Valley of Vice

by Steve Garcia

  As he placed his hand up and took hold of the cold metal scaffolding pole above his head, Reyes wished he’d had some practice.

  Wrapping his other hand around the vertical pole, he heaved himself up and his feet left the wooden platform. He used them to grip the pole and shimmy upward. The city spun below him, but the structure didn’t budge an inch. He looked down, and his hands tightened on the pole. His mouth was dry.

  Keep moving, Salvador. Keep moving.

  Four feet up, and taking a deep breath, Reyes released one hand and took hold of the crosspiece. He heard Mangan’s voice carry on the wind from the other side of the building.

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy, detective. You don’t get it, do you? I got nothing to lose. Davey here’s got everything to lose.”

  Reyes scrambled on to the next platform, which was three feet lower than the roof level. He caught a glimpse of Mangan, still facing toward the west side of the building, his gun aimed toward the top of the emergency stairwell. He had a three-sixty-degree scan of the rooftop. Reyes lay back on the wooden scaffold platform, letting his breath still after the climb.

  “You’re right, Captain,” shouted Wallace. “You’re holding all the cards. But no one has to get hurt here. You don’t want to kill Samuel Davey. He’s innocent in all this.”

  “That’s right, detective. You keep on talking.”

  Reyes unclipped his service revolver.

  What am I thinking? Mangan missed my head by a whisker at twenty-five yards.

  He rolled on to his front and peered over the rim of the roof. Mangan was still standing in the open, whispering something to his hostage. Reyes was near enough to see that Davey had tears in his eyes and was bleeding from a cut to the side of his head. His legs were almost buckled with fright, and the captain kept having to pull him up.

  “Pearl and Simons were different, Captain,” bellowed Wallace. “They were crooks. I can see why you did it. But Mr. Davey’s different. He’s a good guy. Never hurt you, never hurt anybody.”

  Mangan laughed. “Show me an honest man in the building trade and I’ll show you a broke one. They’re all as bad as each other, ain’t they, Sam?”

  Samuel Davey mumbled some words.

  “Say that louder, Sam. The detective can’t her ya.”

  “I just want to go home,” said Davey. “Please.”

  “What’s that?” howled Mangan. “Home to your lovely wife, Sam? I had a wife once, too, God help me. Don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. Come to think of it, we’re not so different, though I was getting my dick sucked by a pretty senorita off Rosemont for free, not paying some tight-ass freshman in a rat-infested hole.”

  “Please…” said Davey.

  Suddenly, the thrumming of a helicopter’s rotor entered Reyes’s consciousness. He ducked back as Mangan arched around. The Aerospatiale B-2 Astar, nose tilted slightly forward and angling searchlights ahead and down, ate up the air toward them.

  “What do we have here?” shouted Mangan. “You got ASD on my ass. I’m honored.”

  Mangan pulled back along the roof toward the air-con housing, a curled aluminum chimney seven feet tall and five feet across, keeping Davey on a short leash.

  “Please, let me go,” Davey said. “The police already know everything.”

  “Shut up,” Mangan said. “Right now, your life has value only because those police officers over there can’t shoot my ass for fear of hitting you.”

  The chopper did a pass, flooding a strip of the roof with white light. Reyes saw a sniper, his feet already on the skid. Captain Mangan disappeared out of sight behind the flue.

  This was Reyes’s chance. He hopped into a crouch, then put both palms on the asphalt roof and vaulted over the ledge. With his gun leveled, he paced swiftly across to the HVAC unit, placing each foot with care. Mangan could pop out either side at any moment. He was ten feet away when he saw Davey’s arm sticking out the left side. Reyes went right and reached the unit. Mangan and his hostage were only six feet away on the other side.

  “These dumb fucks think I won’t kill you, Sam, but if you so much as fart on me, I swear I will.”

  “But they’ll kill you.”

  “I think they’ll take my pension, too,” said Mangan, laughing.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “They call it post-traumatic stress,” said Mangan. “Driving a Humvee through a fucking minefield will do that for you.”

  The helicopter came back, slower this time, and a shot erupted from the other side. It thumped into the side of the B-2, which banked away.

  Shit, Brian Mangan was some shot.

  Reyes checked his safety was off again and circled the unit. Mangan was looking the other way, following the helicopter with his eyes.

  “I told you I was good, didn’t I, Sam?”

  Reyes brought up his gun, three feet from Mangan’s head, and fired.

  Davey screamed, suddenly straightened, and jumped off the ground. Mangan’s head turned half around, his mouth hanging open, and his eyes already dead, as blood darkened his fair hair from the exit wound beside his left temple.

  His legs coiled beneath him, and Davey was almost dragged down as Mangan still gripped his collar. They seemed to struggle for a moment, with Davey scrabbling at the lifeless hand. The police captain sank to the ground. Davey pulled away, instinctively seeking shelter behind Reyes. Wallace was up on the roof in a second and running over to them, her rifle trained on Mangan. Her eyes darted back and forth between Reyes and the body.

  “Is he dead?” said Davey.

  Reyes lowered his gun. “He is.”

  Wallace flicked on her safety and pointed the barrel of her rifle at the ground.

  “Good work, Sal.”

  Reyes stared at the expanding puddle of blood collecting under Mangan’s fallen body and beginning to trickle toward the east side of the building.

  “You need to get a level up here, Mr. Davey,” he said.

  Samuel Davey was trembling when they got him down to the bottom of the stairs again.

  “I pissed in my pants,” he whispered to Wallace.

  His wife came running through the crowd and cars toward them. “Sam! Oh, Sam. I thought…Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re all right…”

  She threw her arms around him, and he hugged her back, weakly.

  Wallace waited until Mrs. Davey released her husband.

  “We need to get you checked out, Mr. Davey,” she said, and led him by the elbow to the group of three ambulances that had pulled up inside the gate and where Philby was being administered to on a stretcher.

  “Another one for you guys,” said Wallace. “He took a nasty knock to the head with the butt of a firearm.”

  Davey sat unsteadily on the ambulance step, then reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Detective, this is for your file.”

  Wallace took the paper and opened it up. It was a letter.

  Dear Janet, I’m sorry for everything. I killed them for you. Love, Sam.

  “He wrote it. He was going to throw me off the roof. He killed Robbie, that bastard.”

  Wallace nodded, and left Davey with his wife. She thought about their suburban house, with two cars and the range of coffee accompaniments. Sam and Janet had a lot to talk about. It would be a hard conversation, but she half-suspected they’d pull through.

  The gate had been closed and several press vans had gathered outside behind a cordon. Flies to a turd, thought Wallace. A helicopter was circling overhead as well, no doubt from another TV crew hoping to catch a glimpse of Captain Brian Mangan, deceased.

  Siley was standing to one side, with his hand on Reyes’s shoulder. Wagner was smoking a cigarette beside them and offered the pack to Reyes. Sal reached out, then shook his head, as his hand flopped back to his side. He’d been high as a kite after the shooting, but now it had obviously sunk in. He looked about twenty years old. A kid. Mangan was his first.


  Wallace moved closer.

  “You did well,” said Wagner, exhaling a mouthful of smoke. “Mangan was no pussycat.”

  “Thanks,” said Reyes halfheartedly. “I really didn’t have any choice.”

  “That’s right,” said Siley. “I’ve seen Mangan’s type before. Cold-blooded psycho. Davey would be dead for sure if you hadn’t responded the way you did.”

  The first ambulance, carrying Philby, pulled out of the lot, with paparazzi pressing their lenses up to the windows as it went. Mrs. Davey accompanied her husband in the back of the second. Wallace turned to Siley.

  “I guess this means the heat will be off homicide for a bit,” she said.

  Siley shrugged. “This shit makes us all stink,” he said. “The press will run with it for months.”

  “But Cresner’s name is cleared. And Ray’s.”

  “I guess so. Who’d want to be a cop for thirty years, huh?”

  “FID should take the fall for this mess,” said Kahn, joining them. “If they hadn’t been closing our crime scenes and trying to make a case to cover their asses, we could have been on Mangan much sooner.”

  “FID will slip away like nothing ever happened,” said Wagner. “Shit don’t stick to them.”

  “Just shut up, will you, Harlen?” snapped Wallace.

  “Sorry,” said Wagner. “We got played on this, is all.”

  Wallace ignored him. “Sal, do you want a ride home?”

  “Do you mind if we stop by the Good Samaritan on the way?” he said. “We should check on Philby.”

  “Sure,” she said. The rattle of a trolley came from behind, and a stretcher loaded with a black body bag was wheeled out to the remaining ambulance.

  “Taxi for Captain Mangan,” muttered Wagner to himself.

  The doctors said Philby would be fine. Mangan had missed her femoral artery by a fraction of an inch, and though she’d need surgery to remove the fragments of bullet from her bone, she was expected to make a full recovery in a matter of weeks. When Wallace and Reyes left the hospital at two in the morning, she was laughing in her bed while Strachman joked about pulling the plug so he could get some compassionate leave.

  They followed Herdez and Diaz to the Belgian Waffle and Pancake Palace on Franklin. The air was cool and clean, and after he’d eaten, some of the color returned to Reyes’s cheeks.

  “You heading home?” he asked.

  Wallace thought about it. David would be up still, she knew it. He could never sleep when work was going badly. Only this time, she couldn’t feel any sympathy for him. She looked at her watch. “Our shift starts in five hours. I think I might head back to Wilcox. Finish up on the paperwork.”

  “Hell, Phil, you’re a machine. There’s gonna be a lot of paper to shift on this one.”

  “Don’t I know it? You take it easy.”

  “You, too. Good work, boss.”

  Reyes opened the door of the waiting squad car, driven by Herdez and Diaz. “Take me home, amigos.”

  Wallace waved them off, then walked to her own car. In the driver’s seat, she placed her hands on the wheel and tried to squeeze the tears back into her eyes. A single trickle escaped. Not bad, after pulling a seventeen-hour shift.

  With her right hand, she eased off her wedding ring and held her naked hand up in front of her face. Her black skin was slightly darker where the ring had sat for ten years, but it would fade.

  Maybe you’re not ready for that, Philippa, she thought. Not yet.

  She pushed the ring back on, started the ignition, and reversed out of the parking bay.

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