Ditch Rider

by Judith Van GIeson

  I turned onto Llorca and headed back toward Rosa looking at more of the same: graffiti walls, children playing, guys washing their cars, women talking, most of them paying far less attention to my passing than the people on Pino had. That street had pulsated with paranoia. I stopped at Rosa, waiting for the traffic to clear and watching a woman step off her porch, walk across the corner lot and unlatch a chain-link gate. When she reached the street she waved. There was nobody in a hurry behind me, so I waited to see what she wanted. She wore bedroom slippers and a black dress. Her white hair tumbled out of her bun. Her legs were as thick as tree trunks. Her face was furrowed. Her eyes were dark. When she reached the Nissan I rolled down my window.

  “Could you give me a ride to the Seven-Eleven?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said.

  She shuffled around to the passenger side, and I unlocked the door to let her in. She lowered herself slowly to the seat and locked the door behind her. “Do you play Powerball?” she asked me.

  “No.”

  “I won two hundred dollars last week. Why don’t you play?”

  “I don’t like to gamble. Life is risky enough.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “Life is very risky.” She didn’t say anything else until I’d driven the five blocks north to the 7-Eleven. Driving on Rosa was a gamble, too, and we both gave it our full attention. Her foot tapped an imaginary brake whenever she thought I wasn’t reacting fast enough. I reached the 7-Eleven and parked without being sideswiped or rear-ended or provoked into giving anybody the finger. My passenger put her hand on the door handle and asked, “Will you wait while I buy my ticket?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I had parked behind a Dumpster with a sign on it that read “FOR STORE USE ONLY.” I watched a guy drive up, dump a large bag of his own trash and speed off. In a few minutes my passenger was back with a scratch ticket and a quart of milk. She sat down, patiently scraped the black goo off her ticket, sighed and said, “Not this time.”

  “Do you want me to take you home?”

  “Yes, but leave me on Rosa, please. It’s not good for you to be seen in my neighborhood. I remember you from the courtroom. Do you remember me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe somebody else will remember you, too.”

  “You were related to Juan?”

  “I am his grandmother.”

  “You’re a Padilla?”

  She nodded. “I have thirty-five grandchildren. Do you believe that? He is the third one to die. It’s not right when the grandchildren die before the grandmother.”

  I couldn’t disagree with that.

  “Why were you on Llorca?” she asked me.

  “I was looking for someone.”

  “On my street?”

  “No. On Pino.”

  “There are a lot of gang members on Pino. Which one were you looking for?”

  I looked into Grandmother Padilla’s eyes and saw a well in which my information could settle to the bottom and sink into the sediment. Still, I wasn’t eager to give up the name of a witness. It could be risky for me, it could be risky for the witness.

  “Was it Alfredo Lobato?” she asked.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “He told everybody he saw the murder and that the killer was the white boy.”

  “Ron Cade.”

  “If he saw Ron Cade, why did you let that pretty little girl say she did it?”

  “Ron Cade had an alibi. My client didn’t. She knew things about the crime that the police didn’t reveal. She was spotted near the crime scene around the time of the murder.”

  “Was she afraid?”

  “Very.”

  “In my time boys killed each other. Girls didn’t do things like that. And now they are murderers, too?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Alfredo is a sad boy.” She tapped the side of her head with her forefinger. “Mean, but not very smart.”

  “Are you related to him, too?”

  “Not that I know of.” Her brown eyes twinkled, and I saw the spirit of a young and lively woman. “For a long time nobody wanted Alfredo. He was a want-to-be. Even the gang didn’t want him, but then I see him wearing the shirt. I think you will want to know why he was accepted, but I don’t think you should come looking here again.”

  I’d reached the corner of Llorca and parked on the far side of Rosa.

  “I can walk from here,” she said. “Thank you very much for the ride.”

  “Thank you for the advice.” I handed her my card. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

  She stared at my name and address, fingered the card and put it in her pocket. “I have one more word of advice for you,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Play Powerball.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  She let herself out of the car. I waited for the light to change and the traffic to clear, then watched her walk across the street holding the milk carton in her hand.

  ******

  That night over Tecate, tequila and a couple of burritos from Arriba Tacos, I told the Kid I’d seen Alfredo Lobato, but I didn’t tell him I’d also seen a gun.

  “What’d Lobato look like?” the Kid asked.

  “Big, ugly. Like you said, he has a goatee on the back of his head.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “I drove by his house on Pino. He was outside shooting baskets. I stopped and asked for directions. You were right about his being a member of the Four O’s; he was wearing a Juan Padilla mourning shirt.”

  “That DA guy was wrong.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe Lobato became a witness first and a Four O later.”

  “I told you to stay away from those guys. You never know when to stop, chiquita.”

  And how many times had I heard that one? Sometimes the tightrope I walked on had no net, which was one reason the Kid liked me whether he’d admit it or not. If I didn’t go looking for excitement, he’d be aburrido como una ostra, bored as an oyster. “Why should I stop?”

  “Because it’s dangerous.”

  I shrugged and took a sip of my tequila.

  “You never listen to me,” he complained.

  “You never say anything new,” I replied, wondering how much time it took with someone before you began repeating yourself. He had nothing to say to that, and we finished the burritos in silence. While I cleaned up he watched Walker, Texas Ranger, his favorite bad and violent TV show. Some people watch violence so they don’t have to do it; some people watch it and get inspired to do it. When the Kid is angry he becomes silent, not violent. He was still fuming when we went to bed, which meant he wasn’t talking. He can go to bed angry and fall sound asleep and I can’t. I lay awake watching him toss and turn and thinking about how complicated men are. At least women can talk about what’s bothering them and get rid of it. Problems (especially men problems) are a hot potato that women toss from hand to hand. But men don’t talk at all or they talk about cars and sports while the wheels inside keep turning and churning. Compared to the Kid I’m simple, I thought. Basically I have two moods. Either I’m pissed off or I’m not.

  18

  THE KID SPENT Sunday afternoon lying on the sofa watching a baseball game and keeping to his vow of silence. I spent the afternoon working in the front yard waiting to see if Danny would pedal by. My front yard is surrounded by a low wooden fence. The enclosure is about the size of a bathroom, but I found enough to do. There were Siberian elm shoots everywhere. I gave them a tug, but they didn’t want to come out of the holes they’d burrowed in the ground, so I took a pair of clippers and snipped them off at the root. When I had a pile I carried it down the driveway and dumped it behind the garage.

  I continued my weed therapy by stepping outside my yard and working the area in front of the fence, which gave me a clear view of the trailer. Leo’s truck and Sonia’s Thoroughbred Toyota were parked out front. If anyone came out I’d see them and they’d see me
, but nobody did. The shoulder of Mirador Road was where the tough weeds grew. They were about eighteen inches tall, with sage green leaves and a delicate lavender flower, but were hard and thorny as a homegirl. I yanked at them and got bloody fingers and a palm full of prickers. I went back to the garage, found an old pair of gloves and continued tugging. Weeding isn’t fun, but at least you can see that you’ve accomplished something. The ice-cream truck drove by tinkling lullaby and good night, but it didn’t pull anybody out of their homes.

  The pricker pile was building and I was getting hot and sweaty when the Kid pushed open the door to take a commercial, pee and/or silence break.

  “You’re gardening, chiquita?” he said.

  “So?”

  “I never saw you do that before.”

  “Isn’t there a baseball game on?”

  “Sure,” he said, shutting the door.

  I returned to my tugging. My gray nemesis climbed up the courtyard wall and studied me as if it might pounce. I threw a handful of weeds in its direction and it leapt down only to reappear on the far side of the courtyard still watching, but beyond the reach of my throwing arm. All my bad dreams and dark thoughts seemed to have coalesced into the form of a street cat hungry for my catnip patch. The pacing and watching could be seen as my punishment for giving in and feeding its addiction. I know it’s better to face your demons than it is to sublimate them, but I was getting sick of this one. “You don’t have to supply every junkie on the block,” I told myself. “You could get rid of this cat by yanking the catnip out.” I was thinking about doing it when I heard the squeal of Danny’s bike. The cat heard it, too, and raced down the driveway.

  I straightened up and let go of the weed I’d been tugging. The best thing about gardening is how good it feels to stop. I put my hand against my back and stretched a kink out. Danny was approaching from an unexpected direction—the ditch instead of the trailer—and looking hot and sweaty himself.

  He pedaled up beside me, dropped his kickstand to the ground and watched the cat as it disappeared behind the house. “That cat gives me a hinky feeling,” he said. “Like Goosebumps.”

  “I don’t like it either,” I replied.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Weeding.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I’m done. How about a glass of water or lemonade?”

  “Lemonade,” he said.

  I went into the house, came back with two lemonades and we sat down on the banco in the courtyard to drink them.

  “Patricia told me you’ve been following her on your bike,” I began.

  “Sometimes I do,” he said.

  “Are you worried about her?”

  He nodded. “Look what happened to my sister.”

  “You’re nine years old, Danny.” The dangerous age, when a boy would do anything to be accepted. “You should leave this stuff to the grown-ups.” He gave me a look that implied he didn’t think the grown-ups had been doing so hot so far. “You miss your sister, don’t you?”

  “A lot.” He swung his heels and kicked the banco. “She could be mean, but she didn’t let anybody punk me.”

  “Somebody tried to punk you?”

  “The gangs thought I was a Four O because my dad used to be, but I’m not.”

  “Your dad tries real hard to keep you out of the gangs, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t live here and Cheyanne did.”

  “She and your dad fought?”

  He nodded. “All the time.”

  “Did they fight the night she got beat up?”

  “No.” Today his hair was grease-free and it fell into loose and floppy bangs. He brushed them away from his face. “She was in her room. Him and me, we were watching TV.”

  “What was it that got Cheyanne out of the house? Do you know?”

  “I think somebody beeped her and she climbed out the window.”

  “Cheyanne had a beeper?”

  He finished his lemonade and put the glass down on the banco. “It was an old one of Patricia’s. She said it was big and ugly and it didn’t even vibrate. She didn’t want it no more.”

  “What happened to the beeper after Cheyanne went to the D Home?” I asked.

  “I have it.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “No.”

  “Did you show it to your mom or dad?”

  “Cheyanne said not to. She said they’d go off if they knew. I locked in the last message she got.”

  “Could I see it?”

  He saw that I wasn’t about to go off and said, “Okay.”

  He biked down the road and in a few minutes came back with the beeper hidden under his shirt. We took it into the courtyard and shut the door behind us. The beeper looked like a guy’s model, plain and black with a belt clip on the side. I could see why Patricia wanted a new one. Since I was beeper-illiterate, I asked Danny to show me how it worked.

  “When somebody calls you, see, their message or their number shows up here.” He pointed to the tiny LCD screen, which happened to be blank at the moment. “Some beepers have letters, but those ones cost a lot. Kids don’t have that kind, so they use the numbers for letters. This beeper only has numbers. You can leave a code if you want to so people will know it’s you.”

  “A code?”

  “That’s like a tag,” he said.

  I stared at the blank little screen, but it told me nothing. Danny pushed the lock-in button. A little padlock appeared in the corner and the number 6656 showed up. “That’s the code of the person who called Cheyanne,” he said.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “No.”

  “Do those numbers represent letters?”

  “5 is S, but 6 isn’t anything.”

  “Could it be a B?”

  “No. That’s 8.”

  He pushed another button and what looked like a phone number came up. “I think that’s a beeper number,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because the beeper company that everybody goes to uses those first three numbers.”

  He pushed the button again and the sequence 01*10*17335 appeared. “That means see you at the ditch at ten.”

  “Huh?”

  He flipped the pager over and showed me the numbers reversed and upside down. “5 is S, 3 is E, 17 is U. That’s see you. 01 is a d or an a. But this time I think it’s a d and it means ditch. Star is at. And 10 is 10.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “There are a lot of messages that kids send. 177 0 177 or 303, that’s MOM. 304 upside down, that means hoe.”

  “As in whore?”

  “Right. 304*55318008, do you know what that means?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Do you have any of those yellow stick-on things?”

  “Post-its?”

  “Yeah.”

  I went inside and got him a pad of Post-its and a pen. He wrote the message down for me, but I couldn’t decipher it.

  “Look at it upside down.”

  I still couldn’t imagine what it meant.

  “Boobless hoe,” he said.

  The creative imagination of kids boggled the mind. The game was time-consuming and seductive. Already I was wondering if the word boggle could translate into numbers.

  “‘17*31707*1,’” Danny wrote. “That’s I love you.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said. “Are there any other messages stored?”

  “No. With this beeper you can only lock in one.”

  “Did you call the number?” I asked him.

  Danny nodded. “I called one time when I was at my dad’s for the weekend. I left his number but nobody called back. Some people don’t answer even when they get your message. They say they forgot their beeper or their battery went dead. Or they got a lot of messages and the first ones were erased.”

  “I think it would be better if you di
dn’t try again.”

  “Okay,” he said. He actually seemed relieved to be finally turning the matter over to an adult.

  “Do you want the beeper back?”

  “You keep it,” he said. “Are you going to call the number?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe when you find who that person is you’ll find out that my sister didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Somebody has to prove she didn’t do it,” he said with the same fire in his eyes that I’d seen in his dad’s.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  He got on his bike and rode home without indicating whether he thought my best would be good enough.

  ******

  I went inside and called Information to see if any of my suspects’ beeper numbers were listed and found out that the phone company doesn’t list beeper numbers. The police could track the number down if they had just cause, but I couldn’t turn it over without my client’s consent (which I didn’t think would be forthcoming) or involving Danny further, and I didn’t want to do that. I dialed the phone number Danny had locked in and got a generic female voice telling me to key in my number at the tone. I thought about leaving a message, but my imagination wasn’t up to the job of translating what I had to say into numerical form, so I punched in my office number and hung up. I didn’t want to be waiting around my house for some delinquent to show up or call me back. In a way, beepers resembled ditches. They were a current that flowed through the valley. Once you put your number out there you gave someone the power to answer and let the water flow or to shut you off.

  I went into the living room, where the baseball game was still on the tube. Nobody happened to be spitting in anybody else’s face. The outfielders stood around staring into their gloves and looking bored as oysters. The Kid was sound asleep on the sofa. That’s precisely the effect baseball has on me.