No Witness But the Moon(37)

“If you tell me it’s not true, I’ll back you all the way. No matter what. Even if it costs me my job. But you need to give me something.”

“Anything I say could get you subpoenaed. You want that?”

“I want to be able to back you with a clear conscience.”

“Nena, you know me.”

“I used to.”

Vega heard the brittle frozen edges of doubt creeping into her voice. He couldn’t do or say anything to change that.

Silence. He waited. She waited.

“I gotta go, Adele.” He hung up.

He shoved his phone in his back pocket, cursing himself for even answering it. He had enough to worry about right now. He turned the corner, hoping his luck might change.

It did. It got worse.





Chapter 12


On the sidewalk, Vega found himself face-to-face with three young Latinos leaning in through the passenger-side window of a faded silver Nissan Sentra. The men were all wearing baggy jeans and hoodies. They straightened at the sight of Vega. Their hands shot out of their pockets. Their eyes tracked him while their heads pretended not to. Vega had been an undercover narc for five years. He knew instantly that he’d stumbled into a drug buy. He cursed under his breath and crossed to the other side of the street.

The biggest, heftiest of the three shoved something into the waistband of his jeans. He straightened and stepped back from the vehicle. Vega could tell just by the young man’s stiff posture and the challenge in his eyes that the thing he’d just shoved into his waistband was a gun.

Vega was alone. He had no weapon. He had his badge, but showing it in a jurisdiction that wasn’t his would only make things worse. He kept moving. He was no match for three armed gangbangers and God–knew-how-many-others inside the tinted-windowed sedan. The problem was, just as he could recognize a deal going down, they were equally good at knowing that aviator shades and a short, quasi-military haircut meant that he was a cop—unshaven or not. And not just any cop, but a cop who was trying to avoid them. That turned him from predator to prey in an instant.

The thug with the gun and one of the others crossed the street and began tailing him from a distance. The third guy broke away and headed up the opposite side. Some kid he’d never even seen before popped out of a doorway. Vega felt like he was being set up. Or maybe they were just playing mind games with him—scaring him off their block. He couldn’t be sure. He kept walking. He heard one of the thugs behind him mutter, “Five-O.” Yep, they’d made him. He decided not to engage. But then he felt their footsteps getting closer. The kid in the doorway began approaching from the other direction. Vega had to get control of the situation. If he didn’t they might take it as a sign of weakness—which could turn out worse in the end.

Vega stopped in his tracks. He turned toward them and spread his arms in a way that was non-threatening but at the same time exuded the confidence of a man who had a gun and knew how to use it. It was posturing of course. But so much of police work was.

“Guess it’s your lucky day, hombres,” Vega said coolly. “I’m off-duty. Don’t need the paperwork.” He gave them a mock salute, turned, and kept walking, aware that their eyes were still on him. Sharks’ eyes. His peripheral vision caught one of the shorter gangsters leaning into the window of the car, having a conversation with one of the occupants. The guy was pointing to the protest up ahead—to the giant poster some demonstrator was carrying with Vega’s picture on it. Ricardo Luis had less face recognition to this crowd than Vega did.

“That’s him,” the gangster said to the faceless figure inside. “That’s the cop they’re marching about.”

Vega kept walking. Up ahead he saw the protesters. Their chant had grown stronger and more heated. Somebody had even turned it into a catchy rhyme: “Hands up! Don’t shoot! Cops should never execute!”

Vega was trapped. There were no walkways to cut through. Nothing but solid fifty-foot canyons of brick and concrete on either side of him. There was a buzz of energy behind him now. A car door slammed—the Nissan’s, he suspected. More feet on the pavement.

“Yo! Five-O! You the asswipe on those posters?”

Vega’s heart pounded. A bitter, metallic taste settled at the back of his throat. If these gangbangers got ahold of him, they would beat him until he was as bloody as a side of beef and then finish him off with a bullet to the head—just like Hector Ponce. That’s how they’d reason it, too. Retribution. Street justice.

Vega tried to calm his breathing and think. He had no weapon. He could fight as hard and dirty as any kid from the neighborhood. But he wasn’t eighteen anymore nor was he particularly big or brawny. He saw only two choices: fight a fight he was bound to lose. Or run straight into the hands of the protesters streaming across the intersection who might very well do the same thing to him—albeit with more cell phone footage on YouTube.

He’d take his chances with the protesters. The ratio of college students-to-felons would be better. Not that that guaranteed anything. Vega had dealt with his share of drunken frat boys when he was in uniform. But at the very least, they’d be less bold about delivering a punch, more worried about losing teeth that their parents had spent thousands to straighten. He started running toward them.

“That’s the cop! The one on the poster!” one of the gangbangers shouted to the demonstrators.