19: Crime SuspenStory

OUR STORY SO FAR: Oscar Rayne is on the run. The McCarthy Mob wants him dead and the SFPD aren’t far behind. Meanwhile, Detective Dela Cruz is unaware that she is riding shotgun with a cop on McCarthy's payroll and that death could be around the next corner. Click here to start from the beginning:  http://dublinsworld.blogspot.com/2012/02/part-one-crime-suspenstory.html 

Based on True Events
O’Neil knew the way, Claudia never had to give directions. They double parked across the street from Gold Duck and she looked out at the people wandering up and down the sidewalks, through the rain and neon of North Beach. She scanned the crowds for Oscar Rayne.

“Give me your phone so I can call Dan,” Claudia said.

O’Neil brushed the breast pocket of his jacket with his fleshy fingers but didn’t reach in for the phone.

“They got the van over at the paint store, what’s the point of checking in?” he said.

“I just want to talk to him.”

“I got to go in and get this son’a bitch. I don’t got any time to hand over my phone.”

O’Neil took a deep rasp of a breath as he rolled his window up. Claudia could feel the blood rising to her face.

“I’m going in,” she said, no trace of a question in her voice.

“Dressed like that?” he said.

“They won’t expect it.”

“They? We’re just here to apprehend Rayne. Who’s they?”

“This is McCarthy’s place,” Claudia explained, losing patience. “Rayne must be here in some connection to the crew. I’ll go in and flush him out, you watch the front for when he exits.”

“I can’t send you in there alone.”

“This is my case Detective. My collar. I appreciate your help, I do,  but I’m going to take the lead on this.”

O”Neil watched her, finally letting out a ragged sigh.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” he said.

“I’m glad you agree. Now, give me a weapon so I can go get this asshole.”

O”Neil labored as he bent down to his sock holster and handed over his .32 snub nose back up piece. He also gave her his raincoat, which hung off her like an untethered kimono when she got out of the car and began to cross the street. There was still a light rain but Claudia didn’t feel it, she just felt the criss cross pattern of the gun’s wooden handle as she reached forward and pushed the door of the Gold Duck open.

It was dimly lit inside the bar, at first she could only make out huddled shapes among the shadows. She took a deep breath and let her eyes adjust. As the place came into focus she had the realization that all the other eyes in the room were on her. Two old Asian men sat directly across from the door with dice lying on the bar between them and there was an old red looking white man in the corner, nursing a beer under the ugly painting of a topless tennis player.  The T.V sitting above the bar was showing a poker tournament and the four old men seated under it couldn’t care less, they were watching the woman in the giant rain coat and tight fitting dress.

****

The twenty seven thousand dollars felt a lot heavier coming down in the elevator than it had when he stashed it in the wall. Oscar looked down at the bag in his hand and wished he had taken the time to pick another. It was all black, except for a tacky pink peace sign printed on both sides. It looked like a gym bag bought for a teenager by a crazy aunt.

He moved the bag to his left hand and pulled the gun from his waistband. It was a very real possibility that the elevator doors would open and that would be it, he would be lit up at the end of the line. He stepped back into the corner, nowhere to really go, and pointed the gun at the door, pulling the hammer back with his thumb.

The  elevator let out a high shriek as it hit the bottom, the lower bowels of the city cushioning its drop.  Everything was still as he strained his ears, the gun thrust out in front of him, waiting, until the doors finally separated and revealed the striped brick wall of the passageway. He pushed up against the right door and took a look one way, then flipped around and scanned the other. The passage appeared to be empty.

He stepped out, wanting to run but forcing himself to take one measured step after another. He squinted into the gloom, waiting for someone to emerge around the corner, out of the dim end of the hallway near the stairway. His ears continued to strain. There was nothing but the faint buzz of the lights that lit the passageway four feet apart.

He walked by Charlie’s office. The poor bastard might have been coming around right about then but he would be groggy and tied up and not up and about for some time. Oscar would just go up the stairs, nod at Tek, and be on his way. By this time tomorrow he would be out of the country and finally able to rest.

It was dim in the passage but there was still a flash of light from the butcher knife as Tek leapt around the corner at the base of the stair, slashing wildly. The blade came down and caught the top of the gun in Oscar’s hand, otherwise it would have chopped the limb clean off.

The blow jarred up through his bones and Oscar lost his grip on the gun. He stumbled back as Tek raised the huge knife up with both hands again, taking another wild swing. It cut through the leather at the front of Oscar’s jacket and he could feel the sting as it pierced the skin on his chest, barely deep enough to draw blood.

He leapt back and the bricks of the wall dug hard into his shoulder blades as he slammed into it. He cursed and had to bend down to dodge another oncoming blow. The knife’s edge scrapped the brick and sent a burst of red dust into the passageway.

Oscar launched himself forward, catching his attacker square in the chest. This time it was Tek slamming into the brick and Oscar could feel the air punch out of the little man’s body, then felt the air leave his own body when Tek sent a sharp knee into his gut.

Oscar lost his hold and stumbled back, his lungs screaming. He looked out through the tears in his eyes and saw Tek reach down to recover the knife from where it had fallen onto the floor. Oscar scanned the passage for the gun, spotting it nearly ten feet away down the hall.

He glanced at Tek and found him coming again, the knife raised high with both hands. Still gasping for air, Oscar raised his own hands up in desperation. He caught Tek’s arms on the way down, but the little man ripped free and slashed again, weaker this time. The knife connected, the blade slicing deep into the meat of Oscar’s fore arm.

Oscar gripped Tek’s hand with the knife in it, ripping it from his own arm. The knife flew, sliding along the base of the passageway, and Oscar reached forward, forcing both hands around Tek’s neck and pushing, his weight forcing Tek to backpedal. Oscar could see the panic in the little man’s eyes as he grabbed at the hands around his neck, trying to pry them apart. Oscar was giddy with pain and anger, squeezing his fingers into the slippery flesh of the other man’s neck and pushing back, back.

Tek’s left foot stepped on the gun and he slipped, landing hard on the cement floor with Oscar on top. The little man’s body cushioned the impact, he was gasping for breath. Oscar dug his knees into either side, around the ribs. He began to pummel the little man’s face with his fists.

The punches came down hard, digging into the flesh of the cheeks, mashing the lips and  jaw. Oscar kept punching until both his arms were burning around the shoulders and his fists were numb, until he could no longer see Tek’s eyes from the swelling and the blood flowing from the little man’s head and the open wound on Oscar’s forearm.

Oscar stood up, wiping the sweat and blood from his face. His legs were unsteady and he leaned against the wall. He stood there, sucking breath.  Once he was breathing evenly his head cleared a bit and he could think again.

He took off his jacket and dropped it on the floor, then ripped the bottom of his shirt off. He rolled his sleeve up and tied the ripped cloth tight around the cut on his forearm. It wasn’t great but it would stop the bleeding. He put his jacket back on and looked down at his attacker. The blood was collecting around Tek’s head, his face no longer recognizable. Oscar hoped it looked worse than it was and that the man would live.

He collected the gun and the bag, picking up the six rolls of cash that had spilled out during the attack. The cut on his arm stung like a son of a bitch but it would hold. He would go straight to the airport, catch a plane to anywhere, catch another flight from anywhere to somewhere else and then maybe take a moment to get it stitched up. The most important thing was not to bring attention to it, not get questions asked.

He began to climb the stairs, one by one with effort. He was leaving behind a mess, two of his friends beat up, another dead in an alley way. All this time spent thinking about how he would leave one day with no trouble, no fuss- he shook his head as he continued to climb the stairs.

Oscar thought about the cop, the one that had caught them in the alley and shot Murph. If it hadn’t been for that man appearing out of nowhere Oscar himself would most likely be dead instead of Murph. This wasn’t the time to wonder but he couldn’t help himself. Where had the man come from? Had Judy called the cops? Had they been watching the whole thing? Oscar’s arm ached and he cursed the man and Murph and Dick and Leo and Vaughn and the whole bloody world.

He reached the top of the stairs. All he had to do was walk through the bar passed a couple of drunks, get outside, and that was that. The car was probably reported as a carjacking, he would leave it and flag down a taxi. He would take the cab to the airport, catch the first flight listed.

He swung the door open, the bag in his hand, the gun shoved back into his waistband. He glanced around the room, the old men all in place as they were, completly unaware to what had happened to their bartender down stairs. Oscar noticed the woman by the bar, with her back to him. She was between him and the door. He was making his way towards her, looking passed her, through the rain streaked windows, searching for the lights of a taxi.

The woman turned and looked at him -he knew her. She watched him approach, not saying anything, then she calmly lifted the black revolver and pointed it at him.

Songs About Women

After a four year hiatus I find myself in the process of making another rap album with my good friend and collaborator Elon.is. I don't really know how it happened. We were just hanging out one day I guess and he said "I have some beats" and after he played them I found myself inspired. Next thing you know we have a dozen songs laid down.

Not that a dozen songs an album makes. Songs about various subjects with wildly varied sounds and vibes can not be forced together. They have to come from a similar place, all fitting together like chapters in a book. There has to be some sort theme involved.

As I listen to the rough mixes of what we've already recorded, the theme in the beats is obvious- all the music is emotional but steady, mostly down tempo with a real funky pocket that makes them easy to write to (I try not to use the word funky too often but in this case it's appropriate). Listening to the songs, one after another, the theme of the lyrics reveals itself as well- they're all mostly about women.

There are a couple of pumped up little rap song about rapping (I try to steer away from those but in this case, again, it's appropriate) and another about zombies playing "Words With Friends", but the rest are all about women. In fact, it's a little deeper than that, the songs feel haunted by women.

A person making art for the purpose of making it shouldn't necessarily go and try to figure out why, but I can't help but look closer as I search for a theme to this new project. Why have I written about women so much? I look at my own life, my "real" life outside the vocal booth, and I see women, but not the way they are portrayed on this album. In my own life women are my closest friends, not mysterious and distant like the one's in these songs.

I realize that many of the lyrics were written long ago, some as far as three years, and even then I was looking back, analyzing my past and the women that inhabited it. These songs are about memories and even though I'm making lyrics, often times to be taken literally, the words are really about the feelings these memories cause.

There's bitter songs, songs that take on an argument that was never really finished, and songs about longing and loss, along with a good time here and there. This is what music is for, to work out all that shit you never got around to working out, that is the fuel that powers the engine. Ask Roy Orbison- all his songs were about women too.

Not that Roy Orbison was a huge influence on this new record. Truthfully, when I think back on what I was actually listening to during the time I was writing most of the material, I’m reminded that it was mostly women, all from another era: Skeeter Davis, Connie Francis, and Patsy Cline were in heavy rotation. Did that effect what I was writing? Are those the women haunting these songs? Many of their own songs are bitter, harboring the loss of good times and lamenting their brief stay in their lives. What I’ve written are almost reflections of those feelings, along with my hip-hop influences like Ice Cube and Kool G Rap.

In fact, if you were ever wondering what would happen if Ice Cube and Patsy Cline had a baby and that baby made a record then I think I may have the album for you. A little weird, sure, but I think you might be intrigued.

11-13-13

18: Crime SuspenStory

OUR STORY SO FAR: Oscar Rayne is on the run. The McCarthy Mob wants him dead and the SFPD aren’t far behind. Meanwhile, Detective Dela Cruz is riding shotgun with one of McCarthy’s men and doesn’t know it. Click here to start from the beginning:  http://dublinsworld.blogspot.com/2012/02/part-one-crime-suspenstory.html 

Based on true events:

The inside of the car smelled like cigarettes and sweat, aged air freshener, possibly cheap booze, she couldn’t be sure. Claudia noticed the seat was sticky when she shifted her weight.

“I should check in with Dan,” she said

O”Neil steered the car with two thick fleshy fingers on the wheel while lighting one cigarette with the butt of another, sneering as he sucked smoke between his thick lips.

“He said meet up around this paint store they got,” he said through the smoke. “We’ll call him once we get down there.”

They turned onto Folsom and Claudia couldn’t help but wonder how a man of O’Neil’s size could pass the annual physical. He was enormous, rolls of flesh and cloth all slouched in the seat. Any good years were far behind him. She rolled her window all the way down and could still hear his breath come rough and hoarse from the driver side as he sucked menthol.

“Why would they have grabbed Oscar Rayne?” she said aloud.

O”Neil glance over at her.

“Maybe he owed somebody money?”

Claudia watched the street pass outside the car. She tried to piece together the moments from the bar, tried to put them in an order that made sense.

“Let’s say they had no idea about the surveillance,” she said. “Let’s say someone just happened to grab the purse. That would mean they shut down the party because of Rayne. They grabbed him while they were kicking everybody else out.”

“Are you sure you got the right read on what was happening Detective? How you do you know they weren’t just joking around?”

O’Neil was putting emphasis in the word Detective, it was hard not to sense the condescension.

“It was no joke,” Claudia muttered. “They wouldn’t have stopped the whole party over some joke. You said you had been in on an investigation. What do you know about these guys?”

O’Neil scowled.

“I been in this department twenty three years. These sort of operations gotta be air tight. You can't just go in there-"

"I didn't ask you about that. What do you know about Leo McCarthy?"

O'Neil peered over at her again, his wide nose twitching as the smoke came out the nostrils.

"There's not much. We were on a couple of the guys due to some business down at the airport. We dug a little deeper and Leo McCarthy’s name come up. All we could ascertain was that he was a businessman who hired a couple’a shady assholes- couple’a jerks with records. We didn’t have anywhere to take it.”

Claudia watched the fat face as he spoke. There were bags under the eyes, stretched by the weight of the cheeks. She had tried to call up from memory what she knew about the robbery division but there wasn’t much. She understood it was mostly over the hill guys, cops that had earned their stripes but were too broken to carry much weight anymore. O’Neil fit the description. Yet here he was on the job, helping his comrades when things went south.

“I appreciate you coming in for me. I don’t think I said that already,” she said.

O’Neil nodded.

“You do what you gotta do,” he muttered. “We’re all in it together -way I see it. There’s so much bullshit out here in this city with the fucking yuppies and the god damn crack heads all smashed together. We gotta make sure -”

He was cut off by the theme song from Hawai 50, coming from his phone. He dug it up from the inside of his sports coat and put it up to his ear: “Yeah. You're kidding me? Not far, a few minutes. We’ll get up there. If you think that’s best, then we’ll head over that way. That’s right. Yes. I’ll take care of it.”

Claudia strained to hear if it was Dan or Alex on the line. O”Neil dropped the phone in his lap and threw the cigarette out the window. He reached down under the seat to yank up the police light attached to its thick cord that plugged into the the power.

“Was that them?” Claudia asked, irritated that she had to speak before O’Neil did. He peered over at her, stretched up in his seat as he tried to stick the light to the roof of the car.

“Yeah, yeah, it was them. They said this Rayne guy got spotted up at some bar near Columbus.”

“Gold Duck?” she asked.

O”Neil seemed to go pale for a moment, swallowing. Claudia assumed it was the exertion of trying to put the light on the roof.

“That’s right. Gold Duck.”

“Was he all alone? Was McCarthy spotted too?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They had a tail on him and that’s where he ended up. I figure we try to apprehend him and go from there.”

Claudia was irritated he hadn’t thought to pass the phone over to her. She needed her partner’s take on what they had right away, she wanted to discuss, to compare everything they had picked up before things had gone black.

She imagined bringing Rayne into custody. She thought of his picture from the McCarthy file, the eyes staring back at her from his rap sheet, the scar along the forehead.

“I don’t want someone going in and fucking this up. Was it a black and white that spotted him?” she said.

“He just said Rayne got spotted. They’re gonna send back up but we’re pretty close already.”

O’Neil hit the switch, the siren screaming. The people outside the bars looked up as the car tore passed them and Claudia sat up straighter in her seat, smoothing out the dress that still tightly cradled her body. If they were going to make a collar she would have preferred to be in jeans and a sweatshirt.

****

White Charlie hung up the phone and looked over at Leo, who sat on the top of the desk, staring back, not blinking. Pat sat in the metal chair against the wall and stayed silent like everybody else. He was still sobering up and was starting to feel the cold of the chair through his pants.

“He said he’ll take care of it,” Charlie said. “He’ll bring ‘em both over here.”

“Try Dick again. I want to know what happened.”

Pat watched Charlie punch numbers into the phone and then glanced over at the other men who were gathered there in the paint store office- Vlad, Ken, the Flores brothers, Cabbagepatch, they were all trying to look stoic, ready for anything, but Pat could see the worry in the corners of their mouths, the blinking of their eyes.

“Nothing,” Charlie said and hung up the phone.

“How did he fucking get away?” Ken said.

The other men in the room glanced over at the bartender and Ken seemed to act like he didn’t notice. He really had no business being there, he wasn’t on the inside.

It was Pat’s fault that Ken was there in the first place. Pat was still off guard when Dick and Murph had dragged Oscar off, he hadn’t reacted like he should. He was too drunk to drive and the last thing he wanted was to get caught up on the way to the roudeveux, letting his friend down again.

Ken was the only one still on the sidewalk, everyone rushing off in different directions, leaving O’Neil at the bar to deal with the cop situation. Pat had hollered at Ken to drive his car. The bartender had jumped at the chance, driving too fast and asking a million questions that Pat had no answer for. Pat had yelled for him to shut his stupid fucking mouth, there was no point on going on and on about it. Pat was as confused as anybody else.

He couldn’t get the picture of Oscar being dragged from the bar from his head. He had just stood there, watching like an idiot. He should have done something. Now they had gotten word that his friend had somehow escaped Dick and Murph and was robbing the Duck. Robbing the Duck? Pat brought his gaze over to his uncle, who still sat perfectly still on top of the desk.

“Fran, you and your brother head up there too,” Leo growled. “Our boy is a sneaky bastard. I don’t want any more of this bullshit, I want whatever the hell is going down here to be contained. You should go heavy.”

He got up from the desk and started turning the knob on the large wall safe. Pat lit a cigarette and watched his uncle and White Charlie pull guns out: a glock .45, two extra clips, a .32, another clip; they laid the whole arsenal out on the desk. Bobby got up and picked up the .45, testing the weight in his hand.

Pat took a deep breath. Things seemed be moving so fast, like a wave had come down and whipped him and everybody else up into a fearful panic, and he could feel that it was only going to get worse. He knew his uncle could be capable of anything when the old man felt backed into a corner. Leo had his men all on edge as well, liable to do something stupid.

Pat stood up from the chair, knowing this would probably be the only moment he would have. He dropped the cigarette onto the floor and rubbed it into the rug. Before Fran Flores could reach the table, Pat had stepped forward and picked up the .32 himself.

“I’m going,” he said.

His uncle turned towards him with the cold hard stare that Pat had seen so many times in his life. The big green eyes went from Pat’s face to the gun in his hand.

“Put that gun down boy,” White Charlie warned.

“He’s like a brother Leo. Let me go and take care of this thing.”

His uncle squinted. “He’s no one’s brother Patty. He’s a rat orphan. Now sit back down and let us take care of this thing.”

“Do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you're saying?!”

“We took him in Patty. We gave him everything he’s got. We gave him his only chance and he turned on us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s turned. He did Vaughn. I sent the two of them to do a job and only one of them shows back up. He’s god damned turned!”

“Says who? O’Neil?”

Leo swallowed hard, forcing the rage back. Pat watched his uncle’s face go a deep crimson.

“We don’t have time to debate right now lad. We got a call from the Duck saying our boy is down there robbing the place. Who knows where Murph and Dick are. We don’t have the time to spend ironing out the finer points of it. All we know is the boy’s gone rogue.”

Pat was nearly sober now, he could feel the blood in his veins pushing out to all his limbs, out to the pressure points in his body. It was dark in the little office, just the desk lamp was lit. The only face he could see clearly was his uncle’s, wide and red before him.

“Give me a moment to talk to him,” Pat said.

“We’re going to bring him back here to talk to him. That’s all now.”

“You're going to kill him.”

“Of course I’m gonna kill him!”

Pat heard Cabbagepatch mutter something behind him and Pat realized he had raised the gun he was holding, pointing it directly at his uncle.

“Jesus,” White Charlie said.

It was too late, Pat knew it. Things were out of control, they were always out of control, always beyond his reach. He could feel his uncle's full attention upon him. Pat looked into Leo’s face knowing he had no choice but to continue on, the pistol steady in his grip.

“I want you to let me go over there Leo. I want you to tell everybody else to stand down and let me talk to him. I’ll be God damned if I’m going to let you go in there and wack out my boy over some fucking assumptions.”

“Put the gun down Pat.”

“You need to listen to me Leo. Let me go.”

“Put the gun down.”

“He’s just as fucked up as we are, and if you would let me-”

The shot Pat heard wasn’t from his own gun, it was like a bomb went off in his back. He went against the desk and then was down on the floor of the office, a terrible burn through his back and his chest but only for a moment before everything felt thick and full and all he could hear was the blood pulsing through his head.

He was on his back, trying to take a breath, looking up the ceiling fan and then stretching his neck, trying to figure it out, looking over at Ken, the bartender, with the .44 in his hand. A flash filled the room and Ken flew back, disappearing from view. Everything became much foggier, dimmer.

His vision cleared for a moment -he saw Cabbagepatch staring down at him, the eyes big and white, that wide black face shiny with sweat. Then the black face went fuzzy and it was just a shape with other shapes around it. All Pat could hear was the blood in his ears and it was starting to get softer.

The last thing he saw was his uncle’s face, looking down at him.