Cole landed nose-first on the white tile floor of the narthex of St. Cajetan Church. The joint smelled like bad eggs, like contaminated tap water, like a holy place that knew it was being misused. Before he could lift his face off the floor, a boot came down on his skull and held him there.
“Heel, doggie.”
He couldn’t place the voice. Sounded Latino.
“Pick him up.”
That was a different voice.
The boot came off, replaced by a hand. It gripped Cole by the hair, forcing him to his feet, all out of sync. He just now realized his bomber jacket got ripped somewhere in the storm of arms, legs, and grips. Fuck.
“Nice phone.” That was the man who had him by the hair. He held up Cole’s phone with his free hand, molesting its contours with his fingers. It was police-issued. He wasn’t getting it back.
The narthex opened up into the sanctuary by way of two wide, wooden doors, both stopped open. Inside, the great hall was infested with little red and yellow card tables, most covered by velvet throw blankets, meant to conceal the creeping impression that this was just a community potluck with light beer and flashy die, both tops and squares. The pews were off to one side. The players wore sunglasses and held poker chips in clear Ziploc bags. The dealers were young men and women from around the Tenderloin, dressed in Sunday attire. They looked good. They looked frightened. They looked like they’d seen this kind of thing happen before, and they knew what happened next.
The dealers parted seas, revealing the pulpit, where a big-ass Bible sat next to an Hispanic man in a maroon three-piece suit. His dark hair was shaved on the sides, but kept long on the top, culminating in a man bun at the end like the docked nub of a puppy tail. He spiraled down from the pulpit and unbuttoned his jacket as he closed the distance between himself and Cole.
“Clear him, please,” the man-bun guy enunciated, as if speaking to someone who didn’t understand English in the first place.
The guy with his hand on Cole’s hair let go and pulled at his bomber jacket. Apprehended that. Took Cole’s gun. His Sam Browne belt. His wallet. Even the badge. The guy didn’t think to take the wedding ring off Cole’s finger and Cole didn’t think to remind him.
He finally got a look at the man who dressed him down: Hispanic, about Cole’s height, but his bulk made him seem taller, with a shaved head, revealing those weird creases some people have on their skulls. The same guy who was buying from the girl at the corner when Cole was outside. Now Cole realized he had been keeping eye.
“Bring him in!” said the man in maroon with a musical wisp, as cheerful as a field trip counselor. It felt put on. There was force behind the ease.
Cole was shoved into the sanctuary, revealing even more tables set up with everything from dice to cards to money wheels to slot machines.
Little Reggie was lying on the floor, hands behind his back, held together with zip-ties. It was a position he was a little too used to.
The man in maroon was handed Little Reggie’s phone. Then Cole’s phone. Then a Twizzler. He ate the Twizzler. He pocketed the phones. He walked in circles around Little Reggie.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to talk on the phone when you’re playing a friendly game of cards?” The man slowly raised his hand as if he were using the Force. “You can stand.”
Little Reggie struggled to his knees, then to his feet, the arms tied behind him giving him some trouble.
The man in maroon smiled. Those incisors. Those canines.
“What’s your name?”
“Reginald.”
“That’s a good name. What’s his name?” The man in maroon pointed at Cole.
“Fuckhead.”
“No, no, no. His real name.”
“Cole Hoffer.”
Now he smiled with his mouth open. Those premolars. Those molars.
“And do you know what my name is?”
Little Reggie nodded his head.
“What do they call me? It’s not fuckhead, is it?”
“You’re La Mitad.”
“You know me.”
Little Reggie nodded his head.
“You know what I do?”
Little Reggie nodded his head.
“And yet in the face of that, you come in here with your phone, yapping with Cole Hoffer over there, about … what? About whom? Regarding whom?” La Mitad’s musical voice went dull. “You said a name. Not your name. Not his name. Not my name. What was that name?”
Little Reggie weighed his tongue like it might kill him. It could. The kid was maybe twenty. That wasn’t how he ought to go. Not that young. Good people ought to save those kinds of people.
“You think he’s good people?” That was Cole, three years ago, with Mia, in Cole’s little kitchen, with pizza delivery. She changed the subject.
“You think I’m good people?” That was Cole, two years ago, with Mia, as she got dressed in her bedroom.
“You’re a good person,” came the words, tentative, from the Chinese woman in the little red room with the big blue pillow. Cole wasn’t listening.
But he was listening now. Little Reggie eyeballed him, looking for a cue from Cole, as if Cole still had a plan of attack. He wished. He grunted. Got La Mitad’s attention.
“He said Chuck Hattaran.”
La Mitad drew designs around Cole now. Somewhere in the talky-talky, someone shut off the slot machines. It was quiet enough to hear the grinding of ball bearings in the overworked motors of the ceiling fans.
“Table,” demanded La Mitad.
Cole was grabbed by the hair again and stumbled to a nearby craps table. The hand shoved his head down to the green. His forehead landed on the rake.
“Who did it?” That was La Mitad. Cole could just make him and Little Reggie out from his limited sideways view.
“Did what?”
“Who did it?!”
Patrons were trying to sneak out of the church.
“Nobody leaves!” announced La Mitad.
“Sandí!” La Mitad snapped at the guy with a fistful of Cole. Turned out that was his name.
Sandí snapped at the bouncer at the front doors, leading to the narthex. He shut them. He plucked a hole puncher off a receipt table and held it up like a weapon. Not very threatening, but the point was made. There were worse weapons where that came from.
“Who did it?” It was thirty seconds later. The patrons had calmed down. Play friendly, play nice, get home alive, they probably thought. Cole still hadn’t answered La Mitad. How could he?
La Mitad blew through his lips. Pointed at a nearby dealer.
“Garbage bag,” he said.
The dealer procured a black garbage bag out of a can from under another table, dumped out the contents, and cut it with a small knife until it was one long, black, plastic blanket. He handed the knife to La Mitad, then laid the black plastic in front of Little Reggie.
La Mitad stepped up to Little Reggie and stabbed him five times in the stomach.
Little Reggie inhaled in sharp bursts but never got another word out. His blood dripped onto the plastic bag. He eventually fell to his knees, then onto his face, bathing in himself. The plastic crinkled.
Cole tried to turn his head to look away, but couldn’t. Sandí still clung to Cole’s scalp. Meanwhile, his heart pounded against the rim of the craps table. His legs lost sensation. His vision kaleidoscoped, except for the center, where Little Reggie’s face silently asked for mercy.
A memory flashed: a kid in Bayview. Daytime. Plastic gun in his hand. Different kid. Same face. Bayview-One.
Sandí’s grip brought Cole back to now. Little Reggie had died somewhere in the drift. Maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe it could’ve been prevented. Shoot. Maybe not. Maybe now he and Tamina could be at peace. True love and all.
“Who did it?” repeated La Mitad.
“Fuck!” was all Cole could belch.
“Who killed him?”
“Obviously fucking YOU!”
“Who killed Chuck?!”
Who fucking knows! That was the whole point. He could lie, come up with a name, anything to spare him a garbage bag, but with all these options, he still couldn’t figure an end result that didn’t land him in a limbo with every other poor sap from Bayview-Two or otherwise.
The thighs gripped tighter. That red room. That blue pillow. The thighs were around his neck now. He liked that.
The danger. The whirl of now. The promise of impending action. A universal bang on a tiny scale. This is why he became a cop. He hated that he liked that.
“Hole puncher,” demanded La Mitad.
The bouncer with the hole puncher wandered over and placed it in his hand.
Sandí pulled Cole back to a standing position. Some other guy grabbed Cole’s right hand. Splayed it on the craps table.
La Mitad inspected the puncher. It was of the single-hole variety. The thin metal guide between the punch and the lever had been removed at an earlier point. Cole doubted it had been done for giggles.
La Mitad stepped to the other side of the craps table. Ran his fingers over Cole’s hand. He was sensual.
“Who did it, Cole Hoffer?”
“I really don’t know, man. I’m on your side here.”
La Mitad grabbed Cole’s hand, rammed the hole puncher in the gap between the index and middle fingers, and stamped through the webbing.
Cole screamed.
So much pain over so little blood. It speckled and stained the green table. The cavity in between his knuckles burned, throbbing with the rhythm of a death metal band, sharp and quick and relentless, the feedback focused in the smallest physical space, garbled and snowy and agonizing.
“Cole Hoffer. Who did it?”
Cole swore. His hand was gripped by two people now. They were already spreading the webbing between the middle and ring fingers.
“Cole Hoffer?”
“What!” Cole barked.
“Who did it?”
“I—I don’t know!”
La Mitad punched through the webbing between the middle and the ring.
That garbled, snowy agony returned and rivered down the nerves from hand to body, launching into new tributaries in his forearm and elbow. He felt the burn in his bicep. His vision smarted with translucent floaters.
“Who did it?”
“Fuck! You!”
La Mitad punched through the webbing between the ring and the pinkie.
The worst yet. His pinkie finger gave to tremors in the aftermath, or maybe his whole hand had — he couldn’t tell. When he bothered to look, blood slithered out of the wounds and down the fingers, darker than it should’ve been, heavier than it should’ve been, and wherever the blood slithered, the pain appeared to travel with it, across the knuckles, onto the tips, and that didn’t make much medical sense, but damned if that’s not how he felt. “Who did it?”
“Who do you think?!”
“Do you know Moses?”
“No!”
His hand flinched in anticipation. Another shot of hot physical distress ran up the arm like a kid on a waterslide, crashing at the end, waiting for the next cut.
“Moses! Do you know him?”
“I don’t know no Moses!” An Old Testament thing? Who fucking knew. His thumb tremored as his Old Testament punishment neared.
La Mitad punched through the webbing between the thumb and the index.
Cole cursed until he ran out of alphabet.
La Mitad had stepped away, allowing Cole a sweet moment to nurse his hand.
“Don’t let him bleed on the floor,” La Mitad ordered.
Cole elbowed Sandí away. If he said something back, he didn’t remember it.
But he did remember that La Mitad had said a name.
“Who’s Moses?” asked Cole.
La Mitad stopped in his tracks, back still to Cole.
“It’s you and him. Isn’t it?” La Mitad started. “You, him, and the fucking crooks in the Vigilance Committee. You, him, the Vigilance Committee, and your hate.”
Cole was dizzy from the pain.
“Vigilance Committee?” That was a local organization. “You got a beef with a bunch of protestors, too?”
La Mitad spun and stomped. A masculine stomp.
“Have you ever loved, Cole Hoffer?”
La Mitad squeezed the hole puncher in his hand and continued.
“I don’t know what’s worse.”
Cole saw: La Mitad had a ring on that hand. La Mitad continued.
“If you haven’t loved, and you’re just an ignorant cabron …”
La Mitad wore a golden wedding ring.
“…Or if you have loved, and you’re that fucking malvado.”
Just like the one on Cole’s unblemished left hand.
“Who did it?!”
La Mitad stomped over. Sandí gripped Cole’s left hand and splayed it on the craps table.
“Wait,” started Cole. He instinctively clamped his fingers together.
La Mitad was at the other side of the craps table.
“Who did it?”
“I can find Moses!”
The hell he could, but La Mitad had paused.
“You can come with me, even,” Cole lied. “And I can find him.”
La Mitad asked for more details and Cole started bullshitting a history with “Moses.” But his mind wasn’t on his words.
Mia jetpacked him from behind. That musical laughter. Ten years apart, and yet back then, two years ago, they felt ageless.
Was she still home? What had happened since last he left? Why hadn’t he thought she might be in danger? He’d gotten so caught up with playing hero, so sure in himself that Mia was disconnected from the evils of the jaws of a beast named the Bay, so placid with her positioning, and so determined in his mission, he’d neglected to consider any other. What the fuck was wrong with him? How could he warn her?
Cole stopped rattling his impromptu backstory.
“Proof,” ordered La Mitad.
Cole yanked his left hand out of Sandí’s grip.
“He gave me this,” Cole offered. He pulled the wedding ring off his finger and spun it on the craps table. Around and around it went, and with each revolution, La Mitad’s eyes yawned a bit wider. The ring fell, and so did his composure. La Mitad bust into guttural tears, gone to primordial rue, swept up in his agony, like a kid on Santa’s lap.
“Mi amor,” La Mitad blurted between wails. “Mi amor!”
The room went silent besides. Gamblers avoided eye contact, focusing instead on their chips. Sandí stepped away from Cole, unsure whether or not he should dry La Mitad’s eyes. The scene was as tense as teenagers in a school play where no one knew the next line.
That meant it was Cole’s line.
He grabbed the ring.
He flipped over the craps table.
He ran through the gamblers, headed for the back sanctuary.
He had no idea how he was getting out of here.
He hoped.
He prayed.
He’d gone all-in on the prospect he was heading toward an exit door.
If it turned out he wasn’t, he knew:
He was already dead.