Lines and shadows (32 page)

Once Fred Gil tried to make a stab at the old hardball, merciless kind of ribbing they used to do when BARF was new, when they were
young
, about a century ago. He found a pair of glasses and plastic teeth left over from a Halloween costume and he made himself up, like Charlie Chan but, according to Manny Lopez, looked more like a Filipino bookmaker, so Manny gave a yell to Carlos Chacon, who was married to a Filipino girl. Manny said, "Hey, Carlos, your brother-in-law's here!"

And sure enough Carlos bought it, and came down the hall wondering what the hell his brother-in-law was…

Then Carlos was looking at old Fred Gil in buckteeth and glasses with his eyes pulled back with Scotch tape, and Carlos bated his wolfish incisors, and his Rasputin eyes popped and he screamed, "FUCK YOU, GIL!"

And poor old Fred Gil and all the others began to figure out that they didn't even know themselves anymore, and much of the fun and fellowship was gone forever. They started to come to work looking like something that fell off a boxcar, or was pushed off by a railroad bull. They'd work in their yards or wash their cars or haul fertilizer or whatever, and they'd come to work. Rank. Unshaven. Eddie Cervantes, the gung-ho Marine reservist, let his hair grow way past the Halls of Montezuma and even stopped going to reserve meetings.

They'd tell their wives and friends, and fellow cops who worked patrol and detectives, that they
had
to dress and look and smell like that. That out in the canyons they had to
be
aliens. That their performances might make the difference in whether they lived or died. Then they'd look at some ex-partner who had to wear a police uniform every day and follow file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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rules of conduct suitable to the department and the city and the state and the U.S.A., and they'd say, "Aw, fuck it! How would
you
know?" The implication being that some cop brother who didn't work BARF was, in the final analysis, the same as a lizard-shit civilian. All of their paranoia, a hundred times more potent than ordinary police paranoia, was realized when Joe Vasquez went uptown to central headquarters on some errand for Manny Lopez, and was challenged by a startled uniformed cop who took one look at the scruffy, rank, raggedy-ass canyon crawler with a bulge under his shirt and drew down on him, making Big Ugly grab some air and yell, "Hold it hold it hold it! I'm a cop, goddamnit!"

Did it prove to them that Big Ugly and the rest of them had terrific wardrobes? Alas, it only convinced them they had
nothing
in common with their former peer group, and the steel ratchets tightened around this beleaguered little group and they turned inward. And then in would come Manny Lopez, fresh from a little speech to some students at San Diego State, and his thinning hair would be blow-dried and styled and he'd be still all excited, with his gold religious medal gleaming and his pinky ring sparkling and his disco duds immaculate. And he'd smell of Jade East or Brut or something, and start telling them about this little twenty-three-year-old gerbil that kept
throwing
her goddamn phone number at him, asking him if Gunslingers wear bikini briefs, because she was doing this survey.

And Manny, with a Santa Fe Corona Grande stuffed in his teeth, would be giving them his impish grin, and then someone, usually Eddie Cervantes, would say, "How ya gonna walk tonight?"

And Manny would say, "Whaddaya mean?"

And Eddie Cervantes would look at Manny with those sad, down-turned eyes and say,

"Well, we
might
get a few bandits to hit on us. But not unless you put on a wig."

"A wig? Whaddaya
talking
about?"

"Well, you ain't gonna pass for an alien smelling like an uptown whore, but maybe with a wig they might try to
rape
you."

And then Ernie Salgado, who by now also despised Manny Lopez, might say, "Hey, Manny, when do
we
get to go to a luncheon?"

Manny found himself more and more on the defensive, so he'd say, "I told you a million times, come with me
anytime.
Remind me when ya wanna go. Remind me next time, fuckers!"

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Manny Lopez was nobody's fool. He was aware of the growing envy and resentment of him from the outside
and
within his own squad. He discussed it with superiors Wee Dick Snider, who by now was under strict orders to remain an ordinary uniformed watch commander and leave this BARF business to Manny.

Manny Lopez had lots of opinions about Mexican-American cops, and when he expressed them, it was like one of his briefings. He pointed his finger like a gun: "There are minority groups and there are minority groups," Manny Lopez reasoned. "The black cops speak as one. They intimidate. Not the Mexicans. We're like fucking Arabs, always squabbling among ourselves. Mexicans're aggressive policemen, very eager to please the whites, but Mexicans aren't raised to cherish academic things, so they don't tend to do well on written civil service exams. And since they're not good communicators, they don't do well on oral exams either. They become frustrated. They can accept a white guy making sergeant, or even a black guy. Just being a cop is stressful enough, but being a Mexican cop with all these problems? And if a Mexican cop like me just happens to be a good public speaker?

They'll
never
forgive you! And here I was the head a the whole goddamn police association! Mexicans're the most jealous motherfuckers alive and
that's
what I had to contend with in my own squad. I got so I hated to come to work, not because a bandits, but because of all the nasty looks and bitching about my publicity. I
tried
to give them credit. I didn't
write
the fucking stories!"

One day Manny Lopez, while off duty, happened upon a traffic accident and pulled a woman from a flaming car. He ended up in the newspapers once again. He came to work like Roberto Duran to a prizefight. He roared in and threw the newspaper on the table, saying, "Okay, fuckers, who wants to be first to start bitching about me stealing the glory

GODDAMN CAR ON MY OWN GODDAMN TIME?"

It all started reminding people of the movie
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
, where the gold prospectors start out as bosom buddies but pretty soon they're watching each other like rattlesnakes. And it even got to that.

Carlos Chacon took to walking
behind
Joe Castillo, always keeping someone between them when they were out in the canyons at night. Joe had made
too
many comments about Carlos having shot him, and about how Carlos should be shot so
he
might learn what it feels like. And after he had a few drinks he'd say it
to
Carlos, and he wasn't joking. It had finally come down to the last reel of
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
. They were starting to fear each other more than the bandits.

There wasn't a wife who didn't want her husband to quit. There wasn't a marriage not suffering under the strain of it. But most of the Barfers were responding true to the code of file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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machismo;
they were toughing it out with the help of the greatest ally a macho young cop ever had,
booze
. Occasionally one of them would fall in love for a few weeks, or so they were convinced during this loony period of their lives.

And some of the camp followers who came looking for The Last of The Gunslingers were gems. There was one they called The Snake who was a reject groupie from another police department. She came to San Diego looking for greener pastures and a new bunch of cops. She was about thirty years old and wore cat's-eye glasses twenty years after everyone but the actors on
Saturday Night Live
. The glasses kept sliding off her nose so she was always looking at you over the top of them, but she had a great body. She lurked in those bars that cashed payroll checks for cops. When she first started dating San Diego policemen, she had only two tattoos: one was a bunch of roses on her ass and the other was her kid's name on her belly. Then she fell for a motor cop and had a San Diego Police Department badge tattooed on the tender flesh of her upper thigh.

The first Barfer to go home with The Snake was dubbed The Reptile Curator by the others. He found the motor cop's uniforms hanging in her bedroom and it made him nervous. The motor cop was a supervisor. The motor cop wore
very
big uniforms
(We who are about to
die…)
.

Just when the Barfers started to think that The Snake had no redeeming qualities, they learned of some charitable work she did. It seemed that she worked in a county home for the elderly, and she would let the codgers "touch" her, because it made them feel younger, she said. In fact, she was discovered jerking off the old coots, but nobody complained. It beat the hell out of Geritol any day.

There were also Barf groupies from solid professional backgrounds. There were nurses who worked at free clinics near the border: white, middle-class, educated. The Barfers made themselves especially larger than life with the nurses. And there were schoolteachers, also white and middle-class, just out of graduate school and looking like commencement night at Brigham Young. All clean-cut and eager.

"They wanted to teach in the poverty areas," a Barfer said, "so they came to San Ysidro to save the little Mexicans. I never knew there were people that naive about life." And then he added: "Except MS."

Perhaps the strangest of the groupies was a new one introduced to them by Fat Mindy. She'd been out of circulation for a while because she'd fallen in love with a border patrolman. He was in love with her, too. He wanted to leave his wife for her, but it all turned sour. He tried to OD on pills a couple of times which she thought showed he wasn't serious, because if they're serious, cops always shoot themselves, don't they? The Border Patrol finally had to transfer him to El Paso because the guy got really goofy over her. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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She fell out of love then and immediately into love with Ken Kelly. She liked macho guys and the King was muscular and chewed cigars a lot. There was always a bit of tobacco leaf clinging to his orange-rind walrus moustache. But it was probably his Jack Nicholson impression that got to her, with him pulling his scraggly blond hair back on the sides of his head and looking all cobra-eyed like the actor, except that Ken's eyes were blue. The new groupie couldn't resist him, and another groupie assured all of them that this girl was an all-time, world-class comer.

She'd come if you touched her with your toe, the fascinated Barfers were told. Or your knee. Or your goddamn elbow!

She looked like those aristocratic girls up in Northern Division, moist lips, moist eyes, orthodontic smiles, bodies pearly or buttercup in the sun. Girls with skis strapped to their BMWs. But she said she liked pot and ludes and uppers and none of the Barfers used anything but booze, so this made them nervous. Nevertheless, the King, who was frustrated by being forever a spear carrier, was ready for some
action
. For the "ultimate experience," as advertised by Fat Mindy.

"Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll!" Ken Kelly screamed, looking all demented. "Bee bob a doo bop, a bam bam boo!"

Ken Kelly got boiled on vodka for courage and showed up at Fat Mindy's apartment as ordered, and sure enough the new girl was waiting for him. Eating a peanut butter sandwich.

She was dressed like a Gainsborough portrait, or maybe Little Bo Peep, and when she said,

"Have some peanut butter?" it sounded like the movie he saw on television where Gregory Peck asks Ingrid Bergman if she wants ham or liverwurst and when she answers it sounds like a goddamn symphony.
Liverwurst
! Peanut butter!

And then as he was reclining on the sofa thinking he may have overdone it with the booze, she blindsided him with: "Do you believe in God?"

"Sure," Ken Kelly shrugged. "I'm a Lutheran. Why?" And suddenly she began to tremble and edge away. She got slanty-eyed and
cold
. She was turning to ice before his eyes. This very same number who could reportedly get off by touching your fucking elbow!

And she said, "I worship the devil."

"I like to raise a little hell myself," Ken Kelly giggled.

"No, I mean it," she informed him, licking her peanut butter with the darting tongue of a
serpent
. "I adore the Prince of Darkness."

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Now Ken Kelly had his turn to squirm a bit and he tried to think of something to change the subject, because this kind of woofing wasn't as funny as she probably thought it was. His walrus moustache was twitching like mad and he knew it.

Then she swallowed a capsule, and since drugs could get him fired from the police department, he wasn't thrilled about that either. Then she said, "I belong to this… society. We like to fuck."

"Now you're talking!" Ken Kelly cried. "Most a my friends also like…"

"On altars. In real churches if possible. Or when necessary we can recreate an altar." Ken Kelly suddenly started going into his Jack Nicholson impression without even trying, because he also does it when he's
scared
. He started raking his limp blond hair back over the top of his ears, the moustache flapping like crazy.

"Do you do acid?" she asked. "Or maybe peyote?"

"No, I drink beer mostly," Ken Kelly said, and his blue eyes darted toward an ominous closed door. He wondered if there was a guy behind it dressed in an iron bra and leather mask! He was getting very sorry he wasn't wearing a gun.