Renee Camacho was livid and Tony Puente couldn't stop swearing. Manny Lopez, who had gone to the substation, was the object of just about every obscenity ever invented in English or Spanish. They decided that it was time to do something.
They figured that the horrible explanation was that Manny was glad the chopper came in attracting attention. He wanted more Tijuana cops to come on over for another celebrated shootout. It seemed crazy but all of this was crazy.
Ordinarily at the end of their shift, they trooped into the BARF office, where Manny would have a message or two written on the chalkboard about the plan for the next night. So they all came trudging in as usual except that their eyes were all red from tequila shooters and sandblasted from the whirlwind blown up by the helicopter. Tony Puente, as the senior man, had drawn the short straw.
He was a quiet chap, not very outspoken at any time, and of course he was afraid of Manny, as they all were.
When Manny said, "Is there anything else?" preparatory to dismissing his troops, Tony Puente removed his glasses, wiped them nervously, put them back on, sighed once or twice and said, "Yeah, Manny, there is. Close the door."
But Tony Puente just couldn't come out and say all the things they told him to say. Things like: "This shit's getting old!" Or, "We're tired a hanging our asses out for your headlines!" Or, "We've had it!"
It just wasn't Tony's style. He began tentatively and diplomatically. He said, "Manny, this is hard for us. I don't know how to say it but we got thoughts."
"Yeah, so say it," Manny said.
"It's like we got the feeling that we shouldn't be doing certain things cause we're gonna get ambushed. And like tonight, with that chopper. we all talked it over and we feel you put us through shit that we didn't need to be put through and."
"Our cover was blown by that chopper!" Eddie Cervantes said.
"There was absolutely no reason to stay there and get lit up for Tijuana cops!" Ernie Sjalgado said.
"No alien robber in his right mind would come in and work the area after that!" Eddie Cervantes said.
"What were we doing there, trying to bait more Tijuana cops?" Ernie Salgado said.
"My wife's pregnant," Renee Camacho said.
"My wife's pregnant," Ernie Salgado said.
"I'm not getting killed for this," Eddie Cervantes said. "I wanna see my kids grow up."
Not everyone was attacking. The younger ones-Joe Castillo, Carlos Chacon, Robbie Hurt-were mumbling. Big Ugly, Joe Vasquez, wasn't saying anything but even he was bobbing his head in agreement. Manny Lopez could see they were about to pop their chains.
Then they just talked themselves out. Everyone got very quiet and noticed that Manny's eyebrow had crawled to Point Loma. Manny was in his "Sabes que?" mode. Everybody's sphincter slammed so tight a sand flea couldn't have crawled in, which had actually happened out there in those vermin-infested canyons.
They were expecting the worst. Would he single people out? What would he call them? Kill me in combat but please don't call me a pussy!
But suddenly Manny's eyebrow came floating back down on his head. Then he got this look of melancholy resignation, like a hangman, or a proctologist, or an actor's agent. The kind of look that says, "It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it."
Manny's mouth kind of turned down under his Zapata moustache and his little Asian-looking eyes got all misty and Manny put his hands in his lap and dropped his little head as though gathering himself. And when he looked up he made a speech about his sons! His dear sons!
Manny Lopez began it thus: "When I talk of you I call you mis hijos. And sometimes I call you guys mis hijitos. And that means I'm feeling extra caring about you. The things I go through uptown with the chiefs. the things I go through for you, well, I don't tell you because I don't wanna worry you and." Then he reaches up and god-damnit! It looks like Manny's wiping away a motherfucking tear! And he says, "Okay, I hear you, I hear you. I get your drift. I just want you to understand that whatever I've done it's only for you and. Okay! I hear you. We'll make a few changes, mis hijitos." Then he gives them his impish grin and says "Now! Let's go down to The Anchor Inn because I got a Master Charge that'll pay for all the drinks you fuckers can hold."
There wasn't a dry eye in the house. They were ecstatic. They'd won! Manny Lopez! What a guy! They hit The Anchor Inn like a freight train.
Ken Kelly wondered about it. Manny the high-living dude whose credit cards were always pushed to the max? Manny ordered a round. He told them he loved every one of them. They got all warm and rosy and started chattering about the groupie schoolteachers. Maybe they'd show up tonight. We'll give some apples to the teacher! Bring on the whole freaking school board!
Manny tossed down his Chivas while somebody was telling jokes, and he excused himself with a wink, saying, "I gotta go to a meeting."
Everyone started winking back. A meeting. Sure. Hey hey, Manny! A meeting! Sure!
When Manny left, Ken Kelly, who often talked of reincarnation, said, "Last time around, Manny was either Joan of Arc or Heinrich Himmler. Or maybe he was W. C. Fields? He could con Orphan Annie into chain-saw massacre."
Then he called their attention to the fact that maybe they were only about as complex as a game of Bingo. Manny had stifled them with the bar tab.
"He knows us like ya know your dick!" Ken Kelly cried.
And within a week they were all back to walking south of the invisible line.
Shortly thereafter it broke wide open. Predictably, it was Eddie Cervantes who bit the bullet. They were having their night's briefing as usual. Dick Snider walked into the tiny squad room as he sometimes did and was leaning against the wall, showing his permanent squint from the dangling cigarette. He looked even taller in the sun tan uniform of the San Diego police.
Eddie Cervantes suddenly threw a whole lot of sand into Manny's gargantuan jockstrap. He said to Dick Snider: "Lieutenant, I don't think it's wise for us to be operating south a the line."
And of course Dick Snider's eroded jaw crunched against his Sam Browne and the cigarette was barely attached to his lower lip. Even the squinted eye got bigger than the shield on his chest, and he said, "You're what?"
Eddie Cervantes softened it a bit, since Manny's eyebrow had crawled halfway down his back. Everyone had only one thought at the moment: Manny was looking exactly as he did when he said Sabes que?
Eddie Cervantes plunged ahead and told Dick Snider how they'd been strolling "a few feet" south sometimes because all the bandit activity seemed to be at the border line or south. And how they hadn't been able to take down any good crooks lately because of the robbers staying where they belonged, but all in all, wasn't it a little "chancy" to be doing it this way? He didn't even have to say what the chief of police and the deputy chiefs and the inspectors and Amy Carter, or whoever advised Jimmy, would say if they learned that after an international shootout with a country that had become an oil producer, a bunch of hardball little turds had rolled on south to do their thing.
Dick Snider said, "Manny, I'd like to talk to you after lineup." And he left without comment.
Manny Lopez showed them a Richard Nixon glower for about three seconds or three days, and didn't say a word. Then he took the number two wooden pencil he was gripping and threw it like a knife at the face of Eddie Cervantes, who nearly caught: it in one of his sad eyes.
And then there was all the macho posturing, with Manny snarling, "You pussy! You pussy!"
And Ken Kelly trying to patch things up by saying, "You are what you eat!"
And of course all the other Barfers began jumping up and reminding them that this was a police station. Manny Lopez blazed out to talk with Dick Snider.
This made it easier for Eddie Cervantes to leave the squad quietly and accept the new job with the school task force, a day-shift job with weekends off, doing ordinary normal sane police work. Manny in the end tried to be gracious by saying how this was a career opportunity for Eddie and how he was happy for Eddie. But nobody believed h
im.
First Fred Gil, now Eddie Cervantes. The Barf squad was shrinking. And Dick Snider issued a direct order that they would not walk south of the imaginary line.
One evening when the Barfers were out "chasing the elusive southern burglar," after having tossed down more than a few shooters at a saloon, Ken Kelly couldn't get his mind off two things: his impending day in court with a judge who was finally going to sentence him for the criminal assault, and his mother dying. Of course what was happening in the canyons was no doubt mixed up with these other very dark thoughts. He was quietly riding along in an unmarked car with Renee Camacho driving when Ken just cocked his fist and shattered the windshield of the police car.
Renee couldn't believe it! Ken couldn't believe it! The windshield was a spider web of broken glass. Renee had to drive off the road and stop. Unfortunately, Manny was in a plainclothes car following and he screeched in behind them and jumped out yelling, "What the hell happened?"
Renee, who was still shaky, said, "Manny, it's very simple. A brick came flying over the wall and."
"No, that ain't what happened!" Manny said, looking at Ken, who was unconsciously doing his Jack Nicholson impression. Manny then said, "Okay, what the hell happened, Ken?"
Ken Kelly wanted to say a lot of things. He wanted to say: Manny, I just went to court on this scum bucket that creamed somebody with a two-by-four just for fun and they dropped the charge. And there's so many mass murderers getting acquitted and paroled that if the Mansons hadn't been dumb enough to kill celebrities, Susan Atkins'd be living in Mission Valley giving Tupperware parties for Charlie. And me, I'm convicted and waiting sentence just for hitting a number one prick asshole with a flashlight and my mother's dying of cancer and my little off-duty business selling emergency equipment blew up in my face and I'm losing my investment and my marriage is about as sound as a Chicago ballot box and I mortgaged my house for the business that blew up in my face so the only thing that ain't happened is I ain't found out my minister's fucking my wife!
That's what he wanted to say. All he could say was: "I'm flipping out, Manny. I don't know what's happening except I'm flipping out!"
Thirty minutes later, Ken Kelly was sitting in the BARF office with Dick Snider when Manny came in with some papers and shut the door. Manny said, "I'm sure you want a representative of the Police Officers Association here, don't you?"
"What for?" Ken Kelly asked bleakly.
"This is a predisciplinary interview," Manny said.
"Well then, I guess I could call my lawyer," Ken Kelly said to Dick Snider. "But I don't wanna have a lawyer except that the city's making me crazy because they're mad about having to pay that maggot mouth I hit with the flashlight a lot a bucks because his eye doesn't work too good anymore. All because I hit this bag a pus with a little four-cell flashlight? What was it, a magnum flashlight? With hollow-point batteries? Lieutenant, my lawyer says I oughtta go to a hypnotist to see if I was cognizant of what I did or was it unconsciousness of fact or did it result from a perceived threat based on my experience as a police officer? But trouble is I got too many skeletons in my closet to have a hypnotist fucking with my mind! I don't know what to do! Ya understand? Ya understand what I'm saying?"
Dick Snider just smoked and nodded at Ken Kelly from time to time and finally he put his big leathery hand on the young cop's shoulder and said, "Son, I think you have a real problem. I think you need psychiatric help."
Ken Kelly looked up painfully at Dick Snider, the man he hoped he'd get as a father next time if reincarnation is what it's cracked up to be.
And Mr. Sensitivity, Manny Lopez, shook his head sadly and clucked, "Yep, King, you're a fucking nut case. Wacko. A banana is what you are. We gotta get you a fucking lobotomy or something."
Dick Snider ordered Ken Kelly to take a week's vacation and not to report for duty unless he had a note from a psychiatrist attesting to his mental health.
Ken Kelly was sore about the forced vacation, but during that week he was glad Dick Snider had ordered it. He completed his psychiatric work-up and came back to the Southern substation full of enthusiasm. He met with Manny Lopez and said, "This was a righteous shrink! He was one that did a work-up on Patty Hearst! That's heavy duty! He canceled his appointments for the whole day and part a the next day just for me! I spilled my guts, Manny. I told him about the first time I pounded my pud and which hand I used. I told him I stole pears when I was four years old. I told him the first time I got a hard-on seeing bare tits. And at the end I say, 'Tell me, Doc, am I a banana or not? Do I need a lobotomy or what?' And he says, 'On the contrary, I wish the San Diego Police Department had more officers like you!' Manny! I ain't a nut case!"
Ken Kelly had a letter from the head doctor to prove he wasn't a nut case or a banana after all. Ken Kelly couldn't have been happier when he walked into the office of Captain Joslin, the commander of the substation. Until the captain said, "I've got bad news for you, Kelly. The inspector said you're a liability. I've got to take you off your present job."
Ken Kelly was devastated. It took every ounce of self-control to hold together. He said, "Captain, please don't send me out a the division at least. Put me on a patrol unit, as close to the border as possible. So I can help them sometimes."
"You got it," the captain nodded.
Later, Ken Kelly said, "I've heard that every sane person contemplates suicide sometime. Well, I made up for all the insane people who never did. I never thought a smoking it-that'd be too dirty, too many reports for other cops. But a traffic accident? A little bit of overtime for some traffic cop and that's all? No detectives, no lab man, no insurance man saying they can't pay off on suicides? A cop bites it on-duty in a car? Happens all the time."
Ken Kelly had these thoughts when, on his first night back to patrol, he was screaming down 1-5 at one hundred miles per hour. Thinking how easy it would be. Then he got real scared. He called in sick. He didn't come to work for a few days.
"I was unbelievably bitchy. Then I was a zombie," he said. "My old lady was closer than ever to dumping me. My world was over."
He never knew why, but BARF was the only thing he wanted in life. Was it the carousing? The camaraderie? Was it a perverse thrill of screaming Barf! in the night? Was it the threat? Was he a banana?
He'd tried to go to Nam dozens of times when he was in the Air Force, but could never leave the Mojave Desert, not in three years. BARF was something he thought would be significant, a new kind of police work. Even though he was the wrong color, he went out and got it on his own. And now he'd lost it.
When he returned from his "sick" days off, he was called into the captain's office. Captain Joslin looked at the dejected young cop and said, "Do you want back in BARF that badly?"
Ken Kelly couldn't even speak. He could only nod and hold his breath.
The captain said, "Okay, I talked the inspector into it. You're going back."
He was in a daze when he walked into the miserable little squad room after a week's absence. Renee Camacho and Joe Vasquez hugged him and kissed him on the cheek Mexican-style and said they were going to party for a week.
Ken Kelly started blubbering and had to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. He said to Dick Snider: "Lieutenant, I hope that if I get reincarnated as a foxy chick I can give the captain a blowjob for this!"
Dick Snider told him he didn't think that would be necessary. A simple thank you was enough.
They had been at it nearly a year. Summer started to end more abruptly than usual, with rain. And there were very few bandits. Manny took them on a mini-Death March, and his daily activity report estimated that they covered ten miles and had seen only fifteen illegal aliens all night. But they did see a fire. Stewart's Barn was ablaze and was destroyed. There would be no more aliens hiding there after they'd crossed. It seemed like an omen of change. Something familiar was gone. The rumor began instantly that a border patrolman had torched it.
On October 5th, the log of Manny Lopez read: "It was very quiet due to t
he rain. We contacted two subjects who stated that they had been robbed on the Mexican side just prior to entering the U. S. We are getting more and more reports of robberies just south of the fence."
And then Manny Lopez added a sardonic closing line: "I wonder why the bandits won't come across?"
Late one night right by the fence, right near Interstate 5, so close to the U. S. Customs House that you could hit a government employee with a rock, Manny Lopez put Renee Camacho on the fence as a decoy. It was well lit there. Renee had come to hate light. Light was jeopardy. Light was danger. He wanted to be in the dark at all times.
"Talk to guys," Manny told him. "Tell them you got money."
Renee stood there alone. Manny and the others were thirty yards away in the darkness. Two men approached the fence from the south. One of them was wearing a T-shirt on this warm night. He was about thirty years old. He was incredibly filthy and had a homemade tattoo on his forearm. He had curled puffy lips and swollen white gums. He said to Renee: "The patrol's coming. Come back over the fence."
"No, I'm waiting for my guide," Renee answered in his lilting pollo singsong. "I'm waiting for my guide."
"The patrol's coming!" the man repeated, and he turned to his partner who had approached from the darkness. His partner was an ugly man with hair like a Zulu and heavy lips. His smell was overpowering. It made Renee dizzy. He had jaundiced eyes, pupils bright as sapphire in the yellow whites.
He said, "Come back. We're trying to help you."
"No, I have to stay here," Renee told them in his alien voice.
"Bastard, I said come back!" the Zulu said, and Renee felt his hot breath. He smelled like murder. Like the slavering maniacs of the nightmares.
"If you don't come, I'm coming over there and dragging you back," the man said with that corpse-death-murder breath. His leer was saw-toothed, as hideous as a moray eel.
Lines and Shadows (1984) Page 30
