“Thanks.” Fredo began peeling the foil and taking a bite out of the tail.
“You should probably ask them.” Riverton held his thumb over his right shoulder.
“These things are so sensitive, they’ll start beeping. Then I’ll stop. Chocolate is a food group in Puerto Rico.”
“May I?” Riverton gestured to the straight-backed chair in the corner, removing a newspaper before he sat. He crossed his legs and brought out his small vest pocket spiral notebook and pen. “I wanna ask you about who you saw at the grocery store.”
“Supermercado. They don’t say grocery store in that part of town.”
“Duly noted. So Kyle says there were three of them?”
“Yes. Why did you call Kyle?”
“He called me.” Riverton wasn’t going to reveal anything else until he got his questions answered. “So tell me about those boys. Three? Is that it?”
“Yes, there were three. I know I’ve seen one of them before several times. Even had a dream about him last night.”
Riverton stopped his chicken scratches and looked at Fredo, slightly tilting his head to the side, a worried frown consuming his ruddy face. “We’re dreaming about boys now, are we, Fredo?”
“Shut the fuck up. More like a nightmare.” Fredo couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been to reveal the dream.
“So which guy we gonna talk about now. The one in your dream or the one who accosted you outside the supermercado?” Riverton showed his disdain for the Spanish he was forced to speak in California.
“Funny. I remembered him from somewhere. There was a funeral, I think.”
That made Riverton pensive. Fredo was careful with his words. Most obvious in the room was the fact that there had been way too many of them recently. The Special Forces were experiencing casualties unlike ever before, and for a war that hadn’t escalated in the public’s mind, but one Fredo knew was brutal and deadly and still in its infancy. Fredo knew it would some day be called the hundred-year war. Or it would until someone had the guts to stop it by being more brutal than the enemy. Fredo and his buddies on SEAL Team 3 were the spear of that miniscule fighting force.
“You remember which funeral it was? Someone on Team 3?”
Fredo focused on the birds outside his window, swirling in a small swarm. Starlings or some other small birds that traveled in clouds, pulsing like the beat of a human heart, morphing into different rounded shapes.
Everyone’s connected.
Here he was, sitting in the hospital bed with a gunshot wound to his chest, unable to be over at Mama Guzman’s Thanksgiving feast with Mia and her mother fussing all over him like he was a boy of ten.
And then it hit him. He’d seen this kid a few years ago.
“I know who he is now.”
“Enlighten me.” Riverton’s deadpan was even deader. The only way Fredo knew he was interested was the speed with which he answered.
“We had this kid, came from the projects here. Tried out for the teams and washed out during the underwater phase. He couldn’t swim. Afraid of water and all that.”
“How’d he get a shot at trying out if he couldn’t swim?”
“Well, he’d gotten some training all right. He was a big, physical kid. Family from Mexico. We used to see them bring food and things they weren’t supposed to. Hung around the parking lots, the beaches where we trained.”
“So he washed out. Whose funeral was it, then?”
“His. He begged for a second chance. But the Navy grabbed him, and he was off to the Pacific fleet. Family was devastated when he got shot. He was home on leave. Just a random thing, like this,” Fredo said as he pointed to his chest.
“You guys attended the funeral, I take it?”
“Yeah. We all did. Kyle had taken a liking to him, too. We were going to try to help him. Had a tough life. They were very poor.” Fredo studied Riverton’s face to find a trace of compassion there and found none. “A lot of us came that way.”
Fredo remembered the big kid with the wide smile. In uniform, he could have been a kid from a middle class family in Santa Monica. Fredo had felt the instant bond between them, due to their backgrounds.
“Go on. Was he involved in something he shouldn’t have been?”
“Yeah, there was a girl he knocked up.” Fredo faded to the place where this young man was dead, a man who could father children, and he was very much alive, but not able to add to his own bloodline.
Get yourself away from this pity party you’re having, Fredo. Makes no difference. Makes no difference.
He found Riverton sitting at rapt attention, his pencil poised on the little notepad. He didn’t know how many seconds he had been daydreaming about life and the meaning of life—all very dangerous stuff. Stuff that could get you killed. Or worse, get a buddy killed. Fredo jerked his mind out of the clouds and continued.
“Had a ton of brothers and sisters, too. All of them had moved away. Who could blame them? He came back to help his mom with his younger brother. This kid with the blue eyes. The kid idolized him.”
“And the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The girl he knocked up.”
“Last time I saw her she was as big as a house, but she wasn’t allowed to sit with the family, not that she wanted to. She moved away, and no one ever saw her again. Too bad, too. I think the grandmother would have liked to have her here.”
“Can’t say that I blame her. She gets a way to get out, she takes it. End of story. There’s a different concept for a family here in these streets.”
“Yeah. I grew up knowing that, too. You stick together, and you’re safer than on your own.”
Riverton sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Well, that’s one helluva story, son. Not sure it does me much good. Unless you think the kid, or one of his little buddies, did you.”
“I don’t think so. I’d be surprised.”
“He recognize you at the store?”
“Oh definitely. Most definitely.”
“What makes you say that?”
“His friend asked me to buy alcohol for them. I usually decline. But it was almost Thanksgiving, and, hey, I was a kid their age, too, once.”
“No kidding. We all were.”
“So I messed with them a bit. The two of them ran off to go look for another asshole to buy their booze. This kid played my game.”
“Game?”
“I asked him what kind thing had he done.” Fredo stared directly into Riverton’s eyes to make sure he got the point. “He told me he’d stuck up for a girl. I think I embarrassed the kid, and he had second thoughts.”
Riverton shrugged. “This is leading nowhere. How do you know he knew you?”
“He called me a frog-man. And then he took off before I could figure out who he was. Now that I know, I doubt he was the shooter.”
“You got a name for this kid?”
“His brother had a strange name—Ephron Hernandez. We just called his little brother Blue, Azul, because of his blue eyes. All the kids had brown eyes, and the mother had brown eyes. But this kid had the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen on a Mexican kid.”
Riverton closed his notebook after getting a further description of all three of the boys, especially Blue. “Well, I think this helps. How many blue-eyed Mexican kids from this part of San Diego are there? Can’t be that many.” He stood, shaking Fredo’s hand. “My best to Mia.”
Riverton was clean-shaven today, but his clothes were wrinkled, like they always were. Fredo watched him shuffle out of the room, like he was some ghost of lost souls, dressed in ashen rags. He figured Riverton’s job, studying and solving mysteries involving bad things people did to each other, usually life-ending things, was a calling. But it sure wasn’t one Fredo had any attraction to.
Chapter 5
‡
Three days later, Fredo was released from the hospital. They began shopping for Christmas. Mia took him to an upscale children’s clothing and toy store. He spent most of
the time there squinting, examining price tags so small he thought perhaps he might need glasses.
“Geez!” Fredo growled, noticing the price on a pair of little girl’s socks with lace trim around the ankles. “I don’t even pay that much for a hundred percent wool.” He held the tiny pair of pink socks high in the air, between his index finger and thumb.
Mia bestowed a broad smile, following up with a wink. She rescued Fredo from the lethal clothing fashion statement. “You don’t wear lace, do you?”
“Well, I like lace. I like lace very, very, much, Mia. Just not on me.”
She giggled, her warm cadence lightening his heart. Anything was fun with Mia, even shopping for socks for little Ricardo or Mia’s cousin, who was about the same age. As she approached him, she allowed her tits to brush against his chest, and on cue, his dick got hard so fast he nearly doubled over.
“You know, you been filling my belly with come so much, Fredo, I think you gonna give me a little present one of these days. I want a little girl, sweetheart. Can you fill my belly with a little girl, hmm? Please?” She reached into his pants and squeezed his package while Fredo searched the boutique to make sure no one was going to see her actions.
“Oh my God! Fredo. I never knew shopping for baby clothes turned you on so much!” She purred up close and personal to him, her little pink tongue darting out between her red lips as she moaned. “I want you to fuck me until I am big with three children.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Mia,” he could barely say.
“It could. You are the magic man, Fredo. Nothing you cannot do.” She grabbed his hand and shoved it down her considerably tight blue jeans. “Just touching me makes me come.”
Her half-lidded eyes lasted only a few seconds, as they heard the bell of an incoming customer with a string of little ones in tow. Fredo counted three. All boys.
“See, that could be us, my lover. Let’s do this. Isn’t that what you guys say?”
It was what they said all right. It was the doing part that bothered him the most. The practice was fine, but the filling her belly with little ones—that wouldn’t be happening. Fredo thought that by now it would have gotten easier.
Riverton wanted Fredo to take a stroll with him around the neighborhood where he’d gotten shot. Fredo agreed on one condition—that they both wear Kevlar.
He felt like the Michelin Man as he waddled down the nearly non-existent sidewalk overrun with weeds springing up defiantly between concrete cracks. He was used to walking this way, his swagger from side to side usually accentuated by his hands on his H&K, in a walking shooter’s stance: right up top, finger on the trigger, left down on the barrel. If need be, he could swing his weapon up, balancing it on his hip if there wasn’t something else he could use to prop against. Without the gun, he still found himself holding his hands in that position just from force of habit. In a dangerous neighborhood like this one, having a semi-automatic made sense, even though it was illegal as hell.
Riverton was nervous and not used to wearing the heavy Kevlar. It was also due to the fact that someone had underestimated his girth, the detective’s arms exploding out the sides like growing eyes on a potato. But it was the constrictive breathing Fredo could hear that caused him the most worry.
“Clark, you wanna stop breathing through your mouth? You’re making too much noise.”
Riverton rolled his eyes and pulled his neck up and out of the protective vest, resembling a turtle coming out of its shell.
“You want me to loosen it? I can, you know.”
“I’m fine.”
“Breathe through your nose. You won’t scare so many people.”
They came to the little neighborhood store, and Fredo took the lead, striking up a conversation with the clerk, who appeared to be from India. Fredo was going to speak in broken Spanish until he saw the young kid’s dark face and wire-rimmed glasses.
“Amigo,” he started. “I was here a week ago, before Thanksgiving.”
The lanky teen nodded.
“I got shot, right outside your doors there. This here’s Detective Clark Riverton from the San Diego P.D. We’re looking for a couple of kids. One has real blue eyes, blue like the sky.”
“I’m sorry, haven’t seen them today.”
“Okay, so you know who we’re talking about, then?”
“Sure. Sure. The kid with the blue eyes. I see him just about every day.”
Riverton pushed Fredo to the side. His considerable girth took up most of the counter space. “You know where we can find them? Know where they live?”
“No, sir. They come in, buy stuff, and then leave. They’re no problem.”
“They use a credit card or pay by check?”
The clerk returned a face to Riverton, looking like he was sucking on a mouthful of lemons. “No checks. We never take checks. Cash. We take cash only. Food Stamps. They use Food Stamps.”
“Food Stamps?” Fredo asked.
“Yes. The one with the blue eyes has an older sister with a baby. They buy diapers sometimes. Baby things, cereal.” He drifted off, naming items Fredo didn’t recognize.
“Any idea where they live?” Riverton asked.
“No. I’m sorry, but I don’t pay attention. They pay; they leave. I don’t want to watch or get too curious. This is a terrible neighborhood.”
“Tell me about it,” Fredo mumbled under his breath. He knew his instincts were good in not allowing Mia’s mother to come to shop here anymore. In fact, he’d tried to get Felicia to sell her little bungalow and move some place safer with Mayfield. But if Mayfield couldn’t change her mind, Fredo and Mia, and Mia’s brother, Armando, would never convince the stubborn woman, who had lived in the same house for over twenty years. It was her piece of the American Dream, purchased with the settlement money from her husband’s murder in Puerto Rico.
Fredo took a turn at the clerk. “What does the sister look like? How old?”
“She’s not much older. I think she’s still in school.”
Fredo swore and shook his head. He remembered his first encounters with Mia, who also was a wild child and had run with the wrong crowd. The son he was raising as his own was, in fact, the biological son of a man in prison for gang violence and drug dealing. Mia had nearly cost Armando his life when he tried to defend her.
“Do you know where the kids here hang out?” Riverton asked.
The clerk gave a smirk. “You mean like a library or public pool? A park?” He wrinkled his brow. “If we had a park, it would be filled with druggies. If we had a library, they’d be setting fire to the books or the paper towels in the bathroom.”
“What about sports? Any basketball courts around?” Fredo watched as the clerk suddenly had a bright thought.
“Yes. I’ve seen them before. St. Rose Middle School. It’s abandoned now. Boarded up. But the basketball court still has the rims. No nets, nothing but blacktop and those big poles. No lights, either, so you don’t want to go at night.”
That was a start. The two of them got directions and found the abandoned school, covered in graffiti, some of it rather colorful and well-done. Scenes depicting jaguars, large spotted cats, and panthers hiding in bushes with big eyes made him feel like he was walking through a museum of modern art.
“Shit, this is good,” Fredo remarked.
“No kidding.” Riverton was viewing the landscape of abandoned houses, car hulks, and upturned garbage cans in the middle of the street. The neighborhood was deserted.
“Reminds me of some places in Syria and parts of Iraq.”
“That’s a statement,” answered Riverton. “Come all the way back here and find districts like over there.”
“Oh man, you should see some of the hill country, though. Beautiful. Snow, trees, not hot and dusty like the cities. Baghdad was a beautiful city at one time, was legendary for its beauty. Hard as that is to believe now.”
Fredo caught a glimpse of a pair of teens rounding the corner of the school, heading straight for them. R
iverton braced himself and stiffened. But the kids, when they saw Fredo, turned around and ran away.
“That’s him, blue eyes,” barked Fredo as he took off after the pair.
They wound around several alleyways, avoiding loose dogs in fenced yards and lines of laundry, swinging a whole street away from a group of nearly a dozen youths, all with gang colors. Someone in a flat black, lowered, seventies model muscle car with darkened windows and custom paint drove slowly by, trash talking rap music making the insides of Fredo’s chest rattle. Fredo noticed Riverton had pulled out his badge, wearing it on his belt, and he’d unclipped his holster.
“I don’t like this at all, Fredo. This was a bad idea.”
“I thought you was smoking something to even suggest it. We don’t want to stop these guys or mess with them in any way. We should head back.”
Riverton followed behind Fredo, turning every few yards to make sure they weren’t targets. They hung close to trucks and large-trunk trees, and next to wooden fences and the sides of buildings so they weren’t out in plain sight, just like they searched the neighborhoods in Ramadi and Fallujah. What surprised Fredo most was that he felt safer there than he did here, in his own country, only fifty miles from where he grew up.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and caught a flash glimpse of two teens running around the corner of the abandoned school building. Riverton was going to run after them, and Fredo held him back.
“We don’t want to put too much attention on them. Not in their best interest to be talking to a cop.”
“Just didn’t want them to get away. They’re suspects.”
“No way, Riverton. We take this one slow.” Fredo knew well the damage an angry street gang could do to a kid’s house, his parent’s car, or one of his friends. If blue eyes didn’t want to talk to Fredo, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to talk to Riverton.
Easing along the backside of a wall perpendicular to where the kids had run, Fredo checked the streets, listening for sounds like a safety being released, rounds loaded with a metal clip, a whisper, or a scared dog barking his lungs out. The chopped vehicle was gurgling down away from them, two streets over. Birds were chirping in rhythm to the white noise of a freeway nearby. Fredo led them to the end of the building and then quickly turned the corner without making a sound.
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