Rag and Bone (16 page)

“I thought you told her you’d been with men,” I said.

“I did. She was cool about it, you know. I think it even turned her on a little, but I guess she thought I was done with all that.” He put the cup down on the table with a clatter. “I let her think that ’cause I thought it was over, too. Until I met you.”

“You made it sound like things were winding down between you two.”

“I thought they were,” he said. “How was I supposed to know what she was thinking? She turned me down when I proposed and now she’s screaming at me that she thought we were going to get married.”

“Maybe she’s been working on a different calendar than you.”

“Duh,” he said. He swallowed a couple of aspirin. “She didn’t have to call me names and say that thing about AIDS.”

“You caught her off guard,” I said. “People react out of their gut when that happens.”

“Don’t defend her. She was a bitch.” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t mean that. You’re right. I took her by surprise. Man, if she took it this hard, I don’t want to think what my family’s gonna do.”

“They also think being with guys was a phase for you?”

“Yeah, like drinking. Just me being my bad self. You shoulda seen my mom’s face when she met Deanna. I bet she spent the next month on her knees doing rosaries to thank
la Virgen
that her son wasn’t a
joto
anymore.”

“Let’s talk about the drinking,” I said. “How long has it been?”

“I went on a bender when I broke up with Tom,” he said. “Almost two years ago. That was it, otherwise I’ve been sober, but I haven’t gone to meetings in a long time.”

“So are you at the beginning or the end of a binge?” I asked, and then, because I heard it with his ears and it sounded harsh, added, “Look, I’m not being holier than thou, believe me. It took me four years of drinking and stopping and three rehabs to finally get sober, and then five years into it, I went out again. I can help you with this.”

He held up a hand. “No, I don’t want you to help me, because then what we have becomes about drinking.” He gulped some water. “I know the drill. Go back to AA, get a sponsor, work the steps. I don’t need you for that. This won’t happen again. I promise.”

“We never mean to get drunk again, but sometimes it happens.”

“It won’t.”

“Let me finish,” I said. “All I meant was that you don’t have to make that promise to me. The possibility that one of us could go out is going to be there. I can accept that as long as this slip ends tonight.”

“It’s over.”

“I’m beat. How are you doing?”

He threw his arms around me. “Can I stay here?”

“I’m not letting you drive when I can still smell old Mexico on your breath. The cops pull you over, you’d blow an oh-eight, easy.”

He was sobbing and laughing. “You crack me up, Henry.”

“Oh, baby.” I kissed the top of his head. “Let’s go to bed.”

John was asleep as his head hit the pillow, snoring peaceably while his hand curled around mine beneath the sheets. There would be a lot more to talk about in the days to come, but for now I was happy he was here. Just as I was drifting off, the phone rang. It was now just before three. This could only be bad news. I reached over John for the phone and said quietly, “Hello.”

There was silence on the other end and then I heard a small, soft, “Uncle Henry?”

I sat up. “Angel? Where are you? Is everything all right?”

“Uncle Henry,” he whispered. “I think my mom killed my dad.”

J
OHN MUMBLED AND STIRRED.
I quietly rolled out of bed and went out into the hall. The loudness of the traffic noises at the other end of the line indicated he was calling from a phone booth.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at a g-g-gas station,” he said, stuttering with fear. “The Ar-Arco at the c-c-corner of Hollywood and La Ba—La Ba—”

“La Brea. That’s close by,” I said. “Stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Hurry,” he said.

I put the phone down and went back into the bedroom. John was still asleep, his snoring had subsided into a low rumble. I dressed quickly and stood over the bed for a second. His face was peaceful, the wide chest calmly rising and falling, one big arm was thrown behind his head, the other at his side, the fingers still half-opened where they had been wrapped with mine. He had a hero’s physiognomy that would not have been out of place as an illustration in
Tales from Homer
and if I had awakened him, he would have insisted on coming with me. The temptation was great, but in the end I let him sleep. While I was no hero, I didn’t run from trouble, and I had heard big trouble in Angel’s cry for help. I kissed the crown of John’s head and left.

Angel was standing beside the phone booth in a bright cone of light cast by the street lamp above him. I pulled into the parking space beside the gas station and got out. He was wearing the same Giants T-shirt that he had been wearing the first night he came to my house. The night was cool and damp, and he was shivering. He had on a game face, a small boy trying to project big, but when he saw me, he deflated, and I think he would have run into my arms except for that caution that rarely seemed to leave his dark eyes. Instead, he walked slowly toward me. Across La Brea Boulevard was a dumpy motel called, predictably, the Hollywood Inn that advertised X-rated cable and AARP special rates. Two shrieking black-and-white patrol cars pulled into its lot, followed by an ambulance. Angel glanced fearfully over his shoulder. I knew where I would find his mother.

I removed my sweatshirt. “Put this on,” I said. He pulled it over his head and it came to his knees. I knelt down and rolled up the sleeves until his grubby fingers were visible. “Is your mother in the motel?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I went to McDonald’s and when I came back, my dad was dead and my mom had a gun…”

He started sobbing. I pulled him close and he threw his arms around my neck and shook. The sour musk of fear emanated from deep within his body I remembered that smell; it had clung to me for most of my childhood. I stroked his greasy hair and let him cry himself calm.

“Here,
m’ijo,
blow your nose,” I said, giving him my handkerchief. He blew with a loud, damp noise. “I’m going over to the motel to take a look. I want you to wait in my car.” There was a snack shop in the gas station. “Are you hungry? Do you want a soda?”

“A Coke,” he hiccuped.

“Okay, let’s get you a Coke.”

A moment later he was sitting in my car with a Coke and a Mars Bar. I stooped so that our faces were level.

“As soon as I leave, roll up the windows and lock the doors and sit tight. I’ll be back in a couple minutes. H’okay?”

He gripped the candy bar as it were a lifeline and stuttered, “H’okay.”

“Remember you told me you know all the names of the presidents?”

He whispered. “Yeah.”

“If you start to get nervous, just say them to yourself until I get back.”

The Hollywood Inn was at the base of a rocky, eroded hill. Above were the gates of a hillside community where a star or two may have once lived. On the strength of this proximity, the motel’s neon sign boasted it was “The Gateway to the Stars.” The two-story building was in the throwaway style of a thousand other such places in the city. The first floor opened directly onto the parking lot, which the police had cordoned off. The second floor was set back on a breezeway where, at the moment, a few onlookers roused from their sleep stood at the railing watching the scene unfolding beneath them. I went up the stairs holding my keys in my hand, as if going to my room, and joined the clump of spectators in time to see my niece carried out of her room on a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance. Even in that glimpse I saw blood on her blouse, the pounding her face had taken, and I had to look away, turning to the floridly sunburned man beside me.

“Do you know what happened?”

“Can’t say, mate,” he replied, the accent Australian. “Me and the wife were sound asleep when I heard gunfire. I got up and called the police. We didn’t leave the room until we heard the sirens in the parking lot.”

“Gunfire? You mean there was shooting back and forth?”

“Well, there was several shots,” he said. “Didn’t you hear ’em?”

“I was out,” I said. “I’m just getting in.”

He cast a suspicious glance at me. “Well, ’s over now. G’night.”

He trundled back into his room. The ambulance drove off without its siren, which I took to mean that as bad as Vicky’s injuries appeared, they weren’t mortal. A few minutes later, the medical examiner’s van arrived to remove the body of the other person who had been in the room. Angel’s father, Pete. I knew that would take awhile. I didn’t wait.

Angel was slouched down in the front seat, his Coke unopened, the candy bar unwrapped, muttering beneath his breath, “Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter—” He was practically sweating terror and I wished for one second that I could get into the car and just start driving until we reached a place where he would never be afraid of anything again. Instead, I got into the car, started it up, pulled out of the gas station and drove home.

John was sitting in the living room in his boxers drinking coffee when we came in. Angel took one look at him and ran toward him, crying. John scooped up the sobbing boy and murmured,
“M’ijo,
what’s wrong?” while casting a look of confusion and concern over his head at me.

“It looks like his mother may have shot his father.”

John stood up, holding the boy against him like an infant. “How did you find out?”

“Angel called me from a gas station across the street from where it happened. I went and picked him up.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“There was no time.”

He rocked the boy.
“Pobrecito.”

“I’ve got to make some calls from my office. Can you watch Angel?”

“Of course,” he said. “Angelito, I’m going to make you some hot milk and honey, like my mom used to make me, okay?”

The boy sobbed assent. I left them to it.

An hour and a half of calls yielded the following information: Vicky had been arrested for murder and transported to County General for medical treatment. After being treated, she would be taken to LAPD’s Hollywood station for booking and arraignment at the nearby courthouse. None of the various cops I talked to could or would tell me, however, the nature or extent of her injuries, how long she would be held at County General or when she might be brought to Hollywood for booking. I worked my way up the chain of command at the station, telling each cop that I was her lawyer, and I was to be informed the moment she arrived at the station. I also warned each of them not to question her, unless I was present. This last gambit was greeted with the silent contempt it deserved. Vicky would be grilled as soon as it appeared she could answer questions. If she waived her right to counsel, it would make no difference that I had told the cops not to question her because the right had to be invoked by her, not me. Even if she asked for an attorney, they would continue to interrogate her to obtain what were called “statements outside
Miranda.”
The Supreme Court had held that, while statements made in violation of a suspect’s
Miranda
rights could not be introduced by the prosecution to prove he committed the crime, if the defendant testified and denied having done so, his illegally obtained statements could be used to impeach him. In light of this ruling, cops routinely ignored a defendant’s request for a lawyer and continued to attempt to extract incriminating statements. I knew the cops would lay into Vicky because this looked like the kind of homicide—a spousal killing committed in a moment of passion—where the defendant was likely to confess, and she was the kind of suspect—female, minimal criminal record, confused, injured and terrified—most likely to roll. I could only hope her injuries were severe enough that she’d been given painkillers that would either knock her out or so incapacitate her that even the cops would realize any statement she made would be worthless.

When I came out of my office, it was morning. I found John and Angel in my bedroom asleep, the boy curled up against the man. Almost as soon as I stepped into the room, John opened his eyes and said in a low voice, “Did you find her?”

“Sort of,” I said, sitting at the foot of the bed. “Her husband beat her up so bad the cops took her to the hospital. She’s somewhere between there and the jail.”

John gently extricated himself from Angel, who looked to be in a dead slumber. “She kill him because he was beating on her?”

“That’s how it looks. Did Angel tell you anything?”

“He said he went out for some food, and when he came back his dad was dead and his mom was holding the gun.”

“Nothing about what led up to it?”

“I didn’t ask him, Henry. He was all shook up.” He looked at me. “Man, you look beat. First me dumping on you, then this. You need some sleep yourself.”

“I’m going back to the motel,” I said. “Can you stay here or do you have to get to work?”

He smiled. “I’m the boss. I show up when I show up.” The smile faded. “Why are you going back? Won’t the cops be there?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “It’s a simple case from their point of view. They got the victim, the suspect and the murder weapon. Whatever other evidence there was in the room would be minimal. I’m sure they’re gone by now.”

“Then what are you gonna find?”

“I don’t know that I’m going to find anything,” I said, “but I want to take a look while the scene’s still fresh.” I stood up. “I won’t be long.”

He got out of bed and drew the covers over Angel.

“He’s so small,” I said. “Even for his age. You can’t see when he’s awake because he seems older than he is, but you can really see it now.” I looked at John. “I wanted to get him away from his parents, but not like this.”

“You call your sister?”

“Elena. Man, I hadn’t thought about her.”

John put his arm around me. “You can’t think of everything. I can’t believe how cool you’ve been. I’d be running around like a chicken with its head cut off if it was me.”

“This is my job,” I replied. “I’ll have to call Elena later. It’s just as well, I’ll know more then. What a mess,” I said wearily. “Well, on the bright side, it’s lucky you showed up last night.”