by George Rowe
“That’s me.”
“I heard what you did to my nephew.”
So this was Uncle Mike, Norco’s vice president.
“Your nephew called my old lady a cunt,” I told him. “What would you have done?”
Mike glanced briefly over his shoulder at the long-haired douche before pointing at my arm cast.
“So you hit him with that?”
“That’s right.”
“You hit my nephew with a fuckin’ cast?” said Mike, heating up.
“Yup.”
Like I’ve said, I fought a lot of men over the years, and experience tells you when an opponent is preparing to unload. The body coils and there’s a look in the eyes that’s primal—almost wolflike. You can recognize it when you know what to look for.
That day, facing Uncle Mike, I was definitely seeing it.
I felt my senses sharpen and my mind snap into focus. My body was tuned in now, primed and ready for the assault to come. Usually I let the other guy take the first swing; it always put me in the mood to rumble. Once Uncle Mike took his best shot, I was pretty sure what would be coming next. The rest of the Norco boys would immediately pile on and turn a fair fight into a lopsided rout . . . it was the outlaw way. I planned on using my arm cast to block some of those blows—with luck maybe even break a few hands—but I also knew I had an ace in the hole. There was a buck knife sheathed on the back of my belt. If I had to pull that blade to save my skin, I’d do it without a moment’s hesitation.
“Hold up!”
Just as we were about to dance, Big Roy was cutting in.
“I know all about what happened, and I’m gonna handle it,” he told Uncle Mike. Then he turned to the nephew and announced loud enough for everyone to hear, “There’s at least four other guys here who saw what happened at Johnny’s. You were out of line, and you know it.”
The punk kept his mouth shut.
“George is a Hemet hang-around,” Big Roy told Uncle Mike. “If anyone’s gonna punish him, it’ll be us.”
I felt like the naughty schoolboy again, caught between my adoptive father and Principal Vanderwater.
Mike thought it over a moment then told Roy, “Alright, P. But if you don’t take care of this, we will.”
That said, he walked away with his nephew and the rest of the Norco Vagos in tow. As soon as they’d cleared earshot Big Roy turned on me and hissed, “You owe me, motherfucker.”
“I appreciate it, Roy, but—”
“Shut the fuck up and listen,” he snapped. “Don’t ever make this chapter look bad again, do you understand me?” Then he pointed at the ground. “When you’re done setting up the chairs, I want you to find a fuckin’ broom and sweep.”
I looked around.
“You want me to sweep the parking lot?”
“Are you fucking deaf? I said clean up this mess.”
Man, I was pissed. Here I was, a grown man being ordered around by a punk-ass bitch. Any other time I would have grabbed that prick by the throat and bitch-slapped him six ways to Sunday. But for the sake of the mission I swallowed that asshole’s shit and swept the parking lot, daydreaming of the day John Carr would throw open Big Roy’s cell door and I’d step inside for a little payback. I’d beat that bastard bloody, then walk right out again with a parting “Now clean up this mess.”
Man, I couldn’t wait.
8
The Fire Chief’s Daughter
George, it’s Billy. Listen, I really need you to do me that favor.”
“Huh? Who the fuck is this?”
The phone call had slapped me from a sound sleep, and it took a few seconds to clear the cobwebs and realize who I was talking to. Billy was on the line again, that crazy kid who’d been tossed in the can for beating up his even crazier girlfriend. He was calling from the jail in Temecula for a third time, and each plea was growing more desperate than the last.
“You gotta help me, man. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “Already told you there’s nothing—”
“You can tell that bitch to drop the charges,” he jumped in. “She’ll listen to you.”
“Billy—”
“George, if Jenna testifies against me, I’m fucked. I am totally fucked. Please. There’s no one else. You gotta talk to her, George. Please.”
This was one more aggravation I didn’t need, but the kid was facing serious jail time for assault and battery, and he was freaking out. I knew Billy wouldn’t quit calling until I did as he asked.
I rubbed my eyes and sighed, “Where is she?”
I drove out to the place where Billy figured his old lady might be shacking up—a house belonging to one of her longtime tweaker pals. Jenna was supposedly there trying to get clean ahead of a drug test with Child Protective Services. If she failed it, there was a strong possibility she would permanently lose the child she and Billy had made together.
My knock went unanswered, but the door was unlocked, so I let myself in.
The place was a shithole. I moved through the living room into the kitchen, where I found the counters littered with rotting food and fat flies. I headed into the hall, then turned into the first bedroom. And that’s where I found Jenna.
The girl was on the downside of a high, laying half naked on the bed and curled on her side. She seemed to recognize me standing in the doorway but barely moved.
“What are you doing here?” she mumbled.
“Billy asked me to check on you.”
“Fuck Billy,” she said, closing her eyes. “Fuck that asshole.”
I walked to the edge of the bed and noticed the rubber tubing and an empty syringe on the nightstand.
Jenna always had a sweet tooth for heroin. In high school she’d spread that shit on tinfoil, put a match to it and chase the dragon, sucking the smoke through a straw. Then she took it a step further when a girlfriend got hold of her diabetic aunt’s syringes. At her peak Jenna was shooting up every four hours like clockwork. By the time I walked into that room, the twenty-two-year-old had slammed so much junk that the veins in her hands and wrists had died and the crooks of her elbows were plastered in scar tissue. Lately she’d taken to injecting that shit into her neck’s main cable. That way it went straight to the dome.
“Are you just gonna lay there feeling sorry for yourself?” I said to her.
“Maybe,” she murmured.
“The hell you are. Take a shower and get dressed. You’re coming with me.”
I took her by the arm and hauled her to a sitting position.
“What the fuck?” she snapped at me.
“C’mon, get up.”
“Where are we going?”
“Out.”
She looked at me thoughtfully a moment then down at her bare feet.
“I don’t have shoes.”
“Where are they?”
“I told you. I don’t have any.”
I walked around the bedroom, checking the floor for shoes, then headed into the hall telling her, “I’ll find some shoes. You take a shower.”
Jenna as a teenager, a few years before we met.
I think it might have been one of the few times Jenna ever listened to me. She cleaned herself up and threw on some clothes while I scrounged a pair of shoes from her friend’s closet, which were too big but walkable. Then we piled into my truck and headed for the OK Corral, a bar Jenna had been sneaking into since she was fifteen. We pulled up stools at the bar and I ordered her a Zombie, the strongest drink I could think of.
With all she’d been through, I figured the girl could use it.
Jenna was originally from Big Bear, a mountain community in the San Bernardino National Forest, but she and her little sister didn’t stay rooted for long. Her folks had a messy split when the girls were young, then her mother got heavy into drink. By age thirteen, Jenna was following in Momma’s footsteps, sneaking Gentleman Jack from the cupboard and smoking marijuana behind her school.
One year later, tired
of life with Mother and an abusive stepfather, Jenna called her old man, who was then Hemet’s fire chief, and begged him to come rescue her. He did as his daughter asked and eventually gained custody. It’s a sad irony that the chief was also one of Hemet’s drug and alcohol counselors at the time—the man other parents would send their kids to for help. But not even he could control his wild child. Despite all his training and best efforts, the man lost his own daughter to heroin.
Of course, Jenna wasn’t born an addict, but once she got a taste for the lifestyle she jumped into it like a teenager cannonballing into a swimming pool. By the age of sixteen the girl was slumming in flophouses, slamming heroin, smoking meth and fucking a different partner every other night.
One of those partners was Billy, and once that tweaker and Jenna hooked up it was like putting a lit match to gasoline. Ever the romantics, the couple began spending nights together making crank for resale. Law enforcement eventually caught wind of their little enterprise, and the two fled to Arizona, where Billy had family.
But there would be no happily-ever-after for these two young lovers.
They moved into a twenty-foot travel trailer off a dirt road in the Golden Valley, where Billy began beating her on a near-daily basis, the physical violence escalating until the day he crushed her nose. Jenna checked in at the emergency room to have the nose repaired, but doctors refused to give her pain medication. When she asked why they told her she was pregnant.
After throwing a tantrum, cursing at doctors and slapping the walls, Jenna returned to the trailer to plan for her abortion. Seemed like the thing to do. After all, junkies are a self-serving breed, and babies only get in the way of that me-first lifestyle. Jenna wasn’t in the best of health at the time either. After three years of slamming heroin and taking every other drug imaginable, she was justifiably afraid her kid would pop out looking like something from a carnival freak show.
Because Arizona frowned on abortion, she and Billy scraped together all the cash they had and headed for Nevada. Only a funny thing happened on the way to the doctor. The idiots detoured into a casino and gambled away all their abortion money.
Now it was back to Arizona, where Jenna resumed the high life. So high, in fact, that before she knew it six months had passed and now, by law, it was too late to abort. Meanwhile Billy started injecting speed, and that sent Daddy into a whole ’nother level of violent. He and Jenna were driving the back roads in his Impala, arguing as usual, when Billy pulled a gun and tried shooting his girlfriend’s foot off. The bullet missed its target, went through the floorboard and shot out the tire instead. Billy regained control of the car but lost control of himself. After pulling the Impala off the road, he dragged Jenna into the street by her hair and beat the snot out of her. When he was finished he shoved her back into the car and drove on three tires going one hundred miles per hour back to the trailer, where, out of his mind, he kicked Jenna until she fell unconscious.
As Jenna’s due date approached, her mom drove out to Arizona and took her daughter back to California. A few weeks later Jenna delivered a daughter one month premature. Miracle of miracles, the kid wasn’t born with a craving for heroin-in-a-bottle.
Now a young mother, Jenna tried to do the right thing and clean up her life. She started by going back to school while her mom watched the baby. The girl might have been a drug addict, but she was a damn smart one. Although she’d spent most of her high school years high on dope, she still graduated one year early. Despite her best intentions, however, the old cravings soon returned and Jenna tumbled back into drugs. To survive, she turned to welfare and sold dirt weed to finance her heroin addiction. The state stepped in, took the baby away and handed temporary custody to Jenna’s mom, passing the child from one addict to another.
Then, just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, Billy came back into her life. He assured Jenna he was a changed man, ready to be a faithful husband and loving father. Hell, the new- and-improved Billy even came bearing gifts, a passenger van with a kiddie seat strapped in back. But their kumbaya moment didn’t last. As soon as the couple climbed into the van they were right back to arguing again. You can pretty much guess what happened next—and if you guessed Billy plunging a screwdriver into Jenna’s back, you would be correct.
He shoved her out of the van and hit the gas as Jenna was punching him through the open window, causing the van to veer headlong into an olive tree. Jenna didn’t bother checking on his condition. Instead she ran off and called the police. Billy ended up behind bars on an assault and battery charge.
Ah, young love.
So that was the young woman sitting beside me at the OK Corral bar; the fire chief’s daughter who had already packed a lifetime into twenty-two years of hard drugs and violent abuse.
As the drink arrived in front of her, Jenna said to me, “The first time I ever saw you, you were on your bike in the parking lot at Mickey’s Liquor Trade. Do you remember?”
I shook my head.
“Well, I remember you. You looked so confident. The way you held yourself with your head so high. I asked Billy who you were and he said, ‘That’s George Rowe. Why? Do you want to fuck him?’ Then he hit me.”
She said this as a matter of course and took a sip of the Zombie—a drink guaranteed to kick anyone’s ass.
“You know, I’ve heard things about you,” she said after a moment.
“Oh, yeah? What have you heard?”
“Well, it’s not good,” she said coyly. “Whenever I’ve asked people about George Rowe it’s never like, ‘Yeah, I know that guy.’ It’s more like, ‘I hate that fucking guy,’ or ‘That dude used to sell me dope.’ ”
She took another sip and looked at me hopefully. “Do you still sell dope?”
“Not anymore,” I answered, taking a pull on my bottle. “I got clean about ten years ago.”
“And now what?”
“I own a tree service.”
Jenna played with her drink then said offhandedly, “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Not really,” I answered. Which was a lie. I was seeing Christie at the time.
Jenna set her half-empty glass on the bar and studied it a moment.
“What are we doing here, George?”
“You mean in this bar?”
She turned with a level gaze. “You know what I mean.”
“I already told you. Billy wanted me to check on you.”
“That’s all?”
I thought for a moment, then said, “And he doesn’t want you pressing charges.”
Anger flashed in her eyes—a look that, unfortunately, would become all too familiar.
“He can go fuck himself,” she hissed. She drained her glass and ordered another Zombie. “You know we’ve got a kid, right?”
“I heard you have a little girl.”
“Did you know Billy tried to kill her?”
“When was this?”
“Last year in Arizona, before the baby was born. He was cheating on me. I saw him go inside this tweaker pad with this chick, so I grabbed a pickax from the shed and started hitting his fuckin’ Impala with it. I put holes all over that thing.”
Jenna paused as the bartender showed up with her drink.
“People tell me I have a temper,” she said, lifting the glass.
“No shit,” said I.
“I get it from my mom. I remember she used to say to me, ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ men because we are badass babes.”
She smiled at the memory and took a drink. “Where was I?”
“With a pickax.”
“Right. So Billy comes running out of the house and chases me across the yard with a broom handle. I tried to climb a fence, but I was seven months pregnant and couldn’t make it, so I just sat on the ground and let him beat me. But then he started kicking me, so I decided I’d better run. When he caught me again he started hitting me in the stomach with that broom handle, and the whole time he’s screaming, ‘You’re not going to have that baby,
bitch. You’re not gonna have my kid.’ ”
Jenna lifted her glass in triumph. “But guess what? I had his fucking kid.”
She took a healthy swallow, then paused to reflect.
“That asshole was always doing shit like that. Like this one time he had me pinned to the floor of our trailer with one hand and he’s got a gun pointed at my face with the other. And then he started shooting. The bullets are hitting all around my head and ricocheting off the concrete slab under the trailer. I could smell my hair burning, that’s how fuckin’ close those bullets were. When he let me up there were holes in the floor the shape of my head.”
“That’s messed up,” was all I could think to say.
“So the next morning I grabbed my pink lady—that was this little gun I owned with a pink mother-of-pearl grip—and I straddled Billy while he was sleeping, pointed the barrel at his nose and said, ‘Good morning, motherfucker.’ ”
I grinned at this. “Should’ve pulled the trigger.”
“I never got the chance. He grabbed the gun out of my hand and hit me in the head with it. Then he starts yelling at me, ‘Run, bitch, you got six seconds’ and started counting. And I ran too, because I knew that sick fuck would kill me. I ran into the desert and hid behind a Joshua tree until I knew he was gone.”
I shook my head. It was just too crazy. Jenna drained her Zombie and set the empty glass on the bar. Man, that girl could drink.
“Thank you, sir,” she said to me, “may I have another?”
After we left the OK Corral I took Jenna back to the shack in Valle Vista. Old Joe came out of his trailer to introduce himself, but my date was shitfaced and made a lousy first impression.
“She’s younger than Christie,” Joe scolded when Jenna was out of earshot. “What are you doing with a kid?”
I wasn’t sure myself, but I had a pretty good idea—and it wasn’t exactly a noble one. I’d really like to say I was a gentleman, that I did the right thing and tucked that poor girl into bed to sleep off her drunk. I’d like to say that, but I’d be lying. Truth is I wanted to fuck her brains out.
But when Jenna shed her clothes, my stomach nearly turned. Jesus Christ, if you could have seen the shape that girl was in. Never mind that her body was emaciated, it was also covered with ugly welts and bruises. Swear to God, she had black and blues that literally ran from her head to her toes. Never in my life had I seen a human being that looked like that. Here was the poster child for battered women, and, man, it really pissed me off.