He’ll have to run across the boulevard. There is a crosswalk but no light. He will have to time it and run when the traffic is clear both ways. He edges out to the curb. Nothing to his right. Nothing to his left. He begins to run. He is about five steps into the crosswalk when a cop car turns a distant corner and heads toward him. Oh, Jesus! Rickie stops and begins to back up slowly. The cop car is now two blocks from the intersection. Have they seen him? It is dark here, the streetlight at the corner blinking off and on sporadically. He backpedals slowly to the curb, stumbles up onto it—shit, the awkward movement will call attention to him—and backs into the darkness of the theater entrance, behind the ticket booth. The cop car reaches the stop sign. Rickie can hear his own breathing like waves crashing the shore. The cops stop momentarily and then cross the street slowly. They’re coming for him. They know they have him trapped, so they don’t have to hurry. Where is he going to go? Out into the open where they can gun him down? The bright light on the driver’s side snaps on and sweeps across the theater entrance. Rickie inches around the opposite side of the ticket booth. The light hits the windows and concrete at his feet, just catching the tip of his Nike. He pulls it back carefully out of the pool of light. If they stop and get out, he’s dead.
They pause at the intersection now, not twenty feet away, while the light probes the area between the ticket booth and the doors to the theater. Rickie can hear their radio going nonstop, a woman, but he can’t understand anything other than the controlled urgency in her voice. He waits to hear a car door open. That will be his signal to take off across the street no matter what’s coming. Sweat runs down his sides. He is aware of his own sour smell.
The light shuts off and the car accelerates into the neighborhood. Rickie steps from behind the ticket booth, takes one quick look both ways on Landerman and sprints across the wide and empty boulevard, up the street from Johnnie’s where they ate just this afternoon, feeling the exhilaration and joy of a long distance runner in sight of the finish line. He laughs out loud as he enters the darkened neighborhood west of the boulevard.
SUNDAY NIGHT
CHAPTER 20
When he stops running, he’s at the edge of the large empty lot. It isn’t fenced, but no kids come over here to play. It’s vacant except for the weeds that someone cuts down once each year and the bottles and cans and condoms and fast food containers that people throw out of their cars. Rickie glances up at the power lines crossing it, held up by the tall metal stanchions that scared him as a little boy because they looked like skeletal robots. He used to believe that if he stared long enough, they would begin to move. He still never looks at them for long when he passes by. As he glances up at them now, dark forms against the lighter sky, he feels uneasy in the pit of his stomach and looks away.
If they are in front of him, then Anthony’s house must be on his right. Anthony was an elementary school friend who has since disappeared. Rickie recognizes the cinder block fence and the broken blocks where a drunk driver crashed into it. The bougainvillea does not completely cover the damage. So, if this is Anthony’s house, the wedding was at a house just a few blocks over. And beyond that… Now he knows where he is and where he is going.
He runs north a long block until he can go no further. Now to his left. He runs across the street and past an old beige two-story apartment building with tin foil on the windows to the cluster of small, one-story houses. The one sitting furthest from the curb and in the deep shadow of a leafy tree is the abandoned house. The heavy shade, the protection it gives from probing searchlights, provides hope. Maybe they won’t find him. They could go right past the house and not even notice it, hidden as it is back from the street in the darkness.
He runs along the side of the house as quickly as he can without making noise, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass on the driveway. Is the garage unlocked? He doesn’t stop to find out.
What if someone is there? What if a couple of vatos are smoking a blunt or cutting cocaine or tagging the wall? What if he comes across a couple like Claudia and himself? They’ll yell, alert the neighbors, maybe even attack him. He’ll have to run again, and then where?
For the third time in the last two days, he pushes open the back door of the abandoned house; he stands on the threshold listening. If anyone else is in the house, they have heard him and are listening as well, maybe pulling a gun or a knife or a screwdriver out of a pocket, slowly and quietly rising to their knees, readying to attack. Rickie’s heart pounds in his ears. It is unbearably loud, deafening, until he separates it from the other hammering noise, a helicopter nearly overhead. He can see the light grow outside, as though a frightening full moon has suddenly risen. For a brief second, it makes him think of Halloween and being young, no, not young so much as free of fear, like he was only an hour ago. His stomach aches with longing. His eyes well and his throat thickens.
Sirens rise and fall relentlessly in the thick night air, stop suddenly, and then begin again just as suddenly and draw closer. The light from the helicopter comes nearer. He can’t stand in the doorway or he’ll be spotted. He has to get inside no matter who’s there.
He steps into the kitchen.
“Hey,” he whispers loudly. “It’s okay. I just need a place to hide.”
He stops and listens as closely as he can, considering the noise outside and within his own body. He expects to hear a slight shift in position, a leg or arm rubbing on fabric, a shoe scraping the floor. No response. The sound of his whispered words carries into the emptiness and comes back mournfully, as though spoken by a ghost. The skin on his neck and arms prickles with fear. He has to move.
He stands at the kitchen door holding his breath, and then begins tip-toeing quietly through the kitchen, past the dining room and down the short hall, past two bedrooms and a bathroom on his left and into the empty living room at the front of the house. Nothing. No people. No furniture. Just darkness. Angular shadows soften and disappear as the light comes closer again. The helicopter is circling overhead. Where is he going to hide? In a bedroom behind a closed door? That’s ridiculous.
The helicopter passes overhead again, the beam of light sweeping over the little house and illuminating it with an eerie silver light. He goes up and down the hallway again looking in bedrooms and into the bathroom. Nowhere to hide. Empty rooms with nothing even to hide behind.
Maybe there is some place outside behind a bush or a tree. No. A crawlspace, maybe, under the house. He imagines rats and spiders, earwigs, roaches, himself lying on dusty cobwebby ground, more fearful of the rodents and the insects than the cops. Crawlspace. Some houses have attics. His grandmother’s house has one. There is an access panel to it right in the hallway. Rickie leaves the bedroom he’s standing in and goes into the hallway. He looks up. There it is, a small hatch cut into the hallway ceiling.
Except that he can’t reach it. The access door is a good couple of feet beyond the reach of his outstretched hand. He will have a chance if he gets up there and hides, but how?
He steps quietly from room to room again, hoping he has missed something to stand on, but the rooms are completely empty. He stands in the kitchen and looks out the door at the backyard, aware of a car going by the front of the house—is it a cop car?—and the relentless hammering of the helicopters.
He realizes what his gaze is resting on—the garage. He knows there is no hiding there, but maybe a step stool or a ladder leaning against a wall, even a rickety chair, anything to boost him up into the attic. He listens. He hears no voices, no sirens. The helicopter heads west in a wide circle. Are the cops on foot searching door to door? He calculates his chances. He doesn’t think he can leave this house. He pictures himself running away, running, running, right into a hail of bullets tearing at his clothes, at his flesh, at his face; sees himself shredded by thousands of bullets until the vision becomes so real that he cries out in the dark and empty house. He hadn’t meant to kill the cop. He had just been angry, about what he could no longer remember, but ang
ry in a way that blinded him. Again, he wonders if he has a problem in his head, a tumor or something. He has seen a show on television about people with brain tumors who went into fits of rage and did things they did not remember afterwards. But he remembers with terrible clarity that shocked look on the cop’s face, which seemed to say that nothing like this should have happened, that Rickie has violated the rules of the game and ruined everything for everybody. Rickie isn’t angry now. He is young and helpless and scared. He has to find a place to hide until they give up and he can sneak back home to his room and his bed.
He has to chance running out the back door and hope the garage holds something he can use to climb on. He opens the back door. The yard is cast in bright light and patches of leafy shadow; the air is still. He strains to hear. Maybe they are sneaking up on him now, the cops, not any cops but members of the anti-gang unit. A new fear jolts his body. He has heard stories about them, how they plant drugs or knives or guns on you, the guns with the serial numbers filed off, and take sadistic glee in beating the shit out of you or killing you. And nothing ever happens to them. He has heard of homies who had served years for crimes they didn’t commit, and, once released, were visited by these cops at their apartments or little houses in Pacoima or Sylmar and were shown another “clean” weapon or enough drugs to put them away for years. “Why don’t you go home to Mexico, leave town, before we find you in possession of something like this, amigo?”
These guys are ruthless, and everyone on the street knows it.
The night is frightening in its stillness, as though a hundred sets of eyes watch him, wait for him to expose himself before guns begin to blaze. Fighting the fear that rises in his throat like acid, Rickie edges quietly down the back steps and waits for a moment on the bottom step. The garage is across the small yard with a door on the side facing him. Rickie forces himself to move slowly toward it, stepping on the smooth rock pathway through the narrow garden.
The door is unlocked. Maybe God is with him. Maybe the Virgén will protect him from heaven because she knows that, though he has made a terrible mistake, he is young and can be forgiven.
He tries to think of what he has done to warrant divine intervention. All he can think of is that he loves his grandmother. But they fought yesterday. No, not yesterday, this afternoon. He has been a good friend to Alex, but Alex is under arrest and maybe dead because of him.
He stands just inside the doorway of the darkened garage, leaving the door open to allow the ambient light to enter. He turns his head quickly because he thinks he hears voices and the crackle of a police radio. He remains completely still and listens in the darkness. Nothing. No noise except for voices and laughter coming from a nearby TV.
He exhales. Urgency surges through him. He has to find something. He peers into the dark interior. The warm air within is suffused with the smell of gasoline and mowed grass and the hint of paint and paint thinner, a pleasant nostalgic smell for Rickie because it reminds him of the tool shed in the back yard of his grandmother’s house where his grandfather stored the mower and the gardening tools and buckets of paint.
One time, when Rickie was a little boy, he ran into the shed during a sudden downpour and laid down in the little bit of space between the mower and the paint cans lined neatly against the wall and stacked two high. He found the pile of old towels that his grandfather used to clean with, spread one on the dry concrete floor, used two as a pillow and another with which to cover himself. It was dry and dark, but not too dark, and the air was a cocktail he associated warmly with the jobs his grandfather performed—mowing the lawn, touching up some wall or woodwork of the house, raking the grass cuttings and Eucalyptus leaves and bark that the neighbor’s tree shed when the wind blew. Rickie, the six-year-old boy, fell asleep in that shed and wakened later when his grandfather called for him in the backyard.
“Did you make yourself a bed? Were you sleeping, my child?” his grandfather asked. When Rickie nodded yes, his grandfather laughed and took the little boy’s hand in his own hardened hand and led him into the house, where he told Rickie’s grandmother what had happened. She was happier in those days, and she laughed, too. Their eyes narrowed when they smiled or laughed and the lines that formed at their temples were like rays of light.
Rickie can see nothing inside from the doorway. He will have to step into the darkness and feel along the walls. He moves to his right and proceeds carefully, his right shoulder bumping against the exposed studs. He forces himself to breathe regularly and with as little noise as possible.
He thinks his best chance is at the back of the garage but it is deep in shadow, so dark as to be almost alive. Maybe something will spring out at him when he gets close, like the shadows in the old movie Ghost that carry away the souls of the dead bad guys, but he isn’t dead, so it will scare him even more when these shadows jump out at him and grab him and begin to drag him, still alive, toward Hell.
He stops in his tracks. His breath comes in gulps. His heart is pounding and his shaven head, when he puts his hand up to it, is covered in cold sweat. He moves forward again, slowly and sideways, with his right hand thrust in front into the glob of darkness. He inches along until his hand jams against the back wall, stubbing his fingers. The wall is smooth. He lays his palm against the cool smoothness—it’s pegboard. He can see it in his mind’s eye—the smooth brown material with holes in it for hooks from which you hang tools. Alex’s mom has it on a wall in their garage, but there are only a few hooks stuck in the holes and nothing hangs from them.
He leans against the back wall. He can’t stay here. One cop with a flashlight will be able find him. He has to go back inside the house and hide in a closet. It will be darker than dark, difficult to breathe. His fear will sour the air as he waits in terror to be discovered.
As he leaves the back wall and starts along the wall on the other side, the foot of a suspended stepladder hits him in the shoulder. He jumps in fear and swears out loud. Immediately, a dog with a deep throaty growl barks just a few feet from him. Rickie turns quickly to see where the sound comes from. He is going to be attacked and torn up. How has it gotten in without his having heard it? Rickie turns around in a complete circle. No dog. Where, then? The dog barks again. It’s outside, on the other side of the tall metal fence covered in bougainvillea and climbing roses which separates this property from that of the house in back! The neighbor’s dog. It is only a few feet away, but on the other side of the fence. Thank God! Where was it yesterday? No matter. He has to be careful now before the dog lets everyone know that a prowler is around.
He runs his hand carefully over the splintery wood of the studs, follows the lines of the ladder legs, and realizes that someone has driven long nails in each stud to suspend the six-foot wooden ladder. Rickie could cry for joy. For the first time, he truly believes he has a chance. All he has to do is to take the ladder down without causing the dog to go off again, cross the yard and get it into the house without being detected.
He eases it off the wall and heads for the open doorway. Now that his eyes have become accustomed to the almost total darkness inside the garage, the yard, in spite of the shade of the avocado tree, seems cast in brilliant light. Where is it coming from? Street lights, lights at the windows of those bedding down late or rising early, and front porch and backyard lights that stay lit throughout the night. It’s too bright!
He walks quickly and soundlessly across the yard under the avocado tree to the back door. He holds the ladder on his shoulder like a battering ram. The skin on his neck and back tingles with fear from the expectation that the dog will begin to bark again and someone will call out, “Stop! Drop it! Get on your knees!” He stands the ladder up and pulls the screen door open. He knows he is making too much noise in his haste to get inside, opening the screen door and scraping the ladder on the concrete step. The dog barks once, listens, and barks again. Rickie wants to turn around but he doesn’t dare, fearing that he will discover someone smugly watching him with a nine millimeter
pointed right at his head. He hurries into the house, the screen door banging on the side and then foot of the ladder as he drags it inside. “Oh, God,” he cries out quietly, desperately; the dog begins to bark in earnest now. He drags the ladder through the house to the hallway beneath the attic access door. In a rush, he sets it up, climbs up, and pushes on the rectangular panel. It gives easily. He pushes it up and over. He hears a man yell angrily at the dog to shut up, for Chrissake, and the dog quiets.
Because the roof has a steep pitch, there is room in the middle of the attic for someone Rickie’s size to actually stand. Dark cottony insulation has been blown all over the floor of the attic. It is covered with a fine dust from not having been disturbed in years. Nothing is stored here. At each end there is a louvered vent covered with a screen to prevent squirrels and rats from getting into the attic. It is hot and dusty up here, the heat of the day ticking and creaking in the rafters. Rickie’s head and shoulders are through the opening. Electrical wires pass by him across the floor at eye level. He knows he must step only on the joists; if he doesn’t, if he steps in the area between, he might put his foot through the plaster ceiling.
He hears noises outside. The dog has stopped barking, but he thinks he hears leaves being kicked or fallen twigs snapping beneath someone’s heavy tread. He climbs all the way up into the attic and kneels on two parallel joists. He leaves the stepladder where it is. Later, he can get a hand on it and pull it up into the attic with him. For now, he slides the cover over the access door and secures it in place with a quiet thump. He listens but he hears nothing except his own breathing and pounding heart. He needs to get to one side or the other; he chooses the driveway side, partially shadowed now by the tree in the neighbor’s yard. He crawls to the far side of the attic near the vent, making sure to place his hands and knees on boards, eases himself down slowly into a sitting position and listens hard. He hears nothing. Maybe he has just heard the dog moving around. Or his own fear.
Rickie Trujillo Page 17
