Ray Wood was a lawyer in National City, a young guy with busted teeth who looked like a beanbag chair and dressed like an all-night poker game at the Elks’ Lodge. He looked like the kind of guy who checked the coin chutes of pay phones, and just automatically felt under couch cushions.
Ray Wood wasn’t one of those uptight lawyers that cops distrust, one of those three-piece suiters forever checking to see if his fly’s unzipped. Ray Wood never checked and it was never zipped. He slouched into his office at the end of a tough day in court, and literally hung his coat on the floor.
The office looked like one of those prefab Quonset huts in Tijuana where you can buy Mexican insurance to cover your booze-soaked Ensenada run. There was a sign on the wall saying: BLESS THE IRISH. The cops figured that anyone like this has to be straight, so they trusted him.
There were three people waiting for him one afternoon after Manny Lopez had decreed that the boys go south. It was extremely unusual for any lawyer to be doing this kind of business with healthy young dudes aged twenty-four, twenty-eight and twenty-nine years respectively. They were staring somberly at the lawyer, who could see that this prearranged meeting was going to be about as pleasant as a clap check.
The young men were Joe Castillo, Eddie Cervantes, and the lawyer’s childhood pal Renee Camacho. They gravely examined the document the lawyer handed to each of them.
The document began: I, being of sound mind, a resident of San Diego, California, declare that this is my last will and testament.
BARF
DICK SNIDER LURKED ON THE FRINGE. HE WAS STILL A Southern Division watch commander and still the godfather of the Barf squad. Sometimes he’d have a beer with the boys, and after a few, one of them might start hinting that Manny was having them do something that the department might not approve of.
But as Ken Kelly put it: “Lieutenant Snider would tell us that he’d have a talk with Manny. But he didn’t really wanna hear bad things about Manny Lopez. He knew that nobody else coulda made BARF what it was, the biggest publicity machine the department ever had and the only protection the aliens had. And maybe Manny was another side a Burl Snider’s fantasy life? Maybe Burl Snider was the superego and Manny was the id? Maybe.”
Ken Kelly often spoke in psychiatric terms. He probably learned them firsthand. He was soon to have his head shrunk.
“I just never felt much purpose,” Ken Kelly would say. “Neither did Robbie Hurt. There we’d be, sitting in the brush for hours, listening to rabbits and coyotes and skunks and rattlers crawling around us. Sometimes having people just appear out a nowhere, scaring the shit out a both of us. And they’d look at us ragpicking bozos and wonder if we were waiting for scorpion stings or what.
“The sound a gunfire used to make us psycho because we never knew anything till after the fact. When we got scared there was never a payoff. We just felt useless. No wonder poor Robbie became an alcoholic.”
And what did Ken Kelly become, living with this frustration of being, and not being, part of the Barf squad? These two young men, one black and one white, who could not be part of it because of their color, were, as he put it, like a double shot of nitroglycerine.
This was just after the San Diego district attorney’s investigator had a little conversation with the homicide leader of the judiciales in Tijuana. It seems that the judiciales were handling their own investigation of the shooting of the Tijuana cops. And the Mexican homicide leader told the district attorney’s man that if their findings were such that the Mexican government decided to issue arrest warrants for Manny Lopez and his men, well, it would be the judiciales’ job to serve those warrants.
Of course the Mexican lawman knew that he couldn’t just stroll into the San Diego Police Department and throw handcuffs on Manny and the boys, and take them back to Mexico for trial. Yet there were ominous implications in what he said. The judiciales were working along the international border now, trying to arrest robbers on their side, the homicide leader said. And they might just run into the Barf squad.
When the district attorney’s man asked if judiciales would really consider coming across into the canyons to kidnap the Barfers, the homicide leader said they would do what was required.
The Barf squad received the information but it changed nothing. Manny Lopez still had them walking south of the line. So there were cracks made about the judiciales hanging Manny by his heels like Mussolini and other such jokes that no one found funny. And there were more Barfers pondering a last will and testament.
“This job just ain’t dangerous enough,” Ken Kelly said to Manny at lineup. “Why don’t we milk rattlesnakes or jerk off tarantulas on our lunch break?”
One night the Barfers were walking in the drainage ditch near Monument Road and Dairy Mart Road, near the place where they had shot down Chuey Hernandez and his partner. The ditch comes across the border and during the rainy season spills runoff into a cow pasture near Stewart’s Barn, often used as a resting place for illegal aliens on their nightly crossings.
Ken Kelly and Robbie Hurt were discussing the exact location of the Barfers in the drainage ditch. The others were possibly on the wrong side of the line, since the fence was damn close to being the actual boundary. But of course a few feet didn’t matter if a squad of judiciales prowling the darkness suddenly ambushed them after figuring that real pollos wouldn’t be hanging around that fence for so long, a fact that Chuey Hernandez found strange on the night he went to investigate.
Just then a U.S. Border Patrol chopper came roaring in out of nowhere and spotted the Barfers hiding in the ditch. The chopper hovered above them and lit them with a spotlight. The pilot started issuing Spanish commands over his loudspeaker. He started ordering this little group of bogus pollos to get their asses back to Mexico.
But Manny Lopez told his men to stay put, and he tried to raise someone on the Handie-Talkie which never worked properly out there beyond the pale. So, much like the Tijuana policemen, the border patrolmen in the helicopter started getting a little testy because this group of pollos there by the fence wouldn’t run away and wouldn’t obey. They were just staying put, which was very strange.
Meanwhile, Ken Kelly and Robbie Hurt were going bonzo because the Border Patrol helicopter was making such a commotion that cars were starting to stop there on the Mexican highway, and what if one of them was a Tijuana police car?
Ken Kelly and Robbie Hurt were doing their damnedest to get through on their own radios with no success, and finally the Border Patrol pilot had enough of this shit and he started blasting his siren and swooping down a little lower.
Ken Kelly was nearly in tears and was screaming all kinds of things that the F.C.C. wouldn’t approve of over the radio, but nobody heard him and by now the pilot was getting just about as mad as Chuey Hernandez got the night he was shot down. And he dived!
Ken Kelly stopped breathing because he was sure the chopper was going right in on top of the Barfers in a fireball, but this pilot was a hot dog, and good. He was also good and mad. He stopped his dive a few yards from the ground and blew up a cyclone of sand and brush and flying tarantulas, and the Barfers were all on their bellies protecting their eyes and faces and weapons and balls or whatever, and Ken Kelly started screaming hopelessly, “They’re trying to cut our dicks off!”
And just then they saw a car slam to a stop on the highway and Ken Kelly was seeing phantoms and was positive it must be the judiciales. With Tommy guns!
Well, even the Barfers weren’t yet crazy enough to shoot down a Border Patrol helicopter, and finally the pilot either figured out who these lunatic pollos must be, or he was called out of the area. He took off very suddenly.
Ken Kelly said, “I was absolutely sure that if it had been judiciales on the highway our guys woulda been executed on the spot. They woulda just disavowed all knowledge, like they say on Mission Impossible.”
When it was over, his troops told Manny that it was time, definitely time, to “chase the elusive southern burglar.”
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 Salgado 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 qué?” 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 stiffed 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 squadroom as he sometimes did and was leaning against the wall, showing his permanent squint from the dangling cigarette. He looked even taller in the suntan 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 qué?
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? Me 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 s
narling, “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 him.
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?”
Lines and Shadows Page 30