Sissy and I left the office—and the moment the door shut behind us, Weiss’s computer sang its chirpy little three-note song. An e-mail had arrived. Weiss swiveled to the machine and clicked the mail open. It was from Bishop.
Weiss. New stuff. Have info that Tweedy and his boys are the gang who took out the Bayshore Market…
Weiss let out a hiss like a radiator releasing steam. He followed local crime stories religiously, and the details of the Bayshore Market massacre were still painfully fresh in his mind. The girl with her neck broken. The boy shot in the store, the boy shot as he waited behind the wheel of his car. The market owner—what was his name?—Joe Something—shot where he stood, leaving behind a pregnant widow and a two-year-old child…
…I don’t know yet if the girl was into it too. I’m going forward per the client’s wishes to get her out on the down-low. Which’ll take time, cause she’s hooked up hard. Meanwhile, Tweedy’s planning a big money job and wants me in, which will keep me close to the girl, and could give the cops a chance to pull these assholes in. The bad news: Tweedy also wants me to make my bones by whacking one of his guys. Kind of a rock and a hard place situation, since the guy in question likewise wants to whack me first. Got any suggestions? JB
Weiss snorted loudly. That last bit was meant to piss him off and it did. Got any suggestions? That was Bishop all over. That was Bishop needling him, provoking him, trying to get a reaction. Got any suggestions?
Yeah, Weiss wanted to write back, I’ll give you a suggestion: Don’t whack anyone and don’t get whacked. That’s my suggestion.
Well, it took his mind off the weekend, anyway. Took his focus off his guilt-ridden old heart and put it right back on his acid-ridden stomach. He knew he ought to pull Bishop out. He knew that was the right thing to do. He couldn’t leave an operative in a situation where the sole choice was to do murder or die. He ought to pull Bishop out right now, right away.
But he wasn’t going to. He couldn’t. He wanted the justice—and he needed the business.
See, in his mind, Weiss was still a cop: an ex-cop, an old cop, but a cop. If Cobra and the Outriders were really the gang who’d done the Bayshore killings, then he wanted to take them down. He would take them down, come hell or high water. That was the justice angle.
The business angle? This was a big assignment for Weiss, for the Agency. Philip Graham was a top-flight client, and he was paying double rates for dangerous work. If the Agency handled the case well, brought his daughter home safely, it could mean more top-flight clients and more double rates to come. Weiss couldn’t afford to walk away. He couldn’t even afford to wonder just then if the girl was into it, too.
So he wouldn’t pull Bishop off the case. And Bishop knew he wouldn’t. That was the whole nasty joke behind the “any suggestions” crap. He was making it clear: Whatever happened next was not just Bishop’s responsibility, it was Weiss’s as well. Any protest from Weiss after this point, any lectures, any silent looks of reproach, would be pure hypocrisy.
Weiss let out a gravelly groan. He shifted the computer’s mouse, clicked Reply on the e-mail form. He set his fingers on the keyboard, thought a minute, then typed:
JB. Stay in if you can. Don’t cross the line. You know what I mean. Weiss.
He hesitated, then sent the mail. He swiveled away from the machine, his belly sour with discontent.
It was a complicated thing. All part of the psychology between them, this silent, father-son sort of struggle over which way Bishop would go, what kind of man he would be. It went back a long way in their relationship. It was probably there from the first minute they met.
This was years ago now. Bishop had just gotten out of the service, just gotten back from overseas. What he did for the government was a highly classified secret, but I heard little pieces of it over the years and deduced a few others. I know he flew helicopters. I know he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Silver Star and a Distinguished Flying Cross. I know he killed people face-to-face and hand-to-hand.
I don’t know why he left the service. And I don’t know why he came home such a lost soul. But by all accounts, his interior world was practically a vacation spot for personal demons. He went wandering from one job to another, one town to another. Drunk sometimes, often disorderly, run out of several counties by the local law.
Until finally, in San Francisco, he fell under the sway of an older veteran, a violent little ratbag by the name of Ed Wolf.
For a while, Wolf and Bishop were just drinking companions and whoring companions around the city. But then, one day, Wolf told Bishop about a burglary he was planning—one of those in-and-out, can’t-go-wrong, set-you-up-for-a-lifetime scores these scumballs are always dreaming about. He invited Bishop to come along. Bishop said he would.
A few nights later, the two men broke into a mansion out near the Presidio. For all it was supposed to be an easy piece of work, both of them were carrying guns.
Of course, it turned into one of those typical bad-guy fuckups. There was supposed to be some fantastic mother lode of cash hidden in the house. There wasn’t. The family was supposed to be away on vacation. They were home.
Bishop and Wolf soon found themselves tying up four terrified people with electrical cords, gagging them with duct tape, dragging them out into the living room. Mom and her two daughters were sobbing and choking. Dad was shaking his head again and again, trying to insist through the duct tape that there was no secret treasure in the house, so help him God.
Wolf went nuts. He tore the place apart, looking for the big payoff. He ransacked drawers, busted jewelry boxes, ripped open cushions, punched holes in the walls. All he came up with in the end was a couple of hundred dollars and a handful of Mom’s rings and necklaces.
He got angrier and angrier. He screamed at the father. Where’s the money? He kicked him in the thigh.
Bishop said, Forget it, man, let’s just go, let’s just get the hell out of here.
But Wolf wouldn’t stop. He was in a fury now. His gun was drawn. Foam was flying from his lips. These fuckers aren’t making an asshole out of me!
Finally, his wild eyes lit on one of the girls. He had an idea. He bared his teeth in a smile.
Let’s just go, Bishop said. Come on, man, it’s a bust, let’s ride.
I’m not gonna walk away with nothing, said Ed Wolf.
He leered at the girl some more. She was the older of the two daughters. She was twelve. Tied with electrical cord, gagged with duct tape. Wearing a cotton nightgown with valentine hearts on it. Ed Wolf grabbed the cord around her ankles. He dragged her out into the middle of the living room. Mom and Dad and the other daughter struggled wildly against their bonds, screaming and pleading through their gags.
Ed Wolf took out a stiletto. He knelt down and slit the cord on the girl’s ankles so he could get her legs apart. He stood, and started to work his belt off. He grinned over at Bishop. You can have her after me, he said. He turned back to the girl.
Fuck this shit, said Bishop. He hit Ed Wolf in the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. Ed Wolf dropped to his knees. Bishop hit him again. Wolf fell face forward onto the floor, unconscious.
Bishop took Wolf’s stiletto, cut the girl’s father free. Call 911, he told him. Untie your people.
Bishop stood over Wolf with a gun until he heard the sirens coming. Then he glanced up at the father. The father gestured with his chin toward a hallway. Bishop nodded and followed the hallway to the rear of the house. He left by the back door as the cops were coming in the front.
The patrolmen arrived first, and not much later the investigators got there: Weiss and his partner Ketchum. Wolf was coming around by then, and Weiss and Ketchum took him into custody and questioned him. It was an easy interview. Wolf was only too happy to give the two inspectors Bishop’s name along with his last known address.
Weiss and Ketchum caught up with Bishop that very night at a Mission flophouse near the Transbay bus station. They handcuffed him and put him in the backseat of their unmarked Dodge. Weiss was driving. But he didn’t drive back to the cop shop. He drove instead to an empty field at the base of the coastal bluffs.
He parked at the edge of the field. There were no lights here. Just a patch of grass and wildflowers bordering the beach. Above hung the rocky cliffs. Beyond was the whispering black water and the line of car lights moving across the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge towers stood out sharply against the starry sky.
Ketchum was in the passenger seat. He was a wiry, gravel-voiced black man who hated everybody with the possible exception of Weiss. He turned to Weiss now and growled, What the fuck, man? You think because he didn’t let the girl get raped he’s Saint Francis? He’s psycho garbage. He’s gonna be psycho garbage till he dies.
Weiss, gazing out the windshield, shrugged. He couldn’t explain. It was partly about the girl, sure: the fact that Bishop had risked his own freedom to save her. Then there were Bishop’s medals, the Purple Heart and so on. Weiss was a patriot down to his toes. He regretted his lack of military service, and that stuff counted with him a lot. Then there were his instincts about people, the things he knew about them sometimes without understanding why. Whatever it was, he had already made up his mind.
He hoisted his heavy body out of the car. Opened the back door. Grabbed Bishop by the collar. Dragged him across the seat. Dragged him across the pavement. Dumped him, handcuffed, onto the patch of grass.
Lying there on his back at the big man’s feet, Bishop sneered up through the dark and said…(This, for some reason, is my favorite part of the story.) He said, Why don’t you take the handcuffs off me, tough guy?
And Weiss laughed once and said, What the fuck kind of stupid question is that?
Weiss then proceeded to beat the living crap out of him. It was a thorough, expert, methodical job. It went on so long that even Ketchum sniffed and shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat of the Dodge. Still it went on. Bishop’s blood, spattering the lavender flowers and the grass, was invisible in the night. His grunts and retching were swallowed by the gentle plashing of the surf. It went on and on. And he stayed conscious through the whole thing, too. Weiss made sure of it.
By the time Weiss delivered the final kick into the prisoner’s solar plexus, he was pretty worked up. He seized the front of Bishop’s shirt in his two hands. He hauled the limp body off the ground. He snarled directly into the bloody, swollen face.
You wanna be a piece of shit your whole life? he shouted at him. A man like you. You wanna be a piece of shit?
Then he dumped Bishop onto the earth again. Took off the cuffs. Left him there. Stomped back to the Dodge.
He lowered himself behind the wheel.
Damn it, Weiss, said Ketchum. That’s just soft.
Weiss angrily shoved the car into gear, and they drove away.
Weiss didn’t see Bishop again for a year or so. By then, Weiss had left the force. He was just starting the Agency. One day, before he’d even hired a receptionist, he looked up from his desk and Bishop was standing there.
You remember me? Bishop said. He looked ragged. He smelled bad. Weiss wondered if he’d been living on the streets. He wondered if he’d come in here looking for revenge.
Yeah, Weiss said. I remember you.
I want to work for you, Bishop said.
Okay, said Weiss. Sure.
But it was a complicated thing. For Weiss, there was that whole burden of fear for Bishop’s soul and the envy of his practically pathological virility. There was the vicarious thrill of sending him out on a job and the responsibility—the guilt—for loosing him on the world at large.
For Bishop—well, Weiss might’ve been the only man on earth for whom he had ever had any real respect or affection. If Weiss gave him an assignment, he’d walk through hell to get it done. But maybe Weiss, with his big, essentially moral presence, crowded Bishop a little, too—the way conscience can crowd the fire in a man. Maybe sometimes Bishop wanted to push Weiss off, to break free of him, free of his faith and expectations, free of his heavy ethical code.
But—so far, anyway—he could never quite do it. And Weiss could never quite let him go. I think they both understood that Weiss was Bishop’s last chance, his only chance. With Weiss, with the Agency, Bishop might slowly become the man he had once dreamed of being, the man Weiss believed he still was, deep down.
Without Weiss, alone, what would Bishop turn into? What would he be but a man like Ed Wolf?
Or, for that matter, a man like Cobra?