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It took me thirty minutes to track down an address for a Thad Paulus.
I called Mike to ask him to run the name, but he was on another phone call and had to call me back. I searched on my phone and found a couple of hits on the name that looked like they matched, but I could only get the phone number, which I already had. There wasn't much else attached to his name besides a Facebook page that hadn't been updated in several years and didn't show any photos. I called another friend of mine, a guy on SDPD who I was still friendly with, who ran the name through a database and came up with a North Park address. Mike called me back just after that and confirmed the address. He asked if he should ask me more about it and I told him it would be better to wait before I filled him in.
The North Park area had undergone a gentrification in recent years that was still surprising to see. Twenty years earlier, it had been a largely ignored part of San Diego, a haven of old liquor stores, check-cashing places, and homes in decline. But the demand for a San Diego zip code had spread from Banker's Hill and Hillcrest, and the entire neighborhood had revitalized itself with new restaurants, shops, embracing its roots in the process. The housing prices in the area had risen, but only because people realized they could snatch up properties on the cheap, tear them down, and build something new on them. The neighborhoods now were a mishmash of old and new, the past sitting right next to the present.
The address I had for Paulus was definitely one from the past. The small, white house was in bad need of a new paintjob. The roof had seen better days, too, with many shingles missing from the left side. The porch in front of the house sagged in the middle and the steps leading to it were slightly crooked. A chain-link fence sporting a few gaping holes contained the tiny yard.
On the porch, two guys eyed me as I pulled to the curb. The one on the left was splayed out in a wooden rocker, his hands jammed into the front pocket of a black hoodie. He wore a Padres cap crooked on his head and a thin, scraggly beard on his face. His partner was seated in an upright chair that looked like it belonged at a kitchen table. He wore a long-sleeved Lakers T-shirt and jeans with holes in the knees. His brown hair was buzzed to his scalp, and oversized, black sunglasses covered his eyes.
I pushed open the gate and it squeaked loudly. The one with the hoodie sat up straighter in his rocker. The guy with sunglasses pushed the glasses down his nose a bit to get a better look at me.
“What up?” the hoodie guy said.
“I'm looking for Thad Paulus,” I said.
“And who are you?”
“My name's Joe Tyler. He doesn't know me.”
“Well, if he don't know you, he doesn't wanna know you,” he said.
Sunglasses cracked up.
“Is he here?” I asked.
“I think he has a learning disability, Jay,” Sunglasses said, smiling.
Jay stood up, tall and thin, all arms and legs. “Seems that way.”
“I don't want any trouble,” I said.
Jay smiled, a gap between his top two front teeth. “Then you should leave or there might be some trouble, Joe Blow.”
The problem with telling someone at the beginning of a conversation that you didn't want any trouble was that they almost always took that as an admission that you were scared, which led them to think they had the upper hand and, in turn, become more brazen. They never saw it for what it was.
Their opportunity to avoid getting hurt.
“Is he here?” I asked again.
Jay came down off the porch, his hands loose at his sides. I'd considered that he might have a weapon inside the pocket of the sweatshirt and was relieved to see that his hands were empty.
“Are you supposed to be a bodyguard or something?” I asked. I pointed to the guy still up on the deck. “You and him?”
He was a little taller than I was, and he was trying to use the minimal difference to intimidate, standing up straight and looking down at me.
I held my footing.
“I said leave,” he growled. “Or there's gonna be trouble.”
“You never told me to leave.”
“What?”
“You actually never told me to leave. You said I should leave, but you didn't explicitly tell me to leave.”
His eyes narrowed. “Well, I'm telling you now to leave. Or there's gonna be trouble.”
“Why?”
The question confused him. “Why what?”
“Why is there gonna be trouble if I'm just asking if someone lives here? That doesn't make much sense.” I shrugged. “If Thad Paulus doesn't live here, you would've just told me that I had the wrong address or something like that. But now you're telling me to leave and threatening me, which makes it seem like I definitely have the right address.”
He thought for a moment and then frowned. “Just get the fuck out of here.”
“After you answer my question. Is Thad Paulus here?”
He turned to his buddy, laughing, shaking his head. “You believe this guy, Billy? He really wants an answer. Should I give him one?”
Billy adjusted his sunglasses, chuckling. “Yeah. Give him one.”
I could see it coming from two miles away. Jay's hand was already balled into a fist and he pivoted away from the house toward me, his left arm coming at me in a big, wide arc. I stepped back, outside of his swing, and let his momentum carry him past me. I shoved hard on the back of his shoulder as it swept past and he stumbled away from me before catching his balance.
He stood up, pissed off. “You're gonna regret that.”
I didn't say anything, waited.
He glanced at Billy, then took two quick steps toward me, his right hand already cocked and ready to strike. I slid to my left and drove my fist into the middle of his stomach as I sidestepped him. He froze, his mouth open in a circle, his arm still cocked and ready to strike. His eyes watered and his knees shook.
“Just stop now,” I said. “Before I really hurt you. You don't know what you're doing and I do.”
Billy was on his feet on the porch, watching us, trying to decide what to do.
“Don't,” I warned him. “Stay there.”
He paused, unsure of himself now.
Jay finally grunted, his wind coming back, and he made a gurgling sound, turning to me again. His face was red, and he wasn't nearly as tall as he'd been when he'd come down off the porch.
“Don't,” I said, shaking my head. “Just don't.”
Jay didn't listen and instead lunged at me, sloppy and all over the place. I sidestepped him again and buried my fist behind his ribs as he went by. His legs gave way and he fell to the ground, silent, trying to find air again.
I hadn't been in any kind of fight or confrontation for several years and the spike in my adrenaline surprised me. My heart raced, my hands tingled, and the hair on my neck was standing at attention.
I flexed the hand I'd punched Jay with, uncoiling my fist, wiggling my fingers.
Billy's feet shuffled against the steps to the porch and I knew he hadn't listened to me. I turned in his direction and he was rushing at me from the porch, coming in low like a linebacker trying to hit a running back. I took one step forward, then lifted my knee into his onrushing face, catching him under his chin and snapping his head backward. He collapsed to the ground in a heap, his body falling awkwardly to the side with his hands and arms beneath him. He was out cold.
Jay rolled over on his back, his face an entire mask of pain, his mouth still open.
Arrogance was the easiest way to get yourself hurt.
The screen door to the house creaked and I turned.
The guy standing there was in his late-twenties, short black hair, about my height. He had on a gray T-shirt and jeans, and his build reminded me of that of a swimmer's: broad shoulders, flat chest, narrow hips. He seemed confused by what he was seeing, looking at Jay and Billy on the ground.
“Are you Thad Paulus?” I asked.
He took a look at me, nodded, then stared down at his friends again. “What the fuck happened?”