That afternoon Big Moe drove me to Mai’s funeral in a Ford Taurus that had seen better days, but was clean and looked well maintained. The Taurus had an infant’s car seat in the back but Moe apparently decided to leave his baby at home.
It was quite the juxtaposition, this young slanger driving such a conservative, respectable family car. My confusion must have shown; Moe said, in an almost apologetic tone, “It has a very good safety rating.”
The funeral was a dismal affair, as such rituals always are. Her family stood around that cold, cold hole while some kind of priest dressed in colorful robes mouthed words in a language I couldn’t understand. Mai’s tiny casket was lowered into the ground and that was that.
One of the male Vangs looked my way; I was standing with Moe several graves over, as distant as I could manage and still pay my respects by attending. This Hmong guy just stared at me; I couldn’t interpret the expression on his face but I didn’t take it for friendliness.
“I was out of line, what I said before,” Moe said, both of us watching the funeral instead of looking at each other. “You’re still needed – can’t let you get away that easy. It was like an act of God, not your fault.”
He spat on the ground. “Just like an act of God,” he said again.
I turned to see Officer Reese standing by his car a ways behind us with a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a soda can in the other. His black-and-white was a brand new Crown Victoria. Given Stagger Bay’s money problems, it had to have been bought with drug seizure money.
Big Moe was right by my side as I walked toward Reese, but I shook my head at him. “Go wait in the car.”
Moe didn’t like it, but he peeled off.
“Tell me Kendra didn’t know about any of this, Reese,” I said by way of greeting, lobbing the name right up in his face to get it over with. “Tell me she had no part in it.”
But Reese was already intent as a targeting attack dog: “What you was saying to Mr. Tubbs before, about those douche bags that killed Kendra? Where’d you get that? Who told you?”
“That’s between me, Mr. Tubbs, and my source.”
“Source,” he snarled. “You’re full of it, just trying to stir things up.”
“You may be right. You’d be the one to know whether you and Kendra got your shifts switched. You’d even know who was the one made it happen.”
Reese shuddered but it was no more than a momentary spasm, nothing to hang my hat on. He hadn’t shaved since the last time I’d seen him. His uniform was wrinkled and soiled like he’d worn it overnight on a stakeout.
“You know she’d despise what you’re doing,” I said. “And yet listen to you, trying to act like the grieving boyfriend.”
“Are you getting ready to assault a police officer here?” Reese asked, looking at his whiskey bottle. “Are you a deadly threat? Self defense against a dangerous suspect?”
“You’re forgetting there’s witnesses,” I said, stabbing a thumb over my shoulder at Mai’s funeral party.
“What witnesses?” he asked.
I turned: the Vang funeral had broken up and the extended clan was piling into their fleet of minivans. I shrugged like it didn’t concern me a bit. “It’s still kind of hard to reach for your.357 with your hands full. Lemme know whether you want to let go of the booze bottle or the loogie can. I’ll hold whichever for you so you can slop your gun out the holster.”
Reese’s eyes bugged and the wad of dip spewed from his lower lip as a single hiccup of laughter escaped him. He swigged hard at the Wild Turkey, ignoring the tobacco dribbling down and off his chin. “If you weren’t such an asshole, you might be almost likeable,” he said, his eyes a wicked gleam.
I shook my head. “But how could you ever forgive me for what you did to my brother?”
“Ooh, that’s rich,” he said with a sneer. “That’s some psychobabble shit all right. You wouldn’t have stood a chance with her, you know.”
“What do you mean?” I was disturbed despite myself at this riposte.
“It shows in your eyes when you say her name, whenever anyone does in your presence. Your heart is on your sleeve, Mr. Subtle Man.” He took another swig off the bottle.
“You’re too old, and you weren’t her type anyways,” Reese said. He tried to make it a dig but he spoke as if by rote. His gaze was focused on something behind me and I turned to look. There was nothing to see but the back hoe chugging into position to commence filling Mai’s grave.
“Her runaway jaunt didn’t last very long, did it?” I asked.
“You’re just as guilty as anyone,” Reese said, his voice wild and bitter.
He swayed a little and his eyes were glassy as he stared at the little girl’s grave. “How’re the Gardens folks liking you these days, Markus? They pointed out that you’re as responsible for that little girl’s death as the unknown suspect that did it? If you hadn’t tried to be a big shot on TV, she’d still be alive.”
I had to close my eye for a moment. His zinger stung, no matter how Sam and Moe kept trying to rationalize the event in my favor. When I opened it again Reese was smirking at me, but not near as unkindly as I would’ve expected.
“You think I’m heartless, that I’m the bad one here,” he said. “But I’m not. Not really. Don’t you see how beautiful Stagger Bay is, how much she’s worth protecting? This is my home, all I’ve ever known. I’d do anything for her.
“I watch news of the outside world, Markus. I know what’s what. You’re from Oakland, right? Car-jackings, murders, drive-bys – you and your family came up here to leave all that behind, didn’t you? You raised your own son here. Doesn’t that prove what I’m saying?”
“Sure Oakland can be a rough town,” I admitted. “But you can’t be bragging too much on Stagger Bay these days. How many folks have disappeared around here again? How many have you had to kill in ‘self defense’ lately? You know, like my brother the big-time pot dealer?”
“I won’t apologize for doing my job,” Reese said, sloshing the whiskey bottle around. “And I sure won’t apologize for doing your brother.”
“As you say, I’d be insulted if you did say you were sorry,” I said. “In fact, I’d be mightily pissed if you even tried.”
Reese sneered. “Those people are outsiders; the barbarians are at the gates. You saw yourself first-hand at the school. But there’s some of us with enough sand to stand up for our own. The trash needs to be down in the city where they belong; they’ve got to go away and keep their place.”
“Like the back of the bus?”
“See, listen to you going on with that Al Sharpton crap,” he said. “You’re the right color and all, but you’re one of them at heart. What are you saying, Markus? You got you a Pass down there in Oakland? You could walk through the hood and they’d all be flashing gang sign at you, greeting you by name? No matter that you’re Oakland native; they hate you for being white, you’re just another honkie. Maybe you survived it, but you’re a fool if you call it home.”
“After what you did at the school, you and Sam could be honorary old local here,” he said. “Mr. Tubbs is a dab hand with a barbecue, and you could eat at his house any weekend. There’s lots that’d be proud to call you two our own, but here you are throwing yourself away on a lost cause, for low-lifes who don’t even appreciate it.”
Reese saw himself as a paladin, but if so he was a doomed one, fighting for the old school horrors and joys of this isolated dinosaur of a community. He was too close to it to see these were the last days of Stagger Bay; that his home would be one of the final victims in the decline and fall of small-town America.
“What if I told you I’ve had a change of heart?” I asked.
Reese stared at me then threw his head back and laughed a harsh series of mocking brays, the reek of liquor wafting from his mouth with each paroxysm. “You mean like Luca Brasi?”
“Who?”
“Luca Brasi, in the Godfather. I love them old movies. The Corleones being mean to you, Markus? You looking to swim with the fishes?”
I inclined my head toward the little girl’s grave. “Maybe I just don’t want things like this to keep on happening. You’re right – it’s all my fault and your hands are clean. Maybe I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, and forget the past. Only, this has to stop.”
He chewed on that, the wheels turning in his booze-sodden head. Then he smiled unpleasantly. “Bygones like your brother? You may think I’m a hick, but that don’t mean I’m stupid. You’d have to go pretty far to convince me.”
“About your brother, just to set the record straight,” Reese said in a sudden wide-eyed approximation of sobriety, “I know you won’t believe me, but he really was dealing major weight. I was serving a legit warrant, and he truly did try to throw down when I served him. He was armed; it was self defense and a fair fight: face to face and man to man. I didn’t pull anything fishy, and if he didn’t want to pay he shouldn’t have tried to play.”
I winced. With my squirrelly big brother Karl it was surely possible, though I wasn’t about to nod in sheepish acknowledgment. “The dank wasn’t the only reason you were there.”
“You see? There’s no way I could ever convince you. But like I said, I have nothing to apologize for.”
“They’re ready to crack, Reese,” I said. “You’ve got them on the run. I figure, if the Driver hits them one more time, pretty much everyone in the Gardens will pack it in and caravan out of here, back down to the Bay Area where they belong. How’s that for proving in?”
He raised a brow. “Now, that’s interesting. One thing though – it means someone else is going to have to get hurt. How you feel about that?”
I planted a look of guilty realization on my face, pretending he’d pointed something out I hadn’t considered.
“As long as it’s the last,” I said in anguished tones, acting like I was gullible enough to believe any of this would end even after the Gardens were Pol-Pot-ed out. “As long as it’s over after that, and no one else has to suffer ever again.”
“I should have been there instead of Kendra, I know that,” Reese said. “You’re right, our shifts got switched that day, I’ll give you that freebie. I usually patrolled the bank and I’m the one who should be dead.”
“So who switched the shifts?”
But Reese’s only reply was an angry shake of the head. “I would have done exactly the same as you, if I’d been lucky enough to be there at the school.”
I envisioned all the scenarios, plugging my brother’s murderer into the equation. “If you’d have been there, you’d have done the same,” I said.
When I spoke those words to Wong I’d just been going for a sound bite, but with Reese I knew it for the truth. Reese appeared surprised at that admission but he wouldn’t have if he’d known me at all. Even though he’d killed Karl, I knew what it was to be used as the point man like he’d been so many times. And I knew what is was like to always be the one that took the fall – Karl had never done time, it’d always been me that paid the price.
“I’m not even pretending to be on your side, Reese. You can go to hell if you think that.” I gestured toward those unseen Southlands. “But you also know I’ve got little reason to stick around here. I’m heading back home to Oakland pretty quick.”
“Oh? Just gonna run off are you?” Was Reese disappointed?
“It’s got to end, that’s all,” I said. “After the next one, after the last one? I can count on you to put it all to bed then, can’t I, Reese?”
Reese scowled, his lower lip pushed into an upside down U. Then he put on a final show of cogitation, at least as much as the alcohol would allow.
“I still think you’re full of it. But you’re probably right; they’ve got to be on their last legs. I’ll let you know my decision.” He took his Wild Turkey, got into his cruiser, and bounced erratically away over the cemetery’s uneven ground.
He was going to decide? Yeah, right. I figured Reese for the kind that wouldn’t change his underwear without specific instructions from his higher ups.
I already had a pretty good ideas just who that had to be. And I wondered what they thought about how wide open he was playing things, how sloppy his grief and his drinkage was making him.
I gave Big Moe a wave to let him know I hadn’t forgotten him and wended my way through the tomb stones, searching. If Karl or Angela had been buried here I would have paid my respects; but there’d been no money and they’d been cremated, their ashes scattered to the wind. No Potter’s Field allowed for in Stagger Bay.
My quest didn’t take long: Kendra’s tombstone was a huge slab of polished pink marble, taller than any other monument in the whole cemetery including the antique mausoleums the founding father robber barons built. Old Man Tubbs had gone all out.
“We never got a chance to talk in life,” I told Kendra’s towering headstone. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Markus, in case you didn’t already know.”
I looked over at Moe, who sat in the Taurus listening to his stereo. “The reason I’m here, Kendra, is to thank you. Everyone’s making a big deal about what I did that day but I’m a total fake. It was a fluke, blind dumb stinking luck. I never expected to survive. I never thought I could really save any of those kids.”
“You were the hero that day, Kendra. I came to figure out that if you hadn’t shown the guts you did when you died, I couldn’t have done what I did.
“I like to think that, at the least, we would have been friends. I know you couldn’t have been any part of what’s going on in this town, Kendra. And I know you’d wish me well when I tell you I’m going to bring it crashing down on their heads. They’ll all curse my name before I’m through.”
“That’s all,” I said.
Was there an afterlife? Was Kendra in some kind of heaven? The possibility sort of comforted me, but I really didn’t have enough faith to be able to invest in the theory.
Angela, Kendra, and Natalie: I had three women in my life right now, and two of them were dead.