Car doors slammed, tires screeched.

The earth slowed on its axis. After a long ten or fifteen minutes that could’ve easily been only three, the two front doors to the car opened simultaneously. Mack and Robby got in. Strangely, I thought, in another time that would’ve been me with Robby.

We drove in silence until Robby said, “Reach back and take that hobble off. I want him sitting up. I want him to see this.”

“Pull over,” Mack said. “I can’t do it while we’re moving.”

“Cut the son of a bitch off. I’m not stopping. There isn’t time.”

Mack turned and leaned way over in the seat. With a razor-sharp knife he cut the nylon hobble. My legs sprang free from my hands and my feet kicked the door. My feet were still tied together and tingled as the blood returned to the nerves.

“Get him up.”

Mack leaned back over and tried to grab me by my hair, only I kept it cut too close to my pate. He took hold of my shirt and yanked. It tore. With both hands he pulled on my shoulder until I sat up. There was nothing in this world I wanted to see. Not anymore. All I could think about was escape. What it would take. What I had to do. Would I go through both of these men? Yes, I would. I had until they got me behind concrete walls, then it was truly over. I made plans.

Until I recognized the narrow street Robby brought us to.

We were headed down 133rd.

I couldn’t breathe. The thought of what was about to happened set me firmly down in my own personal hell, one I’d have to live with for an eternity.

Four cop cars, all at the same time, pulled up out in front of our safe house. We’d made it in time all right, in time to see what Robby wanted me to see. Two plainclothes cops came over with Marie handcuffed behind her back. I was ashamed. I was emotionally bankrupt. A long, low moan slipped past my lips. Part of me wanted to slide down into a deep, dark hole and stay there until the pain went away. The other part, the controlling part of me that was still sane knew this would be the last time I would ever see Marie. I tried to etch her image into my memory, as bad as the memory was going to be, I had to have it.

Her expression was at peace. There wasn’t any fear, no remorse. My brave girl. When the bright spotlights hit, she squinted, ducked her head.

Marie’s expression stayed the same for a second until the light illuminated the interior of the car. She saw me and broke from the cops’ grasp, screaming, keening, “Bruuunooo!”

It ripped my guts out. “Marie!”

Robby chuckled. “She’s got a nice ass on her. Don’t know what the hell a class act with a built-in money maker like that sees in a nigger parolee like you.” He put the car in reverse and backed down the street before the news vultures had time to pick my bones.

I leaned forward, put my forehead against the seat. “Tell me.”

Robby smirked, “Tell you what, partner?”

“Tell me what I did to deserve this from you.”

“You crossed over to the other side. You know how I operate. It’s us against them. You turned into one of them. Can’t say that I blame you, enticed by a world-class Puerto Rican piece of ass like that. I guess you might’ve been one of them all the time and I was blind to it. My mistake, but I just corrected that mistake. You were the best, my man, even better than this hunk of shit sitting next to me. He’s not half bad when he’s got his head outta his ass.”

I let his words sink in and tried to decipher their meaning. My voice croaked, “One of them?”

“That’s right.”

I looked up to see Robby smiling in the rearview. I saw an evilness I’d never seen before. It hadn’t been there. Not when we partnered. Something had changed him.

Mack stared straight ahead. He looked at me with short, little glances. He wouldn’t let Robby see his reaction.

I said to Robby, “If I’m one of them, then so are you.”

He laughed. “Now, just how do you figure? I’m not the one going down for the last time, kidnap, murder takes you out of the game for good, my friend. Me, I’m done. I’m taking a long, well-deserved vacation.”

“You’re no different than I am. Worse maybe.”

“Oh, is that right? This is rich, tell me, please.”

“All those times you—we, planted evidence, lied in reports, for what? To what purpose? To put some scumbag in the slam. Each time we snipped off a little bit of our souls. We convinced ourselves, each time we did it, it was for the better good. That’s what we told ourselves. At first anyway, then it became as natural as any other department procedure. We committed felonies, multiple counts. How are those felonies different?”

“If you don’t know, pal, I feel sorry for you.”

“We were nothing but a gang of street thugs ourselves, with tattoos, guns, and initiations, who constantly conspired to commit felonies.”

Mack squirmed in his seat.

“Those kids back there were in a bad place. I took them out of that place and gave them a chance. You—you—” Big hot tears blurred my vision and wet my face. “You put them right back in that hostile environment. They don’t have a chance now. You’re a big man, Robby Wicks, a big man. We stretched the rules to throw bad people in prison for the betterment of society. That was the theory, right? Tell me how it’s different?”

We pulled up to the secure parking at the Century Station and waited for the gate to open and admit us. My last chance.

He said, “It’s a lot simpler than some convoluted theory of yours. There has to be good guys and bad guys. These good guys just caught themselves a number-one bad guy, an ex-con out on parole for murder, a con who committed murder and kidnapping again for the last time. Our mission is accomplished. I’d like to say I felt sorry for what you now face. But I don’t. You made your choices. It’s Miller time.”

The gate wasn’t yet open all the way, but open enough, and he gunned the car through the narrow gap. Robby skidded to a stop, slammed the car in park, and got out. To Mack he said, “Book him. I’ll see you in four weeks. I’m en route to a vacation in Jamaica, mon.”

I’d been who he was after all along. I wanted to yell at him, ask him about the torch who still prowled the ghetto, dousing victims and lighting them up. How could it not matter to him? I thought I knew the man. When we worked together he would never take a vacation when a major case remained open, especially one with a psycho out on the street torching innocent folks.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

They let me cool out in an interview room, handcuffed, some of the black nylon rope from the hobble still tangled around my right ankle. The thought of my father in a cold, damp jail cell living out the last days of his life, all because of something I had done, something I had organized and put in play, made me look for a place to hang the rope. Not that it would help, as they were continually monitoring from the other room with a pinhole camera, waiting until I ripened for interrogation.

A while later Mack came in, t-shirt, Levi’s, his shoulder holster empty, his hands full with two cups of coffee and a thick, brown accordion file folder he placed on the table. He did well fighting the urge to smile. They had won, brought in their prize. He’d come from the bull pen gloating over their victory. What he wanted now was a little gravy. He wanted information so he could act the big man when the FBI came in to adopt the kidnap case, take everything federal. He uncuffed one hand and secured me to the ring mounted in the table and slid the cup over. He was trying for Mr. Congeniality. Only that personality wouldn’t fit, not the way I already knew him. I couldn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t know what to say to get it started. In the same situation I probably wouldn’t either.

“You like it black?”

“That some kind of slur?”

“No, man, it’s my attempt at being civil.”