Lines and shadows (14 page)

PARADISE REGAINED

IN MID-JANUARY THE NEWSPAPERS ANNOUNCED THAT BARF had been

disbanded. Dick Snider was disconsolate. Manny Lopez was frustrated. Some of the men had mixed emotions. Felix Zavala said he had no desire to return even if the department should change its mind. He was gone for good.

They were flea/chigger/mosquito-bitten, cactus-stuck, kicked, punched threatened by scorpions, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, men. Some of the newspaper stories were getting dubious as to whether BARF was ever a sensible police experiment to begin with. Letters to the editor complained about the waste of taxpayers' money to protect illegal aliens. There were newspaper stories such as DOUBTFUL TACTICS. And, BORDER FORCE

TERMED EXPERIMENTAL.

But then suddenly, very suddenly, other newspaper stories started appearing: GANG

STABS, ROBS YOUTH AT BORDER. And, MAN ROBBED NEAR BORDER. And,

ILLEGAL ALIEN STABBED AND ROBBED.

Dick Snider was desperately trying to convince his superiors that perhaps banditry had slowed
because
they were effective. Manny Lopez said the word spreads fast in Colonia Libertad and the bad guys had boogied because of BARF's presence. Dick Snider could point clearly to the drop in reported robberies, so wasn't
that
an indication of their effectiveness? They hadn't made any big dramatic bandit arrests, but was that their primary function? Or was it to curtail alien robberies? If the bandit arrests they'd made persuaded the robbers to cool it, they'd done a job. Would it have been better if they'd shot down a dozen bandits in canyon firefights? They'd saved some people. Ask the mother and child at the tunnel.

"Saving people?" Manny Lopez said privately, shaking his head. "
Helping
illegal aliens?

The police administration laughed at Dick Snider behind his back." Manny Lopez puffed on a Santa Fe Corona Grande as he said it, and his eyebrow went sidewinding into the question mark. "When I was director of the San Diego Police Officers Association, I had to work with the brass and the politicians every day to get what cops wanted. I knew how to file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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deal with these fuckers in the real world. You don't talk about
helping
people. You talk about influencing the taxpayers. The voters. You don't get things done
helping
illegal aliens. I talked about the
media
. About making the media love us. I talked about City Hall and how if we could reinstate BARF I'd guarantee we'd get the kind a press relations to make them give anything the department wanted in our next budget request. That's how you accomplish your goals in the
real
world. I played
hardball
with these fuckers." Then the eyebrow of Manny Lopez settled down where it belonged and he said, "Dick Snider? He looks like he'd
never
fit in a business suit. They thought he was just some big old country boy who liked to run around those hills. They didn't understand his fixation with helpless aliens. They never could understand that Dick Snider actually believed that everybody uptown was basically a nice man like himself."

" 'What's he trying to
do
, Manny?' they'd ask me. 'Does that Okie mean what he says?'

They didn't respect him and they didn't like him. We all had our reasons for wanting BARF to start back up again. I had mine, and most of it had to do with ambition… and maybe
something
else. The fact is, I was starting to like it out there in those canyons. There were… strange kinds a payoffs. In your head. We all had our reasons, but only Dick Snider's reasons were…
pure
. You had to love a guy like that. He stayed
pure
till the end." The efforts of Dick Snider and Manny Lopez to reactivate BARF were given some help by the bandits themselves. Very suddenly the newspaper stories told it: BANDITS STAB

AND ROB AT BORDER.

Whether or not the disbanding of BARF was known by the bandits—and it's doubtful that it was—the robberies began in earnest. And they were
violent
. City Hall was besieged by the media, who wanted to know if America's Finest City was just going to concede the border canyons to the cutthroats in perpetuity. It could get uncomfortable for Mayor Pete Wilson, who was, in a few years, going to make a successful run at Washington, D.C., as a United States senator.

In less than three weeks everyone caved in. BARF was reactivated. Manny Lopez was back, but Dick Snider was ordered to keep himself occupied as a uniformed watch commander,
indoors
. Total control of BARF should be left to Manny Lopez, he was told. Dick Snider never complained much. He was content to help and advise in any way he could. He would like to have been out in the canyons, but the fact that BARF was there was a great victory for the alien victims.

Yet he knew it would never be the same. Manny and the others kept him informed, and yet he was also starting to feel like an outsider.

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Ken Kelly was having lots of domestic problems. As he put it: "I was running with this fast bunch a cops who went through a couple shifts a waitresses at our fast-food emporium." He was getting off at 11:00 P.M. and getting home at daybreak. Some of that "fast bunch" were Barfers. And they were
very
fast and the waitresses loved to hear the exaggerated stories of bandit arrests in Deadman's Canyon. Ken Kelly could see that an aura was starting to form around these canyon hardballers with their funky alien rags and wild hair and moustaches and whiskers. God, he wanted to be one of them.

"Be nice to Lopez," they all told him. "When there's an opening we'll talk for you."

"But will he
take
a blond white boy?"

"We'll talk for you," they promised him. "He might." Ken Kelly was a hard-charging cop, and he was glib and articulate, much like Manny Lopez himself. He continued bombarding the sergeant with one-liners but he also wrote a persuasive officer's report stating a host of reasons why he should be a Barfer. Manny was impressed by anyone who, like himself, could wield a pen as well as a sword.

"And then fate sprung the trapdoor and I fell in a vat a drizzly shit and almost drowned!" Ken Kelly wailed at the memory.

He was working night patrol and took a drive down by the U.S. Customs secondary inspection area. It's the place where tourists pay duty on goods brought back from Mexico, or have their cars torn apart if it's suspected that they're carrying contraband. It's the place where trained dogs sniff for drugs, away from the mainstream of traffic. Ken Kelly was only an hour from getting off duty. He had a reserve officer riding with him, and as all regular officers do, he had a tendency to be a tour guide for the citizen cop. He was driving the patrol car south on I-5 by the old border check station when they saw a commotion near the bus circle where Tijuana tour buses and regular city buses drop their passengers. They could see some U.S. Customs inspectors milling around a gathering crowd in the darkness.

It turned out that a man had driven back across the border the wrong way on 1-5. He tried to avoid the customs line and drove northbound on the Mexican side which was open only to southbound traffic. He was not stopped by the Mexican authorities, but the Americans halted him before he could get his car onto the proper side of Interstate 5. He was not drunk. He was not carrying contraband. He just didn't feel like waiting in the customs line. And he was screaming his head off at everybody within earshot. He was, in the words of Ken Kelly, "a real number one prick asshole." file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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So Ken Kelly did what cops generally do to number one prick assholes who have committed a traffic violation they didn't observe. He started looking for a violation he
could
observe. He found that the car's left taillight was out and he began writing him a ticket, for failing the attitude test, as they say.

But this driver's attitude didn't improve. He kept chipping away. He had a
big
mouth. Ken Kelly started getting a tension headache like the one on television. He wondered if he'd
ever
get on the Barf squad. He wondered if he'd ever get away from number one prick assholes like this one. He'd rather be facing bandits in the canyons. He'd
much
rather be facing bandits in the canyons.

The man said he would not sign the traffic citation. Ken Kelly informed him that it was only a promise to appear and not an admission of guilt. The man said he still wouldn't sign.

The man was told that he'd have to be arrested, rather than released on the promise. He signed. Then he wanted to void the signature. Then he relented. Then he didn't want to take his citation copy. Then he changed his mind.

And suddenly his attitude altered miraculously. It was so sudden Ken Kelly couldn't believe it. And shouldn't have. The man took the ticket and began to apologize. He apologized more than profusely. He smiled and told Ken Kelly that he had been out of line and that Ken Kelly was one of the most professional lawmen he'd ever met. Moreover, he put out his hand and told Ken Kelly that he was one of the
nicest
cops he'd ever met. And there are moments like this in every policeman's life, when the adrenaline surge is simply squeezed off. When the tension instantly subsides and you're not sure if you're relieved or disappointed. When all that was wrong in your angry cop's world becomes inexplicably right. In short, when some citizen cons the shit out of you. He gripped Ken Kelly's hand and said, "I mean it. You're the
nicest
police officer I've ever met."

And Ken Kelly just stopped being a cynical cop and reeled back on his heels and generally behaved like a dumb ass
civilian
, saying, "Well, that's okay. Sometimes I do things I regret, so I understand. It's okay and I'd like…"

But the man, continuing to hold the grip, cut him off by leaning closer. And he breathed into Ken Kelly's face and told him something that all policemen have been told. It wasn't the worst thing that was ever said to him by a citizen. It was just that, at this time in his life, he was vulnerable. The man leaned very close into his face and said something like:

"You're so nice that I wonder when you're gonna stop fucking little animals, you slimy lowdown…"

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Suddenly Ken Kelly was doing his deranged Jack Nicholson impression without even knowing it. And he saw the man tumble over backward and land flat on his back. The right side of the man's head was gashed open and bleeding.

Why was everyone looking at him like he ate chicken heads? What
was
this guy yelling about?

Ken Kelly said to his astonished partner, "What's he yelling about? I didn't hit him!" Then to the fallen citizen he said, "I didn't hit you!"

He hit him all right. Ken Kelly's flashlight looked like an eight iron. Later, he sat in the watch commander's office, smoothing his limp blond hair back over his ears, and told his sergeant: "
Obviously
I hit him with my flashlight. I
must
have. But I
swear
I don't remember!

Would I do something like that on purpose in front of a million witnesses that all looked like lawyers with hemorrhoids?
Would
I?"

The sergeant answered dryly, "Why didn't you just take a hammer down to the nearest A.C.L.U. office and lay your cock on the desk?"

Ken Kelly was destined to become a police department celebrity. He was the first San Diego cop to be criminally indicted as a result of a citizen's complaint. It was a bifurcated complaint in that he was also charged by the police department with using excessive force. The mother of Ken Kelly was diagnosed that year as having terminal cancer. He had to hire a lawyer and the case dragged out for months during that terrible period of waiting. He pled no-contest to simple assault and went to a probation interview like any common criminal. He was the first in San Diego to do so dressed in a police uniform. He also had to go to the police credit union and say that he needed desperately to borrow a lot of money: "No, not for a new car, asshole! To keep from wearing stripes!" Manny Lopez could understand that there are moments in a man's life. He had a moment or two he wanted back. He had long since decided that Robbie Hurt could not be on the walking teams because he was black, and that Robbie needed a regular partner on the cover team. It wouldn't hurt if the partner was a white guy who also couldn't be a decoy in the canyons. He could be another
outsider
.

Ken Kelly was told that when there was an opening he would be nominated by Manny Lopez and maybe voted into BARF by the others who knew him. If that happened, the next guy he smacked with a flashlight wouldn't be dragging him into court. Canyon bandits don't make citizen complaints. Of course the next guy might just
shoot
him to death, but Ken Kelly figured that the way his life was going these days the guy would be doing him a favor.

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On their second night back in the canyons, an otherwise uneventful Sunday evening, they began to suspect they had taught the bandits a trick or two. Manny Lopez was walking with the junior varsity that night. Renee Camacho and Carlos Chacon were his partners. Despite uptown orders Dick Snider would not stay in the station and decided to join Robbie Hurt on the cover team.

Just before dark, Dick Snider spotted a man near E-2 Canyon about half a mile east of the port of entry. He was lurking near a large hole in the fence and he looked like a very wrong number. Pretty soon he was joined by four other men, and as darkness fell, Dick Snider contacted Manny Lopez by radio and told them to take a little walk in the direction of the fence.