BACK WHEN I worked as a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff and had a little girl to care for, Olivia, I needed extra money. I signed up for special-duty assignments on days off or after shift. I worked events at the Eagles Lodge, weddings, quinceañeras, birthday parties, that sort of thing. The job didn’t require much brainpower, more just a security post so that no one got stupid. That didn’t always work, though, on either side.
The night of the accident, I stood just inside the entrance to the Eagles Lodge, monitoring the people coming and going to a wedding reception. Henry Espinoza sauntered in wearing a black bowler and gray trench coat. He’d tattooed a big double-barreled shotgun on his neck, a symbol of his life’s work that made him easy to recognize. I’d thrown him in jail a few times, chickenshit cases he pled to and got county time. I’d just wanted him off the street to cut down on the murders and mayhem.
He came into the hall, stopped, and gave me the stink eye. I returned it. People attending the wedding walked by. Henry shoved one guy into another guy, his eyes still on me. The fight started among them and quickly grew. A common prison tactic, he wanted a diversion to pull me into the melee in order to shank me in the kidneys or liver.
I took out my mace and sprayed it over the tops of all their heads, tear-gassed the whole mob, as I kept an eye on Henry. I’d arrest him for inciting a riot, put the hurt on him this time.
People screamed and tried to get away from the mace. Half the group, with Henry included, pushed out through the doors to the sidewalk. I followed. Henry saw me and ran west. I chased him down the sidewalk.
Behind me came a woman’s scream. I turned in time to see a man, still rubbing his eyes from the mace, run blindly into the street. A car took him at full speed, forty-five or fifty miles an hour. He thudded hard and flew in the air in a cartwheel, up and over the car. He landed flat on his back twenty feet from where he’d started.
I’d caused him to run out into harm’s way. My fault. I ran to him to render aid. I called for backup and an ambulance. I got to him and didn’t know what more to do to help him. I flagged cars to go around him and took a piece of lumber chalk I kept in my pocket to mark tires at scenes of car accidents and drew an outline around his body.
I felt like hell.
I’d caused this.
I went back to directing traffic, not knowing what else to do. The sergeant arrived first. He parked his car blocking the road in front of the Eagles Lodge. He hurried up to me and said, “What the hell happened, Bruno?”
“It was terrible, Sarge. I maced Henry Espinoza and contaminated this other guy who ran out into traffic. He got hit. He’s bad off.”
“Where is he?”
I turned around. The street lay empty, with only the yellow chalk outline of where his body used to be.
Later that same night I tracked him down, patient John Cruz at St. Francis. Not one broken bone. He’d been so drunk, with all his muscles relaxed, that the impact only gave him soft tissue damage and no broken bones, this according to the doctor.
I came to in the hotel room, thinking about John Cruz and how he flipped over the top of that car and landed on the asphalt twenty feet back. Saw that empty yellow outline of his body again. I didn’t think Bosco was drunk when I flipped him over and out into traffic. He would’ve been tense. I know I would’ve been.
Marie said, “Look, he’s awake.”
An Indian man I’d never seen before probed my cranium. Every muscle in my body ached. Marie and Drago stood at the end of the bed. The doctor put a light in each of my eyes and took it away, checking pupil reaction.
He stood and spoke to Marie with a faint British accent. “Based on my examination, and the symptoms you described, I would say he definitely has a concussion. To what degree, I do not know. I strongly recommend he seek regular medical attention at a hospital where he can receive X-rays.”
“That’s not going to happen, Doc.” My voice croaked from lack of moisture.
“Bruno, shush.”
“Barring that,” the doc said, “I recommend bed rest for the next five days.”
“Doc,” I said, “if nothing’s happened in however many hours since I got hit on the head, doesn’t that count for something? I mean, if it was an intracranial bleed, wouldn’t it have manifested itself by now?” I looked at Marie because I never talked like that. I’d stolen all of that medical-speak from her, the benefits of being married to a physician’s assistant.
“Yes, that is probably true, but there is definitely an injury there, and you cannot injure it further if you are restricted to the bed until you can heal.”
“I feel fine, Doc. All I needed was a couple of hours’ sleep.”
“Bruno,” Marie said, “do you know what time it is?”
I looked out the window to the dark night. I’d rolled into the front of the hotel about six o’clock. “Eight or nine?”
The doc shrugged and didn’t comment.
“Drago?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Drago said, “he got that right, it’s eight fifteen.”
“See?” I said
“Bonehead,” Marie said. “You’ve been asleep for twenty-four hours. That’s why I had Drago bring in the doctor.”
“Twenty-four hours?” I tried to jump up. The doc restrained me.
Marie pointed a loaded finger, angry now. “Bruno, you stay in bed or I’ll have Drago tie you down. And you know I’ll do it.”
I eased back onto the pillow and nodded. I didn’t know if I liked Marie having a bulldog like Drago available to do her bidding.
“He’s my friend, too. I don’t think he’d do that, would you, Drago?”
“Sorry, bud.”
“So much for sticking together, huh?”
He shrugged and smiled.
Marie escorted the doc to the hotel door, where they spoke in low tones.
“Drago,” I whispered, “gimme your cell.”
He reached into his basketball shorts, pulled out his phone, and tossed it.
I dialed Sonja’s number. She answered on the first ring and didn’t say anything.
I said, “It’s me. How’s Bosco?”
“Same, thanks for askin’. Where’s our money? How come you didn’t turn it over to the fed? That was the deal and you screwed it up. He’s already called and he’s mad as hell.” She sounded tired and angry.
“You know John Ahern, aka Jumbo?”
“Yeah, he’s a little pinhead.”
“But a dangerous pinhead.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” she said.
“He was the one who showed up in place of the fed.”
“That little bastard. Why’s he got his beak dipped in this?”
In the background, Bobby Ray said, “What is it?”
She put her hand over the phone, but I still heard her brief Bobby Ray.
“Sonja?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Do you know the name of the ATF agent you were dealing with?”
“The guy who called and gave us the deal for the fifty large said his name was John McCarty.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Whatta ya mean?”
“Jumbo fed me that name, too.” I almost told her about Larry Gerber, but information is power and I needed to keep some on my side of the board.
“That little bastard.” She put her hand over the phone and told Bobby Ray.
Bobby Ray took the phone from her. “Thanks, Bruno, for handling this for us. I don’t know what’s going on with Jumbo in the mix, but thanks for not givin’ that money away.”
“I got it here.”
“I figured. What took you so long to call us? For a minute there I thought you might’ve skipped with our dough.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I had a problem I had to deal with.”
They hadn’t found out about my involvement with the incident on the freeway, not yet anyway.
“Thanks. The doctor gives him a fifty-fifty chance of comin’ out of it. That’s better than last night when they told us to get his affairs in order. What a fucked-up way to tell someone their son is going to die.”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t know what else to say. “Yeah”? What kind of reply was that? The guilt came on again and started to smother me. I again thought about John Cruz and how he just got up and walked away. That helped a little, helped me to imagine that Bosco could still pull through, wake up, and just climb out of that hospital bed. Yeah, and pigs could fly.
“Hey,” Bobby Ray said, “how do you think we should handle this other problem with the ATF? I still wanna go forward with it. Bosco’s going to come out of it, I know he is, and I don’t want him going to a hospital ward in a prison.”
“You got your hands full there at the hospital. Let me make a call, then I’ll get back to you.”
“Call who?”
“I’m not gonna say over the phone, but there is someone I can call who owes me a favor.”
Dan Chulack, Senior Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, no longer owed me. On our last phone call, he’d made it clear we were even and not to call him again, that if we ever met again, he’d be forced to arrest me for the outstanding federal warrants.
“Thanks, buddy,” Bobby Ray said.
“No problem. I’ll hang onto the money until I see you next.”
“I’m not worried about the money, I trust you. Get back to me as soon as you can. I really need to get this thing resolved. And thanks again.”
He wouldn’t thank me once the word got out about what happened out on that freeway. He wouldn’t call me buddy anymore.
Marie came back into the room. “Give me that phone. You heard the doctor.”
The phone in my hand rang. I held up one finger, begging for just one more minute. Bobby Ray forgot to tell me something and had just called back.
I answered it. “Yeah, Bobby?”
“Bruno, this is Dan Chulack, we need to talk.”