He was running through Piedmont, into the second week of his paid leave. He’d find out the next day what the Department had decided to do with him. He’d done what he did and he’d do the same thing again, and worrying wouldn’t help. The worst they could do was fire him. But all cops are afraid of Internal Affairs, the largest detective unit on the OPD by far, with four times as many officers as the homicide bureau. When they hired you it was as if Internal Affairs implanted a fear chip in your brain. They could do anything they wanted to.
In all the interviews with Internal Affairs he’d made himself say “I feared for my life.” The magic words that justified almost any shooting. It was his only lie. But lying is the one thing they’ll fire you for, even if you haven’t done anything else wrong.
No OPD officer had ever been fired for killing a citizen, on duty or undercover, much less prosecuted. One or two, over the years, had been terminated, briefly, before the police union lawyers reversed the decision and put them back on the job with back pay. How would the Department find anyone to work the streets of East Oakland if they knew they’d be second-guessed for shooting somebody in an instant of panic, confusion, poor judgment? You only had to say you feared for your life. He’d done everything perfectly, but he’d lied.
Nothing to do for it but run a little harder.
He was running down Fairview Avenue when he saw Knox’s Piedmont PD patrol car cruising uphill toward him. He turned, hunched his shoulders, and walked briskly in the opposite direction. When he heard the blip of the patrol car’s loudspeaker, he walked even faster, the patrol car getting closer until, from just behind him, in an amplified whisper, “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.” He stopped walking and held his hands high in the air.
“How you doin’, Hanson? I heard about it. You killing those three Black Muslims.”
Hanson clasped his hands behind his head, took a wider stance.
“Witnesses said they’d never seen anything like it. They said you executed them.”
Hanson turned around, looking at Knox. “What else did you hear?”
“A lot of guys don’t like you.”
“True. What do they say?”
“You name it. Rumor has you moonlighting as Felix’s bodyguard.”
“What do you think?”
Knox snorted. “You’re a good cop. Those fuckers would have killed you if you hadn’t killed them first. Three fuckin’ thugs, two pistols, and an Uzi? Christ. Somebody needed to kill them—who cares why? You did an excellent job.”
“Well,” Hanson said, lowering his hands, walking to the patrol car, “thank you very much, Officer Knox. Thanks, man.”
“Probably, though, you shouldn’t hang around with Felix Maxwell. Not because it looks bad, which it does, but…I’ve worked the Bay Area pushing twenty years now, most of it on a real police department.”
Hanson nodded.
“There was a time, in fact, when I was a real hot dog over there. A real son of a bitch, working narcotics and gangs, a special unit,” Knox said, thinking about it, shaking his head at the memory. “I know all about Felix Maxwell. He’s smart and he’s slick. They think he’s Robin Hood in East Oakland.” He looked at Hanson. “A sociopath and a treacherous motherfucker. Crazy too. He knows it but doesn’t believe it. Don’t trust him. Do me a favor and watch your ass.”
That night he was still awake at 2 a.m., looking at the dark ceiling. He hadn’t drunk enough to go to sleep, not wanting to be hungover in the morning for his meeting with Sergeant Jackson.
He worked on his breathing. Just as he was going to sleep, he thought about Mickey and Champagne. Lone Pine, up there in the mountains where it was green, the air was clear, and birds danced through the trees.
Across town, Felix was still awake too, watching the stars. That afternoon a couple of OPD motorcycle cops had pulled him over, just to fuck with him, as if they could. They wrote him a warning ticket, laughing when they handed it to him. “Have a nice day, Mr. Maxwell.” When he drove off, he was so angry that he hit a parked car with the Rolls. He’d driven away and told Levon to take care of it.
Levon had just looked at him. “Okay.” He said maybe Felix should take some time off, relax a little bit. The cops were touchy about that graveyard shooting. Patronizing him. Relax? There’s no relaxing in this world. You relax and they’ll kill you. They’re just waiting for you to relax. That’s exactly what they want.
At 9:50 the next morning Hanson pushed through the main entrance of the Justice Center on his way to the elevators. He stopped for a moment at the black marble End of Watch memorial wall, the names of all the OPD officers killed in the line of duty and the date they died, forty names and dates cut into the polished stone. It seemed small and cobbled together and a little shabby, individual names poorly aligned with the others, some done in a slightly different font where it was obvious that one engraver had been replaced by another over the years, some doing better work than others. As if the budget had been used for something else, and then another cop was killed and they had to find the money somewhere else to pay the lowest bidder. The lettering was too small, the names overwhelmed by the gleaming wall. Half a dozen leafy potted plants had been pushed against the base of the wall. A guest register was chained to a wooden podium flanked by the American flag and the State Flag of California.
The dead had been killed by gunfire and in traffic, pursuit, and motorcycle accidents, most of them victims of bad luck, inexperience, carelessness, and confusion. The street wasn’t like the war, where if you lasted a couple of months you had a good chance of surviving your tour because you knew what to expect, what to look for. Where you paid attention all the time because people got killed every day, not every few years. It was war all the time, without marriage problems or money problems, no traffic jams, supermarket lines, or bills in the mailbox. The cops got careless because they’d go insane if they tried to remain alert all the time like you did in a war.
Hanson heard them talking behind the wall, dead but still bitching about how fucked up things were: the out-of-touch Department brass, who were politicians instead of cops, the citizens out there, the self-righteous liberals who, with all their education, knew nothing about the real world. And Tyrone out in East and West Oakland, of course. Who could ever know what went on inside his head. You might as well try to reason with a fuckin’ mailbox, and if you tried, he’d see it as weakness. And Tyrone would kill you if you gave him a chance. The same conversations Hanson heard in the locker room every day.
He crossed the lobby, checking the big clock that was a giant OPD badge, seeing his reflection in the locked glass door of a bulletin board. Anywhere but on the street, when he was in uniform, he felt like he was wearing a costume.
Waiting for the elevator, he relaxed his shoulders, slowed his breathing, told himself to expect nothing, good or bad. Whatever happened was the correct outcome. Don’t think too much. Don’t react. Don’t get angry. You have no friends in this place.
The elevator doors closed behind him when he stepped out onto the fifth floor, a bleak corridor of gray walls, acoustic tile ceiling, recycled air, and solid core doors. The hallway was silent, deserted, dust motes barely moving in the dead air. His ears clicked and whined. For just an instant he thought he might have gotten off on some wrong, off-limits floor, but the numbers on the doors were right. Sergeant Jackson’s office was at the end of the hall. Every other office on the fifth floor—those that had names on the doors—were assigned to captains and above.
He knocked, and Sergeant Jackson told him to come in, “and close the door behind you.” Hanson went in and closed the door, not knowing what the protocol was. He stood at attention.
He’d stepped out of the grim hallway into another dimension. The light was softer and the air fresher. The Persian carpet had a simple but elegant design in blacks and dark reds. A leather sofa against one wall was dark cinnamon, a big brooding Hudson River School landscape, sunset in the mountains, on the wall above it. What he’d heard about Sergeant Jackson having a rich wife must be true.
He was sitting behind a solid oak desk, the desktop bare except for a single personnel folder, which Hanson assumed was his. Sergeant Jackson watched him taking it all in. He reminded Hanson of his relatives in North Carolina, the cheekbones and hard green eyes.
“At ease, Hanson,” he said. “Relax. Take off your hat if you want to. In one afternoon you killed three citizens. Sit down.”
Hanson went to the sofa, and Sergeant Jackson swiveled his chair, following him around.
“A couple of witnesses said it looked like an execution. Three in one day,” he said. “You only killed one suspect in Portland, now you’re out here doing it in batches.”
“They’d have killed me if I’d waited for them to figure out how their guns worked.”
“They were there to kill Felix Maxwell. They’d been following him around for a couple of days, waiting for a chance. They picked a bad time.”
If the OPD had been following the Muslims around, Hanson thought, they must have watched the whole thing.
“What is your relationship with Felix Maxwell?” Sergeant Jackson said, looking at him.
“A year ago, I hadn’t heard of him. The biggest drug dealer in the state, maybe the country, and I’d never heard of him.”
“Our unit knew you’d been talking to him.”
“I gave him a warning about double-parking in front of Raylene’s Discount Liquor. It was pretty obvious that he was a drug dealer. Though maybe I just jumped to a racist conclusion because of the Rolls-Royce.”
Sergeant Jackson didn’t smile.
“After that I ran into him once in a while. I like him.”
“Felix Maxwell doesn’t run into anybody unless he plans to run into him. What were you doing with him the afternoon when you shot the three suspects?”
IA had already asked the same questions. Many times. Sergeant Jackson must have read the reports.
Hanson thought about it. “I’d just gotten some ribs at Flint’s Ribs and was going back to my car when he came walking up to me. He wanted me to work for him. I said I couldn’t. We went to the cemetery and talked about the counterfeit stars he’s been seeing.”
Sergeant Jackson leaned back in his chair. “We were watching you,” he said. “We checked everything out. Nobody believed you. Who would believe a story like that?” He paused. “The Department is going to give you a Medal of Valor.”
Hanson glanced back at the painting. It wasn’t a sunset. The mountains were on fire.
“Back in the Academy, when I was hitting you with those focus gloves? I saw it in your eyes then. If we fought I’d have to kill you. I talked to the lieutenant about it. I want you on The Unit.”
Hanson didn’t say anything. The mountains were in flames. Elk and deer were running for a river far below.
“Well?”
“Thank you, Sergeant Jackson. I appreciate that. Working with you. Can I think about it for a few days?”
Sergeant Jackson looked surprised, then annoyed, then he said, “Why not? Take another week off, the award ceremony can wait. Let me know.”
“Thank you,” Hanson said, and Sergeant Jackson nodded, giving him permission to leave.
Hanson was opening the door when Sergeant Jackson said, “Don’t fuck up. The city council’s not happy about this. The Black Muslims are their houseboys. Me, I think it was a good thing you killed those thugs. Keep the others in line. But I’m not the boss.”
Hanson turned the handle.
“I know you don’t get along with Barnes and Durham, but just testify for them on that case. They think it’s a big deal. Call the DA and set it up.”
Hanson nodded, stepped out into the hall and closed the door.
He didn’t want to be on The Unit. He didn’t want to be a cop at all, but that’s what he was, and he wasn’t a quitter. He’d never quit anything before. If you quit, that first time, then you’d quit again the next time, and the next, till you got so you couldn’t handle anything you were given, even the easy stuff, and you might as well put a gun to your head and quit everything.
He thought about Lone Pine. You can get there from Oakland, through the mountains, but you have to leave before winter closes the road. Drive east over Tioga Pass, across Yosemite, and down to Mammoth Mountain, then follow the road south, past the ghost towns and hot springs and bottomless lakes, till you see Mount Whitney.