Hard Favored Rage

by Don Shift

  It was all naïve but tell that to the population who wanted all cops to be like “Adam-12”. Sometimes they got it. Ventura County had been very lucky that its deputies and most local officers were the polite, professional, and highly capable men that Hollywood idealized. California cops always believed they were the best and they might just be right, but it is more likely that western police grew into their role as the frontier states’ societies grew too.

  Idealistic, yes, but Villareal believed his deputies were the finest trained peace officers in the world. Though he could never quantify it, there was just something different about his department. Whatever it was, he prayed that it would see them through this crisis.

  Road Trip

  Getting out of the metropolitan Phoenix area wasn’t particularly challenging. Not too many drivers were out and about on the freeways today. I-10, however, was filled with westbound traffic that thickened as lanes narrowed outside Buckeye. It took three hours to get to Quartzite driving in stop and go traffic that accelerated briefly up to 55 miles per hour for up to a mile, then slowed to a crawl as the speeding traffic caught up with the cars ahead. Mr. Church could see that the sudden sprints, only to crawl along at 15 miles per hour wasn’t helping the traffic problem. He wished people were smart enough to split the difference at 35 miles per hour and avoid the rear-end accidents that were jamming everything up.

  In Quartzite, they stopped to spend half an hour trying to find a bathroom and waiting in line for it. The usual twenty-minute drive down the grade to Blythe and the California border took over an hour in traffic more reminiscent of leaving a stadium after a ballgame than an Interstate. Near the Colorado River, a black pillar of smoke rose up near the freeway and a cloud of smoke was obscuring the views across the river valley.

  Harold wasn’t so bothered by the drive itself as it was unavoidable, but the lack of anything to listen to on the radio. He had no ability to drift off and instead had to listen to Jenny and Mrs. Levine’s chatter. Often, they asked questions he had no answer for, and Mrs. Levine had an irritating habit of asking rhetorical questions about the traffic and using that as a springboard for her to rant about every conceivable topic that she had a negative opinion on. If it wasn’t blisteringly hot outside, he would have rolled down the window and shouted at the other drivers just to have someone else to talk to.

  Just before the river, traffic was being diverted and turned around at the overpass. Highway patrolmen were busy directing traffic to go over the overpass and get back on eastbound I-10. Harold rolled down the window to ask for directions across the river. The cop nearest to the Church’s car saw the window drop and yelled without being asked. “Gas pipeline blew. Turn around and take the 95 to Parker. Follow the signs, keep moving!” Mr. Church raised his hand in thanks and got back on the interstate.

  The drive uphill wasn’t as long as downhill, but to get from Quartzite to Parker took two hours on the choked two-lane highway. Harold demanded an opportunity to stretch his legs and not have to eat behind the wheel. Another effect other than cramped legs and full bladders from the long drive was that the stop and go traffic had severely impacted the car’s fuel economy. Harold paid $50 for five gallons of gas that smelled like it had two-stroke oil in it, which was hopefully enough to get out of the desert.

  Bigger Plans

  Andres and Jaime were two small-time criminals. Neither of them had ever affiliated with any of the Oxnard gangs, even though many of their cousins and friends were members of the Colonia Chiques or had ties to one of the prison gangs. Both men, in their late twenties, were disappointments to their families, all hard-working immigrants who were naturalized by Reagan’s amnesty. The worst crime either of them had committed was reduced to misdemeanor theft and landed Jaime in jail for nine months, barely avoiding a felony rap.

  Lazy an inept as they were, they looked for opportunities as much as anyone else, although their preference ran far more towards the easier ways of making money and getting things they wanted. Both men were street smart, but you wouldn’t know it from their grades or some of their life choices. By dawn, they knew something was drastically wrong and it only took a few hours of listening to the single radio station for them to begin scheming. With a little help from marijuana, worries about what to do next turned into a fantasy. After much talk, they realized that it was possible, with a little luck, to succeed. They quickly formulated a plan.

  Jaime told Andres about all the food and supplies they needed, basing his ideas on episodes of “The Walking Dead” and “Doomsday Preppers.”

  “Esé, where we gonna store all that stuff?” Andres asked.

  “In your cousin’s garage.”

  “My cousin’s garage? You serious? It’s a two-car garage, more like a one and a half car garage. We ain’t gonna fit all that in his there.”

  “No cabron, not at his house. At his shop garage,” Jamie said.

  “Oh right.”

  “Ain’t he always bragging about how it never gets hot inside? ‘Nadie gonna sweat working in my shop,’” he said, imitating the old man.

  “I see where you’re going. How we gonna guard it?”

  “Easy, put a couple guys there. We could take over that fotografo’s office next door. You know the one I’m talking about? Guy hooked our whole family up with pictures. There’s like five or six different little rooms for pictures, plus offices and stuff. We could move our families in there, stay just as cool as the garage.”

  “I bet we could get some generators and plug in some of those portable air conditioners.”

  “You think they’re gonna work?”

  “Some of ‘em got to. Not everything is fried.”

  “How are we going to get gas?”

  “Pop the lid, drain gas station tanks. Suck it from cars and trucks. My uncle says diesel will last forever. There’s plenty of it out there in abandoned cars and trucks.”

  “Sounds good. Once we get our stuff together, we can go out and hit some of those preppers out there and rip ‘em off.”

  “I don’t know about all that rape and murder stuff.”

  “I’m not talking about gangbanging and raping. Just go after the ones with the guns, ammo, and food. A fair fight and we ain’t gonna be ripping off poor people like us just trying to survive. Take from the rich because we’re the poor.”

  “How are we gonna find these people?”

  “Word will spread. The house with the dead bodies all around it, lights at night, smell of food. That kind of stuff.” He was glad he paid attention to those doomsday TV shows.

  “Alright. In the meantime...”

  “What do you mean, ‘in the meantime?’”

  “We gotta round up supplies, don’t we? We can’t go out there boosting generators without any heat. People gonna be fighting over that stuff in a couple days. All I got is my Hi-Point nine mil. Unless you got more than your daddy’s six shooter and that ugly shotgun, we’re up gonna look like some sorry pendejos.”

  “We could buy some.”

  “From where? All the stores are sold out for sure, in case you didn’t notice the shit hit the fan. They ain’t sellin’ no more of anything.”

  Andres thought for a minute. “We could get some from Miguel.”

  “Miguel? You serious? He’d charge us an arm and a leg even if this stuff wasn’t going down.”

  “No, but we could trade him for it.”

  “Trade him what, Andres? You got a stash you didn’t tell me about?”

  “No, we go get some.”

  “Explain.”

  “It’s easy. We rip off a drugstore.”

  “They’re closed.”

  “That’s the idea. All of them are closed until tomorrow. We break in tonight, while everything is still loco. The things your momma saw at the grocery store was nothing. It’s gonna explode tomorrow. They’ll clean out the shelves and then the pharmacy. If we do it before anyone else gets the idea, we score big time.”

  It was Jaime’s turn to think for
a minute. “You know what to get?”

  “Yeah. Miguel talks about that stuff all the time.”

  “Well, let’s do it.”

  When night fell Saturday evening, Jaime and Andres decided to hit a CVS in one of the smaller neighborhoods that looked deserted. They parked in back and used a crowbar to jimmy open the back-fire door. Once inside, there were no cameras, no alarms, and no electronic locks to stop them. It was just a matter of collecting the drugs and carrying them outside. Their first stop in East Ventura, was as easy as they expected. The fire door didn’t even have an anti-pry plate on it. The door to the pharmacy had a cipher lock and keycard reader on the wall, both of which were dark. Andres turned the handle and the door opened easily.

  “See, I told you. Supposed to have a key on this one if the power goes out, but I guess they was too cheap to get that part.”

  “Lucky us.”

  Jaime swung his flashlight around the pharmacy. The number of bottles was truly staggering. “I hope you know what you’re getting.”

  “Yeah, I got it.” Andres pulled a handwritten list from his pocket. “Never mind the stuff on the shelves. Most of that is just for old people, creams and stuff. The good stuff Miguel will pay for is in a locked cabinet. See it?”

  They looked around, expecting to find a metal wall cabinet with a punch-code lock on it. Instead, it was a drug safe that weighed five hundred pounds empty and was bolted to the floor.

  “Chinga tu madre!” Andres swore. “I didn’t know they’d have a safe.”

  “Well hell,” Jaime said.

  “Ain’t gonna be able to crack this open, no way. Can’t cut into it neither. Look at it.”

  The safe was black and had an electronic combination lock below the metal locking wheel. “If the battery still works, I’d bet we could find the combination written down in the office.”

  Andres breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, go take a look.”

  Jaime left the room and went into the office. He checked the pharmacists’ desk drawers, which were full of lots of things, but no scrap of paper with four or six numbers written down. Nothing on the walls, either. They had to write it down somewhere in case everybody who knew the code quit, got fired, or called in sick. He looked at the computer and felt a little sick because the password was probably saved on it.

  He took one last look around the room for anything helpful or valuable. His eyes lingered on the bookshelf. Physicians and pharmacological books, mostly, but there were some CVS corporate books too. Individual Store Pharmacy Training, one read. Jaime took it down and flipped through the pages until he found ‘Security Procedures.’ It was all standard corporate policy, mostly, but one page was filled with blanks and hand-written numbers.

  “Phone number for the police station, nearest hospital. Manager’s home phone, district manager.” He kept running his finger down the page. “Security system password, abort code. Yes!” he exclaimed. Next to ‘Narcotics Safe Pass Code’ was written in looping black ink the store’s code.

  Jaime ran out with the book in his hand. “Try this,” he shouted.

  Andres punched the numbers in. Nothing happened. “Do I gotta hit star or the hash tag button?”

  “No, it just says the number.”

  Andres tried it again. “It ain’t working. Let me see that.” Andres looked at the page himself and tried the number again. “It’s fried.” He pointed to the power cord coming from the safe.

  Jaime cussed. “I got excited there for a minute.”

  Andres walked away and mumbled curses to himself. Jaime tried the code himself to no avail. Then he touched one of the spokes of the lock wheel. The wheel moved. His heart leapt and he turned it further, then kept turning until the locking bars retracted with a clang. The door swung wide open.

  “Check this, homes!” Andres rushed over and gave Jaime a hug. “Fried it all right, fried it good.”

  “Let’s get to work. What do we need?”

  Andres pulled the list from his pocket. “Benzos and downers. Top shelf there. Nembutal, ooh look at all the Xany bars!" He swept a whole shelf of Xanax bottles into the bag. “Valium, Prozac, lorazepam, Ambien.”

  “Vicodin and Oxy, got that, but what about these other kinds?”

  “Grab all that codeine. The Tylenol and Advil; get the generics too. It don't matter. Look for hydrocodone, dihydrocodeine, Lortab and Lorcet, Percocet and Percodan. Those are the ones I know.” Demerol, Morphine tablets and drops, Adderall, and Ritalin all went in too.

  “What about this other stuff?” Jaime gestured to the open shelves.

  “I’ll read; you grab.”

  Andres read off the list and the two scrambled around the pharmacy reading labels and grabbing the containers. Muscle relaxers, antihistamines, weaker sleeping pills, antibiotics that ended in -cillin, and things with exotic names that they could place were grabbed.

  “Anything else?”

  “See that stuff, over by the register?”

  “Yeah, the cold medicine?”

  “Grab that. Miguel can sell it to guys who make meth.”

  “Got it.”

  Andres took a shopping cart from the stocking area and began stacking the bags and tubs in it while Jaime finished with the shopping list.

  “Okay, that’s it.”

  “Cool.”

  “Can I grab some stuff for my family?”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “Antibiotics, my abuela’s heart drugs. Gonna get some of those giant Advil for my uncle’s back.”

  “Good idea. I figure we can keep a little of the strong stuff too. Ain’t gonna be no more doctors, you know?”

  “Exactly. Guess we should get some first aid stuff too.”

  “Probably. Might as well help ourselves to what’s out front too.” Andres went to lift up the rolling shutter that separated the pharmacy from the store.

  “Hold up. Best to wait until we’re all done. Get this stuff out of here, boost the rest on our last trip.”

  “Right. Let’s get this stuff home. We can make two or three more stops if everything goes smoothly.”

  The second store took longer than the first, owing to a better protected backdoor and two dead-bolted doors to the independent pharmacy that had to be broken down with a fire axe. At the last store, the pair stowed their haul in Andres’s car before heading back in to “go shopping” as Jaime called it. Each of them loaded up carts with whatever they thought they needed or could find. Most of the food was gone, but medical supplies and cosmetics were plentiful. Those could be used or traded, the same for birth control, toilet paper, and feminine products.

  The Impala was packed to the roof.

  “Man, I’m gonna have to ride with my feet up and holding a thing of toilet paper.”

  “I guess in my next life, I’ll get a Suburban or something.”

  “At least it ain’t a Honda.”

  “For real.”

  Their last trip was carrying out two celebratory liquor bottles each. As they exited the back door, they found three other Hispanics standing around the car.

  “Looks like you guys done some shopping,” the one who appeared to be the leader said.

  Two others stood around smoking cigarettes—something that CVS had recently stopped selling.

  “That’s right. Help yourselves.” Andres pointed his thumb at the store and tried to walk past, but one of the smokers stepped in front of him.

  “What you got in there? Get any prescriptions filled?”

  “Nah man, just toilet paper and tampons.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Seriously man.”

  “Why don’t we just take a look?”

  One of the men grabbed Andres by the arm. Andres swung one of his liquor bottles at the man’s head and dropped the other bottle to free his left hand. As Andres’ bottle connected with skull, Jaime pulled his pistol from his and shot the ‘leader’ twice, then shot the one who grabbed Andres. The third turned and ran. Jaime shot him four times in the
back. “Forget this man, let’s roll.”

  Both jumped in the car. Andres sped away from the store, leaving the toilet paper on the roof to fall off.

  “Man, that was close! What was that?” Andres kicked the dash.

  Andres didn’t like killing. He hated the thought of it, which was why he was never much of a gangbanger. Dying or killing was not what he planned for his life. He had always carried a gun because that’s what men did in his neighborhood. Even if he didn’t want to use it, he understood that he might have to one day. Today was that day and Andres wondered for a brief second why he didn’t join the Army like his brother and get away from this life. Andres would do what had to be done, but he didn’t have to enjoy it.

  “You did good back there. They didn’t see that comin’.”

  “We didn’t see that coming. We shoulda been more careful, you know? Now I shot three guys.”

  “What are you worried about? You think the police are gonna catch you? No video, no witnesses, no evidence. Besides, it was self-defense.”

  “Self-defense robbin’ a store?”

  “Yeah, it was. As for the other stuff, we’re just getting food and supplies. Not like we can buy them. They ain’t gonna mess with us for that. You know as well as I do that the cops ain’t coming in our neighborhood. Didn’t care then, ain’t gonna care now. Gonna be too busy and trying to get theirs. You know how many unsolved murders there were after Hurricane Katrina?”

  “No. How many?”

  “I don’t know, a lot, but the point is none of that CSI stuff is gonna work. Police ain’t gonna be investigating anything. They can’t do none of that without electricity. Now chill out. You did good, saving our asses like that. I owe you one big time. We made a big score, we’re gonna score big.”