Ditch Rider

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Cheyanne didn’t come home last night?”

  “Not till five in the morning she didn’t.”

  I wondered if I ought to tell Sonia about finding her daughter beside the ditch, but I decided to see what Sonia had to say first. There’s a law that says doctors can’t tell a mother when a daughter is pregnant. Maybe there was another law that says a lawyer ought to keep a daughter’s secrets.

  “Fucking police,” Sonia said. “There’s supposed to be a curfew in this town. Why the hell are they letting teenagers stay out all night anyway?”

  Which could be exactly what the police were saying about the parents. “There are more teenagers than there are police, and at five in the morning the teenagers have more energy,” I said. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” I did have an office to get to.

  “You know Juan Padilla? The boy that got shot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When Cheyanne finally got home this morning she told me she was the one that shot him.”

  That was the kind of news that could shatter your life.

  “She says she pulled the trigger.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “Where’s the weapon? Does she have it?”

  “She told me she threw it in the ditch.”

  “Did she tell you what kind of gun it was?”

  “A thirty-eight, she says.”

  “A thirty-eight?” Tech Nines were the guns of choice in gang slayings. Even a thirteen-year-old was likely to know that.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did the shooting happen?”

  “She says she was with some guys and there was an argument. She was holding the gun for one of them. She says she didn’t mean to kill Juan, but the gun went off.”

  “What guys?”

  “She’s too scared to tell.”

  That made sense in New Mexico. “We have a law in this state that makes an accessory as guilty as the shooter.”

  “Yeah? I didn’t know that,” Sonia said. She was rubbing her fingers together—the telltale gesture of a worrier in need of a bead or a smoker in need of a butt.

  I wondered how much Cheyanne knew about the accessory law and, if so, who had told her. Gangs, I figured, would have their own accessory laws.

  Sonia fixed her tired eyes on me. “Could you help us?” she pleaded. “Cheyanne thinks a lot of you. I know you could represent her better than anybody, but I can’t afford to pay you much.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “If I take the case, we’ll work something out.”

  “Maybe I’ll win the lottery.”

  “Maybe.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears. “Is Cheyanne gonna spend the rest of her life in prison for this?”

  It was a parent’s second-worst nightmare. The first is that her own child will be lying dead in the street.

  “She don’t know nothing ’bout guns. She didn’t mean to kill Juan. She was hangin’ with the wrong people, that’s all. It was just a dumb mistake.”

  Dumb for her, maybe, fatal for Juan, a nightmare for his family and friends. “Cheyanne is thirteen, isn’t she?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All the state can do to a thirteen-year-old is put her in the Girls’ School for two years.” Prosecutors had tried to get consecutive two-year terms, but no one had succeeded yet. Two years was the maximum under our justice system, but it was unlikely gang members would be so willing to forgive and forget.

  “Really?” Her sense of relief was so strong that for a minute her fingers stopped fidgeting and she forgot how much she needed a cigarette.

  “Really. Did Cheyanne know Juan Padilla?”

  “He used to hang out around the place some, but when he got in a gang I told him I didn’t want him comin’ around no more. I don’t want gangs rankin’ in my boy, Danny. Look, I gotta go back to work this afternoon. I need to get some sleep, and I’ll sleep a whole lot better if you’ll just tell me you’ll represent Cheyanne.”

  “She hasn’t been charged with anything yet,” I pointed out. “A witness fingered a guy named Ron Cade, who’s a member of a Heights gang. The police are looking for him. Did he hang out around the place, too?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “The shooting happened Friday night. Do you know where Cheyanne was then?”

  She shook her head. “I was working.”

  “And after work?”

  “I went to see my boyfriend. Will you help us? Please. Cheyanne’ll be better off in the Girls’ School for two years than she will on the street. My boy’s always been good as can be, but I never could do nothin’ with her.”

  “I need to talk to Cheyanne before I make a decision.”

  Sonia stood up. “I’ll go get her.”

  “I need to talk to her alone,” I said.

  “You think she’s gonna tell you something she didn’t tell me?”

  “She might.”

  “She’s my daughter,” Sonia insisted.

  “She’ll be my client,” I replied.

  “You lawyerin’ me?”

  “Just doing my job,” I said.

  Sonia was too tired to argue. “All right.” The minute she was out of the house she lit up, Marlboro Reds. If she was a drinker I figured her for Jack Daniel’s, a smooth, cool, seductive drink, a gambler’s drink, a drink that tasted good. Jack Daniel’s could make you believe it would make things better. My preference, Cuervo Gold, didn’t taste good enough to make any promises. All it offered and all it delivered was to kill the pain. I opened the street door for Sonia and saw Danny waiting on his souped-up bike.

  “Hi, darlin’.” Sonia gave him a hug with one hand and tousled his hair with the other, leaving the cigarette to dangle from her lip. “You’re on your way to school?”

  He nodded.

  “Do me a favor, will you, and get your sister.”

  “Okay.” Danny pedaled away on his bike.

  “That’s my good kid,” Sonia said while Danny was still within earshot. “My nine-year-old.”

  Good kid. Bad kid. Some roles are assigned early, and once they are it’s hard not to live up to them. I knew that because I’d been the bad kid myself. “Danny’s Cheyanne’s brother?” I asked.

  “Half brother. They have different fathers. You know how that is. Danny’s father’s Hispanic. Cheyanne says you have a Hispanic guy living here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mexican men can be rough, but they can be kind, too, if you know what I mean.”

  Actually, I did. “He’s not Mexican. He was born in Argentina.”

  “Well, he speaks Spanish, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Spanish guys in this country get treated like women, so they know how that feels. It can make them gentle if it don’t make them mean. Cheyanne’s father was a mean son of a bitch. He was gone before she was even out of the womb. But Danny’s father, he keeps in touch. He works, gives me money for Danny. He does things with his boy and he’d do ’em with Cheyanne too if she’d let him. Cheyanne likes to think her father is an Indian. Does she look like she has any Indian blood to you?”

  “No.”

  “She gave herself the name Cheyanne, but she spells it C-H-E-Y-A-N-N-E. She always did have a lot of imagination.”

  “What’s her real name?”

  “Charlene.”

  Charlene/Cheyanne was following Danny down the street looking rumpled and tired. She cradled the fat orange and white cat in her arms.

  “Neil here wants to talk to you alone,” Sonia said.

  “Can I bring Tabatoe in?”

  “No, you cannot! Put that damn cat down.”

  Cheyanne put Tabatoe on the ground, and the cat made a dash for the catnip patch.

  “You tell Neil everything. You hear me?” Sonia said.

  “I hear you,” Cheyanne mumbled to her running shoe.

  “What?”

  “I HEAR YOU!” Like many c
onversations between mothers and daughters, this one was full of capital letters and exclamation points.

  “All right.” Sonia turned around and walked home with her high heels tapping the street. Danny rode his bike toward school. I led Cheyanne into the house, called my office and told Anna I’d be late. Cheyanne would be late for school herself, but under the circumstances that didn’t seem critical. In fact, it seemed wiser not to go. The best thing for Cheyanne at this point would be to stay home and barricade the door or to get out of town if she had a father or anybody else to go to.

  First I asked her why she went out last night. “Nobody was home. Danny was with his father. I was lonely,” she said.

  “Where did you go?”

  “To Patricia’s house.”

  “That was Ron Cade you were with when I saw you beside the ditch, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “Will you tell me what happened with him?”

  “Nothing. He tried to rough me up is all, but I curled up in a ball and pretended I was a little animal, see. He didn’t hurt me. It was no big deal.”

  “Did you see him again last night? Did he convince you to confess to Juan Padilla’s killing in order to cover for him? They can’t do much to you, but they could put him away for life.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Why did you tell your mother about Juan this morning?”

  “I couldn’t keep it a secret no more. You’re not going to tell my mom about Ron Cade, are you?”

  “It would be better if she knew.”

  “Don’t tell her, please. She’ll kill me.”

  “I can’t represent you, Cheyanne, if you’re not honest with me.”

  “I’m honest.” Not exactly. If nothing else, there were lies of omission.

  “Were you with Ron the night Juan was killed?”

  “Anybody I was with is as guilty as me, right?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then don’t make me tell you that.” She squirmed in her chair.

  “I’m your lawyer, not your judge. Whatever you say stops here.”

  “I can’t,” she mumbled.

  Who were you with? was a question you might not want to ask an adult client. And there was a real good chance you’d never ask my next question; sometimes it’s better not to know. But this client was only thirteen years old. I tried to get her to look me in the eye, but her eyes were fixed on her big toe. “Did you shoot Juan Padilla?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she mumbled.

  “I didn’t ask whether you meant to. I asked if you did.”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t nod. We’re talking about murder here. Maybe Juan wasn’t an altar boy, but he was a person. He had a family, he had a life, he had dreams just like you.”

  “I know,” she said. Tears were running down her face.

  “I want an answer and I want you to look at me when you give it. Did you shoot Juan Padilla?”

  She raised her eyes, and although she looked harder at the wall than she did at me, she gave me an answer. “Yes. I shot Juan Padilla. All right?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not all right, but I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “How many times did you pull the trigger?”

  “Only once. It was an accident, like I said. I wasn’t trying to kill nobody.”

  “Where did the bullet hit Juan?”

  “In the heart.” She put her hands to her chest to show me the spot.

  “What kind of gun was it?”

  “A thirty-eight.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Wait here a minute.” I went and got my own Ladysmith thirty-eight, which—at the moment—was residing unloaded in my bedside table. I checked to be sure—no bullets—and handed the gun to Cheyanne. “Show me how it happened,” I said.

  She stared at the gun as if it were a centipede, curled, angry and ready to bite.

  “Show me,” I insisted.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes.”

  She pointed the gun at the wall, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger with a click. Her tiny hand had trouble reaching around the handle even though this gun had been designed for women. She proved she could fire it once, although she might have had trouble firing it again in rapid succession.

  “What did you do after you fired the gun?”

  “I ran home and threw it in the ditch.”

  “Where?”

  “Between here and there.” She stared wistfully at my blank computer screen. “I don’t think my mom’s gonna make me go to school today. Would you mind if I played with Digital Schoolhouse or got on the Internet for a while?”

  “Not now,” I said. “I have to go to work. Tell your mother I’ll call her this afternoon.”

  “You can’t. She disconnected the phone. She said too many boys were calling.”

  “Then tell her I’ll stop by after work. You stay home all day with your mother and you keep the door locked. All right?”

  “All right.”

  I walked her to the door and watched until her mother opened the door and let her into the trailer. When I crossed the courtyard again I spotted Sonia’s butt on the bricks. I picked it up, took it inside and dropped it in the trash.

  5

  ON MY WAY downtown I took a detour to the District Attorney’s office to visit my old friend and occasional adversary, Deputy DA Anthony Saia. He still had his creased, rumpled Sunday-morning-in-bed look, although his hair had turned Saturday-night slick. He had the kind of hair that reacted to every change in humidity and wind—before he started spraying it. He hadn’t sprayed his desk, however, and that was still a mess. Having a computer hadn’t prevented him from accumulating a pile of papers that was six inches thick and in constant motion. If he sneezed, a document would fall off. His walls were cluttered with diplomas and photos of himself at various stages of his legal career. Rowing a boat at Yale, smiling with President Clinton when the Pres came to town, eating Chinese with Raymond Ko at the Ko Palace. But the most prominent spot on the wall was occupied by a mirror tipped so that Saia could see into it without getting up from his desk.

  “Hey, Neil,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good. New hairdo?” I asked.

  He ran his hand over his helmet-smooth head. “Oh, yeah. I haven’t seen you for a while, have I?”

  “Nope.” There was only one reason I could think of for Anthony Saia to change his look. “New woman?”

  He grinned. “That, too.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Her name is Jennifer Spaulding. She’s a clerk for Judge Raymond Stone.”

  “A law clerk?”

  “Yeah. She works out with a personal trainer. Great abs.”

  “I see a few more gray ones, Anthony.” It was a lie, but a Deputy DA ought to know a lie when he hears one.

  “Where?” he said, turning toward the mirror.

  “Just kidding.”

  “Ha, ha. So what’s new with you?”

  “I quit smoking.” Saia was a guy who worked out with a pack of cigarettes, a hard-core nonfiltered Camel addict who’d been known to keep two cigarettes burning at once. I checked his desk and saw no overflowing ashtrays or smoking butts. “You too?” Was that a side effect of being involved with a law clerk?

  “Naah. They turned this into a nonsmoking office, so now I have to go outside. Bad thing to do to a public servant. It could be enough to send me into private practice.” That was one change I didn’t think Saia would ever make; this man was born to prosecute. “How’s your life going?”

  “Good. I bought a house.”

  “Where?”

  “In the North Valley.”

  “Yeah?” He rubbed his fingers together in the universal gesture of money and greed. The North Valley is one of Albuquerque’s more affluent neighborhoods, but not the street tha
t I live on.

  “Not that part of the Valley,” I said.

  “Where is it?”

  “On Mirador east of Fourth.”

  “There was a shooting in that neighborhood recently, a kid named Juan Padilla.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Is this the visit of a concerned citizen?” He knew I didn’t stop by just to shoot the shit.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Anything you want to tell me about Juan Padilla’s death? You know something I don’t?”

  “What do you know?”

  “We have a witness who ID’d the shooter as Ron Cade, a member of a Heights gang.” That was no revelation; it had been all over the news.

  “Your witness is reliable?”

  “He gave the police a very accurate description of the shooter.”

  If he was thinking the same thing I was—that the witness’s description might be too accurate—he gave no indication. “The sketch was very close to Ron Cade’s photo,” I said.

  “There was a strong resemblance. It was either Cade or his evil twin,” Saia agreed. “The police artist does good work.”

  “What’s your witness’s name?”

  “I’d rather not give it out until I have to. He’s a juvenile. There’s always the danger of gang retaliation.”

  “Is he a gang member?” That would make any witness less credible in my book.

  “No.”

  “The witness didn’t see anybody but Cade?”

  “No.”

  “And you believe Ron Cade acted alone?” In my experience teenagers joined gangs because they didn’t like to act alone.

  “That’s what the witness said.”

  “That’ll make it easier for you guys. Only one perp to track down.”

  “Unless Padilla’s gang gets to him first. Their system of justice is swift and effective. Ours?” He threw up his hands.

  “Are you ever tempted just to stay out of the way and let them duke it out?”

  “It would save the taxpayers some money,” Saia said. “A Four O shoots Ron Cade in retaliation for Juan Padilla’s death, which was probably in retaliation for some other gang member’s death. Then a Heights Highlifer has to kill a Four O in retaliation for Ron Cade. Once the killers are dead we turn them into heroes. That’s the American way. Trouble is, a gang-banger’s idea of justice can be to drive down the street shooting at anyone wearing the wrong color. We’re not always right either, but we do put more effort into our justice than they put into theirs.”