Enemy in Blue

by Derek Blass

  The white man who had spoken up gestured his head towards the other side of the yard and Shaver followed. When they were out of earshot, he asked Shaver, “You fuggin crazy?” He shook his head, “You gonna stawt a fuggin war.”

  The man talking to him was short, only coming up to Shaver's shoulder. He had swastikas tattooed up his right arm and another one on his forehead. His jaw was in constant motion whether talking or not. Grinding, clenching. The hallmarks of some sort of drug addiction. His right shoulder hung slightly lower than his left as he walked in a sped-up gimp, his right foot scratching the ground every few steps. Two other men walked with them, absolute hulks. Both taller than Shaver, both wider, meaner. They all had sandy hair and blue eyes. The ideal Aryans.

  “Listen, you owe us now.”

  “Who's us?”

  The short man paused. “Yous kiddin' me, right? Fuggin Aryan Brotherhood. The ones that jus' saved yawr sweet, virgin ass!” One of the big men shook laughing. “Those vatos were gonna make you toss some salad.” The big man kept shaking, gleeful.

  “So what do I owe you?”

  The short man stopped walking this time. He looked at the other two men and then Shaver in disbelief. “How 'bout a fuggin thank yous for stawters?” A thick and apparent Bostonian accent melted out of the man's mouth.

  “Thank you,” Shaver returned tersely.

  “Well, well. There ya go. I'm Pick,” the man said while extending his hand.

  “Pick?”

  “Edward J. Pickhat. Pick for short. Listen, if you gonna fug around you can go back to your lonesome. Good luck surviving in here, fuggin' cop. We was doin' ya a favor.” Shaver didn't say anything. “Pretty lucky you are that we get on wit those spics. So, the way I see it, yous owe us a favor. Quid pro quo,” Pick said, his eyes shining. They continued walking to the other side of the yard, toward some bleachers filled with white men. As they neared, it was apparent to Shaver that all of the men were positioned in a semi-circle around one man. That one man was huge, probably six foot five. Bulky but still lean looking. He had dark brown hair and deep-water blue eyes.

  “Pick, whud I tell ya about mutts?”

  “This ain' no mutt, Mills. He's good, ain't ya?” Pick asked.

  Shaver stood on the edge of dream and reality. These gang members were what he fought for so many years. Although he didn't target the white ones that often, it was still a tremendous adjustment. The path before him was clear at this point. He could either play along, associate with the Brotherhood, or he could go back to being on his own. In the latter scenario, he probably wouldn't last long. So, he nodded his head.

  “This is the cop, huh? Whud-th'-fuck you doin' bringin' a cop over here, Pick?”

  “He's good, Mills. He ain't no regular cop. You know what he's in here for?”

  “I know, killin' a spic. Still a cop.” Pick didn't say anything else. Everyone looked at Shaver. He remained silent as well. Talking wouldn't be redemptive, only action. Shaver knew that was coming next. Mills measured Shaver up. Some of the other gang members went back to what they were doing, playing cards, talking to each other. “You wanna prove you'self copper?” There it was, the undertow that would suck Shaver in. This yard had instantly become a case of survival. Shaver didn't say yes or no, but kept looking at Mills.

  “Not the talkative type, huh boss?” Mills cackled. “I dun mind that. Anyway, Pick talks enough for the rest of us.” Pick shrugged his shoulders and went to sit down beside Mills. “I got this shipment comin' in, some yay. I need someone to see it gets to its intended recipients. You game?”

  Survival, Shaver thought to himself. “Yeah, I can handle it. Any unwelcome buyers?”

  “Hey,” Mills said, turning serious in a hurry, “We dun do no sellin'. It's trade an' barter, got it?”

  “Sure, I get it. So, who'm I trading with? And who doesn't get any.”

  Mills' posture relaxed. “We dun sell to those gorillas. The rest is game. I'll give ya twenty-four hours to unload what you get.”

  “What am I gonna get in return?”

  Mills spit on the ground, “Ballsy. You just got what ya gonna get. A get-oud-uh-jail-free card.” Mills spoke with a strange falling off, sometimes letters and whole syllables just dropped off of the end of his words. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing massive biceps. Oddly enough, his arms were clean of tattoos, as were his neck and face. “Should have the yay by 'morrow; meet me here in the yard.” Mills checked out the nails on his left hand, ending the conversation.

  Shaver looked at the rest of the members, but none paid attention. He took the cue and walked back to the prison compound. A full blast of sun poured down on the yard. Some prisoners gathered under the scant shade produced by the compound itself. Others sat on bleachers, soaking in the rays. Shaver could see the outside world through the chain-link fences enclosing the yard. It had quickly become a remote vestige of memory. Someone else's life, faint, barely pulsing with existence. A short burst of grief radiated out from his chest.

  “You shouldn't get involved with them, any of them,” a voice came from behind him. Shaver turned around and saw a woman corrections officer. She was pretty, albeit plain. Brown hair and eyes, strong but not plump—healthy.

  “Get the fuck away from me.”

  “I know who you are. You don't have to get involved with the gangs. We'll do a fine job of protecting you.”

  “You don't know who the fuck I am lady. Now get away from me.” The worst thing for him would be to have guard protection. It would make him everyone's target.

  She took a step back. “I know why you're saying that, but just consider it. You get wrapped up with them and you'll never get out of here. You can survive on your own.” She left him standing alone. He looked back over his shoulder at the Brotherhood. Pick was watching him.

  * * * *

  “What do you mean you've been to his home?” Mason asked.

  “Just that. I've been there. It's a long story, but...” Cruz drifted off as he looked out the window behind Mason. Snow was falling, straight then swirling counterclockwise. Slowly changing direction and then spinning clockwise. He thought about the people on the street, huddled in the bluster. “...the condensed version is that the doctor held Sandra captive in his house. Martinez and I, along with two other guys, went to rescue her. That's when I was in the house.”

  “Timeout. This is all news to me. Someone held Sandra captive?”

  “Yeah. Sandra and I went to find Martinez, so that we could track down the video.” Cruz was upset about having to relive this story. “See how this devolves, constantly pulling back layers until we've been here all day talking about it?”

  “Doesn't matter—this is important. Plus, it's interesting, so go on.”

  Cruz sighed and slipped deeper into his chair. “We tracked Martinez down at a hospital. Problem was that some henchman, who we now know was the Chief's henchman...”

  “Uhh, wait a second,” Mason said as he fumbled through some papers on his desk. “Tyler?”

  “Tyler, right. Tyler surprised all of us. He was armed and took Sandra hostage. It's weird to talk like this, in war terms. We're pretty regular people, civilians.” Cruz rubbed the chair's arms as he spoke. “Anyway, Tyler took her hostage. Then the Chief called us with an ultimatum. The video for Sandra.”

  “But you didn't give him the video.”

  “Nope. We never intended to give him a thing. We were going to go in there and blast them away to save Sandra. When I say blast it may suggest that I'm adept at those types of things, like guns and shooting them. I'm not.” Mason used his lips to intimate that it didn't matter. “We went in there, Martinez did the blasting, and the Chief and Tyler escaped. We got Sandra out.”

  “Where was the doctor?”

  “I didn't see him. I wasn't really looking either, to tell you the truth. Sandra was a terrifying sight. They had her strapped to a medical table with an overhead light pulled down to an inch from her face. All I wanted to do was save her
. But that has to be it...his house, that is. Would just be too coincidental otherwise.”

  “How does Shaver fit into all of this?”

  Cruz shook his head and reached for a glass of water. “Beats me. Not sure if Shaver and the Chief were working together at that point. They certainly had a joint interest in recovering that video. But Shaver wasn't at that doctor's house that day...at least not that I saw.” Mason twirled a pen in his fingers, letting it roll off of his index, then middle, then ring finger and back to his thumb. The movement mesmerized Cruz.

  “This carries significant implications. The chief of police, with an assassin henchman and an unlicensed doctor on the books? Movies are made from that kind of crap.”

  “Dramatic.”

  “We've got to track down this Tyler guy. I can charge him with assault, kidnapping, conspiracy. The charges against him aren't really what we'll be after though.”

  “Leverage.”

  “Exactly. Maybe he can help us tie Shaver to some other crimes. Hell, if Shaver had a hand in kidnapping Sandra, we'll tack those charges on. You never know what'll come from a rat. I'll give you a call when Todd and I have tracked down Tyler. Can you and Martinez go find him? A police presence would be helpful.”

  “I don't think this guy will go lightly. It would probably make sense to get more than me and Martinez.”

  “You guys work it out.”

  Cruz got out of his chair and shook Mason's hand. “I'll be hearing from you.” Mason nodded and started typing something on his computer. Cruz left the office and headed through a labyrinth of cubicles until he found the elevator. He stepped in and headed down to the lobby. The piercing snow- ridden wind pricked his face when he opened the glass doors to the street. Hardly any people were out. Most had probably left by this time of day. The city was on a spring blizzard warning. Cruz stood there, snow steadily gathering on his shoulders, as he looked into the white wall and questioned how such horrific things could emerge from such beauty.

  T H I R T Y-S E V E N

  __________________________________________________

  The computer screen seemed to hum electronically in front of Tyler. Matter formulated pixels which coalesced into pictures, text, numbers, which Tyler converted into information. The woman was easy to find. She was on the news all the time. He would just watch her daily habits going to and leaving work. There was no problem finding the lawyer either. A quick search on the state bar's website revealed that he was the only attorney named Cruz. Got his business address from the website. Tyler didn't bother looking for the cop. The other two would lead him there. The phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “It's me.”

  “Daddy?”

  A pause. “Listen, you fuck,” the voice hissed, “I've got one call this week so don't screw around with me.”

  “Not like you have anyone else to call.”

  “When you land in here too, I'm gonna feed you to the spics.”

  “You sure they'll still be hungry after tasting your sweet ass?”

  Another pause as Tyler could hear Shaver breathing hard. Finally he said, “What did you decide?”

  “I was on my way to start taking care of business when you called.” The line went dead. “Prick.” Tyler set the phone down and went back to gathering his equipment. Binoculars, a bionic ear with recorder. Conversations a hundred yards away were crystal clear with that ear. Tyler recalled reading somewhere that bears had a twenty-one thousand times greater sense of smell than humans. They could smell a carcass from twenty miles away. One hundred yards seemed peevish in comparison. Pen and paper. He put these all into a small pack and went out to his car.

  The apartment complex he lived in provided protection of the masses. There was so much filth and criminal activity going on that he seemed saintly. It was like hiding a diamond ring in a bag of shit. He cranked up his car and set out for the news station. The day was young and Tyler was an early riser. From four in the morning to six he could be alone in the world as it awoke. It allowed him to avoid the herd in their daily rush to stick their heads through a yoke. It happened to coincide well with when reporters get going. He checked both ways before turning onto a four-lane road that would lead him all the way downtown.

  Strip malls, fast-food joints, porn stores, thrift shops lined both sides of his path. The number of strip malls per block seemed a reasonable way to judge the makeup of a community. They housed the Indian groceries, the Somalian dry cleaners, each with some name in foreign lettering above a carefully crafted name in English, “All Season Tailor.” Something innocuous and meaningless like that. Who knew if the two names even matched?

  The buildings changed as Tyler drove toward the city. Building facades became renovated and shiny. Signs of gentrification emerged. Brown and black changed to white. The push to remove the poor from sight, to the outskirts of civilization, where they could collect like trash in garbage dumps. All of this facilitated by land value, capitalism. Tyler turned right into an alley that ran behind the news station. He stopped and pulled out the bionic ear. It was fun to switch it on and see what he could pick up. People were completely different when they didn't know someone was listening. Friends were enemies. Enemies turned out to be even worse enemies. Gossip, that's often what Tyler picked up. Men were pigs, but women were too. That's something the bionic ear taught Tyler. It also solidified his hate of other people. The sentiment that they were conniving animals, a brownish sticky substance pressed into the tread of his shoes.

  He didn't pick up any chatter so he stepped out of the car and walked down the alley. He ran his hand along the grout lines in the brick facade of the news building, enjoying the roughness. The sun was just breaking the horizon, reflecting off a low-lying level of clouds. The clouds themselves radiated neon pink. Tyler came around the corner of the building and kept walking to a small park on the opposite side of the street. He took a seat on a bench in the park, partially obscured from the front of the news building.

  The occasional person walked by as Tyler waited. Cars started to flow more heavily as time passed. He watched the clouds above him change from pink to a burnt orange, Monetesque in the sky. Finally, they settled on their daily color. The flow of people increased too. Tyler felt sorry for them, the walking dead. Addicted to productivity, to supposed advancement from one level of the caste to another. They woke, consumed, worked, consumed, worked, took a break, worked out, went home, consumed, slept and then repeated it all the next day. Maybe they changed the pattern two days a week, but not all of them. How did that differ from being an animal? How was that not worse than being an animal?

  Tyler perceived his killing as a method of elevation. Out of the race to uniformity and oblivion these people so willingly participated in. He had no schedule, no office, no secretary, no Outlook and PowerPoints, no productivity meetings, no donuts on the first floor, thank-you-very-much. His life wasn't marked by the tedious passage of time. The monotonous chug of existence. Life was constantly thrilling. Tyler recognized that his way of life appealed to an animal sense as well. The predatory aspect instead of the working aspect. He identified targets, stalked them and finally hurled himself at them, his mouth clenched around their necks, both bodies breathing furiously from the chase.

  She came out of the building and he recalled her allure. Not that Tyler cared on any level other than an appreciation for the creation of beauty. He was not a hetero or homosexual. Sexually, he was ambivalent, removed. All of his sexual fulfillments came in those moments when he was crouched over his victims, watching life drain out of their eyes. Despite that, Tyler could still recognize physical beauty. She had it. Glossy black hair, of medium height and perfectly figured. Her heels clacked authoritatively as she walked. Her skirt rubbed against her skin as she moved. Form-fitting, ass-fitting.

  He stood up and walked briskly to his car while watching what car she got into. Her car crossed in front of the alley as he pulled out and fell in a couple of vehicles behind. 54XTS7. License pla
te number. He followed as she wound through the city. Technically, all he needed was the license plate number. That would tell him where she lived. This was the stalk though, the study of a person's small movements in their daily lives. This is what Tyler would shatter.

  She slowed and put her right blinker on to parallel park. Tyler continued past her and parked around the corner. He saw her walk into a restaurant and then reappear on the patio, escorted by a hostess.

  She picked up a menu, looked at it, looked at her watch, then cell phone, took a sip of water. This is what he would interrupt. The hostess reappeared with a man. Tyler took his binoculars out and focused them on their table. It was the lawyer, Cruz. He sat in a chair next to her and picked up his own menu. They laughed, he drank some water. Tyler could have used his bionic ear but it was unimportant. Plus, he didn't have to listen to see they were in love. They exchanged playful touches, laughed together, talked about people together. Tyler put the binoculars down, feeling something empty inside himself. That is what he would shatter.

  * * * *

  The darkness was all-encompassing. His limbs were foreign, non-existent. All that remained was a kernel of thought, fleeting glimpses. The faintest shimmer in someone else's dream. It might be suggested that some thought would be welcome, but it was terrifying. Locked in absolute isolation, those brief moments of thought only promoted awareness of what was happening. Sound usually triggered the thoughts. From time to time voices were noticeable. They flew at him from a distance like a shout in a desert, wind-borne and solitary. He ached to reach out, to show some acknowledgment of the voices, but he had no control over any part of himself. The self-awareness was murderous. It would have just been peaceful darkness without that.

  Then a collision of epic proportions, big-bang-esque, and Raul sucked in a roomful of air with one, prolonged gasp. Darkness collided with light. Senses with numbness. Silence with sound. A set of recurring sounds, beep—monitors, Raul recognized. His mind was slow. Thoughts fell into a vast chamber like individual grains of sand. They hit, echoed, and remained until the next fell. He cracked one eye open, which he shut immediately. Light burned. He requested that his right index finger move. It did. Got control of you again. Middle finger, thumb, ring finger, pinkie. Other hand. Both feet.