Lines and Shadows

by Joseph Wambaugh

  The nurse looked at her watch and said, “Well, I don’t have to suction him out anymore.”

  Ken was left all alone with the bandit and he thought: This is amazing! This is an amazing fucking thing! This guy’s really dead!

  And Ken simply couldn’t help himself and he was afraid someone would see him and think he was some kind of pussy or wimp or something but he couldn’t help himself. He put his hand on the bandaged head and whispered, “God bless you.”

  Ken Kelly telephoned the Southern substation and reported the bandit’s death to Ernie Salgado. Then he asked to speak to Joe Vasquez.

  When Big Ugly got on the phone Ken said, “Joe, I wanted you to know that the guy just died. I was here with him the whole time and I just wanted you to know.”

  Ken heard a strange voice that was nothing like his friend, smiling uncomplaining Joe Vasquez, who rarely went out partying with the guys, and called his wife his best friend, and talked about adopting a baby because they couldn’t seem to have any.

  The voice Ken heard, which was Joe but wasn’t Joe, said, “I don’t give a shit! Fuck him!”

  “Well,” Ken Kelly said, “I just wanted you to know I blessed him for you. I just wanted you to know.”

  But Joe Vasquez didn’t reply. And he never talked about it to Ken Kelly or any of the other Barfers.

  Big Ugly always talked in a sincere, halting fashion. He smiled easily and genuinely. When he finally talked about that night he said, “It’s a weird thing. People more or less congratulate you cause you killed somebody. Ernie was on the phone and he came in and shook my hand and said, ‘Congratulations. You got your first one.’”

  “Thanks,” Joe Vasquez said to Ernie. But then he thought: This isn’t a good thing. He didn’t like the feeling.

  Joe Vasquez had to deal with questions. People would say, “What was the guy like you killed?”

  And Joe Vasquez would say, “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t even know his name. He was just some Mexican. Just some hype. I don’t care to know his name.”

  Joe Vasquez, the most stoic and private of any of them, spoke about it briefly to his wife and once to his parents. Everyone told him that he’d saved Tony Puente’s life and he decided that further comment was pointless.

  Joe Vasquez would only say, “I had to deal with it for quite a while. Like, for a long time I was saying things like: ‘Yeah, I shot the guy and the guy died.’ Like, he died of his injuries. He died. I never could say I killed him. That I killed the guy. It took me a while to say I killed the guy.”

  Before that night, Joe Vasquez had been experiencing a burgeoning kind of excitement out in the canyons. It had grown to an unbearable intensity. And then it literally all blew up in his face.

  “I guess that was my last hurrah,” Joe Vasquez said. And some things were never the same for him after that.

  Joe Vasquez usually talked in drug terms, a “quarter” being .25 gram of heroin, worth $25. The final thing he would say on the subject was: “They robbed us to get drugs. The one that lived told that to the detectives. I used to think that if I’da known that this guy needed a fix that bad I’da went and scored a quarter for him, you know, rather than take his life. I felt that strong about it for a long time. It’s something that’s gonna, you know, be there the rest a my life.”

  About the bandit Carlos Chacon killed, Joe Vasquez said, “Carlos is weird. He’s a weird person. He gets excited about weird things.”

  Carlos Chacon said he wanted the nine .32-caliber shotgun pellets they dug out of his bandit’s chest. For a necklace. Carlos was joking, maybe. But he did order autopsy shots of the dead bandits from the coroner. Some Barfer scrapbooks contained more memorabilia than others.

  The next day they all went out to the canyon with homicide detectives to reenact the shooting and they found something startling. The chopper had blown everything that attested to the shooting right off into Deadman’s Canyon, and yet, in the exact spot that Carlos Chacon and Joe Vasquez had killed the bandits, the people of Colonia Libertad had placed markers. There on the ground were two crosses formed by rocks. The people of Mexico believed in marking the fall of a sparrow and other creatures of the canyon.

  DARK CROSSING

  SO FINALLY THE BARF SQUAD HAD MANAGED TO KILL A couple of people. It had been getting eerie what with all the people being shot down out there and nobody dying. It had been too much like the policeman’s recurring nightmare of the killer who won’t die no matter how many times you shoot him. Now that two bandits had died there was a secret wave of relief sweeping over some of them who hadn’t forgotten that the chief of police had said that if someone died out there he would discontinue the experiment.

  In their heart of hearts some of them were praying that the chief would let the death of two bandits satisfy the requirement and stop this Thing before it killed them all.

  In fact, he did. And the next couple of months were like being reborn. Of course there were adjustments to make for people who hadn’t done ordinary sane normal police work for so long. Manny Lopez warned the brass that they couldn’t expect his people not to overreact now that they were to return to regular duty.

  This was now the time of Confession. And there is no one in the world, not anyone in history, not Saint Augustine, not Paul after being coldcocked by a bandit, or whoever it was, on the road to Damascus, nobody in the Vatican itself, who has ever had the need to confess like your average faith-shaken, stress-ridden American cop. They are the all-time world champ Confessors. Once you get them going they can’t stop confessing. They’ll start spilling and singing ten times louder and longer than the most eager confessor at a judiciales soda pop interrogation.

  Everyone who has been a police department’s Internal Affairs headhunter, or a district attorney’s hatchet man, or part of one of the million or so “crime commissions” which purportedly uncover malfeasance, marvels at the confessor mentality of police officers. It’s part of their makeup and it’s what makes them such terrific victims, especially since they’re usually too macho even to know they’re victims. That’s why the early conversation at police reunions and retirement parties usually entails discovering how many of the old classmates have seen whatever it is they see deep in the darkness of their own gun muzzles just before they smoke it.

  In any case, the Barfers started confessing. There were Barf wives weeping all over town as the boys told them about the waitresses and the nurses and the schoolteachers and all the goddamn blood drinkers and geriatric titillaters, all those who ran amok amongst them, obsessed with the myths and legends of America. And how they didn’t want to be the last of the Gunslingers anymore and just wanted to settle down to being ordinary sane normal cops and husbands and fathers. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

  So there was weeping and confessing and forgiving, and some of the more unstable Barfers were trying to pull themselves together and there were lots of promises about how things would be different and how they were going to cut out the booze and how they would never look at another woman as long as they lived. Mea maxima culpa.

  And then, right around April Fool’s Day 1978, the Barf wives read some very ominous headlines in the San Diego newspapers. Such as: BORDER BANDIT ACTIVITY ON THE RISE.

  On April 5th a boy pollo was summarily shot to death by a bandit gang operating on the west side.

  By the 12th of April the Gunslingers were right back in the hills slinging like crazy.

  By 7:40 P.M. that night, the Barfers had already been confronted by three knife-wielding bandits who, just before Manny could say “¿Sabes qué?” were scared off by a Border Parol helicopter which came swooping in and screwing up the Barfers’ timing.

  Manny Lopez chased one toward the border fence and fired a round at the crook as soon as he was nearly close enough to get stabbed. The shot missed but the terrified bandit hit the deck and knocked himself out anyway.

  And before the department brass even had time to reassess the wisdom of reactivating this dangerou
s experiment, in fact on the very next night, there was another shootout. With a deadlier gang. And this time Manny Lopez had an epiphany. It was such an awesome moment in the life of the thirty-one-year-old Barf sergeant that some people claimed it actually drove him sane.

  The murder that had occurred on April 5th was in the canyon two miles west of the port of entry. The entire Barf squad went out there now, with the cover team of Robbie Hurt and Ken Kelly parking some distance away from the walking teams. As it turned out, too far away.

  The early evening was a drag. Robbie and Ken talked about the probationary sentence and fine the court had given Ken for hitting the citizen with a flashlight, which sent Ken back to the credit union for another loan to keep from wearing stripes. Then they bitched about Ernie Salgado being on the radio this night because he yelled. And they especially hated it when Carlos Chacon was the radio man, because his excitement level made communication almost impossible.

  Ken Kelly explained: “When they’re upset it’s like trying to convince your wife that lipstick stains are all part a the job. You just can’t, especially when you have so many priors. It’s no good saying, ‘Unless you got pictures, it wasn’t me!’”

  In short, you couldn’t calm them down when they were on the air during hot times.

  Manny and his other six Barfers decided to sit alongside a path one hundred feet north of the international border, a path beaten rock-hard by the feet of the alien armies of the night. The path was a wide one that tunneled through thick brush on both sides and ran north toward prosperity. At about ten minutes past ten, with no stars and very little moonlight, the Barfers heard cries of terror and the sound of running and every man was up and had guns drawn and was fanning out as two silhouettes came toward them.

  The Barfers leaped out and grabbed the runners, who thought they were dead and were uttering cries for mercy and begging for their lives and were uncomprehending until they were made to understand that these were San Diego policemen. Then they started pointing behind them in terror.

  These two aliens had been ambushed by three bandits wearing ski masks. One had a gun, another a knife, and the third, ¿quien sabe? The two aliens tried escaping back to Mexico but were cut off by the pursuing bandits and had to veer off in the darkness and run north, right into the Barf squad.

  The Barfers heard the part about the ski masks and gun and got very tense because they figured they had their gang of murderers, and just then they heard some more running footsteps and there wasn’t even time to set up a proper ambush because here they came! Right out of the darkness!

  The newest and smallest Barfer, Gil Padillo, had the shotgun. Manny Lopez heard a metallic click and yelled, “They got a gun!”

  When the first two masked bandits charged nearly on top of them, Gil Padillo let go with a shotgun blast. Carlos Chacon fired. Joe Castillo fired two guns. The first bandit stopped and screamed and started shooting back.

  There was another point-blank gunfight in absolute darkness. The muzzle flashes lit up tall silhouettes and ski masks.

  In addition to driving Manny Lopez sane, this shootout drove Ken Kelly and Robbie Hurt crazy. For these outsiders, fate had saved the worst for last. The cover team was waiting a couple of miles west of a riding stable. There is an escarpment which rises about five hundred feet to a mesa. The border fence south tumbles into nearly impassable terrain, at least for a vehicle, and then there is Smuggler’s Gulch, five hundred yards across and three hundred feet deep.

  When Ken and Robbie heard the gunfire it sounded distant, like someone breaking concrete with a hammer. They leaped into their vehicles and drove straight through the brush, straight up the escarpment. They skidded and slid and just about lost two police vehicles and stopped.

  Ernie Salgado came on the tactical channel, broken by static, screaming, “WE NEED YOU! WE NEED YOU!”

  And thus began the moment they’d avoided till the very end. Both outsiders went utterly bughouse. Ken had fifteen parachute flares, extra ammunition, a shotgun, first aid kit, bulletproof vests and radio. Robbie had nearly as much equipment. The grade was perhaps forty-five degrees, through nearly impenetrable brush after a rainy season.

  All the outsiders could hear was “Barf barf barf!” being screamed in the distance and the BOP! of gunfire and each other’s moans and panting and breathing which very quickly sounded phlegmy. Neither of the young men had ever worked this hard in his entire life. Within three minutes each was beyond pain and sweat-drenched and Ernie Salgado’s voice kept screaming over the radio.

  Just as they started seeing hallucinatory bandits and rattlesnakes, Ernie’s voice broke in again, screaming, “… helicopter!” And that was all they got.

  Ken dropped his bag and shotgun and radio and started losing ammo and Robbie also started dropping things as they hacked through the brush with arms and legs and shotguns. And while Ernie screamed unintelligibly on the goddamn Handie-Talkie, Robbie went into a death rattle and started croaking things to Ken with his last gasp. “This … is … your … god … damn … FAULT!”

  Ken knew he meant that it was Ken’s idea to park where they did. But Ken croaked back, “Aw, go … fa … fa … fu …”

  It was no use. His breathing sounded like a rasp on hardwood. He couldn’t even gurgle an obscenity, and they both saved their last bit of energy to hack through another tunnel of brush.

  The Barfers didn’t know if the bandits were hit. After the tall bandits fired back, they vanished. And Barfers were reloading and running and screaming and ducking and doing the usual things and the two aliens were down on their knees praying for the chance to get out of this freaking country and back to Mexico alive. Suddenly two helicopters, Border Patrol and sheriff’s department, came roaring in, having heard most of the transmission of Ernie Salgado.

  When Ken and Robbie get to the top and collapse, they go into the giddy state wherein they start jabbering nonsense like: “Who’s gonna buy the beer tonight if we live?” And, “Nice night to go crazy!” Things like that.

  Then Tony Puente comes on the radio to say that no Barfers are hit but three bandits are hiding somewhere in five acres of brush, and the bandits have at least one handgun.

  Suddenly Ken spots the red and blue lights of the Tijuana police gum-balling down the highway, having also picked up the broadcast. And he starts popping off parachute flares. Only he’s so exhausted and suffering something like hyperthymia that he’s damn near shooting down the two helicopters with the flares and he can’t stop and the goddamn sky over the U.S. and Mexico is totally alight!

  Robbie sees Ken looking up with a little demented smile, and it’s clear that Ken’s bewitched by the soaring popping floating flares. And then the sheriff’s helicopter comes attacking through the flare pattern, and the chopper’s blades are blowing the shit out of the cover team and all their equipment. Ken is so crazy by now, and so is Robbie, that they’d like to pop one right at the freaking helicopter bubble and Ken thinks of how the Italian-made helicopter sounds just like a dago machine as it hovers overtop with the whining thumping blades sounding like: GUINEA GUINEA, WOP WOP WOP!

  Ken Kelly starts jabbering that he’ll never eat lasagna again—Guinea Guinea, WOP WOP WOP!—but the pilot just waves fraternally and blows the shit out of everything. And now with scorpions and tarantulas and flying skunks soaring through this hurricane, Ken and Robbie are falling off the mesa and picture themselves tumbling into a rattlesnake convention just as they hear PLOOM!

  A bandit made a break for the international fence and someone cranked one off. At least they all thought it was a bandit but they never knew because he made it into Mexico. And though they could see Tijuana police gathering over there, they never saw the man again.

  Ken Kelly spent an hour on the mesa popping off flares, and the search continued until the choppers were running out of fuel and there were Tijuana cops everywhere. And San Diego cops everywhere. And news media from both sides everywhere. And they figured Chano B. Gomez, Jr., was probably ov
er there selling tamales to the mobs watching this nutty carnival.

  Ken Kelly had indeed lost the gear bag with guns and ammo in it and Manny Lopez would soon be chewing him a new one because expensive police equipment is a lot more important than inexpensive bandits, and everyone would have to look for the goddamn gear bag and Ken figured he might as well shoot himself but he couldn’t because he’d lost the frigging gun!

  During the search Manny Lopez found a red ski mask and a knife with an eight-inch blade, and finally the Border Patrol chopper lit up a patch of brush and reported a man hiding there. Manny and Joe Vasquez pounced on a tall guy, who put up a hell of a fight before they thumped him into submission. They found a poncho lying nearby and with it a black leather holster, but that was all.

  When the bandit search was discontinued that night, Ken Kelly reported that several reporters down on Monument Road were really pissed off at them because they hadn’t killed somebody, or if they had, they let the goddamn body get away.

  Ken Kelly asked, “Why do people wanna play with your dick when you shoot somebody?”

  Two shootings in two nights was a bit much even for the ambivalent brass of the San Diego Police Department. This experiment was finally and forever deemed too dangerous, and within a few days BARF ceased to exist.

  And so said the San Diego newspapers, making it a sad day for the media, for mythmakers, and for lovers of latter-day Gunslingers.

  One wonders what might have happened to the Barf leader had the experiment been allowed to continue. Manny Lopez had experienced something exceedingly strange out there, something that troubled him and gave him pause and made him lie awake thinking about where this experiment had taken him.

  He had pursued the fleeing bandit immediately after the gunfire. Even the new Barfer—who despised Manny Lopez and hadn’t been with them on all those occasions when Manny’s conduct had made the others scared of him—had to say, “You don’t do that. Nobody does what he did.”