Lines and shadows (24 page)

Pretty soon everyone stopped being solicitous and sympathizing with Fred because everyone was sliding and falling on sharp stones and cactus and complaining about Fred's weight and those little Mexicans were still rolling those tires down on them, and Manny Lopez was threatening to kill every Mexican in Colonia Libertad and wishing he had a fucking bazooka! But all that was nothing compared to what was to come. When they got to the helicopter, the sheriff's deputies made the mistake of trying to load what they thought was a dying bandit first, but Manny's right eyebrow blew clear off his head and he was literally foaming at the mouth when he screamed, "Get that fucker out a there. Get him OUT!"

Manny wasn't doing Fred Gil any favors. What he didn't know was that Fred Gil had acrophobia and didn't like high places. Not one little bit An airplane was okay, but flying in a litter on the outside of a helicopter?

"Get that bag a puke out a the litter!" Manny Lopez kept yelling, and Fred Gil, who was getting weaker by the minute, croaked, "It's okay, Manny. I'll go in the ambulance."

"You're going by helicopter. Get that fucker OUT!"

"But he's dying, Manny," Fred Gil argued.

"Fuck him!" Manny Lopez yelled.

"Oh heck," Fred Gil said, using his customary epithets. "Goldang it." The worst was yet to come. Poor old Fred Gil was placed in the outside litter all right, and since it was cold and since he'd be flying for some minutes, they feared he might freeze. So they put him in a warm bag—a
body
bag. He hardly knew what was happening to him until he heard it, the most terrifying sound he'd ever heard in his life. Worse than an armed bandits who smelled like garbage breathing in your face and saying,

"Give me your money." Worse than incoming and outgoing rockets in Da Nang. Worse than a drunken father saying, "You'll never be anything but a mama's boy!" Worse than all those sounds.

Fred Gil felt like one of those poor soggy tarantulas or scorpions that the Mexican kids jarred and sold to tourists. Once strong and venomous, the pathetic insects groped and pawed blindly, not for air but for freedom. They had all the air they needed in those jars file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 122 of 256

but still they looked like they couldn't breathe. Why did their dumb tarantula and scorpion brains convince them that they couldn't breathe, just because their movements were…

Fred Gil couldn't breathe! The
worst
sound of his life. He heard a zip. The ZZZIP! of a body bag. And he flashed to Nam. He went totally utterly completely bughouse. He screamed: "WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT!"

"Wait for what?" Manny asked.

But poor old Fred didn't know for what. He was so terrified and panicked that everything was all wrong—but he didn't know why. And he couldn't think fast enough to say anything at all except: "WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT!"

Manny Lopez, who had been talking with him all the way up the hills to keep him calm, figured that was it: he'd gone bonzo, some kind of shock or something. Then Fred Gil—who couldn't sit there and explain to all these dummies that he was absolutely in stark terror of being zipped up in a body bag because of someplace thousands of miles and several years away—said, "My vest my vest my vest! I can't breathe!" And that was true enough because he was hyperventilating like crazy. So somebody opened up that freaking corpse bag to remove his bulletproof vest, and it hurt like hell but poor old Fred didn't care.

And then Manny Lopez said, "There, is that better?"

But before Fred Gil could tell them hoty much better it was
not
to be zipped up inside that dead man's bag, they did it again! ZZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIIP!

Only this time Fred shot past terror.
Way
past. The chopper took off.

"And my mind went on a little trip" is the way he told it. Fred Gil had a Carlos Chacon-type fantasy, a Technicolor wide-screen hallucination complete with Dolby sound. He fantasized that he was outside his body and could see this poor cactus-stuck, hardball, worm-chewing, bandit-busting, ball-clanging,
hip-shot
little bozo in a wire litter, hanging outside an old worn-out Italian helicopter, skimming over Deadman's Canyon at about five hundred feet, and the wire basket detached itself. In slow motion it just slipped loose because those fools didn't attach it right and why should they since they hadn't done
anything
else right and he watched himself tumbling out of the sky, basket and all. Poor old Fred Gil, a raggedy hip-shot turd-in-a-basket, tumbling end over end down into the godforsaken canyon, maybe by some terrible quirk still alive when those miserable little kids rolled the hot burning tires down on top of his shot-up carcass. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 123 of 256

But just then old Fred Gil came around from his little mind-prodding act. Because for real he could
not
breathe. He was five hundred feet above the canyons, and the rotors were causing such terrible turbulence that the body bag was snapping and popping in his face and his arms were pinned inside and the fluttering flap on the bag was sucking into his mouth! All because he hadn't let them zip it all the way. Fred Gil was going to be the first cop in the history of San Diego, and maybe all of America, to be killed by a corpse bag!

He was starting to faint when they descended and slowed. They made it. To the
wrong
hospital. But Fred Gil didn't care. They were on the ground: His face was fuchsia but he was alive. And the helicopter broke down just minutes after landing and they couldn't even get it started.

Fred Gil looked at the stalled helicopter and said, "I've
always
been lucky," to a nurse who thought he was nuts.

Another nurse thought he was an illegal alien. It was a natural mistake what with all his bloody alien rags and almost smelling like garbage himself and his wild-looking hair and not having shaved for a few days. She thought he was shot in the legs, so drenched was he by bandit blood.

When she started to undress him she discovered one of his
guns
, and screamed, "This wetback's
armed!"

But old Fred Gil had heard so many terrifying sounds that night he hardly noticed. He was more worried about the catheter that a doctor was sticking in his penis to check for internal bleeding.

"Oh, I don't want that. I really don't!" old Fred Gil tried to tell the doctor, but he was so weak and dizzy he hardly felt it.

Then they were taking X rays and sticking tubes in his arms and nose and mouth as well as his dick, and the pain got worse in his hip and some homicide detective showed up and was trying to question him when he was getting weaker and disoriented. The bullet merely chipped the hipbone without shattering either bone or bullet. The bullet missed the bladder and everything else. It was just nestled in his body, right in there over his pelvis as snug as you please. As far as the creakers were concerned, it could stay there as long as he didn't get infected from all the debris and trash they scraped off him. But before Fred Gil could say again how lucky he was, an unlucky thing happened. After they'd cleaned up all the blood and had Fred wheeled back into the emergency ward, they let Jan and the kids come in.

file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 124 of 256

Fred Gil was lying there looking at his littlest daughter, perhaps a bit dazed from the medication, when she said, "Dad, you don't have scrambled eggs, do you?" And he smiled and said, "No, my head's okay, honey."

And then he considered that.
Was
it? Wasn't Vietnam
enough
? He remembered how it felt for years after Nam. Just being happy to be
alive
. Not feeling overly ambitious. Not striving. Just to be alive with no one shooting at him anymore. Then the police department? Was it that he would forever hear that miserable hateful voice? A voice saying, "You'll
always
be a mama's boy."

Wasn't
ordinary
police work enough? He'd been one of the few who were truly touched by the alien plight, like Dick Snider. He'd hated seeing the terrorized barefoot alien children with hair full of burrs and thorns, watching their mothers weep from just having been raped and robbed in their presence. It was like Nam in that respect: suffering children. But was it worth dying for? What were they doing out there? It was one thing to get shot. Another not to know
why
. He wanted desperately from that moment on to see his little girl become a woman. It was the only thing that made any sense whatsoever. And all this was going through his head more or less incoherently when the television news crews arrived and interviewed both Fred and his wife.

He could see that Jan thought it was great. She'd loved the BARF publicity and admitted it, and now they were the
stars
. Their own show! The Lily Tomlin-Lee Trevino hour!

He could see it in her face: their marriage was lousy but this was terrific! The news team came without calling, without permission. They startled Fred Gil by asking pointed, embarrassing questions.

"It looks as though you were shot by one of your partners. How does that make you feel?

Is there something wrong with San Diego police training? Do you think more care should go into the selection of men to be out there in those canyons?" Jan Gil said things like, "He doesn't have to talk to you at all. Fred, don't talk to them if they're going to ask those kinds a questions! Fred isn't going to criticize
anybody
even if they
did
get trigger-happy!"

"I didn't say anyone was trigger-happy!" Fred Gil later tried to explain to Manny Lopez. "I never said hardly anything! It was Jan. AND YOU KNOW HOW BIG HER GOLDANGED

MOUTH IS!"

He did say something in answer to their insatiable interrogation. He said what he was
expected
to say when they asked The Big Question, which was: "Are you willing to go back out there in the canyons now?"

file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 125 of 256

He said, "Sure! Soon as I'm back on my feet. Sure I am!" And then he thought of his little girl. And Fred Gil felt old. As old as war. Along with Mexican immigration officer Luis Tamez, Fred Gil and Joe Castillo were the second and third lawmen to be shot down in the canyons. So far that made two righteous bandits and three cops. All shot by cops. One might begin to wonder what Chano B. Gomez, Jr., the tamale vendor, would think of
this
from his vantage point on the upper soccer field. All those little hardballs rolling around in Deadman's Canyon, in and out of the canyons and tunnels like so many flinty little turds. Screaming "Barf Barf Barf!" and shooting down people in the night. So far, shooting more cops than bandits. There is something about violence. Once unleashed, it usually tends to escalate.

THE BITCH

THERE WAS LOTS OF ATTENTION FOR THE WOUNDED gunslingers. While Joe Castillo lay in the hospital the next day, with his exploits spread all over the newspapers and television, he was having trouble keeping strangers out of the hospital ward. Hell, out of his bed!

In fact, just before his wife arrived, and even before regular visiting hours, one of the schoolteacher groupies from The Anchor Inn showed up and started looking at him like he was Warren Beatty or somebody, and asked if she could give him a head job. On the spot!

While young Joe Castillo was trying to deal with this little popularity perk, a television news crew caused a ruckus in the hall corridor and a nurse came in to see if the border Gunslinger would consent to an on-camera interview.

"Hell, no," he said. "Get them
out
a here!" The schoolteacher couldn't believe it. "Turning down a television appearance? Are you
that
famous?" Now she
really wanted
to give him a head job!

And that wasn't the half of it. His phone wouldn't stop ringing. A college instructor called to tell him not to worry about missing classes because he was giving Joe a goddamn A, for the semester. And every waitress from every fast-food joint and every gin mill in South Bay was asking him if he was the tall one, the heavy one, the nutty one or… Christ, they didn't even give a shit
which
Barfer he was, just so they could come and see him. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

dummy1

Page 126 of 256

It was quite a bit to handle for a lad twenty-four years old, all this attention. Of course he didn't understand that he was an embodiment of an American myth, an honest-to-God bandit-busting, badge-toting, shoot-from-the-hip Gunslinger.

All he knew was everyone wanted to give him blowjobs.

And his marriage wasn't worth a shit anymore. He was drunk half the time and the other half he was out in the canyons, or running wild all over San Diego with other Barfers who also didn't understand about American mythology. And he had perhaps the sweetest, shyest, and unquestionably the prettiest wife of any of them. She was being hurt terribly, and she would cry, which would break his heart.

Joe Castillo thought maybe it would have been more tolerable if his wife had been white instead of Mexican, and raised hell and kicked his ass like a Jan Gil would surely do, because he deserved it. The young cop was filled with remorse and confusion and ambivalence about being a real live Gunslinger.

And there was something else—his hand. It sure wasn't right. He was scared that it wouldn't work right ever again. When he was without visitors he'd get very depressed because his hand was no longer graceful and fluttering, and he discovered how hard it was even to
talk
without his fluttering hands. And he'd look over at his roommate in the next bed and say, "I'm only twenty-four years old. What the hell am I gonna do? Retire or what?"