If even then.
“Those parts I get,” I countered. “Free flick, a temperature that isn’t somehow even hotter than where we just got back from? Hell yeah, I’m in.”
“So then why are you complaining?” Swinger asked. “That’s my job. You moving in on my turf?”
The smile on my face grew a bit larger as we threaded our way through the parking lot. On a Saturday night, the local crowd seemed to be out in force, many of them most likely having the same thoughts we did about seeking cooler climates for a few hours.
“I’m not complaining,” I replied, lifting my hands in surrender. “Just...Captain America? Seriously? Don’t you get enough of that stuff at work every day?”
The argument was one I’d made no less than a hundred times in the preceding few months. Ever since the first trailer for the movie had been released and Swinger had started talking about making us go see it.
In a vacuum, I could kind of see the appeal. Iron Man a few years before was entertaining. Thor was a bit rougher, but I wasn’t sorry we went.
Of course, that vacuum assumed that we hadn’t just spent every day of the last six months with a rifle in hand. That we hadn’t been tucked away in a jungle we weren’t allowed to ever speak of.
That we had even the slightest desire to hear more gunshots or see a scrubbed-down version of what military life is really like.
“Come on, man,” Wendell said, extending a fist and clapping me on the arm. “Didn’t you grow up reading comic books? Cap is an icon.”
The neon signage along the front of the theater gleamed over the front row of cars in the lot as we made our way forward. Already I could feel a thin veneer of sweat having arisen just from the short walk, my cotton t-shirt starting to cling to my back. Another ten minutes, and I would be openly dripping.
I hated to even think what it must have been like under the blazing afternoon sun.
“Nope,” I replied. “Must have been too busy playing sports and dating women.”
Laughter was the only response from both as we mercifully made our way off the asphalt of the parking lot. Stepping up onto the concrete sidewalk lining the front of the multiplex, we moved three across for the ticket line. Around us, a loose gaggle of people headed in the same direction, herding us forward.
Not once did any of us think to look over at the exit doors parting to our right as we went. Never did we so much as glance at the pair of young women stepping outside.
At least, not until a voice I hadn’t heard in over two years called out, “Kyle?”
Chapter Eight
Byrdie wakes with the right side of his face pressed into the sand. Cracking his eyes to nothing more than slits, the bright glare of day bursts in, threatening to make his head explode.
On his back he can feel the harsh warmth of the sun. A faint breeze slides over his body, shoving around the long hair laying limp across his neck.
Peeling his head away from the earth, a torrent of stray grains falls from his cheek. Many more cling to his skin, plastered there by the sweat and blood coating him.
Twice he works his tongue around the interior of his mouth, the top of it feeling like sandpaper as it scrapes against the back of his teeth.
Sliding his hands up under him, Byrdie pushes himself upward. When he’s made it a foot or so, he twists his body to the side, coming to rest on his bottom, his feet extended before him.
Lifting a hand to his brow, he peers into the distance.
Where he is, there is no way of knowing. As far as he can see in every direction is nothing but sand, the monochromatic scheme broken up only by the occasional tuft of sage grass and his motorcycle parked a few yards away.
How long he has been there is equally uncertain, the last thing he remembers being the confrontation with Ringer in The Wolf Den. A confrontation he is reasonably certain he was winning before letting his guard down for just a split second. Turning to address the guys around him, his arms extended out to his side, was all it had taken for Ringer to land that one big shot. One looping right hook that sent everything to spinning, what little remains thereafter nothing more than a blur before cutting to black.
Lowering both hands before him, Byrdie splays his fingers wide. The tops of several knuckles are scabbed and bloody, indication that at least what he does remember is accurate. Lifting them to his face, he traces his fingertips down either cheek, assessing the damage.
Compounding what Kyle Clady started a few nights before, Byrdie can feel that the left side of his face has taken the brunt of the damage. Already swollen, it now feels woefully disfigured, the flesh soft and spongy, painful to the touch. The surface of it seems as if it is two sizes too small, everything taut, each movement tugging in various places.
A scowl comes to Byrdie’s face as he again works his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Managing to conjure the smallest bit of saliva, he spits it onto the sand beside him, the red liquid standing out against the pale ground.
“Bastard,” Byrdie mutters, lowering his hands back to his chest. Running them down the front of his body, he checks along his ribs and torso, going through the usual progression after waking from a bad tussle.
Far from the last – or even the worst – fight he’ll ever be in, he goes through the paces one at a time. Finding everything in working order, it isn’t until his hands make it all the way back to his lap that he realizes what is missing.
“My vest,” he mutters. His hands shoot back up to his chest, patting over the same area he touched just moments before. Finding it just as bare as the previous time, he snaps his attention toward his bike, seeing nothing save the sun flashing off the front headlight.
The showdown with Ringer had been coming for some time. Byrdie knew it, is reasonably certain that his counterpart did as well. Same for every single man wearing the brand. For years, the two had managed to coexist for the greater good, but the time had finally come to put that shit aside.
When Byrdie refused to accept whatever scraps were thrown his way, reward for being a good lapdog.
Still, never would he have imagined this.
“No,” he pushes out, drawing his feet up under him. Rising to full height, he feels the world begin to spin, the swelling in his head causing everything to tilt on edge. Holding his hands out wide, he makes it no more than a step, his body listing to the left. Staggering forward, he falls to a knee, dust rising around him, clinging to his bare chest.
Managing to make it back onto his feet, Byrdie stumbles on. Cleaving a haphazard line through the sand, he manages to cover the ten feet before falling against the side of his motorcycle, the heavy machine tilting against the kickstand.
“No, no, no,” Byrdie says, running his hands atop the scorching leather of the seat. Finding nothing there, he pops open each of the saddle bags on either side, both completely empty save a couple of plain cotton t-shirts.
More sweat rises to the surface as he continues searching. Jerking the motorcycle to and fro, he checks every square inch, finding absolutely nothing.
Releasing his grip on the seat, Byrdie watches as this time the kickstand is unable to support it. Toppling to the side, the machine lands in a heap, a perfect encapsulation of everything that has gone down in the last week.
Really, the last couple of years, if he’s being honest.
The terms of the fight were clear before they’d started, but Byrdie assumed it was all just posturing. Ringer had taken some heavy losses in the last week. The vest was under attack, and the man at the top had done nothing besides sit at his table in the corner and direct others.
Hell, he’d even let that little blonde piece walk in with a gun in hand and start giving orders.
Needing to reassert himself, he’d gone after Byrdie. A man he outweighed by a hundred pounds and knew was already wounded.
And even at that, he’d needed a lucky shot to get the upper hand.
Never, though, would Byrdie have imagined it sticking. He’d taken his licks and received
his penance. A public flogging for a bit of insubordination.
This was something else entirely, though. Something he’d never seen, or even heard of, in all his years riding with the Wolves.
Bit by bit, he could feel all of this rise within him. Anger, frustration, a hundred other things each in equal measure, all bubbling upward until finally he pointed his face toward the heavens and began to scream.
Long and loud, he let it roll out across the desert, expelling everything he had, until he himself collapsed into the same misshapen heap as the motorcycle beside him.
Chapter Nine
“What did he say?” Mark Tinley asks, the question arriving a moment before he does. Despite the handful of people that have drifted in and are currently huddled up in the bullpen area, it is the only voice Malcolm Marsh can clearly make out. The sound of it pulls his head up in time to see his partner pass through the doorway.
Like him, he looks like he hasn’t slept much in the last several days. A healthy amount of tan from his recent trip to Costa Rica helps to obscure some of the bags under his eyes, as does the man being right at thirty years of age.
Even at that, it is obvious their recent caseload is getting to him as he falls sideways into the same chair Kyle Clady used a couple of hours before.
“Came right out and said he’d met with Hoke,” Marsh says.
“Before or after you’d asked?”
“I asked if he knew him, he countered he did, had just seen him last week.”
Raising a hand, Tinley runs it back over his thick hair cut short. “Did he give a reason?”
“His wife,” Marsh says. “I guess she was a social worker, used to work with Hoke from time to time.”
Dropping his hand back into place, Tinley presses, “Do you believe him?”
Whether or not he believes Clady is one of several questions Marsh has spent most of the morning trying to work his way through. Enough to fill several pages of the legal pad before him, the various things they have encountered in the last ten days seeming too much to be coincidence, but as yet too far apart to be definitively tied together.
The kind of case that keeps a detective awake long after they should have turned in, their mind refusing to let things go, constantly trying to work things into a pattern that makes sense.
“I believe he went to speak with Hoke about his wife,” Marsh answers. With his gaze locked on the legal pad in front of him, his voice is a bit detached, his word choice deliberate. “Whether it was merely to be the bearer of bad news, I have serious doubt.”
“Do you think he had anything to do with-“
“Hoke being killed?” Marsh asks, flicking his focus upward. “No.”
“Reason being?”
“Two reasons, actually,” Marsh replies. “The first was he made a point of mentioning that he had been to see Greg Bond, the arson investigator over at Clairemont Mesa. Said after that, he swung by his house to see the damage, then he called his buddy and they went to go forget the world for a while.”
Mulling the answer for a moment, Tinley eventually nods. “He’d know we’d follow up with Bond. Wouldn’t have included it unless it was true.”
Without bothering to confirm the obvious, Marsh continues, “And the second thing is, you should have seen the man’s reaction to finding out Hoke was dead.”
“Legit?” Tinley asks.
For a moment, Marsh doesn’t respond. He simply sits and replays the encounter in his mind.
It wasn’t so much that Clady was shocked by the news. That much a person can sometimes effectively pull off. It was that there was much more to it. An underlying weariness at the report of another senseless death having occurred. Another piece that made no sense, the pain of his wife’s recent death still so fresh, making this that much worse.
“Very,” Marsh replies.
When he’d first caught this case, Marsh had figured it would be one of the easier gets he’d had in a while. A Navy SEAL on the verge of washing out, trained in every form of combat, unsettled about no longer having a chance to use his skills.
The way he’d acted when help arrived in the park, how he’d ignored the trench torn through his triceps, gone after the first responder, all hinted at serious guilt.
All Marsh had to do was sit and wait for the man to eventually break. For the truth to come spilling out, the flimsy story that had been supplied wilting under scrutiny.
Nothing of the sort had gone that way. Instead, the account that had been given was not only true, but part of something that was so much larger than any of them could have imagined.
One that could still end up being the springboard out of Central District Marsh is seeking, but for vastly different reasons.
The sound of the desk phone erupting between them cuts the conversation short. Jerking both their attention toward it, Marsh lets his desk chair rock him forward. Pressing his forearms into the edge of his desk, he takes up the phone, placing it down on the pad before him.
Flipping the line to speaker, he says, “Marsh.”
“Hey, Detective, this is Wilson Ramirez out in El Cajon. How are you?”
Hearing the sound of the man’s voice, Marsh can recall their conversation from a day earlier. An information gathering session, the man had shared what he knew about the Wolves from a local’s perspective, his personal experience being far more well-rounded than the SDPD’s Gang Unit database.
Leaning closer another inch, Marsh replies, “I am well, Chief Detective. Thank you again for making a few minutes for me yesterday.”
“Not at all,” Ramirez replies, “happy to do so. In fact, that’s why I’m calling you now.”
Feeling his eyes narrow slightly, Marsh lifts his gaze to Tinley, seeing the young man staring intently at the phone as well.
“This morning I got a call from a contact of mine over at Parkside. I guess late last night, two guys came in that had been worked over something fierce. Way more than your typical barfight.”
Not sure what it might mean, Marsh can feel his pulse pick up slightly. More effective than any caffeine, he stares down at the receiver, practically willing Ramirez to continue.
“How bad we talking?”
“Bad,” Ramirez replies.
“Any ID?”
“Neither were carrying any, weren’t really in much shape to talk,” Ramirez says.
Considering this a moment, Marsh looks down to the pad before him and the assortment of questions needing to be answered. To it he can now add a handful more about what Ramirez is describing.
“But you think it was the Wolves?
“That’s just it,” Ramirez answers. “My guy saw who dropped them off, and he’s pretty sure they are Wolves.”
Chapter Ten
It would have made more sense to have this conversation in a couple of hours. To swing by on my way from the Valley View to Point Loma for the Chuukese mass taking place at St. Mary’s, an event that is infinitely more pressing now in the wake of what Detective Marsh shared with me this morning.
The problem with doing that is that I would have both of the Ogo women with me. No way I could leave them sitting in the car, I would either have to give a slimmed down version of what happened to my in-laws or I would need to let Fran and Valerie hear everything that had actually taken place.
Neither being good options, I pull up to the childhood home of my late wife just shy of one o’clock. In the air is the scent of fresh-cut grass, the front lawn looking like it was knocked down since my last visit the day before.
Respecting the effort that was put in, I loop around the back of my car and take the front walk. Making it no further than the concrete slab serving as a front stoop, a voice calls out from within the house, ordering me in.
Doing as instructed, I pause on the foyer long enough to strip away my shoes. Taking a moment to let my eyes adjust, I cast a glance around the living room, finding it completely empty.
“Hello?”
“Back here,” my mother-in-law
calls out, the sound of her voice pulling me through the open doorway on the back end of the living room. Passing through the kitchen, I find her and my brother-in-law Hiram both seated at the dining room table. Their respective attire hints at what they’ve been up to all morning, Angelique in her Sunday church clothes, Hiram wearing the same t-shirt and shorts he was in yesterday, grass clippings clinging to his exposed calves.
On the table between them is a platter of tamales, fresh salsa in a bowl beside it.
At the far end of the table is a third place setting, a gesture both touching and harrowing.
“Hey there,” I say, pausing along the edge of the room as they both stare up at me. “Sorry for interrupting.”
“Nonsense,” Angelique replies. “We’ve been waiting for you to get here.”
Casting my gaze across the table a second time, I notice that both of their plates are still empty. Aside from the missing top half of Hiram’s water glass, nothing appears to have been touched.
I can feel the heat of embarrassment rising to my face, cheeks no doubt glowing pink.
“Well then, sorry for being tardy,” I say, slipping past Angelique and dropping into the seat earmarked for me. “I didn’t realize...”
“Well, you should have,” Angelique snaps. “In fact, from now on, plan on it.”
Not under the best of circumstances can I ever remember winning any sort of back-and-forth with the woman that is basically a miniature version of what my Mira would have been in twenty years.
This last week being a long, long way from that, I know better than to even attempt declining.
Instead, I watch as she begins to dole out the meal, her small frame mandating she has to stand to reach everybody’s plate. Once steaming food has been deposited before each of us, she turns my way, her lips pulled back into a tight line.
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