Enemy in Blue Read Online Free PDF

time to puss out. He was already the lily-white member of their circle. Drinking was a rare event, he didn't smoke—cigarettes or pot—and he refused to bang. Eduardo called him a bookworm, but at school they called him “pendeja” or “maricon.”
    All of a sudden, the boys could hear whistles from about two blocks away.  The whistles grew closer and closer.
    “ Es la pinche polic í a, g üey ,” Eduardo said.
    Sure enough, a slow-moving black police interceptor was taking its time down the middle of the street.
    “ Put the beers away,” Cruz warned.
    “ Que se chingan ,” Eduardo said defiantly.
    “ No way man, don't screw with them,” Cruz said. The cop car moved forward onto their block. The windows were tinted, but Cruz could tell the cops' eyes were on them.
    “ Look man, we gotta ditch this shit,” Tony, the other member of their trio, said with a slight tremor in his voice.
    “ Too late bro,” Eduardo responded. Just as he did, the interceptor slowed to a stop in front of them. The driver's side window rolled down. Cruz saw the cop's face. Young and angry. Burnt red face. Shaved head. A scowl that looked entrenched around his eyes and mouth.
    “ What's that you got? Que tienes all í ?” The Spanish from a white cop wasn't a surprise where Cruz lived. The department trained them to “know their enemies.”
    “ We ain't doing nothin',” Eduardo answered.
    “ Did I ask you what you were doing, boy?” The cop started to open his door and Eduardo took off without second thought. Cruz hesitated but when he saw the cop start to run, instincts kicked in. He remembered thinking it made no sense to run—he wasn't really in that big of trouble.
    Nevertheless, he found himself directly behind Eduardo. They ran tightly bunched together, each life sparing stride falling in rhythm. Cruz had no idea where Tony went. He probably kept his cool and walked home.
    Cruz remembered hearing the lumbering footsteps of the cops behind him. Between slow, steady breaths, Eduardo said, “Cruz, we got these pigs.” Just as he did, the two turned a corner into the waiting muzzle of another cop's gun.
    “ Get down you motherfuckers!” he screamed. Cruz and Eduardo went down so fast they nearly slid into the cop's feet. The other cop came up behind them. Cruz looked around and noticed that they were in the alley behind the local grocery store.
    “ What's up you dumb bangers? Why'd you run, putas?”
      Cruz curled into a fetal position on the ground. Eduardo was face down, sprawled out next to him. Dust blew up from Eduardo's breath.
    “ Look man, we give up, we give up,” Eduardo belted out.
    Cruz turned his head slightly to the right and saw the two cops standing over them. One of them was the cop from the interceptor—a burly man of medium height. He sported a thick, orange-blond mustache and looked down at the boys with cobalt blue eyes. He knelt down next to Eduardo and took off a black glove. “The time for giving up is over, holmes . Now, it's time for daddy to teach you a lesson.” The cop stood up and stepped onto the side of Eduardo's head. He laughed as Eduardo started to squirm.
    “ Yo, what the hell you doing?” Eduardo screamed. His sentence trailed off as the cop put more of his weight onto Eduardo's face. The cop was lifting himself onto that one foot.
    Eduardo's voice changed from its cool self to the high pitched scream of a teenage boy, “Get off me! You gonna break my face!”
    Cruz watched in terror as he lay there, face to face with Eduardo. Eduardo's face was turning purple-red as tears welled up in his bulging eyes. Then he started to sob uncontrollably.
    “ No, no, no…Cruz…help me man...” The cop was standing with all of his weight on Eduardo's face. Cruz heard something snap and Eduardo scream. Cruz closed his eyes and began to yell.
    “ Look at these two pussy cholos,” the cop said as he turned his head to look at Cruz. “So fucking tough, you filth of the streets.” He