He chewed on that, the wheels turning in his booze-sodden head. Then he smiled unpleasantly. “Bygones like your brother? You may think I’m a hick, but that don’t mean I’m stupid. You’d have to go pretty far to convince me.”
“About your brother, just to set the record straight,” Reese said in a sudden wide-eyed approximation of sobriety, “I know you won’t believe me, but he really was dealing major weight. I was serving a legit warrant, and he truly did try to throw down when I served him. He was armed; it was self defense and a fair fight: face to face and man to man. I didn’t pull anything fishy, and if he didn’t want to pay he shouldn’t have tried to play.”
I winced. With my squirrelly big brother Karl it was surely possible, though I wasn’t about to nod in sheepish acknowledgment. “The dank wasn’t the only reason you were there.”
“You see? There’s no way I could ever convince you. But like I said, I have nothing to apologize for.”
“They’re ready to crack, Reese,” I said. “You’ve got them on the run. I figure, if the Driver hits them one more time, pretty much everyone in the Gardens will pack it in and caravan out of here, back down to the Bay Area where they belong. How’s that for proving in?”
He raised a brow. “Now, that’s interesting. One thing though – it means someone else is going to have to get hurt. How you feel about that?”
I planted a look of guilty realization on my face, pretending he’d pointed something out I hadn’t considered.
“As long as it’s the last,” I said in anguished tones, acting like I was gullible enough to believe any of this would end even after the Gardens were Pol-Pot-ed out. “As long as it’s over after that, and no one else has to suffer ever again.”
“I should have been there instead of Kendra, I know that,” Reese said. “You’re right, our shifts got switched that day, I’ll give you that freebie. I usually patrolled the bank and I’m the one who should be dead.”
“So who switched the shifts?”
But Reese’s only reply was an angry shake of the head. “I would have done exactly the same as you, if I’d been lucky enough to be there at the school.”
I envisioned all the scenarios, plugging my brother’s murderer into the equation. “If you’d have been there, you’d have done the same,” I said.
When I spoke those words to Wong I’d just been going for a sound bite, but with Reese I knew it for the truth. Reese appeared surprised at that admission but he wouldn’t have if he’d known me at all. Even though he’d killed Karl, I knew what it was to be used as the point man like he’d been so many times. And I knew what is was like to always be the one that took the fall – Karl had never done time, it’d always been me that paid the price.
“I’m not even pretending to be on your side, Reese. You can go to hell if you think that.” I gestured toward those unseen Southlands. “But you also know I’ve got little reason to stick around here. I’m heading back home to Oakland pretty quick.”
“Oh? Just gonna run off are you?” Was Reese disappointed?
“It’s got to end, that’s all,” I said. “After the next one, after the last one? I can count on you to put it all to bed then, can’t I, Reese?”
Reese scowled, his lower lip pushed into an upside down U. Then he put on a final show of cogitation, at least as much as the alcohol would allow.
“I still think you’re full of it. But you’re probably right; they’ve got to be on their last legs. I’ll let you know my decision.” He took his Wild Turkey, got into his cruiser, and bounced erratically away over the cemetery’s uneven ground.
He was going to decide? Yeah, right. I figured Reese for the kind that wouldn’t change his underwear without specific instructions from his higher ups.
I already had a pretty good ideas just who that had to be. And I wondered what they thought about how wide open he was playing things, how sloppy his grief and his drinkage was making him.
I gave Big Moe a wave to let him know I hadn’t forgotten him and wended my way through the tomb stones, searching. If Karl or Angela had been buried here I would have paid my respects; but there’d been no money and they’d been cremated, their ashes scattered to the wind. No Potter’s Field allowed for in Stagger Bay.
My quest didn’t take long: Kendra’s tombstone was a huge slab of polished pink marble, taller than any other monument in the whole cemetery including the antique mausoleums the founding father robber barons built. Old Man Tubbs had gone all out.
“We never got a chance to talk in life,” I told Kendra’s towering headstone. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Markus, in case you didn’t already know.”
I looked over at Moe, who sat in the Taurus listening to his stereo. “The reason I’m here, Kendra, is to thank you. Everyone’s making a big deal about what I did that day but I’m a total fake. It was a fluke, blind dumb stinking luck. I never expected to survive. I never thought I could really save any of those kids.”
“You were the hero that day, Kendra. I came to figure out that if you hadn’t shown the guts you did when you died, I couldn’t have done what I did.
“I like to think that, at the least, we would have been friends. I know you couldn’t have been any part of what’s going on in this town, Kendra. And I know you’d wish me well when I tell you I’m going to bring it crashing down on their heads. They’ll all curse my name before I’m through.”
“That’s all,” I said.
Was there an afterlife? Was Kendra in some kind of heaven? The possibility sort of comforted me, but I really didn’t have enough faith to be able to invest in the theory.
Angela, Kendra, and Natalie: I had three women in my life right now, and two of them were dead.
Chapter 45
When I got to the car Moe was still listening to the stereo. But instead of music I heard a man’s voice speaking urgently and persuasively; Big Moe was paying such rapt attention that he didn’t notice I was there until I opened the passenger door. He quickly switched from CD to radio as I climbed in.
“So what was that?” I asked.
Moe gave me a pained look, but ejected the CD and handed it over. It was a motivational course as read by one of America’s top self-help gurus; the tall guy.
“He has some good stuff to share,” Moe said. “The man’s very helpful to me.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “If it’s useful, keep it. If it’s useless, throw it away.” Big Moe’s usual doom and gloom demeanor seemed to soften in response.
“You knew Wayne pretty well, right?” I asked.
“Sure,” Moe said.
“Okay, I know you weren’t in with his last clique – those guys from out of town I mean. But why’d they go so Terminator that day?”
I was still chewing on what Hoffman had told me, trying to decide how much was bullshit and how much was useful. Tubbs and Reese sure acted like they believed it, which was more important than whether or not there was a lick of truth to it. “Hell, Moe, where did Wayne and them get all those drugs they were on? Was it from you guys?”
“Not from any of us, I swear. I’d tell you if they had, it’s no big – but their dope didn’t come through the Gardens.”
“Okay,” I said, believing him – there was no profit for him to lie in this case. “So how long you known Sam?”
“Oh, since kindergarten man. You probably don’t remember, but I came over to your house a few times when I was a little kid. Your wife always put out fruit. I liked that better than the candy a lot of the moms gave us.”
I closed my eye and tried to recall, but shook my head when no memories came.
“Don't worry about it. You know Sam has a real mean streak in him, don’t you?” Moe asked, his tone admiring. “Sometimes he rolls like he just don’t care.”
“Before my baby’s mama had my kid, Sam and me used to go around on Saturday nights crashing parties we wasn’t invited to.” Moe looked at me then away. “Hate to be the one to tell you, but they’s a lot of guys in Stagger
