It all started innocently enough. A guy was holding the door open for Sal. What happened next Martin wasn’t really sure, but he could guess: Sal must have given the man a dirty look or something. 

“Jew got a problem?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got a problem asshole,” said Sal.

Martin couldn’t help but agree with Sal’s own assessment. Sal obviously had a problem.

And there they were squaring off, chests two inches apart, puffed out. It looked like they were attempting to stand upright as straight as possible, so as to get an extra eighth of an inch of height or something. It reminded Martin of some sort of mating rituals he once saw on a nature show. Martin briefly speculated about whether the last one to back down got to mount someone. He had enough of it. He grabbed ahold of Sal’s arm and pulled him away. He was just about to apologize to the guy, when the man’s arm shot forward so fast that Martin could barely see it. It went right to Martin’s chest. He had no idea what just happened. He didn’t even feel it at all. Then he tried to speak, and nothing came out but a kinda rasping sound. 

“D’at’s what I thought Gringo,” said the man.

And though Martin still couldn’t speak, he couldn’t help but think: I know we all look the same, but you got the wrong fuckin’ Gringo buddy.

When the man pulled his hand away, Martin noticed the knife, glistening and stained with red all the way to the handle. Martin fell to his knees. It was like everything went in slow motion, even the trip down to the floor. He saw a group of Greenhats. First they looked on, simply curious. Then they came running.

The guy, under the mistaken impression that the Greenhats would do something to him, ran off.

A minute later Cappy and Doug were there. The Greenhats were just watching. Martin kept thinking they still had hospitals in the barrio. He tried to say something, but he still couldn’t speak. So, he lay in a pool of his own blood and watched Sal shoo away his last hope for survival. One Greenhat remained. As long as he was there a little hope also remained. 

“Fuck off Wet,” said Sal.

Luckily the guy wasn’t leaving. Maybe he was the one guy in the barrio who actually did, “no hablo Inglés.” Martin had to get Doug and Cappy to get the guy to get help before Sal drove him off too.

Gasping and spitting blood as he spoke Martin managed to get out, “Sal … kill.”

“Sal’s fine, Martin,” said Cappy with grave concern showin’ in his face.

Martin’s face must have shown incredible disbelief. 

For just at that moment, Doug began to laugh, “I don’t think that’s quite what he means, Cappy. Don’t worry Martin. I’ll shoot the dumb son of a bitch,” then Doug pulled his gun from its holster.

Before Martin had a chance to see if Doug shot Sal or if the last remaining Greenhat took him to the hospital, his alarm buzzer began to ring.

It was the third time tonight Sal had managed to get Martin killed while he slept. Martin hit the alarm. He slid to the end of his bed and just sat there for a moment. Martin didn’t believe in omens, but if there was ever a time to start believing in them, he figured, it was today, 

“Shit,” said Martin out loud. “Keep him alive. Fuck that.” It might have been Martin’s job to keep Sal alive, but in his mind, that priority just got moved downwards quite a few notches. His new number one priority was to keep himself alive. He briefly speculated about accidentally pushing Sal down the escalator in Libertad. They had to pass that way, and the thing had to be over a hundred feet high. He laughed. In reality Martin never did have it in him to do that sort of thing. Tunnel was great duty. It might have been the best job a Cop could get. Today it was just going to be stressful.

 “Tunnel” in its most basic sense meant the subway. Specifically, it meant the area of the subway that was off limit to the citizens. This was the area reserved for contractors and the residence of the barrio alone. The subway tunnel itself was the same one that the citizens took to Libertad: the restaurant district with the traffic circle and the round fountain where John Brown gave his speeches. The other end of this tunnel came up at a huge warehouse, a warehouse that was outside the wall of the barrio. It came up in Maryland. Well, in fact, it didn’t actually come up in Maryland. It came up in DC and then became an elevated railway that went into Maryland – regardless it stopped in Maryland. The warehouse and its fenced in grounds, really a parking lot, was the only place Wets were legally allowed to go outside the barrio. Of course, Martin only knew about the DC barrio. He assumed there were other places at other barrios. 

This warehouse was called the Factory. The warehouse itself was very fancy, though much of it showed the effects of misuse and neglect. Most of the huge windows were broken and boarded up. Even some of the windows that made up the roof of the building were missing. Others leaked when it rained or when the snows melted. Many of the marble tiles that made up the floor of the place were cracked. Others were missing. Half the toilets weren’t working. None of that mattered, the place showed great wealth. In its own way, as much wealth as the fancy government buildings the Wets had turned into hospitals and schools. It was fancier than the big blue Mansion where Ernesto lived. The one they still called the Whitehouse.

Martin had been told what the place had been before the barrios. It, like everything else, was made before the time of the barrios. He could only half believe the story. Martin was used to half believing what he was told. The place was called the Factory, because of a sign. The Factory was not a factory. It had never been a factory. There were actually two signs on the front of the building. The smaller of the two was damaged. It said simply factory. Above the word factory you could see evidence of a C and an h that had also been there. The walls, the floors of this part of the building were covered with beautiful polished stones. Just inside a door that led out to the parking lot, there were round columns of the same polished stone that went right up to the roof of the building, thirty, forty feet high. Cappy once said the stone was granite, Martin thought it was marble. It didn’t matter, whatever it was spoke of a splendor Martin never knew. 

The other sign, the one that was still intact was – anticlimactic. It had no mystery, no wonder. It simply said, “Borders books and music.” It was a bookstore, a place where you buy things, a shop. It didn’t seem right to Martin that there should be a shop next to all this splendor. Cappy had once told Martin that the entire place had been an enormous shopping center, and that the area of the Factory where the sign was, with the beautiful polished stone, had been a restaurant. Martin could only half believe it. 

Regardless of what it had been, it was now a warehouse. Not just a warehouse, the warehouse. This was the spot where all procured goods and legal contraband was brought into Washington. 

This subway stop was different from the rest. It wasn’t old. The subway didn’t originally stop at the Factory. When Martin and Sal exited the subway, they were ID’d by a Greenhat. The Greenhat was carrying a machine gun. Greenhats were not allowed to carry weapons of any kind. Everyone understood that they were armed, most had pistols, every single one carried knives and clubs. Everyone also understood that Greenhats had serious weapons close at hand. In the Factory, they carried machine guns and right out in the open. The only contractors who were armed in the Factory were DC cops and they carried mini-pistols, which fired one shot before they needed to be reloaded and invariably after the second shot the barrel cracked, making them useless. Cappy said they started that way. Cappy had been a DC cop when they were really cops, before they were contractors. Cappy carried a real gun.

The Greenhat didn’t need to ID Martin and Sal, only Wets and DC cops came from the subway. They were wearing their uniforms and the man even knew them by sight. It was just Ernesto’s way of reminding the DC cops who was really in charge. It wasn’t a game. Greenhats took over the Factory because of the number of robberies, and shoot-outs. Now they checked everybody. Everyone other than the DC Cops and the Greenhats themselves had to leave their guns at the doors. It didn’t matter to Martin. Tunnel duty was once the most dangerous thing a DC Cop did. Now, it was a cakewalk. Even the other part wasn’t really dangerous, when they patrolled the other Tunnel. Tunnel duty meant three days in the Factory, three days in the woods. The woods was where the other stuff came in: the illegal contraband. 

For three days Martin and Sal would be walking around the Factory floor, looking official. It was good duty. They got lunch allowance in DC Pesos so they could eat for free. Sal strutted around the place like he was some big wig. He was armed. Martin guessed it made him feel bigger more important. Guns intimidated Martin. He didn’t feel bigger. He also didn’t really feel like he was armed. The Greenhats were armed. They looked like storm troopers or something. Martin and Sal had popguns. 

Martin had only fired a gun once in his life. Most of the DC cops got to fire twice during weapons training. The plastic and aluminum barrel of Martin’s gun cracked after just one shot. He didn’t even hit the target. 

“Sometimes they do that,” said Cappy. Cappy had been Martin’s weapons instructor. “Sometimes they don’t even last through the one shot. A few years ago a guy pulled the trigger and the thing blew up. He died a few days later. It was probably for the best. The thing blew off half his face.”

Martin looked at the gun in his hand. The barrel was split in two. It looked like a peeled banana.

“Thanks for telling me after I shot the thing,” said Martin.

Cappy laughed. Martin was just the kind of cop he liked on his team, one with a healthy respect for their own mortality.

Since then, Martin had been on the job for nearly two years. He had never pulled out his gun in public. Once a week, every Monday right before the start of his shift, he took out the bullet and cleaned the thing. He then reloaded, put it back on his belt and tried to forget about it for another week. He never felt comfortable carrying his gun. He never thought of it as his gun. Whenever he was off duty Martin stuck the thing in his locker and pretended it wasn’t there.

Sal cleaned his gun every day. He caressed it. Martin thought he looked like a gay lover caressing a penis. He didn’t say anything to Sal. Sal wasn’t right in the head. And with things with the Greenhats as they were, Sal wasn’t long for this world. Martin had seen it happen before, arrogant assholes, true believers, morons who were stupid enough to call a Wet a Wet to their face. Nothing would happen on the job. That would cause problems. People might ask questions. Sal simply would not come to work one day, and that would be the end of it. More likely than not, no one would even come around and ask what happened to him. No one missed people like Sal. That made Martin think about whether anyone would miss him. 

Well Martin had a job to do. He thought about that. It was Monday. His job was to watch Sal like a hawk, make sure that he didn’t say or do something so stupid, that he wouldn’t show up for work on Tuesday. On Tuesday Martin would have a totally different job: to make sure Sal didn’t say or do something so stupid that he wouldn’t show up on Wednesday. Martin looked at Sal strutting through the Factory like a king, a white guy who knew in his heart that he owned the universe. Martin looked around at the Greenhats not paying a bit of attention to them. That was good, ‘cause those guys really did own this universe. Well, he’d try to make sure Sal was around and acting like an asshole on Tuesday.  

Martin made it through the morning without incident. Sal and he met Cappy and Doug for lunch. There was an area of the Factory with tables and little stands where people made food. Factory duty was good. Cappy and Doug were laughing; they were enjoying themselves. Sal had a sour look on his face. Martin didn’t think much of it. He usually had a sour look on this face. They weren’t dealing with Greenhats or any other Wets. They were just sitting enjoying themselves. They were off duty for now. Sal was looking off somewhere. Doug was telling a story. It was a funny story. Doug always told funny stories. Martin was laughing. Cappy was looking over his shoulder at something.

Cappy interrupted Doug’s story saying: “it’s not nice to stare, Sally.”

Martin leaned over to look. There was a group of Greenhats. There was a big guy there, must have been two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle. He had his hand right on the backside of a white girl, right in the crack. He had his hand very low almost between her legs. He was practically fingering her. It didn’t mean anything to Martin. The woman was laughing.

“Jesus, just look at that,” said Sal.

Doug turned and looked casually. He turned back toward Sal and said, “just look at your food man.”

“Shouldn’t we do something?”

“Only if she yells rape,” said Cappy.

“Yeah right,” said Doug. Doug wasn’t about to be playing cop even if the woman did yell rape.

“Who does he think he is?”

Martin said, “a very large man carrying a submachine gun. Who do you think you are?”

Cappy smiled. 

Sal gave a look like he thought his fellow cops were as bad as the Wet, as bad as the woman.

Martin shook his head and said to Cappy and Doug, “they’re coming over.”

“Great,” said Doug.

The large man walked over and stood right behind Cappy. He looked right at Sal and said, “dere a problem?”

Cappy casually looked over his shoulder and asked very innocently, “you guys need some help?”

The man looked at Cappy now and said, “I thin’ your fren has a pro’lem.”

Cappy ignored Sal completely. Instead, he stared straight at Martin and once again asked very innocently, “Everything ok Marty?”

“I’m good,” said Martin.

The man smiled. He and his friends turned and walked back towards their table. When he got there, he leaned over and kissed the woman, then he reached out and grabbed her breast as he left, probably just for Sal’s benefit.

Doug just sat there staring at Sal and shaking his head. Sal watched the scene. He had the same look of disgust on his face. 

“Perhaps you should stare at your food,” said Cappy.

Sal stopped staring at the man. He looked at Cappy. He didn’t say a word.

“If you don’t like what you see, then don’t look,” said Cappy.