Damnation Street

12.

It was a fine, clear, cold October day. Bishop tooled his bike slowly across the Bay Bridge. His mouth tasted bad and he stank like garbage, but after two nights in lockup, it was good to be outdoors. The water spread sparkling around him. The cities of the East Bay lay before him in a mist of distance. The red rooftops dotted the green hills. The green hills rose against the blue sky. He felt the bike rolling under him. It was a decent feeling.

It didn't last. By the time the bike poured off the bridge into Berkeley, all the crap in his life had come back to him. Having his girl get arrested and screwing over Weiss, losing his job, and even that pain in his shoulder from where the psycho had stabbed him, which he'd forgotten about while he'd been in the can.

His bike sputtered up the avenue. The shops and streetlights whipped by on either side. There were the white stone buildings of the university up ahead and the green iron of the university gates. He curled the bike to the right, gunned it past the rising hill of campus grass. By now all his good feelings about getting sprung were gone, and he was pissed off and miserable again same as before he'd been arrested.

The Harley went on, down among the tall, faceless concrete dormitories on the south side. Splitting the lanes, cutting around the slow traffic of old student cars, Volks after Toyota after dusty Chevrolet. Bishop motored left and made his way to Telegraph.

His building was on the near corner, a dingy brown pile of brick and stone, elegant once, but not for a long time. Past the intersection, on the avenue itself, a steady flow of students and hangers-on slouched past the rock-star posters plastered on the windows of a music store. On a billboard hanging above them there was a picture of a sports car and the words EXPERIENCE FREEDOM.

Bishop pulled his bike to the curb. Shut it down. Swung off.

He stepped through the fine old oak doorway of his building into the vestibule. He paused there to open the creaking brass flap to his mailbox, to yank out some flyers, some bills. He pushed into the foyer. Slid back the cage of the old elevator. He rode upstairs, blinking, tired, irritable. He scratched his stubble with the edge of a piece of mail.

Fucking Ketchum, he was thinking. Fucking Weiss too. Fuck all of them.

The elevator stopped with a jolt. He rattled open the cage. As he shuffled down the carpeted hall, he sniffed his armpit, made a face. He smelled like something in a frat house refrigerator. Fucking CJ. Fucking everything.

He opened his apartment door, went through. He let out a long, whiffling breath as the door swung shut behind him.

The apartment was big, but there wasn't much furniture in it. There wasn't much point in buying furniture. He never stayed anywhere long. He threw the mail on a phone table just inside the door. He moved into the center of the living room, facing the tall windows on the far wall. He stood there, tired, looking at the view without really seeing it. The windows showed the flat roofs of the Telegraph shops and the blue sky beyond them and the billboard with the sports car on it. Experience freedom.

Good idea. Only his life was crap. What now? he thought. What the hell was he going to do now?

Here was something, though: patting his shoulder, he found his Marlboros in the slash pocket of his jacket. The bastard deputies hadn't stolen them. It was his lucky day, after all.

He shot a cigarette between his lips. Torched it with a plastic lighter. He drew smoke and felt the nicotine rush all through him, sweet, like a flower opening. It was the best thing that had happened to him since that piece of ass he had been nailing when the cops came for him, the real estate agent or whatever she was.

He took another hit off the cigarette. He closed his eyes. This was good. Fuck everything. This was really good.

The two gunmen ruined the moment. That was the kind of guys they were. He heard them creeping in on either side of him, one coming out of the bedroom, one from the kitchen. He didn't bother to jump back or put up his dukes or anything. Without looking, he knew they had guns. In fact, for another second or two, he didn't even bother to open his eyes.

Then he did. Sure enough, they had him covered with a couple of very serious-looking Glock 31s. Not just guns. Big guns. Catch a slug from one of those, they have to pick up your body with a vacuum cleaner.

Bishop took another drag on his cigarette. He looked from one gunman to the other. The guy who'd come out of the bedroom-he was the good one, the dangerous one. Young, still twenty-something. Tall and lean. Sleek and muscular most likely under his crisp slacks, his red windbreaker, his white cable sweater. Mixed race, with light brown skin, a long, smooth handsome face with a thin layer of hair over his jaw and up top. He had calm, cold, smiling eyes-a little like Bishop's eyes, in fact. He kept his stance relaxed, kept an easy grip on his gun, kept his left arm casually slung across his belly, casually steadying his right wrist to keep his aim nice and true.

The other guy, the one who'd come out of the kitchen-a stocky, nervous white guy with thinning red hair-he was amateur night, a back-alley arm breaker. A gym rat, judging by the ripples in the muscle shirt under his brown leather jacket. He had a lot of twitches, quick glances this way and that, as if people had been sneaking up on him his whole life.

"Fuck with us and we'll feed you your knees," he said tensely.

Bishop snorted. He glanced over at the brown-skinned gunman from the bedroom. "Feed me my knees?" he said. "What kind of threat is that? What kind of cheap operation is this anyway?"

The brown-skinned gunman shrugged wearily. "What can I tell you?" He had a smooth, mellow voice, no accent, just northern Cal. "Listen, this isn't really a gun play, Bishop, awright? Our guy just wants you to come with us, no problem. It's not a killing thing. Really."

"Come on, come on, let's go," said the arm breaker. "You wanna do this on your feet or on your face?"

"Is this guy, like, an intern or something?" Bishop asked the brown-skinned gunman.

The brown-skinned gunman laughed.

That made the arm breaker angry. Twitching, looking this way and that, he moved in on Bishop. "Oh yeah. Give me an excuse. Make me happy. Give me a reason to put you down."

Bishop took his gun away and smacked him in the nose with it.

"Ow!" said the arm breaker. "Jesus! Fuck!" He grabbed his face with his hand. Blood flowed out of his nose, ran between his fingers.

The brown-skinned gunman sighed. "Morris, you are such a fucking knucklehead."

"Oh. Oh shit," said Morris, cupping his hands under his nose to catch the blood.

Bishop gave Morris's Glock to the brown-skinned gunman. "Thanks," the brown-skinned gunman said. He slipped it into the pocket of his windbreaker, still shaking his head. "You ready?" he asked Bishop.

"Whatever," said Bishop. "If we're going, let's go."