It was late in the afternoon and Hanson had just finished running his miles around Lake Merritt for the second time that day. He was catching his breath, a little dizzy, as he walked beneath the three-story neon marquee of the Grand Lake Theatre where Jaws 3-D was playing.
He’d outrun his craziness, left it back at Lake Merritt, looking for him, like an alcoholic stepfather. He was feeling a little out of his body, trying to catch up with himself now before anyone on Grand Avenue noticed. Part of it, he knew, was from being off the street for almost two weeks on paid leave after the shootings. Thinking too much. Life was simpler working the street, in the moment, expecting the worst but relaxed at the same time. It was easier to keep up with yourself working the street with a gun, and you could act pretty weird out there too, before anybody even noticed it.
He passed a Tribune newspaper box and the headline stopped him:
OPD LIEUTENANT SLAIN ON SPECIAL UNIT SURVEILLANCE
He felt in his pockets for a quarter, but all he could find was a four-inch folding knife, so he crouched down, then knelt on one knee, legs aching from the run, and read what he could through the warped plastic box cover, as far as the center fold.
The lieutenant must not have been surveilling in an alert and appropriate manner to get shot through the window of his car. Another special unit op gone bad…and found out, this time. But there wouldn’t be anything more about it in tomorrow’s paper, whatever it really was—a meet, a buy, a trade, a snitch, a threat, a bad look or wrong word—that got the lieutenant killed. That’s all it took, Hanson thought, limping up Grand toward the Safeway. The Department would be kicking in doors, and so would some members of the armed Oakland drug community, he thought, stealing each other’s dope stashes…
An OPD patrol car turned onto Grand, coming Hanson’s way, the cop behind the wheel looking at him hard. Some day-shift guy Hanson had never even seen before. Cops always noticed him right away, since he’d come back from the war. It had taken work, but now he usually talked himself out of making eye contact with them. The way he was feeling today, though, stupid as he knew it was, he locked eyes with him, the car slowing, then going on past and through the intersection.
And then, Hanson thought, if the cops decided to kick ass because of the dead lieutenant, after a mini drug war and a spike in drive-by shootings, everything would all be just the same as it had been before except for a few dead mean-ass black kids—who were gonna die eventually anyway—and maybe another seventeen-year-old quadriplegic watching daytime TV for the rest of his useless life, from a piss-soaked mattress in East Oakland. But then, so what? His life would have been shit even if he could still use his arms and legs. Fuckin’ cops, Hanson thought, shifting his shoulders like a boxer. Fuck ’em, he thought, dancing the pain from one leg to the other as he passed the coffee shop on the corner of Grand and Elwood, loosening up to run the last half uphill mile of switchback streets to his house. He took the left on Elwood and leaned into an angry, punishing sprint, working the anger for two long steep blocks before turning right on Mira Vista which was even steeper, up the section of steps built into the broken sidewalk, past the cars parked with their wheels turned and wedged into the curb. Another left onto Alta Vista, snarling, daring his heart to blow up and kill him. Yeah. Do it fucker, do it. At Jean Street, though, he stopped, sobbing for air, sweating tequila, sneering at his weak, gutless heart. Then he heard the slow tick, tick, tick of Weegee’s bike coming up the hill behind him.
“Weegee,” he said, straightening up, turning. “Good. To see you. Amigo.”
Weegee was walking the bike, leaning against it, wobbly with exhaustion, but he managed a genuine smile. “Hi, Officer Hanson. How come you not at work again today?”
“I’m on my paid vacation.”
“For shooting those guys?”
“Yes, sir. But it’s not really a vacation. They’re trying to decide what to do with me.”
“Did you really shoot all three of those Muslims, by yourself, to protect Felix?”
“Not for Felix. They were shooting at me too.”
“I heard that maybe you were working for Felix.”
“No, sir,” Hanson said, and Weegee looked relieved.
“You’re different from the other cops,” he said, “but I didn’t know you was so bad. Three to one.”
“I’m not that bad, just had a lot of practice learning to shoot. You practice enough at anything, keep practicing, and you get good at it. Whatever it is. Riding a bike, recognizing birds, or shooting people. And those poor guys, they were scared and didn’t even know how to use their weapons.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“Not exactly. It’s complicated. I don’t really understand it myself. Come on inside,” Hanson said, cutting across his front yard, untying the door key from his shoelace. “Bring your bike in. What’ve you been up to?”
“Oh, you know, just ridin’.”
“Well, come on inside,” Hanson said, taking the bike from him, carrying it up the stairs, unlocking and opening the door. “You okay?”
“Okay,” he said, “doin’ okay.” But he wasn’t doing okay, and he wasn’t just tired, he was scared too. Hanson knew what scared looked like, and he’d never seen it in Weegee. He reached down and touched his shoulder.
“Looks like we could both use some water. You want a glass of water, man?”
“With some ice?”
“Coming up,” Hanson said, wheeling the bike into the kitchen. “Don’t got Coke or soda pop or anything else in that refrigerator, but hell yeah, I got ice like you wouldn’t believe, all the ice you can handle,” he said, beginning to laugh at himself. “Just close the door behind you, and we’ll be on that ice.” He ran some water into a glass, put in ice cubes, and took it into the living room. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the sofa. “Here you go. Be right back.” He returned with a pillow on top of a folded blanket, setting them both down on the couch, saying, “Just in case.”
“You gotta go to work today?”
“No, sir. Still on vacation.”
“That’s what I was hopin’, cause I’ll tell you what, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Saw it right away. Police training. Which is why I went and got this take-a-nap equipment, which I think you should utilize, in conjunction with that sofa, in a timely manner, and get some rest.”
Weegee smiled. “You so funny sometimes, talkin’ like that,” he said, and Hanson, his eyes stinging, had to look at the ceiling for a second, thinking that his heart might be what would kill him after all, his own heart.
“You okay?” he asked again.
“Yes, sir. Just tired.”
“Make yourself comfortable,” Hanson said. “I’ll be out on the porch reading if you need anything. At your service. You just holler, okay?”
Weegee pulled off his Nikes, fixed the pillow, and pulled the blanket over himself. “Back there, on that porch?” he asked, half sitting up and nodding toward the back of the house.
“That’s where I’ll be, señor, the only porch they’d rent me back when I moved to Oakland.”
“Not going anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
Hanson sat down on the porch and looked out at the darkening sky. The birds were gone for the day, their feeder almost empty. He wondered why Weegee was so tired. He should have tried harder to find out. No, he thought, he shouldn’t have. He’d find out later. Even worried about him, it felt good to have Weegee in the house. He wondered if he should call Libya, let her know Weegee was with him. The house was always empty, and sad. Haunted maybe. Someone who had lived in the place when it was new and beautiful, before it had been cut into apartments, disrespected, ruined, and for some reason had been left a ghost, all alone now.
He picked up a book he’d gotten the day before at Walden Pond Books and thumbed through it, a new book, about the Special Forces raid on the Son Tay prison camp back in 1970, including a lot of recently declassified material. Sixty Special Forces troops in six helicopters had crossed the border and continued deep into North Vietnam to assault the prison camp and rescue fifty American POWs. The camp was empty. The POWs had been moved the month before, there was nobody left to rescue.
If he’d come back from Vietnam a few months later, he’d have probably been on one of those helicopters. He looked through the photos in the middle of the book, wondering if he’d recognize anyone he knew, guys like him, their faces blackened, already exhausted and expecting to die. Guys like him. He wondered how they were doing these days, back in the world. One of the photos stopped him, five guys looking at the camera from inside a helicopter. He thought he recognized one of them. He tipped the glossy page with the grainy black-and-white photo into the light.
The phone rang.
He looked hard at the phone, as if he could stare it down, but it just rang again as it always did. He picked it up and said hello.
“Felix gonna kill that kid Weegee. Has to do it hisself, ’cause nobody else will.” Then the voice was gone in an electronic wind, before the phone stuttered into a dial tone.
Thank you, Tyree, Hanson thought.
Hanson put the book down, picked his Hi Power up, and checked to be sure the front door was locked. And the windows. And the door to the basement. Then he went into the living room, where Weegee was asleep on the sofa. He sat down across the room from Weegee, put the pistol beneath one leg, and watched him sleep. Weegee needed to be rescued—not just from Felix, from everything. Weegee was worth saving. He was worth everything. He was worth living for.
The phone rang again. He picked it up and said, “Hello.”
It was Libya. “Felix Maxwell is looking for Weegee. He came here…His eyes are crazy and he’s looking for Weegee. Tyree called after he left…”
“I talked to Tyree,” Hanson said. “Weegee is safe. He’s with me. We’re all safe.”
“Not while Felix is alive.”
The OPD could keep their Medal of Valor and their special units. If he really couldn’t be killed, why not use his life for someone else instead of just dragging it around with him, whining about the unfairness of the world. And if he could be killed, why not trade the life he’d already written off for something worth dying for?
“I saw something I shouldn’t have,” Weegee said, when Hanson woke him. “But I can’t tell anybody about it.”
“And they know you saw it?”
Weegee nodded.
“Don’t worry. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Libya will be here soon.”
Across town the headlights of a gleaming Rolls-Royce on the hunt flare and recede through the streets of District Five.
He didn’t have to show Libya how to handle the shotgun.