Ditch Rider (11 page)

Juan's women sobbed while the attendant led Cheyanne—hiding behind her hair—back to the D Home. It was all the state could do, but it would never be enough for the Padillas. Leo hurried Sonia and Danny outside. The newscasters headed for the door and the cameramen began hauling away their equipment. For them the drama was over.

I watched Patricia step across the divide and walk up to the guy in the black hat, who was talking to one of his homeboys. His back was to me and I could read the inscription on his turned-backward hat. B
ROWN
P
OWER
, it said in white Old English letters. The guy didn't know Patricia was behind him until
she
tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around like he was getting ready to take a swing, but when he saw it was Patricia he stopped himself, looked her up and down and smiled smoothly.

“Looking baaad today, Patricia,” he said. “Real bad.”

“Take your breath away,” she replied.

“Don't count on it.” His smile turned cold and hard.

One of Juan's young women, a girlfriend or a sister, grabbed Patricia's arm. “Your girlfriend's gonna rot in jail, bitch,” she hissed.

“Chill out, Laura,” Black Hat said.

Patricia shook the girl off, turned her back and walked away.

Black Hat held the girl in check until Patricia was out the door. I'd been standing by the bench watching and the girl turned toward me. “That goes for you, too,” she said.

“Just doing my job,” I replied.

“It's a hoe's job.”

Whores get paid better than me,
I thought, but I let my feet do the talking. I walked out of the courtroom, down the hallway, out the door and onto the street, where I encountered the cloud of smoke that hovers outside every professional building. My buddy and adversary, Anthony Saia, was standing in the middle of it puffing on a Camel.

“Give me a hit,” I said.

“Just one?”

“That's all.”

He handed over the cigarette. “Remember when these things used to be called coffin nails?” he asked me.

“I remember.” I took one deeply satisfying drag, coughed and handed the cigarette back. Saia finished it off, dropped it to the sidewalk and rubbed it out. Then we walked to the corner, where we intended to go our separate ways—he back to the DA's office, me to the underground parking lot where I'd left my Nissan. “Don't let it get to you,” he told me while we walked.

“It's not,” I replied, pulling my dark glasses out of my purse. The sun and the wind were making their presence felt in the canyons of downtown, causing me to put on my sunglasses and making Anthony Saia squint. One side of the street was in sunlight. The other was in shadow. Both sides were feeling the wind, which picked up trash and swirled it around.

Saia did not accept my denial. “What's the problem?” he asked.

“It's hard to watch a teenage client plead guilty to manslaughter.” And not that easy to confront the friends and family of a fifteen-year-old victim.

“Happens every day,” he said.

“
Not to my clients.”

“That's because you've been going for the big-buck negligence cases.” He laughed.

“Ha, ha,” I replied. “Cheyanne will stay on suicide watch, I hope.”

“I'll look into it. If you ask me, she's better off in the D Home than she is in her own home if the mother's hanging out with Chuy Ortega.” The wind tugged at Saia's hair and whipped mine across my face.

“Do you mean Leo?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“He's the father of Sonia's son.”

“When I read the police report for the night your client was assaulted I didn't realize I knew him. There are a lot of Ortegas out there. Your client pled guilty and refused to cooperate in the assault investigation, so it went no further. I didn't put it together until I saw Ortega in court today. I knew him by his gang name of Chuy. He was a violent son of a bitch back then.”

“What'd he do?”

“Aggravated battery. I prosecuted him about ten years ago.”

“You've been prosecuting that long?”

“That long.”

“Maybe you're getting stuck, Anthony.”

“Maybe one day a new DA will come along and kick me out. I am getting tired of seeing the same faces over and over again.” He looked tired. Squinting was deepening the wrinkles around his mouth and lengthening the bags beneath his eyes.

“How much time did Leo do?” I asked him.

“A year.”

“He seems devoted to his son. Maybe being a father has straightened him out.”

“It's a tough job,” Saia said, “but somebody's got to do it. It's getting to be too much for parents all alone. Maybe Hillary was right when she said it takes a village, only we don't have villages anymore. The city is swallowing them up.”

“We do have streets,” I said.

“True. Don't go beating yourself up over this case, Neil. If Joseph does accept your client's plea and sends her to the Girls' School, it's not exactly a dungeon.”

“There are going to be Four O's or their girlfriends inside who can make it hell for my client if they want to. They were showing their colors in the courtroom.”

“I guess we'll find out then whether our justice is their justice, whether they believe your client is guilty or not.” The wind had pried one lock of graying hair loose, and it danced across Saia's forehead.

My
own hair was blowing into my face. I brushed it away. “Who was the kid in the black hat?” I asked.

“Nolo Serrano. Good-looking kid, huh?”

“Not bad.”

“He should have been a movie star or a musician instead of a gangbanger. He plays the guitar and was doing all right with it until he dropped out of school.”

“How do you know him? He's not your eyewitness, is he?”

“You're asking me to give up a witness?”

“The case has already been settled, Anthony. My client pled guilty.”

“The witness is still a juvenile.”

“Then can you tell me if he's not your witness?”

“I told you my witness wasn't a gangbanger, didn't I?”

“That's what you said.”

“It's not Serrano. The way I know him is he's been in and out of the system. That kid can charm the bark off a tree or the money out of a lawyer if he wants to. He's not bad, just misdirected.”

A woman was coming down the street wearing high heels and a power suit that made mine look like it was fifteen years old. She held a bottle of designer water by the neck and she smiled at Saia.

“Could that be the new lady friend?” I asked.

Saia slicked the errant strand of hair into place. “That's Jennifer.” She did look impressively fit, a lot fitter than Anthony Saia. This was not a lawyer who intended to be clerking for long. “You want to meet her?” Saia asked.

I wasn't in the mood for Xena, Warrior Princess. I could see what Saia saw in her, but not what she saw in him. World-weariness can be a comfort, but it's not a turn-on—not to me, anyway. “Maybe later. I gotta get back to the office.”

“Talk to you later,” Saia said.

“Okay,” I answered.

13

I
WALKED TO
the underground lot where my Nissan was parked and took the elevator down to Level Three. I don't like parking lots. What woman does? An inside lot is worse than outside, unless it's after dark. The concrete ceiling, the institutional lighting, the shadows under the Broncos and BMWs told me to get in and out fast. Usually I circle the levels until I find a spot that's close to the elevator. I like to have as few vehicles as possible between escape and my Nissan. But today there'd been no close-in spots on any level. Several cars away on Level Three was the best I'd been able to do.

Guilt was at my side when I got on the elevator. The deal I'd made for my client was not justice for the Padillas and maybe not for my client, either. While the elevator descended I took out my key ring, made a fist and inserted the keys between my fingers, not a bad idea when you're entering a parking lot. I got off the elevator, saw that I was the only living thing on Level Three and walked to my car. When I got there and inserted the key in the lock I heard the elevator descending and the door sliding open.

I turned around and saw Nolo Serrano—many women's dark and handsome nightmare—dance through the sliding door. No one is as much trouble as a good-looking guy. I'd lived long enough to know that and to remember when fear took the form of dirty old men. Now it's teenagers who bring on the goose bumps. None of Nolo's homeboys followed him. The door rolled shut, and he and I were alone on Level Three. My right hand went to my purse, reaching automatically for the piece I wasn't packing, hoping Serrano didn't know that.

“Hey!” He held up his hands. “I'm not packin'.”

I didn't think he'd come down here to pick up his car. So what was it? And why was he alone? I didn't intend to let Nolo Serrano charm the money out of me. I kept one hand on my keys and the other on my purse. “What do you want?” I asked.

“Just to talk is all. Just want to talk.” He boogalooed a little closer. His movements and speech had a quick and nervous rhythm.

“I can hear you fine from where you are.” And I could also see how pretty he was, even in the harsh underground light. His pale eyes, fringed by thick black lashes, danced with amusement. His hat framed his face in black. The white scar that I'd noticed on his jacket turned out to be an embroidered zipper.

“Okay, okay.” He tried to stand still, but he was too wired. He did a little rubber-soled dance while we talked.

“
Laura, she shouldn't have called you a hoe. You were just doing your job. It's a tough job, I know. But you and Cheyanne, you did the right thing. She did the crime, hey she should do the time.”

“Just as long as she's not doing more than her time,” I said.

“She'll do better on the inside if she stays cool, keeps her mouth shut. There's some bad people in the D Home, and what you say there can be used against you. Has anybody been bothering her?”

“No. Let's keep it that way.”

“No problem. The Four O's inside, they won't hassle Cheyanne.”

“How do you know that?”

“I'm the leader,” said Nolo. He smiled the smile of an actor who wins an Oscar, a mystery writer who gets the Edgar, a lawyer who gets to argue before the Supreme Court. At sixteen or seventeen years old he'd achieved all he'd ever dreamed.

“How'd you get the name Nolo?” I asked him.

“First I was Manuel, then Manolo, now I'm Nolo. You get a new name when you rank in.” His eyes rolled up until the whites were visible under the pupils. “How'd you know my name was Nolo?”

“Deputy DA Saia told me.”

“That guy's a lawyer too, right?”

“Right.”

“How do you like being a lawyer?”

“It's okay.”

“Maybe that's what I'll be when I grow up.” He smiled.

“Maybe,” I said, but when I looked into his eyes I saw a boy who'd never grow up.

“Can you explain something to me about lawyers?”

“Try me.”

“I see you and that DA in court. You're on one side. He's on the other side. Then when it's over I see you smoking a cigarette together. I see you talking. I see you walking down the street. How can you be enemies on the inside and friends on the outside?”

“That's the way it is in the professional world.”

He shook his head. “It's not like that in my world. Someone's your homeboy or he's not.”

No shit,
I thought. His world was ruled by hormones, drugs, egos and guns. All lawyers had going for us was ego and an ever-diminishing supply of hormones. It's a crazy society that lets teenagers pack semiautomatics. “Your world is trigger-happy,” I said.

“That's the truth.”

“I heard you were a musician,” I said, changing the subject, hoping to discover more about Nolo Serrano.

“
Who told you that?”

“Saia.” Nolo's feet continued their restless dance. On the one hand, he didn't like Saia talking about him. On the other hand, any kind of attention had value because it made his name come out. “Were you a musician?”

“Used to be. Used to be.”

“The man in my life is a musician.”

“What does he play?”

“The accordion.”

“I played the guitar.”

“Why did you give it up?”

“See this?” He pointed to the zipper embroidered on his jacket. “That means I caught a bullet. That's when I got into gang life.
Mi Vida Loca.
It's the crazy life, but it's my life.” He laughed. “You'll be seeing Cheyanne?”

“Right.”

“You tell her I'll be watching out for her.”

“I'll do that.”

“Bueno.
Gotta go.
Mucho gusto.”

“El gusto es mio,”
I said, watching him dance back to the elevator and wondering how long he'd have wings on his feet.

******

The Kid worked late that night, and by the time he got home I'd had a burrito and a couple of tequilas and gone to bed. He thumped around the house until he tracked me down in the bedroom wearing a pillow over my head. “You're sleeping, chiquita?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

He sat down on the bed beside me and lifted the pillow. “You never go to bed this early.”

“It was a bad day.”

“You went to court?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Cheyanne was arraigned.”

“You knew that was going to happen, no?”

Count on a man to be reasonable when the problem has nothing to do with reason. “It was worse than I expected. Cheyanne was comatose. Juan's family was grieving and hostile.”