Ditch Rider (20 page)

22

I
N THE MORNING
Saia called me. “I got your message last night,” he said. “I hear that by the time the police arrived the crime had been committed.”

“Did they respond to your call or mine?”

“Mine.”

“What took them so long?” The APD had the capacity to go to all three sites concurrently, but I'd had to do it consecutively.

“I wasn't able to get the message to them immediately.”

“Turned off your pager, had you?”

“For a while.”

“Where was it? Hanging from the bedpost?”

“I was with Jennifer.” He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “I have a police report here that says you and your friend were walking along the Main Canal and happened to witness Ron Cade shooting Nolo Serrano.”

“That's right.”

“You knew there was going to be trouble. Are you going to reveal your source?”

“Let's just say I happened to be eavesdropping on the information highway. The minute I got the information I tried to pass it on to you. It's not my fault you weren't in receiving mode.”

He coughed and cleared his throat again.

“You got Ron Cade. You can't be complaining about that,” I said.

“I'm not. I have a weapon. I've got you and your friend for witnesses. What I'm lacking is motive. Or is the fact that these guys were armed and dangerous gangbangers motive enough?”

“The word I got is that Nolo Serrano killed Juan Padilla, then told his fellow gang members that Cade had been the shooter. It put Cade's life in jeopardy. This shooting was in retaliation.”

“How do you explain that Cade's alibi for the night Padilla was killed turned out to be worthless?”

“He was engaged in some other crime?”

“Always a possibility. Can you prove that Nolo was the shooter in the Padilla case?”

“No, but I did hear that your witness lied to cover for Nolo. He was a Four O wannabe and Nolo promised to get him in. Your witness is now wearing the mourning shirt of a Four O member.”
Fortunately
Saia didn't ask me how I'd gotten that information.

“We'll bring him in for further questioning.”

“Good.”

“You do know that a witness who changes his story lacks credibility.”

So did a witness with a vested interest, which included me. My hope was that Saia would see the wisdom of a plea bargain and not take this case to trial. He wouldn't get everything he wanted, but Cade would do time. “I know.”

“Can you get your client to recant now that Nolo is dead?”

“I'll try.”

“I suppose it was fear of him that put her in the D Home in the first place.”

“It was a determining factor. He was the one who cut her face.”

“Why did Serrano pick her?”

“She was at the scene of the crime. The Four O's were trying to rank in her half brother, Danny Ortega.”

“Leo's son?”

“Right. Cheyanne went to tell Juan Padilla to leave Danny alone and she witnessed a shooting.”

“What caused it? Some sort of intramural rivalry?”

“That and a dis. Nolo wanted to be a leader.”

“Now that the gangs are the size of corporations, fighting inside them has become as big a problem as fighting between them. It's amazing what they'll do over an insult.”

“They don't have a very high opinion of themselves, Anthony. Add hormones, drugs and guns. It's a bad combination. You were wrong about Leo, you know. He's been a good father to Danny.”

“Maybe it's time to get out of the prosecuting business. I was wrong about Serrano, too. I thought that kid had potential.”

“Me, too. He bled out in my arms.”

“That's a tough one. I'll give you a call after we talk to Cade and my witness. See what you can do with your client.”

“Will do.”

He had one last question. “Did you ever really believe she was guilty?”

“I didn't know. I will say that representing her was the hardest thing I've ever done.”

“I can understand that,” Saia said.

******

My client had been in the D Home long enough for it to have lost some charm. Her own home
was
looking better to her and the outside less dangerous now that Nolo Serrano was off the street. True to his word, he had protected her while she was in detention. She wasn't quite ready to recant, however, unless Alfredo Lobato changed his testimony. Until it was proven that Nolo had killed Juan, she considered the Four O's a threat.

But Lobato stuck to his story that Cade had been the shooter. Nolo seemed to have a hold over him from beyond the grave. True to Cade's reputation as a sleaze, he and his lawyer not only implicated Patricia, they tried to blame her. It strained credibility that a hard-core gangbanger had been forced to kill another gangbanger by a fourteen-year-old girl, even one as hard as Patricia. When the police brought her in for questioning, she was accompanied by her parents, not her lawyer. The detectives were tough and thorough. Patricia's parents demanded answers. She broke down and admitted her part in the shooting of Nolo Serrano. She would soon turn fifteen, the age when she could drive and be prosecuted as an adult, but she hadn't crossed that line yet. All Saia could get was two years in the Girls' School. He was inclined to leniency toward Patricia, since her testimony helped him convince Ron Cade to plead out. But Patricia's parents were repelled by their daughter's acts, and they wanted her to do the time. Saia recommended a counselor who had a good record working with teens in trouble and their parents. It offered some hope that Patricia would come out of the Girls' School with a better set of values than when she went in.

******

A few days after the shooting I was standing in the kitchen trying to figure out what to do about dinner. The cupboard was bare, and I was leaning toward Casa de Benavidez. The doorbell rang. I went outside, opened the chevron door and found Danny standing on the other side holding his bike. He had a new hairdo, shaved clean around the sides with a skullcap left on top.

“What do you call that one?” I asked.

“The buzz. My dad did it with his electric razor.”

“Cool,” I said.

“Will my sister go free now that Nolo is dead?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you have a plastic bag I could borrow?”

“You're not planning to put it over somebody's head, are you?”

“Nope. It has to be about this big.” He made motions with his hands about a foot square.

“I'll see what I can do.” I went into the house and came back with a brand-new plastic bag approximately the designated size.

He folded the bag up and put it in his pocket. “Can you come with me?”

“
Okay.”

He pedaled away with his head down and his elbows poking into the street. When he got to the ditch he turned north. I followed him down the footpath, studying the patterns his tires made in the dirt. I watched him cross Montera and Lujan way ahead of me, but when he got to his destination he stopped and waited for me to catch up. He stood next to a valve that controlled the flow of water into a narrow field. The adjacent field was lush and green. Horses and a long-legged colt ran up and down it, churning up the soil. But this field was full of dead weeds and beyond dry. A horse wouldn't leave a nick in this hard ground. It was one of those fields that no longer used its life-giving connection to the ditch.

Sunflowers bobbed along the ditch bank in a wind-driven dance. The Sandias were a remote and distant blue. Behind the unused valve was a wooden backboard. Danny reached into it, parted the weeds and showed me a thirty-eight revolver.

“Whew,” I said. “When did you find it?”

“Last week. I knew it would be near the ditch. After Juan was killed I rode my bike up and down here every day looking for it.”

“Don't blame yourself. I saw the policeman go right by this spot and he didn't find it either.”

“Do you think it's the gun that killed Juan?”

“There's a good chance. Why didn't you tell me sooner?”

“I was afraid. But now…” He took out the plastic bag, folded it over his hand and reached down to pick up the pistol. He knew the evidence procedure; he'd probably seen it often enough on TV.

“Don't do that, Danny,” I said. “It would be better if the police find it in place. Will you stay here and watch it while I call them?”

“Okay,” he said. He'd been a good guardian so far; I felt I could trust him.

But I couldn't help acting like an adult. “Don't touch it,” I warned.

The Kid's shop wasn't far and I ran over there to call Detective Jessup. The Kid could tell just by looking at me that something positive had happened.

“Qué pasa?”
he asked.

“I think Danny found Nolo's gun.”

“Bueno!”
said the Kid.

“Bueno,”
echoed the parrot, picking up on the excitement in the Kid's voice and raising its vocabulary level a notch. The bird liked its new word so much that it repeated it over and over again.

“That's what's been wrong with Mimo,” I said.

“What?”

“There hasn't been enough excitement around here.”

“Bueno,”
said the bird.

Detective
Jessup was excited herself when I told her the news, but since she was a cop, it had to be a controlled excitement.

“What makes you think it's Serrano's gun?” she asked.

“He had to get rid of it somewhere. It's the right weapon in the right place.”

“I'm on my way over,” she said.

The Kid went back to work. I went back to the valve, sat down on the ditch bank and waited with Danny for Jessup to show up.

“Now do you think my sister will go free?” he asked me.

“We'll see. It can be hard to get fingerprints from a gun.”

But this gun had been sheltered. Nolo Serrano's prints were on file and they matched the only print the crime lab was able to get from the gun. With the bullet Cheyanne had turned in, the crime lab had no trouble ascertaining that Nolo Serrano had fired the gun that killed Juan Padilla.

******

The day Cheyanne was released from the D Home I waited outside for her with her family.

“Hey, bro,” she said, running her hand across Danny's skullcap. “Cool do.”

Danny laughed and kicked up some dirt.

“I'm real glad you're coming home,” Sonia said, hugging her daughter.

“Me, too,” Cheyanne replied.

Leo and Cheyanne gave each other a tenuous hug. At least they were trying. “I'm real proud of you guys, you know that?” Leo said. “You proved you can do it.”

“Do what?” asked Danny.

“Beat the gangs,” Leo said.

Cheyanne came over to me and we faced each other. What kind of a relationship would this be now anyway? I wondered. I wasn't her mother. She wouldn't be needing a lawyer anymore. I was too old to be her friend. I extended my hand and she took it, but I didn't know if I'd be seeing her again.

******

A few weeks later the doorbell rang. I couldn't see anyone through the chevron pattern, but I opened the door anyway and found a baby lying on the stoop. It was wrapped in a blanket and tucked inside one of those plastic baby carriers with a handle. I bent over for a closer look and the baby started to cry. I was considering picking it up when Cheyanne laughed, came around the corner of the courtyard, flipped the doll over and turned it off. She was wearing her extra-large Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Her fingernails were painted blue. Her blonde curls bobbed around her head, but they didn't hide all the scars.
There
was a jagged red lightning mark on one side of her face. It didn't destroy her looks, but it gave them another dimension. Tabatoe was with her, and the cat turned and raced down the driveway, heading for my catnip patch.

“How are you doing?” I asked Cheyanne.

“Pretty good.”

“You didn't steal a doll from the school again, did you?”

“No. It was my turn to take it home. It goes back tomorrow. Would you mind if I, um…”

“Got on the computer?”

“Right.”

“Come on in.”

Cheyanne followed me across the courtyard and into the living room. She put the doll on the sofa and sat down at the computer. Before she began searching for fine guys on the Internet, I asked her about Patricia.

“She's in the D Home until she gets sentenced. I talk to her a lot.”

“She's going to end up in the Girls' School, you know.”

“I know. It'll be hard for her in there. Nolo's homegirls are already hassling her. She doesn't care what she looks like anymore. She orders pizza all the time and is getting fat.”

Weight gain was a place girls went to hide out from guys and life and death. “Is she talking to her parents?”

“Yeah, they talk, and her mother goes to see her. Patricia told me that when Nolo died she thought that meant he couldn't do nothin' to hurt us anymore. But now she feels she can't get rid of him.”

“He's hanging from her neck like a rotting animal.”

“How did you know? That's the way I felt when I was in the D Home. I didn't kill Juan Padilla, but I had to act like I did. I tried to pretend what that would be like and I felt I was responsible for him twenty-four-seven. I hated the way his women looked at me in the courtroom.”

“Did you tell Patricia that?”

“Yeah, but she didn't listen. She wanted to make Nolo pay for what he did.”

Payback was one form of justice that had existed for a long, long time. “We all pay, don't we?”

“I know that now.”

I hadn't seen the gray cat for a while, and I asked Cheyanne if she knew what had become of it.