The second time I got shot I had been on the job.

It was another one of those things that happens a lot more often on TV than it does in real life; a shoot out with bank robbers. Sometimes I think that these people get their ideas from TV shows that they watch.

The bank personnel had tripped a silent alarm and we had all the exits covered before the bank robbers came out, and they came out shooting like it was a war zone. And I have to tell you, once the bad guys start shooting everybody starts shooting. Bullets fly, glass is everywhere, and debris flies just as much with bullets hitting and dislodging everything from car window glass to pavement to everything in the line of fire.

I got hit in the ear by a piece of concrete dug up by a bullet and when I crouched down to cover myself from further debris a ricochet dug a furrow down my back from that space between my left shoulder blade and neck to where my right kidney would be. Technically that’s a flesh wound as the bullet didn’t actually enter my body and no internal organs were injured. But this flesh wound is more than two feet long and nearly half an inch wide. It felt like someone had laid a hot poker across my back; the pain was astonishing.

When the dust settled all three bank robbers were dead and three police were injured, including me. All three of us recovered and got medals. When the investigators finished figuring out everything it was determined that I had killed one of the robbers, and I had shot him after I had been shot. That got me a promotion that eventually led to me becoming a Detective. That’s fine, but I don’t remember anything from the incident other than the pain of getting shot.

I have one hell of a scar to prove it, and sometimes the massage girls hesitate when they get to it, even if I’ve told them about it ahead of time – which I will often do with ones I’m with for the first time. My regulars know what to do.

By the time Gilda’s people got me home it was nearly 3 in the morning. I was tired as hell but I was pretty keyed up. I hadn’t actually seen any of the bodies or even witnessed the crime, but I was all the police had until the science cops came up with leads or the FBI gave them something to go on.

I got a beer from the fridge and opened the curtains to the view that had cost me nearly $2 Million dollars – a view of the San Francisco Bay facing the Golden Gate Bridge. I had a similar view of the Bay Bridge from another window in this room but I wanted that great orange bridge tonight. I started going through what the next steps in the investigation would be. Once a Marine always a marine, and once that marine becomes a cop he stays one of those as well.

I would ask vice if this new house was controlled by one of the Chinese families, as most massage parlors in San Francisco tend to be “Asian” in nature.. There are eight great “families” that come from San Francisco’s expansive Chinatown, and they control just about every aspect of life that can be traced to something Chinese in origin in the city, including the Mayor. If you’ve emigrated from China to the U.S. and wound up in San Francisco the odds are that you have come to be accepted by one of these “families”, and you’ve helped them out while they’ve done the same for you. Probably all legal but some every rare once and a while not. That would be a long shot though; lots of the massage parlors featured Korean girls these days and had nothing to do with the families – and as often as not that had to do with the slave trade. Still, rule them out if nothing else.

Then check out the victims. Could one of them have been the main target and the rest collateral damage? I ruled that out almost at once. That would be one hell of a lot of collateral damage and unnecessary if there had been a single target. Just kill the one you’re after and maybe any witnesses, but all those people behind closed doors would probably never know you had even been there. A professional hit man would have known that and the scene was too clean to have been a crime of passion.

More than likely the intended victim was the massage parlor itself, which brings up the question of why? Someone who hates hookers? Someone who hates Asians? Family versus Family? I honestly hoped that last one wasn’t true. We hadn’t had a real gang war in San Francisco between the families in more than 20 years, and that one had been ugly.

Was I the target?

It seemed unlikely but not impossible. Sure, I had pissed off a lot of people so far in my professional and personal life but I didn’t think anything I had done warranted killing 13 people. Framing me for it? If so it was badly done because if they had suspected me even slightly I would have been held, despite my friendships with the various members of the Homicide squad and even further despite the fact that Gilda Gold had briefly been my lover after I left the force and the dust had settled from that.

It was something we both had to get out of our systems and we both moved on quickly after.

By the time I had rummaged through all of this in my head my beer was empty and the sun was starting to come up. Watching the sun rise from my condo is an amazing thing, but watching its reflection off of the Golden Gate Bridge from my condo is nearly orgasmic in beauty, and one of the reasons I had stayed in town after my retirement.

Well, that and the liberal attitude towards massage parlors.

I fell asleep in my recliner watching the reflected sunrise, slightly buzzed, and not even realizing that I had missed something very important.

And not knowing that my descent into hell had only just begun.