Damnation Street wab-3

by Andrew Klavan

  The sirens grew louder. A damp wind passed over him. He breathed it deeply. It was refreshing. It was good.

  Slowly, then faster, then faster, like water running to a cliff and pouring off the edge, he and his machine curled over the crest of the hill and cascaded down.

  He picked up speed, more speed. A sharp turn-a hell of a turn-rose toward him, quick as a thought. He gassed the bike to forty, fifty. Neared the bend. The mist went red, went blue, went red again around him: the cops. He had only an instant to glance back. He caught only a glimpse of them. The two patrol cars, one after the other, came sailing over the hilltop behind him, catching air, their light racks flashing, their sirens howling at the sky. Their tires screamed as they smacked down onto the pavement. The cars gripped tar and fired after him.

  Bishop faced forward and went into the turn. He hardly slowed, just took it. The bike leaned over, leaned over more. He laughed again through gritted teeth. It was practically supernatural-he was practically lying on his side, practically skimming on top of the air. Every moment he expected to go rubber up, lay the bike down in flames and sorrow. But no, then he was around the curve, pulling up straight, threading a narrow street lined with parked cars on one side and on the other with October roses.

  The cops were close behind him. He heard their sirens, louder. He saw the red-and-blue rack flashers throw their colors into the night. He looked over his shoulder, caught a blurred image through tearing eyes. The lead squad car was ripping around that wicked bend. Its tires smoked. It skidded out to the right, scraped a parked car, and threw up sparks. It yanked itself back toward the planted median, raking a roadside trellis so that flowers flew merrily into the air like it was all some sort of big parade. The blossoms hit the windshield of the second squad car as it came wriggling frantically around the corner. The car's brakes shrieked like a hectoring fishwife.

  Bishop's heart raced. His eyes were as bright as a madman's. He felt a thing inside him that was cold and glinting like a knife blade turning to catch the moonlight. Looking ahead, he saw the pavement sailing toward him, felt his bike sailing uncontrollably fast down and down and down the constricted lane. At the bottom the street horseshoed around the rosy median. He could choose to continue forward and let the cops run him to ground in the flatlands of the Mission, or he could try the tight 180 and lose them here and now, racing away back up the hill.

  The road swept left. He hit the brakes. He wrenched the bike around. The Harley's rear wheel skidded out from under him. The whole bike skidded, changing direction like a needle on a meter. For a second the machine went sideways across the macadam, heading for the parked cars. Then Bishop gave it gas and it was off again, rising back up the hill in the lamp-lit mist.

  The squad cars had no chance to make a turn like that. He heard them brake. He heard the bay of their sirens become a sour whine. He looked behind him as his bike climbed, and it was great, just great: they were stranded down there, their flashers revolving uselessly. They could only edge, slow and cautious, around the bend. With any luck, he'd be gone before they were even up to speed.

  A thrill went through him. It was a sensation of breaking out of darkness into day. He'd been lost in a fog of trouble these last few weeks, and now he burst free of it. It all swept back past him. The girl on the TV and the pain in his shoulder and the beer and the bars and Weiss, whom he'd betrayed-it all swept back. The way ahead looked clear and bright.

  Then a third squad car screamed into his path and cut him off.

  It came out of a side street at the top of the hill. It planted itself across the intersection. It sat there, big and silent against the sky. Its red-and-blue lights circled with a sort of slow, lazy arrogance, the way a hick sheriff chews his gum.

  Bishop gave a snarl of frustration. He cursed. There was no way around the thing and no way through. He squeezed the brakes. He let the bike slide sideways. It stopped. He set a boot down on the pavement.

  Below, the other squad cars chugged up the hill to block his retreat.

  Bishop smiled his sardonic smile.

  The door of the third car, the car across the road in front of him, swung open. A grizzled veteran climbed out with a grunt. He hoisted his heavy utility belt over the bulge of his belly. He strolled down the hill toward Bishop with his thumbs in the belt's sides.

  He stopped. He cocked his head. He looked Bishop over. He sighed.

  Bishop grinned outright. "Gee, officer," he said. "Was I going too fast?"

  The veteran bit his lip to keep from laughing. "Bishop," he muttered. "You are such an asshole."

  6.

  Two hours later; the Hall of Justice. Homicide, fourth floor.

  Bishop sat in an interview room about the size of an outhouse. The soundproofing on the walls, once white, had gone a depressing gray. There was a wooden table. Three wooden chairs, one on one side, two on the other. Bishop sat in the one, slouched, rebellious, his arm thrown over the back.

  He waited. A long time. It had been an evening full of thrills. He waited in the little room until every thrill had died. The fog of dejection settled over him again.

  Then Inspector Ketchum walked in, scowling and furious.

  Ketchum was a small, sinewy black man. He was wearing green slacks and a blue shirt, a red tie pulled loose at the collar. His gold inspector's star was on the front of his belt. His. 40-caliber Beretta was holstered on his hip. He was carrying a thick black binder. It had some numbers on the side of it and a name. It was the name of the girl on TV, the blond girl in handcuffs. Bishop's girl.

  Bishop gave the inspector a bored look. Ketchum was bristling with anger, but so what? Ketchum was always bristling with anger. The son of a bitch hated everyone, except maybe Weiss. Weiss had been Ketchum's partner in his cop days, so maybe Ketchum liked Weiss. But that didn't help Bishop any. The way things were set up, that only made Ketchum hate Bishop all the more.

  Ketchum dropped the black binder- whap! -on the wooden desk. He propped his foot up on one of the chairs, rested his arm on his raised knee. He gazed down at Bishop balefully, like a vulture waiting for lunch to die.

  "I hope you think I'm good-looking, Bishop, 'cause I'm about to fuck you hard," he said. He had a low, rasping growl of a voice. His scowl was apparently permanent.

  Bishop shifted in his chair. He whiffled. He sneered. Just because his life was swirling down the crapper didn't mean he was going to take shit from this chucklehead. "Give it a rest, Ketchum," he said. "This is San Francisco. You can't even bust people here for breaking the law-what do you think you're gonna do to me?"

  Ketchum lay a finger on the black binder, the girl's casebook. "Accessory to murder. Receiving stolen goods."

  "Oh bullshit."

  "Interfering with the police. Oh, and how about DUI and speeding? How about operating a fucking motorcycle without a fucking helmet?"

  Bishop gestured with the hand behind his chair. "Without a helmet. Jesus. I guess I'm a pretty bad guy, all right."

  "You're not even a bad guy, Bishop. You don't rate high enough to be a bad guy. You're just a waste of space with skin on. Too much dick and not enough brains and no fucking heart at all."

  "Oh for Christ's sake, Ketchum, what do you want from me?"

  "Well, now, I'm glad you asked me that question. I was just getting to that." The inspector took his foot off the chair. He stood straight, one hand resting on his gun butt. "I want you out of here."

  "Hey, I'd like to help you, but all those mean men with guns out there won't let me leave."

  "I mean out of my life. Out of Weiss's life. That's what I want. I want you out of Weiss's life."

  Bishop shrugged. "I'm gone already. I haven't been back to the Agency since you hauled the girl in."

  "Oh, but you will be back, Bishop. You'll strut around and drink and raise hell awhile, but you'll crawl back there sooner or later. Know why? You got nowhere else to go, that's why. No one else would have you. And Weiss knows that. And he'll take you back. 'Cause he thinks he can s
ave your soul somehow. Now what's your opinion on that, Bishop? You figure Weiss can save your soul?"

  "Let me think," said Bishop. "What's the right answer? Oh yeah: blow me."

  Ketchum snorted. "Doesn't matter. 'Cause it ain't happening. 'Cause you're getting out of Weiss's life. And when I say out of Weiss's life, I mean out of San Francisco altogether. And when I say out of San Francisco, what I mean is: get the fuck out of California and stay out. I want you to live fast and die young in any one or all of the other scenic forty-nine states in this great and good land of ours. And I want you to understand with the full power of your maladjusted mind that if you ever come back here, you are going to find an Inspector Ketchum-shaped misery at the center of your existence as unchanging as the infinite but in your case misguided love of almighty God."

  "I'm sorry, Ketchum, did I forget to mention you can blow me?"

  Ketchum's scowl didn't falter, but an unpleasant light came into his eyes. It occurred to Bishop that this probably was not a very good sign.

  "I don't think you've been listening," the inspector said.

  Bishop kept up the hard-guy routine, never mind his sinking feeling. "I'm listening," he said. "But you got nothing here. Accessory to murder! Come on, man, you can't hold me on shit like that."

  The light in Ketchum's eyes grew brighter. "Boy, I can hold you on any damned shit I please. For forty-eight hours. Counting from the start of business tomorrow. Except-oops-tomorrow's Saturday, there is no business. So it's counting from the next day except-oops-that day's Sunday, so now we're counting from the day after that. Which means, let's see, I can throw you in CJ for forty-eight hours counting from the day after the day after tomorrow-assuming your papers don't get lost or you don't get transferred somewhere we can't find you, which might slow things down considerably. And this is just the start of what this city's gonna be like for you from here on in, just the start. Now get the fuck on your feet, you miserable piece of shit."

  7.

  So now Bishop lay on his bunk in the county jail, three floors up. His jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket were gone, and he was dressed in orange coveralls. He lay with his hands behind his head. He gazed up at the mattress above him. The mattress above him sagged under the weight of an enormous shaved-headed muscleman. The muscleman was also dressed in orange coveralls. There were eighteen other men in the cell, each on one of the bunks on the eleven other double bunk beds. All of the men were dressed in orange coveralls-county orange-just like Bishop.

  The cell was dimly lit, shadowy. There was a grated window high on the wall. It showed a rectangle of blue-black sky. There was a steel toilet underneath it and a steel sink. There was a strange, empty smell in the place, tainted now and then with shit and sweat and disinfectant. There was a steady wash of noise: doors and voices, ventilation fans, footsteps on stone. Bishop breathed in the smell and listened to the noise and watched the mattress above him move as the muscleman rolled over.

  He tried to think about other things. He thought about his Harley, about being on his Harley. He thought about the cops chasing him and how the wind had felt on him as he careered downhill. That was funny; that was all right. He thought about the girl-the one from the bar-he'd forgotten her name again. But he thought about her ass against his belly and her tits against his palms. He thought about that other girl, the blond who'd nearly killed him. He thought about the moments when he'd been inside her on that cold, still border of himself…

  But finally, it was no good. Here he was in CJ. All those thrills were in the past, and he couldn't bring back the feel of any of them. He was sick of his life.

  The noise came back to him, the smells, the heavy presence of breathing, grunting, cursing men in orange. He tried to think his thoughts, but they became vague and jumbled. The girl's tits in his hands became the feel of the motorcycle handlebars, and then his hands were fists and he was in an old dustup with his drunken father, finished long ago. Then he had a bad taste in his mouth, and he knew he'd been asleep and time had passed. He thought it was the dead of night. There was still plenty of noise-fans, voices, doors, footsteps-but there was a stillness underneath the noise somehow that gave him the sense of a late hour. Somewhere in the distance someone was screaming for the deputies, screaming for help. No deputies answered. Eventually, the screaming stopped.

  Bishop drew a breath, coming fully awake. He shifted, stretched on his bunk.

  Suddenly, a hand grabbed his upper arm. A pair of wild staring eyes appeared right beside him.

  "Help me!"

  It was a sobbing gasp. Bishop glanced toward it. He saw a willowy white kid, the only other white guy in the cell. His face was as pale as paper. His lips were as dry as dust. And that stare, that wild stare of his, was full of terror.

  "He's gonna kill me! Please!"

  Bishop put his hand over the kid's face and shoved him. "Get the hell away from me," he said.

  The kid fell backward onto his butt. He scrambled onto his knees, grabbed Bishop's hand. "Please! I don't want to die! My father will pay you! I swear!"

  The kid had a round, soft face, a floppy mop of brown hair. He had full sensuous lips and deep sensitive eyes. His hands were delicate with long fingers. They gripped Bishop's hand hard. His voice cracked.

  "I didn't mean anything! Really. I was just scared, that's all. They just scared me! Please! You're a white man. Please!"

  Bishop yanked his hand free. "Get the hell away from me or I'll kick you in the head," he said.

  "But he'll kill me!"

  Bishop kicked him in the head-not hard, just a few harrying blows around the temple to drive him away again.

  Throwing up his arms for protection, the kid retreated in a crouch. He sank onto the floor, his back against the bunk across the narrow aisle. He buried his pale face in his delicate hands. He sobbed. "Please. Please."

  The Mexican on the bunk across the aisle was lying on his side, his back to them. He looked over his shoulder. "Shut up, Maricon, " he said to the kid.

  The kid went on sobbing.

  Now, with a sort of dreamy slowness, another man heaved around the bunk bed at the end of the row. He came lumbering toward them.

  This one was a hulking figure, big-bellied, slump-shouldered, broad. His head was squashed and shapeless. It looked like a giant glob of clay that had been hurled down- splat!- on top of his neck. Marble eyes glowered out of the clay as he approached. Bishop glanced down instinctively and saw the clay-headed man was gripping a sharp strip of metal in his doughy right fist.

  He thought, well, the kid was telling the truth anyway. This monster was definitely out to kill him, all right.

  The Mexican on the bunk across the way shook his head in exasperation. He rolled back onto his side, his back to the action. The enormous muscleman on the bunk over Bishop's let out a deep laugh- heh, heh, heh. He was happy to have some entertainment.

  Bishop lay as he was, his fingers laced behind his head again. He watched the clay-headed man stalking toward the kid step by slow step. He sighed. What a bunch of fucking lowlifes. It depressed him to be locked up in the same cell with them.

  The kid looked up from sobbing. He saw this Clayhead guy coming for him. He shrieked like a girl and flung himself at Bishop again. His voice was a ragged, high-pitched scream:

  "Ple-e-e-ease!"

  He gripped the edge of Bishop's bunk desperately.

  But now Clayhead was on him. He let out an animal growl and grabbed a handful of the kid's floppy mop of hair. He yanked it so the kid's face turned up toward him. The kid gaped up at the squashed features with his mouth in a wide frown like a fish's mouth. Somewhere in that shapeless mass of flesh above him, there was a killer smile and those marble eyes gleaming. The kid stared at those eyes helplessly, waiting to die. Clayhead held the metal blade low and aligned it with the kid's jugular, to make sure he cut just the right place.

  "Oh for Christ's sake," Bishop muttered. He reached out irritably and broke the clay-headed man's arm.

 
He broke it at the wrist, grabbing it in both his hands, twisting it back and around. The snap of the bone was like pistol fire. The metal blade pattered quietly against the cell's concrete floor.

  Clayhead screamed. He grabbed his broken wrist and started reeling back up the aisle, banging from bunk to bunk, whooping and roaring. At the end of the aisle, he fell down and writhed.

  The kid, released from his grip, fell down too. He curled trembling into a ball on the floor, his orange jumpsuit stained at the crotch and bottom.

  There was a loud buzz and the cell door opened, and the deputies came rushing in, as serious and self-satisfied as if they'd arrived in the nick of time.

  8.

  I'm not sure-I'm never really sure-whether my own story is worth telling here, whether it's worth interrupting the main action with it. The romantic doings of my admittedly callow existence at that time seem pretty unimportant compared with the working out of Weiss's fate and Bishop's. Still, we all did converge in the end, and while I don't know-even all this long time later-whether I had any effect on what happened to the others, I do know that what happened to them, violent and terrible as it was, changed my life for- ever. In any case, as I say, we all did converge, so I guess my part in these events has to be told. I promise to get through it as quickly as I can.

  To begin with, the main thing you have to know is I was in love. Her name was Emma McNair. She was a student at UC Berkeley, where her father was an English professor. She had an adorable heart-shaped face and witty green eyes and… Well, I guess it doesn't matter what she had, does it? The point is I met her one night in a pizzeria called Carlo's. I fell in love with her on the spot, convinced on the spot that she was my second soul, fashioned for me at the Creation. Before we parted, she wrote her phone number on a Carlo's coaster for me, and I promised to call her right away. Only I never did. That very night I became entangled in an affair with my superior at the Agency, Sissy Truitt. Day after day I didn't call Emma, because night after night I was with Sissy.