Start Shooting

by Charlie Newton

  “Not once?”

  “I said, no.”

  “Did Robbie get you the audition?”

  “What? No. I don’t know any Robbie Steffen.”

  “Bet he knows you.”

  I look at the cop, then his partner. Don’t show them my heart beginning to pound.

  “Mind if we search your car?”

  “For what?”

  “A witness to the Greektown shooting remembered a car like yours. Do you mind if we search your car?”

  “I’m attacked on a street corner and now you want to search my car?”

  The cop nods and holds out his hand. “Keys?”

  Hands to hips, circa Maureen O’Hara. “And you’d want to strip-search me, I suppose?”

  “No, ma’am, just your car—”

  “My boyfriend’s a policeman. Should I call him? Tell him your hands were all over me?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “So that matters? Now you’ll treat me like a human being? His name’s Bobby Vargas. He’s a TAC cop just like you, except he’s a gentleman. When it’s called for.”

  The cops glance each other. “We’d still like to search your car.”

  “Get a warrant. Or arrest me.” I snatch my papers back. “Tell my lawyer and the Tribune your ‘probable cause.’ ”

  Left turn onto Division. My heart’s still doing one-sixty. Why did I say “arrest me”? What if they did a paraffin test like on TV? So, Ms. Brennan, you fired a gun today. Your car was in Greektown. And you have no alibi … Why did I say Bobby Vargas? That’s a half step from Ruben Vargas.

  Bobby called me just to say hi. I fumble for my phone to call him back. Why does the devil have to be his brother? Anyone but his brother and I could tell Bobby—

  Tell him what? That you shot a Korean to death? But it’s okay because Bobby and Arleen have a date to the prom? You’re not going to the prom; go home, clean up—Can’t go home; no telling what Ruben intends to do after I threatened to go to Choa. Cringe. Ruben might get past the Choa threat, but the U.S. attorney was way too strong.

  Will Ruben hunt for me at the L7? He might.

  Left turn onto Clark Street, southbound, not north to the L7. Headlights behind me blink to brights; I swerve and they pass. Cameron Smith’s on my radio doing some Olympic hipster pitch. Can I make tonight any worse? And Ruben has the gun. If my prints are on it I’m so in prison—No, no, no I’m not. Tonight can be worse. Ruben will make sure I die in a shootout with the police. He can’t risk me talking, trying to save myself with the U.S. attorney. After I’m dead, the gun and prints will be proof I was guilty. Ruben or his cop accomplices will be the good guys. That’s what will happen. Right after Ruben and I finish with the Japanese women.

  Jesus, God, the Japanese women. What are Ruben and I doing to/with Furukawa? This whole city will lynch Ruben if he burns Furukawa. But no mob’s hanging me, I’ll already be dead. The light at Kinzie turns red. Or … or … I could shoot Ruben first before he kills me. My foot hits the brake. The Koreans don’t know me … Murder? That’s Arleen’s solution?

  Car next to me.

  Maybe.

  What about Robbie? Kill him, too? Robbie knows you were in the Greektown alley and he knows you were on Lawrence Avenue. Robbie knows you’re a civilian; you’ll blurt everything two seconds after you’re arrested. Deep breath. Robbie will kill you as soon as he can. And he’ll kill Ruben Vargas, too.

  Jesus, this is awful. But Bobby Vargas is a cop. What if he helps me? Somehow?

  The car next to me accelerates to the Clark Street Bridge. I follow across the river, change lanes and pass the Thompson Center lit up for a Saturday-night event. Then past city hall lit up because the mayor wants it lit up. Monroe Street. I make a left, then one block and park. Across from the beautifully lit Shubert Theater. The marquee tells me and the whole world:

  STREETCAR starring ARLEEN BRENNAN

  SOLD OUT

  Horns honk and loop my VW. Just scam Furukawa, Chicago’s new patron saint, and murder two crooked cops. I conjure the marquee lights and two-foot letters that will solve everything.

  Except I’m not killing anybody.

  And crooked cops aren’t taking my dreams away.

  Goose bumps in the July heat. My name up there. An entire family inside who loves me. I want to call Bobby Vargas, promise we’re having our picnic, it’ll just be awhile, but dial Ruben’s number instead, then stare at the marquee while I wait. The marquee begins to play Coleen’s stark winter funeral; then the boardwalk in Venice Beach—Fellini’s grotesques in and out of the neon—the dark cars and sticky upholstery; then the men, the promises.

  Ruben answers his phone, “About fuckin’ time, chica.”

  The marquee goes black.

  Lightning hits beyond the pier in Santa Monica. The solution to evil has a high price, but it’s clear and it’s simple: Just pull the trigger.

  OFFICER BOBBY VARGAS

  SATURDAY, 10:00 PM

  I run lights toward Wolfe City. For the date with destiny I’ve worked for since I was sweeping sidewalks at Maxwell Radio and Records. Me, Bobby Vargas, on the Chess benefit record—holy shit. Wish my parents and Arleen could see this … stand behind the mixing board and watch me play next to the greats. Gonna be so good, if I don’t faint or drool.

  I brake for three young girls in white T-shirts, start to yell at them to get home but don’t. Barlow’s little girl from your building is my new tag. The discussion isn’t if I molest children; it’s what brand I prefer. I watch the girls across the intersection. How does Danny Vacco put an Irish girl together ninety blocks north?

  He didn’t, not without help. Mexican motherfucker. But he could’ve; odds are against it, but he could’ve cornered the mother, scared the hell out of her—he’s an animal—then … then what? Child molestation is a monster charge to make, and ten times worse to defend. The mother and daughter know I’ll fight … and they filed the charge anyway.

  So if it isn’t just Vacco, who? The Herald—maybe. Hahn—she’s capable all the way; I’m already half an hour late telling her I’m ready to be her rat. Could be the U.S. attorney—if the mother was jammed on something federal, the U.S. attorney or an FBI agent could drop a hint for the mother to follow, then the G rolls me, I roll on Ruben for their Coleen Brennan case and whoever got Lopez killed, Jo Ann Merica becomes governor. Mother and daughter walk away.

  Or, maybe the kid really was molested and …

  Be here, Bobby, not there. Be the blues, baby; be the blues. Deal with what you can deal with. Wolfe City won’t know about a little white Irish girl from your apartment building. Or Little Paul. Or that my own brother—my hero for half my life—gave me the look.

  Once Ruben, Barlow, and I were alone at Barlow’s table, the new paper was explained. Ruben said the little girl at my apartment building had come forward after her mother read the Herald. The little girl said I made her read about Coleen and threatened to do the same thing to her if she told. Barlow’s advice was brutal but true: if I’m innocent, we break both children—the girl and Little Paul; if I’m guilty, we break both children. Officer Bobby Vargas becomes seriously Hispanic, a Mexican American civil servant of immigrant parents, a victim of stereotyped race hatred because I had the nerve to police white people, not just brown and black.

  Barlow didn’t ask if I was guilty, but he didn’t want to touch me and then return to his food. Ruben gave me the blank face he uses in his interrogations. My own brother. And stayed in his chair at the Mambo. Made me want to hit him; broke my fucking heart is what it really did.

  Don’t be there, be here. Be the blues, baby.

  I pull to the curb on Halsted. Half a block south of Wolfe City, four bangers eye me from the corner, their white wifebeaters sharp contrast against the abandoned storefronts and shot-out streetlights. Four teenage ghosts with gang promises blue on their skin, two-way radios, do-rags, and futures so short they don’t add up to yesterday.

  A car door pops. Banger number
five exits a parked Chevy, straightens, and—Cop Killa, the North Side import with the Twenty-Trey tats who Hahn and I braced, muscled-up from prison and out on bond for attempted murder. My hand lands on my Airweight, not my guitar. In all of the Four Corners, Cop Killa happens to be standing here? Staring at me, hands hidden? The street knows I’m up against it, that I’m weaker than yesterday. Is Cop Killa here to make a move? Danny Vacco gets me before I get him? A block beyond Cop Killa and his lineup, the main body of Danny Vacco’s La Raza set are out representing the colors, ruling their real estate in the war with the Latin Kings. If I’m tonight’s target, I’m already surrounded.

  Across Halsted, the dim blue neon WOLFE CITY R. S. arches above a warehouse doorway. One hand stays on my pistol, the other pulls my guitar out of the trunk. Lose today, Bobby. Be tonight. Play the blues for as long as Ed Cherney will let you. My eyes close tight and I squeeze the guitar case. Be the blues. You’re a musician; this is the Crossroads, baby; highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

  Eyes open—Cop Killa’s still watching me. Still can’t see his hands.

  The WOLFE CITY R. S. neon dims then brightens. The Chess Records benefit session is on; the studio’s in use, sucking power into the hands of my heroes. I’ll be a part, no matter what the papers say tomorrow, no matter what my own brother believes. My playing will be on this record forever. My fingers tingle to my wrists.

  Out front, three limos are double-parked, the drivers all leaning against the center limo’s fender, their backs to Halsted and me, and Cop Killa a hundred and fifty feet south. Tonight’s no biggie to the drivers, but this might be what you’d call my Big Chance, that single moment when your entire world changes, where bad things shift just enough to crumble under their own weight, where the miracles happen. I close my trunk and pull the Airweight. Maybe when tonight’s over, after I’ve played for Ed Cherney, Kenny, Rab, and the Memphis Horns, maybe I won’t have to kill Danny Vacco, or his pit bull Cop Killa, or wear a wire on Buff Anderson and sell out my gang-team family. Maybe Ruben changes his mind and says he’s sorry.

  Arleen’s image materializes … Neverland, that’s the answer. Arleen and I get out of the Four Corners after all—just like the bluesmen in the Delta. I start to grin; the door to Wolfe City opens; two men exit: one white, one black. The tallest of the limo drivers jumps to attention and grins at the Memphis Horns, Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love. Holy shit, star time for forty years. Wayne, the white one, possibly the best trumpet player alive, waves off the driver; he and Andrew walk north. Bad night for that.

  I go instant hall-of-fame, blues-royalty fan and yell from my car, “Wayne?”

  Both men turn. I put the Airweight on my leg so Cop Killa can see it but the Memphis Horns can’t, and jog across Halsted with my guitar case in the other hand. Slipping through the parked limos, I say: “Hi, ah, not that good a neighborhood; kind of a Latin gang war under way. Don’t think you guys should be walking out here.”

  Both men search Halsted for threat they missed. I holster the pistol and point behind me over my shoulder. “Those T-shirts are La Raza lookouts.” Neither man twitches like crack cocaine is part of his lifestyle. “Honest.” I tip the guitar case and show him my gun and the badge clipped next to it. “I’m a gang cop.” Smile. “When I’m not playing in the studio.”

  Andrew Love smiles his famous wide smile. “You’re on the Chess record?”

  “Supposed to play behind you.” I push my hand out. “Bobby Vargas.”

  Both shake it; Andrew’s has a tremor. Wayne says, “We’d like to walk off a bit. Any idea where—”

  “Sure.” I pull my cell and speed-dial Jason.

  Jason answers, “Man … Bobby?”

  “Do me a favor, okay? Get a car by Wolfe City. Two guys I’m playing with need an escort. They want to walk a few blocks, thirty minutes or so.”

  Jason says, “Just heard that’s where you were.”

  I smile at two all-stars, telling Jason, “Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love, the Memphis Horns. Can you can believe that?”

  Bad tone. “I’d believe anything.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll get your friends a car, but you already got some coming.”

  I see the lights before I realize the sirens have been amping. Uniform cars come in from two directions; four uniforms exit and circle us on the sidewalk, same way you’d do a street stop. I recognize all four cops. One says, “Bobby, you have to go in.” One of the other three cops pulls my guitar out of my hands, another steps into my face while the third snatches my gun and badge while I’m wrestling for my guitar.

  “Hey.” I grab for my gun and miss. “No. I’m going in Wolfe City, got a gig with these guys.” I nod at Wayne and Andrew moving away. “I’m playing on the Chess Records benefit.”

  “Sorry, man, but you gotta come in.” He has handcuffs out. “Have to, sorry.”

  “Fuck you. What are you talking about?”

  Two of the uniforms re-crowd me. One pulls my arms behind my back. I twist, step left and shove him away. “No. Understand? I’m playing on a record. Me. A big record. And I get one chance. Whatever you think you have to do, we can do four hours from now.”

  They clamp me hard and twist me into the wall. My cheekbone scrapes on the bricks. I hear one of the uniforms say, “Sorry, man. Guess fucking the second little girl was one too many.”

  SATURDAY, 10:30 PM

  Handcuffed to a bench. Rocking back and forth. Be stone, Bobby, block of stone.

  My guitar and case are twenty feet across the room, along with my badge and gun. Evidence. Officer Bobby Vargas is in lockup, and not just any lockup but the twenty-five-by-twenty-five basement I see every day. This is District 12’s TAC/Gang Team lockup; it’s in our office, my office. I’m handcuffed to an anchored pipe that runs along the bench’s back. The rack, we call it, for the felons and gangsters. In the room’s center, five communal desks are topped with wire baskets for our paperwork and computers too old to sell for salvage. For seventeen of my nineteen years I’ve sat at one of those desks. Was the good guy, the guy you called when you needed help. And I came; every single time.

  Third watch is still on the street, doing what I used to do. The only people in the basement are our secretary Shannon, one of the four arresting uniforms, and me—felony arrest, rape, sodomy of a child. At the end of my bench, Shannon peeks out of her tiny office next to Buff’s, stares till I look, and says, “What the fuck, Bobby?”

  I can’t answer; I’m busy rocking back and forth. How do you tell people you know that you’re not a child molester? That they could leave their kids around you and not worry?

  You don’t; you sit on this bench in silence. Like the criminals do. When we’re done processing your paperwork, you’ll sit here, waiting for the bus to county jail. At county, you’ll wait for an arraignment and try not to be raped, beaten, or stabbed. If you’re a child molester or a cop, county will take special precautions, both in your transport and your housing. If you’re a known gang member they will sort you by affiliation. What they won’t do is guarantee your safety. Jail world has many levels, all bad, all the time.

  Shannon retreats behind her open door but her voice doesn’t. “Better not be true.”

  Buff Anderson walks in and nods the uniform out. The uniform shakes his head. Buff stares and the uniform leaves. Buff cuts to Shannon and says, “Smoke break.”

  Shannon doesn’t smoke. She leaves without looking at me.

  Buff stares, hard and angry. “True or not? Any fuckin’ part of it.”

  If I could stand, I’d hit him.

  “Answer me.”

  “You believe it, huh? After five days a week for seventeen years?”

  Buff sets his jaw. “You tell me.”

  “Yeah, me and your kids, too.”

  His fist lands before I can jerk out of the way. I blink through stars and flashes; shake out the blur. His eyes and teeth are most of his face. “Say my kids again.” Buff un-holsters his pistol. “Go
ahead.”

  I blink until I can glare, and shut up.

  Buff shakes his head, no. “Answer. True or not?”

  “What the fuck do you think? It’s me, asshole. Me!”

  Buff hits me again. And again. “Gotta have an answer, Bobby. We all do.”

  Blood drips into my eye and mouth. I focus on the concrete floor, not pride, not friendship, not trust. “No. I did not rape Coleen Brennan.”

  “Little Paul? The girl in your building?”

  “No.” Dry swallow. “I’m not a child molester. The first time I had sex with anyone but my hand I was twenty.”

  “Look at me.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Buff slaps me upright, slams a boot into my chest, and pins me to the wall. “I want you to swear on your mother and father, on your guitar-hero future, on all of us who’ve stood with you since you put on the uniform. Our uniform, motherfucker. Swear to God you did none.”

  I stare.

  “Swear it, Bobby, or I shoot you where you sit.” Buff stands back and aims his pistol at my head. Blink.

  “You honestly think—”

  “Swear it!” echoes off the walls of what used to be my home away from home, off the yellowed cartoons and fight gouges, the gallows humor and shared lifetimes. Buff has three little girls and tears in his eyes. He thinks I’m capable of child rape.

  “I did none of it. None.”

  Buff breathes in the words but doesn’t lower the gun. His skin is red against the white hair, eyebrows, and mustache. He doesn’t get this angry at work. I think I might kill him if I could.

  “Somebody’s framing me—Danny V for sure, maybe others—you said so yourself. I don’t know why, or what they want, but I’m innocent. They can bring in five more little kids and I’m still innocent.”

  “I said it smelled bigger than Danny Vacco.”

  “Too much weight on me. From too many directions, and all at the same time.”

  “That’s how you know?”

  “Tania Hahn.”

  Buff’s pistol slowly lowers. “What about her?”