that calls you a snitch over being a cop caller; you got women and children to watch out for here.”
“Think we haven’t tried? The local cops don’t do crap – and any time out-of-town law wanders in to look around, nothing ever comes of it.”
“Not like I’m a big fan of the Man, but some might find that a bit surprising.”
Moe snorted. “Shit, dude, you know first hand no one down in the City gives a damn what happens up here in the sticks. And like I say, SBPD don’t never seem to get very excited over it.
“It used to be he only hit the disposables: hookers and runaways, hitchhikers, street people and such like – he worked Old Town a lot. You may have noticed how squeaky clean it is now. Tell the truth, I didn’t much mind them being gone – a lot of them people had no class at all.
“He almost never ever touches the locals, though – unless they raise a stank about what be going on. Then they gone, too – a lot of upright white Citizens has disappeared around Stagger Bay.
“Now he’s after us; it’s our turn. Maybe we should have made our stand before this. Sometimes he still takes out-of-towner white trash from other neighborhoods. But lately, yeah, it mainly be Gardens folks that disappear around town, whenever we leave here.”
“Sometimes you have to take the law into your own hands,” I observed.
“That’s been tried, too,” Big Moe said. “More than one person has gone after this guy, some of them old family locals with something to lose.”
“What happened?”
“We doesn’t know. They was never seen again, none of ‘em. No one he’s taken has ever been seen again, neither.” Big Moe scuffed the ground with his sneaker. “It occurs to me this is the same guy who killed the Beardsleys.”
“Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out,” I agreed. I waited for him to continue but he was silent. Instead, Moe and his Crips squirmed around like little boys caught playing hooky.
“G-Thug-Units,” Natalie said from her doorway. “Macho men.” She jerked her chin at Big Moe. “This one’s too manly to ask for anything. Does my proud brother really need to say what we want from you?”
Moe was too dark for me to tell if he was actually blushing, but he sure seemed to find the ground exceedingly interesting.
She smiled in my direction. “Do I need to ask you to do it for me? I’d think you’d be as red hot for the Driver as your own son is.”
I smiled right back at her even though Sam didn’t. “You don’t think I’d do it just to help out? You don’t think I’d do it even if I wasn’t involved?”
Natalie snorted, and then turned to go back inside. “You’re a lucky one. Maybe some of your luck will rub off on us.”
I had my own opinion about just how lucky I was, but as I had no incentive to pop anyone’s bubble I kept my mouth shut. “Take me to Elaine’s office,” I told Sam.
Chapter 28
When we got in the Continental, Sam just had to give me the needle: “Sure you’re up to helping me get payback for Karl and Mom, old man? I mean, you being an over the hill one eye and all.”
“How’s about you shut up and let me think?”
Sam snickered as he left the Gardens and headed back into town. “Yeah, thinking. That’s always been your forte, hasn’t it? I know Uncle Karl was the brainiac of the family, don’t even pretend otherwise.”
I cringed as I considered just what kind of war stories my big brother must have filled this kid’s head with. It was plain that Karl had made me the clown of the family saga in Sam’s eyes.
Chapter 29
Once back in Stagger Bay proper, the contrast between its well-kept little Pleasantville-style 1950s houses and the stark, broken-down hovels we’d just left was startling. Sam drove us down I Street, weaving in and out of traffic, ignoring the honking of cars forced to get out the way of his motorboat Connie.
Elaine's office was on the far side of Stagger Bay Center. As we started driving through the Center, I saw the cyclone fence surrounding the School a few blocks down.
Even from here I could see the warped, torn stretch of cyclone fence where Kendra’s roller had slid into it; could see the charred spots on the asphalt from the grenade explosions. As we got closer to the scene, I grew more and more nervous.
“Are you all right?” Sam asked.
I was sweating and breathing hard as I stared at the school buildings now coming into view. Stared at the place where I’d committed multiple murders in front of wide eyed, terrified children.
“Pull over,” I managed to say. “I need a little air.”
Sam swooped up next to the bank, almost going up over the curb and taking out an old lady on a walker. But I wasn’t in the mood to zing him about it, and was grateful he didn’t take advantage of my present weakness to make any wisecracks his own self.
As I staggered out the car I could hear the recess bell ringing down at the school, and I almost hurled in the gutter as those unseen children commenced shrieking and screaming in play. I bent over with my hands on my knees taking deep breaths.
The nausea passed but I was still trembling as I stood and I saw my pale Cyclops reflection in the bank window. I changed focus to look inside the bank at the wreckage from the robbery: holes in what was left of the false ceiling, as if a great beast had ripped at it; stains and burns on the carpet and walls; a shroud-like canvas draped over one of the teller’s windows concealing whatever homicidal damage had been committed there.
The children’s shrieks melted into each other, sounding louder and shriller as I turned away from the bank. The kids were no closer, of course. It could only be a trick of hearing that made their laughter warble up and down the scale like the beginnings of a bad acid flashback; it was just echo acoustics off the interposing buildings.
A Mexican restaurant was down the block, and I walked quickly to it. As I leaned against its front door and almost toppled inside, the brass bell on the knob jingled.
I slid into a booth while the Mexican couple behind the service counter stared at me. A kid who looked like their son came over, brows raised and a menu in his hand.
“Jarritos, por favor,” I muttered. “Fresa.”
The boy hurried to fetch me my bottle of strawberry soda. I sucked on the straw they were kind enough to put in there for me, listening to them whispering in rapid-fire Spanish, pretending they weren’t talking about me.
Focus on the here and now, I told myself – think of the Stoics. You’re happening but you don’t mean shit, I told the trembling and the still-too-rapid breathing. I’m in charge, not you – You can’t defeat me unless I let you. But my uncooperative body didn’t want to listen.
The bell jingled as the front door opened, the Mexican family shut up, and Officer Hoffman stood in the entrance. He walked over to me with all his leather gear creaking, and slid into the booth to sit opposite me.
“I need to change what I told you about Officer Tubbs,” Hoffman said. “I knew her.”
He looked me directly in the eye for the first time in our acquaintance, giving no evidence he noticed how sweaty my face was. His hand fiddled with his mace holster; he couldn't seem to leave his tackle alone.
“I knew you’d tell me when you were ready, Officer Hoffman.” I shoved my bottle of strawberry soda away.
“I told you before, call me Rick.”
A lopsided smile assembled and disassembled itself quickly on his face. “You’re standing up to them,” he said. “If you're doing it I can too – right, Markus?”
“There's nothing to stop you.”
A curious expression crossed his face, one I couldn’t really interpret. Was he angry? Afraid? “If I knew
