Flashback

1.09 Denver and Coors Field—Tuesday, Sept. 14

No one in the Denver Police Department when Nick was there ever blurred female detective K. T. Lincoln’s initials to sound like the soft, feminine “Katie.” At least not to her face. When talking to Detective Lincoln on a first-name basis, it was always “K… T” with a certain pause of respect, if not outright fear, separating the hard-edged consonants. It was rumored that no one, not even the captain or commissioner or those in Human Resources who handled her paperwork, had a clue as to what the K or T stood for. Behind her back, of course, there were plenty of foul and sexist variations. She tended to scare men and—as Nick had quickly discovered when he was her partner—the more insecure the men, the more quickly they frightened.

Detective First Grade K. T. Lincoln had never scared Nick Bottom, but it was probably because the two had worked together so well.

But now, seeing the scowl on her face as she came striding toward the booth near the back of the Denver Diner where Nick sat waiting, he felt some of that insecurity and fear. The absolute certainty that this hard-featured, frizzy-haired, six-foot-two scowling woman of color was packing a 9mm Glock on her hip never helped ameliorate that particular stab of anxiety.

“I’ve got some coffee coming for you,” said Nick as she slid into the booth opposite him. They used to catch breakfast here often after a night shift at Denver Center. Dara had never minded, nor had K.T.’s partner.

It had been almost five and a half years since Nick had seen or talked to K.T. She’d been promoted to lieutenant and made squad commander since then… a position that Nick himself might be filling if it hadn’t been for his flashback addiction. And his total screwing of the proverbial pooch on every front.

“I don’t want any coffee,” K.T. said coldly. “And the answer to what you’re going to ask me is no. Now, is there anything else, Mr. Bottom? I have an early meeting with Delvecchio’s Emergency Service Unit guys. I need to shove off.”

That mutt Delvecchio is running ESU now? thought Nick. He said, “What are you saying no to, K.T.? I haven’t asked anything of you yet. What did you think I was going to ask?”

“I won’t be your sniper-second at Coors Field this afternoon,” the lieutenant said. Although Nick had never once come on to K. T. Lincoln, he’d always seen her as an attractive woman despite her size, rugged features, and short wild hair. Nick had once told Dara that he was able to imagine K.T. being descended from Abraham Lincoln—if the former president had mated with a beautiful black woman with K.T.’s café-au-lait complexion and chicory-bitter personality. Like President Lincoln (despite the inevitable rumors by second-rate history writers desperately seeking a new angle on the most-written-about president in U.S. history), K. T. Lincoln preferred women in matters of romance.

But it was her deeply recessed, dark, and strangely Lincolnesque—and only sometimes sympathetic—brown eyes that were the main similarity between the sainted president and the scowling and silent squad commander.

“How’d you know I was going into Coors?” asked Nick.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” said K.T. “Everybody in the department’s been watching you make an asshole of yourself working for Nakamura. You think you’re going to get special permission from the governor on down to see Oz, Dean, Delroy Nigger Brown, and the rest of these chumps—everything being greased from the Advisor’s office—and not have us know what you’re doing? Come back to Planet Earth, Bottom.”

“What happened to ‘Nick’?” asked Nick.

“He died at the bottom of a flashback addict’s sniffer vial,” snapped K.T.

Stung, Nick said, “I have a sniper-second for Coors.”

“One of Nakamura’s thugs,” she said. “Good. You don’t need me, then. If there won’t be anything else…” She started scooting out of the booth.

The waitress accidentally blocked K.T.’s exit for a moment, bringing both their coffees and Nick’s big breakfast of eggs, bacon, and hash browns. Nick said hurriedly, “It’s about Dara.”

The lieutenant paused. Then sat down.

“What’s about Dara?” asked K.T. sharply when the waitress had refilled their coffees and left.

“Danny Oz, the Israeli poet who was one of the last people interviewed by Keigo Nakamura…”

“I remember who Oz was,” said K.T.

“… told me yesterday that he met Dara and an unidentified fat, balding guy who must’ve been ADA Harvey Cohen on the day that Keigo interviewed him. I need to know why she was there, K.T.”

K.T. lifted her coffee cup with both hands and sipped slowly, obviously just as a way to find time to think. “Oz never mentioned your wife in any of the other five investigations into Keigo’s murder,” she said softly.

“Five?” said Nick. “Five? I just knew about our department’s joint investigation with the Feebies and then the Japs themselves, Nakamura Senior, doing it again a couple of years later.”

“There’ve been three more since,” said K.T. while she looked down at her coffee. “DHS three years ago, then our office again after the governor put a rocket up Peña Junior’s ass. Then, a year and a half ago, the Feebies again with the CIA or some damned spook group looking into the nasty corners where the feds usually can’t go.”

“So my investigation makes six in six years,” murmured Nick.

“Your investigation makes five and one one-hundredth,” snapped K.T. For a fleeting instant there was a rare expression on her face, as if she wished she hadn’t said what she’d said.

But Nick just nodded. “Why has Nakamura hired me after all that firepower has come up empty? But the truth is, I don’t care why… I just want to find out why Dara and Harvey Cohen were there in Six Flags that September day. There’s also a chance that she was at the party in LoDo the night Keigo was murdered there.”

K.T. looked up. “At Keigo’s digs? No chance, Nick. All the investigations have combed that party list and the video recordings a thousand times. Hell, Nakamura’s people even re-created the whole thing in a three-D simulation. No sign of Dara.”

“Simulations come out of a computer,” growled Nick. “Computers depend on what goes into them. And on one of the outside videos I caught a glimpse of… someone… who could’ve been Dara, across the street about half a block away. Right when everyone was hightailing it out of the building before the cops got there.”

K.T. shook her head. “The FBI and the other tech investigations enhanced all those outdoor night videos. No matches with anyone of interest.”

“Well,” said Nick, setting words in place like sliding bullets into a revolver, “maybe my dead wife wasn’t of interest to them. But she’s of interest to me. I need to find out why she was at Six Flags that day and maybe at the party that night and to do that, I need your help, K.T.”

The lieutenant leaned back and away from him. “Jesus, Nick. You’ve been watching or reading too many goddamned private-eye stories where the defrocked ex-cop still has a pal on the force that does all the heavy lifting for him, despite the fact that it’d cost a real cop in the real world her gold shield. Well, I’m not your pal anymore, Nick Bottom, and I wouldn’t do it if I were.”

“You were Dara’s pal,” Nick said flatly, his hands clasped together and his forefingers pointing at K.T.’s chest like a pistol. “Or you acted like you were back then.”

“Fuck you, Bottom.”

“And fuck you, Lincoln. You’re not worried about losing your gold shield. You’re worried about losing your next promotion. But what’s next to get promoted to, K.T.? Commissioner? Mayor? Queen of Colorado?”

Nick had chosen a booth near the back of the diner, near the restrooms and away from the windows and early-morning crowd, but people were still turning to stare over the backs of their booths.

Nick leaned closer and whispered, “I need your help, K.T.”

The lieutenant’s expression had not changed except perhaps for a slight narrowing of her eyes. “What you need, Nick, is a shave, a haircut, to get your teeth cleaned, and to lose about twenty-five pounds. A new suit and a tie might help as well.”

Nick felt the wince inside but did not show it. “I need your help, K.T. I need to know why Dara was at Six Flags. And if she was near Keigo’s apartment that night.”

“She never said anything to you about Cohen or the district attorney looking into anything having to do with Keigo Nakamura?”

“Nothing that I remember. I’m going through those days one at a time with flashback and everything she says or doesn’t say seems suspicious to me now. I need to talk to the district attorney then, Ortega.”

“Mannie Ortega?” K.T. chuckled and took a piece of bacon from Nick’s plate. “Good luck in seeing the mayor to ask questions about something he probably didn’t even know about six years ago. The word downtown is that Ortega sees being mayor of Denver as a temporary stepping-stone. He has national aspirations.”

“Well, fuck him and his national aspirations,” hissed Nick. “I just need to know what Harvey Cohen was working on that might have put him and Dara in Six Flags Over the Jews that day.”

“Maybe you can get away with pulling your Advisor strings once to get in to see Ortega,” said K.T., “but your… investigation… doesn’t have a damned thing to do with who killed Keigo Nakamura anymore, does it?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said truthfully. “I just know that right now I don’t give a shit about who killed that kid unless it has something to do with Dara. And maybe even Dara’s… accident.”

K.T.’s strong eyebrows shot up. “Her accident? You’re not suggesting that the car crash that killed her and Harvey Cohen was more than an accident?”

Nick shrugged and looked down at his cooling and congealing breakfast.

“Nick, the state patrol, sheriff’s office, and DA’s office all shared their investigation notes with you five and a half years ago. I know they did. Traffic was moving fast when Cohen’s car started to exit I-Twenty-five to East Fifty-eighth Avenue—Harvey always drove too fast around the city. The old couple in the Buick gelding in front of them stopped suddenly. No reason… someone just slowed in front of them and they slammed on the brakes, the way old drivers do so often. Harvey couldn’t stop in time or get out of their way, neither could the driver of the eighteen-wheeler behind them, and all three vehicles went into the barrier. The old couple and the trucker also died in the fire. For God’s sake, where is there anything but an accident in that, Nick?”

He looked at her through bloodshot eyes. “Did you ever hear of a swoop-and-squat, K.T.?”

The lieutenant snorted. “Sure I have. One of the oldest auto insurance scams on record. But I’ve never heard of the braking car in front of the targeted auto being an old anglo couple with not a single moving violation to the driver’s name, nor the squat car being an eighteen-wheeler. Nor have I heard of swoop-and-squat scamsters volunteering to die in a fire. You have to do better than that, Nick.”

“Where the hell were they coming from, K.T.?”

“Who?”

“Harvey and Dara. Where were they coming from when this ‘accident’ happened?”

“Lunch, I think the report said.” K.T. suddenly sounded tired.

“They’d been out of the office for more than three hours by then,” snarled Nick. “Long goddamned lunch. And where the hell were they going? The DA’s office at the time just said they were going to take a deposition of someone in Globeville—no other details. Who the hell goes to Globeville to get a deposition?”

“I guess ADAs and their assistants do when the person being deposed lives in Globeville,” said K.T. “Why didn’t you bring these questions up at the time?”

“They didn’t seem important at the time,” said Nick. “Nothing seemed important at the time.”

K.T. looked down at her strong fingers where they were splayed on the tabletop. “You’ll have to see Ortega and the current district attorney for all that information,” she said very softly. “What do you want me to do?”

“First, get me everything that the state highway patrol, sheriff’s office, and DA’s office didn’t show me almost six years ago,” said Nick. “And everything from the coroner’s office that I didn’t see.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Nick, do you really want to see the accident-site photos of Dara’s crumpled and burned body?”

“Yes,” said Nick, returning her stare with some ferocity. “I do. Also Harvey’s body, the old couple’s, and the truck driver’s. And I need to see everything the department had on everyone involved in that crash. I want to know everything there is to know about that trucker and the old farts.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” said Nick. “I need you to poke around and see if any branch of the department or the FBI or anyone else was looking into anything about Keigo Nakamura before he was murdered… anything that might have brought the DA’s office in and sent Dara and Harvey Cohen to Six Flags that day in September.”

“That won’t be easy,” said K.T.

“You’re squad commander, Lieutenant Lincoln,” said Nick. “When you and I were detectives second grade, we considered that position second only to God’s.”

“Yeah?” said K.T., looking at him. “Well, it’s not.”

She started scooting out of the booth again. “You have the same phone number?”

“Yeah,” said Nick but hesitated. “But if you could report to me personally—in private like this—it might be a better idea. Hard copies of the info rather than digital.”

K.T. paused and cocked her head. “Getting a little paranoid, are we?”

“Even paranoids have enemies, K.T.,” said Nick. “If the FBI and CIA kept coming back to this investigation of Keigo’s murder, odds are strong that they suspect some sort of conspiracy against Nakamura and his holdings by those cabals of corporations they have there.”

K.T. was standing next to the booth now, but she leaned over and lowered her voice. “That would be a dangerous area to poke around in, Nick. For you or for me. Since the Day It All Hit The Fan, Japan’s gone almost feudal again. You know that. Those clusters of companies—keiretsu they call them—are like fiefdoms. You’ve heard of the resurgence of the keiretsu in Japan, haven’t you?”

“Sure,” said Nick.

“Then you need to remember that the prime minister and members of the National Diet are nobodies. Heads of these corporate-alliance keiretsu like Hiroshi Nakamura, who also head up their own family monopolies called zaibatsu that have made such a comeback, all want to be Shogun of the new Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere that the Japs are carving out of China and the rest of Asia. Being an Advisor to America the way Nakamura is means that he’s one of the top players in that feudal nightmare that these Nipponese samurai-businessmen call a culture. Assassination has always been fair game between these keiretsu and zaibatsu. You really don’t want to get involved in their wars, Nick.”

He looked up at her. They were so close that he could smell the subtle fragrance that she’d worn when they were partners working out of the 16th Street house. “I have to get involved in it, K.T. If there’s the slightest chance that Dara was involved, I have to be, too.”

K. T. Lincoln straightened up and seemed to be looking at the blank wall behind the booth. But she didn’t leave. After a few seconds, she said, “Do you know why I’m part of the tiny five percent of Americans who’ve never once tried flashback, Nick?”

“You’re Amish?”

His former partner didn’t smile. “No, it’s because I already have too many important dead that I’d spend most of my time visiting in the haze of that motherfucking drug. I read in a report that you saw that Google punk Derek Dean yesterday. So you know how sick this habit of going to live that false life with the dead is, Nick. Every hour under the flash is an hour lost from your real life forever.”

Nick looked at her without blinking. When he did speak, his voice was firm, emotionless. “What real life, K.T.?”

She closed her eyes for a second, then turned to leave but paused, speaking over her shoulder. “Be careful at Coors Field this afternoon. The department has info that this Hideki Sato you chose as your sniper-second is one of these zaibatsu assassins we were talking about.”

“Good,” said Nick. “Then he should be able to shoot straight. Call me as soon as you have something and we’ll meet again.”

Lieutenant Lincoln walked out of the diner with the same confident, aggressive strides she’d used to enter.

No visitor went into Coors Field armed, so Nick spent more than a half hour donning the Kevlar-Plus armor that went under his street clothes and up and over his neck and head like an overlappingly scaled and lightweight metal-ballistic-cloth balaclava. Nick’s face was exposed, so an inmate could always shoot him there—and there were guns as well as shivs, cleavers, spears, spikes, saps, and full-scale combat knives in the prison called Coors Field—but the K-Plus would turn away most blades and other cutting edges and, with luck, allow his sniper-second to step in.

But a long blade in the eye socket, struck in with lightning speed and an inmate’s Body Nazi–exercised and honed muscle, would serve as well as any bullet. These hard cases in Coors Field were the fittest and strongest men in the state of Colorado.

“Only men here?” asked Sato. Warden Bill Polansky and head guard and chief of the sniper squad Paul Campos were there watching Nick armor up. Polansky was the kind of quiet but solid midlevel administrator who, if he were in public education, would either be superintendent by the time he was forty-five or ready to blow his brains out.

Campos—with his head of silver, short-cropped curls and deep-water tan—was a man who’d blow any other man’s brains out before his own. And he’d do the job not happily but with absolute efficiency.

“Only men,” said Warden Polansky. “We have no indoor cells here except the emergency isolation holding cells under the stands. Women are housed in the nearby ex–Pepsi Center.”

“I used to watch the Nuggets and Avalanche play there,” Campos said. “And I heard Bruce Springsteen there once. Are you familiar with the rifle, Mr. Sato?”

Sato grunted and nodded.

Busy fitting the body armor over his genitals, Nick looked at the unloaded rifle that Sato was hefting. It was a basic M40A6 bolt-action sniper rifle of the sort the U.S. Marines still used. Nick could see that it had a five-round detachable box magazine. The range in Coors Field was relatively short—about one hundred eighty meters maximum—so it made sense that the prison snipers used the lighter 7.62 × 51mm former NATO cartridges rather than heavy, armor-piercing .50-caliber models.

Campos tapped the scope. “A modified Schmidt and Bender 3 – 12 × 50 Police Marksman II L with illuminated reticle. Daytime scope. You’ll probably be shooting into shadow under the second deck—that’s where D. Nigger Brown lives—but this will gather enough light to give you a clear shot, even if it gets cloudy.” Campos paused. “Have you used this particular weapon before, sir?”

“Yes, I have,” said Sato. He set the long gun down on its bipod on the table.

“We don’t want anyone dead,” Warden Polansky said tiredly just as Nick was pulling the K-Plus balaclava over his head. “Colorado abolished the death penalty years ago and never got around to reinstating it. So every prisoner you shoot creates a lot of paperwork for all of us. Actually, there’s more paperwork if a prisoner dies than if the visitor is killed.”

Sato nodded. Nick stared out through the eyeholes of his new headgear. His ears were covered but microphone pickups conveyed both external sounds and kept him in radio touch with Sato and others in the old press box. There was a 3D mini-cam and dual pickup microphones on the headpiece, so Sato and the others could monitor everything he was seeing and hearing… unless one of the inmates cut his head off and stashed it somewhere.

Nick started pulling on his outer clothes. The K-Plus gloves would be the last thing he put on.

Warden Polansky came over to Nick, turned on the cameras and mikes, stepped back, and folded his arms. He was scowling. “We want to accommodate Advisor Nakamura, Mr. Bottom, but is interrogating this particular prisoner really worth all this hassle?”

“Probably not,” said Nick. Fully dressed, he flexed his arms and fingers and moved his head around. He felt as if someone had sheathed him in metal-and-plastic shrinkwrap. The sweat was already pooling up under the K-Plus armor. “Let’s go,” he said.

Nick came out through the door in the centerfield wall and began the long walk across the playing field. Delroy Brown’s hovel was on the first level behind home plate, halfway up. Being a mere drug dealer in for a mere three-year fall, Brown wouldn’t warrant such a prime location, but he’d been in often and for more serious offenses and he had friends here.

Nick didn’t look over his shoulder but he knew Sato was up there behind the reflective, bulletproof glass of what used to be the second-level outfield VIP restaurant. Now it was a sniper’s roost.

In the early days of Coors Field’s use as an outdoor prison, the entire playing field was kept free for exercise purposes. Now outfield and infield—both grassless—were filled with blanket tents, cardboard and scrap-tin shacks, and junk-heap hovels. Those who lived down here were the newbies and nobodies, since their cobbled-together cubies suffered the full force of the weather. Coors Field had never had a roof, retractable or otherwise. The black prisoners had pride of place, owning all the covered area behind home plate and spreading to beyond both the first-and third-base-side dugouts. Whites owned the covered left-field areas on both the first and second tiers. Spanics had both tiers of right field and an uncovered part of the centerfield stands once called the Rockpile. It was still called the Rockpile by its inhabitants.

The expensive enclosed luxury boxes were now windowless hovels for the VIP prisoners—they paid the guards and warden a fortune for them—and the third-tier seats were a melange of shacks and tents for eccentrics and aging prisoners who just wanted to be left the fuck alone.

There was a sort of trail from the centerfield-wall door through the hovels to home plate and Nick kept to it. Sullen eyes glared out from under tents and cardboard shacks, but no one came close to him here. The understood shooting zone for visitors was six feet.

It was a long walk and the K-Plus armor made Nick’s body heat build up until he almost felt faint.

He knew the drill: if one or more inmates attack you with edged weapons, roll up in a ball, cover your face with your K-Plus hands, and let your sniper-second handle things while the inmates stab away at you. Then, when the attackers are all down, get up and run like hell for the nearest exit.

Only the nearest exit was now some four hundred feet away across the entire infield and outfield.

Nick paused about where home plate used to be and peered up into the stands. The backstop and net were right where they used to be before this felon-inhabited state began parking its captured felons here. The reality of the place surprised him since he was so used to seeing the digital version in the Rockies games he followed during the summer. Most people had thought that the death of public gatherings would be the death of professional sports, but televised 3D digital-virtual games, in all sports, were more popular than the original live versions. One reason was probably the better players: the new Colorado Rockies team boasted such players as Dante Bichette, Larry Walker, Andrés Galarraga, and Vinny Castilla, who had all played for the team more than forty years earlier. The only rule now in major league baseball was that the virtual player on the roster must have played with that team sometime in the past (and could only be digitally resurrected to play on one team), thus the joyous return of the Brooklyn Dodgers with Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, and the rest. Those Dodgers faced a New York Yankees lineup that included Derek Jeter, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris (tuned to his best year), Lou Gehrig, Dwight Gooden, and Babe Ruth.

There was endless bitching about the fairness and accuracy of the virtual MLB players and teams, but baseball fans loved the resurrection era. Few would go back to the steroid-riddled players of the last, scandal-ridden decades of the live game.

Nick, like the Old Man before him, loved boxing and often watched Friday Night Fights, where a young Cassius Clay could be found fighting Rocky Marciano or Jack Johnson…

“Bottom-san, are you paying attention?” whispered Sato’s voice in Nick’s ear. “Man approaching from your right.”

Nick whirled.

The man coming out of the tent-and-shack village toward him was tall, thin, white-haired, black, and old. The old man wore baggy khaki shorts, sandals, and a spotless white shirt. He walked slowly but almost regally, stopping about seven feet away from Nick and opening his hands to show that they were empty.

“Welcome, sir, to our modest world of Coors Field, sans baseball, sans fans, sans hot dogs and Cracker Jack, sans Coors beer, sans everything but incarcerated felons, myself included, sir.” The old man bowed slightly but very gracefully. His voice was rich, full, deep, mesmerizing, in the way those of some Shakespearean actors and old-time sports announcers used to be.

Nick nodded slightly but looked around, his gaze flicking everywhere, wondering if this was the setup for some trap. Move on, his brain told him. Move on, idiot.

“My name is Soul Dad,” said the old man. “Soul with a ‘u.’ May I inquire as to your name, sir?”

Move on. Move on. Nothing good could come from Nick’s giving his name to some senile old felon.

“My name is Nick Bottom.” Nick heard his own voice as if from a distance. Something about his early-morning conversation with K. T. Lincoln had distracted him at a time when he couldn’t afford to be distracted. It was as if all this—the hovels and felons and sunlight and ravaged old ballpark, even the crazy old man with the amazing voice—was part of some flashback session and Nick was hovering above it all.

Hovering will get you killed, asshole.

Soul Dad chuckled in the same resonant, rich tones. “Well, Mr. Nick Bottom, you left your ass’s ears at home today, sir.”

Nick glanced at the old man and moved slightly to his right, keeping the same distance between them but putting the old man between him and anyone with a gun in the stands straight ahead or to the immediate right, without blocking Sato’s shot.

When Nick didn’t reply, Soul Dad said, “I’ve always thought that when the awakening Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream says, ‘It shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death,’ the ‘her’ he’s talking about is Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare wrote the two about the same time, you see, Mr. Bottom… perhaps at the same time, although that would have been very unusual for the Bard… and I believe he allowed one reality to bleed over into another in Nick Bottom’s line there, just as flashback users often let one of their realities seep into another. Sometimes until they can’t tell the difference.”

Nick could only blink. It was odd that the Israeli poet Danny Oz had also brought up the question of who the “her” was in the “sing it at her death” part of that quotation.

Knowing he was wasting time and making himself more of a target, Nick said, “You seem to know quite a bit about Shakespeare, Mr. Soul Dad.”

The old man threw his head back and laughed deeply and delightedly. His teeth were large and white and only one was missing on the upper right side, despite his age. Something about the laugh made Nick think that the old man was Jamaican, although he had none of the accent. Whether he was laughing at being called Mr. Soul Dad or because of the Shakespeare compliment, Nick had no clue.

“I lived for more than forty years in a small railroad-yard shack in Buffalo, New York, with a sterno-addicted philosophy professor of great learning, Mr. Bottom,” said Soul Dad. “Some things rub off.”

Nick knew it was stupid to ask a question and drag things out with this old man, but sometimes one had to be stupid. “Soul Dad,” he said softly, “what are you in here for?”

Again that full-throated laugh. “I am in here for living under an overpass in winter and fouling the view of the Platte River for people paying much money to live in a tall glass tower along the river park,” said Soul Dad. “What, may I ask in return, are you here for, Mr. Bottom? Or, rather, whom are you searching for here?”

“Delroy… Brown.”

Soul Dad showed his strong teeth again in a broad grin. “How gallant of you to leave out the n-word, Mr. Bottom. And I agree with you on the choice. Of all the things I have seen and suffered in my eighty-nine years of life, my people’s return to the never-really-abandoned n-word of our centuries of servitude is the greatest self-inflicted folly.”

Soul Dad turned and pointed to a hovel halfway up the first tier behind home plate, where, of course, all the seats had long since been torn out. “Mr. Delroy Nigger Brown is there, sir, and expecting you.”

“Thank you,” Nick said absurdly and started to step forward.

Blocking the gesture from the sight of those behind him, Soul Dad held up a hand with one finger raised. “They plan to kill you,” the old man said very softly.

Nick paused.

“Not Mr. Brown, whom you seek, but a certain Bad Nigger Ajax. You know the man?”

“I know the man,” Nick said just as softly. He’d been the arresting officer and his testimony had sent Ajax away more than ten years before for repeatedly sodomizing a six-year-old girl. The girl had died of internal hemorrhaging.

“It will be like this,” said Soul Dad in the same quick, soft, reverberant whisper. “Mr. Brown will invite you into his tent-hovel. You will wisely decline. Mr. Brown will say, ‘Let us step up here where it is private.’ Ten steps up, Mr. Ajax will pop up from behind another tent and shoot you in the face. His friends—or, rather, his fearful acolytes, since Mr. Ajax has no friends here—will block the view of your sniper with their bodies while Mr. Ajax escapes into the crowds toward left field. The pistol will not be found.”

Nick stared at the old man. Eighty-nine years old. Soul Dad—whatever his original name was—had been born in the early days of World War II.

Before Nick could speak, even inanely to say “Thank you” again—although he had no idea if the old man was telling the truth or setting him up for some other form of assassination—Soul Dad put his hands together, bowed, turned, and walked away down what once was the third-base line.

Nick took two steps back while surveying the maze of tents and shacks filling the entire first tier behind home plate. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

“We heard it,” came Sato’s voice in his ear. “I am looking at a photo of Ajax right now.”

Nick licked his dry and chapped lips. “Any suggestions on what I should do?”

“Mr. Campos suggests that you should come back through the centerfield fence, Bottom-san. He says to jog and weave. Ajax’s pistol is probably of small caliber.”

Sweat was running into Nick’s eyes but he resisted the urge to wipe it away. “I’m going to go up and find Delroy. Can you react fast enough to take Ajax out when and if he pops up?”

“It will be in deep shadow up there.” Sato’s voice was calm in Nick’s ear. “He will expose himself for only a second. And I have something to confess to you, Bottom-san.”

“What?”

“All American black men look pretty much the same to me, Bottom-san.”

Nick laughed despite himself. “Bad Nigger Ajax weighs around three hundred pounds,” he said, covering his mouth with his hand so no one in the stands could read his lips. How many pitchers have done that here with their mitts? he wondered.

“I confess, Bottom-san, that all three-hundred-pound American blacks look the same to me. So sorry.”

“Well,” said Nick behind his hand, “shoot the one aiming a gun at me. If you can.”

“Warden Polansky will not appreciate the paperwork,” Sato said with no hint of emotion. Nick had no idea if the big security chief was joking. And he didn’t care.

Nick went up the dirt ramp into the stands. Men outside their tents shrank away from him—or, rather, from the killing circle that moved with him. He felt their gazes on his back as he climbed the steps. The center railing that had been there in baseball days had long since been torn out.

Halfway up the first section, he paused near the tent that Soul Dad had pointed out. “Delroy Nigger Brown!” he shouted. His only satisfaction was that his voice still sounded strong, no quaver. Less satisfying was the sudden urge to piss down his own leg through the K-Plus armor. “Delroy Nigger Brown! Come out!”

“Who wants me?” came a familiar weaselly voice from inside the tent.

“Come out here and I’ll tell you,” said Nick, lowering his own voice a little but still using his never-take-no-for-an-answer cop tones. “Now.”

“You all come on inside the tent where it be quiet,” whined Delroy. “Nothin’ in here to be, you know, afraid of, cop-man.”

“Out here, now,” repeated Nick. Each syllable was flat, hard, and imperative.

Delroy Nigger Brown came wriggling out of the low tent-shack. He was dressed as Soul Dad had been, in shorts, shirt, and flip-flops, but everything on Brown was as filthy as Soul Dad’s had been immaculate. When he came closer and stood straight, he still barely came up to Nick’s shoulder.

“I ain’t done nothing, man,” complained Delroy. “I only be in here for eight months for selling a li’l flashback is all what it is. And that be ’staken identity.”

Nick had to smile despite his continued urge to run. “Nobody gets sent to Coors Field for selling flash, Delroy,” he barked. “You were hauling coke, X-H, heroin, flashback, and Terror up from New Mexico with you. And selling it to kids. I just have a couple of questions for you… not about any of the drugs or guns or other crap you got caught with.”

“Not about none of that what my, you know, lawyer wouldn’ let me, you know what I’m sayin’ to you, talk about?”

“Right,” said Nick, not even sure what the sniveling dealer had said.

“All right,” said Delroy, brightening suddenly as if Nick were a friend or customer visiting. “Why don’t we, you know, go up there a bit where no one can, you know what I’m tellin’ you, listen and where it be a little, you know what I’m sayin’, out of the sun and like that?”

“All right,” Nick heard himself say. He grabbed Delroy’s upper left arm in a grip so tight that the little dealer let out a yelp.

One step up together, Delroy squirming to get free.

Two steps up. Three. Four.

There was the sudden stink of fresh urine. Nick realized that Delroy had pissed himself. The little weasel hadn’t planned to be next to Nick when the gunfire started.

Five steps. Six. Eight.

“No!” screamed Delroy and tried to pull out of Nick’s grip. He couldn’t.

There were blurs of movement all around. Men dodging, diving, shoving forward, pushing back, coming out of tents and leaping into tents.

The crack of the rifle shot echoed through Coors Field, sounding very much like the crack of a baseball on a wooden bat connecting for a home run. Nick saw the explosion of blood, brains, and skull fragments three rows up and fifteen feet to his right, exactly where Soul Dad had said Ajax would be shooting from.

Doesn’t mean that there aren’t three more waiting, Nick’s brain shouted at him as he dragged a soggy and sagging Delroy up the old seat levels toward the fallen shooter. Men were running wildly now, knocking down hovels and other men to get away from the killing zone that encircled Nick.

In the movies, someone always kneels next to a gunshot victim and puts three fingers against the fallen man or woman’s neck to see if there’s a pulse. Nick had never had to do that—after a while, you could tell at a glance when the person was dead. Of course, it helped—as in Bad Nigger Ajax’s case here—when a third of the man’s head had been blown away and his brains were spread across dirty concrete like so much spilled oatmeal.

Nick was after the gun and he found it—a .22-caliber target pistol with a long barrel. Giving no thought whatsoever to fingerprints, he picked it up, jammed the narrow muzzle deep into the soft skin under Delroy Nigger Brown’s sagging jaw, and pulled the little man with him back down the steps. Nick didn’t look back once at Ajax’s sprawled and spavined corpse.

Men were still fleeing on both sides, toward the outfield walls or the third-base-side dugout or the first-base-side dugout, as Nick pulled Delroy along with him across the open field. Tents were being knocked down and hovels were flying apart in the frenzied exodus. Nick now held the pistol high enough that everyone could see it. Any movement even partially toward him and the gun moved to cover it. There wasn’t much movement.

It reminded Nick of that scene that he and Val and Dara had always enjoyed where Charlton Heston as Moses parted the Red Sea. Pre-CGI special effects, but cool nonetheless.

You’re too cool nonetheless, Nick’s cop brain warned him. Odds are good that there are still people out here waiting to kill you.

It couldn’t be helped. Nick didn’t have permission to take Delroy Nigger Brown out of Coors Field—that would require a court order and two hearings with Delroy’s public defender present, probably three months’ time, only to have the request denied—and he needed information now.

About where the grass of centerfield would have begun, Nick kicked the drug dealer’s legs out from under him. Delroy fell to his knees. Nick set the muzzle against the little man’s forehead. He could see lice moving in what was left of Delroy’s thinning hair.

“I won’t ask any question twice,” barked Nick.

“Nossir. Yessir. Oh shit and fuck. But nossir,” quavered Delroy.

“What did Keigo Nakamura ask you about when he interviewed you six years ago and what did you tell him?”

“What?” shouted the kneeling man. “Who? When?”

“You heard me,” said Nick, digging the small muzzle deep enough into Delroy’s temple that it broke the skin.

“Oh, the Jap? That Jap with the camera and the, you know what I’m sayin’, sexy snatch assistant? That motherfuckin’ Jap?”

“That motherfuckin’ Jap.”

“Whattya want? I mean, you know what I mean…”

“What did he ask you?” repeated Nick, pressing the muzzle tighter. Blood began to flow. “What did you tell him?”

“The motherfuckin’ Jap wanted to know where I got the, you know, the motherfuckin’ flashback that I, you know what I’m tellin’ you, sold,” whined Delroy.

“What’d you tell him?”

“You know, man—told him the motherfuckin’ truth. No reason not to, know what I’m sayin’?”

Nick dug the muzzle deeper. “Tell me the truth or there’ll be two men named Nigger in this yard minus their brains. I swear to God, Delroy.”

“I’m tellin’, I’m tellin’, I’m motherfuckin’ tellin’,” screamed Delroy, raising his shaking hands but keeping them away from the pistol. “What was, like, you know, the question?”

“Where’d you get the flashback?”

“Where I got all my good drugs then, man. This be six motherfuckin’ years ago. Got all my good shit, ’cludin’ the flashback, from Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev at his big motherfuckin’ hacienda down in Santa Fe. He’s the, you know what I’m sayin’, head of the Bratva fucking Russian motherfuckin’ mafia down there.”

Damn, thought Nick. All roads always lead to Santa Fe. He’d have to go through with the trip Sato had planned for tomorrow.

“What else did you tell Keigo Nakamura during that interview?”

“Just about the motherfuckin’ flashback, man. He wasn’t even interested in the heroin or coke or nothin’, you know what I’m sayin’? Just wanted to know all about the flash—how I get it from fuckin’ Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev, how we drive it back with the motherfuckin’ pass to get past the motherfuckin’ reconquistas, that sort of shit.”

“What else?” demanded Nick, moving the pistol’s muzzle to Delroy’s soft eye socket.

The dealer squealed. “Nothing else. Jap didn’t wanna talk about anything else. Look at the motherfuckin’ videos if you don’t believe me.”

“Why’d you leave the party with Danny Oz the night Keigo was killed?”

“What? With who?”

“You heard me.”

“You mean that Jew-boy over to Six Flags?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you think I left with him, man? Somebody just got his ass murdered at that party, you know what I’m tellin’ you? Time to go, Joe. We had to get out of there and whatshisname, the Jew, the wizard of Oz or what the fuck, wanted some product. We went to my house up on the motherfuckin’ hill. I didn’t bring no vials to the party.”

“Which product, Delroy?”

“Flashback. That Jew never bought nothing else.”

Nick held out his phone with Dara’s photo filling the screen. “Look at this picture…”

“Nice white snatch…,” began Delroy.

Nick dug the muzzle of the .22 target pistol deep enough behind the dealer’s left eye that he could have popped the eyeball out with a twist of his wrist. Delroy screamed. Nick let up some of the pressure. The barrel and muzzle were wet with blood trickling down from Delroy’s forehead.

“What the fuck, man? You want me to look without no motherfuckin’ eye?”

“Where have you seen her before? And when? Be specific or you’ll lose more than an eye, I swear to God.”

Delroy waved his right hand in a placating way and leaned closer to the screen, squinting. “I ain’t never seen her, man. Nowhere. No time.”

“Look again.”

“I don’t have to fuckin’ look again. I don’t know her, never sold to her, never paid her for nothin’, never fuckin’ seen her, you hear what I’m tellin’ you?”

Nick slipped the phone away. “I hear what you’re telling me.” He hit the little man just hard enough with the barrel to drop him to the dirt.

Nick walked quickly toward the centerfield wall. He refused to run, to keep the last of his dignity, although the back of his head waited for a bullet to strike it and his shoulders scrunched up despite his best efforts to keep them from doing so. The K-Plus might deflect the body shot, but the blow to the back of his head would kill him even if it didn’t penetrate the Kevlar balaclava.

“Warden Polansky will not be happy with us,” whispered Sato’s voice in his ear. “But by great good coincidence, Bottom-san, your video and audio pickups seem to have failed the last two minutes or so.”

“Okay,” said Nick, not caring. “Tell Polansky and Campos that they have to get Soul Dad out of the yard… right away. Everyone saw him talking to me before you took out Ajax.”

The centerfield fence and door were less than fifty feet away now. How many outfielders had rushed at that flaking green wall while chasing a fly ball? How many relief pitchers had come through that door and walked toward the mound with their hearts pounding and body jagging with adrenaline the way Nick’s was now?

Only the top of the centerfield wall then hadn’t been covered with rolls of razor wire as it was now.

Chief sniper Campos’s voice buzzed in his ear. “We don’t need to get Soul Dad out, Mr. Bottom. He’s almost worshipped here at Coors Field. A lot of the blacks think he’s hundreds of years old and some kind of wizard. Even the whites and spanics leave him alone. No one will harm him.”

“But…,” began Nick.

“Trust me,” continued Campos. “Soul Dad is in no danger. I don’t know why he warned you, but he must have had his reasons. And he was right about Bad Nigger Ajax having no friends here. Lots of toadies and butt-boys, but they hated Ajax even more than the others who were terrified of him. Soul Dad’s all right.”

Nick shrugged. He would have jogged the last fifteen feet or so to the high wall and door, but his legs were weak with the retreat of adrenaline.

He could hear someone on the other side loosening the heavy latch. Someone opening it with the rusty hinges screeching like a dying man’s scream. Except Bad Nigger Ajax hadn’t had time to scream.

Then Nick was through. Then he was out.