Robert Crais - Free Fall

“Sure.” I unwrapped the taco. The paper was soaked through with oil and barbecue sauce, but it smelled like a handful of heaven. The taco was two handmade corn tortillas deep-fried to hold their shape, and filled with meat and chili peppers and the barbecue sauce. The sauce was chunky with big rings of jalapeno and serrano peppers.

Cool T finished off the rest of his taco, then pointed out the peppers. “It’s pretty hot, you ain’t used to it. They probably make one without the peppers, you ask.” He was showing a lot of teeth when he said it.

I took a bite, and then I took a second. It was delicious, but it wasn’t very hot. I said, “You think they’d give me more peppers?”

Cool T stopped showing the teeth and went sullen. Shown up by the white man.

Washington said, “Cool T’s been living on these streets while I’ve been swabbing decks. He’s seen what’s going on.”

Cool T nodded.

“Okay. So what’s Cool T know?” I finished my taco and eyed the box lustily. There were three more tacos in it. Washington made a little hand move that said help yourself. I did.

Cool T said, “Those cops ain’t cops no mo’. They just passin’.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Mean they in business and they use the Eight-Deuce as what we call sales representatives.” He grinned when he said it.

I looked at Washington. “Is this for real?”

Washington shrugged. “That’s what his girlfriend says.”

Cool T said, “I friendly with this bitch used to live with a Gangster Boy.”

I said, “Are you telling me that these officers are in the crack trade?”

Cool T nodded. “They in the everything trade. Whatever the Eight-Deuce in, they in.” He selected another taco. “Ain’t been an Eight-Deuce home boy locked down in four or five months. Pigs take off the Rolling Sixties and the Eight-Trey Swans and all these other nigguhs, but not the Eight-Deuce. They look out for each other. They share the wealth.”

“The cops and the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys.”

“Uh-hunh. They in business together.” He finished the taco and licked his fingers. “Eight-Deuce point out the competition and the cops take it down. You wanna see it happen, I can put you onto something.”

“What?”

Cool T said. “Nigguh been sellin’ dope out a ice cream truck over by Witley Park. He at the park every Thursday and the park in Eight-Deuce turf and they tired of it. The cops going over there today to run him off.”

Washington said, “I figured we could go over there and see what’s what. I figure if it’s our guys, maybe we can do something with it.”

I was liking Washington just fine. “Okay.”

Cool T said, “Not me. Anybody see me over there and something happen, I be meetin’ up with Mr. Drive-By.”

Cool T stood up. Washington held out his fist and Cool T brushed his own fist against it, back and top and sides, and then he walked away.

I looked at Washington. Well, well. “You did okay.”

Washington nodded. Cool.

When we walked out to the car, I saw Joe Pike parked at a fire hydrant a block and a half north. We made eye contact, and he shook his head. No one was following.

James Edward said, “What’re you looking at?”

“My partner.”

“You work with someone?” He was looking up Broadway.

“If you look for him like that, people will know someone’s there.”

James Edward stopped looking and got into the car. I slid in after him. “Use the mirror. Angle it so that you can see. He’s in a red Jeep.”

James Edward did it. “Why’s he back there?”

“The men who killed your brother have been following me. He’s there to follow the followers.”

James Edward readjusted the mirror and we pulled away. “He any good?”

“Yes.”

“Are you?”

“I get lucky.”

James Edward settled back and crossed his arms. “Luck is for chumps. Ray knows a couple of people and he asked them about you. He says you’re a straight up dude. He says you get respect.”

“You can fool some of the people some of the time.”

James Edward shook his head and stared at the passing buildings. “Bullshit. Any fool can buy a car, but you can’t buy respect.”

I glanced over, but he was looking out at the streets.

James Edward Washington told me where to go and I went there and pretty soon we were on streets just like James Edward Washington’s street, with neat single-family homes and American cars and preschool children jumping rope and riding Big Wheels. Older women sat on tiny porches and frowned because teenagers who should’ve been in school were sitting on the hood of a Bonneville listening to Ice Cube. The women didn’t like the kids being on the Bonneville and they didn’t like Ice Cube but they couldn’t do anything about it. We drove, and after a while I knew we weren’t just driving, we were taking a tour of James Edward Washington’s life. He would say turn, and I would turn, and he would point with his chin and say something like The girl I took to the prom used to live right there or Dude I knew named William Johnston grew up there and writes television now and makes four hundred thousand dollars every year and bought his mama a house in the San Gabriel Valley or My cousins live there. I was little, they’d come to my street and we’d trick-or-treat, and then I’d come back here with them and we’d do it all over again. The lady that lived right over there used to make caramel-dipped candy apples better’n anything you ever bought at the circus.

We drove and he talked and I listened, and after a while I said, “It has to be hard.”

He looked at me.

I said, “There are a lot of good things here, but there are also bad things, and it’s got to be hard growing up and trying not to let the bad things drag you down.”

He looked away from me. We rode for a little bit longer, and then he said, “I guess I just want you to know that there’s more to the people down here than a bunch of shiftless niggers sopping up welfare and killin’ each other.”

“I knew that.”

“You think it, maybe, but you don’t know it. You’re down here right now cause a nigger got beaten to death. We’re driving to a park where a nigger gonna be selling drugs and niggers gonna be buying. That’s what you know. You see it on the news and you read it in the papers and that’s all you know. I know there’s people who work hard and pay taxes and read books and build model airplanes and dream about flying them and plant daisies and love each other as much as any people can love each other anywhere, and I want you to know that, too.”

“Okay.” He wasn’t looking at me, and I wasn’t looking at him. I guess we were embarrassed, the way men who don’t know each other can get embarrassed. “Thanks for telling me.”

James Edward Washington nodded.

“It’s important.”

He nodded again. “Turn here.”

At the end of the block was a playground with a basketball court and six goals, and, beyond the court, a softball diamond with a long shallow outfield. A few teenaged guys were on the court, but not many, and a guy in his early thirties was running wind sprints in the outfield, racing from second base to the far edge of the outfield, then walking back, then doing it all again. A row of mature elms stood sentry along the far perimeter of the outfield, then there was another street and more houses. A sky blue Sunny Day ice cream truck was parked at the curb in the shade of one of the elms and a tall guy in a Malcolm X hat was leaning against it with his arms crossed, watching the sprinter. He didn’t look interested in selling ice cream.

James Edward Washington said, “That’s our guy.”