Shadow Boys

by Harry Hunsicker

  For this I had no answer. We are all damaged. We are all missing something, slivers of what we think happiness should be, broken parts from our emotional well-being.

  “See you around, Deputy Chief.” I walked out of Piper’s bedroom.

  From behind came the sound of thrashing, feet kicking the floor, heavy breathing.

  “Cantrell,” Delgado said. “Stop.”

  I kept going.

  His voice, fainter: “I need to talk to you.”

  I strode through the living room, slung open the front door.

  “Cantrell—”

  I slammed the door shut on Deputy Chief Raul Delgado.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE -

  THE WEST DALLAS GANG LEADER—PART II

  Lysol Alvarez grabs a submachine gun from the utility closet, just off the kitchen.

  His guard lies on the floor, blood pooling underneath his still-warm corpse.

  Sawyer is behind him, crying, huddled in a corner.

  The subgun has a silencer, three mags taped to each other. A SIG Sauer nine-millimeter is tucked in a holster in the small of his back. Lysol doesn’t even go to the bathroom without the SIG.

  A brick wall topped with broken glass surrounds the backyard.

  Against the back of the property, at the end of the driveway where the garage should be, sits a gray Escalade, the front pointing toward the street. The keys are in the ignition.

  Lysol eases out the rear door. He stands completely still on the back stoop, letting his senses get used to the ambient noise.

  The yard is empty. Minimal landscaping, nothing for anybody to hide behind.

  No sign of his guards anywhere.

  From the front, around the driveway side of the house where he can’t see, comes a whistle, a high-low trill. Soft, like a signal to a dog or a child.

  Lysol clutches the subgun, wonders where in the hell his guards are.

  The whistle again. The same volume, but longer, more insistent.

  Lysol pulls his cell out, sends a text to his man in the house across the street: 911 where ru

  A few seconds pass.

  No reply.

  The first whisper of fear creeps up Lysol’s spine, an icy caress that makes his stomach clench.

  The whistle once more.

  Lysol resists the urge to lash out, start firing, to let the fear take hold.

  That’s what the whistle is about, an effort to provoke. Lysol’s been to the river a time or two. He’s not going to fall for something like that.

  A sound like a balloon popping. A silenced handgun firing. The noise comes from the driveway, followed an instant later by the clatter of the Escalade’s front grill shattering. Coolant dribbles to the ground, green and oily, rendering the vehicle undrivable.

  Lysol hops off the stoop and heads toward the other side of the house, opposite the driveway.

  At the corner of the house, he turns, crouches low, and creeps toward the street, using the narrow area between his place and the one next door, which he owns, as cover.

  Halfway down the length of the house he finds his man from across the street and two soldiers.

  They’ve been shot in the head, dragged here, and dumped.

  That’s a ballsy move, a much bigger play than anybody from the Iris could even contemplate.

  Lysol takes a deep breath, palms sweaty. His teeth chatter even though it’s not cold.

  The whistle again. Hard to tell where it’s coming from.

  Lysol kneels by the bodies. He glances at the side of his house, comes to the realization that this place is no longer his. It’s dead to him, in a very real sense.

  A moment of melancholy passes over him, followed by acceptance.

  This is the life he’s chosen. This is the price you pay to be something more than a half-breed piece of street trash from West Dallas. This is the price of respect.

  He reaches into his pocket and removes a tiny electronic device that looks like an alarm remote for a car. The device is attached to a lanyard. He ponders the item for a moment before slipping the lanyard around his neck.

  From the front of the house comes the whistle again, followed by a low voice: “Lysol, where are you?”

  The exterior of the home next to his has an inset, a small piece of cover formed where the living room meets the dining area.

  In a loud whisper, Lysol says, “Help me. I’m hurt.”

  Then he jumps across the gap and nestles against the inset, aiming the subgun toward the front.

  Laughter.

  Lysol waits. Sweat stings his eyes.

  Thirty seconds drag by.

  Lysol blinks. Once.

  A dash of movement from the front.

  Lysol fires a short burst from the subgun.

  More laughter.

  Lysol tries not to hyperventilate, struggles to maintain control.

  Another thirty seconds go by. A car door slams.

  Then:

  RAP-RAP-RAP-RAP-RAP.

  Gunshots, a high-caliber rifle, fired as fast as the trigger could be pulled. No silencer.

  Glass shatters. Wood shreds. The shooter is firing into the front of his house. No longer worried about being stealthy. No longer caring if the police know.

  Sawyer screams, her voice muffled.

  Lysol swears. He retreats. Runs toward the rear, the way he just came.

  He rounds the corner, sees one of his guards standing in the backyard.

  The scene is wrong. The man appears unarmed but he’s holding something close to his stomach, a bewildered expression on his face.

  “What the—” Lysol hesitates, confused.

  The item the guard is holding is a length of intestine he’s trying to stuff back into his abdominal cavity.

  Lysol tries to control his shock. That’s his man, his possession. Who would dare disrespect him in this way? He swallows the outrage and sprints by the injured soldier, heading toward the alley.

  From the driveway a figure appears, a white guy in a black tracksuit.

  An AR-15 is in his hand.

  Lysol fires on the run, a long burst from the subgun. Spits of flame and the rattle of the bolt.

  The man in the tracksuit disappears around the corner of the house.

  Lysol ignores the damaged Escalade. Instead he kicks open the gate that leads to the alley.

  The AR-15 opens up. Chunks of brick wall fly everywhere.

  Lysol keeps running.

  Ten feet. Then twenty.

  At about forty feet down the alley, nearing the back of the second house past his headquarters, he decides he can’t wait any longer.

  So he punches the button on the remote around his neck.

  A nanosecond later, the bundle of C-4 plastic explosive in the hall closet of his house explodes, a blast of thunder like something from the hand of the Devil himself.

  Dallas, Texas

  1991

  Raul Delgado was twenty-one years old. He sat in the back row of the auditorium, stiff and awkward in his new Dallas police uniform.

  He was no longer an Explorer. Not a Boy Scout anymore. He was a duly licensed peace officer.

  The badge on his chest seemed heavy, tugging at his shirt. The weight felt good, however, a silent reminder that he was doing something with his life that mattered.

  That was a lesson that Bobby had drilled into his head over the years: make your time on earth count for something.

  In a holster on his hip sat a brand-new Smith & Wesson Model 4006, the semiautomatic pistol that was slowly replacing the revolvers most police used to carry. The gun was heavy, too, another symbol of the direction his life was taking.

  A rookie, two weeks out of the DPD academy. He worked in the southeast division, which included the Fair Park area, the roughest part of Dallas.r />
  Trial by fire, they called it. If you could make it in the war zone south of Fair Park, you could make it anywhere.

  The auditorium where he was sitting was part of the Dallas Baptist High School campus, a private institution near downtown.

  Tonight was graduation.

  Junie’s night.

  In a little while, she was going to walk across the stage and receive her diploma. In the fall, she would be a freshman at Baylor University, her tuition paid by a scholarship that benefits the children of police officers.

  The college was in Waco, a little more than an hour south of Dallas, a straight shot down I-35. An easy drive.

  He planned to see her as often as possible.

  Her personality—kind and caring one minute, mischievous the next—seemed to fill a void inside Raul, the dark place where he didn’t like to let his thoughts dwell too long.

  Junie had just turned eighteen. Her hair had darkened to a light chestnut, the color accentuating the green of her eyes. Her legs were still long, but the swell of her hips and the slenderness of her waist made everything perfectly in proportion, at least in Raul’s mind.

  Tonight, in her culture, she left childhood behind, like girls in his old neighborhood do with the quinceañera on their fifteenth birthday.

  Raul didn’t know any girls from his old neighborhood. Lately, he hadn’t spent much time in that part of Dallas.

  The last four years had been busy.

  Ride-alongs with Bobby. Studying his way to a criminal justice degree at UT Arlington, just a few miles from Dallas. Weekend chores at the ranch. Keeping an eye on Junie when Bobby was working.

  The people he knew from childhood had scattered as the homes in Little Mexico fell to the bulldozers preparing the ground for new buildings.

  His abuela moved back to Brownsville. His cousins were uncomfortable when he came around, disdainful of his new way of speaking and his college degree, openly hostile to his career choice.

  He wished they could understand.

  Police work offered a chance for order, a way for Raul to control things and make a difference.

  Who wouldn’t want that?

  Tonight, as a gesture of respect, Raul planned to ask Bobby for permission to date Junie.

  He and Junie were close—friends but more. Physically attracted to one another, emotionally bound by what happened one summer afternoon almost five years before.

  Raul was craning his neck, looking toward the front, when the seat next to him creaked. He turned to see Bobby sitting there.

  The older man was wearing a navy-blue suit and black cowboy boots. The suit looked dusty, like it had been in the closet for years. The boots were polished to a high gloss.

  In his midfifties now, Bobby had worked for the Dallas police for more than thirty years, and he would be retiring soon.

  “You didn’t have to come.” Bobby shook his hand. “But we appreciate you being here.”

  “You’ve always been there for me. You and Junie.”

  Birthdays and graduations and holidays too numerous to mention, Bobby and Junie had both been welcoming to a young man who for reasons beyond his control found himself with no real family.

  “How’s your partner?” Bobby said. “I told him to take good care of you.”

  Raul’s partner was a crusty ex-Marine with twenty years on the force, almost all of it behind the wheel of a squad car. Two weeks with the man had taught Raul more than the entire three-month course at the Dallas police academy.

  More people had entered the auditorium. Toddlers and school-age children, mothers and fathers in their forties, grandparents.

  Raul told him everything was going well. Then he said, “Where is the family sitting?”

  Bobby’s people were blue-collar. They would not be at the ceremony. His brother worked on an oil rig in Louisiana. His sister lived in West Texas with her husband, a prison guard. There was a nephew in New Mexico, punching cows on a ranch by the border.

  Junie’s deceased mother, however, came from a well-to-do family in North Dallas. Her people were lawyers and bankers and such.

  High society, Bobby called it. Raul wasn’t too sure what that meant. Debutante balls and tennis tournaments, maybe. Old guys with white hair, dressed in tacky clothes like in the movie Caddyshack.

  For a moment, Bobby didn’t reply to the question about where everyone was sitting. He watched people walk down the aisle. Finally he said, “The family. Yeah, they’re, uh, at the front.”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “Junie will be happy they’re here,” Raul said finally.

  The older man didn’t reply.

  A woman in her forties, wearing a peach-colored silk blouse and a gold necklace, approached Bobby. He stood and they embraced. Bobby introduced the woman, Junie’s aunt.

  “Hello, Rah-ool.” The aunt pronounced his name with twang in her voice and a smirk on her face. She made no move to shake hands. “Don’t you look nice in your uniform. Like a bus driver or something.”

  Bobby stared at the ground while the aunt prattled on.

  Her words and attitude indicated she regarded Raul in the same way she would the guy who mowed her lawn, a lesser human, not worthy of her time.

  Raul was used to that attitude. Growing up, he’d learned about racism firsthand, and then had the concept explained to him in minute detail by the radical Latinos who came around after his brother was killed. The radicals were wrong about many things, of course, but a lot of what they said made sense. The white man had kept people of color impoverished by his actions and economic tools.

  Raul didn’t concern himself with politics, though. He just wanted to be a good cop, an officer that Bobby could be proud of, and go out with Junie.

  A buzzing sound. The aunt pulled a mobile phone, a bulky Motorola, from her expensive-looking purse. She talked loudly about Junie’s graduation and the party later at the country club. Then she hung up and told Bobby she’d see him at the party.

  Bobby nodded but didn’t say anything.

  The aunt said good-bye and walked down the aisle toward the front. She managed all this without looking at or speaking to Raul again.

  “Don’t mind her.” Bobby shook his head. “That branch of the family thinks they’re better than us mortals.”

  “There’s a party for Junie?”

  Raul wondered why he didn’t know about the celebration. He had always been included before, at least when Bobby was in charge.

  “Junie’s aunt.” Bobby stared at the floor. “She does things different.”

  The crowd had gotten larger. The ceremony was supposed to start in a few minutes.

  “You had fun in college, didn’t you?” Bobby fiddled with the knot of his tie.

  The question came from nowhere. Raul was confused. He nodded after a moment.

  “Junie’s aunt and her people, they’re real big on college.”

  While he was in school, Raul worked two jobs and spent whatever extra time he had at the ranch. He didn’t have a lot of free hours for the traditional college pursuits—beer drinking, chasing girls.

  He wasn’t much of a drinker and, truth be told, there was only one girl he wanted to chase, and she was still in high school.

  “Not having a mama around,” Bobby said. “That’s not a great way to raise a young lady like Junie, you know what I mean?”

  Raul shrugged, not understanding at all where the conversation was going.

  “Living on a ranch out in the country.” Bobby smoothed a wrinkle from his pants. “Looking back, that might not a been the best move for her to meet people.”

  The memory of one of the people she did meet near the ranch hung between them. Neither man acknowledged Wayne or what they’d done.

  “She seems happy,” Raul said.

  “College is gonna b
e good for Junie,” Bobby said. “Her aunt’ll make sure she gets into a sorority and everything. You know, to meet the right kinda people.”

  “The right kind of people?” Raul said. “What does that mean?”

  Silence.

  “I’ve seen the way you look at her, son.” Bobby’s voice was hard to hear. “She’s an attractive young woman.”

  Raul’s breath caught in his throat.

  “I’ve always taken a shine to you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Raul nodded.

  “First time we met in that interview room, I knew somebody oughta be looking out for you.”

  Raul’s badge seemed heavier.

  “My wife had just died. I suppose I needed somebody who needed me back. Me and Junie both did.”

  “What are you trying to say, Bobby?”

  “Junie. She’s gonna go to college. And she’s gonna meet her a boy there.” Bobby’s voice was soft. “She’s gonna have a different kind of life than what you’re offering.”

  Both men were silent for a long few moments.

  Raul tried not to sound indignant when he finally said, “So you don’t want your daughter to be with someone like you?”

  Bobby’s face was blank.

  “You don’t want her to end up with a cop?” Raul said.

  “A cop?” Bobby shook his head. “That’s only half of it. You saw the way her aunt is.”

  Raul sat there for a moment, numb. With Bobby and Junie, he’d never been conscious of their different ethnicities.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Bobby said. “I had her for eighteen years. Now her mother’s people want to get more involved.”

  “But you’re her father.”

  “They’re her flesh and blood, too,” he said. “Hell, they don’t even like to call her Junie anymore. Not sure there’s much I can do to stop it.”

  Raul didn’t reply. Instead, he got up and left the auditorium.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO -

  I strode past a Suburban parked in Piper’s driveway. The SUV had exempt plates, the mark of a law-enforcement vehicle. It was empty, locked.

  The official transport of Deputy Chief Raul Delgado, currently fighting his way across Piper’s bedroom floor.