Rag and Bone

by Michael Nava

  I knew on this case there would probably not be any follow-up reports, so this was going be as good as the prosecution’s evidence got. While strong, it was also entirely circumstantial, and had it only been a matter of circumstantial evidence I could have picked it apart. Unfortunately, Vicky had confessed, and now much would depend on whether I could find a plausible ground to suppress her statement. I had not yet been provided with a transcript of her interrogation and made a mental note to request it at the arraignment. I glanced into the interview room, where Angel and his mother were now engaged in an intense conversation, heads bent together more like co-conspirators than mother and child.

  13.

  I GAVE ANGEL AND HIS mother a half-hour and then I sent him outside to wait for me while I talked to her. As soon as he left, all the animation went out of her and she assumed a mask of passivity, though by now I knew she was passive only as stone is passive. Her face was still swollen and gashed, the bruises even darker and more florid than the day before, but she had arranged her hair to cover the stitches on the side of her head and she had found lipstick somewhere. The shapeless jumpsuit she had been given to wear emphasized the soft slope of her shoulders, the swell of her breasts, and made her seem more vulnerable than ever. I was reminded of my first impression of her: a small, gentle animal with many predators and few defenses.

  “How do you feel?” I asked her.

  “Fine.”

  “It looked like you and Angel were arguing.”

  She shook her head. “No, I was telling him that I wanted him to go stay with his grandma until I get out. He doesn’t want to.”

  “I know. He told me he wants to stay with me. I said it was up to you.”

  “I don’t want him to be any more trouble for you,” she said.

  As if that were the reason. “You know,” I said, “I’ve called Mrs. Trujillo and she hasn’t returned my calls. By now the police will have told her about Pete. Maybe she’s less anxious to raise Angel than you think.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Vicky, you killed her son,” I reminded her. “She might be upset about that.”

  “She knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  She stared past me at her reflection in the mirror and touched her battered face. “She knows why. She knows I’m sorry for what I did.” She looked at me and said in a decisive voice. “I want to plead guilty.”

  “You’re charged with second-degree murder. You plead to that and you’ll go to prison for fifteen years to life.”

  That gave her pause. “What about good time?”

  “Even with good time, you’ll do fifteen, plus you used a gun, so that adds another five. Angel will be thirty by the time you’re released.” I let this sink in. “I’m not going to let you plead guilty to second-degree.”

  She seemed surprised by my firmness and I caught a flash of gratitude in her eyes, but then she frowned and said, “I told the police I killed him.”

  I shrugged. “There may be ways to get around that. Anyway, Vicky, in the law not all killings are murder. If you killed Pete in self-defense or because there was a long pattern of abuse from him, you might not get off completely, but maybe I can persuade the D.A. to let you plead to something less than murder and you won’t have to spend as long in prison.”

  Her lip trembled and her eyes welled up. The decision to plead had been bravado; she really was terrified. “I don’t want to go to prison,” she whispered. “I don’t want to leave Angel without his mom. It was like you said, self-defense. Pete was hitting me.”

  “But he had hit you before that night and you didn’t shoot him then. What was different about this time?”

  She composed herself. “I don’t know. It happened so fast. He was coming and I saw the gun and I picked it up and started shooting. I didn’t mean to kill him, Uncle Henry, I just wanted to stop him.”

  “There’s a problem with that picture.”

  “What?”

  “He was shot from the back, so he couldn’t have been coming at you.”

  She glared at me. “Why are you trying to trick me?”

  “I’m not,” I said, “but if we go to trial, you’ll have to testify, and if you lie, you will be convicted of murder. I think what happened that night was that he beat you up just like he had many other times, and you didn’t fight back because you knew that was a fight you couldn’t win. I think you waited until he had stopped and his back was turned and then you shot him.”

  “He was drinking all day and getting high. Jesusita said she would give us money to go away and start all over again, but he was going to shoot it up his arm. We started fighting and he told me it was his mother’s money and he could spend it any way he wanted to.” She shook her head despondently. “I wanted to be a family again. Angel needed his dad. But not like that.”

  “Is this what you told the cops?”

  “I honestly don’t remember. I was hurting and they gave me something at the hospital that made me drowsy.” She looked at me. “All they wanted to know is, did I shoot him.”

  “What did you do with the gun?”

  “It was in the room. The police don’t have it?”

  “No,” I said. “It seems to have disappeared. Did you get rid of it?”

  “No,” she said. “I could hardly move.”

  I believed her, but it complicated matters. “All right, Vicky. Tomorrow at the arraignment, you’ll plead not guilty. Your mother and I will try to get you out on bail and then we’ll take it from there, one step at a time.”

  I looked back through the one-way glass one last time as I left. She was still sitting at the table as the deputy came in to escort her back to her cell. She still looked fragile, but also thoughtful, as if she was working something out in her head, something complex. I saw for the first time the intelligence that lay beneath the softness and realized I was wrong to have conflated her with my mother. Vicky might present herself as a victim, but that was only her protective coloration. Beneath that coloration I now detected a determination to survive that marked her as a Rios.

  On the drive home, Angel turned the radio on and began to fiddle with the channels while I tried to assess how much Vicky had lied to me. After a few minutes of static and snatches of music, I snapped. “Hey, pick a station and stick with it, okay?”

  He switched the radio off and said, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “I just did, Angel.”

  He reached for the radio and I slapped his hand away. He folded his arms belligerently across his chest, stared out the side window and didn’t speak to me again. I had a sudden, chilling thought of my father.

  When I saw John’s truck parked at the curb in front of my house, I felt seep from my shoulders the tension that I hadn’t even realized was there.

  “That’s John’s truck,” Angel said, relenting.

  “Yeah, but I don’t see him.”

  I pulled into the driveway and noticed the boots hanging out of the window on the passenger’s side of the truck. I parked, went over to the truck and peered in. John was stretched across the cab, the bill of his cap pulled low over his eyes. He was dressed for work in grubby jeans and yet another faded, flannel shirt, this one black-and-purple plaid.

  I grabbed his boot. “Hey, no loitering.”

  Lazily, he flicked up his cap and smiled. John smiled so much that it seemed to be his default setting: lips parting to disclose large, slightly crooked but benevolent teeth. This smile scarcely curved the corners of his mouth and showed only a white glimmer of teeth, but revealed a happiness that excluded everyone in the world but me. I slipped my hand into the leg of his jeans until skin touched skin. He was warm. He was always warm.

  “Hi, John,” Angel said, coming up beside me. I dropped my hand.

  John sat up. “Hey, Angel. Henry. Where have you guys been?”

  “Visiting Angel’s mom,” I said.

  The sad, squinty eyes became even narrower. “Was she okay?”

  I waite
d for Angel to respond, but when he didn’t I tried to respond for him. “It was hard to see her like that.” There seemed nothing else to say on the subject, so I asked him, “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I’m taking the afternoon off,” he said. “You can do that when you’re the boss.” That comment, directed to Angel, got a half-smile out of him. John reached into his shirt pocket and flashed some cardboard. “The Dodgers are playing the Diamondbacks at twelve-thirty. I got three tickets.” He grinned at Angel. “Know anyone who’s interested in seeing a game?”

  Angel squealed, “Uncle Henry, can we go?”

  “Yeah, Uncle Henry, how about it?”

  “I have to call Elena. Give me fifteen minutes. You want to come in?”

  John shook his head. “Angel and me are going to sit in the truck, and if you’re not back in fifteen minutes, we’re taking off without you.” He reached over and threw open the passenger door. “Right, Angelito?”

  “You better hurry, Uncle Henry,” Angel said as he climbed in.

  Elena told me she’d been unable to get an evening flight and had booked a Monday morning flight, so we agreed to meet at the courthouse. There were a couple of other phone messages I had to respond to, and then I realized I was still wearing my suit, so I changed into jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. When I went back outside, John’s truck was gone. I went to the curb and looked up and down the street, thinking he was pulling a prank, but I didn’t see him. I stood there for a couple of minutes not knowing what to do, when I saw his truck chugging up the hill. He roared by, grinning, made a U-turn and pulled up beside me.

  “We went to get some lunch,” John said.

  Angel held up a sack. “We got a hamburger for you, Uncle Henry.”

  I got in. “I thought you’d left without me.”

  “I wanted to,” John said, “but Angelito made me come back. I don’t know why ’cause I hear you wouldn’t let him play the radio.”

  I looked at Angel who looked away anxiously.

  “I was kind of a jerk,” I said. “I’m sorry, Angel.”

  “That’s okay,” he mumbled.

  “Thanks, John,” I said.

  “For what, man?”

  I reached into the sack. “The burger.”

  Above Dodger Stadium the sky was cloudless and blue, the air was warm and the light was pure. Beside me, I heard a sharp intake of breath and then a dreamy sigh from my nephew. I looked at him. He was transfixed. Down on the field, the Diamondbacks were taking batting practice. John, who seemed almost as excited as Angel, wanted to go down to the fence and watch.

  “You two go,” I said. “I need to sit.”

  John looked at me. “You feeling okay?”

  “Go on, I’ll be fine.”

  They trotted down the steps while I looked for our seats. Down on the field, some of the Dodgers were running sprints and tossing the ball around. I watched them for a moment, but my thoughts soon drifted back to the problem of my niece’s defense. Self-defense would be a hard sell because it required that both the threat and the response be immediate. Here, neither was. Pete had not been coming at Vicky when she shot him, and she had time to get off three rounds. In real time, this may all have taken only seconds; but the law operated in legal time, which, like the Twilight Zone, existed in an entirely different dimension. In legal time, all it took was a couple of seconds for someone to deliberate a killing, and that was sufficient to convert it from manslaughter to murder. She had had enough time for that. I might have to forego straight self-defense and rely on battered women’s syndrome, a considerably tougher defense because it asked the jurors to see the killer and not the decedent as the victim. My presentation would have to be flawless. That reminded me of Edith Rosen’s doubts about whether Vicky was a battered woman. I made a mental note to call her. Of course, even if I couldn’t argue self-defense to a jury, I could use the threat of raising the defense as a bargaining chip with the D.A. Where was the gun? Hadn’t Angel told me he had seen it? I realized that I had not questioned him since the night of the shooting, but now I would have to ask him some hard questions. That got me thinking about whether I had any business representing my niece at all. I worried that my personal stake in the outcome of the case would impair my judgment and cause me to miss some crucial detail. But what was my personal stake? If I got my niece off, she would probably take Angel and disappear from my life. If, as likely, she ended up having to do time, either of his grandmothers had a stronger legal claim to custody than I did. And did I really think I was equipped to raise him? All I knew about his life was that he had had the kind of childhood that turns people into psychological time bombs. How would I react when he started to go off? Did I have my own time bomb ticking away in me? Was it possible I could revert to the brutality with which I had been raised?

  “Uncle Henry, John got me a baseball from the Dodgers.” Angel ran up the steps holding a pristine ball. He was wearing a Dodgers cap.

  I roused myself. “How did he do that?”

  “He used to play with the batting coach!” Angel exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” John said, coming up behind me. “He was my catcher. After twenty years, he’s still bitching about how I used to shake him off.” He looked at me quizzically. “What’s wrong, Henry?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was thinking.”

  John pulled another Dodgers cap out of his back pocket and clamped it on my head. “We’re here to see baseball, man. No thinking. Okay?”

  “Like I could squeeze a thought past this hat.”

  The line-ups were announced and we sat down, Angel between us. A moment later we were back on our feet for a country-western version of the national anthem. Somewhere around the rockets’ red glare, Angel reached for my hand.

  The D’backs won, 7 to 5, but didn’t score the winning runs until the eighth inning. Angel got to shout himself hoarse rooting for the Dodgers, which, because John had played in their farm system, was now Angel’s team. We were standing outside the bathroom waiting for John as the park emptied. A blond, blue-eyed boy about Angel’s age wearing an Arizona cap drifted by in the passing crowd, spotted Angel and smirked.

  “We kicked your butts,” he said.

  Suddenly it was as if I was holding an enraged dog at the end of a taut leash. Angel’s body went rigid, his face became a mask, and he glared at the boy with such unblinking hatred that the kid went scrambling after his dad. Gangbangers used this stare to intimidate each other. They learned it in the prison yards, where it was called “maddogging.” When the boy disappeared, the rage went out of Angel’s eyes and his hand went limp in mine.

  “Why did you maddog that kid?”

  He seemed surprised that I knew the expression. “He started it.”

  “He was just teasing you, Angel.”

  He dropped my hand and took a half-step away.

  “Where did you learn how to do that?”

  After a moment of sullen silence, he said, “I got jumped.”

  Since I knew what maddogging was, he had used the street term for being initiated into a gang.

  “Where was this?”

  “At school. In San Francisco.”

  “Recently?”

  “Last year,” he said. “When my dad was still in jail.”

  “Why would they jump you? You’re ten years old.”

  His expression suggested I should get out more often. “Some sixth graders did it,” he said. “They wanted me to be a runner.”

  “Drug runner.”

  Again the look. “They said I could have a gun.”

  “These sixth graders?”

  He nodded. “A semi,” he said admiringly. “I told my mom and she took me out of school. Uncle Henry, are there gangs in the schools in L.A.?”

  “Not in any school you’re going to, m’ijo,” I replied. “Did you want to be in a gang?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I like school.”

  John emerged from the bathroom smiling. “So what did you think
of your first big league game, Angelito?”

  “It was cool,” he burbled as if, a moment ago, he hadn’t calmly been discussing semiautomatic handguns and gang initiations. John picked him up and sat him on his shoulders. Bemused, I followed them out.

  When John dropped us off, I asked him to come back for dinner.

  “Just for dinner?” he asked.

  Angel had rushed into the house with a bladder full of lemonade.

  “You want to stay over?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “What about Angel?”

  He smiled. “What about him? When we were down at the fence watching the D’backs he asked me if I was your boyfriend.”

  “He did?”

  “Listen, Henry, Angelito is ten going on thirty. You know what I mean?”

  I thought about the conversation I had had with him about gangs. “Yeah, but when I look at him, all I see is a little boy.”

  John reached across the seat and squeezed my thigh. “That’s ’cause he knows he can be a little boy around you. That’s your present to him.”

  “What did you tell him when he asked if you were my boyfriend?”

  “I’ll only answer that in bed,” he said. “In the presence of my lawyer.”

  “Then I guess you’re sleeping over.”

  He leaned his sunburned face forward. I kissed him in full view of my neighbors, none of whom were home except old Mrs. Byrne, the fundamentalist, who had long ago cast me into perdition when she discovered I was taking care of Josh as he was dying of AIDS. She had gone around the neighborhood with a petition to force me to move. She was probably watching us now from behind the lace curtains in her living room. So I groped his butt for good measure. He laughed and groped me back.