Ditch Rider (15 page)

17

I
INTENDED MY
final destination to be Alfredo Lobato's house, but I had a couple of other names and addresses in my pocket to check out first. I cut over to Second, went north to Paseo del Norte and headed east toward the foothills. Paseo is a limited-access highway until you reach the Interstate; after that it becomes four lanes, then narrows down to two. I passed the corner where a guy was selling bears he'd carved with a chainsaw and someone else was selling red chile ristras. This used to be an empty part of town, but it was filling up. The land on my right had been turned into identical brick houses that had four thousand square feet inside but only fifteen feet between them. Behind a sign reading “R
UNNING
R
IDGE
E
STATES
,” the land on the left was just starting to be developed. I turned into the mostly vacant development of one-acre lots. Each of the few houses was surrounded by several undeveloped acres, an island in the high, barren desert.

I found the address I'd been looking for. The house was brand new, with no neighbors and no landscaping. It was large and ugly, as if wings from houses of different styles and periods had been slapped together. The doors to the three-car garage faced the street. The house's windows—looking west toward the long view—were as blank as eyes that had been sealed shut by cataracts. This was the place where Ron Cade lived if Ron Cade ever came home.

I took Paseo back to I-25, went south to Lomas, drove to the country club and looked for the second house on my list. This was an old and settled neighborhood with expensive landscaping and big trees. Professional people with money who wanted to be close to downtown lived here. The house I'd been looking for was white stucco with a red tile roof in the California mission style. The windows had the scrolls and loops of elaborate burglar bars. The message inscribed thereon was “keep out.” There was a wall around the property and an intercom at the gate. It took only a half hour to get from Ron Cade's residence to here, but I felt better about Henry O'Brien Jr.'s safety after I saw the place. Gang members would be noticed in this neighborhood. Henry would be protected if he had the brains to stay home, if his craving for coke allowed him to stay home, if his father made him stay home.

I went east on Lomas and north on Rosa to Alfredo Lobato's hood, where walls spray-painted with graffiti were part of the scenery. It was art or vandalism, depending on your point of view. Recently a cleanup crew hadn't been able to tell the difference and had painted over a commissioned work of art, which hadn't made the artist happy.

I'd never driven by Lobato's place on a Saturday. When I'd yielded to the impulse it had been a
weekday.
I hadn't seen anybody in the street, and as far as I knew, no one had seen me. I told myself that once I was noticed I'd stop. Cruising Pino on a Saturday when there was bound to be somebody out was a way of pushing the envelope.

The minute I turned the corner I saw a bunch of teenagers taking up a lot of space in their wide clothes. I saw the clothes as a means of intimidation, and it worked for me. I'd thought of putting my thirty-eight in the glove compartment before I left home; people get shot nowadays for wearing the wrong colors or driving into the wrong hood. But I'd seen too many possibilities for disaster and had left the gun at home. On the other hand, leaving it at home might have encouraged disaster of another kind.

One of the girls looked a lot like Laura from the arraignment. When she saw me she put her hand over her mouth and said something to her friends. I didn't see the only other gangbanger I knew—Nolo Serrano. I hadn't put him on my drive-by list because there were too many Serranos in the phone book to narrow my search. As I approached the gang they fanned out until they covered the width of the street. I tried driving onto the shoulder and cutting around them but two guys in “smile now, cry later” shirts stepped in front of me. It was run them down or stop.

“You looking for somebody?” one of the guys asked.

“Is this Calle Llorca?” I asked back.

The gangster's pants went beyond baggy, his smile radiated menace, four O's were tattooed across his right forearm, there was a conspicuous bulge under his t-shirt. Just in case I missed the point, he lifted the shirt to show me the Tech Nine he was packing between his boxer shorts and the waistband of his pants. “You're on the wrong street,” he said.

“How do I get to Llorca?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level, showing neither fear nor disrespect. I figured looking into his hostile eyes could be considered a dis, so I focused on his comedy and tragedy masks instead. “You're an adult,” I told myself. “You're a lawyer. He's a punk.” Still, he had the gun and this was his turf. On the other hand, my foot was on the gas pedal and a Nissan could be considered a weapon, too.

Maybe he realized that. Maybe he wasn't in a killing mood. He looked away from me and pointed deeper into the hood. “Go that way. Turn left.”

“Okay,” I said.

The homeboys stepped aside to let me pass, watched for a minute to make sure I kept on going, then turned around and walked in the direction of Rosa with their
cojones
intact. I could see in my rearview mirror that the back of their t-shirts read RIP and that no one wore a goatee on the back of his head.

I drove slowly toward the end of the block. There were people out today washing their cars, pounding their boom boxes, playing with their kids or standing around talking. Everybody stared at me,
but
nobody made a move. I craved a cigarette, but didn't want to take my eyes off the street long enough to light one. When I got to number 347 I saw someone in the driveway throwing a basketball at the hoop without a net. He was a big guy with a head shaved bald and shiny except for the hair at the nape of his neck that had been slicked into the shape of a goatee. His mourning shirt read J
UAN
P
ADILLA
RIP.

Maybe my car had an unfamiliar rattle or the people on Pino had finely tuned antennae. Like everybody else, Lobato stopped and stared when he heard me coming. He picked up his basketball and cradled it in his arm. His eyes were small and close together. His skin was pockmarked. Even by gang standards, he looked mean and ugly.

I peered into my rearview mirror and saw that the black cloud of gangsters had left Pino, so I pulled over. Lobato stared at me. I stared back. His stare was duller than the other kids', as if he wore protective lenses made of tinted glass. I rolled down the window and asked, “Do you know where Rafael Contreras lives?”

“Uh-uh,” he said. He turned around, shot his ball at the basket and missed.

I rolled up my window and drove on. I had the right to question Lobato about the Padilla shooting, but this wasn't the time or the place. One objective had been accomplished, anyway—to see what kind of person he was. I hadn't been impressed by the quality of Saia's witness no matter how well he'd stuck to his story. His Four O's t-shirt discredited him in my mind. I didn't consider gang members reliable, especially if they had a score to settle. But Saia had an agenda and that agenda had been Ron Cade. When it came to the truth about Lobato's gang affiliation, maybe Saia had been hearing what he wanted to hear, believing what he wanted to believe. When I reached the end of the block I did as I'd been told and turned left, wondering why Alfredo Lobato was home alone and not out cruising with the rest of the gang.

I turned onto Llorca and headed back toward Rosa looking at more of the same: graffiti walls, children playing, guys washing their cars, women talking, most of them paying far less attention to my passing than the people on Pino had. That street had pulsated with paranoia. I stopped at Rosa, waiting for the traffic to clear and watching a woman step off her porch, walk across the corner lot and unlatch a chain-link gate. When she reached the street she waved. There was nobody in a hurry behind me, so I waited to see what she wanted. She wore bedroom slippers and a black dress. Her white hair tumbled out of her bun. Her legs were as thick as tree trunks. Her face was furrowed. Her eyes were dark. When she reached the Nissan I rolled down my window.

“Could you give me a ride to the Seven-Eleven?” she asked.

“Okay,” I said.

She shuffled around to the passenger side, and I unlocked the door to let her in. She lowered herself slowly to the seat and locked the door behind her. “Do you play Powerball?” she asked me.

“
No.”

“I won two hundred dollars last week. Why don't you play?”

“I don't like to gamble. Life is risky enough.”

“That's true,” she admitted. “Life is very risky.” She didn't say anything else until I'd driven the five blocks north to the 7-Eleven. Driving on Rosa was a gamble, too, and we both gave it our full attention. Her foot tapped an imaginary brake whenever she thought I wasn't reacting fast enough. I reached the 7-Eleven and parked without being sideswiped or rear-ended or provoked into giving anybody the finger. My passenger put her hand on the door handle and asked, “Will you wait while I buy my ticket?”

“Sure,” I said.

I had parked behind a Dumpster with a sign on it that read “F
OR
S
TORE
U
SE
O
NLY
.” I watched a guy drive up, dump a large bag of his own trash and speed off. In a few minutes my passenger was back with a scratch ticket and a quart of milk. She sat down, patiently scraped the black goo off her ticket, sighed and said, “Not this time.”

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“Yes, but leave me on Rosa, please. It's not good for you to be seen in my neighborhood. I remember you from the courtroom. Do you remember me?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe somebody else will remember you, too.”

“You were related to Juan?”

“I am his grandmother.”

“You're a Padilla?”

She nodded. “I have thirty-five grandchildren. Do you believe that? He is the third one to die. It's not right when the grandchildren die before the grandmother.”

I couldn't disagree with that.

“Why were you on Llorca?” she asked me.

“I was looking for someone.”

“On my street?”

“No. On Pino.”

“There are a lot of gang members on Pino. Which one were you looking for?”

I looked into Grandmother Padilla's eyes and saw a well in which my information could settle to the bottom and sink into the sediment. Still, I wasn't eager to give up the name of a witness. It could be risky for me, it could be risky for the witness.

“Was it Alfredo Lobato?” she asked.

“
Why do you think that?”

“He told everybody he saw the murder and that the killer was the white boy.”

“Ron Cade.”

“If he saw Ron Cade, why did you let that pretty little girl say she did it?”

“Ron Cade had an alibi. My client didn't. She knew things about the crime that the police didn't reveal. She was spotted near the crime scene around the time of the murder.”

“Was she afraid?”

“Very.”

“In my time boys killed each other. Girls didn't do things like that. And now they are murderers, too?”

“Sometimes.”

“Alfredo is a sad boy.” She tapped the side of her head with her forefinger. “Mean, but not very smart.”

“Are you related to him, too?”

“Not that I know of.” Her brown eyes twinkled, and I saw the spirit of a young and lively woman. “For a long time nobody wanted Alfredo. He was a want-to-be. Even the gang didn't want him, but then I see him wearing the shirt. I think you will want to know why he was accepted, but I don't think you should come looking here again.”

I'd reached the corner of Llorca and parked on the far side of Rosa.

“I can walk from here,” she said. “Thank you very much for the ride.”

“Thank you for the advice.” I handed her my card. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

She stared at my name and address, fingered the card and put it in her pocket. “I have one more word of advice for you,” she said.

“What's that?”

“Play Powerball.”

“I'll remember that.”

She let herself out of the car. I waited for the light to change and the traffic to clear, then watched her walk across the street holding the milk carton in her hand.

******

That night over Tecate, tequila and a couple of burritos from Arriba Tacos, I told the Kid I'd seen Alfredo Lobato, but I didn't tell him I'd also seen a gun.

“What'd Lobato look like?” the Kid asked.

“Big, ugly. Like you said, he has a goatee on the back of his head.”

“
Where did you see him?”

“I drove by his house on Pino. He was outside shooting baskets. I stopped and asked for directions. You were right about his being a member of the Four O's; he was wearing a Juan Padilla mourning shirt.”

“That DA guy was wrong.”

“Maybe not. Maybe Lobato became a witness first and a Four O later.”

“I told you to stay away from those guys. You never know when to stop, chiquita.”

And how many times had I heard that one? Sometimes the tightrope I walked on had no net, which was one reason the Kid liked me whether he'd admit it or not. If I didn't go looking for excitement, he'd be
aburrido como una ostra,
bored as an oyster. “Why should I stop?”

“Because it's dangerous.”

I shrugged and took a sip of my tequila.

“You never listen to me,” he complained.

“You never say anything new,” I replied, wondering how much time it took with someone before you began repeating yourself. He had nothing to say to that, and we finished the burritos in silence. While I cleaned up he watched
Walker, Texas Ranger,
his favorite bad and violent TV show. Some people watch violence so they don't have to do it; some people watch it and get inspired to do it. When the Kid is angry he becomes silent, not violent. He was still fuming when we went to bed, which meant he wasn't talking. He can go to bed angry and fall sound asleep and I can't. I lay awake watching him toss and turn and thinking about how complicated men are. At least women can talk about what's bothering them and get rid of it. Problems (especially men problems) are a hot potato that women toss from hand to hand. But men don't talk at all or they talk about cars and sports while the wheels inside keep turning and churning.
Compared to the Kid I'm simple,
I thought.
Basically I have two moods. Either I'm pissed off or I'm not.