Guilty as a motherfucker, Cole thought as he was shoved back into the room with the table and the corkboard and the cages. Sibs was still at the table, her head in her hands. Woe is her. Or maybe she was asleep. Conked out. Hell, maybe she’d helped herself to some of that peppermint tea after all, just to get some shut-eye, anything to forget that she was as nasty as any of them. She’d wanted forgiveness. She got it. Would he give it to her again? He didn’t know. Probably not. He couldn’t trust her. Who could he trust?
“Can I trust you?” he had asked Dups a few moments earlier, back in the kitchenette passing stovetops and fridge doors. “Dups?”
“I hear you.” He said it quietly, though they were alone.
“What’s the plan, man?”
“The plan is chill. Yes, you can trust me.”
“You’ve lied to me, you put a gun to my head, you locked me in a room, and you’re about to lock me in a room again. How am I supposed to trust you?”
“Still alive, ain’t you?”
Dups shoved him toward the rickety wooden door. He opened it up, revealing Sibs inside. Asleep at the table. The dog cages, undraped, remained where they were left—albeit with no dogs.
“Now what?”
Chatter interrupted down the hall before Dups could answer. Sounded like soldiers, the 4FC, headed into the bar, ready for orders, activity, action.
Four Fingers could be heard in the revelry, distant: “Ten minutes!”
Dups cleared his throat, put on the airs of authority: “Look where your mouth gotcha, sucker. One day, you’re gonna learn there’s a ceiling to how high you can go with a mouth like that.” He leaned in. “You understand? There’s a ceiling.”
Dups shut the door in Cole’s face. It locked. Cole looked up at the plaster drop ceiling—the one his eyes had gone glossy on just before the tea had knocked him unconscious.
“Thanks for the tea,” Cole said to Sibs, a few moments later. She stirred awake, grunted, seemingly feeling the pain in her temple again. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Am I dead?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
She struggled out of her chair, the creases at her lips revealing a thin smile, one of relief perhaps. “You made it.”
“Well, you made it happen,” Cole snapped, turning away before she could collect him in her arms, gone all handsy.
“I—I didn’t have a choice.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to die.”
“What do you want, Sibs?” He grabbed at the metal frame of one of the dog cages and pulled it across the little room, eyeing up the plaster drop ceiling all the while. Each ceiling panel looked the same …
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she began, “but it’s about Damian.”
“Damian. Four Fingers?” The dog cage screeched as he pulled.
“Yes.”
“What about him? He’s a maniac?” Cole had caught sight of a ceiling panel in a corner of the room slightly off-kilter; one of the edges not properly embedded. He hoisted the dog cage in one arm and dropped it on the table. The teapot fell over and clanged and dumped warm water along the floor. Sibs moved to avoid the puddle.
“No … Cole. He loves me.”
He rested his weight on the cage on the table.
“He loves me with all his heart.”
“This the guy who left you in Napa?”
“Yes.”
“The guy who lets you get shot upside the head, leaves it like that?”
“Yes.”
“The guy who keeps you locked up in here?”
“Yes!”
Sibs drifted toward the corkboard, or what was left of it, running her fingers along the index cards. He hadn’t taken the time to notice it before, but they actually formed a mosaic. All together, they looked like the jaws of a beast.
They looked like the Bay.
“The Vigilance Committee really does help people, Cole. It stands up for the innocent in court. It makes sure kids stay in school. Gives them somewhere safe to go afterward. In the summer. Helps people stay clean. Gives people purpose. Helped me realize I loved art,” Sibs said. “He did. Specifically. He gave me my studio. He gave me inspiration. He bought my art.”
“To hide his money,” Cole clarified.
“He chose me.”
“And do you love him?”
Sibs ran her fingers up the penciled Bay until she was deep in San Francisco. Pacific Heights. “I’m not stupid. I know what abuse looks like. Had two parents who can account to that.” Her fingertips continued to drift along the map. Golden Gate Park. “And when I ran away, I found friends. Or ‘friends,’ you know.” She air-quoted. “Some ‘friends’ who can account to that. I know abuse. I know bad people. But Damian’s different. He has integrity. He’s a tiger. And like a tiger, when he wants something, he takes it. So, you see … he has to love me.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
“Everyone’s got a funny way of showing they love somebody.”
Cole felt a memory barreling in. I love you, he had said. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I don’t care, Cole. You love me; you don’t love me; you love someone else … Love makes us do funny things. Isn’t that how you got here in the first place?”
He was back in the banquet hall for the Police Officers Association all those years ago. The first time he met Mia Hattaran. “You were talking to my husband earlier,” she had said, clavicle deep in a knockout dress. As they fucked in the hallway, she had fingernailed his neck and growled in his ear: “Guess which one was my husband.”
“Do I get a hint?” he asked between thrusts.
“It’s a puzzle,” she purred, gasped, purred. “Figure it out.”
“A donor?”
She moaned. “No.”
“A cop?”
She inhaled. “No!”
“Works for the union?”
She squeaked. “Yes!”
He hadn’t talked to many union guys. “A lawyer?”
She wailed. “Yes!”
“Got a full head of hair?”
She cried. “Yes!”
“Chuck Hattaran?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“You’re a bad man,” she said later, slipping her panties back on, stumbling back to the banquet to find her husband.
“I’m really not,” he had muttered, but she was already gone.
Outside the room with the table and the chairs and the cages, he heard that Jamaican accent bellow orders, followed by the sound of footsteps trudging away. They could be coming for him soon.
“What are you doing?” Sibs asked, assessing his table-dog-cage structure.
“Leaving.”
“Forget it. Stay. I’ll talk to Damian—”
“You know that guy Dups? He told me a secret. He told me how to escape.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because,” Cole lied, “your boy Damian is in serious trouble. I …” He milked it. “I’m not supposed to tell you this.”
He shut his trap and started to mount the table. Four Fingers kept tossing out orders outside.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Forget it, Sibs.”
“Tell me!”
“No.” He stepped atop the dog cage, all wobbly and dangerous.
“If you don’t—”
“All right!” Cole sighed heavily, one hand on the ceiling panel, remembering to keep his voice low. “Chuck Hattaran’s killer? It ain’t Four Fingers. It’s some kid. Some kid with the Limit Break Boys.”
“You’re lying.”
“I didn’t think you’d believe me. Damian didn’t believe me either.” Cole popped out the ceiling panel and took a look inside. The shallow attic led to a vent cover in the back. The promise of streetlights seemed to peak through. “And you know him. He won’t listen to reason. And now the rest of Homicide thinks, for sure, Four Fingers is the guy,” Cole lied. “Well. He’s gonna get himself killed.”
His words were smooth, but he swiftly undercut himself as he awkwardly climbed up into the attic, favoring his good arm.
“Hey!” That was Sibs, down below. Cole gave her his regard through the hole. “So what are we going to do?”
“We?”
“We or bust.”
“Yes, ma’am … Then we are gonna find the Limit Break Boys,” he decided, doing his best to make his resolve sound genuine. He held a hand out to her but it seemed to cue another concern.
“And why should I trust you?” she said.
“Because if I’m right, that means no one needs to come after your man. Now, you in or you out?” Cole made a grabbing gesture with his outstretched fingers. She pulled at her curly hair, painted a picture in her head—one Cole wasn’t privy to—and then grabbed Cole’s good hand and stepped atop the table.
“Where’s it go?” she asked.
“Outside.”
“And then where?” she asked.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Actually,” she seemed to realize. “I know where to take you. Exactly where.”
“You’re sure about this?” he egged her on. “Might be dangerous. Maybe it should just be me. A cop.”
She gestured at herself. “No one’s gonna hurt me.”
“I don’t think you know this city as well as you think you do.”
“You got that the other way around. You’ve gotten it that way the whole time.”
She raised to her tip toes and looked up through the hole in the ceiling. Seemingly satisfied, she dipped her head out from the hole.
“Help me up.”