The Tattooed Soldier (40 page)

He should have seen it coming. If he had been living like a true soldier, the new war wouldn't have caught him by surprise. When he was with the Jaguars in Guatemala, he read and studied the newspapers, understood the political currents. If his mind was still battle-sharp, he would have sensed the explosiveness of the city, the correlation of forces on the street.

Longoria realized that he was caught in the middle of a war without a weapon to protect himself.

Reginalda. For reasons he couldn't explain, her name began to resonate, drowning out the rest of his thoughts. Reginalda. Something might happen to Reginalda. He had to find her.

*   *   *

A black man in a watch cap jumped over the fence surrounding the graffiti-covered lot and headed toward the tunnel entrance, where Frank and Antonio were breaking up pieces of scrap plywood for the fire. The man looked like a monk in his long, hooded jacket, hands in his pockets.

“Hey, look who's back,” Frank called out. “Our leader!”

“Never mind that shit,” the Mayor said. He looked angry but rational, his recent madness gone. “You heard what happened with Rodney. The trial.”

“What trial?”

“Rodney King, fool.”

“Oh. What happened?”

“Motherfucking cops got off, that's what.”

“What?”

“They got off. Every one of those white boys that beat my man Rodney. Scot-free. They're walking the streets now. With smiles on their faces. Not guilty. Every last one of them, not guilty.”

Frank looked stunned. Antonio had heard about this case but had not followed it in his obsession with killing the tattooed soldier. He wished he knew more about it so that he could understand the rage and hurt that seemed to overtake his two black friends. They looked like people who had pinned great hopes on something and suddenly had those hopes shattered.

“What are we gonna do about this, Mayor?” Frank said finally.

“I don't know, but the shit's gonna hit somewhere, I know that. People are going to Parker Center right now. They're gonna have a little demo. I heard it on the radio.”

“Right here in downtown? Shit, let's go.”

In a flash Frank and the Mayor were climbing over the fence and running toward the Civic Center. Left behind to guard the camp, Antonio started the fire and sat alone next to the flames. The afternoon light turned deep orange, the shadows lengthening around the tunnel entrance. Soon it would be dark. Antonio held the unloaded gun in his hand and pulled the trigger, watching the cylinder turn and the hammer fall over and over again.

*   *   *

It was about ten blocks from El Pulgarcito Express to the apartment building on Normandie where Reginalda lived with two roommates. Longoria walked briskly, passing through neighborhoods where everyone except the homeless and the junkies was locked inside, huddled around a television set. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of the spreading conflagration through an open window, the screen flickering from one incendiary image to the next, a pyromaniac's slide show. When no cars passed by and quiet briefly settled in, he could hear the distant sound of sirens. Otherwise there was no sign that the battles gripping the rest of the city would spread here. There were no crowds on the street corners, nothing like what he had seen on the television. He was relieved, because the injury to his arm would make it hard for him to defend himself if he was attacked. In the sky a helicopter headed south, toward what people were already calling the “
quemazones
,” the great burning.

Longoria had been to Reginalda's apartment only twice before in the whole time he had known her. Almost always they talked by phone, meeting elsewhere and spending the night in his room. She would be surprised to find him on her doorstep. He wanted to see her, he wanted to wrap his good arm around her waist. Perhaps his impulse to protect her would inspire her to forgive him his mean silences, his crude remarks.

Reaching her building, he walked through an unlocked steel door into a small alcove, then out a glass door into a courtyard where an empty swimming pool was surrounded by two floors of apartments. Reginalda lived on the second floor.

Her door opened to the ubiquitous sound of the television set and the face of an unknown teenager with smart, penetrating eyes.

“I'm here to see Reginalda,” Longoria said.

“
No se encuentra
,” said the girl, whose voice was familiar; she sometimes answered the phone when he called here.

“Where is she?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Longoria.”

The girl's eyebrows rose in recognition: so this was the famous Longoria. She nodded and took a good look at him, leaving him with the vague sense that she had sized him up and the assessment was less than favorable. For a moment he felt like an evil character in a soap opera, making his entrance to jeers and whistles from the audience.

“Reginalda went out,” she said curtly. “I don't know when she'll be back.”

“Tell her Longoria came to see her,” he said, turning to leave.

“Is that all?” she called out behind him. “Is that all you wanted to say?”

Longoria walked away.

*   *   *

One by one they began to filter back to the camp, long after nightfall. They were returning from four hours of running street battles with the police, a night of broken glass and baton charges. First Farley, the Texan, with blood dripping from a cut to his forearm, an injury suffered when he stepped through the smashed windows of a matrimonial supply store on Broadway. Then Darryl, who silently plopped down on his sleeping bag with a drunken smile. And finally, halfway to dawn, Frank and the Mayor, announcing their return to the tunnel with boisterous laughter.

“Hey, my little Spanish friend, we're back from the war,” Frank said. “Back from the revolution.”

“Victorious days,” the Mayor said. “These are victorious days.”

Both men were grinning, their faces more alive than Antonio had ever seen them.

“The battle of Parker Center,” the Mayor said bombastically. “That's what they'll call it. The historic battle of Parker Center. When the people got theirs.”

“Fucking cholo,” Frank said with a laugh. “Remember that? He nailed that cop. A rock right in the fucking helmet. Wham! Fucking cop was all dizzy and shit.” He imitated a man about to fall over like a slowly spinning top.

“I never thought I'd live to see the day when we'd attack the
L.A. Times
,” the Mayor said. “We besieged the place, that's the word. Besieged. For me that was the highlight. Breaking those motherfucking windows.”

“I hit that window on the third floor,” Frank interjected. “Where the lights were on. Still got that old baseball arm.”

“God, I feel good right now. So good!”

“But we didn't get anything. I saw people taking stuff.”

“Man, this is more than
that
,” the Mayor said, sounding slightly offended. “You know what I'm saying. This is more than just getting things, fool.”

“I know that and you know that. But people are getting things anyway, stereos and shit. I just want my share.”

“Stop with that.”

“We coulda got something if we'd gone down to South-Central like I said. That's where the serious action is.”

“Don't be crazy. That's the last place I'm gonna go on a night like this. Get my sorry self shot at, have the cops beat me. I don't need that shit. I'm too old. That's for the youngsters to do, the new generations.”

They were still talking when Antonio set his head down on his pillow of old shirts and pulled a blanket over himself. He was happy for them, for the unexpected excitement, for their jubilant laughter, so different from their mood earlier, when the anger of the injustice still gripped them. He drifted off to sleep to the rise and fall of their voices, visions of running people and flying rocks slipping into his dreams.

*   *   *

By the time he made it back to his room, Longoria had forgotten about the
quemazones.
Reginalda hadn't been home when he went to see her, long after dark. Her absence was an anomaly, a shock, a slap in the face. In the middle of the evening. There might be a good explanation, but Longoria couldn't think of one. She didn't work at night, churches were not open at night, there was no decent place for an unaccompanied Salvadoran woman to go after dark. Not in this neighborhood. He began to imagine her out with another man, dancing with him at a club, going to his apartment. What else could she be doing? Only a few days since their last argument, and already she was going out at night on her own.

If she was not at work and if she was not with him, she should be at home. This woman had no loyalty.

Sometime after midnight, agitated and unable to sleep, Longoria got up and walked down to the pay phone in the lobby.

On the seventh ring, a sleepy, scratchy voice answered. It was the nosy roommate.

“Is Reginalda there?”

“What?”

“Reginalda.”

“She's not here.”

“She's not there?”

“No.”

Before Longoria could demand to know where she was, the phone clicked dead.

He slammed down the receiver. Now he was certain that she was with someone else. This had turned out to be an evening of surprises, punches to the stomach. The city was burning, and Reginalda had betrayed him. Reginalda whom he met at Taco Bell, the only woman who'd ever kissed him with real passion, the only woman he'd ever danced with. Reginalda could make him dance. She wrapped her arms around him when they danced. He could feel her touch slipping away, passing to another man.

If he saw her, he would want to kill her. At the very least, slap her.

She better have a good explanation for not being home after midnight.

*   *   *

Antonio felt hands on his shoulders and opened his eyes wide to see a freshly shaved face, dried specks of blood on the cheeks. It was José Juan, smelling of soap and shoe polish, the scent tickling Antonio's nose.

“It's nine-thirty in the morning and everyone is asleep.” José Juan sounded amused. “What's wrong? Did you have some kind of party last night?”

Antonio rubbed his eyes and tried to shake himself awake.

“
Vámonos, compadre
,” José Juan said. “I want to show you the house. Our new house. Our new room.”

“You mean in South-Central?”

“Yes, the one I told you about.”

“But what about the riot,
moro
? I heard things are going on down there.”

“No. I was watching the TV this morning at Cristina's house. That was last night. It's calm now. There was a lot of burning, but everything is fine again. Daylight calms people down. The fires stopped this morning. Anyway, that's why I want to go, to see if the house is okay. If Cristina's family is okay. They closed down the factory, so I have the day off. And I already have the money for the rent.” He tapped at his front pocket. “I got paid early. We can move in today if you want. No more sleeping in the cave.”

“Today?”

“I think so. Why not?”

“Maybe I should pack first.”

“We can come back later.”

“I just need one thing.”

“The hotplate?” José Juan joked.

Antonio reached into his pillow of shirts and retrieved his gun and bullets from inside a dirty sock. José Juan watched him load the gun and frowned.

“¿Para qué es eso?”

“You know what it's for.”

From the tunnel they walked uphill to Third Street, leaving the men in the camp fast asleep. As they went by the bulldozed lots, they noticed a new cyclone fence and freshly painted warnings against trespassing. Soon, maybe in a week or so, people would begin to tear down the fence and reinhabit the place.

At the corner of Third and Bixel they caught the bus, which was three-quarters full. Antonio could see no sign of the street battles Frank and the Mayor had described last night. Here on Third Street, at least, there were no burned buildings or broken windows, just the usual crowds of Latinos gathered at the bus benches, glaring at the traffic with impatient eyes. Maybe Frank and the Mayor had been exaggerating, making up stories. He wouldn't put it past them. José Juan tugged at his sleeve to indicate that their stop was coming up.

“You want the Vermont Avenue bus?” the driver asked as they were descending the rubber-coated steps. “South?”

José Juan nodded, holding up his transfer.

“I'm not sure it's running. Because of the riot last night. It might only take you as far as Washington. That was the last I heard on the radio.”

Then the driver turned to make the announcement to the rest of his passengers. “For anybody going to South-Central, I cannot guarantee that you will get there!”

Duly warned, Antonio and José Juan stepped off the bus and crossed the street to the Vermont Avenue stop. There were two giant parking lots at this intersection, asphalt fields serving the customers of two supermarkets, a Vons and a Ralphs. Here again was a picture of ten-in-the-morning weekday normality, shopping carts squeaking across the tarmac, street vendors crowding the adjacent sidewalks.

When the Vermont bus arrived five minutes later, Antonio and José Juan boarded and stood in the center aisle, gripping the steel overhead bar. Jostled against the bodies of strangers, Antonio put his arm over the gun in his pocket so that no one would feel it.
What a stupid thing for me to do, carrying a loaded gun on a bus.
What if it went off and wounded an unsuspecting rider or started a panicked scramble for the doors? He was imagining various ballistic mishaps when the bus screeched to a halt and a commotion spread at the front, passengers expressing outrage in Spanish, Cantonese, English.

“This is bullshit!”

“¿Cómo puede ser?”