Halfway House (32 page)

“You’d like to move your hips like Elvis.” For the first time she smiled outside of herself and her cheeks were beautiful. “I saw him many times, you know. My husband played piano for The Monsoons back in the fifties and early sixties. He was such a boy, that Elvis. Such a little boy right up until the end.”

She gazed at Bobby with her head cocked slightly to the side. “You have the same look as him. Elvis was so many things. You can say what you want about him. One thing you could always say was that he was very respectful, especially when it came to his mother. And you, Bobby Dupree, have that same look, like you want to please me but aren’t sure how to do it.”

Her candid assessment of his temperament was right on and it scared him. This was no well-kept wallflower. Mrs. Welker was an exceptional woman. So much like Sister Agnes. One of the sister’s strengths had been that people easily underestimated her. They saw only a diminutive woman in a nun’s habit. But they saw what they wanted to see, never realizing that behind the facade of a wife of Christ stood a tall, proud woman who’d taken under her wing a hundred boys, living and dying with each one as they experienced the ebb and flow of adoption.

“I’ve never had very good personal skills,” Bobby said.

“So how is it that a good-looking boy such as yourself was never adopted?” When she saw his face redden, she quickly added, “I’m prying. That’s probably too personal.”

“No, that’s okay,” he said, licking his lips as he contemplated how to phrase it. “You said it earlier. We all have our personal dramas. I just have more than my share. I was never adopted because I have a medical condition.”

“Oh.” She let her hand slide along the keys until she came to the very last key on the left. She depressed it and the deep, full-bodied tone surrounded them. When it died, she stood. “I suppose it’s time for you to see what you came for.” The Yorkie danced around her feet, but she ignored it. She held out her hand to show the way. “This way, Bobby Dupree.”

He followed her down the hall and into a long study. A desk stood against a wall covered with pictures of a younger version of herself, a man who could only be her husband, and various celebrities. She’d been a knockout, the kind of woman songs were written about.

On the opposite wall were different music industry awards. And there, as the centerpiece to the collection, was what he’d been searching for. He approached it with deliberate reverence. He slowed his breathing. He stepped softly. He kept his hands clasped in front of him, to keep them from reaching out and touching the platinum disc. He’d never thought it could look so beautiful. Inside an immense frame were two platinum-coated forty-fives with the words RCA etched beside a picture of a Victrola and a dog. In the space to the right of these was a picture of Elvis in a red shirt and black pants, holding his guitar like a lover.

A sob bubbled near his heart. He swallowed it, unwilling to reveal the emotion. Still, his eyes brimmed with tears until the image was smeared in his vision. He’d never seen anything as beautiful. And to think that it belonged to him.

“Where’s your camera?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your camera. You said you had to take a picture beside the award for the scavenger hunt.”

He felt at his pockets, then patted his jacket. He grinned sheepishly. “I seem to have forgotten it.”

“Oh, I see.” She smiled softly, as if she’d never really believed his story. “What shall we do then?”

He sighed, looked once more at the picture, then allowed a trembling hand touch the black lacquered frame. “Maybe if it’s not too much trouble, I can come back another time for the picture.” He turned and looked into her eyes.

She gazed back at him, and their eyes locked like a handshake. She finally responded, “I think that would be nice.”

He wanted to say thank you, but his mouth wouldn’t work. Instead, he nodded and showed himself out. Blockbuster honored the silence and didn’t say a word until they were almost back to San Pedro.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

Bobby nodded and stared through the window at the passing cars. Night had fallen, and the red and white lights blurred through the tears in his vision. He had some business to take care of, but when he was done, he vowed that he’d return to Malibu. He felt a connection with the woman, something more than just his father’s award.

His father’s award
... he liked the sound of that.

The existence of the award at the end of Verdina’s trail proved that it had come from the Memphis orphanage, and if that was true, then the contents of the letter were true, which meant that Elvis was, indeed, his father.

Bobby thought the information would hit him like a blow, or perhaps arrive with an angelic chorus, but instead the knowledge was more like a warm feeling of satisfaction, much like he’d felt with Laurie and Kanga, and sometimes with Lucy. The feeling was one of belonging. If this was what it felt like to have a family, he understood why the convention was so popular.

How about that?

He smiled.

He had a father.

Not that anyone would ever know, but it meant the world to Bobby Dupree.

The easiest way to destroy a monster is by removing its head. Such was Lucy’s idea to divest him of his problem with Shrewsbury. Either he’d convince the man to move along, or send his soul to the halfway house. He wasn’t going to stand for it.

His father had been moved to Sinai downtown, where Salvadorans of any shape or size would be as out of place as a rat at a wedding. The place was so high rent that even the cops drove Lexus vehicles. Funny how his dad would be safe by hiding him with the rich folk. When he came down off his high, he’d laugh at the whole thing. At least that’s what Lucy convinced himself. For now, he needed his father out of the way and in a safe place so they could start a war.

With the exception of Blockbuster, who was taking Bobby to Malibu, and Trujillo, who was held back in Pedro with six trusted Angels, they were traveling in force. Seventeen lowriders rumbled along Western Avenue toward Portuguese Bend. They were led by Mojo’s 1973 Chevy Caprice with gull wing doors, the car hopping and dancing like a court jester announcing their procession. Behind this came Impalas, Cadillac Broughams, a purple Oldsmobile 88, a completely chrome El Camino, and a new Titan pickup with mermaids splashing across the sides—all of them snapping, popping, and cruising mere inches from the earth.

These augmented machines were the mechanical version of a bebop, brown pride strutting along on four wheels, sometimes three, and once in a while even two. The duality of a stately procession and flamboyant displays of mechanical machismo fit perfectly into the Angel attitude. There would be no sneaking up on the enemy. They’d come at it with as much pomp and circumstance as was possible. This trip up the hill with the Angels and their cars was like a prize fighter’s jaunt to the ring. They passed homes with clapping children on the porches. Wind blew leaves from the trees like nature’s confetti. Entire families rose from their picnics at Point Fermin to run to the curb and applaud them.

Lucy and the 8th Street Angels were the people’s champion. They were the Rocky Balboa of Los Angeles, grown from the streets, heart of the neighborhood. The city was part of their genetic makeup.

Lucy rode midway in the line of cars, driving a 1948 Chevy Fleetline Bomb. Cherry red, the chrome grill snarled at the asphalt. Matching chrome fenders and wheel wing strips sluiced the air. Atop the mountainous hood stood an angel polished to blinding perfection, wings outstretched, face pointed to the sun. Lucy sat on the red leather and white bench seat, gripping the thin wheel in both hands.

They couldn’t be stopped.

They had to win.

Right was on their side.

But the police weren’t.

They heard the sirens before they saw the dozen cars that had pulled across the road. Cops rested shotguns across blue and white hoods forming a double-ought barrier. Others held pistols at eye level. Straight out of a movie, Lucy couldn’t hide the desire to run them down and check his chances. But this wasn’t a movie. This was real life.

His inability to do anything suddenly came crashing home. No longer was he the gang leader. No longer was he the toughest guy in the neighborhood. His father was in the hospital. Split was dead, as were many others, and he could see no end to it.

The cars stopped in line, engines revving, front ends rising like bulls ready to lower their heads and charge.

“Lucy,” came Mojo’s voice through the phone.

The irony of the police protecting a porn movie director with pedophile connections who was responsible for all the recent violence in San Pedro wasn’t lost on Lucy. No matter how he argued with them, no matter how he explained he was trying to protect his city, at the end of the day he was just another brown-skinned nigger not worthy of going up the hill.

“Lucy? What should we do?”

He remembered a scene in a movie he’d once seen. The movie had been
The Devil’s Rejects
and was about a family of murderers. Ultraviolent, the movie ended with the three murderers facing off against a line of police cars blocking the road. Broken and bloodied, shot through and cut to ribbons, the family decided to charge the police as a demonstration of the will to live and their rage against being held back.

“Lucy? I swear they’re locking and loading. I’ll run them down if you want me too.” Mojo’s voice hardened as he said those last words.

Is that what Lucy wanted? It sure would be an easy way out. Then he thought of his
abuela
and what she’d told him when he was a child the first time he’d got his ass beat by a bigger kid.

“You wanna cry, then go cry, but crying ain’t gonna make that boy stop hitting you.”

“But he’s bigger than me.”

“Then hit him harder.”

“What if I’m afraid?”

“Then leave this house now. I won’t have anyone afraid in my family.”

The idea that he’d be thrown out of his home and be denied his grandma’s love shattered his childhood innocence like nothing else could. From that moment on he’d made a choice to love his grandma, even if that meant violence. She’d grown up on hard times and believed in the virtues of a hard life. She didn’t see it as bad or evil. She saw it as survival. He’d gone out the next morning and surprised the bigger kid at the bus stop by hitting him over the head with a brick. As he’d stood above the crying boy who was cradling his bleeding head, Lucy felt no fear, and he liked the feeling. So why was he afraid now?

“Fuck it, Lucy. I’m going to run the
putos
down!”

“No, Mojo,” Lucy whispered. Then louder, “No!”

“What’d you say?”

“I said stand down. Everyone, we’re going home.”

Exclamations of surprise erupted all up and down the line. It was clear that they didn’t like it, but the Angels followed his command. A once orderly, stately procession, devolved into a parking lot as cars backed up and struggled to turn around on a narrow San Pedro street. The police made no move to stop them. They weren’t out to arrest anyone. They were merely there to keep Lucy from doing what he should have been allowed to do.

The Angels asked him repeatedly what they were going to do now. They begged Lucy to answer, to say anything. But he kept silent. He was keeping his own counsel at the moment. The truth was, he didn’t know what to say.

When the others left, he stayed and spoke with Captain Feisler for a while. He didn’t hide his desire to exact his own angelic brand of retribution. She commiserated, but pointed out that L.A.’s finest couldn’t be party to such a thing. Protect and serve included everyone and they were all innocent until proven guilty. But she did tell him she’d look into Shrewsbury’s connections. She’d get a search warrant in the morning, and if there was anything at his home to incriminate him, she’d haul his ass downtown. By her demeanor, Lucy believed that she would do it, too.

He arrived home an hour later. He parked the Fleetline in the garage. Julio played dominoes by himself on the porch. He looked up as Lucy passed. They exchanged a nod.

Lucy’s
abuela
was in the kitchen ironing the neighbor’s laundry like she always did. They paid her two dollars a bag as they had done for twenty years. What the old woman did with her money, Lucy didn’t know. It didn’t matter. As long as she lived in this house, which had been for Lucy’s whole life, she’d want for nothing.

She glanced up as he entered and watched with a miserable glare as he went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, popped the top, then took a long swig. When he raised his eyes as if to ask
what
, she merely
tskked
and returned to her ironing, her attention dedicated to the neighbor longshoreman’s dark blue cotton slacks.

He grabbed a chair and sat and watched her. The domestic scene helped still the snakes in his brain. So much was going on, he barely felt in control. Trujillo was checking with his connections in Compton, trying to get a handle on the next attack. They’d been caught flatfooted last time and had severely underestimated the Salvadorans’ abilities.