Lines and Shadows

by Joseph Wambaugh

  But old Fred Gil had heard so many terrifying sounds that night he hardly noticed. He was more worried about the catheter that a doctor was sticking in his penis to check for internal bleeding.

  “Oh, I don’t want that. I really don’t!” old Fred Gil tried to tell the doctor, but he was so weak and dizzy he hardly felt it.

  Then they were taking X rays and sticking tubes in his arms and nose and mouth as well as his dick, and the pain got worse in his hip and some homicide detective showed up and was trying to question him when he was getting weaker and disoriented.

  The bullet merely chipped the hipbone without shattering either bone or bullet. The bullet missed the bladder and everything else. It was just nestled in his body, right in there over his pelvis as snug as you please. As far as the croakers were concerned, it could stay there as long as he didn’t get infected from all the debris and trash they scraped off him.

  But before Fred Gil could say again how lucky he was, an unlucky thing happened. After they’d cleaned up all the blood and had Fred wheeled back into the emergency ward, they let Jan and the kids come in.

  Fred Gil was lying there looking at his littlest daughter, perhaps a bit dazed from the medication, when she said, “Dad, you don’t have scrambled eggs, do you?”

  And he smiled and said, “No, my head’s okay, honey.”

  And then he considered that. Was it? Wasn’t Vietnam enough? He remembered how it felt for years after Nam. Just being happy to be alive. Not feeling overly ambitious. Not striving. Just to be alive with no one shooting at him anymore. Then the police department? Was it that he would forever hear that miserable hateful voice? A voice saying, “You’ll always be a mama’s boy.”

  Wasn’t ordinary police work enough? He’d been one of the few who were truly touched by the alien plight, like Dick Snider. He’d hated seeing the terrorized barefoot alien children with hair full of burrs and thorns, watching their mothers weep from just having been raped and robbed in their presence. It was like Nam in that respect: suffering children.

  But was it worth dying for? What were they doing out there? It was one thing to get shot. Another not to know why. He wanted desperately from that moment on to see his little girl become a woman. It was the only thing that made any sense whatsoever.

  And all this was going through his head more or less incoherently when the television news crews arrived and interviewed both Fred and his wife.

  He could see that Jan thought it was great. She’d loved the BARF publicity and admitted it, and now they were the stars. Their own show! The Lily Tomlin-Lee Trevino hour!

  He could see it in her face: their marriage was lousy but this was terrific! The news team came without calling, without permission. They startled Fred Gil by asking pointed, embarrassing questions.

  “It looks as though you were shot by one of your partners. How does that make you feel? Is there something wrong with San Diego police training? Do you think more care should go into the selection of men to be out there in those canyons?”

  Jan Gil said things like, “He doesn’t have to talk to you at all. Fred, don’t talk to them if they’re going to ask those kinds a questions! Fred isn’t going to criticize anybody even if they did get trigger-happy!”

  “I didn’t say anyone was trigger-happy!” Fred Gil later tried to explain to Manny Lopez. “I never said hardly anything! It was Jan. AND YOU KNOW HOW BIG HER GOLDANGED MOUTH IS!”

  He did say something in answer to their insatiable interrogation. He said what he was expected to say when they asked The Big Question, which was: “Are you willing to go back out there in the canyons now?”

  He said, “Sure! Soon as I’m back on my feet. Sure I am!”

  And then he thought of his little girl. And Fred Gil felt old. As old as war.

  Along with Mexican immigration officer Luis Tamez, Fred Gil and Joe Castillo were the second and third lawmen to be shot down in the canyons. So far that made two righteous bandits and three cops. All shot by cops. One might begin to wonder what Chano B. Gomez, Jr., the tamale vendor, would think of this from his vantage point on the upper soccer field. All those little hardballs rolling around in Deadman’s Canyon, in and out of the canyons and tunnels like so many flinty little turds. Screaming “Barf Barf Barf!” and shooting down people in the night. So far, shooting more cops than bandits.

  There is something about violence. Once unleashed, it usually tends to escalate.

  THE BITCH

  THERE WAS LOTS OF ATTENTION FOR THE WOUNDED GUNSLINGERS. While Joe Castillo lay in the hospital the next day, with his exploits spread all over the newspapers and television, he was having trouble keeping strangers out of the hospital ward. Hell, out of his bed!

  In fact, just before his wife arrived, and even before regular visiting hours, one of the schoolteacher groupies from The Anchor Inn showed up and started looking at him like he was Warren Beatty or somebody, and asked if she could give him a head job. On the spot!

  While young Joe Castillo was trying to deal with this little popularity perk, a television news crew caused a ruckus in the hall corridor and a nurse came in to see if the border Gunslinger would consent to an on-camera interview.

  “Hell, no,” he said. “Get them out a here!”

  The schoolteacher couldn’t believe it. “Turning down a television appearance? Are you that famous?” Now she really wanted to give him a head job!

  And that wasn’t the half of it. His phone wouldn’t stop ringing. A college instructor called to tell him not to worry about missing classes because he was giving Joe a goddamn A for the semester. And every waitress from every fast-food joint and every gin mill in South Bay was asking him if he was the tall one, the heavy one, the nutty one or … Christ, they didn’t even give a shit which Barfer he was, just so they could come and see him.

  It was quite a bit to handle for a lad twenty-four years old, all this attention. Of course he didn’t understand that he was an embodiment of an American myth, an honest-to-God bandit-busting, badge-toting, shoot-from-the-hip Gun-slinger.

  All he knew was everyone wanted to give him blowjobs.

  And his marriage wasn’t worth a shit anymore. He was drunk half the time and the other half he was out in the canyons, or running wild all over San Diego with other Barfers who also didn’t understand about American mythology. And he had perhaps the sweetest, shyest, and unquestionably the prettiest wife of any of them. She was being hurt terribly, and she would cry, which would break his heart.

  Joe Castillo thought maybe it would have been more tolerable if his wife had been white instead of Mexican, and raised hell and kicked his ass like a Jan Gil would surely do, because he deserved it. The young cop was filled with remorse and confusion and ambivalence about being a real live Gunslinger.

  And there was something else—his hand. It sure wasn’t right. He was scared that it wouldn’t work right ever again. When he was without visitors he’d get very depressed because his hand was no longer graceful and fluttering, and he discovered how hard it was even to talk without his fluttering hands. And he’d look over at his roommate in the next bed and say, “I’m only twenty-four years old. What the hell am I gonna do? Retire or what?”

  Then he’d pull himself together and realize how that sounded. His roommate was only sixteen years old and had his leg amputated because of cancer.

  So Joe Castillo blurted his favorite self-deprecatory cry, saying, “My shit is so ragged! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  But his roommate didn’t mind. This kid was jazzed out of his skull from reading all about Joe Castillo in the newspapers and seeing him on television. This kid was in the presence of the first Gunslinger he’d ever met in his life. The kid would pull himself out of bed, still trying to stand on a limb that wasn’t there, and answer phone calls for Joe or do other little chores in the room. The kid asked the doctor if he really had to go home as scheduled the next afternoon. He wanted to stay with his new hero, Joe Castillo.

  And of course that made the
young cop feel just great when he was already wondering what kind of an asshole he’d become out there in those hills. He got a chance to think about it for the next month. He was put on light duty and assigned to be a gofer in the detective bureau. He hated the job.

  He started working out with a vengeance. He began punching the big bag and tattooing the speed bag. He found out that he was pretty good. Boxing was terrific. Boxers couldn’t be troubled by booze and broads. Rest. Lots of rest. A Spartan life. Just try going into a ring after a binge and watch your little ass get kicked. He loved it. Somebody broke his nose. Who gives a shit? Joe Castillo went to Chino State Prison to box and fought a black inmate. All the Mexican inmates cheered for him, a cop. Later, a snitch he met on the street said, “Hey, man, I know you! I saw you throw some leather in the joint!”

  He boxed at 156 pounds and eventually won a silver and a bronze medal in the police Olympics. His hobbies became running and boxing. His marriage might just survive the craziness in the canyons, he figured.

  When he came back to BARF he had most of the use in that hand. He could sure as hell make a fist out of it and the fingers soon began to soar and glide and flutter like wings, just as before. Pretty soon he was back to his body language; shrugging, twisting, bowing, swaying when he talked to the groupies in the gin mills. He couldn’t leave the booze behind, not when he was back with the Barf squad. But he said he didn’t think he was the prettiest thing to walk down the street anymore. He didn’t think he’d ever be a cocky, black-glove kind of cop ever again.

  But one thing didn’t change: his feeling for Carlos Chacon. When he’d get drunk his eyes would smolder almost as much as Carlos’ eyes always smoldered. Carlos Chacon had shot him, no matter how much Carlos claimed it was inconclusive. Joe Castillo knew it was Carlos who did it and there was no remorse in Carlos for shooting him. He was going to watch Carlos Chacon very carefully in those canyons.

  A few things happened to the squad while Joe Castillo and Fred Gil were off recuperating. One thing was that Ken Kelly was brought in as a replacement. Like Robbie Hurt, Ken Kelly had to be convinced that he was the wrong color to walk as a decoy with the others. Ken Kelly figured that Robbie, being black, couldn’t do a proper makeup job to pass as a Mexican, whereas he, being white, could pull it off. So Ken tucked his blond hair under a woman’s stocking and smeared some kind of pancake makeup, mocha coffee goop, on his face and looked like one of the maniacs in a Hollywood version of gooned-out Vietnam G.I.’s.

  Another thing that happened is that all the ragging, jazzing, merciless personal insults and wisecracks elicited new responses. For example, if someone were to call Ernie Salgado “The Jaw” because of his prominent chin, or say that a night in his hometown—Marfa, Texas—held all the excitement of a bricklaying contest in Poland, he might not laugh anymore. Ditto for Eddie Cervantes when they asked him if he was riding Uncle Ebeneezer’s back this Christmas. Tony Puente was getting sick of the gags about seeing his wife out on the street corners handing out Bible tracts to winos. And even someone as good-natured as Renee Camacho with the soprano alien voice didn’t find the drag queen jokes so funny anymore. Nor did Joe Castillo laugh very much when they said he was about as smart as a sack of rutabagas. And maybe even smiling Joe Vasquez had heard just about one reference too many to his looking like Charles Laughton hanging from a bell. And for sure Robbie Hurt had had it when he got compared to some jive-ass with diamonds in his teeth.

  In fact, when they were donning their bulletproof vests and alien duds, things were getting pretty quiet these days. Even in the little squadroom, which was about the size of a family crypt, there wasn’t much horsing around anymore. And when they piled into the four-wheel drive to head for the canyons at dusk, the silence was absolutely spooky. Nobody opened his mouth. A new element had been introduced since they learned unequivocally that even living legends might get hurt out there.

  On the 5th of April a bandit gang made a very good score in Deadman’s Canyon with what had to have been the most unfortunate robbery victims who ever lived to tell their story. Eighteen pollos from El Salvador and Guatemala decided to try their luck in Deadman’s Canyon that afternoon. In that the sun was still high over the hills, they probably felt they might be more vulnerable to la migra but would surely escape the bandits about whom they’d heard so much. They were wrong.

  While the party of eighteen men and women took their first rest under a stunted oak in Deadman’s Canyon, they were approached by three young men and a large black dog. One of the young men was carrying a .22-caliber rifle. He had the longest hair most of them had ever seen on a man. In fact he looked exactly like an Apache from an American movie. His hair was so long it hung all the way down his back to his belt. And he wore a dark-blue bandanna around his forehead just like an Apache or an American hippie. And he wore a brown vest over a white long-sleeve shirt, making him look even more like a movie Indian.

  Since he had a big ugly dog and a rifle, they hoped he was just out hunting jackrabbits in the canyons, especially since one of his companions was a boy. But the boy was carrying a big rock. And the third young man was hefting an iron bar.

  And perhaps because the eighteen pilgrims didn’t look like border Mexicans, or for some other reason, the one with the long hair and the .22-caliber rifle said something very silly. He said, “We’re judiciales. Give us your money.”

  It was almost funny, except that he had a wild and glassy-eyed look and his rifle was clearly not a toy. The longhaired bandit searched one of the pilgrims and found only some Salvadoran money. He crammed the useless stuff in his pocket and the three left in disgust, not even bothering to search the rest. The pilgrims thought they were in luck.

  But thirty minutes later, while they crouched waiting for a Border Patrol vehicle in the far distance to clear out, three more men approached. These three were older and they said almost the same thing: “We’re state police. Give us your money.”

  It seemed that all the bandits liked to pose as police. But judiciales didn’t carry clubs and machetes and broken bottles. The nine men and nine women were terrified into giving up their life savings. Three junkie thugs strolled off that afternoon with over 5,000 U.S. dollars.

  Then, while the pilgrim party wailed and keened and wept and wondered how they were going to get to Los Angeles or back to El Salvador and Guatemala without one dollar left, yet another group of men approached them, twelve men. And still the sun had not set in Deadman’s Canyon. The twelve men were crestfallen to learn that the pilgrims had already been robbed. Twice. There was nothing left for them but the women.

  This was one of the bandit gangs who intimidated through violence. The spokesmen for the Guatemalans saw that it was absolutely hopeless. He perceived savage brains behind black depthless eyes. When he tried to protect the women, the bandits picked up huge rocks. They attacked viciously, driving the wailing male pilgrims back into a ravine, the men begging the bandits to spare the women. Some of the pollos from El Salvador later reported thinking that this could not be real, not three bandit attacks.

  The bandit gang encircled the weeping women like a mangy dog pack. The women’s spoken prayers were met with obscene appraisals by the bandits, who were already arguing about who would get the youngest.

  Suddenly a U.S. Border Patrol aircraft swooped over the canyon and banked. One of the male Salvadorans began waving and screaming. Demanding to be arrested as an illegal alien.

  Within a few minutes a chopper arrived and sent the bandits running back toward Colonia Libertad. The women were saved. The thing they kept repeating over and over as they sat dazed in the Southern substation of the San Diego Police Department was that they had felt so safe once they crossed the imaginary line. They had thought that on their trek through Mexico, wherein they had braved danger a hundred times, they might be robbed, but never were. They had thought that the moment they set foot on United States soil, in broad daylight, they were safe at last from bandits. No one believed it when a uniformed cop tol
d them sardonically that there were more robberies in San Diego than in the entire countries of El Salvador and Guatemala put together.

  Two nights later in Spring Canyon, while the media darlings were re-creating bandit arrests for a television crew, Dick Snider was out and about with his binoculars. He spotted a young man with the longest hair he’d seen in quite a while, something like an Apache with a bandanna headband. He was carrying a .22-caliber rifle. Dick Snider told Manny Lopez, but by the time they could break free from show biz and call it a wrap, the long-haired bandit had vanished.

  The next night they arrested two bandits with daggers. There was a fight, and nobody was fooling around, not these days. Ernie Salgado and Joe Vasquez put some lacerations on a bandit’s face during the struggle and Ernie thought he’d done a creditable job. He was very surprised when later that night, while having a few for the road at The Anchor Inn, Manny Lopez had a bit too much scotch and said, “Eeeeeeerr-neeeeee, get over here.”

  Manny would never forget hearing Ernie’s wife say that at the party. Then Manny turned a little mean and said, “Gotta run home to mama? Big Marine D.I. How come you’re the only one didn’t shoot the night Joe and Fred got it?”

  “Maybe I’m the only one used my head. I didn’t shoot the robbers, but I didn’t shoot Fred and Joe either.”

  “Maybe you froze,” Manny Lopez said boozily.

  “Maybe that’s whisky talking,” Ernie Salgado said. And he left without finishing the beer.

  “You got to have some big huevos to look in a gun muzzle,” Manny Lopez told the rest. “And you got to have even bigger ones to draw against it and smoke them down.”

  Perhaps it was best unsaid that network news teams are not interested in ball-clanging mythic heros who go around arresting bandits like ordinary cops.

  Ernie Salgado said he was indifferent about blowing a hole through the shotgun-wielding kid when he worked SWAT. And about the Viet Cong he had killed face to face during the Tet offensive. But he also thought that unless it was absolutely necessary, he’d like not to kill people. And his feelings for Manny Lopez were turning into something more than resentment. Much more.