Bury the Past

by James L'Etoile

  “We can’t leave with them here.”

  “I’ll take care of them too. They will be on their way. You guys split now, or I swear I’ll call the gang task force and get them to search all of your houses and impound your cars.”

  “Man, you’re not right,” the Blood said.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Paula pointed to the door, and a few of them started out.

  The Blood said, “This ain’t over.”

  Paula stepped to him and jabbed a finger in his chest. “It’s over if I say it is.”

  When the last one left, Paula went to the Crip contingent. “Same goes for you. Leave someone here who can let his family know what’s going on, and the rest of you hit it.”

  “Damn, Penley, you got you a bulldog here,” Deshawn said.

  “I think I need to make sure she’s up to date on her shots.”

  Paula shot him a scowl.

  “Deshawn, you get your butt home and take care of your mom,” Paula said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When the last of them had departed the waiting room, the hospital employee at the counter gave Paula a thumbs-up.

  “The department could cut back on their crowd-control budget if they’d turn it over to you,” John said.

  “Most of these kids didn’t have a chance for anything positive in their lives. They just need to be told what to do and have a way out.”

  “Who are you and what have you done with my partner?”

  “You know I’m right. There is nothing for these kids, and the ones who get out are the ones who survive. Drugs, gangs, no jobs, no positive role models, some bounced around in the foster care system; I’m surprised it isn’t worse.”

  They walked out the double glass hospital doors into the sun. The glare off the car windshields reflected back at them. John put on his sunglasses and Paula raised a hand to cut the bright reflected light.

  A gunshot rang out and echoed under the hospital portico. John dropped to a knee and pulled his weapon.

  The screech of tires under a high-powered engine from a car speeding away pulled John’s attention to the left.

  “One of your gang converts wasn’t happy about leaving.”

  John stood, holstered his weapon, and turned. Paula was splayed on her back on the pavement with a bullet hole in the center of her gray jacket.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Wallace pulled a dust-coated blind aside when the rumble from a pair of motorcycle engines vibrated the beer cans on the windowsill. A pair of bikers dismounted their rides in Junior’s driveway and unstrapped their helmets as they walked toward the garage. Wallace couldn’t hear what was being said, but the voices carried an urgent tone.

  Wallace opened the door to the garage, and the two bikers looked at Junior, who gave them a nod.

  “What’s going on?” Wallace asked.

  “Seems like that lady cop friend of yours bought it,” Junior said.

  “Newberry? No kidding? What happened?”

  One of the newly arrived bikers, who sported dark sunglasses, stroked a long red beard. He hooked a thumb at the other biker and said, “Me and Spider was making a run, and we was near the hospital when a sweet GTO went screaming outta the parking lot.”

  “Dudes were runnin’ outta there, red rags and blue rags. We figured they was up to the usual, killing each other, so no big deal,” Spider said.

  “Then the GTO pulled past us, and it was Simmons’s people. They must of dusted it up with some of the locals. We pull in, and there’s people going everywhere. That lady cop was down, and that Penley asshole was standing over her.”

  “You sure it was her?” Wallace said.

  “No doubt. It was her.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “Couldn’t tell at first. It coulda come from any of them red-and-blue-wearing gangster wannabees. We split before the cops showed up and got us swept up in the show. Caught up with Simmons’s crew at their place.”

  “The bar on Sixty-Fifth?” Junior said.

  “Yeah, we go in and they was whooping it up like after a big score. They started talking and joking about the shooting. It was them. They put the cop down,” Red Beard said.

  “Simmons sanctioned a hit on the cops?” Junior asked.

  “I didn’t see him there, but they was acting all chesty like they just made their bones by killing a cop.”

  “Why would they make a move on Newberry?” Wallace asked.

  Junior climbed out of his lawn chair. “The cops see you guys at the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “The only other cop there was too busy looking at his partner on the ground. He didn’t see us.”

  “The Brotherhood would only make a move like this if it was necessary. That kind of action brings too much heat. I remember when one of them went after a prison guard out on the street. The shit that came down after that was unbelievable. Every AB member behind bars got their asses kicked,” Junior said.

  “What was Newberry to them?” Spider asked.

  “To them—I don’t know. She should have been just another cop to Simmons. They’re more concerned about the feds moving on an organized crime indictment,” Wallace said.

  “If she was working with the feds, that might explain their taking that kinda risk,” Junior said.

  Wallace went to the beer fridge, snagged a cold bottle, and leaned against the door. The vibration of the door couldn’t counter the sense of uneasiness that grew in his belly. The beer only made it sour.

  “There was only one person with a hard-on for Newberry, and you know who I mean,” Wallace said.

  “Sherman,” Junior said.

  “Bull’s-eye,” Wallace responded, tipping his beer at the big man. Then to the two bikers, he said, “Sherman ain’t gonna be a problem no more.”

  They looked at each other before Spider said, “No?”

  Wallace ignored the question, stared at the beer bottle, and peeled a section of the label with a thumbnail. “If Sherman and Simmons were in business, that’s not good for you. You know that, right?”

  Junior didn’t say anything in response, but his ruddy complexion went a few shades darker.

  “What you saying?” Red Beard asked.

  “You said Sherman owed you a delivery today,” Wallace checked his watch, “in about an hour. He’s not coming. If someone from Simmons’s crew does, you’ll have your answer.”

  “No way. We’re tight with Simmons,” Red Beard said.

  Junior remained silent when his two men needed reassurance.

  Spider stepped forward. “Tell him, Junior. Tell him the Brand’s got our back.”

  “Hey, I got no beef with you, Spider. But you gotta get real. Look around. You see the Aryan Brotherhood around here except for when they want something?” Wallace asked.

  “You’re talking outta your ass,” Red Beard said. The biker’s hand slid around to the bone handle of a knife strapped to his belt.

  “Step off, bitch,” Wallace said in a low voice.

  “Who’s this guy think he is? He got no right to come in here and talk shit.”

  Wallace looked out at the driveway and saw a GTO pull to the curb.

  “Looks like we’re gonna see who’s talking shit now.”

  Red Beard strutted out to meet the visitors. He greeted them with a slick handshake and bro-hug. He was trying too hard.

  “Man, he looks like his daddy just showed up,” Junior said.

  The driver was a man with a slick-shaved head. He wasn’t tall, but his arms were thick and sleeved with spider webs and brick tattoos, a graphic illustration of a man who’d done lots of prison time. Life on the installment plan.

  “Who’s the bald dude?” Wallace asked.

  “That’s Simmons’s number two. Goes by Stubbs.”

  Wallace figured out the genesis of the name when the man ran a hand over his bald head, the ring and little finger were missing.

  Stubbs nodded to Juni
or, who waved back.

  “I take it you weren’t expecting Simmons’s second in command today?”

  “Nope.”

  Stubbs sauntered to the garage with Red Beard in tow like a dutiful puppy.

  “How you doin’, Junior?”

  “You tell me, Stubbs. Wanna beer?”

  Stubbs had already opened the door and rummaged around for the coldest bottle.

  Wallace wandered back to the workbench, away from the middle of the garage where Junior and Stubbs stood.

  “What brings you out here today?” Junior started.

  “We got us a little problem with our distribution network,” Stubbs said.

  “How’s that? I get you guys what you want. Nothing’s changed about that,” Junior said.

  “Let’s say there’s competition out there now, and Simmons decided to go with the new guy.” Stubbs never looked away from Junior as he laid out the news.

  “Yeah, who’s this new guy?” Junior asked.

  Stubbs shrugged. “Ain’t my deal.”

  “You’re a little early for the pickup today. I won’t get it for another hour.”

  “That’s kinda why I’m here. There ain’t gonna be a pickup. And we need our money back.”

  “That’s not how this works, Stubbs. You know better. That money was fronted for the shipment.”

  “The deal’s off, and Simmons wants his money.”

  “He can’t get what I don’t have.”

  “I’d hate to tell him you don’t have his money.”

  “Sounds like he got what he paid for after hijacking my connection.”

  “He don’t see it that way. You’re on the hook for what he gave you.”

  “How am I supposed to make good on that when Simmons took my connection for himself?”

  “That’s your problem,” Stubbs said.

  “I’d say that’s your problem,” Wallace said from the sidelines.

  Stubbs turned. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Just a guy who knows Sherman won’t be giving you anything.”

  “I think he knows better than to cross Simmons.”

  “I’d suggest you keep your business with Junior,” Wallace said.

  “You leave Brand business to us.”

  Stubbs tossed his beer bottle against the back door, sending shattered glass fragments around the garage.

  “Thanks for the beer. Best have the money back to Simmons tonight.”

  “You tell him if he wants something from me, he best come and tell me face-to-face and not send his errand boy,” Junior said.

  Stubbs stiffened. “Boy, you better watch your mouth.”

  A metallic click stopped Stubbs from his advance toward Junior. Wallace had thumbed off the safety of the .380 pistol, the barrel less than three feet from the man’s head.

  “You go home and tell Daddy that he got his answer,” Wallace said.

  “You’re a dead man,” Stubbs said.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m quaking in my boots. Now leave.”

  Stubbs turned and went to his car. He stopped briefly and gave Wallace a glare from a distance, a look Wallace had seen a few thousand times from cell-front warriors, those jail inmates who’d threaten officers from the safety of being behind bars.

  Stubbs sped away, and the car’s tires chirped when he shifted into second.

  “I appreciate the backup, but that probably wasn’t the smartest thing you ever done,” Junior said.

  Wallace put the .380 down on the workbench. “Maybe not, but you got your answer. Simmons and the AB just took sides, and they picked Sherman over you. My question is, what’re you gonna do about that?”

  “What I shoulda done from the gate. Take over Sherman’s supply.”

  “That ain’t gonna be so easy if he made a deal with Simmons,” Red Beard said.

  “Nah, that makes it easier. If Sherman gave them the stash, we know where they’re hiding it—with Stubbs and his boys at the bar.”

  “You talking about taking out their place? Man, that’s suicide,” Red Beard said.

  “They’ll never see it coming,” Junior said.

  “With Sherman out and us holding the supply, they have no choice but to deal with you,” Wallace said.

  Junior grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and drained it. “You were right, Wallace. Let’s figure out when we do this.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  From a fleabag motel room, Sherman drained a beer, popped open another, and gave thanks to the stopping power of an inch-thick oak podium. Three pistol slugs had dug into the dense wood before the police reacted, tackling Sherman to the ground.

  The squalid room was the kind of place where hourly customers came and went without raising concern from the front desk attendant. When Sherman checked in, he didn’t need to show any identification and simply scribbled a fake name on a yellowed ledger below five John Smiths and three Jerry Browns. It seemed there were a few unidentified men and septuagenarian California governors at this spot.

  The desk attendant didn’t bother to look at the ledger and tossed the key across the counter in exchange for a one-hundred-dollar bill, which went into the man’s pocket.

  The motel was one of those horseshoe-shaped affairs with a total of twenty-four rooms, twelve on the second floor and twelve on the lower. Number nine was in the far right corner on the ground floor. If sleep were the object, the rattle of the ice machine two doors down would have made it impossible. But he was happy the mechanical grinding almost muffled the grinding of another sort in a room nearby.

  Sherman flipped on the light to reveal hues of 1970s brown, mustard, and avocado. The colors dated by the construction of the place, but the dust and spider webs in the corners of the room testified to its neglect. He flipped the light off, and dust motes rode a slip of light that fell through a torn curtain.

  He placed his cell phone on top of the dresser and pulled a chair to the window where he could watch the parking lot. Why had Wallace turned on him? The press conference? Getting Newberry’s image shredded was always the plan, and blaming her for the killing was the piece Sherman loved the most. He’d seen what it was like for a cop behind bars, and it was a pity that Newberry wouldn’t get her turn.

  Sherman parted the curtain and settled. He smiled when he realized that was the first chair he’d sat in that hadn’t been bolted to the floor in three years. A small thing, insignificant to most, but being able to sit where you wanted was liberating.

  Less than twenty minutes after he checked in, a black-and-white police car prowled through the parking lot. Sherman closed the curtain until the police car finished its sweep of the lot. They made note of the license plates in the no-tell motel. But they had no reason to look for him—yet. The disposable prepaid cell phone rang and startled Sherman. He pushed his chair back from the window and grabbed the cell. Caller ID showed the number he’d used to call Simmons before.

  “You have something for me?” Sherman said.

  “That side job you wanted us to handle is done.” The voice on the other end was Simmons. “How’s about we get on with the real business?”

  “I’m gonna need proof that Newberry is out of the picture; then we can get on with it.”

  “Turn on the television, little pig, and you’ll have all the proof you need.”

  Sherman found the remote and the black plastic was sticky to the touch. He hit the power button, waiting a few seconds for the old screen to warm up. A local news broadcast was in progress. Sherman turned up the volume.

  “Hang on a second,” Sherman said into the cell phone.

  The news anchor read from a script. “A broad daylight shooting leaves a decorated police officer dead. Details are scarce following the attack at the UC Medical Center. The identity of the officer is not being released pending notification of the next-of-kin, but sources inside the hospital tell us that the officer, a woman, was an eleven-year veteran and a detective with the Sacramento Police Department. The gunman fled the scene, and there is an active se
arch under way in the area.”

  Sherman flipped through the channels, and two other local networks posted similar stories. He turned the volume down.

  “Looks like you came through for me. I was gonna say thanks, but you probably got as much out of doing that as I would have.”

  “Like I said, you must’ve had your reasons. That was some expensive takeout,” Simmons said.

  “Now how about we get on with business. Still in the market for a house?”

  “Still need to take a look. That gonna be a problem?”

  “Whatever happened to trust? When you pay the asking price, you can look at it to your heart’s content,” Sherman said.

  Simmons laughed—more of a course cough deepened by a night of whiskey drinking. “I’m talking to a man who stole drugs and went out of his way to screw his partners. Trust is something earned.”

  “Point taken. Okay then, one hundred thousand, nonrefundable, credited against the final payment. One man, you choose.”

  “We can do that. When and where?” Simmons asked.

  Sherman glanced at the television screen and a banner scrolled at the bottom of the frame. It read, Vigil planned for fallen officer.

  “Seven PM in front of police headquarters on Freeport.”

  “You have a strange sense of humor,” Simmons responded.

  “Make sure your man has the hundred K with him or no deal.”

  “Yeah, yeah. He’ll be there.”

  “He comes alone or it’s off. I’ll find him. Have him wear a kid’s backpack, let’s say pink.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll find him.”

  Sherman disconnected the call and turned off the phone. He pulled the battery out of the phone and laid both parts on the dresser. He smiled at the thought of a muscle-bound Aryan warrior with a pink backpack in a sea of cops. That should be enough to put the man off balance and leave Sherman in control.

  Sherman shut off the television. They weren’t showing any images of Newberry, or even releasing her name. That would come, but for now, he closed his eyes and the image of her he’d drawn on his cell wall came to the front of his mind. He’d spent so many hours with her in that concrete box that he’d memorized every curve and contour of her face.