Ditch Rider

by Judith Van GIeson

  ******

  On my way home from work that night I passed the trailer. Sonia’s car was gone, but Leo’s truck was parked out front. Danny was riding his bike in loops around the yard. Leo came out the door cradling a soccer ball in his right arm. He waved his free hand when he saw me. I stopped the car and rolled down the window.

  “What’s happening with Cheyanne?” he asked.

  “She’s going to be arraigned tomorrow.”

  “I want to be there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Will she stay in the D Home after the arraignment?”

  “Probably. If the judge grants bail I suspect it will be high.”

  He looked around the bare yard. “Not much collateral here.”

  “True,” I said.

  Leo tightened his grip on the ball. “Did Cheyanne tell you if anybody’s been hassling her? She won’t tell her mother anything.”

  “She says no.”

  “If you hear she’s having any trouble with gang members in there, you let me know.”

  “All right. You were here the night she was assaulted?”

  “Right.”

  “What was it that got her out of the house? Do you know?”

  “It wasn’t the phone. Sonia had it disconnected. The TV was on. I didn’t hear anybody outside.”

  “You guys didn’t fight, did you?”

  “No.”

  Danny had circled closer, zeroing in on us. He parked next to Leo and put his kickstand down.

  “There’s a game on,” Leo said. “We gotta go.” He handed the ball over to Danny.

  “Talk to you later,” I replied.

  When I got to my driveway I stopped to pick up the mail, looked back down the road and saw Leo following Danny toward the rec field next to the Sacred Heart Church where the soccer games were played. Danny rode his bike with the soccer ball in one hand and the handlebars in the other, but it was awkward. The bike weaved back and forth across the road. Danny stopped and waited for his father to catch up. When Leo did, Danny tossed him the ball. Leo bounced it up in the air with his shoulder and caught it in his arms on the way back down.

  12

  WHEN A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL is indicted for homicide in Albuquerque, it’s a major news event, and the press showed up in full force at the arraignment. The reporters waiting outside Juvenile Court wanted to get a statement from me, but I had nothing to say. Inside the courtroom the cameras were set up and the Four O’s were waiting, wearing black t’s with smile now, cry later masks on the front and Old English letters on the back that read Juan Padilla, RIP.

  An invisible line divided the courtroom down the middle. Juan’s mourners crowded into one side of it and Cheyanne’s supporters took the other. There were only four people on Cheyanne’s side: Sonia, Leo, Danny and Patricia. It was more than a lot of juvenile offenders had. Sonia wore a short black skirt and a black western shirt with turquoise trim and silver tips on the collar. Her hands tugged nervously at the skirt. Leo wore his repairman’s shirt, as if he intended to go back to the job the minute this was over. His left side was turned away from the Four O’s, shielding Danny, who stood to his right. Danny was jittery as a cricket and Leo put his hand on his shoulder to settle him down. He had the slicked-back hair of a junior gang member, but his mother hadn’t let him dress the part. He wore straight-legged jeans and a plain t-shirt. Patricia had on a green dress and a lot of makeup. Her curls tumbled down her back. Today she was fourteen going on twenty-one. She was the only one in the courtroom who dared to stare across the aisle.

  The other side of the room was dominated by gangsters. They wore full pants and had their hair clipped close to their heads, trying their best to scare us more than we scared them. The Four O’s didn’t have to look tough to convince me. These boys could well have been to more funerals than they had birthday parties, which would give them an older person’s perspective that death is the place where you go to reconnect with friends and family who have already passed on. The gang members were a dark cloud on Juan’s side of the courtroom. In front of them sat the women: a mother, aunts, sisters, a grandmother. All the grown men in this family appeared to be absent or dead. An old woman looked up from the soggy handkerchief she clutched and her eyes met mine. She had the long, furrowed face of a hound. Her white hair was slipping out of its bun. Her legs were thick as tree trunks. Her mournful brown eyes said Juan had been more than a gang member—he’d been a hope for the future. There was no accusation or threat in her look—only loss—so I couldn’t justify myself by getting angry or defensive.

  Cheyanne didn’t look at the Padillas or the Four O’s or her own family either when she entered. She wore her blue D Home uniform with the numbers on the back. Her arms still showed the marks of the assault. Her movements were sluggish. She wore no makeup and she’d wiped off the last of the blue nail polish. Her hair had been brushed until the curls had fallen out. She’d peeled off her bandages and her stitches were visible, giving her the sewn-together look of a rag doll. I wasn’t sure looking like a waif would convince anyone she was guilty of murder, but I could have been underestimating the weariness and experience of Juvenile Court Judge John Joseph, who was known for his unpredictability. The way he reacted could depend on whether his breakfast had agreed with him or whether he’d experienced road rage on his way to work. Cheyanne didn’t cry as she stood before him, but she did have the slouch of a victim deep in depression and the clenched hands of a wrongdoer full of remorse.

  When she appeared, the gangbangers looked away in unison, like a bunch of raw recruits under the command of a drill sergeant. But I couldn’t tell who was giving the orders; no one stood out as bigger or meaner or older. One guy wore a black baseball cap turned backward and a jacket with white stitching across the front. Maybe it was him. He was better-looking than the other gangbangers, with small features, pale and striking eyes. Sometimes good looks are authority enough, but I didn’t know if that would cut it among these tough guys.

  The eyes that had avoided Cheyanne glared at me as I approached the bench to face Judge Joseph, but that’s my job, to absorb the anger and the heat. Saia stood beside me, and if he was feeling any heat he didn’t let it show. His hair was slick and smooth. His clothes were deeply rumpled.

  Judge Joseph glared at my client over the top of his dime-store reading glasses, and his fine white hair shimmied with static. He’d been on the bench for years and had seen a whole lot of kids in trouble. He’d seen girls who’d killed and girls who’d been assaulted. He’d seen pretty girls, ugly girls, innocent girls, guilty girls, but it was unlikely he’d seen many girls who lived in harmony with their parents and he’d undoubtedly seen some whose parents hadn’t even shown up. The judge read off the charges against my client and asked her if I had explained the charges and the consequences.

  Cheyanne nodded.

  “Don’t nod, young lady,” he barked. “Answer me.”

  “Yes,” Cheyanne mumbled.

  “What?” The judge cupped his hand to his ear.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “You are charged with a capital offense. Do you understand what that means?”

  “It means I killed somebody.” Cheyanne paused as if trying to remember something. Maybe it was my admonition to show remorse. “I’m very sorry for my actions, Your Honor,” she continued.

  “Why is that?” queried the judge.

  “I shot Juan Padilla and caused his family pain and suffering.”

  “What were the circumstances of the shooting?”

  “I … I was holding the gun in my hand. The gun went off.”

  “Did you act alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it your intent to shoot Juan Padilla?” He stared down at her from the height of the bench, making my client appear very small, very young and very scared.

  She shook her head. “No. It was an accident, Your Honor.”

  “Where did you get the weapon?”

  “I found it.”
r />   The judge took his eyes off Cheyanne for a moment and appraised me. “Are you satisfied with your legal representation, young lady?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” my client answered.

  “And with your guilty plea?”

  She’d had the option of taking an Alford Plea, which doesn’t admit guilt, only that the prosecutor can prove guilt, but that hadn’t been my client’s wish. My client had wanted to stand up before the judge and the Padillas and plead guilty. The time had come to do so.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” she whispered.

  The judge stared at her for a long time. He closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them he said, “I am taking your plea under advisement and will schedule a hearing when I have made my decision.”

  “When will that be, Your Honor?” asked Cheyanne.

  “When I have given the matter due consideration,” he snapped. Considering the age of the defendant, Judge Joseph would be expected to take a long, hard look at this case, which would include reports from a psychiatrist and a probation officer. But his sour expression indicated he’d made up his mind.

  He set bail at an amount Sonia Moran couldn’t possibly meet and remanded Cheyanne to the D Home until the plea hearing. Maybe he thought the D Home would be the best place for her. Maybe he thought she would be a menace out on the street. He pounded his gavel and dismissed us.

  Juan’s women sobbed while the attendant led Cheyanne—hiding behind her hair—back to the D Home. It was all the state could do, but it would never be enough for the Padillas. Leo hurried Sonia and Danny outside. The newscasters headed for the door and the cameramen began hauling away their equipment. For them the drama was over.

  I watched Patricia step across the divide and walk up to the guy in the black hat, who was talking to one of his homeboys. His back was to me and I could read the inscription on his turned-backward hat. BROWN POWER, it said in white Old English letters. The guy didn’t know Patricia was behind him until she tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around like he was getting ready to take a swing, but when he saw it was Patricia he stopped himself, looked her up and down and smiled smoothly.

  “Looking baaad today, Patricia,” he said. “Real bad.”

  “Take your breath away,” she replied.

  “Don’t count on it.” His smile turned cold and hard.

  One of Juan’s young women, a girlfriend or a sister, grabbed Patricia’s arm. “Your girlfriend’s gonna rot in jail, bitch,” she hissed.

  “Chill out, Laura,” Black Hat said.

  Patricia shook the girl off, turned her back and walked away.

  Black Hat held the girl in check until Patricia was out the door. I’d been standing by the bench watching and the girl turned toward me. “That goes for you, too,” she said.

  “Just doing my job,” I replied.

  “It’s a hoe’s job.”

  Whores get paid better than me, I thought, but I let my feet do the talking. I walked out of the courtroom, down the hallway, out the door and onto the street, where I encountered the cloud of smoke that hovers outside every professional building. My buddy and adversary, Anthony Saia, was standing in the middle of it puffing on a Camel.

  “Give me a hit,” I said.

  “Just one?”

  “That’s all.”

  He handed over the cigarette. “Remember when these things used to be called coffin nails?” he asked me.

  “I remember.” I took one deeply satisfying drag, coughed and handed the cigarette back. Saia finished it off, dropped it to the sidewalk and rubbed it out. Then we walked to the corner, where we intended to go our separate ways—he back to the DA’s office, me to the underground parking lot where I’d left my Nissan. “Don’t let it get to you,” he told me while we walked.

  “It’s not,” I replied, pulling my dark glasses out of my purse. The sun and the wind were making their presence felt in the canyons of downtown, causing me to put on my sunglasses and making Anthony Saia squint. One side of the street was in sunlight. The other was in shadow. Both sides were feeling the wind, which picked up trash and swirled it around.

  Saia did not accept my denial. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “It’s hard to watch a teenage client plead guilty to manslaughter.” And not that easy to confront the friends and family of a fifteen-year-old victim.

  “Happens every day,” he said.

  “Not to my clients.”

  “That’s because you’ve been going for the big-buck negligence cases.” He laughed.

  “Ha, ha,” I replied. “Cheyanne will stay on suicide watch, I hope.”

  “I’ll look into it. If you ask me, she’s better off in the D Home than she is in her own home if the mother’s hanging out with Chuy Ortega.” The wind tugged at Saia’s hair and whipped mine across my face.

  “Do you mean Leo?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s the father of Sonia’s son.”

  “When I read the police report for the night your client was assaulted I didn’t realize I knew him. There are a lot of Ortegas out there. Your client pled guilty and refused to cooperate in the assault investigation, so it went no further. I didn’t put it together until I saw Ortega in court today. I knew him by his gang name of Chuy. He was a violent son of a bitch back then.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Aggravated battery. I prosecuted him about ten years ago.”

  “You’ve been prosecuting that long?”

  “That long.”

  “Maybe you’re getting stuck, Anthony.”

  “Maybe one day a new DA will come along and kick me out. I am getting tired of seeing the same faces over and over again.” He looked tired. Squinting was deepening the wrinkles around his mouth and lengthening the bags beneath his eyes.

  “How much time did Leo do?” I asked him.

  “A year.”

  “He seems devoted to his son. Maybe being a father has straightened him out.”

  “It’s a tough job,” Saia said, “but somebody’s got to do it. It’s getting to be too much for parents all alone. Maybe Hillary was right when she said it takes a village, only we don’t have villages anymore. The city is swallowing them up.”

  “We do have streets,” I said.

  “True. Don’t go beating yourself up over this case, Neil. If Joseph does accept your client’s plea and sends her to the Girls’ School, it’s not exactly a dungeon.”

  “There are going to be Four O’s or their girlfriends inside who can make it hell for my client if they want to. They were showing their colors in the courtroom.”

  “I guess we’ll find out then whether our justice is their justice, whether they believe your client is guilty or not.” The wind had pried one lock of graying hair loose, and it danced across Saia’s forehead.

  My own hair was blowing into my face. I brushed it away. “Who was the kid in the black hat?” I asked.

  “Nolo Serrano. Good-looking kid, huh?”

  “Not bad.”

  “He should have been a movie star or a musician instead of a gangbanger. He plays the guitar and was doing all right with it until he dropped out of school.”

  “How do you know him? He’s not your eyewitness, is he?”

  “You’re asking me to give up a witness?”

  “The case has already been settled, Anthony. My client pled guilty.”

  “The witness is still a juvenile.”

  “Then can you tell me if he’s not your witness?”

  “I told you my witness wasn’t a gangbanger, didn’t I?”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “It’s not Serrano. The way I know him is he’s been in and out of the system. That kid can charm the bark off a tree or the money out of a lawyer if he wants to. He’s not bad, just misdirected.”

  A woman was coming down the street wearing high heels and a power suit that made mine look like it was fifteen years old. She held a bottle of designer water by the neck and she smiled at Saia.


  “Could that be the new lady friend?” I asked.

  Saia slicked the errant strand of hair into place. “That’s Jennifer.” She did look impressively fit, a lot fitter than Anthony Saia. This was not a lawyer who intended to be clerking for long. “You want to meet her?” Saia asked.

  I wasn’t in the mood for Xena, Warrior Princess. I could see what Saia saw in her, but not what she saw in him. World-weariness can be a comfort, but it’s not a turn-on—not to me, anyway. “Maybe later. I gotta get back to the office.”

  “Talk to you later,” Saia said.

  “Okay,” I answered.

  13

  I WALKED TO the underground lot where my Nissan was parked and took the elevator down to Level Three. I don’t like parking lots. What woman does? An inside lot is worse than outside, unless it’s after dark. The concrete ceiling, the institutional lighting, the shadows under the Broncos and BMWs told me to get in and out fast. Usually I circle the levels until I find a spot that’s close to the elevator. I like to have as few vehicles as possible between escape and my Nissan. But today there’d been no close-in spots on any level. Several cars away on Level Three was the best I’d been able to do.

  Guilt was at my side when I got on the elevator. The deal I’d made for my client was not justice for the Padillas and maybe not for my client, either. While the elevator descended I took out my key ring, made a fist and inserted the keys between my fingers, not a bad idea when you’re entering a parking lot. I got off the elevator, saw that I was the only living thing on Level Three and walked to my car. When I got there and inserted the key in the lock I heard the elevator descending and the door sliding open.