“Ouch,” I said.
“Hey.” Leo looked over at me.
“How’s Danny’s team doing?”
He laughed. “Losing again, but he sure does love to play. How’s Cheyanne?”
“She seems to be all right.”
“That’s good.”
Leo’s eyes returned to the field, where Danny had picked himself up and started running again. There was a paper cup in Leo’s left hand and he raised his arm to take a sip. The Virgin of Guadalupe slipped out from under the sleeve of his t-shirt and embedded in his right forearm I could see the other tattoo. What I had seen earlier as a chain I now saw as four zeros.
“What gang were you a member of?” I asked him.
“Why do you want to know?” he replied.
“Was it the Four O’s?”
He looked at his arm, saw that the tattoo was plainly visible and owned up.
“How’d you get out?”
“I didn’t. Gangs are like family. You never get out, but you can get away and that’s what I did. I just don’t have anything to do with them. They’re more interested in ranking in the young ones anyway than they are in me.”
“How do they feel about your girlfriend’s daughter pleading guilty to Juan Padilla’s murder?”
“I haven’t discussed it with them.”
“There couldn’t be many Four O’s your age left.” I doubted if Leo was thirty-five, but he’d probably lived long enough to be an elder statesman in gangland.
“Not outside the Pen,” he said.
“If they consider you family, I suppose there is a lot of pressure to rank Danny in.”
“Too much,” he said. He turned toward me and his eyes blazed with a fire I hadn’t seen even when he’d been sniping at Cheyanne. No one is as fierce as the converted—or those who want you to believe they’re converted. “But they’re not gettin’ him. My son’s not dying when he’s fifteen. My son’s not gonna be in the State Pen. My son’s gonna grow up and get a job and take care of me when I’m an old man.”
The game ended, and Danny galloped over to us. Leo pulled him close and ruffled his hair, which—today anyway—happened to be grease-free. Some children seem to be born good. Some children get told it so often they start to believe it. Hard to tell which of those categories Danny fit into, but he was a good kid. I wondered whether that was a quality that was fixed for life or if there was still time for the gang predators to get ahold of him and turn him into one of them.
A sandy-haired soccer dad approached Leo and they started making plans for next week’s game. The other dad wore khakis and a polo shirt. His eyes were a faded blue. Leo dropped his arms to his side, hiding his tattoos.
“This is the best facility in the city,” the dad said. “You know that?”
“It’s pretty good,” Leo replied. “I’ve been watching your boy. He has a lot of talent.”
“You think so?” The dad beamed.
“Sure.”
“Danny’s coming along well.”
“That’s good to hear.”
While Danny watched his dad with admiring eyes, I wandered off and examined the crowd. A soccer field is one place where the colors of Albuquerque come together, where junker meets Mercedes-Benz and what matters is enthusiasm for the game. Sports have long been a way out of one life and into another. I saw brown, white, Asian and black kids with matching and unmatching parents. The one thing the parents had in common was that they all had plans for their children. The Kid and I wouldn’t have stood out here, except that he was closer to the soccer players’ age than I was.
Some girls gathered at one end of the field. They could have been cheerleaders, but they’d taken no interest in the game. They were just hanging out, looking at boys, comparing fingernails. I saw Patricia and walked over to say hello. When she spotted me coming she separated from the other girls and met me about ten feet away. Her fingernails were nearly an inch long. Her lips were black. She was wearing a chain around her neck that said BITCH in silver letters. Her pager was attached to the waistband of her skirt.
“How’s it going?” I asked her.
“Okay.”
“Do you talk to Cheyanne?”
“Every day.”
“She’s doing better than I expected.”
“Oh, sure, she’s doin’ great in jail twenty-four-seven,” Patricia scoffed.
“Twenty-four-seven?”
“All day every day. She’s gonna be spending the best years of her life in the Girls’ School.”
“The judge hasn’t accepted her plea yet.”
“He will. Did you see the way he looked at her? Even if he doesn’t, her life still won’t be worth nothin’. She’s only thirteen and already her life is over.”
“It’s not over. Life does get better when you get older.”
“But you don’t have any fun.”
“I don’t know. My boyfriend and I have some good times.”
“He’s still young!” she said.
“Not that young,” I replied.
“Cheyanne’ll die if she goes to the Girls’ School. She can’t spend two years in that place.” Spoken with the intense conviction of a fourteen-year-old. It was like witnessing an oath, as if Patricia had slashed her finger and mixed her blood with Cheyanne’s for all time.
If Cheyanne did get two years and got out before her time was up, it wouldn’t be the first (or last) time someone escaped from the D Home or the Girls’ School. The escapees usually got caught, but not always. “If you’re thinking escape, don’t even consider it,” I said.
“Two years is forever!”
“No, it’s not. It’ll be over before you know it.” I had enough mileage on me by now to put two years in perspective. “Your friend Nolo Serrano talked to me after the arraignment.”
“Him? He’s not my friend.”
“He said he’d look out for Cheyanne while she’s inside.”
“The only person Nolo looks out for is himself.” Patricia glanced at her sports watch. “I gotta go.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
“I’m going downtown to my office. I can give you a ride.”
I could see her mentally comparing me to the bus and deciding I was better, but not by much. “Okay,” she said. “As soon as I turn fifteen my parents are giving me a car. No more rides. No more bus.”
“Cool,” I said.
The soccer crowd was breaking up and heading for their cars, trucks and bikes. Patricia and I walked down Mirador toward my house. While we waited for the long light at Second she turned around and saw that Danny had left his father behind at the soccer field and was following us on his bike. “Hey, bro,” she called. Danny waved.
“He follows me a lot now,” Patricia said.
“How come?”
“He doesn’t have his sister to follow anymore.”
“She didn’t like it much.”
“It doesn’t bother me. I don’t have a little brother.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Only Cheyanne. She’s like my sister.”
The light changed and we crossed Second. It’s hard to make small talk with a teenager. Besides, the things I wanted to talk about were not small, so I went ahead and asked her what I wanted to know. Either she’d answer or she wouldn’t. If I’d been Detective Jessup I’d have tried flattery, but that’s not my style.
“I could have done more for Cheyanne if she’d told me who or what got her out of the house the night she was assaulted,” I said. “If she’ll say it was Ron Cade, I may be able to get her out of the D Home.”
Patricia said nothing, and we kept on walking. We reached my house and stood outside in front of the courtyard.
“She doesn’t like Leo much, does she?” I tried again.
That got a response. “She hates him. They’re always duking it out.”
“Why?”
“He thinks he’s the head honcho. He tries to tell her what to do. He’
s not her father.”
I’d been focused on our conversation and hadn’t noticed how close Danny had come. He had a way of turning into a shadow when he rode his bike. Whether he was within earshot or not I couldn’t tell.
“Did they fight that night?” I said, lowering my voice as if Patricia and I were conspirators, but that could only happen if she confided in me. She closed her eyes and considered it for a minute, but when she opened them again I could see I was one of those people over thirty she couldn’t trust.
“I can’t tell you what happened that night.”
“You have to trust somebody.” She was a savvy fourteen-year-old but way young to be dealing with matters of life and death by herself. She’d erected a wall, however, and I didn’t know the way in.
Her eyes were opaque. “I trust Cheyanne. She trusts me.” She looked at her watch again. “I gotta go.”
“Okay.” I walked down the driveway to get the car, and when I came back Danny had pedaled home.
******
Patricia directed me to her house, which was several blocks south of Mirador on one of the streets that still resembles a country road. She lived in a frame stucco dwelling in the middle of a large lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. It wasn’t much of a place, but I figured Patricia’s bedroom would be pink and plush and full of gadgets like the computer she knew how to operate and the pager she always wore. The west side of the property bordered the Chapuzar Lateral, the ditch that crossed Mirador near my house and the Morans’ trailer. It was a cool and shady walk from her place to mine in the daytime, but at night the predators roamed and La Llorona would be out weeping and looking for her lost children. On the ditch side of the field the fence was topped by circles of wire.
Two orange chows had dug holes in the dirt next to the fence, and they leapt up when I parked. One growled, the other stood still and watched. As soon as Patricia stepped out the door they ran toward her wagging their tails.
“Hi, guys,” she said.
She pulled a key ring from her purse and began unlocking the padlock that held the gate shut. Someone was going to a lot of effort to keep this place and/or Patricia safe. Maybe it was living in a fortress or maybe it was being an only child that enabled her to be so bold. Cheyanne had the raggedy air of a street dog—sometimes confident and sometimes not—but Patricia seemed better-groomed to me, more pampered, and more reckless as well. “Do your parents own this property?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I bet they get offers all the time.” A couple of acres this close to town would get developers salivating even if the rest of the street was full of yard cars and trailers.
“All the time,” she said. “But my dad won’t sell. He grew up here.”
“What does he do?”
“They run a temp business. They work twenty-four-seven.”
She let herself in, locked the gate behind her, stopped to pet the dogs. “Thanks for the ride,” she said.
“De nada,” I replied.
******
I hadn’t intended go to my office. My intention had been to question Patricia, but all I’d learned was where she lived, that she was an only child, that she had parents who worked all the time, that her home life might be more stable than Cheyanne’s but lonelier and that she considered Cheyanne a blood relative. I’d thought about asking her if she knew Alfredo Lobato, but that was a name I felt I ought to be keeping to myself. His name and address and the question of why he’d fingered Ron Cade if Cheyanne had shot Juan Padilla was a sore tooth I couldn’t stop touching. After I dropped Patricia off, I lit a cigarette and went out cruising.
17
I INTENDED MY final destination to be Alfredo Lobato’s house, but I had a couple of other names and addresses in my pocket to check out first. I cut over to Second, went north to Paseo del Norte and headed east toward the foothills. Paseo is a limited-access highway until you reach the Interstate; after that it becomes four lanes, then narrows down to two. I passed the corner where a guy was selling bears he’d carved with a chainsaw and someone else was selling red chile ristras. This used to be an empty part of town, but it was filling up. The land on my right had been turned into identical brick houses that had four thousand square feet inside but only fifteen feet between them. Behind a sign reading “RUNNING RIDGE ESTATES,” the land on the left was just starting to be developed. I turned into the mostly vacant development of one-acre lots. Each of the few houses was surrounded by several undeveloped acres, an island in the high, barren desert.
I found the address I’d been looking for. The house was brand new, with no neighbors and no landscaping. It was large and ugly, as if wings from houses of different styles and periods had been slapped together. The doors to the three-car garage faced the street. The house’s windows—looking west toward the long view—were as blank as eyes that had been sealed shut by cataracts. This was the place where Ron Cade lived if Ron Cade ever came home.
I took Paseo back to I-25, went south to Lomas, drove to the country club and looked for the second house on my list. This was an old and settled neighborhood with expensive landscaping and big trees. Professional people with money who wanted to be close to downtown lived here. The house I’d been looking for was white stucco with a red tile roof in the California mission style. The windows had the scrolls and loops of elaborate burglar bars. The message inscribed thereon was “keep out.” There was a wall around the property and an intercom at the gate. It took only a half hour to get from Ron Cade’s residence to here, but I felt better about Henry O’Brien Jr.’s safety after I saw the place. Gang members would be noticed in this neighborhood. Henry would be protected if he had the brains to stay home, if his craving for coke allowed him to stay home, if his father made him stay home.
I went east on Lomas and north on Rosa to Alfredo Lobato’s hood, where walls spray-painted with graffiti were part of the scenery. It was art or vandalism, depending on your point of view. Recently a cleanup crew hadn’t been able to tell the difference and had painted over a commissioned work of art, which hadn’t made the artist happy.
I’d never driven by Lobato’s place on a Saturday. When I’d yielded to the impulse it had been a weekday. I hadn’t seen anybody in the street, and as far as I knew, no one had seen me. I told myself that once I was noticed I’d stop. Cruising Pino on a Saturday when there was bound to be somebody out was a way of pushing the envelope.
The minute I turned the corner I saw a bunch of teenagers taking up a lot of space in their wide clothes. I saw the clothes as a means of intimidation, and it worked for me. I’d thought of putting my thirty-eight in the glove compartment before I left home; people get shot nowadays for wearing the wrong colors or driving into the wrong hood. But I’d seen too many possibilities for disaster and had left the gun at home. On the other hand, leaving it at home might have encouraged disaster of another kind.
One of the girls looked a lot like Laura from the arraignment. When she saw me she put her hand over her mouth and said something to her friends. I didn’t see the only other gangbanger I knew—Nolo Serrano. I hadn’t put him on my drive-by list because there were too many Serranos in the phone book to narrow my search. As I approached the gang they fanned out until they covered the width of the street. I tried driving onto the shoulder and cutting around them but two guys in “smile now, cry later” shirts stepped in front of me. It was run them down or stop.
“You looking for somebody?” one of the guys asked.
“Is this Calle Llorca?” I asked back.
The gangster’s pants went beyond baggy, his smile radiated menace, four O’s were tattooed across his right forearm, there was a conspicuous bulge under his t-shirt. Just in case I missed the point, he lifted the shirt to show me the Tech Nine he was packing between his boxer shorts and the waistband of his pants. “You’re on the wrong street,” he said.
“How do I get to Llorca?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level, showing neither fear nor disrespect. I figured looking int
o his hostile eyes could be considered a dis, so I focused on his comedy and tragedy masks instead. “You’re an adult,” I told myself. “You’re a lawyer. He’s a punk.” Still, he had the gun and this was his turf. On the other hand, my foot was on the gas pedal and a Nissan could be considered a weapon, too.
Maybe he realized that. Maybe he wasn’t in a killing mood. He looked away from me and pointed deeper into the hood. “Go that way. Turn left.”
“Okay,” I said.
The homeboys stepped aside to let me pass, watched for a minute to make sure I kept on going, then turned around and walked in the direction of Rosa with their cojones intact. I could see in my rearview mirror that the back of their t-shirts read RIP and that no one wore a goatee on the back of his head.
I drove slowly toward the end of the block. There were people out today washing their cars, pounding their boom boxes, playing with their kids or standing around talking. Everybody stared at me, but nobody made a move. I craved a cigarette, but didn’t want to take my eyes off the street long enough to light one. When I got to number 347 I saw someone in the driveway throwing a basketball at the hoop without a net. He was a big guy with a head shaved bald and shiny except for the hair at the nape of his neck that had been slicked into the shape of a goatee. His mourning shirt read JUAN PADILLA RIP.
Maybe my car had an unfamiliar rattle or the people on Pino had finely tuned antennae. Like everybody else, Lobato stopped and stared when he heard me coming. He picked up his basketball and cradled it in his arm. His eyes were small and close together. His skin was pockmarked. Even by gang standards, he looked mean and ugly.
I peered into my rearview mirror and saw that the black cloud of gangsters had left Pino, so I pulled over. Lobato stared at me. I stared back. His stare was duller than the other kids’, as if he wore protective lenses made of tinted glass. I rolled down the window and asked, “Do you know where Rafael Contreras lives?”
“Uh-uh,” he said. He turned around, shot his ball at the basket and missed.
I rolled up my window and drove on. I had the right to question Lobato about the Padilla shooting, but this wasn’t the time or the place. One objective had been accomplished, anyway—to see what kind of person he was. I hadn’t been impressed by the quality of Saia’s witness no matter how well he’d stuck to his story. His Four O’s t-shirt discredited him in my mind. I didn’t consider gang members reliable, especially if they had a score to settle. But Saia had an agenda and that agenda had been Ron Cade. When it came to the truth about Lobato’s gang affiliation, maybe Saia had been hearing what he wanted to hear, believing what he wanted to believe. When I reached the end of the block I did as I’d been told and turned left, wondering why Alfredo Lobato was home alone and not out cruising with the rest of the gang.
Ditch Rider Page 11
