“Watch his paranoid ass. He’s got priors for turning on friends. Remember when he stabbed Mahoney?”
“I guess I do. I was about ten feet away. I spilled hot coffee all down my front getting outta there.”
“Him and Mahoney were good friends.”
“I know.”
“Okay. I hope I don’t have to kill him ’cause he kills you.”
“Oh, no, that won’t happen.”
Troy looked out at the streets. They were crossing the southwest quadrant of the endless city. He’d once had a girlfriend who lived in the area. It had undergone a metamorphosis in the last decade. Developed after World War II and sold under the F.H.A. and the G.I. Bill, it had deteriorated from bright two- and three-bedroom ranch styles that could have been a Norman Rockwell cover to a world closer to the colonias he’d seen in Tijuana. The manicured lawns were weed-infested patches of brown. Torn and rain-soaked sofas were discarded at the curb. Trash filled the gutters and blew into piles against fences. Walls were defaced by graffiti in black spray paint. A pack of stray dogs had overturned a trash can and were digging in the mess. This was not the Southern California of song and legend. It made him remember Chepe in Tijuana.
“What’s the deal with Chepe?”
“I don’t know any more than I told you.”
“Why does he want me? He’s got pistoleros running out his ears. Shit, he was tight with Big Joe and those dudes in the Eme.”
“I think he wants somebody with more sense.”
“Well, we’ll see what he wants.”
“You’ve never been to La Mesa.”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’ve got an experience coming.”
Alex turned into a mobile home park: Narrow streets, mobile homes sited close together, DRIVE SLOW, CHILDREN AT PLAY signs. He parked on the road’s shoulder. “I’ll be one second,” he said as he got out and went around a corner.
It was closer to a minute, but it was quick: Alex came back with a big suitcase. He put it on the rear floorboards. “Three hundred grand,” he said.
Back at the Bonaventure, Troy carried the suitcase across the lobby and took the elevator. Diesel and Mad Dog were waiting in the room. The suitcase was opened and packets of currency were dumped on the bed. It was old currency, plucked from sweaty palms all over the city and gathered by denomination in packets fastened with rubber bands. The amount of each packet was written in pencil on jagged pieces of paper torn from a yellow legal tablet.
“Count it out,” Mad Dog said to Troy.
“Take your own,” Troy said.
The packets were in various amounts. Some had $1,000 in fives, others $2,500 in tens, but most were $5,000 packets of twenties. In less than a minute, each of them had $100,000. Diesel started to pack his share in an overnight bag. “While you guys are down there, I’m gonna go home for a couple days.”
“Don’t let that broad take all your money,” Mad Dog said.
Diesel stopped packing and frowned. “What’s that mean?”
“That means … whatever you think it means.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Troy said, stepping between them. “Take it easy. Don’t start arguing over nothing.”
“That was some kinda little dig, like I’m a trick or something.”
“Man, you’re paranoid,” Mad Dog said, waving his hand in a deprecating manner as he turned away.
“I’m paranoid! Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Hey, hey,” Troy interjected. “Knock it off. What’s wrong with you dudes? You’re partners.”
“Aw, man,” Mad Dog said, “just ’cause this sucker weighs a ton and was some kinda halfass prizefighter, he thinks he’s bad.”
“No, I’m not bad—but I can keep bad motherfuckers off me.”
“Cool it,” Troy commanded.
“Don’t tell me. Tell him. He started it.”
“I’m telling both of you … freeze on that shit. It’s not about nothin’.”
Diesel swung his eyes to Troy. His face was red, but after a moment he turned away, muttering, “Crazy motherfucker drops a lug like I’m some kind of trick.”
“Let it go, Diesel,” Troy said.
“Hey, I was just putting you on a little,” Mad Dog said. “Fuck you if you can’t take a little ribbing.” His voice was shrill.
“Hey!” Troy snapped, glaring at Mad Dog. Mad Dog was flushed, his eyes glazed, but then he snorted a half-laugh and shrugged. “I’m sorry, Troy. I don’t wanna push your button.” To Diesel, “Sorry, brother.”
“Forget it.”
Troy nodded, but he knew nothing was forgotten. He knew these men. Any wound to the ego festered in the mind. Mad Dog would chew on it and get paranoid. Diesel would feel the paranoia and get scared because he knew how dangerous Mad Dog could be. The only way to keep one from eventually murdering the other was to keep them apart. Diesel’s going to Northern California was good. Troy would keep an eye on Mad Dog. He had mixed feelings about the maniac. He knew Mad Dog so well, knew the torture of his childhood and the torment of his youth. Whatever Mad Dog was, however insane and dangerous, he’d been made that way, and society had abetted the crimes against a child. His mother had burned him with cigarettes before she went into the nuthouse. When she got out, the juvenile court sent him back to her—and she tortured him some more for telling on her. He’d been ten years old and ran away; he was caught breaking into a neighborhood market. That got him into the juvenile justice system, where he was often punched and kicked by bigger boys because he was small and different—until he was once goaded too far and stabbed a bully in the eye with a fork. After that his reputation for being unpredictably dangerous got him a wide berth. Once he understood his situation, he exploited it by behaving with violent insanity, and in return got greater leeway from his peers. Even the toughest kids get nervous about the crazy ones.
When Mad Dog and Diesel and others of their reform school cohort graduated into adult crime and San Quentin, Troy was already a legend. He was chief clerk in the Athletic Department and controlled the lists for weekend and night gym. Coach Keller, who disliked being bothered, signed whatever Troy put in front of him. Troy okayed the gym work crew, one of San Quentin’s better jobs. It had fringe benefits, a place to get off the Big Yard out of the rain, a chance to shower every day, access to TV for sporting events. Troy arranged for Diesel’s job and played mentor to him for the next three years. Diesel was sure that listening to Troy had kept him out of trouble so he could get a parole. Now Troy had led him to a score that thieves dream about. What would Gloria have to say when he dropped a hundred grand on her pretty blond ass? That would shut up all her heckle and jeckle bullshit. Maybe he should get a new suit, too, a whole new outfit, a Brioni or Hickey-Freeman, and wear that when he arrived home. Diesel grinned to himself while he envisioned gloating and strutting as he pitched packet after packet of untraceable money on top of the kitchen table. How sweet it would be. “I think I’ll leave tonight,” he said. “Drop me at the airport and take the Mustang if you want. The Dog’s car might not make it on Mexican highways.”
“No, take the Mustang. I’m gonna buy a car tomorrow. We’ll use that one.” He turned to Mad Dog. “I’m not gonna buy a new one, so I need you to check it out. I don’t know shit about cars.”
“I’m your man for that,” Mad Dog said. He liked that Troy had a favor to ask. It belied a feeling that Troy had pulled back from their friendship. Mad Dog usually sensed whatever anyone felt toward him; he had a kind of radar that he trusted completely. He knew the regulars thought he was paranoid, and maybe he was—but a little paranoia was a valuable tool if one lived in a land of snakes.
Late the following afternoon, Troy bought a five-year-old Jaguar with a Chevy 350 V8 under the hood, which juiced it to the horsepower of a stock Corvette. That part was hidden. The exterior was identical to the newest model, and was similar to what he’d driven twelve years earlier, which was partly why he bought it. Mad Dog checked it out and said it was in good shape. The odometer
said it was low mileage, which was confirmed by unworn floor pedals. The seats still had the rich smell of new leather. Nothing mass-produced could compare with Jaguar coachwork.
“They’re supposed to be trouble, but they’re great cars, and this one is primo.”
That’s when Troy told the salesman, “I’ll take it,” and paid cash. They drove both cars back to the Bonaventure and Troy checked out. Except for a few hundred dollars, they hid the proceeds in the spare-tire well of Mad Dog’s car; which they parked at the LAX long-term lot. It would be undisturbed for the few days they would be gone.
When they were underway in the Jag, Troy called Greco on the cellular phone. He would meet them at a Holiday Inn outside San Diego sometime that night. Tomorrow they would cross over. Nothing more was said. Talking on a cellular phone was to throw your words into the air; that was what the Supreme Court said in ruling that the laws against wiretap were inapplicable.
The Jag went east on the Santa Monica Freeway, then south on Interstate 5, which went straight to the border, passing through many Southern California towns en route.
East L.A., seen from the freeway, was much as it had been throughout Troy’s life. He had come here from Beverly Hills when he was fifteen and sixteen, running around with Mexicans he’d met in juvenile hall. He remembered speaking English with a Mexican accent and smiled. Until he went to reform school and met tough white kids from Okie cities like Bakersfield and Fresno and Stockton, who could and would fight, he rather despised most white boys as weak and cowardly. The values of a macho ethic better suited his nature. The frame houses were older here, most from before World War II, and built more substantially, if not palatially. Everything was bleached to pastel by the steady desert sun, for that is what it was without the piped-in water from up north. Long before the blacks of South Central had Crips and Bloods, East L.A. had Chicano gangs—Maravilla, White Fence, Flats, Hazard, Clanton, Temple, Diamond, Dogtown, Eastside-Clover, Los Avenues, La Colonia de Watts, and others. Back then the fathers of the Crips were still picking cotton in Alabama.
The little towns of greater L.A., once described as thirty suburbs in search of a city, now blended into seamless sprawl. Once the factories of Firestone, Goodyear, Todd, and Bethlehem Steel provided the jobs. Now the factories were gone south in phrase and in fact. He had no idea where the working people of the little towns found jobs these days.
Los Angeles became Orange County—and the only way to tell the difference was a small sign beside the road. Billboards for Disneyland appeared.
“Ever been to Disneyland?” Troy asked Mad Dog.
“No. I never been to L.A. before.”
“Let’s go check it out.”
“You’re jiving.”
“No, let’s go.”
“Why not?”
So they did, and seemed to be the only adults without a passel of excited children. They took no rides, the lines being too long, but it was an enjoyable hour just walking around. Mad Dog even had a cotton candy. “You know what,” he said, “I liked it better as a kid.”
Shadows were lengthening when they got back on the freeway. Even in Troy’s memory, most of the landscape had been rural, orange groves and alfalfa, between the little towns. Now it was one urban sprawl for a hundred miles. Newport, Laguna, and the other beach towns were no longer separated by miles of empty shoreline and low hills. Expensive houses covered the seashore and rolling hills, so huge windows overlooked the sea at sunset. This was the land of milk and honey, of tanned bodies that expected the good life as their due.
When darkness came, they pulled off the highway to take a piss, look at the silver ocean under a harvest moon, and to smoke a joint. Looking for privacy, they went through an underpass and found a bumpy dirt road. It looked deserted. Then, without warning, the headlights flashed over an encampment of homeless Hispanics, probably all Mexicans, although there was no way to tell. Nearby were avocado orchards and melon patches. The Mexicans picked the fruit but could not pay for shelter on what they made. As soon as the headlights intruded, most of them ran off into the darkness. It might be the migra, so they couldn’t take a chance.
Troy and Mad Dog turned around. Within a few hundred yards was the fence of a development where the houses started at $800,000. As they got back on the freeway, Troy was unsure of what he thought about the homeless farm workers.
They smoked the joint in the car. Troy still had to piss. It was dark beside the road. “Pull over,” Troy said. Mad Dog did so and Troy got out. He was in pain from the need to urinate. In prison a urinal was always close by, so he was not conditioned to restrain himself. The embankment sloped and was dark. He went down; then slipped and slid five more feet, part of it on his hip, before his feet hit solid ground. He pushed himself erect and unzipped his pants. As he pissed into blackness, he looked up and saw Mad Dog standing atop the embankment while headlight beams flashed over him. “Damn,” Troy said, realizing how stupid he’d been.
Mad Dog realized it, too. The stream of cars and trucks buffeted him with slipstream wind and the headlights blinded him. If a Highway Patrol car was coming, the police would pull over to see what was wrong.
Troy could climb partway, then his feet would slip and he would slide back.
“Here, man, try to grab this.” Mad Dog took off his belt and got down where he could hold on to a root with one hand and toss the end of the belt down the slope. Troy grabbed the belt and, after a step, was able to take Mad Dog’s hand. At the moment that their hands touched, Troy remembered that this man had murdered a seven-year-old child, and he wanted to pull away in revulsion. But Mad Dog pulled him up and they got back into the car. Under way again, Troy thought about his reaction on the embankment. It surprised him because he knew many killers, men who had slain cops or store owners or other criminals, men who came from the cellhouse in the morning without caring if it clouded up and rained dogshit, or if they killed somebody or died themselves before evening lockup. He felt nothing about whatever they had done—except the Zebra Killers, some crazy niggers (the term fit) who ran around San Francisco in a van, and whenever they saw a white person alone and vulnerable, they either murdered him on the spot or snatched her for rape and later murder. One of them had lived three cells away from Troy. Hundreds of times they passed on the tier, inches apart, without looking into each other’s eyes or exchanging a word. It was the heat of obsessed hate that Troy felt, and after a while his initial bemused wariness turned to indignation, and then he saw that this nigger would kill every white person in the world, man, woman and child, if he could. Troy’s hostility smoldered in response to the hatred directed toward him. It was Max Row in San Quentin, where they’d put him on arrival. He had several good partners on the tier, so he never felt threatened enough to require a preemptive assault. Eventually they moved the nigger away.
Troy had never murdered anyone, but that was as much luck as prudence or morality. Once, fresh from reform school, he had robbed a liquor store. The owner pulled a pistol from under the counter. Troy hesitated and yelled, but the owner was courageous and intent, so both fired simultaneously so that it sounded like one weapon. The owner’s bullet passed by his eye like a buzzing bee; he felt the disturbed air. Troy’s bullet hit the man’s collarbone and tore straight through. He was out of the hospital in an hour—but it could have been robbery-murder. It was a crime now older than he had been at the time, sixteen or so. It was so alien from where he’d grown up. Such things were unheard of there, but rather common where he later found himself.
No, he had never killed, but he could have. In prison, too, there had been situations—and confrontations—where death could have resulted, his own or his antagonist’s, but the disputes were settled short of murder, although not always short of violence. Such memories of reality made him hesitant to judge others. Still, murdering a seven-year-old child was a far cry from that.
Suddenly, red lights flashed ahead, all across the several lanes of freeway. Mad Dog hit the brakes and Troy lurched f
orward. It brought his mind back from reverie.
They began to inch forward. A helicopter went by above them. KNX News reported a multiple-vehicle collision with a “Sig Alert” near the Pendleton Exit. “We’re gonna be late … late,” Mad Dog said. Troy winked and reached for the flip-top phone. A sucker could quickly get used to this, Troy thought as he dialed. A minute later he was talking to Greco moving down a highway on the other side of California. “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “I’ll be late, too.”
“No, shit,” Troy said. He was looking forward to seeing his friend and the trip across the border. He’d heard tales of La Mesa for many years. Now he’d finally see what it looked like.
11
That night the three men ate steak and lobster in the hotel dining room; then took in a topless bar a couple blocks away. They had business early, so they got back to the hotel early. Alex and Mad Dog used the twin beds. Troy was equally content on the hard floor: The thick carpet and a bedspread folded over made an adequate mattress for him to rest comfortably.
In the morning they left the Jaguar in the hotel parking lot and took Alex’s middle-aged Cadillac Seville across the border. Tijuana, Mexico, was no longer a sleazy border town, half Old West and half whorehouse, but rather a shiny metropolis with a million or more residents. Corporate logos were everywhere. Still, a presidential candidate had been assassinated here, and a chief of police had been ambushed and gunned down. Federales had shot it out with the local police. The wealth of drugs was entwined with all of it.
Alex said he usually walked across. It was easier coming back and a lot faster. Driving back took an hour to get across at the best times. And there was always a chance the Border Patrol would motion him out of line for a search that tore the car apart and took several hours. They never found anything, but their goddamned dogs always barked at some residue of something. Today, however, he had the toilet bowl and his companions, so he drove into Mexico. Nobody looked at them. “Damn, man,” said Mad Dog, “don’t they wanna see something … a driver’s license—”
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