Flashback

“Not Mr. Brown, whom you seek, but a certain Bad Nigger Ajax. You know the man?”

“I know the man,” Nick said just as softly. He’d been the arresting officer and his testimony had sent Ajax away more than ten years before for repeatedly sodomizing a six-year-old girl. The girl had died of internal hemorrhaging.

“It will be like this,” said Soul Dad in the same quick, soft, reverberant whisper. “Mr. Brown will invite you into his tent-hovel. You will wisely decline. Mr. Brown will say, ‘Let us step up here where it is private.’ Ten steps up, Mr. Ajax will pop up from behind another tent and shoot you in the face. His friends—or, rather, his fearful acolytes, since Mr. Ajax has no friends here—will block the view of your sniper with their bodies while Mr. Ajax escapes into the crowds toward left field. The pistol will not be found.”

Nick stared at the old man. Eighty-nine years old. Soul Dad—whatever his original name was—had been born in the early days of World War II.

Before Nick could speak, even inanely to say “Thank you” again—although he had no idea if the old man was telling the truth or setting him up for some other form of assassination—Soul Dad put his hands together, bowed, turned, and walked away down what once was the third-base line.

Nick took two steps back while surveying the maze of tents and shacks filling the entire first tier behind home plate. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

“We heard it,” came Sato’s voice in his ear. “I am looking at a photo of Ajax right now.”

Nick licked his dry and chapped lips. “Any suggestions on what I should do?”

“Mr. Campos suggests that you should come back through the centerfield fence, Bottom-san. He says to jog and weave. Ajax’s pistol is probably of small caliber.”

Sweat was running into Nick’s eyes but he resisted the urge to wipe it away. “I’m going to go up and find Delroy. Can you react fast enough to take Ajax out when and if he pops up?”

“It will be in deep shadow up there.” Sato’s voice was calm in Nick’s ear. “He will expose himself for only a second. And I have something to confess to you, Bottom-san.”

“What?”

“All American black men look pretty much the same to me, Bottom-san.”

Nick laughed despite himself. “Bad Nigger Ajax weighs around three hundred pounds,” he said, covering his mouth with his hand so no one in the stands could read his lips. How many pitchers have done that here with their mitts? he wondered.

“I confess, Bottom-san, that all three-hundred-pound American blacks look the same to me. So sorry.”

“Well,” said Nick behind his hand, “shoot the one aiming a gun at me. If you can.”

“Warden Polansky will not appreciate the paperwork,” Sato said with no hint of emotion. Nick had no idea if the big security chief was joking. And he didn’t care.

Nick went up the dirt ramp into the stands. Men outside their tents shrank away from him—or, rather, from the killing circle that moved with him. He felt their gazes on his back as he climbed the steps. The center railing that had been there in baseball days had long since been torn out.

Halfway up the first section, he paused near the tent that Soul Dad had pointed out. “Delroy Nigger Brown!” he shouted. His only satisfaction was that his voice still sounded strong, no quaver. Less satisfying was the sudden urge to piss down his own leg through the K-Plus armor. “Delroy Nigger Brown! Come out!”

“Who wants me?” came a familiar weaselly voice from inside the tent.

“Come out here and I’ll tell you,” said Nick, lowering his own voice a little but still using his never-take-no- for-an-answer cop tones. “Now.”

“You all come on inside the tent where it be quiet,” whined Delroy. “Nothin’ in here to be, you know, afraid of, cop-man.”

“Out here, now,” repeated Nick. Each syllable was flat, hard, and imperative.

Delroy Nigger Brown came wriggling out of the low tent-shack. He was dressed as Soul Dad had been, in shorts, shirt, and flip-flops, but everything on Brown was as filthy as Soul Dad’s had been immaculate. When he came closer and stood straight, he still barely came up to Nick’s shoulder.

“I ain’t done nothing, man,” complained Delroy. “I only be in here for eight months for selling a li’l flashback is all what it is. And that be ’staken identity.”

Nick had to smile despite his continued urge to run. “Nobody gets sent to Coors Field for selling flash, Delroy,” he barked. “You were hauling coke, X-H, heroin, flashback, and Terror up from New Mexico with you. And selling it to kids. I just have a couple of questions for you… not about any of the drugs or guns or other crap you got caught with.”

“Not about none of that what my, you know, lawyer wouldn’ let me, you know what I’m sayin’ to you, talk about?”

“Right,” said Nick, not even sure what the sniveling dealer had said.

“All right,” said Delroy, brightening suddenly as if Nick were a friend or customer visiting. “Why don’t we, you know, go up there a bit where no one can, you know what I’m tellin’ you, listen and where it be a little, you know what I’m sayin’, out of the sun and like that?”

“All right,” Nick heard himself say. He grabbed Delroy’s upper left arm in a grip so tight that the little dealer let out a yelp.

One step up together, Delroy squirming to get free.

Two steps up. Three. Four.

There was the sudden stink of fresh urine. Nick realized that Delroy had pissed himself. The little weasel hadn’t planned to be next to Nick when the gunfire started.

Five steps. Six. Eight.

“No!” screamed Delroy and tried to pull out of Nick’s grip. He couldn’t.

There were blurs of movement all around. Men dodging, diving, shoving forward, pushing back, coming out of tents and leaping into tents.

The crack of the rifle shot echoed through Coors Field, sounding very much like the crack of a baseball on a wooden bat connecting for a home run. Nick saw the explosion of blood, brains, and skull fragments three rows up and fifteen feet to his right, exactly where Soul Dad had said Ajax would be shooting from.

Doesn’t mean that there aren’t three more waiting, Nick’s brain shouted at him as he dragged a soggy and sagging Delroy up the old seat levels toward the fallen shooter. Men were running wildly now, knocking down hovels and other men to get away from the killing zone that encircled Nick.

In the movies, someone always kneels next to a gunshot victim and puts three fingers against the fallen man or woman’s neck to see if there’s a pulse. Nick had never had to do that—after a while, you could tell at a glance when the person was dead. Of course, it helped—as in Bad Nigger Ajax’s case here—when a third of the man’s head had been blown away and his brains were spread across dirty concrete like so much spilled oatmeal.

Nick was after the gun and he found it—a .22-caliber target pistol with a long barrel. Giving no thought whatsoever to fingerprints, he picked it up, jammed the narrow muzzle deep into the soft skin under Delroy Nigger Brown’s sagging jaw, and pulled the little man with him back down the steps. Nick didn’t look back once at Ajax’s sprawled and spavined corpse.

Men were still fleeing on both sides, toward the outfield walls or the third-base-side dugout or the first- base-side dugout, as Nick pulled Delroy along with him across the open field. Tents were being knocked down and hovels were flying apart in the frenzied exodus. Nick now held the pistol high enough that everyone could see it. Any movement even partially toward him and the gun moved to cover it. There wasn’t much movement.

It reminded Nick of that scene that he and Val and Dara had always enjoyed where Charlton Heston as Moses parted the Red Sea. Pre-CGI special effects, but cool nonetheless.

You’re too cool nonetheless, Nick’s cop brain warned him. Odds are good that there are still people out here waiting to kill you.

It couldn’t be helped. Nick didn’t have permission to take Delroy Nigger Brown out of Coors Field—that would require a court order and two hearings with Delroy’s public defender present, probably three months’ time, only to have the request denied—and he needed information now.

About where the grass of centerfield would have begun, Nick kicked the drug dealer’s legs out from under him. Delroy fell to his knees. Nick set the muzzle against the little man’s forehead. He could see lice moving in what