Knuckleball (One Eye Press Singles)

by Tom Pitts

  Ramon and Salty had known each other since first grade. Together they did palm cuts, cigarette burns, pissing contests—actual pissing contests—first blunts, first boosts, first arrests. Ramon had known Salty before he was known as Salty. Ramon knew why he was called Salty and helped him keep it mysterious.

  “Fuckin’ unbelievable. Crazy balls, man. That’s what they should call that guy. Crazy Balls.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy. The fuckin’ guy who did this, man. Shoot a cop in the middle of Capp Street. Fuckin’ crazy.”

  “Shit,” Ramon said. The beer wasn’t even halfway done and it was already flat. Ramon thought it took more than crazy balls to do something like that. It took something evil. All that blood. Leaning over. Sticking a gun under the cop’s chin.

  “Ramon?” Salty said. Ramon wasn’t listening. He was staring at the cement between his shoes. “Ramon, what you got going today? You still got to do shit for your moms or are we free to party?” Salty tried to make it sound upbeat like a rhyme. To party meant doing what they were doing right now. On these steps or maybe they would move to a different spot. A blunt, some more beer if Salty could steal it with out fucking up, wait for someone else to show up with another blunt, bullshit, bullshit some more.

  “No, I ain’t hanging. Fuck that. All these fucking cops jacking everybody up. I’m going home to watch cartoons.” It was true; he didn’t want to answer anymore questions. Cops scared the shit out of him. But more than anything he wanted to get off the street. He was sick of looking at that sidewalk, the gutter. The grey, lifeless color of it. All that blood. The guy with the hood, leaning over.

  “Hey, you see that game yesterday? Fucking Dodgers.”

  “Salty, what the fuck do I care about the fucking Giants? I look like a big baseball fan to you?” Ramon handed the beer back to Salty. “This shit tastes like piss.”

  Ramon stood up and walked away without saying goodbye.

  “Nice shirt, dickhead.” Salty called out.

  Ramon looked down and realized he hadn’t changed his shirt since the day before.

  He was still wearing Oscar’s Giants shirt. Fuckin’ Salty.

  GAME TWO

  When the Giants faced the Dodgers again that night there was a somber moment of silence before the start of the game. Thoughts and prayers went out to the family and friends of Officer Hugh Patterson as his cadet graduation picture loomed giant across the scoreboard. His smiling face, full of blind faith and stubborn optimism, looked impossibly young and possibly immortal when stretched to nearly sixty feet. When the announcer told the crowd that Hugh was a tireless Giants booster they hooted and hollered. It was infectious. A slow roar built up, the crowd adjusting to cheering for a dead man.

  It was game two of the series today. First pitch at 7:15 pm. Oscar hated the night games on a Saturday. It meant he had to wait all day to watch the game. He tuned in early and saw the spectacle unfold under Patterson’s image. He’d seen the cop around the neighborhood. He had never spoken with him, had not known that he was a Giants fan either. Seeing his face on the screen, Oscar thought Hugh looked like a Giants fan. His face, he thought, looked like baseball itself, as though the face on the jumbotron was staring back at him from an old bubblegum card. It was only missing a nickname like Shoeless or Boomer or Dusty. Oscar thought Hugh looked like what a real American should look like: Apple pie. Hugh’s face didn’t make Oscar think of San Francisco, it made him think of clean-sounding places he’d never been with names like Utah and Ohio. Oscar contemplated that face and felt a little sick.

  Oscar tired to forget about the face, but every time the game broke to commercial there would be a quick fifteen-second teaser for the evening news. There the face would appear again. Hugh’s face, staring back at him, spliced between shots of his street corner and the anchorwoman with a police shield superimposed behind her head. Oscar checked for his bedroom window in the shots from 23rd Street. His house looked so strange on TV. It was hard to recognize their front door. The whole block appeared strange to him. A little cartoony. Invented like a movie set, a sound stage.

  He stood up and peeked out the window wanting to see the street for himself, check the corner and compare to the one on the television. There were white vans and bright lights out there still. There were two different reporters talking at the same time. Two cameramen filming. Two sets of bright white lights washed the normalcy away. Oscar thought the corner outside his window looked fake too, just like the one on TV. Not real, not the corner he knew. Nothing like yesterday. That’s what the cameras wanted to show. The blood. That’s what everyone wanted to see. All that blood.

  • • •

  Vince was sitting on a folding chair at a bare table in an interview room. He was on the opposite side from where he was used to sitting. He sat alone with the door open, familiar cop-shop sounds echoing down the hall. He could hear the ballgame on someone’s radio, guys bullshitting, gruff testosterone-fueled cop talk. And laughter.

  A tall, nondescript man came in and closed the door. He wore the uniform of the office cop, white shirt, dress pants, polished black shoes. It was the same detective that interviewed him yesterday, Detective Terry Schmitz. He looked at Vince and smiled. Or maybe he winced.

  “I understand you gave some preliminary statements last night. Now we just wanna nail down a few spots, here and there. After all, we gotta hurry up and get this son of a bitch, right?”

  Preliminary? He gave six hours of interviews well into this morning. He said nothing to Schmitz. Alvarez tried to play back the answers he gave last night. He had told the truth. Almost. He had to stretch a little. He couldn’t face the fact that he was so far away when the shots were fired.

  “How ya feeling, Vince? Did you get any rest? Can I get you anything before we start?” The detective didn’t wait for any answers. He sat across from Vince and flipped open a yellow legal pad, wet a pencil on his tongue, and started where they had left off.

  “So when you got to the block.”

  “On to Capp Street?”

  “Yeah, Capp. When you hit the block, you said you may have seen a figure.”

  “It may have been him.”

  “The shooter?”

  “I dunno. I saw someone.”

  Terry wrote something down and continued.

  “You running top speed?”

  “Not all the way. I had to exercise some caution.”

  Schmitz took a moment and adjusted his wristwatch. “Because you saw the perp.”

  “Because I heard the shots.”

  “You heard the shots when you hit Capp Street?”

  “No, before I was on Capp.”

  Schmitz took his perfectly sharpened pencil and made a notation on the yellow legal pad. “On the corner?”

  “Yes. On the corner.”

  “All five shots?”

  “All five shots.”

  “Let’s go over again where you were when you heard the first shot.”

  And so it went.

  At AT&T Park that night a small force of volunteers walked throughout the concourse with black and orange buckets taking donations for Patterson’s family. During the fifth inning, with no fanfare and with no context to the game, it was announced that the reward had been raised to thirty-five thousand dollars. A cheer of support went up and the picture of Hugh was once again splayed across the jumbotron.

  This all played out on local television, and during the commercial break the TV news showed a sketch of the shooter. A male Latino, approximately 5’10”, 160 lbs, black hoodie, blue jeans, last seen running east on 23rd Street at South Van Ness, 2:35 pm Friday afternoon. The sketch was a caricature of no one. It was the same fractured facial composite charcoal drawings that go out to the public after any crime of this magnitude. As anonymous as a blank page.

  Down the hall from where Vince Alvarez was being interviewed, Bobby Reese sat at a table identical to Alvarez’s. Bobby leaned forward, straining to hear the game through the open door. T
he noise in the police station drowned out the nuances of the play-by-play, but he managed to catch the score and the inning, Giants 3—1, top of the fifth. The volume jumped at the commercial and Bobby listened to the shooter’s description with the rest of San Francisco.

  Detective Schmitz walked in and closed the door. He stood looking at Bobby. He nodded his head a little, like maybe he knew something Bobby didn’t know.

  “Bobby,” he said. Like it was a greeting, as though they were old friends. “Bobby Reese. Bobby Reese.” The detective repeated his name, trying it on for size, hearing how it sounded. “I thought you maybe looked kinda familiar, and now that I’m looking at your sheet here, I see why. Geez, Bobby, maybe we ought to ask you to chip in for rent around here, you seem to spend enough time.”

  “Why Latino?” was all Bobby said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “La-ti-no. Why you all think this guy is Latino. I just heard the thing on the news. They say they looking for a Latino.”

  “Yes.” Unraveling information from an interviewee was a subtle business. Detective Terry Schmitz liked to use the technique he borrowed from television psychologists, a lot of tacit agreement and the occasional, How does that make you feel? The person usually just wanted to unload, wanted someone to listen. They wanted someone in a position of authority to hear them—and agree with them.

  “How you know a guy is Latino—with a hood on? How brown was he? Sure he wasn’t one of them terrorist motherfuckers from Afghanistan?”

  Terry smiled at Bobby and raised his eyebrows a little to let Bobby know that he got the joke but he was waiting for the punch-line.

  “Guy I saw?” Bobby continued, “Couldn’t tell. Not for real. Not for swearing to. You could presume, maybe. You could presume that this little fuck was a Latino. I mean, I did—I still do, but he wasn’t flying no colors and I didn’t axe to see no green card.”

  Bobby thought that was hilarious.

  “No colors?”

  “No colors.”

  “This is 23rd Street. No colors, huh? Bobby, you know those guys down there, don’t you?”

  “I maybe know some, you know, the ones who deal.” Bobby also thought this was hilarious. He paused to let the Detective chuckle or respond. Schmitz was quiet, but offered up a little smile.

  “It wasn’t none of them guys, none of them guys I know.”

  “What about 18th Street? How about one of those guys?”

  “How the fuck would I know, I could barely see the guy and he wasn’t wearing no colors.”

  “All in black. Like the grim reaper.”

  “No, man, like I told your man over there, jeans, some baggy shit, black hoodie and a Giants t-shirt, you know, just the logo, the old-school one with the ball. Shoes? I didn’t notice no shoes, I never do. I already told the other guy all this shit.”

  “I’m not talking to him, I’m talking to you. You tell me what you saw so I can understand. If you can make it clear to me, make me see what you saw, we won’t have to keep asking you the same damn questions all day. Now, let’s start at the liquor store.”

  Bobby Reese started that afternoon like any other, by walking straight to the one liquor store in the Mission that would still give him credit, Star Liquors at 22nd and South Van Ness. Hustling was tough, but it was even tougher without a breakfast beer. After convincing cashier Hassan that he was good for the money, Bobby got a 24oz malt liquor in a can.

  “The beer, yes,” Hassan said. “The cigarettes, no. That’s too much, Bobby. You already owe us over thirty-five dollars.”

  “Did you say dollars or dinars? Hassan, you know I don’t carry any I-raq money around on my person.” It was tough to say no to Bobby Reese. Hassan shook out a couple of Marlboro Lights from his own pack and sent Bobby on his way.

  Bobby cracked the beer and stuck one cigarette behind his ear, the other in his mouth, and began to walk toward 23rd Street. At two-twenty in the afternoon the sun was still high and the Mission was as warm as it ever gets. Bobby stopped to take off his jacket. He set down the beer on the sidewalk, hung the jacket on a parking meter, and was searching his pants pockets for a book of matches he was sure he had. Nothing. Typical Bobby. The gods bestow a beer and a smoke upon him and he forgets to ask for fire. He looked back at Hassan’s and cursed himself for forgetting to get a light. Pop. There went the first shot. Bobby looked toward the corner. Pop pop pop. 1-2-3 more. Now Bobby did something most people don’t do, Bobby ran towards the shots. He turned the corner at 23rd, looking, scanning, he saw nothing. No one. He saw the people at the ATM up on Mission Street, yeah, but no one on the corner of 23rd and Capp. Pop. One more.

  Then Bobby knows there’s trouble. He’s got it triangulated. He knows where the hot spot is. He freezes up, becomes part of the scenery. Act like a tree. Be invisible. He’d been doing it his whole life. Then he saw the kid—yes, kid—running straight at him, and fuck yeah, he did look like the grim reaper. Hood up, mouth tight, gun still clenched in his hand. Running straight ahead, determined, like a linebacker.

  “So you saw his face?” asked Schmitz.

  “Yeah, straight at me.”

  “And?”

  “And it looked like every other motherfucking face you see every goddamn where. Two eyes, one nose. No mustache, no beard. One fucking angry face. I’m serious, man, that fucker scared the shit outta me”

  “He looked angry?”

  “He looked serious.”

  “Was the gun in his right or left hand?”

  “C’mon, man. I already done told you guys three times. It was in his right hand.”

  “In your initial interview with my partner, you never mentioned the Giants shirt.”

  “I also never said Latino.” Bobby smiled.

  “Come on, Bobby, why not? What else didn’t you mention?”

  “I was focused on the face, man, the demon. That’s what was coming at me, a demon.”

  • • •

  Ria Flores pushed open her front door with two bags of groceries.

  “Oscar, Ramon? Hello? Anybody home?”

  Oscar was relieved to hear his mother’s voice. He hurried the top of the stairs and rushed down to grab a bag from his mother. He felt safe now that she was home. He set down his bag on the counter and began to unpack it.

  “No, no, no, Oscar, let me do it. You don’t know where stuff goes.”

  He knew where stuff goes. He sat down at the kitchen table and watched her move from cupboard to cupboard. She looked exhausted. She made a little groan every time she put something away. It was nearly ten o’clock and she was just getting home. Oscar looked at his mother and for the first time noticed the jowly flesh gathered at the bottom of her cheeks. He noticed, too, the crow’s feet reaching across her temples. His mother seemed to be aging right in front of him. Wilting.

  “How was your game, sweetie?” she asked when she noticed him watching her. He loved it when she called it his game, like he was part of the team. She didn’t follow baseball but she was always interested for him.

  “Good, we won. 5-2. We’re in second place in our division now.”

  “Good, honey, good. Do me a favor and put this sugar up on that top shelf, please.”

  Oscar got up, proud that he could be called on by his mother to perform any favor. She’d been telling him that he was a big boy since he was in training pants. Now he was starting to feel like it. He could finally be of use.

  “You’re getting so tall,” she said, rubbing the small of his back. It was what she always did, to reassure him, to relax him, to put him to sleep. It was their own special communication.

  “Have you seen your brother today?”

  The spell was broken.

  “I think he’s in his room, sleeping.”

  Oscar put the bag of sugar on the counter. He looked at his mother. He waited for her to see him. She hadn’t even noticed the shift, the darkening of his mood. She was already handing him a bottle of vegetable oil to go back up to the top shelf.

>   “Push it back now. Make sure there’s enough room for the sugar to fit.”

  He wanted to tell her. He wanted her to stop what she was doing and listen to him. He wanted to tell her what a sick, sadistic son-of-a-bitch Ramon was. He wanted to tell the truth, he wanted her to believe him.

  “Mom?”

  She didn’t answer, she kept right on moving.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “I don’t wanna live here anymore.” It was all he could say; the truth was too much.

  “I know, honey, we all want to move. This place is too small. There’s no room to breath in here.”

  “No, I mean I don’t want to live with Ramon anymore. I hate him.”

  “Oh, sweetie, he’s your brother. You love each other. You’re brothers.” This is what she always said. She couldn’t know Ramon, what he was. And she couldn’t know Oscar either, not if she thought they were brothers. He was sorry he brought it up.

  “Brothers don’t always get along, but you’re still brothers.”

  “I hate him.”

  “He’s your brother.”

  He let it slide. There was no point in taking it any further. She finished putting the groceries away and sat down across from Oscar.

  “Mom, what’s for dinner?”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m too tired to make anything. I didn’t even leave the salon till after nine. Just make yourself something, but clean up after yourself, okay? I’m going to bed. G’nite, I love you.”

  Ria got up and kissed him on the forehead. She hadn’t even sat down for one whole minute. She was up and moving again, flicking off lights, picking up a few scraps of junk mail. She moved into her bedroom to continue her nightly rituals.

  Oscar was left alone in the kitchen. He sat at the table pondering his options. The house grew quiet when his mother shut her bedroom door. Maybe a bowl of cereal, maybe a frozen dinner.

  It was quiet but he could tell Ramon was still awake. He felt it.

  Oscar decided he wasn’t hungry, not hungry enough to chance disturbing his brother. He walked as lightly as he could toward his bedroom. His brother’s door glared at him. The door itself was an ugly face watching Oscar slip into his room.