by Tom Pitts
For her part, Ria Flores never understood the animosity her boys shared, could never grasp her role in their relationship. Brothers fought, she knew that. Ramon always had a wild streak. It was only natural. She worked hard as a salon manager and knew that the long hours took a toll on her family. But it was a compromise; hard work without a husband, or a miserable life of leisure with plenty of extra time to fight, plenty of time to play detective and discover your husband’s hobbies, plenty of down-time to apply make-up to those bruises.
At fifteen, Oscar Flores’s life consisted of school, video games, and hiding from his brother. And baseball. Oscar learned to love baseball while hiding from Ramon. He spent long afternoons in his room watching games on his TV with the volume turned way down. Fate was smiling on Oscar and the Giants for this series. He knew it. There was no school that day and, as far as he was concerned, that was because of the series. He sat patiently in his room waiting all morning for the first pitch at one o’clock. He felt a connection between the dusty shafts of light that filtered into his room and the bright, wide-open sunshine bleaching the fans down at AT&T Park. The same wind that whipped though the bleachers at the ballpark rolled across San Francisco, channeled through the hills and then, moving easily over the flat Mission, blew through the open window above his head. On those days, he was no longer in his room; he was out there with his people. To one day be a ballplayer was a far-fetched fleeting fantasy for Oscar, but to be there at the park, with the fans, that was a reachable dream, a possible reality—practically true. Up in the box with the announcers, in line at the concession stands, sharing opinions with the stranger next to him, these were the things he could and would do. There was a warm feeling inside of him when he watched those games, especially those day games. It was a feeling of family.
Nothing brought family together like prayer. And on this day they were all praying for an end to the top of the sixth inning. The Giants had been up two runs for most of the game, but now the Dodgers had runners on second and third and the winning run was at the plate. Sanchez, who’d been on the mound all day, was showing signs of wear. Oscar felt as though he’d pitched the game with him. He hadn’t gone to the bathroom or the kitchen since the game began. He was afraid now that any absence from the screen might be noticed, marked by karma, or luck, or the great god that controlled baseball, and the lead—with one solid crack of the bat—would be gone.
The pitcher wound up.
The bedroom door opened just a crack.
“Fuck you doing, faggot?”
Oscar didn’t say a thing. He kept his eyes focused on the TV in front of him, watching the pitch. Strike one.
“Hey, you fucking bitch, you got ears?”
Oscar’s focus was intense. He was willing himself to the park. He was the ball boy on the green, waiting. Another wind up. Ball one. Ramon began to look around the room for some imagined object, flipping over empty plates and DVD’s and games cases. Oscar could smell the malt liquor on his breath. The faint smell of beer and stale cigarettes permeated the room. Oscar tried his best to stay at the game, to be invisible. Strike two.
The first punch jolted him. A square blow to the back of the head. He expected it, yet it always surprised him. Just for a second, everything went white. He could hear Ramon’s sick chuckle. Ball two. The next one landed on his ear. Ramon’s breathing sounded tinny and far away, but Oscar could feel his hot breath near him. It was the game that was distant now. The park, the people, were all now strangers. Cold and ignoring.
“Hold still, you piece of shit.”
• • •
Hugh Patterson stood in front of a taqueria at 24th and Capp. The game played silently inside while Hugh stood transfixed. Sanchez wound up, threw, and crack, a double. Both runners on base made it in. A collective moan went up all over the neighborhood. Except for Hugh. A small smile crept across his face. He loved the tension. That’s what made it a real ball game. There was never any worry for him, not really. It was a matter of faith. He didn’t think there was any chance of the Giants not pulling it off.
“Eh, I gotta make a phone call.”
He’d forgotten Alvarez was even there. Hugh nodded and returned his attention to the game. They both carried mobile phones; he couldn’t understand why Vince felt the need to walk away every time he needed to make a call. “Go, go. I’ll be right here.”
Alvarez longed for the privacy of a phone booth. He didn’t want anyone hearing the conversations between him and his wife. Any chance he could, he’d find the most secluded corner possible, turn his head toward the wall and, with an index finger stuck in one ear and the phone clamped onto the other, make his call.
Vince dialed home and got no answer. It was the middle of the afternoon, where the hell could she be? He dialed again. His heart skipped a beat. Was she ignoring his calls? Was she somewhere where she couldn’t answer the phone? Was she afraid for him to know where she was? Or was she with someone and she didn’t want him to know?
He tried to counter these thoughts, but they came too fast. He’d always rationalized his way around these things, finding a way to quiet the jealous voice inside his head. He knew if he could just hear her voice then it would be fine, he would be fine. He walked up 24th Street, staring into his phone and redialing.
Third time is a charm. She picked up.
“Baby, where you been?”
Behind Alvarez, there was a crack. Not the crack of a ball against a bat, but the loud, flat crack of a gunshot.
It only took one bullet to put down Officer Hugh Patterson. It was unnecessary to pump an extra four into his head. The blood flow from a wound like that—when the head is opened up while the heart is still beating—is enormous. It was flowing so fast that the puddle of blood had a ripple. It snaked down toward the gutter, slick and almost black. He lay there, still, not a shutter, not a chance. There was brain matter and skull fragments yards away. An explosion of blood and hair. For the last shot, the killer had bent down and put the gun under Hugh’s chin, turning the top of his head into a volcano.
There were screams long before there were sirens, but the neighborhood was still slow to walk out to investigate. The five shots turned curious heads at the Wells Fargo ATM line at 23rd and Mission, a half a block away. None of them turned quickly enough to get a good look at the dark figure sprinting away. They stepped out into the street to look, but not too fast, they knew this neighborhood. Stray bullets and getaway cars were always a risk. A block away, at 22nd and Capp, several tough looking hombres ran out of the El Trebol bar in defense, clutching the guns in their waistbands and jackets and shouting to one another in Spanish. The gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Drunk and blinded by daylight, they saw no shooter, no victim. The coast was clear.
Alvarez heard the shots and froze.
“Fuck.”
He didn’t bother to hang up the phone, he just turned and ran.
“Fuck.”
When he didn’t see Patterson in front of the taqueria, he figured that his partner must already be running to the scene. Where the fuck was the scene? Alvarez didn’t radio in, he just ran.
By the time he reached the corner of 24th and Capp, he could hear civilians wailing. Near the corner of 23rd, there was a cluster of people. They were knotted together with their backs turned to him. He started up Capp Street, scanning the onlookers for Patterson. Still not hearing anything on the radio, he keyed the mic and said, “Thirty-oh, ten-seventy-one, ten-seventy-one. Shots fired. Shots fired. 23rd and Capp.” He was out of breath. Where the fuck was Patterson?
It was quickly apparent there was a victim. The onlookers were circled around a body. Most of them had cell phones in their hands, either taking pictures or already on the phone with 911. A woman turned away to retch and the group opened up. Alvarez peered in and saw the blue uniform first. Is that blue? Yes, it’s blue. Another cop? A security guard, maybe? His mind, always rationalizing. Lying to him.
An older woman with wet eyes turned to him and sai
d, “Llamar a la policía.”
The police? He was the police. He squinted at her, trying to read her lips. She was still speaking, but Alvarez could no longer hear anything.
Where the fuck was Hugh?
“Fuck.”
This time the word sounded like it had been punched out of him. It was barely a whisper. All the heads in the circle turned toward him, waiting to see what he would do. What was he going to do about one of his own? Vince’s mouth began to water. He tasted bile. He kept wanting to make a positive ID, wanting to see the face, confirm it was not Hugh. He couldn’t find it. There was no face. He saw tufts of red hair glued with blood to everything. He saw the little gold SF Giants logo that was pinned to the uniform, not permitted by regulation. But where was the face?
“Thirty-oh? Thirty-oh?” Alvarez’s radio chimed in stereo with his partner’s.
• • •
The San Francisco Chronicle’s headline read Shot Down! The SF Examiner’s headline simply read, Blood-Bath in letters so fat the word had to be broken in two. Local morning news shows all claimed to have exclusive story information. On Muni buses, in Starbucks lines across the city, people on their way to work traded opinions about the scumbag who gunned down the police department’s most positive force. That’s what the paper called Patterson. Overnight, he’d gone from being a happy-go-lucky guy floating by on dumb luck to being canonized as a true hero of the city, a throwback to the white-hat mavericks of the Wild West.
Oscar folded back the first section of the Chronicle and turned directly to the sports page. The Giants 5-4 loss to the Dodgers yesterday seemed perfectly in tune with the sour mood that hung over the whole city.
There were crime scene detectives and uniform cops crawling over every inch of the corner below their apartment last night. He watched them from the window in his room, keeping his TV off so he could overhear their police banter. Bits and pieces of information came in clips. It was English but sounded as foreign to him as Chinese. It went on through the night. The police radio was the lullaby that had put him to sleep. He was tired of thinking about it.
Oscar’s mother puttered dutifully around the kitchen. Motherly multi-tasking: putting away dishes, pouring cereal, wiping the stove, making lists. Her deliberate menial tasks took on an insect-like business quality. It blocked out the chaos of last night. His mother didn’t mention a word about the shooting, even though police came to interview her four different times during the night. Oscar watched her scrub and organize as though it warded away evil spirits.
“Come on, Oscar, hurry up and finish your breakfast,” she said for no real reason at all. It was Saturday; there was no school for him and she didn’t start work at the hair salon till ten.
Ramon had been gone most of the night. He left late and then stayed gone. When he saw his chance to get out, he took it. When the doorbell rang at midnight, he was sure to slip out behind Ria Flores as the detectives were asking their questions. He knew that a young Latino man would be less scrutinized exiting his own house with his mother beside him. He kissed her on the cheek and said he’d be home in an hour. He was down the last few steps and almost to the street before the cop was able to ask him to wait.
The detective asked him a few quick ones, “How tall are you? When were you born? Where were you born?” Simple fast ones, a barometer of guilt. Nerve check.
Ramon was used to it. He knew how it worked. He gave direct, basic answers, saying close to nothing but speeding the interview along.
Ria stepped in, voiced her disapproval, added weight to his alibi. After all, he was inside at the time of the shooting, she said. It was the truth. The same truth she repeated to the detectives until the early morning hours.
“I want you to gather all those clothes on your floor and put them in the basket. That’s why we got it, to keep the clothes off the floor.” Ria spoke to Oscar without looking at him.
Oscar sat at the table letting his cereal get soggy, staring at the picture of Sanchez on the mound. Sanchez had his head down. He looked as disgusted as the city felt.
Beyond disgust, the city felt outrage. There was talk of illegal aliens, youth crime, mandatory minimums, stricter gun laws. There needed to be a special unit to find the killer. A ten thousand dollar reward was announced by the SFPD. The Commissioner promised the department would not rest until there was justice. Flags were lowered to half-mast.
When word filtered out that the killer was most likely a young Latino male, Oakland Tribune columnist Mitch Tatum jumped the gun and called the killer “a scourge that vilified all hardworking, honest Latinos trying to overcome racial bias.” The culprit was demonized to become larger than life. The story eclipsed all others. By two o’clock that day the reward was raised to fifteen thousand. By five o’clock the SFFD kicked in another ten, with Chief Buchwald stating that “no one in a uniform was entirely safe if someone such as the killer were to be allowed to walk the streets.” And by the time that Oscar was trying to ignore the news, the reward was up to thirty thousand dollars.
• • •
Vince Alvarez sat on his brand new weight bench with his head in his hands. The cold steel of the weights around him seemed to reflect his mood. He’d been home only an hour. The morning light streamed through the curtains, the stillness making his happy home seem more like a mausoleum. The night had been filled with endless interviews at Hall of Justice. Endless paperwork. The same questions over and over. He was exhausted, wrung out.
Sue paced, lightly as a cat, working her way back and forth in front of Vince. She wanted to approach him, ask questions, comfort him at least. She could only tiptoe back and forth with her hand clenched over her mouth, holding back those questions like a cough or a sneeze, something that nature was trying to force out.
“I shouldn’t have left him,” Vince said. He held his head in his hands and stared straight at the carpet.
“You said he was watching the game, right? What could have made him walk away from that?”
“No shit. Fuckin’ jerk. He was glued, too, standing there with that stupid grin on his face. I didn’t think he’d walk away from the game, not for anything.” Vince paused and looked up at his wife. “He said he wasn’t going anywhere. I’ll be right here, that’s what he said.”
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
There was a long unhealthy pause while Vince let this sink in.
“I know. I know it’s not my fucking fault. Why would you even say that? I mean, what the fuck? Do you think it’s my fault?”
“No, no.” She was sorry she opened her mouth. “No, honey, no. I didn’t mean that at all.” She took a step toward him, reached out, but didn’t touch him. His head went back into his hands. And the morning crept on.
The Police Officers Association had counsel for Alvarez within hours, the in-house guy they used for everything. Then the department’s interviews turned decidedly more aggressive. His adversaries were now accusers. As soon as he lawyered up, his position, as far as they were concerned, became solidified; there was something he was hiding. Alvarez felt like a pariah.
It was police policy that he be put on administrative leave. As it was any time an officer involved shooting occurred, whether he fired his weapon or not. Last night, the POA lawyer told him not to worry; that, technically, he wasn’t involved in the shooting. It didn’t put Vince’s mind at ease, not for one second.
“I’m a cop.” Alvarez reminded him. “Don’t blow sunshine up my ass. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“Vince, do you mind if I call you Vince? Vince, try not to worry. The department has to go through its procedures, you know this. I’m just here to help guide you through it. Just try to relax and keep your head clear. Answer the questions honestly and we’ll take it from there.” The attorney—his attorney—smiled at him, his words whistling a little through the large gap between his front teeth. He wore thick glasses that made him look academic, but Vince couldn’t shake the feeling that the guy was just an old cop
who couldn’t hack it on the streets.
Now, back in his own home, he could sense Sue’s support eroding. She was upset that some action of her husband had now upended their life. Some fuck-up, some avoidable mistake of his, like forgetting to take out the garbage or pay a credit card bill. She couldn’t understand. The phone calls he made were to her, yet she couldn’t understand. How could she? How could he tell her that he trusted her so little that an unanswered phone could mean infidelity? Those phone calls amounted to an accusation. Truth was, if she had not answered that third call, he would have left his beat, his partner, sped straight to their Sunset home and stormed in to catch her in the act. What act? He didn’t know; she’d answered the third call.
“Now what?” Sue asked. She didn’t want to ask, but she couldn’t take standing in the silence anymore.
Vince lifted up his head from his hands and looked at his wife through bloodshot eyes and said nothing.
• • •
“You see that shit yesterday?”
“I heard it, didn’t see shit.” Ramon knew better. He didn’t know who capped the cop or why. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
“Cops is still everywhere, man.”
“Talking shit.”
“Provoking shit.”
“Exactly,” Ramon agreed. He and his friend, Salty, were sitting on a small side street off of 24th. They sat warming themselves on some dirty marble stairs, sunshine barely overpowering the wind. They shared a beer wrapped in a stained brown bag that was plucked from the gutter. They picked the bag up because the beer was stolen. 24-oz. Budweiser in a can. Salty joked that he stole so much beer from that same corner store he should be asking for a bag anyway. Ramon hated Budweiser. It tasted like piss but that was all Salty could get his hands on.
Fuckin’ Salty. Snaky be more like it.
Ramon’s standards were never high when it came to companionship; he deemed those same standards a necessary quality in his friends as well.