THE POMONA FREEWAY eastbound at two thirty in the afternoon started to bind up with go-home-from-work traffic. In another fifteen minutes, as folks got off work, the clumps of cars would turn into long moving bodies, and fifteen minutes after that, it would shift to stop-and-go. Another fifteen minutes after that, it would be more stop and a lot less go.
Without any distractions—like a car crash—I could make it to Chino in forty minutes and get back to LA in thirty. The westbound traffic for the return trip would be opposite, everyone trying to get out of LA, not too many trying to get in. I drove with the window down, the warm wind on my arm and blowing in my face.
I noticed the air the most, the difference between the humid, thick air in Costa Rica compared to the dry, light, and smoggy air of So Cal. Too bad I liked the So Cal air better, even with its smog.
I left Drago in the lobby of the hotel, waiting on his security people. He said that he’d have some guns delivered. I asked him to take one up and give it to Marie and reiterate to her not to open the door for anyone.
The phone call to Sonja turned out just as cryptic as the last one with her coded message about Tuesday and the blue Chevy. This conversation didn’t start out with any, “Hello, how are ya?” Just, “Meet at the barbeque place on Pipeline east of Central in Chino.”
“When?”
“Thirty minutes.”
Click.
She’d hung up. I couldn’t blame her. We’d not left on the greatest of terms. That last time, we’d hardly spoken, the night I laid my badge and gun on Rodriquez’ desk, the night I’d watched the paramedics load Sonja on a gurney and into an ambulance.
And then nine months after that she’d just dropped Olivia off. She walked up the stairs to my apartment and knocked on the door. When I answered, she tried to set her in my arms without a word, not so much as a hello. I didn’t even know she’d been pregnant. How could I have known? She never told me. My entire life shifted that day, tilted out of control. I had a child, a baby girl. I knew absolutely nothing about raising a baby, let alone a baby girl.
Sonja said, “I can’t handle a girl. A girl, of all things, can you believe it?” I thought that’s what she said, anyway. I’d slipped into a kinda groggy shock with that warm, squirming little child in my arms. Her tiny hand reached up and gripped my nose. Sonja simply turned and walked away, still talking, words that drifted into the wind.
I found out later, from a friend who said it wasn’t that uncommon, that Sonja probably had a bad case of postpartum depression. From my experience working the streets, with postpartum depression, sometimes it was better for the child’s safety if the mother and child were separated. Olivia needed to be with her mother. I only took the child because I thought it would be for a short stint, until Sonja felt better. Sonja would one day suddenly snap out of it and say, “What the hell did I do? I gave up my daughter.” Then she’d come running back and snatch Olivia away just as abruptly as she’d dropped her off.
Only that never happened.
With each passing day that Sonja didn’t show, I lost a little more of what I had in my heart for her, until that day I finally hit the peak of my emotions. By that time I didn’t want Sonja to show up anymore to take away my daughter. In fact, after six months, I’d have fought her over custody. That never happened either.
Seventeen years after I received Olivia, I again contacted Sonja and told her that she was now the proud grandmother of twins. Olivia, only a child herself, gave birth to little Albert and Alonzo. On the phone, Sonja sounded indifferent, but said she’d buy some gifts and come right over. She never showed. It saddened me that a grandmother wouldn’t want to meet her grandchildren. I never told Olivia about it.
Out of nowhere, three Harley Davidson motorcycles zoomed up on me, growing large in my rearview. Outlaws for sure, all the chrome, the ape-hanger handlebars, the rumble of their engines, the blue denim of their cuts. They yanked me out of my nostalgic funk.
I didn’t have a gun. I should’ve gotten a gun from Drago, first and foremost. What was I thinking?
How had they gotten on to me so quickly?
Okay, okay, I still had the car. I could use the car against them. Motorcycles didn’t do so well against cars, especially with someone who knew how to use one as a weapon. In my days on the Violent Crimes Team, I ran over three suspects, three different times, suspects who’d chosen to fight rather than go to prison for the rest of their morally corrupt lives.
All three bikes gunned their engines and came around on the driver’s side. I watched their hands in the side mirror for weapons as they made the move. Their hands never left the handlebars. I braced for impact, ready to jerk the wheel to the left, shove my car right into them. What a dumb maneuver, to come up alongside me like that.
In the last second, I caught a glimpse of their colors, the words embroidered on their cuts: Visigoths.
Visigoths, and not The Sons of Satan.
As far back as I could remember, the Goths had warred with The Sons in a blood feud, the original reason for it long forgotten.
All three bikes continued to accelerate and changed lanes until they rode in the lane right in front of me. Only four more miles until Central Avenue where I needed to get off. I kept it cool. My pulse calmed. No cops, no Sons, I didn’t have any problems.
Coming from behind, two cars caught up to us and rode side by side. Teenagers not paying attention—a little yellow VW and a brown Honda Civic. The passenger in the Honda, a girl, smiled and tried to yell an address or phone number or email address to the blond girl in the VW Bug. Both had their windows down, the wind blowing their hair, their skin tanned and smooth, eyes clear and bright, a vibrant display of youth in its most innocent form.
The Honda swerved—unintentionally—into the other girl’s lane. The girl in the yellow Bug overcompensated to keep from smacking into the Honda, and in doing so, her tires crossed into the Goths’ lane. All three Goths swerved. They yelled and shot the young girl the finger.
The expression of the girl in the yellow Bug shifted from a smile to pure panic. The Goths slowed in front of me, causing me to slow. They came across and got behind the Bug.
I didn’t like this at all. The older Goth, with long, dirty brown hair flowing from under his helmet, came up beside the Bug and kicked in the driver’s door, denting it. The older Goth recoiled from the strike, swerved, and almost went down.
What a fool.
The girl screamed, now frantic to get away. The next Goth came up beside her, pulled a ball-peen hammer from a loop on his belt, and whacked the top of her car again and again, the metal-on-metal thunk easily heard over the loud roar of the bikes. He eased back and broke out her side back window. Safety glass sprayed everywhere.
The girl screamed again, her eyes wide in terror.
I put my foot on the accelerator to move over and ram them just as a siren from behind us lit off with a squeal.
I checked the rearview. A black-and-white California Highway Patrol car—red and blue lights flashing—coming up fast. I’d been so involved in what transpired right beside and in front of me that I’d not kept up my constant vigil for law enforcement. In this case, it worked out. The patrolman didn’t want any part of me. He’d seen what the Goths did to the VW and the terror they inflicted, the threat they caused to the safety of the drivers on the freeway.
I backed off on the speed.
The Goths looked back. They nodded and yelled something to each other as the CHP got in behind them. In one large group, the CHP and three motorcycles moved across the two lanes over to the shoulder.
I didn’t intend to follow until I saw the driver, the CHP officer, a petite woman with a blond pageboy hair cut. I fell in behind and pulled to the shoulder, stayed several car lengths back, my intent being to remain until her backup arrived.
But the Goths figured the same thing about the back-up.
The bikes stopped. The kickstands slammed down.
Things started to happen fast, too fast to think twice about leaving.