Ditch Rider

by Judith Van GIeson

  Patricia stepped out from behind the tree holding her chow on a short leash. She looked at Nolo with the hardest eyes I’d ever seen. “Muerto,” she said.

  There wasn’t any life left in Nolo, and I laid him gently down.

  “How did you find us here?” she asked.

  I saw her beeper attached to her belt, but my response was, “I can’t say.”

  “Was it Cheyanne?” She tightened her grip on the leash. If Cheyanne had confided in me, Patricia would consider that a betrayal and a betrayal in this world could end your life.

  “No.”

  She cut the dog a little slack. “Nolo’s the one who beat her, you know. He cut her face. He made her confess. She saw Nolo shoot Juan, and he didn’t want her out on the street telling anybody. He was afraid the other Four O’s would find out and off him.”

  “Why did he kill Juan?”

  “It was a dis. Juan laughed at him and told him he was too pretty. Nolo wanted to be a leader and make his name come out.”

  “But first Nolo tried to put the blame on Ron Cade?”

  “Juan hated Cade, so the Four O’s and the police were ready to believe he killed Juan until he got his alibi. When Nolo heard that he made Cheyanne say she did it. It wouldn’t matter what happened to her—she’s only thirteen years old.”

  “Is that what got Alfredo Lobato into the gang? Acting as a witness against Cade?”

  “Yeah. Nolo got him in. He was Alfredo’s hero. Alfredo would do anything for him. Word got around that Cheyanne had been at the killing. When you saw Ron and Cheyanne together that time he was trying to get her to tell him who’d put the hit out on him.”

  “What was she doing at the strip mall that night?” I asked.

  “She went to tell Juan to stop trying to rank in her brother. Nolo and Alfredo came up. She saw it all happen and she picked up the bullet, but it wasn’t her fault. She was in the wrong place.”

  “Ron Cade was the shooter this time?”

  “You got it.”

  “You shouldn’t have gotten involved, Patricia.”

  “Nobody else was doin’ nothin’. Nolo had it coming,” she answered.

  As Anna had said, the girls were more than willing to play their parts. And as Saia had said, gang justice was swift, brutal and effective. But it might as well be happening on the screen as far as they were concerned. Death and violence meant nothing to them. Patricia stood before me as still and indifferent as a statue.

  Cade hadn’t gotten far. I heard the sound of fighting and swearing in the brush and ran across the bridge to see who’d come out on top. I had my thirty-eight but I didn’t have to use it because the Kid was coming down the moonlit path pushing Ron Cade in front of him. Cade’s shirt had been yanked up over his head, pulled behind his back and knotted, exposing his pale and scrawny tattooed chest. The shirt held his hands behind him, but his mouth was free and screaming abuse. “Fucking wetback,” he yelled. “Get your dirty hands off of me.”

  “Shut up.” The Kid gave him a shove.

  I handed over the thirty-eight. The Kid hated guns, but Cade didn’t know that. The Kid sat Cade down on the path and stood over him, aiming the pistol at his head. Cade gave him an evil stare, but he kept his mouth shut. Up close he looked like his pictures, but paler and meaner. His eyes were burning with anger. His mouth was a dark hole.

  “He’s dead?” The Kid nodded in Nolo’s direction.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s the girl?”

  I turned around, but Patricia and her chow had disappeared into the trees and gone back whatever way they’d come. “Se fue,” I said. “She’s gone.”

  Lights began spinning in the area south of us where Lupe Circle met the ditch. Either Saia had gotten my message or the APD was finally responding to my call or someone had heard the gunshots and called the police. The cops ran down the path, crisscrossing the night with their flashlights.

  “Everybody freeze,” one of them yelled.

  At this point freezing came easy enough for me. Nolo wasn’t going anywhere, and the Kid had Ron Cade locked in place. One cop went to Nolo, two went to the Kid and Cade, the fourth one came over to me. I guess I looked like the oldest and most responsible citizen. My cop asked me what had happened.

  “We were out for a walk,” I said. “We saw that guy…”—I pointed to Nolo—“crossing the bridge. Then the one sitting over there on the ground shot him with a semiautomatic. My boyfriend chased the shooter. You’ll probably find the murder weapon somewhere near where he brought him down.” The Kid’s eyebrows might have been rising at this version of events, but he didn’t contradict me.

  It was obvious that Cade was a gang member, but the cops weren’t treating the Kid with any respect either. He was young. He was Hispanic. On the other hand, so were two of the cops.

  The second cop eyed the Kid suspiciously and barked, “Drop the weapon.” The Kid did as he was told.

  “Who does the gun belong to?” the cop asked.

  “It’s registered to me,” I said.

  “Why were you out here with a pistol?” my cop asked.

  “Would you take a walk along the ditch at night without one?”

  “I wouldn’t take a walk on the ditch at night at all,” the cop said. “What were you doing out here?”

  “Getting some air.”

  The casing from Cade’s semiautomatic lay on the path, clearly visible in the glare from the flashlights. Nolo’s cop got on his radio and called for an ambulance, although it was too late to do Nolo any good. The Kid and his cop walked back to the spot where Cade had fallen and found the murder weapon lying in the brush.

  “Were there any other witnesses?” my cop asked me.

  I hesitated briefly, then said, “No.” It was a lawyer’s instinct not to give anybody up. There was no way of proving Patricia had been here unless she confessed.

  Cade’s cop read him his rights. Cade had been through this before and he knew the drill. “I want my lawyer,” he said.

  The cops asked the Kid and me to come in and give statements. When we left the scene they were already putting the yellow police tape up.

  ******

  The statements the Kid and I gave at the police station were nearly identical, and they both omitted any mention of Patricia. But when we got home he asked me why I hadn’t told the police about her. “She got that boy killed,” he said.

  Patricia had been an accessory. There was no doubt about that. “Nolo killed Juan Padilla, assaulted Cheyanne and let her take the rap for him. In Patricia’s mind, justice has been served.”

  But not in the Kid’s mind. “She could do it again.”

  “I don’t know that two years in the Girls’ School would change that,” I said. I’d let my client do time for a crime she hadn’t committed. I wasn’t sure I had the heart to put another young girl in detention. “It would be hard to prove that she was involved.”

  “What about the beeper?”

  “I checked it. A bunch of new messages came in and erased the ones she’d received from Cade and Nolo.”

  “You didn’t lock them in?”

  “I only have one lock-in space. I reserved it for Nolo’s message to Cheyanne.”

  “Maybe Cade will tell on her.” Obviously the Kid didn’t think justice had been served, but he didn’t seem to want it bad enough to go back to the police.

  “Maybe.” In a way I hoped Cade would tell; it would get my conscience off the hook, because Patricia had killed Nolo just as surely as if she’d pulled the trigger. There was no question of self-defense. The murder had been as cold and calculated as they come, and the motive had been revenge.

  “Now you know what happened, can you get Cheyanne out of the D Home?” the Kid asked.

  “I don’t know. Everything Patricia told me is hearsay. The fact that Cade shot Nolo doesn’t prove Nolo killed Juan Padilla. It would help if Alfredo Lobato told the truth or the police came up with a weapon.”

  After that the Kid
went to bed. I took off my clothes, which were caked stiff with Nolo Serrano’s blood, put them in a black plastic bag and dumped it in the garbage pail. I showered and washed my hair, watching Nolo’s blood run down the drain. No matter what color they carry, they all bleed red. Then I went to bed, where in spite of—or maybe because of—the events of that night, I slept a deep and dreamless sleep. I’d already had a nightmare with my eyes open wide.

  22

  IN THE MORNING Saia called me. “I got your message last night,” he said. “I hear that by the time the police arrived the crime had been committed.”

  “Did they respond to your call or mine?”

  “Mine.”

  “What took them so long?” The APD had the capacity to go to all three sites concurrently, but I’d had to do it consecutively.

  “I wasn’t able to get the message to them immediately.”

  “Turned off your pager, had you?”

  “For a while.”

  “Where was it? Hanging from the bedpost?”

  “I was with Jennifer.” He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “I have a police report here that says you and your friend were walking along the Main Canal and happened to witness Ron Cade shooting Nolo Serrano.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You knew there was going to be trouble. Are you going to reveal your source?”

  “Let’s just say I happened to be eavesdropping on the information highway. The minute I got the information I tried to pass it on to you. It’s not my fault you weren’t in receiving mode.”

  He coughed and cleared his throat again.

  “You got Ron Cade. You can’t be complaining about that,” I said.

  “I’m not. I have a weapon. I’ve got you and your friend for witnesses. What I’m lacking is motive. Or is the fact that these guys were armed and dangerous gangbangers motive enough?”

  “The word I got is that Nolo Serrano killed Juan Padilla, then told his fellow gang members that Cade had been the shooter. It put Cade’s life in jeopardy. This shooting was in retaliation.”

  “How do you explain that Cade’s alibi for the night Padilla was killed turned out to be worthless?”

  “He was engaged in some other crime?”

  “Always a possibility. Can you prove that Nolo was the shooter in the Padilla case?”

  “No, but I did hear that your witness lied to cover for Nolo. He was a Four O wannabe and Nolo promised to get him in. Your witness is now wearing the mourning shirt of a Four O member.” Fortunately Saia didn’t ask me how I’d gotten that information.

  “We’ll bring him in for further questioning.”

  “Good.”

  “You do know that a witness who changes his story lacks credibility.”

  So did a witness with a vested interest, which included me. My hope was that Saia would see the wisdom of a plea bargain and not take this case to trial. He wouldn’t get everything he wanted, but Cade would do time. “I know.”

  “Can you get your client to recant now that Nolo is dead?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I suppose it was fear of him that put her in the D Home in the first place.”

  “It was a determining factor. He was the one who cut her face.”

  “Why did Serrano pick her?”

  “She was at the scene of the crime. The Four O’s were trying to rank in her half brother, Danny Ortega.”

  “Leo’s son?”

  “Right. Cheyanne went to tell Juan Padilla to leave Danny alone and she witnessed a shooting.”

  “What caused it? Some sort of intramural rivalry?”

  “That and a dis. Nolo wanted to be a leader.”

  “Now that the gangs are the size of corporations, fighting inside them has become as big a problem as fighting between them. It’s amazing what they’ll do over an insult.”

  “They don’t have a very high opinion of themselves, Anthony. Add hormones, drugs and guns. It’s a bad combination. You were wrong about Leo, you know. He’s been a good father to Danny.”

  “Maybe it’s time to get out of the prosecuting business. I was wrong about Serrano, too. I thought that kid had potential.”

  “Me, too. He bled out in my arms.”

  “That’s a tough one. I’ll give you a call after we talk to Cade and my witness. See what you can do with your client.”

  “Will do.”

  He had one last question. “Did you ever really believe she was guilty?”

  “I didn’t know. I will say that representing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “I can understand that,” Saia said.

  ******

  My client had been in the D Home long enough for it to have lost some charm. Her own home was looking better to her and the outside less dangerous now that Nolo Serrano was off the street. True to his word, he had protected her while she was in detention. She wasn’t quite ready to recant, however, unless Alfredo Lobato changed his testimony. Until it was proven that Nolo had killed Juan, she considered the Four O’s a threat.

  But Lobato stuck to his story that Cade had been the shooter. Nolo seemed to have a hold over him from beyond the grave. True to Cade’s reputation as a sleaze, he and his lawyer not only implicated Patricia, they tried to blame her. It strained credibility that a hard-core gangbanger had been forced to kill another gangbanger by a fourteen-year-old girl, even one as hard as Patricia. When the police brought her in for questioning, she was accompanied by her parents, not her lawyer. The detectives were tough and thorough. Patricia’s parents demanded answers. She broke down and admitted her part in the shooting of Nolo Serrano. She would soon turn fifteen, the age when she could drive and be prosecuted as an adult, but she hadn’t crossed that line yet. All Saia could get was two years in the Girls’ School. He was inclined to leniency toward Patricia, since her testimony helped him convince Ron Cade to plead out. But Patricia’s parents were repelled by their daughter’s acts, and they wanted her to do the time. Saia recommended a counselor who had a good record working with teens in trouble and their parents. It offered some hope that Patricia would come out of the Girls’ School with a better set of values than when she went in.

  ******

  A few days after the shooting I was standing in the kitchen trying to figure out what to do about dinner. The cupboard was bare, and I was leaning toward Casa de Benavidez. The doorbell rang. I went outside, opened the chevron door and found Danny standing on the other side holding his bike. He had a new hairdo, shaved clean around the sides with a skullcap left on top.

  “What do you call that one?” I asked.

  “The buzz. My dad did it with his electric razor.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “Will my sister go free now that Nolo is dead?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Do you have a plastic bag I could borrow?”

  “You’re not planning to put it over somebody’s head, are you?”

  “Nope. It has to be about this big.” He made motions with his hands about a foot square.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I went into the house and came back with a brand-new plastic bag approximately the designated size.

  He folded the bag up and put it in his pocket. “Can you come with me?”

  “Okay.”

  He pedaled away with his head down and his elbows poking into the street. When he got to the ditch he turned north. I followed him down the footpath, studying the patterns his tires made in the dirt. I watched him cross Montera and Lujan way ahead of me, but when he got to his destination he stopped and waited for me to catch up. He stood next to a valve that controlled the flow of water into a narrow field. The adjacent field was lush and green. Horses and a long-legged colt ran up and down it, churning up the soil. But this field was full of dead weeds and beyond dry. A horse wouldn’t leave a nick in this hard ground. It was one of those fields that no longer used its life-giving connection to the ditch.

  Sunflowers bobbed along the ditch bank
in a wind-driven dance. The Sandias were a remote and distant blue. Behind the unused valve was a wooden backboard. Danny reached into it, parted the weeds and showed me a thirty-eight revolver.

  “Whew,” I said. “When did you find it?”

  “Last week. I knew it would be near the ditch. After Juan was killed I rode my bike up and down here every day looking for it.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. I saw the policeman go right by this spot and he didn’t find it either.”

  “Do you think it’s the gun that killed Juan?”

  “There’s a good chance. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I was afraid. But now…” He took out the plastic bag, folded it over his hand and reached down to pick up the pistol. He knew the evidence procedure; he’d probably seen it often enough on TV.

  “Don’t do that, Danny,” I said. “It would be better if the police find it in place. Will you stay here and watch it while I call them?”

  “Okay,” he said. He’d been a good guardian so far; I felt I could trust him.

  But I couldn’t help acting like an adult. “Don’t touch it,” I warned.

  The Kid’s shop wasn’t far and I ran over there to call Detective Jessup. The Kid could tell just by looking at me that something positive had happened.

  “Qué pasa?” he asked.

  “I think Danny found Nolo’s gun.”

  “Bueno!” said the Kid.

  “Bueno,” echoed the parrot, picking up on the excitement in the Kid’s voice and raising its vocabulary level a notch. The bird liked its new word so much that it repeated it over and over again.

  “That’s what’s been wrong with Mimo,” I said.

  “What?”

  “There hasn’t been enough excitement around here.”

  “Bueno,” said the bird.

  Detective Jessup was excited herself when I told her the news, but since she was a cop, it had to be a controlled excitement.