The pickup truck made a sudden U-turn over Highway 805 and reversed its direction, and a full-scale lights and siren pursuit was commenced through holiday traffic on uptown streets. While the pursuit was heading east on G Street, the first patrol unit was shot at twice by the robbers. When they got to the U-junction with Boylston Street, two more shots whanged off the asphalt with some mighty big muzzle blasts lighting up the night.
One patrol cop returned fire twice from his pursuit car and then a couple of police units tried paralleling the pickup truck on the next street. After a lot of squealing and careening, the robbers were tooling on down Boylston right toward Carlos Chacon and Joe Vasquez, who were out of their car and waiting.
As the robbers whizzed past Carlos Chacon, he fired five shotgun rounds and Big Ugly fired six revolver rounds, blowing that pickup truck all over the street. The robbers had enough, right then and there, and coasted to a stop peacefully.
Carlos Chacon—with those incredibly expressive eyes which could show hostility, joy, rage, fear, during a conversation on the relative merits of shave lotion—was by far the Barf squad’s most prolific Gunslinger. He had nearly out-slung Manny Lopez.
Carlos had lived a violent childhood, first with a man who beat his mother and beat him. He had shot his best friend to death in a moment of carelessness. He had shot two of his fellow Barfers in a moment of canyon combat. He had shot Chuey Hernandez. When Carlos carried the shotgun out in the canyons and was ready to use it, they would all hit the deck.
“I was worried that I was crazy and dangerous,” Ken Kelly said. “Carlos thought he was sane and in control and he was a hundred times more dangerous.”
Whether or not Carlos Chacon was “dangerous,” one thing was for sure: this very young Gunslinger did not shrink from violence. And he wasn’t through shooting.
The squad was running out of gas in more ways than one. Manny Lopez was getting administrative chores and was sometimes staying in the station all night or having to run uptown for some meeting or other. He was still kept busy with speeches and interviews, but not nearly as many as before.
Despite vows to put down his wife’s fellow religionists, Tony Puente did not make good his vow to buy a Christmas tree so big they’d have to bring it on a crane. In fact, the tree was smaller than any tree he’d ever gotten before. And this year when he decorated the house he didn’t try to prove anything. The decorations were sparse. And he even started asking her questions about her religion. He was getting tired.
The night of January 25th promised to be chilly and damp. Walking with Manny that night were Tony Puente, Joe Castillo, Carlos Chacon and Joe Vasquez. Robbie Hurt was with Ernie Salgado on the cover team. The new Barfer, Gil Padillo, had the night off, as did Ken Kelly.
Ken Kelly and Joe Vasquez, the Barfer Ken liked best, were about the only ones left with enough energy to entertain the squad. Big Ugly liked to get dressed in a medical smock, so Ken dubbed him Doctor Violence. They’d do make-believe examinations of drunks brought into the substation.
Joe Vasquez, holding a little knee-banger mallet, would say in a Viennese accent: “I’m giving zis man a free psychiatric checkup.”
And Ken Kelly would invariably reply, “That’s awfully white of you, Doctor.”
And Joe Vasquez and the other Mexican cops would say, “Hey, watch it, watch it!” to Ken Kelly.
But all the laughs were forced. There weren’t even many smiles left in them anymore.
That night they were dragging themselves wearily toward the border after having done a whole lot of walking. Actually, they were tired all the time, it seemed. Some were secretly trying to line up transfers to new jobs, and even Manny Lopez was getting sick of what he perceived to be the lack of appreciation of everyone around him. His Barfers nowadays were bitching and complaining about everything. He was starting to dread what he used to love most, the news stories about the squad, because if only his name was mentioned the snide remarks would start.
The new Barfer was good at snide remarks, and it seemed that every week or so some brass hat uptown would make Manny defend their existence, with the inevitable admonition that if someone got killed, BARF was all over.
So even Manny was getting tired as he led them up a hill that night looking for an early moon and seeing very few aliens and wishing they had gloves because their hands were already getting cold.
All the boozing was catching up with them too. Robbie Hurt was the worst, but several of the others were bloaty and swollen like bullfrogs. In addition to their ordinary fear of being murdered, they had that kind of paranoia peculiar to excessive drinkers. There were demons riding each back, clawing at their throats, breathing hot in their ears. Whispering fearfully. It was like a bellyful of cold earth.
So they were weary and feeling old, these young men. Dick Snider said they were aging before his eyes and he worried what his experiment had wrought.
There had been reports of a gang of bandits in that canyon who’d been walking up to parties of aliens and stabbing the nearest pollo without warning, just to get the attention of the survivors. This was on the mind of Manny Lopez as they climbed, and for a flash he thought he saw human silhouettes on the skyline. Then the shapes were gone, but not the thought of stabbing bandits. Suddenly dark shadows loomed above them. Then the shadows plummeted.
The other Barfers were traversing the canyon’s edge. They saw the shadows bearing down quickly at a forty-five-degree angle. Manny started snapping his fingers like an alien guide, but it wasn’t necessary. All of them were watching the shaggy specters take shape and the Barfers began to fan out in a line five abreast. These shapes were approaching too forcefully, with too much purpose.
Manny was first, then Tony Puente, carrying the alien tote bag containing flares, radio and first aid kit. Then Joe Vasquez. Then Joe Castillo with his malfunctioning hand, standing next to Carlos Chacon, the man who had shot that hand and was hated for it. Whenever Carlos was next to Joe Castillo in a potential confrontation like this, he had two things on his mind: the bandits, and whether Joe was crazy enough to make good the threats of revenge he made when drunk.
Every man there knew this was a robbery for sure. Each was snapping finger signals back to the next man. They didn’t squat polio-style when the three shapes got close. The shapes belonged to three young men in their twenties, three heroin addicts as it turned out. Three bandits.
The three bandits didn’t skirt around them as pollos would do. They didn’t send one man up to talk politely as pollos would do. The three walked right up and blocked their way and one said, “Where are you going?”
“That way.” Manny Lopez pointed.
Tony Puente pretended he was out of breath from the climb, and he was, but not as much as he pretended. Tony began sucking at the air and wiping his brow and he put down his tote bag as though to rest. So as to have his hands free when Manny said ¿Sabes qué?
Another of the bandits said, “La migra is over there. You better not go that way. You better rest here.”
And Manny Lopez started going into his pollo routine and said, “Oooooooh? ¿La migra? Thank you.”
Tony Puente started squinting at one bandit, then the second, then the third. He was not wearing his glasses. They were all on a path over the canyon. If a man would move a few steps in the darkness you could just about lose him, and everyone’s head was jerking this way and that, and people were starting to perspire, and then an extraordinary thing happened. The first time it had ever happened out there in the night.
“¿Sabes qué?”
What the hell? We’re not ready! They haven’t threatened to rob us! They haven’t asked for money! They haven’t shown weapons!
Tony Puente looked down the line. Who said that? We’re not ready, goddamnit!
Joe Vasquez saw who said it. The remarkable thing is that while looking right at the bandit who said it, Big Ugly, the most malleable and obedient Barfer, more than any of them a product of training, actually got ready when the ba
ndit inadvertently gave the code words.
Manny Lopez thought: Hey, asshole! That’s my line!
The bandit repeated it. “¿Sabes qué?” You know what? Then he told them what. He laid the old, we’re plainclothes cops story on them which they’d heard a dozen times out there.
“We’re judiciales,” the bandit said. “And we’re going to need a little of your money before we can let you go on.”
Tony Puente decided to move a few steps to get between the nearest bandit and the border.
The bandit perhaps didn’t like him moving, because it happened. Very very fast. The bandit lunged for Tony Puente. He grabbed Tony, and Tony grabbed him. Then everyone made his move.
Joe Vasquez had been told earlier that if he ever had to drop someone quick without the bandit’s motor reflexes coming into play, he had to take off the back of the head.
Joe Vasquez in that microsecond saw something that Tony Puente, being partially night-blind, did not see. And Big Ugly jumped on the back of the bandit who had grabbed Tony Puente. In this bizarre nightmare instant the young men embraced in a three-way bear hug there over the chasm. They did an eerie little bear-hug dance, in the moonlight, on the edge of the precipice.
And there was screaming: “Barf barf barf barf!”
And there was the sound of hissing leather as guns were whipping out.
PLOOM! BOP BOP BOP BOP!
Joe Vasquez broke the bear hug long enough to place his two-inch .38 up against the back of the skull of the bandit and …
It was unquestionably the loudest explosion Tony Puente had ever heard. Louder than all forty-nine rounds fired the night of the international shootout. Louder than any shotgun round in all these months he had walked these canyons.
The round was fired in his face. His eyes were burned by the muzzle flash and stung by lead shavings. He was blinded. He was shocked.
At the same second, or a second later, Manny Lopez was screaming something and seeing a bandit lunging at him with a knife as Manny fired.
The bandit was spun around and started running. Then Manny shot at him one more time. And the man ran. Manny began chasing him.
Then PLOOM! Carlos Chacon fired the shotgun point-blank into the chest of the third bandit. But the man simply turned nonchalantly and walked away. And this was like the recurring nightmare of policemen. They don’t go down! You can’t make these bastards go down! You shoot them and they either run away or they just turn nonchalantly as if to say, “Is that the best you can do?” And they stroll off along the edge of Deadman’s Canyon.
Manny Lopez had emptied his five-shot revolver and he was chasing his man over the canyon screaming, “You fucker! Stop or I’ll kill you!” But he couldn’t kill anybody. His gun was empty. They ran, and ran some more. Then the bandit ran out of gas and slowed nearly to a walk and Manny staggered up and booted him in the stomach and the bandit went down at last. Then Manny booted him twice more in the stomach and Manny went down. They lay side by side gazing at the stars, the bandit moaning in exhaustion and pain and Manny gasping for breath, thinking dizzily that he had to cut down on the booze. And then the bandit started to get up. Manny Lopez slugged him with a hand he’d broken twice. And the bandit groaned and lay back down. Then the bandit started holding his elbow and screaming. One of the shots had hit him after all and the pain had belatedly struck. A Barfer ran up with handcuffs, since Manny didn’t have any.
Carlos Chacon went for a walk toward his strolling bandit, who looked as though he might take a little nap. The bandit lay right down there in the dirt and put his face down sideways with his hands underneath him.
Carlos Chacon’s Rasputin eyes were even more so then, and he was sweating buckets because he had shot the guy point-blank and missed. The bandit was just lying there playing possum, with his hands underneath him. No doubt holding a weapon.
Carlos was creeping up in the moonlight screaming, “MOVE AND I’M GONNA KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD! MOVE! GO AHEAD!”
Carlos would creep a few steps closer and say, “TAKE THOSE HANDS OUT FROM UNDER THERE, YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU HEAR ME?”
And still nothing. So Carlos got a step closer and said, “ALL RIGHT, I’M GONNA KILL YOU, GODDAMNIT!”
Carlos was standing over him. And still the guy wouldn’t move. So Carlos squatted down ever so slowly and pulled one hand out and knelt on it. The guy didn’t respond. So Carlos very slowly rolled him over, and as Dick Snider later put it: “There was a hole in his chest you could throw a cat through.”
Carlos hadn’t missed. But he learned that, unlike everything he’d been told, people don’t always get blown to the ground when you shoot them with a shotgun at point-blank range. Sometimes they just turn nonchalantly and take a little stroll for themselves.
Carlos did his Bram Stoker number, leering at the dead man and poking his eye which was half open. Carlos ripped open the ragged bloody shirt and saw the ragged bloody holes oozing.
Carlos Chacon said, “I remember how I felt. Good. I felt good. I really enjoyed killing that guy. I wanted to do it some more!”
Just then Manny Lopez came running up, and seeing his youngest cop all bent over the body of a dead bandit, thinking Carlos was going into some kind of remorseful shock, Manny started screaming in Carlos Chacon’s ear: “FUCK HIM! HE’S AN ANIMAL! HE DESERVED IT!”
And Carlos, who wasn’t feeling the least bit of fear now that danger had passed, got scared shitless as Manny Lopez screamed in his face: “FUCK HIM! HE’S DEAD! GOOD FOR THE COCKSUCKER!”
Carlos was baffled for an instant. He thought Manny was mad at him, and he was confused and frightened. Then he figured it out and said, “Manny! I don’t need reassurance! I loved it!”
During the moment or so in which all this took place, the greatest shock of all was experienced by Tony Puente. After having been in the three-way bear hug—the death hug, three panting silent young men in a death-dance polka—one of the embracers suddenly let go and the world’s most gigantic explosion went off in the face of Tony Puente, and his polka partner dropped his head on Tony’s shoulder like a sophomore at a prom, and his brain fluid started gumming up and welling down his neck and Tony was still embracing him, dancing, and saying, “Oh no oh no oh no!”
Tony Puente laid his dancing partner on the ground and saw it all leaking then, behind the ear: fluid, blood, brain matter itself, and Tony started yelling at Joe Vasquez: “JOE, YOU FUCKED UP! YOU KILLED THE GUY! HE WASN’T HURTING ME, JOE!”
But Big Ugly was already hauling ass after Manny and his bandit, so he didn’t hear Tony’s yelling.
When Joe Vasquez came running back he said, “Are you okay, Tony?”
“Why did you shoot him?” Tony cried.
Big Ugly said, “Tony! He was trying to stab you!”
“I didn’t see any knife,” Tony said.
Joe Vasquez pointed down under the body of the bandit, who was moaning and gagging. And there it was. A long blade with the handle wrapped in tape. A stabbing knife.
The Border Patrol came flying in with a helicopter after the calls went out. They landed thirty feet from the crime scene and blew everything into Deadman’s Canyon, and Manny Lopez said, “Aw fuck it!” and they started dragging the two living bandits out.
Ken Kelly was enjoying his night off by trying to get things back together with his wife. In fact they were on the floor watching television and making love when he heard something that the wives had heard for fifteen months now. “Border shooting! Film at eleven!”
That was the end of the lovemaking. Especially when the announcer added, “At least one dead!” He didn’t say who.
Ken Kelly sped down I-5, crying. He lived twelve minutes from the station. He made it in five. He found Carlos Chacon at the station looking like a homerun hitter doing a high five. He decided that Carlos was more psycho than Manny Lopez. He saw Joe Vasquez looking like trouble. Manny Lopez asked Ken to go to the hospital and report back on the head-shot bandit.
Ken Kelly had to force h
is way into the intensive care unit after a lot of arguing. He was there for four hours. He had never actually seen anyone die before. After a time he and a starched nurse of the old school were left alone with the patient.
Ken Kelly became interested in all of it. The bandit had a wrapping around his entire head. Only his face showed. He was a good looking guy about Ken’s age. His arms were covered with tattoos and heroin tracks. Both this bandit and the other even had neck tracks. But he was powerful looking. Ken stared and thought, I wouldn’t want to fight him.
The bandit was breathing and moaning from time to time. He was hooked to a machine that gave digital readouts: blood pressure, pulse, respiration. The nurse was sucking brain matter out of his throat because he was leaking.
It was interesting to watch the pulse and blood pressure and respiration building. The patient’s system was taking over and fighting to live.
“His blood pressure’s super,” Ken observed. But his pulse was 180 and climbing. Then Ken said, “Isn’t there something we can do for him?” Ken Kelly was pulling for the bandit.
The patient was wearing a cross and it got to Ken, who was Lutheran enough not to like women who worshipped devils. He was mightily disturbed by this young man’s dying.
The nurse said, “Don’t get upset just because a doctor’s not here. He’s had irrevocable brain damage. The only use he has to the world now is that he’s got a good heart and lungs. If we had permission we’d take his organs. He’s young and strong.”
And Ken got mad and sad at the same time, and thought: The stupid bastard. Barf hadn’t even planned to go out that night which is why Ken had the night off. The stupid bad-luck bastard.
And then Ken thought: He’s got a good heart and lungs. It’s the nicest thing anybody can think of to say about this dying young guy.
In the next hour his blood pressure, pulse and respiration started to drop. Then it jumped a little and then it dropped. Then up a notch and down a few more. His vital signs were way down and then his pulse got down to forty-six. Ken Kelly would never forget the number. Because then the little humming noise started.
Lines and Shadows Page 32