Free Police and Thieves: A Novel by Peter Plate Page A

narc, Flaherty’s silent partner, pulled out his gun, Bobo howled, “Fuck that! Let’s get out of here!”
    We zigzagged back toward Twenty-first Street; Eichmann cut in front of me, going to my left while Bobo sailed past me on the right. The streetlights bobbed up and down, dancing merrily as my shoes touched the ground.
    “Hurry up, Doojie!” Eichmann screamed.
    He and Bobo were ahead of me. The quicker I ran, the smaller they became, receding up the block. I made a picture of Flaherty in my brain and sent it down to my legs to make them run faster, but my feet didn’t respond. The first warning shot he fired twanged over my head. The second report blew out a streetlight, throwing half the street into blackness, showering glass on me, and covering my hair with shards. People were opening their doors and windows to see what the ruckus was about. The narcs kept coming, hot on my tail.
    I’d been sprinting, not running, all my life. At first, it was to avoid my mom’s hand, and if it wasn’t her, it was my stepdad or my grandmother. Then came the teachers in public school, always liberal with their fists. Then it became everything the world had to offer me and I kept sprinting. The other narc squeezed off a round that shrieked the length of San Carlos Street—the bullet whistled by my leg, nicking the pavement. Before I could take cover, a mint-condition ’63 Chevy Impala turned the corner at a rapid clip. Flaherty saw the car and opened up with a panicked fusillade from his Smith and Wesson, obliterating the Chevy’s windshield.
    The Impala’s driver gunned the gas pedal, losing control of the steering wheel—the Chevy veered left, jumping the curb and knocking over a dwarfed palm tree before plowing into a ground-floor apartment. The car barreled through sheet rock and timber, leaving a gaping hole in the front wall.
    When the smoke thinned, the folks in the Impala climbed out of the wreckage unharmed, but completely bananas, terrified. The narcs corralled them on the sidewalk, forcing them to get down on their knees, then Flaherty punched the car’s driver in the mouth.
    I said to myself, Doojie, if you get out of this one alive, swear you’ll never break the law again. It was an oath I’d made and brokena thousand times before. So I did it once more for superstition’s sake. Then I put my head down, tucked in my arms, and got the hell out of there.

13
    I woke up that night not knowing where I was, and desperate to go to the toilet. I wriggled out of the sleeping bag and got to my feet. Nobody else was awake. Loretta and Eichmann were sleeping on the couch; he was snoring like a freight train. So I tiptoed past them, silent as a tomcat on the prowl.
    In the dark, dust sprites swirled around my ankles. I went around the couch and bumped into the hot plate, which I didn’t understand because the garage door was in the other direction. So I turned around and retraced my steps. By accident, I blundered into the beanbag chair. Someone was sitting in it, gently moaning.
    I leaned over to get a better look and and got a shock that turned my hair white. A stranger with bloodshot eyes stared belligerently back at me. His translucent skin was punctured by a solitary bullet hole; blackened rivulets of blood decorated his flaccid chest and stomach.
    It was the dead man; sweet musical hatred writhed on his broad, solemn face.
    He asked me in a grating, pissed voice, “Why did Flaherty shoot me?”
    What was I supposed to say? The Mission was a small neighborhood; some places were made for bloodletting, but nobody got away with murder anymore. Every time I passed Folsom Street, I thought about the shooting. An altar of plastic flowers, bouquets of carnations, single roses wrapped in cellophane, votive candles, white dominoes, bottles of vodka, and cans of Olde English 800had been erected on the nearby sidewalk to commemorate the killing. I answered, “Flaherty fucked up. But what can I do?”
    “You can say