asked for it, you got it.

“The way they laughed after they shot her, it’s like I got this psychic flash off them or something. It’s like I got to know them all in that instant, inside and out, like the sound of that laugh told me everything that was going to happen, everything they were gonna do.

“They were going to massacre anyone in their clutches at the end, I just knew it, it don’t matter you believe me or not. Those kids’ chances were slim to none.

“Most of those kids were going to die, hard, no matter what I did.” I smiled defiance at all those surrounding badges. “And then of course, the families of all the kids who died would blame me for antagonizing the killers instead of waiting on you, the wonderful wonderful cops, and they’d curse my name forever as being responsible for their babies’ deaths.”

Nobody said anything for a while – the stenographer stared straight ahead with her languid fingers poised idle above the keys of her livelihood. The internal mechanism of the camcorder whirred as it continued recording my deposition for posterity.

“I couldn’t let them die alone, could I?” I blurted out to the friendlier looking cops, surprising even myself at that failure in self control. “I had to make them think someone was coming to save them, maybe make them a little less scared even if they were all doomed, right?”

The Chief nodded after a few seconds and then stood. “Perhaps it is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, it does not even matter – but I know the Beardsley kill by heart, and I know you did not do it. And now the wonderful science of DNA has brought you back to us.”

He smiled at me. “Welcome home Markus. I know I speak for everyone here.”

“What was her name?” I asked the Chief, as he shook my hand preparatory to leaving with his entourage of media recorders. “The woman officer they shot at the school, I mean. The one driving.”

“Her name was Kendra Tubbs.”

Most of the force stood in line after that to shake my hand as well. I figured I could probably jaywalk with impunity in Stagger Bay for a little while.

Not all the cops stopped to pay homage however. Some left without even looking my way, apparently having more important business to attend to than pressing flesh with the likes of me.

My scowling friend in the corner waited until everyone else had left the room and we were alone before coming over to stand next to my bed, mad-dogging down at me with baleful eyes. He’d been drinking and the smell of cheap beer wafted off him. Seeing his face without the Stetson pulled down to conceal it, I saw he’d forgotten to shave for a day or three; his lower lip stuck out from the load of dip he had parked there.

This guy was a rough cob, the kind of thick-skulled hard-knuckled redneck I’d always given full respect and attention to when I’d had to bump chests with them back in the day. He was a dirty fighter born and bred, a man who would have you spitting plenty teeth if you weren’t careful.

“You’ve sure got all those rookies from out of town fooled, but I’ve got your number,” he said. “You’re right in my sights, bub.

“So you didn’t kill the Beardsleys? So you saved those kids? Point of fact, you’re just as bad as those animals you killed at the school – you were just fighting on the right side for the first and only time.”

“Does this mean you don’t want my autograph?” I asked.

A sudden expression of agony writhed across his face for an instant before disappearing, but not in reaction to my feeble wisecrack. “Why’d she have to die, and not you?” he asked, even as his sneer returned.

He spat again but his accuracy was curiously inexpert, as the brown juice completely missed his can and instead stained my blanket in a widening pool of brown. Strangely, I felt no urge to comfort him. As he left, I didn’t beg him to stay.

Hoffman stuck his head around the corner, aiming that submissive smile at the floor until he gave me a semi-direct glance and saw the expression on my face. He squinted back down the hall in the direction my newfound buddy had gone, then nodded to himself before coming in.

“Markus, I like you just fine, please believe that. I understand you. But not everyone in this town appreciates you as much as I do; they don’t know you at all.”

“So who the hell is he?” I asked Hoffman. “And what’s his beef with me?”

“His name’s Reese. And the female officer who died behind the wheel, the one you watched shot? That was his fiancée. They were going to be married next week.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, his feelings for her are certainly understandable, but I think you’re probably right – he and I ain’t going to be very close.”

Chapter 15

“Excuse me, Markus?” A man stood by my hospital room door. He looked to be Chinese, with an expensive haircut, an Armani suit, and a watch the price of which could have fed a third world village for a decade. “I’m here to do you the biggest favor of your life. May I speak to you for a moment?”

“My card, Markus,” he said, handing me an elegantly embossed rectangle of bone-white pasteboard.

He took a step back away from my space. His coat was unbuttoned and open; his hands were at his sides with empty palms facing me, fingers spread. His face was blandly polite but he was reading me like human radar, receptive and open to my every mood – this guy was slick as snot.

The card read ‘Alden Wong,’ followed by contact info: cellie, fax, and email – no more. I gave him a questioning look and he smiled:

“I’m a PR man, Markus, an agent. I negotiate and make deals: sell, promote, maximize distribution, whatever makes money for my client. I’m the best there is at what I do,” he said.

He leaned toward me, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Have you given any thought on how to take advantage of your current situation?”

“I just want to be left in peace and left alone,” I said. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“I know you didn’t, Markus. But you’re a bona fide national hero – and Lord knows America is starved for heroes these days. Like it or not you’re part of something bigger now, and they figure you belong to them,” Alden said, nodding toward the outside world.

“Cameras are going to follow you, Markus. Microphones are going to be stuck in your face wherever you go. The media will hound you; the public will want to see you, to know who you are.

“You’ll have interview requests from newspapers, from television networks. It’s going to happen – your only choice is in how you use it, how you consume this energy. Are you ready for that kind of attention?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not. Okay, so my face and name are bouncing around right now. But it’ll be a flash in the pan – I’ll endure my fifteen minutes of fame, and then they’ll all lose interest.”

Alden stepped closer and looked at me with eyes wide and brows lifted. “That’s my point. We have to strike while the iron is hot, and that’s what I do best: I’ll make a better fifteen minutes of fame for you, with a fatter financial reward for your actions.”

“I’ll have you on daytime, primetime, and late night. I’ll get you on syndicated and satellite radio,” he said. “I’ll get you book contracts and movie deals, athletic gear and men’s cologne sponsorships; I’ll put you on the lecture circuit and have you do mall openings. You’ll have lunch at the White House and maybe even throw the opening pitch at the World Series – hell, I’ll have you giving seminars on close combat tactics at Quantico, and at Coronado for the Teams. The possibilities are endless, if you’re interested.”

“I’m sure you mean well,” I said. “But can’t you see I hate this kind of attention?”

Alden pursed his lips and shifted gears. “That was a noble thing you did that day, Markus. I’m here to tell you, you deserve to get paid – and I’m going to make you a lot of money. You’ve got it coming – I know you’ve been through a lot, the false imprisonment thing and all.”

“That’s the past,” I said. “It’s not even worth talking about.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Alden said. “Seems to me a man with a background like yours has a lot to talk about: the kind of childhood you must have had, and being an innocent man in prison like so many others. About doing what you did in a situation where you had no chance at all, and pulling it out of your hat like that. If you do this with me, you’ll have the biggest soap box in the world to speak your piece from.”

“I wouldn’t know what to say.”

Alden grinned, his perfect array of teeth resembling a shark’s. “Oh, I think when the time comes, once you get used to it, you’ll have a lot to tell us. I’d venture to say we won’t be able to shut you up; you’ll get hooked on it like everybody else does. We’ll make a camera whore of you yet.”

“What are you doing with my patient?” Nurse Dorcas asked from the doorway. As she watched Alden bid me farewell and leave, she was visibly upset. “These media people. They’ve been awful, Markus, just awful.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She looked at me, thought for a moment with her chin cupped in one plump hand, and then turned on the TV. The sound was off, muted. On the screen a woman newscaster stood in front of yellow crime scene tape at the school, yakking away soundlessly.

Behind her on the screen, through the open double doors where I’d first made my stand, CSI technicians poked around in the relative dimness of the ruined stretch of hallway where Wayne met his end. Even on the TV’s grainy screen I could clearly see the dark stain on the vestibule wall where I’d been shot.

Inset in the upper left corner of the screen, above the silently gesticulating newswoman, they had one of my old mug shots on display. I’m not particularly photogenic, and they hadn’t gotten my pretty side.

“Jeez Louise,” I said.

The station cut from the newscaster to close-up footage of me lying on my hospital bed with the left side of my face bandaged, talking away. Chief Jansen was prominent, flanked by uniformed cops crowding the walls of the room – the same room I was in right now. Someone in the Stagger Bay Police Department had sold my deposition video to the networks.

As Dorcas turned up the volume, the scene cut again and the newscaster did a voiceover: “A neighbor with a camcorder was eye witness to some of this, and we’re fortunate enough to have footage of what happened outside the school at least. We give fair warning here – the following images are shocking and intense, and we recommend a parental advisory.”

I saw the school entrance again. I stood there onscreen with my stiffened back toward the camera as I shouted like an irate baboon; next to me, the mortally wounded principal sat pawing my leg. It was amateur footage – the shaking camera lurched over to pan on the shattered cop car for an instant, then jerked back to zoom in on my back as the door crashed open, and Slash and Wayne rolled out leering like clockwork monsters.

I watched the grainy film of Slash raising his pistol, heard a muted bang from the TV as I watched parts of me splash onto the wall next to that poor one-eyed schmuck trapped forever inside the video loop. My doppelganger turned to look at what dripped down.

I shut my eye as even more noises emitted from the TV’s speakers. “Turn it off please, Dorcas.”

She did so, and when I opened my eye she was blinking back tears. She went to the window and opened the drapes. Sunlight flooded the room, and I squinted as I rose up on one elbow to peer outside.

Stagger Bay Hospital was built in the shape of a big square C, and I was on the second floor of one of the arms. I could see the main entrance to the hospital, as well as the parking lot with its medevac Flight of Life helipad off to the side.

It was a three ring media circus out there. The parking lot was crammed with dozens of news vans, almost all with satellite antenna masts and dishes deployed like electronic trees. Most had major network logos plastered on them; some of the news service names were in foreign languages and alphabets.

Newscasters made antic gesticulations for their camera crews, or were being made up in preparation to do so. Hundreds of non-local people, most of them well dressed, milled around talking to one another. Every person who entered or exited the hospital, whether civilian visitor or medical staff, ran a gauntlet of microphones.

Paparazzi were stationed in ambush at the main door of the hospital, but they didn’t click away at everyone entering or exiting. They were saving their film for bigger fish. Maybe for a one-eyed old ex-con.

“Jeez Louise,” I said again.

Dorcas nodded with her pale lips crimped together. “I’m sorry, Markus. They’ve been trying to get up here this whole time, but we’ve managed to hold them off so far. None of us want this for you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, lying back to stare at the ceiling as Dorcas closed the curtains and left to continue her busy rounds. “It’s all good.”

Chapter 16

Dorcas went off shift and the night crew took over. I didn’t know them, having been unconscious during their previous ministrations. I closed my eye and pretended to be asleep when any of them came into my room.

As if I hadn’t felt trapped enough by my injuries and the cops’ attentions, now the media folk made me understand how any mouse felt with a hungry cat licking its dainty chops outside that rodent’s hole. I couldn’t stay at this hospital; I had to get away. Technically it was the medical equivalent of dining and dashing, but I was sure the hospital administrators would be warmly sympathetic to my plight.

I waited ‘til after midnight to make my move, when things had quieted down. It took some effort to wrestle myself vertical, but I finally managed to sit upright on the edge of the bed.

I pulled the IV catheter out my arm and stood, tottering. The linoleum floor felt arctic against the soles of my bare feet.

I shambled like a reanimated corpse to the closet, looking for something to wear, and was surprised to find my prison release clothes, still stained and tattered from the school. By all rights they should have been disposed of as biohazard, or put in the SBPD evidence locker.

But Stagger Bay was a small town – I counted my blessings and put them on. The dried blood made them stiff.

I peeked out the door: No one in sight. From the right came the murmuring unhurried activity typical of any nursing station in the wee hours.

I headed left. At the end of the corridor was a lit exit sign and I clung to it like a beacon, aiming my body at it in a slow decrepit stroll, leaning my shoulder against the wall and sliding along.

Every second I expected hospital staff to call out ‘stop;’ every room I passed, I expected paparazzi to leap out with cameras blazing. But I reached the exit door without event and pushed it open to see a flight of stairs wending downward.

It would have been entertaining for a second party to watch my progress down to the first floor, but for me it wasn’t quite so amusing. I got a death grip on the railing and leaned my forehead against it with my eye closed. It was a drunken, slow-motion scramble, often head first, with only my sliding grip on the rail preventing a total nose dive down the stairwell.

I was proud of how neatly I negotiated the reverse at the landing; felt like I was doing some complicated gymnastics move. I followed the next rail to the bottom, then straightened up, opened my eye, and reeled across to the exit.

I opened the door a crack. I was at the corner of one arm of the hospital. The parking lot was to my right, well lit despite the hour; to my left was a barrier of blackberry thickets.

The news trucks still dominated the parking lot. If anything, there were more of them than before. Satellite antennas aimed at the sky, pumping live broadcasts to viewers around the globe. Newshounds stood around in clumps, sucking on coffee and staring at the front of the hospital like a dog pack eying treed prey. Freelance photographers prowled the outskirts, scavengers awaiting the crumbs dropped by their betters in this digital Serengeti.

I slunk away to the blackberry thicket, squeezed through an opening and through the clawed, grasping branches until I reached a wide open space on the far side. The edge of a marsh was at my feet.

I knew this spot well from before prison. A large creek came down from the foothills and delta-ed into this marsh before finally draining to the southern wetlands of the Bay. It was a soggy low-lying area dotted with raised tussocks of mud, swamp grass, assorted shrubbery, and carnivorous plants. The air was moist and pungent with the smells of life and decay; the only native sounds were those of birds and frogs, insects and slow-moving water.

When Sam was a boy we’d ridden our bikes here for nature hikes on numberless occasions. There were tadpoles in season, and the big predatory water beetles they called electric light bugs, because of their habit of flopping across the ground toward any source of artificial illumination. The beetles were huge things that looked like they’d be better suited to co-starring in a Japanese horror movie than haunting a backwoods swamp.

There were crows and snakes and possums here too, as well as skunks and lots of mud. It was a little boy’s paradise and Sam always loved it. Tell the truth, I hadn’t minded it too much myself, being a big-city boy who’d never come closer to Wild Kingdom than on the picture tube of my TV.

Frogs throbbed out their mating song, the shrill chorus seeming to mock me and my current situation. Once, with Sam, this had been one of my favorite places on earth. Now it seemed eldritch and menacing in the moonlight.

Weakness overcame me and I sank to lie on my side in the mud at the edge of the water, staring into the dimness of that inhuman swamp. I closed my eye and fell asleep to the frogs’ malevolent piping and the rustlings of all the little swamp creatures going about their nocturnal business.

Chapter 17

I woke at dawn and the air was clammy; I was engulfed by a white fog that had risen off the swamp to hide the world in a numb blank swath. Despite the chill I was sweating.

I was on fire; I had a fever, bad. To add to the fun the dope they’d been pumping into me at the hospital had worn off, and my missing eye was really kicking up a fuss; the pain was the worst I’d felt since it had been blown out my skull.

I rose to hands and knees, swaying like a sickly dog as I coughed again and again, each cough a deep, gluey, rattling boom. I finally convulsed up a thick wad of chunky green phlegm, spat it onto the ground in front of me, and studied the gross little puddle clinically from a few inches above. I was in bad shape here.

I got to my feet and commenced shambling slowly through the fog, the swamp water slopping up next to the muddy path I followed. Behind me the hospital bulked up to darken the haze. As long as I was headed away from it, I was going in the right direction.

I hit a path leading uphill away from the marsh and turned that way, toiling up a slight incline that I wouldn’t have given a second thought to in better circumstances. Right then it felt like Mount Everest, and I found it harder and harder to breathe with every step. I felt like I was drowning with each labored rattling breath. My legs were rubbery stilts, stretching an infinite distance from my whirling head to the teetering ground below.

At the top of the path was a sidewalk on an empty street. The fog was thinner here but it still prevented me from seeing more than maybe twenty-five yards in any direction.

Memory failed me; my thoughts were less and less coherent. I had no idea where in Stagger Bay I was.

At random, I turned left and continued slumping along. The further I got from the marsh the thinner the fog got, until it finally disappeared.

I was on a wide street, brand new – an avenue, really. It looked out of place in this uninhabited corner. Both sides of the road were bulldozed and graded flat in preparation for construction, the lots all laid out. Surveyor’s stakes were everywhere, connected by string and fluttering with orange plastic ribbons. Cement sidewalks and curbs were poured and cured – inlets to what would be courts and cul-de-sacs broke the lonely curbing at architecturally appropriate intervals; concrete curves and spirals led off to ghost houses yet to be constructed.

I passed a bulldozer and grader parked next to a prefab contractor’s hut on concrete blocks. The wide avenue teed into a pot-holed cross street leading to my left, into a lurking cluster of identical bungalows, all of them in need of a paint job.

Now I recognized where I was: I’d stumbled my way straight to the Gardens. It was a jarring contrast between those run-down hovels and the pristine blank area I was passing through.

This was the erstwhile home of a man I’d gotten murdered at the school. Wayne, I recalled the Chief saying – his name had been Wayne. I always figured that, at a minimum, you should at least remember the names of people who die because of you.

Chapter 18

I’d always felt calling this neighborhood the Gardens had been somebody’s idea of a bad joke: a ramshackle cluster of one-bedrooms situated in a lowlands next to a swamp behind the ass-end of a hospital was not my idea of a scenic locale.

The Gardens weren’t projects; they weren’t part of any official government housing authority. They were originally little shacks built by some timber baron to house his bachelor loggers. Over time, one slum lord or another had pimped the Gardens’ hovels to whatever people were currently too poor to afford living anywhere else.

The Gardens had always been home for the few black families in Stagger Bay – people who’d been living in this white bread rural community for generations without attaining jobs paying enough to buy property of their own. While the Gardens couldn’t hold a candle to the strife and violence of any Bay Area housing project, it was like a small unofficial hick replica of one.

The Gardens also housed several extended Hmong and Lao clans out of Southeast Asia brought over to the U.S. for services rendered in Viet Nam, and then relocated from the bigger cities to a place where their government sponsors hoped they’d be better able to assimilate. Despite the Hmong being mountain folk themselves, I’d always figured the philosophy behind the move had probably been more ‘out of sight, out of mind.’

Because of the welfare influx, however, the people of the Gardens were all races: black, white, Mexican, Asian -a low-rent Rainbow Coalition. It was still the kind of neighborhood where strangers stick out and residents take immediate note of them, though – you needed a Pass here.

I staggered into the Gardens proper, walking molasses-slow down the middle of the street that was the only way in or out for vehicles. Women were cleaning their narrow porches, and folks sat on what passed for stoops. Children played on dirt patches where lawns should have been, and groups of men worked on cars that looked like they’d be better off sent to the wrecking yard.

As soon as I entered, every eye in sight was staring right at me without shyness or welcome. An old man stood from where he’d been sitting on the stoop nearest me, called hoarsely to the children playing in his front yard, and shuffled inside through the warped screen door. The kids streamed into the house after him like a pack of puppies.

“You’re him, ain’t ya?” a wide-eyed teenage white girl asked, standing right next to me even though I hadn’t noticed her approach.

I ignored her as I stumbled on. The only sounds I heard were papers fluttering in the wind all around me – flyers, posted on every door. Squinting at the nearest sheet flapping in the breeze, I saw ‘ORDER TO VACATE’ posted on it in big letters.

I was drenched in sweat and shivering. My cough had gotten much worse. And, in the blink of an eye, I was the only one on the street anymore. Except… down the block a group of young males stood in front of a stoop, facing me with intent postures.

It was déjà vu: this wasn’t Oakland, I hadn’t been a street kid for years – but this crew appeared familiar. Like if I could just make it all the way to them without falling down, I’d see some of my childhood homies among them. Maybe I’d be as close to safe as surrounding friends could make you.

Of course, when I finally got close I didn’t recognize any of them. ‘What did you expect?’ a voice jeered in the back of my head. ‘All your home boys are dead.’

“You look like shit, dude,” one tall black kid with cornrows said.

I didn’t argue with him. My head commenced spinning and I sank to my knees. I started coughing and couldn’t stop, my booming lungs sounding like a broken washing machine.

I toppled over to lie on my side, which seemed to be becoming a habit for me. My empty left eye socket throbbed, blurring what was left of my vision; but with my good right eye I saw a circle of pants legs and shoes surrounding me.

“Hey, Natalie,” the tall black kid said. “Here’s Sam’s dad. Here’s the cracker who killed your man.”

“Bring him inside,” a woman said from the open door to the nearest bungalow.

With a feeling akin to flight, I was hoisted into the air by many hands. I felt myself being carried up the steps and onto the bungalow’s stoop, but I passed out before we got through the doorway.

Chapter 19

The next while was an endless fever dream. Movement and voices, doors slamming, people coming and going. An occasional hand touching me.

Even in my delirium I felt bone-deep shivering rack my frame. During one of my more lucid moments I felt something delightfully cool and wet mopping my brow. I opened my eye to see who was comforting me.

She was young: a tall big-boned Mexican girl with calm brown features and a long mop of curly black hair, a lit Newport cigarette dangling from her full lips. Her expression didn’t change as she saw I was awake, but she stopped mopping my brow to return my gaze. I drowned in the dilated pupils of those big brown unsympathetic eyes.

“I’m ruining your couch,” I said, embarrassed to be sweating buckets onto her furniture. A small black boy stood behind her, staring at me wide eyed.

“Go back to sleep,” she said.

“You should hate me,” I said.

“Who says I don’t?” she said, exhaling menthol cigarette smoke out her nostrils dragon-like. “You need antibiotics or you’re going to die, though.”

“No hospitals,” I said. “Please let me stay here. Don’t send me back to them.”

“I have to change the dressing on your wound or it’ll get infected,” she said. “It’s filthy.” She fumbled at it, but I slapped feebly at her hand and she stopped.

She started mopping my brow again and I fell asleep. Then I was awake again and on my feet. Somebody was on each side of me with my arms over their shoulders.

“Open your mouth,” Natalie said, fading in and out of focus in front of me. I obeyed, and she put this big horse pill on my tongue.

It was huge, and tasted like shit. I gagged, and then Natalie put a glass of water to my mouth. The glass clicked against my teeth as I guzzled that delicious water, the big pill tearing at my throat as I fought it down. I was out before they laid me back on the couch.

The ordeal with the pill was repeated again and again, I have no idea how many times. Then, out of the blue, I woke to realize my fever had broken. I felt almost fine lying there, except for the pulsing throb where my left eye had been.

The little black kid stood right next to the couch, looking down at me. He held a big butcher knife in his hand, its tip pointed at the floor.

“You killed my daddy,” he said.

“Uncle Moe says this man has to live,” Natalie said from behind us. “But I say it too.”

The boy sobbed, dropped the knife to the carpet and ran from the room. Natalie picked up the knife and laid it carefully on the coffee table instead of sticking it in me herself. She came over to the couch and dropped to squat next to me on her hams.

“You’ll make it now; you weren’t a waste of my time,” she said. She cocked her head to the side. “But you want to know why I’m doing this. You’ve got to be wondering.”

I sat up, naked except for the sheet, which I wrapped around my waist. She had a silver necklace around her neck, and she tugged it out from where it hung between her ample brown breasts. A cross dangled at the end of it, glittering and flashing in the light.

Natalie turned and looked at the wall. A big wooden crucifix hung there with a piece of palm frond wrapped around it. On a table below was a statue of Madonna and Child, staring rapt at each other.

A mirror hung on the wall next to the crucifix. I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in it: a stump-chested pale old white boy with red hair, and one side of his face bound up in filthy bandages. My pecs were still as veiny and shredded as a thousand pushups a day carved them inside. But I’d lost a lot of weight; I was pretty haggard and gaunted up.

“I’m Catholic,” Natalie said. “I was raised to forgive all trespasses against me, and to love my enemies. God is the judge, not me.”

She studied her silver crucifix. “Revenge never fixed nothing, and it sure won’t bring back the dead.”

“But how am I to find forgiveness, Lord?” she asked that cross. “It’s hard; it’s not in me right now. Least ways, not for this one.”

She slipped the cross back between those magnificent breasts and looked at me again. “My brother has use for you, or I think you’d be dead right now. Maybe it would be a mortal sin, but I still could’ve borne the weight of it.”

I couldn’t think of any comeback. “Where’s your facilities?” I asked, not trusting myself to look at her.

Chapter 20

Once I had the bathroom door closed and locked I removed my bandages, looking down as I did so as not to see my reflection in the mirror. There was some hydrogen peroxide in the medicine chest, and poured it in the open wound as I leaned over the sink.

Whilst clutching the edge of the basin to brace against the startling pain, I saw the peroxide’s foam swirling down the drain tinged with streaks of yellow. I could feel and hear the peroxide fizzing and popping on and in my face as I kept pouring until the foam finally drained a steady pink.

I found a box of sanitary napkins and a roll of duct tape under the sink. Sanitary napkins made pretty good street dressings, sterile and absorbent: I remembered once back in Oakland, watching a guy use a tampon from his girlfriend’s purse to plug a sucking chest wound in his partner, sticking it into the bullet hole.

I took out the napkins and tape, forcing myself to look at the wound for as long as it took to cover it up. The napkin deodorant’s daisy fresh scent was a little overwhelming at first.

When I was done, I took a little longer to make sure nothing showed but the undamaged portion of my plug ugly mug. I’d never been the kind of guy who was always eying his own image in reflective surfaces, but I figured me and mirrors weren’t going to be on particularly friendly terms for a while, maybe for good.

I opened the bathroom door to find my clothes on the floor outside, clean and neatly folded. There were still stains on them pre-wash would never take out, and they were pretty ragged. It looked like I was trying to make some kind of goofy fashion statement.

When I came out Natalie took one look at me and snorted, and then laughter flowed joyously through her large shapely frame. But she quickly stopped, appearing guilty.

“You look like you have a patchwork quilt wrapped around your head,” she said, as if defensively. “That’s a very creative use of feminine hygiene products.”

I smiled as if I’d cracked a deliberate joke to make her laugh. I wasn’t too proud to be this beautiful young thing’s buffoon if she’d allow it.

Her gaze dropped to my raggedy clothes. “I almost gave you one of Wayne’s shirts to wear, but I thought that would be inappropriate.”

“You figured right,” I said. “Look, I’ve imposed on your hospitality long enough – and your mercy.”

“What makes you think you’re a guest?” she asked. “Last I heard Big Moe hadn’t given you permission to go.”

There was a knock on the door. Natalie scowled and picked up the butcher knife from the coffee table as I took a wary step backward. Her hips rolled as she stepped to the door and put up the security chain before opening it a crack.

One of the crew I’d seen in my delirium stood there. “You got a smoke?” he asked Natalie – but he stared past her at me.

Natalie pulled her pack of cigarettes from her blouse pocket, put one in her mouth, and sparked it with her butane lighter. “Not for you, Leo,” she said, shutting the door in his face.

“Leo and Wayne were partners,” she said, catching my look. “He got Wayne into boosting car stereos, got him into doing drugs and staying out all night. Wayne was a big boy, but I think if it weren’t for Leo, my man would be here with me instead of on a slab at the coroner’s office.”

She sucked at her smoke, then held it between extended fingers with her palm up and exposed. “Wayne was never any good, but he was so pretty. I guess I always hoped he’d just want to be with me, and that we could just be happy together. Is that so much to ask of anyone?”

Natalie chuckled unpleasantly. “He always liked those action movies – you know, the kind where the hero beats up all the bad guys and saves everyone?”

She stubbed out her cigarette in a handy ashtray. “In the end Wayne got to star in his own movie, only he was the bad guy, and you were the good guy.” There might have been a note of irony in her voice, referring to me as good.

“Yeah, Wayne made his own bed to lie in all right,” she said. “And now I’m the one left to make my own choices, for me and my boy.”

Her eyes flashed at me. “At first I let you live just because my brother Moe said so, he’s always got good reasons even if I don’t always like ‘em. But I had to look at your face hour after hour while you were out, not able to do what I wanted to most. You talked some while you were in that delirium, you remember any of that? Angela – I’m guessing she was your wife.

“Still, Moe finally wasn’t enough – I had to do some praying on it cuz I needed God to tell me not do. I come to believe it’s a miracle you saved those kids and survived; it’s a miracle Big Moe convinced me to spare your life, and it’s another miracle I managed to do so.

“I’m not about to forgive you anytime soon. But I believe God has some purpose for you, else you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Yeah, well, if this is a purpose I’m having a hard time seeing it,” I said. “God’s a fool if he’s working through the likes of me.”

“Are you disrespecting the Lord in my house, Markus?” she asked, voice stern and eyes ablaze.

I back-pedaled fast. “No ma’am.”

“God is watching out for you, Markus, and you’re the fool if you think you can thwart his will. You weren’t alone that day at the school and, when the time comes, you’ll know what he wants you to do next.”

As I opened her front door and stepped out on the stoop, she said, “The couch is yours until Big Moe says otherwise.”

Chapter 21

Those same dozen-odd young hard men were still out there around the porch; maybe they camped out on the lawn or something. This was like a miniaturized fish-bowl version of street life down in the East Bay; it was hard to feel threatened here at all. Hick kids or not though, they sure outnumbered me if I really was a prisoner here.

They huddled around a duct-taped antique of a boom box, listening as a newscaster spoke my name several times. They noted my presence and Big Moe changed it over to the CD player. Dre and Tupac commenced going on and on about ‘California Love’ – given the mood I was in, that sounded like a contradiction in terms.

Looking around at these kids was pretty strange. Here we were in the sticks, in a hillbilly town buried up on the Lost Coast behind the Redwood Curtain, and these young bloods were all dressed up banger style in starter jackets and colored bandanas; many of them wore pants half-mast in baggin saggin style, living large. But they seemed a little awkward about their ensembles, like they knew they were play acting – my take was they’d watched one too many gangsta rap video.

Big Moe came my way; it was hard to reconcile his friendly demeanor with him being my Kiddy Korral prison guard. A skinny white boy walked with him, as close as if they were welded together at the hip. “Hey,” Moe said. “You’re looking almost human today.”

A car pulled up, a Volvo with a couple college students in it. Moe’s skinny little partner trotted over to the passenger door. A transaction took place involving a greenback and a plastic bindle. The Volvo sped off without a word having been exchanged.

“A man’s got to eat,” Moe said, as if defensive.

“I ain’t judging,” I said, wondering why this mopey kid seemed to take everything personally.

“That’s mighty white of ya,” he snorted. “Shit dude, they ain’t even burger flipping jobs in this town. They’s a lot of construction jobs around lately, but I ain’t the right color to get hired even though I was born here. This is it if I want to earn; this is all I got to feed my son and his mama.”

A husky Indian kid with a big, shaved cranium worthy of Lex Luthor came from the direction of the liquor store, carrying an armful of paper bags. He passed out several forty-ouncers and packs of smokes. Then it was apparently his turn to earn and he ran to the curb to deal with a van-load of tweakers.

“Thanks, Mackie,” Big Moe called after him.

Moe offered me a hit off his forty but I shook my head. He shrugged took a healthy swill himself.

Big Moe’s skinny white partner finished his own beer and disposed of it in the garbage can at the end of the stoop. A coffee can was next to the trash, filled with sand and cigarette butts. There wasn’t a speck of litter in front of Natalie’s crib, either on the lawn or in the gutter.

Moe saw my gaze. “Natalie takes care of us, and we make sure nobody litters. We keep the noise down for her too; keep all our biz on a professional level. And as long as the 18th Street Crips are around, both Natalie and Randy will always be well protected. I’d skin a motherfucker alive for either of ‘em.”

“Sounds like a good deal all around,” I said. “The 18th Street Crips, huh? That’s your clique’s name?”

“Yeah,” Mackie the big-headed Indian kid said. “We’ve even got a secret handshake. We’re getting some of those decoder rings made up special.”

He laughed, a jolly shaking sound from deep in his barrel chest. I figured if Mackie lived long enough, when he was older folks would be drafting him into putting on a fake beard and playing Santa every Christmas.

Leo stepped up to us – he couldn’t hold still, like he was ready to jump out of his skin. He looked at me and away, then back at me again; like a stranger dog trying not to antagonize but not really knowing how not to.

“You some kind of killing machine?” he asked. “You offed people before this?”

“That’s no kind of question, son. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. And even if I was stupid enough to answer the way you seem to figure, I’d just be making you an accessory anyways.”

“I ain’t your son,” Leo said. “My daddy’s on death row. They even had him on America’s Most Wanted before they popped him. You wouldn’t know what that’s like.” He twitched his way to the curb to deal with a cowboy in a pickup truck.

“Can I ask you something?” Moe asked. “I know you’re from Oaktown, Karl always made a point of it. That's how you guys roll down there; we’re well aware.”

I was uncomfortable. Just what kind of bull had Karl fed these kids all these years? That him and me just cruised down the block in a drop-top Caddie back in the day, spraying our AKs randomly at all and sundry? It made me wonder if Karl had ever informed these kids that he himself had never done time – somehow he always skated by, and it was inevitably me taking the fall for our shenanigans.

“So how did you take them out so easy?” Moe asked. “You’re not all that big.”

This kid needed reassurance of some kind; he seemed to be in permanent distress. “Do you really think I’m cool, because I killed those men?” I asked him. “It’s certainly nothing to brag of. Do you really think you’re less of a man because you didn’t?”

Before Moe could answer, a cop car rolled through the entrance to the Gardens and pulled up right in front of us. Several customers gunned away from the curb to escape past the cop out the Gardens’ only exit.

Another car entering the Gardens stopped in the middle of the street when the driver saw the black and white. After a few seconds the car backed up, Y-turned, and sped off around the empty development toward the highway.

The 18th Street Crips scattered, walking in different directions without looking back, their backs tight like they were ready to toss-and-run but trying to act casual. Officer Hoffman opened his door and stepped out, adjusting his gear as he stood and stretched. He stood there fussing with his junk as he aimed that handsome mannequin face my way.

“Care to go for a drive?” he asked, fingering the black leather strap running across his rippling chest down to his Sam Browne belt. He turned on that infantile smile and I was forced to smile back almost against my will, at the free ride he offered out of the invisible cage this situation felt to be.

As we left I saw Moe staring after me. I started to give him a grin and a wave over having escaped his clutches. Then I thought about the time and energy they’d expended keeping me alive, and refrained. I faced back forward as Officer Hoffman chauffeured me away from the Gardens.

Chapter 22

This was the first time I’d ever ridden in the front seat of a roller and I’ll tell you, it felt pretty bizarre. As he drove Hoffman sat straight and attentive as if awaiting orders.

“I knew you’d want to talk to the District Attorney,” he said. “I knew you’d protect yourself.”

“Well it was only common sense, Officer Hoffman. You don’t have to read too much into it.”

He studied my face and nodded the whole time I talked, but looked away as he spoke his own words. “Of course it was; you’re exactly right. But call me Rick, please.” There was a sly happiness to him as he shared his Christian name.

When we left out the Gardens sole entrance we had to turn instead of driving straight to the access road that led up out of the lowlands the Gardens nestled in: the new street network and construction layout was in the way, forcing Hoffman to skirt three sides of a huge, empty, cement-rimmed graded rectangle of lots rather than going as the crow flies.

At its top the short, steep access road teed into a well maintained stretch of highway running along the crest of a ridge. To the right the highway led past the hospital to what passed for downtown in Stagger Bay. To the left the highway ran uphill into thickly forested uplands.

There was a sign off the shoulder as Hoffman turned left and began the climb: ‘Moose Creek Road. Residents ONLY.’

We drove uphill, past access driveways to either side every few hundred yards; some gravel, and some poured concrete slab or tarmac paving. Large, expensive looking houses were occasionally visible from the road. All of them stood isolated on their own parcels of land, with plenty of elbow room and privacy.

A roller passed going downhill, Officer Reese driving. Reese and Hoffman made eye contact as they passed but otherwise made neither greeting nor sign of recognition. Moose Creek Road had pretty tight patrol coverage; you’d need a powerful crew to get anything done up here.

We passed other vehicles coming down the hill too; high-end German stuff mainly, with a few SUVs and Hummers thrown in for good measure. I saw that red Cougar on its way down into town, looking bright and shiny as if it’d just been waxed. The long-haired blond driver did a double-take as we passed in opposite directions, I assumed at all the sanitary napkins taped across my face.

The road curved on switchbacks and hairpins, creating striking views: Once I saw a mare and her foal cavorting together on a patch of hillside pasture. Another time I looked out to see the entire Pacific reflecting the sun in a rippling expanse of waves – towards the horizon a pod of whales breached, exhalations geysering up in distant slow motion from their blowholes.

“So what’s going on here, Officer Hoffman?” I asked as we pulled into a gravel driveway.

We parked in front of a rambling Victorian, dwarfed by the stands of old-growth redwoods surrounding it. Its front yard was perfectly groomed and trimmed. But visible in the backyard beyond the house was a disorganized clutter of toys and bric-a-brac: ATVs, a surf boat on a trailer, camper shells, stacks of lumber, and enough other et ceteras to make this very expensive lot look more like a proto-junkyard.

Hoffman aimed that ‘aw shucks’ smile just past me again. “Call me Rick. This is the father of one of the officers that died at the school – Officer Tubbs, the one you watched them shoot execution-style. She was his only child, all the family he had left.”

He almost looked at me now as he spoke. “Listen, Markus, I like you just fine, I’m your friend. But there’s some folks around here you’re not so popular with – bad people.”

We walked to the front door, which opened as we approached. We were expected.

The guy who opened the door was huge, a big hillbilly in a mesh-back trucker’s baseball cap with a neck about as big around as my waist. His identical twin stood a few paces behind, wearing a matching mesh-back cap. One led the way as the other fell in behind Hoffman and me, so they sandwiched us as we walked down the hallway into the living room.

The heat was turned way down like Mr. Tubbs was too frugal to pay out any more than he had to, to PG &E. Stacks of magazines and newspapers in the hallway suggested the current resident might be wrestling with the beginnings of a packrat hoarding obsession.

The living room was dominated by the presence of an old man sitting in an overstuffed yellow leather chair. An overwhelming aroma of Old Spice surrounded him; he apparently doused himself in the stuff. A narrow-brimmed fedora rested on his bony knee, with a green feather in the band. High shiny cheekbones, a balding head of cow-licked white hair that combing would be a waste of time on, and eyes that looked like they could melt holes through titanium. The old man was a real piece of work even though he also looked like death warmed over, like maybe he got his facials done at the undertaker’s.

Officer Hoffman dipped his head to Mr. Tubbs then kept his gaze lowered toward the floor. The Meshback Twins fanned out to take opposite corners of the room behind me, and I wondered if Tubbs ‘boxed’ all his visitors when they came to call.

Tubbs studied me intently. I returned his appraising stare as I took the chair in front of his. I waited but my host was apparently in no hurry to conversate, nor to offer me any refreshment.

He looked me up and down, spending a while on the patchwork of sanitary napkins duct-taped to the left side of my face. His face was deadpan, and I decided right then that this was no man I’d ever play poker with.

He aimed his stare at my stained and raggedy clothes. “You’re not much of a clothes horse,” he observed.

I primped myself defiantly. “This is my lucky outfit,” I said. “We’ve been through a lot together. Besides, I may make it as a male model yet.”

He nodded. “Tell me how my daughter died.”

I took a breath, blew it out. “It was quick,” I said. “She died easy.”

“I didn’t bring you here to be bull-shitted. Kendra wouldn’t have gone quiet.”

“All right,” I said. He was her blood and had a right to know most of it. “I’ll give it to you straight. She knew she was dead, but she didn’t flinch. She looked right in that son of a bitch’s face while he pulled the trigger, and she gave him nothing, nothing at all.”

I shook my head in wonderment at her memory, probing the pain like sticking my tongue into an abscessed cavity. “Mr. Tubbs, I didn’t know your daughter, but it was a privilege to be with her in that moment. She died as well as could be.”

He grunted. “So then a man like you, with a record like yours, he just hauls off and charges into that school unarmed after you watch her die. Why? What was the connection?”

“A lot of people been asking about that one,” I said. “You don’t think the kids were enough of a reason? You don’t think I’d be good for goodness’ sake?”

“Why?” he repeated.

“That’s private,” I said, looking at the floor. “It had nothing to do with Kendra.”

He nodded but didn’t press the issue further. His face squirmed around, and his mouth contorted into what took me a second to realize was a smile, one as warm and sincere as his cadaverous face could approximate. This old man was one tough nut: like daughter like father I supposed.

“That’s about the way I figured, son. I just wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.” He stood.

“I’d like you to go with me somewhere,” he said, planting his jaunty little fedora on his head. I had a suspicion the invitation wasn’t a request.

Chapter 23

The Meshback Twins sat in the front seat: Meshback Number One driving, with Meshback Number Two wedged in next to him. Mr. Tubbs and I sat together in the back seat.

Tubbs’ car was a big old Bronco jacked up on fat all-terrain tires, putting us way higher above street level than I was used to riding at. On the dash radio some redneck warbled a sad song about his dog cheating on him with his pickup truck; I mused on the possible mechanics of that intriguing interaction.

“You probably wouldn’t know it, but I’m kind of a wheel around here,” Mr. Tubbs said. “What I say pretty much goes in Stagger Bay. Not too much happens that I don’t know about.” We were headed toward Old Town.

“Have you given any thought to your future plans, son?” he asked. “You’re quite a celebrity these days. There’s a lot going on in Stagger Bay right now, and I’d like you to be part of it, come on over to our side of things. You’re not the man I thought you were; we had you pegged all wrong.

“You shouldn’t be staying there in the Gardens with those riff raff – we need to put you up in a nice B & B, get you used to being one of us. Hell, I’ll set you up in a cush apartment in Old Town. Or even a house if you like; I own half this town.”

“Maybe I’m more comfortable in the Gardens, Mr. Tubbs. There is cush enough for me.”

“I suppose that’s as good a place to hide as any, though we knew where you were as soon as you lit. Did you know I used to be Chief of Police here, before I handed over the job to Jansen?” he asked, studying his fingernails.

The sidewalks were increasingly crowded the closer we got to Old Town; some big shindig must have been getting ready to throw down.

“Yep, our boys in blue still come to me for advice on tough cases. I still keep my hand in. They came to me about the Beardsleys, actually,” Tubbs said, looking out his side of the Bronco at the thickening crowd, all of them watching us as we passed. “A man like you, an outsider from Oakland with a violent record like yours? We keep a close and wary eye on ‘em no matter how well they behave.

“I’ve seen your rap sheet, Markus. I know you were in CYA for a decent hunk of your teens, I know all about what you were. You were born to pin what happened to the Beardsleys on.”

“What are we saying here?” I asked. “You hung the frame on me?”

“Now, don’t be putting words into my mouth, son,” Tubbs said. “I’m not confessing to nothing.”

“Pull over now,” I said, sitting as far from him as I could.

“You’ll hear the rest first,” he said. He took his hat off and toyed with the pretty feather. “My daddy taught me never to complain, never to explain, and never to apologize. Well, I’m going to break that rule here, for the first time in my life. I’m sorry for what happened to you, Markus. I know you didn’t do it, and I’m glad you’re free again, and that’s as much as I’m going to say.”

The withered bastard looked at me hard, but his eyes glistened. “Thank you for putting paid to those whore sons for my girl. I owe you my marker. You can cash it in any old time. I don’t care whether you like it or not, I’m going to keep an eye out, and if there’s ever anything I can do for you-”

“We’re here,” the driver said as we crossed 4th Street on F and entered Old Town proper.

We were coming up on the Plaza’s wide expanse of cobblestone. Its fountain’s water jets danced and gurgled merrily in front of its spiral-ramped, raised gazebo. Bunting hung from surrounding buildings.

Usually the Plaza was crowded with scavenging pigeons and the shrieking children and barking dogs that chased them. Today its cobblestones were surrounded by barricades, with people of all ages packed against them held back by security personnel. The streets were blocked off and free of traffic, and the surrounding sidewalks were crowded with people who commenced a loud cheering as the Bronco rolled into view.

Mr. Tubbs guffawed at the expression on my face. “Relax, Markus. This is just the dress rehearsal. Enjoy yourself, son – you earned it. But you and me’ll be talking again later after the main event.”

The Bronco stopped and I climbed out, facing up to the cheering crowd. Church bells started clanging and bonging in the distance – from the direction it sounded like it was Stagger Bay Lutheran making their belfry sing.

Those ubiquitous news vans were here – but they were parked off to the side in a small group, they weren’t the star of this particular show. Several big television studio cameras were strategically deployed on pedestals, all aimed toward the gazebo where a group of people stood.

Cables snaked in various directions across the ground, connecting stacked speakers and an open air sound board which techs tinkered with. A man with a meter was doing a check in front of a bank of lights; another man snuck a cigarette while standing to the side holding a boom mike; a bald guy with a clipboard in his hand gave some kind of briefing to a small attentive crew.

A man and woman hurried up to me, bursting with energy and dazzlingly well groomed. The man had white, shiny chiclet teeth, made me wonder if they glowed in the dark. The woman was dark, and had an East-Coasty vibe.

She took in my combat-weary outfit and her eyes widened. “Yes,” she hissed. “He’s wearing the same clothes he fought in. We’ll have the cameraman get a full length shot of him.”

“You can’t be serious,” the man said. “People aren’t going to want to see him in rags – we’ll find a suit for him somewhere.”

“No,” she insisted. “That’s his brand, don’t you get it? The everyday, everyman look.”

“The bandaging has to go,” he muttered. “It’s tacky.”

The people standing in front of the gazebo drew my attention, as they seemed to be at the focus of the entire setup. A bunch of kids stood in front of the dancing fountain, looking strangely familiar. Next to the kids stood a podium crowned with a bank of microphones; the mayor of Stagger Bay stood behind it, goggling at me. The gazebo reared up behind them all on its spiral-ramped ziggurat pedestal.

I turned away from the still squabbling couple and moved toward the kids. My manic handlers ran after me.

“Wait, Markus,” the man said as they paced me. “We have to get some makeup on you before the run through. You don’t even know where you’re supposed to stand, this is out of order. The children are supposed to be last on the program.”

He had to raise his voice almost to a shout. The crowd screamed and whistled behind the barricades; people clapped and stomped their feet in rhythm, faces red and excited as they chanted my name in unison over and over, with the monotonous ding-dong-DING of the church bells as back beat.

I looked to one side as I walked, and quickly returned my gaze forward: there was Bill, the man who’d once been my barber, who’d spat in my face when I was on the way into the courthouse for sentencing. Now he bobbed up and down in excitement, his eyes glittering as if drunk. Perhaps he thought we were friends again.

At the outskirts of the crowd I saw Officer Hoffman, looking down at the ground. Next to him sat that omnipresent Cougar, its wide-shouldered long-haired blond driver standing next to his ride and staring at me through the interposing mob; his feet were spread shoulder-wide, and both fists were on his hips with his elbows jutting out.

As I tried for a clearer look at him a big, strapping woman darted past security to pick me up in a lusty bear hug and plant a kiss on my cheek. The townspeople roared riotous approval.

And then I was in front of the kids, whom I finally recognized: they were the children from the classroom at the School. They watched wide-eyed as I came up, their parents standing behind them and eying me avidly as well.

This silent group of families faced me without any of the fidgeting or shuffling around I’d have expected from such a meeting. This was stage management, I realized – they were all standing exactly where they were told for this dress rehearsal.

“Smile at them Markus!” the woman handler yelled from behind me.

The non-stop celebratory noise from the crowd and the pealing church bells was almost overwhelming as I looked the kids over: they appeared none the worse for wear from their ordeal.

They broke ranks suddenly and ran to surround me, patting at me with their hands and chattering in excitement. Their parents followed as quickly, and these families ringed me in from the rest of the world. I goggled down at the kids in wonder as they touched me and stroked my arms, as if making sure I was all right, or as if they doubted my reality.

And I realized right then that they belonged to me by way of combat adoption, and I to them. They were as much my family now as if they were blood, and everything they made of their lives from here on in would be something I’d have to take note of. It wasn’t a matter of choice – that load was simply unshirkable and I was stuck with it.

Looking at the parents ringing me in with glistening eyes, at the children pressed close in one big group hug, something snapped inside me. All my life-long hard-won reserve parted like an overloaded cable, and I raised both arms over my head strong with fists clenched.

“Yes,” I snarled up at the Heavens above – try taking THIS away from us, You.

The surrounding townsfolk and busily toiling TV crews thought this dress rehearsal was just the windup to something bigger down the road. They didn’t understand that, to us here, this reunion was the main event – any parade after this would be anticlimax.

There was the flash of a camera followed in quick succession by another, and another. Dozens of television crews maneuvered for position, anchor people eager as they led the way with their microphones. Hordes of paparazzi clicked away as they made their frontal assault on the photo opportunity I represented.

“Look at the cameras,” the male handler ordered.

I glared at him, betrayed. This was supposed to be a dress rehearsal!

The crowd’s chanting continued unabated, as if no one seemed horrified by this development but me. I walked quickly toward the barricades, the camera crews and photographers reluctantly parting to let me through.

As I passed the podium the mayor stood with the key to Stagger Bay in his arms, a big ornate bronze monstrosity that looked heavy. A masking tape X was on the ground in front of him, where I was supposed to stand while he handed it to me. As I slogged past he looked like a girl jilted by her prom date.

As I started running through the crowd I got blurred glimpses of confused faces and the mob’s roar subsided raggedly into a baffled murmur.

I ran away from the Plaza, and past the Sugar Shack. There were maybe a half dozen Harleys parked outside, and a handful of bikers stood next to their sleds goggling at me. I recognized them all: the Stagger Bay Fog Choppers and their Prez, a skinny old gray-haired cat named Spider.

Spider gave me a scowl as I approached – I still owed for a pool game I’d lost to him seven years before, just before my bust. Then the fake hard look faded and he smiled.

“Good to see you raised, kid,” Spider said, before he got a good gander at my face.

I ducked past him down Opera Alley behind the bar, hoping for a few moments peace. But media crews appeared at both ends of the alley, blocking it.

It felt like Dawn of the Dead, like the media machine wanted to eat my face. I looked around for an escape route but there was nowhere to get away from them here unless I had wall crawling abilities.

Someone blasted a car horn, really leaning on it and not letting up. Sam’s beat up old Continental bullied down the alley through the reporters, who gave way to avoid being run over. He tweaked his steering wheel, trying to cant the car over to be cool and fishtail up to me; but the tires were too bald and they only made a sad scuffing sound as the Lincoln shuddered to a halt within my arm’s reach.

“Figured you might need a ride, old man,” Sam said.

Chapter 24

We drove south down H Street. “Wasn’t surprised not to see you back there in the crowd, nor at the hospital,” I said. “So what’s changed, why are you here?”

Sam snorted. “Things ain’t changed for squat. I figure your vanity’s getting swelled enough without me feeding into any of this crap. Besides, maybe I don’t like crowds either.”

He was silent for a moment, and then said, “It wasn’t my place, okay? This belonged to you, it was no part of me.”

“It’s all good,” I said.

I glanced around the car, absently cataloging Sam’s worldly possessions. On the floorboards at my feet amongst the other garbage, I saw a filthy old Kodachrome with a boot print stamped on it. It was a photo of a younger me with much more hair, holding baby Sam in my arms.

Baby Sam looked up at Kodachrome Me adoringly even through the boot print. In the picture I had a dopey smile on my face as I looked back down at him; we both appeared inordinately pleased with each other.

I started to bend over and reach for it, but realized Sam was watching me sidelong. I pulled out my wallet instead and sat back up, thumbing through the meager contents like that had been my intention the whole time. If it was okay with Sam this photo was down in the trash, I wasn’t about to show him it bothered me.

“Did Big Moe have a chance to tell you what he wanted yet?” Sam asked out the side of his mouth.

I turned in my seat to click in on him fully, studying his attempt at keeping an expressionless profile. I began cogitating on the ramifications of Sam and Moe sharing the same agenda, whatever that furtive activity list might be.

“No,” I said. “He and I were rudely interrupted in our interactions. Not really sure I should swing by there, though. Natalie thinks I killed her old man, but at least Moe was a gracious host – I kind of got the feeling he wasn’t eager to let me leave.”

Sam looked at me quick before returning his gaze to the road ahead. “You should count your blessings they held off on you.”

“And whose idea was it to be so nice? Yours?”

Sam snorted as we drove past the hospital, and then took the road up the ridge. “You wish. Sure, Moe wants something from you. But I think you maybe want to hear him out. I promised him I’d do my best to make it happen.”

“And why would I want to impose on Gardens hospitality again?”

“I know it means nothing to you, how Big Moe had to scramble to come up with a good reason not to feed you to Natalie and Leo. Maybe Moe’s president of the Crips – but you have no idea what a juggling act it is for him to keep them all happy, and make them toe the line.”

“So I’ll keep it simple,” Sam said. “You’ll come with me for the best of all possible reasons, old man: because there’s something in it for you, something I know will make you very happy.” He turned left and down into the wide hollow the Gardens nestled in.

“You don’t have to worry about Natalie, go ahead and keep playing house with her,” Sam said as we drove around that phantom rectangle of empty lots. “She was always a good girl; I always liked her. She won’t do shit to you without Moe gives her the go ahead, and he ain’t gonna if only because you’re my dad.

“And as for Wayne? He was always an asshole, me and Moe are just as happy he’s gone to tell the truth. Natalie, Randy, and Leo are the only ones who’ll miss him; you won’t get any comeback from any of the other 18th Street Crips.”

“Your cold-blooded analysis is very reassuring, boy. Nice to know I’m staking my life on your people skills.”

Sam slammed on the brakes as we started entering the Gardens through its sole access road. “Something brought you back on up here to Stagger Bay. You ain’t got no parole hanging over your head. You could’ve gone anywhere the waves tossed you without worrying about getting violated – but I guess you got nowhere else to go, do you old man?”

A drug customer honked angrily behind us as Sam scowled at me. “Are you in the car or out of it? No one’s twisting your arm.”

He looked down at Alden’s card, which I was studying after I realized it was still in my wallet. “What up?”

“Some agent wants to represent me, says he can make me a lot of cash.”

I made like I was going to toss it out the window, but Sam grabbed my arm. “Maybe you should sleep on it,” he said, “I’m your next of kin if you get deceased after all.”

He stepped on the gas and we entered the Gardens. I shrugged and put Alden’s pasteboard away in my skinny wallet as Sam pulled up in front of Natalie’s hovel.

Chapter 25

The 18th Street Crips were out there doing their thing as Sam parked.

“Oh, I almost forgot old man. Picked up something at a head shop you’ll be putting on immediately.” Sam reached over and rooted in the glove box, then pulled out something made of leather. As he let it unfold to dangle, I saw it was an eye patch; someone had hand-painted a big red eye on it, like what’s-his-name’s symbol in Lord of the Rings.

I took it from him and turned away, bent over in the seat so no one could see as I peeled off the duct tape and sanitary napkins, then pulled the eye patch on. I took a chance and peeped in the rear view mirror.

The stitches in the healing scars still radiated out spoke-like from beneath the patch, but the empty socket was covered. That red, stylized eye glared back at me as if a separate being were grafted onto my face.

“Pretty evil-looking,” I said, studying my homely profile from various angles. The mirror didn’t seem as much of an enemy now, but I still wasn’t going to make a habit of admiring myself in it.

As Sam and I got out the car and walked up to Natalie’s door, I scoped around for news crews lurking to pounce.

“Looking for something?” Big Moe asked, grinning. It was startling not to see him wearing his habitual Eeyore-on-Prozac expression.

“Some cameras came around figuring to bother Natalie about Wayne,” Moe said. “We convinced them it wasn’t a healthy neighborhood, fun times were had. You’ll still have your privacy here, even with everything all stirred up. Hell, we couldn’t let you interfere with business, could we?”

“Thanks, kid,” I said.

Sam walked over to join Moe as I knocked on the door. They muttered and plotted together on the far end of the stoop, darting amateurish glances my way.

It was good my boy had a place he could call a hometown, and friends who knew him from when he was a baby on. My family had always been on the move when I was a kid, Dad keeping one step ahead of bill collectors, the Man, or whomever.

Natalie opened the door. She was fixing fried bologna sandwiches and when she saw me she hesitated before gesturing me toward an empty seat at the head of the table. I sat down next to Randy and we commenced washing down the sandwiches with grape Kool-Aid.

While we ate I couldn’t help envisioning Wayne sitting down at this same table to eat with Natalie and Randy. Maybe in the very same chair I was sitting in right now?

Studying Natalie out the corner of my eye, I wondered why she and Wayne hadn’t had more kids. She struck me as a Fertile Myrtle by nature.

“Somebody told me you didn’t really kill my daddy,” Randy said. “They said his friends killed him.”

“Some friends, huh?” I said, hazarding a smile. But he didn’t return it, so I wiped mine off my face. “No, that’s truth, Randy. It was those other guys did it, not me.”

“My daddy could never have been part of that,” Randy said in a rush. “He didn’t know what they were going to do or he never would have rode with them.”

I remembered back to how Wayne giggled when Slash murdered Kendra. I remembered the last instants of Wayne’s life, watching him stare down in terror at the grenade skittering against his shoes.

“Well,” I said, “I figure at the end there, he was trying to help me. He made a mistake, that’s all. In the end your daddy was a hero, too.”

Randy rewarded me with a grin that looked to be displaying every tooth he owned, framing the hole where two missing front teeth had been. Natalie hustled him into the bathroom. When she came back out few minutes later Randy was singing to himself in there, splashing and banging and babbling in the tub, sounding like a normal kid for the first time since I’d intruded myself on his home.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Natalie said. “Wayne was always mean, even when he was trying to be nice.” She started to clear off the table, and I came to help.

“He didn’t have that good an upbringing, but that was no excuse, you know?” she said as she commenced washing the dishes.

“Well,” I said, putting away the sandwich fixings in the fridge, “I wasn’t the nicest guy in the world when I was his age, either.” I stood next to her and dried each dish as she rinsed it.

“I want to see under your eye patch,” Natalie said when we were done. “I need to find something out.”

This was more than I’d bargained for, I’ll admit. But I’d helped make her a widow and I’d imposed on her hospitality. She’d shown me mercy; I could trust her with my life. I reached up, pulled the eye patch off fast before I could change my mind, and stood looking at her, feeling naked.

I’ll give her credit, she didn’t flinch. Still, I could see in her eyes just how ugly it was. I didn’t have to study my reflection in those big brown eyes to remember how much my own new face repulsed me now. “I know it’s pretty hideous,” I said.

“People could get used to it if they had to.”

I opened my mouth to answer, unsure of what was going on here. But the sounds of a scuffle came from outside, interrupting my reply.

Natalie peeked out the curtained window above the kitchenette sink. “I been waiting for this for a while,” she said with a smile.

I stepped up to join her and we stood together looking out the window as she held the curtain open for both our benefits.

Leo was on the ground, surrounded by the 18th Street Crips as they lay the boots into him; their arms pumped as they kicked, and all of them were breathing hard. Leo was curled up in a fetal ball with his forearms up guarding his head. When they were done the 18th Street Crips walked away from him and resumed their various places together in front of Natalie’s porch.

Leo crawled a few feet away from them, and then tried the difficult experiment of standing upright. He finally managed, but his balance seemed none too certain. When he tottered away down the street he looked as though something had gone missing inside him.

Natalie still smiled approval out the window as I headed for the door. Her capacity for Christian mercy was limited, and I counted my blessings Big Moe ever placed me off limits to her.

Chapter 26

I stepped out on the porch in time to watch Leo creep around the corner of the abandoned bungalow next door. Sam stood off to the side; he hadn’t joined in on the stomping but apparently hadn’t felt the need to stop things either.

“Hey,” Moe said. He jerked his chin in the direction Leo had disappeared in. “You saw? Beat in, beat out, that’s how the 18th Street Crips roll.” He darted a glance at me as if he wanted me to think he needed my approval. “Just like in Oakland, right? He was getting high on his own supply. Bad for business.”

I started after Leo. “Don’t waste your time on him, old man,” Sam called softly behind me as I rounded the corner of the next door bungalow.

Leo was nowhere in sight but the front door was off its hinges and I heard a furtive noise from inside. I peeked around from the stoop, into what passed for a living room.

Leo squatted against a graffiti-covered wall next to a rolled-up sleeping bag. He’d just set a used match book on the floor, its cover folded back with all the matches burned up.

He had one sleeve rolled up – tracks ran up and down his arm. Dried blood was crusted around a few of the holes; he wasn’t even washing up between hits anymore. A boot lace was wrapped around his bicep.

He put a piece of cigarette filter in the blackened spoon to use as a cotton, to strain out any cut sediment in the load he’d just cooked up. With practiced fingers he picked up his syringe and stuck the tip of the needle into the cotton. He worked his outfit one-handed, holding the tip of the needle steady as brain surgery in that puddle of chiva while drawing back the plunger to load up the syringe with his shot.

Leo set the spoon down, gripped one end of the boot lace between his teeth to keep it snug, and pumped his fist a few times to get his flabby veins fat enough to register on. His eyes glittered as he got ready to slide the point home into his rigidly outstretched arm. He looked like he could see God in that needle.

Part of me kept visualizing Angela in front of me instead of Leo, watching him play out the exact steps she took the day she did up the hot shot that finished her. Angela, my beautiful girl, down on her knuckles in her own Gethsemane with me nowhere around.

Leo became aware of my presence and stared at me, rig poised and ready. “What the fuck you want?”

I stepped into full view, a peeping tom busted in the act. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you,” Leo said. “A brother has no chance in your cracker world.” He gazed longingly at his ready needle but he wasn’t quite degenerate enough to do up right in front of me. Yet.

“I know you don’t like me Leo, but you don’t need to. You’re not a victim, that’s all you gotta know.” I gestured vaguely at him, groping toward whatever it was I was trying to say. “You got to be bigger than this, Leo; you can’t give up. Don’t let them make you weak, young blood.”

“I don’t care what you did at that school,” Leo said, his voice jittering and shimmering. “Don’t mean nothin. Don’t change shit.” His eyes glittered, flickered from side to side. “Hell, man, why couldn’t you have been black?”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, unsure what I was apologizing for.

Leo jumped to his feet and lunged toward me pulling his hand back fast, and I tensed for him to throw a blow. But instead it was the syringe he threw. The outfit broke apart as it hit next to me and the liquid inside splashed onto the wall.

“Blue-eyed devil,” Leo screamed, trembling. “Get the fuck away from me.” Then he looked at what he’d done to his own rig, his own stash, and an expression of abject despair crawled across his face.

Nothing had changed because of my interference here; Leo was a junkie through and through, and would be for the foreseeable future. He started to cry and I creeped back around the corner and out the door, ashamed of this whole wretched fiasco.

Ashamed for him? Ashamed for me? For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you. Death row had eaten both our daddies alive but we had nothing for each other.

I wondered, though, what the career options were for a street dealer once he’d been chased off his corner. The Life was a bitch – always had been, always would be.

Chapter 27

When I got back to the Crips, Sam beckoned me over. “This is what Moe’s been needing to tell you.”

Big Moe licked his lips. “If it’s okay to ask, I was wondering just how long you’re going to be sticking around.” He held up both hands as if in placation. “You were always free to come and go as you please. Natalie was just messing with your head, a’ight?”

I considered. “Well, I was going to lie low long enough for this media thing to die down a tad, and then take off. No offense, but some place far away from Stagger Bay. I got nothing keeping me here.” I looked at Sam, who looked away.

“Little Moe, come here,” Big Moe said. A wiry black boy wriggled his way through the Crips to stand in front of me.

“This is my nephew. Little Moe, tell Markus about the Driver.”

Little Moe was pumped to be hanging with the men, and also seemed excited to be talking to me. “The Driver comes and takes kids if they don’t listen to they mama, or if they be alone,” he said hurriedly, his words piling up on each other.

“Ah,” I said, wondering what this was all about, wondering when they were going to cut to the chase. Why were they using this eight-year-old kid to be their spokesman? They were all tap-dancing respectfully around me and I fought impatience. “Like the Boogey Man or something?”

“Oh no,” Little Moe said, his eyes wide. “He real. I seen him. He drives one of those big old hotrods. It’s fast and it’s loud.

“One time, he drove right past me while I was at the playground, the one up past the hospital at Boat Park. Mama told me never to play alone, never to leave the Gardens, and I knew I was being bad going there by myself. I was scared when I saw him coming, and he smiled at me, and I thought he’d come to take me where he takes all the others.”

“Others?” I said, watching his face close for signs he was lying. Whatever else, this wasn’t a put-up job by the Crips. Little Moe obviously believed he was telling no more than the truth; he looked less and less happy as he told his tale.

“Sure. He took my big sister last year, from the Mall. We never found her, but we all knew.” He abruptly stopped his narrative and tugged sharply at Big Moe’s flannel shirt. “It be getting late; I gotta get back, I gotta be to home. Take me to Mama, Big Moe.”

“I gots to talk to Markus, Little Moe. Jojo, walk him to the crib.” Big Moe’s skinny white partner reached out to Little Moe and the two walked away down the row of bungalows, hand in hand.

“He has dreams about the Driver,” Moe said, moping at me like an undertaker. “All the kids around here dream about that beast. Like Little Moe said, son of a bitch took my niece.”

“I don’t know why you’re talking to me. Maybe you need to go to the cops,” I said.

All the 18th Street Crips had a laugh about that one but I shook my head. “I’m serious, dime him. Fuck anyone that calls you a snitch over being a cop caller; you got women and children to watch out for here.”

“Think we haven’t tried? The local cops don’t do crap – and any time out-of-town law wanders in to look around, nothing ever comes of it.”

“Not like I’m a big fan of the Man, but some might find that a bit surprising.”

Moe snorted. “Shit, dude, you know first hand no one down in the City gives a damn what happens up here in the sticks. And like I say, SBPD don’t never seem to get very excited over it.

“It used to be he only hit the disposables: hookers and runaways, hitchhikers, street people and such like – he worked Old Town a lot. You may have noticed how squeaky clean it is now. Tell the truth, I didn’t much mind them being gone – a lot of them people had no class at all.

“He almost never ever touches the locals, though – unless they raise a stank about what be going on. Then they gone, too – a lot of upright white Citizens has disappeared around Stagger Bay.

“Now he’s after us; it’s our turn. Maybe we should have made our stand before this. Sometimes he still takes out-of-towner white trash from other neighborhoods. But lately, yeah, it mainly be Gardens folks that disappear around town, whenever we leave here.”

“Sometimes you have to take the law into your own hands,” I observed.

“That’s been tried, too,” Big Moe said. “More than one person has gone after this guy, some of them old family locals with something to lose.”

“What happened?”

“We doesn’t know. They was never seen again, none of ‘em. No one he’s taken has ever been seen again, neither.” Big Moe scuffed the ground with his sneaker. “It occurs to me this is the same guy who killed the Beardsleys.”

“Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out,” I agreed. I waited for him to continue but he was silent. Instead, Moe and his Crips squirmed around like little boys caught playing hooky.

“G-Thug-Units,” Natalie said from her doorway. “Macho men.” She jerked her chin at Big Moe. “This one’s too manly to ask for anything. Does my proud brother really need to say what we want from you?”

Moe was too dark for me to tell if he was actually blushing, but he sure seemed to find the ground exceedingly interesting.

She smiled in my direction. “Do I need to ask you to do it for me? I’d think you’d be as red hot for the Driver as your own son is.”

I smiled right back at her even though Sam didn’t. “You don’t think I’d do it just to help out? You don’t think I’d do it even if I wasn’t involved?”

Natalie snorted, and then turned to go back inside. “You’re a lucky one. Maybe some of your luck will rub off on us.”

I had my own opinion about just how lucky I was, but as I had no incentive to pop anyone’s bubble I kept my mouth shut. “Take me to Elaine’s office,” I told Sam.

Chapter 28

When we got in the Continental, Sam just had to give me the needle: “Sure you’re up to helping me get payback for Karl and Mom, old man? I mean, you being an over the hill one eye and all.”

“How’s about you shut up and let me think?”

Sam snickered as he left the Gardens and headed back into town. “Yeah, thinking. That’s always been your forte, hasn’t it? I know Uncle Karl was the brainiac of the family, don’t even pretend otherwise.”

I cringed as I considered just what kind of war stories my big brother must have filled this kid’s head with. It was plain that Karl had made me the clown of the family saga in Sam’s eyes.

Chapter 29

Once back in Stagger Bay proper, the contrast between its well-kept little Pleasantville-style 1950s houses and the stark, broken-down hovels we’d just left was startling. Sam drove us down I Street, weaving in and out of traffic, ignoring the honking of cars forced to get out the way of his motorboat Connie.

Elaine's office was on the far side of Stagger Bay Center. As we started driving through the Center, I saw the cyclone fence surrounding the School a few blocks down.

Even from here I could see the warped, torn stretch of cyclone fence where Kendra’s roller had slid into it; could see the charred spots on the asphalt from the grenade explosions. As we got closer to the scene, I grew more and more nervous.

“Are you all right?” Sam asked.

I was sweating and breathing hard as I stared at the school buildings now coming into view. Stared at the place where I’d committed multiple murders in front of wide eyed, terrified children.

“Pull over,” I managed to say. “I need a little air.”

Sam swooped up next to the bank, almost going up over the curb and taking out an old lady on a walker. But I wasn’t in the mood to zing him about it, and was grateful he didn’t take advantage of my present weakness to make any wisecracks his own self.

As I staggered out the car I could hear the recess bell ringing down at the school, and I almost hurled in the gutter as those unseen children commenced shrieking and screaming in play. I bent over with my hands on my knees taking deep breaths.

The nausea passed but I was still trembling as I stood and I saw my pale Cyclops reflection in the bank window. I changed focus to look inside the bank at the wreckage from the robbery: holes in what was left of the false ceiling, as if a great beast had ripped at it; stains and burns on the carpet and walls; a shroud-like canvas draped over one of the teller’s windows concealing whatever homicidal damage had been committed there.

The children’s shrieks melted into each other, sounding louder and shriller as I turned away from the bank. The kids were no closer, of course. It could only be a trick of hearing that made their laughter warble up and down the scale like the beginnings of a bad acid flashback; it was just echo acoustics off the interposing buildings.

A Mexican restaurant was down the block, and I walked quickly to it. As I leaned against its front door and almost toppled inside, the brass bell on the knob jingled.

I slid into a booth while the Mexican couple behind the service counter stared at me. A kid who looked like their son came over, brows raised and a menu in his hand.

“Jarritos, por favor,” I muttered. “Fresa.”

The boy hurried to fetch me my bottle of strawberry soda. I sucked on the straw they were kind enough to put in there for me, listening to them whispering in rapid-fire Spanish, pretending they weren’t talking about me.

Focus on the here and now, I told myself – think of the Stoics. You’re happening but you don’t mean shit, I told the trembling and the still-too-rapid breathing. I’m in charge, not you – You can’t defeat me unless I let you. But my uncooperative body didn’t want to listen.

The bell jingled as the front door opened, the Mexican family shut up, and Officer Hoffman stood in the entrance. He walked over to me with all his leather gear creaking, and slid into the booth to sit opposite me.

“I need to change what I told you about Officer Tubbs,” Hoffman said. “I knew her.”

He looked me directly in the eye for the first time in our acquaintance, giving no evidence he noticed how sweaty my face was. His hand fiddled with his mace holster; he couldn't seem to leave his tackle alone.

“I knew you’d tell me when you were ready, Officer Hoffman.” I shoved my bottle of strawberry soda away.

“I told you before, call me Rick.”

A lopsided smile assembled and disassembled itself quickly on his face. “You’re standing up to them,” he said. “If you're doing it I can too – right, Markus?”

“There's nothing to stop you.”

A curious expression crossed his face, one I couldn’t really interpret. Was he angry? Afraid? “If I knew something important about Officer Tubbs, would you like to hear it?” he asked.

“You mean Kendra,” I said, insisting that he acknowledge her personally, not as a mere title.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” His newfound confidence seemed to desert him at the sound of her name; he avoided direct eye contact again.

“Look at you, living in fear,” I said, ‘sarge’-ing on him and gambling with a confrontational tone. “You and I understand each other, Rick. But they don’t have a clue, do they? You say you like me. Prove it. Don’t listen to them, listen to me.”

As I spoke, Rick’s eyes rose to meet mine and he nodded and smiled as he battened onto my words. “Now tell me what you need me to know about Kendra,” I ordered.

And he obeyed: “Did you know she didn't usually patrol the bank district? Somebody switched her patrol with Officer Reese at change of watch that same morning.”

“And there's items missing from the evidence locker. The same drugs the robbers were on, and all the same weapons they used at the bank and at the school.” Rick pressed his palms together in front of him; his nails were bitten to the quick. “Her death was planned.”

“Can we prove it?” I asked.

Assuming this was a lie, where was the sting? If it was game, who stood to gain from it? What would it cost me to act like I thought it was true? Hell, who put Rick up to feeding it to me? It was a good thing I liked Twenty Questions, or I'd go nuts in this town.

Rick continued: “I have the physical inventory entries for the robbery weapons, and for the drugs the coroner found in the tox-screen at their autopsies. If anyone holds an audit on the locker the drugs and weapons in the evidence log won’t be there. That’s enough evidence for anybody.”

“Who changed Reese and Kendra’s patrols, Rick?” I asked.

But he giggled and shook his head. “I can only go so far right now. You have to know what to do with it. I have to know you’re who I think you are, that you can save me.”

His gaze searched my face as I nodded decisively, still in charge, and doing my best to make it seem I'd stake my life on his words.

“I knew you could do it, Rick,” I said. “I won’t let you down; I'll take care of it all.”

His shoulders lowered minutely as if a great tension had been released. Outside the restaurant’s front door, Chief Jansen’s squad car pulled to the curb. Hoffman got up without any sort of farewell, hurried outside to Jansen and fawned on him like a puppy, then got in his cruiser and drove away.

After Hoffman left Jansen just stood there, looking around at all the people hurrying about their various business, pretending he didn’t even know I was on the other side of the door. I grimaced. He’d stay there in the only entrance for as long as it took to force me to come to him.

Jansen graced me with a regal nod as I came out the door.

“Your boy’s a strange one,” I said, jerking my chin in the direction Hoffman had disappeared in.

“Rick?” Jansen asked, as if discussing an inconsequential. “He does what’s required of him. He has his uses.”

I wondered how useful Jansen would consider Hoffman's revelation about Kendra. But then again, if Rick was feeding me a line it was probably Jansen’s schemes he was serving.

“You know,” Jansen said. “I understand you better than you think I do.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“Yes. Your hesitance to accept the people’s adulation for that day at the school? No mystery: You sympathized with those men even as you killed them, for you were once much like they were. You feel no pride for laying down dogs that were no madder than you were as a boy. Am I right? No, do not answer; I can see it in your eyes.”

I shook my head. “You’ll have to do better than that if you’re trying to impress anyone here.”

Jansen chuckled. “Suppose I told you I even know why you ran from the cameras, and run from them still?”

“It’d be interesting to hear your theory,” I admitted, glancing down the block and eying Sam’s car longingly.

“No theory,” Jansen said. “I know. And it appears then that I do understand part of you better than yourself. But I am in no hurry to enlighten you. After all,” he quoted as if casting pearls before swine: “’A matter which is explained ceases to concern us. What does that god mean who advised ‘Know Thyself?’ Does that not perhaps mean 'Stop being concerned about yourself!'”

“So I should ‘Become objective,’ eh?” I continued the quote. “Friederich’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ – a golden oldie, a blast from the past to be sure.”

It was sweet to see Jansen’s eyes widen. “You know Nietzsche?” he asked, voice flat, not as delighted as you’d think he’d be at meeting a fellow classicist.

I smiled and shrugged. “Maybe ‘Dick and Jane Do Rehab’ was checked out that day, Chief. Besides, I’m surprised you’re unaware how popular Mr. Friederich is in the Big House.”

Jansen’s expression softened, and he tilted his head to the side. “You see my badge and suppose we are opposites. You think me no more than a sheepdog. But can you imagine what it is like to serve people that might as well be livestock?

“Something could be right in front of them staring them in the face and they would not see it. If I ever tried to talk to them about Nietzsche, or anything sublime, anything transcendent? They would never understand the words, they would just bleat. But you are not one of them, Markus,” he said. Was that a hopeful expression on his face now? “You are no sheep. You think I am your enemy but I am not. I wish you well. I hope you bring it all crashing down on them in a Gotterdammerung.”

“Really,” I said, not bothering to hide my incredulity.

“Yes. It means something to you, does it not? And you are a man like me who is hungry for meaning as these others could never be. That is the worst, is it not? To be meaningless?”

I was irritated. “You know exactly what’s what. Screw the razzle-dazzle,” I said, trying to pin him down. “If you really loved the Canon, you wouldn’t be holding still for what’s happening here.”

“Touché,” he said, but he didn’t mean it at all. “Such a curious mixture you are, of perceptiveness and naiveté.” He shook his head and left.

I got back in the Continental and glanced at the left side of the bank entrance, noting the huge sheet of plywood nailed up there to block the hole where the plate glass window had been shot out – like an eye patch, I mused.

As we pulled away from the curb in the direction of the school, Sam asked, “Do you maybe want us to drive around another way?”

“No,” I said. “Keep right on going, full speed ahead.”

The children playing at the school sounded far away and normal again – it didn’t bother me one damn bit. I stared straight at the school as Sam drove past it, my head swiveling to watch as it receded further behind us. I’d walked Sam to it every day once, and that was all I’d allow myself to take away from this place.

Chapter 30

“So what do you know about Hoffman?” I asked Sam.

“Well,” Sam said out the side of his mouth. “You seen for yourself how he was all over the Chief there outside the diner. He does the same with anyone uphill from him; anyone he thinks has any kind of clout.”

He snickered. “It’s like he’s on a mission to keep that kissy-face of his grafted to their ass, you know?”

“How’s about if someone’s downhill from him?” I asked.

Sam looked at me, then back at the road. “Then it’s a different story all right. I figure what’s going on at the Gardens ain’t exactly an unbiased sampling, but I heard me a story a while back.

“See, there’s about a half dozen of these FFA kids, Future Farmers of America. Guess there’s more grant money in FFA than in 4H anymore. Anyways, these kids is old family locals, pure bred Stagger Bay Citizens all the way.

“Like I say, they’re high school kids, and they get some cases of beer and go schwabbin’ down on the river bank in their 4WDs one night. A lot of kids like partying at the river, there’s no one around, you got all the privacy in the world to get a little schwilly, maybe get your freak on, know what I’m saying?

“Anyways, this particular time, with these particular kids, Hoffman comes creeping out the bushes and busts ‘em. Its dark, town’s a long way off, and the six of them is all alone with him. I guess they’re expecting him to make ‘em pour out the beer and maybe cluck his tongue at ‘em, but instead he goes off all nutso. He grabs one kid by the throat; he even slaps a couple of the girls around and tugs at some clothes.

“They’re scared; they ain’t used to being treated like this by no one. Their folks is up in arms when their kids come home all messed up and crying. But someone convinces them it wouldn’t be useful to press the complaint, so they drop it.”

“And who was that someone?”

“That’s a good question, innit?” He shut his mouth, dropping the subject.

But I wasn’t quite ready to let it lie. “Must be nice being a Stagger Bay cop – sounds like you pretty much have a free hand. How’d Hoffman ever pass the psych eval?”

“Who says he did?” Sam asked. “Heard me another story, from Big Moe. Don’t be telling Moe I’m discussing his business, but he plays watchdog for this dominatrix chick sometimes, name of Breena. You know what I’m talking about, right? Moe makes sure her johns behave themselves. Anyways, I guess Hoffman is one of her clients.”

“Pray continue, kid,” I said when he paused.

“Well,” Sam said, a surprisingly prim and prudish look crossing his face. “I guess Hoffman likes Breena to step on his chubby with spike heels on, have her grind around ‘til his boner bleeds. You ask me, I’m saying Hoffman is the Driver.”

Chapter 31

Elaine’s office was on the fourth floor of a brick commercial on the edge of Old Town, with a nice view of the marina and the crab boats. Her miniscule waiting room was empty, and any receptionist had apparently taken the day off.

She sat alone in her office behind her desk, staring at the surface of that polished mahogany slab. When we entered and she saw Sam, relief flooded her face and she ignored me to hurry around her desk to him.

I thought she was alone, that is: As we entered a fluff ball of fur charged me, bristling. It irked me that the mutt didn’t woof at Sam at all.

“Down, Lola,” Elaine yelled at her protective cur. “Down.”

Lola subsided and retreated to the side of Elaine’s desk; but the little bitch still lay there with her chin on the floor, looking at me from under in trembling indignation.

“Hello, Sam,” Elaine said, taking both his hands in hers and swaying up against him. “It’s been too long.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, looking at the floor without trying to pull his hands free.

Elaine pretended she was just taking note of me. “I’m in trouble here, Markus. I don’t know what to do anymore.” Her damsel in distress act was fairly convincing but it looked like she’d already been playing it on Sam for a while.

She was just as avian as when we’d first met. But meeting her now outside the cage, she reminded me more of a predator bird. Like a shrike with squealing victims spiked up and waiting in her rose thorn larder, or one of those meat-eating kea parrots down New Zealand way: beautiful, and with a sweet song – but no one to turn my back on.

“Yeah, well, let’s see if we can figure things out,” I said. “I had a hunch you weren’t telling the whole truth before, when you said you didn’t know what Karl was up to.”

“No,” she admitted. “I’m sorry for lying like that. But you were in prison, and couldn’t help me right then anyway. I told you Karl was trying to find the man who really killed the Beardsleys. Did you know the killings have never stopped? Did you know people still disappear to this day?”

“I’ve heard as much. I think the Beardsleys were probably one of his earlier sketches; he’s learned not to leave any evidence around. And now it looks like someone’s put him on a more constructive path.”

“Oh, it’s been horrible, Markus, you can’t imagine,” Elaine said. “Someone’s protecting him; he’s being allowed to do this. When I moved here a few years ago, I told myself I could fight the corruption, that I could make a difference in the way things are in Stagger Bay. But when Officer Reese killed Karl, I knew I was in over my head – and I was all alone. I didn’t know you, I didn’t want to involve you, and I wasn’t sure if you could make a difference anyway.”

If Elaine noticed how steamed Sam appeared when she said she was all alone, she didn’t let it bother her. Her words were for my benefit; she’d sold him a long time ago.

“Well, all I can do is try,” I said. “So Reese is the cop who killed Karl?”

“Oh, yes. That’s one of the things I have been able to find out: Reese has killed quite a few people over the years, all of them deemed justified shootings. And for all the people who disappear, the police only go through the motions – their investigations always come to nothing.

“A lot of people here in Stagger Bay don’t like the way things are, but anyone who stands up disappears. There was one group, the Peace Women? They began as anti-war protestors; they’d stand out in front of the County courthouse, all wearing black, holding lit candles. The Peace Women tried speaking out for a while, but they’ve been hit hard. There were about a dozen when they started, now they’re down to half that.

“Markus, I don’t think I was supposed to get your freedom. I’ve stepped on the wrong toes here. Business has dried up almost completely; it’s like I’ve become a leper. Some of my old clients kept coming for a while, but they were afraid, so afraid – I told them all not to come any more. And now, I’m being followed.

“Most of the time I can’t put my finger on it. Sometimes it’s just a feeling. But once in a while I’ll catch the same car tailing me, or see the same men standing outside my office day after day.”

Elaine looked toward the corner of her office: a set of Forzieri suitcases stood neatly arranged as though she was planning a trip, or at least trying to make it appear she was.

“I’m scared, Markus,” she said. And on that one I actually tended to believe her, even though she wasn’t nearly as afraid as she let on to be.

She continued: “Just so you know, Karl put together a lot of evidence. He was getting very close to where you want to be. He had piles of notes, and not just about the Beardsley killings, about other goings on in Stagger Bay as well.

“Karl told me he had something important to talk to you about when you got out; he refused to tell me exactly what. He dropped off the box of evidence he’d been accumulating, about the Driver and everything else he’d discovered. He was dead the next day.”

“Where is it, then? Where’s the evidence he put together?”

“Gone,” she said, with a brittle smile. “Someone broke into my office and took it all.”

“You still got Uncle Karl’s mail though, right?” Sam asked, and Elaine turned toward him as if in surprise. “Karl said there was some letter he was going to share with him. It’s in your top desk drawer.”

“You’re very helpful Sam,” Elaine murmured as she opened the drawer and withdrew an official-looking envelope. “Thank you so much for remembering.” She handed it to me.

“It’s been opened,” I noted. It was from a Special Agent Miller out of the FBI’s San Francisco Headquarters. I folded the letter up and put it in my back pocket.

“Sam,” I said. “This Reese cat? I’ve met him. If he killed Karl, I know you can tell me lots about him.”

“Well, he’s got a cast iron pair, that has to be said,” Sam said, sounding as if he hated to admit it. “He’s the guy the SBPD mainly uses to serve their warrants. He’s kicked in a lot of doors, has Officer Reese. It’s pretty plain he doesn’t like people with sun tans.

“He’s pretty tough. Anyone who took him on would have to be real careful,” Sam said. He gave me a bleak smile when he saw my expression, despite the blood fever momentarily shining from his eyes. “Don’t worry, I can be patient.”

Sam turned to start eyeballing Elaine again. But she was still studying me close, and he got a sulky expression on his face.

“You remind me of Karl a lot,” she told me. “I thought the world of him. Did you know he worked with the homeless here? There’s a ruined lumber treatment plant behind the Mall where a lot of homeless used to camp before the police sliced up their tents and chased them away. Many of them were vets with PTSD. Karl used to go back there to the ruins checking up on them – some of them were so shy and bashful, he could only communicate with them by leaving notes under rocks.”

“That sounds like Karl,” I admitted. He’d been a habitual marshmallow heart, but I’d been the one who always wound up saddled with the strays he regularly brought home.

“Sam,” I said, “I have a favor to ask of you. I want you to stay with Elaine for a while, bird dog her for me. I don’t think Lola here is enough.”

I gave an apologetic glance to Lola, who thumped her tail on the floor at hearing her own name. Sam’s eyes widened at my request but he didn’t appear too displeased at the prospect of hanging around this pretty lawyer.

As for Elaine, she actually blushed as she looked down at her Jimmy Choos. If she noticed I’d ensured Sam would be underfoot 24/7 interfering with whatever schemes she was running, she didn’t seem to mind. Unless Sam was in on it with her?

“I’ll be in touch,” I said as I headed to the door. But I stopped in with my hand on the knob and turned to study Elaine. Maybe she thought all she had to do was say Karl’s name to push my buttons. Buttons were being pushed all right, but not the ones she seemed to be trying for.

“What up?” Sam asked, and I realized I’d just been standing there staring at Elaine.

“Nothing. Like I said, I’ll be in touch.”

I smiled sheepishly at Elaine as if in apology. Her own gaze of cold appraisal faded into an amiable expression as fake as my own.

I left them alone to get as closely re-acquainted as they wanted, and headed down the hall toward the elevator. But behind me I heard her office door open and close, and I turned to watch her forthright approach.

“Is there something you want to ask me?” she demanded. “Anything you want to say?”

“Well, if you insist,” I said. “You were saying you weren’t from around these parts. I was wondering, did you move up here to enjoy Stagger Bay’s scenic beauty? Or were you in a hurry to be away from someone – I mean somewhere else?”

“How is that any of your business? What does it have to do with the price of tea in China?” She didn’t even bother pretending offended innocence, which made me relax a bit.

“Well, it’s just I always find a murky, mysterious past so exciting and romantic in my associates. But if you must, to the chase, then. So, Karl investigates for seven years, you help him for the last few, and y’all never quite get the goods till just before he becomes dead? Hell, when he does the unexpected and finds out the truth despite your interference, are you the one who tells Karl’s killers he has the goods on them?

“Maybe you were using Karl as an unwitting bully stick to run some kind of extortion game on the local hillbilly mafia, and your scam cost my brother his life. And it’s beautiful timing on my release; it’s surely nice for you to have a violent ex-con as a body guard, maybe even as a potential fall guy.

“But I’ve played that role before, haven’t I? And you, you’re so very very frightened here aren’t you?”

“You’re a bastard,” she hissed. “You’re nothing like your brother.”

“I never claimed not to be one. And as for Karl? He could afford to think he was nice sometimes, he always had me. You're right about us being different though: After all, he's dead and I’m still breathing in and out for the time being. Maybe I should be more like him, play patty cake with you and not do dick for seven years.”

“Do you really think we dragged our feet all that time?” she asked, eyes wide. “Do you really think your own brother would let that happen to you? Karl and Sam have always trusted me, and you can too.”

“You’re the one who’s not playing fair here, Elaine,” I said. “You just don’t like having suspicion aimed your own way, but if you take a step back you’ll see my point.

“Of course I’m grateful for you getting me sprung – that buys you payback from me whatever your motives, whatever you’ve got cooking. But that’s my only son’s neck you’re hanging on. I have to have some reason to trust you before I can get comfortable with letting you stay that close to him.”

She grabbed a double handful of my tattered work shirt and pulled me close enough I heard her heart beating in her bird narrow chest; saw her pulse throbbing on the side of her thin neck.

“I won’t let you turn him against me,” she breathed into my ear. And then she let go.

Chapter 32

Our local TV station was a few blocks over, wedged between a candy store and a gun shop. The station was a rinky-dink affair, but sufficient to the needs of Stagger Bay.

A few network news vans were in the parking lot, the nearest out of Oakland from an East Bay station. Even from half a block away I recognized the beautiful redheaded anchorwoman standing by the side of the van, sipping her coffee.

When she saw me rolling up, her mouth opened and the coffee cup tumbled from her grasp to slosh its steaming contents into the gutter. Then she put her news face back on and started slapping the side of the van with her dainty little hand.

Behind her I saw our local station’s excuse for an anchorman, standing in the entrance to his studio. He saw me but didn’t try to approach – he’d made some on-air remarks during my trial seven years before that had been less than kind, and he probably figured I wouldn’t give him the time of day now. He was right.

By the time I reached her, her cameraman was backing her up and another assistant flanked her. The camera tracked me as I approached, making me feel like I had a bull’s eye painted on my forehead.

“Markus,” she said with a grin, sticking the microphone up at me like a weapon. “This is news.”

Her cameraman stepped back and adjusted his lens focus to include us both.

“I’ll keep this short,” I said, facing the camera’s bulbous insectile eye full on like an opponent. “I’m speaking to the coward who killed the Beardsleys seven years ago. I’m talking to the human waste who’s terrorized the people of this town ever since.”

“You think you can hide behind your connections,” I said, keeping my words slow, my tone reasonable and light. Still, I was involuntarily swaying back and forth like in the moments before I’d charged the school.

“But your time is coming. I’m calling you out, if you have the courage to face me.” Rage built as I spoke, that same old dangerous, addictive electric heat wanting to course through me as I threw down the gauntlet here. My face was cramped with the effort of staying squeezed down into clarity. “I’m coming to get you, I swear. I swear it on the life of Officer Kendra Tubbs. I swear it on the lives of every one of your victims.

“I’m going to be the last face you ever see,” I promised.

I nodded at them to indicate my sign off. “Thanks,” I said, turning to go.

“Wait,” she said, dancing around to block my path. “I have about a million questions to ask you. Who were you just speaking to, what killings are you talking about? What’s this about connections? You’re saying you weren’t just wrongfully imprisoned, you were framed? Why aren’t you working with the police? Are you alleging some kind of cover-up? Just what is it you’re planning to do?”

“The questions will have to wait. I think you can see I’m busy here.”

She snorted. “Sure. You’re giving someone a poke to see which way the cockroaches scuttle in response. You’re flushing out a ghost, that’s basic media strategy.”

I looked at her in new appraisal. This news lady was no dummy.

A scowl crossed her porcelain face. “You want to use me to send a message? That’s fine, that’s the way this game is played. But you owe me tit for tat: I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”

I grimaced – she had a point whether I liked it or not. “I give you my word that when the time comes – when it’s all over – you’ll be getting the exclusive.”

She twirled out my way, hugging herself delightedly. “We’ll be a cinch for an Emmy,” she told the cameraman.

“Hell yeah,” he replied.

Chapter 33

It was a nice afternoon for a stretch of the legs. I headed back toward the Gardens, which was only about fifteen minutes on foot; Stagger Bay was a walking town at heart.

People on the street looked at me and pointed, many with smiles on their faces. A little boy riding his trike in a driveway waved at me. A car filled with teenagers stopped in the middle of the street; they called out my name and pumped their fists.

I waved and nodded and smiled back idiotically at people like I was running for office. For them? As an act? Hell, even I didn’t know.

But I also noticed a few drapes twitching aside in windows without anyone showing their face; a couple people hurriedly leaving their yard work to go inside their houses as I approached. Not all the people of Stagger Bay were that thrilled with me. The honeymoon was over, probably before it ever began.

How many people knew about the Driver and approved? How many figured Reese was a good cop, serving the ‘real’ community? How many of Stagger Bay’s Citizens felt I should still be behind bars, innocent or not?

Despite the waves and the greetings and the apparent approval I was receiving from so many, I was still in enemy territory and every smile hid sinister intent. Or was it fear the smiles hid even here in the nice neighborhoods?

Victims or predators, people just going through the motions to get along or people willing to stand up – who was which and which was who? I had no idea where any of these people stood.

I cogitated nonstop as I walked, scraping together what few pieces of data had been handed to me so far, trying to follow the thread of clues into the center of the maze Stagger Bay called a heart. I was handicapped by knowing absolutely nothing about police procedure, other than what had been inflicted on me personally in my own life. Still, the Canon provided a template – I had all the tools I needed to take a stab at things.

Mr. Tubbs? Grieving father or not, he was involved in the goings on up to his neck. As a hillbilly Godfather, he had to be part of the backroom deals. All folded up like a deadly Chinese treasure box, his cracker barrel good ole boy routine masked some deep waters. He’d as much as admitted he’d framed me but that didn’t prove he had anything to do with Reese murdering Karl, or the Driver’s hideous shenanigans.

Elaine? I didn’t trust her any farther than I could throw her, even though I figured I could make that tiny lawyer arc through the air quite a ways before she bounced a few times. Still, her getting me freed, her dropping Karl’s name, and her being important to Sam bought her a little something no matter how predatory her motives. Even if she was dirty as any other lawyer, that didn’t automatically mean she was in bed with the enemy – and if she was gaming, I didn’t care if she gutted them as long as she didn’t get in my way.

Hoffman? I had no idea how much I should beware of him, how much I could trust him if at all, or how to make best use of him if he proved a good game piece to work. Rick was a labor-intensive guy to work with for sure.

Big Moe and the 18th Street Crips were trying to use me as an expendable human cruise missile, which was understandable and probably their most honest motive. Them and the rest of the Gardens folk weren’t necessarily my enemies, but they certainly weren’t automatically my friends either. Still, we were on the same page enough whether they knew it or not, that we might be able to work together without tripping each other up too much.

And Sam… I had no certainty what his intentions were here, but it didn’t seem there would be any fairy tale endings between him and me. He was as insolent, obnoxious, and manipulative as any other teenager; and besotted with Elaine to boot. Which way would he flop if Elaine’s games and my agenda suddenly conflicted? I had no reason to think it’d be in my favor.

The hilarious thing? The only person involved I liked thinking about was Reese. He was my avowed enemy but at least I knew exactly where I stood with him, no games or tap dancing. Maybe he reminded me of a rabid junkyard dog who’d forgotten where he’d buried his bone, but he’d also had the decency to show his true colors. And of course, we both had Kendra in common.

It was getting dark as I walked, and Stagger Bay was the kind of town where they rolled up the sidewalks at sunset – except for the bars and hot-sheet motels of course. I was swinging around the back corner of the Arcade by the rolling steel doors where the trucks unloaded. The handful of stores was closed, and the parking lot was empty.

The street lights popped on overhead, illuminating the Cougar idling thirty feet ahead of me, facing away with headlights on. The engine’s chugging sounded like the hoarse pants of a huge beast hyperventilating in exhaustion. The radio played some kind of oldies tune, 50s cruising music.

Right here right now, I knew this was the Driver. The Cougar was his car, and he’d been trailing me the whole time I’d been back with me too stupid to pick up on it.

I was shocked at his boldness. I hadn’t thought he would actually seek me out. My anger notwithstanding, I’d only hoped my little speech for that red-headed newscaster would stir enough of a reaction from all the guilty consciences to point which direction I should search. But then again, given what I’d seen so far in Stagger Bay, his arrogance seemed perfectly justified.

I put my amazement away and my mouth tightened into its war grin as I realized just how happy I was to see him.

Those red glowering taillights stared at me as if sentient. My depth perception was gone, and the taillight’s glow made it impossible for me to view the Cougar’s interior clearly through the rear windshield. All I could see was the Driver’s dark silhouette as he sat behind the wheel, wide and powerful looking.

I walked forward quickly. I wanted to talk to this guy bad; I had some less than friendly thoughts to share. But he just tapped the gas a bit, maintaining a constant distance between us; I stopped.

“Got your message. You wanted to see me?” the Driver asked, letting his beefy arm dangle out the window. His voice was a deep baritone that sounded forced.

“I do. How’s about you get out the car and we have us a little chat about it?”

He snorted. “Soon. Just wanted to show you something for now. Want to see something neat-o? Something peachy keen?”

He reached over to the passenger seat and I tensed, ready to duck and bail if he pulled a gun. But when his hand rose back into view he held a little kid by the scruff of the neck. He turned the child to face toward me and her face glowed like a little moon from the interior: a tiny Asian girl with duct tape covering her mouth, her eyes glassy with terror.

In a singsong chant the Driver crooned, “Looky, looky, I’ve got nooky.”

The grin left my face. “You son of a bitch,” I said, my voice wobbling, a roaring in my ears. “Let her go. Keep it between you and me.”

I sprinted forward. But he just tromped the gas again and the Cougar’s tires smoked as the car leapt ahead, fishtailing a bit until he spun the wheel over, hit the brakes, and skidded the car so it came to a halt broadside to me.

He was about twenty-five yards away now. The Driver was still concealed in the darkness of the car’s interior, but even at that distance I saw the gleam of his teeth in the dimness, and that blond mop of his bulking around his head.

“Good job, Markus,” he shouted over the Cougar’s chugging bass idle. “You really saved her.”

He dragged the girl to him and held her so their faces were side by side. “Are you saved, child?” he asked her. “Are you impressed by Mister Markus?”

Then, with mocking slowness, he pushed her head out the window until I saw her clearly in the streetlights’ glow. Her eyes begged but I stood there useless and trembling with my fists clenched hard enough to cramp at my sides.

“How ironic,” the Driver yelled, still in that forced fake voice. “Been wanting to hook up with you for a while, but you keep running away whenever I get up the nerve to say hello.”

“Please let her go,” I begged, my own voice raised over the Cougar’s engine. “I’ll do anything you say, whatever you want.”

But he only laughed and shook his head. “No, she’s forfeit, though you make an interesting offer. Don’t waste both our time by pleading. Everyone’s making such a big deal out of you. I’m jealous you’re stealing my thunder so much – it’s me they should be afraid of, not you. Still, I must admit to being impressed with the work you did at the school.”

“At the school?” I asked, confused that would even matter to this guy.

The Driver’s face moved forward a little more, and the light caught the lower part of his face so I could see his mouth. It was a muscular mouth, and somehow familiar. It looked like it could take a bite out of plate steel, chew it up, and spit it out – I wanted to punch that mouth, bad; I wanted to smash it in with a two-by-four.

“You and me, we’re only good at one thing,” he said. “It’s what we were born to do. We take people’s lives for our own.”

“Maybe so, but at least I kill men face to face, not take little girls from behind,” I blurted. “You only kill the weak.”

His head pulled back into the dimness of the car’s interior and he yanked the girl back with petulant roughness, cramming her into the passenger seat like an errant grocery bag. “You shouldn’t have said that, Markus. Now she screams louder, and it’s all your fault.”

He started driving away slowly, as if daring me to try catching the car again. “You keep this up, I’ll keep it up too. You especially won’t like what I do to the next one.”

He stepped on it and the Cougar sped away with a guttural growl, Booker T and The MGs spilling out the window. I watched him roar past the hospital and disappear into the woods enclosing the Gardens. Out of sight now, I heard the Cougar turn right, head past the Gardens and all that new development, and finally move up Moose Creek Road. After a bit, I couldn’t hear the engine anymore.

“I know you,” I said. “You disguised your voice. You’re someone I know.” But it was hard to feel any satisfaction at that tidbit with my shoulders slumped so low.

Chapter 34

I ran the rest of the way to Natalie’s. The Gardens were in an uproar when I got there: people shouted and ran up and down the block, doors were slamming.

A Hmong woman was shrieking in the middle of the street, one blast after another, so loud and unrelenting I wondered that she could have that much breath inside of her. Her extended family surrounded her.

I ran inside Natalie’s house without knocking, and snatched up the phone. “We already called,” Natalie said, but I ignored her as I jammed away at the buttons.

A female voice answered in a clipped nasal twang: “911 dispatch, what is your emergency?”

“We just had a stranger child abduction here. He took her up Moose Creek Road; we need an Amber Alert ASAP.”

“What is your location?”

“The Gardens.”

The dispatcher was silent for a few moments. “Officers will arrive shortly to take your report, sir,” she finally said.

“What’s their ETA?” I demanded. “We need police response, like right now.”

“You need to calm yourself, sir. I cannot give you an ETA at this time.”

I wanted to reach through the phone and throttle her. “Listen, bitch. While you’re dicking the dog here, he’s got her. You want that on your conscience?”

“I don’t have to take that kind of attitude from the likes of you, Markus,” she said, and the line went dead.

“You ever go to catch an elevator, but there’s someone already waiting for it that got there ahead of you?” Natalie asked in that same tired voice. “And you see the button’s lit up; you know that person pressed it before you even got there. But you still got to push that button anyway, more than once even, just in case that first person pressed it wrong or something.”

She gave me a haunted look before walking slowly back into Little Moe’s room. I went outside.

“He’s never done that before, grab somebody from right here in the Gardens instead of out in town,” Big Moe said, resembling Eeyore more than ever. “This is new. He’s stepping it up.”

“We live in Stagger Bay too, but we’ve always been apart, even in the middle of all these goings on.” Moe gestured toward where the lights of Stagger Bay proper shone against the night sky on the other side of the wooded ridge. “They’re all against us; we’re outnumbered and outgunned. If we ever stand all the way up, the whole town will just march out here and wipe us off the planet.”

We headed toward the entrance to the Gardens. Two black-and-whites were parked there nose to nose blocking the road, their strobing trouble lights spinning like idiot dervishes. Reese and another officer leaned against their rollers with riot guns in their hands.

“There’s the Driver right there,” Moe said, indicating Reese.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Who else could it be?”

“Just running a random field sobriety checkpoint here,” Reese said as we approached. “Anyone coming in or out of the Gardens gets a free body cavity search.” His fellow officer snickered at Reese’s wit.

“She’s only a little girl," I said. “No threat to anyone, no detriment to Stagger Bay.”

He shrugged, but his eyes wouldn’t meet mine. His uniform appeared sloppier than it had at the deposition. “Kids run away. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t.”

“How can you live with yourself?” I asked, not prodding for once but truly curious to understand the mechanics of whatever rationalization system he’d constructed for himself. “Why won’t you do your job, like Kendra did?”

“You won’t say her name again,” Reese said, his hands shaking as he racked a shell into his pump’s chamber.

Moe flinched, and I’ll admit to a startle reaction myself – only a madman or a kamikaze ignores a shotgun prepping for action. Reese closed his eyes and breathed in and out hard as I counted to ten internally.

When he looked at me again his voice was soft and calm and controlled. “You’re coming mighty close to disturbing the peace here, Markus. Maybe we should go for a ride, and you can resist arrest where there’s no one to video-tape your heroics this time.” His partner snickered again, like a halfwit with no larger repertoire.

“Besides,” Reese continued, “I’m the one who decides what my job is, not gutter trash from the Gardens.”

“How ‘bout you, Moe?” Reese asked. “You think I should do my job?”

Big Moe shook his head, looking at the ground. I was ashamed for him, and for the fear I saw in his eyes. We slunk back to the Gardens.

Chapter 35

They found her body next morning. I heard a low murmuring outside, and roused from the couch to join a quiet throng streaming to where Reese and his brother officer had blockaded us the night before.

She lay in the middle of a subdivision lot across the street. The graded earth looked like it had been deliberately leveled to improve her display, naked as the day she’d been born. She was uncovered so God and everyone could see the things that had been done to her.

Weird signs and symbols were scalloped into her flesh – he’d taken his time to carve them just so. He hadn’t touched her face, probably on purpose. I judged from her frozen stare that she’d been alive through a goodly portion of it.

Her mother fainted, sagging into a boneless heap in the midst of her family. The big Indian kid Mackie took off his flannel and covered the little girl’s body with it. One tiny hand stuck out from under the shirt, palm up.

A caravan came our way: a squad car, followed by an ambulance and an Escort with a magnetized ‘Stagger Bay Coroner’ sign crookedly stuck on the driver side door.

They stopped and got out: Officer Rick Hoffman; two ambulance attendants serving meat-wagon duty; and the coroner, an older man with a doctor’s bag. They fidgeted on the far side of the flannel-covered little piece of evidence, avoiding our gazes as they looked down at the tiny body.

Hoffman and one of the meat-wagon boys started putting up yellow crime scene tape, using the surveyor’s stakes to string it on.

I approached him. “So, any theories, Officer Hoffman? Any hot leads?”

“Call me Rick. You know I don’t like having to do this. You know that,” he said, an expression of rage filling his face for a microsecond before subsiding. “You know I’m trapped, Markus. There’s more things I want to tell you, but there’s only one way out for me.”

I shook my head sternly, trying to recapture the control he’d handed me before. “There’s always choices. No one controls your life.”

“You’re the lucky one; you get to stand up. That’s why you think I can too. But you should know I only wait. That’s all I know how to do.”

“Look, you told me about Kendra so I know you’re sincere,” I said. “You can’t be the only one. You can keep making the man’s choice.”

“I could really be you? You’re sure?” he asked in a wistful voice. “I can do it, can’t I?”

I held my breath in surprised suspense, waiting to see if he was about to break open. But he sagged back into blankness and continued his work, concentrating on laying tape.

“No,” he said. “I still have to do what I’m told for now.”

The expression on his face told me I should feel sorry for him, and consider him the victim here. Poor pitiful Rick. I kind of wanted to rip his fat head off and defecate down the hole, that’s how much sympathy I wanted to feel for him.

But watching him squatting there all forlorn, I flashed back to prison and the nights I lay in my cell reading the Canon, listening to a punk’s sobs and the laughter of his playmates for the evening down the tier. Listening, but saying and doing nothing except turning the book’s pages.

Rick yanked on the last knot hard enough he snapped the anchoring surveyor’s stake in two. After studying the broken piece of wood for a few seconds, he went and got another stake.

I walked back to Big Moe but he put his hand up, so I was looking at his pale palm and spread fingers. “No disrespect, Markus, but I don’t much feel much like talking right now.”

We stood apart from each other, watching them slide the gurney into the ambulance. She’d been too small for the body bag and they had it folded in half beneath her – I could have carried it under one arm.

As the ambulance left Big Moe said, “They think they’re going to run us off, but they won’t. They’ll have to cart me away too. I won’t back down. I can’t.” Despite his sad-sack demeanor and the rap video clown suit he wore so awkwardly, I saw the steel in him.

Moe looked at me like I was an insect and said, “She’s dead because of you.”

My knees wobbled and I felt dizzy as Moe turned on his heel and headed into the Gardens, leaving me alone on that windswept development.

Chapter 36

I walked back the way I’d originally come, the first night I’d stumbled into the Gardens. I walked up that broad new road, clean white sidewalks to each side with all the courts and lots laid out flat and perfect and sterile.

The new construction confronted the Gardens as if besieging them. The idle heavy equipment appeared ready to move in and do a Godzilla on those rows of bungalows the instant I wasn’t looking. Dirt fire-access roads led off into the surrounding old growth forests like radiating spokes.

I suspected any Pass I’d had in the Gardens was revoked now. I wouldn’t have even been surprised if a carload of Crips or Hmong cruised up and did a drive-by on me.

I found the trail to the marsh and worked my way through the blackberry thickets and tulie grass to the swamp proper. Carnivorous plants dotted the expanse of low mud hummocks spread in front of me.

The night I passed out here after escaping the hospital, I’d flashed back to the times I’d come to this spot with Sam when he was little. Now, in the light of day and doing everything possible not to think about that little girl, I again remembered catching spiders with Sam, and messing around with tadpoles. It had been fun seeing wild things for the first time myself, and sharing the experience with my boy.

One time we even found a raccoon skull. Sam was the one who spotted it by a bush in the middle of the marsh, and he’d just had to have it. So of course I wound up wading through knee-deep swamp bottom to reach that skull, and it turned out a yellow jacket nest was right next to it on a bush.

Apparently the yellow jackets didn’t approve of me being in their space. I danced around in the mud, yelling as they swarmed all over me stinging the shit out of me, and Sam laughed his ass off at the show I put on for his amusement. We went home, Sam with a cool raccoon skull, and me covered in stinking swamp muck and yellow jacket sting holes.

I chuckled at that bitter-sweet memory, but it wasn’t much comfort in the present. I'd been vain: I'd told myself I could do instantaneously what Karl hadn't been able to in seven years. I’d been proud: I'd told myself I was playing these kids, but my ego had been stroked to bloating by their hero worship; I’d bought into being the Crips’ token white boy OG.

Moe was right: My rage had killed that little girl as surely as if I’d wielded the knife myself. I’d poked the tiger in the sphincter with a sharp stick, thinking to bully the Driver – but he’d mirrored my anger, blazed up just as hot and nasty. It was supposed to have been me he came after to chop – instead, that little girl died screaming for my mistake.

I deserved to have the Gardens turn on me.

Chapter 37

I walked toward downtown Stagger Bay. My mind was so involved in my self pity fest that Reese or the Driver could have rolled up and had a free crack at me.

In the past I’d learned to put the darkness and self loathing where it belonged: in a box in my heart where I never had to examine it other than in dreams. But this time the box had overflowed all the way.

I was trapped by the memory of the little girl. I felt small again, just as small as when I awaiting trial for the Beardsleys. Any strength I ever might have had meant nothing.

The classics I’d read in prison were no guidance at all. The Masters were pompous hypocrites. A man couldn’t be expected to fight the impossible; it was pointless for me to even have stood up here.

I reached my destination: the same bus terminal I’d arrived at when I raised a seeming eternity ago. The same bus terminal I’d been heading toward the day it all went down at the school.

I could catch a Greyhound bus to Oakland here at the terminal if I wanted. And why wouldn’t I? If I could sink into the earth I’d do it to get away from this place.

Chapter 38

There were no buses in sight and no hangers on waiting as I neared the tiny terminal’s entrance. The sign on the door said ‘Closed for Lunch.’

I wouldn’t have to decide whether or not to ride the magic bus to East Bay freedom for another little while. In the meantime, I wasn’t about to squat in front of the terminal like a homeless mope, letting traffic goggle at me as they drove past.

The next block over toward the waterfront, the bulk of the Andersen Club towered over Old Town’s shorter interposing commercial structures. The Club, originally a mansion built by one of Stagger Bay’s nouveau riche founding robber barons to show off his wealth, had transformed long ago into a men’s club for the local wheels.

I ambled that way for a closer look, remembering all the local bigwigs were members of the Club: real estate developers and out-of-town wealth, local businessmen and politicians of all stripes.

‘Cui Bono?’ Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla always asked when the Romans investigated an affront against the establishment: ‘Who benefits?’

Looking at the Club, I realized all its members stood to profit from the current goings on in Stagger Bay.

Chapter 39

The Andersen Club was a rambling three-story Victorian, set back from the street behind a manicured lawn. The building was painted green with trim of various colors, topped with towers and cupolas, and covered with so much rococo woodwork that it resembled a giant gingerbread dollhouse or perhaps a Disneyland ride. If the Addams Family Mansion got a high-end makeover the Andersen Club would be it.

A stone wall surrounded the Club’s parking lot, flanked by a line of topiary animals. Next to the lot entrance stood a huge metal Masonic compass and T-square. Through the opening I saw an array of neatly parked luxury cars: a couple of Jaguars, several Porsches, and even what appeared to be a vintage Testerossa.

I’d heard talk about the goings on within the Club. But as none of the Stagger Bay working stiffs ever got a look inside (other than serving staff, who apparently had to sign some kind of non-disclosure agreement), our wild theories were unsubstantiated.

For myself, I’d always envisioned sex parties with shrink tubing and hair-dryers ala Zappa, or possibly even group S &M sessions with leather-clad hookers cracking whips and screaming orders at the Club members as they crawled around in a groveling circular herd, oily and naked. Unlikely stuff but not impossible, right? We low people had to imagine some kind of degrading fantasies about our betters to vent our spleen.

A spacious picture window dominated the wall opposite me, affording the Club’s occupants a fine view of the marina. It also afforded me an equally fine if narrowly delimited view of several pairs of men, sitting opposite each other at dining tables occupying the length of the window.

At one of the tables I recognized Chief Jansen and Mr. Tubbs dining together, but their lunch date seemed to be less than congenial. The way Tubbs emphatically gesticulated at Jansen, the way Tubbs’ mouth rapidly opened and closed, suggested he was not enjoying a relaxing meal. Jansen, on the other hand, wore a bland condescending smile indicating his digestion at least was not disturbed by the current conversation.

Sam’s Lincoln pulled up to the curb and he got out, came over to join me.

“You keep showing up, keep getting in my face,” I said. “You trying to be friends here?”

Sam shook his head. “Don’t dodge the issues. I been on your butt since you walked away from the Gardens. I seen you checking out the bus station.”

“And if I did decide to split, so what? You’ve made it clear I’m on my own and there’s nothing between us. What I do or don’t do is none of your never mind.”

He aimed a look at the Andersen Club’s parking lot, grunted at all that automotive wealth on display. “Uncle Karl told me once that when you run away, you only give them a free shot at your backside. Is that the kind of role model you want to be repping to people, old man?”

I turned the pained look that arose on my face into a sneer of my own. Karl had stolen the ‘free shot at your backside’ line from me, but now didn’t feel like the right time to reclaim the quote for my own. My brother’s ghost could continue taking credit for it.

“I miscalculated,” I said. “I figured the Driver for the kind of coward that’d only come at you from behind. Looks like I was wrong, but I wasn’t the one who paid for it.”

“You’re ashamed,” Sam said in wondering tones. “You’re only human. No one expects more than that. You’re the one with unrealistic expectations of yourself old man.”

He changed tack: “I asked Uncle Karl about you once. He said, ‘All you need to keep in mind to understand your d-.’” Sam stopped, and then began again, his voice a little raised. “’All you gotta know to understand Markus is two things: first off, to him, perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. Second, he’s got a 200 IQ for hate.’”

I smiled. “Well, you know, playing eternal second fiddle to Karl, I had to have some way to vent my angst, right?”

Sam gave me a sour look. This kid had no sense of humor whatsoever.

“Karl never used to be one to tell tales out of school, Sam,” I said. “But yeah, you may have gathered I’m not necessarily the trusting kind.”

Sam grunted. “I’ll admit we’ve given you little enough reason to trust, you and me being family or no. But you’re not being played here, or at least no more than’s necessary for survival. And so what if I did maybe convince Moe we needed you when you first stumbled into the Gardens? A guy can have more than one reason for doing things, right? It’s not always about you, old man. You’re not the center of the universe, and maybe you need to get over being embarrassed.”

“Is it worth it, Sam?” I asked. “Can we even win here?”

Sam appeared surprised and unhappy; he thought for several seconds before he replied. “I know you don't have much reason to like this place. Maybe Stagger bay isn’t much, but it belongs to me. This place is all the home I’ve ever had.”

“Moe and JoJo and Natalie and the others?” Sam said. “I’ve known them all since kindergarten. They’re my people even if they’re nothing in your book. They don’t have to matter to you; it’s okay they don’t. I’m not trying to sing Kumbaya with you here, but they really need you not to turn your back on them. There’s people around here would lose heart if you left.”

“How about you, Sam. You one of them?”

“Quit fishing,” he said, his eyes avoiding mine. “I’m not gonna beg. Fuck you if you think I’m ever gonna.”

I thought about it. Sam was holding some important things back. But that was only natural – hell, so was I. Then the switch clicked in my head and it felt good: It didn’t matter if I could trust Sam or not, he was all I had left – and if he did do me dirty it didn’t matter either, because I had nowhere else to go and no one else to care about.

My son thought this was his home? Maybe he was a fool to back these people’s play, but did I really have any choice but to back his folly in turn? If I didn’t take this on Sam would just try to game all by himself, and die as surely as Karl.

I grimaced as I pulled Karl’s FBI letter out my pocket, opened it up and studied the letterhead for Agent Miller’s contact digits.

“Is there a pay phone around here?” I asked. But Sam just handed me his cellie.

Chapter 40

The FBI switchboard put me directly through to Miller’s extension, and he picked right up. When I identified myself he laughed.

“Talk about synchronicity,” Miller said. “Was just listening to one of those syndicated radio talk shows, girl in the next cubicle had it on. You were the subject of discussion, and all the callers seemed to have strong opinions.”

Next door to the right of the Club, a young girl walked up to stand at the bus stop in front of the Stagger Bay Library.

“Oh?” I said. “What was the upshot?”

“The upshot? Let’s just say you’re getting mixed reviews and leave it at that. So you’re Karl’s brother, right? Small world.”

The girl at the bus stop was on the stroll, judging by her dress and demeanor. Her feet were bare and filthy as if she’d been too busy to find shoes before going to work. From the way she fidgeted, the cement sidewalk was painfully cold against her soles.

She also looked like a girl with a lot on her mind. But that was understandable: this area used to be wall-to-wall working girls, and now here she stood all alone.

“Have to ask,” Miller continued. “What inspired you to become a cop-caller, Markus? Isn’t that against the code or something?”

Chief Jansen exited the Club, wearing his SBPD uniform and looking smug as ever. He got into his cruiser and backed out of his parking space.

“If it was good enough for Karl, its good enough for me,” I said, my attention divided as I focused as much on Jansen’s actions as on Miller’s words.

“So how is Karl?” Miller asked. “He was supposed to get back to me a while ago. How come I’m not speaking to him right now?”

“You’re saying you’re not aware he’s dead?” I grinned to myself despite the subject matter, letting him hear my sneer. “Maybe you junior G-Men aren’t as all-knowing as you’d like us common folk to think you are.”

As Jansen came out the exit his gaze clicked over to as if magnetically attracted to the girl at the bus stop. He stared at her, not even glancing in my direction though I was only twenty feet away across the street.

Agent Miller was silent for several seconds. “How did it happen?” he finally asked, in a quiet voice.

“You sure suck at interrogation,” I said. “It’s hard to be offering me a soda or a smoke over the phone, but shouldn’t you at least be trying to establish rapport or something? Maybe play schizo and give me Good-Cop/Bad-Cop all rolled up in one package?”

“Quit playing around,” Miller said. “I shouldn’t have to work you if your brother’s dead. If I’m wrong about that, just hang up and stop wasting my time. Otherwise, spill what you know and be quick about it.”

I clucked my tongue at his impudence. “It was a justifiable shooting by Stagger Bay law enforcement. Apparently in dealing with my brother you were associating with a major pot dealer, the kind of guy who’d try to shoot the cops serving his warrant. Funny how that works, huh?”

“All right,” Miller said. “All right, let’s both cry uncle here. What do you need from me?”

Chief Jansen turned on his cruiser’s trouble lights so they spun and glowed atop his car. He blurped his siren for a second but turned it off right away, creating a short, choked digital wail as he hung a right and pulled up in front of the young hooker.

“What was Karl doing with you?” I asked. “Was it a two-way street, a team effort between you guys? Or was he just a low life CI you were using up and throwing away?”

“Have you ever heard of a federal judge named Juanita Herrera, out of San Francisco?” Miller asked.

Jansen had the girl assume the position and gave her a cursory frisk before cuffing her, chatting her up all the while. He helped her to climb into the back seat of his cruiser and then drove away, having done his bit to clean up Stagger Bay one working girl at a time.

“Judge Herrera’s daughter was hitchhiking through Stagger Bay a few years ago and went missing, all the way, without a trace,” Miller said. “She hasn’t been seen nor heard from since.

“It’s no secret Stagger Bay is drop dead dirty, there’s bad mojo happening up there in your neck of the woods. Ordinarily when we suspect corruption and malfeasance in a county entity, the State Police would have complete jurisdiction. They’re the next higher level of law enforcement; this should be all theirs.

“But when a federal judge like Ms. Herrera makes it her life’s mission to bust a place wide open, we feds are the first ones invited to play. Markus, I’ve been up to Stagger Bay more than once, trying to find reason to widen the investigation. Your county stinks like day-old puke. I know it. I can feel it.

“Still, believe it or not, we still need a warrant to really dig, even in these turbulent times,” Miller said. “To get a warrant you need probable cause. And in Stagger Bay there are just too many places to bury the bodies. Literally.”

“Isn’t that why you get paid the big bucks? To pull the rabbit out your hat?”

“Rabbit out my hat? Don’t even start,” Miller said. “You of all people should know Stagger Bay’s county covers an area the size of Connecticut, and that it’s almost all old growth redwoods, mountains, rivers, and foggy coastline. Where are we going to search if we don’t know specifically where to bring the cadaver dogs? How are we going to know who to grill if everyone’s either too afraid to talk or has too much to lose? Anyone not familiar with how isolated Stagger Bay is couldn’t possibly understand the handicap we’re working under.”

“How about forensic accounting or something, like you guys did Al Capone with?” I asked.

“Well, we can get away with basic audits and default oversight inspections on anything we have any kind of jurisdiction over. But again, we need a warrant to delve much further than that, especially into the private sector. With even minimally imaginative bookkeeping, they can hide their trail easily.”

“You’ve put a lot of mental effort into this campaign of yours,” I noted.

“What’s my interest, you mean?” Miller asked. “Would it make you feel better if I pointed out just what a shot in the arm it’d be for a special agent’s career, if he broke open a case this big and had a federal judge owing him this kind of favor? A guy could transfer from a field office in, say, San Francisco, right into the Violent Crimes Unit back where the real action is, back in DC. Besides, maybe I’d enjoy putting the Staties in their place by making the bust federal.”

I could probably use this guy without having to be too afraid of his own personal agenda, then. “I got one more thing. Maybe you have some input for me.”

“Shoot.”

“What does it mean when a serial killer drives up to you on the street, says hello and tells you who he is, and then taunts you with his next victim while they’re his prisoner, still alive?”

“What the heck are you talking about?” Miller asked, his voice raised.

I explained, describing my encounter with the Driver, doing my best not to remember the little Hmong girl’s face. Miller was silent for a long while after that, then grunted.

“Markus,” he said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Serial killers don’t come right out and show themselves, anymore than a comic book super villain rips their mask off in public. One of the reasons your brother contacted me was because he knew I’m a fairly decent profiler; I’ve been shooting for VCU a long time. The big boys are back East, but I’m probably as good as you’re going to easily find out here on the Left Coast.”

“Markus,” Agent Miller said. “If the Driver is playing it that loose and crazy, he’s obviously on his last legs. He’s at what he sees as his end game.”

I saw the Club’s entrance door open and Mr. Tubbs walk out, Meshback Number One in front of him, Meshback Number Two behind him pulling drag.

“See, we generally differentiate between ‘spree’ killers and ‘serial’ killers, even though they both have multiple victims,” Miller said. “Sprees kill a whole bunch of people in a short time and then, often as not, kill themselves or suicide by cop. Serials may be organized or disorganized, but their murders are generally separated in time, with their technique becoming ever more similar and ritualized as they kill their way up along their learning curve.”

Meshback Number One got behind the wheel, and Tubbs climbed in to sit shotgun; Meshback Number Two was relegated to the back seat for this particular trip.

“Maybe this Driver is mutating from a serial to a spree?” Miller surmised. “If that’s so, then if he’s not stopped there’s probably a big body count blowout getting ready to happen, soon.

“Something’s changed drastically for him. In which case it sounds like all bets are off and he’s even more dangerous. Things are going to get even uglier with him now, and you need to be very, very careful, Markus. This guy just doesn’t care anymore.”

The Bronco pulled out the Club parking lot and started to make a left turn. But Tubbs saw me standing there and spoke to his driver.

“Dang,” Miller muttered, his mouth aimed away from the phone. “I’ve got to go. I’m already late for a big meeting; time ran away from me here.”

Tubbs’ Bronco rapidly reversed and pulled to the curb butt first, stopping less than a foot from Sam’s front bumper – Meshback Number One could drive, it seemed.

“So what happens if I bring you evidence enough for probable cause?” I asked, avoiding Tubbs’ efforts to catch my eye.

Miller didn’t hesitate: “Then my people and I will be on the next chartered turbo-prop up to Stagger Bay, with a SWAT team, a stack of warrants, and a mob of cracker-jack accountants. You’ll be feeling the warm glow appropriate to any citizen doing his civic duty. And, incidentally, you’ll also have a federal judge who’ll love you forever, as well as a life-long good buddy in the Bureau’s VCU.”

“And one more thing friend,” Miller said. “You don’t strike me as a law enforcement groupie. Heck, if I were you I might not be one either. But I swear to you on my life, if you give me what I need I’ll take them down hard, I’ll burn them to the water line. No getting off on technicalities, as few plea bargains as possible. Trust me, Markus.” He hung up.

“Hello, Sam,” Tubbs said from the Bronco’s shotgun seat, his lipless gash of a mouth compressed into the rictus that was as close as he could get to a friendly smile.

“Mr. Tubbs,” Sam mumbled, looking down at his feet as he never would have for me.

“Hello Markus,” Tubbs said, shifting his gaze to target me in turn. “If you’re done talking to whoever, I think you might want to give me some of your time.”

Chapter 41

“Got some good news for you son,” Tubbs said as we stood together on the sidewalk; he had one hand sticking in his pocket with the thumb out as he aimed that contorted smile up at me. “I have me a little pull in Sacramento – got me some good old friends up there in the capitol – and I made some calls on your behalf. Looks like you’ll be getting that quarter mil for your time in prison after all.”

“I could use the money,” I confessed. “But you don’t owe me nothing.”

Tubbs chuckled. “Meaning you don’t owe me nothing neither, right? But you’re wrong anyways, son, leastways about me owing you. I meant what I said before about being a man who pays his debts.”

He gestured toward the Club. “You need to go in there with me now, Markus, and let me introduce you to the boys. They’ve all been wanting to meet you. You’ll be more than welcome.”

I glanced sidelong at Kendra’s dad. “It’s pretty fancy in there,” I said. “I’d feel weird. It’s not really my kind of place.”

Sam’s face sagged more fully into expressionlessness. What, did the kid expect me to shoot Tubbs down on the spot?

Tubbs nodded but his eyes were twin laser beams aimed right at me. “I can relate, son. I’m an old redneck myself – I assure you I felt like a fish out of water the first few times I walked through those doors. Tell you what though, it’ll feel like no more than your due after a while.”

“I’m sure you’re right. You’re painting a very pretty picture here,” I said. “But you’re focusing on what’s in it for me, like y’all are altruists or something.”

I tossed a shoulder, pretending the Club didn’t look strangely sweet from here on the outside. “I know you know the score; you’re the one sitting behind the stack of chips. Me, I’m just a newbie getting dealt in cold. I’m sure you’ll admit it ain’t exactly been a pat hand. How can I trust, if I don’t know what’s in it for you?”

“All right, that’s fair,” Tubbs allowed with a laugh. “I knew I was right about you. You never make no excuses for yourself. You don’t ask for shit from nobody. You’re one of my kind, son – you watch out for number one, I saw it right off. You’re no fool whatever some may think, and I’m for sure not fool enough to treat you as one.”

Tubbs and I crossed the street with the Meshbacks behind us, ready willing and able to pluck the petals off me like a dandelion. I heard a car door slam and turned to see Sam sitting in the driver’s seat of his Lincoln, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

“Maybe it’s off topic, but what about the Gardens?” I asked as we walked up the front steps of the Andersen Club. I glanced back at Sam again even as he refused to return my look.

“Do you really even care, Markus?” Tubbs asked as we stepped through the front door. “They’re not even tenants with rights – they’re illegal squatters, for Christ’s sake. I’m sorry about the little girl and all, not that I really know anything about it. Maybe those people thought you walked on water before, but I’ll bet they’ll never think as highly of you again.”

The flunky in the monkey suit muttered inconsequentials from behind his podium station, and granted us full Club access with obsequious gestures. Behind him, a sweeping tongue of a stairway curved down, wide enough for a squad to have marched abreast on. At the first landing above, a stained glass window filled the entire wall – you could have driven a bus through it.

“Hell, son, your jacket from when you were a kid was all for Class-A felonies, a lot of them violent,” Tubbs said as we passed the doorway to the dining room.

The light was muted in the dining room, and a husky Asian woman in a strapless evening gown sat in the corner playing the harp. The table linen looked crisp, and the serving staff was right there in attendance at the diners’ elbows; you wouldn’t have to chase any of these waiters down. The air was delicious with the smell of foods I couldn’t even put a name to. The subdued clatter of silverware and crockery flagged as most of the diners facing our way stopped to track us as we passed the doorway.

“You had no problem taking advantage back when you were a kid,” Tubbs pointed out as he continued fronting me down the hall with the Meshbacks body-guarding my rump. “Are you claiming to be a saint now?”

“No,” I admitted. “I’m no saint.”

And he surely had a point: Back in the day I might have even rolled with him if Karl gave the go ahead. Maybe this wasn’t back in the day, maybe my big brother wasn’t nowhere around, and maybe I wasn’t that little monster anymore. But I could hang here, couldn’t I?

I could cross my fingers even as I swore into whatever blood oath equivalent this Club required. I could be a fifth column in here; I could destroy them from within. I could have them eating out my hand before they realized my offering was laced with strychnine.

“This is a boom town these days. I know you can smell it,” Tubbs said as we rounded the corner and passed through the wide archway into the main club room. Now we were face to face with all the people Tubbs so desperately wanted to hook me up with. “Think of it like Dodge City. Maybe a few bystanders get caught in the crossfire once in a while, but that’s just collateral damage. You got to look to your own house, Markus. You got to quit trying to mend other people’s fences.”

He had another point there: What exactly had I accomplished so far in this town? I’d caused Natalie’s man’s death, I’d impressed Big Moe enough he wanted to use me as a throwaway weapon, I was on standby for whatever sketchy purpose Elaine had gotten me freed for, and I’d made no headway at all with my own son.

And the Hmong mother who’d never see her little girl again outside of dreams? That lady had to be thinking I was the cat’s meow.

“You’re not feeling the love here, that I can see,” Tubbs said when I didn’t answer.

But I wasn’t blowing him off; I was just scoping out the venue he’d plopped me in the middle of. The wide, invisibly clean picture window spilled a bar of golden sunlight across a floor covered by what appeared to be a genuine Persian. The overstuffed leather chairs looked comfortable, and the tropical hard-wood end-tables were polished to a solemn glow.

Sitting alone at the bar in the far corner was the coroner, the guy whose county paycheck obligated him to come out and take away the little Asian girl’s body. He was parking his muzzle hard and frequent in the brandy snifter he clutched in a death grip.

Despite the luxury of the club house, the smell of high-end furniture polish and designer cologne, the hushed sense of exclusivity and entitlement? The coroner’s angst flashed me right back to the joint. If you took the thirty-odd people in this room out of their thousand-dollar suits and stuck them in prison garb, they would have appeared right at home on the yard inside.

They were all separated into cliques along lines of mutual interest and shifting loyalties, watching one another’s backs and scheming on how to take advantage of any perceived weaknesses. Just like inside there’d be backstabbing and turncoats here, snitches running from group to group scavenging information to trade for profit. They were hunkered together for protection against forces outside their control, just like all the cons I’d known in prison.

Most of these club folk didn’t even pretend not to stare at me. Despite the smiles they wore, despite the welcoming expressions they aimed my way? I knew I was the new fish here.

One man stood and said something in a low voice to his table companions before turning to approach us carrying two flutes of champagne. A beautiful brunette sitting at his table glanced my way, but I didn’t meet her eyes.

I’d never seen the approaching man before, but his suit sure got my attention. It was a Savile Row, several quanta of rank higher than those on most of the other club members.

Angela had been a closet fashionista; she’d schooled me on all the name brands, she’d loved leafing through the style magazines. She’d always gone on and on about how, just once, she’d like to see me wear something nice.

If I’d pimped for her in a suit as gorgeous as this man’s, Angela’s face would have been beet red with pride. If I’d styled it for her in our bedroom she’d be fussing with my tie, her gaze downcast in pleasure until she looked me in the eyes and we realized we were alone together behind closed doors.

This man and I had all the time in the world to size each other up as he approached. His oncoming face should’ve been blandly politic. He was supposed to project the ‘hail fellow well met’ aura that was second nature to all con-men. And I’d’ve expected him, like any carnival barker, to switch gears instantly to hurt innocence if I didn’t embrace the false friendship he wanted to ensnare me with.

It was startling to see how much he needed me to approve of him.

“Welcome Markus,” he said, handing me a glass of champagne.

“Markus, this is Jim Scallion,” Mr. Tubbs said, and Jim and I shook hands. “He’s one of our star developers right now. He’s doing some really good things for Stagger Bay, like the new James Scallion Opera House, and a lot of the improvements I know you’ve been noticing around Old Town.”

Tubbs grinned at Jim. “So how’s the boardwalk project going?”

“Pretty well,” Jim allowed, swirling his champagne in its glass. “We pour the foundations for the pilings next week.” He looked at me. “We’re trying to bring in more tourist dollars. Our analysts project that an esplanade walkway along the old waterfront would be a real draw. Quaint.”

“You see, son?” Tubbs asked, brows raised. “It’s not just about taking. We give back too.”

Tubbs pinned Jim with his gaze. “Tell Markus what we was talking about,” he said.

Jim’s eyes brightened, and his shy smile widened. “Well, we were also thinking about building a rec center for the children of Stagger Bay, maybe even a public swimming pool.”

That didn’t sound so bad. But how would the Driver react to such a concentration of vulnerable children on supermarket display? And would the kids from the Gardens be welcome there?

“We were also thinking you’d be the perfect person to run it,” Jim continued.

“You wouldn’t have to survive off a glorified babysitter’s salary,” Tubbs hastened to add. “After we televise the real parade, we’ll have even more outside money to play with. It’ll put us on the map. More development, more investors, a good thing for everybody.”

“Real parade?” I asked with a scowl. People looked over at us, as I’d raised my voice. “What do you mean, real?” I asked more quietly, setting down my glass.

Tubbs reached over and squeezed Jim’s shoulder. “I know you’ll be making time for Markus soon enough, but I need him all to myself for right now,” Tubbs said with a shooing gesture.

Jim obeyed, returning to his table with an air of relief.

Tubbs focused his attention on me. “All right, so the dry run was a fiasco. You put egg on my face there, but I can forgive you. All those paparazzi sneaking up on you, all those flashbulbs going off in your face unexpected like – its only natural you’d get upset.

“But I need you to go through with the main event Markus. It’ll be a classic ticker tape parade, as good as Stagger Bay can give you. We’re going to have live network coverage, TV bigwigs are going to host it, and some heavyweights from Sacramento and Washington are planning to show up, hand you some awards and medals, and use it for a photo op for themselves as well. This is very important for everyone involved. Important for you, Markus.

“When you join up with us, I admit we’ll pimp your celebrity to buy a little more credibility, have you front for us doing meet-and-greets with potential investors. You’ll pump some hands and pretend to laugh at some pretty corny jokes – but you’ll also be well taken care of, I promise. You’ll be part of the payday, son – part of the family. You’ll be on the inside for once, and I think you’ve come to realize just how big a stick we swing around here.”

I considered his words as I watched the flickering sidelong glances of the murmuring people keeping their distance. I’d rolled in here wanting to hate and despise these people. Maybe I’d expected them to be clutching cigars in their trotters and oinking together in glee like the hogs in Animal Farm, I couldn’t tell you.

But now that I was face to face with them? Just like with the cops at the deposition, I couldn’t deny our common humanity.

Maybe these club members were on the other side of the tracks from where I’d spent my entire life. Maybe they were disconnected from the lives and concerns of the middle class blue collars dependent on them for a paycheck. Maybe they looked the other way whenever they saw anyone living on the rock bottom of the American underbelly.

But they were as worried about their income as anyone on their payroll. These club folk had as much to lose as anyone in the Gardens, and further to fall if the current development failed.

If they weren’t in with the Driver, they weren’t automatically my enemies. But just how many of these club folk knew about the Driver, and thought he was good for business?

I turned to study Tubbs. Jim and the others were afraid of this hillbilly kingpin. Just why did these people kowtow so hard to him?

Tubbs grimaced at my assessing expression. “You keep looking at me like you’re judging,” he said, coming close to breaking his stated rule against complaint.

He kept his voice low, and his eyes tracked all the others in the room as he spoke. “Grow up, Markus. You think I don’t know they’re buying Stagger Bay from under us? You saying we should just give up without getting our end? The newcomers are gonna own it all anyways. We just need to make sure we’re not out in the cold when it’s over. You either rule here or you serve; there’s no middle ground in Stagger Bay anymore. It’s time to make your choice which one you’ll do, son.”

I looked around the club house, keying in on the signs of dissolution that hadn’t been apparent when we first walked in: a halo of flies buzzed in the void just below the high vaulted ceiling. Beneath the splendor of that Persian rug, the hardwood floors were cracked and sun-faded despite their wax and polish. A background sense of gimcrackery and decay wafted from beneath this club’s expensive, tempting veneer.

“You’re being selfish here, Markus,” Tubbs accused quietly, mistaking my meditative expression for the default stubbornness I’d gotten him accustomed to since our first meeting.

“There’s others you might want to be thinking of besides your own stiff-necked self.” He looked away from me out the window, jerking his chin toward Sam’s Lincoln across the street. I followed Tubbs’s gaze to see Sam staring right at me, white-faced.

But Sam couldn’t really see me in here, could he? No, I thought, stepping back away from the window – the sun had to be reflecting off the pane to conceal me; I had to be invisible to my son.

“Think about it, Markus,” Tubbs said, sounding like he was pleading. “You could buy Sam’s way out of his current sorry financial position. You could put your child through college, help him kick start a business, help him buy a house when he starts his own family.”

Oh God, that one hit me right where I lived, I’ll tell you. Tubbs might as well have punched me in the solar plexus.

Right now me and Sam were two drowning men; but I could let my son step up on my shoulders and thrust me down into the watery depths so he could have his chance at gulping air in the sunlight for a little while longer. Sam could maybe even get a leg up into the boat of prosperity, where he’d be sitting pretty as he and his fellow passengers watched the rest of us tread water around them.

So what if me sinking to the bottom was the price for my son’s salvation? Who cares Sam didn’t like me?

But after he turned his back on his friends and me, my son would live alone with whatever pile of money he managed to scrabble together after I gave him his jump start. He’d have no people to care whether he lived or died.

“I want to sincerely thank you for putting things in perspective Mr. Tubbs,” I said.

He continued to radiate some kind of pseudo-familial fondness at me, as if he wished me and mine no harm at all. If he hadn’t aimed my gaze out the window at Sam, he just might have had me.

But this club was built on sand, built of sand. The Club could no more protect these people from meaninglessness than the tool boxes on the pickup trucks driven by Stagger Bay’s construction workers could manufacture salvation. These people were as deeply trapped in this world as anyone else, and there was no escape for any of us.

This club was a gang just like any other gang I’d ever seen, either as a young blood or inside. And just like any other gang I’d ever encountered, once I got in the car with them I wouldn’t belong to myself anymore. I’d belong to them.

This wasn’t where Angela would have wanted me to wear that fancy suit anyway – and Sam would despise me all the way if I ever called this place my own while the Driver was still at large.

“We’ll be talking again later,” I said.

“You are a stubborn stiff-necked fool,” Tubbs said, realizing he’d muffed the sale even if he didn’t know exactly how. “You’ll never really step through this door all the way with me.”

I’d been about to leave but the paternal disappointment oozing from his voice irked me no end. So this withered son of a whore wanted to use Sam to work me? He wanted to keep playing like some sort of surrogate daddy to me?

“I suppose you’ve talked to whoever switched Kendra and Reese’s tours, right?” I asked, keeping my own voice as low as Tubbs was keeping his.

“What do you mean?” he asked, cocking his head.

“Answering a question with a question – go on playing dumb why don’t you? Kendra wasn’t on her normal patrol when she died, I’m sure you know that at least. In case you didn’t know though, about the guys who killed your daughter? A little birdie told me the guns and grenades they murdered Kendra with came from the SBPD evidence locker – the drugs they were high on too. They made a grand old party out of your daughter’s homicide, huh? And it all came from you and yours.”

For the first time that poker face cracked – he went pale. He tried and failed to be impassive, cranking down on his facial muscles hard enough his features twitched.

Still, I leaned in closer, spoke even softer and quieter so he’d have to listen hard and focus exclusively on my words over the hum of the Club. “Kendra was set up. It was a hit. And you know who murdered her.”

Tubbs trembled as both Meshbacks robotically approached, awaiting their master’s command.

“You will tell me who told you that. Now,” Tubbs gasped, his voice harsh and low.

He still didn’t want anyone else in the club to know we were having a border dispute over here; he had something to lose if they figured out I wasn’t as deep in his pocket as he had maybe been implying I was.

I kept anything even resembling a smile off my face, not wanting to push him any further than I already was – I wasn’t stupid enough to think I knew his limits. “Like I said, a little birdie. Tweety tweet, Mr. Tubbs.”

I turned on my heel and strolled down the hall, out the door, and across the street toward Sam’s Lincoln, my back crawling the whole way. I had no real faith that having all his business buddies around as eye witnesses would slow Tubbs down.

Sam had started the Continental, but the passenger door was locked and the window was up. I rapped on the closed glass with my knuckle but he just gave me the stink eye.

“What?” he mouthed.

“Open sesame, kid,” I said. Sam unlocked my door and I climbed in. Across the street Tubbs’ Bronco roared out the Club parking lot like it was in a hurry.

Sam wiped his face with the back of his hand. “You know we got nothing to offer to match what they’re putting on the table, and I know you’re looking out for number one like always. So what’s changed? How is now any different from an hour ago?”

I grinned at him. “Quit fishing. All you need to know is I want to go back to the Gardens.”

Chapter 42

Sam started to pull away from the curb.

“Wait,” I said, looking over at the library, where Chief Jansen had busted the under-age hooker a few minutes before. “Let’s go to the library really quick, I need to check on something.”

Sam drove over there, managing to take up two spaces when he parked at an uncaring angle.

“Wanna come in with me?” I asked, but he only laughed.

I left him and entered the cool quiet hush of my church. When I’d been inhaling the prison library whole I’d just about memorized the Dewey Decimal System. Now I wended my way through the rows and shelves, running my fingertips along the exposed book spines as I searched for those familiar catalog numbers.

Here was 818.3, and I nodded patriotic respect to the Transcendentalists as I passed: Thoreau with his bleak ironies – his attack disguised so well by the beauty of his words that his victim was unaware of the damage before it was too late. And Emerson, the King – his unapologetic world view was such a lonely one, I was surprised more of Ralph’s readers didn’t try to hack their wrists up with a dull butter knife. A little ways down at 811.3 Whitman held court, aloof as always: Walt, with his suicidal compassion dripping crimson from his poems like a squeezed triage room sponge.

From there a straight leap back to the ancients and my buddies the Stoics: 187 and Lucretius, with his flat gaze and incisive mind, attacking the world as if it were an enemy deliberately trying to pull the wool over his eyes. 188, and my almost-namesake, Marcus Aurelius – reading his Meditations was like chewing on tin foil sometimes; but Marcus freely gave all the tools necessary for courage and honor in a universe so obviously not constructed with our benefit in mind.

What should I do now, Lucretius? I asked silently. How would you go about things here, Marcus? But of course all I got from my boys was static.

Which of my mentors did I want to hold in my hand? What book would be worth the effort of carting it away from here?

I smiled as I realized who it had to be. I walked to 844, grabbed a copy of Montaigne’s Essays and headed to the checkout counter. “I don’t have a card,” I admitted to the librarian, a pretty young brunette.

“Do you have proof of residency?” she asked.

“Sara,” an older librarian called from behind her.

“Excuse me,” Sara said, going back to join her coworker. The two huddled together whispering, both of them turning to look at me occasionally. I was getting ready to leave when they both marched up to me and Sara took her seat again.

“We know who you are, Markus,” the older librarian told me, while Sara pressed all the necessary keys on her computer. I nodded, blinking a little.

I was happy as a kid at Christmas when I left the library with Montaigne, no longer fully alone. Sam just smirked when he saw the book in my hands, and we commenced to driving.

Chapter 43

“Just so you know,” Sam said, “the family’s name is the Vangs; the girl’s name was Mai. The mom you saw crying? She told me once she had seven other children back in Laos that didn’t even make it here to the Land of the Big PX – she still has two left, even with Mai gone. Maybe the Vangs ain’t gonna make you guest of honor at their next Moon Festival, but they know who killed Mai. And they know damn well it wasn’t you.”

“Thanks Sam,” I said.

“For what?”

“Just ‘thanks,’ and let’s leave it at that.” I glanced at the floor but our Kodachrome was gone. I looked around at Sam’s belongings scattered around the car and almost asked him why he didn’t stop pretending he wasn’t with Elaine; why he didn’t just move in with her.

No, I thought, studying his stony profile as he chauffeured me home to the Gardens. Sam’s love life was none of my affair.

Chapter 44

That afternoon Big Moe drove me to Mai’s funeral in a Ford Taurus that had seen better days, but was clean and looked well maintained. The Taurus had an infant’s car seat in the back but Moe apparently decided to leave his baby at home.

It was quite the juxtaposition, this young slanger driving such a conservative, respectable family car. My confusion must have shown; Moe said, in an almost apologetic tone, “It has a very good safety rating.”

The funeral was a dismal affair, as such rituals always are. Her family stood around that cold, cold hole while some kind of priest dressed in colorful robes mouthed words in a language I couldn’t understand. Mai’s tiny casket was lowered into the ground and that was that.

One of the male Vangs looked my way; I was standing with Moe several graves over, as distant as I could manage and still pay my respects by attending. This Hmong guy just stared at me; I couldn’t interpret the expression on his face but I didn’t take it for friendliness.

“I was out of line, what I said before,” Moe said, both of us watching the funeral instead of looking at each other. “You’re still needed – can’t let you get away that easy. It was like an act of God, not your fault.”

He spat on the ground. “Just like an act of God,” he said again.

I turned to see Officer Reese standing by his car a ways behind us with a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a soda can in the other. His black-and-white was a brand new Crown Victoria. Given Stagger Bay’s money problems, it had to have been bought with drug seizure money.

Big Moe was right by my side as I walked toward Reese, but I shook my head at him. “Go wait in the car.”

Moe didn’t like it, but he peeled off.

“Tell me Kendra didn’t know about any of this, Reese,” I said by way of greeting, lobbing the name right up in his face to get it over with. “Tell me she had no part in it.”

But Reese was already intent as a targeting attack dog: “What you was saying to Mr. Tubbs before, about those douche bags that killed Kendra? Where’d you get that? Who told you?”

“That’s between me, Mr. Tubbs, and my source.”

“Source,” he snarled. “You’re full of it, just trying to stir things up.”

“You may be right. You’d be the one to know whether you and Kendra got your shifts switched. You’d even know who was the one made it happen.”

Reese shuddered but it was no more than a momentary spasm, nothing to hang my hat on. He hadn’t shaved since the last time I’d seen him. His uniform was wrinkled and soiled like he’d worn it overnight on a stakeout.

“You know she’d despise what you’re doing,” I said. “And yet listen to you, trying to act like the grieving boyfriend.”

“Are you getting ready to assault a police officer here?” Reese asked, looking at his whiskey bottle. “Are you a deadly threat? Self defense against a dangerous suspect?”

“You’re forgetting there’s witnesses,” I said, stabbing a thumb over my shoulder at Mai’s funeral party.

“What witnesses?” he asked.

I turned: the Vang funeral had broken up and the extended clan was piling into their fleet of minivans. I shrugged like it didn’t concern me a bit. “It’s still kind of hard to reach for your.357 with your hands full. Lemme know whether you want to let go of the booze bottle or the loogie can. I’ll hold whichever for you so you can slop your gun out the holster.”

Reese’s eyes bugged and the wad of dip spewed from his lower lip as a single hiccup of laughter escaped him. He swigged hard at the Wild Turkey, ignoring the tobacco dribbling down and off his chin. “If you weren’t such an asshole, you might be almost likeable,” he said, his eyes a wicked gleam.

I shook my head. “But how could you ever forgive me for what you did to my brother?”

“Ooh, that’s rich,” he said with a sneer. “That’s some psychobabble shit all right. You wouldn’t have stood a chance with her, you know.”

“What do you mean?” I was disturbed despite myself at this riposte.

“It shows in your eyes when you say her name, whenever anyone does in your presence. Your heart is on your sleeve, Mr. Subtle Man.” He took another swig off the bottle.

“You’re too old, and you weren’t her type anyways,” Reese said. He tried to make it a dig but he spoke as if by rote. His gaze was focused on something behind me and I turned to look. There was nothing to see but the back hoe chugging into position to commence filling Mai’s grave.

“Her runaway jaunt didn’t last very long, did it?” I asked.

“You’re just as guilty as anyone,” Reese said, his voice wild and bitter.

He swayed a little and his eyes were glassy as he stared at the little girl’s grave. “How’re the Gardens folks liking you these days, Markus? They pointed out that you’re as responsible for that little girl’s death as the unknown suspect that did it? If you hadn’t tried to be a big shot on TV, she’d still be alive.”

I had to close my eye for a moment. His zinger stung, no matter how Sam and Moe kept trying to rationalize the event in my favor. When I opened it again Reese was smirking at me, but not near as unkindly as I would’ve expected.

“You think I’m heartless, that I’m the bad one here,” he said. “But I’m not. Not really. Don’t you see how beautiful Stagger Bay is, how much she’s worth protecting? This is my home, all I’ve ever known. I’d do anything for her.

“I watch news of the outside world, Markus. I know what’s what. You’re from Oakland, right? Car-jackings, murders, drive-bys – you and your family came up here to leave all that behind, didn’t you? You raised your own son here. Doesn’t that prove what I’m saying?”

“Sure Oakland can be a rough town,” I admitted. “But you can’t be bragging too much on Stagger Bay these days. How many folks have disappeared around here again? How many have you had to kill in ‘self defense’ lately? You know, like my brother the big-time pot dealer?”

“I won’t apologize for doing my job,” Reese said, sloshing the whiskey bottle around. “And I sure won’t apologize for doing your brother.”

“As you say, I’d be insulted if you did say you were sorry,” I said. “In fact, I’d be mightily pissed if you even tried.”

Reese sneered. “Those people are outsiders; the barbarians are at the gates. You saw yourself first-hand at the school. But there’s some of us with enough sand to stand up for our own. The trash needs to be down in the city where they belong; they’ve got to go away and keep their place.”

“Like the back of the bus?”

“See, listen to you going on with that Al Sharpton crap,” he said. “You’re the right color and all, but you’re one of them at heart. What are you saying, Markus? You got you a Pass down there in Oakland? You could walk through the hood and they’d all be flashing gang sign at you, greeting you by name? No matter that you’re Oakland native; they hate you for being white, you’re just another honkie. Maybe you survived it, but you’re a fool if you call it home.”

“After what you did at the school, you and Sam could be honorary old local here,” he said. “Mr. Tubbs is a dab hand with a barbecue, and you could eat at his house any weekend. There’s lots that’d be proud to call you two our own, but here you are throwing yourself away on a lost cause, for low-lifes who don’t even appreciate it.”

Reese saw himself as a paladin, but if so he was a doomed one, fighting for the old school horrors and joys of this isolated dinosaur of a community. He was too close to it to see these were the last days of Stagger Bay; that his home would be one of the final victims in the decline and fall of small-town America.

“What if I told you I’ve had a change of heart?” I asked.

Reese stared at me then threw his head back and laughed a harsh series of mocking brays, the reek of liquor wafting from his mouth with each paroxysm. “You mean like Luca Brasi?”

“Who?”

“Luca Brasi, in the Godfather. I love them old movies. The Corleones being mean to you, Markus? You looking to swim with the fishes?”

I inclined my head toward the little girl’s grave. “Maybe I just don’t want things like this to keep on happening. You’re right – it’s all my fault and your hands are clean. Maybe I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, and forget the past. Only, this has to stop.”

He chewed on that, the wheels turning in his booze-sodden head. Then he smiled unpleasantly. “Bygones like your brother? You may think I’m a hick, but that don’t mean I’m stupid. You’d have to go pretty far to convince me.”

“About your brother, just to set the record straight,” Reese said in a sudden wide-eyed approximation of sobriety, “I know you won’t believe me, but he really was dealing major weight. I was serving a legit warrant, and he truly did try to throw down when I served him. He was armed; it was self defense and a fair fight: face to face and man to man. I didn’t pull anything fishy, and if he didn’t want to pay he shouldn’t have tried to play.”

I winced. With my squirrelly big brother Karl it was surely possible, though I wasn’t about to nod in sheepish acknowledgment. “The dank wasn’t the only reason you were there.”

“You see? There’s no way I could ever convince you. But like I said, I have nothing to apologize for.”

“They’re ready to crack, Reese,” I said. “You’ve got them on the run. I figure, if the Driver hits them one more time, pretty much everyone in the Gardens will pack it in and caravan out of here, back down to the Bay Area where they belong. How’s that for proving in?”

He raised a brow. “Now, that’s interesting. One thing though – it means someone else is going to have to get hurt. How you feel about that?”

I planted a look of guilty realization on my face, pretending he’d pointed something out I hadn’t considered.

“As long as it’s the last,” I said in anguished tones, acting like I was gullible enough to believe any of this would end even after the Gardens were Pol-Pot-ed out. “As long as it’s over after that, and no one else has to suffer ever again.”

“I should have been there instead of Kendra, I know that,” Reese said. “You’re right, our shifts got switched that day, I’ll give you that freebie. I usually patrolled the bank and I’m the one who should be dead.”

“So who switched the shifts?”

But Reese’s only reply was an angry shake of the head. “I would have done exactly the same as you, if I’d been lucky enough to be there at the school.”

I envisioned all the scenarios, plugging my brother’s murderer into the equation. “If you’d have been there, you’d have done the same,” I said.

When I spoke those words to Wong I’d just been going for a sound bite, but with Reese I knew it for the truth. Reese appeared surprised at that admission but he wouldn’t have if he’d known me at all. Even though he’d killed Karl, I knew what it was to be used as the point man like he’d been so many times. And I knew what is was like to always be the one that took the fall – Karl had never done time, it’d always been me that paid the price.

“I’m not even pretending to be on your side, Reese. You can go to hell if you think that.” I gestured toward those unseen Southlands. “But you also know I’ve got little reason to stick around here. I’m heading back home to Oakland pretty quick.”

“Oh? Just gonna run off are you?” Was Reese disappointed?

“It’s got to end, that’s all,” I said. “After the next one, after the last one? I can count on you to put it all to bed then, can’t I, Reese?”

Reese scowled, his lower lip pushed into an upside down U. Then he put on a final show of cogitation, at least as much as the alcohol would allow.

“I still think you’re full of it. But you’re probably right; they’ve got to be on their last legs. I’ll let you know my decision.” He took his Wild Turkey, got into his cruiser, and bounced erratically away over the cemetery’s uneven ground.

He was going to decide? Yeah, right. I figured Reese for the kind that wouldn’t change his underwear without specific instructions from his higher ups.

I already had a pretty good ideas just who that had to be. And I wondered what they thought about how wide open he was playing things, how sloppy his grief and his drinkage was making him.

I gave Big Moe a wave to let him know I hadn’t forgotten him and wended my way through the tomb stones, searching. If Karl or Angela had been buried here I would have paid my respects; but there’d been no money and they’d been cremated, their ashes scattered to the wind. No Potter’s Field allowed for in Stagger Bay.

My quest didn’t take long: Kendra’s tombstone was a huge slab of polished pink marble, taller than any other monument in the whole cemetery including the antique mausoleums the founding father robber barons built. Old Man Tubbs had gone all out.

“We never got a chance to talk in life,” I told Kendra’s towering headstone. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Markus, in case you didn’t already know.”

I looked over at Moe, who sat in the Taurus listening to his stereo. “The reason I’m here, Kendra, is to thank you. Everyone’s making a big deal about what I did that day but I’m a total fake. It was a fluke, blind dumb stinking luck. I never expected to survive. I never thought I could really save any of those kids.”

“You were the hero that day, Kendra. I came to figure out that if you hadn’t shown the guts you did when you died, I couldn’t have done what I did.

“I like to think that, at the least, we would have been friends. I know you couldn’t have been any part of what’s going on in this town, Kendra. And I know you’d wish me well when I tell you I’m going to bring it crashing down on their heads. They’ll all curse my name before I’m through.”

“That’s all,” I said.

Was there an afterlife? Was Kendra in some kind of heaven? The possibility sort of comforted me, but I really didn’t have enough faith to be able to invest in the theory.

Angela, Kendra, and Natalie: I had three women in my life right now, and two of them were dead.

Chapter 45

When I got to the car Moe was still listening to the stereo. But instead of music I heard a man’s voice speaking urgently and persuasively; Big Moe was paying such rapt attention that he didn’t notice I was there until I opened the passenger door. He quickly switched from CD to radio as I climbed in.

“So what was that?” I asked.

Moe gave me a pained look, but ejected the CD and handed it over. It was a motivational course as read by one of America’s top self-help gurus; the tall guy.

“He has some good stuff to share,” Moe said. “The man’s very helpful to me.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “If it’s useful, keep it. If it’s useless, throw it away.” Big Moe’s usual doom and gloom demeanor seemed to soften in response.

“You knew Wayne pretty well, right?” I asked.

“Sure,” Moe said.

“Okay, I know you weren’t in with his last clique – those guys from out of town I mean. But why’d they go so Terminator that day?”

I was still chewing on what Hoffman had told me, trying to decide how much was bullshit and how much was useful. Tubbs and Reese sure acted like they believed it, which was more important than whether or not there was a lick of truth to it. “Hell, Moe, where did Wayne and them get all those drugs they were on? Was it from you guys?”

“Not from any of us, I swear. I’d tell you if they had, it’s no big – but their dope didn’t come through the Gardens.”

“Okay,” I said, believing him – there was no profit for him to lie in this case. “So how long you known Sam?”

“Oh, since kindergarten man. You probably don’t remember, but I came over to your house a few times when I was a little kid. Your wife always put out fruit. I liked that better than the candy a lot of the moms gave us.”

I closed my eye and tried to recall, but shook my head when no memories came.

“Don't worry about it. You know Sam has a real mean streak in him, don’t you?” Moe asked, his tone admiring. “Sometimes he rolls like he just don’t care.”

“Before my baby’s mama had my kid, Sam and me used to go around on Saturday nights crashing parties we wasn’t invited to.” Moe looked at me then away. “Hate to be the one to tell you, but they’s a lot of guys in Stagger Bay don’t like Sam very much.”

“That breaks my heart all right.”

Big Moe snorted. “Anyways, we usually crashed the party if the guys throwing it didn’t like us, if they’d been talking smack. Once we showed up? If it was a sausage fest we’d just crack some heads, drink they alcohol and split. If they was girls there, Sam would go up to the dude with the hottest lady and lay him out. Then he’d sit down on the couch, drink the guy’s bottle dry, and swap spit with the chump’s girlfriend with the fool laid out cold at Sam’s feet.”

Moe wore a pleased expression, enjoying this trip down memory lane. “I stick up for my boy and all, but you definitely don’t want to be around when Sam uncages his rage. Yeah, he ain’t that tall or nothing, but he’s never let it bother him. He’s a real giant killer.”

Moe looked at me with brows raised. “Don’t tell Sam I told you about the party crashing though, okay? He never wanted Karl to find out, and I promised I’d never talk about it.”

“So I think Reese is the Driver,” Big Moe said, “And Sam favors Hoffman. How about you? You formed any opinions at all?”

“Well, I’ve eliminated a few,” I allowed. “It ain’t Little Moe or Randy because they’re too small. And it ain’t Elaine or Natalie, because they’re girls. Sam’s too short, and the voice isn’t right even if he did his best to disguise it.”

I smirked at Moe’s expression. “And as for you? Well, if you had access to Hollywood-level makeup you could achieve the whiteness. And you’re certainly wide enough, though you appear a lot leaner. I don’t know if you’re the right height, as I’ve only seen the Driver sitting down. But I’ll tell you what kid, if you could actually do that good a job of playing a middle-aged Caucasian freak? Get into the movies, son – you’ll win an Oscar for sure.”

“You sure like to push people’s buttons,” Moe said. “You know, it’s possible to be too suspicious.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not.”

“Look,” he said. “Some are saying you’re just sitting on your ass, but I know that ain’t the case. They ain’t doing nothing they own selves, and I know you got a lot going on up in that dome of yours – I can feel the wheels turning even from here. I’ll admit to being a worry wort sometimes, and its okay you don’t want to share. But I need to hear you say it just one time, okay? Can we do this thing?”

Worry wort? I thought. This kid didn’t have an optimistic bone in his body, self help CDs notwithstanding. And here he was reaching out to the likes of me to convince himself we could make a difference?

“Of course we can,” I said.

Chapter 46

“I might just have some kind of use for a gun down the road,” I told Moe.

At a stoplight he reached under his seat and pulled out a pistol. He handed it to me and I examined it, holding it low so no one outside the car would be able to see it – it was a sweet piece, a 9mm automatic, a real heart stopper. I put it in my jacket pocket, the first weapon I’d touched since Angela and I first got together eighteen years ago.

“We need to swing by Elaine’s,” I said.

“You’re looking thoughtful,” Big Moe said. “You’ve finally got something active in mind.”

“Yeah, and I’m keeping it to myself.” I turned to him. “I know why you guys dealt me in on this, okay? It’s because if I fuck up you can pretend you weren’t involved, maybe not pay too much of a price if things fall apart all nasty. It’s a smart move to hedge your bets like that, but for me to be deniable you really shouldn’t be too deep into the loop.”

Moe at least had the courtesy to look guilty, not that I’d needed any confirmation.

I tossed a shoulder. “It’s all good, and I don’t blame you a bit. You got family and loved ones to think about. I’m footloose and fancy free; I’m no one to you. Besides, you didn’t twist my arm – I’m a volunteer, and I’d be doing this even if you hadn’t roped me in.”

Chapter 47

Elaine lived in a nice two-story cottage on H Street, with big round custom picture windows in front. Moe and I headed for her front door, but my steps slowed when I saw something on the front porch.

At first it looked like a pile of rags, or a fur collar ripped off a coat. But when we got close enough, when I saw the blood – I stopped.

Moe bumped into me from behind and we stood looking at what was left of Lola. The poor little dog looked like a sock that had been turned inside out.

I climbed the porch and bent over the leavings for closer examination. Someone had known what they were doing: Lola had been gutted neatly; her body cavity was empty and the cut down the abdominal wall was surgically clean. I couldn’t see any other wounds: Lola had been alive while she was eviscerated. I knocked on the front door.

“Hello?” Elaine asked from inside.

“It’s me, open up,” I said.

“Get that out of sight,” I hissed to Moe. He grimaced as he scooped up Lola’s remains and hurried back to the Taurus, holding the bloody mess out in front so as not to stain his clothes.

“Give me a minute,” Elaine said.

“I need to see Sam right now,” I said.

I twisted the knob, which was unlocked, and pushed the door open. Elaine stood there in a pink chiffon robe, fresh from the shower, with her hair wet and wrapped up in a towel. Sam ambled into the front room, glistening wet as well, with a towel wrapped around his waist. He stopped, and both he and Elaine stared at me.

I pulled the door shut in a hurry and stood there with my face burning. Moe was hiding in his car after sticking Lola’s body in the trunk – hell, I couldn’t fault him for not wanting any further part of this.

After a few minutes Elaine opened the door. She was fully made up, her hair dry and perfectly coiffed even if she was still in her robe. She eyed me coldly as I mumbled an apology, but her face went blank as she caught my expression.

She made way for me to come inside. Sam was jumping around on one foot in the hallway, dragging his pants on.

A copy of our local newspaper lay on the coffee table and the headline picture prompted me to pick it up: a big blurry pixilated photo of me at the Plaza, surrounded by all the kids I’d saved at the school. My hands were thrown up in the air like I was surrendering, and my face was swathed in its patchwork of sanitary napkins. In the picture I looked like I was high or something; I came off as looking pretty goofy. Scanning the headline I noted they’d misspelled my name, and I tossed the paper back down.

Elaine was still in the doorway staring down at something on the front porch. Following her gaze, I saw the bloodstain where Lola’s body had lain.

Elaine’s robe had fallen open and she was wearing nothing underneath, but she only bothered to tug it closed after she turned back to face me.

“What did he put in the trunk?” Elaine asked as she knotted her robe’s belt. “Where’s Lola?”

“Lola won’t be coming back.” I stared hard at Sam, who looked from me to Elaine and back again. My son, I thought. The Driver isn’t just stalking me now – he’s stalking my son, or Elaine, or both. “Did you hear anything last night Sam? Like a big block engine or something?”

“Maybe. Don’t know.”

I caught Elaine’s eye. “I need to talk to you, now. Alone.”

Elaine sighed. “Go powder your nose, Sam.”

He stared at her, his lips parted to say something. He glared at me, shut his mouth hard, and stalked down the hall toward the bedroom he apparently knew so well.

“Look,” I said to Elaine. “You’ve been upsetting my calculations long enough. I got no expectations or requirements of you as long as you stay out of my way and don’t hurt Sam. But if you won’t trust me any, why in the hell would I let my son go on trusting you? I need to either be able to turn my back on you a little, or I need to be rid of you. It’s time for you to spill enough to make me feel safe.”

“All right.” Fear now filled Elaine’s face instead of the indignation I would have received before Lola. “Karl didn’t want you to know. I swear that’s the only reason I didn’t tell you.

“A lot of my clients are pot growers. They’re good customers, usually: They need my services fairly regularly, they always have ready money for the retainer, and as long as you make sure they pay as they go, the cash flow is pretty consistent. The problem with them is their gratitude runs out as soon as you get them acquitted. Then they think all they have to do is hide out down on their pot farms with their dogs and their guns.

“That’s how Karl and I first met. He offered his services as a debt collector on the worst of my deadbeat clients, and he always came through. I never asked him how he did it and he never said, but the money always wound up on my desk.

“Sometimes, though, the debt collection would be ‘in kind’ rather than in cash. And then, of course, Karl would have to sell the product. That’s what he was doing when Reese killed him.”

She caught my expression. “How else did you think Karl was paying his bills? Did you really see him working a minimum-wage job? Do you really think I could stay afloat in this one-horse town doing pro bono work?”

“He was supposed to position Sam away from all that,” I said.

“Yes, well, you’re certainly doing a fine job in that respect these days, aren’t you? Look, please don’t tell Sam about the pot thing, all right? As I said, Karl didn’t want him to know. He wasn’t particularly proud of it.”

“Sam won’t hear it from me.”

“Look,” she said again. “I know I’m older than Sam. I see how all the girls his age smile at him wherever we go. Is that part of what’s bothering you? Do you disapprove?”

“I’m not the one to say. Okay Sam,” I called toward the back of the house. “You can come out now.”

“I need you to do something, right away,” I told Elaine when Sam rejoined us. “I’ve been planting seeds that look like they might be finally taking root, and I need you to do your part, double up on my preparations. I need you to go down to the news station, find that red-headed anchor lady out of the East Bay.

“You got to go on camera and talk about how the people of the Gardens are ready to quit; how one more tragedy will crush their morale and chase them out of town. More than that, you got to speak directly to the Driver and plead with him to stop. Beg for his mercy – you’ve got to grovel, that’ll give him a real hard on.”

I thought a bit. “You’ve got to put some quaver in your voice too, sound like you’re ready to break down, give him a show. Can you fake emotion like that?”

She gave me a pitying look. “I’m a lawyer. I fake emotions for a living.”

“I’m in,” Sam said firmly – and he was whether he knew it or not. “You’re not going to stop me being part of the fun anymore.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I need you body-guarding Elaine. You two got to go see that newscaster lady together.” If Elaine was up to any shenanigans that might impact my game, Sam following her around like a puppy would continue to put a crimp in it; and if Sam was up to something with her, them being together couldn’t do me any more harm.

“After Elaine makes her TV speech, find somewhere to hole up,” I continued. “I don’t know, a motel room outside of town or something. Make sure you park your car out of sight, in back-”

“I know how to lie low,” Sam interrupted in a sullen voice.

I ignored the attitude. “Don’t let yourself be followed, and keep your eyes and ears open for that Cougar. There’s no mistaking that ride.”

We were getting close to the finish here, and I had no choice but to be semi-open. “I think he’s going to hit the Gardens again and soon, maybe tonight. I won’t lie – I think that’s the main chance, and that’s where I need to be.”

“But it looks like he figures Elaine’s a target now too.” And maybe you too, son. “He may come after her again instead. In that case, trust me, you’ll have all the action you can handle and I’ll be the one running your way.”

Was I trying to distract the Driver away from Sam by luring him to the Gardens? When you hunted big cats, you needed live bait unfortunately. The Gardens was the main chance and always had been, I told myself as if cross-examining myself on the witness stand – I’d had this plan in mind even before Lola’s demise, and the Gardens were at risk regardless of what I did or didn’t do.

Elaine took Sam’s hand as he stared at the floor thinking; he didn’t like what I was saying but had no argument to counter it. She couldn’t take her eyes off him – maybe the sweet spot she had for him might just hold a bit longer. Elaine noticed me watching her watching Sam, and glared at me as though ashamed for showing this vulnerability.

I continued speaking to my son: “Hey kid, don’t take it so hard. I promise if it goes down at the Gardens, I’ll call you ASAP. If I do, you’d best get there like your butthole’s on fire.” Or vice a versa, I thought.

“Count on it,” Sam said.

///I saw a stack of official paperwork on Elaine’s kitchen table and something clicked in my head, made me go look at them. There were zoning maps and tax documents, real estate assessments with lot numbers that meant nothing to me – a bunch of seemingly random stuff – but a pattern snapped up in my brain as I studied the pile.

“Elaine,” I said. “All those empty lots next to the Gardens, what’s the story on them?”

Elaine squinted myopically down at her working papers – she apparently hadn’t had time to put her soft lenses in. “Well, Tubbs’ people plan on putting in a high-end retirement village there – no Medicare, just wealthy seniors. There are a lot of construction contracts riding on the senior center, and the potential for major tax revenue, so they’ve declared the Gardens a blighted property under that new Supreme Court eminent domain ruling. They’re getting ready to evict everyone and bulldoze it to the ground, but I filed an injunction for a cease-and-desist so the project is on hold.”

I looked at her, incredulous. “You actually still expect me to think people are following you just because you sprung me? Don’t even pretend you don’t know what it’s really about.”

“It’s a legitimate injunction,” Elaine said defensively. “There’ll be a healthy payout at the end, I promise. But you’re right, it all started after I filed it.”

“I saw a lot of high-end homes on the outskirts of town when I came to town,” I said. “What happened to the people that used to live there?”

Elaine considered. “Well, some took the hint and moved away – others just up and disappeared, the police only took missing persons reports but they went nowhere – the lot sales, the permits for demolition and construction were issued a little hastily I think, given the circumstances.

“There’ve been questionable deaths in the development areas too, but the coroner’s reports always say they’re accidents. The police have had to shoot more than a few suspects serving warrants. Some of the people killed were allegedly meth lab chemists or indoor growers – but there were fires at several of the supposed meth labs, so it’s hard to be sure.”

I nodded. “You know, I understand outside money coming in here – it’s a nice, scenic, isolated place. But what about the pulp mill? I can’t see rich folks moving to Stagger Bay if their view’s going to be blocked by those two huge smoke stacks, even if they’re not spewing toxic waste anymore.”

“Oh, they’re going to dynamite the stacks next week. You can watch it live on TV or in person if you like. Some cruise ship line bought the property; they’re going to put in a big dock and a resort there after the rubble’s cleared away.”

Given Stagger Bay’s current startling cash influx, it was worth the risk to Elaine if she was gaming. She was being a smart girl; there were so many angles here to generate a nice payday for Ms. Hubbard. Then what? An account in the Caymans, a villa in Sao Paolo? And when she got her passport, would Sam be getting one too?

“We don’t know how far this goes,” I said, continuing the pretense we were all putting our cards on the table. “We should step carefully. But I don’t think we’re going to be able to – our only chance is to make things loud and messy, hope they make more mistakes than us.”

Chapter 48

When we got to Natalie’s, something was burning in the trash can where the Crips usually stowed their empty 40-ouncers. Smoke and flames came from the top of the can; I stepped in closer and saw it was a man’s clothes on fire in there.

“I'll never regret Wayne,” Natalie said as I joined her on the porch to watch the pyre. “He gave me Randy after all. But you can’t sleep with the dead and it’s time to put Wayne to rest all the way. I have to clean house and move on.”

“I’m tired of being in love with pain,” she said, harsh and anxious. “Hate won’t warm my bed. It just takes. And takes.”

“You’re right about that,” I said.

Natalie started to say something else but I’d already commenced walking to the Garden’s entrance. Once there, I studied the stillborn development across the way.

Even before it had seemed like those empty lots were besieging the Gardens. Now they had all the charm of a malignant tumor about to metastasize and engulf the people who lived here.

I surveyed my intended battle ground. One wide avenue ran directly across my front, with the Gardens’ entrance teeing into it midway. A hundred yards to the right and to the left, the avenue turned 90 degrees away at the corner, extending a hundred yards from me before joining the far fourth side of the huge blank rectangle that was the series of ghost lots, all surveyed and ready for the retirement community to be built.

I crossed the avenue and hopped the curbs, dodging surveyor stakes as I trotted across the graded earth, finally reaching the far side of the development. I was next to a big Caterpillar grader parked by the lead contractor’s hut.

The avenue in front of me was twin to the one fronting the Gardens a football field length behind me – an easy scrambling lope. I was midway between both corners, which were again a hundred yards to my right and left.

Directly in front of me the access road led up that steep, short slope and teed into the highway running along the crest of the ridge. To my right, the ridge highway curved around the hospital and past the swamp to Stagger Bay proper. To the left it curved out of sight up Moose Creek Road through the tall pines, into the lair of the Driver.

I turned and looked back at the Gardens. Even from this distance I could identify Big Moe and the other 18th Street Crips watching me. Several of the Hmong men were with them; but I saw no women except Natalie, standing by herself to the side, staring in my direction with her arms folded under her breasts.

There was no traffic in or out today. The Crips weren’t serving any customers, and no kids were playing outside. The Gardens were Alamo-ed up.

That was only fair, of course. Even if I was doing this alone, the Gardens folk had to know they were my lure.

Gauging the distance from the Gardens, studying the ground and the rectangle of road surrounding the construction zone, I figured it should just be possible for a man running full tilt to get to this access road before a fleeing car, even a big beast like the Cougar. He’d be driving balls out and slaloming around the corners, but the Driver would have to slow at each turn – and slow even further before sledding up that last steep stretch of access road.

A street racer like the Cougar? No way would he take it off-roading, or try to cut across the construction site – he’d stay on the asphalt.

There was no guarantee he’d come in his ride of course – hell, there was no guarantee he’d come at all. He might come, but just drive by the Gardens and heckle us. Or he might come all sneaky to do a recon, and leave without us ever knowing he’d been there.

But he was an excitable boy. He’d come to the Gardens (I hoped, I prayed, I yearned) and try to do the dirty deed he loved so much.

If I could take him down before he struck, I’d do so. If not he’d make his getaway, with a victim as passenger or not.

And when he made the final turn out of here, when he thought he was home free? I’d be waiting for him with a bullet or ten to blast him straight to hell. If there was a God, the Driver would know it was me killing him when he died.

Chapter 49

I was sitting in the easy chair in Natalie’s living room, Montaigne’s Essays unopened in my hand.

“Read to me,” Randy said, and flew through the air to land in my out-of-practice lap.

I was startled more by his request than by the impact. But I went ahead and opened to the part I loved the best, the passage where I always knew my communication with Monsieur Montaigne was still open whenever I read it.

“He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave,” I said, reading from the page.

But – just as had happened every time I’d tried to read it since checking it out from the library – my head immediately hurt from trying to read with one eye.

I closed the book and quoted from memory: “Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint. There is nothing evil in life for the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be deprived of life is not an evil.”

“What does that mean?” Randy asked.

“It means that this world will crush us like bugs in the end,” I said. “But that is no tragedy.”

Randy lost interest at that, and climbed off my lap to wander outside.

Natalie entered the room, picked up the Essays and riffled its pages. “You actually enjoy reading these old books?”

“I do,” I said, a little irritably from the pain. I closed my eye and rubbed my temples against the growing headache. “I owe everything to them, they’re my fuel.”

But how was I to read anymore? Had that day at the school cost me the Canon?

“Would you like me to rub your head?” she asked, finally seeming to notice my sourness.

I nodded without looking at her, not wanting to impose with any kind of request. She stood behind me, her cool strong fingers stroking my temples in a circular motion.

The headache immediately faded. My pain in my missing left eye even turned down a hefty notch for the first time since I left the hospital.

“I still miss Wayne,” Natalie said. “I miss him in the morning, and in the evenings too. All I had to do was touch his cheek, you know?” she said, brushing the side of my face with the back of her fingers.

“I think my headache is gone now,” I managed to choke out, hoping I wouldn’t have to stand up any time soon.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her chin raised slightly as she leaned around to look me in the face sideways. Her breasts rested easy on my shoulder. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

The living room felt several dozen degrees warmer, probably from the incandescent lamp my face felt to be. And then Natalie said the words that made me smile as she breathed them in my ear; the sweetest words I’d heard coming from a woman’s mouth in a long time:

“You know you can get all those books on tape, right?”

Chapter 50

A nap of exhaustion and I wake from a dream, get up to go to the bathroom. The dream had been an unrealistic one, wherein she welcomes all my attentions and desires.

But now, awake, I hear her sobbing on the other side of her closed bathroom door. I stand there unconscionably rapt at her almost erotic cries, as if they’re the distant call of a siren or undine luring some poor pitiful sailor to his doom.

The door opens and there she stands weeping – strange that her tears lend her a carnal seductiveness her quiet demeanor has never fully expressed to me yet. She’s angry to see me there.

“You…” she says in an accusing tone, before closing her mouth tight and biting her lower lip. I back off and step out on the porch; after a few minutes she joins me and apologizes, but for what I don’t know.

I am awed by her tears. Who are they for, exactly? I am still aroused but now is not the time.

Chapter 51

Later that night, I prowled Natalie’s darkened front room. She’d offered to stay up with me, make coffee and keep me company – but I was pretty gruff and she finally took the hint.

This was the place I was never good at: the waiting. I grew more and more restless, like an over-wound top waiting to whirl into action Tasmanian-Devil-style. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling; as usual it was like a bellyful of bad drugs spinning away in my gut. I kept yawning from tension too, and my jaw was sore from nervously gulping air so often.

I’d had Natalie and Randy lay their bedding on the bedroom floor in case of gunplay. I checked on them from time to time through the open door as I paced the front room: two blanket covered oblong hummocks, one large, one small, looking like graves in the dimness. I couldn’t tell if they were asleep or just pretending to be, but their figures were motionless beneath their bedding and I did my best not to disturb them.

There was a quiet knock on the door and I almost jumped before I got a grip. When I peeked out the spy hole, a tall wide silhouette stood blocking the street light’s glare.

“Everyone in the Gardens is in place,” Big Moe said through the hole. “We’re all up for it, and if he comes we’re ready for him. We got cars if he gets away from us.”

I opened the door and shook my head. “He’ll see a car easy, and he can outrun anything you’ve got if he knows you’re behind him. Minivans and that cute little Taurus of yours got no replacement for his displacement. And if you lynch-mob after him up Moose Creek Road, you know the cops will be waiting. That’ll be suicide for you all.”

I shook my head again. “No, son. I have my plan – sometimes one guy on foot can do things a group could never get away with.”

Big Moe left and stood for a moment at the corner of Natalie’s stoop, clearly visible in the light of the full moon before wandering off on his rounds, the war chief checking his troops. Down the block I saw a cigarette coal flare, illuminating the face of a male Hmong who stood in darkness next to a bungalow. Around the area, several other still figures stood guard in whatever pools of shadow could conceal them from the streaming moonlight.

How had Sam and Elaine made out? Were they still alive, or had the Driver come calling and caught Sam napping? I restrained the impulse to call – I would have wound up wearing out the phone like any worried parent.

Sam could handle his end. And if he couldn’t, if the bastards took out my son, the only family I had left in the world? Then God help Stagger Bay, because I wouldn’t have any pity or self-preservation left in me.

Chapter 52

Time passed and I spun myself up more and more. I couldn't stop myself from shuffling and reshuffling the cards in my head, dealing hand after mental hand of solitaire in my mind’s eye.

The Driver was the only thing I needed to pay attention to right now. Ding an Sich, baby: What was that thing in itself?

How did the he think? What drove his twisted plans? I kept trying to put myself in his shoes but they sure weren’t a comfortable fit. He was arrogant and impulsive, utterly dangerous and seemingly close to some kind of final frenzy – but he could be manipulated and somewhat predicted.

Out of the people I knew, which one was he? Hell, did I even know him? Changing his voice might’ve just been him having fun, deliberately feeding me a red herring.

No, that was bullshit. Ockham’s Razor had to be kept in play. Keep it simple, Markus – you knew the Driver, all right.

What was Rick Hoffman’s place in all this? Was he the Driver? What was going on behind that blank Noh-mask face of his right now?

Or was it Killer Reese? And just how did that rogue cop’s actions fit into the larger campaign? Kendra had loved him, but so what? Either she’d understand what I was doing or forget her.

Someone with influence was protecting the Driver, that was for sure. What would make law enforcement shield a serial killer, make them willing to frame me and let him keep on doing his thing? Was the whole department in on it, or just enough to muster a hillbilly death squad with the other Stagger Bay police unable to break the rogue cops open? They had that 911 dispatcher at least.

And how did Stagger Bay herself feel about so many law-abiding white citizens disappearing? Exactly how many were part of it? Was it pretty much the whole town – or just enough to make it fly, with all the rest too scared to do anything about it, or paying with their lives if they were reckless enough to stand up? A lot of these good people here were making healthy construction-job wages off all the new development coming in. They had enough at stake it’d be easy for them to put the blinders on and live tunnel-vision lives.

This was when it really came home that my big brother was gone forever. Karl would be calming me right now, watching my back while I prepped my head for the upcoming fracas, maybe cracking one of his many dorky jokes to break the tension.

Despite his twitchiness and his many flaws, he’d always tried to be the careful one; the complement to my wrecking-ball nature. Me, I’d always been more hey-diddle diddle, right up the middle, come right at you and say hi as it were.

Karl had always forced himself to sniff at our scores like a leopard examining possibly poisoned bait. Still, it had been easy enough for them to make him die alone with no one to notice or care except Sam and I.

As for me? I figured I was a little too high profile right at the moment for them to feel comfortable about taking me out quite yet, unless I really pushed them. Heck, I’d given them every reason to feel safe; they had to be thinking I was no threat at all.

I was a buffoon; a cage-rattling blowhard that woofed on TV, made a few soapbox speeches to curry favor with Stagger Bay’s underbelly, and talked some inconsequential smack to their faces. After it blew up on me with little Mai, I know they had to have been laughing their asses off – hell, I would have mocked me if I was them.

When I made my move, its speed and suddenness after my previous inactivity would be doubly appalling to them. Underestimate me some more, fools – it felt good they did so.

‘Unrealistic expectations,’ Sam had said. But wasn’t that what life was all about? Stumbling along, doing our best to hypnotize ourselves into believing we could make some kind of difference?

Chapter 53

Down the block a man shouted something incoherent, his leonine roar piercing the night for a moment before being cut off abruptly. A woman howled, and I picked up the phone and dialed Elaine’s cell. Her voice was wide awake when she answered; she hadn’t been sleeping either.

Sam mumbled something behind her and she made unhappy noises aimed away from the mouth piece; there were fumbling sounds as Sam grabbed the phone from her and came on line: “Yeah?”

“Get your butt over here right now, boy. It’s going down.”

Then I was out the door, locking it behind me and checking the knob before heading on. The gun was in my hand pointing at the ground as I rolled up on the bungalow the howling had come from.

It was easy enough to spot: the front door was wide open, all the lights were on, and what looked like every adult male in the Gardens was milling around it. I went inside: a tiny black woman in a nightgown knelt on the floor cradling Big Moe’s bloody head.

“My baby,” she sobbed, staring out the open back door.

I ran out that way and joined the flood of men running toward the brush-line. “He went in there,” somebody yelled, and I followed the herd into the chaotic dark of the undergrowth, people cursing and stumbling, my face getting whipped and stung by branches springing back from the progress of all those ahead. Somebody started shooting, the muzzle flash from one round after another lighting up the shrubbery in front of me and to my left.

“Stop that, idiot,” Mackie shouted somewhere behind me in the dark. “Either you’ll hit the kid or one of us.”

That’s when the Cougar’s engine kicked over somewhere in front of me: He must have come in from above and coasted his car down one of the fire lanes cut through the underbrush surrounding the Gardens, maybe one we hadn’t even known was there. Then he’d ninja-ed his way into the Gardens and taken his prey in a smash-and-grab.

I heard road gravel kicking up as the Driver peeled out, and there were cries of dismay from that direction – his closest pursuers must have gotten pelted in the face by the Cougar’s rooster-tail.

I turned and clawed my way back through the undergrowth. As I was right by the entrance there was still a chance.

I charged full bore across the avenue and down one of the phantom courts, hopping the curb to keep running on the flattened earth of the prepped lot beyond. As I wove my way between surveyor’s stakes, the Cougar’s roar grew clearer and louder behind me as it emerged from the narrow over-grown entrance to the fire lane and gunned out onto the avenue.

The Cougar’s tires screeched as it took the first corner but I just kept running. He rounded the second corner as I neared the Caterpillar, gloating that I’d be in place to take my shot.

That’s when I tripped and fell flat on my face, the pistol spinning from my hand to disappear somewhere in the weeds. I leapt up and took a despairing glance around for the pistol, but it was nowhere in sight.

So much for your grand plan, the unforgiving part of my mind sneered. I ran around the contractor’s hut, to do what I don’t know: throw myself on the hood and scrabble my way inside with my bare hands maybe.

I rounded the hut just in time to see taillights as the Cougar ramped up the access road, turned left onto Moose Creek Road, and headed home to party. I ran up the access road even though my legs were already trembling underneath me, and turned left into the piney woods like I stood a chance in hell of catching up on foot. Even though I doubted I’d do any better this time than at the Arcade with Mai, I still had to try.

Chapter 54

When I was a kid I loved Creepy Magazine, a horror comic that featured terrifying covers by Frank Frazetta. His paintings always had gorgeous full moons, demons, big-titted vampire women and all kinds of other morbid, beautifully rendered monstrosities.

That’s what the night I ran through looked like: a Frazetta cover. The two-lane blacktop extended ahead of me into dim infinities of towering pines and redwoods, their branches leaning in as they clutched at the air. Overhead a bloated full moon shone down with a light that seemed to say anything could happen beneath its rays.

Ahead the Cougar’s taillights glared like a retreating werewolf as it cruised away, not going fast here in the Driver’s home territory. He had his cruising tunes blasting: the Beach Boys’ ‘In My Room.’ He was enjoying the drive enough to make it last.

My heart pounded fit to burst out of my rib cage, and my breath came in pulses of white-hot agony – the Cougar pulled further and further ahead with mocking ease. I ran slower and slower as my old legs turned to wood beneath my traitor of a body and I finally came to a shuddering halt with my hands on my thighs, rhythmic sobs of pain and anger coming from me unwillingly as I watched the Cougar take a curve and disappear into the wooded night. The music spilled back for a few moments before fading, and I was alone in silence.

I’d failed again, and another child would die a hideous lingering death because of it. I dropped to my knees on the asphalt.

A car was coming up fast from the direction of the Gardens, but I was too beat to get out the way. As it came up its headlights backlit me; my shadow spilled to darken the road ahead in a thin goblin caricature of my silhouette.

I waited, almost hoping whoever it was would just plow over me and put me out of my misery, or that it would be a Stagger Bay cop come to eliminate me for overstepping my bounds. But the car stopped a few feet behind where I kneeled.

“Old fool,” Sam said from inside his Lincoln. “You trying to kill yourself?”

I tottered up, turned, and grabbed the door handle. “Step on it, Sam,” I managed to gasp, before I saw Elaine riding shotgun, right where I’d intended to sit.

“What the hell is she doing here?” I asked.

“You’re wasting time, Markus,” Elaine said.

“You said to bird-dog her,” Sam said as he floored the gas before I’d even closed the back seat door all the way. He turned off the Connie’s headlights but the full moon’s light was more than bright enough for him to drive by.

“I didn’t mean to bring her along on this.”

Luxurious manors lay to either side as we raced up Moose Creek Road, some lit up like Christmas trees, some dark as the tomb. We swooped round the first curve and hit a long uphill straightaway. My teeth ground together and I had to repress a snarl of unbelieving joy as I saw the Cougar’s taillights just disappearing around the next curve.

“You think I was going to leave her alone at the motel?” Sam said, his voice raised. I opened my mouth to bark something back.

“What’s your plan, Markus?” Elaine said, cutting me off before I could speak. She was half turned to me, her profile lit up by the dash indicator lights.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, putting aside any worries about letting her be an eye-witness to what was about to happen. “We keep sharking forward until we can’t any more.”

“Doesn’t sound like much,” Sam said, but he kept the car surging ahead, and the darkling redwoods raced past us in a blur as we rounded the next curve to see the Cougar’s taillights much closer now.

“Yes,” Sam hissed, and all three of us leaned eagerly forward as he ground his foot onto the gas pedal, as if he thought he could squeeze any more speed from the maxed-out old war horse. Catch up!

“Let me know when you come up with a better scheme, boy,” I said, but most of my attention was on those fleeing taillights.

We passed Mr. Tubbs’ house as Sam flew toward where the Cougar had disappeared around another curve. All the lights were on and there seemed to be frenetic activity happening in Tubbs’ junk-crowded yard, but we didn’t stop to pay our respects.

We rounded the next curve. Several hundred yards ahead the Cougar’s taillights turned left and abruptly disappeared.

“He’s pulled off of the main road,” Elaine said. “He’s home now.”

I stuck my upper body out the window and squinted my eye against the wind of our onrushing progress as we neared where the Cougar had disappeared. I couldn’t hear the big block engine, couldn’t hear those surf tunes anymore. We were approaching the most rarefied stretch of Moose Creek Road, meteoring our way up that hill to the very top, to the extreme end of the line.

Sam stepped on the brakes as we pulled up to a gravel access road. The moonlight made the access road stand out like a white tongue against the darker surrounding undergrowth.

The gash of a driveway led toward a Craftsman-style house on a knoll, hulking dark behind a ragged screen of interposing trees. We stared hard at that house, as though we could will the Cougar to be down this particular road.

In the gravel of the driveway entrance lay two wide tire tracks. As we watched, a trickle of pea-sized stones rattled down to make a little heap in one of the troughs: Someone had taken this access road at speed and recently.

“If either of you thinks this ain’t the place, now just might be the time to say,” I pointed out. As neither of them seemed inclined to disagree, I got out the car. “Wait here a skosh. I’m going to scout it out.”

I crept down the driveway, the house looming larger and clearer with every furtive step I took. As I got closer, I heard an electric motor humming around the corner of the attached garage.

I angled to the side for a better look. The Cougar’s rear end was visible as the garage’s motorized rolling door descended, rattling and clashing as it lowered to hide the car the rest of the way from my sight.

I needed to move quick but I crept just as careful on the way back to the Lincoln. Like the wise man said: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

“This is the house,” I told Sam, my voice gone tight and brassy. “I’m going in, and you’re gonna stay outside.”

“The fuck you say,” Sam said. “You think I’m letting you do it alone, you got another think coming.”

He looked like he wanted to stomp up to the house and kick it in like a puffball, like he thought fury and a just cause would carry him through whatever awaited within. I shook my head at his foolishness, doing my best to appear dismissive and authoritative – the forms had to be observed here, my son was stubborn enough to need the full pantomime.

“You misunderstand me, Sam. I’m going in, but you’re going to be right outside the front door guarding the exit, making sure I can beat feet fast if I have to. That’s how me and Karl always did it, young blood.”

I was telling the truth – but it would also keep Sam out of harm’s way as much as possible for now. After a moment he reluctantly nodded at the sense of it.

I turned to Elaine. “It’s no good if we can’t get away, so you’re driving the car.”

I looked up and down the road. “Find a turn out or shoulder or something, U-turn the car around, and park it out of sight from here but where you can still keep an eye on this spot. No matter what happens or who you see coming, you keep quiet and wait on us and us only. Don’t let anyone know you’re there – you’re our ace in the hole. We’ll probably be in a hurry when we come out, so be fucking ready to pull up the instant you see us.”

Elaine nodded owlishly at my instructions, but she still had me paranoid as ever. Here I was having to turn my back on her to enter the Driver’s lair, still uncertain about the risk she represented.

But it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do; didn’t matter whose side she was on. I was going into that house after that kid even if it was all some kind of trap, and it still had to be me instead of my son.

As we turned to go, Elaine said, “Don’t come back without that child.” She appeared nervous as I probably did but there was also a set, grim expression on her face.

“We won’t,” Sam promised.

The Lincoln idled quietly away behind us as we moved toward the house. I cased the casa as we neared it, watching for signs of activity, figuring my best angle in. I found myself moving slower and slower as I got a better and better look at the place. Sam didn’t seem in any more of a hurry; he didn’t budge from my side.

I was feeling less and less in control the closer we got. There were too many ways upcoming events could skitter away from me like a drop of water on a hot griddle.

To the right of the garage, the grim bulk of the main house extended in a long one-story wing. The porch light was unlit, and I gestured at Sam to take his station there. Sam peeled off and moved in that direction, silent as a tomcat on the prowl.

When I reached the garage I looked past it at a beautiful view: Stagger Bay sprawled beneath the heights this house commanded, street lights and neon in a small-town grid, like a cartoon or some kind of computer simulation. I saw the Hospital and the Gardens; the jail and the courthouse; Stagger Bay Center and the Arcade; Old Town and the Andersen Club and our two water towers. Beyond all lay the Bay and the Pacific, the night surf glowing phosphorescent in the moonlight.

It was a little town, even if it was Sam’s whole world right now. Maybe the folks living in it were no more than bacterium scurrying across the face of an unremarkable planet orbiting a sub-prime star, facing inevitable entropy and death.

But they mattered, didn’t they? They’d sure tell you so if you asked them.

I’d tried to make this little toy town my home once, and Sam claimed it now. But to the beast lurking in the house behind me it was a hunting ground, and he used this raised vantage point to plan his stalks. He figured he owned Stagger Bay and all the people that lived in it, even if it was the Gardens he was targeting for now.

Did the Driver have any inkling of the Brownian motion of conflicting agendas, selfish impulses, and higher yearnings that had somehow come together to accomplish this moment in time, create the reality of me being here on his doorstep about to have a heart to heart with him? It was almost as though Stagger Bay was an entity with goals and an agenda of its own like some kind of hive mind. I wasn't sure I liked the idea of being a soldier ant, a worker bee serving Stagger Bay's collective soul – a soul I'd found to be homicidally callous and apathetic where my loved ones were concerned.

But what if it was the Driver who served Stagger Bay’s nonhuman needs? What if Stagger Bay was as much my personal enemy as the Driver? A ludicrous thought, one that almost made me chuckle nervously out loud.

I moved around the far corner of the garage to a lit-up window. On the other side of the Cougar I saw the Driver’s broad rounded back and blond mop of hair as he stepped through a door into the house’s interior.

A little black boy was draped over the Driver’s shoulder. There was duct tape over the boy’s mouth and around his wrists. I recognized the boy instantly: it was Little Moe, Big Moe’s nephew. The Driver hit the light switch on his way in and the garage went dark as he closed the door behind him.

When I reached up to test the window my hand stopped short for a moment just before I touched it – as if I were afraid I would feel a pulse, as if the house were a living creature I should be frightened to disturb. I went ahead and grabbed ahold.

The window was locked but it was old and loose in its wooden slide rail. I’d beat this type many times in my burg days as a kid. It was a simple matter to lift it, pull it from its trough, wipe where I’d gripped the edges with my sleeve, and lean it silently against the exterior wall.

I stood to clamber inside and froze again. That dark window looked like a toothless, sucking mouth, and I suddenly felt like I’d rather die than slither in there. But Sam was on duty at the front door, waiting to cover my egress; he wouldn’t wait long before deciding I wasn’t coming out – he’d go into the house and face the Driver alone.

I imagined Sam’s mockery if he ever learned of my hesitation here. If we survived this evening and he ever got an inkling of this, he’d never let me hear the end of it.

At the thought of my son the window was just a window again, like any of the hundred ones I’d B &E’d through before I’d met Angela. I went right on in with ease: eeling through until I rested in a hand-stand pike on the garage’s cement floor, then silently drawing each leg through in turn until finally standing and looking past the Cougar at the door to the interior.

For what it was worth, I was inside the Driver’s lair.

Chapter 55

I swiped my sleeve across where I’d gripped the window sill entering, and scuffed my feet across the floor where my hands had rested when I piked my way in. Sloppy cleanup, but there were timeliness constraints here.

Automotive tools hung neatly on wall racks, and hot-rod accessories lay all about ready to service the Cougar’s souped-up needs – this garage was a wrench-head heaven, and perfectly organized by an anal retentive type. On a work bench next to me I saw a hammer, a 24-ouncer used for framing with a waffle pattern on the face of the head.

I picked the hammer up and hefted it. It wasn’t the jawbone of an ass but it’d have to do.

I rounded the Cougar and stood in front of the closed door into the main house, breathing open-mouthed to improve my hearing. I held the framing hammer up by my ear as I turned the knob with the sleeve of my work shirt covering my hand, slow as possible, dreading the smallest noise.

It finally wouldn’t turn any more and I opened the door a crack, dim light spilling through to illumine my hand. After waiting a few seconds I pushed the door just far enough ajar to take a peek through and make sure no one was lurking, then opened it enough to allow me to slink through and close it gingerly behind me.

A short hallway extended in front of me, with doorways to either side. Directly ahead and to the right was a large archway; it would lead to the front room and the front door.

Only two of the hall doors were open, both leading to lit rooms. The light from the doorway closest to me was flickering and dim; the glow from the one at the far end had the steadiness of artificial lighting.

I side-stepped my way to the closest doorway, which was on the left side of the hall. When I got close enough I leaned against the wall next to it, carefully placing my sleeve-covered free hand against the door frame for support. I leaned over to turkey peek around and through the doorway for a split second before pulling back and away as quick as I could.

I took a few seconds analyzing what I’d just glimpsed – a room painted entirely black: floor, walls, ceiling, and even the window panes. The only piece of furniture seemed to be some kind of altar with a statue and burning candles atop it. There’d been nobody in there I could see.

I crossed to the far side of the hall to make it harder for anyone in the room to ambush me. I side-stepped into position opposite the doorway, ready to float away in any direction if the Driver showed himself, or to jump in at him with the framing hammer if he saw me.

I took a better look into the room without moving any closer to the doorway. Two black candles burned on the left side of the altar, and one white candle burned on the right. Shadows pulsed and danced all about the room, created by the candles’ heartless light. Humped on the altar next to the white candle was a freshly severed woman’s breast, its nipple already wilted and pitiful in death.

Smack dab in the middle of the altar was a statue carved out of dark stone, depicting some kind of fantastic creature. It was a hunched miniature monstrosity, a squatting semi-human perversion. What passed for a face was looking to its left, toward the far end of the hallway.

I side-stepped onward to the open archway, and took my next quick turkey peek around. It was a dark empty living room with sofa, coffee table, and dead TV, its normalcy surreal after the altar room.

A wave of relief flooded me when I saw the front door on the far living room wall; it shone like a beacon promising eventual escape from this place. I could feel Sam out there guarding my back, the knowledge warmly comforting.

The smell of mold and decay filled the air, and clumps of mushrooms sprouted between the baseboards and the edges of the living room’s carpeting. Old plastic Revell models cluttered pretty much every horizontal surface; mainly airplanes and cars. Children’s games and toys were stacked on the floor, all decades old and covered in dust.

Were they the Driver’s? Had the boy he’d once been laughed and played within these now decaying walls?

A photo on the coffee table caught my eye, a high school graduation photo of two young men in caps and gowns with arms over each other’s shoulders, both smiling for the camera. One of the boys was a teenage Officer Hoffman; in the picture Rick looked almost human, though that furtive gleeful slyness was already evident in his eyes. The answer to the other boy’s face was a little harder, of the two he’d changed the most in growing up – but after a few more seconds certainty blazed in my mind and I nodded to myself, unsurprised at this revelation.

Next to the high school graduation photo was a box filled with paperwork, and with video and audio cassettes. Even in the gloom I could see something printed on the manila folder on top in my big brother’s almost illegible handwriting.

I wanted to stay there and dig through Karl’s box of evidence and see what he’d died to learn, to touch something he’d touched while alive. But the clock was ticking for Little Moe.

I continued toward the open doorway at the far end of the hall. I moved past each closed door in turn, listening intently as I passed with my war hammer ready and hopeful. But there was no noise, no movement; the rooms behind the doors felt empty as I passed. And then I was at that last open doorway, the light from within spilling out onto the hall floor in a curdled sour puddle.

Chapter 56

I took my lean-over peek and froze in the middle of it: Little Moe lay duct taped to a hospital gurney in the center of a big plastic drop cloth, which was spread across the floor with one edges duct-taped onto the wall partway up as a splash guard. On the floor next to the drop cloth was an open-topped case box half filled with bottles of bleach.

A wheeled operating room table was parked next to Little Moe’s gurney. On it were implements, most of them surgical but some toolbox stuff as well; they looked well cared for; somebody loved them. They glowed with the evidence of their owner’s affections; they smelled of honing oil even through the stench of disinfectant filling the room.

Little Moe saw me right off, his brown eyes pleading above the duct-tape gag. I stood back up straight and leaned against the wall, out of the doorway’s line of sight. I’d seen no sign of the Driver.

A creak came from the direction of the garage and I gulped, but it was only the old house settling.

Fuck this shit, I thought. It’s Clint Eastwood time.

I pushed off the wall and marched through that door with my war hammer up by my ear and at the ready, feeling wild.

That was the instant he made his move. He’d been plastered against the wall inside the left side of the doorway like a big lizard, waiting.

If I’d still had both eyes I would have seen him in my peripheral vision. As it was the only warning I had was Little Moe grunting hysterically past his gag as he pointed to my left with his jerking chin and flashing eyes.

The Driver lunged in, grabbed the wrist of my free hand in a vise-like grip and stabbed a hunting knife up towards my belly in a disemboweling thrust, a snarling grimace on his blond-haired blur of a face. A cry of dismay blurted out of me as I smashed the heavy hammer down onto his knife hand, snapping his wrist bones and redirecting the blade so it missed my stomach and stabbed into my thigh. I hissed at the knife’s bite, and the Driver squealed at his broken wrist as he let go of me and pulled away.

A nonstop ululating yell came out of me as I lunged after him, clumsily due to the knife in my leg. I brought the hammer down onto him once, twice, thrice. I snarled each time the head embedded itself into his chest, shattering his ribs with a series of hollow thuds like I was destroying an overripe watermelon.

The Driver’s arms wind-milled as he thrashed backward to crash spread-eagle on the floor, hitting hard enough I felt the impact through the soles of my feet. Chief Jansen’s breath came in harsh gargling coughs as he lay there with the blond wig dangling off his head, drops of blood spewing from his mouth with each gasp. His left hand pawed at the caved-in dents on his upper chest; his right arm was draped across his waist, the broken wrist bent out of true.

I hovered over Jansen for a few seconds with the hammer, ready to smack him again if he had any more fight in him. But the Chief was through. He was done.

Next to where he lay was a table filled with enough prescription bottles to medicate a zoo. I recognized the names on some of them from prison: Zidovudine and Combivir, Immunitin and Intelence, Agenerase and Fuzeon; a hard-core end run AIDS medication cocktail. I finally understood the Driver’s reckless desperation, why Jansen had been spiraling downward into final rampage.

I turned and limped to Little Moe, then peeled the tape from across his mouth. “How you doing, little man?” I asked.

“Okay,” he whispered, watching Jansen gurgle on the floor.

I shifted over to block Little Moe’s view of the Driver’s mewling agonies and plucked at the duct tape around his wrists. “I’m here to take you home, Little Moe,” I said.

“I wouldn’t be making too many promises if I were you,” Reese said behind me.

Chapter 57

Officer Reese held the scruff of Sam’s neck with one hand as they stood in the doorway. Reese’s other hand held the muzzle of his.357 Magnum against the base of Sam’s neck.

Sam did not look happy – in point of fact, he had a snarly hard-on light in his eyes that said he was about to do something teen-boy stupid.

Don’t be dumb, I willed him. Just chill, son, and wait for the main chance.

Sam’s gaze met mine, and for a second the mortifying embarrassment of being caught with his pants down in front of me threatened to turn this into a major blood bath. Then the moment passed and he subsided into a sullen, watchful stillness.

Officer Reese frog-marched Sam into the room and looked down at Jansen, seemingly hypnotized by his helplessness. I took that opportunity to hide my hammer hand behind my leg.

Reese stank like he hadn’t bathed in a while. Brown snuff stained the front of his uniform shirt; he’d apparently given up on using a dip-spit can at all. He didn’t smell like alcohol tonight, though – he’d come here sober.

“Hello, soul brother,” Jansen mumbled to me as though Reese wasn’t there, something resembling a smile cavorting across his red-stained mouth. “It is so nice to finally welcome you into my home.”

“If the tip of a knife blade is your standard welcome, I’m assuming you don’t get very many voluntary guests.”

“I gave you chance after chance. I could have reached out and taken you anytime, but I didn’t,” Jansen said in a low, gloating asthmatic voice. “I did everything but give you a map to my front door. I gave you this.”

“You keep telling yourself that. I would have gotten you eventually, even if your buddy Hoffman hadn’t turned on you. Yeah, Rick made it easier, making sure everybody knew you’d set up the hit on Kendra. He’s a surprisingly persistent little thing for such a sketch of a personality, ain’t he?”

Jansen’s eyes rolled wildly at that revelation, but he didn’t respond otherwise to the news of his slave’s betrayal.

“How those ribs feeling, Chief?” Reese asked, a crazed expression on his face as he stared at the squirming Driver. “They stinging a bit? Punctured a lung yet?”

“You are a weak fool, Reese, and a coward,” Jansen said. “Your fiancée was a traitor, she-”

With a hiccupping snarl Reese pulled the pistol barrel away from Sam’s temple to aim it at Jansen. But as Reese’s gun hand extended over Sam’s shoulder, Sam yelled “Haw!” and grabbed Reese’s wrist and ducked under his arm, scuttled and spun until he was behind him holding him in a wristlock arm bar.

Sam cranked on Reese’s wrist with one hand and pressed hard on his elbow with the other, forcing Reese heavily to his knees. Sam continued to crank and press until Reese knelt with his upper body squeezed down against his thighs; Reese’s Stetson spilled off his head and he dropped his Python to the floor. I couldn’t be prouder of Sam than a tiger parent watching their cub’s first successful stalk.

Jansen’s smile hadn’t twitched throughout. “So, is it time for a cutting contest?” he asked me. “For you to hold forth with your impassioned list of grievances?”

“That ain’t on the agenda tonight,” I said. “This isn’t about you. You’re not in control.”

I glanced up at the hall-side wall behind Sam and Reese and saw the book cases lining it. The shelves were crowded with Milton and Blake, Rabelais and Erasmus, Thucydides and Marcus Aurelius and Mina Loy.

He read them in here, when he was taking a break from… I felt dizzy as I looked away from those books; it was a travesty seeing the Canon in this room. Jansen laughed, ever sensitive even to momentary weakness.

He’d lost a lot of weight even in the short time since I’d seen him last at the bank – his skin hung off the bones underlying that once much huskier frame. His makeup was pan-caked on thicker tonight too; he hadn’t been wearing it just for the camera at my deposition. The cosmetics were a by-now futile attempt to conceal the ever-increasing blotches covering the exposed skin of his face and arms here near the end of his disease’s progress.

“He killed Kendra,” Reese reminded me from where he knelt. “What are you waiting for?”

Jansen laughed, but his having to turn his head and spit out a mouthful of blood detracted from any levity he was trying to convey. “Not with my own two hands, but it was my will that made it happen, yes,” he said. “He played you into coming here, Reese. It looks as though he played us both.”

“Who is ‘he’?” I asked.

“Why, Tubbs of course,” Jansen said. He looked at Reese. “You see? I am not afraid to say the name.”

“Oh, you do babble on for a dead man,” Reese moaned. “He’s lying. Mr. Tubbs has nothing to do with any of this. Kill him, what are you waiting for?”

“I gots to agree,” Sam said, still holding Reese tight in the arm-bar. “Why are you debating with this piece of shit? Hurry up and get it over with. Let’s roll.”

I stepped over to Moe, whose eyes were lemur-big in his little face as he stared unblinking at the Driver squirming on the floor. I set down my hammer with the other tools, plucked off the tape binding Moe to the gurney and helped him down before turning to answer: “Who says I’m killing him?”

“You promised,” Jansen said. Sam and Reese both looked at me, with varying degrees of contempt.

I picked up the hammer. “I changed my mind – it’s a free country last time I checked.”

Sam said, “Give me the hammer then.”

I studied, him, considering my best approach. Should I tell Sam that when he killed, nothing would ever be the same for him again? That after going through that exit-only door, he’d never be able to go back to what he was before? No: Sam wouldn’t care about any of that.

“You don’t get it,” I said instead. “I never thought we’d take him alive, never thought we’d get this opportunity. But don’t you see? He’s not our target anymore: now, he’s our weapon.”

Sam shook his head, not understanding.

“This one here, he’s just a dog turd, and for all his grandiose pretensions a little one at that,” I explained. “I don’t want him; I want his masters – I want the swine who profited from him.”

“Stagger Bay wants us to sweep all this under the rug,” I said, trying to convince Sam to see past his hate. “They want us to just clean it up and make him go away. They refuse to look at the mess they made nor to think about it. But I’m not their bus boy, or their servant either. I’m not gonna let them hide from this; I’m dragging him out into the light for all to see.”

“You saw what he did to Mai,” Sam said. “He has to pay.”

“Pay?” I asked, incredulous. “Kid, you have no idea.”

“They’ll spit on him on his way to and from the courtroom,” I said, smiling. “Once he’s in prison he’ll dissolve like an oil slick spreading across tainted water; he’ll fade away into the walls of his cell. The head-shrinkers will study him like a lab rat, and every time the Badge talks to him, he’ll see the contempt in their eyes for a punk bitch like him who hid behind the uniform and shamed whatever clean cops may be.”

“And an ex-law-dog in prison? He’ll have a real active sex life, I’m sure. Well,” I said, gesturing towards the AIDS medications, “given his condition the violating will probably be with foreign objects. Of course there’s solitary confinement if he don’t want that kind of interaction with fellow prisoners, I was no stranger to the Hole either. But in the end he’ll die miserably, surrounded by apathetic medical staff in the most ill-equipped health care system in America.”

“No Gotterdammerung for you,” I said to Jansen with a smile. “No transcendence, nothing sublime. Just meaningless, whimpering oblivion, like any of the sheep you despise.”

“We’re nothing like you, you see,” I explained to the Driver.

Jansen laughed quietly, a horrible sound like marbles grinding in a garbage disposal, and more blood spattered his already crimson lower face. “You are ridiculous. I know you better than you know yourself, soul brother. Admit it, my friend: You came here as much to see my face as to end this.

“You are the Other, Markus, just like me. You think I hate you? Hardly, even though I know we could never be friends. We are both self-constructs; we both had to make ourselves – the sheep misunderstand you as thoroughly as they misunderstand me.

“Perhaps if you stay downwind they will not smell the wolf on you. Oh yes, that strategy has worked quite well for you thus far, has it not, Markus? But do you really think they will ever allow you to be part of them?

“As soon as you have taken out the trash, as soon as you have disposed of me? Once the dragon is gone they will be more and more uncomfortable with the dragon slayer. In the end they will be afraid of you, as well they should be.

“That day at the school? You were never more alive that at that moment – that was the high point for you, it is all down hill from there and you know it. Confess it: You loved it when you killed those men. The feeling of power, seeing the terror in their eyes as you took their lives like a god? You know the pleasure you felt then.

“But why does that truth make you look so guilty? Why do you think you are less because of it, when you are more than the equal of any of the weaklings you fight for? I know why.

“I know your secret, brother. I know why you run from the sheep’s adulation so persistently. Because you have done it before – and you are fool enough to be ashamed of it.

“Am I the only one who wonders how you were able to do so well at the school? I am Chief of Police here; I was able to talk to quite a few detectives in various Bay Area police departments. It is amazing what off-the-record tidbits brother officers will share, suspicions they may never be able to substantiate enough to get a warrant, but informed enough to be damning.

“Shall I tell your son about you, about the things you did when you were his age?”

My face was hot; I didn’t want Jansen to continue discussing that feral young hellion Angela had helped me lay down so long ago. That boy I’d been was a nasty little beast, even if I’d never had a hard-on for deliberate sadism like Jansen did. Still, I sure didn’t want to walk down memory lane.

“Don't you even talk about him like that,” Sam said, startling me with his vehemence. “I don’t care what he did. That don’t matter to me.”

Jansen turned his bland attention on Sam. “Ah,” the Chief said. “In that case, allow me to tell you about your mother.”

“She killed herself. She was weak,” Jansen said, relishing the expression that instantly crawled across Sam’s face. “Your mother chose drugs over her own child. She abandoned you.”

“You really might want to stop now,” I said.

But Jansen, as was his right, opted to continue provoking Sam: “Your precious uncle and Ms. Hubbard enjoyed each other’s company so immensely before you ever became intimate with her. Do you like that image, of your uncle and Elaine naked behind closed doors, doing the exact same things you and she do together now? Do you think she asked him to perform the exact same actions she demands of you? The same positions, the same… timing?”

He returned his attention to me. “Your brother and Elaine allowed you to languish in a cell for seven years, when I was here before them all along. They were trying to deal with Tubbs, and sell him the evidence package. Karl only called Agent Miller to make the threat look legitimate to jack up the price – Tubbs took umbrage at their greed, had Karl killed, and stole the evidence without paying Ms. Hubbard.”

Back to Sam: “Do you really think your lover is going to fight for the Gardens with her feeble injunction? She will sell you out, and you know it – you are a boy, your type is a dime a dozen and she can pick up a new one of you anywhere by rubbing two nickels together. How awful for your friends when she ‘loses,’ pockets the money Tubbs hands her and leaves town. Do you-”

I took a quick step forward to hover over Jansen with the hammer raised high, and he stopped in mid-sentence.

“You promised,” he said again as he turned his head to the side with eyes scrunched tightly closed. His hollow voice wobbled. He was sweaty, agitated and rigid as he squirmed on the floor, pressing his good hand against his hip.

“You little, little man,” I said, shaking my head at his foolishness. “What a keen eye you have for other people’s thumbscrews. I’ll be sure and let you know if you ever get close to one of mine.”

“As you say, Reese killed Karl, not you,” I admitted. “No one wants to give you credit for something you didn’t do after all.”

I squatted down on my hams by Jansen’s head. “You admit yourself you only engineered Kendra’s death; you didn’t have the balls to kill her with your own hands, personally I think she would’ve cleaned your stinking clock. And as you were kind enough to point out to my son, my Angela killed herself. She was weak, as you say.”

I smiled. “Thanks for offering us your so very useful insights. I’d like to return the favor if I may.” I tapped the floor next to him with the framing hammer – whak – and he twitched.

“I’m figuring you probably wet the bed as a kid. Did your folks hang the pissy sheets out for all the neighbors to see?” I tapped the floor with the hammer again, this time up by his head – whak – and Jansen flinched again.

“Poor boopie. Were Mommy and Daddy mean to you? ‘I deserve better, life is so unfair,’” I crooned. WHAK – an inch from his ear – and Jansen almost levitated off the floor.

“I’m betting you got your start tearing the wings off flies. Then what? Maybe graduating to helpless small animals – you know, puppies, kittens – something harmless and cute that trusted you enough to let you get close?” WHAK! – close enough to tear out some hair – and there were tears in Jansen’s eyes now.

“But I understand you, ‘friend.’ I figured you out. I know your secret.” I put one hand on the floor and leaned in close, so our faces were only inches apart. “You’re the one who’s afraid. You make them scream, you send them into the dark – because the dark is what you’re most terrified of.”

“Nothingness,” I breathed, watching his eyes turn inward away from me to face his own ultimate nightmare. “Meaninglessness. Coming for you, and there’s no escape. It’s here for you, right now.”

A sob leaked out of him. Jansen was fully engaged now, with the life long fear his arrogance was a mask for. A mask I’d finally seen past.

“So. A weak little bedwetting boy, afraid of the dark and pulling the wings off flies his whole life to keep the nothing away. Am I close?” I asked as I stood to tower above him once more with the hammer in my hand. “No, don’t answer. I can see it in your eyes.”

“So you’re saying death now would be kinder for him than doing life in prison?” Sam asked.

I nodded. “Oh, yes, son. A thousand times so.”

As Jansen lay weeping in self pity, he squirmed on the floor with his hand under his back, cradling his butt. His face flowed like melting wax, like the shape shifter he was.

“Can’t you see how he hates it?” I said. “Can’t you see how much crueler this is? I really don’t want to kill him, Sam. I don’t want to be the garbage our enemies say we are, and I don’t want this weakling to go out thinking he could provoke us with mere words.

“But if you need me to, if it’ll make you feel better even the tiniest little bit? Just nod, you don’t even have to open your mouth. I’ll do it, and we’ll never speak of it again.”

Sam’s eyes still glittered from Jansen’s venomous words as he thought hard. I readied myself in the ways I knew so well. “No,” Sam said with an evil smile. “He doesn’t get the easy road. We feed him to the Man.”

I held my hand out to Sam, hiding my pride. “Give me the phone, then.”

“You promised,” Jansen yelled, and I turned to tell him to shut the hell up.

That old exultant grin leapt onto my face as he pulled his Glock service pistol from underneath him, where it was holstered at the small of his back this whole time. I dropped to one knee and the hammer came down hard, not slowing even as the pistol’s shot flashed, its blast roared, and I felt the round whizzing past my head to embed itself in the ceiling.

His suddenly terrified expression and futilely outstretched arms made a gratifying tableau: he didn't appear to like my inner killer as much as he’d thought he would. I brought the hammer down onto his face again and again, grunting with effort at each blow. His bleating stopped as soon as the first blow landed but I just couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop.

When I was finally done my eye patch dangled down off my ear -Jansen had apparently scrabbled at my face without me even noticing. I stood and turned away from Sam and Little Moe until I had that evil red eye pulled back up and in place.

I looked down at Jansen’s corpse. Was it a dragon I’d slain tonight? An ogre?

No: It was just a rag-doll meat puppet lying in front of me, the final leavings of a sick hot-brained monkey that mind-fucked himself into believing he was god. All his victims had been no more than pointless human sacrifices to his own delusions, their dissolution into agony a Darwinian waste.

I looked at Sam looking at what was left of the Driver, seeing that same old combination of titillated excitement and horrified revulsion in his eyes.

Did you like it? I almost asked my son. Was it as much fun as you thought it would be? But of course I didn’t shame him so.

Little Moe’s eyes were rapt upon the body as well. The Driver would be visiting him in his nightmares soon enough; and at least now Moe would have this image to use as a weapon in dreamland self-defense.

“Let Reese up,” I said. Sam let him stand but kicked his Magnum away and kept a firm come-along hold on his arm that Reese didn’t resist.

I picked up Jansen’s pistol before returning my attention to Reese. “There’s no escaping this. You know that.”

Reese looked at the bloody hammer in my left hand. I was swinging it idly, twitching it from side to side as his gaze followed it.

“You gonna dangle hope in front of me too?” Reese asked. “Be kind of hard to make it fly; my credibility might be a little strained here. But I’ll confess to being as unenthusiastic about meeting the Feds as the Chief was.”

Had I been toying with Jansen? Sure. But I could still convince myself I’d been going to let him live, couldn’t I?

“What we was talking about before, about your brother,” Reese said. “I’ll admit I could've just wounded Karl and busted him. But I guess I did have my instructions, you know?”

“From who?”

Reese laughed. “Maybe Jansen was a rat, but I’m not. I told you before I won’t apologize, but I know its all unraveling now. One thing I’d like to know first, though – about Kendra.”

“Oh?”

“Well, not about her exactly. About the slime that killed her.” He looked at me, eyes still hawk-bright even in defeat, not afraid to lock gazes with his own murderer. “I’m not asking, you can stick it up your ass if you think I am. But I wouldn’t mind knowing they died badly.”

It didn’t even occur to me to snub him. “They didn’t enjoy it a bit. And none of them died like men. Unlike her they all died like squealing rabbits – like this one,” I said, gesturing at Jansen.

He nodded. “That’s good, then,” he said in a quiet, satisfied voice. “That’s good.”

It was strange to see him studying me like he thought I was watching a TV show he desperately wanted to see for himself, if only he could find the right channel button to press on his remote.

“Maybe you two want to get a room,” Sam said.

“You should show more respect for your elders,” Reese chided him.

“Go fuck your mother,” Sam said. “You know who you serve.” Reese winced as if those last words were ones he’d heard before from someone else.

“If Sam hadn’t taken you down, you were gonna do us when you were finished with Jansen,” I pointed out. “Little Moe, too.”

“Are you complaining?” Reese asked, voice cold. “Snivel, whimper, whine. You won here. Things turned out the way they turned out.”

“The hell with might have beens,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment then looking down at Jansen’s corpse. “He crossed the line when he went after Kendra. But I knew she was sniffing around all the wrong places. I knew some of the guys were talking, and I knew she was blowing it too.”

“And I didn’t say nothing to her nor to them. I didn’t do a thing. I left her hanging.” Reese looked at me and licked his lips. “I’ll give you another freebie, so you can laugh at me some more when you’re done here and you leave. Kendra broke up with me the morning she died. The wedding was never gonna happen.”

“Ouch,” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Give me back my gun,” Reese said. “And one bullet.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Sam said. “He killed Karl; we should be the ones to do it. Or do you want him to live too?”

“She almost married me,” Reese said, ignoring Sam. “I know it’s all over, but you can’t link her to any of the things I did. My death, and you and your boy are both guiltless of it in exchange for leaving her name out of it forever. Please keep her clean, don’t let me sully her.”

“You never met Kendra, or you’d understand,” I told Sam, wondering even as I said it why I was arguing the enemy’s side.

“Sure, I did,” Sam said, eying me strangely. “She was a couple of grades ahead of me before I dropped out, but everyone knew Kendra. We’d be doing this for her?”

I nodded.

“All right, then,” he said, grimacing.

I pointed Jansen’s Glock at Reese as Sam stepped away from him. Sam picked up the Python, kicked out the cylinder, and dropped all the Magnum rounds into his other hand. Sam handed Reese the empty revolver without getting in my field of fire, then backed off again.

“You asked me once about Kendra’s part in all this,” Reese said, spinning the revolver’s empty cylinder. He looked me full in the eye as he stuck the barrel into the soft flesh under his jaw. “She didn’t know. She wouldn’t have had anything to do with it if she did know. But she suspected, and she was closing in.

“And after she found out, she would’ve been standing on the same side of the room you’re on right now if she was still alive. Lord knows I should’ve been.” He dry-fired the pistol. He flinched a bit as the hammer clicked down on the empty chamber, but otherwise showed good form.

Reese pulled the.357 from under his chin. “Will this pay for it? Will I be clean?”

He hefted the empty pistol in his hand. “Do you think she could still love me?”

The veneer had broken; this was the total cash-out of a life. It was as though he was returning to something he hadn’t even known he’d lost until it was too late, both for himself and for his Kendra.

I could almost admire how he was facing his end. “I’m not the one to say. But Jansen couldn’t make Kendra a victim even if he did kill her. There was no quit in her. She was too brave to live, and she chose her own path by charging forward against all odds. Neither Jansen nor anybody else can ever take that from her.”

Reese nodded slowly. I handed Sam Jansen’s Glock, then frisked Reese prison-style to make sure he wasn’t concealing a holdout piece like Jansen had.

I took Little Moe by the hand and led him to the door. Sam followed and placed one of the Magnum rounds on the bookcase, upright on its end next to a copy of the Decameron. No further farewells were made as we left Reese alone with Jansen’s corpse and the.357.

Chapter 58

Instead of heading straight out the front door, I led Sam and Moe past the archway: the candle light flickered from the altar room, and I was drawn moth-like to it. The shadows crawled in there as before, but my memory must have been wrong. I could have sworn the statue had been looking to its left toward the room where Little Moe was stashed.

Now the statue stared directly at us as we stood in the doorway, as if awaiting our closer approach. The severed breast still appeared lonely and plaintive.

“Wanna go in there and check it out?” I asked Sam. Little Moe whimpered.

“You’re fucking high,” Sam muttered, unable even to look inside after his first glance.

I tossed the hammer in Karl’s box of evidence, awkwardly picked it up off the table, and we got the hell out of there. Blowing through that front door into the clean night air was one of the happiest moments of my life.

We heard a single shot from inside and Little Moe tugged my sleeve. “Mister Markus,” he said. “I want to go home.”

I put Karl’s box down, bent to pick up Little Moe, and grunted as my leg almost collapsed under me. With one deft motion, Sam plucked the blade out from where it was embedded in my thigh. I swore and glared at him and he laughed – but then he looked down at the knife strangely.

It was an ordinary buck knife with a six inch blade, just like the one I’d owned so long ago before my incarceration. I wondered if it was the actual one I’d been framed with, and if it had somehow made its way from the evidence locker into the Driver’s loving hands.

“This would make a great souvenir. Like a trophy or something,” Sam said, his voice dreamy and greedy as he continued studying the weapon.

“Sam,” I said.

He almost jumped as I put my hand on his shoulder, but at least he was looking at me now and not at that blade. “For too many people that knife was probably the last thing they ever saw. It’s dirty, let it go.”

Sam stared at me for a few seconds, and then he used his shirt to wipe the hilt and tossed the knife into the trees. He handed Karl’s box to me, scooped up Little Moe, and we walked to the road.

Chapter 59

Elaine rolled up as soon as we hit blacktop. Her head barely came over the steering wheel of the big sedan. “Is it done?” she asked as we pulled out. “Is it all over?”

I wasn’t about to admit a thing, but Sam chirped, “He no longer exists. He’ll never trouble us again.”

Elaine floored it as we pulled out, and I didn’t mind that she was in a hurry to get away from there. The Lincoln took the first sweeping downhill curve, and as we came out of it I caught a glimpse of something long and metallic glinting across the road in the moonlight. We ran over whatever it was before anyone could give warning, and all four tires blew out simultaneously with loud coughing sighs.

Elaine yodeled a blue streak as her tiny hands wrestled with the steering wheel. The car shuddered along on rims and ragged rubber, bucking and swerving like we were riding out a 9.0 earthquake until we finally came to a stop.

Behind us a spike strip – one of those portable road blocks favored by para-military and police around the world – lay across the road. It was placed right at the start of the straightaway so we hadn’t seen it before it was too late; its many sharp hollow metal teeth glinted in the moonlight. A little ways down a driveway, the red strobes of a cop car torched up into fluorescence and began spinning.

“He’s dead, Officer Hoffman,” I called to the man standing next to the police cruiser. “You can be free now, like we talked about. You can be your own man, just like you wanted.”

“I told you before to call me Rick,” he said in reflex.

Then my words registered: “Dead?” he asked, favoring me with that vapid glance-away smile of his. But for all his roving gaze the riot gun was still firmly in his grasp, pressed snug to his shoulder and aimed right at us.

“I get to be the Driver now,” he said to himself in wonder. “I can be as big as the Chief ever was. I’m the one now. I don’t have to be you after all. I don’t even have to like you anymore.” He seemed to ripple; he seemed to grow several inches in height.

A gamut of emotions writhed across Hoffman’s face at the news of his ‘friend’s’ demise: joy and relief and hatred. Then the rapid succession of expressions stopped as he settled on one: a grimace of glee. Throughout, however, the shotgun never wavered.

He looked me right in the eye for the first time in our acquaintance. “Did the Cougar get messed up? Is everything in the house still okay?”

“Rick,” I said, knowing it was a waste of time even as I spoke. “It’s over. We can all go home now.”

“Oh, no,” Hoffman said. “We're going back up there. To the Chief’s.”

“I wanted to be you,” he said. “But now you’re the one that’s nothing. I’m the Driver from now on.”

“Rick, I am impressed,” I said, and meant it. “I had your skill levels pegged as sub-par, your antennae a little stubby. I was going to advise you to ramp it up a little next time. But you played us all. Kudos, you won – let it go now.”

Hoffman giggled at my stupidity, but then an appalled expression crossed his face. “Is the Chief really dead? Did you make sure?”

“I saw your graduation portrait in the living room, Rick,” I said, trying to change the subject to matters closer to sane, trying to help him continue pretending to be human. “Just how chummy were you and the Chief?”

But Hoffman just looked at me blankly. My words didn’t really involve him so he didn’t have to pretend he was even listening.

“I finally figured out why Stagger Bay protected the Driver when I saw all those AIDS medications at his house,” I continued, still trying to engage. “It’d cost a fortune to keep him in custody, a guy as advanced as that; maybe it’d even bankrupt Stagger Bay the rest of the way. Was that part of why Reese killed my brother? Because of the money justice would cost?”

“Justice?” he said. “Reese only killed people who wouldn’t be missed. He was always safe with them. He never left evidence or room for suspicion.”

“And the Chief?” he said in adoring tones like he still couldn’t make up his mind how he felt about his dead master. “He did as he wished. You can’t judge him like you do the sheep.”

“What about the Beardsleys, Rick?” I asked. “Were they the right kind of people? What about all the Citizens you’ve killed?”

“Oh, them. The Beardsleys weren’t real Stagger Bay; they’d only lived here ten years. They were newcomers, like you – like your brother,” Hoffman said, his gaze gloating as he studied my face. “And as for the others? We had permission – they deserved to play with me and the Chief.”

“Who gave you permission?” I asked.

“Get out your vehicle.”

Sam and I did so, leaving Elaine and Little Moe in the car. We rounded the Lincoln, fanning out from each other as we rolled up on Hoffman from opposite sides. Sam had Jansen’s Glock in his right hand, held down along his leg and out of Rick’s sight.

“Ah-ah,” Hoffman said. “Close enough.” He didn’t point the riot gun at either of us; instead he aimed it dead between us at Elaine and Little Moe.

Sam and I both stopped cold. I was still just outside of striking distance, and Sam was smart enough not to display the Glock till it was time to use it. I was ever so grateful then, that Karl had schooled my son after all instead of just letting him raise himself.

Hoffman took one hand off the shotgun and reached over to open the back door of his roller. He tossed a couple pairs of handcuffs on the asphalt in front of us. “You two put these on first.”

“So what happens up at the house?” I asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough, Markus.”

Desperate, I lunged in as quick as my gimp leg would allow, hands outstretched. But he was just leaned forward with the riot gun’s butt shouldered. The shotgun’s barrel jabbed against my forehead and I stopped, still out of reach.

I stood for a moment with my hands out-stretched uselessly, the riot gun firmly planted against my skull. Hoffman laughed softly as I lowered my arms to my sides.

I leaned forward against the barrel, pushing with my legs. He tried to back off but I didn’t let him; I moved forward, following him and keeping the riot gun barrel firmly against my forehead. He couldn’t pull it away without taking the butt from his shoulder, without having to stop aiming the shotgun at us for a fatal second.

I heard Elaine and Little Moe exit the car and run into the underbrush.

“Go ahead,” I told Reese. “I’ll bet in the time it takes you to blow my head off, my son will stick that scatter gun up your ass sideways. Go ahead motherfucker – I even know what it’ll feel like.”

“Don’t do it, Dad,” Sam said. “Not like this. I still need you.”

“You called me Dad.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

I pulled away from the riot gun and Hoffman scampered back out of reach. “I’m the one with the shotgun,” he shouted, eyes crazed. “I’m the one in charge.”

“You might want to shut the fuck up,” I said. “Me and my boy are having a moment here.” I turned back to him, though. “You’re fooling yourself if you really think you could ever be the Driver. You really want to reassess here, it’s not too late. You could never fill those shoes – you need someone over you to shield you; you’re not strong enough to go it alone.”

He scowled as if considering whether to feel insulted or not. But then he stopped trying to pretend he even thought we really existed. “It’s time for that drive, Markus.”

I heard a car engine coming up the incline and Mr. Tubbs’ Bronco chugged into view. They took their time getting to us, like they were in no hurry at all. They pulled up about fifty feet away; Tubbs got out and stood next to his jacked up ride.

“Rick,” Tubbs said. “How’s about you mosey your sorry ass on over here?”

His two Brahma-bull mesh-back bodyguards climbed out to flank him, looking as unexcited as ever. Each Meshback had a scoped Weatherby hunting rifle nestled in the crook of his arm.

Hoffman shuddered. For a second a wild blaze of defiance seemed like it was about to blossom from him into a Tombstone shootout. Then he wilted and choked, and his riot gun lowered to point at the ground as he slumped. Without looking to the right or to the left, he marched toward where Mr. Tubbs stood waiting.

After Rick reached him, Tubbs subjected Hoffman to a quiet harangue I was too far away to understand the words of. The old man snapped his fingers with a pop! and pointed his index finger right up in Hoffman’s face, inches from his nose.

“I’ll buy you some time,” I whispered to Sam.

“I can take them all,” Sam whispered back, twitching the Glock from behind his leg before re-concealing it.

I looked at him incredulously. “You really want them pumping rounds in Moe and Elaine’s direction? Backstop is the beaten zone, boy, never forget it.”

I headed toward Tubbs, not dreading the approach as much as I might have under other circumstances: both because of what it might buy for Sam, Elaine, and Little Moe; and because, truth to tell, I wanted to talk to Tubbs my own self.

Meshback One immediately aimed in on me with his Weatherby while Meshback Two ‘assisted’ Hoffman into the back seat. Tubbs signaled Meshback One to hold off, but the big bodyguard still aimed in on me as I approached, awaiting the release signal.

Jansen had been pest extermination, Reese had been assisted suicide, and Hoffman was no more than a Bozo minus the clown suit. But rolling up on Tubbs, I knew I was coming to the true knife edge of the evening.

“Seeing you here and upright, I don’t have to ask about Reese,” Tubbs said. He stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding Hoffman’s riot gun by the barrel with the butt on the ground.

“You sent him?” I asked casually.

Tubbs shook his head. “You should be more focusing on me pulling your feet out the fire here.”

“Don’t make too much of it,” I said. “Hoffman was a putz. I probably would have had to make a sacrifice bunt, but Sam would have taken him easily enough then.”

“Sam? Is that who I saw skulking into the bushes back up there?” Tubbs shrugged. “I want you to know that it was never about color for me, Markus. Maybe for some of my people, but not for me.”

“Sure,” I said, aping agreement. “Your favorite color is green anyways. People disappearing on a regular basis? That’s fine as long as it’s not racially motivated. Rogue cops, neighborhoods being declared blighted in the interests of new development? Good business is where you make it, right?

"You knew you were framing me from the start, you knew I didn’t kill the Beardsleys – but you protected Jansen all these years for some ungodly reason. Why, was he family or something?”

“Don’t push it, boy. I’ve got your number now, and I don’t owe you any explanations. But I do owe you for my girl,” Tubbs said, honest anger twisting his face. “I hate owing you. I won’t be in anyone’s debt.”

His face cleared and he gave me an enigmatic stare, his raptor eyes glowing. “You’re a lot like she was. She always gave me hell too.

“I’m not admitting to nothing, wasn’t there, didn’t do it. Reese was a good man, I’ll miss him. But Rick here, maybe he was overstepping his bounds. Maybe he was going way beyond a certain agenda I’m not gonna explain, and maybe he was getting inexcusably sloppy.”

“And the car nut who just mysteriously died up at the house?” I asked.

“Some people are hard to kill. Maybe you want to take them out, but they’re like cockroaches, they keep finding their way through, they keep coming out of the shit storm smelling like a rose.” Tubbs chuckled nastily, his eyes gleaming. “Then you just have to live with them for a while no matter how much of a pain in the ass they are. Try to find some use for them.”

“Some use,” I said, trying to keep the contempt from showing in my eyes. With Jansen, Tubbs thought he’d harnessed Grendel to the plowshare. But in the end he’d as much as traded his only child for his own tacky definition of the good life.

I looked at this tough, foolish old man, whose hole cards had proved nothing more than a busted flush. I studied this sick disease-raddled old termagant, his eyes rheumy with the inner knowledge he'd fed his only daughter to Moloch. There was a desperate self-denial happening inside him, but he knew what he’d done – he knew just fine.

And as for me? I knew that making a single comment about it would be sure and certain suicide. Pardon me if I kept my yap shut on that one. You’d have done the same I’ll bet.

“I’m cleaning up loose ends tonight,” Tubbs said. “So tell me, Markus – are you a loose end?”

Tubbs laughed when I didn’t answer. “What do you think Spale?” he asked Meshback Number One. “Is Markus here a loose end?”

“Yeah, boss.” Spale’s cheek was glued to his rifle stock as he aimed dead at my head. “He’s a loose end all right.”

Tubbs laughed again, glanced at me slyly. “That’s one vote against you, but I got the executive veto power. The way I see it we have two ways to go Markus: either I treat you like a loose end, like your friend Rick here – or I let you call in your marker and I let you leave. Which is it gonna be?”

“Marker,” I mumbled.

“What’s that?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear. “Show some gratitude, boy. Who do you think made them hold off on you this whole time? Who do you think called SBPD off Moose Creek Road tonight so you had a free shot at Jansen? Speak up and show some respect here, son – you’re in my ballpark.”

“I’m calling in my marker, sir,” I said, looking at the ground. I almost had to admire his bald faced lying. They’d only held off because I was too prominent with the cameras right now for me to conveniently disappear just yet. Tubbs had only pulled the cops off Moose Creek Road so Reese could take out Jansen without interference.

My politeness was less than sincere, but Tubbs nodded as if satisfied. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

He glanced down the road in the direction of the Gardens. “Looks like you’ve built up quite a little following amongst those people, Markus – some of the other folk in Stagger Bay seem to like you some too.

“I know what that’s like: You take responsibility for things; you think you can make a difference in their lives. But pretty soon you’re compromising yourself and you’re trapped by the power. You know things are going to go smash soon enough, but there’s no stopping that machine – you’re in for the duration.

“Everyone thinks you’re the one driving, but you’re really just the hood ornament. You’re racing head-on at a brick wall. You’re right up front on that hood and you can see it all coming up on you, but there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” He shook his head, looking at the ground at his feet.

He came back to the present. “Besides, what kind of friends are they? Here we are, you and me, talking about life and death on this beautiful night – and those people are nowhere to be seen. It’s just us, and you’re all alone.”

He shrugged. “You were heading on out of Stagger Bay anyway, weren’t you?”

“Well,” I said, “I was sure thinking about it.”

“Don’t think too long – we’re even now, for what you did for my girl. No more markers from me, and our paths had best not cross again. Time to leave Stagger Bay, Markus.”

Tubbs turned to go but then stopped. “Oh, by the way. Looks like I was premature to be promising you that quarter of a mil. It seems now like the bank account never even existed, and all the paperwork’s been lost.

“That’s the price you pay, eh? But you made it clear you didn’t really want anything I was offering you anyways. Quite a disappointment, I’m sure – but I promise you, you’re not the only one feeling let down these days.”

As Tubbs and Spale got into the car, soon-to-be-ex-Officer Rick Hoffman sat in the back seat, his gaze lifeless, his lips moving silently as he contemplated the reversal of fortune that was about to earn him his own private plot in the piney woods, maybe in the same exact place he’d planned on planting me, Sam, Elaine, and Little Moe. As soon as Tubbs had his butt in the shotgun seat, the Bronco started off down hill toward its ultimate destination.

Chapter 60

Sam, Elaine and Little Moe climbed out from the underbrush where they’d been hiding. Elaine plucked pine needles off her fancy clothes; she really wasn’t dressed for tonight’s brand of entertainment. Sam looked pretty sheepish but I liked that he’d had the sense not to be a hero and watched out for Little Moe and Elaine instead.

“You called me Dad,” I observed as we wrestled the spike strip into the gutter so no one else would drive over it.

Sam snorted and we started to roll the Continental to the side of the road. But my injured leg spasmed and collapsed under me as I pushed, and I wound up on my ass.

“Your leg’s bleeding still,” Sam observed as he continued to push the car alone. Elaine came to me, pulled off her scarf, and began tying it tight around my upper thigh.

I didn’t feel guilty at all for not helping Sam muscle the car toward the shoulder of the road, one hand on the steering wheel, the other pushing on the open door. Judging by how much he huffed and sweated, a 70s Lincoln Continental rolling on nothing but rims was a lot of dead-weight Detroit iron. Maybe his next car would be a compact.

“You were surprised I was waiting when you came out the house,” Elaine whispered, continuing to fuss with her scarf even though it was tight enough around my leg by then. “You know, you may have all the others fooled, but I know your secret.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She chuckled quietly and leaned in with brows arched, her smile mocking but not unfriendly. “You're terrified people will figure out you’re a nice guy.”

I was bemused, wondering why she would say something so blatantly nonsensical. “Sure, that’s me all right. The milk of human kindness just kind of oozes from my pores in a fine mist.”

Elaine glanced over at Sam, who’d finished pushing the Connie to the side of the road but still leaned on the rear bumper catching his breath. “I can’t let you keep on threatening to turn him against me, Markus. It ends right now,” she said. “No matter what I do on the side, I would never do anything to harm Sam, or you.

“Don’t you have any secrets, Markus? Leave it lie, I’ve told you all I’m going to. Can’t we just muddle through without being at each other’s throats? Can’t you trust me even a little?” she asked, pressing as Sam approached.

“Well, you’re here, ain’t you?” I said.

“What up?” Sam asked.

“I’m just welcoming Elaine into the family, boy. Such as it is, of course.”

“And what about that?” Sam asked, looking at Hoffman’s cop car. The strobes still turned; that disco trouble light still shot its rays out, painting the surrounding trees as it spun.

“Leave it be,” I said. “It makes a nice nightlight.”

Chapter 61

Little Moe stumbled as we walked down the hill and I was limping pretty bad by then. Sam scooped him up to carry him, and I’ll admit to leaning on Sam’s shoulder fairly hard myself. Elaine was stuck carrying Karl’s box but she didn’t seem unhappy to be lugging it: judging by how she kept looking down into it every few seconds, she was impatient to get some alone-time with Karl’s notes.

“Could it really be that simple?” I asked as we gimped our motley parade down the road.

“Backwoods racists and people with no fishing and logging jobs anymore, willing to go along with pretty much anything as long as they get a paycheck from the development boom. A twisted devil worshiping freak hiding behind being Chief of Police, with the very cops that should be busting him taking orders from him instead. And a hillbilly mafia running everything from behind the scenes, trying to clear out the riff-raff so they can cash in on all that outside money pouring their way.

“The Driver cut his teeth on the Beardsleys first, and there I was, born to be the fall guy for it. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing the locals then somehow convince to only kill the ‘right’ people. The powers-that-be protect him because they can’t afford the medicine if they lock him up, can’t lay him down because he’s got the goods on them, and he’s oh-so-useful. Then he turns on the fools that thought they were his masters, and it all unravels from there. Am I missing anything here?”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know – actually, it sounds pretty convoluted to me.”

“What’s that?”

“Convoluted – it means complex, involved – “

“I know what it means, boy. I’m just surprised to hear you using a word with more than one syllable.”

“What is it with you two?” Elaine asked, throwing us both a sharp glance. “Can’t you be nice to each other even for a little bit?”

I thought about me and Karl, and of how much broken furniture had lain in our wake. Of the snarl that overlaid all our rambunctious affections, and the undertone of cruelty whenever we tried for anything approaching brotherly affection. This lady had no clue what nice meant to our kind.

“You know if I let you in too far it’d feel like turning my back on Uncle Karl, right?” Sam asked. “It’d be like I was spitting on everything he ever did for me.”

“I know.”

“Jansen was a liar, you’re nothing like him. And he was full of it about Mom and Karl too, wasn’t he?” Sam asked. “I mean, okay, he was right about Uncle Karl taking way longer than you without nothing happening. And I’ll admit, if Karl had been here tonight, I don’t see how he could have done better.”

I was feeling a little peaked, but I still gave Sam my best deadpan. “Don’t forget I had the advantage over Karl: Things had already started to break wide open when I got involved. Karl could have worked the pieces as good as me if he’d been alive – I was only half the team that should’ve been here tonight.”

But I’d had the advantage of desperation as well – I’d had to keep the pace quick. Sam had been getting mightily froggy; he’d been getting close to really attracting their attention.

If I hadn’t moved fast, Reese would have gobbled up Sam just like he did Karl. And even if Sam somehow side-stepped Reese, he would have wound up partying alone with Jansen and Hoffman up in that hell house.

“It was a bunch of horse puckie, what Jansen was trying to feed you,” I assured my son. “Don’t even waste time rubbing two brain cells together over it, Sam. This town is built on lies. Everyone here is full of shit.”

“Including you?” Sam asked.

“All you need to take away is that Karl was my big brother and your uncle, and that he was there for you when I couldn’t be. But now it’s time to let both him and Mom rest in peace, okay? Just focus on the fact that they’d both be proud of you, Sam.”

“How about you? Are you proud of me?”

But I only laughed.

Little Moe squirmed and moaned as he nestled in Sam’s arms – he was already sound asleep as crazy as that seems, and his mouth hung open. A hungry expression came onto Sam’s face as he looked down at this boy resting in his grasp.

“We did it, didn’t we, old man?” Sam asked, his voice full of wonder.

“Yeah, I guess we did at that. Good job, son.”

Sam stopped and I tottered as I almost lost my grip on his shoulder. He threw back his head and whooped at the heavens, louder than I’d ever heard him speak: “We did it!”

Little Moe woke up and started squirming and crying – we heard engines from below, multiple vehicles howling our way. “Oh shit,” Sam said. “Tubbs changed his mind. They’re coming back.”

We scrambled for the woods.

Chapter 62

Sam got him and Little Moe out of sight quick, and Elaine tottered after as fast she could lug the box in her Jimmy Choos. As for me, I was still limping along like a man doing the three-legged race solitaire when the lead vehicle came around the curve, and its headlights pinned me like road kill in the making.

I stood and watched, too drained really to be afraid. It was a caravan of four vehicles: two minivans stuffed with Hmong, a low-rider Impala filled with some enthusiastically bullet-headed Mexican kids I’d never seen before, and Big Moe’s Taurus.

“Where is he, you son of a bitch?” Moe shouted hoarsely from the shotgun seat of his ride, holding a bloody rag to the side of his head, his eyes red and crazed. His skinny white brother JoJo was driving, bony knuckles strangling the steering wheel. “Where’s Little Moe?”

“Right here,” Sam said, leading Little Moe from the tree-line for his uncle’s inspection.

Big Moe yelped as he got out the car. A pistol fell and clattered on the asphalt as he dropped to both knees and embraced Little Moe.

Big Moe stood and stalked over to me. He grabbed me hard by the shoulders and ogled me up and down, taking in the makeshift tourniquet tied around my leg.

And then, so help me, this big corn-rowed young black man kissed me full on the lips. Sam smirked at me as Big Moe clutched me hard against him and I patted rapidly at his shoulder.

Big Moe finally let go and turned to face away from us all. His shoulders shook a little while he aimed his broad back at us, but his face was perfectly composed when he finally turned around to face our way again.

“Okay,” was all he said, in a voice that didn’t sound pessimistic at all. He picked up his rod and we all piled into the Taurus.

Chapter 63

When we got back to the Gardens it looked like a fire ant nest someone had kicked open. People ran around or stood in groups, cars roaring every which way. An old white-haired black lady waved a meat cleaver, yelling. The Gardens had finally had enough.

A mob swirled to surround the car as we pulled up in front of Little Moe’s house. A low moan came from the milling crowd as we got out and Little Moe ran toward the open front door of his bungalow crying, “Mommy.”

His mother sprinted out the door panting and gasping; she scooped him up with a shriek, held him tight enough I was afraid for his health. They disappeared inside, no one following to intrude on their reunion.

Everyone headed toward the Gardens’ entrance, so Sam and I followed. I still leaned on his shoulder; my leg had stiffened up something awful.

“I am proud of you, son, proud of you for always standing up to me,” I said. “And I’ve admired all along how loyal you are to Karl. You should be; he was a hell of a man. You’re right that he did all the thinking for us back in the day.

“But I started thinking for myself the day I saw you in your Mom’s arms. And I’m not the man I was before I went to prison, please tell me you see that.

“You’re right, too, about us not having any history before – that was stolen from us, it’s not your fault nor mine. But now I know you some – I’ve gotten to see who you are a little bit. You rock, kid. You did one helluva good job tonight.”

“We can never replace what they took; it’s down the tubes.” I studied his face as we gimped along, ignoring the hustling mob around us. “We still got the future, though, don’t we, Sam? We still have time to make something.”

“Check this,” Sam said, jerking his chin toward our front.

I turned to follow Sam’s look. We were at the entrance to the Gardens, and every male of fighting age stood there in a silent throng; a lot of the women were there too. Everyone had weapons: guns and baseball bats; knives; straight razors.

The Hmong were off to one side, sticking to themselves as usual – an AK and a couple of M-16s leaned against the backs of their minivans, ready to grab. One of the Asians had a blanket-wrapped bundle at his feet that looked suspiciously like a rocket launcher.

The 18th Street Crips were in position, and they came up to join Sam and me. “They’re coming for us,” Big Moe said, voice breathless and eyes wide. “I just got the word from one of my contacts. They’re coming to clean us out all the way.”

I heard a lot of cars coming down the highway from the direction of town but couldn’t see anything for a moment for the trees. Then the first vehicle appeared on the ridgeline, its headlights panning over our faces as it turned down the access road and started around that big loop of road surrounding the empty lots.

Another vehicle came into view, and another and another, hundreds of them in a slow moving line – motorcycles and pickup trucks, cars and vans, even a couple of buses. Stagger Bay was coming to call on the Gardens, in force.

Chapter 64

I’d only been chumming when I used Reese to send the message the Gardens were about to break, and asked Elaine to expose her jugular on TV. I’d just been looking for the opening, trying to flush the Driver and his cronies. Now the bill had come due: Stagger Bay’s sharks were coming up-current along the scent trail, intent on a feeding frenzy.

One after the other, vehicles came around past us and turned into the empty cul-de-sacs and courts in the vacant lots across the avenue. As they parked, the drivers and passengers got out their vehicles and walked up to the sidewalk on the development side, standing to our front with only the avenue dividing us. They were all armed too: axe handles; hunting rifles; shotguns – an arsenal as varied as our own.

They muttered disjointedly amongst themselves until one strident woman’s voice bawled out, “Niggers.”

A few of them enthusiastically chanted the word a few times but most of the crowd refused to join in, their pained looks indicating embarrassment. The open bigots finally stopped and our enemies subsided into the background mumble of any would-be mob working itself up into a tizzy.

The murmuring horde grew steadily until we were outnumbered vastly, with more vehicles arriving and parking behind them in a steady, seemingly endless stream. Then one man crossed the avenue toward us, his hands open at his sides to show he was unarmed.

“Peace to the Gardens,” he said. “I’m here to stand with you.”

It was Takeshi. He saw me in the crowd and walked up with a sheepish grin. “If you still want to work the dock, Markus, you’ve got a job with me. Fuck’em.”

A half-dozen women got out of a VW micro-bus and came to join us, every one of them dressed in black. The women pulled candles from their purses and lit them, turning to face the direction they’d come from with the lit tapers cupped in both hands. The surviving Peace Women: If the casualties they’d suffered before or the comments shouted their way now gave them pause, they showed no sign of it.

A vintage root beer Bentley pulled up and parked a little ways away from the other cars. Jim Scallion got out and gave me a shy wave before joining us, the best dressed man in the crowd.

Others continued to join us: Nurse Dorcas, under the arm of a tall skinny guy I recognized as one of the interns that attended me at the Hospital; Sara and her fellow librarian; others either vaguely familiar or unknown to me.

At first Moe seemed dumbfounded, but the organizer in him stepped up to the plate without delay. He greeted every new arrival to our side of the street, giving them all a gracious welcome as if they were invited guests he’d known were coming all along; as if it were no more than his due they were here. Moe pumped their hands if they let him, and then suggested where in our growing crowd they should take their places, Julius Caesar deploying his Legionnaires.

Now Spider and the Stagger Bay Fog Choppers roared up on their hogs and parked their Harleys in a neat row on our side of the avenue. Big Moe beckoned to them, but Spider just grinned and thumbed his nose at him.

Spider and his Fog Choppers swaggered over to stand with me and Sam. I still owed Spider for that pool debt but the old biker still didn’t seem overly concerned. Fat chance I’d be able to chase these obnoxious scooter tramps away from underfoot, it looked like they were stuck with me.

A white bus pulled up, with ‘Stagger Bay Lutheran’ painted on the side. Several dozen men filed out and made a beeline my way through the crowd, smiling like they knew me. And they did: I recognized them from that day at the Plaza; they were the fathers of the children I’d saved at the school.

They murmured greetings as they formed ranks right in front of the 18th Street Crips, facing the other side of the avenue like they’d die before anything got past them. We’d earned each other, I suppose.

People kept joining our group, or adding to the other, until every vehicle was empty, and every person there had made their position clear. To my surprise, the people standing with the Gardens now vastly outnumbered those who’d come to destroy them; with friendly additions our group was easily twice the size of our enemies’ force.

I was humbled and awed. The people of Stagger Bay had finally risen up.

I’d been arrogant: throughout this whole affair I’d thought I was fighting some lone-wolf battle. I thought it was me against the world, me against Stagger Bay. But I’d been wrong; been guilty of vanity and pride.

I’d never been alone all along – I’d been only one of many.

I was gulping for air and it hurt to breathe; my chest and throat were tight. My lower lip waggled around like it wanted to put my upper lip in a submission hold from beneath, but I did my best to hide it and I’m sure none of them saw.

Down the avenue, about fifty yards away in the direction of the swamp and the Hospital, I saw Leo standing there with his rolled-up sleeping bag hanging from one shoulder by a knotted rope sling. He looked at us all mopey and hangdog, unmoving.

“Leo, come here,” I called out to him, beckoning. “Come over here and stand with me, Leo.”

But he just turned around and walked away down the trail and out of sight – the same trail I used the night I’d reeled into these people’s lives.

A steady stream of catcalls still came from our out-numbered foes, but the silence on our side of the avenue was as ominous as it was eerie. Amongst my folk, there was an occasional cough, or someone stamping their feet in the growing chill – but there were no insults or threats from our team.

I wondered what kept our enemies standing there so obviously outnumbered. I looked at the faces of our foes, recognizing a lot of them, realizing how many of them were staring at me and singling me out from the crowd. My one-time barber Bill kind of stood out to my eye; from the expression he kept aiming my way I supposed any civic gratitude he felt for my deeds at the school had worn off.

I compared the faces of our adversaries to those of the group I stood with. It struck me how similar they were: you’d never be able to predict which group any of these people would pick to stand with before watching them make their choice.

Over with those who’d come to wipe us out was a blue-haired grandmother. To look at her you’d think she was the kind to offer milk and cookies to all the neighborhood kids; but the hate shining from her face was almost palpable.

On our side stood a lanky beanpole of a redneck dressed to the nines in cowboy style, with wide Stetson hat, string tie, pearl-buttoned shirt, and snakeskin boots. He looked like the kind of guy who used the n-word a lot, and would never be at a loss for a funny racist joke at the bar. But here he stood with us.

I’d have predicted every construction worker in Stagger Bay would have rationalized themselves onto the side of their bread and butter. But the toolbox crowd was evenly divided between our side and the other.

You never knew, about people that is. They were what they did; there was no getting around it.

Then, from the direction of the hospital, I saw strobing red trouble lights coming our way, lots of them. Our enemies raised a rebel yell, certain their bloodlust was finally going to be allowed legal vent.

That’s what these crackers were waiting for: The Stagger Bay Police Department was on their way to join the festivities.

Chapter 65

Their sirens were off but their trouble lights spun like a Big Brother rave display. They drove in a tight column of Crown Vic rollers along the ridgeline highway, down the access road and around the outskirts of the development, which was now crowded with hundreds of civilian cars.

When they got to the road in front of the Gardens, however, the cops lost their cohesion: a dozen police cars parked on our side of the avenue, but only a few of cops joined the lynch mob parked across the way.

The small number of cops supporting them had an immediate effect on the enemy camp: suddenly they stood still and silent. An air of hopeless disbelief crawled across them like a visible entity. Faces grew unhappy, and many of them eyed their vehicles with longing.

A steroid-buffed cop I recognized from the deposition got out his car with megaphone in hand; he stood in the middle of the avenue between the two opposing camps, facing our enemies. “This is an unlawful gathering, and you will disperse immediately,” the amplified voice of the law boomed. “Cease and desist – it’s time to go home, folks.”

Our opponents did so, cringing away in driblets to their cars and driving away singly, no longer a caravan, no longer a mob, without that sense of communal purpose and predatory hum they’d seemed to bring with them. They drove home alone, hunched over their steering wheels, defeated. The few cop cars that had parked with them drove away too; I wondered if they’d still be on the department payroll after tonight.

Moe dropped to one knee. “Yes,” he said, karate-chopping his hand down at the ground like he thought he could split the earth. “You lost, bitches,” he laughed. “Don’t come back to the Gardens.”

All Sam’s friends erupted into applause. People threw hats and clapped one another on the back.

They looked around at one another, powerful emotions on their faces. This was the night Stagger Bay rolled over like a giantess in her sleep and escaped to less unpleasant dreams.

The cops unbent enough to smile and shake hands with everyone around them, appearing a little sheepish but still standing on Sam’s side of the street. The cop with the megaphone – the new Chief of police after tonight I assumed – looked my way and gave me a miniscule diplomatic nod which I returned.

I walked through the crowd, meeting everyone’s eyes. Tonight I could let them look right at me despite the grotesquerie my eye patch concealed. I circulated with everyone else, soaking up the feelings just as though I had any right to share them.

News crews had shown up without me noticing. That redheaded newscaster from Oakland eyed me intently as she advanced through the crowd clutching her microphone, her ever dutiful cameraman behind her in tow. She was one determined newswoman.

“Moe,” I said. “Here’s your chance to be on TV.”

I pointed at the newscaster and his eyes lit up like a hungry man seeing a delicious meal. He got in front of her and started talking even as Sam and I commenced our getaway, me limping along as rapidly as possible whilst clutching his shoulder for support.

As we left Big Moe spoke enthusiastically about the Driver and the war on the Gardens; about the atmosphere of fear ruling Stagger Bay. His bloody head made for a dramatic on-camera touch. He sounded like a natural, more comfortable in front of the camera than I’d ever be.

I heard a siren behind us and turned to watch as a fire truck warbled along the ridge line highway and up Moose Creek Road. Looking back into the hills in the ambulance’s direction of travel I saw a flickering glow up there in the woods, like a fire was blazing just about where Chief Jansen had lived.

Tubbs said he was cleaning up loose ends tonight. The Ancients believed fire was a good purifier, a good cleanser; it was also a great way to destroy CSI evidence. How wonderful when two ages could agree together on a course of action.

As Sam helped me hobble toward Natalie’s, that redheaded newscaster peered at me over Big Moe’s shoulder. I wasn’t going to be able to dodge that promised exclusive interview much longer.

Chapter 66

Natalie’s door was wide open, and she stood in it with the light from inside backlighting her like enclosure.

“You’re a mess,” she said, canting her head to the side with hooded eyes. “Listen, Markus – I know you like to take your time and all, but you have to get some kind of move on eventually. Randy and I are going clothes shopping tomorrow, and you might want to tag along. That raggedy outfit is tired – it’s time to shuck it off and put it away for good, time to move on to where you need to be.”

Elaine had arrived before us with Karl’s hard-bought box of evidence. Sam helped me totter to the porch, and then Elaine picked up the box, stepped over to me, and plopped it at my feet.

“Now it’s on you,” she said with a grimace.

“Thanks loads,” I said. “Really looking forward to it.”

She chuckled at my tone, knowing how neatly she’d trapped me: if I really didn’t want my potential daughter-in-law to go through with whatever scam she had cooking, I had to take responsibility for this package.

But if Elaine thought she’d pulled a fast one on me, she might not be so tickled when I made sure she never folded on the injunction preserving the Gardens. Whether she knew it or not she was gonna ram that one through till the Man puked, with me standing behind her, arms crossed and tapping my foot.

I was free now, freer than I’d ever been in my life. I felt bigger than I ever had before, like I could rip the sky open with my bare hands tonight. But I was also juggling a lot of options, a million things I could turn my back on or face all the way, a potentially overwhelming number of decisions to make:

If I stayed in Stagger Bay and opposed Tubbs. If I walked through Natalie’s door and saw where that led us.

‘If’ I called Agent Miller? Please. It had nothing to do with whether or not I could trust the law – when I got ahold of him I knew he’d be up within hours, with bells on.

If.

God’s will, Natalie said. I still had my doubts about me being the kind of tool the Big Man would use if he existed. But I looked up at the stars, feeling the need to hedge my bets here at the end.

“Thank you,” I said, to whoever might be listening: Karl, or God, or Mister Montaigne and his homies – or most likely nobody at all.

“You’re welcome,” Sam said with an airy wave.

He stared at something behind me and I turned to follow his gaze. About a block down I saw that foxy redheaded Oakland newscaster closing in with cameraman in tow. I couldn’t hide from her anymore; it was time to keep my promise to her.

Seeing that camera inspired me to fumble Alden Wong’s business card out my otherwise empty wallet – first things first.

‘The biggest soap box in the world,’ the little agent had said. It would mean living in the fishbowl a little while longer. But what was wrong with a payout if I didn’t have to whore myself too hard, and if nobody else got hurt? “I need the phone one more time,” I said. “I need to call a man about a little thing.”

“No,” Sam said with a grin as he recognized the card. “That’s my Dad,” he noted to all and sundry. “The fucking old sellout.”

Sam smirked at me, awaiting my obligatorily obnoxious reply. But I just looked at him, keeping my proud fondness for him hidden in my heart as was always best.

Even though my son was mocking up on me harshly as ever, he’d been willing to call me ‘Dad’ twice in one night. Maybe, if I had patience and played my cards right, with any luck he’d call me the ‘D’ word again sometime.

Sam was still the typical teenager he’d been before tonight: an insolent little spud to be sure. But at least I’d made sure my son wasn’t a killer. It meant much that I’d kept that from happening here: Sam was still clean.

I dialed Alden’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

And I guess if you watch much TV at all or listen to the radio, if you surf the Internet, read the papers, or thumb through the tabloid magazines stacked high at every grocery checkout in America, you KNOW what happened next.

About The Author

Pearce Hansen is an East Bay native who writes about what he knows: the streets of Oakland and her sister cities, the place he grew up. His work inspired by his experiences on those crazy blocks, Pearce has been writing 15 years and published over 80 times including four anthology inclusions; Stagger Bay is the second of his three novels to date. Pearce currently resides up on the Lost Coast behind the Redwood Curtain, empty nesting it with his wife and their spoiled fat Egyptian Mau cat.

Connect with Him Online

Twitter: http://twitter.com/@PearceHansen

Facebook: http://facebook.com/pearce.hansen

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