Rose City Renegade

by DL Barbur

  “Prairie fire” meant I was in a jam and I needed to be picked up. “One” meant I was in the northeast quadrant of the city.

  Last year, Mandy, my former partner had been badly injured. She would likely never work again. The man coming to get me would be one of her brothers. He wouldn’t waste any time getting here, but he wouldn’t attract attention by going too fast either. Once he got here he’d make a circuit of northeast Portland, driving around four pre-arranged pickup locations, until he either found me, or four hours had gone by.

  I tried another bite of the pie. It went down a little easier this time, but I wished I had time for a real meal.

  Laboriously, I started typing a message out on the phone, to another number I’d memorized.

  Soylent green is people. Casey had picked the phrases for our emergency communications plan. I didn’t know what the hell half of them meant, but at least we weren’t likely to use them by accident.

  I sat there for a few minutes, slowly eating my pie and sipping coffee, trying hard not to stare at the phone like I could force it to spit out a reply. I was worried about Casey. If they had tried for me, they would try for her. She was a smart woman, and very tough in her own way, but gunfights weren’t her forte.

  Finally, the phone buzzed.

  I read her reply. Open the pod bay doors HAL. She was on the run and taking precautions, good.

  One. I typed on the screen. If I’d used the numeral one, instead of spelling it out, she’d know I was under duress.

  One. Her reply came back almost instantly this time. Perfect. She could make a pickup in northeast Portland.

  I wiped the phone down carefully, removed the battery and dropped it on the floor under my table. Then I used my foot to scoot it back under the booth. With luck, it would be there for years before somebody found it.

  I left cash on the table for my pie and coffee, making sure the waitress saw me doing it. I gave her a nod and a wink on my way out.

  “Bossman wants me to go look at a pipe leak, gotta run,” I said.

  She gave me a friendly nod, in working-class solidarity as I walked out the door. Hopefully, if word got around about an armed suspect running around Portland, I wouldn’t be the first person she thought of.

  There was something I was thinking about doing, something rash, and maybe even suicidal. I’d reached this point in my life where I just wanted something to give. I was tired of waiting, so anything I could do to change things was good.

  As I walked south, I pulled a ball cap and a dark gray sweatshirt from the bag. The only person who had seen me at the shootout, other than Gina and the shooters, had been the woman in the window. Her description wasn’t likely to be very good, but I thought it was prudent to don a hat and something other than a tan windbreaker.

  Two people were waiting at the bus stop at 122nd and Halsey, a young guy oblivious to anything other than the music playing in his headphones, and an elderly woman who looked sort of nervous to be at a bus stop at 11 pm. I gave her a smile and tried to look harmless.

  I stood there and waited, just like any other Portlander who had someplace to go.

  Since I had some time to kill, I thought I’d go see my old boss.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I’d been unfortunate enough to know a few cops who should have never been handed a badge. Steve Lubbock was one of them. Up until last November he’d been my boss. It was hard to say which one of us had hated that arrangement the most.

  I strongly suspected Lubbock had been complicit in setting me up last year. I didn’t have hard proof, but there were too many things that didn’t add up, too many coincidences. I’d thought often about confronting him over the last six months. To be honest, I’d thought more than once about kicking the shit out of him and then sticking my 10mm in his ear until he told me what I wanted to know, but he was still a Portland Police Lieutenant, so I’d restrained myself.

  Tonight I seemed possessed by a certain reckless energy that I’d never felt before. I’d never been a stranger to taking chances, but over the last six months, I’d been dealing with two competing urges. On the one hand, I spent hours every day guarding my life. I watched out for surveillance, car bombs and potential attackers. I spent hours working out, training in martial arts, and busting caps at the shooting range. I was in better shape than I’d been in decades. I could run and barely break a sweat, hit harder and shoot better than I’d ever been able to, all so I could live another day.

  On the other hand, sometimes I just didn’t give a damn whether I lived or died. I’d been dating a woman named Audrey last fall. She left me when things went bad. Then I lost my job and the sense of purpose that came with putting bad people in prison. Finally, for a few brief days, I’d had Alex in my life, and that had made everything seem ok, then her dad, my only friend, was dead, and she was gone.

  In my darker moments, I sat in my office, with nothing to do, surrounded by guns, and wondered which one of them would end it all the quickest. When those thoughts would seize me, I’d go work out. I’d run or hit the heavy bag until my muscles were reduced to a quivering mass, then I’d finally be able to sleep.

  Putting away the people who had ruined my life was a mission to accomplish. That was something I’d had my whole life, and I very much needed it now.

  Riding the bus was a calculated risk. There was a chance the police were circulating a description of a shooting suspect among bus drivers. I knew from experience it could take hours for Tri-Met, the local bus company, to get the word out though, and even then the bus drivers had plenty of things to do besides play junior policeman. I doubted the cops had a good description of me anyway.

  Lubbock lived over by Mt. Tabor Park. I got off the bus and started walking. I’d been to his house once, when he first took over the major crimes unit. I talked about it later with some of the other detectives and we all agreed it had been one of the most uncomfortable experiences of our lives. Cop parties tended to be relaxed affairs, with plenty of beer and grilled meat. Lubbock had greeted us wearing a tie. He’d served cocktails and had the affair catered. I think the food was French.

  On sleepless nights when I had nothing to do, I’d often take long meandering drives. Sometimes I’d wind up driving past places where I’d investigated crimes or found bodies. Once I drove as if in a fugue, down Interstate 5, to a highway rest stop, and found myself standing in the bathroom where I’d shot a man to death, with no clear memory of how I’d gotten there.

  A few times I’d found myself driving by Lubbock’s house. He hadn’t been the main actor in my downfall, but he’d been a part, and he was accessible. The rest, Rickson Todd, Henderson Marshall, they were out of reach.

  It was after midnight when I walked up Lubbock’s driveway. The front of the house was dark, but it looked like there was a light on in the back. I cut through the side yard and walked around to the back door. There was a little titanium pry bar in my shoulder bag, but it turned out I didn’t need it. The back door was unlocked.

  I stepped into the kitchen, which was half lit by the light coming from a lamp in the living room. Lubbock had a nice place. The countertops were all granite, and the appliances all stainless steel. The cardboard box from a microwave dinner sat on the counter, next to a single dirty plate and fork. Five empty bottles of Heineken were lined up next to it, like soldiers standing by for inspection.

  The soles of my Danner boots made little noise as I crept into the living room. Things were missing. Most noticeable was the couch. There were still divots in the carpet where once a couch had sat, but now it was gone. There were gaps in the pictures on the walls. The only shoes in the rack beside the front door clearly belonged to a man.

  I heard a door open from farther into the house, then the soft murmur of a television. Next came the sound of a pair of feet on the carpet. Lubbock walked out of the hallway, carrying a bottle of Heineken. He was barefoot, wearing a robe, and looked like he hadn’t shaved in several days.

  He dropped the bottle w
hen he saw me.

  “Hello, Steve. Why did your wife leave you?”

  His eyes darted back towards the way he’d come from. I wondered if he had a gun back there.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you, Ell Tee.” Back when Lubbock had been in charge of the detectives unit, he always wanted his guys to call him Ell Tee. Most guys didn’t do it. The ones that did were either sucking up or subtly mocking him.

  “Are you going to talk to me, or shoot me?” he asked, gesturing at the 10mm I hadn’t even realized was in my hand.

  “I guess it depends on what you have to say,” I said. I realized then, that I wasn’t completely averse to shooting him. Maybe it had been in the back of my mind the whole time and I just hadn’t let myself think about it too much.

  “I’m not sure I really care,” he said. He walked over to a chair and sat down, elbows on knees. It had only been six months since I’d seen him, but Lubbock looked like he’d aged years. His face looked puffy, like a man who had been drinking a six pack of Heineken every night for a while.

  “She left me…” he trailed off for a minute. “She left me because they made me retire, Dent. After I fired you they gave me a choice, I could be investigated, or I could retire. She just didn’t want to live with the stink of it.”

  I realized he was more than a little drunk.

  “The Bureau made you retire?” I asked.

  He nodded his head. “Yes. The assistant chiefs. Those assholes. They just wanted the whole thing gone. You, Williams, me, all of it. I think Cindy had been looking for a reason to leave me for a long time, and my little scandal was what she needed.”

  “I lost my woman too, Steve. When you fired me.”

  He stared off into space for a minute.

  “I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he said. It was almost like he was talking to himself, like I wasn’t in the room. “I really wanted to make Captain before I retired. They didn’t ask for much, just some copies of your reports, updates on the investigation, that sort of thing.”

  “Who was it?” I asked. “Todd? Big bald guy? Former Army?”

  Lubbock hung his head and nodded, like a kid that had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

  “Who else, Steve? Who else in the bureau was in on this?”

  He looked at me and blinked. “I think just Bloem. It seemed awfully convenient that he was right there when you had that wreck. I found out later he’d traded shifts with somebody that day.”

  When I’d been framed for beating up Mandy, Bloem, a patrol cop had been right around the corner. He’d kicked the shit out of me for no good reason too. It fit. Bloem. Maybe I should go talk to him too.

  I looked at Lubbock sitting there with his hangdog expression. I actually found myself starting to feel sorry for the guy.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Steve?”

  That was an old cop trick. I’d sprung that question on more than one suspect and gotten some good information.

  Lubbock was either too drunk, or too unaware, to realize what I was doing to him. He looked puzzled for a moment.

  “That’s it, Dent,” he said. “I just wanted to make Captain before I retired. I thought it would help me find a job after. Cindy had expensive tastes.”

  Somehow all my anger had left. Lubbock looked so pitiful sitting there that the idea of shooting him had lost its luster. I slid the 10mm back in the holster.

  “Well, Steve, you sure fucked things up. They probably let you keep your badge when you retired, but you really ought to give it back. You were a shitty cop.”

  I turned and walked away from him, feeling drained and spent. There were a million questions I could ask him, but right now I felt soiled just being in the same room with him.

  As I walked into the kitchen I heard him say, “I’m sorry.”

  I stopped and looked back. He was still sitting there in his bathrobe.

  “Yeah, you sure are,” I agreed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Like most of the United States these days, Portland didn’t have any big factories running three shifts. So by midnight on a weekday, Portland became a whole different city. While most of the hipsters were donning their artisan silk pajamas and brushing their teeth with vegan toothpaste, there was another, grittier reality out on the streets.

  This was when many of Portland’s homeless people came out of hiding. Many of them holed up during the day, either catching a few winks at libraries, community centers or a similar place where they couldn’t be bothered, or in tents set up along the freeways and other wastelands of the city. They came out at night, to pick trash, socialize, and I often thought, to enjoy the freedom darkness provided. Being looked at like you were a human version of a rat got old.

  After midnight, most of the cars out on the street were older. There were few Subarus and Volvos, and nary a Lexus to be found. They were American cars, most of them on their third or fourth owner, often with dings and dents, the occasional mismatched fender or bumper. The people out right now were on their way to work, to jobs cleaning office buildings, guarding construction sites and working at convenience stores.

  I enjoyed my forty-five-minute walk through east Portland. The night was cool, but not cold. The sky was clear and the stars were out. Not for the first time in my life, I was enjoying the euphoria and sense of enhanced perception that frequently comes after almost dying. I felt wholly alive, and in an odd way even cheerful. I had never been an adrenaline junkie, but I could see how people could get addicted to skydiving, and driving motorcycles too fast.

  I walked down 82nd Avenue, rebuffing offers for various goods and services. As I walked, right hand in the pocket of my new jacket, wrapped around the butt of my Smith and Wesson, I was sized up by two hard cases standing on a corner. I smiled at them, showing some teeth and they stepped back a little.

  In many ways, I preferred this Portland, the Portland of hustlers, prostitutes, dope dealers, and thugs, to the Portland of lattes, yoga and all the latest fads. It was more honest and straightforward. It wasn’t trying to pretend to be something it wasn’t.

  There was a Winco grocery store at the corner of 82nd and Powell. Open 24 hours, the store would have been fertile ground for a lifetime of study by a team of sociologists. The late-night shoppers were broken into two camps: people who looked really tired, and people who looked like they were expecting sniper fire at any moment. The latter walked around with their head on a swivel, avoiding aisles that were occupied and doubling back when they were clear. I imagined most of those folks had PTSD or agoraphobia, or something similar. For them, grocery shopping was more tolerable in the middle of the night when stores were less crowded.

  The bathroom was empty. I took a stall and sorted through all the cell phones in my shoulder bag. I had the one I usually carried, along with the one I’d taken off the dead skinhead back at the ambush safely secreted in the radio signal blocking bag. Now I pulled out a third phone, yet another anonymous pre-paid. I hated cell phones, but lately, I’d been juggling close to a dozen of the damn things, hidden in my little caches all over the city.

  The keyboards were always too small for my big fingers. I fought the urge to curse under my breath. I navigated to the Internet, and found the Yelp! review page for this store. I laboriously tapped out a review.

  I love the coffee here, but the sushi is squamous and rugose!

  That was another one of Casey’s references. I had to Google it.

  I sat there for a while, continuously refreshing the review page.

  Finally, a new one showed up.

  I shop here all the time. I can be in by 1 pm and out by 1:15.

  I checked the clock on the phone and was surprised to see it was almost one in the morning. It was over four hours since the fight at the house. My ride was fifteen minutes out. I bought some random stuff, cold medicine, a bottle of aspirin. To walk out of the store without buying anything, particularly while carrying a big shoulder
bag, was bound to tickle the radar of the loss prevention folks. Then I headed out to a corner of the parking lot.

  It was perfect timing. A crew cab pickup pulled into the lot, and I gave a little wave. The truck parked next to me and I climbed in the passenger side. The driver was a big man, wearing triple denim. I sometimes had trouble telling Mandy’s four brothers apart, but I could recognize Robert the easiest because he was the oldest. He’d done a few tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, before settling down to work on the family cattle ranch in eastern Oregon.

  “Dent,” he said, sticking out a hand.

  I shook it. “Thanks, Robert.”

  He just nodded.

  “Hey Dent,” a voice said from the back. I turned and there was Casey. She looked a little out of place, sitting in the back seat of a farm pickup with her black leather jacket and recently dyed blue hair. Her right hand was inside a tennis racket case on her lap. I was willing to bet what was inside wasn’t a tennis racket.

  “Case,” I said. “Good to see you.”

  We gave each other a fist bump, a goofy little ritual we’d fallen into.

  “There’s coffee and donuts. Guns are in the back,” Robert said. Casey handed up a thermos and a paper bag. On the seat beside her were several black nylon cases.

  We were silent for a few minutes as Robert drove a zigzagging route through southeast Portland. I drank some of the coffee and ate a donut as I watched in the mirrors for a set of headlights that stuck with us. The donut was welcome, but I was going to have to find some real food soon.

  “I believe we’re clear,” Robert said. Casey and I agreed. He turned us east on US 26, headed out of town and towards eastern Oregon.

  “You have any trouble?” I asked Casey.

  She shook her head. “I got Bolle’s warning about an hour and a half before you.”

  “Bolle?” I asked, surprised.

  She nodded, handed me a cell phone. I could tell by the little icon at the top it was in “airplane” mode, so we wouldn’t give ourselves away. On the screen was a text message.