by Dave Stanton
“Stay down,” I yelled. Her head jerked up, her eyes wide and startled.
I sidestepped past each aisle in a crouch. Tucker could have been hiding behind any of the vertically stacked slabs. Or he could have headed for an exit across the floor. I made it to the end of the building without any sign of him. I jogged along the perimeter and down a center aisle, my eyes darting to each row.
A shot rang out, and a bullet powdered a chunk of granite an inch from my face. I ducked and saw Tucker peering from around a slab, taking aim. I returned fire while diving for cover. When I peeked out, I didn’t see him.
I held the Hi-Point in a two-fisted grip and ran to where Tucker had been. When I came to the end of his aisle, a slug punched a hole in the loose material of my jeans behind the knee. Tucker was kneeling forty feet away, pointing a revolver.
He shot again as I leapt behind a stack of granite. I reached out, took quick aim, and jerked the trigger. The short-barreled gun bucked, and I saw my slug tear a trench in a shiny green slab above Tucker’s head. He fired once more and ducked out of my sight.
I ran at his position, then saw him running toward an exit sign. “Freeze!” I yelled and fired a round over his head. He somersaulted, twisted in the air, and fired. It was a prayer and shouldn’t have been close, but his slug grazed my shoulder, and little spots of blood appeared on my sleeve. I shot back just as he slid behind a forklift twenty feet from the door.
My arm stung like it had been burned, but I ignored it and kept my weapon trained on the forklift. Five long seconds passed until Tucker dashed for the door, firing as he ran. I put him in the sights and shot at his legs, but my shot was wide, and I cursed because the Hi-Point was a cheap weapon, and the aim wasn’t true. Tucker would have been down if I had my Beretta, which was still being held by SJPD. I took another shot, aiming wide to compensate, but Tucker yanked open the door just as my bullet hit the wall near his calf, and then he was gone.
I sprinted for the door. Tucker had fired six shots, and it was possible he was reloading. But it only took a few seconds for me to cross the roughly sixty feet, and I was betting he was not practiced enough with a revolver to reload that quickly. I yanked the door open. Tucker had crossed the deserted street and was at a dead run, on his toes, his knees pumping high, leaning forward as if stretching for a finish line.
For a brief second I considered whether to give chase or fire. I don’t lose many footraces, but Tucker was flying, and I doubted I could run him down. Instead I took aim. But then Cody came around the far corner in his Toyota and skidded to a stop, the car perpendicular to the curb. His window was down, and I could see his great head of shaggy hair and the glossy black of his .357 revolver. He straightened his arm and was no more than fifty feet from Tucker, and the big bore of the Magnum was pointed and promised an irrevocable outcome. But Tucker shoulder-rolled and tried forcing open the door to a closed roofing supply outlet.
The door was stout, and I was sure that Tucker, out of bullets and trapped, would surrender. He turned toward Cody, and when he tossed his revolver to the pavement, I lowered my gun.
But to assume Duante Tucker would concede at this point was not only wrong, it was foolish. Surely I knew better, because even though I believe that in the human heart there is a great capacity for kindness and compassion, for some, that space is consumed by hatred. It’s a process that begins in the womb and grows with each year of life until the heart turns wholly black. And then one day, the realization sets in that no amount of misdeed is enough, and after that it’s only a matter of time before the hatred turns inward and the soul devours itself.
If that moment had arrived for Duante Tucker, I can’t truly say. Maybe he thought the journeys of his black heart were just beginning, and the party was not yet in full swing. Or maybe he was just a desperate, sadistic son of a bitch whose blood lust wouldn’t be denied.
In a fluid, athletic motion, Tucker pulled a small automatic from the back of his sweat pants, let off a shot at Cody, and spun to face me. For an instant he had me dead in his sights, and I raised my gun but knew I was too late. Then I heard the thunderous boom of Cody’s .357, followed by the sharp crack of Tucker’s automatic.
Tucker threw his arms up as if praising the heavens, knees bent, back arched, his mouth wide in a silent scream. Then his legs buckled, and he fell to the ground as if his bones had been liquefied.
I turned and saw where Tucker’s shot had split the wood molding on the building behind me. The small round was embedded in the stucco next to a sealed window. I looked back to the street and watched Cody climb from his car, the smoking pistol dangling from his hand. He dropped it in his window and began limping toward Tucker. There was a bullet hole in the Toyota’s back door.
We met at Tucker’s body. Cody knelt with a grimace and said, “He’s still alive.”
Tucker lay facedown, his shirt soaked with blood. The .357 round had hit him dead center in the middle of the back. I had automatically assumed the shot was lethal. If you’ve ever shot a .357 Magnum, you know what I’m talking about; the pistol is like a handheld cannon, and it’s difficult to imagine anyone surviving a wound to the torso.
I leaned down and looked at Tucker. His face was against the asphalt, and a bloody foam dribbled from his lips with each breath. I looked into one of his eyes. He blinked and the skin around the socket grew tight.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
He made a sound like you might hear from a mentally retarded person or an individual with a severe speech impediment.
“He’s not dead,” I said. “But I don’t think he’s having a very good day.”
“That’s too bad,” Cody said. “Maybe tomorrow will be better.”
We stood looking at him. His arm shuddered, and his wrist curled inward, the fingers splayed and twisted.
“Maybe not,” I said.
“That’s the breaks. Hey, I got a new place we should try for lunch today. They make real New Orleans style po’ boy sandwiches.”
The distant sirens were getting closer. The lazy blue sky was split with a dirty plume of dark smoke rising high above downtown San Jose. I wondered if the Skyscape was burning down, or if further explosions had occurred, or if the authorities had apprehended the occupants of the BMW. I also wondered if the CIA had found Lawrence Tucker.
The cops who showed up a minute later didn’t seem preoccupied with those uncertainties. They didn’t even interview us long enough to see the paramedics get Duante Tucker in an ambulance. They were still tending to him when we were cuffed from behind and stuck in separate squad cars.
• • •
I sat in the same interview room at SJPD that I’d been in two days ago. They left my cuffs on, and I waited for thirty minutes until Russ Landers came through the door. He wore a brown suit jacket over a white shirt that looked too tight around his fleshy neck.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked.
“I’ll let you know. Describe what happened this morning.”
“Cody and I followed Duante Tucker from his sister’s apartment. You know, your friend, Shanice.”
“Actually, I don’t know who you’re talking about. But we’ll come back to that. Go on.”
“Tucker parked in front of the Skyscape building and spoke with two men in a BMW. Then Tucker went back to his car, and a moment later an explosion occurred on the sixteenth floor. I think Tucker activated a charge from his cell phone.”
“What next?”
“We drove toward Tucker, and he took off.”
“You followed him at a high rate of speed, causing two accidents.” Landers put his hands on the table and leaned his weight forward. His eyes were small and dark and unblinking.
“After Tucker wrecked his car, he took off on foot,” I said. “I followed him inside a granite warehouse, and he shot at me. We exchanged shots, then he left the building and sprinted away. But Cody came around in his car and ordered Tucker to stop. But he pulled a second gun on us.”
“Did
he fire?”
“Yeah, twice. One round hit Cody’s car, and the other hit the building behind me. Cody shot him to save my life.”
“In the back.” Landers smiled and rubbed his hands together.
“Tucker had me in his sights. I’d be dead if Cody hadn’t shot him. Tucker was trying to kill us, if that’s not obvious to you.”
“I don’t consider it obvious. I also don’t know where you get off thinking you can provoke a car chase, endanger citizens, and engage in a shootout, all under the authority of a PI badge any two-bit chump can get.”
“Tucker had just committed a terrorist act. I’m an American citizen. I wasn’t about to let him drive away.”
Landers came back to the table and leaned into my face. “Our prosecutor is gonna eat you alive, you prick. You’re under arrest.” He read me my rights.
“What are the charges?” I asked.
“It will be a long list,” he said. “How about attempted murder, to start?”
“It won’t stick, and you know it.”
“Oh, I think it will. And one more thing. We may add blackmail to the list. With today’s digital technology, any criminal can create phony pictures and audio files. So you can shitcan the threats you’ve made to me. How does fifteen years in San Quentin sound?”
“I need to make a phone call.”
“You’ve been watching too many movies.”
“My Miranda rights say I can contact counsel. If you don’t let me use the phone, they’ll throw your case out. So you decide.”
“Maybe they’ll let you and Gibbons be bunkies,” he said, a happy smirk on his face. Then he left the room, and a minute later, two uniforms came for me.
• • •
It wasn’t until they completed the entire booking process that I was allowed access to a phone. For three hours I had waited, while they took my mug shot, collected my property, fingerprinted me, conducted a full body search, and took X-rays and a blood sample. It’s in this initial stage that an arrested individual realizes his time is no longer his own. Minutes blur into hours, and there’s never any hurry, because there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, at least nothing you decide on your own.
For someone new to prison, the booking is probably among the most benign of institutionalized experiences. The rude awakening usually occurs when the fresh convict is introduced to his cellmates and understands that he has entered a predatory world where the weak are raped and forced into servitude, and even the strong are shanked and die gruesome deaths on a regular basis. The realization there is no escape from this hellish world for the duration of the sentence drives some to suicide early on. More commonly though, the convicts join prison gangs, which affords them some protection, but the price is mandatory participation in a variety of crimes, including murder.
I stood at the end of a dirty hallway where a pay phone was mounted to the wall, and called my attorney, who didn’t answer. I left him a detailed message, then dialed the cell number for Greg Stillman. He answered on the first ring.
“Stillman.”
“Greg, it’s Dan Reno. I was at the Skyscape this morning when the bomb went off in unit 1602. I assume you’re aware of it?”
“Go on.”
“I think your boys were there too, maybe swooped in on a couple dudes in a BMW, maybe Abdul Talwar and one of his cousins. While your agents were going after the BMW, Cody Gibbons and I chased down Duante Tucker, who was there talking to the guys in the BMW.”
“I heard something about it.”
“Tucker ended up shot. He’s probably over at Valley Medical, if he’s still alive. I think Tucker was the one who set off the bomb. I also think there was possibly more than one bomb that was meant to go off.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because after the explosion, the BMW’s driver sat staring up at the building, and I got the impression he was waiting for something else to happen. And Tucker kept dialing his cell phone, and then he took off in a big hurry.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Stillman said. “Are you still in San Jose?”
“I’m calling from the jailhouse phone at San Jose PD. They arrested me and my partner Cody Gibbons for the attempted murder of Duante Tucker. It’s a bullshit charge brought on by Russ Landers at SJPD. He’s the cop who was in the sack with Lawrence Tucker’s niece.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“You’re damn right it is. How about helping me out here?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Reno. This is a particularly busy time for my team.”
I took a deep breath and fought a surge of anger rising from my chest. “There’re a few more interesting facts I’ve uncovered that I’d like to share with you, Mr. Stillman. That is, if you have the time.”
“Go ahead.”
“Not on the phone. Get me out of here, and we’ll talk.”
The phone went silent. Then he said, “I’ll see what I can do,” and hung up.
The jailer, a mustachioed middle-aged man with a stomach that hung over his belt, crooked his finger at me. “Times up,” he said. He took me through a steel door that opened with a wave of his electronic key. The door clanged shut behind us, and he steered me to the holding cell, a large, barred room with cots on the wall and a toilet in one corner. A half dozen men were in the room. Cody sat in the corner furthest from the toilet, hunched on a cot and studying his fingernails. He looked up, along with each of the men, when I joined the unfortunate group. Saturday lockup meant a weekend stay. Even the dimmest among them understood there would be no arraignment until Monday.
I sat next to Cody. “Did Landers interview you?” I asked.
“He was very professional about it, even polite,” Cody said quietly. “I think he was putting on a show for the DA. He sees this as his chance to fuck me over for the count.” Cody raised his head and stared down a tattooed Mexican who was watching us.
“You get ahold of your lawyer?” I asked.
“Mine doesn’t work weekends. How about yours?”
“Left him a message.”
“I’m sorry about this, Dan. We’re here because of my beef with Landers. But it’s my deal. You shouldn’t have to suffer for it.”
“No need to apologize. Your enemies are my enemies, partner. Besides, I told Landers to go fuck himself the other day, so I made my own bed.”
“We’ll beat this thing. Anisa Clark is a practical DA, and she also knows Landers is dirty. She’ll be the one to decide whether to prosecute, and I doubt she was even here today. It was probably an assistant watching when Landers interrogated me.”
We fell silent. Neither of us wanted to discuss the possibilities if our case went to trial. Ask anyone accused of a felony about his or her experience with the court system. An overzealous prosecutor, a biased judge, a lost or fabricated piece of evidence, a false testimony. All it takes is one of the above to queer a jury and result in a conviction. But often trials don’t get that far. Once the momentum swings far enough in the prosecution’s favor, they typically offer the defendants a chance to plead out. In our case, that might mean three to five instead of ten to fifteen years.
But my attorney was rock solid, one of the best, I told myself. He wouldn’t let me down. I expected he’d call back before the day was out. I’d ask him to contact Anisa Clark, who was probably at home enjoying her weekend, and explain to her that Cody and I were acting in self-defense and should never have been arrested.
I suddenly felt a great weariness descend over me. I was sitting on the edge of the thin mattress, and despite my reservations, I pushed myself back to the darker middle section and leaned against the wall. I’d not slept enough last night, and a throbbing headache had settled in behind my eyes. My face felt oily to the touch and I wondered if I could sleep sitting upright, and I tried but was interrupted when the jailer brought lunch. I was hungry, but the smell of the baloney sandwiches and mashed potatoes made me nauseous. I repressed a gag and closed my eyes again.
Sometime later Cody
shook my shoulder. “Wake up,” he said. “Someone’s here for you.”
I rubbed a kink in my neck and looked up at where the jailer stood at the barred doorway. “You have a visitor,” he said.
Cody and I exchanged glances, then I got up and the cop opened the door and took me back down the long hallway. We went out the steel door and past the interrogation room and entered a small office where two men sat. The jailer left, and I stood looking at the men, one of whom rose from behind a desk.
“I’m David Cohen, assistant DA,” he said. He was a short man in a blue business suit. He had thick eyebrows, and when he looked at me his eyes were very still.
The other man didn’t stand. He also wore a suit and was handsome in a way, but the skin on his forehead and around his eyes looked unnaturally creased, as if he spent long, unrelieved hours in deep concentration. He stuck his square hand out for me to shake. “Matt Royce, CIA,” he said. “Take a seat.”
I took the chair next to Royce, and he turned and uncrossed his legs. “I was told you had information you’d like to share regarding the bombing at the Skyscape.”
“I told Greg Stillman I’d be happy to share everything I know, once the bogus charges against me are dropped. And that goes for Cody Gibbons, too.”
I shifted my eyes to the DA, but he made no gesture or comment.
“Do we have a deal, Mr. Cohen?” I said.
When he didn’t respond, Royce said, “That depends if you have something of value to offer.”
“That sounds pretty arbitrary to me.”
“It’s as good as it’s going to get,” Cohen said.
I stared at the two men for a long moment. “All right,” I said. “Since I last spoke with Stillman, and delivered to him two men hired by Lawrence Tucker, I’ve learned that Tucker’s niece, Shanice, a known prostitute, had been frequenting South Lake Tahoe before Duante Tucker’s trial. I think she was likely meeting someone from the police department there, and influenced the disappearance of the evidence against Duante Tucker. I think Lawrence Tucker put her up to this, because he needed Duante Tucker’s help in his scheme to blow up the Skyscape.”