Target Down

by Glenn Trust

  ***

  A Louisiana boy of Creole descent, Edgar Dupart had returned from the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam and his service with the air cavalry. With nothing better to do, he went with a friend to see the Mardi Gras festivities in the French Quarter.

  Louisa Lopez was also there, visiting for Mardi Gras with friends from Albuquerque. They met by chance on a sultry morning in a patisserie off Chartres Street, each searching for something they might manage to hold down in their stomachs after a night of partying. Edgar helped her read the menu, and his life changed.

  Beignets led to lunch, led to dinner, led to a long walk hand in hand along the Mississippi. By the end of the day, he had proposed marriage to her. She accepted on one condition. She could not leave her family in Albuquerque. Edgar began packing the next day.

  Young, impetuous, and full of love, with a good portion of lust mixed in, they were married a month later. He took a job at a refinery near the rail yards, working long hours. Within a month, they were expecting their first child. Life stretched before them, seemingly without end, as it always does for young people, full of hope and anticipation. What more could they ask?

  Louisa gave birth to a boy less than a year from the day she met Edgar at the patisserie shop. They named him Jean Paul for Edgar’s father, who had passed away while he was fighting the Viet Cong. It should have been a day of rejoicing. Instead, it broke Edgar’s heart.

  The doctor listed the cause of death as left ventricular outflow stenosis, brought on by a previously undetected congenital condition. The words didn’t mean anything to Edgar. Louisa was dead. His life changed again.

  The years passed, raising Jean Paul. He remained close to Louisa’s parents until they passed within a year of each other. They never recovered from their daughter’s death, living in mourning in a darkened house until the day they ceased mourning and joined Louisa.

  Edgar had to find a way to support his son and provide a home. He bought the old store using money he had saved while in Vietnam plus a small inheritance his father had left him. It was enough for a down payment and convinced a bank to lend him the rest. Dupart’s Market was born.

  In time, Jean Paul grew and followed his father’s steps, joining the army. Unlike his father, he did not return. He died in a minor fight at a place that had no name in the barrens of Afghanistan.

  Jean Paul left a wife and small son behind, and Edgar welcomed them into his home. They were all that remained of the family he and Louisa had begun.

  ***

  “Hola, Edgar.” Salvadore Estevez walked in for his newspaper and cup of coffee.

  Edgar always joked that you could set a clock by Salvadore’s visits. Newspaper, coffee, precisely one-half hour of conversation to catch up on the local news, and then off again to complete his circuit of the neighborhood. Edgar worried about him. Sometimes Salvadore wandered into places where the gang presence was heavy, but Salvadore shrugged off the concern and flashed a wide, toothy grin.

  “See this smile,” he would say.

  “I see it,” Edgar would reply, knowing the routine by heart.

  “Who would hurt this smile?” He would chuckle and touch his fingertips to his forehead in salute as he went out to the street. “Until tomorrow, mi amigo.”

  “Tomorrow, mon ami,” Edgar would call after him with a smile of his own as he helped the next customer and passed on the latest news.

  Knockout

  The van had been stolen an hour earlier, chosen solely for this occasion. An hour from now, it would sit abandoned in some vacant lot engulfed in flames.

  There was nothing remarkable about it. No special paint job, no company logos, or phone numbers, not even any gang graffiti spray-painted on the inviting plain white surface, a common occurrence in this part of town. It was one of thousands of similar fleet vehicles, unidentifiable on the surface. The only alteration was the license plate, swapped for a different one, also stolen.

  It cruised slowly along Central Avenue in Albuquerque. At Third Street, it turned south, still moving below the speed limit, the occupants leaning forward in their seats peering out at the passing shops and pedestrians.

  “There.” One of the young men in the back seat pointed off to the right down a side street. “That one.”

  “Yeah.”

  The driver nodded and spun the wheel, making the turn and accelerating rapidly to the end of the next block. Braking hard, he turned at the next corner and pulled to the curb.

  The driver turned in his seat to stare at the young man wedged in between two other members of the gang known as Demonios de la Muerte—Death Devils, or DM for short. His name was Jose ‘Joey’ Gonzales, but the others had taken to calling their newest gang member Keet, short for parakeet, because of his habit of repeating back whatever anyone said to him.

  “Do it,” the driver said.

  His gang name was Slice, and no one asked how he had earned the sobriquet. The others in the van, all gang members, included Poco in the passenger seat and Cheech and Ape, both large men whose bulk held Keet firmly in place. It was his initiation day, and no one knew how he would react.

  “Do it?” Keet stammered, barely able to make eye contact with Slice.

  “Yeah. Do it,” Slice growled. “And don’t say it back to me again. Just get your ass out and do it.”

  “Right.” Keet nodded. “Do it.” His eyes darted to Slice. “Sorry, man. I mean, yeah. Let me out so I can handle it.”

  Ape slid the rear door open and stepped out. Keet followed, and Cheech slid across the seat to stand on the sidewalk with them. All eyes were on Keet. It was his show. He could pass through his initiation or—what? He wasn’t sure what would happen if he backed out now, and he didn’t want to find out.

  No one spoke, giving him nothing to repeat back, so he said. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Sandwiched between Ape and Cheech, he walked to the corner and turned down the street the van had driven a minute earlier. Slice watched in the mirror as they disappeared from sight.

  Less than two minutes elapsed before the three came running at full speed around the corner and climbed into the van.

  ***

  Salvadore Estevez had lived in the Barelas district of Albuquerque for thirty years. He’d come there after gaining his U.S. citizenship and securing a job with the railroad. In those years, he and his wife, Carmen, had raised a family and seen their children go off into the world. They remained behind in Barelas, partly out of reluctance to leave their home of thirty years, but also because depressed property values in the neighborhood made selling and moving nearly impossible for those on fixed incomes.

  As on most days, he stopped by the shop of his friend Edgar Dupart and picked up a copy of the Albuquerque Journal. Edgar poured him a cup of coffee from the pot he kept brewing behind the counter, and they chatted for half an hour. Then, newspaper tucked under his arm, Salvadore left to continue his walk.

  “If someone stops you,” Carmen always reminded him when he left for his walks. “Give them what they want. Hand them your wallet. Don’t make trouble or fight. They will only hurt you if you try.” Then she would pat his arm, kiss his cheek, and send him on his way.

  The counsel from his wife was unnecessary, but Salvadore listened every day and nodded sincerely that he would comply with her wishes. In reality, he had no intention of resisting. Salvadore had always been a peaceful man, a pacifist in the truest sense of the word. He considered all confrontation, unnecessary, and a waste of the little time that God had given him on the earth. In his long life, he had never been in a real fight, only a small school tussle or two over a girl when he was a teenager, and that was driven mostly by hormones and not any genuine desire to fight.

  Some mistook him for a coward. He was not. He would defend his wife or his children or a friend if the occasion required such action. But as far as protecting his property, there was nothing he valued so much that he wanted to fight over it. Take what you want, and let me go in peace. That philosoph
y had served him well as the Barelas district transformed into one of the highest crime areas of the city.

  ***

  He had only gone fifty feet from Dupart’s door when the three young men turned the corner, walking briskly toward him. Young men wandering the streets like that made him nervous, so he did what he always did to relieve the tensions. He tried to make eye contact with them and smile.

  The young men ignored him and passed to either side, one to his right and two to his left. He breathed a sigh of relief as their footsteps receded down the pavement.

  Then there was a shuffling sound behind him. The footsteps were returning, louder, moving faster.

  They were on him now. He started to turn and smile, but not in time to see the gloved fist flying in an arc toward him. It caught him in the side of the head, and the world went dark for Salvadore. He fell to the sidewalk, his head smacking into the concrete.

  By the time Edgar Dupart, ran from behind his counter to aid his friend, the three young men were turning the corner they had rounded a minute earlier. He knelt by Salvadore. Blood pooled on the sidewalk from a gash in his friend’s head. Edgar pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. As he spoke to the operator, the sound of tires squealing and an engine roaring reverberated down the street from around the corner.

  Keet panted heavily and grinned broadly as he followed Ape and Cheech into the back seat. Slice put the van in gear and pulled to the end of the block, turning down another side street that would take them away from the area.

  “I did it, man!” Keet was jubilant, flushed with the thrill and exhilaration of the moment. “That motherfucker hit the ground hard. Shit, he might be dead.” He put an arm out the window, his fist pounding on the door.

  Slice cast a doubtful eye to the mirror and looked at Ape.

  “He did it.” Ape nodded. “Don’t know if he’ll die, but he did it.”

  “Shit. You see how hard the motherfucker went down.” Keet bubbled. “Shit, if he ain’t dead, he gonna wish he was.”

  Slice accelerated to the next corner and ran the stop sign, nearly hitting a pickup turning in front of them. John Sole, turned his head and stared stone-faced through his sun glasses at the men in the van.

  “Fuck you, cabrón!” Keet shouted, out the window at the pickup man, feeling powerful and invincible, surrounded by his gang brothers.

  The others nodded and smiled. They understood. The van roared away from the area.

  It was the gang’s right of initiation—the knockout game. The rules were simple, find some unsuspecting person, and deliver a blow to the head to send them to the ground unconscious. If they died, even better.

  They allowed the prospective DM one punch. If that blow did not render the victim unconscious, he failed the initiation and had to ask for another chance to select another victim and repeat the process until he got it right. It was a badge of honor to succeed on the first attempt, and a deep disgrace to fail.

  The choice of victims was critical. Generally, women were considered off-limits for the knockout initiation, although they were fair game for other activities. Old men, however, were definitely allowed, even preferred, because they were frailer and less able to defend themselves. The gang’s machismo bravado had its limits. Besides, the proper choice of victims made for successful initiations, especially for newcomers participating in the game for the first time.

  “Goddamn, that felt good.” Keet pounded his gloved fist into the other bare hand. “Let’s do another.”

  “You done good, cholo,” Slice said, smiling at the new member’s exuberance. “But first, we dump this ride and move out of the area.”

  He steered the van south on William Street alongside the rail yards. A turn to the right took them across the tracks and onto a dirt trail that led down to a secluded spot near the banks of the Rio Grande. The van rocked to a stop, and everyone piled out. Ape and Cheech took two five-gallon gas cans from the back and doused the inside of the vehicle.

  Slice handed a lighter to Keet. “Your day, bro. You do the honors.”

  Keet reached out, grinning and thumbed the lighter, tossing it into the van. The gasoline flamed up, and they all stepped back

  “Time to go.” Slice led them to another vehicle they had positioned there earlier in the day.

  Before they had gone a half mile, headed north on William Street, the van was engulfed in flames. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky. A pilot in an airliner on approach to the airport a mile away reported seeing a fire and suggested they call the fire department.

  Slice retraced their route back to Central Avenue. As they passed the side street, they could see an ambulance pulling to the curb. The siren of a police cruiser wailed down the block. The van continued on without being noticed. The old man lay motionless on the sidewalk. A small crowd had gathered around his prostrate form. Two people knelt beside him.

  “Told you.” Keet grinned. “Knocked that motherfucker out!”

  Sidetracked

  “Fuck you, cabrón!”

  The white van sped away. Gangbangers. Sole had, indeed, found the right neighborhood.

  He lifted his foot off the brake, and the pickup began to roll forward when he noticed the crowd gathered around a man lying on the pavement half a block down a side street. He pulled to the curb and stopped.

  Stepping from the pickup, he reached under the seat to retrieve his .45 auto, tucking it securely under his waistband. He began walking down the block.

  “What are you doing?” the voice inside called out to him.

  Just going to see if there’s anything I can do. Then I’ll move on. No delays. No entanglements. Looks like those gangbangers might have hurt someone.

  The voice inside sighed, but did not try to convince him to walk away.

  He pushed forward to kneel beside the old man lying on the sidewalk. Another man knelt beside him, a cell phone in one hand as he cradled the old man’s head in his lap, rocking him back and forth to comfort him. A pool of blood spread around the man’s head where it had struck the curb and opened a gash in his temple.

  “They hit him,” Edgar Dupart said to the stranger who knelt beside him. “They just came up and knocked him down.”

  Sole realized the gangbangers in the van must have been fleeing the scene after attacking the old man. He recognized the signs of the knockout game and a gang initiation. Better than shooting the old man, he thought, but not by much.

  “He may have a neck or spinal injury.” Sole leaned forward to take the man’s head between his hands. “We should lay his head flat and keep his neck straight.”

  “Okay.” Dupart nodded. The stranger seemed to know what to do for his friend.

  Sole eased the old man’s head back onto the pavement, keeping his neck aligned, then lifted his eyelids one at a time. His years in the Marine Corps and law enforcement had taught him to recognize mydriasis, extreme dilation of the pupils, a typical result of brain trauma, especially in the elderly.

  “That’s bad, isn’t it, his eye like that?” Edgar Dupart looked at Sole.

  “It means he’s had a brain injury. Do you know him?”

  “Yes. Salvadore Estevez.” Dupart’s eyes watered. “He’s my friend.”

  “Is that 911 on the line?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I speak with them?”

  Dupart handed the phone to Sole. He began speaking, briefing the dispatcher on what the paramedics would find on arrival.

  “Elderly male, appears to have a traumatic brain injury, mydriasis present. Some bleeding present but no apparent arterial blood loss.”

  He waited a moment while the dispatcher relayed the information to the responding EMTs, and then added, “I have a possible lookout on the suspects.”

  “Go ahead with the lookout,” the dispatcher said, typing rapidly as he spoke.

  “White van, no marking of any type. Two males in the front. Two or three passengers in the rear, also appeared to be male. Last seen southbound on…” He looked ar
ound, not sure of where he was exactly. “Southbound on the adjacent street a block to the east from this location.”

  “10-4,” the dispatcher said, and then muted the line to relay the information. A minute later, she was back. “The EMTs and responding officers will be with you in a minute.”

  “Right.” Sole restrained himself from using the usual 10-4 response that came naturally to him.

  They heard the sirens, and a few seconds later the ambulance pulled up to the curb. Two EMTs jumped out and began examining Salvadore Estevez.

  A police unit arrived right behind them. The officer stepped out, saw the phone in Sole’s hand, and took him aside.

  “You law enforcement?” the officer asked. “Dispatcher said it sounded like it.”

  “Marine Corps,” Sole replied, leaving out his police experience.

  “Well, she said you definitely had your shit together.”

  “He helped us.” Edgar Dupart joined them as the EMTs worked on his friend. “I could hardly speak. I couldn’t think of anything except to call the 911.” He shook his head. “Salvadore just left me in the store. Hadn’t been gone five minutes.”

  “You did right, sir,” the officer said. “We’re looking for the van and people who did this right now, and the EMTs will get your friend to the hospital.” He turned to Sole, his clipboard in hand, ready to complete the necessary report. “Your name?”

  Sole reached in his pocket and pulled out a wallet, careful to keep the .45 concealed. “Myers … Bill Myers.”

  “And you?” The officer turned to Edgar Dupart.

  “That’s me.” Dupart pointed at the storefront a few doors away. “Edgar Dupart.”

  The officer spent a few more minutes gathering information. When he was done, the EMTs had Salvadore Estevez on a backboard, his neck stabilized with straps. They loaded him in the ambulance and left, driving carefully to avoid any unnecessary jostling of their patient. A minute later, the officer departed.