by Paul Levine
Cardenas charges him. Rubber boots glopping in the mud, it seems to take forever for the short, stocky Mexican to close the distance. Rutledge crouches, sidesteps, and clotheslines Cardenas, catching him under the chin, knocking his feet out from under him. A quick kick to the backside flattens Cardenas, facedown in the mud.
Spitting a wad of clotted earth, Cardenas gets to his feet. "You fuck my wife, bastard cocksucker."
"Got no time for this, Hector! Not tonight. Not fucking tonight."
Cardenas comes at him again, taking Rutledge to the ground. They roll down the slope to the water's edge. Rutledge gains leverage, gets his hands around Cardenas's neck, and squeezes hard enough to crack walnuts.
Cardenas tries to pry his hands off, but Rutledge is bigger, stronger, and meaner.
Zaga splashes toward them. "Hey, Sim. How 'bout letting up now?"
"Shut up, Z!"
Rutledge twists Cardenas's head to one side, forces the Mexican's mouth and nose underwater. Cardenas chokes, and inhales the slime. His limbs spasm. The other workers look away. Rutledge does not let go until Cardenas stops twitching.
"I told him, not tonight," Rutledge says to Zaga. "Not fucking tonight!" He turns to the rest of the crew. "Get the fuck back to work!"
EIGHTY-NINE
Payne watched each man's body language. Cardenas stood stiffly, locked into a two-handed grip. Rutledge appeared relaxed, his limbs loose, even with his right hand hovering above the holstered. 45.
"When you get down to it, Javie, your old man was weak." Rutledge pinched a nostril and blew out a clot of blood, soiling his mustache. "If he'd come to me first thing and told me to stay the hell away from your mother, I'd have respected that. But he just let it go on. Then, with everything I own on the table, he melts down."
"So you killed him? A man who gave you everything. Even his wife."
"You're goddamn right I killed him! And now that I think about it, you're sure as hell Hector's son and not mine. A gelding's got more balls than either one of you."
Cardenas's jaw muscles danced and his eyes narrowed.
Now Payne was certain. The chief was going to shoot the old bastard. But there would be three witnesses.
Just what will Cardenas do to us?
Again, Payne glanced toward the ground. Still one knife, one baseball bat. And two men with guns.
NINETY
"At long last," Cardenas said, "the real Simeon Rutledge. Rapist and murderer."
"Ain't asking your forgiveness," Rutledge said.
"Ain't giving it."
One of these men was about to die, Marisol knew. The policeman's eyes burned with hatred. But Rutledge seemed defiant, his right hand motionless, his fingers spread, close enough to draw his gun in a split second.
The policeman held his own pistola in both hands. But were his arms trembling? Marisol had the horrible thought that the old man-even with a gun pointed at him-was the one in control. She doubted that the young policeman had ever killed a man. But with Rutledge, there were no doubts. He would neither hesitate before killing nor be remorseful after.
"Do what you got to do, Javie," Rutledge challenged.
Marisol wrapped her arm around Agustino. She had left Mexico, had come all this way, wanting only one thing, to save her son from harm. She looked toward Payne. Agustino had told her all about the man. He had turned down money-a fortune-to bring Agustino back to her. So decent and courageous. She had never known such a man. Now she sought some gesture from him, some instruction. What can we do to save ourselves?
Without taking his eyes off Rutledge, Cardenas spoke to Marisol in a formal policeman's voice. "Ms. Perez, do you recognize Mr. Simeon Rutledge?"
"Yes."
"Is he the man who raped you?"
"Yes, that's the pig."
Tino spit in Rutledge's direction. "I'll kill you, old man."
"No, you won't," his mother said.
"I will!" The boy squirmed out of her embrace. "He hurt you, Mami."
"Quiet, now!" She grabbed his arm.
"Payne, how about you?" the chief asked. "Is Simeon Rutledge the man who horsewhipped you?"
"You know he is," Payne answered without hesitation.
"Unhook your gunbelt, Sim, and drop it to the ground," Cardenas ordered.
Rutledge coughed and a pink bubble of blood formed on his lips. "Why not try taking it away from me?"
"You resisting arrest, Sim?"
"That's what you want, isn't it? Shoot me down right where your daddy sucked his lungs full of mud. Poetic fucking justice."
"Last warning."
"You been holding that sissy gun a long time, Javie. Your arms ain't getting tired, are they?"
Cardenas moved the barrel a bit lower. "Right in the belly, Sim. Gonna watch your guts spill out."
"I remember your first wild hog. What'd it take? Three shots? Four?"
"Drop the gunbelt, Sim."
"Thought you already gave your last warning."
Marisol tightened her grip on Tino. She did not want him to see this, but did not know how to prevent it.
Rutledge's fingers flexed and seemed to move even closer to his gun. "You'll get off one shot, for sure. But when you miss, I'll blow a hole right through your chest."
"Shoot him!" Tino yelled at Cardenas.
Cardenas's eyes flicked toward the boy.
Instantly, Rutledge drew the. 45. Cardenas fired and missed.
Rutledge slapped back the hammer.
Tino tore away from his mother and scooped up the knife. "I'll kill you, cabron!"
Marisol reached for him, but he dodged her.
Rutledge swung the gun toward the boy just as Marisol stepped between them. She felt a thunderbolt strike her chest, felt her feet fly from the ground, and by the time she landed flat on her back, felt nothing at all.
NINETY-ONE
The day baked with desert heat, the Santa Ana winds pushing the smog out to sea. The San Miguel Cementerio, leaves rustling on its spindly pear trees, was a patch of green in the parched foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains a few miles from Pasadena.
Next to the open grave, three people were squeezed so close together as to seem to have one body. His hair trimmed and brushed back, Tino stood rigidly, a stoic little man in a crisp new suit. He clutched a bouquet of white lilies so tightly that the stems might snap. On one side, Sharon gripped the boy's shoulder. On the other side, Payne, his left arm bandaged, wrapped his right arm around Tino's waist.
A somber altar boy from Saint Phillipe the Apostle swung a silver thurible over the grave, smoke wisping upward before disappearing into the breeze. The air smelled of incense, freshly cut grass, and moist earth. An elderly priest, a Mexican-American man in his sixties with a kindly face and a soft voice, prayed aloud. Payne tried to listen but heard only fragments.
"God's merciful love."
"Communion of saints."
"Consolation to the living."
Payne did not feel consoled. He felt guilty. Again.
He had moved as quickly as he could. When Tino grabbed the knife, Payne snatched the bat from the ground. Then everything happened at once. Rutledge wheeled the gun toward Tino just as Payne swung the bat, and Marisol moved into the line of fire. Rutledge pulled the trigger a split second before the bat crushed his temple with an explosion of bone and blood. The. 45 slug caught Marisol just above the sternum. The half-dozen gunshots Cardenas fired into Rutledge's body were unnecessary, except for the chief's own needs.
Now Payne looked down at Tino, whose lips trembled, but whose eyes remained dry.
"It's okay to cry," Payne whispered.
The little valiente shook his head.
"Don't hold it in like I did."
All the while knowing that tears could never wash away the anger or the pain. Thinking that Tino needed someone who understood, someone whose heart had been seared by the same branding iron, Payne squeezed the boy even harder.
The priest sprinkled holy water and asked the angels
to carry Marisol to paradise. Tino stepped forward and fluttered the lilies into the grave, where they landed like white birds, fanning out across the mahogany coffin.
With a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder, the priest said, "Agustino, would you recite the Oraciones por las almas?"
"No," the boy replied.
The priest's eyes widened.
"In English. My mother would have wanted English."
The priest nodded, and Tino spoke in a clear voice, "Oh God, who hast commanded us to honor our father and our mother…"
"It's my fault," Payne whispered to Sharon.
She shook her head. "You climbed out of that hole and did something for someone else."
"In Thy mercy have pity on the soul of my mother, and forgive her her trespasses."
"I failed him."
"You saved him. And yourself."
"Let me see her again in the joy of everlasting brightness."
Sharon leaned closer. "Forgive yourself, Jimmy. For everything."
NINETY-TWO
Just after sunset, in the kitchen of his Van Nuys bungalow, Jimmy Payne contemplated the blur of the last several days. Washing down painkillers with sour-mash whiskey, he tried to divine the complex equations of the universe.
A mother dead, a boy alive.
A soulless man, facedown in the dirt.
What is the meaning of all this, and…
Where do I go from here?
Payne had read the front page story in the Los Angeles Times. The body of multimillionaire grower Simeon Rutledge had been found alongside an irrigation culvert in Kings County. He had been beaten, shot multiple times, and his skull fractured by blunt trauma. The brutal murder shocked the close-knit community. Local police chief Javier Cardenas said the investigation was focused on the Patriot Patrol, an anti-immigration vigilante group that had placed a bounty on Rutledge's head. The chief broke down in tears at his press conference as he vowed to bring the killers to justice. No mention that Cardenas was the sole beneficiary of Rutledge's estate.
Another tumbler of Jack Daniel's made the story go down easier.
Earlier today, the deputy director of the local immigration office had called, asking for Detective Sharon Payne. He had reviewed her affidavit regarding a boy named Tino Perez from Caborca, Mexico. Rafael Obeso, a well-known Mexican drug smuggler, had threatened to cut the boy's heart out. So, too, a vicious coyote who called himself El Tigre vowed to kill the boy on sight. No need to fill out a Form I-590, the deputy director said. Tino Perez would be granted refugee status by administrative order.
An hour later, Quinn called to express his condolences about Marisol and ask how Payne's arm was healing. Such a decent gesture, it caught Payne off guard. Quinn apologized for missing the funeral, explaining he had to catch a flight to New York. It's okay, Payne said. Sharon had already told him about Quinn's new job, the talk show on Fox. Payne congratulated him, and meant it. Really meant it, because Sharon wasn't going east with Quinn.
Then, just minutes ago, as Payne poured another Jack Daniel's, Rigney knocked on the front door. He had a new look. A sleek Armani suit of a gray fabric that shimmered like a wet shark. Gold nugget cuff links poked out of the sleeves of his silk shirt like shiny wrist bones. His hair seemed to be a new color, not unlike the yellowish orange of the one-ball in billiards.
"You look like shit," Rigney said. Studying the bruises, cuts, and scrapes on Payne's face.
Payne figured it out, even before Rigney told him. With Enrique Zaga dead, Rutledge Ranch and Farms needed a new head of security. Rigney had already proved his worth to Cardenas. The payoff was a job at triple his detective's salary.
"Got some good news for you, too," Rigney said. "That five grand we thought you skimmed from the bribe money. It was in the evidence room all along."
"C'mon. I took the money. You know I took the money."
Rigney lowered his voice. "You took it. I put it back."
"Why?"
"A word of advice, Payne. Don't look a gift horse up the ass."
"Doesn't make sense. Why'd you do it?"
" 'Cause Cardenas told me to. It's his money now, and he's spreading it around. Just bought four new Hummers for the Imperial County Sheriff. He's so happy he's dropping all charges against you."
Payne was flummoxed. "Why's Cardenas looking out for me?"
"He admires you. The way you risked everything for the Mexican kid."
Payne shrugged. "I had nothing to risk."
"Not the way he sees it."
Once Rigney left, Payne returned to the pleasant task of becoming reacquainted with Mr. Jack Daniel's. Just as they were getting to be buenos amigos, Payne heard footsteps in the corridor. A moment later, Sharon appeared in the kitchen.
"Tino asleep?" he asked, pouring her a drink over ice.
"Just dozed off."
She joined Payne on a bar stool at the counter. "You call Harvard-Westlake today?" she asked. Referring to the ritzy private school in Studio City.
"Seventh grade awaits. As do massive tuition bills."
"We'll split the costs."
"Yeah. But I was hoping…"
"What?"
"That maybe you'd move in. For Tino's sake, I mean."
"Slow down, Jimmy. I was engaged until twenty-four hours ago."
"Okay. Okay." Payne sipped the whiskey, let it warm his throat. "No hurry."
Sharon swirled her glass, the ice cubes clinking against one another. "Just before he fell asleep, Tino asked me to tell you good night."
Payne smiled. "He does that every night. ' Buenos noches, Himmy.'
"
"Not what he said."
"In English, then."
"Nope."
"I don't get it."
"He said, 'Say good night to mi papi. ' "
"Oh, man." Payne had not been prepared for the sheer weight of those words. The mixture of joy and obligation they conveyed. "I hope I'm up to this."
"You'll be a great father. I've seen your work, remember?" She gently placed her fingertips on his forehead, scraped raw in the fight with Rutledge.
"I know," Payne said. "I look like shit."
"The wounds will heal." She leaned close and kissed his bruised cheek. "You won't even have a scar."
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