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d the sweat itches like steel wool down my scalp and my shoes are wet from God knows what and my suspenders are too loose and my shirt is untucked and fuck it, fuck all of this. I stop spinning. Gone.
Gone. I think the car was brown. Looked old and long. Town car. Sedan. Four doors, maybe. Probably.
Deep breath while I stare down the street, and I don’t feel the torch holes of bullet wounds. I holster and wipe off tuna dip from my shirt, my pants. My face. That fish slop burns worse than the sizzle of getting grazed by a round.
I walk up the street, turn the corner. Take my jacket off and snap it, trying to work out the wrinkles. I get a few houses down and jog over to Willibald’s. Off in the distance I hear sirens playing our music.
Up the steps onto the porch. Graham. Crying. On his knees, back and forth, rocking. Holding Willibald. And all that red everywhere.
I kneel down, put an arm around Graham. I watch the street for more of the gangbanger turds, and I feel Graham’s hand climb up and grab my arm. Squeeze so tight he might think if he lets go he’s going to float off.
“I’m feeling petty,” Graham says in a voice I’ve never heard him use before.
“I do too, and this is war,” I say, and I hold my friend while his grandfather goes off to join his wife now that his circle is complete.
18
Seven a.m., Thursday
My stomach is sour from lack of sleep.
SAPD processed that scene well into the night, Graham and I being fed cups of burnt, black coffee as we gave our statements over and over. They wouldn’t let Molly through the police tape. Made her wait, sobbing and alone on the other side until Graham walked off mid-sentence, took his wife in his arms and came back with her.
The gang unit’s ears were to the ground the moment the 9-1-1 call came out. They heard one thing. Thuggie himself pulled that trigger.
I go to a greasy spoon and sit at the counter, rub the bridge of my nose. Ponder how exactly those turds went from me at Moss’s to this. But that lone dude at Eudora’s funeral, studying faces, he keeps coming back to my mind.
Abe Baldwin: my main man. He failed himself, his over-bearing mother and the community at large with how terrible he was at being an assistant district attorney. Now he practices privately and sends clients my way. I dial is number. It’s seven in the morning, so no doubt he’s swaddled in a towel, the youngest man by thirty years sitting in a sauna over at the country club up north in Gravel County.
He always has his cellular leash on him, in case his never-gonna-die mother or his needs-to-die-tomorrow wife calls. He answers before the second ring expires.
“Hello?”
“Morning, Abe. Taking a steam?”
“It’s seven in the morning, isn’t it?”
“Sure. I need something.”
“Speak, my friend.”
“You remember that shit bird gangbanger you defended on the weapons charge?”
“Buster Ford? Great kid,” Abe says and I can hear the smile on his face. That’s one of the reasons why Abe was so terrible at being an ADA. Abe only sees the good in people, even when they’re standing before him covered in blood and carrying the severed head of their latest victim. Although, that trait worked out well for his wife. No one else would have married such a troll.
Buster is not a great kid. He might be keeping his nose relatively clean now, but that’s only because he’s had to flee the city lest he be gutted and eaten in front of his family.
Buster was known to the gang world as Raptor. Now he’s known as Snitch. Apparently in his Raptor days he was one mean motherfucker. He’d been in the clink twice, almost right in a row. He was imprisoned on a count of aggravated battery against a law enforcement officer, released on parole and put right back in on a domestic violence charge for putting his brother through a wall.
Buster got out a second time and was pulled over by a patrolman for running a red light. In plain sight, lying across the back seat of the car were two AK-47 knock-offs Buster was delivering to a rival gang. Seems intelligence and loyalties were lost on him.
Buster knew if this hit the light of day or worse, if he went back in the pen, both his ass virginity and his life would be taken from him faster than he could say “plea bargain.” Abe was his court-appointed lawyer. Buster turned state’s evidence bigger than shit to make sure he got parole instead of hard time.
He now lives in Three Mile High working at a yuppie sports bar where they serve beer and specialize in chicken wings. Buster and his ankle bracelet monitor are cautiously avoiding anything that resembles Saint Ansgar nowadays.
“I need to meet with Buster,” I say.
“How about a phone call? I’m fairly certain I can get him to agree—”
