Pound for Pound (11 page)

Dan burned with a passion for vengeance—not mere justice, but vengeance. Tim Pat had been murdered, hadn’t he? Once the police put the little spic whore away, he’d be free of her. The men in blue were on his side. He’d seen the cops fill out the police report, hadn’t he? Even though they’d placed him in handcuffs inside the patrol car for choking her, he’d heard her say that she’d gone
around
the ice-cream truck, hadn’t he? The diagram would prove it. The bitch was going down. Nothing could make up for what she’d done. But at least a long stretch in the slammer was something; at least some kind of
justice
would be done; at least some kind of
respect
would be shown for the death of a little boy at the rotten hands of this fucking gangbanger whore
beaner.

Dan blinked his dry eyes as he got out of the car. Father Joe prayed. Dan looked away. After the service, Dan took a pinch of soil and sprinkled it across Tim Pat’s short casket.

There had not yet been time to incise the last name on the stone:

TIMOTHY PATRICK MARKEY 1986–1997

Not wanting to talk to anyone, Dan turned quickly away and started for his car. Some of the paint had faded; there were small chips where
careless drivers opening their doors had dinged it; there were hairline scratches on the fenders; faint patches of rust worked at the big bumper. The car had only sixty-eight thousand miles on it and still handled like a dream. Sunlight reflected off the windshield. Dan stopped abruptly. Was that Brigid in the car, Tim Pat in her arms? Were those shamrocks and roses in the backseat? Dan’s vision grew dim, and he felt as if he was about to pass out.

“Dan,” said Father Joe, lightly placing his hand on Dan’s arm.

Dan pulled away.

Father Joe offered Dan his card, with a number on it that had been penned in red ink. “I got a cell phone last week. Not ten people have this number. If I can’t reach you by this evening, please call me. Wherever you are, I’ll be there.”

Dan gave him a bitter grin. “Father Joe, Jo-Jo, dear old family friend.”

“Dan?”

“Don’t
Dan
me, Jo-Jo,” Dan said, reaching for an envelope in his back pocket. “You came over for this, right?”

“I don’t expect anything. You know that.”

“That’s good, then,” said Dan, his face suddenly mottled with rage. “‘Cause you ain’t gettin nothin.” Dan tore up the envelope, threw the pieces in the priest’s face. “That was a grand in there, Joe, same’s always when my family gets stuffed down holes.”

The priest tried to touch Dan’s arm again. “Why don’t we go have a drink? There’s plenty of places on Sunset. There’s that Irish place, right?”

Dan’s eyes filled with rage. “Do you, as Christ commanded, love God with your whole heart and soul, and with all your mind?”

“What a question,” said the priest. “Come on, I’ll drive.”

“Well, do you believe, or don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be a priest if I didn’t.”

“You never have no doubts about Ab’ba?” Dan asked.

The priest pleaded, “Let’s have that drink, the two of us.”

“It was for the boy, for his mother, and for my wife, but only out of
respect for them. Here’s what I think of your god, with a small g.” Dan handed the priest three pennies. “One for your heart, one for your soul, and one for your god, two cents more than your fuckin god’s worth, small
g.”

“Ah, Dan, don’t, please, don’t do this to yourself.”

“Fuck god.”

Father Joe hung his head, his face twisting, but he didn’t leave. Dan waved Earl off.

Earl had heard it and stepped in. “You’re still comin to our place, right?”

Dan got in and closed the door of the Caddy. “You go ahead. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

Dan drove away. Earl went over to Father Joe. “You all right, Father?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

Dan took Chávez-Sunset Boulevard all the way to the sea. At Highway 1 he turned north. In Malibu he filled up the tank and put the Caddy’s top down. He had intended to drive to San Francisco, maybe all the way to Canada, what the fuck, maybe never come back. No, he couldn’t go that far. There was a certain matter that had to be handled through the LAPD. He drove calmly for a stretch, managed to keep his mind blank, but then grief bored in and he started to weep. He pounded his forehead on the steering wheel.

The wind off the sea distracted him for a time, and driving comforted him as he moved along the scrubby brown mountains and barren beaches south of Point Mugu. He began to feel sick to his stomach. He tried to make sense of so much death to those he loved, all of them younger than he. Yet here he was, an old man, his heart ticking away, while his other five hearts were still, in boxes, down holes. There was a time when he could have blamed all this on god, but now there was no god. He wanted to blame it on Satan, but since there was no God, there could be no Satan.

That left him with nothing. He was speeding along the beaches and rocky retaining walls north of Ventura when he started retching. He pulled onto the weedy shoulder of the freeway and threw up.

By the time Dan got up to Santa María, he’d pulled over three more times to vomit, but by Solvang he had the dry heaves and only tears, bile, and snot came out of him.

At Pismo Beach, he said, “Fuck Canada.”

It was well past dark when he got back to Malibu, and twenty minutes later he headed for the Santa Monica Pier and the merry-go-round. He watched kids and moms, and lowered his head so they wouldn’t see what was going on in his eyes. He wanted a drink. He wanted twenty drinks. Instead, he chose a fish shack, thinking that he could keep down a broiled fish dinner with steamed potatoes. He ordered halibut, his favorite, but when it was served, his appetite vanished. He paid the check, left the table, and went to a nearby bar. He drank too quickly and he drank too much. He became rude and loud and got himself eighty-sixed. In the parking lot he kicked the left-rear white sidewall of the Caddy. He stopped at a store for a quart of milk and a package of Mother’s cookies. He chugged half, then spewed all of it back up. Between spasms, he remembered something about the women who’d come for the little gang bitch who killed Tim Pat. But he promptly forgot them as the dry heaves doubled him over again.

He got home sick but almost sober and pulled into his driveway. He backed out immediately. He would never be able to sleep at home again. He didn’t want to check into a flophouse or dirty-underwear motel, so he drove to the parking structure of the Los Angeles airport and slept in the car.

The next day, he ate cold cereal and cottage cheese and cantaloupe in an airport hotel coffee shop. From the phone booth near the shoe-shine stand, he telephoned the Hollywood division of the LAPD, which was located on Wilcox and De Longpre. The phone was answered by a
woman who identified herself as Officer Carneros. Dan explained that he was calling to request a police report.

“What kind of report?”

Dan gave the details of Tim Pat’s death, and asked if he could stop by in an hour to pick up a copy of the report. The officer informed him that cases like Tim Pat’s were automatically processed by the West Traffic division of the Wilshire area regional facility, located on Venice and La Brea.

Dan said, “But this happened on Wilcox, only two miles down from you.”

“I know, but West Traffic handles all traffic-related homicides,” the lady cop said.

Homicide, Dan thought, yeah, the cops call these things by their rightful names.

Officer Carneros added, “But give it at least a week before you make your request.”

Time. How could he speed up the sunrise, how could he shove down the sun? Each night, late, he pulled the Caddy into the shop and slept in the car, used the shop toilet, but would leave before the crew arrived. He didn’t shave or brush his teeth. He knew he was gamy, but didn’t care. He began to wear a Dodgers cap and dark glasses, and only kept in touch with Earl by phone. Sometimes he’d drive all day, choosing to poke along the old streets of as many Mexican communities as he could think of, hate in his head. Riding under the front seat was the 12 gauge that he’d taken from the shop. The shotgun was a holdover that Earl had brought in during the Rodney King riots. Dan knew how to load the gun, to aim it, and to shoot it. He knew where the safety was. As far as he was concerned, that was enough.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom.
Perfect aim wasn’t what shotguns were about.

Somehow he always managed to turn around and find his way back to the shop.

Dan telephoned West Traffic a week after Tim Pat was killed, sure that the police had already nailed the little bitch, sure that justice would be done. It wouldn’t bring Tim Pat back, but at least there would be a consequence for a
homicide.
He wondered how they’d charge her. Assault with a deadly weapon? Could a van be a deadly weapon? Vehicular manslaughter?

An Officer Singleton answered Dan’s call. He listened patiently, then told Dan that the report was not yet available.

“But since there was a fatality, what you might need to do is contact Detective Rall Nájera on this.” In saying “Rall,” Singleton had used the Anglicized pronunciation of Raúl. “But when the report’s ready, you can order it here at the desk.”

“Right,” said Dan. “So if she’s not already busted, she will be, right?”

“Was she driving under the influence, or speeding, or both?”

“I don’t know.”

“Reckless driving? Did they arrest her at the scene?”

“No. Uh, I don’t really know. I remember some Mexican women, is all.”

“I see,” said Singleton. “Are you sure the investigating officers didn’t arrest the driver?”

“Not that I saw. To tell you the truth, I don’t recall.” Dan didn’t add that the police had handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a patrol car once Earl had pulled him off Lupe. Nor did he mention that the police, sympathetic to his grief, cut him loose. He assumed that Earl had said he’d be responsible for getting Dan off the street.

Dan said, “How much longer before I can get the report?”

“Give it a few more days.”

Dan said, “We’re talkin right and wrong here, aren’t we, Officer?”

Dan waited another day, but then couldn’t wait any longer. He showed up at West Traffic on four days in a row before the report was available. Dan paid the fee, expecting to get the report at that time, but
Officer Singleton, a big black man with a creased face, told him the report would be mailed to him in about a week.

“Has the driver been arrested, or what?”

Singleton checked the computer. “It looks like this was determined an accident.”

Dan exploded. “Accident! We got a murdered kid here!”

“Apparently not in the view of the investigating officers.”

“I want to see that Mexican detective you told me about.”

“Rall Nájera,” Singleton said. “I’ll check his schedule and make an appointment for you.”

Dan didn’t know what to do with himself. He bought new clothes rather than go home. He checked into a whorehouse motel so he could shower and shave and brush his teeth. He showed up at West Traffic the next day. He was sober, but his hands were shaking. He had to wait fifteen minutes. Then Detective Nájera came out and led him to a reception room off the hallway.

Dan said, “We got a murdered kid here, Detective.”

Nájera was in his fifties. Most thought of him as a Chicano, but he had been born in El Paso, and though he’d lost his Texas accent as a child, when his family moved to California, he still considered himself Tex-Mex, off duty wore boots and a Stetson. His home was near the Santa Cruz Sports Arena, where for several years club fights had been held. He had done his share of boxing, and he often went to the sports arena to have a few beers, talk with some of the old guys he had known since his boxing days, and unwind. What was left of Nájera’s balding hair and clipped mustache was salt-and-pepper gray. At five foot nine, he weighed close to 190, but Dan could see he was solid. Nájera’s nose was flat and there was scar tissue in his black brows. Dan felt like he was with one of his own.

Nájera shook hands gently, the way fighters do who have nothing to prove. He noticed Dan’s eye, smiled slightly, and nodded. “You know me,” said Nájera.

Dan said, “That right? From where?”

“From Daw, your middleweight. Earl retired me after my fifteenth pro fight. You’re Dan Cooley the trainer, right?”

“Yeah, I remember you, you were big for a Latino fighter in those days,” Dan said. “That was like thirty pounds ago.”

Nájera smiled broadly and nodded.

Dan added, “You knocked Earl down in the second. You always had to gain weight because the forty-seven-pounders wouldn’t fight you. You had a big hook.”

“Yeah, but Earl had a bigger right hand. That’s when I became a cop. What can I do for you, Mr. Cooley?”

Mollified, Dan spoke barely above a whisper. “It’s about my grandson.”

“Which one is that?”

“The Markey kid, Timothy Patrick.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Jesus. I didn’t make the connection you were that Dan Cooley.”

“You arrested the bitch who did it, right?”

Nájera cleared his throat, watched as Dan’s eyes went from green to black. “Could you call me tomorrow, Mr. Cooley, so I can get the whole file?”

“I been waitin a long time. I made an appointment.”

“I wasn’t told specifically what this was about. Our error. Or I could call you?”

“No, no,” said Dan, “I’ll call you.”

“I’ll wait to hear from you.”

“Just so we’re pullin on the rope in the same direction,” Dan said, “we’re talkin Justice with a big
J
here, right, Detective?”

“Mr. Cooley, I’m backed up here. Tomorrow, okay?”

Dan went to his car feeling even more unsettled than before. Maybe he was just being jerked off.

He put his key into the ignition. “They better put that bitch away, they fuckin better.” He reached down to touch the eighteen-inch barrel of the shotgun. “These fuckin dicks better help.”

Dan called Nájera several times daily, three days running. He left the number of his cell phone, but Nájera didn’t return his calls. Dan was living on coffee, aspirin, and bourbon.