Cort reached into his satchel for his cell phone as his pager went off; Alonzo Reed’s number came up. Alonzo was the City editor. Cort punched the digits.
“Where are you?”
“Mount Pleasant Street, about a block from the fried chicken place.”
“It’s on TV. What’s happening now?”
A block south of the besieged bus, eighty cops in gas masks and full riot gear materialized. The mob gravitated toward the cops. Some of the rioters wielded long metal rods like spears: yanked-out street signs.
“A mob’s forming. There’s cops in riot gear out here now. Looks like they’re about to square off.”
“Stay with the mob.”
“What?”
“No matter what, stay with the mob until it’s over.”
Cort couldn’t argue. “Will do.”
He clicked off, and started to punch in Phil’s pager number. Maybe they could devise an alternate plan. He’d hit three digits when a riot cop with a bullhorn announced, “You are unlawfully assembled. Disperse now.”
From behind, Cort heard a handful of voices chanting, gently, “Paz, queremos paz.” Peace, we want peace. Cort turned. Father Dave was leading a half dozen church people on a march into the bedlam. They were holding hands, with the priest at one end.
Cort slipped the phone into his bag and hustled over. Ten cops loaded their tear-gas shotguns. In his mind’s eye, he flashed on a mug shot of Ruben Salazar. Salazar had been a prominent Los Angeles Times columnist in the 1960s. He was shot dead by a sheriff’s tear-gas projectile after covering an antiwar march. Tear-gas projectiles were basically ten-inch bullets.
“Father, they’re about to fire tear gas. Maybe you all should veer off.”
Without breaking stride, Father Dave braced Cort on the shoulder. “I appreciate your concern, Cortez. Sometimes, you just gotta have faith.”
Cort turned in time to see the riot cops level their shotguns at the mob. To his left, he spotted a short brick wall on the side of a corner apartment. He thought about Ruben Salazar. He sprinted and dove behind the wall as the cops fired.
Chaos: The rioters and Father Dave and his group turned and hightailed it away from the thick, dark smoke.
Cort was on his knees, the tear gas burning his eyes, his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He stumbled to his feet. Choking, gagging, he weaved his way one block west, to 16th Street. He paused and bent at the waist. He wiped his eyes and jogged north for one block on 16th, then hooked a left back onto Mount Pleasant Street. Had to stick with the mob.
Half the mob had scattered, the rest were now in the street. Someone lit a Molotov cocktail. Someone else tossed a brick through the front windshield of a Toyota sedan. The Molotov flew into the sedan; the interior went up in flames. A TV cameraman backpedaled on the sidewalk.
Cort was reaching into his satchel for his notebook when he noticed a muscular Latino wielding a metal spear over his right shoulder in the middle of the street, thirty feet away. The man had a blue bandana over his mouth. He wore jeans and a black tank top. His hair was slicked back and he had a tattoo on his left bicep: a big dollar sign.
Gato
Cort scanned the street, looking for Phil, for a random uniformed cop. No Phil, no uniforms, just turmoil.
The sunlight dimmed. Twilight was descending.
Word would get around the neighborhood that a cop was looking for Gato. He might even know already. Gato would be in the wind the next day, on his way to El Salvador.
“Goddamnit.”
This half-assed, adrenaline-drenched, crazy idea popped into Cort’s head: Maybe he could get a quote from Gato. A proforma denial. Maybe delay him. What’s the worst that could happen?
Cort yelled, “Gato!”
Gato turned, looked at him. “Gato!” Cort held up his hand.
Gato cocked his head to the side, studying Cort now. Three seconds later, he looked away, turned his attention back to the street.
Something inside Cort snapped: “Hey, Gato. Asesino.” Assassin.
Gato’s head snapped toward Cort like an agitated cobra. His face went dark. He started sprinting toward Cort, clutching the metal rod like a lance, rage in his eyes.
Cort’s heart skipped a beat, maybe two.
Gato was closing fast. He got within twenty feet, fifteen, en…
Cort quickly slipped his satchel off his shoulder — maybe if he timed it just right he could sidestep the rod and slam Gato in the head, knock him off balance. Maybe.
Gato closed in. Cort locked in on the sharp tip of the rod — it was aimed at his chest, there would be no chance to even take a swing at Gato…
He half-closed his eyes, started to throw up a truncated Hail Mary.
He saw a flash of movement on the right. He heard a thump, then another. He braced for the tip of the spear. It never came. He opened his eyes.
Gato was sprawled facedown on the street, the rod clanging on the sidewalk at Cort’s feet.
Phil Harrick stood over Gato, clutching his leather-over-metal sap in his right hand. Phil put his knee into the small of Gato’s back. Smoothly, quickly, he slipped the sap into the back of his waistband, brought out the cuffs, and snapped them on.
Cort said, “Where’d you come from?”
Phil stood up. “I was tracking Gato in the crowd, waiting for my chance. Then you called him out. Good thing I had the angle. Ballsy move.”
Cort was about to say, “Stupid move.” Instead, he said, “Sometimes, you just gotta have faith.”
Jeanette
by Jim Beane
Deanwood, N.E.
I should’ve listened to Pop. He warned me off Jeanette right away, said she was nothing but trouble, but I was too far gone from the first time I saw her to ever listen. “Jackie, she’s a snake pit,” Pop said, like she was the bottom of evil.
Last fall, Pop and I painted the office where Jeanette worked. That’s when we met. Her boss, a guy named Olivet, operated a chop shop in the far Northeast corner of the city, in Deanwood. Olivet kept two steps ahead of the law and two steps behind Jeanette. Before I knew her a week, she told me she hated him, hated his hands always trying to touch her, hated his eyes undressing her.
“Quit,” I told her, like I knew what to do.
“And do what?” she fired back.
I couldn’t say.
She called herself a secretary, but I never saw her type one word. Olivet spent his days yakking on the phone, and watching Jeanette’s ass. He leaned his chair back, propped his feet on his cluttered desk, plastered the phone to his ear, and followed every move her hips made with reptile eyes. If Jeanette bent over at the file cabinets, he moved, but only for a better view. Her body made your mouth water.
The first day on the job, Pop dropped a daub of paint on the corner of Olivet’s desk, and the slob let him have all hell. Jeanette slid between me and Olivet, before I acted stupid, and held her finger to her lips, for my eyes only. She strolled across the room to the files, opened the bottom drawer, bent at the waist, and swelled inside her skirt. And Olivet gasped. Jeanette swayed her hips to the music piped in through speakers mounted in the ceiling. And Olivet forgot all about Pop. I thanked her when she brushed past me. She blew me a kiss.
“Call me,” she whispered.
Pop stared at me the whole ride home.
“She wants more than you got,” he said in the alley behind our house on 12th Street. He’d already had too many beers. After my mother ran off, he soured on all women.