The light shines on me. Two silhouettes stand over me, but their arms aren’t cocked like they’re going to screw me. I squint at the white light.
“It’s just us,” says a voice.
It’s Matt, the cop.
“Christ,” I growl.
Matt and Jack somehow convince me to climb into their unmarked car parked over on Second Avenue. Maybe it has something to do with that I don’t have a choice.
I have the whole back seat to myself. It’s plastic but they got the heat on. They have a coffee for me too. It’s a mocha. Only one person still alive knows I like a mocha.
“You found our tent,” I say.
Matt nods. “Amy’s smarter than you think, when she’s not frying her brains out.”
“It’s not like her. Giving my spot away.”
“Well, she’s worried about you. Thought you might be getting bad thoughts.”
Matt and Jack smile at each other like happy parents, then direct their eyes back to me. In the dim streetlight-dawn, the shadows show off the womanly curves of Jack’s face. Her seeming attempts to resemble a baseball umpire don’t always hold up.
“Mocha all right? Hot enough?” Matt adds.
I only shake my head. “If this was TV? You guys would be threatening to turn me over to the badass railroad bulls.”
Jack and Matt stare, drawing blanks.
“You know, for trespassing? I’m living in a rail zone. Jesus.”
“I thought the cops rough guys like you up for sport, make you stand in lineups?” Matt says.
“That wasn’t no TV show. That was real.”
“That was years ago,” Jack says.
“So. And I was going to file complaints too—”
“We get it,” Matt says. “No one listened. Well, we’re listening now.”
“Or? We just go and arrest you for murder,” Jack adds.
Matt and Jack smile at that.
“Then why haven’t you?” I say. “Instead you let me fucking dangle.”
Matt shrugs. “We just want the truth here.”
“Fully objective in our pursuit,” Jack adds.
I try not to roll my eyes. “What about that guy Gerald Tappen?”
Matt looks to Jack.
“He’s on ice,” Jack says.
“Meaning what?”
“He has a nice place at the coast. Manzanita. Said he’s heading there for a few days.”
“That’s not what’s usually called ‘on ice.’”
“No, it’s not. We couldn’t hold him.”
I throw up my hands. “I asked you guys a simple question.”
“What about him?” Jack says.
“Did you question him or didn’t you?”
“We did.”
“And?”
“Maybe we didn’t believe him completely,” Matt says.
“Hey, you quit drinking your fancy coffee,” Jack says to me before I can follow up.
“I finished it.” I couldn’t help chugging it, it was so warm and rich.
Jack looks to Matt, her eyes wide. “Oh, you know what?” she says to him. “He’s thinking that he got to us.”
Meaning Tappen got to them, I guess.
They smile at that too.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Matt tells me. “Not so directly anyway. Not in this town. Be cool if it did—more like good TV, but it don’t.”
“Just what the hell are you guys talking about?”
“Gerald Tappen, who else? You’re sitting there thinking that Tappen bought us off or something, had pressure put on us from powerful people.” Matt shakes his head.
I shake my head back. “I’m not thinking anything. I swore off that a long time ago. And you know what? I think I’m tired. I’m going back to bed.” I move to exit my back door even though they locked it from up front. “I appreciate the mocha ...”
“Wait. Stay a sec,” Matt says.
I have to roll my eyes now. “What, is this the bad cop part?”
“Man, come on,” Jack says.
“Most cases?” Matt adds. “We find that people play bad cop to themselves.”
Jack nods to that. “It’s in their heads. All in here. Is it in your head?”
“I really, really do not know what you’re talking about now. You’re not going to arrest me?”
“No. Don’t have a good reason to,” Matt says.
I sigh. “Jesus. Maybe the old days were better. At least I knew the torture had an end.”
“All right, fair enough,” Matt says, and he and Jack share a knowing glance.
To which Jack says, “Let me ask you something—what do you think about a wire?”
“It’s not actually a wire,” Matt adds, “it’s more like you’re the wire yourself, and you tell us what you hear.”
“I think that’s called being an informant.”
“Okay. Sure. We wanted to make it sound better.”
It doesn’t. “That means I’d be a witness. Right? You being the experts and all.”
“Not necessarily,” Matt says, and Jack adds, “Look. I know you wanted to figure this out yourself. D-I-Y. Street guys, you got good reasons for it. But in this case?”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Matt says.
I sit there a moment, slumped down, the plastic of the seat digging into my hip. They don’t seem to have anything on me, even they admit it. So some of the danger might be lifted. The problem is, I probably know less now than when I started looking for Oscar.
Then it hits me.
“Eva,” I blurt. “Eva Tappen. She’s the only one you haven’t mentioned.”
“You got it,” Matt and Jack say at the same time, then chuckle at each other. “You are good.”
I cough, clear my throat. I hock one out the window. A sweet coffee drink does that to me.
“She helped get Oscar here,” Matt says.
“Eva did? From Guatemala?”
“Yep. And you know what else? She’s his sister,” Jack says.
I make my eyes go big. I sit up straight. “Is that right? Whoa. Who knew.” I add another shake of my head.
“Crazy, right? She set him up here,” Jack adds. “Gave him all kinds of chances. Oscar, he’s had more chances than all those jornaleros out there put together.”
“And you think there’s something you don’t know. That a guy like me could find out?” I snort at that. “You know what Oscar would say to this? Walk away, my friend. Stay free, amigo.”
“The thing is though, you’re not Oscar,” Jack says.
“Tell you what. You think on it. But not too long,” Matt says. “You know where to find us.”
“Christ,” I say. “You guys are too nice.”
“So nice it could get a guy killed,” Jack says in a movie gangster voice.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Matt says to her.
“Nothing. Thought it sounded cool.”
And I can only shake my head, throw up more hands, roll more eyes.
*
Matt and Jack didn’t give me any more clues to go on than Gerald Tappen did, and I didn’t want to hear too many because it would look like I was committing to them.
I don’t go to Eva's home. I hit the Rescue House instead. This way I can bolt if it gets weird, and if not maybe I’ll catch her softhearted.
I stand across the street like I do. There’s no line this time. Inside, I can see Latino homeless eating with their heads down as a man reads a bible to them standing.
Matt and Jack must suspect Eva Tappen of something, or they wouldn’t be lowering their standards to test out the likes of me. As for Tappen, well, I just hope he’s not looking to frame me in some way.
Eva comes out the door. I skip across the street, stroll up next to her.
She faces me. The neon cross of the mission illuminates our faces red like crabs on the boil. She doesn’t have that look like people get, she’s sorry but she doesn’t have any change. She’s taller than Oscar was. We’re about ey
e to eye.
“I’m looking for your brother,” I say.
Her eyes go dead a moment, just glass eyeballs on a wax museum figure. They fix on me.
“You should go inside,” she says, with less of an accent than Oscar had. “They are still serving people.”
“I’m not people.”
“You’re that friend he mentioned. He worked with you.”
“That’s right.”
She lets out a deep breath. She glances back at the mission, and just walks off.
I stand there a moment, then follow. I keep after her. We head around a corner. It’s darker here. I tense up inside, my ass tight. I usually don’t follow people down streets like this.
She stops, pivots, faces me again.
“I was looking for him. Then I read the news,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
Her thick lips tighten and thin like she wants to hock one on me. “Don’t be.”
“I guess I don’t understand.”
She steps forward, into my face, her eyes above me now. “Go to the cops. Do whatever it is you’re going to do.”
“You don’t think they’d believe me,” I say. “A guy like me, that it?”
“Like you? Look at me. An immigrant, or whatever you want to call it.”
She’s throwing me off with this. My brain goes foggy, scrambled. I don’t know what to say.
She says, “I really ought to slap you is what I should do.”
She walks away again.
Then things unscramble in my brain like yarn strewn all over rolling back up tight in a ball. The blood pumps in my fists, thighs. “But what? You’ll dirty up your pretty hand? Screw you, lady.”
“Fuck you,” she says over her shoulder, keeps walking.
I follow but keep my distance, because I seriously consider that she could pull a knife or something worse. I can’t help giving her a once-over. Her skirt is shorter than her thighs long.
She turns and plants each foot like a bull rearing up, and it makes me halt, straighten up.
“You don’t get it,” she says. “And you never will.”
*
Eva Tappen walked off for good. I let her. She knew the play and when you know the play, you don’t go and give it away. I understood that. The play was the same, whether it was me outwitting a nut job in a dumpster alley, or some investment broker scamming the rich guy up high in the mansion. To get wherever you need to be you string people along, hinting at what they crave, feeding their fire.
People think those of us on the street make the dumbest choices. Maybe they’re not wrong. But that doesn’t mean one of us still doesn’t have the potential to be Einstein or Machiavelli or Buddha or all rolled into one. Matt and Jack might say I am capable, or good even. But Matt and Jack want me to be a certain way. I can’t be. I am still doing this thing on my own. So I never reported back to them on my encounter with Eva. Those two will have to trust that I am copacetic, that I am a guy who might play along in the end. That’s why I didn’t say no, while not exactly committing either. Hopefully Matt and Jack don’t suspect me. They want at Tappen. They want at Eva. Still, I can’t help thinking there is something or someone else and probably untouchable. Eva could be right. Maybe I don’t get it. Maybe it is right under my nose. Maybe there is some force I’m not seeing. A power.
Why not aim higher? That was what my dad always said.
So I decide to provoke that forceful power into making its next move. That morning, I make myself visible. Act like a guy on a mission. I show up at the job site where I’m still thinking Oscar bought it. The four corners too, of course. Even Dad’s Place. I roam the Central Eastside warehouse streets. Pretend to use that working outside pay phone, let everybody see me. Try another phone I know. I do keep clear of the safe tents around the Bressie Electric building even though it means not seeing Amy—I just have to trust she’ll hole up there. And of course I avoid my Steel Bridge hideout. Even the smallest animals need a lair.
I keep at it that afternoon, making a big show of it. I’m everywhere. It’s food-score galore when you’re out roaming that much, every trash can offering up something, people practically throwing money at you, when you couldn’t give one fuck. I’m inviting the full force of it. I go fetch my BMX bike locked up down by the rail zone. I do the tour on two wheels. I show myself back on Grand, ride the whole damn traffic-clogged shit show of an avenue. I stop at corners to chat it up with sketchy dudes I usually stomp right on past, not making eye contact. I slow down going by the police precinct. I wheel around, turn back. I stand in the doorway of the precinct with my chest out. Then I step inside, bike and all and linger as long as I can until the info desk cop asks me if I have a reason. This is balls-out of me, considering the Oscar incident, and I feel my chest tightening up. I mumble, “Sorry, never mind,” and stumble out, rolling my bike along. My heart is pounding now.
That will make anyone watching think. Maybe I am a little paranoid, but, I swear I feel eyes on me. They might be inside cars, or vans, some luxury SUV. They might be watching from building windows, or atop buildings. Someone is watching me. A guy just knows. Coming around every corner I expect someone to come at me. All my instincts tell me to dodge those eyes on me, but I do not.
And yet, nothing gives. By late afternoon, I’ve had enough. For now. Tomorrow I’ll start it all over again, a scene that could still get hairy unless my eyes were telling me lies all day.
I ride to the Dead End sign down by the rail zone, stopping to look over my shoulder, making sure no one’s watching, and I lock up my two wheels.
I settle in at my secret spot, staring at the Steel Bridge, its spans and girders thickening black from the dusk coming fast. I hear the drone-rush of I-5 overhead, the coming and going, speeding, slowing. The heavy hum lulls me. My eyes close ...
My eyes pop open. It’s dark out now. I think I hear rocks crunch, I straighten. Someone is coming, I can feel it, but I can’t see them and I can’t hear with the freeway.
My pulse thumps, throbbing in my fingertips, my sinuses swelling with fear. I stand, letting my blanket fall. I face the only way in. A sense of relief hits me, loosening my face like cool spray from a mister. Only Matt and Jack know this place, I tell myself.
“Not you two again,” I say.
They say nothing. Where are they? I step into the darkness near the tracks.
“I thought I was supposed to go to you when I’m ready to play along—”
Hands clamp onto my upper arms from behind and hike me up. I jerk my arms free and bolt but I stumble over rocks and where can I go? Into the river? Hit by a train? I look back and see the black silhouettes coming, enlarging, looming. I fall, fuck. I get up, they kick at me, I go down again. They hold me there and roll me onto my side. I smell glue, no it’s tape, hear it rip. “Wait—”
They slap duct tape across my mouth, wrap it around tight. I flail my arms, but they catch them and slam my wrists together. I feel the sting of a sharp edge, but it’s no knife. It’s plastic ties, zipping tight. Cuffs. They pull something over my head, a long stocking cap and tape it secure around my neck.
They hoist me up and carry me along, my toes banging at rocks and sticks, my head knocking against their shoulders. The fear blasts out my nostrils like I’m blowing my nose, but soon they’re huffing and puffing too and slowing. They stop, panting. I make a walking gesture in place, like the most pathetic fucking harlequin ever seen. One of them pats me on the back and they let me walk alongside them.
We go the length of a football field, maybe more, probably out to the end of Second Avenue. They stand me up. I feel a shape before me, blocking the breeze. They open it and push me down on my haunches and shove me inside and shut it—I hear the clink of a lock.
I’m on some kind of bunk. I roll either way and only hit walls. I lift up and my head bangs the top, the stocking cap hood cushioning the hit.
“Help!” I shout, “Someone help!” but through the duct tape it’s just a murmur and it steals the air from
my nostrils.
No response. What I lay on is flat, firm yet soft. My fingertips feel the taut fabric.
I’m hemmed in on all sides. This is like a coffin. What if it is?
“Let me out!” I scream, but I might as well be screaming underwater.
I take deep breaths, calming my breathing till the fear becomes only tiny hammers tapping at my lungs. If this were a coffin, it’s made for two. I feel around with head and hips and shoulders hoping for a window but only find rivets and framework and something taped over, probably the only glass I could have reached. Through my hood I sniff, smell wood and wax and a faint petroleum aroma like rubber or new plastic. I sputter a sick laugh under my tape and it sounds like a moan. And I lay there on my side, letting the tiny hammers ease altogether.
I hear a truck rumbling at idle despite the din of the highway. I think I smell exhaust.
Then I’m rolling, jolting. My eyeballs bulge in the dark. I bang my head again. The whole thing’s moving. I press against a wall, hold on. My pulse races and the more I gasp, the less air I get, all made worse by this thick, black hood they got on me like some poor bastard in one of those CIA black sites.
If I could only talk. Come on, I’d tell them. Let me out, we’ll talk.
We’re moving faster now, out onto flat road. I’m being towed in my cage. Soon we’re on highway; I can tell by the way the roadway echoes inside here. So I lower my head, and I enjoy the goddamn ride. I asked for this, after all.
The plastic handcuff bites into my wrist no matter how I let my hand hang or lie. It’s attached to bars, what feels like a railing. It’s night but I don’t know how light it is inside here with this hood on. At least they’ve taken the duct tape off my mouth. The fabric around my lips is moist again from me breathing, then hyperventilating, and all that saliva and breath with nowhere to go is making me probably more sick than anything. I’ve been here about an hour. I shouted, at first. Banged that cuff again and again till my wrist bone stung raw. But no one’s hearing me out here out in this dead-end suburb. Which this must be. It took us about forty minutes to get here, tops. Lots of smooth freeway, then what felt like boulevard, then the slow turning and smooth cruising of a suburb—a development, more like. They dragged me out and through a garage to get inside.
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