Lines and shadows (27 page)

"
Sabes que
?"

The last one up the trail was Tony Puente. And he wasn't wearing his glasses and it was dark and he hadn't heard any conversation as yet except that he knew there was a holdup going on. Tony Puente squinted up ahead and could clearly see a man. And he saw that the man was holding something and he squinted a little more. And it looked to Tony Puente just like a stick in the robber's hands. A skinny old
stick
, And this was pretty funny. On a night when the varsity and junior varsity were teamed up, two bandits jumped them file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 137 of 256

with a skinny little old stick! This was
really
funny. Were those bandits ever going to get their asses kicked.

Then Tony Puente heard one bandit say more forcefully "Give us your money!" And he was practically giggling when he yelled out from the rear of the queue: "Don't give them shit, the pricks!"

The others couldn't believe it! They were all starting to sweat buckets looking down the barrel of an M-l carbine and Tony Puente was back there yelling don't give them shit?

Calling them pricks?

Manny Lopez said, "Shut up," to Tony Puente, and he started snapping his fingers, hoping that Tony might pick up on it.

Snap, snap, snap, but it was lost on Tony, who couldn't figure out why Manny hadn't said something like "
Sabes que
, motherfucker? I'm gonna stick that stick right up your ass!" Another problem was that Manny was trying to push the woman down to the ground, because something real bad was going to happen and he wasn't ready to make his move just yet.

And all of a sudden Tony Puente, who was having a hell of a good time, yelled out, "I'm not giving you anything. In fact, I think you're nothing but
putos
. Hey, thief! Fuck your mother!"

And now
all
the Barfers were groaning and sighing, and fidgeting and wanting to shoot Tony Puente because everyone but he could see that goddamn M-l carbine pointed down their throats!

And Manny Lopez was saying through clenched teeth: "Shut up, Tony. Shut
up
, Tony." And everyone except Tony Puente knew that if they lived through this, he sure as hell better start wearing those fucking glasses!

And then Manny managed to get the woman more or less out of the way and he said,

"
Sabes que
?"

When he yelled "
Barf
!" there was the most godawful racket heard yet in those canyons, what with the number of Barfers who were together that night. They fired about thirty rounds at the two bandits. They missed one entirely and thought they'd even missed Clint Eastwood, who turned and started flying toward the border with his poncho trailing like a cape.

file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 138 of 256

Eddie Cervantes started after the guy and the firing was still going on and he turned to see Carlos Chacon shooting at the guy and he figured he was going to suffer the same fate as Joe Castillo and Fred Gil, and he started screaming at Carlos and calling him every kind of name when the bandit with the poncho fell flat on his face. Eddie Cervantes was on top of the guy, worrying about the ploy of knives up the sleeves and also worrying that Carlos was going to blow him off the body.

The bandit didn't put up much of a fight. He was shot through the armpit. His companion escaped in the darkness.

The wounded bandit was taken to the hospital, and the homicide detectives once again had to truck on out to the canyons for yet another officer-involved shooting, and stagger around in the coyote crap and mumble about these Barfers being
way
more trouble than they were worth.

But the alien couple who had almost gotten their heads blown off weren't complaining at all. In fact, the man asked very respectfully if he could inform a superior officer about how kind Manny Lopez and his men had been and how the Barfers had saved them from the bandits.

The night ended as usual with lots of booze being poured to celebrate, except that there were some very bitter comments from Eddie Cervantes to Carlos Chacon about shooting carelessly. Then a few insults started flying back and forth. They were starting to be wary of each other.

Almost every Barfer was having problems at home, what with the riotous drinking going on all night. They got so they'd work like mad trying to get some kind of an arrest in the early part of the evening so they could make it to The Anchor Inn before the bar closed, or if it was too late, get on out to The Wing and unwind a little before going home. It was getting more and more impossible to sleep without a few drinks. And pretty soon on their nights off their wives started to notice that even at home they needed a few. The heaviest drinker was Robbie Hurt. He'd be eager to stop at a bar even if only one other Barfer was willing. He didn't go alone, because of course that might mean he had a problem. But pretty soon his wife, Yolie, would find him zoned out in front of the television with a drink in his hands.

If Yolie complained, he'd get irritable and say, "I'm only doing what all men do. A few drinks won't hurt me."

He was absolutely wrong. A few drinks one night almost killed him. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 139 of 256

As Robbie looked back on those days, he would sigh and say, "Yolie was the epitome of a Mexican wife. She got it from her mother's side. She'd have dinner ready. She was acquiescent. She was agreeable. She'd work ten hours a day at her job and then take care of me. She made it easy to do what I was doing. Too bad she didn't take after her father's side of the family and come on more like a black chick. And kick my ass!" He was twenty-six years old and it was so incredibly easy. The Barfers would just come banging into a bar after they got off duty and the groupies would fight each other to get at these hardballers.

And they'd lead off the conversation with: "Well, ladies, you'll get to read it in tomorrow's papers, but lemme tell you what we did
tonight."
It was
too
easy. And though some of them stuck to beer drinking, Robbie was drinking hard liquor.

And after he'd had a few he had an easier time with the wisecracks. He was of course still working the cover team instead of being able to walk with the others,
because
he was black. Therefore, black jokes increased his frustration and he wasn't laughing anymore. And if a macho type like Eddie Cervantes or Joe Castillo would say in front of a groupie: "Whadda
you
know about it, Robbie?" he would be offended and refuse to talk at all. And he'd drink. They came to call him "Hurt Feelings," and Eddie Cervantes made no attempt to understand, saying, "They never shoulda had anyone but Mexicans on this squad in the first place."

Manny Lopez used to take Robbie aside and stroke him by saying, "Robbie, we
need
you. Don't pay any attention to Eddie. That's the way Mexicans are. They make fun of everybody. We
need
you."

Then, after a time, Manny the manipulator took a new tack. When Robbie would come to him and threaten to quit BARF, Manny would say, "Fuck you, Robbie! Go ahead and quit This Barf squad's gonna make your career but if you wanna quit, do it." Then he'd yell,

"Hey, guys, Robbie just quit again!"

And Robbie Hurt would go off and sulk and think about his police career. He didn't quit, but he
did
drink.

Then he fell madly in love with a lady bartender. It had to be true love, but every time he saw her he had about ten ounces of booze in his belly. She was a white girl, a brunette, a little hefty but nice. She loved music and so did Robbie, so one night he took her to see
The
Wiz
when it was appearing on stage in San Diego.

It was the first time he had had a date with another woman since his marriage. He was suffering what the cops called the Secret Service Syndrome. He was looking all around the theater for someone who might know Yolie. He was a wreck and was trying to work out file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 140 of 256

an alibi instead of watching the show, which had cost him plenty. He couldn't very well tell a spy she was his sister, could he? He didn't have his eyes on the stage for three minutes at a time. He decided never to do that again.

Robbie was feeling so guilty that he ran right out and bought two more tickets to
The Wiz
. The seats were even more expensive. He took Yolie, and when they got to the part where Dorothy and her dog go to Emerald City and the Wiz sings his solo, Robbie said, "Wait till you hear
this
part! This guy can really…"

And he just hung there in mid-sentence with his mouth agape. And sure enough, Yolie said, "How do
you
know?"

"I been reading about it," Robbie said. "It's in all the papers!" It was too complicated, so he decided not to continue this. He wasn't cut out for it. He wasn't sure he was in love with the bartender anyway, except he was absolutely sure of it whenever he was with her, because whenever he was with her he'd sit and guzzle a pint or two, and it made his romance glow with a hard gemlike flame, or whatever. Robbie was driving a 260Z Datsun at that time. It was a hot car, but he wanted a Porsche. The young man had expensive tastes. Once he had to have the car pulled out of the mud near Monument Park when he was there at three o'clock in the morning telling a wideeyed little lollypop all about Gunslinging in No-Man's-Land. Another night when he was leaving his lady bartender, he was caught on a flooded road after a heavy rain and had to say adieu to the Barf squad for nearly two weeks because he almost took down a telephone pole on San Ysidro Boulevard. He woke up in the hospital, where he spent the next ten days, but after the gash on his head healed up and the eye started working again, he was ready for BARF. And more drinking. He was also trying to be as macho as any Mexican cop.

For the first time his wife started criticizing the boozing. It made him cranky. "
You
won't drink with me," he said. "We get so little time together and you won't even sit and talk and have a taste. You make me go
out
to do it. It's not
my
fault." And then, if Yolie would go off and cry or something, Robbie would go banging out the door yelling, "Okay,
you
don't wanna have a good time. I'm going to The Anchor Inn!" And he did the right thing with the insurance money he got from the totaled Datsun. He bought the Porsche 924 he'd always dreamed of. It was
much
faster. Yolie Hurt decided that it was time to have a life of her own. She liked to dance and he didn't. He liked to drink and she didn't. She worked for a company that manufactured contact lenses, and she made some friends there. She wanted him to meet them. He tried a file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 141 of 256

time or two. He'd sit and listen to them and wonder where they were really coming from, these lizard-shit civilians. And what did
they
know about anything?

Robbie Hurt was not just a member of a minority group. He was a minority within a minority within a minority. An outsider within an elite force within a police force. He started to think he had nothing in common with
any
civilians, Yolie included. One night he got home at 4:00 A.M. and said he'd worked late. He'd parked his car under the lights in front of The Anchor Inn, unconsciously hoping she'd see it, since they lived nearby. She had. She accused him. He said, "Well, you caught me. So let's call it a day. I don't want you anymore." Then for good measure, he said what he knew was a bald-faced lie. He said, "Besides, I think
you're
screwing around, you and your girl friends from work. So why shouldn't I?"

She slapped him. He slapped her back, the only time he had ever struck her. She cried for days. He felt like a low-down dog. He had to get out of this before it killed him. He moved out. He moved back. He couldn't understand what was happening inside his head. The move back was halfhearted.

Robbie Hurt was getting macho, very macho. He demanded a swimming pool. She couldn't swim. He
had
to have a swimming pool to be happy. He wanted dogs and got them, a Doberman and a Labrador. It took her two days to clean up after those monsters. She worked ten hours a day at a good job as a lab tech supervisor, but there was never enough money for him. She was losing so much weight she was looking like a half-starved alien. The other wives noticed it at the many Barf parties Robbie threw at their house. Yolie noted that Manny Lopez had to show who was boss even at the parties. If someone started hitting the bottle, Manny would hit it harder. Once he outdrank everyone and spent the night at Robbie's house on the bathroom floor. Manny Lopez would not let himself be bested by his macho cops, not even at a party.

And Yolie listened to the merciless wisecracks these Barfers directed toward each other. She knew that Robbie was getting more sensitive than he'd ever been about ethnic jokes.

"You can't be on a walking team, Robbie. Who'd rob a spade? It's the other way around." Or, "Whaddaya call two brothers in a twelve-room house? Burglars!" But if Robbie was obviously offended by something, the Barfers would just say, "Go pout, Robbie. Christ, you remind me a my wife!"

Yolie recalled those days with Robbie, saying, "I hope I never know anybody as well as I know him. Not as long as I live. It's like having a twin. I knew just how he was going to react to everything."

file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 142 of 256

Of all the Barfers, she liked Big Ugly, Joe Vasquez, the best. She admired the way he was devoted to his wife and lived a quiet life. And since they too were childless, she liked to talk with Joe and his wife, Vilma, about adopting children.