David Putnam - The Disposables

“There are four of them in there, and Ruben’s coked out of his mind and armed.”

Mack took a key from his pocket, unlocked the cuffs, unwound the chains from my waist. In the hedge, in the dark he wouldn’t bend down to take off the shackles, he handed me the key. I unlocked the shackles, said, “Last I saw Ruben he was about five ten, a hundred and eighty. He’s a strawberry with a gap in his two front teeth. You can’t miss him.”

“What’s a strawberry? “

I stood, handed him the chains, “A light-skinned black with a splash of freckles under his eyes and across his nose. His hair is light brown with a red tint instead of black.”

Mack nodded. “I want my hands clear.” He handed me back the chains. “You carry ’em.”

Mack knew he’d just put a very effective weapon in my hands. The thought to run did dash fleet-footed across my mind. It wasn’t an option. “I’m not going anywhere. I want my girl out of jail.”

“You help me get Ruben and he’s the dude, he’s good for these killings, I’ll go to the wall to help you.”

“That’s good enough for me.” I held out my hand. Mack hesitated, his stark, blue eyes locked on mine. I believed him. This was the first time Mack yielded an inch in the direction of Ruben being the killer instead of me. He took my hand and shook. His hand was stronger than I had imagined. Maybe this corn-fed cowboy from Texas would’ve been harder to take than I’d thought.

I wound the chains around my right hand to use like a medieval mace. Mack turned his back to me and went back up the two concrete steps. He tried the knob, when it didn’t turn, he put his shoulder to the wood, put one foot back, leaned, and slowly pushed. In the dim shadow, his shoulder muscles bulged. The wood creaked, then gave.

The house had been converted into multiple rentals. Directly inside the door a flight of stairs ran along a too-narrow hall that accessed all the downstairs rooms. All the noise came from downstairs. Muffled cries from smoked-out coke freaks, creatures of the night.

Mack hesitated just inside while keeping his gaze up into the blackness of the second level, pulled his unbuttoned long-sleeve shirt back, and keyed his handie-talkie on his belt. He had an ear jack. “Mike, we’re in. The primary is on the second floor. The way it’s set up it looks like he’s probably on the one-two side. We’re going up.”

The front entry of the house was always the one side. The house is numbered clockwise from there.

Mack nodded to himself as he alone heard Fong’s reply then started up the stairs. Stairs always gave me the heebie-jeebies, the most dangerous part of a building search. Someone above you had total advantage and could snipe you at will, reach a hand over the stairwell without looking, and gun whoever was dumb enough to expose themselves in that manner. Had Mack been the asshole I’d first perceived him to be, he would’ve made me go first, bait. He’d moved up a couple of notches in my book.

The old wooden stairs with carpet worn away swayed in the middle from decades of use. The steps didn’t comply with city code, and too narrow for the footfall, our heels hung over. Mack ascended, his big.45 extended straight up at arm’s length, covering as best he could. I reached up and put my hand on his back for balance, to let him know where I was and to stay close. He didn’t flinch. He kept going to the second floor that smelled of mothballs and urine. We automatically deployed on the first door on the right, the way Thin Man described it. I took the left side, the hinge side, Mack the right, the knob side. Sweat ran down his forehead, his blue eyes a fraction wider than normal. Adrenaline did that to you.

His hand went carefully to the knob, gripped, and gently turned. Unlocked, it turned freely in his hand. He pulled his intent gaze off the wood to look to me, as if saying, on three. He pushed. The door only moved half an inch, then caught. On the inside the occupant had installed a hasp. Mack was ready for the obstruction, took it head-on as it happened, stepped back, and booted the door. Mack rebounded from his kick. Instinct propelled me in first. I buttoned-hooked right. The floor was a sea of litter, trash, ratty blankets, cans. Over by the closed window, Ruben the Cuban stood, soaked in sweat, clad in a dirty wifebeater t-shirt, his every muscle wound tight, ready to spring. He did. He jumped right through the closed window. The abrupt maneuver left his shoes on the floor in the same position. Glass shattered. Mack yelled. I ran to the window, kicking trash.

Outside, down on the ground, Ruben rolled several times and disappeared into the gloom.

Mack yelled on his handie-talkie. “He’s out. He’s out on the one-two side. You got him, Mike? You got him?”

“Negative. Negative.”

I didn’t wait.

I leapt out the window.

Freezing wind blew in my eyes and caught in my lungs for a fraction of a second before my feet jarred into the ground. I let my knees give and shoulder-rolled, as the chains clattered.

Mack yelled from above. “Stop. Johnson. Stop, you son of a bitch.”

I got to my feet and went after the sound. Ruben plowed through the bushes. The window Ruben came out of had been covered. Now the light lit up a portion of the yard. Mack’s gun banged loud.

Then again.

And again.

The third time cherry-hot iron slashed the top edge of my shoulder. I hit the sidewalk. Down half a block, Ruben ran full tilt, the devil chasing. “Picking ’em up and putting ’em down,” as Robby would’ve said. I went after him. At any moment, I expected Mike Fong to step out onto the sidewalk behind me, line up for an easy shot, and put one between my shoulder blades.

Ruben cut between some houses. He knew the neighborhood. But so did I. I gained on him. No bullet caught up to me. I made the turn and was okay. I tossed the heavy chains that were slowing me down.

I lost sight of Ruben and stopped to listen for him, tried to still my rapid breath. Ruben was no fool. He quit running and now walked, hood rat silent running. The odds of catching him just diminished greatly if he no longer panicked. I went on down between the houses and into the weed-infested dirt easement that ran parallel to the street, and fought the urge to run in any direction just to be doing something. Ruben, the little weasel, jeopardized any chance I had for a deal. I waited and listened. Nothing. Fifty-fifty chance, I went right, heading south. Prey will always run downhill. This wasn’t San Fran with the hills. It was South Central Los Angeles, flat as a floodplain all the way to the ocean. But maybe Ruben’s survival instinct dragged him south. I walked faster and faster until I broke into a jog. Ruben could’ve ducked back into any one of the yards on either side of the easement, just like I had when I’d crawled in with Manny and Moe.

On the other side of the houses, a car raced, the engine winding out, tires skidding. Mack picked up Fong and was trying to set up a makeshift perimeter, a useless deployment with only one man on the perimeter especially with no bird in the air. Mack couldn’t call for air support, not for an escaped inmate that he’d helped escape.

I came to the first perpendicular street, walked over to an ancient maple, stood in the shadow back by an overgrown hibiscus that smelled honey sweet and reminded me of my Marie. The thought left a hollow feeling in my chest.

Mack drove up the street, turned, and squealed around the corner. Nothing moved, not even the ghetto wolves that prowled at night in packs, looking for smaller dogs or inexperienced cats. The denizens somehow smelled danger afoot and crawled under their rocks.

I gave in to the fact we’d screwed it up and lost Ruben. It happened that way sometimes. Had we deployed an entire Violent Crimes Team around Shawntay’s house, this wouldn’t have happened. You went with what you had. A crackhead wasn’t hard to track down. We’d just missed him.