by Michael Nava
“Don’t defend her. She was a bitch.” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t mean that. You’re right. I took her by surprise. Man, if she took it this hard, I don’t want to think what my family’s gonna do.”
“They also think being with guys was a phase for you?”
“Yeah, like drinking. Just me being my bad self. You shoulda seen my mom’s face when she met Deanna. I bet she spent the next month on her knees doing rosaries to thank la Virgen that her son wasn’t a joto anymore.”
“Let’s talk about the drinking,” I said. “How long has it been?”
“I went on a bender when I broke up with Tom,” he said. “Almost two years ago. That was it, otherwise I’ve been sober, but I haven’t gone to meetings in a long time.”
“So are you at the beginning or the end of a binge?” I asked, and then, because I heard it with his ears and it sounded harsh, added, “Look, I’m not being holier than thou, believe me. It took me four years of drinking and stopping and three rehabs to finally get sober, and then five years into it, I went out again. I can help you with this.”
He held up a hand. “No, I don’t want you to help me, because then what we have becomes about drinking.” He gulped some water. “I know the drill. Go back to AA, get a sponsor, work the steps. I don’t need you for that. This won’t happen again. I promise.”
“We never mean to get drunk again, but sometimes it happens.”
“It won’t.”
“Let me finish,” I said. “All I meant was that you don’t have to make that promise to me. The possibility that one of us could go out is going to be there. I can accept that as long as this slip ends tonight.”
“It’s over.”
“I’m beat. How are you doing?”
He threw his arms around me. “Can I stay here?”
“I’m not letting you drive when I can still smell old Mexico on your breath. The cops pull you over, you’d blow an oh-eight, easy.”
He was sobbing and laughing. “You crack me up, Henry.”
“Oh, baby.” I kissed the top of his head. “Let’s go to bed.”
John was asleep as his head hit the pillow, snoring peaceably while his hand curled around mine beneath the sheets. There would be a lot more to talk about in the days to come, but for now I was happy he was here. Just as I was drifting off, the phone rang. It was now just before three. This could only be bad news. I reached over John for the phone and said quietly, “Hello.”
There was silence on the other end and then I heard a small, soft, “Uncle Henry?”
I sat up. “Angel? Where are you? Is everything all right?”
“Uncle Henry,” he whispered. “I think my mom killed my dad.”
11.
JOHN MUMBLED AND STIRRED. I quietly rolled out of bed and went out into the hall. The loudness of the traffic noises at the other end of the line indicated he was calling from a phone booth.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at a g-g-gas station,” he said, stuttering with fear. “The Ar-Arco at the c-c-corner of Hollywood and La Ba—La Ba—”
“La Brea. That’s close by,” I said. “Stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Hurry,” he said.
I put the phone down and went back into the bedroom. John was still asleep, his snoring had subsided into a low rumble. I dressed quickly and stood over the bed for a second. His face was peaceful, the wide chest calmly rising and falling, one big arm was thrown behind his head, the other at his side, the fingers still half-opened where they had been wrapped with mine. He had a hero’s physiognomy that would not have been out of place as an illustration in Tales from Homer and if I had awakened him, he would have insisted on coming with me. The temptation was great, but in the end I let him sleep. While I was no hero, I didn’t run from trouble, and I had heard big trouble in Angel’s cry for help. I kissed the crown of John’s head and left.
Angel was standing beside the phone booth in a bright cone of light cast by the street lamp above him. I pulled into the parking space beside the gas station and got out. He was wearing the same Giants T-shirt that he had been wearing the first night he came to my house. The night was cool and damp, and he was shivering. He had on a game face, a small boy trying to project big, but when he saw me, he deflated, and I think he would have run into my arms except for that caution that rarely seemed to leave his dark eyes. Instead, he walked slowly toward me. Across La Brea Boulevard was a dumpy motel called, predictably, the Hollywood Inn that advertised X-rated cable and AARP special rates. Two shrieking black-and-white patrol cars pulled into its lot, followed by an ambulance. Angel glanced fearfully over his shoulder. I knew where I would find his mother.
I removed my sweatshirt. “Put this on,” I said. He pulled it over his head and it came to his knees. I knelt down and rolled up the sleeves until his grubby fingers were visible. “Is your mother in the motel?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“I went to McDonald’s and when I came back, my dad was dead and my mom had a gun…”
He started sobbing. I pulled him close and he threw his arms around my neck and shook. The sour musk of fear emanated from deep within his body I remembered that smell; it had clung to me for most of my childhood. I stroked his greasy hair and let him cry himself calm.
“Here, m’ijo, blow your nose,” I said, giving him my handkerchief. He blew with a loud, damp noise. “I’m going over to the motel to take a look. I want you to wait in my car.” There was a snack shop in the gas station. “Are you hungry? Do you want a soda?”
“A Coke,” he hiccuped.
“Okay, let’s get you a Coke.”
A moment later he was sitting in my car with a Coke and a Mars Bar. I stooped so that our faces were level.
“As soon as I leave, roll up the windows and lock the doors and sit tight. I’ll be back in a couple minutes. H’okay?”
He gripped the candy bar as it were a lifeline and stuttered, “H’okay.”
“Remember you told me you know all the names of the presidents?”
He whispered. “Yeah.”
“If you start to get nervous, just say them to yourself until I get back.”
The Hollywood Inn was at the base of a rocky, eroded hill. Above were the gates of a hillside community where a star or two may have once lived. On the strength of this proximity, the motel’s neon sign boasted it was “The Gateway to the Stars.” The two-story building was in the throwaway style of a thousand other such places in the city. The first floor opened directly onto the parking lot, which the police had cordoned off. The second floor was set back on a breezeway where, at the moment, a few onlookers roused from their sleep stood at the railing watching the scene unfolding beneath them. I went up the stairs holding my keys in my hand, as if going to my room, and joined the clump of spectators in time to see my niece carried out of her room on a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance. Even in that glimpse I saw blood on her blouse, the pounding her face had taken, and I had to look away, turning to the floridly sunburned man beside me.
“Do you know what happened?”
“Can’t say, mate,” he replied, the accent Australian. “Me and the wife were sound asleep when I heard gunfire. I got up and called the police. We didn’t leave the room until we heard the sirens in the parking lot.”
“Gunfire? You mean there was shooting back and forth?”
“Well, there was several shots,” he said. “Didn’t you hear ’em?”
“I was out,” I said. “I’m just getting in.”
He cast a suspicious glance at me. “Well, ’s over now. G’night.”
He trundled back into his room. The ambulance drove off without its siren, which I took to mean that as bad as Vicky’s injuries appeared, they weren’t mortal. A few minutes later, the medical examiner’s van arrived to remove the body of the other person who had been in the room. Angel’s father, Pete. I knew that would take awhile. I didn’t wait.
Angel
was slouched down in the front seat, his Coke unopened, the candy bar unwrapped, muttering beneath his breath, “Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter—” He was practically sweating terror and I wished for one second that I could get into the car and just start driving until we reached a place where he would never be afraid of anything again. Instead, I got into the car, started it up, pulled out of the gas station and drove home.
John was sitting in the living room in his boxers drinking coffee when we came in. Angel took one look at him and ran toward him, crying. John scooped up the sobbing boy and murmured, “M’ijo, what’s wrong?” while casting a look of confusion and concern over his head at me.
“It looks like his mother may have shot his father.”
John stood up, holding the boy against him like an infant. “How did you find out?”
“Angel called me from a gas station across the street from where it happened. I went and picked him up.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“There was no time.”
He rocked the boy. “Pobrecito.”
“I’ve got to make some calls from my office. Can you watch Angel?”
“Of course,” he said. “Angelito, I’m going to make you some hot milk and honey, like my mom used to make me, okay?”
The boy sobbed assent. I left them to it.
An hour and a half of calls yielded the following information: Vicky had been arrested for murder and transported to County General for medical treatment. After being treated, she would be taken to LAPD’s Hollywood station for booking and arraignment at the nearby courthouse. None of the various cops I talked to could or would tell me, however, the nature or extent of her injuries, how long she would be held at County General or when she might be brought to Hollywood for booking. I worked my way up the chain of command at the station, telling each cop that I was her lawyer, and I was to be informed the moment she arrived at the station. I also warned each of them not to question her, unless I was present. This last gambit was greeted with the silent contempt it deserved. Vicky would be grilled as soon as it appeared she could answer questions. If she waived her right to counsel, it would make no difference that I had told the cops not to question her because the right had to be invoked by her, not me. Even if she asked for an attorney, they would continue to interrogate her to obtain what were called “statements outside Miranda.” The Supreme Court had held that, while statements made in violation of a suspect’s Miranda rights could not be introduced by the prosecution to prove he committed the crime, if the defendant testified and denied having done so, his illegally obtained statements could be used to impeach him. In light of this ruling, cops routinely ignored a defendant’s request for a lawyer and continued to attempt to extract incriminating statements. I knew the cops would lay into Vicky because this looked like the kind of homicide—a spousal killing committed in a moment of passion—where the defendant was likely to confess, and she was the kind of suspect—female, minimal criminal record, confused, injured and terrified—most likely to roll. I could only hope her injuries were severe enough that she’d been given painkillers that would either knock her out or so incapacitate her that even the cops would realize any statement she made would be worthless.
When I came out of my office, it was morning. I found John and Angel in my bedroom asleep, the boy curled up against the man. Almost as soon as I stepped into the room, John opened his eyes and said in a low voice, “Did you find her?”
“Sort of,” I said, sitting at the foot of the bed. “Her husband beat her up so bad the cops took her to the hospital. She’s somewhere between there and the jail.”
John gently extricated himself from Angel, who looked to be in a dead slumber. “She kill him because he was beating on her?”
“That’s how it looks. Did Angel tell you anything?”
“He said he went out for some food, and when he came back his dad was dead and his mom was holding the gun.”
“Nothing about what led up to it?”
“I didn’t ask him, Henry. He was all shook up.” He looked at me. “Man, you look beat. First me dumping on you, then this. You need some sleep yourself.”
“I’m going back to the motel,” I said. “Can you stay here or do you have to get to work?”
He smiled. “I’m the boss. I show up when I show up.” The smile faded. “Why are you going back? Won’t the cops be there?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “It’s a simple case from their point of view. They got the victim, the suspect and the murder weapon. Whatever other evidence there was in the room would be minimal. I’m sure they’re gone by now.”
“Then what are you gonna find?”
“I don’t know that I’m going to find anything,” I said, “but I want to take a look while the scene’s still fresh.” I stood up. “I won’t be long.”
He got out of bed and drew the covers over Angel.
“He’s so small,” I said. “Even for his age. You can’t see when he’s awake because he seems older than he is, but you can really see it now.” I looked at John. “I wanted to get him away from his parents, but not like this.”
“You call your sister?”
“Elena. Man, I hadn’t thought about her.”
John put his arm around me. “You can’t think of everything. I can’t believe how cool you’ve been. I’d be running around like a chicken with its head cut off if it was me.”
“This is my job,” I replied. “I’ll have to call Elena later. It’s just as well, I’ll know more then. What a mess,” I said wearily. “Well, on the bright side, it’s lucky you showed up last night.”
He put his arm around my waist. “Viejo, you can look all you want, but you ain’t going to find the bright side.”
“Viejo, huh? I must look like shit.”
“No, you look good to me, Henry. Go. I’ll watch Angelito.”
There was police tape across the door of the room that had been the last residence of the Trujillo family. A fifty-dollar bribe to the desk clerk had bought me ten minutes inside. I stooped beneath the tape and went in. The room was about the size of a small studio apartment. The tiny kitchen was piled high with fast-food wrappers and Styrofoam containers with scraps of food that released a stench into the warm, still air. A king-sized bed covered with a blue floral bedspread dominated one side of the room; next to it was a cot where I guessed Angel had slept. A sofa upholstered in avocado green vinyl, a desk, a dresser and two chairs completed the decor. Through an open door I heard water dripping: the shower or the toilet. On the white wall behind the bed was a thick, viscous splatter of blood and brain. Elsewhere on the walls were two bullet holes, far apart from each other, in no discernible pattern. The dark blue shag carpet glistened with a dark, wet stain. Droplets of blood were also splattered on the sofa and the kitchen counter. A chair had been upturned, a lamp smashed against the wall. The air still seemed to reverberate with rage. I guessed the smaller amounts of blood came from Vicky as she had been slapped around the room. She had shot him as he was coming at her from the direction of the bed, firing wildly. Two shots missed, the third hit him in the head and he fell forward at her feet.
On the dresser was a folder for Greyhound bus tickets. I opened one of them. Two used ticket stubs showed the same trip: San Francisco to a town called Turlock in the central valley taken a couple of weeks earlier. The dates seemed significant, so I stuck them in my pocket. My ten minutes were almost up. I started searching for Angel’s things. Most of his clothes were in the dresser. I stuffed them into a laundry bag I had brought with me. Beneath his T-shirts and socks I found a snapshot that I at first thought was of him, but it was faded with age and I realized it was the picture of me that Elena said she had given him. I slipped it into my pocket.
On the floor was a pair of boy’s jeans. I picked them up and noticed they had been recently patched at the knee. They were the same pants Jesusita had been sewing when I visited her three days earlier. In a corner of the room, I found the book I had give
n him, a baseball mitt and a baseball. I put them in the bag. Someone knocked at the door. I froze.
“Sir,” the desk clerk said. “You have to leave now.”
I hurried out of the room and brushed past him before he could object to the laundry bag.
Angel was sitting at the table, still wearing the sweatshirt I had given him and watching John cut a banana into a bowl of pancake batter. John was barefoot, wearing his jeans from the night before and an old striped button-down shirt of mine. I dropped the laundry bag on the floor.
“Hey,” I said to them. “How are you doing, Angel?”
“Where’s my mom?” he asked in a scared voice.
I looked at John. “The cops phone?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“She’s either at the hospital or at the police station. After breakfast, I’ll make some calls and find out for sure and see when I can take you to see her.”
He stared at me. “Is she dead?”
“No.”
“Her mouth was bleeding,” he said.
“I talked to the police while you were asleep,” I said. “She’s going to be all right. Look, Angel, later on I want you to tell me everything that happened from when you and mom left here. Is there any coffee?”
“Yes,” John said. “Fresh pot. Hey, Angelito, how are you at flipping pancakes?”
“I don’t know.”
John pulled a stool to the stove where he had lit the griddle. “Come on, let’s find out.” Angel scrambled onto the stool and watched John ladle some batter onto the griddle. “See how it’s making bubbles? That means it’s cooking. Now, you want to flip the pancake right when it’s cooked but before it burns.” He slipped a spatula beneath the pancake and turned it perfectly. “Like that. Now you try.”
I poured a cup of coffee. My head fell against the wall and I drifted into a half-sleep. I felt a hand on my head, fingers threading through my hair, and when I looked up John was standing beside me. He smiled, but his eyes were worried.
“You all right?”
