Lines and shadows (13 page)

Ernie Salgado only heard one explosion. One
long
explosion. The longest explosion he'd ever heard outside of Nam.

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But it
wasn't
one long explosion. There were three rapid explosions. The boy fired both barrels. One blasted out the doorjamb just above the tall cop's head. The other took out part of the wall and ceiling. Ernie fired once. The .54-caliber rifle slug, seven-eighths of an ounce of lead, hit the boy full in the chest and blew a hole clear through him. There was also a visual explosion. The huge slug, which might knock down an elephant at that range, hit an aorta. The boy exploded in blood.

He died within seconds. When asked later how he felt about it, Ernie said he felt indifferent about it. He said that shortly thereafter he made a promise to himself and kept it. He said he wanted never to think about it and never did.

The violent episode experienced by Ernie Salgado during their return to ordinary sane police duty was perhaps not nearly so bizarre as an encounter by varsity member Tony Puente, whose wife was overjoyed now that the ninety-day experiment in the hills had come to an end. Maybe their life could return to normal. Maybe he'd stop coming home in the middle of the night smelling like an alien— smelling like a
drunk
more often than not. It was the thing to do after they got off duty. After all, they were part of a unique police experiment and a guy
needed
a taste or two when he'd been stumbling around for hours out there in the black of night with strange people all around him in the darkness. How could she understand the canyons? Even
he
couldn't understand the goddamn canyons. Part of him was glad it was over. They had never, any of them, admitted how scary it was out there in no-man's-land. Some of them hinted at unpleasant dreams. But they were baaaaad-ass cops. Way too macho to talk about it. He wondered if some of the others were relieved that it was over, no matter how much they complained about not having a fair chance to take those bandits down.

He was not glad to be back doing dreary, boring uniformed patrol, but he could always hope that some plain-clothes job would open up for a Mexican. When Tony Puente had joined the San Diego Police Department eight years earlier, only 4 percent of the department had Spanish surnames. In one of America's ten largest cities, on the very border of Mexico, the gateway to
all
of Latin America.

Even under the new chief there was only one Mexican out of twenty men in Homicide, one in Burglary, one in Narcotics. The Mexican cops hoped that Chief Kolender could institute some changes in the department. He had come up through the ranks. He was smart and he was no redneck. But America's Finest City, and the police force that protected it, were very slow to change. This was a prosperous, isolated, provincial corner of America. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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So if he wanted a plainclothes job, he'd better find one that was presently held by a Mexican. And he'd better wait until that Mexican got promoted, moved out, or died. Traditionally, the only chance for a Mexican was to replace another Mexican. He'd hoped that the experiment might prove something to the rest of them: that a bunch of Mexicans could go out there in those hills and do a
job
.

And that was another odd thing about those hills: dressing, talking,
smelling
like an alien was very very strange. Really, trying to
think
like someone else for the first time in his life. It made you understand that you are
not
a real Mexican, not even close. And yet the white majority thought of you as one. It was very hard out in those hills for some of them. It produced a culture clash in their heads.

And then on top of it he was having to cope with a
religious
crisis at home that was driving him goofy.

When as a boy Marine he married his child bride, his new father-in-law wouldn't even speak to him. Bad enough the premature wedding, but to be marrying one of
them
? The man was eventually won over by young Tony Puente, who understood that it might not be easy for a West Virginia hillbilly to accept the prospect of "half-breed" grandchildren. Tony won him over not by being more "white" but by being more Mexican. Though his Spanish was lousy he spoke it as often as possible for his new father-in-law in those days, and the old boy was delighted by the sound of it in Tony's soft, crackling, quiet way of talking. And after he'd become a cop it was apparent that he was going to be a good husband to Dene and a good father to his children. Everything was going along fine for Tony Puente until she took the plunge into the all-consuming, tract-disseminating, Bible-thumping, Fundamental religion. It was mildly annoying at first, but what the hell, she'd been such a young wife and mother. He had police work and was gone much of the night, but what did
she
have?

But then he started reading the tenets of this religion. Only the missionary position? Wives shouldn't undress in front of husbands? Unnecessary provocation? BULLSHIT!

Except that it was too late. She was immersed ten fathoms deeper than John the Baptist. And in the holidays just past, she said she didn't want a Christmas tree in the house because it violated the dogma of her new faith.

So he immediately went out and bought a Christmas tree about the size of a California redwood. He had to saw half the limbs off the goddamn thing just to get it in the door. He was going to show her a Christmas, all right. He was going to hang mistletoe and holly and colored lights in the
John
, for chrissake!

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But despite a Christmas tree sticking out half the windows in the house, despite more lights than the San Diego airport, Christmas was a bust. They argued; she cried; he felt guilty. Christmas sucked.

She had to suppress and humble herself to be pleasing to God, he was told.

"But I spent half my life trying to
better
myself," he told her. "I wanted you to have
more
than my mother, married to that drunken Mexican!"

"Lately I think
I've
been married to a drunken Mexican," she informed him.

"BARF's finished. I'll stop drinking so much," he promised. She he read the Bible for two hours each night and there was nothing he could do about it. And really, when he dared admit it, there was something creeping into his hatred of her church. He despised her new religion, all right. But if someone needed to
believe
in something, what could he offer? He still remembered the white priest: "Your husband's dead, Mrs. Puente? I'll come at once… for a seventy-dollar donation." He didn't know if he believed in
anything
supernatural, so what could he give this girl who needed something more than he had?

Well, maybe things could improve now that BARF was over. Now that he was once again in uniform doing regular police work. Maybe he could work a day shift? Then with the drinking cut out of his life, things
would
get better. Maybe she wouldn't need her new Bible

-banging pals so much. Maybe he could wean her away from them.

So it was back to ordinary, dull, boring,
sane
police work. And then, on his very first day back to ordinary dull boring sane police work, he received a radio call. Later, it didn't seem possible. He wasn't sure it was happening while it
was
. It was like when he woke up drunk after the nights of boozing. What happened? What was real? What wasn't?

The radio call was given to him in broad daylight. There was a family disturbance. There was a fifty-nine-year-old man fighting with his sixteen-year-old son. No big deal. It was a middle-class white neighborhood. It was his very first radio call after leaving the insanity in the canyons.

"I can't reason with my dad," the boy said to Tony Puente when he opened the door. "He's getting more senile every day!"

He was just your run-of-the-mill sixteen-year-old, all fuzz and zits, patched blue jeans, a Tshirt. Just bitching about his "senile" old man with whom he shared the house. Just like a teenybopper to call the old man senile, Tony Puente thought, wondering when his kids would call
him
senile.

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Tony Puente looked at the man standing in the living room in his bathrobe, enjoying
All
My Children
or something on TV. He was fifty-nine years old, too young to be senile. He
was
senile.

He said, "Hello, you!" and brought out a little gun and pointed it right smack at Tony Puente's shiny badge, which he'd taken the trouble to polish this first day back in uniform.

"I don't know shit about guns," Tony Puente later said.

"At first I didn't think it was real!"

It was real. It was a very cute derringer, a
magnum
derringer. Tony Puente squinted through his glasses. He homed right in on that funny little gun in the man's hand. It was looking more and more real all the time.

Tony Puente had a strange thought the whole time he was in that room. In fact, he couldn't think of anything else for what seemed like an hour but was really only a few minutes. He had never worn the bulletproof vest during the ninety days in the hills. The thought was this: My wife's gonna get mad at me. She'll say I died because I wouldn't wear that goddarrin bulletproof vest!

"I think
All My Children's
a groovy TV show," Tony Puente said. "Don't you?"

"I'm not watching
All My Children
, you dumb son of a bitch," the man said, making little circles with the derringer.

"I sure like
As The World Turns
," Tony Puente said, sweating buckets. And just that fast, his glasses were fogging.

"I don't have to take your shit!" the man told him.

"No, sir!" Tony Puente said. "So maybe I better just boogie on out and let you enjoy your…"

"Don't move!" the man said. "I think I should kill you right
now
." And the cop flinched when he heard the word. He was desperately trying to avoid any statement, sentence, phrase, word, anything that included terms like
shoot, kill
, or…

"Dad, don't
kill
him!" the kid screamed suddenly, and Tony Puente flinched again and wanted to scream back at the kid: "DON'T SAY KILL, YOU ASSHOLE!" Instead he said, "Well, now, your dad and me, we're just gonna talk. Hell, we probably have a
lot
in common and…"

"I hate niggers!" the man said.

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"That lets
me
out!" Tony Puente informed him ecstatically. "I'm a'Mex…"

"Dad, he's
not
a nigger! Can't you see?" The kid was screaming it. "He's a
cop
, Dad! And he's a Mexican! You're a Mexican, ain't you, Officer?"

"Uh, could you just let
me
handle this, my boy?" Tony Puente said to the kid, who was jumping up and down and tucking his hands between his knees and under his arms. But then the kid shrieked, "You can't kill a cop! He's wearing a uniform! He's a cop, Dad! Don't
kill
him!"

And Tony Puente's shirt was soaked, and he realized the horrible truth of the situation. The
kid
was a banana! Bonzo. Loonier than his old man. He was alone in a house with
two
psychos, not one!

The kid started spinning like a top. The old man started babbling something else about niggers. Tony Puente was thinking how he'd survived three months in the hills and canyons with nothing worse than a fading scar on his ass from falling on a rock with his badge in his hip pocket.

He had to think! He thought of inching his hand closer to his Handie-Talkie, of keying it open. He thought of going for his gun and leaping to his left, since right-handed people usually jerk rounds to
their
left. He couldn't swallow the spit in his throat.

"Don't
shoot!
Don't
kill!"
The kid kept screaming it, and Tony Puente was starting to hyperventilate and could think of only one thing: to take that fucking kid with him when he died!

Then the man got tired of all this screaming and yelling and jumping around, and he strolled over to a chair and made himself comfortable.

And Tony Puente leaped on his head. And, true to form, the kid leaped on Tony Puente, yelling, "Don't you hurt my dad, you son of a bitch!"

"I didn't know
anything
about guns," Tony Puente later said. "I especially didn't know anything about derringers. I had hold a the gun with one hand and managed to get my radio out with the other. And there I was with maniacs hanging all over me, and scared I'd shoot myself with this nutty little gun, and I somehow get a screaming call out to communications. And the communications operator said: 'Is this urgent?'" That evening an inspector came to the station to ask about Tony Puente's encounter with the father and son, who were both in custody and would no doubt be treated like what they were—nuts. The inspector didn't ask him many questions. He said he was glad no one got hurt. The sergeant thought it was kind of a funny deal. Ditto for the lieutenant. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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Nobody seemed to care very much or notice that Tony Puente was having trouble keeping his mouth moist.

He realized he couldn't even tell his wife about it. She'd get mad about the goddamn bulletproof vest. Tony Puente thought he might as well be back in the canyons. Things were no more real and explicable out here in the city. He came home very late that first night back in patrol. He did the sensible thing. He went to a cop's bar and got smashed.