Pearce Hansen bio
Born in SF in the 50s into a train wreck of a family, the subject under discussion came up in Oakland in the 70s and then traveled widely, misspending his youth careening from one terror-in-retrospect abortive learning experience to the next. Cab driver, bouncer, kick boxer, Marine: all the stereotypical noir writer's breeding grounds apply here. Has seen most of the continents, and is not nearly as dysfunctional as his writing might seem to imply. Street Raised will be published by PointBlank Press next year.
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PROLOGUE

 

There were no other cars on the road with the Coupe de Ville, so they were making good time. That was just fine with Esteban – he just wanted to get this little trip over with. He pressed a little harder on the gas pedal and snuck a glance over at his older brother, Beau, lounging in the shotgun seat.

The big old-school sedan was up to seventy-five now, but Beau seemed not to notice. He stared straight ahead into the night, that lady-killing profile expressionless as he listened to the oldies playing on the radio, the kind of doo-wop he knew Esteban hated, but that Beau made a point of playing whenever they were together.

Beau was always on Esteban's ass about something. If he had been paying attention, he would have said something like "Keep it under the speed limit, Esteban," or more likely, "Keep it under the limit, pendejo."

Pendejo: Stupid.

Then Oso's laugh would have come from the backseat, that scary booming chuckle bubbling up from way down in his barrel chest, a chuckle that sounded like water gurgling past in the depths of a sewer storm drain.

Esteban turned red just thinking about it. This was the first time he’d ever been on one of these rides, and he was terrified he'd do something to embarrass himself. He got nervous, even on normal jobs, but Beau always made him drive. No free tickets in this business, he’d say, not even for familia.

Thinking of rides, despite his best efforts Esteban's thoughts turned to their passengers on the floor in the back. Two punks wrapped up in chains, and stacked on top of each other with a bedspread concealing the whole mess. Oso was sitting back there with them, folded up in the backseat with his knees almost up by his ears and his size-fifteen feet planted on the punks to keep them from squirming around too much.

He knew Oso was loving this, but it gave Esteban the creeps – he’d never been involved in the killing side of the business before.

He wondered what was going through the punks’ heads as they lay back there in the dark, unable to move, unable to fight or run away.

Their duct-taped mouths prevented them from sharing any words – were they looking in each other's eyes? Or were they alone together, locked inside their own skulls reliving the decisions that had brought them here, to the end of the line?

Esteban’s mind veered away from that train of thought. If the punks hadn't wanted to end up like this, they shouldn't have tried ripping Beau off. Anybody with any sense knew better than to try punking Beau, either over his money or his drugs.

They were coming up on a river, with a tall steel girder bridge spanning the deep chasm between hills. The tires's whine took on hollow overtones as the Coupe de Ville started across the span, as if the car itself could feel the drop below.

Beau said, "Stop here."

Esteban did what he was told, stopping right in the middle and killing the headlights.

Beau opened his door and climbed out, stepping to the bridge railing to look over and down. He rubbed his hands as he turned back toward the car. "We'll do it here."

Esteban licked his lips. "Beau, man, this is right out in the open and shit. I don't know, man." He felt like he could hear Oso's lips spreading into a feral grin in the darkness behind him, and the back of Esteban’s neck crawled.

Beau bent over to stare across the front seat at Esteban through the open passenger window. "C'mon out here with me, hermanito."

Esteban trotted around the car to stand in front of his older brother.

"Look around us," Beau said.

Esteban peered up and down the highway. The road spooled away in both directions, an asphalt ribbon glowing dull gray in the moonlight and disappearing into the pine-crowded mountains behind and ahead of them.

Beau reached out and grasped the back of Esteban's neck. He steered Esteban to the railing and stood next to him, both of them staring down into the abyss.

"No traffic, no lights, no towns - this is the true middle-of-nowhere, es verdad?"

Esteban trembled, hypnotized by the long drop. The river sighed past far below, its swirls and ripples sparkling cold under the moon as the water surged past the bridge’s supports, but Esteban couldn't admire the view - he was terrified of heights. And Beau knew it.

"We're on a bridge between life and death, hermanito, all the time. And this is where those punks in the car step off."

Beau's eyes glowed as he stared into the distance, and he stroked the back of Esteban’s neck as his little brother listened to his speech. But then, Esteban had listened to a million of Beau’s speeches. He could recite most of them by heart.

Beau always got dreamy and mystical when he talked about killing. For Esteban, the whole idea made him feel cold – he shivered when his brother released his neck.

They turned to face the Coupe de Ville.

"Let's do it," Beau said.

Oso clambered from the backseat to tower by the car in the watery moonlight, his square face an impassive mask.

"Bring 'em out," Beau said.

Oso pulled off the bedspread, wadded it up and tossed it onto the seat. Then he grabbed the guy on top by the ankles. The punk’s separate chains dragged across each other, clanking and chinking together in a skirling whir as Oso dragged him across his friend's body.

When the punk's head reached the doorway and slipped off the edge, it dropped the foot or more to the pavement and slammed into the asphalt with a hollow thud that made Esteban wince. The duct-tape muffled the punk’s grunt.

Esteban watched the guy's eyes blinking as Oso dragged him toward the railing. Esteban couldn't decide if the guy was groggy from the long drive in chains, the blow to the head, or both. Maybe it was better the guy stayed out of it a little, Esteban thought.

"What's the hold up, Esteban?" Beau said. "Get the other one."

Esteban turned away to escape his brother's scowl and found himself reaching with both hands into the darkness of the backseat to take up his share of the burden.

As he hooked his hands into the slacker chains around the guy's ankles, the punk stirred and Esteban froze for a second. When Esteban began pulling, the guy tensed up, his body snagging and catching as Esteban dragged him across the floor to the door. The chains made him heavy.

When he almost had the body all the way out, Esteban stopped, grabbed the guy's head, and lowered it gently to the pavement. He couldn't bear to hear that thud again.

He flicked a guilty glance up at his brother and Oso, but they were hovering by the railing, muttering to each other as they studied the other punk like he was some sideshow freak.

Esteban looked down at his guy's head, still cradled in his hands. The guy was young and Asian, maybe Chinese, with hair braided into a ponytail. He was just a kid, even younger than Esteban's seventeen years.

For the first time they made eye contact, and right away Esteban wished they hadn't. All the life inside the young Asian seemed to flood out of his wide brown eyes, pleading with Esteban, sending him a silent message like he was trying to reach into Esteban's soul.

Esteban remembered his Grandmamma talking about the evil eye when he was a little kid, before she died and it was just him and Beau.

Esteban wrenched his gaze away with his heart pounding in his chest like the bass speakers at a loud party. He grabbed the Asian by the shoulders and dragged him the rest of the way to the railing.

Esteban set the Asian down next to his bound friend and stood shoulder to shoulder with Beau and Oso. The three crime partners stood looking down at their pair of victims.

The light was better here, and Esteban could see that the other punk was a white kid with a blonde crew cut, still blinking stupidly. Maybe bouncing his head on the road had knocked something loose.

The Asian kid seemed all too conscious of his predicament, however - his face was covered with a glistening sheen of sweat, and Esteban could see the whites of his eyes as the Asian stared up at an indifferent heaven.

"So you maricons figured you'd take me off?" Beau asked the two, grinning as his hands fumbled at his crotch. "Here it comes," Beau said, and started pissing on them.

Esteban's mouth hung open as Beau swept his hips from side to side, the pungent stream of his urine arcing out to splash up and down the lengths of their chained bodies and across their faces.

The Asian kid grunted and shut his eyes tight as he jerked his head to the side in a futile effort to escape the fluid's touch, but to no avail. It spilled across his cheeks and up his nostrils.

He was still sneezing the piss out his nose when Beau stopped urinating, tucked his verga back inside his fly and zipped up his Armani trousers.

"You like that, putos? You're gonna love this." He nodded to Oso.

Oso squatted next to the blonde and looked up at Esteban with a smile.

"Time to lose your cherry, 'Steban," he said, good-natured enough now that someone was going to die.

Esteban swallowed and squatted opposite him. He grabbed two handfuls of chain like Oso did, and with a heave and a grunt the two stood up, the chains on the blonde clanking as they dragged him into an upright position against the concrete railing between them.

The blonde's face was only inches from his, and Esteban could see his eyes rolling around in his head, his eyelids fluttering. He was lucky, Esteban thought - he didn't even know he was here.

"Ready?" Oso asked, eyes twinkling.

Oso grabbed one of the blonde's ankles, but kept his other hand on the chains around the blonde's waist to hold their victim upright. Esteban hurried to follow suit.

Then, at Oso's nod, they both stood upright, heaving the blonde's ankles overhead as he flipped end-for-end over the railing and off into space.

Esteban turned away – but Oso peered over the edge until the blonde hit the river below with a distant splash.

Oso leaned over the Asian so their faces were close together.

"Your turn, mamon," Oso crooned to the Asian in a bass singsong.

Then a high pitched giggle leaked from him as if beyond his control, a falsetto titter that Esteban would have expected to hear coming from a girl instead of a huge man like Oso. Esteban’s skin crawled as he stood on the other side of the last would-be rip-off.

He knew the drill now. He didn't have to think, didn't want to. Esteban squatted as Oso did, not looking at their victim's face this time. The Asian had tensed up – he was straight and stiff as they grabbed him and stood, heaving him against the rail.

That's when he went off.

He screamed, again and again, but his cries were muffled behind the gag..

He swung his head from side to side in a frenzy, his ponytail whipping across Oso's face. Oso flinched away and growled in outrage.

The Asian shimmied inside his chain prison, the links clinking and slithering together as he thrashed and gyrated like an escape artist in a stunt gone bad.

Esteban and Oso struggled to keep hold of him. Esteban lost his grip on the slippery chain and the Asian slammed down onto his side on the pavement. The Asian’s muffled screaming stopped as he lay stunned by the impact.

Beau sneered. "Damn, ese. You're blowing it."

Esteban couldn't look at him or Oso. "It's different, man," he said. "This guy's all awake and shit. It's not like with the other guy."

Beau shrugged. "Awake, out cold, so what? Don't wuss out on me, hermanito."

Esteban squatted next to the Asian again and glanced at his face once more, hoping that hitting the road like that had knocked him out.

No such luck: his almond eyes were open and filled with tears as he stared back with that same silent plea. Angry with himself for looking again, Esteban glanced away.

Oso took his position and they hoisted the Asian up to the rail once more.

He didn't fight this time. Instead he shook in fear like a wet dog, a bone-deep trembling that Esteban could feel through his hands where he held him on the edge of this final, fatal drop off.

The shivering felt electrical, it sent shocks through Esteban’s hands where he was touching the Asian. It was if all the life inside this kid, soon to be snuffed out and grow cold in the dark waters below, was leaking out of him already.

And Esteban was right in the middle of it, in the here and now, with no way to stop it, no way to escape this deed. He stooped like a next to Oso, as much a trapped robot as these two poor payasos.

He was a prisoner, too, he realized for the first time in his short life. The insight stunned him, and he froze there for a moment, stooping next to the second man he was about to help murder tonight.

"Goddammit, lift, Esteban," Oso said.

Obeying without thinking, as he had obeyed since forever, Esteban stood at the same time as Oso and heaved up on the Asian kid's feet, regretting his action the instant he made it.

‘No!’ he screamed in silence, wishing he could take the deed back, wishing he could undo it.

Despite his fear of heights he watched as the chain-bound figure toppled end over end through the air in seeming slow motion. The moonlight beamed onto the figure's face for an instant.

Esteban saw not the Asian kid's round ivory features, but his own face peering back at him.

Then the Asian hit the river and was gone.

Esteban thrust himself away from the rail. He felt light-headed. Almost he wanted to laugh, or maybe cry – but he couldn’t do either.

He wondered now, when he went to his next Mass and Confession and told Padre Trejo of this night's work, how many Hail Mary’s would he be given, how many acts of Contrition? What Act of Atonement could remove the stain he had just voluntarily put on his own soul? He was afraid there was none.

"Get your ass in gear," Beau said behind him.

Esteban spun to face him.

Oso was already folded up like an idling praying mantis in the backseat of the Coupe de Ville. Beau stood by the open passenger door.

Beau was all the family Esteban had left in the world. He’d taken care of Esteban since they were little. Esteban studied his big brother as if seeing him for the first time, and it was like Beau was a stranger staring back at him.

Esteban didn’t have to ask himself, if he stepped far enough out of line, would Beau wrap him in chains and drive him up to the river? Esteban knew the answer to that one, clear as day. He was just another vulnerable meat-bag, born to die like the two punks they’d offed here tonight. He pushed that knowledge away.

He walked around the Coupe de Ville to the driver's side, his mind turning like a wheel.

As he opened the door, Esteban realized with a panicked thrill that Beau could die too, just like him, just like the two guys that had died here tonight. But from that train of thought, his mind scampered away to less dangerous ideas.

"You getting in or what?" his brother asked from the darkness inside the car. Esteban willed his mind toward blankness, as he had so often before.

It took some hard work, but by the time Esteban slid into the driver's seat, he was successfully thinking about nothing at all.

 

Copyright© 2004 Pearce Hansen

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