Martin knew his life had changed irrevocably. He was standing in a field in Maryland, just north of the DC line, and he was pointing his gun at Charlie Viese’s crotch and trying to reason with him.

*****

The week before Martin met up with Charlie Viese in that field, Martin’s life could have been described as uneventful. Then it was as though he inadvertently took a step onto a path -- a path that led, not only to that field in Maryland, but more importantly to Eliana. 

He remembered that first step in vivid detail. It was near the end of Martin’s shift. He was walking down P. Street. It was quiet. It was always quiet in the barrio. At least That’s what they called it at Police Headquarters. They just meant there was no trouble, nothing for him to do: no fights, no muggings, no rapes. The barrio was never quiet. There was always music, always dancing. It seemed as though the barrio was a constant party that spilled out of the restaurants and nightclubs and out onto the streets. To Martin the barrio was life itself. And life was many things, but it certainly wasn’t ever quiet.

The barrio was fun, beautiful, and alive and definitely no trouble. In fact, the barrio was so no trouble, that Martin sometimes worried about his job. They really didn’t need the DC Cops. The barrio had its own police, its own government.

In the foreign papers they called the barrios ghettos and concentration camps. It made it sound like Martin worked in Auschwitz. The Washington barrio was nicer than Martin’s home in Maryland. Technically Martin was free. He could freely move from one decrepit run-down Maryland slum to another.

If the people of the barrios were prisoners, they lived better than the guards. There was no doubt about that. The government was just fine with it too. They didn’t want the French or the Canadians accusing them of being Nazis. They did anyway. Screw them, thought Martin. He liked the barrio. It was the rest of his life that he hated.

There was a crowd up ahead on P. Street, at the circle.

Martin called in on his radio. “There’s a disturbance at Libertad. I can’t tell what it is.” 

Martin picked up his pace, walking quicker down P. Street toward the circle. The little trouble there was in the barrio always occurred here, in one of the two places where the citizens came out every night. No trouble ever occurred in the other one, the red-light district. Ernesto made damn sure of that.

“It’s just John Brown,” came a voice from Martin’s radio.

Martin slowed his pace.

“You need me, there?” he asked into his radio.

“The Greenhats are handling it. Cappy’s there. I guess we need a presence. He’s by the fountain.”

Martin laughed to himself. Ernesto handled everything in the barrio. Cappy was Martin’s boss. Martin would go and stand next to Cappy and look official.

“I always wanted a history lesson,” said Martin into the microphone that hung from the shoulder of his uniform.

He heard Doug laugh in the background at Police Headquarters.

Actually, Martin liked to hear John Brown. He reminded Martin of his old man. Only John Brown wasn’t a drunk and a fuck up. John Brown called himself the last of his breed: a liberal, a hippie, a radical. Martin didn’t much care for liberals. He liked John Brown though. John Brown was cool. John Brown was funny. 

Sometimes he said things that pissed him off. Most of the time even that was ok. John Brown was really funny when he did it. Needless to say, John Brown was not John Brown’s actual name. Martin had no idea what his actual name was. He wondered if anyone in the barrio did. John Brown was a white man. John Brown lived in the barrio. The story was, that John Brown didn’t actually move to the barrio. He just didn’t leave when the relocation took place. 

Ernesto had no problem with John Brown, and if Ernesto had no problem with John Brown, well then neither did the Cops. If Ernesto wanted John Brown to go, then John Brown would go, and he wouldn’t be asking the cops to do it for him. 

Ernesto had no issues kicking people out of his barrio. Ernesto had no problems disappearing people from his barrio. A citizen who messed around with Ernesto’s people, well they never did that again. That’s why the Cops never went into the red-light district. The Cops weren’t allowed to do what Ernesto did without any problems, any questions. A citizen who caused trouble there disappeared. Ernesto didn’t play games. Straight up, he’d kill the sucker. It was better for business too. No one caused trouble. It wasn’t just Whores and Johns either. It also kept the contractors mostly honest. That, too, was good for business. And business is the business everyone understood.

Well almost everyone, thought Martin as he moved closer to hear John Brown speak. 

“… paying for food, monopolies selling goods. The barrios are great business. Why do you think they’ve lasted so long?”

Martin saw an agitated citizen at the edge of the crowd. One look and Martin knew -- he was a believer, a zealot. Martin had never been a believer. He never understood them. Martin headed over. Cappy also saw the man; he too was moving. It was too late though. John Brown had also seen him. Martin picked up his pace, walking as fast he could through the crowd without causing a panic. Ernesto’s Greenhats saw him too. Several were already on their way. 

Martin spoke into his radio, “Better send some people. We got one of the faithful.” It’s what Cappy called them. The nuts who still, after all these years, believed in Cassandra.

“Now I’m not saying the President is intentionally trying to milk the situation for every penny she can – hell that would require a plan, a thought, an idea. She definitely doesn’t have one of those. It’s just her natural inclination to steal, rob and plunder whenever possible.”

“You’re talking about the President of the United States …,” yelled the Zealot.

“That I am,” John Brown yelled back.

The man started moving towards John Brown.

A woman who had been standing in the crowd, listening to John Brown speak, turned toward the man and said, “He has a right to speak.” 

The man stopped then yelled, “Fuck you. You Wet Bitch,” Wet being the most common derogatory term for Latino. The Fat Man used it all the time on his radio show. The Fat Man was a long way from the barrio when he said it though. 

Not one second later, one of Ernesto’s boys tackled the man. You simply did not call a Wet lady a Wet in Ernesto’s barrio. This guy was dead. Martin was still a few feet away. He stopped. He stayed just where he was. This was no longer his concern. 

Cappy was there a few seconds later. Martin looked up. John Brown was actually smiling. Martin would have loved to think that John Brown wouldn’t have been so brave if Ernesto’s Greenhats weren’t holding the man down. He knew it wasn’t true. If John Brown was talking to the man in a dark alleyway, he wouldn’t have done anything differently. Actually he probably would’ve. He would’ve provoked the man even more.

“Get the fuck off me. I’m a citizen.”

Martin now noticed that it was Raúl who had tackled the man. Raúl was Ernesto’s main strongman, second in command of the Greenhats. This citizen was beyond dead. 

“We care a great deal,” said Raúl. Raúl was at Libertad, cause that’s where the trouble was, and Raúl ended trouble very quickly. Raúl stuck his knee in the small of the man’s back and pushed his face right into the dirt. “Now I theen’g the lady’z owed an apology,” he said. He then lifted the man’s head up by the hair, pulling his face out of the dirt so that he could speak.

“Fuck you,” said the man.

Raúl smashed the man’s face into the dirt again.

“Guys, guys,” said Cappy squatting down so that he was on eye level with Raúl. “Now look Raúl, I’ve done nothing to you. If you throw this guy in the Potomac I have to jump in after him. Well, Martin here does.” 

Several of Raúl’s men looked at Martin and laughed. Raúl looked but he didn’t laugh.

Cappy tried a different approach. “You’re right Raúl. You’re absolutely right.” Cappy then stood up and faced the lady and spoke very sincerely: “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Her face remained unmoved, but she smiled with her eyes. To Martin it looked as though her eyes were actually dancing with laughter. This time Raúl cracked a smile. He then spoke to the man he was holding: “You’re lucky, gilipollas.” 

Raúl got off the man’s back. The man started to get up. Martin came over and pushed him down again, putting his knee on the small of his back where Raúl’s had just been. He then removed his handcuffs from his belt and put them around the man’s wrists. 

“What the …”.

“Shut the fuck up,” said Martin. He then bent down and spoke quietly to the man, though everyone else could hear him quite clearly. “You’re not out of the barrio yet asshole.” Martin wondered what a “he - polis” or whatever Raúl said was. It didn’t matter. This idiot was one of them. 

“He don’t come back here,” said Raúl to Cappy. He was not smiling as he said this. 

“I got it covered,” said Cappy.

“It’s on you Gringo,” said Raúl looking straight at Cappy and then at Martin. He didn’t have to speak. The look said it all. That look said, “You too, Gringo.” 

Raúl and his Greenhats walked off.

“Shit,” said Martin. And just like that this man’s problems were now Cappy’s and Martin’s. It was just the type of thing that gets a person dead in the barrio. They didn’t pay him to get involved with that type of shit. He wondered why Cappy bothered. It was fine that Cappy risked his own life to save this idiot. Martin would have been happier to have been left out of the whole thing. For all Martin could care, if Raúl threw every one of Cassandra’s followers off the 14th street bridge, that was just fine with him.

Martin removed his knee from the man’s back. He sat back onto the dirt and took a deep breath. The woman was still watching.

Martin smiled at her, then he noticed just how gorgeous she really was.

“It’s ok,” said Cappy using his Cop, nothing to see here, voice.

“I know it’s ok,” said the woman. “It was ok before you guys show’d up.”

She turned and walked off. Martin looked at Cappy. Cappy laughed. Martin started to laugh too. The man turned and looked at them. 

“Just lie there,” said Martin.

A moment later they could hear the siren. They watched the car casually drive around the circle before coming to a stop just a few yards away. Doug got out of the car. He was by himself. So much for send people.

“Fuck,” said the man on the ground. 

He had no idea how close he had come to dying. He was worried about being arrested.

Cappy spoke to him, “you’ll be released after we get to the station.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he began.

“Just be quiet,” said Cappy in a very calm voice.

Doug walked over to where Martin, Cappy and the man were. “So what we got?” asked Doug. Two years earlier Martin and Doug started as cops together.

“Disturbing the peace,” said Martin.

“Disturbing the peace?” said the man. “That asshole called the President a …”.

“What he call the bitch?” asked Doug interrupting.

The man didn’t answer. Doug had a wonderful way with words. Martin was impressed. Judging by the barely concealed smile on his face so was Cappy.

John Brown had walked over. He smiled at Doug’s question, turned and walked away. Martin suspected that John Brown was giving the Cops a few minutes to take the guy away before he continued his speech. John Brown never let a little thing like a near homicide delay him for long.

“Come on,” said Doug grabbing the man’s arm and helping him to his feet. Doug held on and guided him to the car. Cappy and Martin followed. 

The police cars had no doors. Doug guided him into the back seat, making sure the man did not hit his head against the roof as he got in. Martin went around the back of the car and sat beside the man. 

“I didn’t do anything,” began the man again.

“Just relax,” said Martin. “When we get to the station you can say whatever you want. Right now, just be quiet.”

Doug got into the driver’s seat. Cappy sat beside him. Doug put the car into gear, and they headed off to the station.

“Fuck. It wasn’t me, it was the Wet bitch,” said the man.

“When we get to the station,” repeated Martin this time speaking slower and calmer but with a sense of authority that made it an order. The man shut up. There really wasn’t a safety issue anymore. Martin just didn’t want to hear him.

Doug asked Cappy, “What he do?”

“Called some girl a Wet in front of fifteen Greenhats,” said Cappy.

“Whew,” said Doug. Then he looked back over his shoulder and smiled at the man and said, “You’re in the lucky to be alive category my friend.”

The man looked at Martin. Martin nodded. Even in the dark Martin could see the man swallow. He just figured it out. Everyone heard the stories. Maybe this guy just didn’t believe them. He believed them now. That was for sure.

“It’s ok,” said Cappy reassuringly.

“You’re just lucky the Greenhats didn’t get to you first,” said Doug amiably to the man.

“Yeah lucky,” said Martin. “Could you do me a favor and watch the road a little bit while you’re driving, Doug?”

Doug turned back around, to see where he was driving. There was a short moment of silence then Doug asked over his shoulder: “You do something stupid, Martin?”

“Not me,” said Martin.

Doug looked at Cappy. “Playing cop again, Cappy?”

Cappy looked straight ahead. Martin couldn’t see his expression. Cappy was a cop once, a real cop. Martin suspected Cappy really did like playing cop again. Martin smiled. He supposed that was why Cappy had done it. Doug laughed to himself. The man just sat there, looking terrified. Martin wondered if you really did see your life flash before your eyes. He supposed it really wasn’t the best time to ask the man.