Ditch Rider (19 page)

“Usually there are two dogs here,” I said to the Kid.

“Maybe she took one with her.”

We continued south on Fourth to Lupe Circle. Every Lupe we went to represented a different period in the Valley's development. This street looked like the 1970s to me. The houses were medium-sized and low. The trees were large and well established. There were cars parked in the driveways and beside the street. I cruised Lupe slowly until we neared the place where the circle turned back toward Fourth. My headlights landed on a red and white Fast Five Chevy parked in the loop.

“That's Nolo's car,” the Kid said.

I turned my headlights off, backed up and parked about halfway around the circle. We stepped out of the Nissan, shutting the doors behind us very carefully and quietly. We walked in the middle of the road so as not to crunch the gravel on the shoulder and set off all the dogs in the hood. The dogs heard us anyway and began barking one after another, knocking down quiet like dominoes.
“Callensen, perritos,”
whispered the Kid. After they'd had their say the dogs calmed down again. Barking was background music in the Valley anyway. It happened too often to rattle anyone's nerves.

The moon was high and bright enough to illuminate the footpath beside the Main Canal and reflect off the water in the ditch. Up ahead we saw a footbridge with a small waterfall flowing underneath it. The noise of the falling water concealed the sound of our footsteps. Something small and dark scooted across the grating of the bridge and darted into the brush.

“We need to get off the path and walk close to the trees,” the Kid whispered.

“Okay,” I whispered back, but it was tough going once we left the path. The trees were large cottonwoods with rough-textured bark and branches that reached across the ditch. If we'd been squirrels we could have gotten to our destination by leaping from branch to branch. We would have had a bird's-eye view, and we would have gotten there a lot faster. On the ground it was hard to tell what was substance and what was shadow. We had to get through the weeds and brush without making too much noise and around the obstacles and fences without taking too much time. We'd had fifteen minutes by the car clock when we'd parked. The gentle lapping of the ditch was hiding our more subtle sounds, but then I stepped on a twig, which gave a loud
snap.
It set my heart thumping so hard I thought it would wake the closest household a hundred feet away. We waited for a reaction, but all we heard was the ditch water flowing, an owl hooting, a dog howling.

We started up again, trudging through the underbrush. The waning moon was a scimitar in the sky. Lamplight glowed from the windows of the closest house, saying, In here is warmth and safety, out there lies darkness, La Llorona and the creatures of the night. Ahead of us I could see where the ditch
forked
and formed a V. The Kid grabbed my arm and pulled me deeper into the shadows.

“What?” I asked.

“Oye,”
he whispered. Listen.

I didn't hear anything at first but the rippling water. Crying was on my mind, but it was laughter that lifted and separated from the sound of the water. It was a girl's laugh, soft but chilling as ice water dripping on the back of my neck.

A guy answered from the other side of the ditch. The lateral was taking some of the water away, but the action seemed to be taking place on the Main Canal. The guy's voice was rougher than the sound of the water. “Where are you?” he called.

“Over here.” The girl's voice came from behind a cottonwood on our side of the ditch.

“Come across the bridge,” the guy said

“You come here.”

“Are you alone?”

“All alone.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked.

“You can.” Her laughter this time was an enticement. This girl was feeling and enjoying her power.

The guy tried hard to resist. “How do I know you're not packing?” This could be the mating call of the nineties.

“Trust me. Come on over.”

“Prove it.”

“Ooookay.” A small pistol—probably a twenty-two—flew out from behind the girl's tree and flopped into the water like a silver fish.

“I'm comin',” the guy said.

He hadn't said whether he was packing and the girl hadn't asked. The Kid tensed beside me. My own hand gripped my thirty-eight. The guy stepped out of the shadows and onto the footbridge. His feet scraped the grate. His hands gripped the railing. The bridge swayed under his weight. He was a vain and pretty boy, a boy who'd have to prove himself over and over again. His baggy clothes and turned-backward hat gave him a wide and distinctive silhouette. In the moonlight it made him into a target that was nearly impossible to miss.

The girl's laugh turned derisive. “Take your breath away, Nolo,” she said.

“Get down,” I yelled.

The only cover lay beneath Nolo in the ditch, but he didn't take it. He looked into the water. It was only a second, but it was too long. His hand went into his pants reaching for his piece.

“
Get down now,” I screamed.

Semiautomatic fire started and repeated until the clip ran out. The Kid and I pressed ourselves hard into the ground. Bullets kicked up the dirt around us. Nolo jerked inside his baggy clothes, crumpled up and fell to the floor of the bridge. We heard the sound of footsteps running down the path. The Kid jumped the ditch and gave chase. I ran to Nolo and held him in my arms, trying hard to find a pulse or a breath. His blood poured out of him and squirted through the grating, turning the ditch water red.

Patricia stepped out from behind the tree holding her chow on a short leash. She looked at Nolo with the hardest eyes I'd ever seen.
“Muerto,”
she said.

There wasn't any life left in Nolo, and I laid him gently down.

“How did you find us here?” she asked.

I saw her beeper attached to her belt, but my response was, “I can't say.”

“Was it Cheyanne?” She tightened her grip on the leash. If Cheyanne had confided in me, Patricia would consider that a betrayal and a betrayal in this world could end your life.

“No.”

She cut the dog a little slack. “Nolo's the one who beat her, you know. He cut her face. He made her confess. She saw Nolo shoot Juan, and he didn't want her out on the street telling anybody. He was afraid the other Four O's would find out and off him.”

“Why did he kill Juan?”

“It was a dis. Juan laughed at him and told him he was too pretty. Nolo wanted to be a leader and make his name come out.”

“But first Nolo tried to put the blame on Ron Cade?”

“Juan hated Cade, so the Four O's and the police were ready to believe he killed Juan until he got his alibi. When Nolo heard that he made Cheyanne say she did it. It wouldn't matter what happened to her—she's only thirteen years old.”

“Is that what got Alfredo Lobato into the gang? Acting as a witness against Cade?”

“Yeah. Nolo got him in. He was Alfredo's hero. Alfredo would do anything for him. Word got around that Cheyanne had been at the killing. When you saw Ron and Cheyanne together that time he was trying to get her to tell him who'd put the hit out on him.”

“What was she doing at the strip mall that night?” I asked.

“She went to tell Juan to stop trying to rank in her brother. Nolo and Alfredo came up. She saw it all happen and she picked up the bullet, but it wasn't her fault. She was in the wrong place.”

“Ron Cade was the shooter this time?”

“You got it.”

“You shouldn't have gotten involved, Patricia.”

“
Nobody else was doin' nothin'. Nolo had it coming,” she answered.

As Anna had said, the girls were more than willing to play their parts. And as Saia had said, gang justice was swift, brutal and effective. But it might as well be happening on the screen as far as they were concerned. Death and violence meant nothing to them. Patricia stood before me as still and indifferent as a statue.

Cade hadn't gotten far. I heard the sound of fighting and swearing in the brush and ran across the bridge to see who'd come out on top. I had my thirty-eight but I didn't have to use it because the Kid was coming down the moonlit path pushing Ron Cade in front of him. Cade's shirt had been yanked up over his head, pulled behind his back and knotted, exposing his pale and scrawny tattooed chest. The shirt held his hands behind him, but his mouth was free and screaming abuse. “Fucking wetback,” he yelled. “Get your dirty hands off of me.”

“Shut up.” The Kid gave him a shove.

I handed over the thirty-eight. The Kid hated guns, but Cade didn't know that. The Kid sat Cade down on the path and stood over him, aiming the pistol at his head. Cade gave him an evil stare, but he kept his mouth shut. Up close he looked like his pictures, but paler and meaner. His eyes were burning with anger. His mouth was a dark hole.

“He's dead?” The Kid nodded in Nolo's direction.

“Yeah.”

“Where's the girl?”

I turned around, but Patricia and her chow had disappeared into the trees and gone back whatever way they'd come.
“Se fue,”
I said. “She's gone.”

Lights began spinning in the area south of us where Lupe Circle met the ditch. Either Saia had gotten my message or the APD was finally responding to my call or someone had heard the gunshots and called the police. The cops ran down the path, crisscrossing the night with their flashlights.

“Everybody freeze,” one of them yelled.

At this point freezing came easy enough for me. Nolo wasn't going anywhere, and the Kid had Ron Cade locked in place. One cop went to Nolo, two went to the Kid and Cade, the fourth one came over to me. I guess I looked like the oldest and most responsible citizen. My cop asked me what had happened.

“We were out for a walk,” I said. “We saw that guy…”—I pointed to Nolo—“crossing the bridge. Then the one sitting over there on the ground shot him with a semiautomatic. My boyfriend chased the shooter. You'll probably find the murder weapon somewhere near where he brought him down.” The Kid's eyebrows might have been rising at this version of events, but he didn't contradict me.

It was obvious that Cade was a gang member, but the cops weren't treating the Kid with any respect either. He was young. He was Hispanic. On the other hand, so were two of the cops.

The
second cop eyed the Kid suspiciously and barked, “Drop the weapon.” The Kid did as he was told.

“Who does the gun belong to?” the cop asked.

“It's registered to me,” I said.

“Why were you out here with a pistol?” my cop asked.

“Would you take a walk along the ditch at night without one?”

“I wouldn't take a walk on the ditch at night at all,” the cop said. “What were you doing out here?”

“Getting some air.”

The casing from Cade's semiautomatic lay on the path, clearly visible in the glare from the flashlights. Nolo's cop got on his radio and called for an ambulance, although it was too late to do Nolo any good. The Kid and his cop walked back to the spot where Cade had fallen and found the murder weapon lying in the brush.

“Were there any other witnesses?” my cop asked me.

I hesitated briefly, then said, “No.” It was a lawyer's instinct not to give anybody up. There was no way of proving Patricia had been here unless she confessed.

Cade's cop read him his rights. Cade had been through this before and he knew the drill. “I want my lawyer,” he said.

The cops asked the Kid and me to come in and give statements. When we left the scene they were already putting the yellow police tape up.

******

The statements the Kid and I gave at the police station were nearly identical, and they both omitted any mention of Patricia. But when we got home he asked me why I hadn't told the police about her. “She got that boy killed,” he said.

Patricia had been an accessory. There was no doubt about that. “Nolo killed Juan Padilla, assaulted Cheyanne and let her take the rap for him. In Patricia's mind, justice has been served.”

But not in the Kid's mind. “She could do it again.”

“I don't know that two years in the Girls' School would change that,” I said. I'd let my client do time for a crime she hadn't committed. I wasn't sure I had the heart to put another young girl in detention. “It would be hard to prove that she was involved.”

“What about the beeper?”

“I checked it. A bunch of new messages came in and erased the ones she'd received from Cade and Nolo.”

“
You didn't lock them in?”

“I only have one lock-in space. I reserved it for Nolo's message to Cheyanne.”

“Maybe Cade will tell on her.” Obviously the Kid didn't think justice had been served, but he didn't seem to want it bad enough to go back to the police.

“Maybe.” In a way I hoped Cade would tell; it would get my conscience off the hook, because Patricia had killed Nolo just as surely as if she'd pulled the trigger. There was no question of self-defense. The murder had been as cold and calculated as they come, and the motive had been revenge.

“Now you know what happened, can you get Cheyanne out of the D Home?” the Kid asked.

“I don't know. Everything Patricia told me is hearsay. The fact that Cade shot Nolo doesn't prove Nolo killed Juan Padilla. It would help if Alfredo Lobato told the truth or the police came up with a weapon.”

After that the Kid went to bed. I took off my clothes, which were caked stiff with Nolo Serrano's blood, put them in a black plastic bag and dumped it in the garbage pail. I showered and washed my hair, watching Nolo's blood run down the drain. No matter what color they carry, they all bleed red. Then I went to bed, where in spite of—or maybe because of—the events of that night, I slept a deep and dreamless sleep. I'd already had a nightmare with my eyes open wide.