Street Raised Page 35

  Something hit the ground next to Speedy even as he impacted on his side: Ghost’s left hand, blown off at the wrist but still holding the knife. There was an incredulous, thwarted expression on Ghost’s face as his head bobbled atop what was left of his neck and blood spewed into the night air – the double-ought blast had taken out enough meat, it looked like a Great White had chomped on Ghost’s throat.

  Ghost started firing the Tommy gun up at heaven one-handed, holding back the trigger of the Tommy gun so the rest of the 50-round drum magazine emptied into the sulfurous sky above.

  Then Ghost’s body crashed down next to Speedy and was still.

  Chapter 45

  As Speedy stood, the sawed off started to tumble out the hole it had blasted through his field jacket. But Speedy merely clutched at the raggedy flower of green cloth where his pocket had been a few moments before, and held the sawed-off against himself absently.

  Carmel was kneeling next to Louis, holding the cellophane from her pack of smokes against Louis’s sucking chest wound. Carmel’s gaze roved Speedy’s body disbelievingly, looking for blood that wasn’t there.

  Speedy noted that Louis didn’t look very good. Louis’s face was gray and sweaty, instead of the proud (if burn-scarred) mahogany Speedy was used to seeing.

  As if in a dream, as if Louis wasn’t lying there shot on the lawn, Speedy walked right past them down the stairs into the basement, checking out Ghost’s back trail with a nameless dread – something called to him from the darkness, something he couldn’t refuse.

  It was pitch black down there; he couldn’t see at all except for the sliver of moonlight spilling down the stairs and a little ways across the cement floor. Speedy fumbled around on the work bench until he found a candle, but hesitated with the match in his hand.

  He didn’t really need any light down here, did he? The longer he stayed in the dark, the longer he could pretend Willy was somewhere far away, happily doing drugs or reading one of his books. He could just turn and leave this basement, he didn’t have to know.

  Speedy lit the match, touched it to the wick and turned around. In the candle’s flickering glow he saw Little Willy duct-taped to the chair. There was a single stab wound up under Willy’s jaw, and the front of Willy’s shirt was soaked with the blood that congealed in a puddle on the floor under the stool.

  Speedy knew without touching his little brother that there was absolutely no possibility he was still alive. But still . . . was that a smile on Willy’s face? Speedy couldn’t be sure.

  Speedy remembered his last night at home when he was 13, when dad had trapped him in the kitchen where there was no escape route, and commenced hitting Speedy again and again. Dad’s big fists had crashed into Speedy’s chest, his face, and the side of his head.

  Dad was a strong man; his blows had rocked and stunned Speedy; the blood was streaming into Speedy’s eyes and blinding him. Speedy couldn’t fight back; he was cornered and couldn’t get away.

  Speedy had accepted for the first and only time in his life that there was no way he could win. It was finally all over, dad was going to kill him this time, and Speedy surrendered fully in his heart, resigned to his own end.

  That was when Little Willy had burst into the room screaming. He’d latched onto dad, but Willy had never really been much of a fighter.

  Dad had put Little Willy in an arm bar with no trouble at all and slammed Willy face first into the wall with a crunching sound. Dad smashed Little Willy’s head against the wall again and again, each impact doing ever more damage to Willy’s young genius brain.

  But Little Willy’s crippling had bought Speedy just enough time to shake the blood from his eyes, come up on dad from behind, and do what had needed doing for so long . . .

  Speedy wanted – no, needed – to go to Willy now and embrace him one last time in farewell. He wanted to reach out and touch his little brother.

  But he couldn’t. This was a crime scene – Speedy couldn’t bring himself to step in Willy’s blood pooled on the floor, he couldn’t risk touching Willy and leaving physical evidence for the Man.

  Speedy dropped to his knees in lifetime-delayed self-loathing – how he hated and despised this cold selfish core that was himself, which calculated only in terms of survival, of domination. It should be Speedy dead in that chair instead of Willy; their places should be traded.

  Little Willy should be a transcendent child of the light instead of living and dying as a son of darkness – the hole left by Willy’s passing was orders of magnitude larger than Speedy’s death would have produced. Life was cruel, God was wasteful, and his little brother’s remains were the proof of it.

  “You were always the brave one Willy,” Speedy whispered, his voice cracked and halting.

  See the indomitable Speedy, laid low. Is this the part where you cave, Speedy?

  Speedy heard Carmel mutter something strident out in the yard, and Louis’s calm reply – the cop soothing Carmel down as if he weren’t the one lying there wounded. Speedy stood, wiping angrily at his face as he turned his back on Willy and went out the door.

  “Move the cop car,” Speedy ordered Carmel as he came out the basement, emptying his mind into action, into sharking forward and away from this horrible place.

  Carmel noted Speedy’s face was as pinched and white as she figured her own had to be, and was reassured that he was reacting to events the same as her for once.

  “Make sure you wipe off the steering wheel and the door handles, then get the Vega in front,” Speedy instructed. “We gotta hustle up here.”

  As Carmel backed the roller down the driveway, Speedy knelt next to Louis. Louis’s hand was pressed to Carmel’s cigarette cellophane but wasn’t making a very good seal – every breath made the plastic crackle as pink froth bubbled noisily past the cellophane. Louis’s breathing was wet and tortured, sounding like small animals were fighting inside his chest.

  “This is going to hurt,” Speedy said. He lifted Louis’s hand away from the cellophane, and then grasped the base of Louis’s index finger.

  “Relax,” Speedy said as he stuck Louis’s own finger into the hole in his chest, Louis playing the little Dutch boy plugging the dike in his own gunshot wound.

  “Oh, that smarts, white boy,” Louis cried weakly, eyes closing as Speedy forced the finger as far into the hole as it would go, all the way to the third knuckle.

  “Pipe down you old sissy. We both know you’ve been through worse than this.”

  Speedy rolled Louis onto his wounded side, to keep the other lung from filling up at least. The cop immediately coughed up a big bubble of blood that swelled and burst to stain the front of his uniform shirt. Louis’s mouth made a little ‘O’ of surprise.

  “You came by yourself,” Speedy said to Louis. “You didn’t bring back up. No one knows you’re here. Why didn’t you call this in?”

  “Is that your squeeze?” Louis asked, rolling his gaze toward the direction Carmel had disappeared in.

  Speedy nodded.

  “She seems like a nice girl. Too nice for the likes of you,” Louis said, a smile appearing, but vanishing just as quickly. “The scumbag who shot me – what was his name?”

  “He called himself Ghost,” Speedy said, then squatted and picked up Louis’s fallen service revolver without asking. Louis tensed as Speedy raised Louis’s revolver and emptied it into the back of the house and the side fence.

  “Louis,” Speedy said, wiping the pistol, dropping to one knee and handing the empty service piece back. “You have to say Ghost and some other guy robbed those Mexicans. You chased them from the scene to here, Ghost shot you, and then his partner turned on him and blew him up with a sawed-off. You shot at Ghost’s partner but don’t figure you hit him, and the partner ran off with the money. It’ll fly, Ghost’s still got the pistol he shot you with and they’ll figure the partner has the other guns.”

  “Please, John,” Speedy begged unashamedly, his voice tight and harsh as he reached out to touch his friend�
�s hand. “You’ve got to or I’m done.”

  Speedy glanced over to make sure Carmel was still out of sight, still out front. Then he leaned in close, said low, “Willy’s down in the basement. Ghost did him, he’s gone. Bob’s dead too.”

  “Oh, Speedy,” Louis said, an extra veneer of anguish coating the old man’s burn-scarred face to momentarily overlay his own present physical pain.

  Then John Louis pinned Speedy with his gaze without pulling his hand away from Speedy’s grasp. “Did you really kill them that time, Speedy? Did you kill those bastards that murdered my boy?”

  “Yes Louis,” Speedy confessed to this Officer of the Law, pretending that John hadn’t known the whole time. “I killed all three of them.”

  Louis rolled his head to face away from him, muttered something that Speedy couldn’t make out.

  Louis’s head rolled back to face Speedy. “You’re finished now? This is the last time?”

  “I’m through,” Speedy said, and really meant it.

  “I’ll take care of everything. You have to get out of Oakland for good now, white boy. Get out of Oakland son. I might have to change my mind if I ever see you again.”

  Louis fumbled at his shoulder radio with his free hand. “I’m getting kind of light headed here, Speedy,” Louis said apologetically as he thumbed it back on. “If you’re really not planning on finishing me off, I’ve got to make the call now.”

  “Louis,” Speedy said as he stood; his mouth wanted to squirm around for some reason.

  “Get the fuck out of Dodge,” the old man said.

  Speedy obeyed, hopping into the Valiant to remove the last piece of evidence linking him to the crime scene. Other than Willy’s abandoned corpse of course.

  “Officer needs assistance,” Speedy heard Louis groan into the mike as he backed the Valiant full speed toward the street. “Officer down.”

  Speedy cranked the steering wheel over and gunned it as he reversed in a backward arc to parallel-park the Valiant against the far curb, then sprinted to hop in the Vega. Carmel burned rubber away from there.

  “Don’t draw attention. Slow down,” Speedy said, scowling at having to school her twice. Carmel complied, though it still seemed counter-intuitive to her.

  As Carmel drove east up 63rd, multiple clusters of cop cars barreled in from all directions, already on full alert from the drug house robbery. Even though it was a fellow cop on the line and most of them responded directly to the call’s location, they still did it by the book: units peeled off to interdict surrounding intersections in a multi-layered concentric circle, designed to prevent potential suspects from escaping a net whose size was only limited by how many cops they could put in place.

  A roller skidded to a halt in the middle of the intersection in front of the Vega, blocking their path as the rookie driver mad-dogged them with a frantic gaze.

  “Look happy and start creeping around him,” Speedy said quietly, putting an excited, entertained expression on his own face as Carmel obeyed.

  Speedy snuck a glance at her as they came up on the cop, who was fumbling at his holstered service piece as he exited his roller – Carmel’s glassy-eyed grin wasn’t cutting it, she appeared a little green around the gills.

  As they came abreast the young cop he was standing next to his open car door staring at them with his pistol out (but not actually aiming it at them just yet, Speedy still had a millisecond or two).

  “What’s going on, officer?” Speedy asked in a gloating tone, leaning forward past Carmel to demand the cop’s full attention. Speedy was glad now that he hadn’t run up and hugged Willy in the basement – this would be impossible to make fly if Speedy had been covered in blood.

  The rookie cop looked with poorly concealed disgust at Speedy’s expression, that of a powerless Citizen vampiric for suffering as long as it was inflicted on someone else. The rookie turned away from Speedy with a grimace, already ramping up the career learning curve that would ultimately have him nodding in understanding whenever a compatriot ate his gun.

  “Move along sir,” he ordered, gesturing them the fuck away with a horizontal brusque chopping motion of his hand.

  The rookie looked hungrily past them at all the strobing lights down the street where Louis had called from; obviously wishing he was there where the real action was, tending to a fallen brother instead of babysitting fools like Speedy and Carmel.

  Speedy put a disgruntled expression on his face, the one any Citizen would wear when being cheated of his vicarious thrills.

  “Do what the officer says, honey,” Speedy told Carmel in a sullen resentful voice. He tinged his expression with terror at the possible prospect of getting a ticket or something from this uniformed flunky.

  They took Alcatraz up past College, and angled north onto Tunnel Road past the Claremont Resort. As they passed the junction to the Caldecott Tunnel enroute to the Warren Freeway south, Speedy could see swarms of choppers hovering over where they’d left Louis, mechanical dragonflies searching for prey that was already far, far away.

  Chapter 46

  They took the Warren Freeway south, passing uphill from the Oakland Mormon Temple with its five flood-lit gold spires like something out of the Arabian Nights. After the Macarthur Interchange they took the 98th Avenue exit and drove west toward the Oakland International Airport, finally hunkering down in a motel near the junction of Doolittle Drive and Hegenberger Road.

  The area surrounding the Airport was a No Man’s Land of industrial parks and commercials, and a primary transit node where several highways met to feed auto traffic into the Airport. As it was nestled between the various municipalities of Oakland, Alameda and San Leandro, police jurisdiction was always a little vague around the area.

  All the fringe activities went on here that proliferate where the Man’s footprint wasn’t overly heavy: places like the Edgewater West Adult Resort XXX-rated motel, or chop shops and mob money laundering fronts. This was also where most of the East Bay outlaw dragsters raced for pinks, but there didn’t seem to be any hotrods lurking about tonight.

  Inside, Speedy had heard guys talking about something new the East Bay kids were starting to do, something they’d invented called a ‘sideshow’ – instead of going to the sticks to race, everyone would converge with their cars on a block right in the middle of town. Guys would skid their rides around in endless donuts and figure-eights, smoking their tires and slamming into parked cars and onlookers while the mob of screaming spectators blazed drugs, performed public sex acts, and shot each other and/or random bystanders.

  Evolution, Speedy supposed. Progress of a kind, to do it right in the Man’s face instead of having to come to a lonely stretch like Doolittle to misbehave in your car.

  Once they got in their motel room, Carmel went straight into the bathroom and shut and locked the door. From the noises she was making in there, it sounded like she was puking out her post-traumatic stress from all the evening’s activities.

  Speedy knelt next to the bed with the sawed-off and the Thompson right to hand within arm’s reach. He’d spilled the gym bag of money out onto the bedspread and commenced a fast count on all these rubber-banded stacks of C-notes and 50s and 20s.

  He had the TV tuned to KTVU Channel 2 while he counted, watching for any newsbreaks to see if they were hot or not.

  He’d been counting the money for so long that his knees were numb, but he ignored the discomfort when the news flash he’d been waiting for came on:

  Dennis Richmond was the anchor, the distinguished a looking brother with a moustache who’d been reporting for Channel 2 since Speedy was a kid. Dennis was wearing an expression of concern as he reported live from the crime scene. Willy’s old squat was behind him, lit by floodlights as cops swarmed all over it.

  “A major story out of West Oakland tonight,” Dennis intoned somberly. “A gun battle at a suspected drug house leaves at least four dead. The assailants apparently used a machine gun in the robbery.”

  “Veteran OPD Off
icer John Louis pursued the suspects from the crime scene and confronted them at the house just behind me, here near Emeryville. In the ensuing gun battle Officer Louis was shot; but he has indicated the two suspects then fought amongst themselves, with one suspect shooting and killing the other.”

  “When Officer Louis heroically continued firing while he lay on the ground wounded, the other suspect apparently fled the scene with the money. The second suspect is currently the subject of an intensive manhunt effort.”

  “The dead suspect at this house matches the description of a man wanted for questioning as a person of interest in the string of home-invasion/rape/torture/murders that have been plaguing the East Bay in recent months. In a puzzling additional mystery, police are gathering forensic evidence at another possibly independent murder scene in the basement of the house behind me, where police discovered the body of a man they have yet to be able to identify. It is unclear what connection, if any, exists between the two men.”

  “The second robber is still at large, with an APB for his arrest. Acting on Officer Louis’s description, police are advising citizens to be on the lookout for a seven foot 300-pound Maori with facial tattoos, driving a late model Jaguar. Anyone spotting this suspect is advised to treat him as armed and extremely dangerous. Do not approach this suspect – instead, notify authorities at once.”

  “Officer Louis is a highly decorated veteran with a long valorous record, and is expected to make a complete recovery . . .”

  “Fucking Louis,” Speedy said, as he pressed his palm against Louis’s picture on the TV screen.

  Speedy finished the count as Carmel exited the bathroom; her face was knotted up like she was wrestling with belated qualms.

  Speedy paced to the far wall and back to the head of the bed, then suddenly blurted “257,000 dollars,” mouthing the incredible words.