Ditch Rider

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Have you seen Danny boy?” she asked me, changing the subject.

  “Yeah. He told me he misses you.”

  “He’s a dork, but he’s my bro. It sets me off that I can’t do nothin’ for him in here.”

  “What could you do for him out there?”

  “Keep them Four O’s off his back.”

  ******

  When I got home I took out Patricia’s discarded black beeper that had ended up in Cheyanne’s hands. I held it in my palm, where it was a neat fit, and pushed the on switch. The beeper responded by squealing a few times; then a bunch of bubbles appeared on the LCD screen. I pushed the message button. There were a lot of them—codes and numbers that meant something to someone but not much to me. It occurred to me that this was a satellite beeper still connected to Patricia’s number, and that she hadn’t disconnected it when she got the new one. Patricia could have read the messages Cheyanne received and I could read the messages she received—if I could decipher them.

  I pressed the button that recalled the message from Nolo Serrano that Danny had locked in. It was still there on this beeper, although it probably wouldn’t be locked in on the newer model. I figured the beepers received communally but stored individually. I began clicking through Patricia’s messages. I didn’t see Nolo Serrano’s number, which was the only one I’d recognize. Most of the numbers had the first three digits of the popular beeper company. One message I saw several times was 304*14, hi hoe. I saw a few MOM’s and a lot of 17*31707*1, I love you’s. The code for that particular message was 77. I wondered what that meant. Initials? The year of a car? A birthdate? If so, that guy was too old to be saying I love you to Patricia.

  I began checking her messages a couple of times a day. I got a queasy feeling every time the bubbles rose to the surface of the LCD screen, but the messages I could decipher tended to be teen trivia—a lot of hi’s, a lot of hoe’s, a lot of I love you’s. I wouldn’t have minded hearing that one as much as Patricia did.

  ******

  I called Saia and asked him if he’d located Ron Cade.

  “Still working on it,” he said. “He’s one slippery son of a bitch.”

  “I think there’s trouble brewing in gangland,” I told him.

  “There’s always trouble brewing in gangland. You got anything definite?”

  “Not really.”

  “Give me a call back when you do.”

  “What’s your beeper number?”

  “You’ve joined the beeper network?”

  “Sort of.”

  He gave me his number. “Can I beep you?”

  “It would be better if you didn’t.” Any incoming messages for me could also be read by Patricia.

  ******

  On Saturday I did my evening beeper check and finally saw the one number and code I recognized. I compared it to the message in Lock-In to be sure. The code was 6656 and the number was the number that had drawn Nolo Serrano into my office. The message was a long one: 00*17*301177*17701117*17335. 17335 upside down was “see you,” I knew, but the rest of it was a mystery.

  I clicked the message button and found one more message—104. HOL or Hd upside down—or “okay” right side up in the lingo radio operators use. The first three digits told me the callback number was another beeper. I knew from experience that I wouldn’t be able to find out who it belonged to from the phone company. The code was 72, but, like 6656, I couldn’t decipher what it meant. I’d found 6656 by setting up a meeting in my office, but I doubted there’d be time for that and I didn’t want Patricia to know I’d been eavesdropping.

  In a way I’d struck gold, but gold that was buried deep in the vein. It seemed that Patricia and Nolo Serrano were planning to meet and that 72 would be joining them. I needed to find out when and where, so I did what I always do when I’m curious—got out my map. If a map doesn’t provide answers, it can provide escape. This was a city map showing all the drains, arteries, laterals, ditches, wasteways, streets, lanes, courts, roads, places and trails in town.

  I went back to Nolo Serrano’s message and tried looking at the second word upside down. Since “see you” had been upside down, it seemed logical that the next word would be, too. I got gobbledygook, but when I flipped the beeper right side up I got 17701117, which could be Main. I’d never heard of a Main Street in Albuquerque; it didn’t strike me as a Main Street kind of place. But I checked the street index on my map and found a Main leading out of Old Town. It wasn’t a good place for this assignation—too busy, too far away. I figured this meeting would take place closer to Patricia’s house, maybe even within walking distance since she wasn’t old enough yet for her parents to have bought her a car. My eyes returned to the map and wandered around the North Valley until they landed on the Main Canal, which flows from the Sandia Reservation to the South Valley. This Main could be reached by starting at the lateral that flowed by Patricia’s house and following the ditch network.

  I was getting somewhere, but not near enough, as the Main Canal was several miles long. I turned to 301177, the next word. Right side up it was E 0 I M-E 0 1M or E d M. I flipped the beeper over. Flipping back and forth was a lot of trouble to go to to pass on a message, but these words and places could already be familiar to the participants and they might not have to go through the gyrations that I did. Upside down 301177 read Lupe. There were Lupes all over the Valley. Lupe Road wandered north and south in the convoluted path of a cow trail. There was also a Lupe Lane, a Circle, a Court and a Trail. The Road more or less paralleled the Main Canal, the Trail crossed it, the Lane, the Circle and the Court came close to abutting it.

  I wondered what kind of place these kids would choose to meet in, protected or secluded. If Patricia met Nolo Serrano at all, it ought to be in a wide-open lot with bright lights adjacent to a police station, but there weren’t any places like that on the Main Canal. I turned next to the number 17, which followed the star sign and meant nothing to me. If it was the time, it was already past five o’clock, the seventeenth hour. Upside down 17 was a U or a V. I went back to my map and found three places where the Main Canal forked and formed a V near Lupe Circle, Lupe Court, and Lupe Lane. They were each about a mile apart.

  The next number was 11, somebody’s age or—more likely—the time of the scheduled assignation. I looked at the clock—nine-thirty, which gave me only an hour and a half.

  I returned to the code 72, looking at it upside down and sideways but it told me nothing. I did the same for 6656, which I already knew to be Nolo Serrano. These particular numbers didn’t resemble letters, but they might represent letters. It was all too possible that Patricia was setting up a meeting with Ron Cade or Alfredo Lobato. AL could be drawn with numbers, but RC couldn’t. I picked up my phone, cradled it in my hand and looked at the numbers 7 and 2. The 7 square contained the letters PRS and the 2 square held ABC. It wasn’t hard to pull RC out of that. Ron Cade. When I looked at 6656 I saw NOLO.

  Anna had said that the girls liked to get the guys together and set them off. If Patricia was putting Ron Cade and Nolo Serrano together, it was a deadly combination. If what had initially set these guys off was the death of Juan Padilla, tonight could be the final resolution. It had been building for some time and in a way the climax would be a relief, especially if it revealed what had really happened the night Juan Padilla died. The trouble was that one or all of them could get maimed or killed. I was glad Cheyanne was tucked away in the D Home tonight, and I wished that Patricia were there, too.

  The phone was already in my hand, so I dialed Anthony Saia’s home number and got the message, “If you talk now, I’ll listen later.”

  The message I left on his machine was, “This is Neil. There is going to be trouble at eleven tonight on the Main Canal near Lupe Circle, Lane or Court.”

  Then I dialed Saia’s beeper number, wondering if he used vibrator mode or sound. I got his voice telling me to key in my message. I left my home number and waited a few minutes, but he didn’t call back. Either he�
��d turned the beeper off or he wasn’t wearing it. I wondered for a minute exactly where Saia was and what he was doing.

  Next I tried the APD, but none of the detectives I’d worked with—Donaldson, Jessup or Mares—were on duty. The dispatcher who took my information gave the distinct impression that she was overworked and underpaid and was putting my information at the bottom of a long list of Saturday-night trouble spots.

  I called Patricia’s home number, but there was no answer and no answering machine. This family communicated by beeper. I thought about sending her beeper the message to stay home, but I didn’t know how to do it and I doubted she’d listen.

  I went into my bedroom and loaded my thirty-eight. Then I put the gun, the map and the beeper in my car and drove to the Kid’s shop, where he’d been working late. He’d already put the hood over the parrot’s cage and was getting ready to lock up and come home.

  I called up the messages I’d found on the beeper’s screen and showed them to him. “I think this means Patricia is setting up a meeting on the Main Canal with Ron Cade and Nolo Serrano at eleven,” I said.

  “How do you get that?” he asked.

  I demonstrated how I’d reached my conclusion, but he was dubious. “I don’t know, chiquita. Even if you are right, the Main Canal is many miles long.”

  “Yeah, but I think the meeting will be near Lupe Circle, Lupe Lane or Lupe Court where the ditch forks. I can’t get Saia. The APD isn’t interested. Somebody has to go,” I said. “Do you want to come with me?”

  “Como no?” Why not?

  “It could be dangerous.”

  He shrugged. He wouldn’t admit it, but he liked danger almost as much as I did. My attraction to danger wasn’t a problem as long as I took him along.

  “I’m bringing my gun,” I told him. Usually the Kid wanted nothing to do with guns, but this time we were talking gang.

  “Bueno,” he said. “Vamos.”

  21

  WE STARTED AT Lupe Court, the Lupe closest to the shop. If we didn’t find anybody there, we intended to work our way south. We had only an hour left and time was of the essence. Lupe Court was a new subdivision off Fourth. A developer had drawn a line through the middle of an alfalfa field, paved it, ended it in a cul-de-sac and sold off the land on either side as building lots. There was a magnificent view of the Sandias, and it was a place to build a dream house. But one person’s dream is another person’s nightmare. The houses were two stories tall and featured angled roofs, prominent balconies and three-car garages. Houses in New Mexico ought to be closer to the ground. The indigenous architecture gives the impression that it’s risen out of the earth and that when its time is over, it intends to sink back in. The houses in Lupe Court cast a large and awkward shadow.

  I drove to the end of the cul-de-sac where the lots hadn’t been developed yet. Any houses constructed here would have to be even bigger than the others to see over the roofs to the view. There were no cars parked in the cul-de-sac or beside the road. It didn’t feel like the right place to me, but since we were here we followed a path that led from the cul-de-sac toward the ditch and ended at a metal fence. There was a gate, but the gate was locked tight to keep people like Patricia, Nolo and Ron Cade out of Lupe Court. We might have found some way around the fence, but time was ticking.

  “If this was where they were meeting, someone’s car would be parked here,” I told the Kid.

  He agreed, and we got back in the Nissan and headed south to Lupe Lane, a dirt road that maintained the Valley’s rural character, although just north of it was Casa, a home supply store with a large, well-lit parking lot. We cruised through the lot, where several cars were parked, although none that I recognized. Then we drove down Lupe Lane past an adobe house and a vegetable garden with dried stalks of corn high enough to hide a crop of marijuana plants. Lupe Lane got rougher and rockier until it ended in a bump at the ditch bank. There were no cars parked here either, although someone could have walked over from Casa easily enough. We climbed up the ditch bank and walked north toward the place where the Main Canal forked. We didn’t have to walk far to see the V because the ditch was lit by the security lights that protected Casa’s storage lot. The lot was fenced and circled by razor wire. A large black dog ran down the length of the fence snarling at us. This wasn’t the place either. Too well lit, too well protected.

  I looked at the clock when we got back to the car—twenty-five minutes left. Patricia’s house was between here and our last stop, Lupe Road. Just for the heck of it I drove by and stopped outside the chain-link fence. The house was dark. The security lights were on. I beeped my horn, hoping for some reaction, but all I got was a sleepy chow crawling out of its hole and growling at me.

  “Usually there are two dogs here,” I said to the Kid.

  “Maybe she took one with her.”

  We continued south on Fourth to Lupe Circle. Every Lupe we went to represented a different period in the Valley’s development. This street looked like the 1970s to me. The houses were medium-sized and low. The trees were large and well established. There were cars parked in the driveways and beside the street. I cruised Lupe slowly until we neared the place where the circle turned back toward Fourth. My headlights landed on a red and white Fast Five Chevy parked in the loop.

  “That’s Nolo’s car,” the Kid said.

  I turned my headlights off, backed up and parked about halfway around the circle. We stepped out of the Nissan, shutting the doors behind us very carefully and quietly. We walked in the middle of the road so as not to crunch the gravel on the shoulder and set off all the dogs in the hood. The dogs heard us anyway and began barking one after another, knocking down quiet like dominoes. “Callensen, perritos,” whispered the Kid. After they’d had their say the dogs calmed down again. Barking was background music in the Valley anyway. It happened too often to rattle anyone’s nerves.

  The moon was high and bright enough to illuminate the footpath beside the Main Canal and reflect off the water in the ditch. Up ahead we saw a footbridge with a small waterfall flowing underneath it. The noise of the falling water concealed the sound of our footsteps. Something small and dark scooted across the grating of the bridge and darted into the brush.

  “We need to get off the path and walk close to the trees,” the Kid whispered.

  “Okay,” I whispered back, but it was tough going once we left the path. The trees were large cottonwoods with rough-textured bark and branches that reached across the ditch. If we’d been squirrels we could have gotten to our destination by leaping from branch to branch. We would have had a bird’s-eye view, and we would have gotten there a lot faster. On the ground it was hard to tell what was substance and what was shadow. We had to get through the weeds and brush without making too much noise and around the obstacles and fences without taking too much time. We’d had fifteen minutes by the car clock when we’d parked. The gentle lapping of the ditch was hiding our more subtle sounds, but then I stepped on a twig, which gave a loud snap. It set my heart thumping so hard I thought it would wake the closest household a hundred feet away. We waited for a reaction, but all we heard was the ditch water flowing, an owl hooting, a dog howling.

  We started up again, trudging through the underbrush. The waning moon was a scimitar in the sky. Lamplight glowed from the windows of the closest house, saying, In here is warmth and safety, out there lies darkness, La Llorona and the creatures of the night. Ahead of us I could see where the ditch forked and formed a V. The Kid grabbed my arm and pulled me deeper into the shadows.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oye,” he whispered. Listen.

  I didn’t hear anything at first but the rippling water. Crying was on my mind, but it was laughter that lifted and separated from the sound of the water. It was a girl’s laugh, soft but chilling as ice water dripping on the back of my neck.

  A guy answered from the other side of the ditch. The lateral was taking some of the water away, but the action seemed to be taking place on the Main
Canal. The guy’s voice was rougher than the sound of the water. “Where are you?” he called.

  “Over here.” The girl’s voice came from behind a cottonwood on our side of the ditch.

  “Come across the bridge,” the guy said

  “You come here.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “All alone.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?” he asked.

  “You can.” Her laughter this time was an enticement. This girl was feeling and enjoying her power.

  The guy tried hard to resist. “How do I know you’re not packing?” This could be the mating call of the nineties.

  “Trust me. Come on over.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Ooookay.” A small pistol—probably a twenty-two—flew out from behind the girl’s tree and flopped into the water like a silver fish.

  “I’m comin’,” the guy said.

  He hadn’t said whether he was packing and the girl hadn’t asked. The Kid tensed beside me. My own hand gripped my thirty-eight. The guy stepped out of the shadows and onto the footbridge. His feet scraped the grate. His hands gripped the railing. The bridge swayed under his weight. He was a vain and pretty boy, a boy who’d have to prove himself over and over again. His baggy clothes and turned-backward hat gave him a wide and distinctive silhouette. In the moonlight it made him into a target that was nearly impossible to miss.

  The girl’s laugh turned derisive. “Take your breath away, Nolo,” she said.

  “Get down,” I yelled.

  The only cover lay beneath Nolo in the ditch, but he didn’t take it. He looked into the water. It was only a second, but it was too long. His hand went into his pants reaching for his piece.

  “Get down now,” I screamed.

  Semiautomatic fire started and repeated until the clip ran out. The Kid and I pressed ourselves hard into the ground. Bullets kicked up the dirt around us. Nolo jerked inside his baggy clothes, crumpled up and fell to the floor of the bridge. We heard the sound of footsteps running down the path. The Kid jumped the ditch and gave chase. I ran to Nolo and held him in my arms, trying hard to find a pulse or a breath. His blood poured out of him and squirted through the grating, turning the ditch water red.