The tavern used to be called the Lazy Eye. That was a long time ago. It wasn’t much the same anymore.
Years of indifferent age and insolent youth had turned the exterior of the old joint into the cover of a Lisa Frank trapper-keeper, purple and green cosmos, ringed planets, and a Pegasus, all graffiti, like an LSD trip memorialized by the city.
So, this was the headquarters of one Four Fingers, Blake thought to himself.
But why in the world would Cole be here?
The street, MLK Jr Way, was quiet from both sides, plenty of parking available on the curb (Blake still fed the meter, but that was just his way; felt right to pay his due to the city), and plenty of theories available, too. Blake may not have been a gangster savant, and certainly not when it came to Oakland, but it didn’t take a doctorate in drug-dealing to know that the Ghosttown neighborhood was a lousy place to be a cop.
“Best place in the world,” his dad used to say, back when Blake was just a kid. This was when the building had still been the Lazy Eye. The kind of place that sold Budweiser and cashews and that was it. The kind of place run by a crooked kind of people. In this case, “R.M.C.” (the initials were still under the graffiti). The Rangers Motorcycle Club.
“C’mon, B,” said his dad. “C’mon, B.”
This had been their weekly ritual. Every Sunday. A trip across the bridge to the Lazy Eye, where they’d watch Oakland A’s baseball on an old Zenith kept on a wheeled cart like a slide projector in a classroom. A trip for free drinks from the Rangers behind the bar and in the stools. Men with the skin of fruit. Little Blake had more teeth in his mouth than all of them combined, and he was still losing them to the tooth fairy back then.
“Little Scottie,” they called him.
“My name’s Blake,” he’d say.
He didn’t know it then, but now he knew that his dad wasn’t just enjoying America’s pastime. Business had been conducted. Favors granted. Promises kept.
And promises made. His dad always told Blake to keep these Sunday trips top secret. “Don’t tell your brother,” he would say. “He’ll just get jealous.”
“Don’t tell your brother,” he would say. “He’ll just take it out on you. Beat you up. Big brother stuff.”
“Don’t tell Cole,” he would say. “He’ll just follow in our footsteps.”
And now here he was, Blake all grown up, following Cole’s footsteps, across the street from a tomb of his past, where despite the insistence of the Hoffer family line, his brother had wrapped himself along its legs as well.
It was denial he felt first. Denial that this was happening all over again.
But what had he expected from Cole? The man’s tangentially involved with some Napa Valley murder; he’s calling on mystery phones pleading for help; his fellow inspector is leading Blake to street gang hide-outs …
And Blake anticipated—what? A surprise party at the end of the trail?
Now he just felt …
Stupid.
He slapped a palm against the roof of the Malibu. He dreaded crossing the street. Inexplicably, he felt tears, thick, salty, and insistent. It wasn’t sadness so much that summoned them, but rather, the way these circumstances promised undesired change. As soon as he saw his brother in that bar, he knew their pleasantly hands-off status quo would be shattered. The weekly dinners winked out. The unspoken assurance between them over. The future of an “Uncle Cole” failed before launch. But perhaps the worst thing of it all was that if Cole was in that damn bar with those damn people, it would mean the Hoffers were no fucking better than any other screwed-up cop in these cities.
“Blake’s trying to do the right thing?” God said. “Who cares? The Hoffers are doomed. Second-rate. Big deal.”
If Cole really was in there, it’d mean the Hoffers didn’t police the Bay after all; as a matter of fact, the Bay policed them. Kept the Hoffers in line. Pushed and pulled them wherever the Bay needed them to be. A cell, a car, a bar, whatever.
“Hey,” said Blake, after he’d finally stomped across the street and banged on the door. He heard the yap of a small dog inside, still gooey and light like a puppy. “Police!” Better to be straightforward. Better to give them a head’s up.
If Cole really was in there, it was almost as if Blake wanted him to run.
Finally, the puppy’s yaps were shushed. The locks on the door rolled away. He heard the titter of metal. The door peeked open, little chain lock still tethered near the top. Inside, two eyes. Brown. Female. Black. Playing defense from the word go.
“Police,” Blake said again.
“Got a warrant?”
“I got a brother. Where’s that get me?”
“Who?”
“Cole. Yea high. Yea big. Yea looks.” Blake was gesturing at himself. “Also a cop.”
The woman peeked the door open a bit more. She had a big head of hair, yellow paint on her chipped fingernails. Dirt on her fingers. The puppy was yapping again, somewhere inside.
“That’s a dangerous thing to say. Saying your brother’s a cop.”
“Shouldn’t be.”
“Not for us to decide, is it?”
“Would you just bring him out here, miss?” Blake gave her some space to open up. She didn’t budge.
“You ever get a reading, big brother?”
“Little brother,” Blake said. “And what kind of reading?”
“Tarot card reading.”
“Can’t say I have. Is that where Cole is? Some crystal-ball stripmall?”
“No … But Tarot is very powerful. It channels some part of you.”
“Let’s get to the point where you tell me where Cole is and that’s where I go.”
“I’m getting there, little brother.”
She smiled.
“I like you,” she said. “You look like him.”
Blake pointed at his wedding ring and his badge, in that order, and said nothing.
“The thing with Tarot,” she said, continuing, “is that if you get a reading, you figure out a lot more than where your life is right now. You do a lot more than answer your questions. You might just break something that you don’t mean to. Get it?”
“Careful what you wish for?”
“Careful what you go see. Eyes don’t got erasers.”
“They got booze.”
“Maybe. But my point is, if you go out there, looking for your brother, on some pursuit to save him, well … you might just break him.”
Blake fished out his cellphone, unfazed.
“Tell me why I don’t call Oakland PD right now and order them to break this door.”
She smiled again, laughed even.
“Cops. They really are all the same. I’ve never seen an inch of respect from a single one.”
“Besides my brother.”
She darkened, as dark as the room behind her. “Not even him. He just doesn’t realize it.”
This was a waste of time, Blake thought. He was just about to dial the nearest station when …
“He’s not here. But I can tell you where he’s headed.”
“How?”
“He loves me.”
“What?”
“The Shape Note.”
“And that is?”
“Other side of the Bay. A jazz club. For a crew up in Fillmore.”
“What crew?”
“The High Corner.”
“A hide-out?”
“For now.”
“What about later?”
“Later?” She sighed, shutting the door. “Oh, you know. Guess. A war zone.”
“And you know all this how?”
“The man I love told me.”
“Cole?”
She laughed. The door shut. The puppy yapped. And Blake thought. There was a correct choice to be made here. A clear, inarguable solution. Tell the station. Surround the club. Protect the public. Keep the peace.
But none of that promised to accomplish the thing that mattered to him most. Save his brother.
And as he drifted back across the street, and as he slid into the Malibu, and as he turned the ignition, and as he coasted down MLK, he realized for a moment why the Bay policed him and not the other way around. Why fate was so strong. Why the future lorded over him with tens of millions of decisions already made, in spite of him, against him.
Blake was going to save his brother.
And he was going to do it the Hoffer way.
C’mon, B.
What he didn’t understand.
Or couldn’t understand.
Was what that woman, talking about Tarot cards, had to do with Cole.
What that woman, with the big frizzy hair, knew about Cole that he didn’t.
And what in the hell did Cole see in her?