Southtown

Stirman was unprepared for the men busting down his door. He hesitated because of the woman who now stood between him and his enemies.

“Down!” Sam shouted to her. “Get the fuck down!”

The Latina was almost to the door, though what she hoped to accomplish, Sam couldn’t imagine. She had the same grim look as an il egal, halfway across the Rio Grande, when the Border Patrol shows up.

They keep running, knowing they are caught, but they have no choice but to try. It was as if she wanted to push the intruders out of her life.

For a moment, Wil Stirman looked at Sam. Then Wil drew his gun.

Fred Barrow aimed as the woman—who Sam wasn’t sure Fred even registered—stepped in front of the gun, her arms raised like a long-lost relative.

Sam ignored Piss-face and scanned the room. Desolation where there had once been plush furniture, maroon wal paper, reggae music on an expensive stereo. The only thing left was the crepe carpet, now coming apart in patches, water-stained, discolored in places from very old blood.

Piss-face’s hand slid cautiously toward the pocket of his army surplus jacket.

“What are you doing here, Barrera?” he asked. “Scared the shit out of me.”

Sam tried to refocus on the derelict.

Just his luck to find an old col ar—or informant, stool pigeon, whatever the hel this guy was—sleeping in this warehouse, of al places. Then again, Sam had been on the streets so long it was hard to turn over any rock in San Antonio and not find some slimy thing he’d dealt with before.

“Get out,” Sam told him.

He tried to put authority in his voice, but he didn’t feel so good. He was remembering the pattern of the young Latina’s dress, the look on Stirman’s face as his lover fel .

Piss-face licked his lips. Hunger was slowly displacing his fear.

In his better days, Sam would’ve anticipated that shift.

“You remember me, right?” Piss-face asked. “Right, Mr. Barrera?”

His voice was dangerously polite, testing.

Sam counted bloodstains on the old carpet—two large ones, a constel ation of lesser splatters.

Piss-face took a step closer. “Mr. Barrera?”

“Get lost,” Sam murmured.

It didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded like an old man, asking a question.

Piss-face was close enough now that Sam could smel the rotgut on his breath. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Sam had a gun. He knew he should draw it.

“What’s my name, old man?” Piss-face asked. “Tel me.”

The woman had fal en to the carpet. Wil Stirman had fired, his shot taking out a chunk of plaster next to Fred Barrow’s head. The second shot likely would’ve found Barrow’s skul , but Sam opened up—aiming for Stirman’s chest, getting his arm instead, then Stirman’s shoulder as he went down. The couch probably saved Stirman’s life, because as soon as Fred Barrow got over being stunned, he emptied his clip in that direction.

Sam had only shot twice. No more. He had not fired on the woman. He had not continued to fire, in shock, as Fred Barrow had done.

Sam’s ears rang, and the music stil throbbed, but there was a small hole of silence in the room that Sam registered only when Irene Barrow pushed past him, toward the crib. The baby was no longer crying.

In the present, Piss-face drew his gun. It was a small .22, but close enough to kil . He said, “Long as you’re here, old man—how about a loan?”

His breath was downright flammable. His finger was tight on the trigger.

Sam felt something black and hard fil ing his chest. He stepped toward Piss-face, pushed his sternum against the barrel of the derelict’s gun, forced Piss-face to take a step back.

“Do it,” Sam said.

“I swear to God,” Piss-face said.

“Do it!”

Sam slapped the gun out of Piss-face’s hand. He took a handful of the kid’s shirt. With his other hand, he hit the kid in the face, getting blood on his cuff, his coat sleeve, his col ege ring.

He forced himself to stop before he would kil the kid. He released Piss-face, let him fal in a trembling, whining heap.

“Get out.”

Piss-face scrambled to the door and down the metal steps, his hands over his face.

Sam touched his own chest, where the gun had pressed against his heart. It would have been so much quicker than the darkness ahead, the slow painless disease that had begun wrapping around his brain.

He pul ed out his own gun, just to steady his hand. He aimed it at the spot where Wil Stirman had gone down.

After the shooting, reggae music had stil blared: “Tomorrow People,” a song Sam would find ironic in retrospect.

Fred Barrow had stared at the black duffel bag he’d inadvertently shot—one of two, fil ed with blocks of cash. A stray bul et had plowed a groove through the top layer of hundreds.

Standing over the crib, Barrow’s wife was panicked, her voice desperate: “Christ, Fred. It’s not breathing.”

Sam had tried to forget the rest. He had tried for years.

Now God, with His sense of humor, was answering Sam’s prayer for forgetfulness with a vengeance.

The Barrows had argued. Fred insisted that his wife leave before the police arrive, get the hel away. The two men would clean up.

And they had.

The division of the duffel bags—one each, no discussion. Such a simple matter to haul them downstairs, throw them in the trunk of the car, while Wil Stirman was upstairs bleeding, dying, and the sirens were stil a long way away.

Sam stared at his gun. He was getting farsighted. The match-grade handle pattern was only clear at a ful arm’s length.

His memory was like his vision. He had to hold something at several years’ distance to see it clearly.

Soon, he would be living in an eternal present. He would be unable to remember the beginning of a sentence long enough to reach the end.

He thought about the visit he’d taken, at his doctor’s request.

They needed a decision by Friday. When was that—tomorrow?

Sam could live in that brightly lit room, singing “This Land Is Your Land” with a group of old ladies, his name on a kindergarten tag to remind him who he was.

But he suspected the memory of the reggae music would only get clearer, the face of Irene Barrow as she looked into that crib.

He put his gun away.

There was stil time to decide.

He walked downstairs, out of the abandoned warehouse, remembering the weight of the duffel bag so clearly it made his shoulders ache.

The car parked outside wasn’t his BMW. It was a Chevy Impala, but it had already been hotwired, so Sam took it.

He drove toward downtown, then east, under Highway 281, until a scent caught him—a current, steering him toward the place he needed.

Wil Stirman wouldn’t have gone far from his old home. He would’ve chosen another warehouse, a place very much like the first. Sam had seen something on a video.

Every East Side street held memories for Sam, sunken like land mines. The margarita-green house with the unpainted gables. The chop shop with the tiny American flags stuck on the fence posts. The abandoned lot, its cedar trees tangled with birdhouses and plastic grocery bags, the sidewalk bearded with wild cilantro. Sam had been to al these places. He had saved people, arrested people, discovered bodies. He was tempted to stop at every point, and stare, and try to remember why each was familiar.

But he kept driving.

He was looking for a red-brick building. It would be northeast of the Alamodome, in sight of the spires.

He’d seen it on television.

The Impala rumbled down a desolate stretch of crumbling asphalt cal ed Rosa Parks Way. The name struck Sam as pathetic. He remembered Rosa Parks. Al that civil rights work, and the City Fathers made sure Rosa’s memorial street was the geographic equivalent to the back of the bus.

A few blocks east of St. Paul Square, he pul ed into a gravel lot.

Across the street, next to the Southern Pacific tracks, was a dismal four-story wedge of red brick. The faded black and white paint along the top proclaimed: CARRIZO ICE CO. 1907.

A loading dock wrapped around the building, an aluminum awning frayed and hanging down in pieces.

The square freezer doors were thick wood, spray-painted with orange and blue gang monikers. Some of the windows had been bricked up. Others were boarded, or turned into doors for a fire escape that was no longer there. On the top floor, the windows were stil intact—shiny glass, steel frames.

Sam thought he had the right place. He would have to watch it. He would wait for someone to arrive or leave.

He couldn’t afford to move from this spot. If he did, he might lose his sense of purpose. He’d be swept off into the East Side, hunting memories.

He needed to stay here, and stay focused.

He patted his coat pocket, found a cel phone.

In his vest, he found a crumpled note—the name Tres, and a number.

After a moment’s hesitation, watching a shadow move behind the fourth-floor windows, Sam decided it would be proper procedure to cal for backup.

He looked at his watch: 1:34 P.M.

He dialed the number and got an answering machine. Sam left a message. He gave his position, reading the street sign N. CHERRY from half a block away. No problem with his vision, as long as he was at a distance.

Sam took out his gun and placed it next to him on the seat.

He had been on stakeouts before. He knew how to be patient.

He would wait for an opportunity.

He ignored his thirst, his irritated bowels, his dress shirt col ar cutting into his throat. He ignored al discomfort, though he looked down from time to time, and wondered about the blood drying against his knuckles.

Chapter 18

Maia leaned in the doorway of her condo, casual y holding the Smith & Wesson eight-shot miniaturized cannon that passed for her sidearm.

She said, “You brought batteries, I hope.”

Her ensemble du jour was topped off by a white linen jacket—the summer-weight fashion statement she’d had tailor-made to accommodate the Magnum’s shoulder holster. Breezy, yet lethal.

“Batteries . . .” I looked in my bag of Whole Foods Market picnic supplies, which had seemed perfectly adequate a moment before. “What happened, the laser scope on your grenade launcher go out again?”

“Ha, ha. You have no idea how many double-As a Game Boy can go through in twenty-four hours. Come in.”

A meteor had impacted on the smooth surface of Planet Maia. In the middle of the living room’s milk- white carpet, Jem sat cross-legged, playing his Game Boy. He was surrounded by a debris ring of Nintendo cartridges and comic books and LEGO robots.

“Hey, champ,” I said.

He didn’t respond.

I exchanged looks with Maia. She pursed her lips.

“I brought lunch.” I sat next to Jem and unloaded my goodies with a series of ta-da flourishes. Checkered cloth. French bread, cheese, wine for the adults. A juice box, pizza Lunchables, and a cup of Dippin’ Dots futuristic ice cream for Jem.

He glanced at each item I produced, then went back to his game.

“Zapping good monsters?” I asked.

He lifted one shoulder. “My Gyarados is level thirty-five.”

I would’ve understood the statement just as wel in Japanese, but I tried to exude enthusiasm.