Jonathan Nasaw - The Boys from Santa Cruz

On the morning my father telephoned from Marshall City to announce that the FBI was closing in, I was in the trailer watching Teddy, my stepmother, getting dressed.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t there for the show. Teddy was a pre-op, post-implant trannie, built like a nose tackle with tits. But August can be brutal in the Sierras (the temperature was already ninety-two in the shade) and the trailer boasted the only air-conditioning on the property. I was fifteen, living alone in a nonair-conditioned school bus about a quarter mile up the hill from the trailer. No inside plumbing, but I had electricity and all the privacy I wanted. More important from their point of view, so did Big Luke and Teddy.

When my father called, I was sitting at the fold-down table in the kitchenette, working on my second cup of coffee. Teddy’s reverse strip show was taking place at the other end of the trailer. She’d left the bedroom door open, and came out half-dressed to answer the phone. I was only wearing shorts and sandals myself. Not wanting her to get any ideas, I pretended to be real interested in looking out through the half-open louvers at the vegetable patch behind the kitchen, where the dusty tomato stalks were slumped against their stakes like soldiers tied up in front of a firing squad.

Somehow I could tell from the silence that it was bad news. I turned around. Teddy had collapsed into the recliner looking as though somebody had whacked her in the paunch with a baseball bat and she was still trying to draw her first breath.

“What?” I asked her.

She looked over at me, surprised, like she’d forgotten there was anybody else in the room, then nodded slowly, with the phone to her ear and her mouth hanging open. I couldn’t tell whether she was nodding in response to me or to the phone. Finally, though, she pulled her shit together. She started saying stuff like “don’t do anything stupid,” and “I’ll take of everything,” and “nobody has to know anything.” Then she looked up at me again. “You better tell him,” she said into the phone, then held it out to me.

Ten years later, I can still remember the funky smell of the trailer, the rumble of the air conditioner, the way the dust motes danced in the stripes of sunlight knifing in through the louvers as I took the phone from my stepmother. “Hello?”

“Little Luke?”

“Dad?”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Haul ass. Some very bad shit is about to go down. You don’t need to get messed up in it.”

“Where should I go?”

“Your grandparents.”

On my dead mother’s side, he meant. He was an orphan. I was about to become one. “No way. Not happening.”

“I don’t have time to argue. Put Teddy back on.”

That was it. No last fatherly advice, to your own self be true, don’t piss into the wind. Not even a lousy good-bye, much less “I love you.” I could hear the sirens in the background, so I understand the pressure the man was under. But would a kind word to me have fucking killed him?

Instead I got to hear Teddy’s last words to him. “I love you, baby.” Then a pause, long enough for an “I love you, too, baby.” She must have known what was coming, because she held the phone away from her ear. We both heard the shot. “Fuck you,” Teddy started screaming into the receiver. “Fuck you, you fuckers, just fuck you.” Really stretching the old vocabulary there.

I pried the phone out of her hand, heard a man’s voice, not Big Luke’s, yelling something about a gutless son of a bitch, and hung it up. I don’t know if I can explain what I was feeling. It was like I knew what had happened and I didn’t know, all at the same time. Everything else was crystal clear, though, everything I could see and hear and touch. Teddy was collapsed in the armchair. She had panties on, no shirt. Her beefy arms were hanging straight down over the sides of the chair like they didn’t belong to her. I put my hand on her bare shoulder. It was warm. She reached up and grabbed my wrist, leaned her wet cheek against my hand. Then she pulled my hand down and pressed it tight against her breast. I think for a second there she forgot who I was or thought I was my father or something. I took a good feel, more out of numb curiosity than anything else. It felt okay, but not like I thought it would. I could feel the implant squishing around.

Next thing I knew, I was on the floor with my ears ringing. My stepmother was heading for the bedroom. “If you’re still here when I come out, I’ll kill you,” she said over her shoulder.

Ten o’clock Tuesday morning. A stakeout in the post office in Marshall City, California. Sweat stains in the shape of landmasses were already spreading across Pender’s hula shirt from the armpits, the bulge of his belly, the small of his back, threatening to merge like the Pangaea hypothesis in reverse. Bill Izzo, his partner, sat in an air-conditioned car parked across the street, radioing a heads-up into Pender’s flesh-colored earpiece whenever someone fitting the general description of the unknown subject, or Unsub-male Caucasian, dark hair, bodybuilder physique-entered the building.

The reason Special Agent William C. Izzo was cooling it in the car while Special Agent E. L. Pender sweltered in the post office was that no matter how they were dressed, Izzo always looked like an FBI man and Pender never did. Six-four, beefy, homely, and bald as a melon, dressed in that soggy Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, calf-high black socks, and open-toed sandals, he stood in the lobby, pretending to fill out an Express Mail form while stealthily eyeballing the fourth tiny door from the right, third row from the top, in the wall of brass-and-glass P.O. boxes. Because it might not be Unsub who picks up the mail, Pender had to keep reminding himself. Could be anybody: a brother, a girlfriend, a little old lady.

“Ed, this could be it.” Izzo’s voice crackled in Pender’s ear. “Jeans, red tank top. Arms like Popeye. Could be strapped.”

Pender acknowledged by twice tapping the miniaturized microphone under the collar of his shirt. The front door was to his right. As the man in the tank top passed him on his way to the P.O. boxes, Pender snuck a glance at the photo underneath the manila envelope he’d been pretending to mail. It was a grainy blowup of Unsub wearing the Lone Ranger mask he’d worn in the video. This looked like the same man; he reached for the right box, and he even twirled the dial of the combination lock with his knuckles, so as not to leave fingerprints.

“That’s our guy,” Pender whispered into his collar. But the post office was full of civilians, so he and Izzo agreed to take Unsub down outside, on the street. Izzo relayed the information to the deputy from the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department, who was out back covering the loading dock.

Pender waited for Unsub to pass him, then followed two or three paces behind. But just as Unsub opened the front door, the deputy sheriff came charging around from behind the building brandishing a pump-action shotgun.

Aw, fuck, thought Pender, as Unsub turned around and headed back into the post office, nearly bumping into him. Their eyes locked; Pender knew he’d been made. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral time. Unsub reached for the.38 automatic in the waistband of his jeans, Pender for the Smith amp; Wesson Model 10 he was carrying in a behind-the-back kidney holster instead of his trusty calfskin shoulder holster, which would have required him to wear a jacket in the August heat.

Advantage Unsub, who drew first and pulled the trigger while Pender was still fumbling behind his back. Happily for Pender, either the gun misfired, or Unsub had neglected to chamber a round.