A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (14 page)

The stolen car almost surely meant that the man Patrick and I had fought on the walkway outside of Solano’s apartment was from Long Beach. Honestly, I would have assumed that even without the evidence. The murders on Ohio and in Riverside were too much to be a coincidence. They were related, and the connection was Jesús.

I tried his cell phone again, but it went straight to his voice mail.

“Jesús,” I said. “This is Detective Danny Beckett again. I know you need help. You’re not in any trouble. You did the right thing. Call me. Wherever you are. I’ll come to you. Maria needs you. Let me help.”

When I cut the connection, I felt like I’d just drunk-dialed someone after a bad date. I’d meant to be reassuring, to give him the sense that calling us was his best and safest option. Instead, I sounded desperate, as if I needed him more than he needed me. For all I knew, that was true. And whoever was gunning for him had a strong enough desire to keep him quiet when there was no evidence at all that he’d said anything to us. Would he really be safer if he contacted me? Or would that put him even more at risk?

That morning I felt as lost as I had at any time since we first responded to Bishop’s murder. Our first instincts, that the three boys had burned the homeless man in some kind of twisted attempt to gain notoriety and street cred, seemed to be more and more off base. I’d wanted to understand what motivated them and to know if there was something at work beyond their sociopathic urges. Now that it seemed that there was more to the case than we had initially suspected and that they were not the only ones responsible for the immolation, I felt no sense of relief.

Very few murders are purely the result of psychopathy or sociopathy. Most are committed because of money, because of power, or because of sex. There’s almost always a motivation that can be tied back to one of those basic desires or to some combination of them.

It was only just now striking me that my initial drive to find some baser cause for the three boys’ actions was the wrong thing to hope for. I wanted this crime to make sense, and now that it seemed that there might very well be something more complicated at work, I knew that what I should have wished for was that simple, original instinct—that this was an act of violent insanity and that to try to make any more of it would only lead to more suffering.

But there was more to it, and I knew that I had to figure out what it was. I decided then to see if I could get anyone from Gang Enforcement to come in to the station the next day and help me try to identify Roberto Solano’s killer.

My shoulder felt like it was being slowly tightened in a vise, and I couldn’t help thinking about Patrick’s injured rotator cuff. Maybe I was experiencing some sort of sympathy pain. Or maybe, as always, I was trying to make sense of something that was ultimately inscrutable. David Foster Wallace once wrote, simply, that “pain is pain.” One of the great challenges of my life was attempting to subvert my own deep desire to figure certain things out. Most of the unhappiness and the sometimes-severe depression I’ve dealt with throughout my life have come not from the losses and injuries I have suffered but rather from my incessant, bone-deep need to make sense of the suffering. I knew that the very quality that made me a good detective also made me an unhappy person. A therapist asked me once, matter-of-factly, if I would be willing to trade my compulsive desire to ferret out fact and truth for a life of markedly less suffering and discontentment. I told her that I wouldn’t because I believed then, as I still believe, that my job, and really my purpose, was not to solve crimes or render justice but to face reality and to examine the brutality and senselessness of our world so that others might be spared the experience. When she asked me if I thought that might be a little grandiose, I told her that it was. But I also told her that it didn’t make it any less true.

I turned on the radio and listened to
Morning Edition
in an attempt to distract myself from the freight train of thoughts barreling though my head. Maybe it worked, or maybe exhaustion just caught up with me. Whatever the reason, sleep came quickly.

If I dreamed, I didn’t remember. I woke to the sound of my phone at a quarter past nine, feeling as if it had been only moments since I’d put my head down on the pillow. The impulse to ignore the call was strong, but I fought it, and it was a good thing that I did because the name on the display was Jesús Solano. And he needed to talk.

13

O
NE BOX
D
IXIE MEDIUM-WEIGHT PLASTIC FORKS
,
ONE HUNDRED COUNT
. T
WENTY-SEVEN FORKS REMAINING
.

The nightmares had come again, as they had every time Jesús had tried to sleep since he’d abandoned Pedro and the other two that night. He couldn’t remember any of the nightmares clearly, but when he woke from them he was covered in sweat, and it would take several minutes for the images of flames and the echoes of screams to clear out of his consciousness and allow him to return to the small back bedroom he shared with his brother and little sister. When he was once again aware of the quiet darkness enveloping him, the first thing he thought about was Maria. He worried that his dreams would somehow spill over onto her, and that even if she should be spared, he would make some kind of noise in his sleep, that he would convulse in his bed or moan loudly enough to wake her. There was nothing he hated more than to see fear in her eyes. She’d had too much of that already, and he knew that if he didn’t keep her safe, no one would. His mother was receding farther into her alcoholism every day, and Pedro had come up with his insane notion that somehow the solutions to all their problems could be found with the steady and reliable income he believed he would receive once he’d made it into Omar’s set.

Jesús knew that he was all Maria had anymore. He had to take care of her, and to do that he had to take care of himself.

Even though he’d barely slept that night, when he heard the gunshots, he thought he was dreaming. He wasn’t sure how long it took to understand what was really happening. When he did, when the realization washed over him, time seemed to slow down and stretch out before him.

He threw himself across the room, rolled both of them down onto the floor, and shielded Maria’s body with his own.

Her screams didn’t even register in his ears until the vicious roar of the bullets ceased. He felt the silence even more than he heard it.

Was that the squeal of tires from the street or Maria’s shrieks? He couldn’t tell. He just held her in his arms and tried to comfort her.

His mother was screaming too. “Maria! Jesús!” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her say their names.

In that moment, with his family wailing and terrified on the cold hardwood floor of his bedroom, Jesús knew what he had to do.

He dressed as quickly as he could. He grabbed his jacket and his school bag. He kissed his mother and his sister goodbye.

He was out the back door and over the concrete block wall in the backyard a full thirty seconds before the first siren stopped in the street in front of the house.

Five blocks away from home, on Seventh and Redondo, he finally stopped walking and tried to figure out where to go. School wasn’t an option. That was the first place they’d look.

He didn’t even know who “they” were. The cops? The gang Omar and the others were trying to get into?

He wondered if he should call that detective who came to see him. What was his name? Jesús checked his phone. Beckett. Daniel Beckett. Maybe that was his best bet. It wasn’t the police who had opened fire into the front house.

A realization overtook him and he stopped. The people in the front house had taken the heat for him. He didn’t even know their last name. Only that one of the girls was called Mary. “That’s the same almost as my name!” Maria had exclaimed when she’d met their neighbor.

Jesús wondered if they were okay. There were so many gunshots. More than he’d ever heard before. Those must have been assault rifles. What else could have made a noise like that? He tried to think of a way to find out if anyone had been hurt. But someone must have been. So many gunshots. They could all be dead. Was it his fault? Were they looking for him? Did someone think he would snitch about Omar’s plans? What did he even know that could hurt anyone? Only that the killing was to keep someone quiet. Jesús didn’t know why. But the fire was all Omar’s idea. “We’ve got to make this large,” he said. “Only way to get noticed.”

They got noticed, all right. But by whom? Who was after him?

He looked at the cop’s name on the small screen of his flip phone again. Should he call? Then he thought about the battery. Did he have the charger in his backpack? He crossed the street and stood next to one of the outside tables behind Starbucks and rummaged through his bag.

Shit. The charger wasn’t there. He knew that if he wasn’t careful, he’d only have a couple of hours before the battery was dead. Who might call him? His mom, the detective. He thought that was it. Did anyone else have his number? Only a few friends from school. Pedro. Would he have given it to anybody? Could the gang have it? Probably.

He texted his mom to tell her he was okay and that he’d call as soon as he could, and then he powered the phone off. He’d check it for messages later. But first he had to figure out where to go and what to do.

Instead of taking the bus, he decided to walk the three miles down Pacific Coast Highway to the Marina Pacifica, thinking he’d spend the day in the movie theater and in the Barnes & Noble. Maybe even the Best Buy. On the way, he stopped at a Jack in the Box to kill time. If he went straight to the mall, he’d still be too early and the bookstore wouldn’t even be open. He got himself a medium drink and an order of hash browns and sat and thought. The only other person inside the dining area was an old guy in a dirty flannel shirt. Jesús wondered if the man was homeless. There were so many more people who lived like that than he’d ever noticed before. They were all over the place. He got two refills of Dr Pepper before continuing his walk down PCH. It still took him another half hour, and as he walked he could already feel how hot the day would be.

Maybe it was his lack of sleep or even the morning exercise, but his agitation and anxiety had worn themselves down and he didn’t feel the same panic in his gut that had driven him out of the house and onto the street. He planned the time out in his head. Two hours at the bookstore, three hours in the movie theater, then it wouldn’t be that long before school would be out and he could call David.

He knew his friend would put him up for at least one night. His mom was a nurse and worked twelve-hour night shifts at Long Beach Memorial. Jesús had crashed at David’s a few times before. It would definitely be okay. They’d been friends since elementary school, though, and Jesús was sure that David would know something really bad was wrong. He’d probably know about Pedro and maybe even about the shooting that morning. Would that be too much risk? Would he be putting someone else in danger?

His mind was starting to race again.

Back to the plan, he told himself.

David would be okay with not knowing what was going on. He wouldn’t like it, and he wouldn’t stop asking, but he’d still help. Jesús knew this was true because he’d do the same for David.

He started to feel like he could maybe make it through the day.

But what then? What about Maria? His mom? He walked faster. That helped. Concentrating on walking and not stumbling or taking a wrong step forced him to focus at least some of his attention on something other than his problems. He thought about jogging but decided against it. That would make him too sweaty. He might start to smell like he always did after gym class back in middle school, and he knew he had to try to keep from being noticed. When someone stank, he thought, people remembered him. That, he knew, was what he had to focus on.

Don’t be noticed.

Don’t be remembered.

Get to David’s house.

Figure it out then.

That basic plan gave him enough of a sense of focus that he thought he could make it through the day. He could do it. He just had to stay calm.

He stopped at the fancy Ralphs in the shopping center and got a couple of Snickers bars and a bunch of peanut M&Ms. The regular-sized candies were three for a dollar. He took them to the self-checkout and punched in his home phone number to get the club-card special. Even after the fast food and the snacks, he still had almost sixty dollars in his wallet. It was grocery money his mom had managed to scrape together, but this was an emergency, so he tried not to feel guilty about spending it.

Barnes & Noble still wouldn’t be open for almost half an hour, so he cut in between Buffalo Wild Wings and Chipotle and stood at the back edge of the shopping center, looking out over the small arm of Alamitos Bay that flowed between the shops and restaurants and the condo complex on the other side. There were rows of docks along the bottom edge of the building, and Jesús wondered if every condo had its own boat slip. He thought about how often the people there were woken by noises that might have been gunshots. There wasn’t a night he could remember that he hadn’t heard a sharp bang somewhere in the neighborhood and wondered if it was a gun or if someone had just gotten his hands on an M-80 or some other illegal fireworks. He figured that didn’t happen very often here on the bay.

The last time he’d been here, with Pedro and Francisco, they’d stood in almost the same spot and watched some old white guys drive a sleek little speedboat up to the small dock on this side of the water, tie it up, and use a key to let themselves into the gate down below. One of them said something about a golf game, and the others laughed as they walked into the Indian place, Kamal Palace. Jesús had never had Indian food. He wondered what it tasted like.

During the movie, he kept looking at the screen and wondering what was happening. Over and over, he’d find himself lost in his thoughts, and when he focused on the giant robots on the screen again, it would be like he hadn’t been there at all. Like he’d gone to the bathroom and just come back into the theater. And then before he’d be able to figure anything out again, he was thinking about Maria or his mom or Pedro. Or the people in the front house. Was it wrong for him to leave? What if someone got hurt because of him? The guilt and the regret would overpower him, and then something would explode on the screen in front of him, and for just a moment he’d be pulled out of his head and back into the movie.

At least it was better than the bookstore had been. He usually liked to read, but that morning he couldn’t focus on anything, so instead of sitting down with a book or a graphic novel, he just wandered up and down the aisles, occasionally pulling something off the shelf and pretending to read the back or the flap inside the front cover. He must have looked at a hundred books that way, with none of them registering or leaving any impression on him at all.

The worst part of it all was how slow the time seemed to pass. It was worse than geometry class. He wondered if it would ever feel normal again.

He wasn’t sure what he was thinking when he bought the movie ticket, why he picked the one film he’d been wanting to see for weeks. He hardly ever got to see a real movie, and halfway through the running time, he felt like coming there had been a mistake, that sitting in the dark with a Snickers and a Dr Pepper would never be the same again.

And even as miserable as he had been, he was sorry when it ended. Going back outside into the light and the heat of the day seemed impossible. He should have gone to the Edwards at Long Beach Towne Center or even to the Pike. In those places there were so many screens he could have theater-hopped all day. Now, he knew that the dark of the theater was just one more thing he didn’t know he’d miss until it was gone.

Last week he’d thought things were so awful, with his mom and with Pedro hanging out with those fucking losers and with feeling like he had to take care of Maria all by himself. He’d give anything if he could just go back to that.

Anything.

But even then he’d known he couldn’t. That what had gone wrong had gone so wrong that things would never be the same.

It wouldn’t be long, he thought, until he could go over to David’s house, and that would be better, at least a little. He sat down at the bus stop and got an idea.

He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before.

Jesús called his father.