14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 95

MY CAR RADIO was crackling and screeching under the blare of my siren. The dispatcher was calling all cars to Vasquez’s address, and cars were responding that they were on their way.

Swanson stared ahead through the windshield. He looked mesmerized, seemingly lost in his own world as I pitched my Explorer toward Naglee Avenue in the working-class neighborhood known as Cayuga Park.

As we approached Naglee from the southwest on Cayuga Avenue, I heard rapid gunfire, and then I saw the cars parked at angles on both sides of the street.

There were police cruisers, their flashers painting the houses with vivid splashes of red and blue light. The cops in the cruisers were exchanging fire with shooters in the three late-model American-made sedans, probably the strange cars Vasquez had reported rolling up to his house.

Naglee Avenue runs west from the 280 Freeway, adjacent to an overhead BART track. The homes on this block were a long bank of multifamily attached dwellings, the driveways marked by short hedges.

The playground across the street from these homes was empty at this time of night.

The firefight was centered on a house in midblock, a nondescript beige wood house with a rock wall at the garage level.

“That’s Vasquez’s house,” said Swanson.

“Does he have a family?”

“No. He’s divorced, no kids.”

I parked outside the firestorm but within view of it. I had two Kevlar vests in the trunk of my car. I told Swanson to stay put.

I got out of my vehicle, ducked down, and crept along the car on the far side of the gunfire. I popped the trunk, retrieved my vest, and put it on over my jacket. The spare vest was in my hand and I was creeping back to my car door when Swanson opened his door and bolted toward Vasquez’s house.

I yelled, “Swanson! Get down!”

Swanson was running along the short hedge that separated Vasquez’s driveway from his neighbor’s when I saw his body jerk twice, then, drop.

I climbed back into my seat, grabbed the microphone, and yelled into it, “Officer down! Officer down!” I gave my location, even though I knew that an ambulance couldn’t enter this block until the firing stopped. That was protocol.

I didn’t know what Swanson had been trying to do, but if he was alive, I had to get to him. With my lights and siren off, and keeping my head down, I drove over the sidewalk until I saw Swanson lying alongside the hedge.

I braked the car, slid on my belly across the front seat, and wrenched the door open. I was looking directly down at Swanson.

He was bleeding, but he was breathing.

I shouted, “You’re a stupid fuck, Swanson. You know that?”

Blood was spreading across his Windbreaker. Still, he grinned.

“Look who’s talking,” he said.