Blood Father

by Peter Craig

  Back in his seat, he tried the ignition, waiting a few moments as the engine strained, finally pausing so that it didn’t flood.

  “I can’t fucking breathe,” she said. “It’s like the way a spider wraps up a dead bug, with this, like, Saran Wrap for sandwiches or noodles or something—leftovers, and you wrap it around and around, and make it look like a big ugly cocoon except everything is dead inside of it. There’s no butterfly.”

  “Yep,” said Link. “Makes sense to me.”

  “The butterfly’s dead,” she told him, with grave, childlike seriousness on her face. “It never comes out.”

  “That’s a tough break. I’m sorry.”

  “And you can’t do anything about it. Because there’s no air inside. It doesn’t have enough air, and so when it comes out—” She grew distracted.

  Link waited for a long time, tried the ignition again. The car started, and he revved the gas to keep it running. Then he said, “Yep, a dead butterfly.”

  She covered her face with her hands and curled into a ball in the seat. “There’s something in my throat.”

  Link was glad to focus on the road. She must have been twenty pounds underweight. It was incongruous to watch a girl that he thought was both so beautiful and so sick—a travesty—like seeing a Harley left mangled on the roadside. Lydia’s startling blue eyes looked out from beneath swollen eyelids and dirty hair; she had speed bumps along her jaw, and the worried blemish on her neck was scratched and bleeding.

  As he drove along the PCH, she twisted her head around strangely, trying to loosen her neck, and said, “It’s the money, right? Everything is always the money. How much do you think all of my fingers and toes are worth?” She seemed wildly reinvigorated.

  “Yeah, we’re going to get the money.”

  “Oh no,” she said through her cupped palms, drifting into another mood, moaning. “I’m so dead right now.”

  “We’re going to get the money, kid. Off to the bank. So you can get on up to Oregon.”

  They flew through the tunnel in Venice, gathering speed onto the freeway eastbound. The car was fogging up with breath, and Link rolled down his window. She claimed that a group of creepy shadows had been gathered all along the beach.

  “Where are we going again?” she yelled to him over the wind, pulling her hair off her face.

  “Just a while longer,” he said. “I promise you.”

  She glanced all around herself, as if she didn’t remember getting into the car, and with her mouth becoming loose she said, “I don’t know you.”

  There was a burning smell coming through the heater.

  “No, you don’t,” said Link.

  She was rocking to the lullaby motion of the car along the 10, drifting, and she cried until they were south of the city, passing through the interchanges and along the warehouses and train tracks. The tears were like the last drips of energy in her body, smelling chlorinated and toxic, until she was sagging to sleep against the window, lights floating past her. She murmured, “I got a gun, you know. It’s loaded.”

  From the floor beside her, he found an oil-stained towel, and handed it to her. “Use that as a pillow.”

  She crumpled it up and lay against it, saying, “Mmmm, I’m not asleep.”

  “Yeah, just make sure that door is locked. It’s got a mind of its own.”

  Link figured that she’d had enough juice left in her brain to remember his number or call information, and she must have made at least one rational choice while doing it. She had two parents: one who lived in a mansion, and one who couldn’t afford a goddamn taco. He couldn’t escape the idea that she had called him for a reason—that she knew, deep down, that he’d been in the exact same position, that he’d lived in this grim twilight of consciousness for weeks and months at a time. For a while she began to panic that she had been shot. He knew what was happening to her, he knew the last epinephrine had been wrung from her system like the drops from a wet rag; he knew that she was hooked; and when she finally closed her eyes and fell asleep in a pile against the window, he wondered what she would remember tomorrow, two days from now, whenever she woke up again—from this ride, her life, or their years of letters. It was hard for him to imagine that she’d have anything left in her head about him, just his name and a few vague pictures, hovering like the residue of a morning dream.

  five

  When Lydia was two years old, after a string of supervised visits, she had begun to call her father what sounded like—for some strange reason—Barbara. Eventually Ursula figured out the mystery and explained that it was “barba,” the Spanish word for beard, which the nanny had apparently taught Lydia.

  From the age of six months, Lydia had been raised mostly by this nanny while living with her mother and a stepfather in a Sherman Oaks home of prissy furniture and bright plastic gewgaws for children. The nanny was a young, pleasant-faced Latina, who seemed to despise Link as if he were a homeless man off the street. She didn’t appear to be particularly fond of Ursula either, whose hair and makeup were always so untouched, whose clothes were so clean that Link couldn’t imagine her handling a Frisbee, let alone a child. With a stoic expression, the nanny seemed to carry out every basic function of motherhood, chasing down the toddler as she went for lamp cords and power outlets. As if overseeing the project, Ursula read guidebooks about parenting, and she was terribly concerned about how far her daughter lagged behind in speech development. Link said that her development was right on track in Spanish. She called most animals by their Spanish names, and, whenever she scuffed a knee or elbow, she seemed to forget English altogether and wail for her Marianna. Link asked if the girl was being raised to be Jewish like her stepfather or Mexican like the nanny, and Ursula called him a disgusting bigot.

  In truth, no matter how much Marianna hated Link, he still trusted her more than he did Ursula. He hated that big stuck-up house with white rocks on the roof, a koi pond, and a terraced backyard of spiky modern sculptures that looked like obstacles for an amphibious landing; and he dreaded seeing Ursula sometimes more than he looked forward to visiting his daughter. He hated those Yorkshire terriers always riled by the canned Christmas jingle of the doorbell, and that cockatoo squawking and shitting in a pan. The bird could only say “Happy Birthday” in the shrill voice of a soused bag lady.

  After every visit, Link would kick up his bike and ride away down the hillside road to drink himself numb in a bar off Ventura Boulevard. Hours later, he would show up for work with Preacher, smelling toxic. Preacher now had supply lines running all across San Gabriel and Riverside, hydroponic marijuana bred for strength along with batches of crystal meth. Link’s days were a frazzled run of errands, deliveries, and the occasional shakedown. With the extra money, he bought huge presents for his daughter, and sometimes he would see faces in passing cars, laughing at the sight of him riding with a giant pink teddy bear tied to the back of his Harley.

  However shaky, this pattern of monthly visits kept up until Lydia turned six. When Link gate-crashed her birthday that year, he also remembered being alarmed at his daughter’s mood: She was by far the weirdest kid of the lot. She didn’t appear interested in the festivities, but was fixated on some little book full of imaginary monsters she’d drawn. Link had never seen a kid act this way: She was in a trance too deep to participate in her own party. Uninterested in the cake, coaxed through opening her presents, grimacing at flashbulbs, she endured her birthday like a trip to the doctor, and Ursula grew insulted by her nonplussed reaction to each gift. But Link was proud of her: That was a Hell’s Angel right there—a kid who didn’t buy into any of this horseshit. She couldn’t care less about changing a doll’s diaper; and she didn’t see why she needed to perform for her giddy mother, whom Link barely recognized, squealing and mincing around in a loose-knit sweater. After Ursula had scolded the kid for being so nonchalant about her extravagant soiree, Link overheard one of the mothers say that Lydia was on a new “dosage.”

  Link grabbed Ursula and hauled
her into the kitchen, and asked her why in God’s name she was putting a six-year-old on a drug without his consent. Ursula grew ferociously angry at the accusation, explaining that whenever Lydia got angry or frustrated, she held her breath until she passed out. It was a prescription for seizures. “She has the most furious temper you’ve ever seen, John. She changes from pink to red to purple, and then drops. The kid would rather pass out than give in.”

  “You called it a seizure, Ursula—and then you just described a temper tantrum. You’ve had more of those than any woman I know!”

  A few minutes later, his daughter was sitting on his lap on the Harley while the parents took pictures and laughed. When another kid tried to climb on, Link started to get angry: He was tired of playing the clown for these parents and their snot-nosed brats. He kicked up the bike and sped off, holding Lydia in his lap as she howled and cheered with happiness, the first time she had sparked up during the whole affair. When he returned, the parents were in a frenzy. Apparently, no one thought it was safe for a man to take a small child on a Harley, without a helmet no less, and Ursula told him that she was going back to family court for a modification. Link was so angry that he stormed into the house and started breaking things. He kicked over a lamp and tried to strangle the cockatoo.

  Not thirty minutes later, Link was sitting in the back of a squad car as it pulled away, watching two kids fight over his abandoned bike in the driveway. Although the initial charges of child endangerment and domestic violence were dropped, Ursula got a restraining order against him, and a judge revoked his visitation rights.

  For the somber year that followed, Link was in and out of county jail on small possession charges. He didn’t see his daughter. Ursula divorced the restaurateur, kept his house, and began living with an orthodontist. Link never met this newest stepfather or saw the fancier house they moved into on the West Side. Lydia became the greatest injustice of his life, a symbol of a systemic conspiracy against him. He knew lots of bikers with droves of kids: There were little naked babies running all around every clubhouse. He knew a brother who had six or seven illegitimate kids, and it seemed that every week even that human sperm bank was taking somebody camping, to see a shitty movie, or to play air hockey and eat corn dogs. Link resented that he had been held to a higher standard. Just because he lacked a permanent residence didn’t mean, in his mind, that he was an unfit father; and just because he sold drugs didn’t mean he couldn’t impart some reasonable lessons about the world. After all, Ursula had put the kid on drugs to keep her from complaining. Yet somehow Link was the Antichrist.

  One night in May 1990, when Link was just out of county jail on a drunk and disorderly, he met with Preacher to ask him for help in regaining visitation rights with his daughter. When he arrived, the place in Palm Springs was covered with moving boxes, and Cherise was meticulously packing up the kitchen and closets. Apparently their new desert property had finally been developed enough for them to move their operations. But they were stalled by another crisis. Preacher told him, “Good—I wanted you to be here for this anyway.”

  Over the course of the next few hours, his cluttered and half-packed living room filled up with visitors: the vice presidents of the San Diego and Berdoo chapters, the Angels’ bondsman, and Preacher’s two lawyers. The attorneys were small, silver-haired men. They had been through two long racketeering trials with Preacher, brought under the RICO statute, both resulting in hung juries; and they came into the dim, carpeted house, joking and laughing like honorary brothers.

  There was bad news.

  Just three days before, Hardy had been arrested at the Nevada state line with five hundred grams of meth. He was being held in Clark County jail on a hundred thousand dollars bail, and contacts in Vegas believed that Hardy was cooperating with authorities. He was giving names. They suspected that he had already signed an agreement to become a government witness in a new federal conspiracy case, and would likely try to gather information. Everyone was somber at the news, and Link moved into the kitchen to where Cherise was wrapping pots and pans with newspaper.

  “I don’t believe he would do something like that,” she said. “He’s a good boy, you know. He’s just a kid.”

  “He doesn’t have any balls, Cherise,” said Link. “You could scare that kid with a rubber spider.”

  After the meeting, Preacher took Link aside in the dim hallway and explained the plan. The Angels’ bondsman was heading up that night to bail out Hardy. “I want you to go with him.”

  Link stood for a long time with his back against the plaster wall, breathing heavily.

  Preacher continued, “You’re going to take care of this problem, and I’m going to take care of your family. Let’s say twenty thousand dollars to start—and we’ll work on getting you a new custody arrangement. I trust you, Link. You’re tough and you keep your mouth shut. There’s not enough people like you in this younger generation.”

  Link just nodded for a while with his mouth slanted. Finally he said, “I never did anything like this before. On this level.”

  “Time to graduate then, my boy. You won’t have any trouble with it. He’s betrayed us, and you’re my guy here. Now I know you got a long history with this kid—but it’s not all good. He’s never been loyal to you.”

  Link shook his head.

  “You honestly don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “When your old lady was carrying your kid—maybe four months pregnant—he disappeared for about a month. Turns out he was living with her. Think about that for a second, Link. He was fucking your old lady while you were away, while she was carrying your child. Worst thing a brother can do is mess with another man’s old lady. He’s got no respect for anything we believe in, and he’s ratting out everybody he knows.”

  Link was just staring ahead, frowning.

  “He may be paranoid, so show up as a friend. Understand?” Preacher reached up and grabbed his shoulder, squeezing hard and shaking.

  Link nodded solemnly.

  “You do this for me, and I’ll take care of you and your little girl. You got that as a promise.”

  Three days later, after the bondsman had freed Hardy to await trial, Link met his old friend outside Las Vegas to help him retrieve his impounded bike. After a gauntlet of lines and paperwork, the two rode off to the Circus Circus hotel, where they drank together for eight solid hours and lost half their money. At dawn they drank in the Stratosphere bar, Hardy talking nonstop about how he might just disappear, ride his chopper the entire length of the Western Hemisphere. Link called him an idiot, and said that there was some “jungle shit” in Panama that nobody could get through without a machete. Besides, where would he get the money?

  At eleven that morning, as they were the first customers in a strip club, slumped at the edge of the stage and stuffing crumpled dollars into the G-strings of bored dancers, they talked about where they could find enough cash to get Hardy out of the country. Link had put off his assignment for so long he began to wonder if he was simply waiting for Hardy to have an accident and die on his own. If he stalled long enough, the little shit might get cirrhosis or lung cancer.

  “Hey, that’s real nice,” Hardy said to the stripper. “Come on over here closer.”

  Or get himself killed in a bar.

  They kept drinking, took some Benzedrine, and by dusk of that day they were reeling with delirious second winds. Link had decided that he couldn’t kill the little bastard, no matter what kind of snitch he was. There was too much history, he was like an obnoxious relative. They rode across the desert, through a chaotic chain of new ideas, and, by dawn, they were drinking in a stupor at a Tex-Mex restaurant near the Grand Canyon. Link spent most of his remaining cash buying curios and T-shirts for his daughter—a Mexican bobble-head prospector and a miniature ghost town in a glass bubble of water. Hardy had a shark head on the end of a long stick, and whenever he pulled a trigger, it would bite. He kept annoying Link with it, nipping him on the beard, un
til Link lost his temper in the parking lot and slugged Hardy in the arm.

  “What the fuck d’you go and do that for?” asked Hardy.

  “You’re irritating me with that thing.”

  They rode back into Nevada, where, once nestled into a dark casino in Mesquite, Hardy started pouting. Link bought him a whisky and told him to get over it, but Hardy called him a bully, growing enraged, saying that he was sick of how Link beat on him all the time. He began yelling and throwing chips, until security surrounded him.

  Outside on the curb, Hardy began crying, while Link sat next to him, rolling a cigarette.

  “Just stop that shit, man. It’s embarrassing.”

  Hardy bawled and wiped his nose and said, “I’m fucked.”

  Link said, “You don’t think I got problems, man? I got a beautiful little daughter that I can’t even see from closer than four hundred feet. I got to get into the bushes and watch her with motherfucking binoculars or something. Night-vision shit. Crawl around like a fucking bird watcher just to see if the little princess lost a tooth. And Ursula, don’t even get me started.”

  “She’s married to that Jewish guy,” said Hardy, wiping his eyes.

  “No, that was the other guy, I think.”

  “We ought to take him out, Link. We ought to ride back there and teach the son of a bitch something.”

  Hardy laid out an idea to rob Ursula’s house, and it grew more macabre by the minute. They could tie up the husband and turn Ursula out in front of him. Hardy seemed more deranged than Link had ever given him credit for. He talked about torturing the bastard. Dipping him in the Jacuzzi, seeing how long he could hold his breath. Link told Hardy to calm down, breathe through his nose. But Link did briefly fantasize about the idea: a big thrill ride, a violent, looting carnival extravaganza, like getting stoned and riding Harleys through a theme park.