The Disposables (22 page)

They looked at each other. All this had been planned beforehand or Fong wouldn't have been out in the hall waiting. When Mack had gone out, they had discussed it again, made their decision to do it. They had to be scared of losing their jobs, going to jail, and worse. They were scared of the Great Robby Wicks.

They needed a little added nudge. “Q-Ball right now is in an apartment on 124th Street right off of Wilmington in a cul-de-sac.” I raised my right hand, “I swear to you.” Then I remembered how Q had made the illegal U-turn in front of the Bimbo Bread truck on Long Beach Boulevard. He could be at Killer King Hospital. I also remembered about Tommy Bascombe, how he clung to me, how his head came up like a little prairie dog with the sound of the crash. How Tommy gobbled down the food at Lucy's and was now either in foster care, or worse, back with Dora. I pushed that thought back. One small step at a time.

“Here's the deal,” Mack said. “I don't trust you. Not for
one second. That's why I brought Fong in. He's going to walk five paces behind with a gun in his pocket. He won't be involved in anything we do other than watching you. That's his entire focus. If you so much as take a hurried step to get out of the way of a bus that's about to hit you, he will shoot you in the back. You understand?”

“No, problem. I told you I gave you my word. My word's good as gold. You can ask Robby.” I knew that wasn't going to happen.

Mack went and knocked on the steel door to call the jail deputy, then turned back and said, “You're like all the rest of those who have a higher opinion of the Great Robby Wicks. If you only knew. He always refers to you as his ‘skillet.' He'd say, ‘me and my skillet we did this' or ‘you should've seen the skillet's eyes when I gunned him, shot his black ass off' and …”

The door opened, interrupting Mack. His words had done a number on me, sliced right through me, slashed open a gaping wound. Earlier Robby had hurt me with his words but I had somehow halfway justified it. Sure, I was angry, but I'd given him just cause. I'd crossed the line deep into criminal territory and allowed some of my own guilt to mask and accept his behavior. Mack's description of my friend somehow illuminated a truth that had always been there since I'd known Robby, like a bubble about to burst.

The deputy assigned to the hospital came in dragging chains. Policy for a show-and-tell was chains. No arguing this point.

The deputy locked the chain around my waist, laced the cuffs through, and then handcuffed my hands in a permanent position just above my hips. Next, he shackled my legs together at the ankles with enough slack for three-quarter's of a step. With each step, the sound and weight made me think of a chain gang.

Outside my room, all the doors were closed and the hall empty. Mack had wanted to keep the number of witnesses and involved parties to a minimum. A futile effort if the caper went south. As Robby used to say, “It is what it is.”

The deputy stayed ahead of us and called the elevator, the sound of my chains the only noise in the hall, that and my heavy breathing.

The elevator door opened. I flashed on a memory from when I used to work the jail. Back when I was a new guy, “a cherry,” I took my lunch break with a veteran who had all of six months at Men's Central Jail. We called for the elevator. When the doors opened, we saw an inmate all by himself, no shirt just jail-blue pants, handcuffed to the hand rail, his back to the wall, his butt on the floor. Beat to a bloody pulp, his face so swollen his features all blurred into mush. The veteran jail deputy casually reached over and pushed the elevator button. “Sorry,” he said, “wrong floor.” The doors closed and the in
mate went on down. I stood as the veteran deputy turned to me, said, “Maybe it'd be better if we took the stairs.” I never did find out the story of what happened that day, but I heard rumors that on occasion, deputies took the more obstreperous inmates for a “Disney ride, an E ticket,” on the elevators to conduct an “attitude adjustment.”

The doors closed. Mack and Fong stared straight ahead. The odor in the car no different from in the jail cells, a reek that permeated every inch of every jail; human sweat, mixed with spit, feces, and blood. The door opened to the basement, the odor replaced by the aroma of chicken soup. A welcome change emanating from the kitchen.

“Hey, the deal was I got to see my girl.”

Fong grabbed my waist chain and shoved. He was strong. We moved into the main isle of the kitchen. At any one time, the sheriff had twenty-five thousand, presentenced inmates in custody, a good chunk of the residents in Men's Central Jail, MCJ. To the left were rows of large cauldrons of bubbling stew, large enough to be a fat man's Jacuzzi. The inmates in blues all stopped what they were doing to watch as we ambled through. No unauthorized personnel were allowed in the kitchen. A general employee, a cook specialist II, slapped the back of the head of an inmate who stirred a cauldron of stew with a large oarlike boat paddle, snapping him to attention. The cook reached into the cauldron with two fingers and pulled out what looked like a large condom. When he shook it out, it was a latex glove mottled white and gray from the heat.

We moved on down the aisle as fast as the shackles allowed and came to a large opening. Fresh, cold night air hit my face. We turned a corner to a loading dock where a Violent Crime's undercover car was backed in.

On the dock stood a female uniformed deputy and my girl.

My Marie.

My heart soared. I hobbled faster. She broke away from her keeper. She was dressed in jail blues that hid her figure. Her hair was undone and shot out in different directions. Tears streaked her face, her eyes bloodshot from crying. We met in between. I couldn't hug her, my hands were restricted to my hips. She hugged and kissed me, her body hot, hot enough to scorch. I clung to her hips. I nuzzled her neck. Drank her in.

I said, “I'm sorry, babe. I'm so sorry. I truly don't know how they got on to us. It must've been me. They must've followed me.”

“Hush, are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“I'm fine. How are you?”

“Bruno, it's not as bad as you said it was, really, it's not.”

A large ball rose up in my throat, made it difficult to talk. “You're a bad liar. Thank you for trying.”

“The kids, Bruno. The poor kids. Alonzo. I can't even imagine—”

“Ssh. Kiss me.”

She did long and deep.

We didn't have much time. Any second Mack was going to call time. He had already gone out of his way. And I intended to thank him later for it. Even though he'd done it for a reason. He wanted it more difficult for me to renege on our deal. He didn't know me and I couldn't blame him.

“Don't you worry,” I said when I came up for air. “I got something in the works. I'm going to get you out.”

Her shoulders started to shake. “Bruno, what did you do? What did you have to trade away? What makes you think these people will give us the slightest consideration for what we've done? They've got to be mad as hell. Especially about Wally Kim. Poor Mr. Kim.”

“You didn't tell them anything? I mean, you invoked just like I told you, right?”

“Yes, I did just like you said. They didn't get a thing from me. What did you do? Tell me.”

Mack said, “Come on, time's up.”

I ignored him. “They want something only I can give them. I'm going to trade it for you and Dad.”

“No, you have a record. You're on parole. They'll go easier on me. Make a deal for yourself. I'm serious, Bruno. You do it or I'm going to be mad as hell. I won't talk to you ever again.”

She made me smile. “Ssh, listen, there isn't time. How's Dad? Did he take it okay?”

She looked scared.

I tried to read her eyes. “What?”

She whispered. “Did they get your dad too?”

“What do you mean?”

“I never made it to the house. They zoomed up as I was walking down the street. I saw you in the car. They already had you.”

“You never got inside? Did you see the cops inside the house at all?”

“No. Do you think?”

My heart soared at the prospect. Were the cops that naïve to pick her up before she made it to where she was going? If they were so hot after the kids, they were fools for making the scoop when they did. “Robby just wanted to rub my nose in it by showing me he had you. He jumped the gun to make a point.”

“That means your dad and the—” She lowered her voice to faint whisper, “and the kids are still in the house and okay. Can that be true? Is that possible?”

“Then what are they holding you on? What's going on?” I choked on the lump in my throat. “Dad's okay. Dad made it out.” One of the heavy rocks lying on my chest just floated off.

Mack, behind me, tugged on the back part of my chain. “Come on, man, we been back here too long already.”

I leaned down and kissed Marie, my tongue overpowering hers. I wanted to consume all of her.

They pulled us apart, my body cooler from her absence. “I love you, Marie. Always remember I love you.”

“Please don't say it that way.”

“Don't you worry. You won't be in long. I promise.”

Overcome with emotion, she couldn't talk anymore. She wept and gulped at air. The female deputy put her in a wrist lock and tugged her along in the opposite direction. Mack gave up tugging on my chain and waited behind me until Marie was out of sight, then I let them move me to the car. I should've been ashamed at what I'd done to her. Instead I was furious. More furious than I ever remember being. Furious at Robby Wicks. He was the one who had done this. He was the one responsible. No matter what happened, I was going to make him pay.

Mack steered the car toward 124th Street. I sat in the passenger side of the front seat, Fong right behind me, a gun resting easy in his lap. Mack periodically stole a glance at me. “You going to be all right?”

I said nothing and continued to fume.

“Hey, man, you hear me? You going to be all right? I don't need you going supernova on me.”

I didn't look at him. “You're right. He is an Apache.”

In the backseat, Fong chuckled.

When the heat, the anger finally bled off, and I could see straight, I realized that we were headed down Wilmington from Imperial Highway. “Hey, pull in here. Stop in at Martin Luther King.”

“Bullshit, you said 124th. That's what you said. You're trying to dick with us. It won't happen.”

I calmly said, without making eye contact, “This could save us a trip. I saw him crash his car over on Long Beach Boulevard. A real slobber knocker. He's probably still in the hospital. We can go to 124th, but we might be coming right back here.”

“This is bullshit.” Mack whipped the steering wheel hard. The maneuver tossed Fong and me hard against the doors. The Chevy squealed into the parking lot of Killer King. Mack stopped in front of the ER, parked in the law-enforcement
only slot, put it in park, and shut her down. He turned, “If he's in here, what makes you think he's going to tell you where this Ruben the Cuban is?”

“Q-Ball and I go way back. I served paper on his pad twice. Both times he felt the barrel of my .357 across the top of his head. He sees me in these chains, though, he's just going to laugh.”

“I'm not going to fall for that one. The chains stay on.”

The automatic double doors to the ER hissed open when we walked in. No one paid much attention to a black man in chains. Crooks came in to be treated all the time. We went past the waiting area, past the treatment rooms, and down a long hallway, to the backside of admittance. Fong, as promised, stayed back, his hand in his jacket pocket. Mack leaned over the high counter, flashed his gold sheriff star, and whispered, then nodded as the receptionist looked up the information on the computer.

Fong and I waited.

Mack came back over a little more at ease. “You called it right. He's here, fifth floor, 513. Come on, let's take the elevator over here.”

We waited for the elevator car, watching the round lights above the top edge count down. The car stopped on two. We waited some more.

Mack said, “Wicks told me a story about how you trailed a car's broke radiator on foot for five miles. The car killed a little girl. Said he never seen anything like it.”

I said nothing. The light on two went off as the car came down.

Mack said, “It's one of the first times Wicks wasn't talking about himself. He said he had to pull you off the shitbag or you'd have kicked him to death.”

“I never heard that,” Fong said.

I looked straight ahead. “That was another time. Someone else's life.”

The door opened. The car was three times the size of normal elevators. An orderly pushed out a gurney with a white-haired old woman under a thin sheet covering an emaciated frame with two IV bags hanging from an IV tree. We stepped aside, then into the car. The door closed.

Mack said, “Five miles on a summer night, in a hot wool uniform. That true? That the way it was?”

“No, it might have been two miles at best.”

The lights went up the panel as we rose.

On our floor, Mack went straight to the room, hesitated at the closed door thinking something through, then led the way in. Q-Ball lay on a hospital bed one arm and one leg plastered and suspended from ropes. A jagged line across the top of his forehead pinched together with black sutures would leave a bad scar. The accident was worse than I'd thought.

He made Mack for a cop right off said, “Get the fuck outta here, I'm not gonna tell ya shit.” He saw me, flinched, and grimaced with pain. His eyes went wide as he tried to get farther away. Until he saw the waist chains and shackles. His face relaxed into a smile that turned into a laugh. “Dey finally got yo number, huh, Dee-tective Johnson. Dey gonna put you where you belong.”