The headlining story in the morning’s paper says SWAT’s Lieutenant Chet Dalton has been placed on administrative leave. An inquest into the shooting deaths of Sergeant Rico Cassidy and the bank robber is pending. The robber has not yet been identified. Another article reports the Devil Canyon fire is marauding south into the North End. Wildwood Park is in flames. The golf course, too. The police have ordered the evacuation of upper Valencia Avenue.
□ □ □
I stow the stolen bank cash in a food-stained Vons grocery bag. I put the bag by the door. Okay. I’m almost ready to hit the street. Maybe I should take the .25 with me. Just in case of an emergency. There are pros and cons. If I bring it, I might shoot someone. If I don’t, somebody might shoot me. Debating the issue with myself will take all day. I forget about it when the telephone jingles, portending bad juju.
I lift the receiver in fear. “Yeah?”
A female voice with a glossy Central American accent unleashes a blitzkrieg of consonants and vowels: “Pastor? Alonzo needs to talk to you. He’s no good. You be nice to him.”
It’s Alonzo’s wife, a woman from Nicaragua named Josefa. I complain: “I can’t talk now.” Nonetheless, the phone changes hands. Like a malfunctioning satellite, Alonzo flames into my orbit: “What’s up?”
I nearly shot myself in the head last night. I am violating my parole terms. Self-doubt is my middle name. I tell him, “Not a whole lot. I was just going to work.”
“Fuck that job. Remember you ain’t getting any younger.”
“Talking to you is always so uplifting.”
“Don’t mention it. Hey, you know Sugar Child?”
“I do. I mean, kind of. I’d like to know her better.”
“I met her at a party the other night. She’s totally rad.”
“A party? I’m envious. Where at?”
“This crib on Wabash. SWAT came and shut it down. I don’t know what happened to Sugar Child.”
“Were you drinking?”
“Yeah, I was. I got shit-faced. What’s it to you?”
“Nothing, nothing. I was just asking.”
“That Sugar Child is a trip.”
“How is she? Did she seem okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s been having problems.”
“Well, I was drunk. I can’t say how she was doing.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, give me a medal. Listen, I was thinking about your dad. What’s up with him?”
“He drove his car off the mountain a few weeks ago.”
“And your mom?”
“She’s in Patton again.”
“That’s fucked.”
We submerge into a protracted silence. My father is newly buried in the cemetery at Highland and Waterman. I’m certain his first night there was unsettling—the place will take some getting used to. And dear old Mom wrote me a letter just before her return to Patton. She said I was a disappointment. A failure. And I would always remain one.
“You mind if we talk about something else, Alonzo?”
“Sure thing. Rudy said he ran into you.”
“More like shrapnel hit me.”
“Don’t listen to him. He keeps talking about going to Los Angeles. You want my verdict? Rudy has mental health problems. He’s stressing.”
“He’s stressing on you.”
“You think? Anyway, here’s the reason I’m calling. I ain’t doing well. I want a stem-cell operation to get rid of the cancer. My doctor said I had to find someone who’s compatible with me. For a tissue donation or whatever. I asked my sister. She was the best candidate. So she gets a blood test. We find out she has hep C. I’m back to square one.”
“What about Rudy?”
“He’s got it, too.”
“Jesus. What’re you gonna do?”
Alonzo’s uneven breathing is overdubbed with a response so slurred it might as well be a message in a bottle that’s crossed an ocean to reach my ears. “This is my plan. The cancer is getting too aggressive. I have to go back for another round of chemo. But I’ve already done that. The truth is, if I can just have ninety days without doctors or pain, that’s all I need.”
“And afterwards?”
“I’ll check out. Leave this crap behind.”
“That’s it?”
“What? You need a menu? I’m tired. Isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t like the sound of it.”
“Whose life is it? Yours or mine?”
“Let me guess. Yours.”
“Exactly. So shut your mouth.”
“I don’t know about this.”
“What’s there to know? Please don’t be a pendejo. Can you do that for me?”
“I can try.”
“And there’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you there.”
“Where?”
“At my bedside when I go.”
Alonzo is nominating me to be his designated driver—to row him across the River Styx. Though he’ll never cop to it—he wants me to die with him. It’s understandable. Alonzo dislikes being alone. He keeps talking: “Campus Crusade used to flood my high school with their propaganda. You couldn’t walk down the hallways, there were blizzards of it. It was white-boy hell.”
Not every public high school is converted into a private evangelical academy. But Campus Crusade has pull in this town. A few years after Alonzo went to the principal’s office with the hand grenade, his school was privatized. I’m not suggesting the grenade had anything to do with it. I am not saying these circumstances pushed Alonzo toward alcoholism. Somebody composed a poem and didn’t finish it—they had Alonzo in mind.
“Alonzo?”
“Yeah?”
“You talking to me with a gun in your hand?”
“How did you know that?”
“Rudy says it’s your thing.”
“The little snitch. Fuck him.”
Alonzo and I say goodbye. I have to go to work.
I take the elevator down to the lobby, and I walk outside into the soul-destroying sunshine. Just past the hotel I’m confronted by sewage from the halfway house. It’s churning through a hole in the sidewalk. The house’s youngest consumer—a skinny cholita in tight brown slacks and a cropped leatherette jacket—inspects the spillage with scientific curiosity. She sagely opines: “This is some creepy shit. I wouldn’t eat it. Not in a million years.”
We’re joined by an older consumer, a heavyset white woman palsying like a leaf in a wind tunnel. She produces a half-smoked Marlboro cigarette butt and torches it. “Guess what, Pastor? It’s my birthday. I’m forty-seven today. And I’ve got MS. You know what I want? I want to go to Disneyland, the one in Orange County. That would make me happy. I haven’t been there since I was sixteen.”
I add her to my roster of injured souls.
□ □ □
Should something go wrong on the job today—this is my last will and testament. I leave you the .25. An extra clip of bullets. The rent I owe. My sleepless nights. I bequeath the smell of the orange groves. My parole officer’s telephone number. I ask you to remember: I wore my robes in Jesus Christ’s sacred name.