8

A few hours before Sophia received the call from the American telling her he had seen Emily, Elias had walked into the Gang Task Force office and found Trammell standing with six other cops in front of a dry-erase board. It had been one day since Elias moved Rada Harkov’s dead body and he still hadn’t been able to tell Trammell about it.

Trammell had seen him come into the room. Their eyes met for a moment, but Trammell looked away. Elias flanked the group on the right side and tried again to catch Trammell’s eye, and again was ignored. It was preposterous. Why in the hell would he ignore him at a time like this? Elias’s stomach was beginning to hurt in a way that felt medical. Trammell could not have seemed further away. Elias felt a deep loneliness.

“Hey,” said a cop named Oscar Tulafona, coming out of nowhere.

“What?” said Elias.

“You fucking stink.” He said it hatefully.

Things got worse. As the meeting ended, Sergeant Muniz came into the room and called Trammell over to him. Trammell joined the sergeant at the doorway for a moment; they conferred with their heads down and their hands up near their chins, like a pitcher talking to a manager, and then they stepped out of the room. Where were they going? Elias looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. Nobody had. They were all joking about something. Everyone was carrying on, laughing and joking. Their skin looked horrible—a sea of pink skin and broken capillaries. Fat. They were all fat. Everyone was joking and fat. The room was closing in on him. He needed a drink. He needed to talk with Trammell. Make sure he was going to stay solid.

Trammell was gone for what felt like an hour. An hour of panic. The worst hour of Elias’s life. Was Trammell confessing? Elias couldn’t breathe. He was sweating. He pretended to write a report. Where was his partner? Trammell could save him with a few kind words. Where is my partner? He could imagine two scenarios and both were equally bad. Either Trammell was snitching on Elias to save himself, telling them everything about the redhead, the bank, everything, or he was trying to get some kind of transfer, trying to save himself that way. He was trying to leave. That was clear. He would snitch his way out, or he would beg his way out. Elias knew it. In the end, friends weren’t friends, they were enemies.

Elias tried to read Trammell’s face when the man stepped back into the room. Trammell was ice cold. He always had been. He was a fake. That was the thing about him, that’s why he was so successful, that was the reason why everyone loved him. He was a fucking fake.

“Let’s go,” said Trammell. His face looked sad. Elias got up from his desk and wondered what that sad face could mean. Did he snitch? Did he snitch? Sadness and fear fought for majority control of Elias’s inner self.

They walked silently to the car, Trammell staying a few paces ahead of Elias. He’s acting like I killed that lady, thought Elias. A nasty feeling filled Elias. He wanted to ignore him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop paying attention to him. He was transfixed. He couldn’t think one thought that didn’t relate in some way to Trammell. He couldn’t even stop looking at him. He measured his back and wondered whether he could take him in a fight. He knew he couldn’t.

They got in the car. Elias got in the driver’s seat out of habit, but he didn’t know whether he was able to drive. He was so tired. He hadn’t slept in over fifty hours. They sat in the car without moving.

“How are you?” Elias finally asked, not knowing what else to say. His voice came out dully from the top of his chest; the sound of the words echoed around the car. He had to physically will himself not to cry. He could smell his own breath.

“I’m good.”

“You need anything, you let me know, right?”

“Course,” said Trammell. Just that single, disdainful word: course. Elias turned and looked at him. It looked like all of Trammell’s facial muscles had bunched up into a genuine mask of hatred—a hate mask. His skin, normally brown, looked gray. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot. Trammell snorted through his nose and looked ahead. None of it seemed genuine. He seemed like a different guy. Like a complete stranger.

“What was the sergeant saying?”

“Nothing.”

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Elias almost got into an accident as he pulled out onto Seventh Street. A truck honked and lurched. Trammell’s hand shot up to the ceiling. Elias felt like he needed to be 5150’d. He felt shaken.

They drove in silence. Elias debated with himself until finally he said, “I found the Sophia woman.”

“Uh huh,” said Trammell.

The Federal Building grew taller as they approached it. A labor union was staging a protest in front of it. “No union! No peace! No union! No peace!”

“She lives in the Sunset,” said Elias. He didn’t know why he was telling Trammell this, but he couldn’t stop.

Trammell stayed silent. They crossed Market Street.

“Super-normal house, garden hoses,” said Elias. He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. He couldn’t stop talking. “Nice house. It looked like medium rich. Weird.”

Trammell rolled down his window and said, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Just working,” said Elias, defensively. And just like that he was burning. His face was red. He didn’t know why. He wanted an excuse to pull over so he could drink wine. What was I talking about? What was I talking about? Fuck you.

Elias drove up Leavenworth in silence. This was rock bottom. He was driving in a city filled with junkies and bums, driving around with a murderer, and he had to defend himself. He silently mouthed the words fuck you.

The police radio was droning on in the background. Elias felt seized by panic every time he heard mention of the Ingleside District. He was convinced the dispatcher would be calling out an 802, code for a dead body, at any moment.

He decided it would be better not to tell Trammell he had moved the body. Better to let him think she was still sitting inside the house.

They drove in silence, circling through the Tenderloin, causing people to shout out “Five-O!” on every block.

After a while Trammell quietly asked: “Did you hear anything?”

“What?”

“Did they find her yet?”

“The girl?”

“The lady,” said Trammell. “The lady at the house.”

Is he bugged? Is he wearing a mic? Did they put him up to this? thought Elias.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Elias. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t come up with the right words. He couldn’t even understand what Trammell was asking. He kept driving. His mouth became dry.

“Did they find her?” asked Trammell again.

“Who?”

“The cops,” said Trammell. “The cops? San Bruno?”

Elias heard the words and weighed them. “The girl you killed?” he asked. It came out too hard. It was a test. He wanted to test Trammell, see if he was bugged.

“I didn’t kill anybody,” said Trammell

Elias looked at him and felt confused. Trammell continued staring straight ahead. Didn’t kill anybody.

Elias turned left onto Eddy Street and then circled back around on Polk. A tranny prostitute blew him a kiss. There were crowds of homeless people.

“I can’t work,” said Elias.

“Me neither,” said Trammell, and this small agreement, this tiny little coming together, made Elias feel something like hope. He wanted to reach out and hold Trammell’s hand. He wanted to be close to him. He wanted to smell him.

Elias’s phone rang in his pocket. The caller ID said San Francisco County Jail. A recorded voice told Elias the call was collect from an inmate. He pressed 1 to accept. It was Billy Franco, the snitch.

“I got some good news.”

“What?” said Elias. The tiredness, the depression, it all disappeared.

“I found what you wanted.”

“Tell it.”

“You gonna help me?” asked Franco.

“Of course.” Course. Course. Course.

“You gonna get me out of here?”

“Of course.” Elias knew the call would have been recorded, but he didn’t care. “Tell me,” he said impatiently. He looked over at Trammell, whose face had morphed back from ugly to beautiful.

“Apparently, some Russians have been looking for a girl called Emily Rosario. They want her bad.”

“Consider yourself a free man,” said Elias.

“When you gonna get me out?”

“Whenever you want.”

“We got her,” said Elias; his smile, an unsure, painful-looking thing, seemed to be asking for a response, for some kind of affirmation, but Trammell didn’t know how to respond. “We got that bitch,” said Elias. “Emily Rosario, stealing my money, stealing our money.”

Trammell’s face looked confused.

“I pulled our snitch Franco out of CJ-5 and asked him to work his magic,” continued Elias, “and boom.” He raised his cell phone to show Trammell. “Fucking got her. She’s the one. We got her. Billy Franco’s in the fucking house, dog!”

If Trammell smiled while Elias told him this, it wasn’t because he was happy; it was because he was scared of Elias, who had gone from listless to crazed in the span of a phone call. Elias’s behavior wasn’t just unpredictable, it wasn’t a mood swing, it seemed mentally unstable. Trammell’s smile was a reaction to this instability. It was the type of smile offered to appease a crazy person.

Elias raced through traffic to get them back to the Hall of Justice. Trammell followed him into the building. He wanted to keep him in his sight, make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. Elias went straight to the Identification Bureau and ordered Emily Rosario’s most recent mug shot.

Back in the hallway they looked at the page, her picture on the right, her description on the left. She had been arrested ten months earlier after trying to buy oxycodone from an undercover cop. The picture showed Emily in the county-issued orange jail suit. Her face looked vaguely hopeful, like she expected to be released after the picture was taken. Her skin was pale. Her hair had been long then; it hung down past her ears. She was five feet three inches tall and weighed only one hundred and twenty pounds. Tattoos: Bildad, left wrist; Champion of the World, left shoulder; clear complexion. Her last known address was 480 Minna Street, 312, San Francisco. Elias recognized the address as the Auburn Hotel.

“We got this fucking bitch,” said Elias, nodding his head as he drove them back to Sixth Street. They drove past the Auburn and parked about fifty feet from the front door. The alley was quiet.

They had to buzz at the front gate to be let in.

“Who you here to see?” said the manager.

“Parole sweep,” said Elias, flashing his badge. The manager, his face looking indifferent and tired, buzzed them through the second gate.

They went up the three flights of stairs, passing a young woman smoking a cigarette who called out after them, “Hey Darryl, here they come! Whoop, whoop!”

Nobody answered at Emily Rosario’s door.

Emily’s neighbor, Isaac, tucked inside his room, listened to the banging and wondered what all the fuss was about.

On the way back out, the manager confirmed that Emily Rosario did in fact live there.

“Y’all know me by the swag of my walk,” sang Elias as they walked back out into the night. “The swag of my talk, the swag of my block.”

He opened the door to the car, looked at Trammell, circled with his finger to the sky, and said, “She’s here, I can feel her.” He raised his eyebrows and asked: “You wanna fish for her here? Or should we circle?”

Trammell shook his head.

“Let’s circle.”

They did loops: Leavenworth to Sutter to Hyde to Eighth to Folsom to Sixth and back again. They looked at every female they passed on the street, measured their bodies, mentally weighed them, took in their height, their race, and tried to match them to their image of Emily Rosario. They decided not to use any more snitches at this point; better to keep the circle small. “She will appear,” said Elias. “They always do.”

Elias told a story about finding a murder suspect named Dante Hayes, who had been particularly hard to track down. It was from back when Elias still worked in the Ingleside District. Trammell had heard it before but he played along and nodded when he was supposed to. “Must have checked his house over twenty times,” said Elias. “Finally caught him at the YMCA on Ocean. Welch was working out, spotted Dante lifting weights.” Elias looked at Trammell, who nodded. Elias continued: “Wanted for murder, but still had to get his workout in.” Elias laughed. “I told him when I cuffed him that he could lift all the weights he wanted at San Quentin.”

It was well into nighttime now. There were cars filled with kids from the suburbs coming into South of Market to hit the clubs. Homeless men were trying to wave people into parking spots. People smoked cigarettes on corners and people smoked crack in doorways. Massage parlors sat open next to liquor stores. Men and women gathered in small groups on corners.

Later, when he was interviewed about what happened next, Elias would lie and tell the inspectors that he and Trammell had been on their way to the Henry Hotel in search of a gang member named Duda Rue. He would say they were just parking when they had spotted Emily running; in reality, they were driving back to Emily’s apartment when Trammell spotted her. He noticed her walking across Sixth Street close to the wall. “Whoa, whoa, slow down,” he said. Something about the way she walked, the fact that she was wearing a hat, her size, her race, her coloring all matched, but it was something more than that, something that couldn’t be quantified.

“Hold on, hold on,” he said. Elias stopped and Trammell jumped out of the car and crossed Sixth Street against traffic. Elias didn’t know what was going on. He turned in his seat and watched and debated whether he should back up, turn around, or jump out. He decided to jump out. Emily kept walking away from them toward Howard Street.

Elias ran a few steps and then shadowed Trammell from across the street. He felt scared; his heart was racing. His hand kept going down to the gun at his waist. Sixth Street was crowded with people; the buildings were tight and tall, and there were no alleys to run through. There was a group of young Chinese kids lined up to get into a club.

When Emily looked behind her and saw Trammell coming after her, her first thought was that he was making a mistake, maybe confusing her for someone else. He wasn’t Russian. The idea that he might be a cop was just starting to form in her head when she bumped square into Elias.

“Hey,” said Elias, like he was trying to wake her up. She had walked into his chest. They were in the middle of Sixth Street. Cars were stopping and honking. She tried to step around him, but he grabbed her shoulders and held her.

At first Emily thought he was trying to help her. “I’m okay,” she said, pulling her arm away. His hand tightened on her wrist. She looked into his face and saw ugliness and hatred; he looked like he might hit her. Even dressed in plain clothes, she could tell he was a cop.

“I’m all right,” she tried again.

“Come on,” said Elias, pulling her toward the curb. ­Emily’s eyes darted around at all the cars, all the people; nobody was helping, everyone was either staring or ignoring her, but nobody was stepping forward to help.

Trammell caught up to them and took her other arm, knocking into her, making her lose her footing for a second. They pulled her up and toward the sidewalk.

“Nah,” said Emily. She tried to pull her arms away, but they both held tight.

Her mind raced. They were cops, she could tell by their faces, but what were they stopping her for?

“I didn’t do nothing,” she said. Her mind wheeled around.

They pushed her toward a big blue building. Her heart raced. She looked around for help, but the sidewalk had become deserted; every window was empty.

They kept her moving until the back of her head hit the wall. Were they cops? Were they with the Russians?

Elias held up the mug shot and looked from it to her face and back again. “It’s her,” he said.

Emily winced. If I could take it back, she thought. If I had stayed on the roof. She wanted to cry. If I stayed at the hotel.

Trammell held her tighter, the expression on his face, to Emily, appearing incomprehensibly hostile; if they were cops, why were they so mad?

“You fucking bitch,” said Elias. “You know how long we been looking for you?” He pulled his hand back like he was going to hit her. She flinched, and the back of her head hit the wall behind her again. He got right in her face, his expression even worse. “We’re trying to save you,” he said. His breath was hot and bad.

“What’s your name?” asked Trammell.

“Mariah,” said Emily.

Elias swung her around so that her face was toward the wall. She stared at the grout between the bricks; she stared at the texture of the brick and tried to organize a plan. He began patting her down. His hands were rough on her.

“You need a lady cop to search me!” said Emily.

He groped around her pants. Her fear, expanding inside her, felt like it could lift her up. Why didn’t I leave town?

“What the fuck we got here?” he said, finding the gun in her jacket pocket.

“That’s not mine,” said Emily, looking back at him. Trammell tightened his grip on her shoulder and pushed it into the wall. Elias popped the clip out of the gun, confirmed it was loaded, popped the clip back in, and put the gun into his jacket pocket. During the entire investigation that came later, an investigation that included hundreds of officers, this gun was never discovered; it sat untouched and unnoted in Elias’s pocket even as he was questioned by the homicide inspectors.

Cars were driving past like nothing was happening.

He jammed his hands into her pants pockets and found the bag of marijuana. He pulled it out, looked at it, sniffed it, and handed it to Trammell.

“My God,” he said. “You’re fucked.”

None of this mattered to Emily. She didn’t care about a gun charge, or a weed charge, but the fact that they were looking for her, the fact that they were carrying around her mug shot, seemed to mean they had her for the bank. That fucking PI, he probably called them as soon as she left.

Elias found the bottle of Dilaudid and shook it. His lips were smacking like a cokehead. Emily could hear him breathing heavy. He moved down her legs and found the stack of hundred-dollar bills tucked into her sock. Everyone got quiet. Trammell smiled.

“Keep it,” said Emily. “Just fucking keep it.”

“Keep it?” said Elias, looking at Trammell. “She wants us to take a bribe.”

“She’s a gangster,” said Trammell.

“What do you think?” asked Elias.

“I think she’d get ten years for the gun, plus two for the pills, and one for the bribery of a peace officer.” He pulled out a radio, turned his back to them, and spoke into it. All of the problems that Trammell and Elias had been having disappeared like fog. They felt awake. They felt free. They felt strong.

“Bullshit,” said Emily. “That shit ain’t even my gun.”

“What about the money?” asked Elias.

A man walked by, skirting around the parked cars. Emily thought about yelling for help, but decided against it.

“I found that. Swear on my mother. Right up on Turk Street,” she said.

“You found a stack of hundreds on Turk Street?”

“I know,” she said.

Trammell was still forcing her right shoulder into the wall. She couldn’t move.

“You sure it wasn’t on Geary?” asked Elias.

“What?”

“On Geary?”

“Nah, on Turk,” she said.

“Not on Geary?” asked Elias again.

“Not at a bank on Geary?” asked Trammell.

Emily felt sweat on her forehead. Dread boiled in her guts.

The two cops stepped even closer to her, jamming her up against the wall like they were going to rob her. She braced herself for a beating. She could smell sweat and alcohol. The older one needed to shave and he didn’t seem stable. She turned her shoulder, pushed her knee against the wall, and tried to squeeze through them.

“Hold on there,” said Elias. He elbowed her back against the wall and reached under her shirt with his left hand and grabbed the skin of her stomach and pinched it. “Hold on,” he said. Emily tried to push his hand away, but his wrist was like a metal bar. Her skin felt like it might tear. She wanted to cry out, but she couldn’t.

“Shhh,” said Elias in her ear. “Did you get it at a bank?”

“Hell no,” she said.

Elias let go of her skin and held the mug shot up to her face. “You see this?”

“So what?” said Emily.

He took the paper away from her face, leaned in, and said, “Where’s the money?” His breath smelled alcoholic. It smelled sour. The stubble on his face was gray; the whites of his eyes looked yellow. His skin was dry.

Emily was dying of thirst. There was no good thing that could come from this. This was it.

Trammell loosened his hold on her shoulder, moved closer to her, and spoke into her ear: “Look, we got you with a gun, you got drugs, you got money on you that was stolen from a bank—”

Emily opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off.

“You got bills with serial numbers that match stolen bills from a bank. We got video. We got DNA at the bank. You’re fucked. It’s over. Chowchilla time. You gonna be a hard-ass bitch.”

Elias leaned in and spoke calmly. “Now, the way it’s going to go down is this: you’re going to tell us where the money is, and we’ll let you go.” He looked at Trammell.

“Scot-free,” said Trammell.

Elias whispered, “Listen, we are the only people that know it was you, but in about two minutes, I’m going to call in and tell them that I’ve got the girl who robbed the bank. It doesn’t matter if you think we can’t prove it. We can. We have video, you have the money. It’s over. Unless you give us the rest of the money, and we forget about your stupid junky ass, and everyone goes back to their happy ways.”

They waited. A cloud of depression moved in. Emily didn’t know what to do. She had never experienced not knowing what to do in such a pure way. Her insides were splitting. It felt like her heart was breaking. She wanted to shut down, she wanted to go silent on them, maybe even fall down onto the street, let them prove whatever they had to prove. They seemed like they might kill her. She was too scared to think. Time crawled. People were walking by now, but they weren’t doing anything. Where is Pierre? Emily watched as a white van turned the corner from Howard onto Sixth Street. It drove past them. She looked at the driver. He was staring back at her. It was the ugly Russian man, the quiet one from the hotel. Their eyes locked as he went by. “They got it,” she said pointing at the van. She felt anger inside.

“Who?” said Elias.

“Right there in that van, the Russians.”

Elias and Trammell both watched the van as it continued down Sixth Street and then turned right onto Minna. The two cops exchanged looks. Something shifted. The word Russians echoed in the moment. They pushed Emily in front of them and began walking toward Minna. People sank back to let them pass. Everyone stole looks at Emily to see if she was snitching. Fuck all y’all, she thought. Minna was four hundred feet in front of them. They walked without speaking. As they approached the corner, Trammell let go of Emily’s arm and hustled ahead. He peered around and then looked back at Elias. “It’s sitting right there,” he said.

“They got it,” said Emily again. “They got the money.” She didn’t know why she was saying it. It felt compulsive. She couldn’t control her words. She said it calmly but with conviction. The words came out hot. Maybe they would let her go.

“Let’s go,” said Elias, pulling her by both arms. When they turned the corner Emily saw the white van idling in the middle of the alley. It wasn’t parked, it just sat there, about two hundred yards in. Elias pushed her forward. The alley was clear of people. It got darker as they went. Emily looked for the PI’s car, but it was gone. Sirens blared down Sixth Street, headed for some other incident.

The cops pushed Emily toward the wall of the alley. Before she knew what was happening the white one was lifting her right hand and handcuffing it to an iron window bar. He was breathing heavy like men do before a fight.

“No, you don’t got to do all that,” said Emily. He clicked the cuffs closed.

Elias nodded his head toward the van, and said, “Go.”

Trammell began trotting with his gun out toward the van. Elias followed right behind. Emily pulled on her hand, trying to yank it free. The cuff bit into the skin of her wrist. The city sounded like bees in her ears. She was lost.

As the cops got near the van, the engine shut off. Emily watched as the taillight went dark. She watched as Trammell jogged forward. The driver’s side door of the van popped open, and the man Georgy stepped out. Emily watched as he walked toward Trammell. They were about twenty feet apart from each other. Georgy’s posture was straight, and he seemed perfectly relaxed. He had a slight smile on his face. For a moment Emily thought they might start talking to each other. They were ten feet apart. Emily watched as Georgy’s right arm raised up. Everything slowed down. The next thing Emily saw was Trammell’s head snapping back like he had been punched. The color red floated in the air. And then she heard the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. Trammell fell backward. Shot in the head.

Emily watched the other cop shoot. She saw the Russian man’s head explode. It only took one second, and then everything was over. Two men had been shot dead right in front of Emily’s eyes. It happened as fast as someone clapping their hands twice.

She yanked on her hand again, but it wouldn’t budge. She said, “No, no, no,” and “Fuck me,” but nobody was there. Elias bent down and checked his partner, then walked over to the Russian and looked down at him. He went to the driver’s door and looked into the van and got into it. Emily experienced a brief moment of hope—she thought he might drive away—but then the back doors of the van swung open and Elias jumped out.

He walked straight toward her. She tried to find the strength to scream, but she didn’t have the breath. She was suffocating. There was nothing she could do. She didn’t feel ready to die. She prayed for one more chance. Please God, everything I did, I did it for you. She looked over her shoulder toward Sixth Street, but nobody was there.

The cop kept walking toward her. He walked past his partner’s body splayed out on the ground. She braced herself. He looked crazy. His mouth was open. He looked like he was going to cry. He held his gun loosely in his right hand.

“Please don’t tell on me,” he said. He walked right up to her and raised the gun up and pointed it at her head and said, “I didn’t fucking do it.”

All of the men that Emily had ever known passed through her mind; good men and bad men; teachers, boyfriends, and bullies.

“No,” she said, her mind becoming calm and focused. Something clicked. She felt composure settle into her. “Listen to me,” she said, staring him in his eyes. “I’m your witness. I saw it. You saved him. You tried to save that guy, your friend. You did right. You had to. You get it? I saw it.”

Elias lowered the gun. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Jesus Christ. I’m fucked.” His face was squeezed in like he smelled death. He kept up a low moaning sound.

Emily pulled on the cuff. It wouldn’t budge. People had started to appear at the mouth of the alley, but they were still far away.

Elias bent over in front of her. “Oh fuck. I’m so fucked. I’m so fucked.” He looked up at her and said, “I don’t know what to do.”

Emily breathed deeply. “Listen to me,” she said. He looked at her. “Did you radio it in?”

He stopped moaning. “Fuck,” he said. He sounded like a dope fiend. “My radio’s in the car,” he said.

“Do you have a phone?” she asked, calmly. She was in complete control now.

He patted his pockets, pulled out a cell phone, and looked at her.

“Call nine-one-one,” she said. The sound of sirens was already growing in the background.

She looked at him and said, “I didn’t rob that bank. You hear me? This is the deal: I didn’t rob that bank. I was smoking weed right here. That man in the van tried to grab me. You and your partner saved me, right?”

Elias stopped crying. He looked at her, trying to understand.

“You saved me, right?” She looked straight at him and sounded out the words: “You saved me and I didn’t rob no bank.”

Elias’s face relaxed; he seemed to understand. He tucked the gun behind his back and unlocked her handcuffs.