by David Putnam
I pulled up and stopped on Cherry, one of the more violent streets in Fruit Town, a section of Willowbrook. Two o’clock in the morning, most all the houses remained dark, except the one with the Four-Fifteen-V.
I recognized the house. “Watch yourself, the guy in here is bad news. He gets pumped up on rock and there’s no talking to him.”
We moved up the steps to the porch.
A decorative plaster horse lay in the debris of shattered glass.
We peered in through the broken front window and whispered, “That’s Douglas Howard and he’s Three-Ninety for sure, flyin’ high on rock and drunk on his ass.”
Sonja whispered, “Oh my God, Bruno.”
“I know, he’s huge. It’s going to take a while, but we can talk him down. We gotta fight him, it’s gonna be a problem.”
“No, not him, look at the woman.”
Over in the corner of the living room, Doug’s wife, Norma, cowered as she cradled her arm. Blood from a long, deep laceration on her forehead ran into her right eye, down her cheek and her neck, soaking her blouse. Doug Howard stood over her, fists clenched as he yelled, berating her.
“Have you talked him down before?” Sonja asked. She didn’t wait for my reply. Instead, she drew her baton and stepped into the debris-strewn house through the open door.
Doug heard the crunch of her boot. The giant spun around and roared, his mouth wide, his lips pulled back, displaying yellowed teeth. He was shirtless, his muscles twitched, and sweat gleamed off his black skin.
I took long steps and caught up to her, put my hand on her shoulder to keep her from engaging him. “Go to the car and ask for the Sam unit to respond with a taser. We’re gonna need a taser.”
“Like hell I will. I’m not leaving you in here with the likes of him.”
“Get out of my house.” Doug yelled intelligible words this time as he took a step toward us. Sonja pulled back her baton into the ready position.
“You hit him with that,” I said, “it’s only going to piss him off.” I held up my hand. “Doug, wait, it’s me, Bruno Johnson. You know me, we played B-ball in high school.”
I didn’t know him in high school and hoped that he at least attended one year so it would make him stop and think that what I said might have a bit of truth. “What’s going on here, man?” I said. “Why all the drama tonight?”
He’d expected orders to “get on the ground” or “turn around and put your hands behind your back.” He visibly calmed a little, but kept his fists up at the ready. “I know you?” he asked.
“Sure, sure it’s me, Doug, Bruno Johnson, I grew up over off Nord, over in the Corner Pocket. My brother’s Noble.”
“You’re Noble’s brother?”
Sonja slowly eased around, trying to flank him.
Bad move.
Not with this guy. I couldn’t stop talking, or even look at her, or Doug would, too, and all hell would break loose. Doug could flick her aside, throw her head-on through a wall if he wanted to.
“Sure, sure, Noble’s my brother.”
“You got any cane? Your brother slings the best cane in the hood.” He brought his fists down. Now I knew with a little time I could talk him into the cuffs.
Sonja saw his defenses come down as an opportunity and moved quick as a mongoose after a snake. I yelled, “No.”
She came in behind and sapped him in the head with her blackjack.
Doug acted as if someone flipped off his power switch. He wilted to the floor face-first, his eyes unfocused and half rolled up. He hit with a thud and caused a wave to scatter the detritus of fast-food wrappers, empty Old English forty-ounce bottles, and broken-up furniture.
Norma struggled to her feet, still cradling her broken arm. “My husband. My husband. You bastards, what’d you do to my husband?”
Sonja straddled Doug, pulled his hands behind his back, and cuffed one hand with one set of cuffs and had to use her second set to cuff the other because of Doug’s size. Then she cuffed the two sets together.
“You shouldn’t have sapped him,” I said. “I could’ve talked him into the cuffs.”
Sonja, in a half-crouch, looked up, a little startled. She pointed to Norma, who now knelt by Doug and keened. “We have to get her medical aid, and fast. We don’t have time to dick around with this guy. Besides, you said before we walked in here that there was no negotiating with this guy.”
Sonja stood up the rest of the way. We stared at one another. Something passed between us; at least I thought it did. She, too, knew our relationship had just shifted direction, moving on down a bad road. Maybe she’d known before that moment and took her anger out on the back of Doug’s head.
She’d sapped him too hard.
“Go, put out a Code-Four,” I said, “and call for medical aid.” She waded through the debris of broken furniture, never taking her eyes off me. I went and checked on Doug.
She had hit him too hard.
She came back minutes later, got a towel from the kitchen, wet it, and tended to Norma’s face, daubing away the blood from her eye and cheek and neck, the towel turning crimson. Norma sat on her knees next to her man and rocked back and forth, her eyes distant, on the razor edge of going into shock.
Medical aid got there fast, or at least it seemed quicker than normal. It took six of us, including paramedics and the fire fighters, to get Doug up on the gurney. He overlapped the sides. The paramedics treated Norma for a broken arm and lacerations to her face, the largest of which would need a plastic surgeon’s delicate hand. They transported him Code-Three to St. Francis while we followed along in our patrol car with Norma. No one spoke. Norma quietly moaned.
The doc determined Doug to have a depressed skull fracture and transferred him to LCMC, Los Angeles County Medical Center. By the time they admitted him to the jail ward, I had one hour to make an 8:30 a.m. subpoena in Compton court. I had to leave Sonja writing reports in the briefing room. I didn’t want to tell her the kind of trouble she’d be in if Doug didn’t make it. Instead, I looked around to make sure no one was around, then I bent over and kissed her forehead. “See you in a few hours, kid.” We still had to work our regular shift at two in the afternoon. She looked up and smiled. For a brief second, the old Sonja shined through, then her face closed up again.
My heart ached for her. I wanted more than anything for her to be happy. Maybe fatigue clouded my good judgment; I no longer wanted to tell her we were through. I wanted to tell her that, no matter what happened, we could stand together and weather through it.
I sat in court waiting to be called until noon, when the defendant from an armed robbery, Deshawn Simpkins, who’d shot an Asian clerk for looking at him wrong, finally took a plea. I made it back to the station in time to grab an hour-and-a-half nap in the bunkroom downstairs. Sonja wasn’t at the briefing table, and I felt hollowed out inside and a little lost not seeing her. We’d been inseparable for the last three weeks. A glorious three weeks.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“HEY, JOHNSON, GET your black ass up. Come on, man, you’re late for briefing.”
I struggled up out of a bad dream, one with a tree and a rope and white hoods, one with Sonja standing by, restrained, wanting to stop it but unable to. Her beautiful face filled with anguish. I’d done that.
I opened my eyes to see Good Johnson standing over me. At first I didn’t know where I was and thought maybe I was still in the nightmare. Then everything flooded back all at once. This was a nightmare after all. Good Johnson really did populate the real world: the one I lived in. And now he stood next to my bunk in the Lynwood Station basement bunkroom.
He nudged me in the hip with his polished boot a little too hard. “Come on, man, Cole told me to come in and wake up your sorry ass. I did what he asked and now I’m leavin’. You go back to sleep, it’s on you.”
“Partners of all things, of all days for this to happen, son of a bitch.”
“What’d you just say?”
He didn’t turn around.
He just walked out, muttering, “What’d I ever do to deserve this? Huh? Nothin’, that’s what. They fucked me over but good this time, that’s what they did, fucked me over but good. Saddling me with the likes of you.” He walked into the light of the open door at the end of the bunkroom and, like an apparition, disappeared into it.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bunk and tried to decipher what he’d just said. An hour and a half sleep, what the hell. I just closed my eyes not two seconds ago. I rubbed my face hard, trying to wake up. I stood. Every muscle ached and cried out for more rest. I reached to the top bunk and took down my Second Chance vest-body armor. I put it on and then my uniform shirt over it. Good thing I had the sense to take my shirt off and not sleep in it. Still, the shirt looked like I’d already worn it for a week. I took down my gun belt, didn’t swing it around my hips, and carried it slung over my shoulder.
I shuffle-stepped out and held my arm up to the bright light as I crossed the hall and into the briefing room. All of early swing shift sat at the table, waiting for me to arrive before Sergeant Cole started. I sat at the opposite end of the table from Sergeant Cole. My eyes adjusted as my mind continued to wake up.
Over to the right, at the trainee table, Sonja didn’t look at me. She wore a fresh uniform, her hair clean and combed. No one would know she’d only had a couple hours’ sleep unless they looked close and saw the small fatigue wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
Cole smiled. “Nice of you to join us, Bruno.”
I held up my hand, not trusting my voice, sure a croak would come out instead of words.
Cole started to read off the watch list.
Johnny Cane sat next to me and slid a folded piece of paper over. I opened it.
Did you notify OSS about the Abrams on White Street?
–Sonja
I looked up. Sonja now directed her attention at me and saw her answer by my expression. Her jaw locked tight and her eyes narrowed. There’d be hell to pay once we got in the cop car this afternoon. I started to turn angry and wanted to say, Hey, when did I have the time? But Sergeant Cole broke into my thoughts.
“You hear that, Bruno?”
“What’s that, sir?”
“You’re riding in Two-Fifty-Three-Adam tonight with Good.”
“That’s not even funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Lieutenant Rodriquez’s orders. You have a problem with it, see me after briefing.” He gave me the look that said this wasn’t the time or the place to argue about it. He said, “Your trainee is riding with Joe Lopez.”
I could guess what happened. Lieutenant Rodriquez caught wind of the feud between Good and me—the thing that happened in the briefing room, the way I had C-clamped Good, and shoved him up against the wall. And in their typical old-school way of thinking, they put us in the same car to work out our differences. Only in this case it wouldn’t work, and we’d only end up killing each other. Or it could be something else. Rodriquez had a hard-on for Good, thought he was a sadistic racist, and may have put him in the car with me to provoke an incident. Kill two birds with one stone.
Rodriquez didn’t like blacks either. At least not at his station.
What a screwed-up mess. At least Sonja now rode with someone decent. Indian Joe was one of the best training officers at Lynwood Station.
Cole started going over the day-shift log, the calls for service and the extra patrols. I’d also not had enough time to write up the extra patrol on the White Street address and waited for an opening, for Cole to pause long enough for me to jump in and tell the shift deputies about it.
Cole said, “Oh, Bruno, that call last night, the one on White?”
“Yeah, I’m going to put that house in for an extra patrol.”
Everyone froze at the table. Good Johnson chuckled. “Little late for that, dumbass.”
“What? What happened?”
I looked over at Sonja. She slowly stood, her mouth sagging open in shock.
“Shut your mouth, Johnson,” Cole said to Good.
“What happened?” I asked, already knowing, my stomach going sour, the guilt heavy enough to smother me.
“At about twelve hundred hours this afternoon,” Cole said, “suspect or suspects unknown firebombed 16637 White Street. Both occupants perished. The occupants couldn’t get out the bedroom window because of the wrought iron.”
Sonja picked up her aluminum posse box and slammed it down on the table. She spun and shot me a glare that wilted me right down to the bottom of my boots. She left the briefing room and ran up the stairs to the parking lot.
Good said, “Huh, probably her time of the month.”
I stood to go after her.
“Bruno,” Cole said, “give her some time.”
I started to sit back down but changed my mind. “The hell with that.”
I went after her anyway.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I CAME OUT of the stairwell, the afternoon sun almost too bright to see. Sonja had disappeared. I went through the garage area where maintenance worked on the patrol cars, two of them up on racks. I went by the station gym, around back to the two trailers that housed narcotics and gangs. She stood by the ten-foot-tall back fence, fingers intertwined in the chain link. I moved up beside her and put my fingers in the fence and remained quiet. We both watched the street.
“They killed them, Bruno.”
“I know.”
More silence. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Tears streamed down her face, and her body gently trembled.
I wanted in the worst way to take her in my arms and whisper how it would be all right, that I was so terribly sorry that things worked out the way they did. But I couldn’t; we both were wearing uniforms. We both stood out in the open for everyone to see. Cole had admonished me to keep our relationship on the down-low and he’d been right. Still, it hurt something fierce not to console her.
She said, “I’ve got nothing to say to you, Bruno Johnson.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“I’m sorry.”
We stood there for a moment, not talking.
“I guess I do have something to say,” she said, “and I’m only going to say it once so you better listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“Once I say it, there won’t be any discussion. I’ll say my piece and walk away, no discussion, end of story. You understand?”
I nodded, a large lump growing in my throat, and a pain in my chest. I didn’t know if she saw the nod, but she continued anyway.
“In part, I blame you for what happened to those poor folks.”
“I understand.” Right then I’d made a promise to myself to track down the Trey-Five-Sevens and get a little street justice for the Abrams couple. I normally didn’t believe in that sort of thing, but did now. Saw it plain as day.
“I don’t think you do,” she said, “not entirely. You can’t possibly understand or you wouldn’t have screwed up like that.” She lowered her tone. “Trust me, you don’t understand all of it. And you won’t, not until I tell you.”
I looked at her. She still wouldn’t look at me, but instead watched the street on the other side of the chain link.
“Then tell me.”
She turned, her eyes hard. “Not now, after shift.” She wiped her face with both hands and headed back to briefing.
I couldn’t move for a long moment. I just watched her walk away. An emptiness as wide as a canyon yawned open inside me. When the shift ended, she’d do it. She’d end it with us. At the end of shift, she’d say the words that I couldn’t say, not in a million years. Words I didn’t want to hear.
I went back to the station, my legs moving all on their own, the world turning without notice, the sun moving lower in the sky as the day slowly died, the same as it did every day. It would die quietly as it handed off to darkness.
I carried my war bag and
gear out to the car, following along behind Good, who seemed abnormally cheerful. He tended to feast on other people’s hardship; that’s why he worked in the ghetto.
We stopped at the unit assigned to us. Good opened the trunk with his key.
I set my bag in the trunk. “What’s with your polished boots?”
Good turned, his expression a scowl. He always kept his hand on his revolver in his swivel holster so the stock canted the gun back, ready for a quick draw. He did it unintentionally all the time. He imagined himself a ghetto gunfighter.
“Hey,” I said. “And your badge is polished, too. What’s going on?”
“Don’t you worry about it. You don’t stand a chance in hell anyway, so don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. I’m drivin’, you’re bookman.”
He had seniority on me, so I went along with his orders. Normally, deputies would flip a coin. I didn’t want any trouble. I just wanted to get the shift over with so I could talk to Sonja.
As the driver of Two-Fifty-Three-A, he got to choose all the pedestrian checks and car stops we’d make and get us to the calls. My job as bookman meant I’d keep up the unit log on all of our activities and write all the reports for the evening. I didn’t mind—the reports would keep my mind busy.
I opened the passenger door and took out the shotgun. I racked it and checked to make sure the firing pin had not crystallized, something the Ithaca Deer Slayer was notorious for. I loaded it with my own double-ought buckshot shells while I watched Good over the roof of the car. Good smiled.
“What?” I asked.
He got in. I did, too. He turned on the overhead red and blue lights and then the siren to check them.
He smirked.
“What?”
He turned to me with his shit-eating grin. “You sure picked a perfect day to look like you slept in that uniform.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
He shook his head. “There’s a guy, a sergeant who just promoted outta homicide. He’s a lieutenant now. He’s starting up a special team. They’re calling it a Shotgun Team. They handle major crimes, all violent crimes. The team is going to chase the worst of the worst. He’s goin’ around all the stations in The Devil’s Triangle—The Stone, Lynwood, and Carson—to check out the deps, see which ones he wants on the team. Word is he gets whoever he wants, and it’s an automatic promotion to detective whether you’re on the list or not.”