Jump

by Tim Maleeny

  Two hundred. Great, the guy suddenly had to take a shit. But Flan could sympathize. Sometimes just the thought of facing Zorro put his own bowels in an uproar. He’d give it another minute.

  A young man wearing an expensive suit and a haircut to match left the restaurant and entered the men’s room. Flan had noticed the guy when he arrived half an hour ago with his date, who was a reasonably plump tomato with red hair and fishnets. After a count of thirty-three the guy pushed open the door and returned to his table. Didn’t wash his hands, thought Flan.

  Three hundred.

  Murrda. Flan knew the difference between a gang-banger and a career criminal like himself was the ability to stay flexible, think on your feet. That was what separated Zorro’s men from the other gangs whose members wound up dead or in jail. New plan—take the cop down in the bathroom. Lock the door and scare him a little, then drag the maricon to Zorro’s table or throw him out on the street.

  The bathroom was on the left, halfway down a long hallway leading to the reservations desk and the restaurant. The desk was almost twenty feet away, so Flan figured that even if he made a little noise in the bathroom bouncing the cop off the walls, no one would notice. Inside the restaurant, most of the tables were full and it was noisy, the sound spilling down the hallway and out into the street where Flan stood. As he pushed open the door to the men’s room, he flexed his fingers in anticipation, his knuckles cracking like castanets.

  The barrel of the gun was behind his right ear before the door had swung closed. Flan’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t move. He recognized the cool, liquid feeling of the metal and had no illusions that the round shape against his skin might be a finger or ballpoint pen. As Flan tried to estimate the size of the barrel, a voice directly behind him spoke just above a whisper, as if the man that held the gun wasn’t really there.

  “A lot of cops favor the Glock,” said Sam, pressing even closer to Flan, who stood frozen, hands out from his sides. “But the Glock has no external safety, so misfires are very common. When the department first started issuing them, you wouldn’t believe the number of leg shootings we had, cops shooting themselves as they pulled their guns out of their holsters. In the heat of the moment, it’s no wonder a man’s finger could slip.”

  Flan heard the distinctive sound of a hammer being cocked into place and tried but failed to control an involuntary shiver. The voice continued.

  “Me, I like the Beretta. It has a safety that’s easy to flick off with your thumb, and it has a hammer, which you just heard, that makes the first pull on the trigger really, really easy.”

  Flan took a deep breath and nodded his understanding. He heard a sniffing sound behind him.

  “You smell nice,” said Sam. “Almost sweet. Not at all what I expected.” Flan was about to explain his nickname when Sam prodded him with the gun. “Handicap stall, now.”

  Flan shuffled forward, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the sinks. It was a fleeting and only partial view, because turning his head wasn’t really an option, but the expression on the cop’s face gave Flan the distinct impression he wasn’t bluffing. He began to sweat under his jacket, wondering if maybe this guy wasn’t a cop after all.

  Within the stall, one loop of the handcuffs was already locked around the pipe at the back of the toilet, the other dangling freely. Flan felt a sharp push of the gun against his ear and a simultaneous shove at the small of his back, and he staggered forward. When he reached the toilet, he turned his bulk around slowly, as nonthreatening as a three-hundred pound wall of flesh can be, and sank slowly onto his double-wide backside. Sam gestured with the gun and Flan fitted the loose cuff around his wrist—barely—and clicked it into place. Sitting there, chained to a toilet, he looked enormous, amorphous and almost sad.

  Sam managed not to shed a single tear as he holstered the gun and headed toward the door. When he passed the sinks, he didn’t bother looking in the mirror.

  Sam had hit the jackpot. From the layout of the block, Sam was pretty sure this place didn’t have a rear entrance. No other visible muscle suggested Zorro might actually be on a date.

  An attractive young woman manned the reservations desk, her perfect chin lit from beneath by the halogen glow of a sinuous desk lamp. The effect made her eyes seem dark and huge, shadows stretching across her forehead, giving Sam the impression she was a beautiful alien sent to Earth for the sole purpose of welcoming him to this restaurant.

  Sam gave her his most reassuring smile as he flipped his wallet open and closed and said, “Police.” Her mouth opened and closed but no sound came out because Sam had already moved past her.

  The restaurant was split into two parts. On the right was a traditional room filled with tables seating two or four, a long room running to a bar in the back. But to the left was an open courtyard where tables were arranged in rows, all the seats facing the exterior wall of the adjacent building, a five-story slab of gray cement. Normally not much of a view, but the restaurant had put it to good use and projected movies onto the surface of the wall, turning the courtyard into a cross between an intimate restaurant and a drive-in movie.

  Sam had read about this place. To enhance the atmosphere, justify the prices, and avoid the issue of ambient noise, the restaurant showed foreign art films without the sound. Tonight a Japanese film about food loomed over the dinner guests. Marie had been a sucker for art films, and Sam recognized it from her collection. As he watched, the image on the wall cut to a scene of Japanese women dressed as pearl divers standing in the surf, the waves moving in an almost sensuous rhythm. As Sam scanned the courtyard, reflected light from the film flickered across the faces of the patrons, the strobe effect keeping time with the rocking of the waves.

  A woman twenty feet away laughing at something her date had said. A man staring into the hypnotic light of his cell phone as he sent a text message, as if the phone was a crystal ball. A young woman in a too-tight dress leaning toward a man who had his left arm draped heavily over her shoulder, the man turning into the light to reveal teeth jagged and bent, reptilian fangs darting outward in all directions.

  Bingo.

  Sam moved quickly between tables and came up behind Zorro on the side opposite his date. With his left hand, Sam clamped down on Zorro’s neck while his right pulled Buster’s butterfly knife and swung the blade open with a sound like change falling. Zorro’s head swung reflexively to the right as Sam brought the blade up and held the point directly below Zorro’s right eye.

  Zorro’s mouth popped open with a wet smacking sound as his teeth disengaged from his lips, but no sound came out. He sat frozen as his eyes darted right and left, either searching for Flan or wondering when the other diners were going to turn away from the movie.

  “Hola Zorro,” said Sam, his voice like gravel. “Remember me?” Sam leaned across Zorro’s shoulder just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of his assailant. Zorro grunted in recognition as he regained enough composure to close his mouth.

  Sam glanced at Zorro’s date to confirm his sudden appearance had the desired effect. She looked petrified, her right hand over her mouth in an almost theatrical gesture. He figured it was only a matter of time before her state of shock evaporated and she remembered she wasn’t mute.

  Sam tilted the point of the blade backward into the soft flesh below Zorro’s eye. Zorro flinched, but Sam held his neck in an iron grip and forced his head forward. “Is this how you do it, Zorro? Do you scoop them out after they’re already dead, or do it while they’re still alive?” Sam twisted his wrist counterclockwise and heard Zorro gasp as the knife pricked his cheek. A thin trickle of blood ran over the back of Sam’s hand.

  On the screen, a young Japanese woman held an oyster shell in her hand and brought it to her mouth, the camera hovering only inches from her perfect skin. As she wrapped her mouth around the shell, the ragged edge caught on her lip and the camera zoomed even closer as blood pooled into the oyster. The image was jarring, erotic, and disturbing.

&
nbsp; Zorro’s date found her voice buried just below the surface of her fear and started to scream. Chairs screeched across the stone floor as people turned toward the girl, whose scream ascended rapidly into a wail. Sam didn’t bother looking up but held the knife fast as he leaned close enough to whisper into Zorro’s ear.

  “Tag,” he said. “You’re it.”

  Sam flipped the knife closed and stood, turning his back on the crowd and the movie. Behind him on the wall, the girl with the bloody lip had rejoined her friends in the surf, the sea rolling back and forth as if waving goodbye.

  The lovely alien from the reservations desk ran into the restaurant as Sam pocketed the knife and walked toward her with no sign of stopping. She looked at him accusingly.

  “I thought you were the police.”

  “I was,” said Sam. “But not anymore.”

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  “I’m still a cop, you know.”

  Danny Rodriguez stated the obvious but didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

  Sam smiled gently. “I thought you were off duty an hour ago.”

  Danny sighed. He yanked his badge off his hip and placed it deliberately on the bar between them. “This is a badge, Sam.”

  “I know,” said Sam. “I’ve got one at home.”

  Danny’s eyebrows shot up. “You were supposed to turn it in when you retired.”

  “I wanted a souvenir.”

  Danny laughed despite himself. “You mean something other than the shrapnel in your leg and the heartache?”

  Sam didn’t respond.

  Danny tapped the badge. “You used to wear one, amigo.”

  “You’re saying you won’t help.” Sam narrowed his eyes. “Is that what this speech is about?”

  Danny scowled and snatched the badge off the table. He hadn’t convinced himself, so why should his ex-partner buy his bullshit. He drummed his fingers on the bar and looked over his shoulder. There were other people in the restaurant but no one close, and the lesbian bartender was at the far end, washing glasses.

  “You and I didn’t know each other—not really—until we were partners,” said Danny. He spoke slowly, his gaze somewhere beyond the walls of the restaurant. “Different years at the academy, and I spent some years in Narcotics before moving over to homicide. And your old partner, before me—”

  “—James,” said Sam.

  “Right,” said Danny. “A black guy, which is hard enough in San Francisco.”

  Sam nodded but didn’t say anything. Cops used to joke that San Francisco was like a bag of Wonder Bread, all the bright colors on the outside wrapping—inside nothing but white. Hispanics quarantined in the Mission, blacks pushed all the way across the water to Oakland. A few scattered here and there in city council positions like chocolate sprinkles on vanilla ice cream, just because the mayor loved the taste of the word diversity when making speeches.

  Danny said, “So you don’t know what it was like coming up as a Latino cop with guys like Zorro crawling all over the Mission District like cockroaches. Other cops asking where you grew up, were you in a gang, got any friends in prison—wanting to make sure you won’t get confused when it comes time to take a homeboy down.”

  “Assholes,” muttered Sam.

  “Maybe.” Danny shrugged. “Not a lot of color-blind cops out there. But they had a point.”

  “Which was?”

  Danny leaned forward and looked like he was going to spit. “Whenever the chip on my shoulder got too heavy, I had to remind myself that more than half the fuckheads we arrested came from my neighborhood. Gangs or no gangs, assholes like Zorro and Buster are the reason that I work twice as hard to get half the respect as other cops. I hate those fucking guys.”

  Sam didn’t say anything. Danny had said it all.

  Both men sat silently hunched over the bar until Danny said, “Of course I’ll help.” Sam squeezed his shoulder but Danny held up a warning finger. “But I won’t break the law.”

  “I don’t want you to break it,” said Sam. “Just bend it a little.”

  “You’ve already got it as bent as a pretzel.” To emphasize his point, Danny reached into the bowl of snack mix on the bar.

  “I like pretzels.” Sam grabbed a handful.

  “We’re cops,” said Danny. “We’re supposed to like donuts.”

  “I like ‘em both.”

  “How bent?” Danny chewed for a minute, short angry crunches that mellowed by the time he swallowed. “Not reporting a crime, like your little tango with Buster—that’s not too bent, because your story is just hearsay, not a confession.”

  “See?” said Sam. “Just like a pretzel.”

  Danny ignored him. “Not reporting your assault on Zorro, that’s questionable, but—”

  “—again, just a story I told you in a drunken rant.”

  Danny looked across his shoulder at his former partner. “You haven’t finished your beer.”

  “That’s also hearsay.” Sam took a drink, set the glass down slowly. “I’m a lightweight these days.”

  “What about Buster? Where is he now?”

  Sam looked straight ahead and spoke to Danny’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “You know that gas station on the corner where he hangs out?’

  Danny’s reflection nodded as the Danny next to Sam grunted in acknowledgment.

  “There’s a dumpster behind it.”

  Reflected Danny frowned as the real Danny groaned. “When you allegedly deposited him in this alleged dumpster, what state was he in?”

  “Physically, just a few scratches,” said Sam. “Mostly cosmetic, around the ears.”

  “The ears?” Danny glanced sideways at his friend.

  “You don’t want to hear about it.”

  “You’re right,” replied Danny. “I don’t.”

  “But as for his mental condition, I’d say he was pissed. Mad as a hornet might be the best way to describe it.” Sam thought for a minute, then added, “And scared shitless.”

  “Of who?”

  “You mean whom.”

  “Fuck you,” said Danny. “Afraid of you—or Zorro?”

  “Probably a little of both. Zorro had Buster set me up, so he must have figured that’s where I got his cell number.”

  Danny waved a hand dismissively. “Buster won’t do shit.”

  “So no crime committed there,” said Sam. “At least none that’ll get reported.”

  “Swell,” said Danny. “But not reporting a dead body—that’s pushing it.”

  “That one’s on me,” said Sam. “Dead Walter is my responsibility.”

  “Is your responsibility—is?” Danny was incredulous. “You still haven’t made the call?”

  Sam grabbed a handful of pretzels. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Jesus.”

  Sam held up a hand that was meant to look reassuring, but it ended up looking just like a hand, so he put it back on the bar. Danny put his hands over his ears and said, “We’re not having this conversation.”

  Sam finished his beer while Danny sang to himself, hands cupped and locked in place. Sam thought the tune might be It’s A Small World, but he couldn’t be sure—Danny did have a daughter at home. Sam signaled to the bartender, who smiled and moved down to pour him another beer.

  Danny lowered his hands but waited until the bartender moved away before speaking. “Zorro’s gotta kill you now—you realize that, right?”

  “Machismo.”

  “No small thing, in his world,” said Danny. “You embarrassed him in public, in front of a woman no less.”

  “Wish you’d been there.”

  The laugh Danny had been fighting burst forth. “Me, too partner. Me, too.”

  They sat for a minute, both smiling, like the two old friends they were. After a minute Danny turned on his stool and dropped his voice. “You must have a plan, pareja. You always do.”

  Sam nodded. “It’s messy.”

  “You figure he’ll come for you tomorrow night?�
�

  “Yeah,” said Sam. “Tonight he’s licking his wounds, and he doesn’t move around during the daytime.”

  “But you can’t be sure.”

  “No,” said Sam. “I don’t know anything for sure.”

  “I could arrest him,” said Danny.

  “For what?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Sam looked skeptical. “And hold him for how long?”

  “Not long enough,” said Danny. “Not long enough to keep you safe.”

  “So you want to hear my plan?”

  “Absolutely not,” replied Danny. “The less I know, the better.”

  “Agreed.”

  Danny blew out his cheeks. “But how messy is this plan?”

  Sam seemed to think about it before saying, “Very.”

  Danny studied his friend for a long minute. “You’re making this up as you go along.”

  Sam drained the last of his beer and nodded. “More or less.”

  Danny watched his reflection work the muscles in his jaw.

  “So what do you expect me to do,” he asked. “When the time comes?”

  “Just be yourself,” said Sam. “A good cop.”

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  A good cop.

  Buster almost laughed at the thought but started coughing, an involuntary spasm that drove his bruised ribs into his lungs, which made him cough even harder. He bent over the sink and spat blood, watching as the crimson tide swirled down the drain, his future right behind it.

  A good cop. That’s how Zorro had described Officer Sam, saying it like an insult. Calling the guy a pussy, letting Buster know they had nothing to worry about. Zorro predicting the future like some old gypsy minus the head scarf, bad perfume, and crystal ball.

  All Buster had to do was raise his eyes to the mirror to remind himself how completely wrong Zorro had been. Both his ears were ravaged where the hoops had torn through—he looked like he’d been chewed on by a wolverine. The antibiotic ointment he’d smeared on them glistened in the weak fluorescent light of his bathroom.