Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  Ed Wolf took out a stiletto. He knelt down and slit the cord on the girl’s ankles so he could get her legs apart. He stood, and started to work his belt off. He grinned over at Bishop. You can have her after me, he said. He turned back to the girl.

  Fuck this shit, said Bishop. He hit Ed Wolf in the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. Ed Wolf dropped to his knees. Bishop hit him again. Wolf fell face forward onto the floor, unconscious.

  Bishop took Wolf’s stiletto, cut the girl’s father free. Call 911, he told him. Untie your people.

  Bishop stood over Wolf with a gun until he heard the sirens coming. Then he glanced up at the father. The father gestured with his chin toward a hallway. Bishop nodded and followed the hallway to the rear of the house. He left by the back door as the cops were coming in the front.

  The patrolmen arrived first, and not much later the investigators got there: Weiss and his partner Ketchum. Wolf was coming around by then, and Weiss and Ketchum took him into custody and questioned him. It was an easy interview. Wolf was only too happy to give the two inspectors Bishop’s name along with his last known address.

  Weiss and Ketchum caught up with Bishop that very night at a Mission flophouse near the Transbay bus station. They handcuffed him and put him in the backseat of their unmarked Dodge. Weiss was driving. But he didn’t drive back to the cop shop. He drove instead to an empty field at the base of the coastal bluffs.

  He parked at the edge of the field. There were no lights here. Just a patch of grass and wildflowers bordering the beach. Above hung the rocky cliffs. Beyond was the whispering black water and the line of car lights moving across the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge towers stood out sharply against the starry sky.

  Ketchum was in the passenger seat. He was a wiry, gravel-voiced black man who hated everybody with the possible exception of Weiss. He turned to Weiss now and growled, What the fuck, man? You think because he didn’t let the girl get raped he’s Saint Francis? He’s psycho garbage. He’s gonna be psycho garbage till he dies.

  Weiss, gazing out the windshield, shrugged. He couldn’t explain. It was partly about the girl, sure: the fact that Bishop had risked his own freedom to save her. Then there were Bishop’s medals, the Purple Heart and so on. Weiss was a patriot down to his toes. He regretted his lack of military service, and that stuff counted with him a lot. Then there were his instincts about people, the things he knew about them sometimes without understanding why. Whatever it was, he had already made up his mind.

  He hoisted his heavy body out of the car. Opened the back door. Grabbed Bishop by the collar. Dragged him across the seat. Dragged him across the pavement. Dumped him, handcuffed, onto the patch of grass.

  Lying there on his back at the big man’s feet, Bishop sneered up through the dark and said…(This, for some reason, is my favorite part of the story.) He said, Why don’t you take the handcuffs off me, tough guy?

  And Weiss laughed once and said, What the fuck kind of stupid question is that?

  Weiss then proceeded to beat the living crap out of him. It was a thorough, expert, methodical job. It went on so long that even Ketchum sniffed and shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat of the Dodge. Still it went on. Bishop’s blood, spattering the lavender flowers and the grass, was invisible in the night. His grunts and retching were swallowed by the gentle plashing of the surf. It went on and on. And he stayed conscious through the whole thing, too. Weiss made sure of it.

  By the time Weiss delivered the final kick into the prisoner’s solar plexus, he was pretty worked up. He seized the front of Bishop’s shirt in his two hands. He hauled the limp body off the ground. He snarled directly into the bloody, swollen face.

  You wanna be a piece of shit your whole life? he shouted at him. A man like you. You wanna be a piece of shit?

  Then he dumped Bishop onto the earth again. Took off the cuffs. Left him there. Stomped back to the Dodge.

  He lowered himself behind the wheel.

  Damn it, Weiss, said Ketchum. That’s just soft.

  Weiss angrily shoved the car into gear, and they drove away.

  Weiss didn’t see Bishop again for a year or so. By then, Weiss had left the force. He was just starting the Agency. One day, before he’d even hired a receptionist, he looked up from his desk and Bishop was standing there.

  You remember me? Bishop said. He looked ragged. He smelled bad. Weiss wondered if he’d been living on the streets. He wondered if he’d come in here looking for revenge.

  Yeah, Weiss said. I remember you.

  I want to work for you, Bishop said.

  Okay, said Weiss. Sure.

  But it was a complicated thing. For Weiss, there was that whole burden of fear for Bishop’s soul and the envy of his practically pathological virility. There was the vicarious thrill of sending him out on a job and the responsibility—the guilt—for loosing him on the world at large.

  For Bishop—well, Weiss might’ve been the only man on earth for whom he had ever had any real respect or affection. If Weiss gave him an assignment, he’d walk through hell to get it done. But maybe Weiss, with his big, essentially moral presence, crowded Bishop a little, too—the way conscience can crowd the fire in a man. Maybe sometimes Bishop wanted to push Weiss off, to break free of him, free of his faith and expectations, free of his heavy ethical code.

  But—so far, anyway—he could never quite do it. And Weiss could never quite let him go. I think they both understood that Weiss was Bishop’s last chance, his only chance. With Weiss, with the Agency, Bishop might slowly become the man he had once dreamed of being, the man Weiss believed he still was, deep down.

  Without Weiss, alone, what would Bishop turn into? What would he be but a man like Ed Wolf?

  Or, for that matter, a man like Cobra?

  Sixteen

  Bishop was in Shotgun Alley the next night, and Honey came in alone. She was wearing hip-hugger jeans and a lacy tank that left her midriff bare. Her hair swung soft and free around her fine-featured face. She scanned the bikers at the tables quickly. Then she spotted Bishop at the bar.

  It was Tuesday, early evening. The roadhouse was quiet. Bishop was on a stool back in that gnarly corner where the Outriders liked to be. He was drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette. His eyes met Honey’s eyes. She came toward him. His gaze traveled down her as she moved. She smiled, shook her head.

  “You’re gonna lose those eyes if you don’t take better care of them,” she said, pulling up to the rail. “Bottle of Rock,” she told the barmaid. She looked back at Bishop. “Where d’you think you’re going with this, Cowboy? Huh?”

  Bishop grinned. Took a lazy drag off his Marlboro. “You never know.”

  “Yes, you do. You know. I know anyway.”

  “Nah.” The smoke drifted up from his mouth as he spoke. “You just think you know, Honey. Could turn out you’re wrong. Could turn out I’m the next big thing in your life.”

  She blushed. Even in the dim bar light, Bishop saw it. It startled him, reached him down deep. For a moment, she resembled the girl she’d been, the schoolgirl in the snapshots on her vanity table back home. Bishop felt something shift inside him. His ache for her shaded over into longing. It was a strong feeling. Too strong. It irked him. It made him want to hurt her somehow.

  The barmaid clapped a beer bottle down in front of her. Honey swiped it up a little too casually. She leaned back against the bar. Studied the big room as if she was done with Bishop for the night. “Excuse yourself,” she said. “You’re dreaming out loud.”

  Bishop laughed. “That’s good. That’s funny. Only I’m telling you: It’s not right.”

  “No?”

  “Uh uh.”

  “All right,” she said. “Enlighten me.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’m gonna have you, Honey. I’m gonna take you away from Cobra and I’m gonna have you.”

  She lost the blush, went pale. She lost the bored look and whatever was left of her smile. She turned her face to him. “What are y
ou, fucking nuts? How about I tell Cobra you said that? What d’you think’ll happen then?”

  Bishop’s Marlboro box was on the bar. He lifted it, shuffled a stick out at her. She took it. ‘Thanks.” He held his lighter up, struck the wheel. He waited until their eyes met across the fire.

  “You won’t,” he said softly then.

  She drew the fire into the weed. Let him smell the smoke on her exhale. “I might.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “Oh right. You’re not afraid of him.”

  “No,” said Bishop. “Are you?”

  Honey went back to her beer bottle. “You know what, Cowboy? Fuck you,” she said. She swigged her beer hard.

  Bishop smiled. He watched her hand on the neck of the bottle. Her painted red fingernails against the green glass.

  “You know, I got a theory about you, Honey,” he told her.

  She made a noise, rolled her eyes. But he didn’t go on. So she had to ask him, “All right. What’s your big theory?”

  “My theory is you’re in too deep.” She came out of another swig of beer. Glanced at him, her blue eyes hot. He went on smiling. “My theory is you got yourself into something ’cause you thought it would be cool and now it’s not so cool and you can’t get out.” He could see her teeth between her lips. He could see she was seething. “You keep telling yourself you want to be here. You keep telling yourself how exciting and rebellious it all is. But right there”—he tipped his beer toward her exposed navel—“in the pit of your belly, you know you’ve crossed the line. I think right now you’d sell your soul to get the hell out of here.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s my theory.”

  “And let me guess. You’re the guy who’s gonna take me away from all this.”

  “I might,” he said. “If you’re lucky.”

  Her laugh was harsh. She leaned in toward him, close, with her teeth bared and her eyes flashing. “You wanna hear my theory, Cowboy? My theory is I tell Cobra your theory and he cuts your heart out and uses it for an ashtray. That’s my theory.”

  Bishop shook his head. Never took his eyes off her. “Yeah, but, see, that’s not gonna happen.”

  “Oh? Won’t it? You think so? Why not?”

  “Because Cobra’s over, Honey.”

  “Oh!” she said thickly. “Oh yeah. Oh right. Now it’s you, huh?”

  “That’s right,” said Bishop. “Now it’s me. From now on, in your life, it’s all me.”

  “Where do you get this shit?” she asked him. She leaned back against the bar again, her elbows on it. “You’re so fucked now, it’s not even funny.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah. I should feel sorry for you.”

  Bishop nodded, with that wry expression of his. He took a good long time tamping his smoke out in the bar’s black ashtray. “Only here’s the thing,” he said.

  “You tell me the thing,” she said. “You tell me.”

  “The thing is, your boyfriend did the Bayshore Market, and he’s going down.”

  She turned fast. He could look right into those hot eyes and see the anger die and the fear come up from underneath it.

  “If you were there, Honey, even just there, it’s felony murder. The same as pulling the trigger.”

  “What are you—? Who are you?” she said.

  “That gets you life in a cell about the size of your bathroom back home, Honey—if they don’t just march you down the death house aisle for show.”

  The fear flared brighter. Oh yeah, she’d thought about it, all right. She had the picture of it right there in her mind. The cell, the death house—she had it all in her mind already. Which was just the way he wanted it.

  Her whisper when she spoke again was dry and faint like a little puff of dust. “Who are you?”

  He planted a fresh cigarette in his lips. Lit it quick. Squinted at her through the lighter’s flame. He felt tight inside, tight and pulsing all over. He liked this, doing this. He liked to see her with all the bullshit gone and the fear showing naked.

  “They just might, you know,” he said. “A rich, pretty white girl with all the advantages. They just might give you the needle, just to show they would. I hate to think of you on that table, Honey—”

  “Stop.” She choked on the word. Her eyes misted over with terror.

  Bishop couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman more. He felt wild inside, out of control with the feeling. He didn’t know what would happen next, what he’d do, what he’d say—even he didn’t know.

  He lifted his hand. He brushed her cheek with his fingertips. She was too shocked, too scared, too uncertain, to pull away. He spoke around the cigarette in his mouth. “So you can tell Cobra, if you want to. And he can kill me. Or he can try. But in a couple of days, a week, maybe two, there’ll just be another guy.” He took his hand from her. Plucked the cigarette from his lips. Gestured at her with it. “And he won’t be nice like me. He won’t be willing to get you out. I am.”

  She stared at him. She didn’t answer, couldn’t. He watched her breathe. He watched her swallow. She was wearing a pink glossy lipstick that made her mouth look wet, but it was really dry, and he watched her dampen it with the tip of her tongue. She stared and stared at him.

  Then the roadhouse door banged open and in strutted Cobra. In strutted Shorty in his wake with his heavy arm slung over the narrow shoulders of his little redhaired girl, Meryl. Then the tough-featured Steve came in and Charlie, the muscle boy, followed. And then the door swung shut behind them.

  And then it banged open again. And then in came Mad Dog, last of all.

  Seventeen

  Now they were at their table, all of them. All of them smoking, knocking back beer after beer. Cobra was holding forth with hazy eyes.

  “The cage people, man. The cage people don’t like to see things, don’t like to see the way things really are. With them, reality kind of passes by the window, fades into the background, y’know? They put it out of their minds. They forget it. They tell themselves: Life’s about me, man. I’m toodling down the road here. Life’s about, like, Junior got into college. Or Daddy got a promotion. Or Mommy went to church and prayed for world peace.” All those sharp angles on his V-shaped face arched as if everything he was saying were a joke. As if it were a joke and not a joke at the same time. “But when you’re us, and you’re out there, jamming in the wind and the weather, you can see it all, dude, it hits you right in the face and you can take it all apart. You know it’s not about that Mommy-Daddy shit. It’s not about that shit at all.” He leaned his elbow on the table, turned his questioning, comical expression from one of them to the next. “It’s about firepower. That’s right. It’s about who can kill who. See, the cage people, they got the cops. And the cops got the guns. And the cops can kill us and if we kill the cops, the cops can keep coming and kill us anyway. That’s why Junior can go to college in the first place. That’s why Mommy can go to church and pray for peace. That’s the only reason. Because without those cops, without those guns, brother, we would fuck Mommy. We would fuck Mommy right up her tight little ass, right there in her church, and then we’d slit Junior’s throat and take Daddy’s promotion and make him eat it. Because then we’d have the firepower and there wouldn’t fucking be no church to pray for peace in. Because that’s all church is, man: It’s their guns instead of our guns.”

  Shorty was nodding. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And Meryl was nodding, snug under Shorty’s arm. Charlie said, “Amen, bro.” And hard-boy Steve, practically asleep in his beer, muttered something that sounded like “Ey-muh-ey-wha.” Which was all pretty much the way things usually went whenever Cobra got philosophical like this.

  But tonight—tonight, there was a lot of other stuff going on at the same time. A lot of secret glances and eyeball-to-eyeball exchanges with deep meanings going on. A lot of unannounced dark doings on a lot of people’s minds.

  Honey, for instance. Honey couldn’t keep her eyes off Bishop. Normally she not only l
istened when Cobra discoursed, she listened with an admiring expression on her face. Cobra liked that. But tonight she was distracted. She kept stealing furtive sidelongs across the table, Bishop’s way. And Bishop—he’d catch her glance and sort of smile his ironic smile at her. He knew she was thinking about death row and wondering if Cobra really was over and if Bishop really was her only ticket out.

  So Bishop would smile his ironic smile, and then he would return his attention to Mad Dog. Because Mad Dog and he, meanwhile, were looking death at each other. Passing lazy, laid-back stares of sudden death back and forth across the ashtrays and the beer mug rings. Mad Dog was on God-knows-what: meth and pot and three kinds of booze at least. The whites of his lunatic eyes were streaked with red, and you could tell just by looking at them that he was off in some other zone someplace, some crazy, drugged-out zone where his thoughts swarmed around his head like slow-motion mosquitoes and he couldn’t move to swat them and didn’t particularly give a shit if they swooped in and sucked him dry. He hunkered solid in his chair, all three hundred pounds of him. One arm slung over the back, the other resting on his belly with the beer mug in his hand. He made no secret of the gun in his belt. That big .44. He had his BORN TO RAISE HELL T-shirt pulled down over it, but the blocky shape of the grip was clear to see. And Mad Dog watched Bishop. And his weirdo smile with its missing teeth was visible in his scraggly beard as a thin strip of white and black, like piano keys. And the smile said, I’m so going to kill you, dude. So soon.

  Bishop smiled back. He was feeling good. He was feeling jazzed. Honey’s glances and Mad Dog’s stare, the beer and the pulse of longing and the smell of a killing on its way—it was all like energy going into him, like sizzling bolts of blue electricity zapping into his core, charging up his senses until the bar—the whole world—was clear and fine and bright. Something was going to happen. Maybe everything was going to happen. Tonight, tomorrow, now. Fast. It was coming fast, and he liked the sense of the speed. Somewhere in some back corner of his brain he had Weiss’s latest e-mail nagging at him. Don’t cross the line. You know what I mean. But that was in a back corner, a nagging voice far away. Bishop was right here, right now, and he thought, Hell, Weiss. What was he supposed to do? This was the assignment. He couldn’t leave now without losing Honey, and he couldn’t help it if Mad Dog made his play.