While young Joe Castillo was trying to deal with this little popularity perk, a television news crew caused a ruckus in the hall corridor and a nurse came in to see if the border Gunslinger would consent to an on-camera interview.
"Hell, no," he said. "Get them out a here!"
The schoolteacher couldn't believe it. "Turning down a television appearance? Are you that famous?" Now she really wanted to give him a head job!
And that wasn't the half of it. His phone wouldn't stop ringing. A college instructor called to tell him not to worry about missing classes because he was giving Joe a goddamn A, for the semester. And every waitress from every fast-food joint and every gin mill in South Bay was asking him if he was the tall one, the heavy one, the nutty one or. Christ, they didn't even give a shit which Barfer he was, just so they could come and see him.
It was quite a bit to handle for a lad twenty-four years old, all this attention. Of course he didn't understand that he was an embodiment of an American myth, an honest-to-God bandit-busting, badge-toting, shoot-from-the-hip Gunslinger.
All he knew was everyone wanted to give him blowjobs.
And his marriage wasn't worth a shit anymore. He was drunk half the time and the other half he was out in the canyons, or running wild all over San Diego with other Barfers who also didn't understand about American mythology. And he had perhaps the sweetest, shyest, and unquestionably the prettiest wife of any of them. She was being hurt terribly, and she would cry, which would break his heart.
Joe Castillo thought maybe it would have been more tolerable if his wife had been white instead of Mexican, and raised hell and kicked his ass like a Jan Gil would surely do, because he deserved it. The young cop was filled with remorse and confusion and ambivalence about being a real live Gunslinger.
And there was something else-his hand. It sure wasn't right. He was scared that it wouldn't work right ever again. When he was without visitors he'd get very depressed because his hand was no longer graceful and fluttering, and he discovered how hard it was even to talk without his fluttering hands. And he'd look over at his roommate in the next bed and say, "I'm only twenty-four years old. What the hell am I gonna do? Retire or what?"
Then he'd pull himself together and realize how that sounded. His roommate was only sixteen years old and had his leg amputated because of cancer.
So Joe Castillo blurted his favorite self-deprecatory cry, saying, "My shit is so ragged! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
But his roommate didn't mind. This kid was jazzed out of his skull from reading all about Joe Castillo in the newspapers and seeing him on television. This kid was in the presence of the first Gunslinger he'd ever met in his life. The kid would pull himself out of bed, still trying to stand on a limb that wasn't there, and answer phone calls for Joe or do other little chores in the room. The kid asked the doctor if he really had to go home as scheduled the next afternoon. He wanted to stay with his new hero, Joe Castillo.
And of course that made the young cop feel just great when he was already wondering what kind of an asshole he'd become out there in those hills. He got a chance to think about it for the next month. He was put on light duty and assigned to be a gofer in the detective bureau. He hated the job.
He started working out with a vengeance. He began punching the big bag and tattooing the speed bag. He found out that he was pretty good. Boxing was terrific. Boxers couldn't be troubled by booze and broads. Rest. Lots of rest. A Spartan life. Just try going into a ring after a binge and watch your little ass get kicked. He loved it. Somebody broke his nose. Who gives a shit? Joe Castillo went to Chino State Prison to box and fought a black inmate. All the Mexican inmates cheered for him, a cop. Later, a snitch he met on the street said, "Hey, man, I know you! I saw you throw some leather in the joint!"
He boxed at 156 pounds and eventually won a silver and a bronze medal in the police Olympics. His hobbies became running and boxing. His marriage might just survive the craziness in the canyons, he figured.
When he came back to BARF he had most of the use in that hand. He could sure as hell make a fist out of it and the fingers soon began to soar and glide and flutter like wings, just as before. Pretty soon he was back to his body language; shrugging, twisting, bowing, swaying when he talked to the groupies in the gin mills. He couldn't leave the booze behind, not when he was back with the Barf squad. But he said he didn't think he was the prettiest thing to walk down the street anymore. He didn't think he'd ever be a cocky, black-glove kind of cop ever again.
But one thing didn't change: his feeling for Carlos Chacon. When he'd get drunk his eyes would smolder almost as much as Carlos' eyes always smoldered. Carlos Chacon had shot him, no matter how much Carlos claimed it was inconclusive. Joe Castillo knew it was Carlos who did it and there was no remorse in Carlos for shooting him. He was going to watch Carlos Chacon very carefully in those canyons.
A few things happened to the squad while Joe Castillo and Fred Gil were off recuperating. One thing was that Ken Kelly was brought in as a replacement. Lake Robbie Hurt, Ken Kelly had to be convinced that he was the wrong color to walk as a decoy with the others. Ken Kelly figured that Robbie, being black, couldn't do a proper makeup job to pass as a Mexican, whereas he, being white, could pull it off. So Ken tucked his blond hair under a woman's stocking and smeared some kind of pancake makeup, mocha coffee goop, on his face and looked like one of the maniacs in a Hollywood version of gooned-out Vietnam GI.'s.
Another thing that happened is that all the ragging, jazzing, merciless personal insults and wisecracks elicited new responses. For example, if someone were to call Ernie Salgado "The Jaw" because of his prominent chin, or say that a night in his hometown-Marfa, Texas-held all the excitement of a bricklaying contest in Poland, he might not laugh anymore. Ditto for Eddie Cervantes when they asked him if he was riding Uncle Ebeneezer's back this Christmas. Tony Puente was getting sick of the gags about seeing his wife out on the street corners handing out Bible tracts to winos. And even someone as good-natured as Renee Camacho with the soprano alien voice didn't find the drag queen jokes so funny anymore. Nor did Joe Castillo laugh very much when they said he was about as smart as a sack of rutabagas. And maybe even smiling Joe Vasquez had heard just about one reference too many to his looking like Charles Laughton hanging from a bell. And for sure Robbie Hurt had had it when he got compared to some jive-ass with diamonds in his teeth.
In fact, when they were donning their bulletproof vests and alien duds, things were getting pretty quiet these days. Even in the little squad room, which was about the size of a family crypt, there wasn't much horsing around anymore. And when they piled into the four-wheel drive to head for the canyons at dusk, the silence was absolutely spooky. Nobody opened his mouth. A new element had been introduced since they learned unequivocally that even living legends might get hurt out there.
On the 5th of April a bandit gang made a very good score in Deadman's Canyon with what had to have been the most unfortunate robbery victims who ever lived to tell their story. Eighteen pollos from El Salvador and Guatemala decided to try their luck in Deadman's Canyon that afternoon. In that the sun was still high over the hills, they probably felt they might be more vulnerable to la migra but would surely escape the bandits about whom they'd heard so much. They were wrong.
While the party of eighteen men and women took their first rest under a stunted oak in Deadman's Canyon, they were approached by three young men and a large black dog. One of the young men was carrying a .22-caliber rifle. He had the longest hair most of them had ever seen on a man.
In fact he looked exactly like an Apache from an American movie. His hair was so long it hung all the way down his back to his belt. And he wore a dark-blue bandanna around his forehead just like an Apache or an American hippie. And he wore a brown vest over a white long-sleeve shirt, making him look even more like a movie Indian.
Since he had a big ugly dog and a rifle, they hoped he was just out hunting jackrabbits in the canyons, especially since one
of his companions was a boy. But the boy was carrying a big rock. And the third young man was hefting an iron bar.
And perhaps because the eighteen pilgrims didn't look like border Mexicans, or for some other reason, the one with the long hair and the .22-caliber rifle said something very silly. He said, "We're judiciales. Give us your money."
It was almost funny, except that he had a wild and glassy-eyed look and his rifle was clearly not a toy. The long haired bandit searched one of the pilgrims and found only some Salvadoran money. He crammed the useless stuff in his pocket and the three left in disgust, not even bothering to search the rest. The pilgrims thought they were in luck.
But thirty minutes later, while they crouched waiting for a Border Patrol vehicle in the far distance to clear out, three more men approached. These three were older and they said almost the same thing: "We're state police. Give us your money."
It seemed that all the bandits liked to pose as police. But judiciales didn't carry clubs and machetes and broken bottles. The nine men and nine women were terrified into giving up their life savings. Three junkie thugs strolled off that afternoon with over 5,000 U. S. dollars.
Then, while the pilgrim party wailed and keened and wept and wondered how they were going to get to Los Angeles or back to El Salvador and Guatemala without one dollar left, yet another group of men approached them, twelve men. And still the sun had not set in Deadman's Canyon. The twelve men were crestfallen to learn that the pilgrims had already been robbed. Twice. There was nothing left for them but the women.
This was one of the bandit gangs who intimidated through violence. The spokesmen for the Guatemalans saw that it was absolutely hopeless. He perceived savage brains behind black depthless eyes. When he tried to protect the women, the bandits picked up huge rocks. They attacked viciously, driving the wailing male pilgrims back into a ravine, the men begging the bandits to spare the women. Some of the pollos from El Salvador later reported thinking that this could not be real, not three bandit attacks.
The bandit gang encircled the weeping women like a mangy dog pack. The women's spoken prayers were met with obscene appraisals by the bandits, who were already arguing about who would get the youngest.
Suddenly a U. S. Border Patrol aircraft swooped over the canyon-and banked. One of the male Salvadorans began waving and screaming. Demanding to be arrested as an illegal alien.
Within a few minutes a chopper arrived and sent the bandits running back toward Colonia Libertad. The women were saved. The thing they kept repeating over and over as they sat dazed in the Southern substation of the San Diego Police Department was that they had felt so safe once they crossed the imaginary line. They had thought that on their trek through Mexico, wherein they had braved danger a hundred times, they might be robbed, but never were. They had thought that the moment they set foot on United States soil, in broad daylight, they were safe at last from bandits. No one believed it when a uniformed cop told them sardonically that there were more robberies in San Diego than in the entire countries of El Salvador and Guatemala put together.
Two nights later in Spring Canyon, while the media darlings were recreating bandit arrests for a television crew, Dick Snider was out and about with his binoculars. He spotted a young man with the longest hair he'd seen in quite a while, something like an Apache with a bandanna headband. He was carrying a .22-caliber rifle. Dick Snider told Manny Lopez, but by the time they could break free from show biz and call it a wrap, the long-haired bandit had vanished.
The next night they arrested two bandits with daggers. There was a fight, and nobody was fooling around, not these days. Ernie Salgado and Joe Vasquez put some lacerations on a bandit's face during the struggle and Ernie thought he'd done a creditable job. He was very surprised when later that night, while having a few for the road at The Anchor Inn, Manny Lopez had a bit too much scotch and said, "Eeeeeeerr-neeeeee, get over here."
Manny would never forget hearing Ernie's wife say that at the party. Then Manny turned a little mean and said, "Gotta run home to mama? Big Marine D. I. How come you're the only one didn't shoot the night Joe and Fred got it?"
"Maybe I'm the only one used my head. I didn't shoot the robbers, but I didn't shoot Fred and Joe either."
"Maybe you froze," Manny Lopez said boozily.
"Maybe that's whisky talking," Ernie Salgado said. And he left without finishing the beer.
"You got to have some big huevos to look in a gun muzzle," Manny Lopez told the rest. "And you got to have even bigger ones to draw against it and smoke them down."
Perhaps it was best unsaid that network news teams are not interested in ball-clanging mythic heros who go around arresting bandits like ordinary cops.
Ernie Salgado said he was indifferent about blowing a hole through the shotgun-wielding kid when he worked SWAT. And about the Viet Cong he had killed face to face during the Tet offensive. But he also thought that unless it was absolutely necessary, he'd like not to kill people. And his feelings for Manny Lopez were turning into something more than resentment. Much more.
It was as if someone were playing a record at the wrong rpm. Things were speeding up. It was happening in the canyons faster than they could arrange for the media to cover it. Their luck was limitless, it seemed. For example, the judiciales contacted them about that long-haired bandit with the .22 rifle. It seemed that the judiciales had him figured to be a dude who had shot and raped a woman in the canyons two years earlier. He had left her for dead and by the time her brother found her and dragged her body back to Mexican soil, she was dead. There was no report of the crime on the U. S. side although it was covered in the Tijuana newspapers.
Manny Lopez said, "Okay, we'll see if we can spot this cat and bust him for you."
And since the kid had hair to his ass and a headband like an American "hee-pee," and a .22 rifle, they started calling him "Twenty-two Long."
Just for fun Manny wrote on the chalkboard, TARGET: .22 LONG. And within three days, while they were lollygagging on a hillside in the late afternoon, waiting for sunset and checking out the mobs on the upper soccer field with binoculars, somebody said, "Hey, there's a broad up there squatted down smoking grass."
Then someone else looked through binoculars and said, "Hey, that broad's sure got long hair. She's wearing a blue bandanna around her."
Fifteen minutes later, Tony Puente, Eddie Cervantes, Joe Vasquez and Carlos Chacon were huffing and puffing over Airport Mesa toward Twenty-two Long, who was working on his third joint and was flying higher than any plane leaving the Tijuana airport that day.
It was just that easy. Twenty-two Long turned and saw these panting sweaty pollos standing behind him showing about a hundred teeth under their moustaches, and the pollos said, "Sabes que? Sabes que, asshole?"
And Twenty-two Long was busted. Lifted clear off the ground by his waist-length hair. And turned over to the judiciales. Of course he confessed, probably after a few bottles of Coke or Bubble-Up or ginger ale. And he led the Mexican authorities to the murder weapon. And because Mexican justice is swift, he was getting ready for prison before Manny Lopez could even figure out how to get the most P. R. mileage out of this one.
Nevertheless, it was impressive. You want a guy on a two-year-old homicide? You got it. Give us about three days. What else can we do for international relations?
It was, the Barfers believed, the incredible luck of Manny Lopez. How many times could he be so lucky? Other than breaking a finger or two when punching out bandits, or falling on his face once in a while as they all did, Manny couldn't be hurt, they were convinced. And they could accomplish anything he asked of them. They were feeling elite. Special. They were outside of ordinary police experience. And getting wild.
Joe Vasquez was so outrageous-looking that one day when Big Ugly was uptown he was drawn on by a startled patrolman who thought that some kind of Banana Republic terrorist had gotten into central headquarters.
Meanwhile, old Fred Gil was getting rehabilitated in record time. Per
haps he owed it to his wife, Jan. Anything was better than being home with the relentless squabbling. It ended one night with him saying that the only thing she really felt bad about was that he didn't get killed. And her saying, "Well maybe that's right." And then both regretting it because their little girl was being affected by the bitterness and endless bickering.
They were utterly incompatible, Jan liking to drink and go out raising hell, and Fred wanting peace and quiet. At first he couldn't sit in a chair with that bullet in his hip. When he walked he dragged a leg behind him like Lon Chaney's mummy. But he exercised nearly every waking moment.
He asked to go back to duty and they put him to work filing juvenile reports. He hated it. His lower extremities would go to sleep because of scar tissue touching nerves. After two weeks of this, and evenings fighting with Jan, he faked full recovery and said, "I guess I'm ready to go back in the canyons." There were things worse than getting shot.
Jan Gil was the life of any party, and was only too happy to go one-on-one with Manny Lopez when BARF threw their frequent little bashes. No one else could joust verbally with Manny, but she could, and just as profanely. Jan Gil said she couldn't stand him, and told the other wives he had an ego like Fidel Castro. Manny just figured, what the hell, she was probably in love with him. Of course Fred Gil was mortified, but Jan Gil's balls clanged as loud as Manny's any old day.
And since policemen are about as prone to gossip as soap opera heroines, there were lots of unsubstantiated rumors flying around that Jan Gil was doing more than going out nights with girl friends, and that also mortified him.
The talk of divorce was constant, and then Fred Gil met a woman during the course of his police duty and fell in love, but good. She was utterly different, this one. She didn't drink or smoke and she kept a spotless house for herself. Like Fred she didn't even swear. And Fred Gil, who felt bad about most everything in life, felt very bad about sneaking around. He told Jan that he wasn't so innocent either. That he'd met a woman. And it really hit the fan: threats, accusations, usually in front of the children, and finally a scene in the living room of his new lady, with Jan kicking on the door and calling the "other woman" gamy names. So old Fred Gil packed up and left home. For one day.
Lines and Shadows (1984) Page 18
