Lines and shadows (25 page)

Then he'd pull himself together and realize how
that
sounded. His roommate was only sixteen years old and had his leg
amputated
because of cancer. So Joe Castillo blurted his favorite self-deprecatory cry, saying, "My shit is so ragged! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

But his roommate didn't mind. This kid was jazzed out of his skull from reading all about Joe Castillo in the newspapers and seeing him on television. This kid was in the presence of the first Gunslinger he'd ever met in his life. The kid would pull himself out of bed, still trying to stand on a limb that wasn't there, and answer phone calls for Joe or do other little chores in the room. The kid asked the doctor if he really had to go home as scheduled the next afternoon. He wanted to stay with his new hero, Joe Castillo. And of course that made the young cop feel just great when he was already wondering what kind of an asshole he'd become out there in those hills. He got a chance to think about it for the next month. He was put on light duty and assigned to be a gofer in the detective bureau. He hated the job.

He started working out with a vengeance. He began punching the big bag and tattooing the speed bag. He found out that he was pretty good. Boxing was terrific. Boxers couldn't file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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be troubled by booze and broads. Rest. Lots of rest. A Spartan life. Just try going into a ring after a binge and watch your little ass get kicked. He loved it. Somebody broke his nose. Who gives a shit? Joe Castillo went to Chino State Prison to box and fought a black inmate. All the Mexican inmates cheered for him, a cop. Later, a snitch he met on the street said,

"Hey, man, I
know
you! I saw you throw some leather in the joint!" He boxed at 156 pounds and eventually won a silver and a bronze medal in the police Olympics. His hobbies became running and boxing. His marriage might just survive the craziness in the canyons, he figured.

When he came back to BARF he had most of the use in that hand. He could sure as hell make a fist out of it and the fingers soon began to soar and glide and flutter like wings, just as before. Pretty soon he was back to his body language; shrugging, twisting, bowing, swaying when he talked to the groupies in the gin mills. He
couldn't
leave the booze behind, not when he was back with the Barf squad. But he said he didn't think he was the prettiest thing to walk down the street anymore. He didn't think he'd ever be a cocky, black-glove kind of cop ever again.

But one thing didn't change: his feeling for Carlos Chacon. When he'd get drunk his eyes would smolder almost as much as Carlos' eyes
always
smoldered. Carlos Chacon had shot him, no matter how much Carlos claimed it was inconclusive. Joe Castillo
knew
it was Carlos who did it and there was no remorse in Carlos for shooting him. He was going to watch Carlos Chacon
very
carefully in those canyons.

A few things happened to the squad while Joe Castillo and Fred Gil were off recuperating. One thing was that Ken Kelly was brought in as a replacement. Lake Robbie Hurt, Ken Kelly had to be convinced that he was the wrong color to walk as a decoy with the others. Ken Kelly figured that Robbie, being black, couldn't do a proper makeup job to pass as a Mexican, whereas he, being white, could pull it off. So Ken tucked his blond hair under a woman's stocking and smeared some kind of pancake makeup, mocha coffee goop, on his face and looked like one of the maniacs in a Hollywood version of gooned-out Vietnam GI.'s.

Another thing that happened is that all the ragging, jazzing, merciless personal insults and wisecracks elicited
new
responses. For example, if someone were to call Ernie Salgado "The Jaw" because of his prominent chin, or say that a night in his hometown—Marfa, Texas—

held all the excitement of a bricklaying contest in Poland, he might not laugh anymore. Ditto for Eddie Cervantes when they asked him if he was riding Uncle Ebeneezer's back this Christmas. Tony Puente was getting sick of the gags about seeing his wife out on the street corners handing out Bible tracts to winos. And even someone as good-natured as Renee Camacho with the soprano alien voice didn't find the drag queen jokes so funny file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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anymore. Nor did Joe Castillo laugh very much when they said he was about as smart as a sack of rutabagas. And maybe even smiling Joe Vasquez had heard just about one reference too many to his looking like Charles Laughton hanging from a bell. And for sure Robbie Hurt had had it when he got compared to some jive-ass with diamonds in his teeth. In fact, when they were donning their bulletproof vests and alien duds, things were getting pretty quiet these days. Even in the little squad room, which was about the size of a family crypt, there wasn't much horsing around anymore. And when they piled into the fourwheel drive to head for the canyons at dusk, the silence was absolutely spooky. Nobody opened his mouth. A new element had been introduced since they learned unequivocally that even living legends might get
hurt
out there.

On the 5th of April a bandit gang made a very good score in Deadman's Canyon with what had to have been the most unfortunate robbery victims who ever lived to tell their story. Eighteen pollos from El Salvador and Guatemala decided to try their luck in Deadman's Canyon that afternoon. In that the sun was still high over the hills, they probably felt they might be more vulnerable to
la migra
but would surely escape the bandits about whom they'd heard so much. They were wrong.

While the party of eighteen men and women took their first rest under a stunted oak in Deadman's Canyon, they were approached by three young men and a large black dog. One of the young men was carrying a .22-caliber rifle. He had the longest hair most of them had ever seen on a man.

In fact he looked exactly like an Apache from an American movie. His hair was so long it hung all the way down his back to his belt. And he wore a dark-blue bandanna around his forehead just like an Apache or an American hippie. And he wore a brown vest over a white long-sleeve shirt, making him look even more like a movie Indian. Since he had a big ugly dog and a rifle, they hoped he was just out hunting jackrabbits in the canyons, especially since one of his companions was a boy. But the boy was carrying a big rock. And the third young man was hefting an iron bar.

And perhaps because the eighteen pilgrims didn't look like border Mexicans, or for some other reason, the one with the long hair and the .22-caliber rifle said something very silly. He said, "We're
judiciales
. Give us your money." It was almost funny, except that he had a wild and glassy-eyed look and his rifle was clearly not a toy. The long haired bandit searched one of the pilgrims and found only some Salvadoran money. He crammed the useless stuff in his pocket and the three left in disgust, not even bothering to search the rest. The pilgrims thought they were in luck. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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But thirty minutes later, while they crouched waiting for a Border Patrol vehicle in the far distance to clear out, three
more
men approached. These three were older and they said almost the same thing: "We're state police. Give us your money." It seemed that all the bandits liked to pose as police. But
judiciales
didn't carry clubs and machetes and broken bottles. The nine men and nine women were terrified into giving up their life savings. Three junkie thugs strolled off that afternoon with over 5,000 U.S. dollars. Then, while the pilgrim party wailed and keened and wept and wondered how they were going to get to Los Angeles or back to El Salvador and Guatemala without one dollar left, yet
another
group of men approached them, twelve men. And
still
the sun had not set in Deadman's

Canyon. The twelve men were crestfallen to learn that the pilgrims had already been robbed.
Twice
. There was nothing left for them but the women. This was one of the bandit gangs who intimidated through violence. The spokesmen for the Guatemalans saw that it was absolutely hopeless. He perceived savage brains behind black depthless eyes. When he tried to protect the women, the bandits picked up huge rocks. They attacked viciously, driving the wailing male pilgrims back into a ravine, the men begging the bandits to spare the women. Some of the pollos from El Salvador later reported thinking that this could not be real, not
three
bandit attacks. The bandit gang encircled the weeping women like a mangy dog pack. The women's spoken prayers were met with obscene appraisals by the bandits, who were already arguing about who would get the youngest.

Suddenly a U.S. Border Patrol aircraft swooped over the canyon-and banked. One of the male Salvadorans began waving and screaming.
Demanding
to be arrested as an illegal alien.

Within a few minutes a chopper arrived and sent the bandits running back toward Colonia Libertad. The women were saved. The thing they kept repeating over and over as they sat dazed in the Southern substation of the San Diego Police Department was that they had felt so
safe
once they crossed the imaginary line. They had thought that on their trek through Mexico, wherein they had braved danger a hundred times, they might be robbed, but never were. They had thought that the moment they set foot on United States soil, in broad daylight, they were safe at last from bandits. No one believed it when a uniformed cop told them sardonically that there were more robberies in San Diego than in the entire
countries
of El Salvador and Guatemala put together.

Two nights later in Spring Canyon, while the media darlings were recreating bandit arrests for a television crew, Dick Snider was out and about with his binoculars. He spotted a young man with the longest hair he'd seen in quite a while, something like an Apache with a bandanna headband. He was carrying a .22-caliber rifle. Dick Snider told Manny Lopez, file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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but by the time they could break free from show biz and call it a wrap, the long-haired bandit had vanished.

The next night they arrested two bandits with daggers. There was a fight, and nobody was fooling around, not these days. Ernie Salgado and Joe Vasquez put some lacerations on a bandit's face during the struggle and Ernie thought he'd done a creditable job. He was very surprised when later that night, while having a few for the road at The Anchor Inn, Manny Lopez had a bit too much scotch and said, "Eeeeeeerr-neeeeee, get over here." Manny would never forget hearing Ernie's wife say that at the party. Then Manny turned a little mean and said, "Gotta run home to mama? Big Marine D.I. How come you're the only one
didn't
shoot the night Joe and Fred got it?"

"Maybe I'm the only one used my head. I didn't shoot the robbers, but I didn't shoot Fred and Joe either."

"Maybe you froze," Manny Lopez said boozily.

"Maybe that's whisky talking," Ernie Salgado said. And he left without finishing the beer.

"You got to have some big
huevos
to look in a gun muzzle," Manny Lopez told the rest.

"And you got to have even bigger ones to draw against it and smoke them
down
." Perhaps it was best unsaid that network news teams are not interested in ball-clanging mythic heros who go around
arresting
bandits like ordinary cops. Ernie Salgado said he was indifferent about blowing a hole through the shotgun-wielding kid when he worked SWAT. And about the Viet Cong he had killed face to face during the Tet offensive. But he also thought that unless it was absolutely necessary, he'd like not to kill people. And his feelings for Manny Lopez were turning into something more than resentment.
Much
more.

It was as if someone were playing a record at the wrong rpm. Things were speeding up. It was happening in the canyons faster than they could arrange for the media to cover it. Their luck was limitless, it seemed. For example, the
judiciales
contacted them about that long-haired bandit with the .22 rifle. It seemed that the
judiciales
had him figured to be a dude who had shot and raped a woman in the canyons two years earlier. He had left her for dead and by the time her brother found her and dragged her body back to Mexican soil, she
was
dead. There was no report of the crime on the U.S. side although it was covered in the Tijuana newspapers.

Manny Lopez said, "Okay, we'll see if we can spot this cat and bust him for you." file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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And since the kid had hair to his ass and a headband like an American "hee-pee," and a .22

rifle, they started calling him "Twenty-two Long."

Just for fun Manny wrote on the chalkboard, TARGET: .22 LONG. And within three days, while they were lollygagging on a hillside in the late afternoon, waiting for sunset and checking out the mobs on the upper soccer field with binoculars, somebody said, "Hey, there's a broad up there squatted down smoking grass."

Then someone else looked through binoculars and said, "Hey, that broad's sure got long hair. She's wearing a blue bandanna around her…"

Fifteen minutes later, Tony Puente, Eddie Cervantes, Joe Vasquez and Carlos Chacon were huffing and puffing over Airport Mesa toward Twenty-two Long, who was working on his third joint and was flying higher than any plane leaving the Tijuana airport that day. It was just that easy. Twenty-two Long turned and saw these panting sweaty pollos standing behind him showing about a hundred teeth under their moustaches, and the pollos said, "
Sabes que? Sabes que
, asshole?"

And Twenty-two Long was busted. Lifted clear off the ground by his waist-length hair. And turned over to the
judiciales
. Of course he confessed, probably after a few bottles of Coke or Bubble-Up or ginger ale. And he led the Mexican authorities to the murder weapon. And because Mexican justice is swift, he was getting ready for prison before Manny Lopez could even figure out how to get the most P.R. mileage out of this one. Nevertheless, it was impressive. You want a guy on a two-year-old homicide? You got it. Give us about
three
days. What else can we do for international relations?