Cole Shoot Read online

  “Hi Mei!” Marco shouted, as he began running toward her.

  “Where have you been?” Mei’s voice betrayed her worry.

  “I got on the wrong bus. I’m not lost though. I’m here.”

  There was a steady stream of foot traffic on McClarren as people rushed to their offices. Lots of briefcases and Café Espressos. Two kids with backpacks were barely noticed in the sea of focused early morning suits and pencil skirts. No one saw Marco and Mei as they went down the alley next to 415.

  Above a rollup door at the service entrance were three faded stick-on house numbers that told them they had found the right building. Marco stood looking at the roll up door.

  “How do we get in?” Mei said softly.

  “The key is in the electrical box,” Marco said, as if he knew what it meant.

  “What’s that?” Mei frowned.

  “A box where electrical is,” Marco replied, as he looked from one side of the huge wall to the other.

  The pair spotted two groups of flat grey panels at almost the same moment. One by one they popped open the covers. Two were sealed with wire twists and they left them alone. The last box of the first group held the key. Hanging on a screw, two keys waited, just like the man in the restaurant said.

  “Here they are Mei! Here they are! I told you!”

  Mei peered into the panel, took the keys, and closed the door. As Marco watched, she walked to the door just to the right of the roll up and tried the key.

  “This one works,” She said excitedly.

  They opened the door and entered the building. Marco locked the door and they made their way across the dimly lit room.

  “I can’t see very good,” Mei said.

  “Go to the light. I think it is a door.”

  Marco was right. The thin ray of light that lay across the floor was from the crack of a door left slightly ajar. It opened into a hallway leading to the front of the building. Natural light from the windows on the ground floor lit their way.

  “It’s all ours!” Marco said with delight.

  “It’s not ours. We are borrowing it for a while.”

  “Forever!”

  “Let’s go upstairs. I like to see out better.”

  In the lobby, four sets of elevator doors faced the front windows. Outside, the shapes of the morning foot traffic flickered past, their shadows melding together on the soaped out windows and huge front door.

  “Up. Up. Mei.”

  “I know, Marco,” Mei said, giving Marco a push on his shoulder. “Up we go.” She pushed the button with the embossed upward arrow.

  The doors opened almost immediately. The pair stepped inside. For a long moment they stood staring at the two long rows of black buttons.

  “What floor?”

  “High up!” Marco said excitedly.

  “Twelve?”

  “No, thirteen!”

  Mei stood looking at the buttons. Slowly she raised her hand and ran her fingers over the buttons. “Ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen.” She turned and faced Marco. “There’s no thirteen. Look.”

  “Ha! They forgot. Fourteen!” Marco reached past her and pushed the fourteen.

  The elevator jerked ever so slightly and began moving. Moments later the doors opened and Mei and Marco stepped out into the reception area of their new home.

  “I like this. This is just right,” Marco said looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Mei walked cautiously toward a door to the left of the room. She slowly pushed the door open and stood silently. After a long moment, she stepped into a large conference room. The space was carpeted and light sliced the floor from the almost closed blinds. She turned and closed the door behind her exiting the room.

  “Too big”

  Marco didn’t respond, he just stood looking out the window. Mei looked around and made her way to another of the three doors. Growing in confidence, she opened the door to find a short hall and two restrooms. She nodded and closed the door.

  “Bathrooms!”

  “OK”, Marco said, not turning around.

  The third door opened onto a long hallway. All the doors were closed and the hallway was dark and uninviting. Mei opened the doors one by one. Most were small offices, some had desks, some still had phones sitting on the floor. In the middle of the hall on the right side was a “Women” bathroom and on the left, a “Men”.

  Mei stood staring at the sign with the blue “Men” sign. This was a chance to see what was inside. Her brother Ricky always locked the bathroom door at home. He would say he had business to do. Mei never understood why at home everybody used the same bathroom, but at school boys and girls each had their own bathrooms. This was her chance to find out why.

  She looked down the hall toward the reception area and Marco. He won’t know, she thought. The door was on a strong pneumatic closer. Mei pushed hard, the entry to the unknown lay just ahead. A sensor turned on the lights as she stepped inside. Four sinks and tall mirrors lined the right wall. To the left were three stalls and four oval porcelain sinks hanging on the wall. Why do they need more sinks? Mei approached the strange fixtures. She was standing trying to figure out why the sinks had flushing handles, when the door opened behind her.

  “You should pee in the girl’s room. This one says ‘Men’!” Marcos said with an authoritative scowl.

  “I wasn’t! I was just checking out the rooms!” Mei said indignantly, as she marched passed Marco and out the door.

  “So where are we going to sleep?” Marco asked, following her into the hall.

  “There are lots of rooms here. I guess we can have any one we want. Some even have desks. Let’s check out the rest of the doors.”

  At the end of the hall, to their delight the duo found the break room. Marcos found the light switch and they said almost in unison, “Yes!”

  There were three tables and chairs, a refrigerator, a stove, microwave, and large sink. Marcos opened the refrigerator and took out a plastic container.

  “Gross!” he squealed as he lifted the lid on someone’s long-forgotten mold-solid lunch. “I brought some grapes and other stuff. I’ll put them in here.”

  “We’ve got a whole house here. Bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen.” Mei smiled at Marco, “I think this is great!”

  “I told you we can stay forever! We got everything.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Mei looked around the room. She nodded her head several times before saying, “We are grownups now.”

  Marco took off his backpack. “I’m hungry. You want a tamale?”

  SIX

  The phone on Cole’s desk had far more buttons and gadgets than he would ever use. What ever happened to just plain old telephones? he thought. Six buttons, five of which he never used, stared up at him. The little grey screen was dark and reflected the lights overhead. Dial it. Funny thing is there are no dials any more. The whole world was buttons and touch pads. With all the changes, with the speed mankind was flying into the world of social media, communication, and technology, basic animal instincts still rear their ugly heads.

  As he rolled and tumbled the night before, Cole realized what he needed to do. It went against everything Anthony fought so hard to get away from. He was a college graduate. His future was solid, and secured. This mess was and wasn’t Cole’s fault. Either way, the guilt was palpable. Anthony was no longer the street hustler he met almost five years ago.

  Cole picked up the hand set. A little red rectangle lit up on line one. He stared at the number scrawled across his old note book. The name above the number flooded Cole’s memory. He saw a spark of something special in “Whisper” Perez the first time they met. He was bright, well read, and possessed a natural curiosity. The thugs he surrounded himself with were another story. Luis Hernandez’s name carried dark fears as well as gratitude in Cole’s thoughts.

  The violence that Luis was capable of, without concern or a thought of the consequences, made this call all the more difficult. Cole could clearly see in his mind�
�s eye the box cutter and Luis slicing open a man’s scalp. If he would slice open a man’s head for Cole, what was he willing to do for his lifelong friend? Savage cruelty without hesitation, and only ten digits away. Cole would be asking for what he knew would unleash unspeakable retribution.

  Cole sat the handset down and decided to use his cell instead. He hit the numbers in rapid succession not realizing he was holding his breath. On the third ring he heard Luis’ flat deep “Hello”.

  “Luis. This is Cole Sage. You remember me?”

  “The guy who paid for Whisper to go to school. Yeah, I remember you. I ain’t seen him in four years.” Luis did not sound pleased.

  “There’s a problem.”

  “You are a problem old man. You bring it with you. What you want this time?”

  “It’s Anthony. Whisper. He’s in trouble.”

  “What, you can’t make him do his homework?” Luis chuckled at his joke.

  “I wish it were that simple. He’s been taken by an Asian gang up here in San Francisco.”

  “What the hell’s he doin’ up there?” Luis sounded angry.

  “He was working with me, doing an internship with the college. He was on assignment and got too deep into their business, I guess.” Cole tried to explain.

  “You guess? Don’t you know what he was doin’? I thought you always knew everything!”

  “Look, I didn’t know who else to call. The cops have nothing...”

  “Never do,” Luis interrupted.

  “He’s been gone two days. I met the guys who took him. They want one of theirs released from jail. It’s never going to happen. It’s a gang thing. Brown on yellow. Norteños verses unaffiliated Asians.”

  “So now schoolboy needs his old street shit friends to save his ass, ay?” Luis was almost growling.

  “No, I do,” Cole replied.

  “This your best number?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call when I get there.” The line went dead.

  Cole just sat with the phone to his ear. What had he done? He knew the knot in his gut would not soon dissolve. He was part of the violence he so detested. A means to an end? It’s easy to justify if it’s somebody else doing the deed. Cole would still have blood on his hands.

  * * *

  Anthony awoke with the iron taste of blood in the back of his throat. A dull throbbing in his shoulder and knees confirmed that he had been shoved down a flight of stairs. The last thing he remembered, before being swallowed by the darkness, was a voice behind him saying, “Don’t trip”. His wrists burned where he was strapped to a chair. A pair of florescent bulbs arced and sputtered over a small greasy workbench across the room. Anthony blinked and shook his head, the haze of his unconsciousness refused to clear.

  The room was a disheveled collection of boxes, old furniture, and shelving crowded with bric-a-brac and dragons. The sound of footsteps, muffled laughter, and the thump, thump, thump of a boom box came from overhead. Anthony was concerned but not afraid.

  The recklessness of the FCBZ, and Trick in particular, was not the way business was conducted on the streets of East L.A.

  Anthony momentarily blacked out again. As he tried to shake the swamp of black ink from his head, he attempted to take inventory of what he was sure of.

  There were at least ten guys upstairs. They were younger than he first thought. Teenagers, high school age for the most part, and mostly, really stoned. All were clearly willing to kill him, and certainly, the innocent bystanders at the parade. Why hadn’t the police caught up with these guys? They were certainly visible. By now Cole must realize something was wrong.

  The number of footsteps overhead seemed to be growing. Behind and above him came the sound of a door opening and steps quickly coming down the stairs.

  “Hey, what’s your password?” Ricky Chou shouted.

  “Anthony closed his eyes trying to focus on the words. “What?”

  “The password, for your phone! What is it?’ The voice was connected to a pair of hands that shook Anthony’s shoulder violently.

  “I, I, what, what do you want?” Anthony tried to process what the voice was saying through the pain in his shoulder.

  “Let me say it slowly.” Ricky moved within inches of Anthony. He could smell a heady mix of marijuana and tobacco. “Your phone password, dumb shit!” the almond eyes widened and spit flew into Anthony’s face from the force of the scream.

  “Chicago2013,” Anthony said, knowing it was better to give it to the guy, rather than get beat up, or worse.

  Ricky Chou stepped in closer, but white t-shirt was all Anthony saw in front of him. “Thank you, Taco Man!” he chirped brightly.

  Anthony looked up to see the grinning face of one of the FCBZ punks that filled the room upstairs. This was a face he would remember.

  The grin disappeared and Chou slapped Anthony on the side of the head and said, “Don’t go away!” and with a stoned giggle at his clever remark, he ran back to the stairs.

  “Taco man? That’s the best you got?” Anthony said, half smiling, his head clearing and his mind starting to work. “Now go turn on the GPS, pendejo.”

  Anthony watched as the errand boy scampered back up the stairs.

  The door slammed behind Ricky Chou, “Chicago2013”.

  “That was quick.”

  “You sent the right guy, Trick!” Chou blustered.

  “We’ll see. Listen up. I have an idea. Let’s set fire to some Norteño ass.” Trick Zhuó stood and walked to the window. “Who’d like to take a little ride to the Mission?”

  The Mission District, is a small neighborhood that upwards of 200 active gang members call home. Norteño gangs control between the south section of 26th Street to 20th. The Mission is not a place where Asian gangs are welcome or safe. Further north is controlled by various groups of the Sureño family of street gangs. Neither group would tolerate an intrusion from an unconnected bunch of Asian bangers in souped up Japanese “rice burners”. The combination of the way they look and the cars they drive, make the FCBZ stick out like an olive in a jar of cocktail onions.

  Trick nodded, not the least bit surprised, when he received unanimous support.

  * * *

  “Mr. Sage?”

  A small blonde woman in her fifties stood at the open door.

  “Yeah?” Cole waved her in dryly.

  “I’m, Hanna Day.” the woman’s blue eyes twinkled with a mischievousness far younger than her fifty plus years.

  “I’m Cole Sage.” Cole stood and offered his hand across the desk.

  “You’re a lot taller in person than you are in print.”

  “What?” Cole said, not quite sure he heard right.

  “Nothing. Um, I’m from the clerical pool. I’m here to man, uh, woman, the secretary desk.” Hanna started to panic, fearing her attempt at jest was not welcome.

  “Have a seat, please. Have a seat.” Cole realized the disaster his office was in as Hanna picked up a stack of folders from the chair and looked for a place to set them.

  “You’re number three or four, I don’t know, maybe five, to be sent up here. Frankly, I have run out of patience with all of you, ‘I’m only filling in’, People reading-fingernail polishing...

  “Look,” Hanna interrupted. I want this job. I asked for this job. I need this job.”

  Cole sat for a long moment looking at the woman in front of him. Gone was the cute, perky, pixie who just greeted him a few seconds before. In her place was a woman of intense conviction. She wasn’t pleading, she wasn’t even asking, she was telling him the way it was going to be, and he liked it.

  “You may regret it at times, but you won’t be sorry. I make mistakes, but I will work my heart out for you. I’ve read all your stuff since you’ve been here, and a lot of what you have done over the years. I can do whatever you need me to. Research, proofread, type, make calls. Please, please Mr. Sage, don’t just have me answer calls. You don’t know it now, but you need me as much as I need to...”
>
  “I get it,” Cole said softly. “Look, I ...”

  “Just one more thing,” Hanna said, raising her hand like a school girl. “I won’t leave. I don’t want to be a writer, or an editor’s secretary. I want to be like Jean Arthur or Rosalind Russell in the old movies where they always help their boss. I want to...”

  “I think maybe we should call the clerical pool,” Cole said firmly.

  Hannah’s heart sank.

  “And have them take you off the sub list.” Cole continued. “Anybody who uses Jean Arthur in their pitch to get a job needs to be at that desk!” Cole laughed, showing the first signs of his true nature.

  Cole had no idea that he had just won the lottery. Hanna Marie Day, was a survivor. Orphaned at five, she had survived years in the Foster Care system. She was mentally, physically, and sexually abused until she turned seventeen. That’s when she left her last foster “father” with a cracked skull, a pair of ruptured testicles, and a front door hanging on one hinge.

  That summer she went to the California Conservation Camp and fought forest fires. She got a job as a monitor at a burglar alarm company at night and went to community college in the daytime. Married at nineteen, widowed at twenty-one, Hanna never gave up her dream of an education. It would be five more years before she re-enrolled at the University of California at Irvine and earned her degree in English while working at an all-night video store. At thirty she remarried and was happy until her first child was born with a genetic heart defect and died five days later. Her husband went out and got drunk with his brother and stayed that way for five years. By then Hanna was gone.

  After twenty years of being unappreciated and underpaid, she was sitting across the desk from the man who wrote Women, Abuse and Recovery: From Darkness to a Bright New Beginning. Hanna still had a ragged, yellow copy in a sheet protector. It changed her life. She saw a new beginning each day, no excuses, she was in control of her life. The scars had faded and the anger and fear of abuse had been cast into a sea of forgetfulness. She set out four years ago to get this job and now it was hers.