Rag and Bone (17 page)

He put his arm around my waist.
“Viejo,
you can look all you want, but you ain’t going to find the bright side.”

“Viejo,
huh? I must look like shit.”

“No, you look good to me, Henry. Go. I’ll watch Angelito.”

There was police tape across the door of the room that had been the last residence of the Trujillo family. A fifty-dollar bribe to the desk clerk had bought me ten minutes inside. I stooped beneath the tape and went in. The room was about the size of a small studio apartment. The tiny kitchen was piled high with fast-food wrappers and Styrofoam containers with scraps of food that released a stench into the warm, still air. A king-sized bed covered with a blue floral bedspread dominated one side of the room; next to it was a cot where I guessed Angel had slept. A sofa upholstered in avocado green vinyl, a desk, a dresser and two chairs completed the decor. Through an open door I heard water dripping: the shower or the toilet. On the white wall behind the bed was a thick, viscous splatter of blood and brain. Elsewhere on the walls were two bullet holes, far apart from each other, in no discernible pattern. The dark blue shag carpet glistened with a dark, wet stain. Droplets of blood were also splattered on the sofa and the kitchen counter. A chair had been upturned, a lamp smashed against the wall. The air still seemed to reverberate with rage. I guessed the smaller amounts of blood came from Vicky as she had been slapped around the room. She had shot him as he was coming at her from the direction of the bed, firing wildly. Two shots missed, the third hit him in the head and he fell forward at her feet.

On the dresser was a folder for Greyhound bus tickets. I opened one of them. Two used ticket stubs showed the same trip: San Francisco to a town called Turlock in the central valley taken a couple of weeks earlier. The dates seemed significant, so I stuck them in my pocket. My ten minutes were almost up. I started searching for Angel’s things. Most of his clothes were in the dresser. I stuffed them into a laundry bag I had brought with me. Beneath his T-shirts and socks I found a snapshot that I at first thought was of him, but it was faded with age and I realized it was the picture of me that Elena said she had given him. I slipped it into my pocket.

On the floor was a pair of boy’s jeans. I picked them up and noticed they had been recently patched at the knee. They were the same pants Jesusita had been sewing when I visited her three days earlier. In a corner of the room, I found the book I had given him, a baseball mitt and a baseball. I put them in the bag. Someone knocked at the door. I froze.

“Sir,” the desk clerk said. “You have to leave now.”

I hurried out of the room and brushed past him before he could object to the laundry bag.

Angel was sitting at the table, still wearing the sweatshirt I had given him and watching John cut a banana into a bowl of pancake batter. John was barefoot, wearing his jeans from the night before and an old striped button-down shirt of mine. I dropped the laundry bag on the floor.

“Hey,” I said to them. “How are you doing, Angel?”

“Where’s my mom?” he asked in a scared voice.

I looked at John. “The cops phone?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“She’s either at the hospital or at the police station. After breakfast, I’ll make some calls and find out for sure and see when I can take you to see her.”

He stared at me. “Is she dead?”

“No.”

“Her mouth was bleeding,” he said.

“I talked to the police while you were asleep,” I said. “She’s going to be all right. Look, Angel, later on I want you to tell me everything that happened from when you and mom left here. Is there any coffee?”

“Yes,” John said. “Fresh pot. Hey, Angelito, how are you at flipping pancakes?”

“I don’t know.”

John pulled a stool to the stove where he had lit the griddle. “Come on, let’s find out.” Angel scrambled onto the stool and watched John ladle some batter onto the griddle. “See how it’s making bubbles? That means it’s cooking. Now, you want to flip the pancake right when it’s cooked but before it burns.” He slipped a spatula beneath the pancake and turned it perfectly. “Like that. Now you try.”

I poured a cup of coffee. My head fell against the wall and I drifted into a half-sleep. I felt a hand on my head, fingers threading through my hair, and when I looked up John was standing beside me. He smiled, but his eyes were worried.

“You all right?”

“Tired. I smell breakfast.”

He and Angel sat down with me to a pile of scorched pancakes made palatable only by mounds of butter and rivers of syrup.

“I burned them,” Angel said in a teary voice.

“Hey, you gotta burn your first batch,” John said. “It’s like an initiation. Next time you make them, they’ll be perfect.”

I swallowed a bit of batter that was simultaneously charred and undercooked. “They’re still better than anything I could cook.”

Angel looked back and forth between us. “Does John live here now?”

“No,” I said. “He just happened to be staying here last night.”

I watched him working something out and waited for the next question, but he turned his attention to his food and ate as if famished.

“I brought you some clothes from the motel,” I said.

He looked up sharply. “How come? When’s my mom coming to get me?”

“Angel,” I said, as gently as I could. “Do you understand your father is dead?”

He froze. “I saw him on the floor,” he said. “His head had a big hole in it.”

“Did you see what happened?” I asked him.

He looked at me, tears splattering his burned pancakes, and then tossed his fork to the ground and began to wail.

When we finally calmed him down, he collapsed in a heap on the couch and fell asleep.

John glanced at his watch. “I gotta get to work, Henry.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.”

He grinned. “You would’ve managed okay. Listen, you mind if I hang on to your shirt? I’ll bring it back later?”

“Yeah, sure. Keep it.”

He got up, went into the bedroom for a moment, then came out carrying his shoes. He sat down again, slipped them on and tied the laces tight.

“You know what’s funny, Henry,” he said. “I don’t even feel hung-over.” He glanced at Angel. “Man, this shit is for real.” He looked at me. “What’s gonna happen?”

“I have to talk to Vicky. In the room it looked like she shot him while he was attacking her. If that’s how it went down, I can argue she acted in self-defense and maybe get her off completely. At worst, I should be able to deal her down to manslaughter. She could do anywhere from three to eleven years. It all depends on what happened in that room. I won’t know until I get the police reports.”

As I was explaining this to him, I realized that I had just signed on to defend my niece.

He nodded. “Will Angel live with you if she goes to jail?”

“He’s got two grandmothers who have a better claim on him than me.”

He stood up. “He’d be better off with you.”

“John, I don’t know the first thing about kids.”

“He needs a man in his life. I’d help you.”

“I don’t know, John,” I said.

His sad eyes caught mine. “You worried I’m gonna flake?”

“No, that’s not it. All I’m saying is that you and I are in the first stages of something that I really want to work out but—look, it’s like you said last night. You didn’t want this thing between us to become about your drinking. I don’t want it to become about my family. They’re my responsibility.”

“You don’t have to take the weight alone,” he said.

“Are you really ready to carry part of it? I’m not sure you know me well enough to get mixed up in this. Especially after last night.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not a flake, so I know you’re going to want to resolve your situation with Deanna.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. See, you wouldn’t know that unless you were the kind of man who took care of business himself. But you take on too much by yourself. You got to let the people who love you help you out.”

I was so tired I didn’t understand at first what he was saying. “That reminds me I need to call Elena.”

He stood up. “Other people love you too, man.” He brushed my cheek with his lips. “I won’t come over later unless you need me, but I’ll give you a call. Okay?”

Then I understood. “John, thank you.”

He grinned. “Later, man.”

After he left, I called my sister to break the news. After a long, stunned silence, she said, “Where is Angel?”

“He’s here with me. He’s all right, Elena. He was the one who called me last night.”

“Have you talked to Vicky?”

“No, not yet. They took her to the hospital—”

“The hospital? What did he do to her?”

“He beat her up pretty badly and the cops had to take her in for treatment before they could book her. I just called again. She’s at the Hollywood police station. I’m going to go see her as soon as we finish talking.”

“I’ll come tonight.”

“Why don’t you wait a day or so and let me figure out what the options are? Come down for the arraignment.”

“Do you have any idea what will happen?”

I launched into my litany. “If she shot him in self-defense, I might be able to persuade the D.A. not to file charges. Even if they do, it won’t be worse than second-degree and I’m pretty sure I can deal them down. Prosecutors don’t like going to trial on these kinds of cases.”

“If he was beating her, of course it was self-defense,” Elena said.

“Self-defense has a technical meaning in the law that’s different from its common-sense definition. It has to be proportional, and blowing away someone who’s hitting you is generally considered excessive.”

She digested this for a moment, then said, “If she has to go jail for any period of time, I want Angel to live with Joanne and me.”

“He does have another grandmother, Elena, and her claim is equal to yours.”

“Henry, have you told her what happened?”

“She may already have heard from the police, but I’ll phone her when we finish.”

“Call me as soon as you get back from seeing Vicky. Take care of Angel.”

“I will,” I said.

I tried Jesusita Trujillo but reached her answering machine. Not knowing what she had been told, I simply asked her to call me about an urgent matter involving her son and Vicky and left my cell phone number.

When I emerged from my office, Angel was awake. I sat down beside him and asked, “How are you feeling?”

He shrugged. “Where’s John?”

“John had to go to work. Listen, Angel, I’m going to go see your mother.”

“Can I come?” he asked eagerly.

“I need to see her alone first,” I said, “but depending on how she’s doing, you can either see her tonight or tomorrow. I have to leave you here alone for a while, but I’ll give you the number to my cell phone, and if you get nervous or upset, you can call me.”

“Why can’t I see my mom?”

He was a breath away from hysterics so I answered as calmly as I could. “Angel, I’m not just your mother’s uncle now, I’m her lawyer, too. Do you know what a lawyer is?”

“Yeah, he defends people.”

“Exactly,” I said. “I’m going to defend your mother, and so I need some time alone with her to talk about what happened last night and how I can help her.”

“She don’t want your help.”

“Did she tell you that?”

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “She said you think you’re better than us.”

I said, “Your mom and I got off to a bad start, but we’re family and I’m going to do everything I can for both of you.” I stood up. “I’ve called both your grandmothers. Elena will be here in a couple of days. I left a message for your grandmother Jesusita. I have to go. Look, I found the book I gave you at the motel. You can read it while I’m gone.”

“Can I watch TV instead?”

I tossed him the remote. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He switched on the TV and his eyes went blank.

I took one look at my niece in the holding cell, turned to the deputy sheriff and demanded, “Why isn’t she still in the hospital?”

He shrugged. “They released her. You want to see her or not?”

“Of course I do.”

He unlocked the cell door. Vicky was lying on a metal bed cushioned with a thin foam mattress, covered with a gray wool blanket. The right side of her face was so swollen that her eye was closed. Her head had been shaved above the ear to reveal a zigzag of stitches. Her breath was loud and raspy. I pulled a chair up to her bed and reached for her hand. Even it was bruised.

“Vicky,” I said.

She turned her face painfully until she could see me. “Uncle Henry,” she wheezed. “Do you know where Angel is?”

“He’s at my house,” I said. “He’s okay. He called me last night from a gas station across the street from the motel. They were putting you in the ambulance by the time I got there.”

She pulled her hand away. “I want my mom to take care of him.”

“I’ll tell her,” I said. “She’ll be flying down day after tomorrow.”

With effort, she shook her head. “No. Jesusita.”

She said it with no particular emphasis, which made it all the harder to hear, and I dreaded having to relay this message to my sister.

“All right, Vicky. I called Jesusita earlier, and as soon as she calls me back, I’ll ask her. I’m ready to represent you as your lawyer, but only if you want me to. Do you?”

Her assent was a passive, “Yes, Uncle Henry.”

“Can you tell me what happened last night?”

“I killed Pete,” she said.

I waited for an explanation, but none came.

“Was he beating you?”

“He was high,” she said. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Where did the gun come from?”

“For protection. Pete bought it.”

“Protection? Who was he protecting himself against?”

“Pete knew bad people,” she said. “Drug dealers. Gangbangers.”

“What were you doing in that motel in the first place?”

“Waiting,” she said.

“Waiting for what?”

Her head lolled back and forth. “I’m tired now, Uncle Henry. When can I see Angel?”

“I’ll bring him tomorrow,” I said. “Listen, Vicky, try to remember what happened last night.”