“If they’re anywhere,” Sanchez says, turning away from his thoughts, “they’re probably behind a bush in back of those ugly brown apartments. What a dump. They should bulldoze the whole place with the trash that lives there inside.”
“Then they’ll all be in the park,” Padilla says.
“Yeah, right. Let’s go on the other side for a bit. If we don’t see nothin’, we’ll give it up. I’m not going to beat the bushes for them. I feel like shit. I hate Sundays,” Sanchez says.
They cross Landerman. On the east side of the boulevard, the streets are laid out in a complete grid and easier to traverse. Sanchez picks up speed, sure that they will find nothing, eager to get back to the new station and its comfortable bathroom. He can kill at least a half-hour there if nothing else comes up.
“I think I see something. Up there on the right,” Padilla says.
“Got’em,” Sanchez says and speeds up.
“Two of them. One’s taking off.”
“Get out and cuff the one standing there. What’s he got in his hand?”
“Pry bar.”
“Dumb shit. Doesn’t even know to get rid of it. Jesus.” Sanchez bumps against the curb, headlights in the kid’s face. Padilla opens the door and squats behind it, gun drawn and the beam of his flashlight in the kid’s face as well. “Drop it! Now! Get your hands up.”
The crowbar hits the sidewalk with a loud metallic clang that echoes along the street. Padilla stands.
“This is that kid,” he says, relieved and disappointed, “the baseball player. I got’m. Go get the other.”
He closes the door behind him, and Sanchez speeds around the corner. Sanchez glances in the mirror. The kid should be on the ground, he thinks; Padilla should have the kid on the ground.
Sanchez watches the taller, darker one take off running. Moreno, a gang-banger with his Dickies and his pressed T-shirt and black Nikes, and dreams of power and intimidation quickly turning to ashes. He doesn’t say anything to the punk he’s with; he just runs, hoping to make it around the corner on to the next block, searching for something to hide behind, a building, a tree, or a fence to stand between him and the inevitable arrest. Fools like this: they always have some outlandish dream secreted away behind the tough talk and the surliness and arrogance. Playing in the NBA. Owning a top-of-the-line BMW or a Mercedes to blow down the 134 Freeway. Being another Scarface bathed in money and diamonds and hot women. Sanchez watches as the kid’s feet pound the sidewalk awkwardly and too slowly and almost trip over one another in his haste to find some refuge, and he wonders what hope this one has dared to lock away and hold on to, what light shining in the distance making life tolerable in this god-awful place of poor houses and run-down apartment buildings and dirt and trash and so many faces with a beaten, lonely, lost look. The boy runs as fast as his legs will propel him, but it is fruitless; he’s not fast enough to outpace the car or the harsh spotlight or the shit that awaits him.
“¿Qué pasa, amigo? What are you and your buddy doing tonight?” Officer Padilla asks as he approaches Rickie. “Turn around. Put your hands behind your back. Interlock your fingers.”
Rickie keeps his face averted. If the officer saw the emptiness there, the complete lack of fear, he would make Rickie get down on the ground flat on his face and would cuff him quickly and stand off.
Rickie wonders why the officer is not telling him to get on his knees or on the ground and wait to move in until his partner returns. Maybe it’s the fact that Rickie and the cop’s brother both play baseball in the park league that makes the cop relaxed and off-guard; Rickie expects that Padilla will start talking about that commonality in some sort of genial way. Anger begins to grow and expand within Rickie. Maybe the man sees himself as a teenager, remembers those days when he acted tough but really wasn’t, and he’ll chuckle at the remembrance of those days. The anger continues to grow. He’s frustrated that they didn’t get into the electronics store and didn’t have the chance to punish the dismissive owner… frustrated by the fact that this guy with his ugly, smiling scar keeps coming into Rickie’s life, trying to be buddy-buddy… angered by Oscar’s mere presence pressing Rickie to do something he doesn’t want to do… infuriated with his so-called father who showed up out of nowhere and wants to take Rickie away… blinded by his desire for revenge on the security in his tight black T-shirt and his careless superiority and dominance.
When the officer reaches for his cuffs and holsters his weapon, the boy turns and reaches with both hands for it. As he struggles with Padilla for control, Rickie knows that Sanchez is going to yell at his young partner, dress him down good for not following standard procedure.
Officer Padilla has not counted on the boy’s quickness or strength. When Padilla looks deep into the boy’s face as they grapple for the service weapon and sees the anger registered there and the frightening, grim determination, surprise and fear jump to Padilla’s eyes. And in that moment, both of them know someone is going to get hurt.
The weapon’s discharge knocks Rickie back on his heels. It is as though he is caught inside the explosion, inside a bubble of sound that slows all actions into discrete pieces. It’s as though he sees the bullet enter the young policeman’s face under the chin and throw his head back and exit the back of the head in an expulsion of blood and bone, brain tissue, hair and skin.
Rickie stands and watches in horror as the life drains out of the officer’s astounded eyes, watches him slump to the ground. He’s the wrong one, his mind shouts. Not this cop—the security at the gate, the one who raped Claudia, that one. Oscar. His father. The anger raging within Rickie just a few seconds before has completely evaporated and been replaced by the awful realization that he has made a mistake, that everything here is wrong. His body is washed over by an unexpected sadness, like a blush of fever, and a sense of aloneness he has not felt before. He stares at the dying man, hoping desperately for the eyes to focus and blink or the hands to reach for his face, but nothing.
Officer Sanchez has returned; he has stopped his car in the middle of the street down from Rickie. He yells from behind his open car door for Rickie to freeze. The voice is loud and scared. Rickie wants to stand in silence and understand the enormity of what he has done and his strange feelings, but he knows can’t. He wheels around and stares at the man and observes in the snaillike movement of time and action that Alex is in the back seat of the car with his hands behind his back, his head raised in order to see, and a horrified expression on his face as he looks from the fallen policeman to Rickie and back again.
Sanchez fires his weapon. Rickie hears the bullet whistle by his right shoulder and head. And then another. Their deadly whisper brings him completely out of this nightmare and into a more frightening one. Fear and horror pulse through his body and drive his legs to carry him up the street into the darkness.
CHAPTER 19
Rickie knows that Coach Vega lives somewhere in the neighborhood. He doesn’t really know where. The players on the team never go there, though somebody said he saw the coach outside one day but was too shy to stop and say anything. Rickie can’t even remember if the kid said whether it was a house or an apartment. It won’t be fancy, Rickie knows, just a place for a guy and his wife. Rickie has no idea what street the coach’s place is on; at this point, in his panic and desperation, he can’t remember what street he’s currently running on. He’s simply looking for a welcoming light, a haven from the tide of fear carrying his feet along. He can’t get the cop’s bewildered and somehow sadly disappointed last look out of his mind. It would have been better if the cop had cursed his soul to Hell.
Rickie turns a corner and sees a lighted window ahead of him. Maybe, by some miracle, it’s Coach Vega’s place. Light falls from the window onto the brittle grass and dirt. Someone is awake. The fact that light pours out a window and that a door is open fills Rickie with reckless hope. He runs into the room and stands before the man seated in an armchair reading his paper. It takes Rickie a few seconds to re
alize that the man seated before him is not Coach Vega. He’s a white man with a round freckled face and thinning red hair.
Bewildered and fearful, Rickie stands in front of the man and is surprised by his calm.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“Is Coach here?” the boy asks, looking around the apartment wildly.
“Is who here?”
“You got to help me, man. I’m in real trouble. Please.”
“What’s going on? Is someone chasing you?” the man asks and looks at the open door as he does so; he has become fearful himself, convinced that there’s something real and dangerous just seconds away.
“I’ll call the cops,” he says and reaches for the phone on the TV table next to his chair.
Rickie watches the man as he dials 911and knows a number of things simultaneously: he will never find Coach Vega’s house; the cops already know what has happened and are on their way into the neighborhood; he has to get out of here; and he is alone as he has never been before. He knows he’s going to die, tonight or tomorrow or the next day. Cops don’t allow a cop killer to live, and they will be out by the hundreds, are already mobilizing the helicopters and dogs and whatever else they will need to find him. The night will come alive any minute with sirens and barking dogs, police radios, helicopter rotors chopping the air, and curious neighbors at windows and doors and clustered in yards to hear of this latest disaster to strike the neighborhood.
“Stay here, kid,” the red-haired man says to the frightened boy. “I’ll get through in a minute. Close the door and lock it. I’ll get the blinds.”
Rickie stands in the middle of the room indecisively. The cops can’t kill him if he just stays here. He’ll just lie down on the floor with his hands behind his back and let them cuff him; tell them it was a mistake, he hadn’t meant to kill the cop, that he knew him and liked him—he’ll exaggerate the truth—never meant to hurt him, just wanted to get away. They can’t do anything to him if he gives up.
Yes, they can. They can take him somewhere in the neighborhood, the field by the apartment complex, take the cuffs off, no, not take the cuffs off, but make him run like he’s trying to escape and shoot him down like a dog. If they can do what they’ve done to so many others, they can just as easily kill him. This guy will say they took him away in cuffs; that’s all he’ll know, nothing else.
“Can you come with me?” Rickie asks.
“Where to?”
“When they take me.”
“Tell me what’s going on. I don’t really understand.” The man has pulled the blinds and heads for the open door.
“Don’t. Please.” Rickie begins to back toward the doorway.
“Okay.” The man stops. “Isn’t someone chasing you?”
“I can’t stay.” No, he won’t make it easy for them even though he knows the inevitable ending, has known it in some sort of way for a long time. What a strange thing to know—that he will die in this neighborhood. He knew it all along! That’s it, that’s why, when Lopez asked him to think of himself at twenty years old, at twenty-five, he never had any ideas. All he had seen was a dark screen.
He wants to say something to his coach. “Tell Coach,” he begins, as though this man might miraculously find a way to get in touch with Coach Vega. But time is short and it’s impossible for Rickie to think of what to say, except that baseball was good and he was a good coach because he cared about his players.
“Tell him what, kid? Tell the coach what?” the man asks, still standing near the door. Then he realizes who Rickie is. “Wait. You’re that baseball player. I saw you play. I go to the field to see if your team is playing. You’ve got skills, dude.”
“I’m sorry, mister,” Rickie says and pushes past him and bolts out the door. The man goes after him.
“Wait, stay here. It can’t be that bad. I can help,” he yells after the retreating boy. He follows him out the door to the sidewalk and then tracks the dark figure as he runs up the block and disappears. The first sounds of sirens and helicopters fill the darkness.
Rickie runs wildly up and down darkened streets, across yards, into cul-de-sacs and out again, all the time aware of the mounting noise of sirens and helicopters. He has to get across Landerman, he has to find a place to hide, but in his panic, he has no idea where he is, just that he is on the wrong side of Landerman. It will be too easy to find him here, the streets too regular, too like a checkerboard. The sky all around him will soon be lighted with bright beams probing the streets and yards. The neighborhood that he thought he knew so well in daylight is like a closed door to him now. Tonight and forever, he has no grandfather’s hard hands to pat his back or whiskery cheek to lie against his. Tonight, all doors are locked.
Stop. He has to stop and find himself. Which way is Landerman? To his left. How far away is he? He has to look at houses. He knows this place, has spent all of his seventeen years here walking on the streets back and forth to school and friends’ houses and the park. He knows street names; he knows faces he has seen working in the yards or beneath the hoods of cars. He knows the wrought iron at windows and the metal security doors and the chain link fences that keep angry dogs at bay. He just has to stop and look.
He stops and turns to look over his shoulder, and in that moment he sees a beam of light pointed toward the ground traveling hurriedly across the night sky as though being dragged against its will to point out the fallen officer and the pool of blood cooling beneath him. Oh, God, Rickie remembers again, I killed a cop. They don’t forgive you for that. They kill you. No. He can’t think about that. He has to get a hold of himself and figure out how to get across Landerman without anyone seeing him.
He runs north through the neighborhood, thinking it will be better to cross above the electronics store. Maybe they haven’t closed it off yet. When he has run until his lungs burn, he heads to his left. Now he moves carefully as he approaches the lighted boulevard. He checks the houses and the yards on his side of the street; he will only have a few seconds to dive for cover if a police car turns onto the street with its searchlight on.
He gets off the broken sidewalk and runs cautiously across the edges of front yards. Most porch lights are off, but he has to fear motion sensing lamps hung from the corners of roofs, snapping on in a glare of blue-white light. If he can only get across Landerman, he’ll be all right. He can’t think why that is true, but he knows he’ll remember once he gets across.
He hears the approaching sirens and stops and crouches down on the grass. It was watered that afternoon. The moisture soaks his pants at the knees. He puts his hands over his head and crouches in a ball to make himself smaller. He knows it will do no good. The siren draws closer and closer. At any moment he expects to see the street in front of him or in back of him brightly lit by headlights, and the car slamming to a stop and cops piling out with guns drawn. He waits.
Two police cars race up Landerman with their sirens blaring, a block away. Rickie raises his head just in time to see the red and blue lights swinging across the building facades as they disappear north on the boulevard. He wipes his wet pants at the knees and takes a number of deep breaths. Somehow, the passing cars give him renewed hope and courage. He walks on the sidewalk again, standing straight up. In back of him the street is clear. In front of him, just a few feet away, is Landerman. He reaches the corner. He has been smart to come up this far. On his left is a lavandería, closed now for the night, some dim night light illuminating the dingy walls and the dark hulks of the empty washers and dryers. On his right is the Iglesia del Valle, an old movie theater that used to be called The Landerman turned into a church.
Coach Vega and some of the other coaches remember it as a movie theater when they were about the age of their players. The coaches laugh conspiratorially the way adults do when they think they know something or when they have something to talk about they don’t want kids to hear. Rickie and some of the others laughed at the coaches—dude, they should see what goes on in the back of the theater
s these days! Yet, at the same time, Rickie wanted to hear, wanted to hear his coach talk about anything that happened to him when he was growing up; wanted to know what he felt, what he did, what he thought about, what confused him or made him happy. Lenny Allen, the only black player on the team, said, “C’mon, man, tell us about it. Shit, what you say ain’t going to be nothing we ain’t heard before. Or maybe done,” and then he laughed and high-fived a kid sitting next to him. Lenny’s family had recently moved from South L.A. But Coach Vega, who was sitting on the other side of him, had nudged him gently in the ribs and told him to watch his language and had stood up and told them all they were too young and laughed. They never did hear.
Now the old movie theater marquee, with The Landerman still scripted in lights above it, advertises the end of the world. Rickie walks slowly near the dark brick wall of the movie theater and is comforted by the darkness and shadow of the building. The lights on the marquee are off—are they ever lit these days? he wonders—and he runs around to the front of the building and hides in the shadow of the detached ticket booth at the edge of the sidewalk. He wants to see inside it, but the windows are plastered with the same flyers that are in the glass-fronted display boxes, which used to advertise the current feature. The flyers advertise traveling ministers who will be preaching at the church. The most recent one is from two months before.
The thunderous noise of a helicopter crossing overhead brings him back to the present moment. There’s no traffic on the boulevard. He looks to his left, down Landerman, and sees a swarm of cop cars with their lights flashing in front of the electronics store. Nothing to his right. Where have those two cop cars gone with their sirens blaring and lights flashing? Is something else going on tonight, too? Something just as bad? Maybe a shootout, Sol Trece or 18th Street and the cops? Maybe they’ll be blamed for Padilla’s death.
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