And Manny Lopez was saying through clenched teeth: “Shut up, Tony. Shut up, Tony.”
And everyone except Tony Puente knew that if they lived through this, he sure as hell better start wearing those fucking glasses!
And then Manny managed to get the woman more or less out of the way and he said, “¿Sabes qué?”
When he yelled “Barf!” there was the most godawful racket heard yet in those canyons, what with the number of Barfers who were together that night. They fired about thirty rounds at the two bandits. They missed one entirely and thought they’d even missed Clint Eastwood, who turned and started flying toward the border with his poncho trailing like a cape.
Eddie Cervantes started after the guy and the firing was still going on and he turned to see Carlos Chacon shooting at the guy and he figured he was going to suffer the same fate as Joe Castillo and Fred Gil, and he started screaming at Carlos and calling him every kind of name when the bandit with the poncho fell flat on his face. Eddie Cervantes was on top of the guy, worrying about the ploy of knives up the sleeves and also worrying that Carlos was going to blow him off the body.
The bandit didn’t put up much of a fight. He was shot through the armpit. His companion escaped in the darkness.
The wounded bandit was taken to the hospital, and the homicide detectives once again had to truck on out to the canyons for yet another officer-involved shooting, and stagger around in the coyote crap and mumble about these Barfers being way more trouble than they were worth.
But the alien couple who had almost gotten their heads blown off weren’t complaining at all. In fact, the man asked very respectfully if he could inform a superior officer about how kind Manny Lopez and his men had been and how the Barfers had saved them from the bandits.
The night ended as usual with lots of booze being poured to celebrate, except that there were some very bitter comments from Eddie Cervantes to Carlos Chacon about shooting carelessly. Then a few insults started flying back and forth. They were starting to be wary of each other.
Almost every Barfer was having problems at home, what with the riotous drinking going on all night. They got so they’d work like mad trying to get some kind of an arrest in the early part of the evening so they could make it to The Anchor Inn before the bar closed, or if it was too late, get on out to The Wing and unwind a little before going home. It was getting more and more impossible to sleep without a few drinks. And pretty soon on their nights off their wives started to notice that even at home they needed a few.
The heaviest drinker was Robbie Hurt. He’d be eager to stop at a bar even if only one other Barfer was willing. He didn’t go alone, because of course that might mean he had a problem. But pretty soon his wife, Yolie, would find him zoned out in front of the television with a drink in his hands.
If Yolie complained, he’d get irritable and say, “I’m only doing what all men do. A few drinks won’t hurt me.”
He was absolutely wrong. A few drinks one night almost killed him.
As Robbie looked back on those days, he would sigh and say, “Yolie was the epitome of a Mexican wife. She got it from her mother’s side. She’d have dinner ready. She was acquiescent. She was agreeable. She’d work ten hours a day at her job and then take care of me. She made it easy to do what I was doing. Too bad she didn’t take after her father’s side of the family and come on more like a black chick. And kick my ass!”
He was twenty-six years old and it was so incredibly easy. The Barfers would just come banging into a bar after they got off duty and the groupies would fight each other to get at these hardballers.
And they’d lead off the conversation with: “Well, ladies, you’ll get to read it in tomorrow’s papers, but lemme tell you what we did tonight!” It was too easy. And though some of them stuck to beer drinking, Robbie was drinking hard liquor.
And after he’d had a few he had an easier time with the wisecracks. He was of course still working the cover team instead of being able to walk with the others, because he was black. Therefore, black jokes increased his frustration and he wasn’t laughing anymore. And if a macho type like Eddie Cervantes or Joe Castillo would say in front of a groupie: “Whadda you know about it, Robbie?” he would be offended and refuse to talk at all. And he’d drink.
They came to call him “Hurt Feelings,” and Eddie Cervantes made no attempt to understand, saying, “They never shoulda had anyone but Mexicans on this squad in the first place.”
Manny Lopez used to take Robbie aside and stroke him by saying, “Robbie, we need you. Don’t pay any attention to Eddie. That’s the way Mexicans are. They make fun of everybody. We need you.”
Then, after a time, Manny the manipulator took a new tack. When Robbie would come to him and threaten to quit BARF, Manny would say, “Fuck you, Robbie! Go ahead and quit. This Barf squad’s gonna make your career but if you wanna quit, do it.” Then he’d yell, “Hey, guys, Robbie just quit again!”
And Robbie Hurt would go off and sulk and think about his police career. He didn’t quit, but he did drink.
Then he fell madly in love with a lady bartender. It had to be true love, but every time he saw her he had about ten ounces of booze in his belly. She was a white girl, a brunette, a little hefty but nice. She loved music and so did Robbie, so one night he took her to see The Wiz when it was appearing on stage in San Diego.
It was the first time he had had a date with another woman since his marriage. He was suffering what the cops called the Secret Service Syndrome. He was looking all around the theater for someone who might know Yolie. He was a wreck and was trying to work out an alibi instead of watching the show, which had cost him plenty. He couldn’t very well tell a spy she was his sister, could he? He didn’t have his eyes on the stage for three minutes at a time. He decided never to do that again.
Robbie was feeling so guilty that he ran right out and bought two more tickets to The Wiz. The seats were even more expensive. He took Yolie, and when they got to the part where Dorothy and her dog go to Emerald City and the Wiz sings his solo, Robbie said, “Wait till you hear this part! This guy can really …”
And he just hung there in mid-sentence with his mouth agape. And sure enough, Yolie said, “How do you know?”
“I been reading about it,” Robbie said. “It’s in all the papers!”
It was too complicated, so he decided not to continue this. He wasn’t cut out for it. He wasn’t sure he was in love with the bartender anyway, except he was absolutely sure of it whenever he was with her, because whenever he was with her he’d sit and guzzle a pint or two, and it made his romance glow with a hard gemlike flame, or whatever.
Robbie was driving a 260Z Datsun at that time. It was a hot car, but he wanted a Porsche. The young man had expensive tastes. Once he had to have the car pulled out of the mud near Monument Park when he was there at three o’clock in the morning telling a wide-eyed little lollypop all about Gunslinging in No-Man’s-Land. Another night when he was leaving his lady bartender, he was caught on a flooded road after a heavy rain and had to say adieu to the Barf squad for nearly two weeks because he almost took down a telephone pole on San Ysidro Boulevard. He woke up in the hospital, where he spent the next ten days, but after the gash on his head healed up and the eye started working again, he was ready for BARF. And more drinking. He was also trying to be as macho as any Mexican cop.
For the first time his wife started criticizing the boozing. It made him cranky. “You won’t drink with me,” he said. “We get so little time together and you won’t even sit and talk and have a taste. You make me go out to do it. It’s not my fault.”
And then, if Yolie would go off and cry or something, Robbie would go banging out the door yelling, “Okay, you don’t wanna have a good time. I’m going to The Anchor Inn!”
And he did the right thing with the insurance money he got from the totaled Datsun. He bought the Porsche 924 he’d always dreamed of. It was much faster.
Yolie Hurt decided that it was time to ha
ve a life of her own. She liked to dance and he didn’t. He liked to drink and she didn’t. She worked for a company that manufactured contact lenses, and she made some friends there. She wanted him to meet them. He tried a time or two. He’d sit and listen to them and wonder where they were really coming from, these lizard-shit civilians. And what did they know about anything?
Robbie Hurt was not just a member of a minority group. He was a minority within a minority within a minority. An outsider within an elite force within a police force. He started to think he had nothing in common with any civilians, Yolie included.
One night he got home at 4:00 A.M. and said he’d worked late. He’d parked his car under the lights in front of The Anchor Inn, unconsciously hoping she’d see it, since they lived nearby. She had. She accused him.
He said, “Well, you caught me. So let’s call it a day. I don’t want you anymore.” Then for good measure, he said what he knew was a bald-faced lie. He said, “Besides, I think you’re screwing around, you and your girl friends from work. So why shouldn’t I?”
She slapped him. He slapped her back, the only time he had ever struck her. She cried for days. He felt like a low-down dog. He had to get out of this before it killed him. He moved out. He moved back. He couldn’t understand what was happening inside his head. The move back was halfhearted.
Robbie Hurt was getting macho, very macho. He demanded a swimming pool. She couldn’t swim. He had to have a swimming pool to be happy. He wanted dogs and got them, a Doberman and a Labrador. It took her two days to clean up after those monsters. She worked ten hours a day at a good job as a lab tech supervisor, but there was never enough money for him. She was losing so much weight she was looking like a half-starved alien. The other wives noticed it at the many Barf parties Robbie threw at their house.
Yolie noted that Manny Lopez had to show who was boss even at the parties. If someone started hitting the bottle, Manny would hit it harder. Once he outdrank everyone and spent the night at Robbie’s house on the bathroom floor. Manny Lopez would not let himself be bested by his macho cops, not even at a party.
And Yolie listened to the merciless wisecracks these Barfers directed toward each other. She knew that Robbie was getting more sensitive than he’d ever been about ethnic jokes.
“You can’t be on a walking team, Robbie. Who’d rob a spade? It’s the other way around.”
Or, “Whaddaya call two brothers in a twelve-room house? Burglars!”
But if Robbie was obviously offended by something, the Barfers would just say, “Go pout, Robbie. Christ, you remind me a my wife!”
Yolie recalled those days with Robbie, saying, “I hope I never know anybody as well as I know him. Not as long as I live. It’s like having a twin. I knew just how he was going to react to everything.”
Of all the Barfers, she liked Big Ugly, Joe Vasquez, the best. She admired the way he was devoted to his wife and lived a quiet life. And since they too were childless, she liked to talk with Joe and his wife, Vilma, about adopting children.
Then Robbie’s running got so blatant that it was apparent he wanted to get caught. He wouldn’t bother to clean the makeup off his clothes.
He’d actually started giving his phone number to Barf groupies, who would call and hang up when Yolie would say, “This is his wife. Can I take a message?”
One called back to say how sorry she was, because Robbie had sworn he was single. On weeknights Yolie would always get these calls and hang-ups.
One girl called and said how sorry she was, but Robbie needed lots of sympathy, since he felt bad about being black, and the caller, being white, could help him.
Another said she was a student at San Diego State and knew Robbie was married, but she was desperate to talk to Yolie because Robbie was lying and cheating. Not on Yolie, but on the student.
Yolie Hurt by now was getting as crazy as a Barfer in the canyons. She made a date to meet this distraught student and was surprised to see that she was a pretty black girl. They met in a Cantonese restaurant and Yolie sat through a tearful lunch discussing Robbie. While they were talking, Robbie strolled in the door looking like a bandit about thirty seconds after Manny Lopez says “¿Sabes qué?”
There they were: Robbie, his girl friend, and his wife. The girl begged Robbie not to lie and cheat on her anymore. Yolie, for the first time, started getting her head straight.
She simply said, “There’s only one thing for us to do. We should make a soap opera out a this.”
And that was that. The marriage was, for all intents, finished. They didn’t get a lawyer. They did their own divorce. She gave him everything.
“I’d spoiled him all the way,” she said. “No sense stopping.”
One night Robbie was pacing on a hillside by the Chevy Suburban with Ken Kelly. They both seethed with frustration because they’d heard three gunshots off in Spring Canyon and could not reach the walking teams by radio for nearly thirty minutes, during which time they both had their GI tracts eaten full of holes by stomach acid until they found out the shots were not fired at or by Barfers. On this night Robbie slipped and fell down a hill, spraining his ankle. He wore a temporary cast for a few days, and when he hobbled into a cops’ bar on crutches, there happened to be a clutch of groupies drinking with some detectives and patrol cops.
Someone pointed out the arrival of the Gunslingers, one of whom was on crutches, and the next thing Robbie Hurt knew, he was regaling three wide-eyed lollypops with a story as to how he got his “wound.”
“It’s a jungle out there, ladies!” he found himself saying. “Yes, we had to shoot a few bandits tonight. And I got hurt chasing one who almost escaped back onto Mexican soil.”
And so forth. The astonishing thing was that he was starting to believe it. It was amazing what it could do to your head, this job. He tried to stop his own mouth but couldn’t. They were gathered around him. They admired him. No, they worshiped him.
Ken Kelly said, “It was like having something very special in your back pocket. I could pull it out when I needed it. Robbie Hurt pulled it out all the time.”
Robbie never stopped calling Yolie for sisterly advice. She was the only person he could talk to, even after the marriage was over. He said that his ex-wife was the finest human being he had ever known in his whole life. He always said he should have cleaned up his act and saved the marriage. He said the loneliness after they parted made him think of suicide. He said he wept out of loneliness.
He said all of this, but there was something he was up against that was so seductive, so irresistible, so overpowering that he couldn’t cope. He was up against something that had overwhelmed many a man older and wiser than Robbie Hurt. This something was a Bitch. And the sinister Bitch had a name. She was called Celebrity.
LINES AND SHADOWS
THE BARFERS WERE BECOMING CONSUMED BY THE PUBLICITY blitz. They were spending their time giving interviews (that is, Manny Lopez was) and speeches (also handled by Manny) and the others were starting to feel like the character actor who never gets the girl. Some of them, Eddie Cervantes especially, were dying to become leading men.
“Hey, I can’t help it if they wanted me at the Rotary luncheon,” Manny Lopez would say defensively. “Listen, fuckers, you’re free to make speeches or go on television or hire press agents if you want. Come with me next time.”
But they never did, except once when Tony Puente tagged along to a Kiwanis speech. He was awed by the way Manny played to the audience. Tony became convinced that Manny could become police chief, or mayor of San Diego, or governor of California, for chrissake. Dick Snider may have dreamed up the idea, but BARF was Manny’s baby. He shaped it, he sold it, he represented it, and if it ever died it would be he who killed it.
Eddie and the others might bitch and complain all they wanted about Manny getting the publicity, but a few of them had to concede that none of them could begin to do what Manny could.
Someone said, “Imagine Joe Castillo or Big Ugly having to address the R
otary Club? Sure. Like pulling teeth. Your own.”
Manny had natural gifts. You only had to watch him sometime, up there in his disco suit and gold chains, the witticisms tumbling out of his impish, gap-toothed mouth, his pseudo-Asian eyes darting around the room to lock in on every chick short of menopause, his droopy moustache jumping under that pseudo-Armenian nose, and that eyebrow squiggling and crawling up his forehead into a perfect question mark. As he pointed his finger like a gun and told them how he drew one from the shoulder holster and one from the belt and smoked them down in Deadman’s Canyon.
He could make them gasp or make them laugh as he chose. All you could hear was the click of ballpoint pens as local politicians started making notes about getting this little hardball son of a bitch on the campaign committee. There weren’t any movie stars in San Diego and only a few big sports stars. And there sure as hell wasn’t a genuine mythic hero before this dude came along. Who cared if he was a Republican or a Democrat? This freaking Mexican was the last of the Gunslingers!
In April their activity report showed that Manny was spending his thirtieth birthday re-creating bandit busting in the canyons for various television crews. The Barfers were in fact actors now, in more ways than one. But an actor better by God get in proper character when he’s doing real-life bandit busting or somebody might get hurt. It was on their minds, but except for Eddie Cervantes and sometimes Ernie Salgado, they didn’t argue very much with Manny Lopez about what made copy and what made sense.
Once they were in character, back to playing the pollo parts, a smuggler actually told them there was very little bandit activity in the hills these days because of one Sergeant Manny Lopez and his San Diego cops who were scaring the hell out of everybody.
When things got slow out there on warm spring nights, the other Barfers were grateful for the respite. It was on such nights that they liked to lie on a hilltop and listen to the music from the Mexican side, and crack jokes and try to get back some of the camaraderie they were losing as they came to fear each other’s guns and Manny’s restless, driven ways.
Lines and Shadows Page 20