TWO

The Last Juvenile Delinquent

He was bent forward on the uncomfortable bench, holding his head with both hands as if it might spin off and fly away. The air in the busy room smelled of ether and ammonia and something else that he couldn’t quite identify. Maybe just the odor of human fear and distress. L.A. County General Hospital, an immense Deco edifice on its own hill just north of the I-10 in East L.A., was reputedly one of the largest buildings on earth outside the Pentagon, though so badly earthquake-damaged that the framing was already going up for a replacement. Its ER probably handled more knife and gun incidents than any other hospital in the country, so he consoled himself with the expertise and experience of the doctors treating Maeve. The ER waiting room was the size of a bus station but remarkably quiet for a space holding so many wounded and terrified people.

It had been a long time since he had felt so panicky and guilty at the same time, and Kathy, Maeve’s mother, wasn’t helping much, sitting across from him in her own bank of plastic chairs with her arms folded, glaring at him. When he’d called the Harbor Station, Gloria had been out on a fraud case in Wilmington but he knew she’d get the message and be there before long. He was counting on her to run interference with the Hollenbeck Division cops who’d already had a go at him once. First things first, though: he desperately required a visit from an exhausted-looking, blood-spattered ER surgeon resembling George Clooney who would assure him that Maeve was going to be just fine.

“I’m not mad at you, Jack,” Kathy volunteered, none too covincingly.

“Well, I’m mad at myself, but I don’t know why. I don’t know what I could have done differently. I didn’t challenge them, I didn’t dis them.” He knew what she was thinking: Her former husband’s life had become so ragged, so caught up in the fringes of the city that he continually put Maeve in harm’s way without meaning to.

“You sure you didn’t bristle a little? You’ve got a temper.”

“I swear, Kath. I’m not an imbecile. I don’t pick trouble with gangbangers.”

He looked at her trying to get a fix on her thinking. She’d aged, he noticed, but he supposed he had, too. Her typically Irish colleen look had taken on an artificiality now with the too-even red dye in her hair, and her face had gone wrinkly with worry lines the way a freckled complexion can, but she was still a handsome woman.

“You look healthy,” he said.

“You don’t. You look like a schizophrenic on work release.”

They fell silent as an ambulance crew brought somebody moaning and gasping past them on a gurney. It was amazing how calm the EMTs stayed.

“Blood is always thicker than water,” one of the EMTs offered carelessly as they disappeared through swing doors.

“Blood is thicker than water,” Jack Liffey repeated. ¡Viva la raza! ¡Viva la familia! ¡Viva el barrio! He shook his head. He was very tired and confused and couldn’t sort out his thoughts, but “support your homeboys” was never a sentiment that sat well with him. It always seemed to lead to finding an “other” to hate.

Maeve had been in surgery for nearly five hours now. Four hours or so back, as he’d come through the archway into the waiting room, a guard had almost tackled him to relieve him of the Swiss Army knife that had set off a metal detector.

“It’s like some huge open-air zoo,” Kathy said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. I just feel weird here, exposed somehow.” She shrugged. She looked suddenly very drained. And very frightened.

He sighed. He figured here didn’t mean the hospital, but the whole Eastside. He subsided into himself, but still aware of the babble around him and unable to completely ignore the sniffling of a preteen boy two seats away who waited with a friend, his arm cradled and wrapped in a bloody plaid shirt that had the handle of a kitchen knife protruding. Could he have dealt with something like that at the boy’s age?

Then Gloria Ramirez stood there in all her impressive cop calm, and his heart lifted. Before speaking to him, she paused to kneel in front of Kathy for a minute, and the two women held hands and spoke softly. Jack Liffey could see Kathy begin to cry then stop. Gloria embraced her.

Eventually, Gloria came and kissed him on the cheek. She kept her face next to his as she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Tears welled up suddenly, and he fought them back.

“What have they said?” she asked.

“Not a word. In four hours, more.”

“Oh, for Chrissake.” She got up and strode immediately across the busy room, decisively pushing past the double doors. He and Kathy watched her disappear like simpletons expecting a magic trick to occur there. Tragedy makes us all primitives, he thought.

It was about ten minutes before she came back. Again, Gloria went to Kathy first, and he could tell by the way his ex-wife’s whole body lost tension that the news was bearable.

“I’m sure she’s going to live, Jack,” Gloria told him. “I’ve seen enough gunshot wounds to know. If she was going to die, it would have happened. One of the assistant surgeons was taking a breather, and he told me they’re struggling to save her right kidney. She’s lost a few feet of her intestine, so I’m afraid she’ll have to wear an ostomy bag for a few months—which is no picnic for a kid—but she’s tough. Her wound isn’t critical. When they come out, prepare yourself—they won’t be bright and cheery, and they’ll say something like serious or guarded to cover their back. But it’s okay.”

“She can have one of my kidneys right now if it’ll help.”

Gloria shook her head. “It won’t be necessary. You can live a full life on one kidney. And they may still save number two. Can you tell me the cops you talked to?”

He was unable to reply, trying to take in her report on Maeve’s condition, but he dug out the card that the lead cop had given him. His partner, an obvious rookie about nineteen had hung back, listening and learning.

The card read, Sgt. Dean Padilla, LAPD, Anti-Gang Unit.

The gang detail had, until fairly recently, been called CRASH—the rather ludicrous Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums—until Rafael Perez and the Rampart Scandal had disgraced that acronym for all time.

“Padilla’s okay,” she said. “I know him. What did you tell him?”

“You’re sure she’s going to be all right?” It was hard to shift gears. The memory of Maeve unconscious on that blood soaked gurney was all he could think about.

“Trust me, Jack. The naked truth is they don’t waste four hours of painstaking surgery in a public hospital on somebody who’s circling the drain. Sorry, that’s a lousy expression. Can you tell me what you told Padilla?”

He took hold of himself and repeated to her pretty much all of what he had told the cops a few hours earlier in the waiting room. Every word the gangbangers had said to him, as close as he could remember, along with the description of their car and the three letters he’d got off the plate.

“Describe the boy with the gun again, please?”

“It was a revolver. He had a shaved head, late teens, I’d guess. Chunky build, from what I could see. He had a mustache and one of those perfectly formed straight down exclamation mark beards under the lip so it all made a ‘T.’ They were throwing those gang signs with their hands, but it didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe one part of it was three fingers with the second-to-the-little-finger tucked in, and the thumb tucked, too.”

“Could be an M.”

“He had on a black T-shirt as far as I remember. It happened pretty fast.”

“I understand. Don’t blame yourself.”

“I’m trying my best not to. What’s lambiche?”

“Roughly, a kissass. I don’t think it’s anything special. Just a random insult. Now what was it that you didn’t tell Padilla?”

He watched her eyes, now as hard and flat as stones. She was on the job. “You can’t know me that well yet,” he said.

“Yes, I can.”

It took him a while. “Several years ago I was backed into a corner.” He wasn’t sure he should say this, but the relief that Maeve would live had pulled some plug in the side of his chest, and a lot of emotion was rushing out without any exercise of his will. “I killed a guy. He was unarmed. It changes you when it sinks in. It rearranges the whole sense you have of what’s normal for you, who you are, what you’re capable of.”

“So?”

“So, if I see that kid again, I’m not sure I won’t kill him. I’m just telling you, Glor. Don’t go ape on me.”

“You need a dose of Father Greg Boyle.”

“Unconditional love for the gangbangers, sure. He’s famous for it.” Father Greg Boyle—G-Dog to the kids—was the patron saint of the gangbangers and had made it his policy not to write off a single soul for years. His parish had started Homeboy Industries to give them jobs and refused ever to turn them into the police when they came to him in trouble. “I try to appreciate the concept. I’m just telling you how I feel. They shot my baby.”

“I understand, Jack.” She regarded him somberly. “You have any idea how many of our neighbors are living with a loss like that? Kids that died senselessly in a drive-by or just the result of poor aim? Almost every family has one dead cousin or son. In the next few days, they’ll come to comfort you, bring you things like chiles rellenos. Ask them about it.”

“I’d rather strangle the little fuck. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

Luisa Wilson went into the back bedroom and shut the door quietly so no one would hear. She had made it into her own private space, like that wonderful red-tailed hawk’s nest she had watched for years from a taller hill back in the Owens. She had a single mattress with two sheets and an old blanket, her old army surplus B-4 suitcase laid out next to it on the floor as a closet, an upended red plastic crate for a bedside table that held her three romance novels. The only thing in the room not hers was a big poster on the wall that she couldn’t do much about and was finally getting used to. It was from one of Rod Whipple’s movies, Coming Traction, and showed a nude Amber Lynn driving a tractor away from three dungaree-wearing men in hot pursuit of her. Luisa had set one of the last of her Owens rocks in the corner of the room, a small rounded nondescript pebble, by its presence tying this place to the one she had left behind.

It was amazing, she thought, how little you really needed to create a refuge. She’d only been here three days, after crashing at various other unlikely L.A. pads, and yet she felt such an immense sensation of comfort in her nest. Rod didn’t even insist on sex very much, just that first night when he was bored really, and he didn’t ask for anything weird at all. She was coming to like him. He was lively and fun, when he wanted to be, and he seemed to be a protector.

She leaned back, turned on the light, picked up Treasure Chest Ranch and opened it where she’d sheep-eared the page.

Ashton had dark hair that wasn’t always tidy, thanks to his outdoor lifestyle as a rancher and broncrider. He seemed to be gittin’ over his mother’s messy divorce and his father’s new 18-year-old blond trophy wife. His eyes were a piercing blue and steady as sapphire now. He was always active, squirming a little where he stood, and he had a great body—strong shoulders, muscular thighs, tight pecs and abs.

Yum! Teresa thought. Oh, yum!

She was just sinking into it when a knock came at the door. “You busy, Lu?”

She didn’t answer right away, but apparently it wasn’t really a question because Rod came in and sat on the end of the bed, grimacing as he gave out a big theatrical groan. “Oooh. You have no idea, kid, the headaches. The director wants me to shoot second unit, no extra money. The editor complains we don’t cover him. The cameraman says he can’t stand shooting video, it’s too flat and soapy, and he’s never going to do it again. The famous Keith is gonna finally bring the money tomorrow. But, of course, Keith’s not gonna bring the money tomorrow.”

She folded the page back over and set the book down.

“Whatcha reading?” He took a look at the cover, with its impossibly dimpled cowboy clasping a blonde beauty and frowned. “You finish high school? I’ll get you something good to read.”

“I was second in my class.” She didn’t tell him there were only twelve students in senior year.

“That’s great. Why don’t you save up a little money and start in at a JC? Look what it did for me!” He chuckled at his own expense. “But I’m serious, you know. Unless you’re dumb. Are you dumb?”

“I don’t think so.”

“There you go.”

She worked up her courage. “If you went to college, why are you making these kind of movies?”

He laughed. “You mean, why am I only AD on fuck films when I could be directing The Godfather, Part IV? You’re wrong, kid. The system is crap—it’s all killer robots and things blowed up real good. Why not bypass it altogether? We get to be the last rebels in the world. We film people going down on each other and how many Tarantinos out there actually dare do that? Who’s the real indie filmmaker? I’m a cattle prod up the world’s ass, and it’s all a gas. Anyway, the serious feature I made on the cheap right out of college failed so miserably I dare not mention its title lest the movie gods hit me with a lightning bolt. I couldn’t get a distributor. I couldn’t even get a screen at Slamdance.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she understood little of what he’d just said.

“Aaah,” he said dismissively. “It was pretentious crap. I mean it, I love what I do. I’m a juvenile delinquent writ large, and I get to stay this way as long as I want. I even get laid as much as I want.”

She folded the covers down suggestively, though she was still dressed. “Do you want to now?”

He patted her knee. “Lu, I was wrong to jump your bones the other night. In my house, you only have to do what you want to, when you want to, though it did seem like you were into it 100%.”

“It was just nice you didn’t want anything weird,” she said. “It was okay.” The fact that she’d been giving it to boys on demand since she was thirteen, not figuring she had much choice about it, she kept to herself.

“All that acrobatic stuff we shoot is crazy, but it would get pretty dull without it. The girls doing reverse cowgirl, the poor guys having to stand on one leg like storks so the camera can see their weenies going in. Can you imagine middle America watching and trying to copy all that stuff. I bet I’ve personally made a million bucks for the American Chiropractic Association.”

She couldn’t help but smile.

“I mean it, Lu. You’re your own woman here. When the money comes, I’ll pay you, and then you can rent your own pad, do whatever you want.”

“How come it’s Keith who’s got the money?” She didn’t like Keith much. She’d met him only for a minute, and though she couldn’t put a name to it, he had something about him you couldn’t trust, like a guy with a habit of nasty surprises.

Rod shrugged. “I think he’s just the messenger, the golden moneybags for the golden eggs. He claims it’s his money, but I doubt it. You know what I think, I think he’s found a group of doctors and dentists or something like that, and I just don’t ask. He knows somebody. He hands us $25,000 to put together an hour and a quarter video in two days of shooting, and, as far as we need to know, that production money just falls from heaven, even if its far more likely it’s come up from the other place.”

“Why don’t you save up and make movies for yourself?”

“Because it’s not what I do. I don’t have a clue how to promote or sell stuff. There’s a lot of people doing this, three hundred tapes a month, and if you don’t know the ropes it’s just going to sit there on your kitchen table. And, to tell you the truth, it’s just possible I could get my fingers broke in the process. This business used to be dominated by a lot of Italian guys with silver suits, and even though it’s changed a lot these days, what with cheap videotape and all, I still think Keith’s moneybags might have a vowel at the end of his name. Whatever, he’s not somebody to mess with. Truth is, when I get ambitious, maybe I’ll go out on my own and direct, but I’ve only been doing it a year, and I’ve got another iron in the fire, anyway.”

“I think you’re a nice guy.”

“Nah, your standards are just too low. Look around you, everybody in this business is at least a little bit pissed off, a little crazed, everybody comes from some kind of dysfunctional family—moms ran off with a salesman, daddy used to do them, they had to lick the floors clean for the wicked stepsister. This pays the rent for now. It’ll buy me a big Harley and a lot of coke. What you see is what you get, kid.”

“I still think you’re nice.”

Dear Diary,

My protector came to talk to me & he didn’t even ask for sex tonight. I wonder if this is a compliment to my dignified manner or if I look too Indian for him to want me. I was never very popular in school except when boys wanted you-know & the white girls didn’t talk to me very much. I dont believe his real name is Rod but he just laughed when I asked him what his real name is. He could have any of these beautiful blonde women in his movies & he came to talk to me & then he bought me a hamburger at the Jack-in-the-Box. He even asked me to go back to school & said he would get me some books. My heart is filled with the warmth of gratitude for this kindly man. I wish I had someone at home to write a letter to & tell them about him. I live now mainly for the time at the end of the day when I can read about other times & places. Maybe one day I will go somewhere like that.